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Follow
the Fire in the Hole script and accompanying images to learn
more about Bisbee, Arizona and the great deportation of 1,200 union miners;
1917.
Narrator:
In 1912 Arizona became the nation's 48th state. Like other Western states, mining had been at the core of the state's development. Arizona was riding a brief wave of labor-friendly sentiment known as the populist movement. The populists were opposed to the control of government by corporations and industrialists. The new state enacted labor laws and new taxes for corporations.
"And then the copper companies realized they had to do something. And they kind of dropped their differences and came together. And by 1915 they had a full-scale counter offensive going against the liberal movement."
Narrator:
The counter-offensive was an effort by mining interests to re-establish their control of government through power, payoffs and hand-picked candidates. By 1916, the pendulum of power was swinging back in the direction of mining interests. The change in climate was felt most dramatically in mining towns like Bisbee, Arizona near the Mexican border.
Boyd Nichol/Bisbee Mining Museum:
"The copper companies shaped the city, absolutely. Without the copper there is no reason for anybody to be here. The copper companies built the town, the copper companies were the reason for the town, copper's sway for the populous was probably, in a certain sense, absolute."
Narrator:
As Bisbee boomed with copper production, the copper companies actively recruited immigrant workers to fill the round-the-clock shifts. There were limits. Chinese were not allowed in Bisbee after dark, and Mexican nationals were not allowed to work underground. But Bisbee soon attracted waves of Southern Europeans.
Byrkit:
"They came to work for less pay. But more enlightened progressive and populist type people were here also, and they were able to use their influence through unions...and on the job arguments to make these people realize they had been taken advantage of. So they became disenchanted with the copper companies, and turned against them."
Narrator:
The workers were largely held in check by the fact that Bisbee miners had been some of the best-paid in the region. . .making up to 45-cents an hour. But the outbreak of World War One shattered the fragile stability of the town.
"Copper went up. It went from fourteen cents a pound to twenty-seven cents a pound to thirty-five cents a pound. It really stimulated mine production."
Narrator:
While the Bisbee economy boomed and inflation roared ahead, the wages of miners were held in check by an agreement between mine owners.
James
Byrkit:
"So they could see this great disparity between how they were benefitting from the rising copper, and how the copper companies were benefitting from the rise of copper, the price of copper. So the whole mind of what the war was doing in terms of economics was open and blatant."
Narrator:
The discontent was fertile ground for union organizing, and by the first months of 1917 several unions were making their presence felt in the area--including the Industrial Workers of the World.
Boyd Nichol:
"Right away, right from the start the corporate entities are tremendously anti-labor organizing. Not anti-labor, but the organization of it. I think they viewed it as any king does. . .they were going to lose their sway. They could see that the fiefdom they had controlled for so many years was being, there was change that was coming from underneath, and they didn't like it."
Narrator:
The mine companies aggressively tried to root-out union organizers. A key figure in the mine crackdown was Walter Douglas, President of the Phelps-Dodge Corporation. Phelps-Dodge owned Bisbee's Copper Queen Mine. Walter Douglas was powerful. . .and Walter Douglas was feared.
James Byrkit:
"The people were absolutely afraid of him. Everybody was afraid of him, even the Governor of Arizona won't call him by name, who is outspoken about everything else."
Narrator:
To Walter Douglas, the presence of the Industrial Workers of the World in the mine fields of Arizona was more than he could bear. In the face of patriotic fervor over America's entry into World War One, the Wobblies argued against the war and urged workers to undermine the war effort. Using wages as the key issue, the I.W.W. and other union organizers encouraged copper miners to go out on strike on June 27th, 1917.
Bisbee Daily Review:
The I.W.W. and their agents and their dupes are striking against the success and safety of our government's soldiers when they strike in the great copper mines that must be depended upon to furnish guns and shells for our armies. Such strikes are vicious, wicked, senseless and unpatriotic." –The Bisbee Daily Review
Walter Douglas:
"There will be no compromise. You cannot compromise with a rattlesnake. I believe the government will be able to show that there is German influence behind this movement." –Walter Douglas
Narrator:
In the first weeks of July, Bisbee underwent a wrenching internal split. Half of the miners went out on strike, half stayed on the job. The conflict broke awkwardly along ethnic and economic lines. The town newspaper, owned by the copper company, began beating the drum for action against the striking miners.
Bisbee Daily Review:
"Those who are not for us are against us. There can be no half-way ground. An infected sore can become a cancer if it is not cut out." -- The Bisbee Daily Review
Narrator:
Copper company officials dramatically revealed a cave full of dynamite, which they claim the I.W.W. was gathering to destroy the mines. No one doubted the company's report of mad bombers loose in the mines of Bisbee. Harry Wheeler. . .a former rough rider with Teddy Roosevelt during the Spanish-American war. . . was the local sheriff. Faced with company demands that he act to protect the mines, he deputized a force organized and ultimately armed by the companies known as the loyalty league.
Boyd Nichol:
"The loyalty league is formed and who is it? Well its half the town. And this is the great catastrophe for Bisbee, is that half the town rounds up the other half of the town."
Narrator:
As union organizers delivered impassioned anti-company and anti-war speeches in Bisbee's new park, wheeler was using the Bisbee Daily Review to organize the loyalty league into a strike force.
Harry Wheeler:
"To all deputies: remember, you are deputized for protection of self and property and the maintenance of peace. You are subject to my call, a call which will be made when necessary." -- Harry Wheeler, Sheriff
Narrator:
But a pivotal event would play out in northern arizona that would shape Bisbee's future. In May of 1917, the United Verde Copper Mine near Jerome, Arizona had settled a strike with miners. United Verde was under the leadership of James Douglas. . .the younger brother of Walter Douglas. . . .and whose home overlooked the nearby mining town.
Out of several thousand miners, less than two hundred were members of the I.W.W. But in early July of 1917 those Wobblies demanded another strike. On the evening of July 9th several hundred men, many of them miners, agreed to get rid of the Wobblies once and for all.
The next morning, armed
vigilantes rounded-up 67 I.W.W. members and forced them on a train. In the
northwest corner of Arizona they were kicked off and told never to return
to Jerome. Such deportations were not new in the American West. . .but all
previous attempts would pale compared to what would happen next in Bisbee.
On July 11th Walter Douglas
arrived at his home in Bisbee, fresh from a meeting with the governor. News
of the Jerome deportation had just arrived in Bisbee as well. That night,
leaders of the area's major copper companies would meet at the Copper Queen
Mine offices. They gave the green light to a long standing plan to kill the
radical union movement in their mines. The Bisbee deportation was on.
Nichol:
"By six-thirty, almost
two thousand men had volunteered. They separated themselves from the people
they were rounding up by wearing a white armband. And at six-thirty in the
morning they proceeded to go up and down the canyons of Bisbee. . .and they
were literally knocking on doors and dragging people out of bed at six-thirty
in the morning, rounding them up." 
Byrkit:
"Some guys didn't even have time to put their shoes on. And you would see these people being brought down the streets of Bisbee. Bisbee's on a hill, and they'd be coming down these streets downtown to where the railroad depot was."
Bisbee Daily Review:
"What a study in faces as the procession rambled by. Old offenders with sullen brows and smoldering eyes. Foreigners with heavy stolid looks and bearded unwashed faces. Sorrowful, simple, soulless faces passed like a bad dream." -- The Bisbee Daily Review
Byrkit:
"They were rounded up. Eventually close to fifteen-hundred of them. They were taken, marched to a ballpark about four miles away, and put in the ballpark and some of them were given a chance to say that they would support the company and go back to work. And once this identity been established, the train backs in very close to the ball park in warren which I said is a couple miles outside of Bisbee. And by noon they started to load the people on the boxcars and cattle cars."
Narrator:
The train, pulling 23 cars, turned away from Bisbee and headed east. . .toward the vast, rough landscape on the border between New Mexico and the nation of Mexico. In an ironic twist, the train was staffed by a union crew.
Fred Brown:
"I got out and asked the head brakeman whether he belonged to the brotherhood or not. And he told me that he did. And I asked him if he wasn't a little ashamed of the extent he was playing, and he said ‘No, we're doing this for Uncle Sam.'" -- Fred Brown
Narrator:
One hundred miles out of Bisbee the train neared the Mexican border crossing town of Columbus, New Mexico. But the governor of New Mexico had learned of the deportation, and ordered the train not to stop in his state. Early on the morning of July 13th, 1917 the train carrying twelve-hundred Bisbee union miners backed up to a flat range a few miles outside of Columbus. . .and stopped.
James Byrkit:
"They just kinda left the train without telling anybody anything. And of course all of these people had been told if they tried to open the doors and come out they would be shot. So somebody kinda looks around and they see there is nobody there. And gradually they start getting out of the cars, and there's nobody there. And here they are out in the middle of the desert. And they don't even know where they are, really. No food. No water."
Narrator:
Eventually a nearby Army unit learned of the deportation and brought blankets, food and water to the men. They found a huddled mass of men. . .tired and poor. . .and seventy percent recent immigrants from a foreign land. Only a small percentage identified themselves as card-carrying members of the Industrial Workers of the World.
With the deportation came a firm order to the union miners never to return to Bisbee. To make sure, checkpoints were established on the roadways leading to town.
Bisbee Daily Review:
"Any talk of them coming back is nonsense. They will not be allowed to come back. The business of this district is the mining of copper, not the building of schools of anarchism."–The Bisbee Daily Review
Lynn Bailey:
"Probably they were fearful of return of the agitators. Maybe they were fearful of news coverage. Everybody was stopped and questioned and they were very careful of who they let into the community for a long time afterwards."
Narrator:
On the streets of Bisbee, the members of the loyalty league and the management of the mine companies congratulated themselves on a job well done.
Boyd Nichol:
"It was a certain sense of smug satisfaction in a way. There is no guilt. They felt absolutely righteous about it."
Narrator:
But in the New Mexican desert, hundreds of men would languish for months. The nation would argue over the deportation. Some calling it the largest wholesale denial of justice and rights in the nation's history. Others calling it a fitting response to agitators during wartime. When a Bisbee doctor criticized the deportation, he was sentenced to ninety days in jail.
Most of the deported miners would simply drift off. . .a few tried to sue the mine companies. With external pressure building, in 1920, two-hundred members of the loyalty league were charged with kidnaping. . .and a Phelps-Dodge employee, Harry Wooten, was selected as a test case. The three-month trial had an endless stream of Loyalty League members proudly reciting their role in the planning and execution of the deportation. The jury deliberated less than twenty minutes before returning a not guilty verdict. Charges against 200 others were dismissed. Investigations and speeches soon faded. . .and a chapter in the nation's working history would quietly close.
On a July day in 1917, twelve hundred men were dragged from their beds at gunpoint. . .loaded on to cattle cars. . .taken to the desert and forgotten.
