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Hellraisers Journal – Friday November 14, 1913
Michigan Copper Country – Striking Copper Miners Governed by Gunmen
From the Miners’ Bulletin of November 11, 1913:
The Miners’ Bulletin is the official newspaper of the Western Federation of Miners in the strike zone of Michigan’s Copper Country. The latest issue contains a scathing indictment of the community’s indifference to the terror being spread through-out the strike zone by the Waddell-Mahon Company gunthugs, known as “Waddies.” The strikers maintain that these imported gunthugs have been deputized by Sheriff James Cruse of Houghton County, in defiance of state law, although the Sheriff continues to deny that the imported gunmen have actually been formally deputized. The article stated in part:
When the citizens of a community show such indifference as to permit any corporation of greed to import gunmen for the purpose of intimidating the working-class of said community in their peaceful demands for simple justice, it certainly is a sad commentary on the stability and integrity of the community. It seems the people of the copper region of this state would have profited by the experience of Idaho, Colorado, and South Dakota camps in the fight for justice by the working-class. There are thousands of good, loyal citizens who could have been deputized to keep the peace, and who would have done their duty without fear or favor, but the mine companies did not want this kind of policing: they wanted the thug, the crook, and the gunman in order to create as much trouble as possible: then comes the National Guard, and the trick is done. The mining officials can then sit home in their easy chairs while the troops guard their property and scabs imported by their agents from all the largest cities in the country. Regarding Government by Gunmen, the Omaha Daily News has the following to say: “The police power is supposed to be the arm of the government to uphold law and order and justice. In theory, policemen are public servants. YOUR employees, hired to execute YOUR will.”
What are the facts?
Throughout the 1,019 square miles of Houghton county, Michigan in the copper country the policing has been subjet to imported gunmen, recruited from the slums of the great cities by a corporation of strikebreakers under the pay of the mining companies: and this Michigan instance is not unique, but typical….
Be that as it may [the abdication of popular government in the Michigan copper country], this hiring out of the police power to disreputables in the interest of greed and oppression WILL HAVE TO BE STOPPED. The alternative is slavery.
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III
https://www.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/3
Miners’ Bulletin
(MI Copper Strikers’ Official Bulletin)
-Nov, 11, 1913
Copy in possession of Janet Raye
Big Annie of Calumet
-by Jerry Stanley
NY, 1996
https://books.google.com/books?id=cXHhAAAAMAAJ
See also:
The Miners Magazine
(Denver, Colorado)
-Nov 13, 1913, p4
Waddell-Mahon Corporation “Boasting of Their Shameless Vocation”
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112043506416&seq=412
More on the Sheriff Cruse and James Waddell from:
Strikebreaking & Intimidation:
Mercenaries and Masculinity in Twentieth-century America
-by Stephen Harlan Norwood
Univ of North Carolina Press, 2002
(search: strikers “james waddell”)
http://books.google.com/…
…Houghton County sheriff, James Cruse, entered into a contract in July 1913 with James Waddell to import gunmen for his Waddell-Mahon strikebreaking agency in New York to train the deputies, protect the strikebreakers, and help evict 60 percent of the miners’ families These gunmen were “muscular men of the prize fighter variety.” Houghton County paid Waddell $5 a day for each gunman, whom he in turn paid $3 a day, allowing him a profit of $2 a day per man. Having anticipated the strike, Waddell had been on the copper range for about two weeks “looking for business.” The sheriff granted the mining corporations a blanket license, allowing them to arm as many men as they saw fit. Shortly afterward, the corporations made a similar arrangement with New York’s Ascher Detective Agency
The strikers charged that James Waddell had assumed the powers of Houghton County sheriff and “dictated everything the sheriff did.” According to the WFM, Waddell-Mahon gunmen were heavily engaged in arresting strikers, usually without cause, and transporting them to jail, often roughing them up in the automobiles on the way
Tag: Michigan Copper Country Strike of 1913-1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/michigan-copper-country-strike-of-1913-1914/
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Woody Guthrie Vigilante Man The Asch Recordings Vol. 3 (1944)