———-
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 21, 1899
Burke Miner Describes Suffering in the Wardner Bullpen of Idaho
From The Salt Lake Herald of May 17, 1899:
SUFFERINGS OF MINERS
—–
Imprisoned Miner Describes Experience In Bullpen
—–
—–
President Edward Boyce of the Western Federation of Miners has received a letter from a friend who was among the miners rounded up after the Wardner (Ida.) riots and penned up for several days on suspicion of participation in those riots. The letter gives a graphic description of the treatment received by the miners at the hands of the Twenty-fourth infantry during the days of their imprisonment and is perhaps the first authentic description by one of the miners themselves.
It describes the arrival of the regulars at Burke and how the miners were made prisoners as they came up out of the mines off shift. Without being given the privilege of changing their clothes or of getting anything to eat they were herded into box cars and taken down the canyon to Wardner Junction. There they were kept standing in their wet clothes until midnight and then driven to a big barn called the bull pen.Between 350 and 400 men were here confined in a space about 40 by 50 feet all without food and some with wet clothes. Not until noon did the prisoners get anything to eat. Then they were divided into squads of twenty-five, and each squad was given a pail of what the author of the letter describes as “swill,” and told to eat it. Some had not had anything to eat for nearly thirty-six hours, and even then could hardly down the food.
[The letter goes on:]
We asked for soap and towels to clean ourselves a little, but the authorities did not seem to think the Canyon creek people needed such luxuries, for they would not give them to us, so, with grease and dirt sticking to us, we were driven back to our sty.
The dire plight the imprisoned miners were in was, after two days, relieved through the good offices of the women of Burke, who sent down to Wardner a quantity of soap, towels, blankets, food tobacco and try clothing.
After three days of life in the “bull pen,” the writer of the letter was released, but there were hundreds who were not freed for many more days. While the miners were imprisoned, he says, the deputies from the Bunker Hill had terrorized the camp,
Insults were offered to wives and sisters, furniture destroyed, jewelry stolen, children abused, young girls threatened with arrest and the lockers and paraphernalia rooms of fraternal societies smashed and broken open.
There is no use of the state authorities or the Spokesman-Review trying to make out that the men arrested are in any way connected with the blowing up of the Bunker Hill & Sullivan mill, for you know as well as I do that the men that planned and performed that work were out of the country long before the soldiers ever got into it. The authorities themselves have acknowledged that most of the men held were innocent men.
The writer severely criticises the conduct of the negro soldiers and says that their treatment of the miners was cruel and inhuman in the extreme. Dysentery broke out among the prisoners one of the first nights of their incarceration, and when their guards were appealed to, they simply swore at the miners and refused to do anything for them.
[The letter concludes:]
Now, all friends of labor and labor organizations, in the name of our birthright, let us stand together to fight the principle now being pursued by the governor of Idaho and the Bunker Hill company, that if they cannot find the guilty, they will make the innocent suffer, as they must be revenged.
———-
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege, Ab Chp III, 1925
https://www.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/3
The Salt Lake Herald
(Salt Lake City, Utah)
-May 17, 1899
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85058130/1899-05-17/ed-1/seq-5/
IMAGE
WFM, Wardner Bull Pen of May 1899, Hutton photo 1, 1900
https://archive.org/details/coeurdalenesorta00hutt/page/n5
See also:
Tag: Wardner ID Bullpen of 1899
https://weneverforget.org/tag/wardner-id-bullpen-of-1899/
The Coeur d’Alenes
A Tale of the Modern Inquisition in Idaho
-by May Arkwright Hutton
Wallace ID, 1900
https://archive.org/details/coeurdalenesorta00hutt/page/n6
For description of the “old bullpen,” see:
https://archive.org/details/coeurdalenesorta00hutt/page/148
The Class War in Idaho
The Horrors of the Bull Pen
-by Job Harriman
NY, 1900
https://archive.org/stream/classwarinidahoh00harrrich#page/n5/mode/2up
The Story of the Bull Pen At Wardner, Idaho
-by Thomas A Hickey
SLP, 1900
Poem for Mike Devine who died in the Bullpen-page 2.
“Murder of Mike Devine”-page 13.
http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/documents/Bull_Pen_remember_the_bullpen_opt_cropped.pdf
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Working Man Sung by Rita MacNeil