There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday August 31, 1916
Mesabi Range, Minnesota – “Injustices, Large and Small”
From The Outlook of August 30, 1916:
THE MINING STRIKE IN MINNESOTA
-FROM THE MINERS’ POINT OF VIEWSPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE OUTLOOK
[Report of Mary Heaton Vorse, Part II]
Under the contract system, the miner contracts to mine ore for a certain price a car load. The price of this car-load may be, and is, varied at any time according to the conditions encountered. It is the mine captain who fixes the price. According to the miners, it has been the custom to sell the best places for prices varying from the virtue of the miners’ wives and daughters to presents of drinks and cigars. So universal is this custom that any reference to the graft of the captain is received in any meeting of miners by laughter and applause.
There are at present in the hands of the Federal investigators affidavits sworn to before a notary public concerning all these forms of grafts, from insulting propositions made to the women of miners’ families to affidavits that drinks or money were paid for the job.
The miners are supposed to work but eight hours; but, instead of their time being counted from the mouth of the mine until they are again above ground, their working time is reckoned only from the moment picks are in their hands.
A word concerning raffles, which, it is alleged, is a usual form of graft. The mine captains make out sometimes as many as a thousand tickets at fifty cents to a dollar on a non-existent farm or a stove or a horse. These are offered for sale, and not a miner dares refuse.
Again, the miner has, in fact, to pay for powder, fuses, tools, spikes, but this account is never itemized. It does not appear upon his due bill, which states briefly what he is to receive for his month’s work. He is paid monthly only, which means that the Mesaba Range is run on a credit system. If a miner is discharged or leaves before pay-day, he must wait until then for his money.
These are the injustices, large and small, as charged by the miners, which have led to the present difficulty. In the coal mines the system employed enables the miner to know day by day what he makes. An itemized account of his powder, fuses, etc., is kept for him. The miner on the Mesaba Range never knows until the end of the month what he will receive. The system makes it possible for the unmarried man who can afford to bribe the captain to get the “soft places.”
As soon as the strike occurred every effort was made by the authorities to stop the strike through hired gunmen and through countless arrests. The miners have been extraordinarily patient in the presence of these hired deputies in their towns and villages. The Oliver Company, which holds perhaps a third of the mines, testifies to the orderliness of the strikers, who, however, have been given ninety days on the smallest charges.
Deep injustice has been shown by the authorities in their treatment of disorders caused by strikers as compared with those caused by gunmen. During a clash of strikers and gunmen—a clash caused by the gunmen themselves—John Alar, a striker, was shot and killed. No arrests followed his death.
On June 28 the home of a man in Biwabik named Masonowietch [Masonovitch], who was suspected of running a “blind pig,” was entered by Deputy Myron and three assistant deputies. The man was told roughly to come along. His wife started to get his shoes from an inner room, upon which she was clubbed by one of the deputies. The boarders sprang to her assistance. In the scuffle that, ensued Deputy Myron was killed, also a man outside the house named Lavalde. There were no guns among the strikers, and evidence goes to show that Myron was shot by one of his own assistants. At present Masonowietch and his wife and the three boarders lie in jail charged with murder. The woman has with her a seven-months baby.
At once Carlo Tresca, Joe Schmidt, Scarlett, and other Industrial Workers of the World organizers were arrested, and are held for murder in the first degree as accessory before the act, it having been alleged that incendiary speeches made by them caused the killing of Deputy Myron. The country is familiar with the arresting of labor organizers on similar charges.
No arrests have been made for the murder of the bystander Lavalde. The mayors of the villages and the members of the American Federation of Labor place the blame for all disorders which have occurred on the presence of the gunmen, and on the system which makes it possible for gunmen to be hired by private corporations.
Up to this time the company has refused to have anything to do with the miners. It refuses to recognize that there is a strike or that the miners have grievances.
It has maintained a rigorous course of aloofness since the gunmen were imported.
At present Mediators Davies and Fairley, of the United States Department of Labor, are on the Range investigating the situation. It is to be hoped that their efforts to make the Steel Corporation consider the miners’ grievances will be more successful than those of the miners’ representatives and those of the mayors and business men of the municipalities, whose efforts at mediation have been met with blank silence.
Mary Heaton Vorse.
Virginia, Minnesota
[Photograph and paragraph breaks added.]
SOURCE
The Outlook, Volume 113
(New York, New York)
-May-August, 1916
Outlook Company, 1916
https://books.google.com/books?id=LUlYAAAAYAAJ
-Outlook of August 30, 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=LUlYAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA1015
“The Mining Strike in Minnesota,
from the Miners’ Point of View”
-by Mary Heaton Vorse
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=LUlYAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA1036
IMAGE
Mary Heaton Vorse, 1874-1966, Spartacus Ed
http://spartacus-educational.com/USAvorse.htm
See also:
History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Vol 4:
The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905-1917
-by Philip Sheldon Foner
-Page 592, reference note #41
International Publishers, 1965
https://books.google.com/books?id=fDjyAAAAMAAJ
Note: William R. Fairley and Hywell Davies of the U.S. Department of Labor investigated conditions on the Mesabi from June 2 to September 17, 1916. Their report was submitted (presumably to W. B. Wilson, Secretary of Labor) on October 28th of 1916. Unfortunately, I have not been able, thus far, to find that report online.
Song of Mary Petrucci at Ludlow – Tom Breiding
This song, written for Mary Petrucci of Ludlow, is dedicated here to all of the miners’ wives and daughters who were at the mercy of the deputized company gunthugs and/or militarized company gunthugs whether or not their husbands and fathers were union members.
According to the miners, it has been the custom to sell the best places for prices varying from the virtue of the miners’ wives and daughters to presents of drinks and cigars.