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Hellraisers Journal – Monday May 29, 1899
Mullan, Idaho – Editor Wilbur H. Stewart Arrested
From The Seattle Post-Intelligencer of May 26, 1899:
ALL THE SALOONS CLOSED
—–MILITARY STOP A PAPER AT MULLAN AND ARREST EDITOR.
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Before the Coroner’s Jury at Wardner the Books of
the Miners’ Union Were Produced,
Showing Lists of Men to Be Run Out
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WARDNER, Idaho, May 25.-All saloons in Mullan, Gem and Burke were closed today, the publication of the Mullan Mirror stopped and its editor, W. H. Stewart [Wilbur H. Stewart], arrested on a charge of publishing seditious matter. Four hundred and seventy-seven permits for employment have been issued in Wardner. The Last Chance mine started up with a small force this morning. None of the mines above Wallace have started, but many men are coming in and they win soon start.
Gen. Merriam left today for Denver, leaving Maj. Smith in command of the United States forces in the Coeur d’ Alenes.
There are now 225 men accused of rioting, confined in the new prison [bullpen] just completed here.
The coroner’s investigation into the cause of the death of two men during the riot of May 9 [April 29-The Battle of Bunker Hill, near Wardner] is still in session, and will probably last a week longer. Three hundred witnesses have been examined, and some very damaging evidence is said to have been secured against the alleged rioters. Examination of the records of the miners’ unions which were seised by the military authorities, show lists of the men who were to be run out of the country.
MOSCOW, Idaho. May 25.-Gov. Steunenberg was seen by a reporter on the southbound train on his way to Boise, and in answer to the charges made by the Silver Bow leaders and the labor assembly of Butte, Mont., to the effect that four of the Wardner miners had died since their imprisonment, he said that like many other statements made by sympathizing orders, there is no truth in it; that not a single prisoner had died, and only one had been seriously ill, and the physician in charge stated he was much improved, having been sick of typhoid fever.
The governor stated that startling evidence was being given before the coroner’s inquest, and when made public, as it would be, the world could then determine whether the condition at Wardner demanded the strong and uncompromising course now pursued.
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[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Quote Ed Boyce re Manly Blood per Gaboury 1967
“From Statehouse to Bull Pen
Idaho Populism and The Coeur d’Alene Troubles of the 1890’s”
-by William J. Gaboury
(Source: Pacific Northwest Quarterly, LVIII, January 1967, p1422.)
https://digitalatlas.cose.isu.edu/geog/mining/minewars.htm
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
(Seattle, Washington)
-May 26, 1899
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045604/1899-05-26/ed-1/seq-3/
IMAGE
The “New” Bull Pen of 1899 from
“Class War in ID, Horrors of Bull Pen”
by Job Harriman, NY, 1900
https://archive.org/details/classwarinidahoh00harrrich/page/n7
See also:
1899 Coeur d’Alene Labor Confrontation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1899_Coeur_d%27Alene_labor_confrontation
Tag: Coeur d’ Alene Miner’s Struggle of 1899
https://weneverforget.org/tag/coeur-d-alene-miners-struggle-of-1899/
For more on arrest of Wilbur H Stewart, ed of Mullan Mirror:
Search at Chronicling America
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/results/?state=&date1=1899&date2=1902&proxtext=%22wilbur+h+stewart%22&x=13&y=12&dateFilterType=yearRange&rows=20&searchType=basic&sort=date
The Mullan Mirror of Mullan, Idaho, 1899-1903
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89091103/
Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town
Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America
-by J. Anthony Lukas
Simon and Schuster, Jul 17, 2012
(search: stewart maggie mirror)
https://books.google.com/books?id=d07IME-ezzQC
The new [military] regime was acutely sensitive to press criticism. Some of the boldest attacks on the bullpen and its keepers came from Wilbur H. Stewart, the delicate-looking editor of the weekly Mullan Mirror. As he was making up his editorial page one day that spring, Bartlett Sinclair [Gov. Steunenberg’s representative in the Coeur d’Alene’s district] appeared at his print shop door, accompanied by a major and several black soldiers with unsheathed bayonet. “I find that you have been publishing a seditious newspaper, inciting riot and insurrection,” said Sinclair, “and we have concluded that publication of your paper must cease.” Stewart was taken to the bullpen, where he was assigned to empty the garbage bins and privy cisterns. But his imprisonment didn’t halt the Mirror‘s publication. Stewart’s young wife, Maggie, published it every week, and when Sinclair sent the cavalry to impound her type, she had the Mirror printed by a sympathetic publisher. Eventually, her husband was released with Sinclair’s pointed “suggestion” that he hew to the “law and order” line. Stewart preferred to sell his paper, which he did to one P. L. Orcutt, a backer of the status quo.
[Emphasis added.]
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There Is Power in a Union – Street Dogs
Lyrics by Billy Bragg