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.
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mary Heaton Vorse on the Mesabi Iron Miners’ Strike in Minnesota, Part II”
