Pray for the dead and
fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones
John Alar, Striking Iron Miner
John Alar, striking iron miner, was shot to death by company gunthugs in Virginia, Minnesota, on June 22, 1916. He left behind a wife and three small children. His murder was described in the August 1916 edition of the International Socialist Review:
…Twenty thousand iron miners in the state of Minnesota are making their last stand. They have revolted against the Steel Trust by going on strike, and the fighting power of these men is made up of SEVERAL THOUSAND CLASS CONCIOUS WORKERS. Their fight is your fight! The amount of support you give them will accurately register the militant strength of the socialist movement in this country.
The Socialists among the Finnish miners have been the only force the companies have been unable to overcome, as there has been no labor organization on the range for several years.
Our Finnish comrades do not confine themselves to any one line of action. They believe the miners should be organized at the point of production in an industrial union, therefore, when they went on strike they called upon the I. W. W. to help them organize and win their demands.
Experienced organizers were immediately sent to co-operate with the comrades. Before they could cover the range the men in mine after mine had downed tools. They started first at the St. James mine near Aurora, on account of unfair conditions. The mine owners refused to meet the men and war was immediately declared….
Meanwhile moves the Iron Heel, the steel trust’s Juggernaut! How deliberate and impassive its gunmen travel in armored motor cars. Private mine guards on the pay-rolls of the mining corporations have been deputized by the AUTHORITIES of St. Louis county to keep LAW and ORDER! How well these hired assassins do their work is told by the strikers in their bulletin:
John Aller [Alar] was murdered by the Oliver Mining Company gunmen at his home near the property, Thursday, June 22, 1916, at 6 o’clock in the morning. The strikers who were on picket line on that morning say that the gunmen deliberately walked into Aller’s house and shot him three times in the back. John Aller was a married man and leaves his wife and three children, the oldest being five years old and the youngest is an infant boy. They are orphaned because their father demanded a right for all of them to live. The strikers are supporting this fatherless family.
The funeral of this murdered striker was held on Sunday, June 26. The funeral rites were held in the Finnish Socialist hall at Virginia. Fully seven thousand strikers accompanied the murdered brother to the cemetery. The Catholic priests of all nationalities on the range refused to perform the rite over the remains of John Aller. It was the wish of the unfortunate widow, that the priest should officiate. The priests, however, being loyal to the master class, refused to do so, although the organizers did everything they could to obtain them. The funeral was headed by a large banner carried by four women, upon which was inscribed: MURDERED BY OLIVER GUNMEN. The Finnish Socialist band of Virginia played the funeral music and marched at the head of the parade. At the grave of John Aller, funeral orations were delivered in all languages of the strikers.
The Duluth News Tribune of June 25, 1916, described a rally held by by I. W. W. organizers and strikers following the murder of Fellow Worker Alar:
Tells of Alar’s Widow.
In a stirring address to more than 500 strikers this morning. Sam Scarlet [Scarlett], leader of the mine strikers of the range, today painted a word picture of the sorrowing widow and children of John Alar, killed by Oliver police on Thursday, which brought tears to the eyes of every man, woman and child in the audience.
He told of the hardships which the family of the dead man must bear; of how the children will be unable to secure the education that they need; of the great loss which the children will have in not having a father to go to with their little problems, which mean so much to them.
The plans for the funeral Monday are now being made and it is planned to have one of the longest parades ever held in the city, with delegations from Hibbing, Chisholm, Buhl, Aurora, Biwabik, Elba, Gilbert and other places to mourn the loss of “the departed brother.” Complete funeral arrangements had not been made this afternoon, as a brother of the deceased, who lives in Chicago, has not been heard from.
Open air demonstrations of sympathy for the dead strikers will be held in Chisholm and Hibbing in the afternoon, when it is planned to have the strikers march from Chisholm to Hibbing in memory of Alar.
The Duluth News Tribune described the funeral which was held for John Alar on June 26th:
VIRGINIA, June 26.-“Murdered by Oliver Gunmen,” were the words which first greeted the eyes of Virginians as the largest and longest funeral procession ever held in the city of Virginia marched from the Socialist Opera house and over the principal streets of the city to Calvary cemetery, where the body of John Alar, who was killed by [?] in a pitched battle between strikers and mine guards last week, was interred.
The red banner was about 12 feet wide and was carried by woman and children. The band accompanied the parade, playing hymns enroute to the cemetery. Although strict orders had been given to the strikers that they should not have a band or carry music, no interference with the line of march was attempted by police or citizens.
The banner was carried in front of the hearse and was preceded only by Carlo Tresca, Sam Scarlet, Joe Schmidt and other strike leaders with heads bowed and carrying their hats in their hands. Mrs. M. Liberattl, the 16-year-old bride, who had arrived here with her husband just as the strike commenced and who was in the Ludlow strikes, marched before the hearse, carrying a huge wreath of flowers.
The strikers and friends of the dead man numbered between 2,500 and 3,000. They did not march by the most direct route to the cemetery, but after leaving the Socialist hall, marched down Walnut street to Mesaba avenue, then to Poplar street and back to Chestnut street on Wyoming avenue, also marching on Central avenues and at other points where hundreds of Virginians witnessed the parade.
Heated indignation was expressed by a large number of civilians because of the banner carried at the head of the parade. The funeral services were held at the Socialist Opera house, which was filled to overflowing with strikers and sympathizers. Only a few carriages were in the cortege, bearing the relatives of the deceased and his immediate friends.
The services were held at the Socialist hall and it required an hour and a half for Virginia, Eveleth, Buhl, Chisholm and other range people to file past the body of Alar and look for the last time on the face of their “fellow worker.” At each end of the casket was a woman relative of the deceased, dressed in black and with black shawls covering their heads as they sobbed quietly.
Widow Breaks Down.
While the huge crowd was slowly passing the body, the widow, unable to restrain her grief, rushed up to the coffin in an almost hysterical manner, throwing her arms about the dead body of her husband, while her children followed her, crying because of their mother’s outburst, but hardly realizing what the death of the father meant. At Calvary cemetery the widow made one frantic effort to see her husband’s body after it had been lowered into the grave, making a leap to throw herself on top of the coffin, but the hands of women nearby restrained her. Friends of Alar failed in an attempt to procure the services of a Greek Catholic priest to bless the body. Alar was a Greek Catholic, while all priests approached were Roman Catholics.
Services were also held at the grave, and there Sam Scarlet [Scarlett] said:
Although Alar is dead, his spirit, as that of John Brown, goes marching on over the range country and it is teaching the people to realize the benefit which will be theirs because of his death.
Tresca Administer Oath.
Carlo Tresca also spoke and had a standing vote, which was unanimously taken, on the carrying out of the “an eye for an eye” policy.
[He said:]
Fellow workers, I want you to take the following oath: “I solemnly swear that if any Oliver gunmen shoot or wound any miner, we will take a tooth for a tooth, and eye for an eye or a life for a life.”
John G. Salties of Minneapolis, a Socialist, spoke, telling of how Alar had left his little town in Europe to come to the land of the free and that he found working conditions on the range worse than in Europe, and that the rule of a czar or a kaiser was comparatively mild.
[He concluded:]
John Alar asked for bread and they gave him lead.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tomi/Thomas Ladvalla, Strike Sympathizer
Tomi Ladvalla was a Finnish popman and strike sympathizer who was shot down by deputized company gunthugs as they raided the Masonovich home in Biwabik, Minnesota, on July 3, 1916.
Philip S Foner described the raid on the Masonovich home:
On July 3, a number of armed special deputies and armed guards, including a notorious character named Nick Dillon, a gunman in the employ of the companies and deputized by the sheriff, stormed into the home of Phillip Masonovitch, a striker in Biwabik, without warrants, ostensibly to investigate the existence of an illegal liquor still there. When they began to abuse Mrs. Masonovitch, a number of the Montenegrin boarders, all strikers, fought back, and in the general melee which followed, James C. Myron, a deputized mine guard from Duluth, and Thomas Ladvalla of Biwabik, a sodapop deliverer, were killed. All the occupants of the house were arrested. Many miles away, at Virginia, Scarlett, Tresca, Schmidt, Little Gilday and other I.W.W. organizers were taken from their hotel at 3 A.M., manacled, and placed on a train for Duluth, where they were charged with murder in the first degree. The claim was made that even though they were not within 12 miles of the shooting, they were “accessories after the fact,” since their speeches were designed to incite violence and thus caused the killing. Masonovitch, his wife, and three of the boarders remained in jail on charge of murder.
[Photograph added.]
From The Rebel Girl by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn:
Shortly after the funeral [of John Alar] a group of four deputies raided the home of a striker, Nick [Phillip] Masonovich, in Biwabik. In a letter I wrote on July 21, 1916, to my friend Mary Heaton Vorse, after my arrival on the Range, I described what had happened as it was reported to us by the strikers.
Four deputies entered a striker’s home without a warrant and attempted to arrest him. His wife objected and they clubbed her into insensibility. The husband and three boarders (Montenegrins) jumped to her defense and in the fracas a deputy, Myron, and a strikers’ sympathizer, sitting on a pop wagon outside the door, were killed. No guns were in the crowd but the deputies, and an eleven-year-old son testified that he saw the mine guard, Nick Dillon (ex-bouncer of a disorderly house), fire directly at the man on the wagon. The boarders were all shot and lay in jail wounded for days. The woman had to be taken to a hospital. The strike speakers [Tresca, Scarlett, Schmidt, etc.] were at once arrested, charged with murder on the theory that their speeches had incited violence. It is like the Ettor-Giovannitti case-except that in this state, accessories are guilty in the first degree and are liable to life imprisonment. No arrests were made for the murder of the popman; the death of the deputy is the only one the state concerns itself with.
[Photograph added.]
SOURCES
The International Socialist Review, Volume 17
-ed by Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1916
https://books.google.com/books?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ
ISR Aug 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA69
“Iron Heel on the Mesaba Range” by Leslie H Marcy
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA74
The Duluth News Tribune
(Duluth, Minnesota)
-June 25, 1916, pages 1 & 6
-June 27, 1916, page 5
http://www.genealogybank.com
Mesabi Iron Range Strike, 1916
-David LaVigne
http://www.mnopedia.org/event/mesabi-iron-range-strike-1916
Riot Revolution, Repression
in the Iron Range Strike of 1916
-by Neil Betten
pdf! http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/41/v41i02p082-094.pdf
The Railway Conductor, Volume 33
Order of Railway Conductors, 1916
https://books.google.com/books?id=KuEDAAAAYAAJ
The Railway Conductor, September 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=KuEDAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA624-IA1
“Report on Strike of Iron Miners in Minnesota”
(Submitted by George P. West to Committee on Industrial Relations)
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=KuEDAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA642
The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905-1917
-By Philip S Foner
International Publishers, 1965
Chp 22: The Mesabi Range Strike
https://books.google.com/books?id=UiScKGtes8EC
The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life 1906-1926
-by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
International Publishers, 1973
Blood on the Range, page 207
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214105.The_Rebel_Girl
IMAGES
Tresca and Alar Family, Mesabi, Marcy, ISR Aug 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA79
Minnesota Iron Miners Strike, Parade, Duluth Ns-Tb, June 25, 1916
http://www.genealogybank.com
John Alar Funeral, Banner, Virginia MN, June 26, 1916
http://ironrange.cdmhost.com/cdm/singleitem/collection/p4002coll1/id/1400/rec/4
P & M Masonovich & Boarders, ISR, Sept 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA161
Mary Heaton Vorse, 1874-1966, Spartacus Ed
http://spartacus-educational.com/USAvorse.htm
See also:
A Footnote to Folly: Reminiscences of Mary Heaton Vorse
-by Mary Heaton Vorse
Arno Press, Jan 1, 1980
(Note: my copy is Farrar & Rinehart, 1935)
https://books.google.com/books?id=rUtPJdIGrfYC
HJ Tag: John Alar
https://weneverforget.org/tag/john-alar/
HJ Tag: Thomas Ladvalla
https://weneverforget.org/tag/thomas-ladvalla/
HJ Tag: Biwabik MN
https://weneverforget.org/tag/biwabik-mn/
Hellraisers Journal: George P West on Mesabi Iron Range Strike: 1000 Gunthugs Deputized by Sheriff Meining
https://weneverforget.org/hellraisers-journal-george-p-west-on-mesabi-iron-range-strike-1000-gunthugs-deputized-by-sheriff-meining/