The Leadville miners' strike was a labor action by the Cloud City Miners' Union, which was the Leadville, Colorado local of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), against those silver mines paying less than $3.00 per day . The strike lasted from 19 June 1896 to 9 March 1897, and resulted in a major defeat for the union, largely due to the unified opposition of the mine owners. The failure of the strike caused the WFM to leave the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and is regarded as a cause for the WFM turn toward revolutionary socialism.
Silver was discovered in Leadville, Colorado in the 1870s, initiating the Colorado Silver Boom. The Leadville miners' strike in 1896-97 occurred during rapid industrialization and consolidation of the mining industry. Mine owners had become more powerful, and they resolved not only to defeat the strike, but also to eliminate the union. The local union lost the strike and was nearly dissolved, marking a turning point for the local union's parent organization, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM).
The defeat forced miners to re-assess their tactics and their union philosophy. Although the federation was birthed as the result of a violent struggle and had engaged in a militant action in the Cripple Creek District in which miners used gunfire and dynamite, the organization's disposition and its Preamble envisioned a future of arbitration and conciliation with employers. After the Leadville strike, WFM leaders and their followers adopted radical politics and were open to more militant policies, breaking with the conservative, craft union based American Federation of Labor in the East.There is a difference between union militancy and union radicalism. Some of the most conservative unions have been quite militant. Unions can be militant in their tactics to preserve or protect the status quo, whether that be wages, jobs, or rights. When a union becomes radicalized, it invests philosophy and possibly resources toward the goal of changing the system.
History
The union local in the Leadville mining district was the Cloud City Miners' Union (CCMU), Local 33 of the Western Federation of Miners. The Leadville strike was the first real test for the Western Federation of Miners, and the first strike into which the WFM poured significant resources. Coming just two years after the Federation's victory at Cripple Creek, the Leadville strike represented a significant hope that the mineworkers could solidify their power and continue their dramatic growth.
Impact of industrialization
Miners working in the industrial enterprise of underground metal mining often came from non-industrial backgrounds. Placer mining was gradually replaced by lode mining from 1860 to 1910, forcing miners to go deeper underground and resulting in an increasing level of industrialization. Tensions resulted from changing demands for job skills and work discipline.
By 1900, there were more than 4,000 miners in Leadville. Colorado's annual mining industry death rate in the 1890s was almost six deaths per thousand workers. As a death rate quoted for miners, the statistics were believed understated because they included surface workers as well as underground workers.
Before the 1890s, many hard rock mines were owned by the miners who had discovered them. Owners who had been miners were often more sympathetic to the concerns of miners. But the higher cost of industrialization changed that. The typical mine owners of the 1890s started out as bankers, managers, and businessmen who had never entered a mine, and whose primary concern was profitability. Lode mining took capital, and investors from the east and west coasts, and even from Europe, were actively courted. When the Colorado Legislature passed a law in 1887 prohibiting foreign ownership of real estate in Colorado, mine ownership was excepted.
Miners had long believed that they were treated poorly. For example, in 1894 a Leadville mine owner instructed the superintendent of the mine to delay a payday for the miners so that a dividend could be paid to stockholders. The WFM had advocated the eight-hour day since its founding convention in 1893. Some miners had the shorter hours, and public employees and building trades workers in Denver had won the eight-hour day as early as 1890. Yet in 1896, hoisting engineers in Leadville were required to work twelve-hour shifts. Mines were more dangerous as they were dug deeper; it was increasingly recognized that poor working conditions as well as longer hours could be correlated with poor health. In 1889 two Leadville workmen were sent to Denver to testify in favor of a mine inspection bill. Although it passed, it made no difference that year because the legislature failed to fund it.
Strike issues During the financial crisis of 1893, the price of silver slumped, and to offset the lower silver price, mine owners cut wages for Leadville miners from $3 per day, down to $2.50 per day ; for a twelve-hour shift, an hourly wage of $0.21 . By 1896, mine owners had raised the daily wage of most miners back to $3, but about a third of the workers were still receiving $2.50.
In May 1896, representatives of the CCMU asked the mine owners for a wage increase to bring all mine workers back up to the old wage of $3 per day. The union felt justified, for fifty cents a day had been cut from the miners' wages during the depression of 1893.
Some believed it was a bad time to demand a wage hike, because the economy hadn't yet fully recovered from the downturn. One mine owner claimed "we have not made a dollar in two years." But others observed that by 1895, Leadville mines posted their largest combined output since 1889, and that Leadville was then Colorado's most productive mine camp, producing almost 9.5 million ounces of silver. The mine owners "were doing a lot better than they wanted anyone to know." Mine owners Eben Smith and John F. Campion were writing letters discussing mine expansions and upgrading operations, such that "both men seemed, in their writing at least, to remain remarkably unconcerned about their overall financial prospects." Campion was attempting to purchase Italian marble, and other luxuries for his home during the strike.
The strike
On 26 May 1896, a union committee went to several mine managers to propose that the $3 daily wage be restored to the lower-paid workers, but all the mine managers they spoke to refused. From the start, mine managers and owners took the position that they were meeting and negotiating with miners, and refused to acknowledge that the miners were union representatives. A union committee again met with a group of mine managers on 19 June, and was again rebuffed, although some managers said that they would consider the idea. That evening, a union meeting attended by about 1,200 miners voted almost unanimously that all workers receiving $2.50 per day should go on strike. The strike began that night with the 11:30 shift change, and by the next day, 968 miners had walked out, shutting down a number of mines.
The mine owners retaliated with a lockout of all the rest of the Leadville mines, so that by 22 June, the entire mining district was idled, with a total of about 2,250 mine workers out of work. The mine owners turned off the dewatering pumps and allowed the mines to start to fill with water, showing that they were prepared for a long strike.
The forces arrayed
Many miners in the West trusted the Western Federation of Miners to stand up to industrialists. But the employers had the upper hand, and only a "remarkably resilient and cohesive" union could withstand and defeat them.
The employers
On June 22, in addition to agreeing to the lockout, the mine owners signed a secret written agreement to maintain a unified front against the union. They agreed that none of them would recognize the union or negotiate with it, and that no participant would agree to any concessions except by majority vote of the owners. The arrangement was later revealed in a report by the Colorado State Legislature.
Leadville city officials had been elected on the "Citizen's ticket," which favored the mine owners. The owners therefore had the cooperation of the city police, and most business, and other community leaders. The Leadville city police took the side of the mine owners. The sheriff of Lake County, on the other hand, had been elected on the "Populist ticket," which was pro-union.
Leadville mine owner John Campion hired labor spies from both the Thiel Detective Agency and the Pinkerton Agency to spy on the union. Campion hired additional spies to report on activities of replacement workers imported from Missouri. The total number of undercover company agents varied from one to four throughout the strike. The effective spy network ensured that mine owners had a complete and accurate description of union plans and activities, as well as the opinions and attitudes of union members. They implemented not just a lockout, but also a blacklist. They sought to co-opt union activities, and when their spies discovered divisions among the strikers, they exploited them.
During the strike in Coeur d'Alene just four years earlier, mine owners "claimed that they accepted miners' unions and were willing to work with them". In Leadville, mine owners essentially denied that unions had any right to exist. The owners refused to use the word "union". Their communications were addressed to miners, rather than to their organization. Some owners of mines with dewatering pumps may have threatened to turn off the pumps, flooding adjacent interconnected mine workings, along with their own, to keep the adjacent mines from meeting the union demands.
The union
In 1896 the Western Federation of Miners was already thought by contemporaries to be radical and militant, but was in fact dedicated to essentially conservative goals: decent wages paid in legal tender rather than scrip, health care for miners, restrictions on cheap immigrant labor, the disarming of detectives, and friendly relationships with employers. They envisioned an eventual end to confrontation and strikes.At the time, detectives were almost invariably private detectives. The WFM was unprepared for the determination and power that mine owners would bring to bear during struggles for union rights.
The Cloud City Miners' Union faced a difficult challenge. Their foes were wealthy and powerful, with the financial ability to lock out the miners, and to close down operations for months. Miners were faced with a loss of credit from local businesses.
The union membership contained internal rifts which came out under the pressure of a strike. National and ethnic divisions and differences in union philosophy were exacerbated by inadequate resources. There was distrust of the union leadership, as well as suspicion and jealousy over outside federation staff who were paid a salary higher than the strike allowance received by miners. Ethnicity was a major factor. A majority of the members were Irish-American, and they elected a union leadership which was almost entirely Irish-American. Other ethnicities, particularly the Cornish, resented the Irish monopoly on leadership positions, and suspected the Irish leadership of running the union to benefit Irish miners at the expense of Cornish miners and others. Local leaders sometimes resorted to coercion to maintain loyalty among some ethnic groups of miners.