NEW LABOR MOVEMENT OF THE WEST 8 THE CLASS STRUGGLE did they do? The facts are perhaps most concisely stated in the following words. Into houses they went, into bedrooms. They dragged men out, many from wives and children, many half dressed and some in pajamas. If a wife protested or asked to be allowed to say farewell, she was struck across the face and insulted. If the man protested, which very few did, he was knocked on the head with the butt of a rifle and marched bleeding down the street.
Some were found on streets, others in rooming houses, others in houses they had purchased with their savings. If a gunman was in doubt he took his man. If he met a man he owed a grudge, he took him, striker or not; it made no difference. Several houses were robbed by these gunmen. In some cases money was taken.
Gunmen returned later here and there to intimidate wives of the victims of mine oppression. Many families deprived of their husbands and fathers were left practically destitute.
And in this matter the attitude of the strikers was again beyond all praise. They preserved a calm demeanor in the face of the insults and the violence. One movement and they might have precipitated a massacre. They refrained from any demonstration and in their prison camp on the desert have been models of propriety and self restraint.
The antecedent conditions in Butte have found a counterpart in those of Bisbee as in the lumber camps. In all three cases former labor organizations had failed to do the work and the coming in of the was greeted by a proportion of the workers sufficient at all events to put the organization on its feet and to give it the immediate control. In all three cases the question of wages has been made somewhat subsidiary to those of hours and the camp conditions and working conditions have been more to the fore. Thus in Bisbee the miners demanded that the physical examination should be abolished. They claimed that the examination was used by the company doctors to discriminate against men who were supposed to have union leanings and whom they would disqualify from work by making an adverse physical report. They wished to confine two men to a machine. In this matter they take the same ground as the British machinists in their disputes with the government over the making of munitions and it is evidently an effort to prevent dilution by means of unskilled or semi skilled labor. They insisted that two men should work together on all raises, meaning thereby dangerous declivities where there is abundance of gas. This would seem to be a very reasonable provision for it is obvious that a man alone in a state of semi asphyxiation would have very small chance to save himself. They also required that there should be no blasting during the shift, which is obviously an elementary precautionary measure. The requirement that there should be no discrimination against organization members is the usual stipulation of trade unions. It is really only noticeable from the fact that it seems obvious that the strikers had no idea that they could control the work and make a closed shop of it.
As for wages they demand six dollars a day flat for work underground and five and a half for work at the surface. These wages appear large and have been made the basis of much comment, but under the circumstances they are very reasonable.
When the nature of the work is considered and the rate of profits, and the further fact that the wages have always been calculated on a sliding scale proportionate to the price of copper, which price was actually set by the employing corporation, the demand appears to be even extraordinarily conservative.
The purely agricultural unions in the Far West are yet to be heard from. Reports constantly come in of their activities and prophecies of a general rising are rife. So far, however, there has been nothing of great importance. strike was called, so we are informed, of agricultural workers in the states of Washington, Utah, Idaho and Oregon. According to the reports in the ordinary daily papers, the call was unsuccessful and the strike did not materialize. How far these reports are true does not at the present appear. It seems to be probable that there was no immediate dramatic response to the strike call though there is no doubt that the very threat of the strike will have tended much to improve conditions and to increase the power of the organization in rural communities. Speaking of this part of the world, California, while we have had no great demonstration on the part of organized labor in the agricultural industry,