Fire and Brimstone by Michael Punke

Author:Michael Punke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hyperion

Beyond the merit of their specific demands, strike leaders knew that ultimate success would depend on the meticulous execution of a highly disciplined strategy. Two elements of this strategy were key. First, the new Metal Mine Workers’ Union would have to walk a precarious middle ground between two feuding labor camps of the day—the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The internal labor divisions that had helped to doom the miners in 1914 were more potent than ever by 1917. One battle for workers’ loyalty would play out in Butte, but such local eruptions were part of a struggle on a national scale.

To the right stood the American Federation of Labor. Butte miners in 1917 were highly suspicious of the AFL and its various affiliates. It was, after all, disdain for this more conservative wing of the labor movement—and its failure to stand up against repeated Company abuses—that created the context for the destruction of the Miners’ Union Hall in 1914 (and its aftermath, the demise of unions in Butte). Despite these deep suspicions, the new union considered an offer to affiliate with the AFL. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, the AFL was a major national power with the potential to bring national-scale labor solidarity to bear. There was also the possibility—precisely because the AFL was viewed as relatively moderate—that the Company would negotiate with it.22

Even as the new Metal Mine Workers’ Union contemplated the best way to deal with the AFL, they faced a far more difficult challenge on their left flank from the Industrial Workers of the World, usually referred to as the “IWW” or the “Wobblies.” Founded in 1905 and headquartered in Chicago, the IWW was a radical, communist-oriented labor organization. Its constitution embraced the “historical mission of the working class to do away with capitalism.” For its strategy, the IWW advocated the formation of “One Big Union,” which would take down the capitalist system through a massive general strike.23

The IWW formally arrived in Butte with the establishment of a “propaganda league” in 1912. The organization made an early mark, ironically, not as a thorn in the side of the Company, but as a thorn in the side of Butte’s then-powerful socialist party. The socialists had actually managed to elect one of their own as Butte’s mayor in 1911 and 1913. The IWW attacked him relentlessly as insufficiently pure.24

The Wobblies flourished in the labor vacuum created after 1914. As more temperate alternatives failed, the IWW emerged as a ready and organized alternative, with the miners increasingly susceptible to “the hypnotic influences of any ‘ism’ that is liable to develop a leadership that can weld and steer.”25 By 1917, the Butte IWW had formed its own union. The Company, of course, did not recognize it, but by one report its local membership may have numbered more than a thousand.26 At the time of the North Butte disaster, the IWW already was actively involved in a strike that had shut down a

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