Coeur D'Alene, Idaho Labor Confrontation of 1899 - Aftermath

Aftermath

Arrangements with replacement officials installed by Sinclair demonstrated "a pattern."

The new regime's principal patronage—the fat contract for supplying food and drink to the bullpen's prisoners—had gone to Tony Tubbs, the former manager of Bunker Hill's boardinghouse, destroyed on April 29. Likewise, most of the thirty men Sinclair hired as special "state deputies" were either employees and former employees of the Bunker Hill Company or contractors for it. Among the most prominent was a saloonkeeper named W.C. "Convict" Murphy, who'd served time for horse stealing and cattle rustling. When Convict Murphy broke down people's doors, he was sometimes asked for a search warrant or other authority, at which he would draw a pair of six-shooters and say, "These are my warrants."

Emma F. Langdon, a union sympathizer, charged in a 1908 book that Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg, who had been "considered a poor man," deposited $35,000 into his bank account within a week after troops arrived in the Coeur d'Alene district, implying that there may have been a bribe from the mine operators. Subsequent research appears to have uncovered the apparent source of this assertion. J. Anthony Lukas recorded in his book Big Trouble,

In 1899, when the state needed money for the Coeur d'Alene prosecutions, the Mine Owners' Association had come up with $32,000—about a third of it from Bunker Hill and Sullivan—handing $25,000 over to Governor Steunenberg for use at his discretion in the prosecution. Some of this money went to pay .

In his autobiography, WFM Secretary-Treasurer Bill Haywood described Idaho miners held for "months of imprisonment in the 'bull-pen' — a structure unfit to house cattle — enclosed in a high barbed-wire fence." Peter Carlson wrote in his book Roughneck,

Haywood traveled to the town of Mullan, where he met a man who had escaped from the 'bullpen'. The makeshift prison was an old grain warehouse that reeked of excrement and crawled with vermin.

Some of the miners, never having been charged with any crime, were eventually allowed to go free, while others were prosecuted. Thirty-four-year-old Paul Corcoran, the father of three and "a highly respected member of the Burke community," was financial secretary of the Burke Miners Union. The state decided to make an example of him. No one could say he'd even been in the vicinity of the crime, but some had seen him riding on the roof of a boxcar of the Dynamite Express. The prosecution, whose salaries were paid by a $32,000 grant from the mine owners, argued that Corcoran should take the blame for planning the attack on the Bunker Hill mill. Corcoran was sentenced to seventeen years at hard labor. Eight more miners accused of leading the attack were scheduled for trial on charges of murder and/or arson, but bribed an army sergeant to allow them to escape. Hundreds more remained in the makeshift prison without charges.

Meanwhile, Sinclair developed a permit system which would prevent mines from hiring any miner who belonged to a union. The plan was designed to destroy the unions in the Coeur d'Alene district. General Henry C. Merriam of the U.S. Army endorsed the permit system verbally and in writing, resulting in considerable consternation at the McKinley White House.

Surveying the situation, with hundreds of union miners locked up by the militia for a year or more — some still never having been charged with a crime — Bill Haywood came to one conclusion. He believed that the companies and their supporters in government — intent upon forcing wage cuts and employers' freedom to fire union miners — were conducting class warfare against the working class.

The editor of one local newspaper, Wilbur H. Stewart of the Mullan Mirror, dared to criticize the bullpen and its keepers. Sinclair appeared at his door alongside a major and several soldiers with unsheathed bayonets. Sinclair declared,

I find that you have been publishing a seditious newspaper, inciting riot and insurrection, and we have concluded that publication of your paper must cease.

Stewart was taken to the bullpen, where he was assigned to garbage and latrine duty. However, the paper did not stop publication; Stewart's young wife, Maggie, continued to publish the weekly. Sinclair impounded her type, and she contracted with another sympathetic publisher to continue the news. Eventually Stewart was released under instructions to end the criticism. He sold the newspaper instead.

Many populist elected officials in Shoshone County were rounded up for their support of the miners. The town sheriff of Mullan, Idaho was arrested and sent to the bullpen.

May Arkwright Hutton, whose husband was the engineer on the dynamite express, wrote a book, The coeur d' alenes: or, A Tale of the Modern Inquisition in Idaho, about the treatment of the miners, and her husband, at the hands of the mine owners and the sheriff.

Both Huttons and Ed Boyce, head of the Western Federation of Miners, had invested in the Hercules silver mine before the 1899 war. After they had become wealthy mine owners, May Hutton sought to buy back all copies of her book. Ed Boyce quit the miners union to manage a hotel in Portland.