Cripple Creek Miners' Strike of 1894 - Impact of The Strike

Impact of The Strike

The Cripple Creek strike was a major victory for the miners' union. The Western Federation of Miners used the success of the strike to organize almost every worker in the Cripple Creek region – including waitresses, laundry workers, bartenders and newsboys – into 54 local unions. The WFM flourished in the Cripple Creek area for almost a decade, even helping to elect most county officials (including the new sheriff).

The Cripple Creek strike also transformed the Western Federation of Miners enormously as a political entity. The year-old union, weak and penniless before the strike, became widely admired among miners throughout the West. Thousands of workers joined the union over the next few years. Politicians and labor officials throughout the country became steady allies of the union, and the WFM became a political force throughout much of the Rocky Mountain West.

But the WFM's success at Cripple Creek also created a significant backlash. The WFM was forever tarred as a dangerous and violent organization in the eyes of employers. Never again would the WFM have in a local strike the level of public support it enjoyed at Cripple Creek in 1894. Indeed, when the union struck the Cripple Creek mines again in 1898, its public support ended after violence broke out. During another strike in 1903–4, whose violent significance earned it the name Colorado Labor Wars, the union went up against the power of the employers and the state combined.

The union's success also altered the course of Colorado politics. Colorado citizens blamed Waite for protecting the miners' union and encouraging violence and anarchy. The backlash led to Waite's defeat at the polls in November 1894 and the election of Republican Albert McIntire. The Populist movement in Colorado never recovered.

The Cripple Creek strike of 1894 also hardened the attitudes of mine owners. Under Gov. McIntire, the government of Colorado formed a political alliance with the mine owners. Mine owners increasingly turned to the Thiel Detective Service Company and Pinkerton National Detective Agency for spies, increased the use of strikebreakers, and implemented the lockout and blacklist as a means of controlling union members. Whenever these tools proved ineffective, the state government stepped in to support the mine owners. When the WFM struck the Leadville mines in 1896, Gov. McIntire called out the state militia against the union and broke the WFM's power in Colorado.

The Cripple Creek backlash indirectly influenced the direction of American labor history. The collapse of the 1896 Leadville strike caused the WFM to sever its relationship with the American Federation of Labor and to turn strongly to the left politically. After the Colorado Labor Wars, the WFM was instrumental in launching the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1905. Although the IWW's heyday was short-lived, the union was symbolically important and the ideals embodied by it continue to deeply influence the American labor movement to this day.