1917 The Bisbee Deportation
The development of the American trade union movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was often a violent affair: beatings, arson, lynchings, murders, and massacres are part of labour history. On this date in 1917 a remarkable act of lawlessness saw hundreds of people kidnapped and forced on to box cars to compel a settlement favourable to management in a mining strike.
The miners of Bisbee, Arizona were represented by the radical union, the International Workers of the World. The IWW (or “Wobblies”) presented a list of demands on wages and safety that the company, Phelps Dodge, rejected utterly, thus precipitating a walkout of about 8,000 miners. The company, claiming that this work stoppage threatened the American war effort, asked for federal troops to be sent in, but President Wilson refused and appointed a mediator instead.
The mine owners came up with a daring and illegal plan. Deputizing over 2,200 men in a posse and arranging with a railway company to provide transport, the deputies entered Bisbee and arrested 2,000 men (not all of them connected to the strike or the union) at gunpoint and marched them to the trains. Two men, a deputy and a striker, died in a shoot-out. They they were given the choice of denouncing the IWW and returning to work or being forced on to boxcars spread with manure and ridden out of the state. 700 of the prisoners took the opportunity to go back to the mines and the remaining 1300, guarded by machine gun positions, were entrained and sent 170 miles away to New Mexico.
Public opinion was divided when news finally leaked out. Most assumed that the miners had provoked violence and deserved their deportation, though the federal government condemned the action. The Justice Department arrested 21 company officials and sheriffs but a court ruled that the federal government had no jurisdiction; it was a state affair and Arizona declined to prosecute.
A YouTube video illustrates the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXOVp9LLRAU