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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 4-90_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 12/5/12 9:38 AM Page 35 LABOR SPIES Union labor spies, such as Riddell and Siringo, not only provided intelligence on “the ranks of labor,” they also were used as agents provocateurs who provoked workingmen to “ill-advised action, or even violence” in order to “tarnish and break the union.”35 During the mid-1920s, some critics of labor espionage even went so far as to allege that detective agencies “agitated radicalism, formed radical labor organizations, and fomented labor troubles through paid representatives in order to make fees in exposing the movement,” and they also claimed that “prominent radicals were allowed to slip through the hands of the investigators that the search might be continued.”36 One method of “breaking the union” was to encourage indiscriminate expenditures from union funds, which depleted the union’s financial reserves and weakened its bargaining power. On March 16, 1906, a week after Riddell was elected president of the union, its members voted to appropriate a thousand dollars, roughly a miner’s yearly salary, for the defense fund of WFM President Charles H. Moyer and Secretary William D. Haywood, who were both on trial in Boise for the assassination of Idaho’s former governor Frank Steunenberg. According to the Eureka Reporter, the money was “undoubtedly the largest sum appropriated for this purpose by any union in the state.”37 A month later, the union donated another one hundred dollars for the “homeless people of California” and the local IWW gave twenty-five dollars.38 Riddell also may have been instrumental in negotiations that helped to and its secret operatives was written on plain stationery and envelopes. The letters of instruction to operatives were written with lead pencil, but the envelopes could be addressed with pen. It was a strict rule of the agency that none of the correspondence should be typewritten, because it might arouse suspicion. See Friedman, Pinkerton Labor Spy, 8-9. 35 Lukas, Big Trouble, 83, 178. Lukas was quoting from Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor who noted, somewhat later, that “Never has the private detective been used to such an extent, or with such unscrupulousness, as during the first decade of the twentieth century.” 36 Salt Lake Telegram, February 13, 1923. 37 Eureka Reporter, March 16, 1906. Steunenberg served as Idaho’s fourth governor from 1897-1901. He died on 30 December 1905 from injuries sustained from a bomb that had been wired to the gate in front of his home. Steunenberg had incurred the wrath, and lasting animosity, of labor and WFM leaders when he was governor, after he requested that President William McKinley send troops to Idaho to quell trouble in the mining camps. The military commander of the force arrested miners without preferring charges, incarcerated them in “bull pens” or stockades and shut down local newspapers. According to Horan, Steunenberg’s murder was the “climax to the war between the mining unions and the mine operators. For years, both sides had indulged in a number of savage acts. The union members bombed, shot, and mutilated nonunion workers in Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Idaho mines. The operators in the MOA – Mine Owners Associations – paid dismal wages, refused to adopt safety measures, and used their political strength to influence local and state officials to crush the unions.” Local authorities believed that Haywood and Moyer, acting as officers of the WFM, were responsible for Steunenberg’s assassination and they charged them with his murder and brought them to trial in Boise, Idaho. It is interesting to note that Haywood, who was known in labor circles as “Big Bill,” was the son of a Mormon pioneer and he was born in Salt Lake City on 4 February1869. Haywood’s father was a Pony Express rider who also tried his hand at silver mining in the Oquirrh Mountains. “Big Bill” joined the WFM in 1895 and in May 1900 he had become a member of the WFM executive board. He also was one of the founding members of the IWW. See Lukas, Big Trouble, 50, 204, 209; Horan, The Pinkertons, 469. 38 Eureka Reporter, April 27, 1906. 35 |
