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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 4-90_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 12/5/12 9:38 AM Page 39 uTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETy LABOR SPIES fostered a “them against us” mentality Park City miners. The mines were between management and workers. A former infiltrated by labor union spies. resident of Bingham recalled, “In the mines a person had to be on his guard, there were company spies who spoke their language and who carried all rumor and talk of labor troubles to the mine officials. The companies were enemies.”52 Despite the precautions that some Utah labor leaders adopted to prevent espionage, such as only electing “well known union men as officers,” they were unable to keep all labor spies from infiltrating the unions.53 In 1913, Pinkerton operatives who were working undercover in the Bingham mine made news again when they informed local authorities that Mexican laborers were supplying a fugitive, Rafael Lopez, with food and that they were endeavoring to raise the money to help him leave the country. Lopez, who had been born to a prominent Mexican family in Chihuahua in 1886, was a desperado who became the object of one of Utah’s most sensational manhunts. After killing half a dozen men, Lopez was eventually “trapped inside the Apex Mine, [at Bingham] which was smudged and sealed, and left to starve.”54 During the next decade, labor spies continued their covert activities throughout Utah. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, the departure of men for Europe created a skilled labor shortage that decreased the output of the mines. In early 1919, Park City mine owners attempted to control rising costs by reducing wages seventy-five cents per 52 Helen Z. Papanikolas, “Life and Labor Among the Immigrants of Bingham Canyon,” Utah Historical Quarterly 33 (Fall 1965): 293. 53 Eureka Reporter, March 8, 1907. 54 Carbon County News, December 18, 1913; Linda Sillitoe, A History of Salt Lake County: Utah Centennial History Series (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Salt Lake County Commission, 1998), 157. According to some sources, Lopez somehow escaped the mine and returned to Mexico. 39 |
