Hi, I’m the History Guy. I have a degree in history and I love history,
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One hundred and twelve years ago today, on December 30th 1905, retired former Idaho
Governor Frank Steunenberg went for a walk around his neighborhood in Caldwell Idaho,
through nearly 10 inches of December snow. As he strolled that frigid December morning, you can
imagine that like millions of others, that he was thinking about the possibilities for the new year.
When he returned home he opened the side gate to his yard; and it exploded. While he was gone,
someone had rigged the gate with several sticks of dynamite. Blown nearly ten feet in the air,
the governor was grievously injured, and died in his home later that day. The assassination
of Frank Steunenberg made national headlines in its day, and the trial that followed,
a national sensation, included some of the most famous advocates of the day, arguing over one of
the most contentious issues facing the young nation. It is a story of the wildest part
of the Wild West, and a part of the nation's history that many people would rather forget.
And yet this now nearly forgotten political assassination, deserves to be remembered.
As much as we think of the West in terms of cowboys and Indians, outlaws and lawmen,
and settlers crossing the nation in their covered wagons, the history of development in the American
West was actually largely driven by minerals. Discovery of gold in California in 1849, the famed
Gold Rush, drove the westward expansion and the overall development of the United States, perhaps
more than any other single event. The California Gold Rush was followed by many more, from the
Black Hills of South Dakota, to Tombstone Arizona, to the Alaskan Klondike. Many US western states,
including Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, Montana, North and South Dakota, and Alaska,
were originally settled not by farmers, but by miners and prospectors. And while many of those
miners headed west hoping to strike their fortune, the vast majority ended up working in a profession
that was dangerous, grueling, and where power was concentrated in the hands of the mine owners.
Attempts to unionize labor in the American mining industry began as early as the 1860s,
although early attempts tended to be short-lived responses to specific complaints. In response,
mine owners formed Mine Owners Associations, intended to protect the interests of the mining
companies. A seminal event in the escalating conflict was a labor strike in Coeur d’Alene
Idaho, in 1892. The central labor complaint had to do with automation replacing miners, and reducing
wages. But the situation escalated when it was discovered that the Mine Owners Association had
infiltrated the Miners Union with a detective, allowing the mine owners to out maneuver many
of the union's plans. The use of these so-called labor spies, in this case a detective from the
famous Pinkerton agency named Charlie Siringo, was a particular bone of contention. The discovery of
the labor spy led to a violent confrontation, with striking miners exchanging gunfire with
mine guards, and replacement workers called strike breakers. Three people were killed,
and 17 injured in the violence. In response, Idaho Governor Norman Bushnell Willey,
declared martial law, deploying both troops of the Idaho National Guard, and later federal
troops. Many union members were confined without formal charges in the four months of martial law.
The heavy-handed response resulted in the formation of a new, better organized and
more militant union organization, called the Western Federation of Miners. The WFM would then
play a central role in the many violent mining labor disputes in the United States and Canada,
in the latter part of the 19th, and early part of the 20th centuries. The WFM led strikes in Cripple
Creek Colorado in 1894, and Leadville Colorado in 1896, both of which resulted in the deployment of
the Colorado National Guard. While the former was largely successful in achieving its goals,
the latter was not, and resulted in an evolution into a smaller, more radically socialist, and more
violent WFM. This would set the stage for another labor dispute in Coeur d’Alene in 1899. In 1896,
Idaho had elected a new governor, a former newspaper editor named Frank Steunenberg, the
36 year-old Steunenberg had won the nomination for both the Democratic, and the Populist Party, and
had won the election on the back of significant union support. He was the first Idaho governor
who was not a Republican, and mining company fears that he would not support them in a labor dispute,
was enough to cause them to raise wages. He easily won election to another two-year term, in 1898.
But trouble flared in 1899, the Western Federation of Miners was having a dispute with two mining
operations that chose to pay a lower wage, and operate only with non-Union miners. The
WFM perceived these two mining operations to be a threat to their wage scale. On April 29th 1899,
Union members from the WFM used nearly 3,000 pounds of dynamite to destroy a mill belonging
to the Bunker Hill Mine. So much dynamite was needed that the Union men commandeered a train
at gunpoint to move it all. The mill contained a huge concentrator, used to refine ore into silver,
in the blast, the WFM destroyed the most expensive piece of mining equipment in the United States,
worth more than a quarter million dollars at the time. The local sheriff supported the Union,
and did nothing to prevent the violence. Shocked by the extent of the damage,
and the lawlessness, Steunenberg appealed to President William McKinley for federal troops,
declaring Shoshone County, where the event had occurred, to be in a state of insurrection,
and rebellion. Once again martial law was declared, the response was heavy-handed,
including indiscriminate arrests where hundreds of men were herded into so-called bullpens
without trial, or the right of habeas corpus. Some were held in inhuman conditions for as
much as a year. Politicians sympathetic to the Union cause were arrested, newspapers critical
to federal response were closed down, the power of the WFM in the area was broken.
One of the Union supporters was convicted of murder in the death of one of the Bunker Hill
employees, and several were convicted of the federal crime of interfering with the mail,
for the abduction of the train used to carry the dynamite. For his action declaring martial law,
Steunenberg was seen as a traitor by the Unions that had helped to elect him. He did not seek
reelection in 1900, but enmity against him clearly remained. Five years later when he
was killed by the booby trap on his gate, the WFM immediately fell under suspicion in
the assassination. Two days after the explosion, January 1st 1906, a suspect was arrested. The man,
named Harry Orchard, had been staying at a local hotel, a waitress reported that he had acted
suspiciously on the day of the bombing. A search of his hotel room found further evidence that
he had made the bomb. The lead investigator, a famous Pinkerton detective named James McParland,
convinced Orchard that he would be better off if he became a witness for the state.
Orchard then told an astounding tale. Not only had he killed Governor Steunenberg,
but he admitted to 17 other murders, all the behest, he claimed, of the leadership of the
Western Federation of Miners. The trial of WFM leader Big Bill Haywood, held in 1907,
was one of the most dramatized of the day. Called by the press, “The greatest trial of modern time”.
One question regarding the mine leaders' arrests in Colorado went all the way to the United States
Supreme Court. The prosecution included future US Senator William Borah, and the WFM leaders were
represented by the legendary attorney Clarence Darrow. After nearly a three-month trial,
Haywood was acquitted, largely because Orchard's testimony could not be corroborated. In the end,
only Harry Orchard was convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.
The trials of the three WFM leaders in the assassination of Frank Steunenberg
ended up being sort of a watershed in the American Labor Movement. While the trials
themselves offered plenty of drama, and there were accusations of misconduct on both sides,
they ended up being sort of trials on the idea of organized labor in the United States. And the
acquittals represented not just the fact that the jurors could objectively appreciate facts,
but also showed the growing sympathy for the Populist Movement in the Western United States.
Still there are many who argued that the jurors were intimidated, that they were afraid that their
families would face violence if they convicted, and to this day there's still disagreement over
whether the WFM was involved in Steunenberg’s murder. Ironically, the acquittals might have
represented sort of a death knell for the radical tactics of the WFM, exhausted after years of
violent confrontations, including the notorious Colorado Labor Wars in 1903 and 1904, labor had
soured on violent tactics. And the acquittals themselves showed that labor members could get
fair trials in the United States, which itself undercut much of the rationalization that was used
to justify those violent tactics. In embracing more radical socialism had alienated many of the
former allies of the WFM, and so by the 1910s, the Western Federation of Miners had lost its position
as a leading voice in the Labor Movement in the Western United States. In 1916, they changed their
name to the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, and enjoyed a brief resurgence
in the 1930s and 1940s, but their association with socialism cost them during the Red Scare of
the 1950's. And finally with declining influence, they merged with the Steel Workers Union in 1967.
Harry Orchard was sentenced to life in prison for the murder, and died in the
Idaho State Penitentiary in 1954 at the age of 88. He maintained throughout his life that his
confession, and implication of the WFM leadership was true. Big Bill Haywood's Fame in the Labor
Movement grew after his acquittal, he eventually split with the WFM as the Union moved away from
more radical socialism, and aligned himself with the Industrial Workers of the World,
which he'd helped to found. In 1918, he and over a hundred other members of the IWW were arrested,
under the Espionage Act, for instigating a labor strike during wartime. Facing up to 30 years in
prison, he skipped bail, and fled to Russia, where he became an ally of the Bolsheviks;
he died in Russia in 1928. The once Trial of the Century has largely faded from the
national memory, as has the period of violent labor confrontations at the turn of the 20th
century. And yet, that period, when violence was common on both sides,
represented significant changes in American culture, and law, and established the Industrial
Labor Movement in the United States. And for that reason alone, that assassination
of Frank Steunenberg, on a frigid December morning in 1905, deserves to be remembered.
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