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Tuesday January 16, 1906
Caldwell, Idaho - Harry Orchard Committed on Charge of Murder

From today's edition of The Wichita Daily Eagle:

ORCHARD TO STAND TRIAL
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Committed On Charge of Murdering Ex-Governor Steunenberg.
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Boise, Idaho, Jan. 15.-At Caldwell today Probate Judge Church committed Harry Orchard on the charge of having murdered ex-Governor Frank Steunenberg. The defense offered no testimony. The most important witness today was Andy Johnson, a Boise officer who talked with Orchard several times before and after his arrest. He had a collection of exhibits connected with the case.

Julian Steunenberg, son of the former governor, testified that a man whom he identified as Orchard, came to him or Wednesday before the murder and asked when his father would be home. He said he had a deal with his father for some sheep and was anxious to see him. The boy told the man his father would be back Friday night.

Among the witnesses was A. Ballantyne, a Caldwell business man, who saw Orchard a few minutes before 6 on the night of the murder, not more than 45 minutes before the bomb was exploded. He testified that Orchard was in a nervous state. He failed to answer questions, and otherwise gave evidence of being under some strain.

Chemist Jones, of the state university, who has analyzed the powders and other materials found in Orchard's room and in his trunk, was not called. No hint of the result of his investigations has leaked out.

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[Photograph of Harry Orchard and paragraph breaks added.]

The author of the following diatribe against the Western Federation of Miners is not identified. But one wonders if that author could be James McParland, Chief Detective of the Pinkerton's Denver agency. The article paints the Western Federation of Miners as a terror-promoting organizations, and insists that they are following in the tradition of the "Molly Maguires."

Reading the following, one might well wonder if another frame-up of union men is in the making.

Hellraisers presented part one of the article yesterday and concludes today with part two.

From The Inter Ocean of January 14, 1906:

STEUNENBERG MURDER ALARMS ENEMIES OF
WESTERN FEDERATION.

[Part Two.]
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DENVER, Colo. Jan. 12-

[.....]

So the strike was declared [in Idaho] in 1899. At a later date, during a congressional inquiry, 500 witnesses told a story of lawlessness and crime that equaled if it did not exceed the black history of the Molly Maguire" ascendancy in Pennsylvania......

There were twelve mines, employing 2,500 men in the region which the unions assumed to control. Agitators began their activities by trying to unionize the labor engaged in these twelve mines and to enforce an equality of wages without reference to the comparative case or difficulty of the work in them....

Real Trouble Begins.
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Miners in Idaho Bullpen March with Wooden Rifles, 1899
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The union miners made easy conquests in most of the mines, but they found a hard nut to crack when they came to deal with the managers of the Helena-Frisco at Gem and the Last Chance and the Bunker Hill mines closed down rather than to yield, and, after parleying ineffectually with the locked out union men, imported a lot of new men from Lake Superior and other places.

The advent of these nonunion men was the signal for a general attack all along the line. The newcomers were subjected to all kinds of torture, but the company held out until one night the water was drawn from the flume of the mill and 200 pounds of stolen dynamite was slid down the penstock to the water wheel.

John A. Finch, the operator of the mine, testified at the Congressional hearing that "the explosion that ensued blew the mill into kindling wood and scattered the forty nonunion men like rabbits. As they ran they were shot down like dogs by the 500 union men lying in ambush for them. Five or six were killed. I cannot say how many were wounded, and the desperate fellows made a demonstration that for a time frightened all the mine owners into submission."

Four or five men had been witnesses of the cowardly act and they were rapidly corralled and marched at gun point out into the barren mountain wilderness. On bended knees in the snow the witnesses were made to swear that they would never reveal what they had seen, and then they were abandoned to their fate in the wilds and threatened with death if they entered any town where a union existed. Some of them were found a day later, huddled around a fire in a gorge which the driving snow had overlooked.

Evidence of the terror with which the men who had committed these outrages were regarded is furnished in the fact that a reward of $10,000 for the apprehension of Kneebone's murderers brought forth not a single revelation.

A mining camp incident a few days later furnished even more striking evidence of the reign of terror. Fifty men sat at midnight in the dryhouse of the Standard shaft awaiting a change of shifts, when two armed men threw back the door.

"Follow us!" they commanded, as they pointed their revolvers at "Dan" Conners, a shift boss, who was lying stretched out on a bench. Not one of the fifty men stirred to save their boss, nor to go to the door to see what became of him. He was given three days to leave the country and he stood not on the order of his going.

A more striking case was that of a man named Whitney, brought from Butte to take charge of the Frisco company's mill. In less than three days he had been ordered to leave the country, but he laughed at the threat and went on with his work. One night thirty men broke into his cabin, dragged him from his bed, and marched him through the streets of Gem. The whole town was aroused by the commotion and looked on from windows and doors. Yet in all that town there was not one brave enough to lift his voice to save the man at the head of the procession of death. He was run down a railroad track by a jeering and howling mob and in a secluded spot was shot to death. This time a reward of $17,500 for information concerning the identity of the murderers brought not one accusing witness.

It was not long before the reign of terror caused every mine in the district, with one exception, to yield to the demands of the strikers. Only the Bunker Hill, well named, remained obdurate. The mine belonged to the Crockers, the McCormicks of Chicago. and D. O. Mills of New York. The superintendent, named Burbridge, resolutely refused to deal with the union. The company paid dearly for its contumacy.

A succession of acts of violence compelled Burbridge to organize his men into a militia company and drill them for action. The state supplied the rifles. Burbridge, in the eyes of the strikers, became the most obnoxious man in the district. If politics could enter into it he was all the more unpopular because he was a Republican and the sheriff (Young) and the three county commissioners were "middle of the road" Populists and in sympathy with the miners.

Here came the climax of lawlessness in the Coeur d'Alene. Before daylight one April morning the miners met in a darkened room and there received masks and revolvers. Then they were marched seven miles in solid column to a field, where rifles were handed out.

The next step was to seize an early morning train on the Northern Pacific railroad running between Wallace and Burke. The train crew was forced to go to Glen and Wardner, the latter on another railroad, and pick up crowds of strikers and take on eighty boxes of dynamite. There were 2,000 men in crowded box cars at Wardner. Three hundred of them wore masks and carried rifles.

Then began the advance on the Bunker Hill mine. Sheriff Young had swung on the last car, and when the crowd disembarked near the Bunker Hill mill he read the riot act. Only jeers answered this formality, and then the sheriff was seized and marched to a box, in which he was made to stand in a corner with his face to the wall.

This done, the union strikers deployed over the mill grounds, and scouting parties were sent to the foothills to coral nonunion men trying to escape. An unsigned dispatch had warned Burbridge of the attack, and he had advised his men to run for it.

In the meantime the eighty boxes of dynamite had been carried to the mill. There was a terrific explosion that shook the hills, and the $250,000 mill went up in the air in splinters of match size.

A few prisoners had been brought in from the foothills, and these were told to run for their lives, the strikers shooting at them as they scampered away. One fleeing man named Cheyne rolled over in the dust, dead.

The next morning the dynamiters were at their places in the mines, acting as if nothing had happened.

The lawlessness that culminated in this outrage could no longer be tolerated. Governor Steunenberg sent Bartlett Sinclair, the State auditor, and a trusty, brave man of his own caliber, to make an investigation. Sinclair had power to act, and he called for federal troops, which were sent under General Merriam.

These troops picketed the mines, and by a firm but patient policy the mine owners again came into their own.

Meanwhile Sheriff Young and the three county commissioners were removed. Dr. Hugh France, coroner of the county, became the sheriff. The doctor had gone West from Bellevue, New York, and was also superintendent of the Bunker Hill's hospital.

The new sheriff, the State Auditor, and General Merriam all went on the theory that all union miners in the region were participes criminis, and they were arrested as fast as they could be picked up. Dr. France went around with the soldiers, he to point them out and they to arrest. Soon there were 500 prisoners, and then the "bull pen" sprang into existence. This was a barrack-like structure of wood, partly surrounded by a stockade, and guarded by soldiers who were encamped near by. The prisoners slept on straw and made themselves as comfortable as possible in an uncomfortable place.

Four of the men confined in the "bullpen" were the deposed sheriff and county commissioners who were among the first prisoners taken.

To forever break up the organization that had so long terrorized the Coeur d'Alene district, the Governor took a step far in advance of anything ever attempted. He issued a proclamation forbidding the mine owners employing union men and requiring every man who entered the mines to have a permit from General Merriam. It is said that Dr. France was really the man who decided whether or not an applicant should have a permit.

The matter aroused such widespread interest that a congressional inquiry was ordered. The republican members of the commission made a report upholding Governor Steunenberg, although he was a Democrat, and the action of President McKinley in sending the troops. The Democrats, under the leadership of Representative Sulzer, made a minority report censoring the state and national administration.

[Photograph added.]

SOURCES

The Wichita Daily Eagle
(Wichita, Kansas)
-Jan 16, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/63984045/

The Inter Ocean
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Jan 14, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/34530469

IMAGES
Harry Orchard, alias Tom Hogan, Jan 1906
http://idahoptv.org/productions/specials/trial/resources/manyfaces.cfm
Western Federation of Miners, Idaho Bullpen 1899, marching with wooden guns.
http://motherlodeleft.blogspot.com/2011/10/ground-we-walk-on-history-of-...

See also:

The Molly Maguires
--from Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, Labor's Untold Story.
United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America,
Pittsburgh, PA, 1955, pp. 43-58.
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/i2l/mollymaguires.html

Senate Report of 1901:
Report of the Industrial Commission on the Relations and Conditions
of Capital and Labor Employed in the Mining Industry,
Including Testimony, Review of Evidence, and Topical Digest.
-Volume XII of the Commission's Reports.
Washington: Government Printing Office, 1901
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=Ne03AQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcove...
Report on Coeur D'Alene Strike & Riot of 1899
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=Ne03AQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcove...

THE COEUR D'ALENE STRIKE AND RIOT OF 1899.

The subcommission on mining visited, in July, 1899, the Coeur d'Alene mining district of Idaho, the scene of the riot of April 29, 1899, during which the mill of the Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mining Company at Wardner was destroyed and two men were killed. The testimony of a large number of witnesses was taken as to the strike and riot, the subsequent establishment of martial law, the arrest and detention of miners, and the requirement of permits from the authorities as a condition of work in the mines......

Uses this link to access these documents:
http://darrow.law.umn.edu/trials.php?tid=3

-Report on the Miners' Riots in the State of Idaho by Brigadier-General Merriam
Brigadier General Henry Clay Merriam led the military intervention to restore order in the Coeur d'Alene area of Idaho in 1899.

-Crime of the Century by Edward Boyce Dec, 1899
Edward Boyce is very critical of Governor Steunenberg in this paper published in the U.S. Senate. Boyce was President of the Western Federation of Miners and presented his version of the labor troubles in Idaho.

-Coeur De Alene Mining Troubles: Report of Brigadier General H.C. Merriam on Miners' Riots in the State of Idaho Dec, 1899-Part of Senate Document No. 24, containing a congressional investigation into mining troubles. General Merriam was in charge of federal troops sent to the area.

-Coeur D' Alene Mining Troubles - Report of Brig. General H.C. Merriam on Miners' Riots in the State of Idaho Dec, 1899

The "Red Book" released Aug 2, 1904
Criminal Record of the Western Federation of Miners
from Coeur D'Alene to Cripple Creek, 1894-1904
- by the Mine Owners' Association of Colorado
The Association, 1904
http://books.google.com/books?id=tQUtAAAAYAAJ

The "Green Book" released Aug 27, 1904
Reply of the Western Federation of Miners
to the "Red Book" of the Mine Operators' Association
-by The Western Federation of Miners
Denver, Colorado, 1904
pdf! http://darrow.law.umn.edu/documents/Category%20of%20Crime.pdf

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Note: the attempted frame-up of the leaders of the WFM in 1906-07, came straight out of the same play book used to frame up the Martyred Miners of Pennsylvania, 1877-79.

WE NEVER FORGET
John Kehoe
Alex Campbell
Mickey Doyle
Edward Kelly
Hugh McGeehan
Thomas Munley
James Carroll
James Roarity
James Boyle
Thomas Duffy
John Donahue
Thomas Fisher
Patrick Hester
Peter McHugh
Patrick Tully
Peter McManus
Charles Sharpe
Denis Donnelly
Martin Bergan
James McDonald
WE NEVER FORGET

Miner's Lullaby - Utah Phillips

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmNjjiKsHAM width:560 height:315]

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