On this day in labor history, the year was 1919.
That was the day copper miners in Butte, Montana went on strike.
Mine owners announced a $1 a day wage cut when copper prices slumped in financial markets.
Swayed by the power of the Seattle General Strike then in progress, miners associated with the IWW and the Metal Mine Workers Union, Local 800 formed their own Soldiers’, Sailors’, and Workers’ Council.
They issued a call for a general strike.
For days, area trade unionists honored picket lines, left their jobs and held meetings to debate joining a general strike.
The streetcar workers shut down public transportation for five days.
Soldiers returning from the war helped man picket lines.
The labor paper, Butte Daily Bulletinreported the post-war economy left returning war heroes penniless and working in dangerous mines.
While solidarity was unanimous among workers, their unions had yet to pass formal resolutions.
Immediately, Montana’s governor, Sam V. Stewart, called in the 44th Infantry to crush the strike. Infantrymen bayoneted nine strikers, when they tried to stop the anti-labor Butte Daily Post from being distributed.
Spirits were high by the end of the first week as official voting began.
The streetcar men went back to work, citing no grievances with their employer.
Then the engineers followed. Finally the IBEW caved.
They worried the engineers would take their jobs, as they had done in a 1917 strike.
The IWW and local 800 called off the strike, fearing continuation would be fatal.
Though most of the troops were soon withdrawn, one company stayed to ensure labor peace at the local water and electric works.
Butte would remain under federal military occupation until the end of 1920.
February 27 - The 1937 Woolworth Sit-Down
February 26 - The Battle at Bethlehem
February 25 - The Paterson Silk Strike Begins
February 24 - Muller v Oregon Decided
February 23 - Black Workers Lead Historic Strike at UNC
February 22 - Labelling Teachers as Terrorists
February 21 - The First Female Telephone Operator
February 20 - Angelina Grimke is Born
February 19 - Philly Street Car Workers Spark General Strike
February 18 - Anti-Slavery Begins in America
February 17 - Standing Up By Sitting Down
February 16 - The Wisconsin Uprising Begins
February 15 - The Uprising of the 20,000 Comes to a Close
February 14 - Kansas City Laundresses Walk Off the Job
February 13 - Martial Law Declared to Crush the UAW
February 12 - The NAACP is Founded
February 11 - Cutting Corners on Safety at Sequoyah I
February 10 - Forty-Three Workers Buried Alive
February 9 - Organizing Bloody Harlan
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