Hidden History: The Strike for the Eight-Hour Day in Colorado & Idaho

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By Ken Secor

Note: You will never understand the present unless you understand the past. Labor history is an important part of our history that has been very deliberately hidden from the eyes of the American public. If people understood labor history, they would understand that the battle against workers is just as active today as it was in the past. Only the weapons have changed.

If there was a law that was not broken by the mine owners and the states of Colorado and Idaho in breaking strikes for the eighthour day between 1892 and 1904, it’s never been found. The workweek was 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Smelter men got off every other Sunday but they had to work 24 hours on the Sunday they did work.

The National Guard and military were used at least a dozen times in as many years to crush strikes for a living wage and the eight-hour day in Colorado and Idaho. Thousands of miners were placed in barbed wire camps for months while their families starved.

In 1903 thousands at Cripple Creek and Telluride were loaded into freight cars and deported without trial or charges. In the great 1903-04 strike for the eight-hour day in Colorado, 42 men were killed, 112 wounded, 1,345 arrested and imprisoned in bullpens or military concentration camps and 773 deported from the state.

In 1899 the miners and farmers, with support from the middle class, got the Colorado legislature to pass an eight-hour law. However, the mine owners refused to comply until the state Supreme Court, which was controlled by the mine owners, declared the law unconstitutional. Even when the miners and their allies successfully passed a ballot measure that amended the state constitution, the owners still refused to obey the law. Labor and their allies then elected a new legislature that pledged to enact an enforceable eight-hour law.

Again, the owners refused to comply.

The miners decided that if they were to succeed where the democratic process had failed, they would need to strike. The Western Federation of Miners was formed.

The Mine Owners Association determined to destroy the Western Federation of Miners. They formed a Citizens Alliance with 30,000 vigilantes, and were determined to not give up until the union left the state.

The strike started in August 1903, with the miners demanding a $3, eight-hour day. The mine owners imported hired killers such as Bob Meldrum, K.C. Sterling, Frank Varnick, D.C. Scott, Willard Runnels and Walter Kinley to intimidate the workers. To combat the striking miners, General Sherman Bell arrived in Cripple Creek and declared martial law. He ordered the mayor and chief of police to obey his orders or go to jail.

He forced the resignation of several elected officials and threw 600 men into a bullpen without charges being filed against them.

When the editor of a newspaper wrote an article criticizing General Bell, soldiers shut the paper down and threw the editor and printers into the bullpen.

When union attorney Edmond Richardson appeared with a writ of habeas corpus, General Bell marched in 30 prisoners. When the judge ordered them released General Bell laughed and declared the writ of habeas corpus suspended and marched them back to the bullpen. Upon leaving the courtroom, Richardson was beaten.

In Telluride hundreds of men were being deported in cattle cars. When someone mentioned the Constitution to General Bell he said “To hell with the Constitution! We’re not following the Constitution!”

The violations became so blatant even conservative papers, which were always against workers, protested. Finally habeas corpus was restored.

After 15 months, the mine owners in Telluride threw in the sponge. The mineworkers received the $3, eight-hour day they wanted.

The workers at Cripple Creek weren’t so lucky. Many were blacklisted and several thousand moved to Tonopah and Goldfield, Nevada where unions were tolerated.

Overall the strike had been successful. Thousands won what they had struck for. While the mine owners tried to destroy the miners’ unions, those unions almost doubled in size.