The Leadville miners' strike was a labor action by the Cloud City Miners' Union, which was the Leadville, Colorado local of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), against those silver mines paying less than $3.00 per day . The strike lasted from 19 June 1896 to 9 March 1897, and resulted in a major defeat for the union, largely due to the unified opposition of the mine owners. The failure of the strike caused the WFM to leave the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and is regarded as a cause for the WFM turn toward revolutionary socialism.
Silver was discovered in Leadville, Colorado in the 1870s, initiating the Colorado Silver Boom. The Leadville miners' strike in 1896-97 occurred during rapid industrialization and consolidation of the mining industry. Mine owners had become more powerful, and they resolved not only to defeat the strike, but also to eliminate the union. The local union lost the strike and was nearly dissolved, marking a turning point for the local union's parent organization, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM).
The defeat forced miners to re-assess their tactics and their union philosophy. Although the federation was birthed as the result of a violent struggle and had engaged in a militant action in the Cripple Creek District in which miners used gunfire and dynamite, the organization's disposition and its Preamble envisioned a future of arbitration and conciliation with employers. After the Leadville strike, WFM leaders and their followers adopted radical politics and were open to more militant policies, breaking with the conservative, craft union based American Federation of Labor in the East.
History
The union local in the Leadville mining district was the Cloud City Miners' Union (CCMU), Local 33 of the Western Federation of Miners. The Leadville strike was the first real test for the Western Federation of Miners, and the first strike into which the WFM poured significant resources. Coming just two years after the Federation's victory at Cripple Creek, the Leadville strike represented a significant hope that the mineworkers could solidify their power and continue their dramatic growth.
Impact of industrialization
Miners working in the industrial enterprise of underground metal mining often came from non-industrial backgrounds. Placer mining was gradually replaced by lode mining from 1860 to 1910, forcing miners to go deeper underground and resulting in an increasing level of industrialization. Tensions resulted from changing demands for job skills and work discipline.
By 1900, there were more than 4,000 miners in Leadville. Colorado's annual mining industry death rate in the 1890s was almost six deaths per thousand workers. As a death rate quoted for miners, the statistics were believed understated because they included surface workers as well as underground workers.
Before the 1890s, many hard rock mines were owned by the miners who had discovered them. Owners who had been miners were often more sympathetic to the concerns of miners. But the higher cost of industrialization changed that. The typical mine owners of the 1890s started out as bankers, managers, and businessmen who had never entered a mine, and whose primary concern was profitability. Lode mining took capital, and investors from the east and west coasts, and even from Europe, were actively courted. When the Colorado Legislature passed a law in 1887 prohibiting foreign ownership of real estate in Colorado, mine ownership was excepted.
Miners had long believed that they were treated poorly. For example, in 1894 a Leadville mine owner instructed the superintendent of the mine to delay a payday for the miners so that a dividend could be paid to stockholders. The WFM had advocated the eight-hour day since its founding convention in 1893. Some miners had the shorter hours, and public employees and building trades workers in Denver had won the eight-hour day as early as 1890. Yet in 1896, hoisting engineers in Leadville were required to work twelve-hour shifts. Mines were more dangerous as they were dug deeper; it was increasingly recognized that poor working conditions as well as longer hours could be correlated with poor health. In 1889 two Leadville workmen were sent to Denver to testify in favor of a mine inspection bill. Although it passed, it made no difference that year because the legislature failed to fund it.