Some primary accumulation done the primitive way in Alaska’s Copper River district as workers lay rail tracks to facilitate the extraction of minerals for the Guggenheim-Morgan syndicate. A comrade from the Socialist Labor Party survives to tell the tale.

‘Labor Conditions in Alaska’s Copper River District’ by Albert Robinson from The People (S.L.P.). Vol. 19 No. 20. August 14, 1909.

The Copper River district, in Southwestern Alaska is, and has been, for several years past, the scene of great activity in railroad building. Thousands of men are being employed, and a line of steel is being driven deep into the heart of the interior, skirting lofty mountains covered with eternal snow, and spanning mighty rivers. Here Nature, with lavishness discoverable nowhere else, has richly endowed the mountains with unlimited treasure in the shape of immense beds of copper and other ores. The railroad is financed by the Guggenheim-Morgan syndicate, who with a rapacity usual with these “stewards of the Lord,” a la Baer, are acquiring the most promising mineral prospects, and, at the same time, rapidly pushing their railroad ahead, by means of which they will eventually freeze out or swallow the independent mine owners and effect a complete monopoly of the country, its industries and resources. Around the Pacific Coast end of the road, there has sprung up, in true mushroom style, Cordova, possessing all the institutions of a “civilized modern city”: Churches, saloons, a jail and an extensive red light district, and last winter, even boasted a bread line made up with as many as six hundred men.

In Cordova the “hands” and material are landed and distributed among the two contracting outfits building the road, the Katella Co. and M.J. Heney. The labor conditions (always bad in railroad work) here are simply inhuman. The men, who have for the most part spent their last cent for the fare out, are, for about a week’s run, packed like sardines in a box and fed on “mulligans.” They arrive in Cordova and confront conditions which they are in no condition to rebel against, or turn back on, and as there is practically no work of any other kind, they are totally at the mercy of the contractors. Once at work, the victims have but one ambition: to earn sufficient to get back to the states, fully determined to stay there in the future. The wages range from thirty cents per hour for common labor, to seventy cents for structural iron workers. The workday consists of eleven hours, with a night and a day shift. The “board,” for which the men are charged $1 per day, is about the rankest fraud in Alaska. Not only is the cooking in most cases bad, but the meat, known as canned “horse,” is one of the “jungle” products of the Beef Trust, to eat which is dangerous to life. The vegetables, canned like the meat in most cases, and of the oldest and stalest, and of course, cheapest kind, are often served up moldy and sour. The only fresh food supplied, as a rule, is fish, which, abounding in the rivers and seas there, are extremely cheap.

M.J. “Halibut” was the nickname bestowed on M.J. Heney by his victims. Every day is Friday in his camps, fish being served three times a day with sickening monotony. At the Katella Company’s bridge camp at Miles Glacier, the men were forced to drink the water from the Copper river, which in so thick with glacial mud as to resemble very strong coffee in color. The same is used for cooking purposes. To sink a well or to buy a filter, on the part of the contractors, would cost money, and besides, it would look like pampering the slaves. The bosses and bulldozers generally have their own mess, and live on the fat of the land, while the slaves threaten to rebel and quit in a body.

To add to this disagreeableness, it happens that in some of the larger camps the men cannot all be fed at the same time, due to lack of accommodations. They are therefore divided into two or three turns, with the result that the “hands” have to turn out at four o’clock in the morning, and after breakfast, and on their own time, walk from two to six miles to work. They must put up with a cold lunch at noon, so a man, in order to get in a day’s work, puts in from twelve to fifteen hours, and receives pay for eleven hours only. The bunkhouses are like the board, only worse, if possible. They consist of tents with three tiers of double bunks on each side, and house from 150 to 250 men in each. They are provided with two small stoves, which are entirely inadequate to dry the men’s clothes. The discomforts suffered may be appreciated when it is remembered that here is a climate where it rains almost every day, and where the rain is so penetrating that oilskin “slickers” afford no protection. Furthermore, the tents have no other floor but the bare ground, which, when the snow melts, is covered with water, often as high as the bottom bunks. When the waters recede, the interior of the tent is converted into a lake of mud, compelling the occupants to wear their rubber hip boots, even to step out of their bunks.

The workers are fleeced $1.50 a month hospital tax, a piece of rascality, in return for which they are, if lucky, vouchsafed the sight of an alleged doctor and possibly a few black pills. The hospital is generally a bare tent. The commissary or store is of the usual “pluck me” kind, famine prices being charged for everything. The work and weather necessitate the wearing of rubber hip boots which cost $9 a pair. They last about a month. One is often charged two prices, one price when buying and quite another on his time check, generally to the profit of the contractor.

Another club in the hands of the contractors is the fact that no one can. without a pass, travel on the railroad or river boat. As “beating it” is impossible, M.J. Heney was thereby enabled to drive back to work last fall a large number of men who quit. The weather was too cold to work outside, but he made them work another three weeks by simply holding up the ferry boat, thus preventing them from crossing the Copper river.

This spring the same Heney induced a large number of station men, on the promise of liberal contracts, to ship to Cordova, and from there he shipped them on to his headquarters camp. As most of the station work lay at, or out from Tasnuna, a point thirty miles away, a number of station men set out on foot for that place. After encountering great hardships, they found, on arrival, that there was very little food on hand. They were soon reduced to two sandwiches and one cup of “coffee” per day each. A number of them resolved to return to headquarters rather than stay where they were and starve. Accordingly, they set out. Soon they had to abandon their blankets, the sun having softened the snow so that in some places they sunk almost over their heads in it. When night came on, they were wet through, in many cases they were, without the means to kindle a fire. Some came near freezing to death. It was a weary band that straggled into the headquarters camp with bitter curses for Heney. They demanded passes back to Cordova, but Heney must needs get his pound of flesh. He refused them passes, and compelled them to go to work for him at thirty cents an hour. A few, however, built a raft and crossed the Copper river, “mushing” it back to Cordova.

It is then no wonder that Heney goes about in fear of his life. He has been shot at several times already; he may yet be the victim of one of his victims. Two strikes occurred while the writer was working at the bridge camp at Miles Glacier. In the first one, the çaisson men, working twelve-hour shifts under an air pressure of five pounds, at fifty cents an hour, struck for seventy- five cents an hour. The Kattela Company soon filled the strikers’ places, but eventually compromised for sixty-two and one-half cents and eight hours. When the writer quit the camp, the caisson men were working under a pressure of seventeen pounds, at the above wages and hours. The same work in the States pays at least $1 an hour. The other strike, in which the writer took an active part, was that of a number of men engaged in excavating for a foundation for a concrete pier. The work was dry at first, but on getting deeper the men were compelled to work in two feet of ice cold water for eleven-hour shifts. They demanded a raise of wages from thirty-five cents to forty-five cents per hour. The men stood well together, only about five out of fifty men involved scabbing. The Katella Company bullied and threatened, but eventually offered forty cents per hour. Believing that they were going to be taken to Cordova, the writer and five other of the most active men, were taken out about twenty miles in a box car and then ditched. However, we caught the regular passenger train for Cordova. When the train crew attempted to put us off, forty of the strikers, who happened to be on the same train, loyally stood by us, and gave the train crew to understand that they wouldn’t allow it. Thereupon we suffered no further interference from the “Brotherhood” men.

As this region will undoubtedly become one of the greatest mining countries in the world, (the nature of the ore deposits and the amount of capital invested permit mining to be carried on in the largest and most economical scale), it will mean that eventually scores of mines will shut down in Montana, Arizona, and other states. Then thousands of sturdy miner members of the W.F. of M. will flock to this region, and the struggle for the eight-hour day, already started by them in Alaska, will receive a fresh impetus. Arrayed against them will be the untold millions of the Guggenheims and the Morgans, with every power of the capitalist state behind them. Will the tragic scenes of the struggle for the eight-hour day in Colorado be reenacted in Alaska, or will the sailors, the railroad men, the longshoremen and miners listen to the teachings of the Socialist Labor Party, and organize industrially, and by so doing, not only prevent the capitalist outrages, but eventually abolish capitalism itself?

What makes it possible for the Heneys and the Guggenheims, Morgans and the other parasites to prey on labor, to coin its very life blood into profit? Nothing but the divided and disorganized state of the working class. The remedy, that preached by the Socialist Labor Party. The workers have got to realize that to all intents and purposes there are but two nationalities, two classes, in the world, the Capitalist Class and the Working Class: Labor must organize industrially and politically and abolish the present system and erect on its ruins the Industrial Republic. This is the one cause and the one hope of, not only the workers in Alaska, but of the world!

New York Labor News Company was the publishing house of the Socialist Labor Party and their paper The People. The People was the official paper of the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), established in New York City in 1891 as a weekly. The New York SLP, and The People, were dominated Daniel De Leon and his supporters, the dominant ideological leader of the SLP from the 1890s until the time of his death. The People became a daily in 1900. It’s first editor was the French socialist Lucien Sanial who was quickly replaced by De Leon who held the position until his death in 1914. Morris Hillquit and Henry Slobodin, future leaders of the Socialist Party of America were writers before their split from the SLP in 1899. For a while there were two SLPs and two Peoples, requiring a legal case to determine ownership. Eventual the anti-De Leonist produced what would become the New York Call and became the Social Democratic, later Socialist, Party. The De Leonist The People continued publishing until 2008.

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