In 1917, the hammer came down on the U.S. left and workers’ movement. An outraged Richard Brazier on one of the largest vigilante actions ever committed in the United States. 2200 gunmen organized by the Phelps Dodge Mining Corporation, deputized and led by Cochise County Sheriff Harry Wheeler descended on the town of Bisbee, Arizona at 3 a.m on July 12, 1917 rounding up a list of 1200 striking miners led by IWW Metal Mine Workers Union No. 80. Also held were many who refused to work in the mines as scabs. In the morning the workers were marched through the desert sun to a baseball field. Under mounted machine guns, they were loaded onto cattle cars and driven 200 miles away to be dropped in the desert town of Hermanas, New Mexico. There they stayed until September, housed in the tents meant for refugees from the U.S. invasion of northern Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa. One striker and one gun thug were killed in a shootout during the sweep.

‘The Iron Heel At Work’ by Richard Brazier from Solidarity. Vol. 8 No. 393. July 21, 1917.

2000 Miners Deported From Bisbee by Mob of Corporation Plug-Uglies Armed With Rifles and Machine Guns. Copper Trust, Like a Mad Dog, Seeks to Punish Miners for Striking to Better Conditions and to Support Butte.

The hall mark of Infamy has been established in “this land of the free and the home of the brave” and a master-class that is loudly acclaiming and entreating that the workers of America must make the world “safe for Democracy,” have shown an astonished and outraged world what kind of Democracy they are saving for it.

Almost two thousand strikers, among whom were three women, and strike sympathisers, were rounded up, taken from their homes and loved ones, in many cases, herded in a ball park guarded by 2,000 gunmen, business men and scabs, and all this hotch potch of evil, commanded by officials of the various mining companies of Bisbee, and other places where the strike was on. From the ball park they were herded into cattle cars, which were crowded to suffocation, transported hundreds of miles across a parched desert land, and unloaded at a siding, whose only inhabitants were three Mexican families and a lone telegraph operator, also there was a water tank.

There they were left without food and drink for 36 hours. This, in short, is what happened.

The Conspiracy.

Everything shows a well planned preconceived plot on the part of the copper barons of Arizona to perpetrate this the greatest wholesale kidnapping of striking workingmen and their sympathisers ever attempted in America, a kidnapping only equaled by the wholesale deportation of the Belgian workingmen by their German conquerors.

The surrounding country around Bisbee was secured for the lickspittles of the copper lords, cockroach business man who grovel in the dust at the feet of corporate greed, scabs who know no manhood, living offal that stinks to the high heavens, and are rotten with cowardice. Professional gunmen, hired protectors of their masters money bags, mercenaries of plutocracy, aided by God-fearing Christians and conscienceless lawyers, backed up by officers of law–servants of the people supposed to be–yet who serve no one but Mammon, and who prostitute justice to the highest bidder, all this mass of putrescent corruption officered and commanded openly, brazenly, by the high officials of the various mining companies against whom these workers were striking. The scum of society and the dregs of the system in a Hell’s brew of Infamy against clean, manly workingmen and their friends, whose only crime was that they dared to strike for better living conditions, dared to assert their manhood against conditions which were supposed to have been swept away with the Dark Ages.

Machine Guns for Citizens?

Well, they wrought their plot, they gathered by night, too cowardly to work in the open, they arrayed themselves with weapons of war, rifles, shotguns, revolvers and machine guns, MACHINE GUNS, mind you! Where did they get them? They say they are citizens, they called themselves “The Citizens’ Protective League” and the “Loyal Legion.” Protective of what? Nothing but the profits of the Guggenheims and the Phelps-Dodge crowd. Loyal to whom? No one but the copper barons of Arizona!

Since when has it become possible for private citizens, whether they belong to a Loyal Legion or a Protective League or not, to obtain possession of machine guns belonging to the state? Can it be that the copper barons are really the State of Arizona, and that the people of that state are only their industrial serfs? Is it possible that the copper barons of Arizona, like the coal kings of Colorado, maintain their own private army? Is this the state within the state? The answer to all these questions is, “Yes.”

We who are loudly boasting to an expectant world, that we are the “saviours of Democracy” have within our midst, something that only China of all other nations possesses, private individuals and corporations maintaining and equipping private armies to keep their slaves in submission, to ride rough-shod over the liberties of the people, sweeping aside all law, be it state, federal or municipal, that stand in the way of the economic supremacy of their industrial masters.

The “Black Hundreds” of the Mine Owners.

Yes, workers of America, these machine guns used by that mob of scabs, gunmen, business men and professional Christians, belonged to the State of Arizona. They were confiscated by the copper corporations, who said, “We are the state,” and they proved it, proved it by overriding every law ever placed upon the statute books of the state. They proved it also by taking possession of the wires and telephones of Bisbee and surrounding towns. They proved it by taking possession of rolling stock and railroads and public ball parks.

They proved they were indeed the power within the State of Arizona by invading the homes of workingmen, tearing them from their wives and babes, and sending them into exile, they proved it by entering the places of business of business men known to be in sympathy with the strikers, closing up their places of business, herding them in with the strikers into exile also. Strangers within the gates were herded by these gangs of thugs, because they refused to scab. Everything that looked human in Bisbee, everyone who looked like a real man, was herded into the cattle cars comprising the Copper Barons Special, and EXILED, and all that was left in Bisbee after the raid, after the round-up, was the dregs of humanity, the riff-raff and back-wash of life.

The Outrage.

And so they marched in full panoply of war, upon unsuspecting, unarmed, peaceful workers, tore them from their homes, from the arms of their wives and children in many cases, herded like cattle, mocked and insulted on every hand by those brave defenders of law and order.

Together with them were rounded up business men who had dared to express their sympathy for the strikers, lawyers who had dared to defend the strikers in so-called courts of justice, everyone who was a stranger in Bisbee, and would not promise to scab, was also rounded up and placed in the ball park to await transportation in the Copper Barons Deportation Special.

Hearing of these wholesale round-ups individuals tried to get in touch with the outside world to inform the authorities of the State and federal officials also of these invasions of all human rights, but were astonished to find out that no word could be sent. Mr. Res and Captain Stout of the Phelps-Dodge Corporation and the Copper Queen Mining Company, had censored all wires leading out of Bisbee, both public and private, all telephones also were censored, not even newspaper correspondents were allowed to send out any messages to their respective papers. Bisbee was isolated, and would remain so until the copper barons had had their way.

Because They Would Not Scab.

Picture in your mind’s eye, those clean-limbed, sun-burned miners, marching from the ball park to the cattle cars awaiting them on a siding, on either side of them long lines of gunmen with their rifles, revolvers and shotguns and machine guns also trained on them, asking the miners, begging them, pleading with them, “to go back to work and we’ll release you,” and with death and exile staring them in the face, pot a single man would promise to go back to work. “We would sooner die than scab,” they said, “do your worst.”

And the copper kings did the worst they could do, the worst they dared do. They loaded them into 24 cattle cars, nearly a 100 men to a car, crowded Worse than the cattle the cars were built for. Locked them in, refused to let them out to attend to their wants or the call of nature, and amongst them were three women. Let this sink into your brains, workers of America, your Christian masters not content with herding 2,000 men in cattle cars, also crowded amongst this seething mass of men, three women, and this is Free America not the Holy Russia of the Bloody Cars.

Guarded by hundreds of gunmen, with machine guns mounted on the cars, the Copper Barons’ “Deportation Special” pulled out of Bisbee, for parts unknown, no one knew where they were going, they only knew that before them lay a burning waste of desert sands, and that at some spot in this bleak and lonely desert they would be unloaded to starve or die of thirst.

Not Prisoners.

After many attempts to unload the exiles upon various towns all other states had failed, they were left on a little siding known as Hermanas, where they found nothing for them in the way of food and very little water.

From there they got in touch with the outside world, food and relief were sent to them, and the Government took charge of the exiles, and put them in a stockade at Columbus, N.M. We are informed by the Government that they are not prisoners, no, not prisoners, just guests of the Government, for when their wives and children came to see them at the stockade, “they were allowed to speak to them thru’ the wire enclosure,” and Uncle Sam says they are not prisoners!

The men are demanding to be sent back to Bisbee, there is where their homes are, and their loved ones, there is where they have made their living, they are asking the Government to send them there, this Government of the people, by the people, that is supposed to protect its most humble and despised citizens. And amongst these men held in stockades in Columbus by the Government after being deported by the copper companies of Bisbee, are men who bought Liberty Bonds. Do you get it? They bought Liberty Bonds to help the Government carry on its war to make the world “safe for Democracy.” And now after the copper barons have destroyed their liberty, the Government whom they supported with their money “to save Democracy” will not even guarantee them protection, will not let them return to their homes and families. The Government is perhaps waiting for the consent of the copper companies.

The Foretaste of the Iron Heel.

Fellow workers, this is something that hits at you direct, this is a fore taste of the Iron Heel, the rumblings of the Oligarchy of Wealth, what has been done in Arizona, will be done everywhere else, when you dare rebel against miserable conditions and economic slavery. Already throughout the northwest halls are being closed, workers placed in jails and stockades, simply because they have committed the same crime as the miners deported from Bisbee–namely, to dare to ask for a few more crumbs from their masters’ tables, a little more wages, little shorter hours. This our masters say is “treason,” we are being led astray by German gold. We are unpatriotic, we ought to work long hours and take less pay, to help save the world for Democracy, and lose our own Democracy, or what little we possess in so doing. Fellow workers, don’t let them hypnotise you with their parrot-like cries of “German Gold.” The Guggenheims of the Arizona Copper Mining and Smelting trust, and the Weyerhausers of the Lumber trust, know more about “German Gold” than you and I. They are the real “German Gold” boys.

Fellow workers, we must stop these outrages, we must curb the power of the masters, as long as the liberty of one worker is endangered by such high-handed methods as brave taken place in Bisbee, the liberties of all workers are endangered.

To the rescue, the Workers of America, strike a blow for your freedom now ere it is too late. Help the Exiles from Bisbee, send in your donations to help feed them and their families, help them win their strike, strike which they have already faced death to win. And above all, do your share, organize now in the One Big Union. Organize now, lest the Iron Heel descend and crush you and yours to a life time of poverty, long hours and industrial slavery.

REMEMBER THE EXILES OF BISBEE AND DONT FORGET THE COPPER BARONS OF ARIZONA

The most widely read of I.W.W. newspapers, Solidarity was published by the Industrial Workers of the World from 1909 until 1917. First produced in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and born during the McKees Rocks strike, Solidarity later moved to Cleveland, Ohio until 1917 then spent its last months in Chicago. With a circulation of around 12,000 and a readership many times that, Solidarity was instrumental in defining the Wobbly world-view at the height of their influence in the working class. It was edited over its life by A.M. Stirton, H.A. Goff, Ben H. Williams, Ralph Chaplin who also provided much of the paper’s color, and others. Like nearly all the left press it fell victim to federal repression in 1917.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/solidarity-iww/1917/v8-w393-jul-21-1917-solidarity.pdf