One of the main I.W.W. organizers of Minnesota’s Mesaba Range iron strike, Tresca writes from prison, awaiting trial on trumped-up murder charges, on the effects of the struggle.

‘What I Think’ by Carlo Tresca from Solidarity. Vol. 7 No. 355. October 28, 1916.

When I received a telegram in Omaha last spring, asking me to go at once to the Mesaba Range, I knew that it would be a big fight, for I knew well the character of the enemy. That we were fought bitterly, as I expected, you all know from what has taken place. We expected all the unlawful acts that culminated in our being here in prison, all of us knew the steel trust’s history, we looked for no mercy and we received none.

Nor do we complain of all this. Our being in jail we accept cheerfully as incidental to the struggle, trusting that the great labor world outside realizes the importance of the strike and our indictments for murder, which are but a part of the strike; we know that labor will be true and faithfully stand by those who chance to be on the firing line as it often has done. Standing by those in jail is standing by the miners on the range, and standing by the boys on the range is standing for laboring class interests everywhere.

Someone has said that the strike was lost. If this were strictly true, I would feel badly indeed. Yet I think all will agree with me that it is not actually lost nor do the conditions on the range look like those that follow lost strikes.

For instance, in the Virginia district, the underground day. laborers whose pay before the strike was from $2.60 to $2.80, are now getting from $3.00 to $3.25. The motormen and brakemen that did not join the union, did not get a like percentage of increase and have changed their relative position from the highest to the lowest paid day laborers in the mines. Former pay for contract work ran from 45 to 55 cents per car, the present pay is from $1 to $1.35. Nor can this be caused entirely from a labor shortage, as I am told that the companies are turning men away.

From a mass of unorganized workers of a dozen nationalities, we have built up a good union of twelve locals on the range with thousands of members.

Contrast this with the strike of the Western Federation of Miners in 1907, which, after organizing for over a year, never got more than 2,200 members. That strike fizzled out when the men went back to work one by one, leaving the organizers at the mercy of the companies, who lost no time in making things so hot for them that they left in the night and have never since tried to organize the range. This is not condemning those organizers, but explaining the difference between the results of the two strikes.

Here the boys fought a good fight, staying out solidly until they realized that it was only the part of wisdom to consider the defense of those in trouble; that they would fight one fight at a time and suspend the strike till the defense of the woman and the men jail was guaranteed. They did not go back to work in dribbles with spirit broken, as did those of 1907, but stuck to their union, considered the situation and after voting to resume work, went back in a body with their allegiance to the union unshaken, their solidarity alive, their spirit unbroken.

Can this be called defeat? If so, I can only say it was a very successful defeat, the kind of defeats I would be happy to see in other districts. It was no more of a defeat than was the A.W.O. a failure in 1915.

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/1916/v7-w355-oct-28-1916-solidarity.pdf