In one of the largest vigilante actions ever committed in the United States, 2200 gunmen organized by the Phelps Dodge Mining Corporation, and deputized and led by Cochise County Sheriff Harry Wheeler descended on the town of Bisbee, Arizona at 3 a.m rounding up a list of 1200 striking miners led by IWW Metal Mine Workers Union No. 80, as well many who refused to work in the mines as a scab. 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. Leslie H. Marcy reports.

‘The Eleven Hundred Exiled Copper Miners’ by Leslie H. Marcy from the International Socialist Review. Vol. 18 No 3. September, 1917.

TWO million men carrying union cards, along with one million Socialists and sympathizers, are wondering how much longer the Phelps Dodge Company of Arizona will continue to defy the President of the United States,

On July 12th, 1,164 Arizona copper miners and sympathizers were exiled from their homes in Bisbee, Arizona, to Columbus, New Mexico. Fully two thousand more were deported out of the Warren District.

Review readers will recall that President Wilson protested against mob action instigated by the Phelps Dodge Company in the guise of the Citizens’ Alliance. Six weeks have elapsed and these 1,164 men are also wondering why the government does not act in protecting them in their rights as citizens of the United States.

The so-called Citizens’ Alliance is composed of bankers, lawyers, preachers, doctors, insurance agents and other parasites of the same ilk, who are all company owned.

Their boast is to make Bisbee an open town, no unions to be tolerated. The leader of this mob is one Brophy, who is down on the payroll of the Phelps Dodge Company as head of their mercantile department. Only a few months ago it was openly charged that he was supplying arms and ammunition to the Mexican insurrectos. His favorite pose is that of a patriot.

Another one of this gang goes by the name of Ed Tovreau. He holds a government contract to supply meat to army encampments in that part of the country.

The mayor, who was elected on the company’s ticket, is a leading member in the Alliance. Pie is a pumpman and a scab.

It is openly charged that Sheriff Wheeler took advantage of President Wilson’s statement to the effect that now is the time to arrest all slackers by swearing in several hundred deputies by phone, the majority of whom supposed they were going to carry out a government order.

On the morning of the round-up, hundreds of pickets were arrested as fast as they appeared for duty. Meanwhile gunmen attacked the boarding houses and by 9:30 in the morning four thousand miners were rounded up in the ball park at the point of high-powered rifles.

When Sheriff Wheeler was asked by a miner as to what was the charge, his reply was, “None of your damn business.” The miners were unarmed, altho a company gunman was filled with lead and a miner was killed.

At least three hundred of these miners owned their homes. Many of them had lived in the district for years and they had many friends among the town people. The gunmen visited the stores of trades people who were known to be sympathizer the strikers, and told them to “sell out or get out.” Several were deported with the miners.

Twenty-eight cattle and box cars were thoughtfully furnished by the El Paso and Southwestern Railways and it was a thrilling moment when the show-down came and the one thousand men displayed their solidarity by sticking together.

An elderly lady, Mrs. Payne, whose husband was acting as a gunman, cried out to her two sons to stay in line and “be men with the men.”

As they were going down the road, one of the miners, Forbes by name, one of the old members of the Western Federation of Miners, saluted an army officer by saying, “What’s the matter with the army?” His skull was fractured by a gunman.

A miner’s wife was knocked down in her own cabin when protesting against the seizure of her husband. Two hours afterwards she gave birth to a dead baby.

Mr. William Cleary, better known as Bill Cleary, is a prominent local lawyer and was deported with the miners. He is an active socialist and campaigned with James Connolly on his last trip to this country. Mr. Cleary tried to send a telegram to Governor Hunt but the telegraph operators were intimidated by gunmen and his telegram was filed.

Mrs. Rosa McKay, elected representative to the State Legislature on the Socialist ticket at the last election, was knocked down in the Western Union Telegraph office in Bisbee by gunmen when she tried to send a telegram to President Wilson. Two days later gunmen drove her husband out of the state from his mining claim in another district.

The men are now guests of the government and there is a food allowance of 23 cents a day for them.

July 21st, military authorities received orders to give the miners their “liberty.” To the credit of the miners, they immediately held a mass meeting and voted unanimously to stick together and are now waiting to be sent back to their homes and families in Bisbee. They passed the buck squarely up to the government. For six weeks they have stood solidly together, demanding their rights, but the wives and kiddies back home are watching the trains and wondering when papa will come back. The women are writing their husbands to “all come back in a body as you left.”

Meanwhile the companies are becoming desperate and are offering any price to the wives of miners, who own property to get them to sell. They are also offering to give free railroad tickets to any part of the country to the women and children.

Every big business house for miles around is running short-handed in order to supply scabs but the best they can do is 22 cars of “gob” or waste per day. The normal output is around 230 cars of ore daily,

The “poison sheets” as the miners dub the newspapers, are spreading the usual company dope about the terrible wobblies, and German money but even the Mexican workers are too white to scab. Their slogan is “$5.50— no work.”

On Monday, September 3rd, let the million throated demand of American Labor be heard ! A demand that your brothers of labor be returned to their homes. One thousand and sixty-four exiles on the desert sands are waiting your answer. And don’t forget to dig down for the brave women and kids of Bisbee. Make your checks payable to Grover H. Perry, 506 Boyd Park building, Salt Lake City, Utah.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v18n03-sep-1917-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf