Western Federation of Miners Founded After Coeur d'Alene Massacre

Hard rock miners establish the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) in Butte, Montana, as a direct response to the catastrophic defeat of the 1892 Coeur d’Alene strike in Idaho and the brutal military repression that followed. The WFM emerges from miners’ recognition that existing labor organizations failed to protect them when mine owners deployed Pinkerton infiltrators to spy on unions, federal troops declared martial law, and 600 workers were imprisoned in “bull pens” without trial, charges, or bail for four months. The founding represents a determination to build a more militant and effective organization capable of resisting the combined power of mine owners, private security forces, and state military intervention.

The Western Federation of Miners adopts a more confrontational approach than the conservative American Federation of Labor, organizing across all mining occupations and skill levels in the western states’ hard rock mining districts. The WFM’s founding follows the template established by extractive industry workers facing unique challenges: geographic isolation in company towns, extreme workplace dangers (32,000 miners died in Pennsylvania alone between 1870-1897), systematic wage discrimination, and employers’ willingness to use lethal force against organizing efforts. The WFM’s militancy is shaped by direct experience with Pinkerton spies, Gatling guns, and federal troops deployed to break strikes.

The Western Federation of Miners grows rapidly in influence and power, achieving significant victories including the 1894 Cripple Creek strike where Colorado’s Populist governor intervened on labor’s behalf—though this proves exceptional. The WFM’s confrontational reputation, earned through employer violence at Coeur d’Alene (1892), Cripple Creek (1903-1904), and other conflicts, leads employers to characterize the organization as dangerous and violent despite workers acting in self-defense against corporate and state aggression. The WFM later helps found the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1905, pursuing the vision of “One Big Union” organizing all workers regardless of skill, race, or nationality—a model abandoned by the AFL but essential to later CIO success in organizing mass production industries during the 1930s. The WFM’s founding demonstrates how catastrophic defeats and state repression can catalyze more militant organizing, though employers and government consistently deploy greater violence to crush such movements, as evidenced by the Ludlow Massacre (1914) where Colorado National Guard and Rockefeller-controlled mine guards kill 25 people including 11 children.