Let's Learn About Mining!!
Apr. 16th, 2025 08:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickOne of the places we visited (I took this trip with Laur, who was mostly along for the Mexican-ish food and the margaritas) was Bisbee, Arizona. In Bisbee, the activity for the day was touring the Copper Queen Mine on trolleys with miner hats and lights and safety vests. (It's pretty safe. You'd have to work at dying on the mine tour. But still, miner hats and lights and safety vests because never underestimate the stupidity of tourists. People fall into the Grand Canyon and die, two to three of them damn near every year.)
Bisbee's Copper Queen Mine was a real mine that really operated until 1975, doing the real business of mining copper for commercial production. In 1975, the mine shut down. In 1976, after infusions of labor and money, the mine reopened for tourism purposes.
Acquired by Phelps Dodge (a mining company) in 1885, the Copper Queen was running about 20% copper when it started (mines could be profitable at about 8%, so 20% was really good). Mining continued at the Copper Queen, both in tunnels under the ground and (later) by open pit mining, for the next ninety years... but the quality of the ore declined as time went on and when it stopped being profitable, Phelps-Dodge shut the mine down. (This is not unusual -- mines run until they are "played out" and then they are shut down.)
After 1900, the ore from Bisbee was shipped by narrow-gauge rail on the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad (founded by James Douglas) to the town of Douglas (founded by James Douglas) to be smelted. (Not part of the tour, but we drove to Douglas and looked at the big pile of slag outside the town and stuff. A lot of the railbed from the old railroad also runs along the modern paved road into Douglas and you can see it as you drive right alongside it, if that's a thing you might be interested in. Anyway, the slag pile thing is huge. Here's a picture:
)
But anyway, to get a better picture of this arrangement, it helps to know that James Douglas was the president of Copper Queen Consolidated Mining, a subsidiary of Phelps Dodge.
In 1907, the various Phelps Dodge railroads, mining companies, real estate firms, etc. were all merged into Phelps Dodge and Company and in 1915, the company went public. So, in 1915, Phelps-Dodge owned the mines and the mining companies and the railroads. They owned all of it. Remember this, it is important later.
At the start, the Copper Queen was a traditional "narrow hole in the ground, tunnels, tiny rails for ore carts" style of mine, but later mining in the area (like the Lavender pit mine south of Bisbee) was done via open pit mining with modern equipment and machinery. We mostly saw the tunnels-rails style of mine because that's more tourism friendly than open pit mines. We did (after the tour) drive to the Lavender pit mine and look at it because it was there, just outside of town, but it was not included in the tour part of the thing. An open pit mine is literally a huge hole in the ground. That's it. Not a whole lot to see, but I do have pictures of that as well.
The Lavender Pit Mine:
There's a big fence around it so that you can't fall in. Each of the little layers is 50 feet high and this is a damn big hole in the ground.
The town of Bisbee grew in a narrow and steep canyon in southern Arizona because of the copper mines. Once the mines shut down, obvi, they switched to tourism. It's kind of an artsy little hippie town now and I think it's doing quite well with that. The restaurants are pretty good for the size town it is. (It's about 5000 residents, about twice the size of Bedford where I work.)
Anyway. The mine tour was VERY good. Our tour guide (a young, stick-thin fellow) was some flavor of rock/mineral/mining nerd and he answered all of our questions. I got the feeling that regardless of the question, he would know something about it. Two thumbs up, would 100% recommend doing this mine tour and visiting Bisbee. It's a neat little town and a fun and educational tour and I am in no way about to diss any of that.
But...
Well...
Would you like to know more? (Of course you would. I have the greatest of faiths in you, dear lexience.)
As a native Pennsylvanian, my experience is more with coal mines, but I am pretty sure that mining is mining, the world over. I don't think there is any mining where the rich people go into the dark dangerous hot wet with *bonus explosions* and the poor people sit safely up on the surface getting the end product to sell. It's the other way 'round, all the time. Poor people in the dark dangerous hot wet, rich people in the nice offices on the surface. This is the way of mines.
As well, if you know anything at all about labor history or labor organization, you know that miners organizing and miners striking are a big part of mining history. This is because mining companies pick profits over people as much as they can and they have done so since the first pick hit the earth. It's what the shareholders would want. They're only thinking of the poor shareholders. Miners have had to demand better working conditions (frequently at great personal risk) by way of organizing and striking since forever. It's not any kind of a secret, more of a basic fact about mining, at least all the kinds of mining I've ever met.
So I found it a little interesting, during the tour of the Copper Queen Mine, that there was not a whisper of unionizing or labor history during our excellent mine tour. Our guide did mention that the mines paid well for the time and that even in later years, the bonus system used by Phelps Dodge at the Copper Queen enabled miners, at least the good miners, to do quite well for themselves. And that is probably true. Something was sure as shit drawing folks to Bisbee and enticing them to work in the mines. Money, I'd say, as there ain't a hell of a lot else in Bisbee.
In the course of the tour, our tour guide mentioned in a carefully casual way that the mine was previously owned by Phelps-Dodge and then became acquired by Freeport-McMoRan (a still-functioning company that bought Phelps-Dodge in 2007). He also mentioned that Freeport-McMoRan, who still owns the mine "graciously allowed" the mine tours to continue. Like, it wasn't super obvious, but also... it was in the tour and explicitly mentioned and he literally used the words graciously allowed. Hrm.
And so I got to thinking. The mine tour (which includes a tram ride and two trained and informative tour guides) is $16.00 a person to take the tour. Their website says about 50K people take the tour annually. Doing some basic math, we can see that the Copper Queen Mine Tour takes in about 800K a year in direct tour-based income (assuming all adult tour-takers). However, the people who come to do the tour also likely get a meal (or two) in town, may stay overnight so that it's a quick drive to Tombstone the next morning, etc. Bringing people to Bisbee is a definite benefit to the town as a whole. So that's... intangible income from the mine tour.
The mine tour (and it's a very good and informative mine tour, let me just reiterate) is a draw to bring people to the town. It's also charged to my credit card as "City of Bisbee" for the business. Hunh.
I am a suspicious person. I wonder, a bit, if the Copper Queen Mine Tour is a profit-making enterprise. I mean... maybe? They do five tours a day, each tour has two tour guides (one talks, the other does not, and they alternate), they probably have a couple of spare guides so that folks can have a day off or whatever, there's someone to run the gift shop... An optimistically-minimum payroll for the entire enterprise is maybe 10 people. Each person needs to earn a living wage, so perhaps $20 an hour (Arizona is expensive) and healthcare... that comes out to a payroll that is almost equivalent to the estimated annual take from the tours. They do make money on the gift shop stuff and a ton of people on our tour (including us) bought shit at the gift shop. But still, it seems kind of marginal as a business at the current price point.
Freeport-McMoRan (current owner of the mine) also supports the renovation/expansion of the nearby tourist thing Lowell, as noted on the epoxy sign in the Bisbee Breakfast Club (nice place for a breakfast, recommended). Like, they're still active in the area, philanthropically. They're still active in the area because they still own/manage the mine sites and have to remediate the drainage and leaching. They're still active in the area because they have to insure the Copper Queen mine tour site in case any tourist escapes from the tour and gets their damn fool self killed. They're still active in the area because they own the .4% ore in the ground north of the Lavender Pit Mine that may, eventually, become profitable... in which case they will for damn sure dig it up out the ground and sell it.
I also googled a bit, as one does. Partly this was because I was curious about the lack of labor history in the mining tour. Like, unions and strikes and labor organizing to demand better working conditions have been a big part of any mining history I've ever heard of, at all sorts of mines, so... how come the Copper Queen Tour was mute on the subject? Was there no union/strike stuff at the Copper Queen? (This was a question I did not ask during the mine tour because I was not trying to pick a fight or antagonize our tour guide who is after all just trying to make a living. I was pretty darned sure that there was at least some union/strike stuff going on at the Copper Queen. It was a mine, after all...) And I'd had two margaritas with dinner, which tends to make me... pull a thread, if there's a thread to be pulled.
Sometimes, it's what they don't say.
When I searched to learn more, Wikipedia mentioned the Bisbee Deportation.
Wait, what?
The Bisbee Deportation. Happened in Bisbee, obviously. Apparently it had something to do with the Copper Queen Mine and the miners and Phelps-Dodge, owner of the mine.
Didn't you just take a tour on that?
I did, yes. It was not mentioned even in passing during my tour of the Copper Queen Mine. Not at all. I paid attention to the entirety of the very good, informative tour. If our tour guide had said even one word about the Bisbee Deportation I would have heard it. He did not. Hrm.
So. Here's what the Copper Queen Mine Tour didn't say.
IWW Local 800 (Bisbee area miner union) called a strike to begin on June 26, 1917 against Phelps-Dodge. When the strike occurred as scheduled, not only the miners at Phelps-Dodge, but also those at other mines walked out. More than 3,000 miners—about 85 percent of all the mine workers in Bisbee—went on strike. (This was in a town with about 8000 residents total.)
The strike was peaceful.
At this time, the president of Phelps-Dodge was a man named Walter Douglas (son of the aforementioned James Douglas who founded the town of Douglas and started what became the El Paso and Southwestern rail line). Douglas, who was also president of the American Mining Congress, got that job by vowing to break every union in every mine and restore the open shop. I feel comfortable stating that the corporate stance of Phelps-Dodge was anti-union.
On July 11, 1917 (15 days into the strike) the Sheriff in Bisbee met with Phelps-Dodge corporate executives to plan the deportation of the striking miners. Some 2,200 men from Bisbee and Douglas (the town) were recruited and deputized as a posse. This was one of the largest posses ever assembled, which is kind of newsworthy.
Phelps Dodge officials met with executives of the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad. The El Paso and Southwestern agreed to provide rail transportation for any deportees. (Note that the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad was OWNED by Phelps-Dodge. The wikipedia article makes it sound like these were two different enterprises, but really, they were THE SAME ENTERPRISE. There was no chance that the "executives of the El Paso and Southwestern" were going to say, "Sorry, we don't want to deport the striking miners" because they were the same company as the one that owned the mines from whence the miners were striking.)
I'm just going to quote this next part in bulk:
At 4:00 a.m., July 12, 1917, the 2,200 deputies dispersed through the town of Bisbee and took up their planned positions. Each wore a white armband for identification, and carried a list of the men on strike. At 6:30 a.m., the deputies moved through town and arrested every man on their list, as well as any man who refused to work in the mines. Several men who owned local grocery stores were also arrested. In the process, the deputies took cash from the registers and all the goods they could carry. They arrested many male citizens of the town, seemingly at random, and anyone who had voiced support for the strike or the IWW. Two men died: one was a deputy shot by a miner he had tried to arrest, and the other was the miner (shot dead by three other deputies moments later).
Hunh. That sounds kinda... timely and relevant, doesn't it? Especially in today's political climate, it sounds very relevant. This miner deportation thing seems like something folks might like to know about, an interesting event that you could mention in your MINE TOUR.
Remember, this was a PEACEFUL strike, where mine workers halted work to collectively bargain for better conditions and better treatment at their jobs. Striking is not a criminal act. What the miners did in Bisbee was NOT A CRIME. And yet they were "arrested" and removed from the area for exercising their legal rights to peacefully assemble and (attempt to) collectively bargain.
It was not illegal to collectively bargain and/or strike in the US in 1917, but the right for workers to strike was not codified explicitly in a law until the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Just to clarify.
At 7:30 a.m., the 2,000 arrested men were assembled in front of the Bisbee Post Office and marched two miles (3 km) to Warren Ballpark. Sheriff Wheeler oversaw the march from a car outfitted with a loaded Marlin 7.62 mm belt-fed machine gun.
Why was there a loaded Marlin 7.62 mm belt-fed machine gun? Probably it was for safety reasons. I'm sure it was for safety. Good guy with a gun, right? To defeat the bad guys with guns, right? Right?
At gunpoint, they loaded about 1300 miners (some 700 took the "pledge against unions" deal offered by Phelps-Dodge at the ballpark, but the rest did not) onto rail cars (cattle cars with shit on the floors) and had the train drive almost 200 miles away to dump out the miners in Hermanas, New Mexico at 3 AM. Hermanas isn't really a town, btw. They tried a town (Columbus, New Mexico) first and were refused there, so the train moved on down the track to Hermanas. Hermanas wasn't in any way equipped to absorb like 1300 penniless miners.
While the company Phelps-Dodge was doing this, they seized the telegraph and telephone offices to prevent word from getting out. (Because they knew it was wrong, is why.) They refused to let Western Union send telegraphs and stopped the AP reporters from filing stories. Nobody outside the area found out about it until a union lawyer issued a press release from Hermanas.
Hunh. I'd think if you were doing a tour about mining, in the mine that related to this event, you might mention this Bisbee Deportation thing IN YOUR MINE TOUR because it is literally the most interesting thing that happened in and around the Copper Queen Mine.
Except maybe if the mine you need for your tour is still owned by the successor-in-title of the mining company what did that... and if the mine tour business and the town are kinda dependent upon the good graces of current owner Freeport-McMoRan for survival... then you maybe might not mention it. Out of politeness. Out of respect. Out of fear.
It was a very long time ago, after all.
It was.
Things are different now.
They're not. They're really not.
Or maybe you're all Look, let's not get political about it. People just want to know about old time-y mines with mules pulling ore carts and so forth. They are here for PICTURESQUE mining, not for information about labor regulations and unions and stuff. But you can have picturesque mining AND ALSO information about labor organizing and how capitalism doesn't... like it when workers do that, because #profits. Porque no los dos?
But it ain't los dos, it's just the picturesque part and not the Bisbee Deportation part.
Hunh. For what it's worth, I did not get to go to the mining historical museum in Bisbee (it was on our list but we got distracted with Trip to Mexico and ran out of time) so I do not know if the historical museum discusses the Bisbee Deportation. If anyone *has* been to the historical museum in the very fancy Phelps-Dodge HQ building in Bisbee, mention in the comments if the museum addresses the Bisbee Deportation because I want to know.
Bisbee, are you OK? Blink twice if you need help.
Also, just as an FYI, one of the things they were striking about in 1917? The miners wanted an end to the bonus system. As I mentioned, the tour stated that Phelps-Dodge used a bonus system to reward the good miners. But in 1917, the miners themselves didn't like the bonus system and were striking to get rid of it. It turns out that miners do not like the bonus system, even today, as seen in a John Oliver segment on (coal) mining, where he talks about Bob Murray (now deceased asshole coal company owner) and his miners being all shitty about the bonus system there.
In a shocking (lol) state of affairs, nobody ever paid for what was done to the deported Bisbee miners. A commission investigated the incident and found that "The deportation was wholly illegal and without authority in law, either State or Federal." but that was it. There were a couple of efforts to lawsuit, but they came up empty-handed. A case (United States vs. Wheeler) went to the Supreme Court, which held that the Constitution alone does not grant the federal government the power to prosecute kidnappers, even if moving abductees across state lines on federally-regulated railroads at the behest of local law enforcement officials, and only the states have the authority to punish a private citizen's unlawful violation of another's freedom of movement. The state of Arizona and the county of Cochise had no interest in prosecuting the matter and it ... died.
Afterward, Phelps-Dodge continued to operate and fight unions, including the 1983 Arizona strike that lasted for three years and did not end well for the unions. So yeah.
The Copper Queen Mine Tour was a very informative and enjoyable mine tour. I learned a lot about copper mining during the tour. But I learned a lot more... after the tour.
Bisbee's Copper Queen Mine was a real mine that really operated until 1975, doing the real business of mining copper for commercial production. In 1975, the mine shut down. In 1976, after infusions of labor and money, the mine reopened for tourism purposes.
Acquired by Phelps Dodge (a mining company) in 1885, the Copper Queen was running about 20% copper when it started (mines could be profitable at about 8%, so 20% was really good). Mining continued at the Copper Queen, both in tunnels under the ground and (later) by open pit mining, for the next ninety years... but the quality of the ore declined as time went on and when it stopped being profitable, Phelps-Dodge shut the mine down. (This is not unusual -- mines run until they are "played out" and then they are shut down.)
After 1900, the ore from Bisbee was shipped by narrow-gauge rail on the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad (founded by James Douglas) to the town of Douglas (founded by James Douglas) to be smelted. (Not part of the tour, but we drove to Douglas and looked at the big pile of slag outside the town and stuff. A lot of the railbed from the old railroad also runs along the modern paved road into Douglas and you can see it as you drive right alongside it, if that's a thing you might be interested in. Anyway, the slag pile thing is huge. Here's a picture:
) But anyway, to get a better picture of this arrangement, it helps to know that James Douglas was the president of Copper Queen Consolidated Mining, a subsidiary of Phelps Dodge.
In 1907, the various Phelps Dodge railroads, mining companies, real estate firms, etc. were all merged into Phelps Dodge and Company and in 1915, the company went public. So, in 1915, Phelps-Dodge owned the mines and the mining companies and the railroads. They owned all of it. Remember this, it is important later.
At the start, the Copper Queen was a traditional "narrow hole in the ground, tunnels, tiny rails for ore carts" style of mine, but later mining in the area (like the Lavender pit mine south of Bisbee) was done via open pit mining with modern equipment and machinery. We mostly saw the tunnels-rails style of mine because that's more tourism friendly than open pit mines. We did (after the tour) drive to the Lavender pit mine and look at it because it was there, just outside of town, but it was not included in the tour part of the thing. An open pit mine is literally a huge hole in the ground. That's it. Not a whole lot to see, but I do have pictures of that as well.
The Lavender Pit Mine:
There's a big fence around it so that you can't fall in. Each of the little layers is 50 feet high and this is a damn big hole in the ground.
The town of Bisbee grew in a narrow and steep canyon in southern Arizona because of the copper mines. Once the mines shut down, obvi, they switched to tourism. It's kind of an artsy little hippie town now and I think it's doing quite well with that. The restaurants are pretty good for the size town it is. (It's about 5000 residents, about twice the size of Bedford where I work.)
Anyway. The mine tour was VERY good. Our tour guide (a young, stick-thin fellow) was some flavor of rock/mineral/mining nerd and he answered all of our questions. I got the feeling that regardless of the question, he would know something about it. Two thumbs up, would 100% recommend doing this mine tour and visiting Bisbee. It's a neat little town and a fun and educational tour and I am in no way about to diss any of that.
But...
Well...
Would you like to know more? (Of course you would. I have the greatest of faiths in you, dear lexience.)
As a native Pennsylvanian, my experience is more with coal mines, but I am pretty sure that mining is mining, the world over. I don't think there is any mining where the rich people go into the dark dangerous hot wet with *bonus explosions* and the poor people sit safely up on the surface getting the end product to sell. It's the other way 'round, all the time. Poor people in the dark dangerous hot wet, rich people in the nice offices on the surface. This is the way of mines.
As well, if you know anything at all about labor history or labor organization, you know that miners organizing and miners striking are a big part of mining history. This is because mining companies pick profits over people as much as they can and they have done so since the first pick hit the earth. It's what the shareholders would want. They're only thinking of the poor shareholders. Miners have had to demand better working conditions (frequently at great personal risk) by way of organizing and striking since forever. It's not any kind of a secret, more of a basic fact about mining, at least all the kinds of mining I've ever met.
So I found it a little interesting, during the tour of the Copper Queen Mine, that there was not a whisper of unionizing or labor history during our excellent mine tour. Our guide did mention that the mines paid well for the time and that even in later years, the bonus system used by Phelps Dodge at the Copper Queen enabled miners, at least the good miners, to do quite well for themselves. And that is probably true. Something was sure as shit drawing folks to Bisbee and enticing them to work in the mines. Money, I'd say, as there ain't a hell of a lot else in Bisbee.
In the course of the tour, our tour guide mentioned in a carefully casual way that the mine was previously owned by Phelps-Dodge and then became acquired by Freeport-McMoRan (a still-functioning company that bought Phelps-Dodge in 2007). He also mentioned that Freeport-McMoRan, who still owns the mine "graciously allowed" the mine tours to continue. Like, it wasn't super obvious, but also... it was in the tour and explicitly mentioned and he literally used the words graciously allowed. Hrm.
And so I got to thinking. The mine tour (which includes a tram ride and two trained and informative tour guides) is $16.00 a person to take the tour. Their website says about 50K people take the tour annually. Doing some basic math, we can see that the Copper Queen Mine Tour takes in about 800K a year in direct tour-based income (assuming all adult tour-takers). However, the people who come to do the tour also likely get a meal (or two) in town, may stay overnight so that it's a quick drive to Tombstone the next morning, etc. Bringing people to Bisbee is a definite benefit to the town as a whole. So that's... intangible income from the mine tour.
The mine tour (and it's a very good and informative mine tour, let me just reiterate) is a draw to bring people to the town. It's also charged to my credit card as "City of Bisbee" for the business. Hunh.
I am a suspicious person. I wonder, a bit, if the Copper Queen Mine Tour is a profit-making enterprise. I mean... maybe? They do five tours a day, each tour has two tour guides (one talks, the other does not, and they alternate), they probably have a couple of spare guides so that folks can have a day off or whatever, there's someone to run the gift shop... An optimistically-minimum payroll for the entire enterprise is maybe 10 people. Each person needs to earn a living wage, so perhaps $20 an hour (Arizona is expensive) and healthcare... that comes out to a payroll that is almost equivalent to the estimated annual take from the tours. They do make money on the gift shop stuff and a ton of people on our tour (including us) bought shit at the gift shop. But still, it seems kind of marginal as a business at the current price point.
Freeport-McMoRan (current owner of the mine) also supports the renovation/expansion of the nearby tourist thing Lowell, as noted on the epoxy sign in the Bisbee Breakfast Club (nice place for a breakfast, recommended). Like, they're still active in the area, philanthropically. They're still active in the area because they still own/manage the mine sites and have to remediate the drainage and leaching. They're still active in the area because they have to insure the Copper Queen mine tour site in case any tourist escapes from the tour and gets their damn fool self killed. They're still active in the area because they own the .4% ore in the ground north of the Lavender Pit Mine that may, eventually, become profitable... in which case they will for damn sure dig it up out the ground and sell it.
I also googled a bit, as one does. Partly this was because I was curious about the lack of labor history in the mining tour. Like, unions and strikes and labor organizing to demand better working conditions have been a big part of any mining history I've ever heard of, at all sorts of mines, so... how come the Copper Queen Tour was mute on the subject? Was there no union/strike stuff at the Copper Queen? (This was a question I did not ask during the mine tour because I was not trying to pick a fight or antagonize our tour guide who is after all just trying to make a living. I was pretty darned sure that there was at least some union/strike stuff going on at the Copper Queen. It was a mine, after all...) And I'd had two margaritas with dinner, which tends to make me... pull a thread, if there's a thread to be pulled.
Sometimes, it's what they don't say.
When I searched to learn more, Wikipedia mentioned the Bisbee Deportation.
Wait, what?
The Bisbee Deportation. Happened in Bisbee, obviously. Apparently it had something to do with the Copper Queen Mine and the miners and Phelps-Dodge, owner of the mine.
Didn't you just take a tour on that?
I did, yes. It was not mentioned even in passing during my tour of the Copper Queen Mine. Not at all. I paid attention to the entirety of the very good, informative tour. If our tour guide had said even one word about the Bisbee Deportation I would have heard it. He did not. Hrm.
So. Here's what the Copper Queen Mine Tour didn't say.
IWW Local 800 (Bisbee area miner union) called a strike to begin on June 26, 1917 against Phelps-Dodge. When the strike occurred as scheduled, not only the miners at Phelps-Dodge, but also those at other mines walked out. More than 3,000 miners—about 85 percent of all the mine workers in Bisbee—went on strike. (This was in a town with about 8000 residents total.)
The strike was peaceful.
At this time, the president of Phelps-Dodge was a man named Walter Douglas (son of the aforementioned James Douglas who founded the town of Douglas and started what became the El Paso and Southwestern rail line). Douglas, who was also president of the American Mining Congress, got that job by vowing to break every union in every mine and restore the open shop. I feel comfortable stating that the corporate stance of Phelps-Dodge was anti-union.
On July 11, 1917 (15 days into the strike) the Sheriff in Bisbee met with Phelps-Dodge corporate executives to plan the deportation of the striking miners. Some 2,200 men from Bisbee and Douglas (the town) were recruited and deputized as a posse. This was one of the largest posses ever assembled, which is kind of newsworthy.
Phelps Dodge officials met with executives of the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad. The El Paso and Southwestern agreed to provide rail transportation for any deportees. (Note that the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad was OWNED by Phelps-Dodge. The wikipedia article makes it sound like these were two different enterprises, but really, they were THE SAME ENTERPRISE. There was no chance that the "executives of the El Paso and Southwestern" were going to say, "Sorry, we don't want to deport the striking miners" because they were the same company as the one that owned the mines from whence the miners were striking.)
I'm just going to quote this next part in bulk:
At 4:00 a.m., July 12, 1917, the 2,200 deputies dispersed through the town of Bisbee and took up their planned positions. Each wore a white armband for identification, and carried a list of the men on strike. At 6:30 a.m., the deputies moved through town and arrested every man on their list, as well as any man who refused to work in the mines. Several men who owned local grocery stores were also arrested. In the process, the deputies took cash from the registers and all the goods they could carry. They arrested many male citizens of the town, seemingly at random, and anyone who had voiced support for the strike or the IWW. Two men died: one was a deputy shot by a miner he had tried to arrest, and the other was the miner (shot dead by three other deputies moments later).
Hunh. That sounds kinda... timely and relevant, doesn't it? Especially in today's political climate, it sounds very relevant. This miner deportation thing seems like something folks might like to know about, an interesting event that you could mention in your MINE TOUR.
Remember, this was a PEACEFUL strike, where mine workers halted work to collectively bargain for better conditions and better treatment at their jobs. Striking is not a criminal act. What the miners did in Bisbee was NOT A CRIME. And yet they were "arrested" and removed from the area for exercising their legal rights to peacefully assemble and (attempt to) collectively bargain.
It was not illegal to collectively bargain and/or strike in the US in 1917, but the right for workers to strike was not codified explicitly in a law until the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Just to clarify.
At 7:30 a.m., the 2,000 arrested men were assembled in front of the Bisbee Post Office and marched two miles (3 km) to Warren Ballpark. Sheriff Wheeler oversaw the march from a car outfitted with a loaded Marlin 7.62 mm belt-fed machine gun.
Why was there a loaded Marlin 7.62 mm belt-fed machine gun? Probably it was for safety reasons. I'm sure it was for safety. Good guy with a gun, right? To defeat the bad guys with guns, right? Right?
At gunpoint, they loaded about 1300 miners (some 700 took the "pledge against unions" deal offered by Phelps-Dodge at the ballpark, but the rest did not) onto rail cars (cattle cars with shit on the floors) and had the train drive almost 200 miles away to dump out the miners in Hermanas, New Mexico at 3 AM. Hermanas isn't really a town, btw. They tried a town (Columbus, New Mexico) first and were refused there, so the train moved on down the track to Hermanas. Hermanas wasn't in any way equipped to absorb like 1300 penniless miners.
While the company Phelps-Dodge was doing this, they seized the telegraph and telephone offices to prevent word from getting out. (Because they knew it was wrong, is why.) They refused to let Western Union send telegraphs and stopped the AP reporters from filing stories. Nobody outside the area found out about it until a union lawyer issued a press release from Hermanas.
Hunh. I'd think if you were doing a tour about mining, in the mine that related to this event, you might mention this Bisbee Deportation thing IN YOUR MINE TOUR because it is literally the most interesting thing that happened in and around the Copper Queen Mine.
Except maybe if the mine you need for your tour is still owned by the successor-in-title of the mining company what did that... and if the mine tour business and the town are kinda dependent upon the good graces of current owner Freeport-McMoRan for survival... then you maybe might not mention it. Out of politeness. Out of respect. Out of fear.
It was a very long time ago, after all.
It was.
Things are different now.
They're not. They're really not.
Or maybe you're all Look, let's not get political about it. People just want to know about old time-y mines with mules pulling ore carts and so forth. They are here for PICTURESQUE mining, not for information about labor regulations and unions and stuff. But you can have picturesque mining AND ALSO information about labor organizing and how capitalism doesn't... like it when workers do that, because #profits. Porque no los dos?
But it ain't los dos, it's just the picturesque part and not the Bisbee Deportation part.
Hunh. For what it's worth, I did not get to go to the mining historical museum in Bisbee (it was on our list but we got distracted with Trip to Mexico and ran out of time) so I do not know if the historical museum discusses the Bisbee Deportation. If anyone *has* been to the historical museum in the very fancy Phelps-Dodge HQ building in Bisbee, mention in the comments if the museum addresses the Bisbee Deportation because I want to know.
Bisbee, are you OK? Blink twice if you need help.
Also, just as an FYI, one of the things they were striking about in 1917? The miners wanted an end to the bonus system. As I mentioned, the tour stated that Phelps-Dodge used a bonus system to reward the good miners. But in 1917, the miners themselves didn't like the bonus system and were striking to get rid of it. It turns out that miners do not like the bonus system, even today, as seen in a John Oliver segment on (coal) mining, where he talks about Bob Murray (now deceased asshole coal company owner) and his miners being all shitty about the bonus system there.
In a shocking (lol) state of affairs, nobody ever paid for what was done to the deported Bisbee miners. A commission investigated the incident and found that "The deportation was wholly illegal and without authority in law, either State or Federal." but that was it. There were a couple of efforts to lawsuit, but they came up empty-handed. A case (United States vs. Wheeler) went to the Supreme Court, which held that the Constitution alone does not grant the federal government the power to prosecute kidnappers, even if moving abductees across state lines on federally-regulated railroads at the behest of local law enforcement officials, and only the states have the authority to punish a private citizen's unlawful violation of another's freedom of movement. The state of Arizona and the county of Cochise had no interest in prosecuting the matter and it ... died.
Afterward, Phelps-Dodge continued to operate and fight unions, including the 1983 Arizona strike that lasted for three years and did not end well for the unions. So yeah.
The Copper Queen Mine Tour was a very informative and enjoyable mine tour. I learned a lot about copper mining during the tour. But I learned a lot more... after the tour.
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Date: 2025-04-21 02:10 am (UTC)Also, the only reason I know of a town named Bisbee is because in Tremors, they talk about going to Bisbee to get help.