Silver Valley Mining Wars: Part 3
William Haywood (aka “Big Bill”) was born in 1867 in Salt Lake City to parents William and Elizabeth. The father, a rider in the legendary but short-lived Pony Express, died when Bill was just 3 years old. Thus, young Bill was required to join the manual labor force at a very early age, working as an indentured farmhand and cowboy. Sadly, a formal education had to be shelved.
At age 15 Bill started working in the local Utah mines. He was a tall, big-boned kid whose mind quickly became aware of what hard work in deplorable conditions and low wages did to the human. He followed the events related to the Haymarket Massacre and the Pullman Strike, and he became interested in the politics of the “Labor Movement,” especially when the movement was involved with violence to achieve their ends. He was drawn to the “One Big Union” concept, which required large numbers of workers in order to be effective.
At age 29 he was working in a Kellogg silver mine when the president of the Western Federation of Miners, Ed Boyce, gave a speech that inspired Bill to join the WFM. He was so committed to the union that at age 35 he had become a member of the Central Executive Board and soon the secretary treasurer of the WFM. To be near the action, he moved to Colorado.
While in Colorado he became acquainted with a miner from Idaho named Harry Orchard.
On Dec. 30, 1905, retired Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg was assassinated by a bomb rigged to the front gate of his home in Caldwell, Idaho. Harry Orchard was arrested the next day. Prosecutors told Orchard he could avoid hanging if he would finger those who had helped plan the murder. Clarence Darrow, the famous lawyer, was Orchard’s defense attorney and told him not to deal with the prosecutors, but Orchard said that three Federation officials — Haywood, Pettibone and Moyer — had commissioned it. Darrow dropped him.
The prosecutors engineered a quick “extradition” to Idaho of the other three. Clarence Darrow called it a “kidnapping.” In May 1907, Big Bill Haywood went on trial with Darrow as his defense attorney.
Haywood, Pettibone and Moyer were acquitted. Harry Orchard confessed to Steunenberg’s assassination and other murders, and he was convicted and sentenced to life in the Boise penitentiary where he died in 1954.
After these trials, Big Bill became a truly big name in the Labor Movement. He was a self-acclaimed Socialist and Marxist. But the Espionage Act of 1917 got him. He was tried for “conspiring to hinder the draft,” plus multiple other charges, found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in prison. On March 31, 1921, he jumped bail and fled to Moscow, Russia. This resulted in the forfeiture of a $15,000 bond and loss of Union support.
Haywood’s life in Russia included work with the Lenin government and deepening loneliness and depression. He died in May, 1928, in Moscow of cerebral vascular disease, diabetes and alcoholism. Half of his ashes were in an urn placed in the Kremlin wall and half in Chicago’s Haymarket Martyrs’ monument.
Richard Sheldon is a member of the Museum of North Idaho Board of Directors.
