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Being a miner in modern times doesn’t seem like a lot of fun, but imagine doing it a century ago. It could teach things that suck how to suck. In 1917 in Arizona, a mining company called Phelps Dodge, that mostly focused on extracting copper, was treating its employees like shit. So the workers went on strike. And the company kidnapped them and deported them out of the state.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: July 12, 1917--
As I said, mining a century ago sucked. But mining a century ago in Arizona super sucked. Especially when you worked for those Phelps Dodge assholes. The pay was shit. The living conditions in the camp were shittier. The bosses treated you like shit. You could die.
So mine employees who lived in Bisbee, Arizona started signing up for the Industrial Workers of the World union. Phelps Dodge pretty much owned the town of 8,000 people. The miners started asking for all sorts of changes, including not just a pay raise, but also not being strip searched after work to make sure they weren’t stealing. The company’s official reply was: Get fucked. Get fucked on all of it. So employees said get fucked on this strike. And it wasn’t just Phelps Dodge workers who went on strike, but those employed by other local mining companies, representing around 85% of the miners in Bisbee.
The sheriff said fuck these guys and called the governor and said these totally peaceful protestors are actually pro-Germany, that country we’re currently at war with, because America needs copper for the war. Tell the prez to send in the troops. President Wilson said, uh, no. So the president of Phelps Dodge said to the governor send in the militia and the governor said no can do and the company man said fuck you I’ll form my own militia because unions suck and we need to bust up that commie shit. So he got a mega-posse of 2,000 armed men, called it the Citizens’ Protective League, and on July 12, 1917 they gathered up 1,300 striking miners and their supporters and loaded them on to train cars with no food and little water for a 16-hour trip through the desert.
They were dumped in the town of Tres Hermanas in New Mexico with no money and told don’t fucking come back to Bisbee. Then the feds had to send in the army to help relocate all the deportees. Since Phelps Dodge controlled the town’s media and telegraph, it was a while before the rest of America found out what happened. The president launched a commission to investigate the deportation and they said oh yeah this was illegal as fuck but of course no one was ever convicted of anything.
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