Charles H. Moyer, William Dudley Haywood, and Charles Pettibone of Western Federation of Miners. © Corbis. Reproduced by permission.

United States 1893

Synopsis

In reaction to the use of federal troops to break a strike of unionized miners of nonferrous metals in Idaho, miners' unions from five western states formed the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), an industrial union of wage earners (miners and smelter workers) in and around the mines. The WFM endorsed the class struggle in the preamble to its constitution and engaged in labor strikes in which the mining corporations used troops to defeat the union miners. The WFM created the Western Labor Union and its successor, the American Labor Union, as competitors to the more conservative, craft union-dominated American Federation of Labor. The WFM endorsed the Populists in 1896 and the newly formed Socialist Party in 1900, and in 1905 the WFM took...