Jackpine Savages: Discourses of Conquest in the 1916 Mesabi Iron Range Strike

Abstract

A wolf ran along the swampa bear rambled on the heath;the swamp moved at the wolf's treadand the heath at the bear's paws there iron rust rose and a steel rod grewwhere the wolf's feet had been, where the bear's heel had dug.(The Kalevala)In the summer of 1916, independent action on the part of immigrant miners on Minnesota's Mesabi Iron Range, the source of the bulk of the nation's iron ore and the taproot of the powerful Steel Trust, drew the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies) into a conflict with some of the nation's most powerful capitalists and employers. The Mesabi's mine-owners—led by the omnipresent Oliver Mining Company—had grown accustomed to an almost colonial dominance over the region after successfully breaking up earlier strikes led by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). Acute demand for iron ore from Europe, the curtailment of European immigration, and an increasingly radical Range workforce seemed to bode well for the Wobblies' chances, however, and the existence of a vibrant socialist movement among the immigrants who lived and worked on the Mesabi Range, especially among radical Finns, held out a ray of hope and a possibility for success that IWW organizers simply could not pass up.