men who lost their lives were Finns : "Striking workers and police were involved in a battle on Michigan Street, between Garfield Avenue and 12th Street, and 18-year old Tom Fitzsimmons and Matt Mack and Ed Johnson, the two latter being Finns, were killed, thus becoming the first martyrs among the workers

in Duluth." 12

The Miners' Strike o f 1907: The next big strike in which Finns participated in Minnesota was a battle for more pay and shorter hours. This strike began in June 1907 at the Johnson Wentworth Company, in Cloquet, with sawmill workers demanding a 20% increase in wages. Skirmishes developed, and three Finns, William K. Maki, S. Kainu and K. Santa, were among those seriously hurt on the workers' side. As a result of the force used against the workers, the strike spread rapidly and soon embraced the employees in Duluth of the Duluth Mesabi and Northern Railway, and then spread to the harbor facilities, with the stevedores of Two Harbors, Alloueze (Wisconsin) and West Duluth soon included, according to the Työmies, which reported that the strike now involved 15,000 men, a majority of them Finns. The strike continued to spread to facilities where ore was loaded on ships, and by 20 July the Western Federation of Miners' official bulletin stated that all loadings of ore on Lake Superior had been halted.

The strike, now directed chiefly against the mines, was caused above all else by miserable working conditions. The mines were extremely hazardous places, and the use of dangerous explosives brought frequent disaster: on 14 June 1900, in an accident at the Hale mine in Biwabik, five men had been killed, among them one Finn, Werner Heti. Four days later, ten men died in an accident at the Clark mine in Hibbing, and three of the dead and two of the wounded were Finns. In addition to such large-scale disasters, there were numerous everyday incidents which cost lives. Such conditions caused bitterness among the workers and constant fear and anxiety among their families. Above all else, however, wages were very low: in 1896 they ranged from $1.60 to $1.75 per day, in 1900 from $2.10 to $2.40, with the discrepancy between wages received and the cost of living continuing to grow during the decade which followed. Also, living quarters were miserable, and the rents for them were exorbitant.

When the Western Federation of Miners was organized in 1893, it gave the workers new hope. Its twenty-year history is

12. WPA Archives, St. Paul, Minnesota,

253