It might have never happened if not for an earlier set of Finnish and Italian immigrant mineworkers who had gone on strike in 1907. This was possible because several groups of immigrants overcame deep divisions of history and language to band together to trade Old World nationalist pride for a new, American class consciousness. After several unsuccessful attempts to hit back at their industrial oppressors, unskilled newcomers, some in the country for less than 10 years, brought America’s ruling industrial class to an unwelcomed reckoning with organized labor. The Mesabi Iron Range strike was a remarkable feat of protest, and during that summer of 1916, the “Reds” won, for a time. Within two weeks, the 40 disgruntled mineworkers had grown to 100, then 1,000 strikers picketing in the streets. Their small labor disturbance would mushroom into one of the early 20th century’s most contentious battles between organized labor and management.
They fanned out across the almost 100-mile Mesabi Iron Range to entice fellow laborers to drop their work and join the common cause.
The men, mostly immigrants, were fed up with the dangerous conditions they faced blasting and hauling iron ore in open pits and underground shafts, and with the prolonged abuses of mining company managers.
James Mine in Aurora, Minnesota, walked off the job. On June 2, 1916, 40 mineworkers from the St.
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