As noted yesterday, in one of the largest criminal acts of its type, industrial vigilantism of a type that we no longer see (thankfully) broke out in Bisbee Arizona. Mining interest operated to illegally arrest and "deport" IWW members from Bisbee to New Mexico, entraining the victims and shipping them off to hapless southern New Mexico.
The IWW, to be sure, was one of the most radical unions going, in an era in which unions were pretty radical. This was an era in which, for a combination of reasons, radical Socialism, of the type stirring up all sorts of foment in collapsing Russia, was on the rise everywhere and indeed had its presence in American unions. The IWW, with its concept of "one big union", was one of the most radical of the bunch.
From the June 30, 1917 issue of Solidarity, the Industrial Workers of the World magazine. One Big Union.
Frankly, in my view, the IWW was really darned goofy, and the concept of "one big union" totally unworkable. Its no surprise that the IWW, which still exists, never succeeded it reaching its goals. But the teens and the twenties were its era in the sun, and in Bisbee Arizona it had its moment.
Bibee in 1916.
The reason was simple enough. Conditions at the Phelps Dodge mine there were bad and the union that had the membership there, the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) wasn't doing much. Some 800 or so workers turned to the IWW.
And the mining interest reacted, gathering up the IWW members and shipping them out of Bisbee.
A humanitarian disaster was in the works, the US had to intervene and did. Ultimately, while the Federal government determined the act was criminal, what with its scale, and what with all that was going on, nobody was prosecuted for this shocking act.
Amongst the shocks the nations was receiving, we'd note, it became clearer and clearer every day that the draft was going to be big. Really big. Early registration had somewhat mixed results but was mostly successful. The Guard was going into official Federal service, conscripted actually due to an odd view of the US Attorney General that Federalized Guardsmen could not serve overseas, in August. The big draw of average male citizens was hitting the news. Even with the big numbers being claimed in the Press at the time, the actual numbers would be much larger.
There's be a lot more than two. July 12, 1917 cover of Leslie's
Regarding fighting, the second of a series of mysterious events, which had not yet hit the international news but which would start to, occurred on this day. Three Portuguese peasant children claimed to receive a visit from a mysterious otherworldly lady who then, they claimed, gave them a momentary but vivid glimpse of Hell. Following that, she gave them a message, which included, but was not limited to, requests for penitential prayers and a prediction that the Great War would soon end, but if penance was not performed, Russia would fall into grave error, spread those errors around the world, nations would be destroyed, and a second war greater than the first would occur in the reign of a Pope who was named but who was not at that time the sitting Pope. While nobody, including Catholics, are obligated to believe in a private revelation, this series of events, which would end, as the visitor claimed, in October 1917 with a final spectacular event, is hard to discount given that the contents of the messages proved to be true. And so went the second, July 13, 1917 apparition of the Virgin Mary at Fatima.
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