On June 2, 1916, forty mostly immigrant mineworkers at the St.
James Mine in Aurora, Minnesota, walked off the job. This seemingly
small labor disturbance would mushroom into one of the region’s,
if not the nation’s, most contentious and significant battles
between organized labor and management in the early twentieth
century. Flames of Discontent tells the story of this pivotal
moment and what it meant for workers and immigrants, mining and
labor relations in Minnesota and beyond. Drawing on previously
untapped accounts from immigrant press newspapers, company letters,
personal journals, and oral histories, historian Gary Kaunonen
gives voice to the strike’s organizers and working-class
participants. In depth and in dramatic detail, his book describes
the events leading up to the strike, and the violence that made it
one of the most contentious in Minnesota history. Against the
background of the physical and cultural landscape of Minnesota’s
Iron Range, Kaunonen’s history brings the lives of working-class
Finnish immigrants into sharp relief, documenting the conditions
and circumstances behind the emergence of leftist politics and
union organization in their ranks. At the same time, it shows how
the region’s South Slavic immigrants went from “scabs” during
a 1907 strike to full-fledged striking members of the labor revolt
of 1916. A look at the media of the time reveals how the three main
contenders for working-class allegiances—mine owners, Progressive
reformers, and a revolutionary union—communicated with their
mostly immigrant audience. Meanwhile, documents from mining company
officials provide a strong argument for corruption reaching as far
as the state’s then governor, Joseph A. A. Burnquist, whose
strike-busting was undertaken in the interests of billion dollar
corporations. Ultimately, anti-syndicalist laws were put in place
to thwart the growing influence of organizations that sought to
represent immigrant workers. Flames of Discontent raises the voices
of those workers, and of history, against an injustice that
reverberates to this day.
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