The Great Bingham Strike of 1912 And Expulsion of the Padrone

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 38, 1970, No. 2

The Great Bingham Strike of 1912 And Expulsion of the Padrone

BY 1912 THE GREAT NUMBER of Greek immigrants were still in the mines. 37 They were still paying Leonidas Skliris for their jobs. A monthly cut of their wages was divided between Skliris and straw bosses. For several years the Greeks had been questioning the right of Skliris and his men to live off their labor.

In Bingham the Greeks, living in Copperfield next to the Japanese, their wrestling and card-playing companions, numbered 1,210. Englishspeaking workmen were leaving mining for other opportunities, and South Europeans quickly took their places. Italians were next in number, 639; Austrians, 564; Japanese, 254; Finns, 217; English, 161; Bulgarians, 60; Swedes, 59; Irish, 52; and Germans, 23.

Zack Tallas, at the time a young Greek fireman in Copperfield, described Bingham in that year.

It was green then, not as it was later with the dumps. There were springs and wildflowers everywhere. In the draws of the mountains were three goat ranches run by Greeks. Now they're filled up with capping. The companies had their boardinghouses, but other people ran boardinghouses too. There were so many men — don't believe the census . . . that they built powder-box houses on company property and went to the barbershops to take a bath.

Each nationality had its own stores and bakeries. The Greeks had four or five bakeries, five candy stores, and ten coffeehouses. . . . The Greeks, Serbians, Austrians, and Italians feuded with each other and among themselves. Killings were not unusual. There was a regular redlight district. . . .

In the mines a person had to be on his guard; there were company spies who spoke their language and who carried all rumor and talk of labor troubles to the mine officials. The companies were enemies. Miners were killed regularly. My brother was killed and the Company sent my parents three hundred dollars. Many of the dead had wives and young children in the old country.

On the long, winding street of the town, labor organizers — the "Bolsheviks," the "Wobblies," the "labor agitators"—were active. The Greeks were not interested in their strike talk. They were interested in digging copper only for the money that would take them out of the mines. An exception was Louis Theos (Theodoropoulos) who was known among his fellow Greeks as an officer of the IWW and who had done undercover work for unions in the Carbon County coal mines.

The miners' talk of grievances was, however, something they understood. They also had grievances. They bitterly resented their suave, welldressed countryman, Skliris, who lived in the luxury of the newly built Hotel Utah on the money he extracted from them. If they did not trade at the Pan Hellenic Grocery Store, he threatened them with discharge. Also, they were not paid as much as the Japanese who worked as bank men. (With ropes tied around their waists, the men lowered themselves over the banks and swung their picks into the ore — a dangerous occupation. )

On May 1, 1912, the Western Federation of Labor called a strike at the lead plant of the American Smelting and Refining Company in Murray demanding recognition of the union and an increase in wages from $1.75 per day to $2.00 per day. The strike lasted six weeks, involved between eight to nine hundred men, and closed the smelter for a short time. The strike was broken by Cretans from Bingham and Helper sent under orders of Skliris. The Greeks saw they were still the puppets of the labor agent.

During the summer the labor organizers increased their missionary work among the immigrants. They first had to overcome distrust and apathy. The immigrants had all come from cultures where the rich were the powerful and that was the fate of life. The labor organizers lived precariously, attempting to make themselves and their principles known to the miners and at the same time forced to hide their identity from the law. The authorities were alert to the vaguest of rumors on which to base indictments for sedition, and if unsuccessful in this, they brought vagrancy charges against labor organizers and put them in jail.

September of 1912 was an auspicious time for a strike. When the officials of the Western Federation of Labor began their talks, they found the Greeks incensed and ready. The anger of the Greeks explains the phenomenal success of the Federation in the summer of 1912. Voler V. Viles's report to the U. S. Department of Commerce show r ed 250 union members in July, 900 on August 27, and 2,500 in October. At a meeting on the seventeenth of September, attended by a thousand miners, President Charles W. Moyer of the Federation asked that further attempts be made to negotiate with the mine officials before calling a strike. At the time the payscale was $2.00 per day for surface men, $2.50 per day for muckers (diggers), and $3.00 per day for miners. The union intended to ask for recognition of the Federation and a 50-cent a day raise for all workers.

The men refused Moyer's suggestion and unanimously voted a walkout immediately affecting 4,800 men. The American-born miners had stayed away from the meeting, not wanting to align themselves with the "foreigners." Another 150 steam-shovel men of American nationality were opposed to the strike, but "did not want to go against the wishes of the majority."

The foreigners were jubilant . . . chiefly Greeks and Austrians . . . shooting off firearms and intimidating American laborers. When deputies attempted to quell the disturbance, the foreigners showed their wildest disorder. One Greek after firing several times after being ordered to cease, was shot in the wrist by Deputy Sheriff Schweitzer. The shot caused more excitement and a mob of foreign laborers chased the deputy who was rescued by other officers.

Fifty National Guard sharpshooters from Fort Douglas and twentyfive deputy sheriffs from Salt Lake City, supplied with several thousand rounds of ammunition, were brought in. Rifles from the munition stores of the Utah National Guard were made ready for delivery to Bingham. Saloons and gambling halls were closed, and railroad crossings and mines were floodlighted.

The day after the walkout, President Moyer told eight hundred strikers at the Bingham Theater that the union officials had waited all day for an answ r er from the mine managers and had not received one. R. C. Gemmel, of Utah Copper, told the press that "we do not treat with officers of the union regarding matters connected with the mines. We do not recognize the Federation." Gemmel said, "I don't think they [the miners] have any grievance. It is the officials of the miners' union who have stirred up trouble." He stated the following day that "We advanced the men twentyfive cents [to become effective in November]. This was voluntary." If the miners would work through committees, Gemmel claimed, the trouble could be adjusted.

President Moyer countered, "as for the men meeting with the companies as individuals, I will only say that a great many of them can not speak the English language, and their only opportunity is through their authorized representatives." Moyer denied the raise to the miners was voluntary, insisting it was the result of a similar raise in the mines of Montana the past June. Even a 50-cent increase, he said, would be less than what the Montana miners received for the same work. Moyer stated that "their [the miners] hours are too long and the current high price of copper justifies the raise."

The strikers took blankets and guns and settled in advantageous positions on the mountainsides. On the morning of September 19, the strikers were given until noon to leave the mines; and if this ultimatum was defied, Salt Lake County Sheriff Joseph Sharp threatened to send 250 deputies armed with Winchesters. Governor William H. Spry said, "We are going up on the hill and drive them down." The governor was believed to be, according to the Deseret Evening News, "one of the party [who wanted] to attack the foreigners' stronghold."

With 800 foreign strikers armed with rifles and revolvers strongly entrenched in the precipitious mountain ledges across the canyon from the Utah Copper Mine, raking the mine workings with a hail of lead at every attempt of railroad employees or deputy sheriffs to enter the grounds, the strike situation has reached its initial crisis.

A last attempt was made by President Moyer to convince the strikers to leave the mountainside. He sent Yanco Terzich, a director of the Federation, with his message, but his climb was in vain.

While the union spoke of wages, the Greeks, mostly Cretans "famed as men who, when the spirit moves them to fight, are difficult to control," were concerned first with getting Skliris fired. Utah Copper Company posted notices in the Greek language informing the men that they were not required to pay for their jobs, and Vice-President Daniel C. Jackling in San Francisco for business meetings sent a telegram to the same effect. Mr. Gemmel defended Skliris; and Governor William Spry, in response to a letter from one of the Greeks explaining Skliris's extortion practices, sent out a "Greek detective" who predictably found no such practices.

Jackling, Moyer said, refused to believe the padrone system existed, perhaps because he was too busy. "I believe he does not look to the methods of Skliris and his ilk, but simply asks cheap labor no matter how it comes."

Governor Spry quickly called a meeting with Sheriff Sharp, Adjutant General E. A. Wedgwood (commander of the National Guard at Fort Douglas), and the mine operators to discuss the calling out of the militia and the proclaiming of martial law. Moyer and Terzich were invited to give testimony as to whether "the striking foreigners [were] amenable to the counsel of the strike leaders." The Salt Lake Tribune continued: "In Bingham the belief is prevalent that the foreign element among the strikers will be a law unto themselves despite the protestations of President Moyer." The union, Moyer admitted, could not handle the Greeks.

"Foreigners" had bought arms in quantity from Salt Lake City hardware and sporting-goods stores. "The men are known to be from Bingham because they took the 3:15 train back to that camp." Brigham store owners had stocked up on revolvers. They were requiring cash for all merchandise and were not sending out their delivery wagons. Druggists were told not to sell liquor. Deputies were arriving on every train.

The Salt Lake Herald Republican reported on the "vile conditions" of the powder-box houses where miners slept in shifts and yet sent $580,000 in money orders to Europe during the past year. In Bingham businessmen and native Americans were hostile to the strikers knowing the long economic misery that would come to the town. Rumors and attempts to prove the immigrants ungrateful to America kept the town in an unheaval.

All mines now except the Apex, which was working under Moyer's orders, were out on strike. Only Ohio Copper officials would consider a conference with the union. In San Francisco Jackling told the press, "When I fight, I'll fight hard."

The strikers remained on the mountainside, and the deputies did not go up and drive them down. The attack was delayed by rumors that strikers had broken into the Utah Construction tunnel and stolen sixty cases of dynamite. While the deputies hesitated, two hundred Austrians descended on the Denver and Rio Grande trestle between lower and upper Bingham and fired on anyone attempting to cross it.

Governor Spry had expected the strikers to heed the ultimatum to leave the mines and was waiting in the Bingham Theater to talk with them. His visit seemed fruitless until a bearded priest in black robes with the tall black priest's hat on his head walked up Main Street and up the mountain.

Their warlike spirit subdued temporarily by a lone priest of the Greek Church, Father Vasilios Lambrides, who exhorted them in the name of their religion to refrain from further violence and defiance of the law, the army of strikers encamped on the mountain side commanding the works of the Utah Copper Company, voluntarily descending from their stronghold yesterday afternoon.

The little father dressed in flowing clerical robes with a glittering cross of gold upon his breast, went among the militant strikers like the spirit of peace and brought "the truce of God." Everywhere guns were laid aside for him and hats were doffed in respectful salute.

With few exceptions the men left their trenches and trooped down to the meeting place where Governor Spry was waiting to address them.

There, Sheriff Sharp wisely decided not to disarm the strikers although 250 deputies were at his service. The Greek miners "declared with vociferous acclaim" that they would go back to work at the present scale if Utah Copper would refuse to have anything to do with Leonidas G. Skliris, "Czar of the Greeks." A carpenter, John (Scotty) Curie, speaking with a brogue, told the mine officials that the Greeks should not be given the entire responsibility for the strike because Italians and Austrians were also involved. Skliris, he told them, was the strike issue. Chris Kiousios repeated Scotty's speech in Greek to the strikers' "thunderous applause." N. P. Stathakos, a Greek community leader and banker, spoke to the Greeks urging them to be peaceful.

A telegram was read from D.C. Jackling, representing Utah Copper, reiterating his previous statement that men did not have to pay to get jobs at Utah Copper. Governor Spry spoke in platitudes, and Robert C. Gemmel defended Skliris. Angrily the strikers left to continue the strike.

Moyer was asked to take Governor Spry and his party up the mountainside. The barricades were empty but "Cretans with rifles were far up. When Moyer's attention was called to them he said they were probably hunting jackrabbits."

The next day about three hundred strikers patrolled the Bingham- Garfield Line ready to shoot at strikebreakers who were being brought into town.

Rumors that Skliris and his underlings were recruiting Greek strikebreakers and that if the strikers did not capitulate immediately, they would be blacklisted only angered the miners and made them more determined in their fight against the labor agent. To further demoralize and subjugate the men, a freight train of hopper ore cars was slowly driven from Magna to Bingham. Rifles were tied in such a way that their muzzles protruded making it appear that men were crouched below holding them. The disloyalty of their fellow Greeks only added fuel to the Cretans' rage. Taking a large supply of ammunition, they returned to their positions on the mountains.

Despite the strikers' vigilance strikebreakers were finding ways of entering Bingham unnoticed. The townspeople were asking why the patrols had not been disarmed, and the sheriff's office assured them that this would be done in the afternoon. People were leaving the canyon by the hundreds on the daily trains. The newspapers reported "White residents leaving camp, . . . The two daily trains carry about 200 of the better element of the camp, . . . the foreign element of Greeks, Italians, Austrians and Cretans are dominant in a situation into which the 'white' element has been forced against its will."

The steady increase of deputies gave no confidence to the people of Bingham. Moyer said that among them were "irresponsible riff-raff of Salt Lake." Promiscuous shooting, theft, drunkenness, and the accidental killing of one deputy by another bore this out. Moyer asked if Sheriff Sharp and Governor Spry would "deputize a couple-hundred armed men to protect the strikers from the gunmen of Utah Copper ... the strikers, many of them citizens, who have committed the awful crime of banding together and demanding a better pay of their employers."

Skliris returned from Colorado and Idaho where he found young unemployed Greeks through the labor agents, Karavellas and Babalis. He defended his fifteen years as a labor agent in the West, insisting that he would pay $5,000 to anyone who could prove the padrone charge, the money to be used as a monument for Governor Stuenenberg or for any other appropriate purpose. The Greek employees of Utah Copper were loyal, he said, but were coerced by an armed mob.

Ernest K. Pappas, spokesman for the Greeks, answered Skliris saying, "Where there is so much smoke, there must be some fire." His letter to the Deseret Evening News continued:

This padrone has grown rich on his exploitation of Greek laborers whom he had induced to come to California, Utah, Nevada and Colorado by advertising in all Greek newspapers in the United States. These newspapers are widely circulated in Greece and Crete. On arrival these immigrants pay Skliris or his underlings $5 to $20 or more. This applies not only to Bingham Canyon, but coal mines at Castle Gate, Kenilworth, Helper, Sunnyside, Scofield, etc.

The Greeks would not have left the mines had the padrone system not been in effect.

As to the grocery store charge, it is well known that Steve G. Skliris, Leon G. Skliris' representative, approves every Greek hired by Utah Copper and threatens with dismissal those who do not trade at Pan Hellenic. Goes farther by saying, "Your account this month is too small. You've been buying elsewhere. We look out for your job, you look out for us." ... If Greeks are loyal, why did they join union head first, 700 in one night took oath to gain freedom from padrone system. I accept Mr. Skliris' offer of $5,000 . . . deposit it in a Salt Lake bank with three judges appointed to decide question, one to be appointed by Governor Spry, one by Western Federation of Labor and one by Utah Copper.

Two days later Skliris resigned. Nothing more came of his $5,000 offer. The Greeks celebrated in the Copperfield coffeehouses before gathering again on the hills. At this point they were ready to go back to work, but President Moyer convinced them that Skliris's resignation was secondary to the union's demands, and the strikers themselves were wary of Skliris saying he could have "made a deal" with the Utah Copper and would again supply the company with labor as soon as the strike was over.

The strikers became better organized and formed themselves into sixhour shifts with over a thousand men on picket duty. Skliris's resignation had brought the first sign of optimism to the town.

Miners spent their free time repairing their cabins, but,

. . . last night coyotes appeared on the moon-licked canyon slope and broke the silence with their calls. This recalled an old superstition that the appearance of these animals in a mining camp prefaces either a long tie-up or a catastrophe.

The Japanese, the better-paid gambling companions of the Greeks, had also gone out with the rest of the men.

The Greeks, it is said, did not consult them before striking but when the walkout occurred the Orientals took it for granted that work was suspended. Among them is Coney Shibota, said to be the champion wrestler of the camp. He is a powerfully constructed man for his race and has downed many stalwart Greeks. The other Japanese have tacitly appointed him leader.

The union leaders now threatened a general strike if the union was not recognized. Strikebreakers were steadily infiltrating into Bingham, even though strikers were covering all entrances to the town.

It was reported that the strikers, largely Greeks, had scattered out along the highways to and from Bingham and are now holding up automobiles and vehicles to learn whether the occupants are strikebreakers.

The mine operators continued to ignore the union, and the Federation ordered three thousand miners out at the Ely, Nevada, Consolidated Mine. A Greek striker was killed there. In Bingham the operators were hopeful at activity which they misconstrued as the Greeks leaving Bingham. However, the Greeks had heard rumors that the companies were going to evict them from the powder-box houses they had built on company land and were taking the precaution of moving out before they were forced to leave.

Strikebreakers were coming into town in growing numbers. Nearly five hundred were already settled in passenger trains made into sleeping cars in Bingham, and in six boxcars with kitchens at the Magna railyards. When a sufficient labor force was brought together, work would be resumed, the mine officials said. Rumors that Utah Copper had three machine guns were denied by its officials; Jackling reiterated that the mines would "have nothing to do with the Western Federation"; and on October 10 strikebreakers, mostly Greek, were brought in by boxcar.

Heavily guarded by mine guards and deputies, Highland Boy, owned by Utah Consolidated, began work with fifty strikebreakers on October 9. The next day a skeleton crew of one hundred men, using one steam shovel, resumed work at Utah Copper. Fighting between guards and strikers broke out. In one incident an unarmed Greek, Mike Katrakis, was ordered back by Sam Lewman, a guard, and shot in the leg as he turned. The Greeks became enraged and met at the Acropolis Coffeehouse owned by the Leventis brothers, one of whom, John Leventis, was the acknowledged leader, the Capitdnios, of the Cretan strikers. The strikers would doff their hats to their priest and community leader, but they followed only the orders of John Leventis.

The streets were crowded and the miners were in an uproar over the shooting that required amputation of the striker's leg. Deputies said the shooting was accidental, but two Italian women who witnessed the shooting said it was intentional. The Greeks reported their houses had been entered by "several hundred gunmen" and ammunition and money stolen. A thousand Greeks met in the Greek Orthodox church in Salt Lake City and sent a telegram to their consul in Washington, D. C, protesting their treatment and asking for an investigation.

Hundreds of strikebreakers were still arriving each day; by the middle of October five thousand were expected to be at work. The majority of these were miners from Mexico who had been driven out of their country by the revolution and gone to California. Another five hundred had been sent to Utah Copper by a New York labor agency. A later force arrived from Arizona and Mexico, and another 150 arrived the second week in November from Mexico and Wyoming. Utah Copper built housing for them behind the Bingham & Garfield Railway Depot.

Tooele smeltermen, as the workers at Garfield had done earlier, passed a resolution refusing to handle ore mined by strikebreakers. To bring attention to their claims that deputies, were committing "unlawful acts" under legal sanction, strikers and sympathizers held a rally that filled the Salt Lake Theatre.

On October 25 a battle in Galena Gulch, between strikebreakers and deputy sheriffs and strikers, ended with five men wounded. One of them, Harris Spinbon, a Greek, died two weeks later. The next day John and Steve Leventis were taken into custody at their coffeehouse on suspicion of having been involved in the shooting. On November 4, forty Greeks were arrested at the Acropolis Coffeehouse. Yanco Terzich, the Federation director, and E. G. Locke, the local secretary, tried to prevent the arrest of the men and were in turn arrested. A week later at the same coffeehouse, deputies went in to arrest Zaharias Rasiaskis in connection with the shooting at Galena Gulch. In the fight that followed three Greeks were shot. One of them, George Padaladonis (Papandonis), died two days later. J. H. White and another officer, Phil Culleton, of the Bingham Police Department, went to the aid of an unarmed Greek who was being beaten by two guards. White arrested the guards and was discharged for his efforts. Culleton was given a future hearing.

On October 31 Mr. Jackling of Utah Copper announced the company was ready to increase wages, as had been planned at the beginning of the strike, by 25-cents per day. This was to go into effect the following month and would include the Ely and McGill mines. This, Mr. Jackling said, was in accordance with a 1909 agreement that specified an automatic increase in wages when copper reached 17-cents a pound.

The announcement had no effect on the miners. Six weeks had passed with no sign of capitulation on either side. The miners were in desperate need. The Butte, Montana, members of the Western Federation sent help by voting $7,000 for the relief of the strikers. Single men asking for relief received $3.00 per week and family men $6.00.

The strikers hoped that the companies would be willing to make concessions as the November 15 termination date of the strikebreakers' contracts approached. They hoped, too, that the inefficiency of the strikebreakers — caused by their lack of skill, their not being disciplined for regular work, and their being physically unaccustomed to hard labor -— would force the companies to reconsider their position. The companies showed no sign of retreating, and the strikers saw the futility of their cause. The strike gradually died. The Federation remained unrecognized; and the 50-cent raise asked by the miners was denied. A 25-cent raise was granted to the muckers and miners; the surface men were raised 20- cents.

During the duration of the strike, the mining industry suffered badly as did the smelting and milling plants. Normal operations took five months to achieve. Business and transportation w r ere seriously affected in the entire county. The killers of the two strikers were never apprehended.

The strike had, however, great importance. It broke the power of Leonidas Skliris who went to Mexico and became part owner of a mine there. The padrone system was brought into the open, and officials could no longer pretend it did not exist. The immigrant inspector's report for the year included the following:

The exploitation of foreign labor in this State by professional agents is an evil that should be eradicated. It was one of the causes that figured in the Bingham mining camp strike. With some metalliferous and coal mining companies, a miner or laborer seeking employment can not secure such until he comes with a recommend of a padrone to whom he is obliged to pay from $25.00 to $50.00 for his job and a small sum monthly to hold the job after it is obtained. Many padrones secure from foreign laborers several thousand dollars each month and presumably "divy" with "higherup officials" under whom they are working.

The bringing in of Greek strikebreakers had a disasterous effect on the Greek people. The strikers were Cretans; the strikebreakers were Greeks from other parts of Greece. The Cretan idea of having been moulded into a more courageous people, even a different people, by the long Turkish occupation that they had just overcome, that they had suffered while the mainland Greeks had lived in freedom and not been deeply concerned with Cretan enosis, union with the rest of Greece, intensified and produced a schism. Business partnerships between the two groups were seriously disturbed. Marriages between Cretan women and mainland Greeks caused great feuds. In Carbon County several attempted killings resulted from these marriages. Problems of the twenties were worsened by the bitter memory of the greed of Greek labor agents.

Now that I leave for foreign lands, and we will be parted for months, for years, let me take something also from you, dearly beloved, azure land.

Let me carry an amulet with me,to ward off evil, to ward off grief,a charm to ward off sadness, death,a handful of earth, Greek earth!

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