Labor Conflict at Eureka, 1886-97 BY P A U L A. F R I S C H
the closing decade of the nineteenth century brought dramatic and occasionally violent confrontations between hardrock miners and mining corporations. By the 1890s the West's rugged individualists, the prospector and the gold panner, existed mainly in folklore. These celebrated stereotypes gave way to the underground wage miner employed by highly capitalized corporations. Miners founded unions to provide sick and death benefits, maintain a wage commensurate with their difficult and dangerous occupation, and lobby before state legislatures for reduced working hours and minimum safety standards. During the 1870s and 1880s local miners' unions struggled to gain a respectable living for their members from an expanding inI N
T H E ROCKY
REGION
MOUNTAIN
Mr. Frisch is a doctoral candidate at U C L A and an instructor at Santa Monica College.
Church Street looking south from railroad bridge at Eureka near the turn of the century. USHS collections.
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