Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER THREE WE BLOW UP THE BUNKEB HILL, MILT, ON the morning of April 29, 1899, I got up at six o'clock, as usual, expecting to go to work in the mine. As I was going to the place where I took breakfast I was told that there would be no work at any of the mines that day, and that there was going to be a meeting at the Miners’ Union Hall at seven o'clock, and that every one must attend. The first notice that anybody had of the meeting was that morning. I think the central union did not dare to give it out before, because if they had, a great many of the conservative men would have left town before they took part in what they did that day. After breakfast I went over to the hall, and it was crowded, and in a few minutes Paul Corcoran, the secretary of the Burke union, called the meeting to order and began to explain the object of holding the meeting at that unusual time. He told the men that the central union had held a meeting the night before at Gem, and had decided that theunions should go to Wardner on that day and blow up the Bunker Hill-Sullivan mine, and I think he said hang the superintendent. I am not sure whether he spoke openly of the latter, but I know that it was generally discussed in the crowd. He told about the trouble the miners’ union had always had with this mine, and said that the union men at Wardner were breaking away from the union and going to work there, and that scabs who had been driven out of the camp from time to time were coming back there. So the central union had decided the only thing to do was to go down and blow up the mill and end the strike once and for all. Then he explained to us about the plans for taking possession of the Northern Pacific train and going down to Wardner that morning. While he was doing this, Mike Devy, the presi…
