Back in the war days the I.W.W. —in full bloom then throughout the West—had lined up the Personville Mining Corporation’s help. The help hadn’t been exactly pampered. They used their new strength to demand the things they wanted. Old Elihu gave them what he had to give them, and bided his time.
In 1921 it came. Business was rotten. Old Elihu didn’t care whether he shut down for a while or not. He tore up the agreements he had made with his men and began kicking them back into their prewar circumstances.
Of course the help yelled for help. Bill Quint was sent out from I.W.W. headquarters in Chicago to give them some action. He was against a strike, an open walkout. He advised the old sabotage racket, staying on the job and gumming things up from the inside. But that wasn’t active enough for the Personville crew. They wanted to put themselves on the map, make labor history.
They struck.
The strike lasted eight months. Both sides bled plenty. The wobblies had to do their own bleeding. Old Elihu hired gunmen, strikebreakers, national guardsmen and even parts of the regular army, to do his. When the last skull had been cracked, the last rib kicked in, organized labor in Personville was a used firecracker.
But, said Bill Quint, old Elihu didn’t know his Italian history. He won the strike, but he lost his hold on the city and the state. To beat the miners he had to let his hired thugs run wild. When the fight was over he couldn’t get rid of them. He had given his city to them and he wasn’t strong enough to take it away from them. Personville looked good to them and they took it over. They had won his strike for him and they took the city for their spoils. He couldn’t openly break with them. They had too much on him. He was responsible for all they had done during the strike.