PINKERTONS AND COAL MINERS IN WYOMING — NO. IS, THOMAS J. WILLIAMS.
While the events we have described in the foregoing chapters were transpiring in Colorado, a battle as fiercely contested was being fought between Pinkerton's Agency and the United Mine Workers in the State of Wyoming. Here, as in Colorado, the union fought absolutely in the dark, neither seeing nor suspecting the real source of all their astonishing defeats.
Wyoming is rich in mineral deposits of different varieties; but the production of coal is one of the leading industries of the State. The biggest coal-producing mines in Wyoming are at Rock Springs, Carbon and Hanna, and most of them belong to the Union Pacific Coal Company.
The Union Pacific Coal Company bears the same relation to Wyoming that the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company does to Colorado; and Pinkerton's Agency has served the former in exactly the same manner that it has served the latter.
It is now strongly suspected that the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company has for many years accepted huge rebates from different railroad companies, in gross and open violation of the laws, for the purpose of destroying competition, and it is possible that the Federal Government may put a stop to this practice. It is now also strongly suspected that the Union Pacific Coal Company has been guilty of stealing immense tracts of valuable government coal lands. It also seems to be the common belief that no searching investigation of this gigantic steal will ever be made, because persons "very high up" on Wyoming's political ladder are parties to this transaction.