Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 047-2 - October 1993 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 12 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

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Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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The Murchie Mine Strike: Vigilantism and the Failure of Militant Mine Unionism in Nevada County, 1937-38 by David Beesley Historic places evoke haunting images. Mount Vernon, Monticello, Gettysburg, and Antietam have drawn millions of visitors over the years because of their connection with past events. In California, visitors to San Pascual, Alder Creek, Donner Lake, and Coloma similarly share, simply by being there, in the dramatic human events which have shaped this State’s history. I am a historian by trade. I teach, research, and write on the subject. Perhaps because of this, historic places may have more effect on me than they on some others. I often take students to places where historic events have occurred. When I check with their reaction to being at a place where something historic transpired, most agree that being there helps to understand what happened in the past. Yet if I were to take students, or for that matter residents of Deer Creek Park above Nevada City, to the junction of Murchie Mine Road with Red Dog Road and tell them that important historical events happened at that intersection, they would probably laugh at me. Murchie Mine Road has few houses on it. It dead ends shortly after its junction. As with many Nevada County roads with the names of mines attached to them, the physical evidence of mining has disappeared. The social and labor relations of a community totally dependent on the hard-rock mining industry is also gone. Foothill suburban tranquility prevails. However, if by some scientific wonder a time-machine could be used to take these students or residents back to the same quiet intersection during 1937 and 1938, they likely would have been caught in clouds of tear-gas, pelted by rocks, or beaten by clubs or axe-handles. They would have been involved in a prolonged and violent labor struggle at the junction of Murchie and Red Dog Roads that helped determine the fate of the hard-rock mining industry in California. Historic places, whether marked by bronze plaques or not, evoke haunting images. This violent confrontation of 1937-1938 saw a majority of Grass Valley and Nevada City residents support the use of vigilante methods to expel members of Local #283 of the Intemational Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, which was affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (C.I.0.), from Nevada County. By doing so, these vigilantes insured that the hard-rock mining industry in the state would remain disconnected from the organization of most of the nation’s major production industries which occurred during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. 12 One of the most fascinating, and at the same time disreputable, aspects of California’s history is its vigilante tradition. The 1850s often saw private citizens, invoking the need for law and order in chaotic times, dispense their own brand of justice. Sometimes these actions were relatively well organized, as in San Francisco. In other cases, lynch mobs motivated by racism and alcohol (as in Placerville, Downieville, and Los Angeles) formed to hang accused trouble-makers without even a nod toward due process. Most people assume that this tradition of citizen justice disappeared from the state at the end of the Gold Rush period. A closer reading of the state’s history reveals many later incidents where mobs took the law into their own hands. In the depression years of the 1870s, a “pick handle brigade” in San Francisco drove away unemployed workers from the Embarcadero where they were protesting the arrival of more Chinese immigrants into the city. In the 1930s vigilante actions included a double lynching in San Jose, and organized vigilante action in the state’s lettuce fields to prevent unionization. The violence of the Murchie strike is part of this broader picture. In April of 1938, a vigilante mob, aided by the county sheriff, took control of the towns of Nevada City and Grass Valley, blocked the roads which led to these cities, and forcibly drove C.1.O. miners and their families out of Nevada County. While no one was killed, the expulsion was accomplished with violence, and the C.I.O. was prevented from retuming. The driving out of the C.I.O. from Nevada County in 1938 was the culmination of a year-long campaign to remove what a majority of people in Grass Valley and Nevada City perceived as an alien force which threatened the mining economy and local institutions. Although a few county residents had joined the local Mine, Mill, and Smelter group, most of the C.I.O. miners were not local people. They had come primarily from other mining areas in the west, particularly Montana, where copper and other non-ferrous mining industries were suffering from the effects of the Depression The gold mining industry in California, in contrast, was enjoying a revival of prosperity due to the effects of a policy of the Roosevelt administration to raise the price of gold as part of his depression fighting measures. Because gold was now more valuable, more mines were in operation, and outside miners rushed in to seek jobs. ! These newly arrived miners generally shared the industrial and militant union ideas espoused by such organizations as re pom