Coeur d'Alene Miners' Strike, Idaho, 1899

The Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, labor riot of 1899 was the second of two major labor-management confrontations in the Coeur d'Alene mining district of northern Idaho in the 1890s. Like the first incident seven years earlier, the 1899 confrontation was an attempt by union miners, led by the Western Federation of Miners to unionize non-union mines, and have them pay the higher union wage scale. As with the 1892 strike, the 1899 incident culminated in a dynamite attack that destroyed a non-union mining facility, the burning of multiple homes and outbuildings and two murders, followed by military occupation of the district. The riot of 1899 resulted from the miners' frustrations with mine operators that paid lower wages, hired Pinkerton or Thiel operatives to infiltrate the union, and the refusal of non-union miners to join or strike.