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| July 11, 1892 | In the midst of a strike in the Coeur d'Alene mining region of northern Idaho, unionists discover a company plant, Charles Siringo. Trouble ensues, with union men dynamiting a mill and capturing 130 non-union workers and holding them prisoner in a union hall. Several persons are killed by gunfire. Over 400 union men commandeer a train and take it to Wardner , Idaho, where they seize three mines, ejecting non-union workers and company officials. Governor Willey declares martial law and asks President Benjamin Harrison to send federal troops, which he does. The strike grew out of the mine owners' decision to reduce wages for certain workers from 35 cents an hour to 30 cents. |
| July 15, 1892 | Federal troops arrest 600 union men and sympathizers, placing them in warehouses surrounded by 14-foot high fences. For two months, the men are kept without hearing or formal charges, then most are released. Union leaders are tried. |
| July 3, 1894 | Forty masked men execute John Kneebone who testifies against union miners at a trial following the 1892 violence. In response to the killing, President Cleveland stations federal troops in northern Idaho for two months. |
| November, 1896 | Frank Steunenberg is elected Governor of Idaho. |
| April 29, 1899 | Union miners plant 60 boxes of dynamite beneath the world's largest concentrator, owned by the Bunker Hill Mining Company in Wardner, Idaho, and at 2:35 p.m. light the fuse, destroying the concentrator and several nearby buildings. Governor Steunenberg calls upon President McKinley to send federal troops to suppress the unrest. |
| May 4, 1899 | Federal troops arrest "every male--miners, bartenders, a doctor, a preacher, even a postmaster and a school superindentent--" in the union-controlled town of Burke, Idaho. The men are loaded into boxcars, taken to Wardner, and herded into an old barn. Within a few days, the number of men held captive in Wardner grows to over 1, 000. |
| November, 1899 | Federal troops are withdrawn from northern Idaho. |
| June, 1904 | In the midst of a violent labor dispute, a railroad depot in Independence, Colorado is bombed, presumably under orders from the leaders of the Western Federation of Miners, killing fourteen non-union miners. |
| December 30, 1905 | Returning to his home in Caldwell from a walk shortly after six p.m., Frank Steunenberg, the former governor of Idaho, is blown ten feet in the air by a bomb blast as he opens his gate. Still alive and conscious, but with blood pouring from his mangled legs, Steunenberg is carried into his home where he dies an hour later. |
| December 31, 1905 | A waitress at the Saratoga Hotel in Caldwell reports that a guest, Thomas Hogan, had trembling hands and downcast eyes when she waited on his table shortly after the explosion. A search of Hogan's room turns up traces of plaster of paris in his chamber pot. Plaster of paris was the substance used to hold pieces of the bomb together. |
| January 1, 1906 | Thomas Hogan, also known as Harry Orchard, is arrested while having a drink at the Saratoga Bar and is charged with the first degree murder of Steunenberg. |
| January 7, 1906 | The state of Idaho hires America's most famous detective, James McParland of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, to head the investigation of Steunenberg's assassination. He arrives in Boise two days later. |
| January 22, 1906 | McParland meets Orchard in the state penitentiary and suggests that more lenient treatment might be possible if were willing to turn state's evidence against those who recruited him to commit his crime. |
| February 1, 1906 | Harry Orchard, after breaking down several times and crying, completes a 64-page confession to the Steunenberg assassination and 17 other killings, all ordered, he says, by the inner circle of the Western Federation of Miners, including William Haywood, Charles Moyer, and George Pettibone. |
| February 15, 1906 | Governor McDonald of Colorado issues a warrant for the arrest of Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone. |
| February 17, 1906 | Late at night, Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone are arrested in Denver and temporarily housed in a local jail. |
| February 18, 1906 | Denied an opportunity to call lawyers or loved ones, the three union leaders are placed on a special train at daybreak. Orders are issued that the train not stop until it has crossed the Idaho border. |
| April, 1906 | The Supreme Court of Idaho rules that it has no jurisdiction to hear the complaint of Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone that they were denied an opportunity to fight extradition to Idaho. |
| November, 1906 | William Haywood loses his race as the Socialist Party candidate for Governor of Colorado. |
| December 3, 1906 | The Supreme Court of the United States, with one dissent, rules that the union leaders' arrest and forcible removal from Colorado, even though accomplished through the fraud and connivance of leaders of two states, violated no constitutional rights of the defendants. |
| December, 1906 | Clarence Darrow agrees to travel to Idaho to head the defense of William Haywood, joined by other attorneys including Edmund Richardson, general attorney for the Western Federation of Miners. |
| 1907 | Adams repudiates his confession and is transferred to Wallace, Idaho to stand trial for an 1899 murder. |
| February, 1907 | Darrow defends Adams against a charge of murder relating to the 1899 violence in northern Idaho. James Hawley prosecutes. The jury is unable to reach a verdict. |
| May 9, 1907 | The case of State of Idaho versus William D. Haywood is called for trial. |
| June, 1907 | For several days, Harry Orchard testifies to his life as a labor assassin under the direction of leaders of the WFM, including Haywood. |
| July 28, 1907 | The Haywood case goes to the jury. |
| July 29, 1907 | After nine hours of deliberation, the jury announces its decision: "We the jury, find the defendant, William D. Haywood, not guilty." |
| Janurary, 1908 | Darrow defends George Pettibone, on trial for the Steunenberg murder. Pettibone is acquitted. |
| January, 1908 | Charges against Charles Moyer are dropped. |
| March, 1908 | Harry Orchard is tried and convicted of the murder of Gov. Steunenberg. He is sentenced to death, but his sentence is commuted to life in prison. |
| 1918 | William Haywood, now leader of the I. W. W. ("The Wobblies") is tried and convicted of sabotaging war industries, is sentenced to thirty years, but escapes to Russia in 1921 while out on bail pending appeal. He becomes a trusted confidant of the Bolsheviks. |
| 1928 | Haywood dies in Moscow. Half of his ashes are buried in the Kremlin next to his friend John Reed and near the tomb of Lenin. The other half are shipped to Chicago for burial near the monument to the Haymarket anarchists who inspired Haywood's radicalism. |
| 1954 | Harry Orchard, a trusty of the Idaho penitentiary, where he raised chickens and grew strawberries, dies at the age of 88. |