Nevada Historical Society Quarterly NEVADA HISTORICAL SOCIETY QUARTERLY EDITORIAL BOARD Eugene Moehring, Chairman, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Marie Boutte, University of Nevada, Reno Robert Davenport, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Doris Dwyer, Western Nevada Community College Jerome E. Edwards, University of Nevada, Reno Candace C. Kant, Community College of Southern Nevada Guy Louis Rocha, Nevada State Library and Archives Willard H. Rollings, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Hal K. Rothman, University of Nevada, Las Vegas The Nevada Historical Society Quarterly solicits contributions of scholarly or popular interest dealing with the following subjects: the general (e.g., the political, social, economic, constitutional) or the natural history of Nevada and the Great Basin; the literature, languages, anthropology, and archaeology of these areas; reprints of historic documents; reviews and essays concerning the historical literature of Nevada, the Great Basin, and the West. Prospective authors should send their work to The Editor, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, 1650 N. Virginia St., Reno, Nevada 89503. Papers should be typed double-spaced and sent in duplicate. All manuscripts, whether articles, edited documents, or essays, should conform to the most recent edition of the University of Chicago Press Mal1ual of Style. Footnotes should be typed double-spaced on separate pages and numbered consecutively. Correspondence concerning articles and essays is welcomed, and should be addressed to The Editor. © Copyright Nevada Historical Society, 1996. The Nevada Historical Society Quarterly (ISSN 0047-9462) is published quarterly by the Nevada Historical Society. The Quarterly is sent to all members of the Society. Membership dues are: Student, $15; Senior Citizen without Quarterly, $15; Regular, $25; Family, $35; Sustaining, $50; Contributing, $100; Departmental Fellow, $250; Patron, $500; Benefactor, $1,000. Membership applications and dues should be sent to the Director, Nevada Historical Society, 1650 N. Virginia St., Reno, NV 89503. Periodicals postage paid at Reno, Nevada and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, 1650 N. Virginia St., Reno, Nevada 89503. evad Historical Society Quarterly William D. Rowley Editor-in-Chief Jerome E. Edwards Juliet S. Pierson Book Review Editor Manuscript Editor Volume 39 Fall 1996 Number 3 Contents 163 The Many Images of the Comstock Miners' Unions GUY LOUIS ROCHA 182 "The Camp Without a Failure": Searchlight, 1903-1909 BRUCE ALVERSON 201 The Chinese Community of Pioche, 1870-1900 CAROLYN GRATTAN-AIELLO 215 Notes and Documents Deep Enough: The Pitfalls and Perils of Deep Mining on the Comstock ROBERT E. KENDALL 243 Cumulative Index, Volume 38 Front Cover: The Miner's Union Hall in Virginia City as it looks today. (Nevada Historical Society) Book Reviews 232 Don W. Driggs and Leonard E. Goodall, Nevada Politics and Government: Conservatism in an Open Society Michael W. Bowers, The Sagebrush State: Nevada's History, Government and Politics reviewed by Jerome E. Edwards 234 Michael J. Broadhead, David J. Brewer: The Life of a Supreme Court Justice, 1837-1910 reviewed by Michael W. Bowers 236 Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1840-1849. Edited and compiled by Kenneth L. Holmes, with an introduction by Anne M. Butler reviewed by Kathryn M. Totton 238 The Mountainous West-Explorations in Historical Geography. Edited by William K. Wyckoff and Larry M. Dilsaver reviewed by Paul F. Starrs THE MANY IMAGES OF THE COMSTOCK MINERS' UNIONS Guy Louis Rocha There are three Miners' Unions, one at Virginia City, one at Gold Hill, and the third at Silver City ... [T]hus far, the principal officers and leading spirits of the several organi­ zations have been men of such honesty of purpose and have shown such fairness in all of their demands that there has been no trouble between miners and mine owners. -Dan DeQuille, The Big Bonanza, 1876 The miners' unions on the Comstock Lode are unworthy champions of the labor cause, for they substitute might for right, and place personal interest in the room of justice. There is no question here of self-preservation, but rather of self-aggrandizement, and it is a disgrace to the Washoe district that such despotism should have existed within its limits for four­ teen years without one effective revolt. -Eliot Lord, Comstock Mining and Miners, 1883 The organizations by which the Comstock miners have maintained wages, have ruled in this respect under all administrations, and still continue to rule, are simply "Unions." At Virginia City, Gold Hill, and Silver City their word long ago became law. -Charles Howard Shinn, The Story of the Mine, 1896 The first miners' unions of the American West were those organized on the Comstock. Four years after the 1859 discovery of the great gold and silver quartz lodes at Gold Hill and Six-Mile Canyon, underground miners attempted to union­ ize. During the formative period of unionization in and around the mines, dis­ putes between corporate capital and organized labor soon led to confrontations, particularly over the four-dollar-a-day wage and closed-shop issues. Blacklisting by the mining companies and a show of military force, directed by Nevada Territorial Governor James W. Nye against the Storey County Miners' League during the mining depression of 1864, inaugurated a "heritage of conflict" in the western hardrock-mining industry that continued well into the twentieth century. Guy Louis Rocha is the Nevada State Archivist and a longtime student of Nevada labor history. His writings have discussed not only Comstock labor but also labor disputes in Goldfield and at the Hoover Darn construction site during the Great Depression. 163 164 Guy Louis Rocha Miners from the Gould and Curry crew in Virginia City, c. 1870. (Nevada Historical Society) While militant in their tactics, the unions of Virginia City, Gold Hilt and Silver City accepted the basic tenets of a capitalistk industrial economy. The union miners discovered, following their initial setbacks, that the means to power in a locality dominated by one industry was to influence or control essential elements of local government through the ballot and volunteerism-especially in law en­ forcement, fire protection, and the militia. Beginning in 1868, and for more than a decade, the Storey County sheriff was either a present or past president of the Gold Hill or Virginia City miners' union. Most of the police chiefs of the three Comstock municipalities were either union miners or men who relied upon union support to get elected. The first president of the Storey County Miners' League, William Woodburn, was elected district attorney in 1870. The unions also influ­ enced legislation affecting their interests by electing miners and other partisans to the state legislature and the United States Congress. Woodburn, a member of the Virginia City union, was elected to Congress in 1874 and again in 1884 and 1886. In 1870, James Phelan, Virginia City union president, won a seat in the state Senate, and Angus Hay and George W. Rogers, both of the Gold Hill union, were elected to the state Assembly. Many other union miners were elected to the state legislature in succeeding years. Although union officers were required to resign their positions if elected to public office, it is evident that these men's allegiance remained with their unions.1 Ultimately, the miners' unions succeeded in wresting basic concessions involv­ ing wages, working conditions, and union security from the absentee-owned mining corporations because they were able to maintain community support Comstock Miners' Unions 165 during times of dispute and negotiation. The business sector, especially, was heavily dependent upon the income of the miners who bought the merchants' products and services. A strike could paralyze commerce, and flood the deep mines by stopping the pumps, exciting the stock market into a selling frenzy. In addition, both the communities and the mining corporations had become reliant on union miners for their fire and militia protection. Absorbing the lessons from their earlier confrontations with mine owners, the unions now pursued coercive tactics directed at management. For example, in negotiating a minimum wage for underground miners in February 1867, a Gold Hill union official none too subtly assured the president of the Imperial Mine that "the Military Co's, Fire Co.'s, etc. of Gold Hill and vicinity were ever ready to protect the property and officials of mines paying $4.00 per day." Despite the underlying industrial tension, the min­ ers and their unions were an integral part of Comstock social and civic life, sponsoring or supporting numerous public events, the only public library, and a private hospital-Saint Mary's-in Virginia City.2 The efforts of organized mining labor in perfecting their unions on the Com­ stock by the early 1870s established the general pattern of union organization and labor-management relations throughout the mining West for the next two de­ cades. Comstock miners, in search of new bonanzas and job opportunities, ex­ ported their union principles to such camps as Bodie, California; Deadwood, Dakota Territory; Leadville, Colorado; Tombstone, Arizona Territory; and Butte, Montana Territory. Almost without exception the new unions adopted the con­ stitution and bylaws of either the Virginia City or the Gold Hill miners' union and with little more revision than altering the meeting day or raising the sick benefit. Few miners' unions, however, enjoyed the sustained level of success achieved by those on the Comstock. 3 Beginning in the early 1880s, the focus of union activity in the western mining industry shifted elsewhere as the Comstock rapidly declined and a general min­ ing depression settled on Nevada. No longer the Gibraltar of unionism, the Com­ stock labor organizations, while still a viable force in Storey and Lyon counties and in state politics, found themselves on the fringe of the mining union move­ ment.