Thanks for the post.   

You might add that Huston's fictionalized novel comes from the extremely 
biased point of view of a Wobblie.  The Wobblies were eventually ousted from 
Bisbee by a citizen's committee after they tried unsuccessfully to take over 
the town and the mines. The Citizens Committee was led by Sheriff Harry 
Wheeler and his sworn in posse of miners, businessmen, merchants and law men 
from Bisbee and other parts of Cochise County, Arizona.  In an article 
published in the Arizona Mining Journal about one year after the deportation 
it was found that of the 1100 or so deported, less than 150 actually had jobs 
in the mines and less six of those had been in Bisbee for more than one year. 
  

The Wobblies were and invasion force sent to Bisbee by the Industrial Workers 
of the World (IWW) to establish a communist form of government, first in 
Bisbee then in Arizona and then on to the United States.  They were American 
Bolsheviks in their beliefs and their actions.   Most of their organizers 
were eventually sent to prison for various kinds of civil disturbance where 
some of them died.  Their songster "Joe Hill" was convicted and hung for 
murder and "Big" Bill Hayward was exiled to Russia where he is buried inside 
the Kremlin wall.  Sheriff Wheeler and several of his posse were charged with 
kidnapping among other things but all of the charges were eventually thrown 
out of court.   The legal justification for the deportation was established 
by the courts as the right of a community to protect itself from invading 
forces.   

Their plan was apparently to first take over the production of copper in the 
United States.   If they could control the copper industry they could take 
over the US as electricity in 1917 had become the major source of power for 
all industry short of steel and rail.  The Wobblies were a rude, crude and 
biligerant group of (mostly men) who tried to intimidate the local populace 
into their dogma. 

 My parents, grand parents, uncles and aunts were involved in both sides of 
the deportation.   My uncle with the last name of Hutterman was abducted by 
the posse until recognized and then given a gun and sworn in.  Another uncle 
was a Wobblie sympathizer but was not deported.   

The deportation was often the subject of great family discussions and debates 
as long as any of the contemporaries were alive.  

Mason Coggin




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