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Flames of Discontent: The 1916 Minnesota Iron Ore Strike

Gary Kaunonen’s Flames of Discontent: The 1916 Minnesota Iron Ore Strike consciously forges an early twentieth-century history of immigrant miners, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) leadership, and their communities in the mines of Minnesota’s Mesabi Range. Dedicated to his “Grandma V,” and early twentieth-century experiences in northern Minnesota, Kaunonen’s account carefully describes the events that led to the 1916 strike in the iron mines, north and west of Duluth. He explains that the northernmost mines in the Vermillion Range were hard-rock mines where laborers sank shafts to reach the region’s iron ore. The middle range, the Mesabi, possessed the richest iron ore deposits, and its mines were among the earliest open-pit operations that used steam shovels to carve enormous holes into the landscape. Southwest of the Mesabi was the Cuyuna Range, opened last and possessing geological characteristics that led to both shaft and open-pit mining operations. As the mineral exploitation developed, typical mining communities (scattered settlements, company-dominated towns, and growing urban centers, such as Hibbing and Eveleth) emerged in northern Minnesota. Using a combination of municipal records, personal recollections, oral history, corporate records, family records, newspapers, and secondary accounts, the book captures a sense of turn-of-the-century life in northern Minnesota’s mining communities.