The Justice Story: Assassin of labor - By MARA BOVSUN, New York Daily News - Crime File
During his tenure as governor, from 1897 to 1901, Steunenberg had made many powerful enemies in one of the most bitter and violent labor revolts the country had ever seen. It had started in 1899, when union miners in Coeur d'Alene, pushed to the limit, called a strike.
Two mines continued to operate, relying on strikebreakers - scabs - until union toughs closed it down, with dynamite.
Riots raged and Steunenberg appealed to President William McKinley for federal troops. Hundreds of striking miners, and a good number of innocent bystanders, were rounded up, imprisoned in a huge stockade - a barn called the 'bull pen' - and subjected to unbearable conditions.
'We have taken the monster by the throat, and we are going to choke the life out of it,' Steunenberg declared. 'It is a plain case of the state or the union winning, and we do not propose that the state shall be defeated."