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Today in Labor History June 1, 1916: The predominantly immigrant iron miners of the Mesabi Range, Minnesota, participated in a seemingly spontaneous strike in response to expensive housing and goods, long hours and poor pay. The group was led by radical Finns who quickly drew the attention and aid of IWW organizers. Wobbly organizers, including Carlo Tresca, Joe Schmidt, Frank Little, and later Joe Ettor and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn came to help local strike leaders draw up a list of demands which included an 8-hour day timed from when workers entered the mine until they were outside; a pay-scale based upon the day worked; pay-days twice monthly; immediate back-pay for hours worked upon severance; abolition of the Saturday night shift; abolition of the hated contract mining system. In the Contract Mining system, the bosses hired and paid “skilled” miners to do most of the mining. The contract miners then had to hire their own laborers and pay them out of their meagre wages. The contract miners were often native-born people, while the laborers were often immigrants. This created a racialized two-tiered system that divided the workers and made it harder to organize. The bosses would routinely offer the contract miners a minor concession to get them back to work, while offering the even more poorly paid laborers nothing, destroying their solidarity and ending the strike.