Digital Bob Archive

Treadwell saw some tumultuous times in the years 1907 and 1908, with some spillover to the adjoining town of Douglas. There was a pitched battle in the boarding house of the Mexican Mine between Japanese and Montenegrin workers, and there were scuffles now and then between other ethnic groups, mostly over union membership. But there was only one event that the newspapers labeled a full scale riot. It occurred on February 21, 1908, and it was over, of all things, a funeral.

After many years without a miners' union, the Western Federation of Miners organized Local 109 at Treadwell early in 1907. This was a militant union wherever it was ? one of its products was the Industrial Workers of the World, known as the 'wobblies? - and since a large proportion of the miners at Treadwell were from the Balkan countries and noted for their belligerence, Local 109 was not exactly a peaceful group.

On February 19, as happened with distressing frequency in the Treadwell mines, Michael Bechir and Frank Doljanica were killed underground. Bechir belonged to Local 109 and his funeral was held from the Greek Orthodox Church in Douglas during the forenoon of February 21. After he had been buried, Father Peter Orloff was approached by a number of Servian members of Local 109 who asked that he perform no service for Doljanica because he was not a member of the union.

Fr. Orloff told them that was not a matter of consequence to the church and that the service would be held in the afternoon as scheduled. But when he reached the church the door was locked and the key broken off in the lock. About that time a procession, with a hearse drawn by two horses, started from the Servian Slavonic Harmony Hall where Doljanica's friends had been holding a wake. Then Peter Gilovich's Slavonian Saloon disgorged a tipsy crowd of members of Local 109 who met the procession in front of the church. The horses were frightened and threatened to run away with the hearse. The union members, shouting and cursing, denounced Doljanica's friends as scabs and traitors and announced that not only would they prevent a service for him in the church but would not allow him to be buried in the consecrated ground of the Servian Cemetery.

After a time deputy marshal H.L. Faulkner arrived on the scene. By himself he was unable to control the mob, but he enlisted an unofficial posse of neutral miners and Douglas townsmen and the procession finally reached the cemetery where Fr. Orloff conducted the services in the open air.