1916–1917 northern Minnesota lumber strike

The 1916–1917 northern Minnesota lumber strike was a labor strike involving several thousand sawmill workers and lumberjacks in the northern part of the U.S. state of Minnesota, primarily along the Mesabi Range. The lumber workers were organized by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and primarily worked for the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company, whose sawmill plant was located in Virginia, Minnesota. Additional lumberjacks and mill workers from the International Lumber Company were also involved. The strike first began with the Virginia and Rainy Lake mill workers on December 28, 1916, and among the lumberjacks on January 1, 1917. The strike lasted for a little over a month before it was officially called off by the union on February 1, 1917. Though the strike faltered by late January and had resulted in many arrests and the suppression of the IWW's local union in the region, the union claimed a partial victory, as the lumber companies instituted some improvements for the lumberjacks' working conditions.

The roots of this strike stemmed from a previous strike involving miners on the Mesabi Range that ended in a partial victory for the workers. During this strike, the IWW became involved and established a local union in the region called the Metal Mine Workers' Industrial Union No. 490, which was based in Virginia. Following the end of the miners' strike, Local 490 began to organize lumber workers in the region. At the time, the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company operated the world's largest white pine sawmill plant in Virginia, which employed about 1,200 workers, and they had roughly 2,000 lumberjacks on their payroll at any given time. Through late 1916, Local 490 continued to organize these workers, working alongside the Agricultural Workers Organization No. 400, a subgroup of the IWW that had been trying to organize lumberjacks in the region for the past year. By December 1916, more militant individuals within the union were calling for a strike against the company, though IWW higherups such as General Secretary-Treasurer Bill Haywood were wary of this, thinking that there had not been enough time to adequately plan and organize a successful strike. Nonetheless, on December 24, 1916, about 700 workers met to create a list of demands for both the mill workers and the lumberjacks that included reduced working hours, higher pay, better working conditions, and changes to scheduling. On the morning of December 28, with the company refusing to institute these changes, up to 1,000 workers, representing a majority of the mill's 1,200-person workforce, went on strike and began picketing outside the plant. At the same time, messengers were sent to the logging camps throughout the area to convince the lumberjacks to strike, and over 2,000 did so between January 1 and 2.

In its first few days, the strike was successful in partially shutting down Virginia and Rainy Lake's plant and several logging camps in the region, while a sawmill owned by the International Lumber Company in International Falls was also affected by a walkout. However, early on, lumber management began to work with local law enforcement agencies and public officials to break the strike. Strikebreakers were brought in from other areas of the state, while police arrested dozens of strikers and IWW leaders on questionable charges. Additionally, many local municipalities began to enact laws that outright banned the IWW from their jurisdictions, with members facing either expulsion or imprisonment. By mid-January, many of the local IWW leaders had been arrested, while striking lumberjacks began to abandon the strike. With the help of deputized sheriffs acting for the companies, many logging camps began to resume operations within a week of the initial lumberjack walkouts, and many mill workers began to return to work due to low strike pay. Finally, on February 1, the remaining leadership of Local 490 met in Duluth and declared the strike over.

The IWW was able to claim a partial victory in the strike, as lumber companies instituted some changes to address the lumberjacks' poor working conditions and low pay. However, the strike had severely damaged Local 490's presence on the Mesabi Range, and while the IWW had planned to launch another organizing drive in the area, U.S. involvement in World War I and the accompanying suppression of the IWW by state and federal governments hurt these plans. In 1917, Minnesota enacted a criminal syndicalism law aimed in part at the IWW, and in September of that year, an IWW individual in Minnesota became the first person in the U.S. to be convicted under such a law. During the 1920s and 1930s, organizing efforts among lumber workers in the area would be taken over by the affiliate unions of the American Federation of Labor and the Committee for Industrial Organization. Discussing the strike in a 1971 article, historian John E. Haynes said, "The resolution of that strike helped redefine the boundaries of permissible political and economic dissent in Minnesota, virtually erased the specter of strong IWW influence on the iron range, and served as a precedent for the state's treatment of dissenters during World War I".