More than a murder conspiracy trial, the prosecution of “Big Bill” Haywood was a showdown over the future of capitalist America—a confrontation between industrialists and labor, between the western mine owners and the destitute hard-rock miners who fought for union wages and an eight-hour working day.
          “There will be a revolution,” cried labor boss Eugene Debs in 1907. Let the mine owners dare to execute “Big Bill” Haywood and, Debs predicted, “a million revolutionaries will meet them with guns!”

In Idaho the protest began in the heyday of the Populist movement. Founded in 1891, the People’s (or Populist) Party extended “hearty sympathy” to common miners and captured nearly every local office in counties with silver mines. Populists called for an end to “yellow dog” contracts that prohibited unions, and the party denounced the use of state militias to settle labor disputes. Already in the Coeur d’Alenes, where the Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mining and Concentrating Company had slashed wages to $3 for a ten-hour day,

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