smelter were nonunionized. In early 1913, tensions began to escalate between the workers and plant management, reaching a peak in April. At the time, the workers worked 12-hour shifts and made $1.40 per day. However, many workers began to demand a wage increase to $1.75 per day. Additionally, some of the workers wanted an eight-hour day, and others had grievances against the company physician and the company store, pushing for changes to the latter and a replacement of the former. Course of the strike Initial strike action On April 10, the workers began a strike against the smelter with a spontaneous walkout of about 100 workers. The next day, an additional 300 workers joined the strike, and by the third day, about 650 Mexican workers were on strike. By mid-April, the strike had involved about 1,000 workers. The only non-Mexican workers were five non-Hispanic white carpenters who worked at the smelter. These five men were union members affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Through the duration of the strike, about 250 non-Hispanic white workers, mostly Anglo and Irish Americans, continued to report to work at the smelter. About a week after the start of the strike, some of the carpenters spoke at a meeting of El Paso's Central Labor Union (CLU), the local membership organization of the AFL, and convinced them to lend their support to the strike. The CLU donated $15 to the strike fund and toned down the anti-Mexican sentiment that was often present in their publications. However, according to historian Philip J. Mellinger, this support may not have been wholehearted, as some of the non-Hispanic white workers at the smelter were union members, and had the CLU been fully willing to support the strike, they could have called on greater solidarity from these workers. IWW vs WFM During the dispute, both the IWW and the competing Western Federation of Miners (WFM) had organizers present in El Paso in an attempt to organize the strikers with their respective unions. IWW organizer Fernando Palomarez had about 200 workers sign up with the union during the strike, saying, "the winning of this strike will be the means of organizing large unions of Mexicans all over Texas and the South". While the exact role that the IWW played in the strike is difficult to ascertain with certainty, Mellinger states that the organization "was only a minor player" in the