had returned to their jobs, and while lumberjacks held out longer, logging operations returned to prestrike levels by the beginning of February. On February 1, what was left of the IWW leadership in northern Minnesota met in Duluth and officially announced an end to the strike. Aftermath Discussing the strike in a 1950 journal article, historian George B. Engberg calls it "one of the most serious strikes that the lumber industry of northern Minnesota has ever experienced". While the strike was primarily a failure for the IWW, Local 490 was able to claim a partial victory based on improved conditions for lumberjacks on logging camps. International Lumber bought new blankets for the bunkhouses and raised the base pay for lumberjacks slightly, while Virginia and Rainy Lake spent 20 percent more on food for the lumberjacks in the year following the strike. While the lumberjacks demanded a $40 per month minimum wage, the companies instead instituted a $45 minimum monthly wage. However, the IWW's presence on the Mesabi Range was all but destroyed by the strike as Local 490's operations were suppressed by law enforcement. Starting in January 1917, the Minnesota Legislature began to hold hearings regarding IWW activities in the state, inviting many mining and lumber industrialists, labor activists, and IWW leaders such as Joseph James Ettor to give testimony. According to academic Ahmed White in a 2022 book, these hearings showed that the IWW had not been engaged in violent activities in the time preceding the strike actions and exposed corruption and use of violence by the lumber and mining companies and local public officials. The report on the hearings also highlighted the poor working conditions experienced by the miners and lumberjacks, but offered little in the way of addressing these issues. While the IWW had plans to launch another organizing drive among the mining and lumber industry in the area, the U.S. involvement in World War I soured these plans. In March 1917, a criminal syndicalism bill was proposed by a Minnesota senator from International Falls, and after passing both the Senate and House of Representatives with only one vote against in both chambers (both cast by Socialists), the bill was signed into law by Governor Burnquist in April. Minnesota was among a number of U.S. states and territories to pass criminal syndicalism laws that primarily targeted the IWW around this time, and in September 1917, Jesse Dunning,