"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". Background Miners' strike on the Mesabi Range In mid-1916, miners on the Mesabi Range in northern Minnesota launched a spontaneous labor strike. The range, situated about north of the city of Duluth, was a major iron ore mining region and part of the larger Iron Range. This strike began with a walkout led by Joe Greeni, a Czech immigrant, on June 2, and at its peak it involved about several thousand miners, primarily immigrants. The labor dispute lasted for several months, but by September, with strike funds running low, numerous instances of violent confrontations between strikers and law enforcement officials, and many of the strike leaders imprisoned, miners began to return to work, and the strike officially ended on September 17. Despite the strike ending without a labor contract in place between the miners and the mining companies on the range, many of the companies began instituting changes to address the causes of the strike, such as increased pay and an eight-hour workday. IWW presence in northern Minnesota During the strike, union organizers from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) helped to organize the miners. The IWW, whose members are known as Wobblies, had been established in Chicago in 1905 at a meeting of socialists and miners from the Western United States. The organization was a radical anti-capitalist union that advocated for industrial unionism and the concept of the One Big Union. Over the next decade, the union had established a presence in Minnesota, organizing a local union of lumberjacks in Deer River in 1910 and participating in free speech fights in Duluth and Minneapolis in the early 1910s. However, the miners' dispute had caught the union off guard. Despite this, shortly after it began, the IWW established a local union in Virginia, a city of slightly over 10,000 people on the range, and helped the miners to coordinate strike actions and write a list of demands to the mining companies. The local union, Metal Mine Workers' Industrial Union No. 490, was based out of the Finnish Socialist Hall, a meeting hall for socialists among Virginia's community of Finnish immigrants. Many Finns in the area