of the strike, with historian Monica Perales stating in a 2010 book that, "[a]lthough it ultimately failed, the action represented a critical moment in border labor history and revealed that the Mexican workers were willing to risk their jobs and their lives to be respected as smelter men". Additionally, historian Philip J. Mellinger speculates that many of the strikers who left El Paso after the strike may have been involved in future labor disputes involving Mexican Americans in the region. At El Paso, the WFM local union barely survived the strike with a few dozen members, but it wouldn't be until the 1930s and 1940s that the Congress of Industrial Organizations succeeded in organizing the plant, later leading a strike in 1946. In the 1970s, residents of Smeltertown were forced to relocate after environmental studies revealed dangerous amounts of lead in the area due to the plant. Background In the early 1900s, the American Smelting and Refining Company, which was owned by the Guggenheim family of New York City, operated a copper smelting plant in El Paso, Texas. The smelter was one of the largest industries in the city and employed about 3,000 people, primarily Mexican Americans, who lived in the nearby Smeltertown neighborhood. During this time, El Paso and its neighboring city of Ciudad Juárez across the Mexico–United States border in Mexico, were hotbeds for radical political activity, primarily among the Mexican populations. Mexican workers in El Paso engaged in several labor strikes in an effort to obtain better pay and working conditions, such as in 1901, when about 200 Mexican construction workers for the El Paso Electric Street Car Company went on strike, demanding a wage increase of 50 percent. In 1907, about 150 workers at the smelter went on strike,demanding a wage increase from $1.20 to $1.50 per day. This strike ended in partial success for the smelters, as the company agreed to a $1.40 daily wage, but also fired several workers who had been involved in the labor dispute. This strike was one in a series of labor disputes concerning Mexican workers in the metallurgical industry in the Southwestern United States during this time. By 1912, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a militant labor union, had established a presence in the city, with several organizers from their regional offices in Phoenix, Arizona, traveling to the city. However, despite this, the Mexican workers at the