actions On the morning of December 28, several hundred strikers began to picket outside that main gates to the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company plant in Virginia. The total number of workers on strike constituted a majority of the 1,200 workers and may have been as high as 1,000. As a result, one of the plant's two sawmills closed, while the other continued to operate only on a sporadic and reduced basis. That same day, men from the flying squad left Virginia en route to International Falls to attempt to recruit the lumberjacks, with many of the camps lying between these two cities along the logging railroads. Meanwhile, another group was sent from Bemidji to International Falls to recruit lumberjacks in the camps operated by the International Lumber Company. At the same time, Beaton left Virginia to go to Wisconsin, a state where he had previously done some work with labor organizing, where he hoped to recruit more lumberjacks to go on strike and possibly lead to a general strike of the lumber industry in the region. The flying squads urged the lumberjacks to begin their strikes with a walkout on January 1, 1917. As the AWO organizers began to generate support for the strike, camp foremen notified company officials, who in turn notified sheriffs and requested deputies, though they were unable to send men before January 1. After several days of rallying support for the strike, on January 1, about 1,000 lumberjacks left their camps, with about 1,000 more joining the strike the following day and more throughout the rest of the week. Of the lumberjacks, over 1,000 came from 6 camps operated by the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company, while another thousand came from 9 camps operated by International Lumber. Exact figures regarding the total number of lumberjacks involved in the strike are difficult to substantiate, though the IWW reported at the time that about 4,000 were involved. The men boarded trains along the logging railroads and traveled to nearby towns, such as Bemidji, Gemmell, International Falls, and Virginia. Most of the affected camps were located in St. Louis and Koochiching Counties. In addition to the roughly 1,000 Virginia millworkers and 2,000 lumberjacks mentioned above, several smaller mills and independent logging operations, such as the Backus-Brooks Company, were affected by the strike, and International Lumber's sawmill in International Falls was hit by a partial walkout of