A Note On The Archives of The Western Federation of Miners & International Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers.

In recent years the periodical "Labor History" has carried articles on libraries that are sources for the study of American radicalism.' However, the Archives of the Western Federation of Miners and International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (WFM-IUMM&SW) have not been mentioned. When negotiations were in progress between the IUMM&SW and United Steel Workers during the fall of 1966 and affiliation seemed imminent, the IUMM&SW began corresponding with the University of Colorado. The union's records were formally given to the University of Colorado's Boulder campus library May 10, 1967, and the Archives of the WFM-IUMM&SW became the largest collection of the Norlin Library's Western Historical Collection. The WFM-IUMM&SW collection is a valuable source especially in making possible the study of the aspirations of the organizations outside the United States. The archive makes it possible to explore the efforts on the part of both the WFM and IUMM&SW in that field such as the WFM strike at Rossland, British Columbia, in 1901. The Miners' Magazine for December 6, 1906, carried an article on "the Cananea Massacre" which was a copper strike in Mexico.