Written by Brendan Freedman, as part of the Roaring Fork Research Scholarship for the Aspen Historical Society in 1998, the paper provides insights into the history of Aspen.

Introduction:

On June 4, 1912, 18 of the 300 workers at Aspen’s Smuggler mine walked off the job to protest a wage reduction of fifty cents a day. Residents of Aspen awoke the next morning to a bold-typed announcement in the Aspen Democrat-Times: “The Great Smuggler Mine Closed This Morning by Order of Superintendent Champion.” The new wage policy
affected timbermen and their helpers by differentiating the compensation paid to them. Both timbermen and their helpers had formerly earned $3.50 per day. The new policy reduced the pay of helpers by fifty cents. Since there were only nine timbennen and nine helpers, the mine manager expected that the total effect on the mine would have been a mere $4.50 in savings per day. But, instead of the mine’s operating expenses decreasing by a small amount on the new payroll, the timbermen all left the mine in protest and the following day the entire mine shut down, throwing all 300 men out of work.