Utah Copper Strike of 1912

Determined Cretans and Greeks, with help from large groups of Austrians, Serbs and Japanese workers, forced the end to the Padrone System in Utah that bound immigrant workers to crooked employment agents during the Utah Copper Strike of 1912.

The Utah Copper Strike of 1912 is full of heroes and bad guys like Leonidas Skliris, the most hated Greek immigrant in America at the time. He was the villain behind the oppressive Padrone system for the Greek community.

Helen Papanikolas’ following account of immigrant life in the mining town of Bingham, Utah primarily focuses on the Greek community during the Great Bingham Strike of 1912, yet her story is filled with insights on the other immigrant groups who shared the same concerns and obstacles as the Greek workers encountered.

The historical accounts that unfolded during this unique worker’s struggle are raw and honest, and they clearly reveal the social order of our times haven’t changed that much from 1912, except for the modern words and slurs to express it. It seems people don’t change much through the ages.

The prevailing social tolerance towards immigrants wasn’t just limited to Utah. You can be sure the attitudes towards immigrants, natives and the colored were

definitely shared and expressed in Pocatello in 1912 as they were used in Utah. In Idaho, as in Utah, large numbers of various immigrant workers were needed to fuel the railroad and mining industries.

For a glimpse of what life was like in Bingham, Utah in 1912, check out the 1.02-minute film by the National Film Preservation Foundation, Copper Mines At Bingham Utah, released in 1912, here.

Film reviewer Scott Simmon says of the film’s surviving footage, “nicely evokes the lost mining West. The steep hillsides of Bingham Canyon were divided into ethnic enclaves, and in the excerpt we glimpse the neighborhood known as Highland Boy, home to Italian and eastern European immigrants. Bingham grew to a population of 15,000 in the next few years — through copper, gold, and silver mining —but every trace of the town, and indeed of much of the canyon itself, was swallowed decades ago by the Kennecott Copper Mine, the world’s deepest open-pit excavation.”