At times the most dangerous revolutionary in America seemed too violent even for union miners. William D. "Big Bill" Haywood was, said his accusers, "a viper, ... an anarchist, ... the most damnable and fiendish [criminal] that ever degraded humanity."
          Born in Salt Lake City in 1869, fatherless at age three, homeless and threadbare in western mining camps at age nine, Bill Haywood had punctured his right eye while whittling a sling-shot, blinding it for life. As a mine worker in Idaho he had dedicated his life to uplifting the laboring man by breaking the capitalist system. Radicalized in 1886 by Chicago's Haymarket Square labor riot and again in 1892 by the Homestead steelworkers strike, Haywood became secretary-treasurer of

the Denver-based Western Federation of Miners, sharing power with union president Charles Moyer and union advisor George Pettibone. All had been fingered by Harry Orchard in the assassin's tearful confession. Captured, handcuffed, and smuggled to Boise where the Idaho Supreme Court hastily rejected their writs of habeas corpus, the three languished in the Idaho State Penitentiary awaiting the sensational trial.
          American socialists were outraged by the strong-armed capture of the celebrated labor leaders. "Will Moyer and Haywood die?" chanted a parade of Chicago protesters. "If they die, here's our cry: there are twenty million workmen who will know the reason why."

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