The Rocky Mountain Revolution

New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1956. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good/Fair. 318, [4] pages. Endpaper map. Bibliography. Index. The DJ worn, torn and chipped. Stewart Hall Holbrook (1893-1964) was an American logger, writer, and popular historian. His writings focused on what he called the "Far Corner": Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. A self-proclaimed "low-brow" historian, his topics included Ethan Allen, the railroads, the timber industry, the Wobblies, and eccentrics of the Pacific Northwest. An early proponent of conservationism, Holbrook believed that Oregon's growing population would damage the state's environment. Holbrook was a logger before he moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1923, when he was 30 years old and became a very accomplished writer. He wrote for The Oregonian for over thirty years, was featured in The New Yorker, and authored over three dozen books. He also produced a number of satirical paintings under the pseudonym of "Mr. Otis," in a style he called "primitive modern." These paintings are still shown occasionally at the Portland Museum of Modern Art or can be found at the University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections. In the early 1960s, Holbrook was the founder and leading spokesperson of an early fictitious conservation movement called the James G. Blaine Society, writing on subjects from sustained yield forestry to his concerns about unplanned population growth. The Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award is named after Holbrook and is presented every year "to a person or organization in recognition of significant contributions that have enriched Oregon's literary community. Harry Orchard devoted most of his early life to lawlessness and crime on a fantasically large scale. As the hired assassin of the Western Federation of Miners, he blasted a trail of violence through the West, ending in the 1905 bomb-slaying of a former Idaho governor. Orchard's skill with dynamite and the fearful results of this talent produced some colorful pages of Americana that, up to now, have escaped the history books. This is more than just the story of Harry Orchard, however. It is also the story of the Western Federation of Miners, of William "Big Bill" Harwood, a onetime idol of American labor, and the organization of the Industrial Workers of the World by Haywood before he fled to the Soviet Union. Stewart Halbrook writes of the labor conditions that led to violence in the hardrock, first in the mines of Northern Idaho and later in the Cripple Creek region and the San Juans of Colorado. Time and again Orchard sparked new violence in the hope of winning the approval of Haywood and the other union leaders. By the time Orchard had killed twenty men or more, there was so much fear, hate, and violence in the hardrock mining towns that the Western Federation of Miners was doomed. Harry Orchard's last assignment, the dynamiting of former Governor Steunenberg of Idaho, put the Western Federation of Miners out of business. Orchard was persuaded to confess his crimes and turn state's evidence. In one of the great courtroom dramas of all times, Clarence Darrow defended Haywood and one of the prosecutors was William E. Borah, then newly elected to the United States Senate.