J. Anthony Lukas - Big Trouble

A richly textured historical recovery of a place and time. A work of scrupulous and significant reportage.

E. L. D OCTOROW

Tony Lukass final book, Big Trouble , bears all the trademarks of his long and distinguished career as a journalist-historianan instinct for a great story, impeccable research, remarkable fairness to all sides, and an enviable literary style.

D AVID H ALBERSTAM

This ambitious book is another landmark achievement by J. Anthony Lukas. It has a powerful, suspenseful, grand-scale story to tell and no end of extraordinary characters. There is enough biography, history, and human drama here for several books. The panorama of America at the start of the new twentieth century is brilliant.

D AVID M C C ULLOUGH

Big Trouble is gigantic and generous.

D AVID R EMNICK , The New Yorker

[ Big Trouble ] is scrupulously documented and lays out for readers a gorgeous, complex, and instructive tapestry.

R ICHARD B ERNSTEIN , The New York Times

Big Trouble has substantial rewards.

W ALTER K IRN , Time

... Toweringly important.... an intricate and irresistible story of raw power, politics, manipulation, murder, intrigue, detective work, legal maneuvering, justice, and passions of every imaginable stripe.... Lukas masterfully chose an event that stands for his theme and followed it meticulously, relentlessly, through the social, economic, and political fabric of the country.

M ICHAEL P AKENHAM , The Baltimore Sun

... Patient readers will be rewarded with a many-layered portrait of an important moment in the nations social history, as well as a fitting monument to its authors extraordinary career.

G ENE L YONS , Entertainment Weekly

Big Trouble is an unforgettable historical drama that is bigger than the Big Sky country of the Rockies in which it is set.... Lukas has held a panoramic mirror up to one of the most colorful and contentious eras of our past, but the reader will see in that mirror much that seems like today.

R OBERT S HERRILL , Chicago Sun-Times

[Lukas] captured that suspenseful flavor of ninety-plus years ago as if he were writing about todays crime.

J OSEPH L OSOS , St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Lukas does an amazing job of exploring and tying together the ramifications and personalities of an episode thats all but forgotten today, turning it into a vivid saga of one of this countrys first trials of the century.

Parade Magazine

Big Trouble is astonishing in its breadth and depth. It would be difficult to imagine any fuller account of a moment in our history, or any more sharply observed, compelling narrative than that set down by J. Anthony Lukas.

M ICHAEL K ELSAY , The Lexington Herald-Leader

... A work fully worthy of its author. It displays the same skill and conscience that won Lukas two Pulitzer Prizes.

J AMES B OYLAN , Columbia Journalism Review

Few reporters as good as Lukas have come along in this century.... in Big Trouble , he has given us a valuable work and made us remember an American time and place that we had all but forgotten.

W ILLIAM S ERRIN , Long Island Newsday

Lukas has woven a wonderfully rich tapestry with material drawn from seven years of research.

S TAUGHTON L YND , The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

At a time when few study labor history, when few recall the bloody sacrifices made for workers rights, a book like Big Trouble by a writer of Lukass stature will fill a void in the national memory.

J AMES G REEN , The Boston Globe

Lukas is a top-notch storyteller.... Despite its length, Big Trouble is remarkably fast-paced.

D AVID P ITT , Nashville BookPage

A riveting account of the era.

L AWRENCE H ALL , Newark Star-Ledger

As a study of the difficulties associated with properly conducting a criminal trial in such circumstances, Lukass book is extraordinarily timely and insightful.

D AVID S TEBENNE , The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Big Trouble is a big book, and it tells a big story, a story about the importance of class in American history.

J OHN M ACK F ARAGHER , Chicago Tribune

Lukas chose to punctuate his career with a story at once narrow and sweeping, and it is a measure of his skill that Big Trouble succeeds on both counts.

M ICHAEL R UBY , The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

... An important and timely book, raising issues that are especially relevant at this point in the social development of the world.... It offers a big reward of pleasure to the reader, since it tells an utterly engrossing story with consummate skill. And it is a superb example of the reporters craft.

J ACK F REEMAN , The Earth Times

Big Trouble is an ambitious, painstakingly researched, and important work of history which readers will find insightful and compelling. Lukas has written a most intriguing narrative which turns out to be a detective story in more ways than one.

A LLEN J. S HARE , The Louisville Courier-Journal

... huge and marvelous.

J OHN G OODSPEED , The Star (Easton, Maryland)

A LSO BY J. A NTHONY L UKAS

Common Ground:

A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families

Nightmare:

The Underside of the Nixon Years

Dont ShootWe Are Your Children!

The Barnyard Epithet and Other Obscenities:

Notes on the Chicago Conspiracy Trial

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Simon & Schuster

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Copyright 1997 by J. Anthony Lukas

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form .

First Simon & Schuster Edition 1998

S IMON & S CHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc .

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Simon & Schuster edition as follows:

Lukas, J. Anthony, 19331997 .

Big trouble: a murder in a small western town sets off a struggle for the soul of America / J. Anthony Lukas .

p. cm .

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index .

1. Steunenberg, Frank, 18611905Assassination. 2. IdahoPolitics and government. 3. Caldwell (Idaho)History. 4. United StatesPolitics and government19011909. 5. United StatesSocial conditions1865-1918. 6. Social conflictUnited StatesHistory20th century.

I. Title .

F746.L84 1997

979.6031092dc21

[B] 97-21359 CIP

ISBN 0-684-80858-7
ISBN: 978-1-4391-2810-7 (eBook)

The photograph on both the cover and the title page shows miners detained without charge in the 1899 bullpenan indignity that the state contended led the Western Federation of Miners to kill Frank Steunenberg six years later. (#8-X25, Barnard-Stockbridge Collection, University of Idaho Library, Moscow, Idaho) .

To Christopher William Lukas

my brother, my friend

Since the trouble largely originates in hostile organizations of men known as labor unions, I should suggest a law making the formation of such unions or kindred societies a crime. Surely history furnishes argument sufficiently in favor of such a course.

G ENERAL H ENRY C LAY M ERRIAM , 1899

Mr. Hawley says they have made trouble and you ought to get rid of them, and a good way to begin is to hang the secretary-treasurer. That is the way to begin to get rid of the Western Federation of Miners, because they have made trouble. Yes, they have made trouble, thank God, and more power to them. Nothing good in this world ever came excepting through trouble and tribulation and toil.