Michigan’s Governor, Woodbridge Ferris, had wanted people and property protected from the violence of rioting strikers when what became known as the Strike of 1913 began in July of that year. In response to appeals from Houghton County Sheriff James Cruse, Ferris has sent the entire complement of the Michigan Militia to the Copper Country. Over 2,000 enlisted men and officers, however, did not keep Alois Tijan and Steve Putrich from being gunned down and killed at their home in August. What started out as a brawl between strikers and Champion Mining Company manager Frederick Denton’s Waddell guards ended with Tijan and Putrich dead, two other strikers wounded and a third badly beaten.

It began when two strikers walked along a path near the Champion’s D Shaft after the path had been declared off-limits to strikers. Ignoring orders from company guards to stop, John Stimac and John Kalan continued on their way home to the boarding house where they lived in Seeberville, so they would be in time for supper. The guards complained about the trespass to Waddell guard, Thomas Raleigh. In response, Raleigh rounded up six deputies, including three Waddell men, and headed to the boarding house where the trespassing strikers had gone.

Steve Putrich, one of the many boarders, stood in the door way of the house and watched a brief struggle in the yard in which Kalan received a severe beating with a club, when Kalan refused to be arrested. At one point, one of the boarders threw a bowling pin and struck Waddell guard Joshua Cooper on the back of the head. Cooper recovered quickly, whirled around as he pulled and fired his revolver. The shot struck Putrich in the abdomen.

Cooper then ran into the shed of the house and fired two more shots into the home. Four guards, on hearing the first shot, surrounded the house and began firing their revolvers through the windows. Alois Tijan, another boarder, was struck and killed instantly. Two other boarders were wounded in the cross-fire. Putrich died the next day at the Copper Range hospital in Trimountain.

It was this sort of senseless violence Ferris had feared would happen once the Houghton County Board of Supervisors authorized Cruse to hire Waddell-Mahon guards and deputize them. A trespassing complaint had ended in the shooting deaths of two men (who were not even involved in the trespassing incident) and the wounding of two others.

Eventually, a contingent of militiamen did show up to help Sheriff Cruse secure the scene, but not in time to prevent the killings. After Raleigh and his deputies conducted an illegal search of the house, it was established that the strikers were not armed. Raleigh had accused the strikers in the house of shooting first, but no firearms were found in the structure.

The murders created a firestorm that ended in smoke. The seven-member executive board of the District Union Number 16 of the Western Federation of Miners filed a petition in Circuit Court for an injunction to restrain the sheriff from continuing to employ Waddell men. WFM attorney Angus Kerr claimed Cruse was in violation of the Compiled Laws of 1897, which is exactly what Ferris had telegrammed Cruse in July.

After the Seeberville murders, Houghton County Prosecutor Anthony Lucas served notice on Cruse of his withdrawal of the Prosecutor’s office’s consent for Waddell men to carry weapons. Just as Cruse had ignored Ferris’ telegram, he ignored Lucas’ withdrawal of consent. The Waddell men continued to carry weapons.

Judge Patrick O’Brien ruled on the injunction on August 23, rendering his opinion that Cruse was in violation of state law in appointing anyone from outside the state as deputy sheriffs.

In his opinion, the judge ruled he did not have the power to grant the WFM’s petition. Oddly, he stated that while he did possess the authority to prevent the appointment of “those men” as deputy sheriffs, it appeared to him they were merely training Houghton County deputy sheriffs.

In rendering his opinion, O’Brien clearly ignored the testimony of the Seeberville murder witnesses who had testified that the gunfire started after John Kalan had refused to submit to being arrested. O’Brien seems to have overlooked the point that if Raleigh had not been acting as a deputy, he would have no power to order the arrest of anyone.

O’Brien would continue to issue confusing, vacillating rulings from the bench throughout the strike. The governor’s warnings to Cruse would go unheeded, due largely to that the governor never did enforce his warning to Cruse.

The local residents began to perceive a sense of lawlessness beginning in their once peaceful mining district. Although Keweenaw and Ontonagon Counties did not at any time hire Waddell men, the Copper Country was beginning to look like something of a war in which if sides had not yet been taken, they would need to be.