Industrial Workers of the World, also known as “Wobblies,” organized loggers who were fed up with low wages and poor living conditions. The strike started in northwest Montana’s Kootenai Valley, six days after the U.S. officially entered World War I. The strike eventually spread to include Washington, Idaho and Oregon. At the height of the dissent, approximately 50,000 men refused to work and almost half of them stood in picket lines. The federal government sent troops to run the timber mills and arrest Industrial Workers of the World leaders. The arrests effectively ended unionization in the West’s timber industry for more than 10 years.