Biography
Philip Masonovich was a Montenegrin immigrant iron miner caught up in the 1916 Mesaba Range strike in Minnesota. When a deputy sheriff was killed during a clash at his Biwabik home, he, his wife, and their boarders were arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Masonovich pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served a prison term — the plea bargain that secured the release of the IWW strike organizers Carlo Tresca, Sam Scarlett and Matthew Schmidt, who are already recorded in the database.
The account dates the deputies’ entry into Phillip Masonovich’s home to July 6, 1916, names boarder Joe Hercigonovich and fellow accused Joe Nicich, and describes the three miners’ subsequent manslaughter pleas in an arrangement securing release of arrested organizers. The author’s contested interpretation of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s defense strategy is not adopted as fact. No sentence length or physical release is supplied.
Fred W. Thompson and Jon Bekken, The IWW: Its First 100 Years, physical PDF pages 129. Source179 SHA256 aa128f62023cae68c84b07606880c2cb665c80266f78854951758922bab40afa.
