A century ago, Butte, Montana, was the largest and most productive copper camp in the world. At its peak, during World War I, more than twelve thousand miners produced nearly 20 percent of the nation’s total copper output. Unlike Bisbee, Butte had a long history of union activity, starting with the creation of the Butte Miners’ Union (BMU) in 1878. Butte went on to become a stronghold of militant unionism. The BMU was instrumental in launching the Western Federation of Miners in 1893, and Butte remained the WFM’s largest local until 1914.
One company, the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, owned almost all of Butte’s mines. From the start, Anaconda sought to undermine the militancy of the miners. The failure of the BMU’s conservative leadership to effectively challenge Anaconda’s autocratic control of the industry led to the formation of a significant opposition caucus within the union. Ultimately, dissidents quit the BMU to form their own, independent union.
As this coalition of radicals grew in strength, Anaconda escalated its repressive measures. Key to Anaconda’s program of repression was its decision to institute the “rustling card” system. Before being hired, miners were subject to a minute review of their history, and anyone suspected of being a radical or a militant was refused employment.
Miners despised the rustling card system. In June 1917, an independent union of mine workers, led by a coalition of radical socialists and IWW members, drastically curtailed production in Butte’s mines for six months in an effort to force an end to the rustling card. Yet the confrontation of 1917 would be marked by a tragic incident that came to symbolize the pitiless cruelty being employed to destroy the IWW. On August 1, 1917, Frank Little was brutally tortured and lynched. Little had been dispatched to Butte by Bill Haywood, an indication of the importance Butte held in the estimation of the IWW’s leadership.
Little’s death marked another crucial turning point for the union, directly following upon the Bisbee deportation. Shortly afterward, federal troops occupied the city, with orders to squelch the radical dissidents and to keep the mines open. Under this intense pressure, the coalition of IWW members and left-wing socialists that had provided the leadership for militant miners came unraveled. By 1921, Anaconda had succeeded in destroying miners’ unions in Butte, thus regaining total control over the mines.
The events of the summer of 1917 were of crucial importance, but they can only be understood in the light of twenty years of bitter class conflict in Butte’s copper mines.
Butte began as a silver camp in the early 1870s. Small, poorly capitalized mines were dug to mine silver. At the time, Butte was an isolated village, many miles from a railroad station. A rate of $3.50 for a nine-hour shift became the norm, high pay at the time. In 1878, when mine owners sought to cut the going rate, miners responded by forming one of the first unions in the western hardrock mining industry,1 the BMU. After a brief strike, the $3.50 rate was restored and the union came to be recognized as a significant force in the camp. Soon, Butte became a stronghold of industrial unionism, with retail clerks, restaurant staff, and brewery workers forming their own unions, all with the active support of the miners. Waitresses were paid three dollars a shift for an eight-hour day. Every year, Butte celebrated the founding of the union on June 13, 1878, with a huge parade marking the occasion.2
In 1882, Marcus Daly discovered copper ore beneath the veins of silver at the Anaconda mine. Unlike the short-lived silver boom, the copper deposits were vast, but they lay deep beneath the surface. Copper mining required a complex and sophisticated technology, and thus the ownership of Butte’s mines was rapidly consolidated into the hands of a few rich mine owners.3
Two of these copper barons, Marcus Daly and William Clark, soon became locked in a ferocious vendetta, disparaging each other at every turn. The split between Clark and Daly provided the BMU with some leverage, as both sides sought to gain the support of the union.4
The first stage of Butte’s history ended on April 27, 1899, when Daly, sick and close to death, sold his interest in the Anaconda mine, as well several other Butte mines, to key members of the Standard Oil trust for $39 million. The resulting corporation would go through several twists and turns in name and formal structure, but it became fixed in popular consciousness as the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Its creation meant that Butte’s mines were no longer in the hands of corporate interests based in the West. Instead, they became a small, albeit lucrative, part of the vast Rockefeller empire. From this point onward, crucial decisions affecting Butte were made on Wall Street, not in Butte.5
Anaconda sought to control every facet of Butte, with its pervasive power extending throughout Montana. Anaconda, or the interests that controlled Anaconda, came to own the mines that produced 90 percent of Montana’s copper, most of the timber land in western Montana, as well as Butte’s leading bank, its largest department store, and all but one of the local newspapers. In addition, the company bankrolled the politicians of both mainstream parties, enabling it to dominate public policy in Butte and Silver Bow County.6
Still, this overwhelming power was not enough. Anaconda attempted to gain total control over the BMU, thus triggering more than fifteen years of intense conflict. The first signs of popular resistance came when Clark, in an effort to gain support for his bid to become a U.S. Senator, introduced the eight-hour day in his mines. He then joined F. Augustus Heinze, another copper baron resisting Anaconda’s push for monopolistic dominance, in funding a slate of populist politicians who swept the state elections of 1901. The newly elected legislature then mandated the eight-hour day for all of Montana’s mines.7
This victory was won “in spite of the active opposition of the Butte Union officials.” Dissidents were convinced that the union’s leadership had become totally subservient to Anaconda. The result was the formation of a cohesive and influential opposition within the BMU. Most of the leading figures within the radical opposition were experienced miners who had spent many years working in Butte’s mines. They were united by a belief in the necessity for a strong, militant industrial union.8
As the radical opposition within the BMU developed, significant ideological differences crystallized. Some radicals were distrustful of any participation in the electoral arena and were convinced that militant action at the workplace provided the sole way forward. Those holding to this perspective identified themselves as industrial union socialists. Most of them would join the IWW after its formation in 1905. The other segment of radicals believed that electoral politics could be an effective arena to reach working people with a socialist message and that workplace-based actions, while crucial, were only one component of a more comprehensive strategy required to build a socialist movement. Militants in this tendency looked to Gene Debs and the left wing of the newly formed Socialist Party.9
These were genuine political differences, but they should not be exaggerated. Agreements in fundamental principles outweighed the specific differences in strategy and tactics. Virtually all of the miners who advocated greater militancy were also socialists and radicals, convinced that fundamental change did not occur through the ballot box but by direct action at the workplace. Indeed, the radical coalition functioned harmoniously through most of the period from 1901 to 1917. Thus, although the IWW would become an influential force among Butte’s dissidents, it represented only one strand in a large and diverse community of radicals.
Both Wobblies and left-wing socialists understood that the ability of Butte’s radical Left to organize effectively against Anaconda depended on the continued unity of the dissident opposition. Of course, the company understood this as well and therefore sought to exacerbate disagreements to the point of an organizational split.
Butte’s militant opposition grew rapidly as working conditions deteriorated in the mines. In part, this reflected an intensification of the pace of work demanded by the mine owners to compensate for the introduction of the eight-hour day. Mine shafts were also being dug deeper, often reaching twenty-five hundred to thirty-five hundred feet beneath the surface. Inevitably, this meant that the tunnels where the miners blasted and dug the ore became hotter. In Butte, this problem was exacerbated by the presence of sulfides in the ore. Miners were forced to work their entire shifts, doing grueling physical labor, in temperatures that exceeded 90 degrees and with humidity levels in excess of 90 percent. In some of the deepest shafts, temperatures rose to 110 degrees.10
The physical exhaustion caused by these extreme conditions made miners susceptible to contagious diseases. In addition, fine dust particles suspended in the air, arising from the constant drilling and dynamite explosions, entered the lungs of Butte’s miners and made them vulnerable to the tuberculosis bacteria. Tuberculosis became endemic in Butte’s mines. Miners paid one dollar a month for hospitalization and yet they were not admitted to either of Butte’s hospitals for treatment of tuberculosis.11
These health concerns were in addition to the more dramatic issues related to safety. Injuries arising from accidents were commonplace and death a constant threat. Yet miners and their families who tried to sue Anaconda found that the local judicial system was dominated by the company. Burton Wheeler and his partner Lowndes Maury, two of the few attorneys willing to tackle the company, recommended to all of their clients bringing suit against Anaconda that they settle before going to court, even though this meant that the legal fees they could collect would be significantly lower.12
In spite of the appalling working conditions in Butte’s mines, the BMU refused to address these critical issues of health and safety. Dissidents were convinced that the company was paying off union officials to ensure their cooperation.13 By 1902, a cohesive caucus of radicals had begun to develop an effective opposition within the BMU. These militants gained the support of a wider segment of miners who were convinced that the BMU leaders were “company men.”14
Radicals advanced a program that went well beyond a call for greater militancy and an adherence to democratic procedures. They began putting forward the objective of a six-hour day, a demand that, a century later, still challenges the fundamental assumptions of a capitalist market economy. Union dissidents also argued that Anaconda should be forced to pay stiff taxes on the enormous profits being accumulated from Butte’s resources. Radicals viewed these demands as immediate measures to be raised as first steps toward the seizure of the mines and their operation under workers’ control.15
The bitter struggle within the BMU reached a crisis point in the spring of 1907. Copper prices were high and union dissidents insisted that the BMU end its cozy relations with Anaconda and demand a substantial pay increase. For twenty-nine years, Butte’s miners had received $3.50 for each shift worked. Instead of negotiating a substantial increase in pay, the BMU agreed to link wage rates to the price of copper.16
The adoption of a sliding-scale wage rate represented a very significant defeat for Butte’s miners. It made it easy for the mining companies to reduce wages in hard times, and it also sought to transform the adversarial relationship between miners and owners into a collaborative one. Radical dissidents would demand an end to the sliding scale and a return to the traditional practice of a fixed wage.
The sliding-scale wage rate was codified within a five-year written contract. Until 1907, the BMU had operated on the basis of verbal understandings with management. The radical opposition vehemently opposed the 1907 contract. Dissidents objected in principle to written contracts that were binding for a specified period of time as inhibiting rank-and-file militancy and class solidarity. In addition, radicals specifically opposed the five-year term of the contract, arguing that such a lengthy period between negotiations would make it far harder for the union to adapt to the rapid changes that characterized the copper industry.17
In spite of the arguments presented by the left-wing opposition, a majority of the membership approved the contract by referendum vote in April 1907, having been told that they would thereby receive a significant increase in wages. Soon afterward, copper prices slumped and stayed low for the next few years. As a result, the wage rate fell, and the popularity of the conservative leadership of the BMU plummeted.18
Total opposition to written contracts with specified expiration dates became a fundamental principle for the IWW. Many of its leaders had been active in the WFM, and the vitriolic debates that surrounded the 1907 Butte contract were a formative experience.19 There is no doubt that the five-year length of the contract was far too long and that this reflected the desire of both Anaconda and the BMU leadership to deter potential rank-and-file actions. Nevertheless, it is odd that the IWW would point to Butte as an argument validating a principled position in opposition to all written contracts. For three decades the BMU, and its conservative leadership, had depended on oral agreements, and avoided written contacts. The result had been a union that cultivated a cozy relationship with Anaconda while steadfastly refusing to address critically important health and safety issues.
In any case, Butte’s miners quickly turned on those who had negotiated the 1907 contract. That summer, several radicals were elected officers of the BMU. Two years later, the radical slate swept the election. Thus, for several years radicals controlled the BMU, preparing the membership for a confrontation with Anaconda. An amount equal to 1 percent of member dues was reserved for an educational fund, with the money spent on the bulk purchase of hundreds of copies of a variety of radical publications. This infuriated the conservative wing of the union, particularly since Solidarity, the IWW newspaper, was one of the publications selected, and it consistently attacked the leadership of the WFM.20
The Butte local soon became the focal point for dissidents within the WFM. At national conventions of the WFM, delegates from the Butte local consistently challenged the policies of President Charles Moyer and the executive board. In turn, Moyer was convinced that the Butte local had been captured by the IWW and the proponents of dual unionism. In a letter to Edward Boyce, his predecessor as the union’s president, Moyer denounced Butte’s radicals for trying to “disrupt the Western Federation of Miners.” Moyer contemptuously dismissed his critics, promising to pay “little attention to the yelping of such curs.”21 The bitter enmity between Moyer and the Butte radicals would soon tear apart the Butte local.
The BMU also began challenging Anaconda on issues of health and safety. In 1911, the radicalized BMU called for the state legislature to investigate working conditions in the mines. A legislative committee looked at the problems of ventilation and the impact that dust and toxins in the air might be having on the high rate of tuberculosis. Union leaders who testified before the committee demanded better ventilation, but they also began to raise the demand for a six-hour day in the hotter shafts.22 These were hesitant, tentative steps, and yet they represented a qualitative break with the past. With radicals in its leadership, the BMU would challenge Anaconda’s absolute control over the workplace.
The slump in the copper industry, and the terms of the five-year contract, hampered the BMU in moving beyond agitation to direct action. Nevertheless, Anaconda understood that the new union leadership would be far less accommodating when negotiations were reopened following the expiration of the five-year contract in April 1912. The company therefore decided to push for a totally compliant leadership or, failing that, the destruction of the union. As a result, the next two and a half years were filled with one confrontation after another, until Butte, which had once been the Gibraltar of industrial unionism, became an open-shop town.
The initial skirmish flared after Anaconda fired five hundred workers in March 1912. The company publicly insisted that the miners had not been fired because of their political views or their commitment to a militant union, but rather because management had found them “undesirable.” The reality was very different. The North Butte Mining Company, which owned the Speculator mine, one of the largest in the area, was tightly connected to Anaconda. It therefore joined Anaconda in implementing a purge of its workforce. John Pope, the general manager of North Butte, later admitted at a public hearing that the dismissals were aimed at socialist activists. Pope defended the dismissals, since it was “necessary that we should have the right to discharge men for any reason that seemed good to us.”23
At Anaconda, the purge took an ethnic overtone as well as a political one. Many Finns joined the Socialist Party as well as the BMU, and they tended to support the left-wing radicals in both organizations. Finns were disproportionately represented among the five hundred miners sacked by the mining companies.24 In this way, Anaconda exacerbated ethnic tensions while also striking at a major base of support for Butte’s radicals.
BMU’s radical leaders immediately demanded that Anaconda rehire the miners, but the company refused. At this point, most union leaders called for a strike at Anaconda and North Butte, a total break with thirty years of quiescence, while a minority, the old conservative grouping, insisted on a membership referendum. By a ratio of 4 to 1, the rank and file of the union rejected the call for a strike, thus permitting the firing of the Finnish workers to remain unchallenged.25 Although this maneuver by Anaconda damaged the BMU in the short run, it also radicalized many Finns and reinforced that community as an important reservoir of support for radical politics. The IWW would recruit large numbers of Finnish workers to its perspective during the following years.
In June 1912, with contract negotiations stalled, the BMU held elections for local officers. This election would be a watershed. Radicals were convinced that Anaconda had spent $30,000 to manipulate the election and ensure the victory of the conservative caucus. Prior to the election, in April 1912, a general meeting was held at the union’s hall to determine judges and tellers for the June election. The constitution of the WFM provided that election officials must be elected at a general meeting of the local. No provision was made for outside observers or representatives of alternative slates as a guarantee of the fairness of the election process.26
The Miners’ Hall held a maximum of six hundred, while the BMU membership stood at roughly eight thousand. On the day of the special meeting, radicals came off the day shift to find the union hall already filled to capacity. Radicals were convinced that shift bosses at Anaconda mines had picked out “fine-day miners,” those favored by the company and given easier assignments, and had allowed them to leave before the end of the shift, with pay, with the explicit understanding that they would proceed to the union hall and vote for the conservative slate. Needless to say, with conservative election officials in place, the conservative slate swept the radicals out of office. As a result, radical dissidents began planning the creation of a new union, independent of the WFM.27
At about this time, the summer of 1912, the IWW began for the first time to develop an organized presence in Butte. Meetings of the IWW Propaganda League were held on a regular basis, giving the radical opposition a formal structure. The new group did not function as an IWW branch, but rather as a meeting ground for dissidents in the BMU. Thus, some radicals who did not identify with the IWW, but rather with the left-wing of the Socialist Party, came to meetings and joined the discussions.28
In the fall of 1912, the conservative leadership of the BMU negotiated a new three-year contract with Anaconda. As before, the contract failed to address essential issues concerning health and safety and job security. A new wage scale was put into effect, once again tying the wage rate to the price of copper. The contract was approved by membership referendum, despite the adamant opposition of the union’s radicals.29
Anaconda saw the situation in the BMU deteriorating as an increasing number of miners lost all confidence in the integrity of the union’s leadership. Furthermore, the growth of the IWW Propaganda League represented a dangerous threat that could not be ignored. In response, in December 1912, Anaconda instituted the rustling card system. Before a miner could apply for a job, he applied for a job at a centralized employment office, providing Anaconda with his complete work record. The company would then ask for references from past employers. Each applicant’s work record was thoroughly investigated. Only then could the applicant go to the mine foreman, who determined whether the miner was needed. Those vetted by this system were blacklisted from every Anaconda mine in Butte, covering 90 percent of Butte’s production. Even then, miners who were employed could always have their cards withdrawn, leading to their immediate dismissal.30
At the time this system was instituted, the company insisted that it did not intend to bar union militants or radicals from employment. In August 1917, Lewis Evans, general counsel to the company, was more candid in comments he made to Missoula’s Chamber of Commerce. He conceded that the “main reason for the adoption of the rustling card system” had been the formation and growth of the IWW Propaganda League.31
This system of intensive screening became the most hated aspect of Anaconda’s power over its workforce. Radicals of every persuasion despised this blatant assertion of corporate authority. In their view, Anaconda’s bosses introduced the rustling card “to control the political and industrial servility of their employees in Montana.”32 No other issue so united union militants as the abolition of the rustling card.
The BMU leadership refused to challenge the rustling card system, thus further reinforcing the firm resolve of Butte’s radicals to confront the conservative leadership, even if it led to the formation of a new union. Still, opposition forces suffered a setback when the radical grouping in Butte was fractured by the ramifications of a split in the Socialist Party at its national level. In February 1913, with the moderate majority using the issue of sabotage to divide the radical opposition, Big Bill Haywood was recalled from his post on the Socialist Party’s National Executive Committee. Thousands of radicals quit the party in protest. In Butte, the hard feelings arising from this dispute made it impossible for radicals to present a cohesive alternative slate for local officers. With the IWW and radical socialists presenting alternative slates, the conservative slate was easily returned to office in June 1913.33
In contrast to the ongoing division at the national level, the split in Butte’s radical coalition was quickly healed. In part, this reflects the extent to which radicals had become rooted in the wider community. It was generally understood that only a unified Left could present an effective challenge to Anaconda’s control of the workplace. In addition, the question of sabotage was irrelevant to the actual issues confronting Butte’s miners. Copper was desperately needed, and thus a workforce that produced a fifth of the country’s output had tremendous potential power, one that did not need to rely on violence of any sort. By the spring of 1914, the radicals had transcended their differences and were again functioning as a cohesive unit. Over the next three and a half years, from 1914 to 1917, the unity of the radical coalition was sustained through a series of tumultuous confrontations.
As the 1914 elections for local officers drew near, dissidents prepared to unseat the conservative leadership of the BMU by presenting a single, opposition slate. A general meeting of the local was convened in April 1914 to select the tellers and judges who would oversee the upcoming election for executive officers. Dan Shovlin, a veteran miner and one of the most prominent radicals,34 spoke for the dissident opposition. He proposed that the forthcoming election be conducted with the use of voting machines, rather than paper ballots. Perhaps naively, radicals were convinced that the use of voting machines would make it more difficult for the conservatives to rig the results. Bert Riley, the president of the BMU, ruled that Shovlin’s motion had been defeated by voice vote and then refused to consider a motion for a standing vote.35
This seemingly minor procedural dispute proved to be the final breaking point. Radicals were certain that the conservative leaders would use their positions of power to manipulate the election process, as they had in 1912, and that they would do so in collusion with Anaconda. Dissidents started leaving the BMU in order to begin laying the groundwork for a new, independent union.36
Radicals initiated a coordinated campaign aimed at convincing miners to refuse to pay their dues to the BMU. On June 2, 1914, the election proceeded as usual, with paper ballots, and with conservative election officials charged with the slow, and questionable, process of counting ballots. This impasse was inherently unstable, an explosion waiting to happen. The inevitable clash came when union officials decided to inspect dues cards at the Speculator mine.
This was not an unusual procedure. Mining companies had tacitly agreed that every miner employed would be a member of the union. Companies did not directly enforce this agreement, but they did allow BMU officials to come to mineshaft entrances to check on dues payments. Miners who refused to join were escorted from the mine and then dismissed from the job.37
Nevertheless, the choice of mines to be targeted was a provocative one. The Speculator mine was owned by North Butte and thus was not directly covered by Anaconda’s rustling card system. As a result, Speculator’s workforce, an ethnically mixed one, was known for its radical leanings. Miners at the Speculator had eagerly responded to the call to withhold dues payments from the BMU.
In addition to the issues raised by the rigging of local elections, rank-and-file miners were convinced that union assessments were too high and that local union officials were using these funds for their own purposes. The WFM had levied a special assessment of two dollars a month to fund a strike of copper miners in the Mesabi Range in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Local officials had increased this special assessment to the equivalent of one shift per month, or $3.75. Butte’s miners became suspicious when the assessment was retained even after the Mesabi strike was lost and most of the strikers returned to work. Many miners at the Speculator refused to pay the special assessment and thus, in the view of BMU officials, were not members in good standing.38
Several days after the election, union officials posted notices announcing that they would be going to the Speculator mine to inspect dues cards on Friday, June 12, 1914. Rank-and-file miners responded by posting signs around the Speculator mineshaft urging everyone to refuse to show their union cards to the BMU delegation. That morning, as miners on the day shift came to work, they were met by leading officers of the BMU. Bert Riley, the local union’s president, insisted that every miner had to pay all assessments owed before they would be allowed to work. A heated dispute ensued, as activists from Speculator’s night shift advised the day shift to walk out. One miner, Muckie McDonald, took a leadership role, denouncing the BMU as corrupt and a tool of the mining companies.39
Most of the day shift refused to work, and the Speculator mine closed for the day. Several hundred miners then proceeded to march down Butte Hill and through the central business district. At a brief meeting at the City Auditorium, plans were formulated for a meeting that same night to discuss the formation of a new union.40
That evening, several hundred miners gathered at the Speculator to support those who refused to pay BMU dues. Once again union officials, led by Riley, demanded that the night shift pay all dues outstanding before starting to work. John Pope, North Butte’s general manager, upheld the union’s position and warned the miners that no one would be permitted to work who was behind in their dues. This time the confrontation was much more volatile as the crowd grew increasingly belligerent. Before the situation could become violent, Sheriff Tim Driscoll intervened and escorted Riley and the BMU delegation away from the mine and down the hill to the Miners’ Union Hall. The Speculator, as well as the Black Rock mine, remained closed.41
Later that same evening, two thousand miners met to discuss the formation of a new, independent union. An interim executive committee was elected and charged with presenting a detailed plan for the new organization at a mass meeting to be held soon after.42 Before the new union could be officially launched, the conflict among Butte’s miners precipitated a violent confrontation.
June 13 was Miners’ Union Day, the biggest holiday in Butte, celebrated by a parade that left from the Miners’ Union Hall and then marched through the main business district. The meeting of radical dissidents held the previous night had voted to urge miners to stay away from this event, but, unfortunately, this advice went unheeded. As the parade wended its ways through the streets of Butte, a scant five hundred participants, led by union officials on horseback, were met with the jeers of thousands of bystanders. Suddenly, a crowd of hundreds of irate miners began attacking the BMU contingent. As fights broke out between bystanders and marchers, the parade began disintegrating in chaos. Angry dissidents then charged to the front ranks of the march and began pelting BMU officials with rocks and bottles. Bert Riley, who had been on horseback, jumped off and ran into the theater where the march was supposed to end. He was protected from an angry mob by Sheriff Driscoll and his deputies. Jere Murphy, Butte’s chief of police, known for his close ties to Anaconda, tried to rescue a union official and was struck on the head by a flying bottle. At this point, the parade dispersed, with no one seriously injured.43
This was already a tense scene, but the crisis escalated when the crowd that had attacked the parade began storming the BMU headquarters, a few blocks away. As those leading the swarm broke into the Miners’ Hall, a substantial two-story building in the center of town, they rushed up the stairs and into the room where the ballots cast during the recent election were still being counted. Ballot boxes were destroyed as miners demonstrated their hatred for the rigged elections that had come to characterize the BMU. The crowd began sacking the union’s offices as chairs, tables, and even carpets were flung out of windows. When Frank Curran, the president of the city council and a member of the Socialist Party, pleaded with the crowd to disperse, he was pushed out of a second-floor window. Luckily, his fall was broken by debris that had already been heaved on to the street, but he was still hospitalized with back injuries.44
The crowd then turned to the union’s safe. Although several miners used sledgehammers, the safe was too sturdy, and it remained shut. Butte police officers arrived on the scene with a horse-driven cart, intending to deliver the safe to the nearby City Hall. Once the safe was hauled on to the cart, the crowd refused to let it be moved. An unknown miner jumped on to the police vehicle and urged the crowd to divert the cart to an isolated district on the outskirts of Butte. Police officers wisely stood aside as the cart and a crowd of five thousand began heading to the outskirts of town. As the cart approached its destination, Sheriff Driscoll and his deputies attempted to block the way and rescue the safe. The crowd refused to budge and became increasingly belligerent. Vastly outnumbered, Driscoll opted to allow the truck to proceed.45
Once having arrived at its intended destination, an area beyond the city’s residential neighborhoods, the safe was opened with a series of dynamite explosions. It contained upwards of $1,000, and an array of sensitive union documents. The contents of the safe were carried away by several individuals trusted by the large crowd of miners, with the previously secret documents delivered to leaders of the newly formed independent union. The passages from these letters that were read to a mass meeting of the new union seemed to suggest that BMU officials had accepted kickbacks from insurance companies.46
The attacks on the parade and the sacking of the BMU hall appear to have been the result of a genuinely spontaneous act of popular anger. In ransacking the hall and destroying the contents of the safe, the miners had left the BMU in shambles. Nevertheless, the events of June 13 were chaotic and disorganized. Although the IWW was blamed for the violence, even by those on the Left, there is no credible evidence to suggest that Wobblies were responsible. On the contrary, radicals of every persuasion had urged miners to steer clear of the parade and to avoid an unnecessary confrontation.
During the week following the parade, Butte remained calm. Mines reopened for work and the BMU began fixing up its hall. Still, Sheriff Driscoll announced that he would deputize security guards hired by Anaconda and the other mining companies. This decision would lead to yet another round of violence. At the same time, radical activists continued to systematically organize a new, independent union. On June 21, five thousand miners attended the official founding of the Butte Mine Workers’ Union (BMWU). An executive committee of twenty was elected, including several IWW members, and Muckie McDonald was chosen president.47
As the new union organized, Governor Samuel Stewart, a Democrat and an Anaconda ally, began requesting federal intervention. A day after the June 13 incidents, Stewart warned Woodrow Wilson that federal troops might be needed.48 The next day, Stewart traveled the seventy-five miles from Helena, Montana’s capital, to Butte and met with Anaconda officials. He then dispatched another cable to the president insisting that the IWW dominated the leadership of the new union.49
By this time, Butte was once again peaceful. Nevertheless, Stewart urged “that federal troops be moved” immediately, to be stationed as a reserve force for units of the state militia, which also would be mobilized for duty at Butte. Once garrisoned at two nearby forts built during the Indian wars and since left deserted, these troops could then “be readily moved to the scene of action.”50
President Wilson responded to Stewart’s request for federal troops in accordance with policy guidelines he consistently followed during similar domestic disturbances. Troops would only be deployed when and if the president was convinced that the situation was actually an emergency and that the state government had demonstrated its failure to cope with the crisis on its own. On this basis, he rejected Stewart’s request, so the governor refrained from mobilizing the state militia.
The situation appeared to have reached a stable impasse, with quiet returning to the streets, until the appearance of Charles Moyer, the president of the WFM, precipitated yet another violent confrontation. Moyer wanted desperately to thwart the newly formed independent union and to revive the BMU as the local affiliate of the WFM. Indeed, a leading official of the union later reported that the “trouble at Butte” had “very severely crippled the Western Federation of Miners.” Moyer therefore traveled to Butte a few days after the incident and publicly declared that the conservative officials of the local would have to resign and that their successors would be elected through a genuinely democratic process. These concessions were far too little too late.51
Moyer opted to convene a meeting of the BMU at the Miners’ Union Hall on June 23. This was a foolish and inflammatory decision. The hall had already been sacked during the previous incident on June 13, with windows broken and furniture dumped. Holding the meeting at the same location could only remind everyone of the previous confrontation. Furthermore, local officials, including Mayor Lewis Duncan of the Socialist Party, warned Moyer that such a meeting would be seen as a provocation, with the distinct possibility of more violence. Moyer responded by asking Sheriff Driscoll, a Democrat and a foe of Duncan, to post deputy sheriffs as guards during the meeting.52
That evening, two hundred miners showed up to hear Moyer and revive the BMU. A crowd of several thousand gathered outside of the Miners’ Union Hall and heckled those entering the meeting place. Several officers of the newly formed BMWU posted in the crowd, including Dan Shovlin, urged everyone to be calm and to ignore any provocation. At 7:30 p.m., with Moyer having already begun speaking, J. H. Bruno, a veteran miner aligned to the BMU, pushed his way forward and entered the building. In response to razzing from onlookers, he shouted his intention of attending the meeting and his disdain for the crowd. As Bruno turned to go up the stairs to the meeting hall on the second floor, he was shot in the face by one of those guarding the meeting. Bruno stumbled down the stairs and collapsed at the entrance of the hall. When several of those in the crowd outside rushed forward to rescue him, gunmen from within the hall began firing wildly, killing Ernest Noye, a bystander, and wounding three others.53
Most of the onlookers were unarmed, but a few carried pistols and they began firing at the gunmen inside the Hall. Others hurried home to get their rifles and began sniping at the hall from nearby buildings. For two hours, a firefight ensued on the downtown streets of the largest city in Montana. Luckily, there were no additional fatalities.54
Once the shooting began, the crowd inside the Miners’ Hall quickly fled down a fire escape at the back of the hall. Moyer was among the last to leave. The fire escape ended in an alley in back of the hall, with a nine-foot drop to the ground. A car had been stationed on a nearby street, so Moyer and his closest associates could leave Butte rapidly and safely. Others escaping from the hall made their getaway through bars that had their back entrances on the alley. Soon there was only one gunman left inside, exchanging rifle shots with the miners perched on rooftops across the street. Finally, the last gunman escaped, and the crowd returned to the street outside of the hall.
A group of armed miners then went to the nearest mine, the West Stewart, one of Anaconda’s properties, a mere block up Butte Hill from the Miners’ Hall. With guns drawn, they seized fifty boxes of dynamite, each weighing fifty pounds. During the next three hours, from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. the following morning, miners set off fifteen different charges, thereby demolishing the hall. The last explosion, primed with an entire box of dynamite, shattered glass for several blocks in the business district. In the end, the Miners’ Hall was reduced to rubble. The entire set of incidents in June 1914 finished the BMU as a significant factor.55
The confrontation on June 23 differed greatly from the sacking of the Miners’ Hall ten days previously. Although the first incident can be characterized as a spontaneous outburst, an outburst of popular anger, the shots fired from the Miners’ Hall came from gunmen acting as deputy sheriffs, not miners. Driscoll had publicly announced that he would be deputizing company gunmen. Furthermore, Moyer had asked Driscoll to provide security for the meeting. That evening, Driscoll and his staff of regular deputies remained outside of the hall, attempting to calm the large crowd of bystanders. Thus, it appears highly likely that the gunmen stationed inside the Miners’ Hall at Moyer’s request, including those who initiated the shooting, were actually on Anaconda’s payroll. This makes the battle at the Miners’ Hall even more problematic.
Calm returned to Butte after the destruction of the Miners’ Hall. Stewart reiterated his request for federal troops, and this time he had the active support of Montana senator Henry Myers. Both Stewart and Myers were Democrats, dependent on Anaconda for their election. Myers met several times with the president at the White House, stressing the volatility of the situation in Butte. On June 29, Wilson queried Secretary of War Lindley Garrison as to whether it would be possible to “place troops at Fort Missoula as a precaution?” By this point, Butte had returned to normal, and no further action was taken. Still, Garrison understood that the president was ready to send a reserve of federal units to Montana should another incident occur.56
Butte remained quiet for several weeks as the newly formed BMWU consolidated its position as the sole credible representative of the area’s miners. By August 1914, the new union claimed five thousand members and growing. Unfortunately, union leaders overestimated their position and fell into a trap that allowed Anaconda to wreck the union.
On August 26, the BMWU sent its Jurisdictions Committee to an Anaconda mine to make sure that every miner working the shift was a union member. When thirty-four miners failed to produce paid-up cards, those in default were brought before an impromptu court. Thirty-one agreed to join, but three miners refused on principle. All three were suspected of being company agents. The union then held an impromptu kangaroo court, attended by thousands of miners, with Muckie McDonald playing a leading role. A delegation then accompanied the three to the train station and deported them. They returned to Butte the next day, escorted by Sheriff Driscoll.57
It is difficult to understand how the BMWU could have fallen into this trap. Similar instances had occurred before, but the situation had radically changed. In the past, the BMU had operated with the tacit cooperation of the mining companies. Radicals should have recognized that the mining companies would utilize every opportunity available to destroy the new union.
Anaconda almost certainly encouraged the BMWU to fall into this trap. The chair of the union’s Jurisdiction Committee, James Chapman, led the delegation to the mine and presided over the impromptu court. He would later reappear at other volatile trouble spots, including Bisbee, Arizona, during the IWW led strike in the summer of 1917. He was widely considered to be working as a spy for the mining companies.58
Sheriff Driscoll notified the governor of the episode, again urging the deployment of the state militia to Butte. Stewart decided to mobilize the militia in preparation for deployment to Butte. He again requested federal aid, and this time Garrison agreed “to send machine guns as requested.” The War Department then authorized the Rock Island Arsenal to lend the Montana militia two Gatling guns, capable of firing multiple rounds without reloading. These Gatlings were supplied with dum-dum bullets, which splintered on contact, causing severe wounds or death. Dum-dum bullets were banned under the Hague convention of 1899. Although the United States was not a signatory to this treaty, it had agreed to abide by it.59
Nevertheless, it took one more incident to finally bring about the military occupation the mining companies so eagerly awaited. At 1:30 a.m. on the morning of August 30, a dynamite explosion at Anaconda’s central employment office blew a hole in the roof and toppled a wall. The office held personnel records used to enforce the despised rustling card system. Union activists were convinced that the company had blown up its own office as a provocation.60
Stewart responded to the bombing by immediately dispatching the state militia to Butte. The day after the explosion he cabled the president that he expected an “armed resistance at from one to five thousand.” He therefore requested federal troops, advising Wilson that the “presence of federal troops” would “doubtless prevent armed resistance.” As a fallback position, Stewart urged the president to send troops to nearby forts as a reserve force.61
Wilson responded to Stewart’s cable by delegating the final decision to Garrison. He would “act in the Montana matter as the Secretary of War” desired. Garrison was not eager to send troops, but he had also received the earlier message from the president indicating that soldiers should be dispatched as a reserve force in the case of further incidents. Garrison therefore cabled Stewart again refusing to authorize the use of army units as part of the force being sent to Butte, but also informing the governor that he was “ordering a battalion of federal troops to Helena.”62
On September 1, 1914, the Montana militia occupied Butte. Six hundred soldiers slept in the Court House, with the two Gatling guns placed outside. Although the militia had been warned that the IWW might dynamite railroad trestles on their way to Butte, the city remained quiet. During the two months the militia remained in Butte, there were no clashes between angry miners and soldiers.63
Soldiers moved immediately to detain strike leaders on charges of kidnapping. James Chapman was jailed and then released with no charges outstanding. Three other union leaders were jailed and faced felony charges. In a trial held in November 1914 in a nearby county, Joe Shannon was acquitted of all charges. A prominent Wobbly, Shannon had not been directly involved in forcing the three miners who had refused to pay dues to leave town. Joe Bradley, a member of the BMWU executive committee and a Wobbly, was convicted and given a five-year sentence. He died while incarcerated in the state penitentiary. Muckie McDonald had been directly involved in the deportation, was convicted, and sentenced to a three-year term. He left Montana after serving his sentence.64
A week after the militia occupied Butte, with the city under martial law, Anaconda terminated the three-year contract it had signed with the BMU in 1912. The company announced that its mines would operate on an open-shop basis and that it would refuse to recognize any union. Although the state militia withdrew from Butte in November 1914, the damage had been done.65 Butte’s radical miners realized that the next time they acted they would have to present a more disciplined response to corporate power. The company would make use of any incident as a rationale to justify the use of troops to crush the union.
For nearly three years, while war raged throughout Europe and the Middle East, Butte’s radicals organized in secret. During that time, wages stagnated and consumer prices increased, as Anaconda’s war profits soared in response to the vastly increased demand for copper. The company used its enormous power to squelch every effort to revive a militant union of miners. Yet once again, Butte would experience an explosion of popular resistance, but this time the network of radicals succeeded in creating an organization that could effectively challenge Anaconda.
The first sign of a revival in activity came on registration day, June 5, 1917. Every mine in the district was closed to enable miners to register for the draft.66 A loose coalition of the IWW, radical Finns, and the Pearse-Connolly club, organized by Irish militant nationalists after the Easter Uprising of 1916, came together to organize a march to protest conscription. A leaflet distributed on the day prior to the march urged Butte’s workers to refuse to “become cannon fodder.” The war was being fought for capitalist profits, and while the sons of the wealthy avoided the draft, working-class youth were being “sent to war to pillage, destroy, murder and burn.” Furthermore, President Wilson had made the decision to bring the United States into the war even though “ninety percent of the American nation” was “against the war.” The leaflet concluded, “Don’t register.” Two Irish radicals, one of them a Wobbly, were arrested for distributing the leaflets.67
On the evening of June 5, a rally of 450 men and women was convened at the Finlander Hall, where IWW meetings were held as well. Several speakers addressed the meeting, including John Korpi, a radical Finn and a Wobbly, who had been categorized by the Bureau of Intelligence as “most radical and dangerous.” Korpi told the crowd that he would refuse to register and urged others to do the same. He then led the crowd from the hall and into the street.68
With Korpi at its head, carrying a large red banner that read “Down With War,” the marchers proceeded to the federal building in the center of the city. The march, although totally peaceful, was quickly dispersed by Butte police with the aid of a small unit of the federalized National Guard, which had been stationed near Butte at the behest of U.S. Attorney Burton Wheeler specifically to suppress those protesting conscription. Several of those on the march were arrested and detained. While most were soon released, some were held in jail awaiting trial for obstructing the draft.69
Although most of the group of radical miners who had created the BMWU did not participate in actions to protest the war or the draft, this in no way implies that they supported the war. Instead, their energies were focused on organizing the networks needed to sustain a new miners’ union, one that could provide the organizational base for antiwar activity.
With Butte on edge after the June 5 march, the entire situation was transformed by one of the most grisly accidents in U.S. mining history. On the evening of June 8, the effort to lower a twelve-hundred-foot-long insulated electrical cable down the main shaft of North Butte’s Granite Mountain Mine triggered a tragic disaster. Engineers had decided to move a transformer at the twenty-six-hundred-foot level to a location farther from the main shaft, thus requiring a longer cable. A crew of ten skilled workers was assigned the difficult task of moving the cable, which weighed three tons. The crew began work at 4 a.m., slowly lowering the cable down a shaft. At 8 p.m., after sixteen hours of intense and arduous work, the crew untied the last two hundred feet of the cable from the hoisting rope, when, all of a sudden, the entire cable began slipping. Crew members working in the shaft barely escaped with their lives by jumping onto the platform at the twenty-six-hundred-foot level. The cable then fell two hundred feet, with 50 percent of the lead outer protective casing shredded, exposing the oil-impregnated jute insulation wrapped around the copper electrical wire.70
For two hours, the electricians on the crew probed the battered cable that had twisted and coiled itself around the hoisting rope between the twenty-four-hundred- and twenty-eight-hundred-foot levels. The electricians finally determined that the cable had been rendered useless and that the crew could not resolve the problem. Oddly, no one would point to the fact that the crew had been working steadily for upwards of sixteen hours as a major factor contributing to the disaster.71
By 11 p.m., the crew of ten had been lifted to the surface and reported the situation to Ernst Sullau, the shift boss. He and two workers from the night shift then descended to the twenty-four-hundred-foot level and began examining the hopelessly coiled cable, looking for one of its ends so it could be hauled up to the surface. At 11:45 p.m., while standing on one of the timbers buttressing the shaft, Sullau brought his hand-held open-flame carbide lamp into contact with the highly flammable, oil-impregnated, cable insulation, sparking an intense fire. With the ventilating fans blowing fresh air into the deeper shafts, thus fueling and spreading the fire, the entire mine was rapidly enveloped in flames, smoke, and toxic gases. The Granite Mountain mine was only eight hundred feet from the Speculator, and North Butte Mining operated the two mines in tandem. With six crosscut tunnels linking the two mines, the fire in the Granite Mountain quickly spread to the Speculator. By midnight, smoke came pouring out of the Granite Mountain mineshaft, and ten minutes later smoke could be seen at the opening of the Speculator mine shaft. The 415 miners working the night shift at the two mines were left to desperately search for an escape route. Although an 1897 state law required exits to be clearly posted, most of the intricate maze of connecting tunnels had no signs directing miners to a safe exit to an adjoining mine.72
As the fire spread through the interlinking system of tunnels within the Granite Mountain/Speculator network, miners sought to escape into adjacent mines, most of which were owned by Anaconda, hoping to find a clear mine shaft leading to the surface. Tragically, these escape paths were blocked by concrete bulkheads several inches thick. State law required that bulkheads had to be constructed to allow for passage from one mine to another in case of an emergency. Since Montana’s mine inspectors lacked enforcement powers, most of Butte’s mines, including the Speculator and Granite Mountain, ignored the law. Two hundred miners trapped at the eighteen-hundred-foot level were able to smash their way through a bulkhead using sledgehammers and escape into the adjacent Badger State mine. Unfortunately, many others failed and died trying to tear their way through a concrete block with their hands. At the Chicago IWW trial, John Musevich, a member of one of the crews sent to rescue the trapped miners, testified that he saw nineteen bodies at the bulkhead separating the Speculator from the High Ore, one of several Anaconda mines adjoining the North Butte holdings.73
Miners had only a few minutes to escape before being asphyxiated by the rapidly spreading toxic fumes. The wartime boom had led to the hiring of many additional miners, many of them new to Butte’s mines. New hires were neither informed of the location of the exits at each level nor told that most exits were blocked by concrete bulkheads. Miners were used to finding a way through obstructions, so it is very possible that many of those who died at the bulkheads could have escaped to safety had they brought with them dynamite or sledgehammers.
As the fire spread through the Granite Mountain and Speculator mines, some of those unable to reach an exit before the toxic fumes reached their section sought to create safety zones by retreating to cul-de-sacs and then building improvised bulkheads made of timber pieces and clothing. Manus Duggan led a group of twenty-eight miners who survived thirty-six hours in a pocket of clear air created by such an improvised bulkhead. Twenty-five of the twenty-eight made it to the surface, but Duggan died after wandering off into the mine after leading most of his group to safety.74
In the days following the disaster, Duggan became a celebrated hero. Yet the local press, owned and controlled by the mining companies, neglected to mention that Duggan had been an active socialist. Refused a rustling card in the aftermath of the 1914 protests, he had been barred from employment in Butte’s mines for nearly three years. Shortly before the fire, North Butte, nominally independent of Anaconda, had hired Duggan as a nipper, not as a miner. Nippers traveled around the mine picking up worn tools, bringing them to the surface for sharpening, and then returning the tools to those blasting for ore. This was an entry-level job and was paid accordingly. Fortunately for those in his group, Duggan’s job as a nipper had provided him with an intimate knowledge of the Speculator mine’s passageways so that he could quickly lead them to a long dead-end tunnel near where they were stranded.75
A total of 167 miners died in the Speculator and Granite Mountain mines, most of them from asphyxiation due to carbon monoxide poisoning.76 It remains the worst disaster in the squalid history of hardrock mining in the United States. Butte was stunned by the horrifying events at the Speculator and Granite Mountain mines. The many years of callous disregard by the companies for the health and safety of the miners had finally resulted in an unnecessary firestorm. The IWW branch insisted that the Speculator disaster had been “preventable,” an assessment shared by all of Butte’s miners.77 Indeed, the arrogant indifference to safety demonstrated by both North Butte and Anaconda had significantly contributed to the disaster.
Infuriated by the needless carnage at the Speculator, miners began to shut down the mines in a spontaneous protest of unsafe working conditions. Butte’s radicals had been developing plans for a new, independent union well before the registration day protest and the Speculator fire. Since they were prepared to act, they were able to forge a solid organization that could channel the bitterness and anger of rank-and-file miners into a total shutdown of the mines. On the evening of June 11, the Elm-Orlu mine went on strike. Its owner, William A. Clark, insisted that before he would “recognize the anarchist leaders of the union” he would cease operating his mines, “close them down, flood them.” This attitude of belligerent hostility was also held by the owners and management of Anaconda.78
By the next day, the strike had spread throughout Butte Hill as mine after mine closed. Virtually all of Butte’s twelve thousand miners heeded the strike call. A week into the strike, Anaconda reported that its production had plummeted from seventeen thousands tons of copper in a day to sixteen hundred tons, a cut of 90 percent.79
A leaflet circulated at the start of the strike urged all miners to join the walkout to demand an end to the rustling card system and the “unqualified observance of the state mining laws.” In order to change the “intolerable” conditions in Butte’s mines, it was essential to form a broadly based industrial union. The leaflet concluded with a slogan coined by Karl Marx, “We have nothing to lose but our chains.” The leaflet was the work of the coalition of radicalized miners, both IWW members and left-wing socialists, who had been organizing protests in Butte for the previous fifteen years.80
On June 13, 1917, thirty-nine years to the day after the formation of the BMU, a mass meeting launched a new union, the Butte Metal Mine Workers’ Union (BMMWU). Tom Campbell was elected president, and he would act as its chief spokesperson during the next critical months. A veteran miner and a radical, Campbell had contested the election for president of the WFM in 1912 as the left-wing alternative to Charles Moyer. Although Moyer had then moved to have him expelled from the WFM as a Wobbly agent, Campbell was not a member of the IWW. He proved to be an effective speaker and organizer, leading the Military Intelligence Division to categorize him as “a disturber of the worst kind.”81
Most of the leaders of the new union had been active during the confrontations of 1914, and, indeed, many of them had worked with the radical opposition within the BMU during the period from 1902 to 1912. Although the IWW did not control the BMMWU, it did exert a considerable influence. Joe Shannon, the new union’s secretary, was the most prominent IWW member in Butte and had worked in Butte’s mines since 1900. In addition to Shannon, several other Wobblies, including John Korpi, served on the independent union’s executive committee or were influential members.
From the start, the IWW understood that the events in Butte were critical to the fortunes of the entire union. Haywood and Perry were eager to merge the new union into the IWW, while many of the leaders of the BMMWU, including Campbell, were sensitive to any interference by Wobbly organizers sent from headquarters. IWW members in Butte were caught between these two polar positions. In spite of these tensions, both sides were able to overcome their differences and work together to forge a militant, unified leadership during the strike.
Shortly after the strike was called following the Speculator fire, Perry sent Charles MacKinnon, a veteran miner who had spent years in the WFM acting as a left-wing dissident before becoming an organizer for the Metal Mine Workers’ Union (MMWU) #800. MacKinnon was also Bill Haywood’s brother-in-law. In his report to Perry, he reported that Butte was quiet and, unlike 1914, the miners remained “orderly.” Indeed, the strike was the “best” organized he had “ever seen.”82
Perry had dispatched MacKinnon to Butte to see if the BMMWU was prepared to affiliate with the IWW and its metal mine workers’ affiliate. Instead, MacKinnon found a majority of the new union’s leadership insistent on continued independence. In a personal conversation, Campbell confided to MacKinnon that he was “of the opinion that no outside party’s” intervention was “needed” or wanted. The Butte miners were confident, experienced activists, so tactical advice from IWW national organizers was not welcomed.83
MacKinnon’s trip to Butte was only the first of several undertaken by IWW organizers. Richard Brazier, a member of the General Executive Board, arrived in Butte soon after MacKinnon’s stay. Brazier found that the IWW was influential, and, indeed, there were eight hundred card-carrying members in the district. Nevertheless, he too was informed that the BMMWU intended to remain an independent union.84
Continuing pressure coming from the IWW’s leadership left Butte’s IWW members and sympathizers in an awkward position. Ed Bassett, chair of the BMMWU’s executive committee, was a former Wobbly who remained sympathetic to the union. He wrote Perry that although he endorsed affiliation in principle, divisions within the core group of activists meant that the union could “not affiliate at present.” The issue would have to be kept in limbo until the strike came to an end. Bassett urged Perry to “instruct” Butte’s IWW members to “harmonize” with the great majority of miner militants who had agreed to abide by this procedure.85
The BMMWU acted quickly to organize the spontaneous strikes that had closed most of Butte’s mines after the Speculator disaster. Anaconda was presented with a list of demands that included an increase in wages to six dollars a shift, with the rate fixed instead of being linked to the price of copper. Mine safety was established as a priority, with the list of safety demands including the installation of concrete blockheads with manholes that would permit miners to move quickly to an adjacent mine in the case of an emergency. The union also insisted that exits be clearly marked and that newly hired miners be informed of the specific locations of exits at each level. Finally, the new union also demanded that each mine establish a safety committee that would conduct a monthly review to ensure that standards were met.86
The most important point on the list of demands was an immediate end to the rustling card system. This was the issue that energized the strike. Every miner, from the transient and radicalized newcomers to the veteran Irish miner who owned a house and felt part of the community, detested Anaconda and despised the rustling card system. Strike leaders informed Burton Wheeler, the U.S. attorney for Montana, that they would rather work for the same pay rate than return to work and “still have the card system in force.”87
Anaconda adamantly refused to compromise on this crucial issue. According to Wheeler, “The Company contends that they will not work the mines unless they can have the past record of every man that they employ so that they can weed out the undesirables, and by undesirables they claim they mean agitators and incompetents.”88 Since Anaconda would not budge on this issue, serious negotiations were never initiated during a six-month strike that disrupted production in the largest copper-producing district in the United States, at a time when copper was scarce and urgently needed for the war effort.
Unlike 1914, there were no riots and no deportations of the few strikebreakers. On the contrary, union leaders were so intent on avoiding violent confrontations that they kept pickets away from the mineshaft entrances up on the top of Butte Hill. In the first issue of the new union’s strike bulletin, distributed shortly after its first mass meeting on June 13, the union’s leadership urged miners to remain united and to avoid any action that could lead to bloodshed. The mining companies were “trying desperately to start trouble,” and undercover detectives were deliberately inciting violence. Union activists had learned the lesson of 1914. The strike bulletin warned miners that mining company executives were hoping for an incident such as “the one when gunmen blew up the ‘Rustling Card office.’ ” One militant miner observed that the union had not “even put out a picket line” because violence was “what would most please the mining companies.”89
In addition to avoiding confrontations, the union sought to bypass Anaconda by appealing directly to popular opinion. A mass meeting held on July 3, 1917, approved a resolution denouncing reports in the local press claiming that the strike was funded by German gold. The miners insisted they were prepared to return to work if the federal government would “assume the control and management of every mine in the district.” Jeannette Rankin, Montana’s sole member of the U.S. House of Representatives and the sole woman in Congress, submitted legislation that would have authorized the president to assume control of Butte’s copper mines during wartime. Her intent was to present Anaconda with the alternative of abandoning the rustling card system or accepting government control. The proposed legislation was buried in committee and thus never brought to the House floor for a vote.90
Butte’s radical miners understood the need to link the local strike with a wider movement. At the same time, the issue of affiliation was a delicate one with the potential for disrupting the unity of the strikers. Even before the Speculator fire, radical dissidents had discussed the question and decided to press for the formation of a new independent union of hardrock miners that would bring IWW members and left-wing socialists into a single nationwide organization. Nevertheless, the activist core was reluctant to press the issue when a strike began shutting down Butte following the Speculator fire. On June 20, the press committee of the BMMWU released a statement insisting that the new union was “not dominated by the IWW.” Furthermore, the fledgling union would “not consider any affiliation with any organization until we have the mines thoroughly organized.”91
Events would compel Butte’s radicals to bring forward their plan for a new, nationwide union. In early July, Charles Moyer sent William Davidson, a member of the executive board of the WFM, renamed the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) in July 1916, to Butte to see if the local union could be absorbed into the national union. Most of Butte’s radical leaders were opposed to the idea of rejoining the IUMMSW, but one leading militant, Bill Dunne, defended the idea.
Dunne was distinct from the other strike leaders. He was not employed as a hardrock miner but as an electrician, a skilled craft. Furthermore, he had only moved to Butte a few months previously, in January 1917. He was working at the Never Sweat mine, one of the Anaconda mines, when the Speculator fire occurred. Dunne was a veteran of militant actions prior to coming to Butte, having led a strike of electricians in Vancouver, Canada, in 1913. During the 1917 strike, he acted as chair of the strike committee of the Butte local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor. Under his leadership, electricians at the Montana Power Company conducted a ten-week strike that further disrupted production at Butte’s mines.92
Nevertheless, Dunne did not entirely share the radical perspective held by the Butte Metal Mine Workers’ Union leadership. Unlike Dunne, all of them were experienced miners, and most of them had spent many years in a futile effort to transform the Butte Miners’ Union into a militant, democratic union. Still, a majority of those voting at a general meeting of the new union convened on July 7 sided with Dunne and agreed to explore the possibilities for a merger, with any proposal to be submitted to a membership referendum.93
At a closed meeting of the BMMWU’s executive board, Dunne continued to press for the proposed merger, arguing that once inside of the IUMMSW the Butte local would constitute a majority of the union and would thus be able to oust Moyer and his supporters from their positions of power. By the middle of 1917, the IUMMSW had dwindled to twelve thousand members, comparable to the number of miners out on strike in Butte, most of them loyal to the radical leaders of the newly formed union.94
In spite of the opposition of the great majority of Butte’s radicals, it appeared that the merger would be approved by membership referendum. Then, on July 10, the eve of the vote, Davidson publicly announced that the IUMMSW executive board had just met and that it had decided to refuse to recognize the strike already in place. Furthermore, the IUMMSW would not accept a renewed affiliation of Butte as a local, but rather it would insist that each miner join as an individual. As new members, the Butte miners would have to pay the usual initiation fee of one dollar, in addition to regular dues. Once the Butte local of the IUMMSW was again chartered and functioning, it could submit a list of demands to Anaconda. If the company refused to negotiate, and if two-thirds of the Butte local approved, a strike call could be submitted to the IUMMSW’s executive board, which would make the final decision on a walkout.95 These terms for a merger represented a calculated insult to every miner in Butte. The next day, July 11, the overwhelming majority, 4,377 to 438, rejected the proposal to affiliate with the IUMMSW and the AFL.96
With this proposal overwhelmingly defeated, Butte’s radical leaders came forward with their own plan. The experience of IWW members working in coalition with radical socialists in Butte suggested the potential for a similar unified, nationwide independent union of hardrock miners. By the first week of July, the IWW, through its MMWU #800, was conducting strikes in copper mines throughout Arizona on the basis of a set of demands similar to those in Butte. IWW leaders in Arizona made it clear that they would remain on strike until everyone, from Bisbee to Butte, had won their demands.
With the success of the IWW organizing drive in Arizona, and the militant response to the Speculator fire in Butte, the potential for a new union became an immediate possibility. On July 12, the day after the proposed merger with the IUMMSW had been resoundingly defeated, the leadership of the BMMWU put forward a plan for a new nationwide union, one designed to supplant the IUMMSW. The proposal ended with a call for a founding convention to be convened on August 1, 1917, in Denver, with each local sending one delegate for every five hundred miners. The purpose of the convention was to “form one clear and definite union of the metal mine workers of this country.” Although the call did not specifically mention the IWW or its affiliate the MMWU #800, it was clear to everyone that Wobbly delegates from Arizona’s copper camps would be welcome. The proposal was enthusiastically approved by unanimous vote.97
This move represented a direct threat to the IUMMSW and to mining companies throughout the West. Anaconda was kept informed of these developments. H. R. Shirley, one of the more prominent Wobbly leaders in Butte, was also a paid agent of the Thiel Detective Agency. In a report on the July 12 meeting of the BMMWU, Shirley concluded that there could “be no doubt as to the launching of a new and radical union in the metal mining field to replace the reactionary Western Federation.”98
The organizational implications of a new union of hardrock miners would have been complex. There is no surviving record of detailed proposals along these lines, but presumably IWW branches in Arizona and in the Mesabi Range in Minnesota and Michigan would have affiliated with the new union, while still paying dues to the IWW’s general headquarters.
Perry was informed immediately of Butte’s call to a Denver convention. He quickly wired Haywood that he would “try to be there,” and he urged Haywood to “make it” to Denver as well. Haywood responded that the IWW would “cooperate,” and that the union’s branches in the metal mining industry would be urged to send delegates to Denver. On the other hand, the only “practical way” forward would require the BMMWU to join the IWW.99 In spite of their reservations, Perry and Haywood were prepared to have IWW branches participate in the founding of a new, nationwide union of hardrock miners, in the hope that this formation would soon be convinced to affiliate with the IWW.
A united, militant national union of hardrock miners would have posed a significant threat to the federal government and to the war effort. The same meeting of the BMMWU that approved the call for the Denver convention heard the first reports of the Bisbee deportation, which had occurred that morning. Intense repression would derail the formation of a unified union of copper miners and would eventually destroy the Butte union as well.
Nevertheless, even after the Bisbee deportation, the creation of a new union of hardrock miners still appeared to be a credible option. The IWW still retained a base of support in Arizona, and it comprised a significant factor within the Butte leadership. Furthermore, much of the funding of the Butte strike came from Wobbly sources. Although AFL locals contributed to the strikers’ relief fund, the IWW donated $15,000 of the $50,000 raised from 1917.100 Although many of the Butte radical activists were opposed to a direct affiliation with the IWW, the formation of a new, radical union would establish a framework that would allow for cooperation and solidarity, while leaving the Butte local organizationally independent.
It was at this point that Frank Little was dispatched to Butte. He arrived still walking on crutches, with his right leg in a cast, injuries suffered during a car accident that had occurred while organizing copper miners in Arizona.101 In addition, Little was still experiencing intense pain caused by a ruptured hernia incurred when he had been beaten by police in El Paso, Texas.
Little had left Arizona to attend a meeting of the IWW’s General Executive Board, where the issue of the union’s attitude to the war had been debated without resolution. He had then taken a train on July 11 from Chicago to Salt Lake City. Once there, he met with Grover Perry, the general secretary of the MMWU #800. There is no surviving record of these discussions, but certainly the two Wobbly leaders would have discussed their response to Butte’s call for a convention in Denver. Perry was hopeful that Little would “help in lining up the men” in Butte “for the swing to the IWW.”102 This was bound to be a futile effort, as MacKinnon and Brazier had already discovered.
Little left Salt Lake City on July 17, apparently arriving in Butte on the following day. A veteran of the bitter disputes within the WFM, Little knew many of the Butte union leaders, who respected him for his courage and his organizing skills.
Little came to Butte just as Anaconda began escalating the pressure on striking miners to return to work. On July 22, Cornelius Kelley, Anaconda’s vice president, issued a statement that the company had agreed to modify the rustling card system so that a job applicant would be permitted to work during the weeks required to check his background references, unless the company was already certain that the applicant was unsatisfactory. Although the AFL unions representing skilled workers employed in the mines viewed this as a significant concession, the miners’ union scoffed at the proposal and remained determined to push for a total repeal of the rustling card.103
Anaconda also placed full-page advertisements in the local press announcing a new wage scale for miners. Under the new scale, miners would receive a $1.00 increase, as the rate for an eight-hour shift increased from $4.50 to $5.50. At the same time, Anaconda warned the strikers that any employee who did not return to work by July 30 would have to apply for a new rustling card before being allowed to return to work.104
This combination of concessions and threats had a significant impact on the strike. Miners began drifting back to work over the next few weeks. Although the mining companies claimed that many miners were beginning to return to work, the union insisted that by July 30 less than twenty-five hundred miners were crossing the picket line.105 In any case, the production of copper was still severely curtailed, with a substantial majority of Butte’s twelve thousand miners in Butte still out on strike.
By the last week of July, the strike had lasted for six weeks, with no signs of a negotiated resolution in sight. Furthermore, the hopes of widening the scope of the strike had collapsed with the deportation of twelve hundred miners from Bisbee, Arizona, and the military occupation of Globe, Arizona. It might well have made sense to consider a judicious end to the conflict, but union activists remained solidly committed to maintaining the walkout.
In this context, the unity of radicals that had characterized the first weeks of the strike began to fracture. On July 25, the BMMWU held a closed meeting at the Finlander Hall. Frank Little spoke, calling for a nationwide strike to insist that the president return the Bisbee deportees.106
That evening, the IWW held a closed meeting for members only. After the meeting, Warren Bennett, an Anaconda informant posing as a Wobbly, approached John Williams, an IWW organizer sent to Butte to help with the strike, and asked if he expected the BMMWU to affiliate with the IWW. William answered, “No, never.” Instead, he pointed out that the IWW had enrolled nine hundred miners in Butte and that, with this as its base of support, the IWW could exert a considerable influence on the direction taken by the Butte independent union.107
Until this point, Little and the IWW had been careful to avoid splintering the coalition of leftists that led the BMMWU, while also presenting a perspective that sought to push the union to take more explicitly radical positions. On July 26, the BMMWU held another closed membership meeting, and tensions began to rise. Little followed up his speech from the previous day by calling for a massive march on Washington to demand the return of the Bisbee deportees.108
The most important issue confronting this meeting was the formulation of a strike strategy that could effectively respond to Anaconda’s ads on the previous day announcing a one dollar a shift pay increase and the resulting decision by a significant minority of miners to return to work. An unnamed miner, almost certainly an IWW member, suggested that the union organize a picket line of women and children along the Anaconda Road on top of Butte Hill, across from the entrance to a cluster of mine shafts. He proposed that the women at the protest would point at their children as the strikebreakers reported to work. Little spoke in support of this proposal, reporting that he had recently met with a group of women who had indicated their willingness to participate in such a militant action. The leadership of the BMMWU opposed this plan, and it was tabled to a future meeting.109
Little was placing the IWW behind a proposal that clearly broke with previous policy guidelines that had been agreed to by both Butte’s Wobblies and radical socialists. This was a serious strategic miscalculation. The only hope for victory against Anaconda was the continuation of the left-wing coalition. Furthermore, the IWW and Butte’s independent union were in the midst of an effort to launch a new, united nationwide union of hardrock miners.
Obviously, Little and the IWW were afraid that the strike could be on the brink of collapse and were desperately seeking a new tactic that might revive it. Still, the argument advanced by union leaders opposed to Little’s proposal was correct. Situating a picket line at the mine shafts in an isolated and desolate area swarming with Anaconda gunmen was bound to lead to a violent confrontation. Furthermore, the company was eager to provoke such a clash as a pretext for military intervention. There can be little doubt that even a picket line of women and children would have been forcibly dispersed by Anaconda’s private army of gunmen.
Local newspapers were eager to portray Frank Little as a proponent of violence, and yet there is every indication that Little, as well as the Butte IWW members who spoke along similar lines, understood the necessity of a disciplined nonviolent approach to Butte’s strike. Nevertheless, the decision to propose the use of more militant nonviolent tactics represented a tactical and strategic error.
On July 27, the issue was raised again at a closed meeting of the BMMWU. Little urged the miners to resist the nationalist hysteria being directed at Germany, insisting that the capitalists were “our worse enemies.” He also repeated his call for a picket line at the top of Butte Hill at the entrance to the mine shafts. Although Little conceded that this demonstration would be met with mass arrests that would “fill the jails,” he defiantly insisted that the local officials who banned mass pickets could “go to hell.”110
Dan Shovlin, speaking for the leadership of the BMMWU, argued against the idea of mass pickets at the mine shaft entrances, once again stressing the need to avoid unnecessary confrontations. A majority of the miners backed Shovlin, and the proposal was defeated. When an IWW member attempted to raise the issue on the following day, Tom Campbell, as chair of the meeting, ruled that the question had already been determined.111
Clearly, Little’s tactical intervention had frayed the left-wing coalition that had dominated Butte’s radical Left for a decade and more. In spite of this, the coalition held firm, and plans for a unified, militant nationwide union of hardrock miners proceeded during Little’s stay in Butte. On July 20, while Little was in Butte, Haywood sent a formal letter giving the Wobblies’ response to the call for a founding convention. His letter, which was read to a closed meeting of the Butte union’s executive committee, confirmed that the IWW “approved of the Convention to be held in Denver.” Furthermore, Haywood informed the Butte leaders “he was communicating with all IWW locals, and would ask them to send delegates to Denver.” This message strongly implied that the IWW was prepared to scuttle its own affiliate, the MMWU #800, in order to build a more broadly based industrial union.112
This same meeting of the executive board discussed the Bisbee, Arizona, deportation. Dan Shovlin read a cable from one of those who had recently been deported, urging Butte’s miners to remain on strike until the deportees had been returned to their homes and Arizona’s copper miners had won their demands. Shovlin noted that the miner who sent the message had been one of the union militants blacklisted after the incidents of 1914 and that the BMU had “deserted him,” so he had been forced to move to Arizona. The executive board voted to send a cable to the Bisbee deportees being detained in Columbus, New Mexico, pledging “that the miners would not return to work until the miners of Arizona were granted their demands.”113
Almost certainly, Little held informal discussions with BMMWU leaders concerning a detailed plan for the proposed nationwide union, although no record of these discussions has survived. On July 25, Little spoke to a membership meeting of the BMMWU, stressing the importance of the Denver conference as a starting point for a broadly based, militant union. The new union would provide the framework for expanding the current strike beyond Butte and throughout the West.114
Unfortunately, the proposal of Butte’s independent union for a new nationwide union of miners was soon followed by the defeat of IWW-led strikes in Bisbee and other Arizona copper camps. These losses, and the weakening of the strike in Butte, did not establish an auspicious time for the launching of a new union. At the July 27 meeting of the BMMWU, the leadership announced an indefinite delay of the Denver conference.115 The concept of a broadly based radical union would reappear two years later, but in a distinctly different form.
Reliable reports of Little’s discussions and speeches while in Butte are scarce. The one large public speech he delivered came on July 19, when he spoke to a rally of six thousand held at the local baseball park on the outskirts of town. Several mass rallies took place at the ballpark, but Little was the only speaker from another union permitted to speak.116
According to a report on the rally from Warren Bennett, one of Anaconda’s undercover operatives, Little stressed “that the Capitalist class was making money out of the war.” He also told the crowd of a discussion he had held earlier in 1917 with Governor Campbell of Arizona during a strike of copper miners at Jerome. When Campbell had threatened to ask for federal troops to break the strike, Little had responded that the IWW would call on all of its affiliated unions to join in a solidarity strike. Once shutdowns began spreading across the country, the “uniformed thugs would be so damned busy that they would not have a chance to go to France to fight.” Little ended his speech by insisting that working-class solidarity was essential and that ultimately the entire working class “must rise up as a unit and in a great rebellion throw off the yoke of the capitalists.”117
This was a rousing speech, but there was nothing remotely violent in its message. Nevertheless, Anaconda’s management demanded that Little be charged with sedition. U.S. Attorney Burton Wheeler met with Lewis Evans, general counsel to the company, but neither could discover a specific statute that had been violated. Furthermore, Judge George Bourquin, the sole federal district court judge for Montana, was committed to the defense of civil liberties and thus would be sure to construe the laws aimed at suppressing dissent as narrowly as possible. Afterward, the local newspapers would insist that the federal government’s failure to prosecute Little had left an enraged populace with little choice but to employ vigilante lynch law.118
That evening, Little spoke to a closed meeting of the IWW at the Finlander Hall. His talk drew an audience of 250 people, an indication of the extensive support for the Wobblies among Butte’s miners. Needless to say, Little was more forthright in his comments than he had been at the ballpark. He condemned conscription on principle. Although each IWW member would have to decide for himself, the union would aid any of its members who resisted the draft. Furthermore, any member who joined the U.S. Army “would not be allowed to carry a card in the IWW.”119 Little’s talk was consistent with the statement on the war and conscription that he had submitted to the meeting of the union’s General Executive Board held in Chicago three weeks previously. Since his statement had not been approved by the board, Little was advancing his own personal views and not those of the union. In fact, IWW members drafted into the U.S. Army were not expelled from the organization.
Little’s stay had a mixed impact on Butte’s miners. His effort to convince the BMMWU to join the IWW failed to sway the union’s leadership. Furthermore, his tactical proposals were rebuffed, and his efforts were only successful in reinforcing the widely held perception that the IWW was intent on sending in outside organizers to tell Butte’s militants how to run their strike when they had spent years confronting Anaconda and were well aware of the terrain and the potential pitfalls. Indeed, the future would demonstrate that Little’s proposal to hold demonstrations up on the hill directly at the mining shafts was foolhardy.
On the other hand, Little had a positive impact on Butte’s movement through his forthright and militant stance in condemning the war. Little also spoke as a committed socialist, linking the immediate demands of the strikers to a wider, deeper critique of capitalism. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Butte’s miners would openly organize as socialists.
On July 30, 1917, Little updated Perry on the strike. This letter would be one of his last messages. His letter indicates an acceptance of the existing situation in Butte and his willingness to cooperate with the leadership of the BMMWU. In his opinion, the strike looked “better this morning than any time since” his arrival. Little was hopeful that his “Double jack blows” had radicalized Butte’s militants, but he knew, of course, that the basic perspective of the strike leaders, in terms of both the independence of the union and the tactics to be followed, had remained unchanged.120
Little was preparing to travel to other towns in Montana, helping to spread the strike against Anaconda and also providing assistance to lumberjacks striking the timber companies in Idaho and eastern Montana. Still in excruciating pain, Little confided to Perry that walking around Butte was not doing his “rupture any good.” Indeed, the strain on him was “sometimes more” than he could withstand.121
In spite of his injuries, Little’s morale had significantly improved over the previous months. There was no mention of quitting the union or taking up prospecting. Instead, Little was planning his future organizing trips, digging in for an extended stay in Montana. He would be murdered on the following night.
Frank Little was a symbol of everything Anaconda hated and feared. He was the most prominent Wobbly to urge that the union resist the war and the draft. He was also an effective organizer who was working to link Butte’s miners with hardrock miners organized elsewhere by the IWW. At the same time, the company was looking for an incident that could provide a rationale for deploying troops to Butte to break a strike that had closed its mines at a time when prices and profits were skyrocketing. Finally, Anaconda was seeking to disrupt the unity of radicals that had been forged in Butte.
On Tuesday, July 31, Frank Little spent the evening at a bar near where he was staying at a boardinghouse adjacent to the Finlander Hall. He met informally with several local union leaders. Bill Dunne found him in good health, and good spirits, although still on crutches. Little was warned by leaders of the Butte union that a death squad had been organized and that he headed the list of victims. They urged him to go into hiding, but he refused, since “he had to die sometime, and [he] might as well go now as any other time.”122
The warning given to Little on July 31 was not the first. Even before Little’s appearance in Butte, union leaders had been aware of plans to use gunmen to attack union activists. On July 14, Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, received a telegram from three leaders of the BMMWU warning that “deportation and violence by gunmen imminent.” The union leaders requested “federal protection,” so Rankin wrote to President Wilson asking for a meeting at the White House and enclosing the cable. The president’s secretary, Joseph Tumulty, responded that the meeting was unnecessary since the Butte situation was receiving “constant and most anxious consideration.” Rankin also contacted the Department of Labor and was told that the federal government “was doing all in its power to handle the situation” by sending a mediator, W. H. Rodgers, to the scene.123
This was not the only attempt that Butte union officials made to warn federal officials of the imminent likelihood of vigilante violence. On July 17, an official at the State Department in Washington, D.C., received a phone call from Butte warning that “deportation and violence” were “imminent” and that company security guards had been deputized. Union officials fervently requested “Federal protection in case of violence.” This urgent plea was denied after Governor Stewart advised Washington to “provide no protection beyond [local] peace officials.” Of course, both city and county governments in and around Butte were controlled by Anaconda.124 As a general rule, Woodrow Wilson would only authorize a federal presence in a locality when the governor of that state requested aid and when there were significant indications that local authorities could not handle the disturbance. With Governor Stewart opposed to providing protection to union leaders, the federal government refused to make any effort to prevent corporate-sponsored mob violence.
The next warning Rankin received from Butte was precise and urgent. At midnight on the night of Monday, July 30, Rankin received an emergency cable from Mary O’Neill, one of her closest friends and supporters. In 1914, Rankin and O’Neill had been the mainstays of a successful effort to pass a referendum granting women the right to vote in Montana. O’Neill worked in Butte as a journalist, and, as a progressive activist, she had established friendly connections with the leadership of the BMMWU.125
O’Neill reported that the situation was quiet, and there was “positively no interference with men going to work.” Nevertheless, she had “just got word operators intend to run leading miners out of town.” In addition to gunmen hired by the mining companies, soldiers were “ready for the work.” O’Neill warned that “if operators take direct action tonight, terrible conditions [were] sure to follow.” In the most compelling line in the cable, O’Neill pleaded with Rankin to “insist that Secretary [of Labor William] Wilson wire Kelley to withhold such action.”126
The cable was unambiguous in its warning of imminent violence, but it was also clear that the Anaconda Copper Mining Company would be responsible for the pending action. Cornelius Kelley, Anaconda’s vice president and chief administrative officer, was certainly in a crucial position of authority.
Rankin understood that this cable was a grim warning. She attempted to telephone the president but was shunted to the relevant government departments. She then spoke with Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson, who promised he would meet with her the next day. Rankin then spent much of Tuesday attempting to meet with Secretary Wilson, without success. As the cable had warned, Frank Little was killed in the early hours of Wednesday, August 1, 1917. The federal government had been warned and yet had done nothing to prevent Little’s murder.127
Rankin’s efforts were laudable but entirely inadequate. As a member of the U.S. Congress, she could have used it as a forum to publicly denounce the threat of violence before it happened. Anaconda commanded enormous power as a component of the Rockefeller industrial empire, so the lynching might have occurred in any case. Nevertheless, the embarrassment that would have been generated by a public denunciation by Rankin might have led Anaconda to reassess its plans.
Furthermore, although Rankin publicly denounced Little’s murder after the event, she did not hold Anaconda responsible. For instance, two weeks after the murder she spoke to several thousand miners at a mass rally in Butte. Rankin condemned the “foul and cowardly murder of Frank Little,” but she failed to criticize the authorities for their lack of interest in uncovering those responsible, and she avoided any mention of Anaconda as the guilty party.128
Unable to elicit any interest in Washington, Butte’s union leaders personally warned Little that he would be the target of mob violence. It is not certain how the leadership of the BMMWU came to be so well informed of Anaconda’s plans, but there are plausible indications. In 1920, Bureau of Intelligence agents assigned to Butte became aware that their phones were being tapped. When they complained to the local phone company, they were told that Bill Dunne “had almost complete control” of the electricians working for the company in his role as business agent of the local electricians’ union (IBEW). Thus, it was probable that every message going through the lines they serviced was being subject to surveillance. Indeed, the Butte Daily Bulletin, with Dunne as an editor, had recently published excerpts from telephone discussions between Anaconda officials and local law authorities.129
Anaconda’s management knew of this wiretapping and therefore used a private code when engaged in sensitive phone conversations. Still, some of those involved in the lynching, those carrying out orders rather than giving them, might have been less careful. This would account for the detailed warning given to Little on the night before his murder.
A few hours after Little had been warned, at 3 a.m. on Wednesday, August 1, 1917, seven men driving a black Cadillac arrived at Little’s boardinghouse at 316 North Wyoming Street. One remained outside as a sentry, while five masked men broke into Room 30 of the boardinghouse, finding it empty. (One member of the death squad stayed in the car, presumably supervising the entire operation.) Once inside the boardinghouse, the five vigilantes acted in a coordinated fashion, keeping a code of silence. Indeed, there was every indication that “the affair had been carefully planned.” Since the death squad had been provided with the wrong room number, one of them charged into Room 28, the landlady’s room, with a gun drawn and demanded to know where Little was sleeping. The gunman insisted he was a police officer, although no badge was shown, and that Little was wanted for interrogation. Although Mrs. Nora Byrne was skeptical of this story, she was frightened and thus directed the vigilantes to Room 32.130
The five gunmen then smashed their way into Room 32, where Little was sleeping in his pajamas. He was beaten, gagged, and then hauled in his underwear to the rear seat of the waiting car. At some point during the two-mile trip, he was tied by a rope to the rear of the Cadillac and dragged through the streets. (Photos of his corpse show the shins of his knees torn off by the force of the abrasion from being dragged.) Aware of his fate, Little did not go peacefully. Shreds of someone else’s skin were found underneath one of his fingernails. Outnumbered, Little was subdued by a vicious blow from a gun butt that fractured his skull.131
The Cadillac then drove to a desolate and unpopulated area of ravines on the outskirts of Butte, the same area where, in 1914, the safe from the Miners’ Hall was finally blasted open. Veering down a deserted sandy lane, the car proceeded a short distance and stopped beneath a railroad trestle. One of the members of the death squad climbed onto the trestle and tied a rope around one of the trestle railings. A noose was tightened around Little’s neck, and the rope was pulled up so that Little was left hanging. In all likelihood, Little was unconscious by the time he arrived at the trestle. A large, bloodstained placard was pinned to his underwear, displaying the numbers associated with vigilante justice and, as a warning, the initials of several of the Butte union’s leading members, including Campbell, Dunne, and Shannon.132
Butte was a thriving city of ninety thousand in 1917. Its large red-light district, a few blocks from where Little had been staying, was open around the clock. The city’s police force was on high alert during a bitterly contested strike. In addition, the police had been notified of the incident since Mrs. Byrne had telephoned the police a half hour after the kidnapping, and police officers had searched Little’s room at 3:45 a.m. Nevertheless, the police made no effort to stop the lynching. A local resident walking to work saw the body at 6 a.m. and officially notified the police.133
A police car was quickly dispatched to the trestle. Shortly afterward, Police Chief Jere Murphy arrived, but he decided to leave the body hanging until the coroner arrived. By the time Little’s body was finally cut down, at about 7 a.m., several union officials, including Dunne, had appeared on the scene. Little’s body was taken for an autopsy and then turned over to the union for burial.134
The coroner reported that Little died of asphyxiation following his hanging, but that he had also suffered a fracture in his skull when clubbed by the butt of a gun. In addition, the coroner found a small hole in the back of his head. Union leaders who had seen the body insisted that this hole had been “inflicted by the steel hook used by Oates on the stub of his amputated right arm.” Billy Oates was a notorious gunman employed by Anaconda.135
The official version of Little’s murder held that it was merely an unfortunate expression of overly zealous popular patriotism. In a report to his superiors, Edward Byrn, the Bureau of Intelligence agent stationed in Butte, claimed that the “lynching of Little was brought about primarily by an incensed populace.” This was a convenient cover story. Lewis Evans, chief counsel for Anaconda, was more candid. He boasted that Little had been killed for “his seditious and treasonable speeches.”136
In fact, everyone in Butte understood that the lynching of Frank Little had not been a spontaneous act of wartime hysteria, but rather that it was a premeditated murder conceived and implemented through a conspiracy involving some of the most powerful figures in the state. Furthermore, those directing the plot were the responsible representatives of the Rockefeller interests in Montana. It was thus hardly surprising that no effort was made to prosecute anyone involved in the lynching.
The Butte Strike Bulletin, issued by the BMMWU as an antidote to the distorted falsehoods disseminated by the corporate-funded mainstream press, rushed out an extra edition the day after the killing. Its editors had no doubt that the murder was “designed to strike terror to the hearts,” not only to those alluded to in the placard, “but to that of every independent man in the community.” Indeed, Shannon, Campbell, and Dunne hid at night for several days following the lynching, each of them sleeping in different houses each night.137
The Bulletin went on to declare that there was no doubt “that Company agents perpetuated this foulest of all crimes.” An investigation had already been launched and had already located several residents who had seen “the automobile loaded with men, recognized some of them, and are able to identify the others.” The newspaper claimed it had credible evidence concerning the identities of the five men who had killed Frank Little and that one of these five was a police officer.
This was to be only the beginning of an extended investigation. At its “finish, some very prominent murderers” would be “headed for the gallows.” Indeed, despite death threats, the Bulletin pledged that it would not be deterred and that the killers would be brought to justice.
Unfortunately, the reality was very different. No one was ever prosecuted for the lynching of Frank Little. William Sullivan, an attorney working with the BMMWU, had written part of the special issue of the Strike Bulletin. When he was brought in for questioning by county prosecutors shortly after the murder, he was unable, or unwilling, to provide the names of witnesses or suspects.138 Although local newspapers had initially denounced the killing, they soon reported that the investigation had reached an impasse, and mention of it faded quickly from coverage.
Anaconda exercised total control over Butte, its newspapers, its politicians, and its law enforcement agencies. The company’s power even extended to the federal government. Burton Wheeler, the U.S. attorney who had previously been known for his critical views of Anaconda, made no effort to prosecute those responsible for the lynching. It would have been easy to identify those in the death car, and with this in hand, go after those who had ordered the killing. The conspiracy almost certainly crossed state boundaries, giving the federal government jurisdiction. Neither Wheeler nor the Department of Justice did anything.
Indeed, the Justice Department was eager to disseminate misinformation to divert attention from the harsh reality of Anaconda’s overwhelming power. A few weeks after the lynching, Wheeler traveled to Washington and met with William Fitts, the assistant attorney general who directly supervised the prosecution of IWW cases. Fitts informed Wheeler that Bill Haywood had ordered the execution of Little because Little had become too popular within the IWW and thus represented a threat to Haywood. Wheeler knew this was a malevolent fantasy, and he told Fitts the truth, that Little had been “hung by agents of some of the companies.” Nevertheless, Wheeler, as U.S. attorney for Montana, did nothing to bring the murderers to justice beyond issuing a public statement that the lynching was a “damnable outrage.”139
The defense presented by the IWW during the 1918 trial in Chicago sought to highlight the events in Butte, specifically Little’s lynching. In addition to testimony linking Oates to the murder, a policeman called as a prosecution witness was also queried if he knew that Ed Morrissey, Butte’s chief of detectives, had taken a twenty-day leave of absence beginning the day after the killing “because he had scratches on his face.” In 1926, Dunne identified another one of those on the death squad. Peter Prlja was employed as a motorcycle officer by the Butte police department, but he had previously been employed by Anaconda as a security guard.140
All three of the gunmen linked to Frank Little’s murder had close ties to the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Oates and Prlja were employed by Anaconda as security guards during the 1917 strike, while Morrissey had worked as a private bodyguard to Cornelius Kelley before joining the Butte police force.141 Indeed, Anaconda had created its own private army, with enforcers and undercover intelligence agents. The killing of Little would have required a decision by those at the top of the company’s hierarchy.
Anaconda had its own Security Department to supervise and coordinate its efforts to suppress radicals and ensure that its mines remained an open-shop operation. D. Gay Stivers, a company attorney, directed the Security Department. His office was located on the sixth floor of the Hennessey Building, adjoining the offices of the other executive officers of Anaconda’s operations in Butte. Stivers was not a native of Butte and had never worked in a copper mine.142
Stivers reported to Roy Alley, another company attorney. Alley directed Anaconda’s operations in Butte on a day-to-day basis. When Edward Byrn, the Bureau of Intelligence agent in charge of the Butte office, needed the company’s help, he went to Alley. Although Alley held the nominal position of private secretary to John Ryan, Anaconda’s president, in reality he exercised substantial power. Like Stivers, Alley did not come from Butte and had never been employed in a copper mine.143
Alley reported to Cornelius Kelley, Anaconda’s vice president. In the summer of 1917, Kelley acted as the company’s chief administrative officer, since Ryan had moved to Washington, D.C., to work full time for the war effort. A native of Butte, Kelley had been employed briefly in one of the mines before receiving a law degree from the University of Michigan and then returning to Butte to become a company attorney. He was instrumental in negotiating the 1907 contract with the BMU that introduced the wage scale linking wage rates to the price of copper. Although Kelley spent most of his time at the company’s headquarters in New York, he was in Butte during the latter half of July 1917.144 Stivers and Alley would not have moved forward with the plan to kill Little without first receiving Kelley’s approval.
The brutal torture and lynching of Frank Little was a cruel and calculated act of terrorism. It sent a message from the corporate interests of Montana that there was no limit to the vigilante force that would be used to suppress Butte’s radicals. A realtor in the town of Billings, Montana, pointed to the “action of a small band of determined men” who thereby “appeared to halt very effectually further workings of the IWW or kindred organizations” in and around Butte. Indeed, the “summary execution of Frank Little” had delivered its intended “effect over the whole state.”145
Ultimately, no law enforcement agency followed up on any of the many leads, and no one was prosecuted for the lynching of Frank Little. Little’s murder conveyed a message to Woodrow Wilson in the sharpest possible terms, warning him that unless he moved quickly to destroy the IWW through government repression, powerful corporate interests—and the Rockefellers were and are among the most powerful—would initiate their own program of corporate-sponsored vigilante justice, certain that their immense power left them above the law.
On August 5, 1917, Butte witnessed the largest funeral procession in its history. Butte’s mayor, W. H. Maloney, had banned all banners and speeches, warning that his order would be “vigorously enforced.” In spite of the genuine possibility that the police would attack the funeral march, thirty-five hundred miners joined in the procession, with more than five thousand spectators lining the streets. A relay of miners carried Little’s coffin for four miles from the funeral parlor in the central business district to a cemetery on the outskirts of town. Union leaders had urged the miners to remain calm, arguing that the corporate bosses who had given the orders for Little’s execution were trying to provoke violence. The mood was somber at the cemetery. Tom Rimmer, one of Butte’s most prominent Wobblies, spoke briefly in defiance of the mayor’s orders. He insisted that Frank Little would “not be forgotten” and that he had been made “victim to his fight for the solidarity of the working class.” The crowd then sang the Marseillaise and quietly dispersed.146
Butte remained quiet, and yet a few days later, on August 10, two companies of federal troops began patrolling Butte’s streets. For much of the next three and a half years, Butte remained under military occupation. Anaconda had been looking for an incident that could justify a military intervention. Little’s murder provided them with the necessary rationale.147
Although striking miners remained disciplined, and a confrontation with the soldiers was avoided, the military occupation of Butte by hundreds of troops represented a major setback to the morale of the strikers. For a brief period, the union was able to counteract the blows it had received by spreading the strike to the nearby town of Anaconda, where the company had placed its main smelter. The strike of smelter workers began on August 23, crippling the production of Anaconda’s output, but it ended a month later, leaving Butte’s miners besieged and alone. With miners drifting back to work, the BMMWU officially ended the strike on December 20, 1917.148 For six months, an independent union led by radicals had sustained a strike of more than twelve thousand miners, drastically reducing production in the most important copper camp in the United States, and it had done so during a wartime crisis. This was an impressive accomplishment, and yet the strike failed to achieve its primary objective. As miners returned to work, they still needed to obtain a rustling card to work at an Anaconda mine.
Relations between Butte’s IWW members and its radical socialists had been acutely strained during the course of the strike. Disagreements over picket line tactics had initiated the rift, but Little’s murder greatly heightened the tension. Indeed, it is very likely that Little had been made a target in large part because of his role as an IWW organizer who had been brought from outside. His death had given the federal government a convenient excuse to occupy Butte with hundreds of soldiers, and some union leaders seemed to blame Little for refusing to hide after being warned.
In addition, many union officials who were not in the IWW were convinced that Anaconda had infiltrated the local IWW branch and that the proposals for more confrontational tactics originated with agent provocateurs. Bill Dunne, who was then close to the BMMWU leadership, informed the Montana Council of Defense that the Butte IWW branch was “about equal proportion of Company detectives and working men.”149
Once the strike was officially terminated, the coalition of socialists and Wobblies dissolved. IWW activists presented a resolution proposing that the BMMWU affiliate with the IWW. When this resolution failed, IWW members initiated their own separate branch of MMWU #800. Although the IWW branch would eventually become the primary organization for Butte’s miners, the resulting split badly damaged the cohesion of the radical core that had led the strike and thus made it more difficult to generate an effective response to the continuing wave of attacks coming from Anaconda and the federal government.
In January 1918, A. S. Embree arrived in Butte. With Grover Perry in jail, Embree had been appointed secretary of the MMWU #800. He proceeded to establish the headquarters of the union in Butte. By early 1918, the organizing drive in Arizona had been crushed, and the national union represented little more than the Butte branch. Embree formulated a new policy, announcing that the IWW would only conduct brief strikes, avoiding lengthy confrontations such as the one that had lasted for six months in 1917.150
Through the first eight months of 1918, Butte remained generally quiet, although troops did disperse a peaceful parade on St. Patrick’s Day in March, using rifle butts and bayonets. On August 30, 1918, Judge Kenesaw Landis imposed draconian sentences on dozens of IWW leaders in Chicago, galvanizing the Butte branch into action. Even before sentencing, the jury’s decision to render its guilty verdicts within minutes after convening had convinced most Wobblies that they could not expect to receive a fair hearing in the courts.
Shortly after the jury rendered its verdict on August 17, the IWW’s Chicago headquarters dispatched an emissary, apparently with Bill Haywood’s approval, to test rank-and-file sentiment for a strike demanding the release of all political prisoners. W. E. Hall traveled to Butte first and received the backing of the Butte branch. Indeed, Embree wrote a letter to be carried by Hall pledging Butte’s support for the strike. Hall then proceeded to Seattle for meetings with the leaders of the Lumber Workers’ Industrial Union. Needless to say, the army’s Military Intelligence Division had been closely monitoring these developments. On August 25, Hall was arrested and detained along with twenty-five Wobbly activists who had attended a planning meeting.151
Hall’s arrest ended any hope for the possibility of a strike that could spread across the Pacific Northwest, but the Butte branch opted to move forward with the proposed action. On September 13, 1918, the Butte branch issued a flyer calling for a “general strike” on “behalf of all political and economic prisoners.” In addition, the list of demands included the end of the rustling card system, six dollars per shift as a minimum, and an eight-hour day to be calculated from the time a miner checked in at the mine shaft entrance to the time he returned to the surface. The flyer made it clear that the strike was being called in conjunction with a nationwide protest to free political prisoners.152
The IWW was able to bring out its core supporters, but it failed to convince a majority of miners to join the walkout. Nevertheless, a significant minority of miners joined the strike, perhaps three thousand out of a total of twelve thousand, enough to hamper production but not enough to shut down the mines. Although the BMMWU officially lent its support to the walkout, in private its leaders thought the “strike inadvisable at the time.”153
The federal government tried to suppress the strike with brute force. On September 13, 1918, army soldiers raided the IWW hall and then proceeded to raid the offices of the BMMWU and the Butte Daily Bulletin, all without a search warrant. Dozens of activists were beaten, arrested, and held without charges. Soldiers were then stationed in front of the Bulletin office to prevent its publication, until Wheeler pointed out that only a court order could close a newspaper.154
Although Attorney General Gregory protested the army’s arbitrary arrests and detentions, soldiers continued to impose summary justice while using excessive force. Indeed, similar sweeps would recur frequently over the next two years. The policy of violent repression reached a crescendo on September 18, when a gunman employed by Anaconda killed an IWW activist after an argument on a street corner.155
In spite of the capricious brutality of a military occupation, the strike held firm. As the strike went into its second week, Wheeler sought to pressure both sides into an agreement. On September 20, Chief Deputy U.S. Attorney James Baldwin addressed a meeting of the IWW held at the Finlander Hall. He urged the miners to return to work, but he also pledged that the federal government would act as an impartial third party in the dispute. Soon afterward, Tom Barker, a mediator sent to Butte by the Department of Labor, began meeting with key officials representing the mining companies.156
The IWW responded to these pressure tactics at a mass rally held at the baseball park on September 22. H. R. Shirley, speaking for the IWW, insisted that the strike would continue. Those attending the rally decided to hold firm, while also approving a call for the federal government to take over Butte’s mines.157
Clearly Wheeler was hoping to pressure both the IWW and Anaconda into reaching an agreement that would bring a quick end to the strike. Anaconda had no intention of negotiating with the IWW, even indirectly, instead relying on the heavy-handed tactics of the U.S. military and its own private army of gunmen. When Dan Kelly, an Anaconda attorney, addressed the local Rotary Club, he chastised the authorities, insisting that the mining companies were “not getting the kind of services” they were “entitled to.” Specifically, Kelly denounced Wheeler for not zealously enforcing the Espionage Act by prosecuting Butte’s radicals.158
Wheeler understood that the company was sabotaging his efforts to end the strike, and he responded with a public letter to Kelly, blaming the strike on Anaconda. Paid agents “high in the counsel of the IWW local union” had been instrumental in leading the strike. Indeed, Wheeler argued that the IWW had been encouraged to initiate the action “by the paid agents of your company.” Undeterred, Kelly blasted Wheeler for having “sought to crucify patriotism and sanctify sedition.”159 This was a most unusual public interchange, marking an open breach between Wheeler and Anaconda.
Although Wheeler did not specifically name the agents who had engineered the walkout, he did mention that both had argued in favor of remaining on strike at the September 22 IWW meeting. This pointed to H. R. Shirley and B. Y. Thorp, since both were leaders of the IWW’s Butte branch who had also spoken at the September 22 meeting. In fact, both Shirley and Thorp were employed as covert operatives by private detective agencies working for Anaconda. Dismayed that Anaconda would sacrifice the production of a vital wartime commodity to gain a tactical advantage in its adamant determination to crush the IWW, Wheeler exposed Shirley and Thorp and thus forced an end to the strike. In doing so, he bitterly antagonized Anaconda.
The conflict came to a head on September 27. That day, on his way back home to Seattle after acting as lead counsel for the IWW at the Chicago trial, George Vanderveer briefly stopped in Butte to meet with local leaders. Vanderveer advised the strike leaders to end the walkout, convinced that efforts to use direct action would only make an appeal of the verdicts more difficult. He also met with Bill Dunne, a vocal critic of the IWW. By then, Dunne knew that Thorp and Shirley were company agents, perhaps having been informed by Wheeler or one of his associates.160
At a climactic meeting that night, Tom Barker, speaking for the Department of Labor, urged the miners to return to work, while reassuring them that a resolution of the issues in dispute would be made a priority concern of the National War Labor Board. Barker had met earlier with representatives of Butte’s mining companies, but he could offer little in the way of specific concessions. As the strikers debated an end to the strike, Dunne denounced Shirley and Thorp as secret agents and condemned the IWW for being a tool of Anaconda. (An editorial in the Butte Strike Bulletin claimed that Thorp and Shirley had engineered the strike, and thus “the A.C.M. must take the blame for the latest trouble.” As editor of the Bulletin, Dunne was responsible for this editorial.)161
Dunne’s speech sparked pandemonium, and the meeting dissolved in chaos. Nevertheless, the momentum of the action had been broken, and the strike was officially ended on the following day. By this point, Wheeler had become the focal point of controversy and an embarrassment to President Wilson. Senator Thomas Walsh, who had originally sponsored Wheeler’s appointment as U.S. attorney for Montana in the fall of 1913, was so fearful of losing his seat in the upcoming November elections that he pressured Wheeler to resign. On October 9, 1918, Wheeler submitted his resignation, once again demonstrating Anaconda’s enormous power.162
The argument advanced by the Bulletin was specious. It could be argued that the timing of the strike, only weeks before World War I ended, was ill advised and that it would have been a wise tactical decision to terminate the strike after only a few days, especially since only a minority of the miners had joined the walkout. Nevertheless, the idea for the strike, and its timing, had been initiated by officials at the IWW’s Chicago headquarters. Furthermore, Embree and many other experienced IWW activists supported the plan. The strike did not occur because of the actions of agents paid by Anaconda. In advancing this simplistic argument, Dunne was only helping the government to achieve its goal of dividing and demoralizing Butte’s radical coalition.
The disastrous conclusion of the September 1918 strike marked a low point in relations between the IWW and the other radical currents in Butte. Events of historic significance would bring the coalition together for yet another effort at unity as Butte’s miners were swept up in a wave of revolutionary euphoria. In November 1918, a popular revolt overthrew the German Kaiser and brought World War I to an end. Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils were formed in cities throughout Germany, and, for a brief period, it seemed that the Russian Revolution of October 1917 had, indeed, provided the spark for a global wave of socialist revolutions.
The impact these events had in Butte can be seen most clearly in the political viewpoint of Bill Dunne. Initially one of Butte’s more moderate union leaders, Dunne began articulating an uncompromising revolutionary perspective. The front page of the Bulletin, which he edited, began featuring articles covering the latest developments in Germany, paying particular attention to the actions of the Spartacus League led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. At the same time, the Bulletin began presenting the IWW in a more favorable light.163
Rank-and-file miners active in both the IWW and the BMMWU were swept up by the revolutionary fervor sparked by the German revolution. In December 1918, both miners’ unions joined the AFL unions representing the skilled crafts in the mines, including the IBEW electricians’ local, in a new formation, the Soldiers’, Sailors’, and Workers’ Council of Butte. Only the hoisting engineers, represented by the WFM, remained outside of the Workers’ Council.164
The goal was to bring together all strands of Butte’s radical community into one united organization that could act as a single, unified entity. At first, the Workers’ Council served primarily as a venue for Butte’s radical community. It formulated a set of immediate demands that ranged from the six-hour day to the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the Soviet Union to the immediate release of all political prisoners.165
On January 5, 1919, the Workers’ Council of Butte sponsored a mass rally as its first public event. Since local authorities refused to rent any of the larger sites, such as the City Auditorium, three simultaneous meetings were held at the Finlander Hall, the Socialist Party Hall, and the BMMWU’s hall. All three venues were packed to capacity, with a total of seven thousand in attendance and hundreds turned away. Dunne spoke at Finlander Hall, under the aegis of the IWW, stressing the importance of the Soviet Union as the focal point for world revolution. Another speaker at the same rally brought the message home. Events in Germany and Russia were showing the way, and the revolutionary movement sweeping Europe would soon spread to the United States. Both speeches were met with enthusiastic acclaim.166
Two resolutions were passed by an overwhelming vote at the January 5 mass rallies. The first praised the Russian working class for having “already instituted the foundation for a real socialist commonwealth.” The Butte Workers’ Council urged other militant trade unionists to form similar organizations and to organize mass demonstrations to push toward a speedy end to U.S. intervention in Soviet Russia. The second resolution declared that it was time to organize “mass strikes and demonstrations to force open the jail doors,” freeing the political prisoners still being held in state and federal penitentiaries.167
The Soldiers’, Sailors’, and Workers’ Council of Butte was a unique phenomenon. Thousands of miners came together on the basis of a radical program, not during the course of a militant strike but as class-conscious workers committed to building a revolutionary socialist movement. Needless to say, the mining companies, as well as the federal government, were alarmed by the new organization. D. H. Dickason, a Bureau of Intelligence agent working undercover, reported that the Workers’ Council had a base of support “much wider than any IWW movement.” The Council was indicative of a renewed solidarity among radicals “more insidious than any IWWism.”168
On February 6, 1919, the Workers’ Council quickly switched from agitation and education to a strike coordinating committee, when Anaconda slashed wage rates for miners from $5.75 a shift to $4.75. The next day, the council responded by issuing a strike call. In addition to a minimum wage of six dollars a shift, the demands included an end to the rustling card system and a six-hour day. This time, the mines were shut down as production came to a halt. Electricians and other skilled crafts joined the miners, as fifteen thousand workers walked off the job. Even the hoisting engineers came out in solidarity.169
The Workers’ Council sought to spread the strike, so as to make it a general strike of all of Butte’s workers. Teamsters delivering bread and meat joined the strike. Deliveries were authorized by the Strike Committee, which meant that the few strikebreakers were cut off from supplies. Newsboys refused to sell the three daily newspapers published by the mining corporations. Instead, they only sold the Butte Daily Bulletin, with twenty-four thousand copies printed during the first days of the strike. A mass march of strikers convinced the streetcar workers, organized in an AFL affiliate, to join the strike, further paralyzing the city. Even the IWW branch representing domestic workers stopped working.170
Pickets were posted at mine shaft entrances at the top of Butte Hill. The military reinforced patrols at those sites, and tensions escalated. On February 10, 1919, army soldiers used fixed bayonets to disperse the pickets. Several strikers were hospitalized with chest wounds. The next day, both sides pulled back from an open confrontation as the council withdrew its pickets and the soldiers were limited to the guarding of the mine shaft openings.171
The craft unions constituted the weak link in the Workers’ Council. On February 15, the hoisting engineers voted to return to work. Their defection marked a turning point. With union solidarity weakening, the IWW called off the strike two days later, thus bringing it to a rapid end.172 Put to the test, the unity expressed in the Workers’ Council disintegrated. Skilled craft workers did not share the same working conditions and wages as miners. Still, Butte’s miners had already demonstrated the power to close the mines if they remained united. Unfortunately, they were not.
In the summer of 1919, the issue of a unified organization of radical miners was raised for the last time. Canadian radicals had created a new union federation, the One Big Union, founded on a perspective very similar to that of the IWW, militant industrial unionism. Based in western Canada, with a strong participation of hardrock miners, the two unions seemed to complement each other. Still, there was one fundamental difference. OBU leaders were drawn from the Socialist Party of Canada and aligned themselves with revolutionary Marxism.173
The One Big Union (OBU) was eager to organize across national boundaries, to create a truly international union. By the summer of 1919, the BMMWU had been eclipsed by the Butte branch of the IWW’s MMWU #800. Nevertheless, the BMMWU retained a solid core of support when it joined the OBU, giving the OBU a definite measure of credibility with other radical trade unionists in the Pacific Northwest.
In July 1919, the OBU sponsored an organizing conference in Butte, with the goal of launching a Montana state affiliate, as a first stage to an affiliated organization covering the entire United States. The OBU was particularly interested in organizing hardrock miners throughout the western United States. Although fifty delegates attended the convention from around the state, the BMMWU was the most important union local represented.174
A. S. Embree was invited to speak to the conference, indicating the interest the OBU had in working with the IWW and its MMWU. Embree insisted that the IWW had won the support of most of Butte’s miners. He also made it clear that the IWW would not cooperate with the OBU or its embryonic union of hardrock miners.175
Embree was certainly correct that the IWW and its MMWU #800 had marginalized the BMMWU, and that the OBU could not ignore the IWW in its efforts to organize hardrock miners in the United States. Nevertheless, his speech smacked of shortsighted parochialism. Butte’s IWW militants had been organizing cooperatively with the radical socialists then leading the BMMWU for more than a decade prior to the split in January 1918. Furthermore, two years earlier, Bill Haywood, as general secretary-treasurer of the IWW, had supported Butte’s proposal to initiate a new union of hardrock miners that would merge the MMWU #800 into a larger formation. Instead of seeking some way for the IWW to work cooperatively with the Canadian hardrock miners affiliated with the OBU, Embree opted for a policy of sectarian isolation.
During the following months, the IWW prepared the groundwork for the final confrontation with Anaconda. On Saturday, April 17, 1920, the Butte branch of the MMWU #800 called for yet another strike. The demands were similar to those presented during the 1919 strike, an end to the rustling card system, a six-hour day, a requirement that all power drills be worked by two miners, and an increase in wages, but the IWW added a distinctive issue, the release of all political prisoners. Unlike September 1918, the response was overwhelming. That Monday the strike began, with production largely shut down, as most miners heeded the strike call.176
From the start, the IWW posted pickets at the entrance to several mine shafts on the top of Butte Hill. Since the number of soldiers stationed in Butte had been substantially reduced during the previous year, the mine shaft entrances were patrolled by Anaconda security guards. On the morning of April 20, company gunmen pointed their weapons at pickets who had been heckling the few strikebreakers coming to work. The following morning, Anaconda security guards attacked and beat eight pickets at one of the mine shaft entrances.177
The confrontation continued to escalate, with neither side prepared to retreat. Since the summer of 1917, IWW members in Butte had been insisting on the need to directly confront strikebreakers by picketing the mine shaft entrances. Everyone understood that this was a perilous tactic. The top of Butte Hill was isolated from residential and business districts, with a few dirt roads running through a barren area filled with mining gear and huge head frames marking the mine shaft entrances. Although the morale of the miners remained high, and the strike remained effective, a specific tactic had become a symbol of resistance.
The IWW decided that rather than disperse the pickets they would all march together to picket one mine. At 5 p.m. on April 21, 1920, Embree led a group of three hundred activists up the Anaconda Road to the Never Sweat mine, one of the many owned by Anaconda.178 They stopped near the entrance of the mine and began taunting strikebreakers as they arrived for the evening shift. A group of forty armed company security guards, including the ubiquitous Billy Oates, assembled nearby, directed by Roy Alley and D. Gay Stivers, the two executives most responsible for Anaconda’s security force. Sheriff John O’Rourke arrived with a few of his deputies, hoping to maintain order. O’Rourke spoke with Embree, urging the pickets to disperse, but Embree insisted that the IWW had a constitutional right to peacefully picket. The pickets did agree to leave the property adjacent to the mine shaft and to stand along a public road.179
At this point, O’Rourke walked over to Alley to report on his talk with Embree. Soon after, Alley urged the gunmen to attack, crying, “Go get the sons of bitches.” Several of the gunmen began firing directly at the fleeing pickets, while others clubbed those who fell. The shooting lasted ten minutes, leaving fifteen miners seriously wounded, all of them shot in the back as they fled down the hill. Tom Manning was one of those shot, the bullet lodging in his lung. He died shortly afterward.180
This tragic incident marked the end of Butte’s radical trade union movement. The War Department reinforced the number of troops occupying Butte, with soldiers patrolling the streets and mine shaft entrances, dispersing any demonstrations or pickets. A month later, on May 12, 1920, Anaconda posted new guidelines, declaring that it would only employ U.S. citizens and that it would discharge any miner suspected of being a member of the IWW. All of Butte’s mines were closed for several months and then reopened as open shops.181 The threat made implicitly in December 1912, with the imposition of the rustling card, had become a reality eight years later.
Anaconda had finally gained total autocratic control of its workforce, with every form of trade unionism having been destroyed. Unions only returned to Butte in 1934 and the New Deal era. By the time the IUMMSW regained collective bargaining rights, Butte was a very different place than it had been in its heyday during World War I.182
The continuing series of confrontations that erupted in Butte from 1914 to 1920 convinced Anaconda, and the Rockefeller interests that owned it, to look elsewhere. The company stopped investing in Montana, in its mines and smelter, and allowed them to slowly deteriorate. By the 1930s, only five thousand miners were working in Butte, far fewer than the twelve thousand who had been employed in 1917. Instead, Anaconda began investing in Chile. In addition to developing its own copper mine starting in 1916, the company purchased a field that had initially been developed by the Guggenheims. The Chuquicamata field would prove to be the largest copper deposit in the world. Anaconda purchased it in 1922 for $77 million and spent tens of millions more in its development.183
Butte was one of the first victims of the globally integrated market. It slowly sank into oblivion during the sixty years following World War I. In 1955, Anaconda displaced six thousand residents when it opted to dig a huge pit on top of Butte Hill. Although the Berkeley pit briefly spurred production, Atlantic Richfield purchased Anaconda’s Butte holdings in 1977 and closed all mining operations in 1982. The sole remaining evidence of past glory days is a giant hole in the ground that continues to fill with water laden with highly toxic chemicals. Butte has become an environmental disaster.184
Butte represented a high point for radical politics in the United States. From 1900 to 1920, leftists developed a solid base of support among thousands of copper miners. The success of this dissident community depended on maintaining a coalition of IWW members and left-wing socialists. Beginning with a commitment to militant unionism and proceeding to a mass strike during World War I, Butte’s miners came to the point where they were ready to create a Workers’ Council, hoping to become participants in a worldwide movement to build a socialist society.
Still, Butte’s community of radicals could only thrive as part of a wider movement in the United States. As the federal government crushed the IWW and suppressed the Socialist Party, Butte’s miners were increasingly isolated. Under the impact of violent assaults by Anaconda’s gunmen and a military occupation, the unity of Butte’s radical community unraveled. Ultimately, Anaconda was triumphant, and Butte became an open-shop town.