A professor emeritus at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, James W. Byrkit authored the most detailed political history of the Bisbee Deportation, Forging the Copper Collar.


Let's begin with helping a contemporary audience understand what the era was like back at the turn of the century. And one of the interesting relationships seems to be the power centers of the east with the natural resource centers of the West, can you help me understand that relationship?

All right. Well first of all, any period of time in history has what you might call its zeitgeist. That is all of the atmosphere that prevails at a particular time. And it is very difficult to recapture that. Historians try, but what we call "presentism" that is, your own situation and the values and attitudes and aspects of your own current place in time which make it very difficult to do that. I have a novel about Bisbee called Bisbee Seventeen by a friend of mine called Bob Houston and he bases it much on the research I did. And Bob fails entirely to capture the zeitgeist. It's all in terms of what people feel today or think today. And that's all very well and it's in reprint now. It's just very difficult to realize that the laws, the values, the demographics, all of this were very different in 1900, or 1915 or 1917, and to be able to understand that you really have to immerse yourself in the mood of that particular time.

Help me be introduced to that mood.

All right, I did it by reading every issue of the Bisbee Daily Review from 1900-1921. It took me three months to do that, and in addition to that I was raised in a small mining town very similar to Bisbee. A lot of people I knew were in Bisbee--my father was. . . he and my mother always reminded me of what things were like when they first came here or even before that. And I was very close to old timers, some of whom were not related to the mining industry at all, but my parents were very interested in Arizona history, so I met lots of people. So I think you have to make a very concentrated effort to try and discipline yourself to get away from whatever presenticism you might have. None of us can get away from it entirely. And to put yourself back into the way in which people felt, thought, acted at a particular time. Now, as far as specifics are concerned of course politics in the one of most conspicuous things. You have manipulated politics, the election of 1916 is a perfect example of that. And economics wasn't like it is today. People didn't have jobs. People were out of work. This is true of the whole 19th century, it's true through the depression. I thinks it's true certainly 'til after World War II, or up to World War II. People don't realize how money motivated and food motivated people were at that particular time and you could get fired for no other reason than some foreman just wanted to exercise his power. And we don't have any appreciation for that today. There's a open labor market. There's a lot of people available for jobs. But, I think that's what made people behave the way they did at that particular time and if you can't appreciate that you'll never really capture that mood or that zeitgeist. That existed at that time.

You talk about the spirit that existed in communities, right there where the workers were and yet, this seems to be a relationship that stretches all the way back to the very powerful centers of the east, help me understand that relationship.

First of all, before television and before there was even radio, people were not as sophisticated as they are today. They really didn't take much interest in what was happening someplace else. I know one time I made a trip to Washington DC and New York and when I came back and talked to people I knew they were totally unimpressed but they said you didn't happen to go to Phoenix on the way, did you? The provincialism that is not just because people are denying themselves knowledge of the outside, but because they have no reason to relate to it. So, it was very easy for external forces to control, newspapers, governors, courts, legislature, without anybody even really realizing it. There's a story, that the copper mining interest in Phoenix, when the people who had been elected in the previous November to come to the State Legislature arrived in the first week in January, or whenever the legislature started, that you could take one of these new people from one of the non-copper mining counties and they'd have them up to the Adams Hotel with a woman and a bottle in fifteen minutes. And from that time on, they would do whatever these exterior forces wanted them to do. At the expense of their own constituency. So, it was just people were not able to understand where power was and where it came from. I'm sure that most of the people that worked for Phelps Dodge [a large mining concern in Arizona at the turn of the century, and still a major internal mining operation] didn't even know the name of the president of the company. And you never said Phelps Dodge by the way, you always said, almost in a hushed tone 'the company.'

You said there was another way of referencing the way the employers or the foreman would talk about who was responsible for these people's daily bread…

All right, this is going to sound hyperbolic, but I know it actually happened. There would be a time when there would just be an absolutely innocent employee, and a manager might say to a shift boss, 'Who is that guy over there?' 'Well, that's Joe Brown.' 'Fire him.' The workers had to be reminded who their daddy was, that what the expression, you got to know who your daddy is. And then this guy would mope around town for a while, and then he, the manager would plant somebody out there and say Well, I think if you went to talk to the manager you might get your job back. That foreman was unreasonable, just go talk… even though the guy might not have known who he was. And sure enough the manager would say I know you're a good worker and that foreman of mine does do, rude things, and act in an arrogant fashion. You certainly can have your job back. So, you see, you know where the power's coming from. They didn't know what was happening to them because the whole thing was a form of manipulation. In the meantime they were desperate to keep their work, so they'd do practically anything to do that.

Again, I am going to ask you to take me back in time to Arizona at the turn of the century. How would you describe it?

Well, you know, this is a hot place. The two largest cities are located in desert areas. It's not very romantic, the Indians had been subdued long before that. Cattle ranching was important. But the truth of it i,s Arizona was an industrial state at the turn of the century and became more so as time went on. If I were to write my uncle in New York, I would have to try to tell him about labor unions or the power of corporations or any number of other more eastern type of concerns. He probably wouldn't want to believe it, even though he was a professor at Columbia University. It would hurt him to hear that. Arizona was supposed to be a refuge from all the things that characterized the industrial and urban east, and, I don't know how people can be convinced of that. The response to my book by the general public reflects that attitude. You just don't want to hear that Arizona was possibly even more industrialized than Ohio was, and certainly didn't have the agricultural base at that time anyway. So to say that it was unionized, urbanized, and industrialized--people didn't wanted to hear it then, and people certainly don't want to hear it now.

How important was copper mining to the economic well being of Arizona back then?

Well, Arizona was probably the primary producer of copper. It was probably the primary producer after 1900. I think Montana might have been and Utah has always been a good copper producing state. But Arizona's economy was very much related to copper mining and there were several large, wealthy copper mines. United Verde and Jerome was a very good example. The Copper Queen in Bisbee was the biggest of all. The Ramsey operation was still going, I think that's the biggest today. But, at that time it was probably third or fourth. Globe Miami Area. So, these particular activities here and the politics of the place were nothing like the romanticized version that most people believe in by reading Zane Grey or any of the other more popular writers of that time.

You talked about how the economic interests could not be divorced from the political interest, one was very very concerned and involved with the other. Yet there seems to be a period of time in Arizona shortly after the turn of the century where the economic interests are not in control, it almost has and I hate to use the cliché but a progressive feel towards the politics of Arizona. Where did that come from?

Well, Arizona's not removed from the national climate, political climate of that time. The Industrial Revolution had fully developed here. And you had a working class that found itself being joined with certain middle class interests particularly of the Progressive Movement. And also the Populous, the farmers and other people who felt that they were being abused by the railroads. And in the Cross of Gold Speech in 1896 and William Jennings Brian. So you have a general feeling of discontent about the way America is drifting towards this control by big business. And the mood the state is such that there plenty of working people here and plenty of middle class people here who resent the power of the corporations. Now, the corporations didn't always get along with each other. So, they were not exactly united, and theynever had to exert themselves very much to have political control. In fact they're just interested in money and you could do a lot of other things and they wouldn't care. So with the national mood and the foundation of a working class and middle class people in Arizona, yes, they were able to organize themselves starting about 1905 and by 1910, and 1912 they were really running the territory before 1912. They wrote the constitutional convention. Nothing could even believe, even if I tell them today how liberal the constitution was for its time. And this is almost entirely done by working, many of them from Bisbee, working class people who were in the legislature or in the constitution convention or wherever. And then the copper companies realized they had to do something. And they kind of dropped their differences and came together. And by 1915 they had a full-scale counter offensive going against this liberal movement.

Tell me how that plays out in the extraordinary election of 1916.

Well, this is Tom Campbell and George W.P. Hunt. Hunt had proved himself to be a friend to the working man and had won previous elections, was president of the Constitution Convention, and was anti-business at least at that particular time, he was. The corporations were very frustrated by this man, particularly Walter Douglas [President of the Phelps-Dodge Corporation]. So, they had to find somebody that might be able to have a running chance to beat Hunt in the 1916 gubernatorial election. They selected a man by the name of Tom Campbell. And he had a little bit of experience and he was popular, even popular with the working class people. And they put him up as the Republican candidate. The election was an absolute travesty.

How so?

Well, in liberal or working class neighborhoods they would make people wait in line for hours to be able to vote. Also the way in which they counted the votes was very questionable. And this was true throughout the state. Or people were intimidated or bought off or any number of other things to make them vote for the right guy against the wrong guy. So everyone can see this was going on, but Campbell was elected. And the Democratic Party was very upset about it, as well as a lot of other people. And George W. P. Hunt immediately filed a suit, but it took a long time for that to go through the court process. And eventually, the court found that indeed, Hunt did win the election but by that time there was nothing you could do about it.

At one point, Bisbee seems to be a very peaceful, very prosperous mining town, the longevity of the miners and such. What contributed to that era of good will?

I think primarily, from the beginning it was the fact that before the advent of electrical equipment in mines and more modern tools such as jack hammers and so forth. , that the miners tended to be of old professional kind of stock, many of them from Wales, Cornish men you called 'em. And they liked their manager. They had a personal relationship. But as copper mining grew, and production was accelerated and the demand for copper grew and the profits leapt up. . .well people had to be brought in that could handle this new equipment that could be told in a day how to handle these drills. and so, a lot of immigrants. . . in fact the copper company actually recruited in Europe for people to come here and these people came and they were willing to work for less wages. But, more enlightened progressive and populist type people were here also and they were able to use their influence through the unions and through pamphlets, and on the job argents to make these people realize that they had been taken advantage of. So, during this atmosphere of the Populous and Progressive period people shifted somewhat in addition to that as I mentioned earlier middle class people felt the copper companies were being, making too much money, were being abusive , were really not fair in, in the way in which they enjoyed the wealth that was being taken out of Arizona. So, they became disenchanted with the copper companies. And turned against them.

You mentioned the role of ethnic groups. You started with this notion of the traditional Cornish miner being a central figure in the early mining experience. I wonder if there were ever episodes where one group was played off another, as they became dissatisfied.

This is where I differ from the new historians. The new western historians argue that it was the ethnic conflicts and racial conflicts somehow they get gender in there too; that really provided the dynamics for the political developments that took place at that time. I have a few situations where this is true, but in general the lines were not drawn along ethnic lines. They were drawn along economic lines. And although I am sure ethnicity played a role. I remember people calling people from Croatia bohunks and pejorative terms for practically any race. Still I felt the cohesiveness among all the workers was greater than their differences.

Is that also true with the emergence of the Hispanic workers?

To a certain degree. Once again there are people who would like to tell us that this was an essential quality of the conflict at that time. In general there was racism on the, on the job, Hispanics in many cases were not allowed to work underground in a mine. I worked with Hispanics in the smelter, in the mine and I didn't detect much conflict of that kind, although that was much later. But I know there was, there was a lot of ethnic conflicts just socially in the town and that sort of thing. Mexicans were not allowed to use the swimming pool, couldn't come into certain stores and that sort of thing. But politically speaking in terms of politics, I think that was a relatively secondary matter.

What was the role of taxation, in the sharply escalating discontent that surrounds mining?

I was afraid you were going to ask me that. Well, obviously you know the corporations have tremendous political clout. George W. P. Hunt said that for seven thousand dollars you could buy any governor off to do whatever they wanted him to do. The greatest concern that the copper companies had in Arizona, and the greatest concern that any business has today, was profits. You want to make as much money as you possibly can and have the lowest expenses you possibly can.

During the territorial days some of the people in the legislature and some of the appointed governors felt that the copper companies were not paying their share. And so you can check the territorial legislative records and see that efforts were made to try and increase taxation of, of the corporations. And sometimes this was successful and sometimes it was not. There were efforts to raise corporate taxes and to a certain degree that was true. It wasn't just taxation, it was workman's compensation too fell into that category. This was just too much for the corporations and this is the key thing that caused them to take such a united vigorous counter attack towards the working people and the middle class people of the state is… the way in which there was this attempt anyway to tax them higher.

We're coming to a period where the United States becomes involved in World War I and if the situation is already one of flux, World War I adds a new dynamic. How did the outbreak of World War I impact the copper mining interests of Arizona?

This was the key turning factor. I think even before World War I, because of the corporate counter offense, a doubt about Populism and a certain doubt about Progressivism and a certain sympathy maybe for corporate America. But the war of course, either you're for us or you're against us, and the corporations are obviously producing minerals, and munitions and all kinds of things to help in the war effort. Not to say that everybody thought that this was a good thing to do, but an increasing number. That swing factor had its say so in national politics and it had a say so in Arizona politics. To be a patriot became very important. And anybody that was trying to hinder productivity of copper was not a patriot and if you were not a patriot, you're a traitor. And so all of the corporate effort to malign unions became much more successful in this atmosphere of World War I.

Did the fervent patriotism of that era provide an opportunity for the copper interests to finally deal with unionizing efforts of the workers?

Right. Let's remember that there are lots and lots of workers that are very strong pro-company people. They may not be as well organized, and they have ambivalent feelings at time but the war created these definitely different perspectives on what the company was and so forth. What it represented and how much was being abusive. So that when it came time to take some kind of action and Walter Douglas, the president of Phelps Dodge Corporation, said we've got to cut this out right now. I think he used to call unionism a rattlesnake. And he didn't just say the IWW either. He said that goes for the International Union of Mine Mill Smelter Workers, AFofL or anybody. And people said all right, they are all traitors. If you're IWW you're a traitor, but if you belong to the International Union you are just as bad as the IWW or in AFofL. And the general public not knowing much about ideologies or the conflict or anything else bought it. And by this time the Bisbee newspaper had shifted over to support the companies. So, the war made it possible to find unionism in Arizona to be unpatriotic or even treasonous.

From the worker's standpoint wasn't the big issue money? The price of copper had gone up dramatically because of demand. And the workers were not really part of the benefit of the increased prices for copper.

Well, we can see this in the records we know how much these companies were making and the price of copper went from eleven cents to thirty-four cents a pound. And the workers got a little bit of a raise, but they weren't ignorant of this. And their leaders weren't ignorant of this. And the cost of living went up faster than their wages went up. So, they could see this great disparity between how they were benefiting from the rising copper, and how the copper companies were benefiting from the rise of the price of copper. So, the whole scenario of what the war was doing in terms of economics was open and blatant. People could easily see that they were not getting their share of the war benefits.

What were the events in Bisbee that lead to the deportation?

Well the unions did start striking because of the discontent economically. People begin to join the IWW. They decided they wanted to do something, drastic. By this time the corporations had coalesced their unity and they wanted to do something drastic too. They wanted to do it even more than the laboring people did. So, as a consequence of this, this growing antagonism, a conflict was inevitable and all of the factors that we've already been talking about were forcing these people to take a position one way or another. The Phelps Dodge Corporation had to exaggerate the danger of this particular movement. So, they made certain charges that were not right. They precipitated the whole thing deliberately, they wanted it to happen. And finally decide just to tell everybody that this is unpatriotic and these treasonous people had to be removed from town. And on the July 12th, 1917, they did just that.

How were the Wobblies characterized by the copper interests?

Oh, first of all they were "ultra left wing communists," even identified with the Reds in Russia that were active at that time, also identified however with the Germans. which is kind of weird but people didn't know the difference. And it was said that they were trying to harm the war effort, harm America, that these were evil people and they were throwing bombs and murdering people, which was not even true. And they tried to take examples from other places, to show that the IWW was really a dangerous element and had to be removed. And people believed it and were willing to participate in the deportation.

One person we've been talking about peripherally, and I think we should spend time considering right now, is Walter Douglas.

You know this is something that absolutely mystifies me. This person is so obviously the central figure in all of this. He comes from an old family. His father was instrental in getting Phelps Dodge established in Arizona. Dr. James Douglas was a very nice guy, people loved him. Walter Douglas was very well educated. And at a very early age they began to groom him to be a leader for not just Phelps Dodge but in the copper industry. And he was a twentieth century kind of person, he's not an entrepreneur, he's not a scientist, he's a business man. A hard nose, sophisticated smart business man. And he is behind the scenes all the time but he comes out in the open occasionally. He wrote a letter to the New Republic, which very clearly identified his attitude towards the mining situation in Arizona. And he becomes not just the president of Phelps Dodge, but he becomes the leader of organizations that are affiliated with mining companies throughout the United States. And he understands publicity, he understands propaganda, he understands international relations, he understands market prices and how they fluctuate and what causes them to fluctuate. And he understands where his profits are being drained. But he's not crude about it. In a sense, to me, he's crude, but at the time he's very smooth. The people were absolutely afraid of him. Everybody was afraid of him, even the governor of Arizona won't call him by name, who is outspoken about everything else. And since my book was published I've tried to talk about Walter Douglas and there still is a great fear. And so here you have this very influential New York business man pulling all these strings doing all these things, getting all this cohesion among the copper companies and no one will talk about him. I wonder you know what that says. I have this feeling once again as I said, people just don't want to know about a person that seems too threatening perhaps or too powerful to even contest. And it's very interesting, he's a man incredibly powerful that nobody wants to acknowledge or even say that he even existed.

One thing he did not do was stand on a street corner in Bisbee, Arizona and harangue the general populous with his point of view. So, how was his will manifest at this time?

This goes back to company relationships and loyalties. Fear. There's a hierarchy of authority in any large corporation today. But he could manipulate anybody in anyplace, and the corporation had terrific influence on the sheriff, on courts, on the legislature, all of this. But he always had somebody doing this, in fact it's almost demeaning to him to even have to lower himself to come to Arizona. And to talk to people about this, to give instructions and so forth. You get the feeling he's very impatient and he feels that if people back in New York found out what he was doing that he would lose their respect, as it's dirty sort of stuff. So, he has plenty of people to do his dirty work for him, and others like John Greenway, who was the general manager at the Calet Arizona Mining Company. He was a very outspoken and open guy, but not terribly bright and certainly not even aware of the dynamics that Walter Douglas understands. He's willing to appear in public and talk about these things and most people like him. He's a hero and so forth. So, Douglas is, and we're not talking about conspiracy here, we're talking about continuation of manipulation. In fact, I've always said the whole story of the West is sponsorship and manipulation by eastern interests. And this is a colonial situation and Walter Douglas doesn't want to even acknowledge that he's here. That he would have to appear here. This is dirt for him. And it works. Nobody even today wants to talk about Walter Douglas.

Was the deportation a unique way of dealing with trouble makers?

Well, not at all. This is an old practice, but it just so happens that the Bisbee deportation is the most extravagant bizarre example of it. . . particularly the scale of it. Throughout Arizona and New Mexico people had been deported just previous to this, there was a deportation in Jerome [Arizona] a week or two before the Bisbee deportation. Which wasn't as successful. Far fewer people involved and done in much less highhanded fashion. But it worked. Or at least it appeared to work at the time. And other minor deportations, I only say minor relative to the Bisbee deportation. And for all I know maybe deportations were being used throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I've never really studied it that far back. But no this is not an unusual thing it's just the size of it.

What is the Loyalty League?

I think the Loyalty League was made up of mining employees. The so-called "loyal" miners…and there's plenty of those. You have to understand that there are plenty of people, you know, that were definitely strongly in support of the mining companies. Then there are those that are opposed and then there's a kind of swing factor in-between. So they are willing to do whatever they were told as a means of keeping their jobs. And this is not necessarily born out of strictly fear, these people really believe that American business is good and they're part of it and they want to be loyal to it. On the other hand, I can tell from personal experience that fear was a factor too. So, the Loyalty League was prepared to do just about anything if they might be asked to do, including even take up arms if necessary to get rid of some of their fellow workers.

You also say that this became something almost immediately became something of taboo subject. We don't want to talk about it.

In Bisbee anyway. You didn't talk about it because that would make you sympathetic with the deportees. People feared for their jobs. Phelps Dodge became even more paternalistic. They did some good things for people after the deportation. And they did increase some of the wages. But they expected even m ore loyalty than ever before. And so, people were scared to death and they might whisper about it in the evening in the kitchen. But the children would hear them talking and they couldn't tell what they were talking about. And it was the children that I talked to. They never knew the story of what their parents had gone through because the parents were terrified to even say anything about it at all. When the story first came out we got a lot of state wide attention and those people shook their head and said ye I'm sure glad to know all of this. But anybody that was born since or come here since then doesn't want to hear about it.

I asked you if there was a legacy of deportation, you said there should be but there isn't. What should the legacy be?

How powerful companies can thwart the constitution of the United States if it serves their purpose. Eisenhower said, "Beware of the industrial military complex. This coziness between big business and federal government, or state government, and the power that corporations still have in influencing taxation and other laws." It's much more different and much more complicated today. That's a simple answer to your question.