Chair of the Political Science Department at Montana State University in Bozeman, Jerry Calvert has researched early-20th century unions and socialist movements in Butte.






Let's start by setting the scene. What was the world the miners lived in, in terms of the Progressive Era?

Well, Butte at the time we're dealing with was perhaps the largest, mining camp in the United States. Here we have a city of, let's be conservative, sixty thousand individuals and, you had thousands of men employed in dozens of mines in the Butte Mining District. Virtually every ethnic group that came to America ended up in Butte in various proportions, of which by far the largest we're Irish. But as Butte moved into the twentieth century before World War I, increasingly the ethnic composition of the mineworkers changed towards more recent immigrants, men from Eastern Europe, Southern Europe. And also a significant proportion of Irish newly off the boat, often from what we call Northern Ireland today. And it was a population that could be divided in another way. And that was that you had an older population of mine employees who had homes who lived there, who had families and children. And then you had a newer bunch of folks, single men without ties, without family without responsibilities living in massive boarding houses in Butte City and spending their money in the saloons and in the Chinese food establishments and getting their laundry done and so forth. So you had really complex social environment at that time.

We're looking at the story from a 20th or even 21st century perspective, but American views of Socialism and Communism were different in the early 1900's. How do we need to look at this story? How was the world different back then?

To truly understand Butte, you have to understand the United States in the era after the Civil War through World War I. And one of the underlying strains was the notion that that capitalism as an institution was out of control, that the government of the United States and other governments were subservient to big capital. And this wasn't an idea that was concocted by radicals and socialist and so on. This was the currency, the political currency of grass roots American institutions like the Green Back Labor Party and later the Populous Party in the 1890's. So the Socialist Party and the IWW are part of that tradition of a strong belief that democracy, as they understood it as majority rule, had been subverted by money and property. And it was time if we may paraphrase Pat Bucannan, 'to take the country back'--that notion of the masses against the elite. It was the underlying, theme. The second thing that was peculiar to that period and not general to American political ideology, was a broad across class belief in progress. Progress was good. Progress was inevitable. That the world, the future, would be one of greater leisure, greater prosperity, of greater equity and justice. So the fight was, if it's a fight, was how to do that.

What distinguished Socialists from Progressives in that large tradition was that Socialists believed that government itself ought to be the owner of the means of production. That the people through the democratic process should control how the economy should be operating. We have to understand where they were coming from. This is before the Soviet Union, before Stalin, before Hitler. You can look in vain at the speculations about what a Socialist society would look like. They really didn't know how to do it. They just thought that there must be a better way than the unregulated and often inhumane economic system that the working class was experiencing at that time.

Let's move into Butte and rise of the power and the union. How was Butte to start with the "Gibraltar" of unionism?

Well, Butte had a reputation as being a very strong union town. In an era when unions nationally were struggling to even get recognized and have some place at the table. Butte was proud to say in the era before World War I, that every occupation, pipe fitter to newsboy, had a union. Why was that? There's no simple answer to that. But the answer I'm going to give is at least getting there and that is you had to look at the capitalist side of Butte in its early days. And the epitome of the Butte capitalist in those early days was Marcus Daily. Marcus Daily was an Irish immigrant who came to America with nothing but the shirt on his back. He started out as a prospector and hard rock miner. He came to Butte and through good luck and hard work became a multi millionaire mine owner. Thanks to his prescient notion that copper was the metal that would make it in the future. And Marcus Daily was one of those multi-millionaires who never forgot his roots. And so he created a, a pretty benign and friendly atmosphere for unionism in his own mines as well as unionism generally.

And how and when did things change?

The big change in organized labor in Butte many historians will probably tell you was when Marcus Daily sold the Anaconda Copper Mining Company to a large holding company called Amalgamated, which was affiliated with Standard Oil. With Standard Oil now being you might say the real power in Butte, it was a different situation. There wasn't any ethnic or societal connection between the bosses and the workers that had existed when Daily was around. And so now you had you know, capitalism in its worst aspects. A distanced board of directors in New York making decisions about what happened in Butte and Bisbee and elsewhere. And it was a very adversarial relationship.

Was it a one company town, did they run the whole show?

Well, Butte was becoming a company town, in the year before World War I. By the time World War I had started, the Amalgamated/Anaconda Copper Mining Company controlled the vast bulk of the mines in the Butte area. Miners were by far and away the largest employed group in Butte, and most of them worked for Amalgamated/Anaconda Mining Operation, so the answer yes, it was a one company town.

In your book, you wrote that 'capitalism in Butte wasn't an abstraction, but a reality'. You talked about this notion of capitalism as being personified by the Anaconda Mining Company. Describe what this looked likeChow this was reflected in the life of Butte miners?

Again I think today capitalism in America is an abstraction for most people. And that's because most of us are employees of somebody. There's a social safety net. There's unemployment insurance, there's health coverage, and there's social security when you retire or are disabled. And so the cost benefit analysis, supply and demand, the cash nexus, these phrases, they don't impinge on our lives directly and negatively like they would if we were working for wages in Butte say in 1917. That was a different reality. You worked for wages and the wages was all you got really. You had no health insurance, you had no disability insurance. There were virtually no meaningful laws protecting your health and safety on the job. You're on your own, Buddy. It's a dog eat dog world. As long as you're healthy you can work. And if you get miner's consumption well, that's just tough. You know, there's nothing for you. It was an entirely different thing. And so capitalism wasn't an abstraction. The calculus of profit and loss was not ameliorated in anyway by the state.

Did the miners bear the brunt of this system? Describe what being a miner in Butte in 1917 was like.

Again it's hard to understand with complete clarity what it felt like, what it would be like to be working in mine in Butte say in 1917. But imagine if you will, going to work an eight-hour shift. You come to the mine, you take your street clothes off and put your digging clothes on, these rank, stinking, dirty, sweating clothes. You go down into the mine to two thousand five hundred feet, poorly ventilated relatively speaking. The temperature is ninety to one hundred and ten degrees. Humidity is 90 percent. And you're working with a power drill blowing silicon-loaded dust into your lungs everyday. It's probably like smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. And that's not ventilated. There's one mine that had very good ventilation, it had a great name, the Never Sweat Mine. But a lot of mines were just; they were hell on earth. But it was a job and you had to have a job to make a buck so you could eat. That's it.

Was there a divide between the rich and poor in Butte?

Again that's a common theme in American political culture. The rich are always too rich. Too privileged, too wealthy by half. But I suspect the contrast between the rich and the poor was much more starkly visible and experienced in the mountain west in Butte in those days. On the one hand you have the single miner, just off the boat from Ireland who lives in this massive boarding house with hundreds of other single miners. Who spends what free time he has in the saloons and so on. On the other hand, just west of Main Street are these fine homes, with well-dressed people with their maids and servants. And they're just across the street. Today in America the poor, especially the unsightly and troublesome poor, are much more ghettoized and isolated then in those days. There was a lot more intermingling and physical contact between the communities of the relatively well off and the relatively not well off in Butte and elsewhere than you see today.

Paint me a picture of the town of Butte. If I'm a stranger to Butte, standing on a street corner, what am I seeing? What are the conditions in the town itself?

Well depending on where you are in Butte you could be in any part outside of downtown and the streets would be not paved. There'd be no sidewalks, and no curbs. The houses were jammed close together without adequate ventilation and space. And you can see the pictures taken by the state sanitation department about 1910 of miner's housing in Butte. You know it was a pretty rough existence. And the Socialist Party promised in Butte and throughout the United States a better city government which would do things like pave the streets, create sidewalks, build sewers, inspect meat processing companies. Basic kinds of thing we accept as given today were not in those days.

And what made Socialism appealing was the understanding that what people wanted was something right up front, right now.

Let's move back to the notion of the Butte Miner's Union, and set the scene of what led up to destruction of the union hall, the Miner's Union Hall, backtracking looking at the notion of this, the miner's were really disgruntled with the union in Butte, why were they so angry?

The discontent in Butte with the Butte Miner's Union of the Western Federation of Miners, Butte Miner's Union Number One, the mother union, the beginning of the WFM, had two primarily sources I think. One was economic. The union had failed to keep pace with developments. The working wage for a miner in Butte in 1914 was three dollars and fifty cents a week. The same wage a miner was paid in 1886 in Butte. So there was a failure of the union to make any effort, at least any successful effort and sustained effort, to increase the wages of its membership. That's part of it. The union was founded initially just to dictate a wage, three dollars and fifty cents a week. It never grew beyond that goal. So it never addressed other things that unions commonly address today. Again working conditions, health conditions, pension plans, those sorts of things. So, the economic issue is one thing. The other thing is partly external. The union was not isolated from the world around it. There were radical trade unions like the Industrial Workers of the World who were pushing for more militant unionism. And so they were in Butte and said hey, how come the Butte Miner's Union isn't doing anything? And they agitated and talked and created discontent and unhappiness with things as they were.

So the miner's were upset with the union for two reasons, one internal and one external. The internal one was basically economic. The union had failed to make any effort, at least any sustained and successful effort, to increase miners wages from the 1886's standard of three dollars and fifty cents a week. Secondly, was the proverbial outside agitator. The Industrial Workers of the World was founded in 1905, and by 1907 or 1908 was very visible in the Butte area and throughout the West. The IWW of course believed that unions should actually not just be wage defense organizations, but they should be the harbingers if you will of the future. They should be the basis for new working class society, and so they wanted it all -- workers control and means of productions. That was the ultimate goal. And that kind of idea played pretty well in Butte.

Was there also a notion that the union was corrupt? That it was infiltrated by company men and it was serving more the company interests than the union interests?

That's a hard question to answer. My own research does not point to any obvious smoking guns where you can say this union official took this bribe. There's no direct evidence of that. The radicals, the critics of the union, rhetorically made those charges. They never produced any evidence.

Was it common practice for companies to hire detectives to infiltrate unions?

It was a very common and standard practice for corporations to hire private detective agencies, whose agents would infiltrate unions and report on those activities. And often of course instigate activities by union, which would cause a strike and / or a breaking of the union. Common practice.

Was that done in Butte too then?

Oh, absolutely.

Set the scene for the destruction of the union hall. What were the events that led up to this incredible violence towards property?

Again, the factors are many. But specifically, someplace about 1913, the radical internal critics of the union gave up in trying to reform the union by taking it over legitimately through the electoral process. The radical or progressive faction in the union boycotted the May 1914 elections to elect officers to the Butte Miner's Union. And they were threatening to form a new independent miner's union. On Miner's Union Day, June 13, 1914, the parade is going down the street. In the parade are the officers of the Butte Miner's Union who had just been elected in a boycotted election, there was no opposition and the turn out was very low. Contrary to previous years there are a few spectators on the sidewalks and those that are, are silent or grumbling or jeering. At an intersection a group of men rush the union leaders, pulling the president from his horse. And then this mob of men, under leadership of 'person's unknown', went to the Union Hall. They broke in and trashed the building including blowing up the safe. They were looking of evidence of corruption which, if they found, they never presented it.

Charles Moyers, the nation president of the Western Federation of Miners came to Butte, couple days later and tried to organize the Butte Miner's Union again. A meeting was called of the Butte Miner's Union. News accounts suggest this is what happened... A supporter of the union came late, and as he walked up the stairs to the meeting, he was shot by a nervous guard. He was wounded, but apparently survived. And then a riot broke out. And some men rushed the near by West Stuart Mine, saying, 'let's get dynamite and let's blow this building to the ground'. The supporters of the old union snuck out the back under police escort and the union hall was then dynamited to the ground. And so within two weeks what had thought to be a very strong union Butte, was literally a wreck. And there was no union. And growing out of that was a very short- lived independent union called the Butte Mine Workers Union.

What expectations or hopes did the miners have with the formation of the new union?

Well, the Butte Mine Workers Union was sort of born out of nothing . The ostensible leader was a young Irish miner named, Michael "Mucky" McDonald who was recently off the boat from Northern Ireland. He became the leader by virtue of instigating the protests that led to the destruction of the union. Periodically, an official from The Butte Miners Union would show up at the gates of the mines to check men for the union cards. And if you didn't have a union card you were turned away. So the story which appeared in the Butte Press the day before the first riot was that Mucky McDonald, on appearing at the mines, said I'm not showing you my card. And he urged all the other miners to do the same. And the mine was shut down. And so by virtue of that bold act, this young man became the leader of the new Butte Mine Workers Union. But the real brains of the operations if I can call it that, were several miners with close ties to the IWW. So the Butte Mine Workers Union was the IWW dressed up in independent clothes. But the union did not advocate revolution, it advocated what the Butte Mine Workers Union hadn't given which was higher wages, better working conditions. The usual things that unions usually advocate.

Why was the union short-lived?

Well, the Mucky McDonald Union as they called it in Butte at the time, was short lived because frankly the companies, and particularly Anaconda would not even talk to them. The price of copper was very low, and so you had thousands of people laid off. So from a bargaining stand point they didn't have much going. Martial law helped, and of course the union leaders, Mucky McDonald and ??? Bradley were arrested for incitement to riot, and ultimately sentenced to state prison. Bradley himself died in prison of gastrointestinal difficulty. Mucky McDonald was paroled in about three years. He left the area and never was heard from again.

Unionism remains silent in Butte until the Granite Mountain mining disaster in 1917. Could you describe the miners' situation at the time? What was their emotional tenure?

Well, if you look at the available accounts at the time the two or three years proceeding the Granite Mountain Fire was probably one of sullen acceptance of conditions. With World War I the price of copper took off. There was a great demand for copper because of the War. Wages did go up, and there was work. And so anybody that wanted to work in the mines who was able to work in the mines and wasn't black listed., got work in the mines. So things were good in a sense in that short of period of time. You have a situation in which, with the rush to production and given the existing labor laws of the time, there was a great deal of negligence in terms of dealing with safety issues. And we have to understand that metal mining, underground mining of any kind, today is also the most dangerous jobs in the country. And it was even more so then because of the absence of any kind of regulatory effort.

The Granite Mountain fire was one of the greatest disasters in [metal] mining history up to that time and in all of history. A hundred and sixty seven men lost their lives, burned to death, suffocated to death. Several of them were never identified. And the cause of the fire was negligence on the part of the company. Which had closed off and locked a, bulk heads escape doors that would have allowed the men in that mine to escape to another shaft and get out.

Describe for me that scene if I was a rescue worker going down into that mine. What would I be seeing?

You'd be seeing hundreds of men; fire fighters, rescue workers, desperately trying to do something, and unable to do anything. You probably had wives and children, especially the wives, relatives crowding around trying to find out about their loved ones. Friends of those that worked that shift, wondering what's going on. We've seen film footage of contemporary mine disasters to know what that's like.

How did the mine fire spark the strike of 1917?

It was, it was a catalyst. All the latent discontent with working conditions, with wages, with general situation in Butte all came to that one point. It was a catalyst, providing an opportunity for those who would have been waiting, many of the same leaders of the IWW and the abortive Butte Mine Workers Union, to try once again to re-establish labor unionism in the mines of Butte. And they ran with it basically, and with some success.

What was the fate of the strike, were the miners successful?

Again the miners were not successful. And here we come to something that was particularly an issue at that time and remains an issue to some extent in the labor movement to this day. The miners are being represented by a new organization now in 1917, called the Metal Mine Workers Union , loudly and vociferously, calling itself independent of any other union. But there were other people working in the mines, each with their separate unions. You had electricians and you had the engineers. Smelter men were a separate union. Those engaged in metal trades, blacksmiths and the carpenters were a separate union. And what happened to the 1917 strike was a peculiar problem of unionism, namely that you had all these people working for the same company but they were divided into ten, twenty, thirty different unions. The craft workers, the metal trade workers and so on. They didn't stick with the strike. And when they didn't stick with the strike, the strike began to collapse of itself. Cause you need everybody as the IWW said everybody in solidarity, everybody out on strike for a strike to be successful. And of course they were right. At that moment in time, mid to late July 1917, as the strike effort was beginning to peter out Frank Little came to Butte.

So, Frank Little comes to Butte, why did he come here?

Frank Little was on the executive board of the Industrial Workers of the World. He had actually been a member of the Western Federation of Miners. He was a miner, in part by profession. He first appears in the records as a delegate to the 1907 or 1908 national meeting of the Western Federation of Miners. Even then he was also a member of the IWW. Frank Little was one of those militant, rabidly militant members of the IWW. He did not mince his words. And he said something when he came to Butte. He said things that would be inclined to enrage lots of people who weren't supporters of the union. He said something to the effect for example, 'that the workers ought to force the bosses down to the pit and make them dig'. And he said that in the context of the strike that was waning. He was the classical outside agitator. He was unconnected to Butte. He came in from the outside. He saw it as an opportunity to for the IWW to capture the moment and seize control and momentum, which was actually waning. And to move the Butte miners in the IWW miners union. And for this, of course, he paid with his life.

What happened to him, what was his fate?

Frank Little was murdered , in the early morning hours in August of 1917. Contemporary accounts say that he was , pulled from his room in a boarding house, kidnaped by men, who are not yet identified, tied up and dragged by an automobile and then lynched from a railroad trestle. Where a working man found his body about seven in the morning.

What was the message pinned to his body?

The message pinned to Little's body was a reference to the vigilante days in Montana with several other letters, with the letter "L" circled or crossed out, the other letters most people thought were the last names of several other union leaders at the time, saying in effect warning them that they were next. But nothing more happened , the murder was a shocker. And who ever did it, who ever organized it, issued you know, they backed off basically no attempt to my knowledge was made to assassinate any other union leader at the time. But the practical effect of the , Little murder was to cause this , fire which was dying out to rekindle and the strike picked up speed again for awhile. But again because of the absence of solidarity on the part of the unions did not sustain itself. And eventually the men went back to work. Those who could go back to work who weren't black listed of course.

Was there a vigilante crowd and fervor, that was going on in Butte at the time. Did the war contribute to that hysteria, or do you think it was more of a union, why was he killed was it due to war hysteria or do you think it was due to union connections?

Frank Little was killed to send a message to the rest of the union militants, you're next. He was the perfect foil the outside agitator, the ranting wobbly. And he was a ranting wobbly who did not mince his words. He was the perfect candidate for martyrdom. And so he was martyred and is buried in the Mountain View Cemetery in Butte today. He became a martyr like all martyr not because of who he was but because of what he represented. You know, the victim, the working man murdered by the capitalist bosses. He became a symbol of that and he remains so today. People visit his grave in the Mountain View Cemetery just as they visit the graves of other militant labor leaders in American history.

There was some nation repercussions, in terms of legislation that was passed. I think Frank Little was the catalyst for that. The anti-sedition laws, how was his death used as an argument to pass those laws?

American entry into World War I illustrated the fault lines in the political culture. On the one side native born, or naturalized Americans who wanted to demonstrate in this time of crisis their patriotism, their nationalism, their loyalty. The other part was of course among many of the immigrants. They worked in the Butte mines, they themselves were victims, escapees if you will, from Colonial Empires. And , they had no incentive whatsoever to join the armed force of the United States and align themselves with the Great Britain, the oppressor of Ireland. Or align themselves with a Czarist Russia, the oppressor of the Russian working class. That's the context. It would be the equivalent of asking a Serb American to be drafted and then go and fight Yugoslavia. You know, it just it wouldn't be particularly a thing that someone would want to do.

Were the protests of ethnic minorities a concern to the national government?

In the establishment, the elite, the people that run things, there was the image of the dangerous immigrant. The carrier of the bacillus of evil ideas like Socialism and Anarchism. There was a concerted and largely successful attempt between 1900 and 1920 to reconfigure the electoral map of this country by creating a series of laws which made it much more difficult for immigrants to participate in the political life of this country. They made if much more difficult for political organizations other than democrat or republican to get on the ballot. One of the arguments for women's suffrage advanced at this time was women, that is white middle class women, if allowed to vote would negate the votes of immigrants who would probably vote for Socialists and other undesirable political ideas. So that the context again we're looking at.

In a nutshell, what was the purpose of the anti-sedition laws?

The purpose, the purpose of the state sedition acts and state criminal syndicalism acts was two. One was to suppress dissident speech. And in the case of the later, to outlaw industrial unionism, or any union that went beyond the narrow confines of wages, primarily. That was the basic goal. The war was a splendid opportunity for capitalist to really stomp on labor unionism in general and militant labor unionism in particular.

What was the fate of the IWW during this time in Butte?

The IWW had a base of support in Butte and so it was able to revive itself. The IWW basically led three consecutive strikes in1918, 1919, and 1920--all unsuccessful ultimately. They were pushing not the revolutionary agenda of the union but its bread and butter agenda, which is what unions, do. But the IWW was severely handicapped locally because of national events. Again, after the War jobs were hard to find. It wasn't a situation where workers could demand things. And there was also a series of repressive efforts by the national and state government to eradicate the Wobblies. The entire executive board of the union was arrested for sedition and tried in 1917 and convicted.

What was the reaction of the Anaconda Mining Company during this whole time?

The Anaconda Copper Mining Company gave lots of employment to private detective agencies as well as people they employed as spies, and agitators and so on. Military intelligence, the company itself, very efficiently infiltrated the IWW. Some of its people ended up being leaders and were identified as such. They made any effort possible to make sure the IWW never got beyond being simply a pest as it were.

It seems in Butte, it's miner against miner or union against union, instead of union against company which you see in other areas, is that true?

The situation in Butte of miner against miner or union man against union man is not particular of Butte, but is particular to the United States at this time. The United States unlike say Germany or France or Great Britain or Russian was a genuinely multi-ethnic society of new arrivals and recent arrivals and so on. It was extremely diverse socially. And these competing interests and philosophies made it very difficult to organize say miners in one union that would stick together because you had old time Irish miners who had roots in the community vis a vis young single Irish miners just off the boat, in relation to mine workers from Serbia from Croatia. You had this great diversity of people and languages which was peculiar to America.

So to state it more succinctly it was the ethnic diversity in America that prevented the "bonding" of the miners?

Right, the very ethnic diversity of miners and the competing interests that go with that ethnic diversity made it extremely difficult if not impossible to organize even Butte miners into one cohesive union that would stick together when times got tough.

What difference has this made for our lives? Is our life any better or different for what the men sacrificed?

Did the sacrifices of Butte miners and other workers at that time contribute in any way to the conditions we have today in terms of the quality of our lives? The answer to that is yes. Clearly, good ideas sometimes take decades to become public policy. If you go back and look at what the Socialist were advocating. You know what Progressives were advocating. What the IWW was advocating, those ideas, some of those ideas began to become reality. Sometimes then, sometimes later. But let's just take one example, , the idea that the mine owner has a legal duty to provide for safe and healthy working conditions for his employees. That was advocated by the Wobblies, by the Socialists, by more left wing Progressives. It began to beget reality finally in terms of law in the 1930's with the New Deal and remains to this day. So they pointed the way, they're the pioneers. You know, and pioneers make sacrifice. They're the ones that break the trail, the rest follow. Some other ideas that they advocated didn't become reality and a good thing too. The idea, for example, of government management of the economy. In a very direct and overt way a Soviet Model. Well that turned out to be a disaster in the long run for the Soviet Union. It would have been a disaster in any other country. So some ideas worked, some didn't work. Some ideas reconfigure themselves.

Anything you'd like to add?

I think what your viewers have to appreciate in this documentary is that to try to put themselves in the shoes literally of the people who are being described and remembered in this film. Try to appreciate and understand their lives and their choices and the options that were afore them. Try to remember that they were looking at the world differently than we are and that that difference had to do with a much more positive and progressive view of what the future would hold. People believed in the goodness of man. They believed, especially these radical unionists, that a just and good society was possible and attainable because of rational ability of people and their common sense and their common empathy with their fellow human beings. It's fair to say that in quote naïveté has been seriously tested by things like Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and more recently Rowanda, Bosinia and Kosovo.