April 21, 1920, Butte Montana. – The
“Richest Hill in the World” was facing an unknown, to them, threat. A strike
against the largest employer in Butte, the Anaconda Copper Mine.
On April 19, 1920, a membership vote was taken and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and
the Metal Mine Workers Industrial Union called for a strike against
the copper mines in Butte. Strikes and union activity were hardly unknown in
Butte. Before America entered World War One, Butte was one of the strongest union cities in the United States. Starting with the unionization of
silver miners. In 1887 the power was with the unions that supported miner safety, better wages, and fair hours.
As the city grew in population
due to a booming mine economy, union power also grew and by 1900 there were few
professions without a union.
This included blacksmiths, brewers, construction trades, stage
workers and musicians.
However, the business owners and
leaders who hated the power of the unions and devised ways to break them
or at least moderate their power and unity. They began by putting the unions
against each other in power struggles for greater membership and influence. By
1914 as the rest of the world looked unsettled with the European powers
appearing to head into an unavoidable conflict, the unions in Butte had had
their confrontation. Socialists, Conservatives, and IWW members clashed. Using
private detectives like the Pinkertons the mine owners had uncovered enough
information to cause these conflicts but also had infiltrated the unions and
put them against each other arguing that union leaders did not represent
workers.
Mine owners also played up old
prejudices and ethnic and national distrust. English against the Irish, Poles
against Prussians, Belarusians and Austrians, Danes and Finns, Turks and
Armenians. Using propaganda and infiltration the mine owners created distrust
and suspicions based on ancient tribal grievances.
The mine owners cared little for
what the unions wanted or fought for. To them there was an unending stream of
manual labor coming from the poorest areas of Europe, Asia and Mexico. Mining was not safe and even with concessions to the unions there
was an average of at least one death a week in the Butte mines and regularly explosions
killing six to ten men at once.
Then there were the toxins copper
mining. Copper dust was itself a toxic inhalant that resulted in asthma and
emphysema. Mines also used mercury and arsenic in the separating processes to refine
the metal, which was dangerous. However, by the time war broke out the ongoing
propaganda operations had created some strong divisions and what had been a
powerful presence in 1900 had lost much of their power.
After the war ended, the Metal
Mine Workers Union and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) tried to step into the power vacuum. When they declared a strike on
April 19 they were trying to gain two things for workers; a standardized 8-hour
day and the end of the “Rustling Card” used by mine owners to ostracize
workers and eventually expel them from Butte and other mining towns for being
unreliable troublemakers. This was how they treated anyone talking about
unionization or organization.
After the strike began the union
miners started picketing and blocking the roads to the mines from workers who
wanted to cross the picket lines. By the end of the next day the strikers had shut
down all the roads to the mines slowing production. The Daily
Bulletin in Butte reported that Anaconda Mine manager Cornelius “Con” Kelley had suggested killing striking workers.
On the morning of the 21st,
Sheriff John K. O’Rouke met with I.W.W. strike leaders at the “Neversweat” mine
on Anaconda Road to negotiate opening the roads. He was met with refusal to stop picketing until the mine owners gave in. Then O’Rouke met Kelley and at his suggestion deputized Anaconda mine security.
This was instantly a bad idea.
Security was under the complete control of Kelley and had been preaching about
the radicals infiltrating the unions. When the miners would not move off the
Anaconda Road at the direction of Anaconda Security The guardsmen opened fire. They
hit 17 of the striking miners who had run when the guns started firing. Most
had run downhill and were wounded.
Three men were hurt severely. Thomas Manning a popular young man who had recently immigrated from Ireland was shot through the bladder and the bullet exited out his abdomen. Manning was mortally wounded and died a week later. Another man Thomas Sullivan was paralyzedwith a bullet shattering his spine. He never walked again and went back to Ireland where he died from a bullet in his kidney 8 months later. Miner John McCarthy was shot 14 times, he did eventually recover and became a lawyer.
The other wounded men all had
wounds from the bullets, some that left permanent injury, but they lived for
years after, many remained in Butte. A coroner’s inquest was held at the
request of the sheriff. Dozens of witnesses testified. Many of the union
workers insisted that Anaconda lawyer and advisor Roy S. Alley had fired the
first shot hitting Manning; both the sheriff and the coroner
felt there wasn’t enough evidence to support that conclusion and ruled the
shooting was at the hands of unidentified individuals.
Kelley went on the offensive with newspapermen interviews and community groups stating that the I.W.W. was at
fault and initiated the violence. He gave speeches and talks for months after
identifying the I.W.W. as radicals who weren’t working for worker rights but to
subvert the mining culture. Kelley said the IWW wanted to take over the labor movement and change the United States with the dreaded
“Socialism”. All industries across America began labeling the I.W.W. as Socialist or Communist it would not recover from the accusations.
Kelley became one of the most
important figures in mining through the first half of the 20th
Century. The Anaconda Road Massacre and other labor actions in the 1930s never affected
his reputation. He helped bargain the Anaconda purchase of the Chuquicamata
copper operation in Chile and the Cananea copper mine in northern Mexico. By
the time World War II broke out Anaconda was the largest copper mining company
in the world and had revolutionized the fabrication of wire and piping.
At Mannings funeral Ralph
Chaplin, poet of the I.W.W., spoke and framed the current and future of the
Anaconda Mining Company: “The overlords of Butte will not permit their right to
exploit to be challenged. Drunk with unbridled power and the countless millions
profiteered during the war, with lying phrases of “law and order” on their
lips, the blood of workingmen dripping from their hands, and the gold of the
government bursting their coffers, they face the nation unreprimanded and
unashamed – reaction militant, capitalism at its worst. The copper trust can
murder its slaves in broad daylight on any occasion and under any pretext.
There is no law to call a halt. In the confines of this greed-ruled city, the
gunman has replaced the Constitution. Butte is a law unto itself.”
Sources:
https://libcom.org/article/when-toil-meant-trouble-buttes-labour-heritage
https://weneverforget.org/tag/anaconda-road-massacre-of-1920/
https://www.mininghalloffame.org/hall-of-fame/cornelius-francis-kelley
https://www.verdigrisproject.org/butte-americas-story-blog/butte-americas-story-episode-6
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