"The Sump"

April is National Poetry Month. Here's a Butte poem you may not have read — it's not exactly uplifting!

THE SUMP
(Written for the Sunday NEWS by L.A. Osborne.)

Four hundred fathoms deep, the giant pump
Drinks greedily the water of the sump;
The sodden air, a noxious envelope,
Scarce feeds the candles in the murky stope.
’Tis here the miner nonchalantly goes
As calmly as a watchman to repose.
Yet, gather not from his deportment bold
That Death, with clutching, clammy fingers cold,
Lingers not ever eager at his side
To seize and ferry him o’er Styx’s tide.

Death sets a hundred traps—unshuddering
The miner steals the bait, nor starts the spring;
The next unlucky go, some oversight
Loosens the click—and then, good-night, good-night!
Insidiously the loosened rock descends;
Or fails the grip on which his life depends;
Or, prematurely, bearing death the blast
Mixes a mess at which men stand aghast;
Of slips the foot beside the yawning chute—
You take your dreadful toll, O mines of Butte!

The drift is driving: roars the loud machine,
Whose furious forces meet resistance keen;
Firm as the crank, observant but at ease,
The stanch machine man holds control of these.
Alert with his good partner at the chuck
To get the round in by their pluck and luck;
With half a mile of granite overhead,
And all around what best is left unsaid.

No fractures holes nor dallies intervene;
The round is finished—down comes their machine.
“I rather think we took an extra ‘five,”
If we’re to blast we’d better look alive;
’Tis either that or else we go on top—
Let’s hurry up and then we’ll take a flop.

“Go get the powder; get the headache stuff
And don’t forget to bring along enough;
And cut it extra long, that treacherous fuse—
’Twas sent here not to look at, but to use;
And while you’re at it don’t forget, old-timer,
For every water hold a double primer.

“Twelve holes to spit; the ‘cut’ holes will be mine;
You take the ‘backs;’ don’t follow me too fine;
Then for the ‘lifters’—ready? Let her go!
Zip, zip, zip, zip—look out below!
The ‘lifters’ now, those lads we mustn’t miss;
Whew, what smoke! It’s fierce—Aha! hiss! hiss!—
My two are gone—say, partner, can’t you score?
Won’t light? Then cut her, cut her yet once more!
O, partner, wait no longer, come away;
Let it alone! It is not safe to stay!
One moment!—let the ornery thing go hang
Me for the crosscut, come in, pardner.” —Bang!
Two more unfortunates gone to their rest—
All that is left of them—blown from the ‘breast’!

Butte Montana, February 19, 1910.
Published in the Butte Evening News, Feb. 20, 1910.

L.A. Osborne was a miner who, in 1910, roomed at the Windsor Hotel that stood just east of the Hirbour Tower and west of the Butte Hotel. 

Butte’s Canine Population, 1910

By Richard I. Gibson

(Click pictures to enlarge)

Monte Christo

“Butte has more dogs for a city of its size than any town in America. This is the opinion of every traveler who ever stopped off on his way east or west and of every citizen, be he dog fancier or dog hater, who has taken the time to think of something besides business. And it’s true.”

“You see dogs everywhere. On leashes and off leashes, on the run, on the sneak, on the yelp or on some other less fortunate brother dog’s neck.” 
—Butte Evening News, Feb. 20, 1910


The Butte Kennel Club was organized in 1907 with James Keefe as its president and architect Herman Kemna among its first members. By 1910 the club had grown to 70 members, active in breeding and showing dogs across the nation. Bally Tip, Keefe’s Airedale, was touted by the Butte Evening News as “one of the greatest dogs in the country.” Airedales seemed to be a favorite in Butte, with more than 60 in residence in 1910 and at least six that had taken blue ribbons in national competitions. “Butte stands supreme” in the entire nation in terms of winning Airedales, the News bragged.

Keefe was proprietor of the Post-Office News Stand at 27 West Park. His home where Bally Tip presumably lived was at 313 S. Dakota. Kemna lived at 635 South Main. Keefe’s house is still standing, but Kemna’s appears to be gone.

Flossie

The fancy house at 303 South Idaho (southwest corner of Idaho and Silver) once housed Butte’s Bachelors’s Club, and their mascot, Bach, an English Bull. Fire Chief Pete Sanger’s collie Flossie held forth at the Station on Quartz Street (today’s Archives building) as the Fire Department mascot. Flossie came to Butte direct from Scotland.

Dr. E.F. Maginn of 635 W. Granite (a home designed by Butte architect Henry Patterson) had “a string of silver cups long enough to go round a small hall,” won by his English Bull Terrier Monte Christo and other canines.

Sources: Butte Evening News, Feb. 20, 1910 (photos and quotes); Dogdom, v. 8, 1907, p. 956 (Kemna letter); city directories; Sanborn maps.

Mrs. E. Creighton Largey (1884-1939)

Largey mansion, Broadway at Washington Street. The multi-columned home directly to the left is Largey Flats, built for visiting relatives and friends of the Largey family. It survives; the mansion burned down c. 1965. See below for more images.

By Richard I. Gibson

Even though Urusula Largey and Julia Coughlin only lived about seven blocks from each other, it’s pretty unlikely that they ever met. The divide between 223 East Granite and 403 West Broadway was deeper than the Mountain Con.

Ursula March was a well-known actress on the New York and traveling stage in the early 1900s. She played the female lead in the musical fantasy “Land of Nod” for two seasons about 1905-07. Butte’s E. Creighton Largey followed the company from town to town, courting Miss March, and they were ultimately wed July 22, 1908 (many sources say 1907, but it is almost certainly 1908), with write-ups on the wedding in New York theater gossip columns.

Creighton was the younger scion of Patrick Largey, often called Butte’s fourth copper king. Patrick started in Butte managing the Butte Hardware Company, but by 1890, when Creighton was three years old, Patrick had established the State Savings Bank, was a partner in Butte’s first electric and power generating company, and helped start the Inter Mountain Publishing Company. He would be a millionaire well before his murder in 1898, an event which set Creighton up as heir and co-manager of the estate.

After Ursula and Creighton married and set themselves up in the Largey mansion in Butte, directly across the street from the Charles Clark mansion (Arts Chateau), they became central to Butte’s social whirl.

In February 1910 Mrs. E. Creighton Largey threw a party to honor the first wedding anniversary of Mr. & Mrs. Phil Carr. It was a lavish affair, with Ursula and Creighton receiving at least 34 guests in the second floor red drawing room, likely comparable in size to one floor of Julia Coughlin’s home. An “elaborate, delicious” supper was served at midnight; miniature railroad cars honored the Carrs; “immense wedding bells of cotton sparkling with crystal dust” decorated the premises along with white satin streamers and asparagus vines; the edible ices were designed as flowers, doves, and hearts. Place markers at table were commissioned works of art. Guests included Dr. and Mrs. Frederick McCrimmon and Fred McQueeney.

The hostess wore a satin gown of orchid hue, and “her only adornments were diamonds.” She performed an impromptu musicale, recalling her stage career.

It was at a party similar to this one, also hosted by Ursula Largey, but across the street in the Charles Clark Chateau which the Largeys then owned, that the state song of Montana was written.

When Creighton and Ursula “tired of a life of ease” and left Butte in 1915, they headed to Los Angeles, where among other things Ursula helped form and directed the Venice Community Players, part of the growing “Little Theater” movement. She died in 1939. Creighton survived her by 24 years, dying in Los Angeles in 1963.

Resources: The Butte Evening News, Feb. 27, 1910; New York Dramatic Mirror, August 1908. House photo from A Brief History of Butte, Freeman, 1900, scanned by Butte Public Library.

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Photo that is almost certainly the Largey House. Courtesy Sara Rowe (Sassy's Consignments) The central bay shows some changes from the photo above, but it is very similar to the drawing below.

Largey house, circa 1902-03, Artist W.H. Thorndike, republished in Montana Standard, 12/16/2014.

Emma Goldman comes to Butte

Emma Goldman c. 1911

Most students of Butte history know of one notorious woman’s visit to Butte in 1910: Carrie Nation brought her hatchet but had little impact locally, beyond entertainment. Another woman, prominent in her day, also visited Butte in 1910—Emma Goldman.

Not a household name today, Emma Goldman was indeed well known nationally in 1910, as an anarchist, anti-religion zealot, advocate for birth control and homosexual rights, and more. Butte culminated her five-month 1910 tour, which her manager boasted “had not a single encounter with the police.” Among her previous run-ins with the police was an arrest in 1901, following the assassination of William McKinley by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Goldman admitted meeting Czolgosz, but disavowed any connection with his act; she was released two weeks later after “third degree” interrogation. (Image below, from Anaconda Standard, Sept. 22, 1901.)

In Butte at the Carpenter’s Union Hall on Granite Street Goldman spoke in June 1910 on “Francisco Ferrer and the Modern School.” Ferrer was a fellow anarchist and educator, executed in Spain because the church feared his teachings, according to Goldman. Her second speech focused on “The White Slave Trade,” by which she mostly referred to prostitution. Butte had quite a reputation in that area, of course, but it was a nationwide issue.

Goldman came to Butte three more times, in 1912, 1913, and 1914. Although she was an American citizen by virtue of marriage, her husband’s citizenship was revoked and courts held that had invalidated Emma’s as well. She was deported to Russia (her 1869 birthplace was in Lithuania, at the time a part of the Russian Empire) in 1920. She had become known as “the most dangerous woman in America.” Disillusioned with the Soviet experiment, she left in 1921 and spent the rest of her life—not quietly—in Europe and Canada. She died in 1940.

As a personal aside, as much as I know that Butte was an incubator for all manner of ideologies, and that all manner of people needed and wanted to visit Butte in those days, it pretty much freaks me out that Emma Goldman came to Butte four times. And spoke in places that I pass nearly every day.

Photo c. 1911 from Library of Congress via Wikipedia.