Butte 1914

by Richard I. Gibson

I had the honor of speaking to Butte’s Homer Club on May 5, 2014, the occasion of their 122nd annual Spring Banquet. The Homer Club is the oldest women’s club in Montana, dating to 1891. This post is modified slightly from my presentation to them.

This year, 2014, is a great year for anniversaries. It’s the 150th anniversary of the Territory of Montana, the 150th birthday of artist Charlie Russell, and the 150th anniversary of the first prospectors here in Butte.

It’s also some important Montana centennials – 100 years since women got the vote here, and 100 years since the destruction of the Miners Union Hall, which touched off some incredible, internationally significant labor unrest.

So I thought I would talk a little today about Butte in 1914.

Butte in 1914 was approaching its peak – the peak of population, the peak of copper production. In 1914 Butte probably had around 80,000 people, maybe more, on the way to nearly 100,000 in 1917. As you know they were from all over the world, and from all walks of life, but mining was why Butte was here. More than 10,000 men worked underground in 1914.

The city had to be an amazingly active place. Every photo you see, the streets are filled with people, people, people. A lot of the historic buildings we still have today were standing in 1914. The Leggatt Hotel opened its doors that spring, rising from the ashes of the Maguire Opera House that had stood at that site since 1888. On the east side, Tony Canonica was building his tin shop on South Arizona Street. In the heart of town, the Iona Café was under construction on Main, across from the Metals Bank. You may remember it as the State Café.

Most of the main uptown streets were probably paved with granite pavers, those blocks about the size of a loaf of bread – hundreds and hundreds of them. Park Street was probably paved about 1908, and I suspect that Broadway and Granite, as well as Main, Montana, and Utah followed pretty quickly.

I’m not sure, but I suspect that residential side streets like Quartz and Copper and Silver probably were not paved yet, even on the well-to-do middle class west side. But they did have concrete sidewalks, at least in places. The oldest “City of Butte” sidewalk with a date in it that I’ve seen is 1910, somewhere around Galena and Alabama. There is one at the corner of Idaho and Quartz dated 1914, and there are a fair number of 1916 dates in sidewalks around the uptown. So Butte was definitely cleaning up its act, and the best of everything any merchant could offer, anywhere in the United States, was available in Butte in the 1910s.

Why? Because even though it was a mining town, it was also the largest urban metropolis in the whole vast area from Minneapolis to Denver to Salt Lake City to Spokane. An upscale, cultured metropolis, as the beginning of the Homer Club in 1891 proves. As an aside, when I was researching things for this talk, I discovered that the first meeting of the Homer Club was at the home of the founder, Mrs. Caspar, at 409 West Quartz – just a block from where I live. That little house is still standing, too. The west side was just taking off then, but within 10 years or so things were pretty well built up to Excelsior and beyond.

In 1914 Minnie Bowman was your president. Her husband was president of the Montana School of Mines, and they lived at 1020 Caledonia, with the BA&P railroad behind their back yard. New bungalows were going up a couple blocks west on Caledonia in the spring of 1914. Minnie was succeeded as president by Lina Speer, who lived at 508 South Main where she managed the Princeton Apartment building.

Minnie probably shopped in all the stores in Uptown Butte. That spring, she could have bought pillow cases at 10 for a dollar at Hennessys, or bought her husband a raincoat for $5. Maybe she bought shoes at Symons – marked down from $5 to $2.35, or found a silk shirt for herself at Connells, for $1.95. As the wife of the President of the school of mines, Minnie must have entertained frequently. If she needed a piano, the Howard Music Company on North Main, where Len Waters is today, had low-end used pianos for $125, and high-end ones for $500. Orton Brothers music across the street offered expensive pianos with a time payment plan - $1 a week – but I bet Minnie would shop at the Howard Music Company, because Blanche Howard, wife of the owner, was recording secretary of the Homer Club that year. They lived at 518 North Henry, and their neighbor at 514 was a well-known Homer Club member. Just the year before, 1913, Helen Fitzgerald Sanders had completed her massive three-volume series covering the History of Montana.

Dr. Ironside was one of the most prominent dentists. If you needed a full set of dentures in 1914, it would run you $10 to $35 per set.

For entertainment, perhaps you’d go to the Orpheum on Park. In May 1914, The Fulfillment was playing – three reels of a “stirring drama with situations that unfold scenes of unparalleled sacrifice and emotion.” Pretty much, it was boy meets girl, girl loves another boy, boys become best friends, girl rejects boy #2, who is to be boy #1’s best man, boy #1 tries to rescue Boy #2 from an inferno, is reported dead; Girl becomes demented; boy #2 recants, brings girl and boy #1 together in marriage and serves as Best Man. All that for 10¢.

For live entertainment, you could go to the Empress on Broadway – the second Empress, as the first, which stood where the Leggatt Hotel is now, had burned in 1912, and the Leggatt had just opened its doors a few months earlier in 1914. At the Empress the greatest comedy variety show of the season was playing, “More Sinned Against Than Usual.” This live show cost 10¢ to 25¢ for the matinee, and up to 35¢ for the evening show. 

The headlines of the day, in May 1914, focused on Mexico – the Mexican Revolution and Civil War were in progress, and Poncho Villa was in the news almost daily. The first week of May 1914 the Anaconda Standard had a photo of US troops raising the American flag in the Mexican port of Vera Cruz.

The Butte Coppers baseball team had traveled to Idaho to face the Boise Irrigators on Opening Day. Manager Ducky Holmes would lead the team to second place in the league that year.

Women’s suffrage was also in the news almost daily. Thousands of women marched in a Great Suffrage parade in Washington DC on May 10. Suffragists in Butte were busy preparing for the visit of Grace Cotterill, wife of the Seattle mayor who spent the week in Butte. She spoke three times at the Carpenters Union Hall and led meetings all over town, from Hornet Street below Big Butte to the Napton Apartments to Texas and Grand Street.

The mining world was reeling from the news on April 20, from Colorado, of a massacre of striking coal miners. Two dozen, including women and children, were killed by the Colorado militia and company thugs at a tent city outside Trinidad Colorado, at Ludlow. The army banned the importation of guns and ammunition to the state of Colorado, fearing that they would arm either striking miners, or mine guards, or both.

The Ludlow Massacre must have stirred the emotions of miners here in Butte. The miner’s wage was $3.50 a day, a pay rate that really was pretty high for hard labor, among the best pay in the United States. But it had been $3.50 a day since 1878 – 36 years without a raise, while the price of copper tripled. Tempers were raw, and radical activists including the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World, saw an opportunity.

Just two months after the Ludlow Massacre, at the Miners Union Day parade here on June 13, activists, drunks, someone stirred up the crowd, and a mob attacked the Union Hall on North Main Street. The place was ransacked and the safe taken.

10 days of fighting, dissent, conversation, and argument culminated in the dynamiting of the Union Hall on June 23, 1914. That event is easy to point to as the ignition, the spark, that touched off six years of labor history here in Butte that echoes down the decades to this day. It led to Frank Little coming to Butte and his being murdered here – and people come to Butte today from all over the world, from London, from Berlin, to see his grave and the city that killed him. It led to the sedition act that resulted in people being arrested for saying anything at all against the US government, the war, or the Anaconda Company. It led to the Anaconda Road Massacre in 1920 that put an end to the labor movement here for close to 20 years. At that point, the company’s control was absolute. They controlled more than just the mines – they essentially controlled the state of Montana. They controlled the legislature, the state supreme court, and they owned most of Montana’s newspapers. I don’t like the way you look – you’re fired! YOU were talking to the cousin of an IWW agent. You’re fired. That was not legal, but it did not matter. They did what they wanted.

Five days after the Union Hall was dynamited, the news headlines changed. Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated, and the War to End All Wars began. The repercussions in Butte would be huge – but that’s another story.

Through it all, Butte of course continued its day to day life, and the Homer Club continued to meet. If I had to say, I would suspect that most of the Homer Club’s members in 1914 would have been pro-company. In many ways, class distinction trumped ethnicity and religion, and it’s unlikely that a simple miner’s wife would hob-nob with the high-class ladies of Butte’s society pages.

In addition to President Minnie Bowman, wife of the School of Mines president, your 1914 corresponding secretary, Cora Copenharve, was the wife of the City Editor of the Anaconda Standard, the mouthpiece of the Anaconda Company. Treasurer Ada Messias’s husband was the chief clerk to the W.A. Clark Interests. That might have caused some interesting tensions, since Clark’s vocal opposition to the Anaconda Company was well known, even though by 1914 he was spending little time in Butte. 

Among your members in 1914 was the widow of Daniel Hennessy – he owned the Hennessy Department Store and the building that housed the company. He died in 1908, but his widow continued to live in the mansion at the corner of Park and Excelsior.

Then there’s Mrs. John Noyes – matriarch of a family grown rich by selling mines to various copper kings and huge swaths of Butte land to real estate developers. The Homer Club met at her large house on East Granite at Wyoming within the first year of its founding, in 1892. That house is gone today.

Mrs. John D. Ryan was another Homer Club member in 1914. Ryan became not only the president of the Anaconda Company, but president of the Montana Power Company as well, and was one of the most powerful men in the United States. Their mansion is on North Excelsior.

In 1914 the Homer Club was focusing its meetings on a study of all aspects of drama. The late April meeting topic was Famous Actors and Actresses and how they influenced playwrights of their time.

1914 was a pretty amazing year, in Butte and in the wide world.

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1914 newspaper images from collection at Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives

Friday Photo: Walkerville

I'm shamelessly stealing an idea from Ellen Baumler's Montana Moments blog. Here's a Butte History Friday Photo for you.

The scene is Walkerville, around 1900, with part of the Alice mine complex in the background. Image from Library of Congress.

Three more Walkerville posts can be found here.

Citizenship Denied, With Prejudice

By Richard I. Gibson

What did it take to become a U.S. citizen in Butte in 1917? The basic requirements were about as they are today, five years of residency and pass a citizenship test. You had to get two witnesses to testify to your character as well. So, more interestingly, what did it take to be denied citizenship?

I went through 750 petitions for citizenship in the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives, spanning most of the time from 1915 to 1920. At a guess, maybe 10% or so were denied. Let’s list the reasons for denying citizenship in Butte in 1917.

Without prejudice

First, you could be denied without prejudice. These were mostly technicalities, of which by far the most common was “failure to diligently prosecute the petition,” which I think means that too much time had gone by between the applicant’s Declaration of Intent to become a citizen and the actual hearing to address the question, but it seems to be a reason that is separate from “Declaration of Intent more than seven years old.” 

The second-most common cause for denying a petition was having witnesses that were incompetent. That included witnesses who were not themselves U.S. citizens, as well as those who had inadequate personal knowledge of the petitioner for the necessary five years. Other fairly common reasons included the petitioner withdrawing the application, often because of returning to his or her native country, and an application that was from someone who lived outside the jurisdiction of the Silver Bow County court.

I saw only two applications denied for not knowing enough about civil government (i.e., they failed the test), and one was rejected because he couldn’t read English. Two lost out because they had filed their intent to become citizens before they were 18 years old, which invalidated the petition, and two others had renounced their allegiance to the wrong government (one renounced Germany, one France, when both were determined to be subject to the King of England). A few failed to satisfy the 5-year residency requirement. One of them had returned to England for a year, invalidating his intent. A few used different names in the declaration of intent and the petition to become a citizen, and that was a no-no. One woman’s request to become a citizen was denied because she claimed her husband was a citizen when he was not. And about 10 petitions were dismissed because the petitioner was dead.

Five or six applications were nullified because the petitioner was already a citizen, typically having obtained it while in the U.S. military. Once you had declared your intent to become a citizen, you were subject to the draft even if you hadn’t yet received citizenship. One applicant was denied his petition for failing to register for the draft in Butte on June 5, 1917 – but his request was dismissed without prejudice, as was the request of the one illegal immigrant in the record, a seaman who deserted his British ship.

With prejudice

In all the 750 petitions, I only found only ten who were denied citizenship “with prejudice.” Two of them were men of “immoral character,” though the details were not specified. One other applicant appeared before the court “under the influence of liquor,” and another was disrespectful of the court in some way. One did not admit to having an arrest record. Another refused to pay “a reasonable fee to take depositions regarding his residency and character” – since that sounds like a technicality to me, I have to wonder if there was more to it than that.

Three were denied in connection with their rejection of military service – one “refused to bear arms in support of the U.S. government;” another was a deserter under the Selective Draft Law; and the third claimed exemption from military service, contrary to his Declaration of Intent which said otherwise.

This research all came about because Don Plessas was researching his grandfather, Peter Gaida. You can find much more about him and his descendents, and about Meaderville, in Don’s book, Katie’s Story, which you can find in Butte at the Archives, in bookstores, at the Visitor Center, and elsewhere.

Don discovered that Peter Gaida’s application for citizenship was denied, with prejudice, because of “his association with the I.W.W. organization in Butte, Montana.”

Even acknowledging the turmoil and contentiousness in Butte over the I.W.W. and other labor unions, this seems to be a remarkable thing – to deny citizenship for that reason. The denial came on January 25, 1918, near the height of the anti-Communist, anti-German, hyper-patriotic hysteria sweeping Montana during World War I, but it still seems surprising, especially since it is the only one out of 750 applicants denied for such a blatantly political reason. The I.W.W. boasted hundreds if not thousands of members in Butte in the late 1910s, and it’s hard to believe that Peter Gaida was the only non-citizen I.W.W. member to apply for citizenship then. Maybe he was the only one whose witnesses tattled on him. Don and I will continue to research this.

Don’s grandfather, Peter Gaida, remained in Butte, but died in 1922 from miner’s consumption (silicosis) when Don’s mother Katie was four years old. Her story includes the remarkable history of Meaderville, and I recommend it highly.

Thanks to Don Plessas for the discovery and permission to blog about it.

Take me out to the ball game

By Richard I. Gibson

Minor league baseball in Butte began about 1892, when Butte was part of the Montana State League. In 1900, the team was called the Butte Smoke Eaters, but (perhaps because the smelters were moving away to Anaconda, and the atmosphere in Butte was improving) by 1902 the Butte Miners were playing, as part of the Pacific Northwest League.

The league the Butte Miners played in was variously the Pacific Northwest, Pacific National, Northwestern, or Inter-Mountain, and from 1911-1914 they were part of the Union Association.

In April 1914 the team that took the field was managed by James William “Ducky” Holmes, a 45-year-old pro with 21 years in the minors including eight years as a manager. Most of his career was in Nebraska and Iowa (where he was born, January 28, 1869), with some years as far away as Detroit. 1914 was his only year in Butte. He was 5’6” tall, 170 pounds, and batted left and threw right. His career lasted until 1922, and he died in Iowa in 1932.

The 1914 Butte Miners finished second in the League, after the Boise Irrigators and ahead of the Helena Senators, Murray (Utah) Infants, Ogden Canners, and Salt Lake City Skyscrapers. Butte led the league in 1913. Butte's 1914 players who had some time with the majors included John Halla (Cleveland, 1905), Ed McCreery (three games for Detroit in late 1914), and Steve Melter (St. Louis in 1909).

After the 1917 season, Butte had no minor league team until 1978 when the Butte Copper Kings franchise began.


Photo from Anaconda Standard, April 19, 1914
Reference: http://www.baseball-reference.com

Happy St. Patrick's Day - 1903

From the March 15, 1903, Anaconda Standard. The vignettes are Ross Castle, Killarney (upper right) and The Vale of Avoca (lower left). The artist, Willis Hale Thorndike, was born on Feb. 8, 1872 in Stockton, California, and studied art in San Francisco, Paris and New York. He began his career with the San Francisco Chronicle in 1890. By about 1901 he was in Anaconda, living at the Montana Hotel and working as an illustrator for the Anaconda Standard. He appears to have met and married Irene Hunsicker in Anaconda, and they lived there until they left for New York on January 3, 1904. Back east, Thorndike worked for the New York Herald and Baltimore Sun until 1915 when he returned to California. He worked as a political cartoonist in Los Angeles from 1928 until his death there on March 18, 1940.

Robert C. Logan

Today’s post is part of African-American History Month.

By Richard I. Gibson

Robert Logan traveled the world, spent most of his life in Butte, and started out a slave.

He never knew his parents. At age one, in 1859, he was sold into slavery in Lexington, Kentucky for $150. His master, Edward W. Powell, raised race horses, and Robert rode as a jockey as well as performing other duties for Powell and other horsemen. When Logan was 17 he fled Kentucky and for the next dozen years survived one way or another. In 1890, he arrived in Butte. According to the 1890 census, there were 1,490 African-Americans living in Montana then.

Logan took one of the only semi-professional jobs available to a Black man in 1890, as a porter on the Butte-to-Salt Lake run of the Union Pacific Railroad. During layovers in Salt Lake City, he took voice lessons from Evan Stevens, the Director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and other voice instructors in Salt Lake City. They helped him make his deep voice into a world-renowned instrument.

Logan sang in 1896 before 30,000 people at the Welsh International Eisteddfod musical competition in Denver and was the only non-white finalist. The winner “was a foregone conclusion,” a Welshman, but Robert Logan came in second. This launched his career as a singer.

In 1899 he joined a Black minstrel group, the Georgia Minstrels, that performed in 40 states, 10 Canadian provinces, Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand. His deep bass voice became famous. “His range covers more than two full octaves with his lower notes resembling the distant vibration of thunder,” according to a New South Wales newspaper review in 1899. And in Hawaii, he reportedly portrayed Simon Legree in Uncle Tom's Cabin so well that the "audience was ready to do him bodily harm."

The troupe included Butte on its itinerary, and when in Butte they often performed at parties hosted by William Andrews Clark, Jr., presumably at Will’s home on Galena Street. W.A. Clark., Jr. was the founder of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 1919.

Logan tired of the traveling performer’s life and returned to Butte permanently in 1905. He took a job as janitor for the Miner’s Savings Bank and Trust on West Park Street when they opened their doors in 1907, and held the job until he retired in 1935. He continued to sing with the Bethel Baptist Church choir – he and his wife Elizabeth lived at 112 S. Idaho Street, just two doors north of the African-American Bethel Baptist Church at the corner of Idaho and Mercury. Robert and Elizabeth organized the choir, and Elizabeth was the accompanist until her death in 1935. The sites of the church and the Logan home are occupied by the Fire Station today.

He continued to sing for special events, including the 1921 funeral of General Charles S. Warren at Mountain View Methodist Church. Warren was the first Chief of Police in Butte, a co-founder of the Inter Mountain Publishing Company, and a charter member and first president of the Silver Bow Club. Warren Island, in Lake Pend Oreille, is named for him. Warren lived at 211 S. Washington, so was a near neighbor to Robert and Elizabeth Logan.

Even at age 83 Logan was a soloist and singer with the Butte Male Chorus. He died in 1945, remembered as one of the greatest bass singers of his day. Robert and Elizabeth Logan are buried in Butte's Mt. Moriah Cemetery.

Resources: primary biography – Montana Standard, March 1, 1942; Montana Standard, March 3, 1945; The Crisis, W.E.B. duBois, ed., 1921; Montana, Its Story and Biography, edited by Tom Stout, American Historical Society, 1921. Thanks to Cheryl Ackerman for finding the 1942 news article.

Naming of the Neversweat

The famous seven stacks, 1900.

The following is taken verbatim from Mining Reporter, Dec. 29, 1904.

NAMING OF THE NEVERSWEAT MINE

We have been entertained many times by the quaint naming of well-known mines, but strangely few of such stories find their way into print. Among mines of queer names and stories are the "Wake Up Jim," "R. A. M.," "Wano-Wato," "X10U8," the alleged Pontius Pilate group on Holy Cross mountain and so forth. At one time the naming of mining claims so appealed to the riotous imaginations of the early miners that the federal government took a hand in the game and made regulations as to how far they could go in giving their locations a name.

The stories as to how some claims received their curious appellations are always Interesting. The Anaconda Standard vouches for the following:

It has been told in the Standard on more than one occasion how the great Anaconda and St. Lawrence mines received their names. A companion mine to these mines is the Never Sweat, and at the present time it may be doubted if there is any greater mine in the entire Butte camp than the Never Sweat mine. While in years past more ore has been taken out of the famed Anaconda, at the present time there is no mine from which a greater amount of ore is taken than from the Never Sweat. It is down 2,200 feet and there is no deeper mine in the camp save the Anaconda itself, which is down 2,400 feet.

H. S. Clark, one of Butte's most esteemed pioneers, was telling to a party of friends the other day how the Never Sweat received its peculiar name.

"I think it was back in the year 1875 that it was located," said Mr. Clark. "I was clerk of the court at the time and it was the custom with a number of the prospectors in those days to give me an interest in the mines they located provided I would file the location and pay the fee, few of the prospectors having much ready cash. Some of my interests in the mines I kept for years; some I gave away; some I sold for little or nothing some I got a good thing out of. All of them nearly would have yielded me handsomely had I held onto them to later days.

"Among the locations made at that time was the Never Sweat. Joe Ransom and Bill McNamara were the locators and they gave me an interest in the property with them.

"Ransom and McNamara had got a little hole dug, perhaps forty or fifty feet deep, when they came by my cabin one day.

"'Well, how is the mine coming on, boys?' I asked.

"'It's a cinch we will never sweat any taking ore out of that hole,' said Ransom.

"'What have you named it?'

"'Ain't named it yet, and don't think it is worth naming," said McNamara.

"'You'd better name it so I can put the location on record in correct shape,' I said.

"'Well, you name it,' said Ransom.

"'Then we'll call it the Never Sweat mine,' said I, 'as you think you will never sweat taking ore out of it.'

"So that is the name it received and the name it has always had. I think I afterwards got about $1,500 for my interest."

The mine is worth untold millions at this day.

* * *

Photo from A Brief History of Butte by Harry C. Freeman, 1900.