The
Cast of Characters
in Fire and Brimstone
The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917
By Michael Punke
The 1917 fire and mining
disaster in Butte, Montana broke out
in the combustible environment created
by four decades (1875-1917) of corporate
abuse at the hands of the Robber Barons. The fire ignited
strikes, murder, ethnic and political
witch hunts, occupation by federal troops,
and ultimately a battle over presidential
power. This drama is a true story;
these are its major players:
Center Stage:
THE MINERS, THEIR FAMILIES, AND
THE “HELMET MEN”
June 8 - 16, 1917
Manus Duggan (1887-1917): Tragic
hero who saved 25 men from certain death. In
the early minutes of the disaster, Duggan
convinced 28 other men that the only
chance to survive was to entomb themselves
more than 2,000 feet below ground. Duggan
was a 29-year-old of Irish descent who
came to Butte from the coal mines of
Pennsylvania. A “nipper” in
the mine, Duggan’s job of shuttling
tools from the deep workings to the surface
made him familiar with every drift, crosscut,
and manway. At the time of the
disaster, Duggan had just built a modest
house for his wife, Madge, who was nine
months pregnant with their first child. Twenty-five
of the men with Duggan ultimately survived,
but he himself perished.
Madge Duggan (1897-1967): Emblematic
of the anguished families on the surface. 19-year-old
Madge, also of Irish descent, met Manus
at the boarding house run by her mother. In
the aftermath of the North Butte fire,
Madge endured six roller-coaster days
of waiting to learn the fate of her husband. There
were two agonizing “false alarms” in
which Madge was told that her husband
had been found (once alive, once dead). Finally,
two weeks after burying her husband,
Madge gave birth to their baby girl,
who she named Manus in honor of her father. [The
author interviewed Manus--the daughter--on
numerous occasions. She is now
an 89-year-old retiree in Dallas-Fort
Worth.] In 1918, two years before
women won the constitutional right to
vote, Madge was elected Butte’s
Public Administrator. In her post-government
life, Madge improved on her eighth-grade
education by taking courses at the Butte
Business College. She worked as
a bookkeeper and ultimately ran her own
business, a women’s clothing store.
Ernest Sullau (1868-1917): Nicknamed “Sully” (everyone
in Butte had a nickname), Sullau was the
experienced, 49-year-old miner whose tragic
accident sparked the North Butte disaster. Like
almost all miners in 1917, Sullau carried
an open-flame lantern. When his
lantern came into contact with oil-coated
industrial wiring, fire erupted up the
wood-timbered Granite Mountain shaft. Sullau
could have saved his own life by retreating
immediately to the surface, but instead
stayed in the depths and helped send fifty
men to safety before succumbing to the
deadly gas. In the hysterical days
after the fire, with ethnic tensions high
among Butte’s immigrants from the
countries embroiled in World War One, some
people accused Sullau – a German
by birth – of setting the fire deliberately.
J.D. Moore: Hot-tempered
assistant foreman who led a second group
to safety – herding some men by
physical force. Remarkably,
at the time of the North Butte disaster,
Moore was already the survivor of another
mine fire – in Virginia City, Nevada. Moore’s
courage in Butte saved six men, though
like Duggan, he perished.
William Budelière: Couragous “helmet
man” who was the first to descend
the depths of the mines as the fires
still raged. Searching
for trapped miners, Budelière
traversed a tunnel flooded to within
inches of the ceiling, trudging through
chest-deep water while pressing his face
into a narrow band of air next to the
ceiling.
Setting the
Stage:
THE ROBBER BARONS
1875 - 1917
The Copper Kings: Three
Robber-Barons whose ambition, corruption,
and rivalry laid the shaky foundation
for the North Butte disaster and its
tumultuous aftermath.
- Marcus Daly (1841-1900): Horatio
Alger-esque Irishman who built the Anaconda
Copper Mining Company into a national
powerhouse after immigrating alone to
the United States at age fifteen. He
fought the first “War of the Copper
Kings” against his bitter enemy,
William Clark, and sold Anaconda to the
Standard Oil Company in 1899. Beloved
by his miners, many of whom shared his
Irish lineage, Daly is the only Copper
King honored today with a statue in Butte
(erected with funds collected by his
men).
- William Clark (1839-1925): Mark
Twain said of Clark that “By his
example he has so excused and so sweetened
corruption that in Montana it no longer
has an offensive smell.” Elected
to the United States Senate after spending
$431,000 to bribe members of the Montana
legislature, he resigned to avoid expulsion– and
was elected again soon thereafter! Clark
hated Daly and opposed the Standard Oil
takeover of Butte until he decided it
served his personal ambitions. Later
in life, he built the most expensive
private residence of his day in New York
City.
- F. Augustus Heinze (1869-1914): Playboy,
frat-boy, “courtroom miner,” sometimes-ally
of Clark against the Standard Oil Company
in the second “War of the Copper
Kings.” After Clark sold
out to Standard, Heinze led a brilliant
guerilla war (including actual underground
battles) that temporarily slowed Standard’s
drive to monopolize the copper industry. Ultimately,
Heinze too abandoned the miners and people
of Butte (for $12 million, a double-suite
at the Waldorf in New York City, and
a beautiful actress to share it with),
leaving the town in the grip of the Standard
Oil machine.
The Standard Oil Company: Corporate
giant that sought to achieve with copper
what it had already achieved with oil:
omnipotent monopoly power. Defeated
Heinze after blackmailing the Montana state
legislature in 1903 – threatening
to unemploy most of the state if its demands
were not met. After securing control
of the state, Standard crushed the formerly
powerful Butte unions, leading to lower
wages, lower safety standards – and
opening the door to labor radicalism and
disaster.
The Anaconda Copper Mining Company: Marcus
Daly’s beloved company, later used
by Standard Oil as a sort of “holding
company” for all of its copper and
related assets. Nearly destroyed
as a company when, in 1970, Chilean President
Salvador Allende nationalized its vast
copper assets in Chile (an act that, along
with other actions, led to his overthrow
by the CIA during the Nixon Administration).
The North Butte Mining Company: Nominally
an “independent” company,
its policies were dominated by Anaconda – including
Anaconda officers on the North Butte board
of directors. Owner of the Granite
Mountain and Speculator shafts – locus
of the 1917 disaster.
Final Act:
AFTERMATH OF DISASTER
1917 – Today
Burton K. Wheeler (1882-1975): The
inspiration (ironically) for both Jimmy
Stewart’s character in Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington and the
sinister vice-president in Philip Roth’s The
Plot Against America. Wheeler
settled in Butte as a young lawyer when
he lost his traveling funds in a poker
game on the way to the train station
(can’t make this stuff up). Wheeler
stood up against the power of Anaconda,
first as the U.S. District Attorney and
later as a powerful U.S. Senator. When
hysteria and misguided patriotism--compounded
by the chaotic aftermath of the North
Butte disaster--led to a de facto suspension
of the First Amendment in the early months
of World War I, Wheeler fought a lonely
battle for constitutional freedoms, refusing
to enforce the anti-sedition law. Wheeler’s
taste of abusive executive power in Butte
led him to spearhead the fight against
Roosevelt’s 1937 effort to “pack” the
U.S. Supreme Court.
Frank Little (1879-1917) and the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW): Radical
labor leader and his union. Formed
in Chicago, the IWW (sometimes called
the “Wobblies”) advocated “the
historical mission of the working class
to do away with capitalism.” The
IWW gained a foothold in Butte after
Standard Oil crushed or co-opted more
moderate unions – such as the
local affiliate of the AFL. Little,
who proudly referred to himself a “half-breed” Indian,
came to Butte in the volatile aftermath
of the North Butte disaster to troll
for converts to the IWW cause. After
delivering several inflammatory speeches,
Little was dragged from his bed in the
middle of the night and lynched, probably
by agents of Anaconda. His killers
were never caught.
William Campbell: Firebrand
editor of the Helena Independent,
Campbell whipped the state (and ultimately,
the nation) into a “patriotic” frenzy. Responded
to Little’s lynching with an editorial
that read “Good work: Let
them continue to hang every IWW in the
State.” Wheeler believed
that Germany’s WWI aircraft (with
a range of 100 miles) were going to bomb
the capital of Montana, and called for
putting “disloyal” members
of Congress in internment camps. Campbell’s
power expanded dramatically when he was
appointed to a controversial organization
called the “Montana Council of
Defense.”
The Montana Council of Defense: A
wartime entity created to help sell war
bonds and to increase agricultural output,
the Montana Council of Defense evolved
into a dictatorial body that ushered
in a period of history often referred
to as “the inquisition.” Led
by Will Campbell – and with no
checks or balances – the Council
banned books, outlawed the use of the
German language, and encouraged the passage
of an “anti-sedition” statute
that effectively banned the First Amendment. Under
the Council’s inquisition, dozens
of everyday citizens were humiliated
in public proceedings, and some were
sent to prison (in some cases, for as
long as twenty years). In 1918,
the Montana law later became the almost-verbatim
model for a national anti-sedition
law, the most severe restriction of constitutional
freedom in US history.
Montana Power/Touch America (1912-2002): The
Enron-esque, final corporate
progeny of the old Anaconda empire. In
the late 1990s, the officers of Butte-based
Montana Power decided to take advantage
of the booming stock market by convert
a century-old, blue-chip utility company
into a telecom dubbed “Touch America.” They
sold off Montana’s power’s “old
economy” assets, plowing the money
into telecom lines. When the market
crashed, Touch America went bankrupt. The
senior corporate officers escaped via
golden parachutes, while employees and
pensioners lost their life savings. One
Montana Power pensioner hurt by the scandal
was 89-year-old Manus Duggan, Manus and
Madge’s daughter.
TO ARRANGE AN INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL
PUNKE, please contact:
Allison McGeehon, Publicist, Hyperion Books
allison.mcgeehon@abc.com/212-456-0173
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