Now is the time, Boys…
We can make it if you muster
all the strength you have left.
-Manus Duggan
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday July 21, 1918
Chicago, Illinois – Butte Miners Describe Horrors of Mine Fire
On June 15th, there came forward two miners from the city of Butte to testify for the defense in the federal conspiracy trial against leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World. The miners quietly and calmly described the horrors they had witnessed during and immediately following the mine fire that claimed the lives of 164 of their fellow miners.
From the Billings Morning Gazette of July 16, 1918:
BUTTE CITY OF WIDOWS SAYS WOBBLY
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The Daily Missoulian June 10, 1917
CHICAGO, July 15.-“Butte is a city of widows,” said Murta Shay [Murty Shea], a witness at the I. W. W. conspiracy trial today. John Muzilech [Musevich], a miner, told of the fire in the Speculator mine in June, 1917, declaring that the workers were trapped behind cement bulkheads which contained no doors. “We found the bodies piled in heaps against these bulkheads,” he said.
Joseph Kennedy, recording secretary of the Metal Mine Workers of Butte, testified he had joined the I. W. W. in 1917. Since 1909, he said, he had worked about six years under ground in Butte and had never seen a mine inspector in the workings.
George Taylor of Fernwood, Idaho, testified he had worked in lumber camps on St. Mary’s river for many years, but was made, a deputy sheriff last summer during the lumber strike there. He said there was no disorder but that many I. W. W. members who went into the woods to fight forest fires were arrested and locked in a stockade on their return.
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[Newspaper clipping added.]
Report from Defendant Harrison George:
[Testimony of Murty Shea]
Next upon the stand [June 15th] came a stalwart, broad-shouldered man, a pleasant-mannered Irish miner from Butte, who told in that nonchalant way usual to those whose every hour of labor is an hour of peril how he and a few other miners had fought their way through that hell of flame and smoke which swept the Speculator Mine in June, 1917, and left its sacrifice to greed in the form of 174 burned and mangled men. The story of this man, who walked out of the jaws of death into the Chicago courtroom is worth perusal.
