Don’t worry, Fellow Worker,
all we’re going to need
from now on is guts.
-Frank Little
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday July 25, 1917
Butte, Montana – “Agitators” Support Striking Miners
The Anaconda Standard, voice of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, declared recently that the “agitators” of Butte are “against everything.”
Yet the striking miners have made it quite clear exactly what they stand against-i.e., the blacklist (Rustling Card system), long hours, low wages, and unsafe working conditions such as led to the deaths of 168 copper miners in the Speculator Mine Fire Disaster just a few short weeks ago.
From the Anaconda Standard of July 23, 1917:
AGITATORS TALKING AGAINST EVERYTHING
—–A mass meeting for miners of the Butte district, held last evening at the ball park, was attended by about 2,000 men. All the speakers urged the miners to stay out and said the modifications of the rustling card and the weekly pay day announced by the Anaconda Copper Mining company on Saturday should be disregarded.
Joe Shannon made a fiery speech in which he urged every miner to start picket duty today, and he remarked that the Campbell union [Butte Metal Mine Workers Union] had the “number of every miner now working.”
R. L. Dunn, strike leader of the electricians, who had pledged the miners the electricians would not go back to work until the miners were underground, said the papers had called him an I. W. W. and he would admit it.
[Said Dunn:]
This strike is an expression against the form of society which allows a few to control the wealth of the nation and a protest against the system of society which keeps workingmen from enjoying the comforts and good things of life.