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When that sun comes up each morning
and I walk down into that cold dark mine
I say a prayer to my dear saviour,
please let me see the sunshine one more time
Dwight Yoakam
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Get the rock in
the box
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Prior to 1915,
miners looking for work simple turned-up and were hired on the spot
as needed. By the time Henry J. arrived a more formal system of
recruitment was in place. The Company hired “Shift Bosses” who in
turn were responsible for hiring the daily workers. Naturally an
Irish shift boss would give preference to his friends and fellow
countrymen. It’s possible that by 1915 some Mourne Men had
established themselves as shift bosses thereby ensuring work for
Henry J. and the later arrivals.
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When
Harry Joe arrived in Butte, there were over 14,500 miners working on
rotating shifts around the clock compared to 2,000 miners in 1883.
For example in 1890 the Anaconda is credited with producing
$17,000,000 of copper. The wealth that flowed from the mines is
difficult to perceive today.
However, all was not how it may have first appeared. Miners’
salaries had not increased at the same ferocious rate as their
numbers. The demand for increased production, “to get the rock in
the box” was met with unskilled immigrants like Henry J. and his
friends who were assigned to the most dangerous tasks. Henry J. was
probably earning between $3.50 and $4.00 a day for this work, the
same wage that was paid in 1878. The price of copper, however, had
risen dramatically from 8 cents a pound in 1878 to around 20 cents a
pound by 1914. |
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Conditions
in the mines were atrocious. All men worked steadily, 12 hours a
day, toward one goal - to take as much ore as possible from the
mines 4,000 feet below the surface. It was the most dangerous job in
America. In the dark airless tunnels, temperatures stayed above 90
degrees all year round. In winter after their long shift when
miners, their bodies soaked in sweat, went above ground they were
plunged into sub-zero temperatures. A moment’s inattention could
lead to frostbite and the threatened loss of a finger or ear.
There was the perpetual threat of silicosis, from
breathing in dust which hadn’t any oxygen pumped into
it. The polluted air tore at the miners’ lungs and led
thousands to die prematurely from pneumonia and
tuberculosis.
To
add to the physical dangers of their work with a daily
litany of injuries and weekly deaths there was in
addition the constant risk of mine collapse, fire and
electrocution. For example, in 1915 five miners were
electrocuted alone and mortuary records reveal 65
accidental deaths in 1916.
If a man lived to be 40-years old, he was considered an
old man in Butte. |
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Against this backdrop it is not
unsurprising that many miners felt antagonism towards the Company
and to the bosses that lived in luxurious mansions in the town and
in neighboring Helena, which at one time harbored more millionaires
per capita than any other city in the nation.
In
that age of dynamic and rapid change, industrial relations relative
to today appear to us to be little different to feudalism. Generally
employers addressed the needs and welfare of the employees only in
relation to efficiencies of production. There were of course
philanthropists whose charitable foundations etc. still bear witness
to their patronage. On a scale unimaginable today, the leaders of
Industry whether they were mine owners or car producers could and
did buy and sell coal mines and forests, build dams and towns,
control railroads or whatever their projects demanded.
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For the
miners, their lives were brutalised by the harsh conditions of work,
social conditions and climate. It is to their eternal credit that
for the majority the tenet of their religion, moral code and innate
goodness was channelled to striving for greater social improvement
for all. It is no accident that Montana elected in 1917 the first
woman, pacifist
Jeanette Rankin, to Congress. Even more remarkable
in that it was to be another three years before women got the vote.
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 “I’m No Lady; I’m a
Member of Congress.” |
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