THE ANACONDA’S LAIR
We continue our journey, and enter the domain of the copper kings. In
“The Goose-step” I have portrayed the state of Montana as entirely
swallowed by a monstrous reptile known as the Anaconda, and I have shown
what this reptile has done to the universities of the state. Let us now
have a glimpse of Butte, which is a mountain of copper with office
buildings and miners’ shacks on top. We shall find here a situation
resembling Berkeley; that is to say, the workers have been making
desperate efforts to control the education of their own children, but
without success. The copper interests, in their efforts to control
Montana, have stopped at no atrocity and no crime. They have broken
strikes with the utmost brutality, and when the people of Butte
succeeded in electing their own political administration, the Black Hand
used its control of the state machine to turn the city administration
out. In the same way, they have been willing to wreck the schools by
every device of slander and corruption. It is hard indeed to find honest
public officials in a community where the rewards of treason are so
high, and the penalties of public service so heavy. The result has been
that the schools of Butte have served as a football of rowdy gangs.
The early stages of Montana history consisted of civil and political war
between the Anaconda and its rival, F. Augustus Heinze. In those days
public officials and political parties commanded fancy prices; but these
good times came to an end in 1906, when the Anaconda bought out its
rival, and took control of a state as big as Germany—most of its
minerals, ninety per cent of its water power, and a hundred per cent of
its politics. Butte at that time had an honest school superintendent by
the name of Young; and because the Anaconda crowd could not use him,
they began war upon him; three years later they kicked him out, and he
died of a broken heart. They put in “the crookedest school man in the
Northwest”; a gentleman who had two interests which absorbed his
attention—breeding fancy dogs, and training brutal football players.
Montana football tactics became a scandal throughout the country; and
teaching standards fell so low that other cities refused to accept
credits from Butte.
In 1911 came a radical wave, and a Socialist clergyman, Lewis J. Duncan,
was swept into office as mayor. The first thing the Socialist
administration attempted was to clean up the redlight district, and this
brought them into conflict with two of the Anaconda’s political bullies
on the city’s detective force. The pair were put on trial, one for
blackmailing a prostitute, and the other for soliciting a bribe, and
were convicted. They swore vengeance, and immediately afterwards one of
the most efficient teachers in the Butte high school, who had been
active in war upon the grafters, was summoned before the school
superintendent and notified that she would not get her yearly
reappointment. (They keep their teachers in Butte upon a string, having
no tenure, and never knowing if they are to be re-engaged.)
This lady was told that her work was “not satisfactory,” but the
superintendent gave no specifications, and refused to discuss the fact
that the principal O.K.’d the teacher’s work. As a result of this
development, a teachers’ union was organized in Butte, and immediately
the three officers of the union were let out without cause. The fact
that the superintendent had given one of these teachers a fulsome
recommendation only one month previously did not count at all. The
president of this union, a Harvard post-graduate, was blacklisted, and
kept from any teaching position in Montana. In the meantime, Mayor
Duncan, who had been re-elected, was kicked out of office by the Black
Hand.
The Socialists had never been able to elect more than three of the seven
school board members. In the 1916 campaign the Anaconda crowd made the
open boast that they had controlled the schools for twenty-five years,
and would continue to control them. They elected their ticket, and
proceeded upon a campaign to “clean out the radicals,” dismissing
without charges twenty-four of the most efficient and intelligent
teachers. There was a roar of protest from the city; a prominent society
woman, friendly to the teachers, made the statement at a mass meeting
that it was the program to discharge every teacher who had attended the
study classes conducted by the Reverend Lewis J. Duncan for nine years
prior to his election as mayor. This lady’s husband happened to be
cashier of the First National Bank, and at the next meeting of the
directors of the bank this cashier lost his position. The school board
took to meeting in secret and refusing admission to the angry public.
Nevertheless, the people succeeded in having their way, to the extent
that the teachers were reinstated and the superintendent retired.
Then came the world war, and that made things easy for the grafters.
Since then there has been in Butte the same situation that we found in
San Francisco; the Catholic schools are flourishing, while the public
schools are deprived both of their money and their brains. A couple of
years ago, through misuse of funds, the school treasury was so low that
the schools were about to be closed two weeks in advance of the regular
time. As a consequence of the Anaconda’s control of the state
government, the mining companies pay taxes only on their net profits,
and when they close down, as they did for a whole year, there are no net
profits and no taxes. At the last moment the banks agreed to lend the
money to keep the schools going—Big Business could not quite afford to
have the news go out to the world that “the richest hill in the world”
was unable to afford schools! In connection with this problem of mining
company taxation in Montana, you may read in “The Goose-step” how
Professor Louis Levine was kicked out of the state university for
writing a treatise on this subject.
The working people of Butte are still struggling to have something to
say about their schools, but their struggles are now blind and helpless,
because the war has put the Socialist movement out of business, and
without the idealism and training of the Socialists the labor movement
falls prey to bribery and intrigue. There are now several so-called
“labor” representatives on the Butte school board; and having read the
story of a “labor” administration in San Francisco, you will be prepared
for what is happening here. The Anaconda has not the least objection to
its henchmen calling themselves “labor” men—provided only they will vote
for the Anaconda. Big Business today has its representatives in all
labor unions; and the Black Hand sees no harm in petty graft and a
flourishing redlight district, provided that taxes are kept down and
dividends not interfered with. On this “labor” board in Butte are a
couple of loud-mouthed demagogues, whose main concern is to get
patronage for relatives and friends. One of them has had his brother
made utility man for the board, and his sister a teacher in the high
school—somewhat to the concern of the city, because this lady is
decidedly unusual in her mind, and two other members of the family are
under restraint. Mr. O. G. Wood, until recently clerk of this board,
writes me:
Professional etiquette forbids doctors and lawyers from buying space
in the newspapers for advertising purposes, but they are not opposed
to columns of fake write-up about the sacrifice they are making to
serve the public while serving on the school board, in which to my
certain knowledge they take no interest whatever except to get some
relative elected to the position of janitor or utility man. The school
board will wrangle for weeks over some janitor getting a job, and
never pay the slightest attention to the great question of educating
the child.... The Anaconda Copper Mining Company has been controlling
the members of the school board for years, so as to divert the
purchasing of supplies into their particular stores. This corporation
has bribed members of the school board and has offered money to some
of them to get them to resign, in order to have their men appointed by
the county superintendent, who has the appointing of members to fill
vacancies. My experience as an instructor in the public schools, and
my two years in an executive position handling about a million a year,
have led me to the conclusion that there is no public institution in
the United States run with more waste and with less regard for the
TRUTH than the public school system of the United States. The waste of
money is appalling.
I close this story with an illustration of where the money goes. One of
the great mining kings of Montana is W. A. Clark, who bought himself
into the United States Senate, and was kicked out again because it was
proven that his agents had dropped thousand dollar bills over the
transoms of the hotel rooms of state legislators. Senator Clark had to
get this money back somehow, so he sold the city of Butte a site for the
high school, at a cost of seventy-five thousand dollars. But there is no
high school on this site, for the reason that the children would have to
go through the redlight district to reach the school, and one mother
publicly declared that she would burn this school down rather than have
the children attend it. After this you will be prepared to learn that
ex-Senator Clark’s newspaper, the Butte “Daily Miner,” forever proclaims
the sacredness of the schools.
One more illustration of the intense concern of the copper interests for
education. You will suspect me of making up this story, because it
sounds like a piece of symbolism—it might come straight from a play by
Ibsen or Charles Rann Kennedy. The Anaconda discovered a vein of copper
immediately underneath the Jefferson School, and has been occupied for
several years in undermining the school. Now the walls of the building
have begun to crack; but needless to say, the taxpayers are not getting
compensation for the ruin of a school building. Nothing has been done
about it, because this is an “East Side” school, where only the children
of miners attend. When the building collapses, the Anaconda will head
the relief list by a subscription of a hundred dollars.
Butte now has a new superintendent, who comes from Columbia University,
and writes me that he was appointed as an educator and not as a
politician. He tells me that neither he nor the school board would
attempt to control outside activities of teachers, and that they are
perfectly free to join a union if they wish. I trust they will not fail
to act upon this information; and I wish Superintendent Douglass good
luck in keeping out of Butte politics!