The worst hard-rock mining disaster in U.S. history was set off, ironically, as part of an effort to improve mine safety. On June 8, 1917, as workers at the North Butte Mining Co. were lowering a transformer cable in the Granite Mountain shaft, the cable slipped, ripping out air hoses and water pipes and scraping away the cable’s lead sheathing as it plummeted down the 3,700-foot opening.
Then as Ernest Sullau, called “Sully,” one of the retrieval crew, clung to the shaft, trying to reach the cable, his carbide lamp touched the exposed oil-soaked insulation, setting it ablaze. A powerful downdraft turned the cable into a wick that set the supporting timbers on fire, and within minutes, smoke and gases were spreading through the adjacent tunnels.
Over the next three days, 163 mine workers died, and in the weeks and years to come, the disaster led to strikes, murder and a campaign in Montana to deprive mine workers and others of their civil rights.
What was so frightening about the events in Butte, according to a federal report written nearly 20 years later, was that they were “altogether normal for its time. … What took place in Butte took place elsewhere as well. When we know the Butte story we know the others.”
Author Michael Punke does a superb job of telling that story in “Fire and Brimstone.” His detailed account of the fire and how it affected the miners and their families is riveting.
Punke is at his best when he relates personal stories: One mine worker refused a shot of brandy after his rescue because drinking on the job was against company policy; an official had to assure him the company would make an exception.
Punke also shows how the aftermath of the fire affected the lives of miners as well as public officials. One was B.K. Wheeler, later a U.S. senator.
In Butte’s earlier days, the copper kings were paternalistic toward their employees, willing to negotiate with the mine workers unions. After the turn of the century, however, Standard Oil Co. acquired most of the Butte properties, folding them into its giant Anaconda Copper Mining Co. What it didn’t own, such as North Butte Mining, it controlled. Standard’s distant management lowered wages, destroyed the unions and cut corners on safety, leading to deadly conditions. Giant slabs of hanging rock in the Butte mines, for instance, were called “Duggans,” for the local undertaker, a term that today is used all over the world.
As a result of the lax attitude toward safety, scores of miners died who might have survived the fire. No signs pointed to escape routes. Tunnels leading to safety in adjacent mines were blocked by solid concrete bulkheads. The ventilation system was poor, and there was little drinking water. Some of the men who managed to find pockets of air allowing them to hang on for hours nearly went crazy from thirst.
If the company officials were uncaring – and Punke paints a grim picture of early 20th century capitalists putting profit before human life – the miners themselves showed extraordinary courage and sacrifice. Sully could have saved himself, but stayed to warn other miners. He didn’t make it out. The tombstone of one selfless miner reads, “No greater love hath any man that he lay down his life for his friend.”
The hero of the disaster was a low-level nipper, or tool sharpener, Manus Duggan (no relation to the undertaker). He led 28 other trapped workers into a blind drift, and directed them to build a double bulkhead from ore and scraps of lumber. They plugged the holes with their clothes to keep out the gas, staying there for 36 hours. Duggan threatened to fight any man who insisted on leaving. Eventually, Duggan himself tore down the barrier to the tunnel, and finding the air had improved, he led the men on hands and knees a quarter-mile to the shaft.
When the men rang for the cage and workers above realized there were more survivors in the mine, they erupted in cheers. Duggan disappeared before the men were brought to the surface, and the mystery over whether he was alive or dead was front-page news for days. Punke’s account of the men’s plight and the excitement up top at the discovery that some miners were still alive reads like a novel.
The aftermath of the Butte fire was discouraging. Despite its claim that it would pay $750,000 to the families of the dead men, the company gave out only a fraction of that. Then the copper giants launched a vicious public relations campaign to dissuade miners from unionizing. Frank Little, an organizer sent to Butte by the radical International Workers of the World, was kidnapped, dragged behind a car and hanged, probably at the instigation of Anaconda, although no one was ever charged.
It would be nice to say that 163 deaths led to changes. But in fact, it would take nearly 20 years before miners formed a strong union in Butte and Anaconda improved working conditions in the mines, relates Punke in this highly readable account of an ignoble chapter in U.S. labor history. And that was only because the improvements were mandated by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Sandra Dallas is a Denver novelist.
Fire and Brimstone
The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917
By Michael Punke
Hyperion, 352 pages, $24.95
