The Richest Hill’s Smoke Wars
Tom Goetz, Simley High School, Inver Grove Heights, MN
This learning activity was created for “The Richest Hills: Mining in the Far West, 1865–1920,” sponsored by the Montana Historical Society and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks of American History and Culture: Workshops for Schoolteachers.
Grade Level: High School
Subject: US History
Standards: NCHS Standards: Era 6 Standard 1 and/or Era 7 Standard 1
Duration: 1-2 days
Description: Beginning in the late 19th century and lasting through World War I, Butte, MT was the world’s leading copper producer. Industrialized hard rock mining thousands of feet under the surface of Butte, the “Richest Hill on Earth,” yielded ore containing rich, abundant veins of copper. Before it could be integrated into the rapidly modernizing US and World economies, however, the copper needed to be separated from the other substances in the mined ore. The last step in that separation is known as smelting, where the copper is chemically extracted from the ore through the use of intense heat. While great wealth was generated by the mining and smelting industries in and around Butte, the residents of the surrounding area were forced to reconcile Butte’s primary raison d'etre with the collateral smoke pollution, rich in sulfur dioxide and arsenic, produced by the smelting process. Ultimately, the issues surrounding the pollution emitted by the smelters in Butte and later Anaconda, MT would transcend the region of the Mountain West and highlight one of the first national environmental challenges for the post-Civil War Era. Whose interests would prevail? The mine owners who advanced the production of arguably the most valuable metal of the 20th century, or those who viewed clean air and water as fundamental ingredients to maintaining an acceptable quality of life or livelihood if you were a farmer in Montana’s Deer Lodge Valley? To what extent was it even possible for these interests to be mutually exclusive, or were they all tied to Butte’s production of copper? As students examine the following documents, they will have to analyze the evidence and assess the extent of the costs of living in one of early modern America’s great industrial epicenters.
Goals: Students will understand the environmental challenges presented by Industrial Capitalism at the turn of the twentieth century, as well as how individuals and groups responded to those challenges.
Objectives: Students will weigh evidence as to whether the chemical emissions from the copper smelting process in and around Butte, MT were harmful to the physical and human geography at the turn of the twentieth century.
Materials:
Document A
Source: William A. Clark, Butte, MT mine owner, 1889
“It would be a great advantage for other cities … to have a little more smoke and business activity and less disease … I must say that the ladies are very fond of this smoky city … because there is just enough arsenic there to give them a beautiful complexion, and that is the reason the ladies of Butte are renowned wherever they go for their beautiful complexions.”
Document B
Source: Anaconda Standard, December 29, 1890
“The mortality of Butte [in] the present month is frightful … One of the best physicians in Butte said today that it is almost impossible to cure either pneumonia or typhoid fever without pure air. For recovery the lungs must have pure air, and the smoke is of course suffocating. It is almost impossible to cure either pneumonia or typhoid fever without pure air. For recovery the lungs must have pure air, and the smoke is of course suffocating.”
Document C
Source: Butte Alderman Eugene O. Dugan, December 9, 1891
“The only objection I have to enforcing the ordinance [banning open air, roaster smelting] is that it may throw men out of employment … Butte has just had one [smelter] shut down and it is not best to have another right away. I have no consideration for the smeltermen, but I don’t like to see laboring men thrown out of work. I think Mr. Couch and the rest should abide by the ordinance. They have had notice enough, and as the council has given them the notice, they should be made to abide by it. It seems to me that the matter could be talked over and an agreement reached without the necessity of throwing men out of work. I don’t believe in extreme measures, but certainly would like to see the city well rid of the smoke.”
Document D
Source: Engineering and Mining Journal, January 2, 1892
“Regarding the future of Butte as a mining camp, everything points to continued and increased prosperity for a great many years to come. As regards Butte as a city its prosperity must depend considerably upon its ability to get along amicably with the great companies operating here.
At the present writing the city is suffering from the smoke from the smelters, and the real estate men, who think that if there were no smoke in Butte real estate would advance 50 percent in value, are at the head of a movement to fight the Boston and Montana Company and to interfere with its smelting operations.
It is to be deplored that these citizens carry sufficient weight to engender a feeling of hostility against the smelters among a section of the citizens of Butte.”
Document E
Source: Butte-Silver Bow Public Library
The Butte and Boston Smelter, Butte, MT, ca 1900
Document F
Source: Butte Reveille, February 3, 1904
Document G
Source: Montana Memory Project (web)
Stereograph, N.A. Forsyth, Butte, MT ca. 1906
Document H
Source: Anaconda Standard, September 12, 1906
“Facts pertaining to the direct and indirect effects of a closing down of the Washoe plant at Anaconda on the industries of the world which require copper were the main things brought about yesterday at the smoke hearings (Bliss v. Anaconda....) … consider the results that would follow the granting of a writ closing down the smelter and the effect on industries all over the world.”
Document I
Source: W.D. Hawkins (Montana St. University) & Robert E. Swain (Stanford University), chemistry professors and witnesses for Deer Valley Farmers Association Bliss v. Anaconda Copper Co., “Arsenic in Vegetation,” 1907
“This is deposited arsenic … rather than absorbed arsenic. By shaking dry grass or hay grown in the vicinity of the [Anaconda] smelter a finely divided dark-gray powder, running notably higher in arsenic than the tissue (soil) from which it came, is obtained. The results admit only one interpretation, which is that the smelter smoke is the source of the arsenic found in such excessive amounts in the vegetation of the region about Anaconda.”
Document J
Source: A.J. Matthewson, superintendent of the Washoe Smelter and defense witness in Bliss v. Anaconda..., as quoted in the Anaconda Standard, December 5, 1908.
“The universal testimony of all [engineering experts] that the high [Washoe Smelter] stack, disseminating the smoke through the air, is the only practical method, the very best that science has to offer.”
Document K
Source: Anaconda Standard, March 7, 1911
Oh say, can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose blue clouds and white mists through the long legal fight
Over maintain and vale were so gallantly streaming!
And the furnaces’ glare, the whistles’ keen blare
Gave proof through the night that our smoke was still there!
The smoke of the smelters! Long may it flow
In the heavens above, o’er the earth here below.
Document L
Source: Smoke Wars (2000), Donald MacMillan
Map of Anaconda and Butte, MT, early Twentieth Century
Document M
Chronology of important events in the Richest Hill’s Smoke Wars
1883: Marcus Daly moves the smelter operations from his Anaconda copper mine in Butte 26 miles west to the Deer Lodge Valley, sparking the creation of Anaconda, MT. / 1909: Bliss v. Anaconda Copper Mining Co. decision rules for the defendant, Anaconda Copper Mining Co. The Amalgamated spent between $600,000 and $1 million defending its position.1890: The City of Butte passes its first smoke ordinance, banning the smelting practice of open-air roasting. / 1909: The Butte Inter Mountain reports that the Deer Lodge Farmers Association found few reputable witnesses to testify in Bliss v. Anaconda; witnesses were unwilling to testify against the defendant or they required a large compensation to testify.
1899: New York-based Amalgamated Copper Company, a holding company run by Standard Oil executives, acquires Daly’s Anaconda Mining Co. / 1910: The Amalgamated begins buying agricultural land in the Deer Lodge Valley that was declared susceptible to smoke damage.
1900: Butte copper production has increased by over 100 percent since 1890. / 1910: United States v. Anaconda Copper Mining Co. begins under the Taft Administration; government seeks an abatement of the air pollution from smelter emissions on US forestland and compensation from Anaconda for damages to the land.
1901: W.A. Clark, Butte mine owner and heretofore ally of mine owner F. A. Heinze against the growing Amalgamated Trust, takes his seat in the US Senate; Clarks breaks his alliance with Heinze. / 1911: US Appellate Court in San Francisco upholds the 1909 Federal Court ruling in Bliss v. Anaconda Copper Co.
1902: Anaconda Copper Mining Co. begins operating its Washoe Smelter in Anaconda, MT. / 1911: Anaconda stipulates to the US Government that it will “ultimately eliminate” harmful emissions from the Washoe Smelter.
1903: Anaconda Copper closes for three months to install a more efficient flue and stack system at the Washoe Smelter, featuring a 300 foot smokestack on a 2300 foot hill. / 1914: US Supreme Court refuses to hear farmers’ appeal of Bliss v. Anaconda... on the technicality that the Deer Lodge Valley Farmer Association could not pay the $4,155 cost for the lower court transcript.
1905: 107 farmers form the Deer Lodge Valley Farmers’ Association to seek damages in lost income from alleged poisoning emitted from the Washoe Smelter. / 1918: Cornelius Kelley, vice president of Anaconda Copper Co., cites labor and technical support shortages due to World War I as the reasons Anaconda had not fulfilled its 1911 agreement with the US Government.
1905: Bliss v. Anaconda Copper Mining Co. begins in Federal Court; Deer Lodge Valley farmer Fred Bliss lived in Idaho, making the suit a federal case. / 1918: World War I brings $122 million in profits for Anaconda, more than the company’s total assets in 1911.
1905: A federal court in Salt Lake City issues an injunction on a Utah smelter that halted its operations if its ore was more than 10 percent sulfur or if any arsenic was emitted from its stacks. / 1923: Arsenic recovery by the Anaconda Co. at the Washoe Smelter becomes more successful as arsenic becomes more in demand for insecticides fighting cotton boll weevil infestation in the South.
1906: The Butte and Boston and the Boston and Montana copper mines begin shipping their ore 150 miles away to Great Falls, MT for smelting, leaving minimal smelting operations inside the town of Butte. / 1925: The US government and Anaconda Copper Co. begin a series of land exchanges involving Anaconda land holdings in Montana outside the Butte-Anaconda Area and polluted National forestland near the Washoe Smelter as a means of settling the dispute between the government and Anaconda Copper.
1906: Heinze sells his mining interests to Amalgamated for $12 million and moves to New York City. / 1933: United States of America v. Anaconda Copper Mining Co. is abandoned. Anaconda pays $200,000 to US government for damages to forestland between 1900 and 1923.
1908: The Roosevelt Administration begins talks with the Amalgamated to mitigate the effects of sulfur dioxide and arsenic pollution emitted from the Washoe Smelter on US national forestland.
Procedure:
The number of documents was not intended to make a lesson too unwieldy for a teacher, but provide instructional options based on a particular situation a teacher might face in the classroom, regarding available time, instructional goals, etc. If there is one central objective to this collection of documents, it is to force the student to weigh trade-offs between economic prosperity and environmental damage. The following are some suggested approaches when teaching the above documents.
1. While the topic of the documents is more micro in nature, it is set up in a traditional Document Based Question (DBQ) format for a teacher to utilize if they chose. The last document that provides a chronology to the “Smoke Wars” would be helpful to a teacher and students looking for some basic outside information to contextualize the issue.
2. The above documents afford a number of discussion topics including, but not limited to the following:
a. Evaluate the role of the press in the documents.
b. How is point of view reflected for the various speakers in the documents?
c. What argument is being made by the photographers in docs E and G?
d. Compare and contrast the arguments made in the political cartoons (docs F & K)
e. How can students use the last two documents of the map of Butte/Anaconda and the chronology to connect with any or all of the document interpretations?
f. What evidence is there that the attitudes of the people living in the Butte area change over time? What factors account for this change?