{"id":3411,"featured":0,"modified":"2026-04-17 19:58:08","latitude":46.01460212867215204823878593742847442626953125,"longitude":-112.53814637660980224609375,"title":"Frank Little Tour: Silver Bow Club","subtitle":"Meeting Place of Butte&#039;s Wealthy Elite","fullsize":"https://storyofbutte.org/files/fullsize/054969572a15e61dcda74e86d1ee82a9.jpg","address":"125 W. Granite","all_locations":[],"zoom":17,"creator":["Leif Fredrickson"],"description":"In the first two decades of the 1900s, class conflict afflicted Butte as never before. Butte may have been the “Richest Hill on Earth,” but the riches of its copper mines were not shared equally. Miners got a wage to survive on. Mine owners, meanwhile, profited extravagantly, as did a small set of professionals and businessmen associated with the copper business. <br />\r\n<br />\r\nThe Silver Bow Club was where this affluent elite met. The Club met in a few different places in Butte before settling here, where it built an opulent, four-story building. There, in the glow of fireplaces and copper chandeliers, members rubbed shoulders with corporate titans like banker J.P. Morgan.  <br />\r\n<br />\r\nButte had its own turn-of-the-century titans: the Copper Kings. These rival copper barons were F. Augustus Heinze, William Clark (who started the Silver Bow Club in 1882), and Marcus Daly, the head of the Anaconda Company. For years, the Copper Kings fought bitterly for control of Butte’s copper mines. But by the time this new Silver Bow Club building was completed in 1907, the Anaconda Company had come out on top. <br />\r\n<br />\r\nAnaconda’s victory shifted the balance of power between labor and capital in Butte. Competition forced the Copper Kings to placate the labor unions, lest workers drop their tools and go to work for a rival company. But Anaconda’s victory eventually made it the overwhelmingly dominant employer, not just in Butte, but in the whole state. This gave the Company (as Montanans called it) immense power over its workers and the state as a whole. In 1903, it temporarily shut down its mines and smelters, inflicting devastating economic pain on miners and the state economy. After that, the threat of a shutdown loomed large in the minds of any challengers to its power.<br />\r\n<br />\r\nJohn D. Ryan, an ambitious executive, guided Anaconda’s dramatic rise to power in the early twentieth century. Marcus Daly had died in 1900 and the Company came under the control of Eastern capitalists. Ryan’s success resulted in his promotion to president of the Company in 1910. The Silver Bow Club celebrated the promotion in what the Butte Daily Post called “one of the most notable banquets in the history of Butte.” The governor and lieutenant governor attended. <br />\r\n<br />\r\nBut Butte miners weren’t celebrating the Company’s increasing power. Their discontent would open the door to more radical labor organizing approaches, and would bring Frank Little, one of the most radical labor organizers of the era, to Butte.  <br />","sponsor":null,"accessinfo":"Private","lede":"In the early 1900s the opulent Silver Bow Club was emblematic of the difference between the classes in Butte, which lead to the rise of radical labor movements.","website":"","related_resources":["<ul>\n<li>Botkin, Jane Little. <em>Frank Little and the IWW: The Blood That Stained an American Family</em>. University of Oklahoma Press, 2017.</li>\n</ul>","<ul>\n<li>Fredrickson, Leif, Erika Fredrickson, Chad Dundas, and Zach Dundas. “The Murder of Frank Little.” Death in the West. Accessed June 23, 2022. <a href=\"https://deathinthewestpod.com/the-murder-of-frank-little\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://deathinthewestpod.com/the-murder-of-frank-little</a></li>\n</ul>","<ul>\n<li>Gibson, Richard I. <em>Lost Butte, Montana</em>. Arcadia Publishing, 2012.</li>\n</ul>","<ul>\n<li>Malone, Michael P. <em>The Battle for Butte: Mining and Politics on the Northern Frontier, 1864–1906</em>. University of Washington Press, 2012.</li>\n</ul>","<ul>\n<li>Murphy, Mary. <em>Mining Cultures: Men, Women, and Leisure in Butte, 1914-41</em>. University of Illinois Press, 1997.</li>\n</ul>","<ul>\n<li>National Park Service. “Butte Anaconda National Historic Landmark Nomination (Revised),” 2006. <a href=\"https://www.co.silverbow.mt.us/DocumentCenter/View/22605/Butte-Anaconda-NHL-nomination\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://www.co.silverbow.mt.us/DocumentCenter/View/22605/Butte-Anaconda-NHL-nomination</a></li>\n</ul>"],"factoids":["Interested in Frank Little's story? Listen to the award-winning podcast series <a href=\"https://deathinthewestpod.com/episodes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Death in the West: Season 1</a>."],"files":{"https://storyofbutte.org/files/fullsize/054969572a15e61dcda74e86d1ee82a9.jpg":{"id":5417,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Silver Bow Club","description":"Entrance to the Silver Bow Club, built for Butte’s very wealthy mine owners, corporate executives, and prominent professionals. The entrance canopy is constructed of copper (now oxidized) and stained glass, and the interior was similarly opulent. | Montana Historical Society | 2019 | Christine Brown","thumbnail":"https://storyofbutte.org/files/square_thumbnails/054969572a15e61dcda74e86d1ee82a9.jpg"},"https://storyofbutte.org/files/fullsize/79ae8c9650874e8b8656e4fe748081bf.jpg":{"id":5418,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Richest Hill on Earth","description":"Butte’s mines and smelters created fabulous wealth, giving the town the nickname &quot;the richest hill on earth.&quot; Those who worked in the mines, however, only ever saw a sliver of that wealth, despite toiling in dangerous jobs and living in the pall of industrial pollution. This photograph, from 1909, shows Butte Hill’s mines in the background, with one of Butte’s poor, working-class neighborhoods in the foreground. | Montana Historical Society | 1909 | N. A. Forsyth","thumbnail":"https://storyofbutte.org/files/square_thumbnails/79ae8c9650874e8b8656e4fe748081bf.jpg"}}}