The disaster exacerbated tensions between miners and the Anaconda Company.
Since the Butte Miners Union’s demise in 1914, tensions between miners and mine owners had only grown more severe. War exacerbated this, first by ramping up copper production, which yielded big profits for mine owners but only minimal benefits for mine workers. And second by threatening to draft workers into a war they believed they had no interest in.
In the midst of these tensions, an unprecedented tragedy hit Butte. On June 8, a fire broke out in the Granite Mountain Mine. A miner’s headlamp accidentally ignited oil cloth sheathing on a long cable in a shaft. Flames quickly shot up the mine shaft, igniting timber supports. The fire spread through the mine and into an adjoining mine, the Speculator.
The fire pumped smoke and toxic gases through the vast network of tunnels in Butte’s mines. Miners trying to escape had to navigate a maze of dark, smoke-filled tunnels. In addition, in flagrant violation of safety laws, the mine companies had walled off some of the tunnels. Later, dead men were found with their fingertips ground to the bone from clawing against the closed walls trying to escape.
Miners on the surface launched heroic rescue efforts. But it was impossible to reach many of the men locked thousands of feet in the depths of the mountain. Some rescuers died trying. In the end, 168 miners lost their lives. It was, and remains, the worst hard-rock mining disaster in U.S. history.
The mine disaster catalyzed a spontaneous strike in one Butte mine that eventually spread to all of the other mines. Other trades associated with the mines also struck. Butte’s miners organized a new union. They demanded safety reforms, better pay, and above all, an end to the “rustling card” system that allowed the Anaconda Company to ban workers who threatened its power. But Anaconda refused to end the system. So the strike went on, paralyzing the greatest copper mines on earth.
Given the strategic importance of copper to the war, Butte’s strike quickly gained national attention. Labor organizers, mine owners, consumers, and the federal government all recognized it as a strike of potentially immense consequences. The city, and the nation, were on edge.
