{"id":3415,"featured":0,"modified":"2026-04-17 19:58:08","latitude":46.016166797351360173706780187785625457763671875,"longitude":-112.53388702869415283203125,"title":"Frank Little Tour: View of Columbia Gardens Location","subtitle":"Site of Frank Little's Most Famous Speech","fullsize":"https://storyofbutte.org/files/fullsize/c998c93001441c6108a77c3855c76b66.jpg","address":"East Copper Street","all_locations":[],"zoom":17,"creator":["Leif Fredrickson"],"description":"On July 18, 1917, Frank Little stepped off the train at the Northern Pacific Station about a mile to the south of here. He slowly made his way up to his lodging on North Wyoming Street near here. While Butte had been on strike, Little had been organizing for the IWW in Arizona’s copper mines. While there, he’d been in a car crash that broke his ankle, necessitating a cast and crutches. On top of that, he was suffering from a hernia.
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\r\nLittle was exhausted, in pain – and in danger. He had narrowly escaped being kidnapped and dropped in the southwestern desert by anti-labor vigilantes. That had been the fate of 1,200 other miners and organizers from Bisbee, Arizona, in one of the most notorious cases of union repression in history. It wouldn’t have been the first time he was kidnapped. In 1912, Little was abducted and beaten while organizing in Minnesota.
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\r\nBut the IWW had asked him to come to Butte. So he did. And he went to work right away. First up on the agenda was a rally at Columbia Gardens, where Little was scheduled to speak along with other labor organizers.
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\r\nColumbia Gardens was a huge amusement park. The Copper King William A. Clark established the park in 1899, perhaps to curry favor with voters and unions. Unlike the Silver Bow Club, the Columbia Gardens was for everyone.
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\r\nThe park was located three and a half miles southeast of here, at the base of the mountains. Later in the twentieth century, the Continental Pit swallowed the park’s location. The excavated terraces at the far eastern side of Butte, visible from here, are approximately the location of the old Columbia Gardens.
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\r\nAmong other things, the Columbia Gardens had a baseball stadium. It was there that Frank Little gave what was probably the most famous speech of his life. Before a packed crowd of 6,000, Little lambasted greedy mine owners and called for all workers to join the IWW’s One Big Union. Little also lashed out against the war. His position was even controversial within the IWW, who feared invoking backlash by criticizing the war. But Little hated the war, which he saw as an extension of capitalist violence. And, in his most incendiary talking point, he castigated soldiers who took up arms against striking works as “federal thugs” and “scabs in uniform.”
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\r\nThe press the following day was awash in coverage of Little’s speech. Newspapers across Montana (many under the influence of the Anaconda Company) railed against Little’s “treasonous” and “seditious” speech. The national press picked up on it, too, given the stakes of Butte’s strike for the war.","sponsor":null,"accessinfo":"","lede":"The speech, given at the Columbia Gardens baseball stadium to a crowd of 6,000, was castigated as treasonous and seditious, and garnered national press attention.","website":"","related_resources":["","","","","",""],"factoids":["Interested in Frank Little's story? Listen to the award-winning podcast series Death in the West: Season 1.","In contrast to Frank Little, many labor leaders not only shied away from critiquing the war but came out as enthusiastic supporters. Samuel Gompers was the president of the American Federation of Labor, a labor federation that was the key rival of the Industrial Workers of the World. The AFL was more conservative than the IWW and less open to members from unskilled occupations and workers who were not white or male. Listen to this 1918 speech, in which Gompers calls on workers to support the war. Unlike Little, who saw the war as a capitalists war, Gompers saw it as “labor’s war.”

Source: Samuel Gompers, “Labor’s Service to Freedom,” Nation's Forum, 1918, available at the Library of Congress."],"files":{"https://storyofbutte.org/files/fullsize/c998c93001441c6108a77c3855c76b66.jpg":{"id":5398,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Post Card of Columbia Gardens","description":"Columbia Gardens was a massive amusement park tucked away in the Rocky Mountains on the east side of Butte. It offered amusement and celebration for people of all classes. And, at times, it was a place to gather to express anger and frustration. That’s how Frank Little ended up there, giving a fiery anti-war, anti-capitalist speech to thousands in 1917. | Billings Public Library | Edward Mitchell","thumbnail":"https://storyofbutte.org/files/square_thumbnails/c998c93001441c6108a77c3855c76b66.jpg"}}}