[R-G] George Hunt and Blood Over the Copper Skies

[Hunter Gray]

Note by Hunterbear:

George W.P.Hunt was a damn good man.  More from him -- genuinely immortal
words -- in a moment. In this era of generally mealy-mouthed, forked-tongue
politicians, these words of his, and his thoroughly honorable career, still
serve as a beacon -- and a vision of just what might come again.

This is a  very specific time period when, if you have a background in
Western metal mining and related mill/smelter/refining work -- and bona fide
"hard-rock" unionism [sorry, I still don't  fully include the Steel union in
that context], you remember -- even if you weren't actually on-earth  for
the horrific events of  July, 1917.  Those tragedies have played a very
significant role in labor relations -- especially in the Southwestern copper
industry  [what's left of it] -- to this very moment.

Cochise County [Arizona], on the Border, was the scene on July 12, 1917, of
the Phelps-Dodge Copper organized "Loyalty League" roundup and
deportation of 1200 striking copper workers at Bisbee [not counting
three that were killed.]  This was in the context of the great IWW-led
copper strike that stretched from Butte, Anaconda, and Great Falls
down to the Mexican border.The 1200 were taken without food or water by
box cars and dumped at Columbus, New Mexico.  They were Chicano,
Anglo, Oriental, and Native -- either members of the IWW or members of
Mine-Mill [or both, a practice that actually lingered through the 1950s
in the Western copper situation.]

The Bisbee Deportation followed the July 10  deportation of about 100 IWW
and Mine-Mill members -- at Jerome, Arizona, just south of  my home town of
Flagstaff -- by a "Loyalty League" organized by the United Verde Copper
Company.  These workers were dumped in California and then driven back
 into Arizona by a California sheriff's posse -- and finally imprisoned at
 Prescott, Arizona.


In the early morning hours of August 1, 1917, Frank H. Little,  Cherokee
Indian and Chairman of the IWW General Executive Board, was taken from his
Butte boardinghouse by gunmen employed by the Anaconda Copper Company.  With
a rope around his neck, he was dragged by automobile through the outlying
streets of Butte for two miles before being hanged from a railroad bridge
trestle. Frank Little, crippled from a car wreck at Jerome, was on crutches
and was in Butte to assist the strike in Montana where he had just delivered
a stirring anti-War speech.  His funeral was the largest ever held in the
State of Montana.

No one was ever punished for any of these atrocities.  But, soon after these
horrific events, the "liberal" Wilson administration moved through the
Justice Department to round up 150 top IWW leaders on charges of violating
the "Espionage Act" -- hastily passed legislation outlawing anything
construed as "interfering" with the War effort [including, of course,
strikes  fundamentally motivated  by static wages and rampant inflation.]
In three massive Federal trials in 1918 -- Chicago, Wichita, Sacramento --
the defendants were all convicted and sentenced to heavy prison terms.
Eventually, as earlier with also victimized Gene Debs, they were released by
President Warren Harding.


Arizona [with New Mexico] had only become a state in 1912 and its fiery
Governor George W.P. Hunt -- who had come into the Territory on a mule and
who was essentially a socialist -- later denounced the brutal vigilante
actions against copper workers in an extraordinary address before the
Arizona Legislature:

"At this juncture I am sorely troubled for lack of a word, a phrase, an
expression with which to give poignant utterance to that which is in my
heart; to adequately describe a certain sort of thing in human shape that
wears the outward semblance of a man, but yet is a craven cur; whose heart
is as malignant as a cesspool; whose mind is a sink of infamy. . . .Such a
thing is the "profiteering patrioteer," the detestable hypocrite who, with
sanctimonious demeanor, goes through the mummery of patriotic service,
though striving all the while to profit by his country's dire distress; to
vent a personal prejudice under the guise of patriotism, or to gain for
himself a pecuniary advantage under the starry folds of his country's flag
with which he drapes his sorry soulless figure.  There is no word in all the
range of human tongue from Sanskrit to Anglo-Saxon with which to describe
this creature, so I abandon the effort in despair."

>From Vernon H. Jensen, Heritage of Conflict: Labor Relations in the
Nonferrous Metals Industry up to 1930 [Ithaca:  Cornell University Press,
1950], pp. 426-427.

Hunter Gray  [Hunterbear]
www.hunterbear.org
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'


In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the
game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the
high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own
inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down
on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings.  Then
it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and
remembering way. [Hunterbear]