The Gibraltar: Socialism and Labor in Butte, Montana, 1895-1920

In the early morning hours of June 23, 1914, over twenty dynamite blasts leveled the Butte Miners' Union Hall. That dramatic event informed the nation and the world that Butte, Montana-the "Gibraltar of Unionism" and the toughest mining town in western America-was divided against itself. Underlying that violence and antecedent to it is one of the most important stories in Montana's political and labor history-the decades-long tension between labor and management in a world-class copper camp and the role that socialism and militant unionism played in that struggle. In this volume, author Jerry W. Calvert presents the first analytical study of socialist politics in Butte. Calvert takes readers inside union meetings, city council sessions, and electoral campaigns to explain the rapid ascendancy, dominance, and sudden decline of socialist Butte. The socialist triumph in Butte was hailed by Socialist Party of American leaders as the beginning of a sweep of municipal elections across the country. But the SPA's success was short-lived and the socialist insurgency in Butte sputtered and died, as it did elsewhere in the nation. As Calvert explains, Butte's socialists could not overcome internecine disputes and the arrayed and entrenched interests of capitalist power. Jerry Calvert has captured the drama and buoyant personalities that made politics in "The Gibraltar" idiosyncratic, dynamic, and sometimes dangerous. He writes about men and ideas in conflict and about political decisions that changed Montana's history. And he argues convincingly that despite their failure Butte's socialists succeeded in setting a new standard in reform and municipal politics in Montana.