Montana history
Profs finish books on state's dark past

photo by David Erickson

University of Montana journalism professors Dennis Swibold (left) and Clem Work discuss a 1914 copy of the Missoula Sentinel. Featured on the front page is Dean Arthur L. Stone, who founded the UM Journalism School and who is mentioned in new books by both men.

By Kelley McLandress
J-School Web reporter

Two J-School professors will soon see in print their hard work detailing important, yet perhaps shameful, parts of Montana history.

Professors Dennis Swibold and Clem Work have received book contracts for their long-time projects, both tied to dark periods for freedom of speech and press in the state.

Work’s book, “Darkest Before Dawn,” to be published by the University of New Mexico Press in September, follows a few of the 64 Montanans who were tried and convicted under the 1918 Montana sedition law for speaking their minds. In spite of the First Amendment, the law punished people who voiced anti-war or anti-industry sentiments.

"My focus is on the fear and hysteria that gripped the state at the time,” said Work.
Swibold’s book, “The Copper Chorus,” to be published by the Montana State Historical Society Press in the summer of 2006, examines the influence of the Anaconda Copper Mining Co. on Montana newspapers from 1889 to 1959. The book details how the Anaconda Co., Montana’s largest industrial employer, with mineral, timber and energy holdings, kept a stranglehold on newspapers it owned. Together, those papers owned by the company were called “the copper press.”

"To the extent that vast numbers of Montana newspaper readers were either left in the dark or given only the news favorable to the company's vested interests, Anaconda journalism was clearly bad for democracy,” Swibold said.

Work focused on the rising chaos that engulfed Montana’s industries between 1905 and 1917.

He writes of the Socialists and dissatisfied workers who formed the Industrial Workers of the World in Chicago in 1905 and later became known as the Wobblies. Their purpose, said Work, was to counter severe work conditions in factories.

When World War I began, Montana was at its industrial high, copper mining and timber industries booming. The eyes of the nation turned to the West, with its abundance of raw materials needed for the war effort. Meanwhile, the IWW’s infamy was growing, and it expanded into Montana. There, the tension between workers and industrialists soared.

A fearless, one-eyed IWW agitator named Frank Little helped organize the Wobblies' first "free speech fight" in Missoula in 1909. In 1917, Little exhorted striking workers in Butte to join the IWW and to oppose the war. On Aug. 1, he was dragged from his rooming house and lynched.

"This was a time when reason was abandoned and people did weird things,” said Work.

In the midst of the tension, the Montana sedition bill was proposed in 1918. In February of that year, Gov. Samuel Stewart demanded a special legislative session to pass the bill.

Nine days later, the state adopted the Montana sedition law and the criminal syndicalism law. These laws, Work said, outlawed the IWW. Saying just about anything critical or insulting to the government could be punished with up to 20 years in prison.

"At the time [the Montana sedition law] was passed,” he said, “it was the [nation’s] most repressive measure for free speech.”

But Work emphasizes the good that came from Montana’s sedition law: “These events in Montana ultimately led to more breathing room for freedom of speech.”

Work took a research sabbatical in 2000-2001 that led him across Montana through more than two dozen courthouses, from Thompson Falls in Sanders County to Sidney in Richland County.

In addition, Work went to the National Archives in Washington and “came back with files 2 feet high,” he said.

In a similar arduous fashion, Swibold logged his share of time in libraries across Montana.

"I read over 70 dailies and weeklies,” he said of his more than four years of research, part of which he completed during his sabbatical in 2001-2002.

One difficulty in researching, said Swibold, was that the Anaconda Co. hid its ownership.

"In the 70 years of the copper press, I found no public admission by any of the copper editors that they worked for the Anaconda Co.,” he said. “It was the state's worst-kept secret, but company officials and copper journalists lied regularly about the papers' true ownership.” They knew the company’s and the newspaper’s credibility would be compromised if they admitted ownership, he said.

Papers owned by the Anaconda Co. included the Butte Daily Post, the Montana Standard, the Billings Gazette, the Missoulian, the Missoula Sentinel, the Livingston Enterprise, the Helena Independent Record and the Anaconda Standard.

"For a town of 3,000 people in the middle of Montana, Anaconda had a paper, the Anaconda Standard, that was matched in scope by no other in the Northwest in 1889,” said Swibold.

Why in Anaconda?

It was the War of the Copper Kings at the turn of the century in Montana, said Swibold.

"Tycoons flooded the state with money,” he said. One notable tycoon was Marcus Daly, founder of the Anaconda Co. In 1889 he decided he needed his own newspaper to promote himself and his expanding company — and the Anaconda Standard was born.

"No paper could cover as much as the Anaconda Standard,” said Swibold. “But with the company money came the company’s editorial voice.”

The company’s 70-year hold on the “copper press” is divided into two stages, said Swibold.

"In the first half, the papers were aggressively attacking enemies in very blatant, overt ways,” he said. “The last half was just bad journalism. The press was really not credible.” You couldn’t find any criticism or negative publicity about the Anaconda Co. in the paper, nor about the politics the company supported, he said.

Anaconda’s ownership of the papers stifled their professional development and that of the journalists who wrote for them, he said.

"Fearful of appearing biased, yet unable to truly pursue the news, Anaconda journalists slipped into a sort of timid twilight ambivalence that was surely the worst consequence of ‘wearing the copper collar,’ ” Swibold said.

By the time Anaconda sold the newspapers to Lee Enterprises in 1959, said Swibold, Montanans had became cynical of the press.

"This is a cautionary tale,” he said. “Ownership matters in conflicts of interest in the press. I want Montana journalists to read it. I don’t want them to forget.”

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