account of briberies, attempted briberies, and corrupt practices.” Faced with adoption of the committee recommendation by the full United States Senate, William Clark resigned on May 15, 1900.15
Resignation, though, was not the same as quitting. Remarkably, Clark’s most outrageous maneuvers were still to come. His resignation created a vacancy that the governor of Montana would now be entitled to fill. The governor, Robert B. Smith, was a Daly ally and had aided the effort to overturn Clark’s election. Smith’s lieutenant governor, however, a man named A. E. Spriggs, was a close ally of Clark’s.
Clark allies arranged an elaborate scheme to lure Governor Smith out of the state. In his absence, Lieutenant Governor Spriggs—now Acting Governor Spriggs—appointed William Clark to the vacant Senate seat! Learning of this outrage, Governor Smith rushed back to Montana, declared Spriggs’s action invalid, and appointed his own man to the Senate. Each side protested the action of the other, and both candidates were tossed to Washington for the United States Senate to sort out.
Perhaps fatigued with the shenanigans, the Senate never resolved the matter of Montana’s rightful representation. The issue would die without any man taking the office. Montana citizens, having labored to earn the cherished right of statehood only a decade earlier, would have only one senator in Washington for the balance of the term.16
The election scandal of 1899, viewed from the distance of a full century, might be amusing if not for the legacy it spawned. Through a decade-long struggle founded on ego and personal aggrandizement, the Copper Kings had done much to “define deviancy down.”17 In the process, Montana picked up habits that would stick with the state for decades, including crude manipulation of the press, naked political corruption, and domination of state government by the copper industry.
In a few years, powerful interests from outside the state would use these same tools in ways as yet unimagined. Indeed, in one sense, the War of the Copper Kings can be viewed as a “noisy diversion.”18 For while Clark and Daly roiled the waters on the surface, a great shark circled below.
Helmet Men Braving Death Each Minute
—HEADLINE, BUTTE DAILY POST, JUNE 9, 1917
Cornelius “Con” O’Neill was lying in bed when he heard the Speculator whistle blow the alarm, just after midnight on June 9, 1917. O’Neill was foreman of the Bell and Diamond mines, Anaconda-owned properties adjoining the Speculator to the south. Married and a father of four young children, the thirty-seven-year-old lived with his family in a gracious house (owned by Anaconda) barely a stone’s throw from the mines.1 O’Neill’s wife, Julia, sensing the seriousness of the emerging disaster, pleaded with him to stay home. Instead, the “big, robust Irishman” rushed to the Bell-Diamond.2
O’Neill arrived while the fire was still in its early minutes, probably around 12:30 A.M. He found himself in the midst of a chaotic and confusing scene. What was obvious, though, was that the Granite Mountain shaft was ablaze. The “flaming torch” at its collar stood only a few hundred feet up the hill. Foreman O’Neill instantly recognized the danger to his own men in the depths of the Diamond. Of particular concern were thirty miners at work on the 1,800-foot level, where there was a direct connection to the Speculator.3
O’Neill directed his men to gather the makings for a bulkhead to “keep the smoke and gas from our men.” Quickly they loaded canvas and other materials onto the cage. Two other men accompanied Con O’Neill into the Diamond shaft—Ed Lorry and “Con” Toomey (O’Neill was sometimes known as “Big Con” to distinguish him from the multitude of “Cons” among the heavily Irish miners). None of the men wore any type of breathing apparatus, but when they reached the 1,800 Station of the Diamond, the air initially was clear. They progressed some 150 feet toward the Speculator and began to make preparations to build a canvas bulkhead.4
When the gas came, it hit hard and fast. Lorry suddenly collapsed. O’Neill and Toomey attempted to carry the stricken man back to the 1,800 Station, but then O’Neill too went down. Though they were close to the station, only Toomey managed to crawl back. By the time he got there, rescuers in breathing apparatus had already descended to search for the three men, worried by the length of time they’d been gone.5
“To hell with me—I can make it,” Toomey told the rescuers. “O’Neill and Lorry are in there.” The rescuers hurried down the drift, finding O’Neill and Lorry unconscious. One of the rescuers described the scene. “The smoke and gas were so thick in the 1,800 of the Diamond that we could not see three feet in front of us. No man could live in that gas without a helmet for ten seconds.” He was right. The rescuers managed to pull O’Neill and Lorry to the surface, but it was too late.6
The death of Con O’Neill, “the best known of the men who lost their lives in the disaster,” contributed to the shock on that first day after the fire. His photo in the newspaper, showing a powerful man with a thick mustache and thicker neck, underscored the vulnerability of all the men. The Butte papers lauded O’Neill in the gushing tone of a less cynical age: “[H]is efforts to save his companion,” wrote the Butte Daily Post, “even when he knew his own life was in danger, were characteristic of the man.”7
Like the effort by Con O’Neill, other early rescue attempts were largely spontaneous, more a function of impulse than contingency plans. The main body of trained rescuers would not arrive at the mines until after dawn.8 Instead of waiting, early rescuers simply dived in. Some, like Con, took their chances without the breathing equipment that would ultimately play a vital role in rescue efforts.
By the early twentieth century, breathing equipment was widely used by both mine rescuers and firemen. In the trenches of Europe, the apparatus was also used in connection with the “recent introduction of asphyxiating gases for offensive military purposes.” Specifically, the helmets were worn by soldiers “setting off the gas.”9
Rescuers at Butte used two main types of breathing apparatus: the German-made “Draeger” and English-made “Fluess.” Both the Draeger and the Fluess looked similar to deep-sea diving equipment, complete with breathing helmets. It was the helmets that gave the mine rescuers their popular name—the “helmet men.” In addition to the helmet (or in some models, a skullcap with goggles and mouthpiece), the apparatus consisted of compressed oxygen tanks that were worn on the back and a rubber “breathing bag” that was worn on the chest. Inside the breathing bag was alkali to absorb the carbon dioxide exhaled by the user. Various tubes and valves connected the components. Altogether, the helmet men’s breathing equipment tipped the scales at a hefty forty pounds. It was hot and cumbersome, particularly in the sweltering depths of the mines.
The breathing apparatus of the day was also notoriously unreliable. Indeed, a 1917 report on breathing equipment by the U.S. Bureau of Mines concluded that its use in any circumstances “involves grave danger.” Citing the many deaths of rescuers wearing the equipment, the report called for a fundamental redesign. The authors noted that helmets were prone to leaking, subjecting the wearers to gas.
The 1917 equipment was also incapable of increasing the amount of oxygen made available to users during strenuous activity. Obviously, rescuers frequently faced situations demanding heightened activity. The report used the specific example of rescuers carrying injured
