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    Hustlers and Homesteaders: A History of Montana, Volume IV: Montana History Series, #4
    Hustlers and Homesteaders: A History of Montana, Volume IV: Montana History Series, #4
    Hustlers and Homesteaders: A History of Montana, Volume IV: Montana History Series, #4
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    Hustlers and Homesteaders: A History of Montana, Volume IV: Montana History Series, #4

    By Greg Strandberg

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    Begin the journey to discover how Montana came to be the great state that it is today!

    By 1900 Montana was home to 243,329 people. The state had produced 61% of the country’s copper just the year before, which amounted to 23% of the world’s supply.

    By 1930 there were 537,606 people in the state. The nation was just beginning to get a taste of the banking crashes and economic depression that Montanans had been feeling since the ‘20s.

    The cause of these problems in Montana can be traced to propaganda both the state and railroads put out beginning in 1905. These pamphlets told bald-faced lies to people the world over. Dry farming was advocated, and in an environment that couldn’t support it long-term. When the bust came in 1916 more than 200,000 people left. As a result, Montana was the only state in the union to lose population in the ‘Roaring Twenties.’

    You’ll learn all that and more in this exciting fourth volume of Montana history. There’s Montana’s involvement in the Spanish-American War in 1898, the creation of the National Forests and magnificent dams in the state, and the Panic of 1907 that devastated the nation’s and world’s economy. And that’s just one decade in this three-decade book!

    Experience this wondrous series that hundreds of readers already have. Discover why Montana is called both the Treasure State and the ‘Last Best Place.” Discover your history today!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGreg Strandberg
    Release dateSep 29, 2014
    ISBN9781310640421
    Hustlers and Homesteaders: A History of Montana, Volume IV: Montana History Series, #4
    Author

    Greg Strandberg

    Greg Strandberg was born and raised in Helena, Montana. He graduated from the University of Montana in 2008 with a BA in History.When the American economy began to collapse Greg quickly moved to China, where he became a slave for the English language industry. After five years of that nonsense he returned to Montana in June, 2013.When not writing his blogs, novels, or web content for others, Greg enjoys reading, hiking, biking, and spending time with his wife and young son.

    Read more from Greg Strandberg

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      Book preview

      Hustlers and Homesteaders - Greg Strandberg

      Author

      Introduction

      There’s little difference between the history of Montana and the history of America, not by the 20th century. Montana soldiers led the charge that would make Teddy Roosevelt President. Montana crooks played the hand on Wall Street that brought financial panic. Montana voters showed the nation what a woman in Congress could look like. Montana men died in the nation’s wars in a higher proportion than any other state. The history of Montana in the 20th century is the history of America.

      But then who are the ‘Hustlers and Homesteaders?’ The latter is quite easy to identify – homesteaders were just about anyone coming to Montana in the 1900s, 1910s and even into the 1920s that had their sights set on farming. Many were coming to the state for the first time, and perhaps without any knowledge whatsoever about their new profession. It was a tough life, breaking the earth and making it grow, but thousands came and tried their hand at it, although most would end up leaving, perhaps with more bad memories than good to always remind them of their Montana days.

      The hustlers, on the other hand, are a bit harder to nail down. Who were these people, which really have no recorded mention or title? Frankly, they were everyone that tried to take advantage of the homesteaders, or just common Montanans.

      These were people of all walks of life and of all income levels. They were men like Dan McKay who travelled about and convinced the new arrivals to split counties, creating more government for the state. They were the Northern Pacific and Milwaukee Road railway managers that lured the homesteaders to the state in the first place, often through blatant lies and outright propaganda. They were the top-men of Anaconda Company, later Amalgamated Company and later Anaconda again, men who cajoled legislatures into doing their bidding, even if it was against the state’s long-term interests to do so. Most of all, however, they were the greedy bankers, swindlers, financiers, brokers, crooks, vagabonds and other malcontents of Wall Street – men like Fritz Augustus Heinze and his brother Otto – who’d bring about a national recession with their actions, one called the Panic of 1907.

      The Heinze brothers got caught and received a slap on the wrist, but a far greater number of businessmen in Montana took advantage of things for their own ends and were never caught or reprimanded...or even called out – the behemoth mining company Anaconda and it’s myriad offshoots like Montana Power controlled the presses in the state, as many upright politicians found out to their detriment and subsequent downfall.

      Hustlers were more than that, however, for they not only preyed on the homesteader directly, but indirectly as well. These were the men controlling the lumber mills of Missoula and Bonner, the source for so much of the raw materials the Butte and Anaconda smelters needed. They were the bankers in the cities giving loans and easy credit, and then giving it again when the original couldn’t be paid. They were the politicians preying upon the weaknesses of the masses, both nationally and in Montana, and with results that would make an already government-weary population more so.

      Most of all, however, they were the men that let greed and self-interest rule their actions, actions which created rifts in the state that last to this day. Historian Arnon Gutfeld put Montana’s economic situation quite succinctly when writing about the state’s politics during the 1910s, saying that, like most of the states of the region, it had developed a colonial economy. (Gutfeld, p 7)

      That colony sent its goods and the vast majority of its money back East to New York’s Wall Street, something it’d been doing for decades. If you want to go back to the fur trapping days you could even argue that the resources of Montana were flowing even further east, across the Atlantic to the coffers of the Hudson’s Bay Company and others like it.

      Montana had improved its lot somewhat since those far-off days, but not by much. At least in the 1890s there’d been Marcus Daly and William A. Clark to keep the wealthy Eastern interests at bay, but when they left Montana’s scene at the turn of the century it was a whole new ballgame. Montana would become a money-making machine for others, and the citizens of the state were entitled to nothing more than the scraps. Little would change by the 21st century.

      Montana in 1900

      By 1900 Montana was home to 243,329 people. The state had just produced 61% of the country’s copper the year before, which amounted to 23% of what was dug up around the world.

      The nearly quarter of a million people living in Montana were a drop in the bucket when it came to the nation’s total. Montana made up just 0.32% of the country’s population, which was 76.2 million that year, up 21% from the previous decade. That could in no way compare, however to the 337% increase Montana had felt during that same time.

      Butte was indicative of the way cities were changing the landscape of Montana, and the people who lived there. In 1880 Butte had just 3,400 people and was considered a camp, up from the sixteen who called the place home in 1869. By 1905 there were 30,470 residents, most in mining or industries associated with it, making it the largest city in the state.

      In 1880 Anaconda was little more than dusty prairie alongside some good water. After Marcus Daly invested and built it up over the years it grew to 9,800 people, all of whom lived in the shadow of the world’s largest copper smelter.

      Missoula had been little more than a timber camp butting up against Hell Gate Canyon and the Mullan Road when it first started. Businessmen that didn’t always follow the letter of the law when it came to Montana forests helped the city grow, and by 1900 it had 4,300 residents.

      And those residents were young. In all of America in 1900 just 1.4% of the population was over the age of 65. In Montana that was slightly higher, with 2.4% of Montanans classified as seniors. The land was hard and tough and it took youthful vigor to tame it. Nearly 20% of the state’s population was between 15 and 24 years of age, and there were nearly two men for every woman – double the national average. It’s no surprise that Montana’s young men were forgoing marriage at a 13% higher rate than their national counterparts – there were few women to ask.

      What women that were in the state were often married already. It was clear well before the first constitutional convention in 1866 that Montana would need to grow its population if it wanted to lose its territorial status and become a state. Families were critical for doing that, as most of the gold prospectors that’d come to the territory in the 1860s were gone by the 1870s, if not sooner. For Montana to grow it’d need people to put down roots, and the railroads set about doing that.

      Montana’s economy was strong, and had all the underlying strengths needed to move ahead with confidence. Mining, timber, farming, ranching, railroads – all showed a level of diversification necessary to support a myriad of industries and ways of life. Montana’s culture would be diverse, and the geographical boundaries of those industries that first began appearing in the 1860s cemented themselves and became the bedrock upon which the state’s growth was based.

      Three-quarters of Montana is comprised of the rugged, flat and arid land called eastern and central Montana. Grass was the main resource there, and the cattle industry thrived. Irrigation would be needed to tame the arid lands and bring them into production, and the people there set about doing so with gusto where applicable, and often where not as well.

      Dual mindsets developed between east and west in the state. In the east people viewed the land as endless while in the west they were boxed-in by forests and mountains and rivers. In the east business was mobile, with cattle moving about and farmers tending large areas. In the west business was focused around commercial and industrial areas, with resources buried deep and often in precise spots. In the east the people were free to work for themselves, Mother Nature their only boss. In the west people worked for the Company or some job related to it, nearly always with out of state interests calling the shots.

      It’s through the study of Montana’s past that we can figure out what changes took place that brought about our current political, economic, social and cultural makeup. But through that past we learn so much more – we learn the story of America. Hustlers and homesteaders, two groups that perhaps couldn’t have existed without the other from 1900 to 1930 in Montana. The ideas they extolled, the identity they forged, and the institutions they shaped are all still with us today.

      Part I – The 1900s

      The 1900s in Montana got off to a rollicking start with the U.S. Senate scandals involving William A. Clark. He finally took his seat in 1901 and politics simmered down for a time now that the Clark-Daly feud was thankfully finished. Fritz Augustus Heinze was still on the scene, however, and his tactics against Amalgamated Copper Mining Company changed the way politics was played in the state, and led to his eventual withdrawal back East.

      It was while back East that Heinze would play another leading role in Montana’s economy, this one during the Panic of 1907. The resulting turmoil would affect many and further tarnish his image in the state over the years.

      At the same time these events were playing out the railroad companies and their propaganda machines went into full swing, trying to lure people from all walks of life to Montana and the eastern lands it had available. Touting dry-farming techniques and the benefits they brought, this literature told blatant lies, misrepresented facts and figures, and painted a picture that was not just unsustainable, but downright ruinous for the state’s economic, cultural, and political well-being.

      Before all that, however, Montanans would have the chance to join in on the first international war in the state’s history.

      Remember the Maine, To Hell with Spain!

      The waters of Cuba’s Havana Harbor were calm. Pedestrians strolled upon the promenade, the electric lamplight flickering off the water. It was a warm night for mid-February, something that caused more people than usual to head out and get a look at the large battleship USS Maine anchored in the center of the harbor.

      BOOM!

      The explosion was deafening and shattered windows all around. Many that’d been walking on the promenade fell to the ground and looked up and looked out, not at a gleaming white warship but at a smoldering steel wreck quickly sinking to the bottom of the harbor. Others saw bodies flying in all directions.

      Artist rendition of Maine blowing up, c 1898

      A total of 260 American sailors aboard the Maine died that night out of a crew of 350, and six more would succumb to their wounds later on. Just sixteen escaped without injury.

      Wreckage of the Maine in Havana Harbor, 1900

      The response was swift and unmerciful and came from an unlikely source – New York newspapers. William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World covered the event in a way that would later be described as yellow journalism, a technique of sensational headlines, spurious ‘facts’ and magnificent exaggerations, all for the sole purpose of selling more papers.

      Joseph Pulitzer, c 1890s

      It worked wonders, and also started a war. Public pressure ratcheted-up against Spain, the country that’d controlled Cuba since Columbus had first stepped foot there in October of 1492. Jingoist ideas espousing an aggressive foreign policy – the same that’d succeeded in getting Hawaii annexed by the U.S. in 1893 – once again reared their ugly head, creating a fever-pitch for war. Outside of New York cooler heads prevailed and called for a negotiated settlement with Spain over the incident involving the Maine, but on March 17 Senator Redfield Proctor, a Republican from Vermont, gave a speech declaring that war was the only sensible solution. Just a few days later, on March 21, the U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry delivered another blow to those calling for peace by announcing an underwater mine had been responsible for the ship’s destruction.

      USS Maine wreckage in 1898

      President William McKinley succumbed to the calls for war and asked Congress to authorize his call for the raising of troops for Cuba. Congress obliged with the Teller Amendment, which was sent to Spain on April 20, caused the end of diplomatic ties by the Spanish on the 21st, and their declaration of war on the 23rd. America was fighting a foreign power for the first time since the Mexican-American War started in 1846, fifty-two years earlier. The Spanish-American War had begun.

      Montanans in the War

      At the start of the war America was wholly unprepared for a conflict. Spain’s army outnumbered America’s by four-to-one. The U.S. Army had just 28,000 soldiers. To make up for that shortfall the federal government depended on the state National Guard units and Montanans saw action as a result, and in many cases died as well.

      President William McKinley called for 125,000 volunteers on the same day he declared war. States were given allotments based on their current units, and that meant Montana was expected to supply 500 soldiers. Looking at its current rosters, there was just no way that could be done.

      The 1st Montana Infantry

      The 1st Montana Infantry of the National Guard had first been formed in 1887 and it held good officers, men like Colonel Harry C. Kessler who had experience in war.

      Harry Clive Kessler was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on March 18, 1844. He was no doubt raised with stories of his grandfather’s participation in the Revolutionary War, serving as a midshipman under Commodore John Barry. Those tales also probably inspired him to join the 104th Pennsylvania Volunteers when the Civil War broke out in 1861. He was just seventeen years old but rose through the ranks quickly, participating in each engagement of General George McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign.

      Harry C. Kessler in the Philippines, 1898

      From Campaigning in the Philippines by Karl I. Faust

      During the Battle of Fair Oaks Kessler was wounded, mustering out of the Army as a 1st Lieutenant as a result. He got into the lithograph business back home in Philadelphia before moving to Montana in 1875, primarily for health reasons. He became involved in newspapers with Captain James H. Mills and put out the New Northwest before heading to Butte in 1876 to open the Butte Miner. He sold the paper the very next year, tired of writing about miners striking it rich when he could be doing the same.

      Kessler got into politics in Butte, serving one term as a county commissioner of Silver Bow County and then three terms as its treasurer. He was active in the Montana National Guard as well, owing to his service in the war and long family-tradition of fighting for his country.

      That service was called upon again on April 25, 1898, when the 1st Montana Infantry United States Volunteers were called up, and there were capable men of experience that would be leading the companies Kessler was to oversee.

      There was Major James W. Drennan, who served under Thomas Francis Meagher in the Irish Brigade and saw action at Gettysburg and later took part in the Indian Wars beginning in 1866 in Missouri. He served in the Great Sioux War, seeing action in the Dull Knife Fight in Montana in 1876 and getting wounded later at the Battle of Slim Buttes.

      Captain John Hallahan fought with the 47th New York Volunteers under General William Tecumseh Sherman and took part in the long siege of Petersburg before fighting with General Thomas L. Crittenden in the Apache Wars, which had plagued Texas since 1849 and would continue to do so until 1886.

      Captain George W. Reif had taken part in the 1877 campaign of General Nelson Miles, continuing with it all the way until the surrender of Chief Joseph in October. Even two privates in the Montana National Guard had served in the Civil War, Andrew McGinnis and Walter L. Whann.

      Regimental Officers of the 1st Montana Infantry

      The men that would serve in the various National Guard companies were drawn from all areas of Montana, in line with President McKinley’s call for twelve companies from each state. The plan was that each company would have 231.4 men, with twelve companies coming from each state for 2,777.7 men. There were 45 states at the time so that equaled the 125,000 men the president felt he needed to win that war, a war which he never really wanted to fight in the first place.

      Where that extra 0.4 man was supposed to come from is unsure, but Montana didn’t have anything close to the numbers the president was calling for in any case, and many states were in the same boat. In fact, Montana’s total number of National Guard troops in 1898 – just 500 – would barely have filled two of the twelve companies the state was expected to supply. Something had to be done, and appealing to the patriotic sensibilities of the populace seemed a good way to go about doing it.

      Forming Companies

      To the patriotic citizens of the state, incensed by what’d happened in Cuba and yelling "Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain," this just wasn’t good enough. By the time the 1st Montana Infantry shipped out there were fifty officers leading 1,019 soldiers. Montanans, it seemed, were ready for a fight. The nation was as well – the U.S. Army raised more than 220,000 men for the war. Before then, however, the men around the country had to be raised into companies, and in Montana that was like so:

      Company A was from Great Falls; Companies B, F and G were out of Butte; Company C hailed from Bozeman and was composed of cavalry; Company D came from Virginia City; Company E from Dillon; Company H, Kalispell; Company I out of Lewiston; Company K and M from Anaconda; and Company L out of Helena.

      Companies L and M hadn’t even existed before the president’s call, for the state had only ten companies, on paper at least. They were formed nonetheless, most likely to avoid any bureaucratic hassle that may have resulted otherwise.

      The men that volunteered weren’t all scoundrels and wasters of life and limb, either, nor were they those that couldn’t find work outside of the military. Influential citizens enlisted in great numbers, men that were ready to give back to a country that’d given them so much. They were John C. Heilig, a Butte alderman; Robert H. Paxson, a leading pharmacist in Butte; William J. Hannah, a state senator from Sweetgrass County; and Albert Pfaus, a Lewistown Presbyterian minister, to name just a few.

      Montana’s Company M

      Anaconda’s Company M of the 3rd Battalion was indicative of the Montana companies. There were ninety-three men with a myriad of occupations – miner, laborer, bricklayer, fireman, clerk, and cook.

      Captain John Hallahan was a liquor dealer that’d been born in Cork, Ireland, sometime in December, 1846. He came to America in 1864 when he was eighteen and immediately got into the Civil War, seeing action at Wilmington and Faison Station, as well as the siege of Petersburg listed above. He joined the 14th U.S. Infantry after the war and fought in the Apache Wars in Arizona before getting into prospecting. He moved around California, Nevada, Wyoming and Montana for most of the 1870s and then to Colorado for much of the 1880s. By 1886 he’d headed to Butte and was engaged in mining there still when war broke out with Spain twelve years later.

      Hallahan’s First Lieutenant, Arthur O’Leary, was a student. Sergeant Philip McDonnell was a butcher and Private Carl A. Steinmetz was a jeweler. In comparison, battalion commander Colonel Kessler’s occupation was listed as capitalist. The men from Company M were largely young and eager and ready to serve their country. Seven of them would suffer wounds in combat and six of them would die.

      By May 4 the first companies started to arrive in Helena and all had reached the capital by the 9th. They encamped near the Broadwater Hotel and the place took on the name Robert B. Smith in honor of the current governor. Volunteers heading to the ‘Robert B. Smith’ were in for a nasty surprise, however, as Lieutenant Alexander Laist recorded in 1899, and which is worth noting at length:

      During the first few days the weather, although cold, was sunny and dry; but when, later, it began to snow, the melting snow, becoming churned into the ground by the tramp of soldiers going out to drill or passing to and fro in the discharge of their duties, turned the camp into the semblance of a duck pond. It was impossible to keep dry or clean or warm. Colds became numerous and the brown mixture provided by Uncle Sam was dispensed to the long crowds that lined up every morning at the hospital tent, by the barrel. The chorus of coughs that was to be heard whenever a company formed for the roll call would have been amusing had it not been indicative of considerable suffering. (Laist, p 4)

      ––––––––

      Lieutenant Alexander Laist served as the Chief Clerk and Chief of Orderlies on General Arthur MacArthur’s staff. At war’s end each state was required to compile an official history of its actions, and as regimental historian, Montana’s fell to Laist. These state histories were then collected and attached to the end of each national copy of historian Karl Irving Faust’s Campaigning in the Philippines, which were then earmarked for the various states. They can be found in Montana’s libraries today.

      Alexander Laist

      Alexander Laist was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on May 3, 1866. He attended Columbia University before graduating from the University of Cincinnati. In 1887 he moved to Bozeman and became a teacher at the Bozeman Academy, a prep school.

      He got into assaying while there and the next year started working in Butte for Anaconda Company as an engineer and later for the Utah and Montana Machinery Company. He supervised the startup of a few mines in Idaho and Deer Lodge and then decided a career change was in order. He began studying law in his free time and passed the bar in 1892, finding work with Thompson & Campbell, where he was working when the war came.

      Laist’s observations are striking and often humorous, yet it’s a humor that belies the terrible conditions the men of his Company G and others like it had to endure. When things are so terrible often the only thing to do to is to belittle them with jokes. Laist’s history is like that, and it was approved by Colonel Kessler at war’s end. It’s frank and engrossing and where we get the bulk of our information about Montana’s involvement in the war.

      Back in Helena, Camp Robert B. Smith was rechristened ‘Camp Mud’ after the ordeal, and finally by May 16 the men just couldn’t take it anymore and the place was abandoned altogether. One has to wonder if the volunteers’ opinion of the governor lessened after taking his name in vain for ten days or more. Smith did choose to return to Butte after his single term as Montana’s third state governor, after all.

      Governor Robert Burns Smith, c 1900

      The troops could be expected to be in a bad mood, and not only because of the weather. Of the twelve companies, just one out of Great Falls had full uniforms and Company M had none at all. They did have blankets, the only thing the government thought worth issuing until the troops arrived in San Francisco. From there it would be to the Philippines or Cuba, although the smarter men new the former was far more likely. To get to Cuba from the West Coast they’d have to head south to come up around the tip of South America at Cape Horn and then north skirting the coast until they reached the Caribbean.

      Route to Caribbean before Panama Canal

      It was a long voyage – the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty establishing America’s right to build the Panama Canal wouldn’t be signed until 1901 and the canal wouldn’t be completed until 1914, thirty-three years after the French first began building it in 1881.

      Troops being raised back East would be sent to Cuba most likely, which wouldn’t see fighting begin until late-June. In the Philippines, however, Commodore George Dewey had already powered his USS Olympia into Manila Bay at the head of the U.S. Navy’s Asiatic Squadron on May 1, and utterly destroyed the Spanish Pacific Squadron stationed there, bringing an end to the a colonial empire that’d existed since Columbus first set foot in the New World in 1492.

      Spanish Empire in 1700s

      Map of Spanish Empire in 1898

      Events were moving quickly, although not in Montana, where the men were just waiting. They couldn’t rightly practice while they were sitting around for ten days, either. First, the only weapons any of the companies had were the old 1873 Springfield rifles dating back to the Indian Wars. Next, there weren’t enough to go around so men had to take turns when it came to firing practice and conducting drills. And boy did Kessler love to drill his men, six hours of it each day.

      Going to California

      By May 25 the interminable waiting was over and the men shipped out, heading south out of the second Camp Smith in a long train of troops broken up into four sections. They were met and cheered in every small town and large city they passed. The reception at Dillon, where the ladies of the town entertained the entire regiment at supper, notes Laist, was especially remembered.

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