People's Power League

"The Vigilance of the Pen" continues in 2018 as corporate aspirations threaten public lands and resources.

The People's Power League formed in Deer Lodge, Montana on June 11, 1911. Forty-one men from towns all over Montana adopted a straight-forward plan to assure that political power was returned to the citizens of the state. They would free themselves from the strangle-hold of megalithic corporations housed in New York and New Jersey by assuring the voter's right to nominate candidates in an open primary starting with the president and continuing down to local officials. Fairness would be guaranteed in campaigns and elections by barring corporate money from influencing the outcome.

The odds were against them. The Legislature was bought and paid for by the Amalgamated Copper Company and would never put forth any bills implementing the plan. Undaunted, the legal minds of the People's Power League drafted three Initiatives to present to the voters while the newspapermen went to work on 'public opinion.'

In referring to newspapers, a person pictures the daily papers in large cities. But, those papers were not a part of the playbook of the People's Power League. The League depended exclusively on the small town editors. They knew how to turn a phrase and stand up for the truth. They couldn't be bought but many were run out of the state by the banks that held the mortgage on their operations.

A Small Step for 1912, a Giant Step for a Century

By 1912, the Initiatives had all passed. Montanans would no longer be compliant citizens swallowing the corporate agenda hook, line and sinker. The self-absorbed corporate bosses back East and their corporate henchmen failed to see the tidal wave of indignation.

Read the following excerpts from the writings of these determined pioneers and you may understand why the Initiatives passed.

"Campaigns were conducted by simply the opening of a barrel, and sowing the state from one end to the other with corporation money—the largest barrel winning in the end. This extravagant campaigning prevented the election of any but the wealthy or those supported by special interests."
E.H. McDowell, Terry Tribune (February 1910)
"The legitimate business interests, honest industry, equality before law, representative free government, and individual liberty, are being destroyed in the state of Montana through the operation and encroachments of law-violating corporate combines. A modern feudalism is being established through the subjugation of the people to the power of organized wealth controlled by non-residents, who have enlisted in their service an army of mercenaries and fortified these behind special legislation corruptly secured to administer government to the people of Montana. These influences have penetrated to every branch and department of government in Montana–state, county, city, and school district; judicial, executive, and legislative. They dominate both party political organizations, and dictate the selection of representatives in congress and national senate. Through authority of laws secured from the last legislative assembly of the state, these foreign forces are now engaged in perfecting a monopoly-combine with power and purpose to control in every form of industry or business which can be made lucrative."
J.C. Murphy, Montana Lookout (April 1910)
"Not only does this new copper combine mean more powerful control over a commodity which has become one of the necessities of commerce; it means the total destruction of the helpless independent copper producers, and it means as well reckless juggling with stock markets."
Collier's Weekly (April 1910)
"Butte would be a bad place for the corporation to look for advocates of consolidation. We are consolidated and amalgamated to death. Some groups of financiers may be profiting by the operation, but out here in Butte we are playing the role of "goat' and it is far from a pleasant one."
Butte Daily News (July 1910)
"Whether through fear or for favor, control of the republican state convention was yielded to the political department of the Amalgamated Copper mining Company--the same interests that...dictated the nomination of both the Democratic and Republican legislative tickets in Ravalli and most other counties in the state, were in the saddle... This great, overshadowing company, lusty offspring of Standard Oil, together with the half dozen other great combines that would dominate the national and all state governments, is now desperately striving to entrench itself in legislative halls from which the waves of insurgency are beating it back. In most states the people are apparently alive to the situation. What's the matter with Montana?"
Miles Romney, Hamilton Western News (September 1910)
"The Outlook hopes to see enacted into law a measure which will severely and commensurately punish any agent or representative of a corporation who attempts to coerce or unduly influence any employee in his exercise of the voting franchise, and the penalty should be made such that in case of conviction the offending party may be sent to the penitentiary. In the recent election held in this precinct the deplorable spectacle was presented of hirelings of certain corporations domineering over employees in an effort to compel them to vote along certain lines, with the result that a great amount of indignation was aroused at the attempt to practice such disgraceful tactics."
T.J. Johns, Laurel Outlook (November 1910)
"Less than a decade of time has been required to bring the mineral wealth under combine control, to dismantle all the half dozen great ore reduction works in Butte which employed thousands of men; to acquire most of the tremendous water power and electric power resources of the state to one ownership, together with the most valuable franchises for the public utilities of water and light and power in cities; to bring the banking interests of the state practically under the domination of a single chain of banks owned by the same interest; to compel the best part of the mercantile interests of the state to pay tribute to these banks; to bring the agencies and officers of state and local governments under subjection and into service of the same interests."
J. C. Murphy, The Comical History of Montana (Scofield 1912)
"Referring to the democratic affair at Livingston last week; it was evidently engineered as "Ryan and Morony wanted it" to be. And this development points somewhat definitely to the intention of the Amalgamated gang to run the next campaign for us taking charge of both sides and executing a flamboyant sham battle for us, something that the people will thoroughly enjoy, but not understand until the affair is over and the 'props' put away. This act has been put on before in a small way but it now looks as if it was to be made the main feature and to occupy the entire arena."
Sam Gordon, Daily Yellowstone Journal (September 1910)
"Montana will declare in favor of a government by the people and against government by the trusts; will have pronounced against the robber tariff and its robber beneficiaries; will have joined with Maine, Wisconsin, Iowa and other progressive states, in repudiating the agents of Wall street and proclaimed to the world that the Treasure State will again be a free people represented by men untrammeled by the octopus of greed and graft."
Sanders County Democrat (October 1910)
The basic principal upon which our republican form of government rests is that the inherent right to govern lies with the people themselves. But the growth of the caucus and convention system of party nominations has so far removed the government from the people, that an impartial observer today is able to recognize very little democracy in our politics.
L. W. Pierson, Havre Promoter (January 1911)
"Even now you hear legislators from the cow regions declaring that party affiliations and party fidelity be thrown to the wind and a grand assault on the citadel of the potent and wicked combine be consummated–-a thing devoutly to be wished."
Daniel Whetston, Cutbank Pioneer Press (January 1911)
"Just now the people of Montana are in a somewhat belligerent frame of mind toward the Amalgamated Copper company, but the grievance proceeds only from the unwarranted and unnecessary attitude of that corporation in its effort to control the politics of the Treasure State. They resent having the big company controlling political conventions of both the leading parties in the state, dictating the selection of public officials and brazenly attempting to block legislation which is desired and needed by the people of Montana....its continued interference in the exercise of independent political rights of these people is arousing a righteous wrath, which may, ere long, reach a point where, in sheer self defense, reprisals may be necessary to bring the corporation to its senses."
Tom Stout, Fergus County Democrat (April 1911)
"Montana will never be free from the dominating power of the corporations as long as its newspapers and well thinking people are held in fear of the great octopus."
George Flashman, Fromberg Herald (February 1911)
"The state suffers because every large daily newspaper of general circulation is controlled by special interests, and its news and editorial columns are under the censorship and control of monopolistic combines in restraint of trade, or by individuals of great wealth and power lacking patriotic loyalty to their state and with all their interests concentrated in themselves."
A.M. Anderson, Livingston Daily Post (May 1911)
"The issue in Montana is clearly defined. Shall the special interests which know no party allegiance, acting in our own state through the Amalgamated Copper company and its allies, control the republican, as well as the democratic party, or shall the republican party be controlled by the people themselves? There can be no compromise in the situation which confronts us. It is a struggle between two diametrically opposed and conflicting ideals and interests. There is and can be no middle ground. The action of the majority of the state committee at Helena has forced the issue, Let him that hath no stomach for the fight depart."
U.S. Senator Joseph M. Dixon, The Daily Missoulian (March 1912)
The substitution of direct party nominations of every candidate from constable to president in lieu of the old-time corporation ridden caucuses and convention system will revolutionize the political status of this state. . . It will be impossible for the agents of the great copper trust, who boast of the employment of half the men in the state, to coerce or buy a majority of the voters in any given county, or the state as a whole, protected as they will be both in the primary and the general election by the Australian ballot and a drastic corrupt practices act.
Miles Romney, Western News (April 1912)
"(P)rogressivism in Montana presupposes and embraces opposition to the Amalgamated and all its works. In fact to all of us who call ourselves Montanans, it is really of more importance that the tentacles of our Octopus be clipped,... Montana cannot, must not, stand for any further extension of the influence of the big copper combine. The revelation of its sinister power in the far outlying counties, in the presidential convention campaign this spring, must have been a surprise to many and a warning to all who hope to live free men in this state."
Sam Gordon, Daily Yellowstone Journal (August 1912)
"It has been announced from time to time that the Amalgamated is 'out of politics,' but its lobby and other legislative agencies have not disappeared from public view..."
Wm. K. Harber, Ft. Benton River Press (March 1913)
"To assert the contrary is to impugn the honesty of scores of men...who stand ready at all times to combat any effort of the Amalgamated to fasten its corporate tentacles about the state, its industries or political institutions."
Tom Stout, Helena Independent (August 1917)

FOUNDING MEMBERS

Miles Romney
Hamilton
Western News

Robert N. Sutherlin
Great Falls
Rocky Mountain Husbandman

William K. Harber
Ft. Benton
River Press

Robert Lee McCullock
Hamilton
Judge

Sidney Fox
Red Lodge
Judge

Edwin K. Cheadle
Lewistown
Judge

Thomas J. Walsh
Helena
Lawyer

Walter S. Hartman
Bozeman
Lawyer

John F. Duffy
Kalispell
Lawyer

A. G. Hatch
Big Timber
Lawyer

Lewis J. Duncan
Butte
Mayor

Edward Cardwell
Jefferson Island
Stockman

Tom Alexander
Forsyth
Stockman

Charles Wilson Chowing
Ennis
Shopkeeper

William E. Nippert
Thompson
Schoolmaster

Max McCusker
Livingston
Federated Railway Trades

Ed Carlton
Livingston
Federated Railway Trades

James O’Leary
Livingston
Federated Railway Trades

H. Jurner
Livingston
Federated Railway Trades

D. J. Fitspatrick
Missoula

Edward Suitor
Deer Lodge
Federated Railway Trades

T.S. Brown
Deer Lodge
Federated Railway Trades

Edward Thomas
Deer Lodge
Federated Railway Trades

T.J. Heron
Deer Lodge
Federated Railway Trades

Wolmer Hanson
Deer Lodge
Federated Railway Trades

Al Divine
Deer Lodge
Federated Railway Trades

W.S. Harter
Miles City
CM&PS Railway Workers

Folk Williams
Butte
Mill & Smeltermen's Union

Dan Leary
Anaconda
Mill & Smeltermen's Union

Andrew Mallon
Anaconda
Mill & Smeltermen's Union

H.W. Nelson
Billings
Trades & Labor Council

Edward Shields
Butte
Trades & Labor Council

Albert Michaud
Miles City
Trades & Labor Council

Phil Christian
Butte
Miner’s Union

Robert Squires
Butte
Miner’s Union

M. M. Donoghue
Butte
MT Federation of Labor

Oscar M. Partelow
Butte
MT Federation of Labor

Henry Drennin
United Mine Workers

W.J. Dorrington
Choteau

Charles Dieter
Mondak

MEMBERSHIP EXPANDS

E.H. Goodman
Townsend
Lawyer

George Maywood
Philipsburg
Lawyer

William M. Johnston
Billings
Lawyer

Edward C. Russel
Lewistown
Lawyer

Theodore Lentz
Missoula
Lawyer

James Holland
Havre
Businessman

John Blewett
Fromberg
Businessman

James Jergenson
Whitehall
Student

Charles Sackett
Anaconda
Court Stenographer

Daniel J. Donohue
Glendive
Doctor

John C. Lowney
Western Federation of Miners

O.H.P. Shelley
Helena
Modern Brotherhood of America

Dennis Murphy
Butte
Miner's Union

Hurburtus Corkish
Butte
Miner