James A. Murray, Senator James E
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Rocky Mountain RADICALS Copper King James A. Murray, Senator James E. Murray, and Seventy-Eight Years of Montana Politics, 1883-1961 by Bill Farley ike many of the railroad magnates, timber barons, and so-called Copper Kings of the LAmerican West, Irish immigrant James A. Murray built his fortune through discipline and ruth less determination. But Jim Murray stood out from his fellow western millionaires in one key respect: his politics were decidedly radical. From the Irish Land League protests of the 1880s through the Eas ter Rising of 1916, he was a steadfast champion of an independent Ireland. At the same time, he supported workers’ efforts to gain fair wages. As World War I raged in Europe and demand for copper united the power of the state with the interests of capital, Murray funded the expansion of a pro-labor newspaper with ties to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In Butte, a town where there existed, in the words of historian David Emmons, an “ideological seam . where the rights of the Irish and the rights of the worker were joined,” a millionaire capitalist could become a fierce champion of labor during a period of extreme class-based tensions in American politics.1 Nephew James E. Murray shared an allegiance to Ireland, and, despite lacking his uncle’s business acumen, developed a remarkably similar political agenda that found expression in Butte and national Irish politics. After a brutal fight to preserve a multi million dollar bequest from his uncle, James found a platform for his progressive ideology in the U.S. Senate, extending the Murray legacy of radicalism. James A. Murray Ed Fletcher, Memoirs o f Ed Fletcher (San Diego, Calif., 1952), p. 178 hroughout Jim Murray’s life, his colorful she pecting and learning the mining business in the Sierra Tnanigans and eccentric personality made him a Nevada. Sometime around 1863, while many young favorite of the press, but he never spoke on record fortune seekers were heading to the Comstock Lode about his early life. The basic facts, however, sug in Nevada, Murray traveled north to what was soon gest that Murray’s history mirrored that of countless to become the Montana Territory.3 other Irish people in the mid-nineteenth century. He At the turn of the twentieth century, Murray remi was born in County Clare in 1840 and raised in the nisced that his real life’s journey had begun when Catholic Church. With one child born in Ireland he “dropped his pack and made his fire in the little in 1848 and another in Canada in 1849, it is certain placer camp of Pioneer,” thirteen miles northwest of that the Murray family endured, and then escaped, Deer Lodge. Pioneer was an unusual choice, as most the Great Hunger. Canadian census records indicate prospectors had abandoned it, as well as nearby Gold the Murrays settled outside London, Ontario, where Creek, in 1862 when word spread about big strikes canal and railroad construction projects offered immi farther to the southeast at Alder Gulch and Grass grants abundant opportunities for employment.2 hopper Creek. Murray, however, likely saw several Jim Murray, however, had little interest in life as advantages to the sparsely populated camp: it was a wageworker. He joined the California gold rush at relatively safe from Indians and highwaymen, close the age of eighteen, making his way there in 1858, to trading posts, and free of intense competition. most likely as a stoker aboard a steamship traveling Quickly, he found the success that had eluded him around Cape Horn. He then spent five years pros in California, later recalling that he “found pay dirt MHS MHS Photograph Archives, H-1097Helena, Archives, Photograph Jim Murray was born in County Clare, Ireland, in 1840, and due to the Irish potato famine, his family immigrated to Canada in 1849. At eighteen, Murray joined the western rush for gold, working his way to California and eventually to Montana Territory, where in 1863 he arrived at the mining camp of Pioneer (right). After striking pay dirt, Murray began making loans to other miners, taking possession of their claims when they were unable to pay. He reinvested his profits and opened a general store and saloon in nearby Yamhill. He also took ownership of the Treadwater Flume, which brought water to the mining district. 4 0 MONTANA THE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN HISTORY In 1878, Murray and his wife Sallie settled in Butte, Montana (above, 1876), where he managed a growing empire of business interests from his private bank at the corner of Copper and Main. At the time, Butte boasted a few small smelters and quartz mills and was known for its silver production. In this burgeoning mining town, Murray took advantage of the 1872 Mining Act that required miners to work their claims to maintain ownership. He sought out partially developed properties whose owners had suspended work and took them over. and then got other men to work his claim for wages he married in 1871. Jim Murray’s political career also while he went in for trade and big profits.” After his started in this mining camp, as he was one of fifteen first lucrative strike, Murray started lending money delegates sent to represent Deer Lodge County at the to his fellow prospectors for supplies. When borrow Democratic Territorial Convention in 1874. Fellow ers failed to make their payments, he took possession pioneer—and future competitor and business part of their claims and horses, allowing him to expand ner—William A. Clark, headed the delegation.5 his own mining operations and to start breeding live Murray and his wife left Pioneer in 1874 for Deer stock. Murray built a dangerous reputation in these Lodge, where they lived for four years before setding early days. It was said that he carried his weapons in in Butte in 1878. From Butte, Murray managed his sight and made it known to all: “What’s mine is mine, growing empire from his private bank at the northwest and I’ll have it if I go to hell for it.”4 corner of Copper and Main, opposite his residence In 1868, as the territory’s growing population on 13 East Copper Street. Both buildings overlooked brought a new influx of prospectors to the Pioneer the mining town with its wood-framed structures, district, Murray again invested strategically, opening muddy streets, and plank sidewalks. During his early a general store and saloon in nearby Yamhill. Some years in the city, before smelter smoke choked the time thereafter, he took ownership of the Tread- air, Murray could gaze beyond the chaotic cluster of water Flume, which transported water from rivers buildings to the valley, where antelope grazed along and creeks to dry gulches—an essential component Silver Bow Creek.6 of the district’s growth. In the Pioneer area, Murray In the late 1870s, Murray adapted his business met Sarah Frances “Sallie” Burchett House, whom to silver production in Butte. Hard-rock mining BILL FARLEY | SPRING 2016 4 1 demanded significant capital to sink shafts, brace formed shareholder-controlled corporations to fund walls with timbers, excavate or blast drifts, remove development. If he did not have ready cash or will groundwater, and construct or lease plants to pro ing investors or was uncertain of a mine’s immediate cess ore—stamp mills for gold and silver; smelters potential, he allowed others to pursue development for copper. Murray approached this new era with of his claims through leases and royalty agreements.7 characteristic discipline. He used his own cash or A keen raconteur, Murray was skilled at convinc sold stock to passive investors to fund development, ing other prospectors that only a little hard work never getting into a position where a need for outside separated them from great wealth buried beneath capital could jeopardize his personal ownership and the boundaries of a claim’s four marker stakes. If the control. As a result, he never borrowed from banks or lessee quit the lease, there was always another miner Courtesy the author 42 MONTANA THE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN HISTORY ready to pick up the contract and take a turn extend often suspended work until they had saved up money ing the shaft farther into the hill. Should a prospector to continue excavating or setting timbers.10 Murray find a productive vein, Murray could either collect actively sought out partially developed properties royalty payments or attempt to evict his tenant and that he could wrest from poorly capitalized miners.11 then work the claim himself.s And if Murray couldn’t jump an abandoned claim, Murray also amassed profits by jumping claims his other option was to steal the ore underground and tunneling outside the boundaries of his proper by drifting into it hundreds of feet below the earth’s ties. The General Mining Act of 1872 required miners surface.12 Murray’s success at claim jumping and to work their claims to maintain ownership.9 Indi underground thievery led one old-timer to say to him: viduals who used their own cash for development “Jim Murray, I knew you when you was a petty lar ceny thief, and now I know you when you are a grand larceny thief.”13 P. A. O’Farrell, editor for Augustus Heinze’s newspaper, also opined on Murray’s thiev ery: “Had he lived in the days of Drake and Raleigh he would have been a buccaneer.”14 Murray’s fortunes in Butte took a dramatic turn alongside those of another famous Irishman, Mar cus Daly. In 1881, Murray partnered with Daly in the acquisition and development of the Northstar and Salisbury mines, capitalized at $2 million, but their joint effort enjoyed little success.15 Later that year, however, Daly’s discovery of the richest veins of copper in the United States at the Anaconda Mine spurred Butte’s rapid expansion.