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Sec. 562, P. L. & R.U. S. POSTAGE

PaidButte, Mont.

Permit No. 139

A REVIEWOF 1944"JANUARY 5, 1945

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The big news of 1944 was the invasion. In May you saw these pictures oflanding craft unloading supplies. Landing craft and their cargoes wereessential to success. You can count on it that the copper which was minedin BuHe, smelted at Anaconda and refined at Great Falls was used in the

•construction of landing 'craft and the tools of war carried by them, picturesof which you have seen throughout the year of 1944 in Copper Commando.

Yeti.! went to the Anaconda Smelter in May to see three stirring war 'films'puton by the Labor-Management Committee at the Washoe. Employees onthe Hill and their families were invited as guests of the Committee and all

Many of you in- Butte saw the war films shown at the Fox Theater there inMarch. This is a section of the crowd from both labor and management as

left the after the serious and dramatic films.

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At Creat Falls in April you saw the National Security Award of the Officeof Civilian I)efense given to Creat Falls Reduction Works, the Wire andCable Plant and to East Helena; in Butte to Butte, Anaconda and Bonner.

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performances were packed. Part of the labor and management group whichaided in making the event a success is shown at the left; at the right, partof the audience seated in the theater just before the war films were shown.

You Met theLabor-Management

CommitteesTHIS issue of Copper Commando is dedicated to a reviewof the year 1944 .•

We thought you would like to review with us the placesyou have toured in our pages during the past year, perhaps torenew acquaintanceship with the folks in the 'rnines and smel-ters, in the shops and offices.

The big news of 1944, and of course we devoted our frontcover to it. was the invasion. During 1944 we saw the tide turnin favor of the United Nations. So the front cover is devoted tothis greatest of all news events. As Copper Commando goes topress, the war news looks brighter, but it is certain that we mustall fight harder than we ever have before to bring the war toan early end.

Behind your Labor-Management newspaper is, naturally,the Labor-Management Committee. There are four such com-mittees in Montana, composed of representatives of the Ana-conda Copper Mining Company and delegates from the CIO andAFL. These four groups are located in Butte. Anaconda, GreatFalls and East Helena. These committees are now well over twoyears old and they have contributed mightily to the productionof vital metals from Montana which today are doing their greatjob in helping to win the war.

On these two pages we review some of the activities of theLabor-Management Committees. Let's go back and revisitthese groups. .

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You saw the fampus bomber. Hell's Angels. land at the Butte airport inApril also. and here a number of the crew are being interviewed by the,Labor-Management group which we.lcomed them. Old timers were out, too.

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BACK in May, the Anaconda labor-Management Committee sponsored ashowing of war films to which employeesat the Smelter and thei r wives and fami-lies were invited. The two top pictureson the opposite side show scenes takenat that affair. Butte had already held ashowing of war films (the Butte Com-mittee sponsored a similar showing offilms in connection with the War Bondshow in Butte on December 7 of this lastyear): In the second picture on the op-posite page we see a group leaving thetheater.

The various Lab 0 r-ManagementCommittees co-operated with the Officeof Civilian Defense in staging ceremoniesat whi'ch the work of the Company andits employees was officially recognizedby the government. In April we got apicture at Great Falls and you can see iton the opposi te page. In the same monththe. crew of the great bomber, Hell'sAngels, came to Butte and was warmlywelcomed-those are Hell's Angels'scenes in the bottom pictures on the op-posite page.

During the year labor played host tothe management in Butte, and later, thelaber members of the Butte Committeewere entertained by Dan Kelly. In thetop picture on this page we see a sectionof the Butte Committee - this picturewas taken, as most of you will recall, inJuly.

Also in July both Butte and Anacon-da were visited by Sergeant Charles E.(Commando) Kelly and Lieutenant Er-nest Childers, two war heroes, who ap-peared in conjunction with the War Bondshow staged by the Labor-ManagementCommittee in collaboration with the FoxTheater management. At that time theMusicians' Union and the Stagehands'Union and many other groups from or-ganized labor once again offered theirservices free to a worthy cause. CopperCommando, as the mouthpiece of the La-bor-Management Committees, cannot toowarmly express its appreciatiorifo thesegroups of men. That's a view of theluncheon group at Anaconda which hon-ored Commando Kelly and LieutenantChilders in the second picture on thispage. ln the bottom picture at the rightwe find the active and progressive GreatFalls group.

•Anaconda Committee welcomed Herbert Heas-ley, left, of War Production Drive, Washington.He arrived at the Smelter to make awards forsuggestions originating with workers.

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This is a section of the Vietory Labor-Manage-ment Production Committee at Butte. taken the

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evening of labor's party for management. Laterthe party was held at the Miners' Union Hall.

You got a close-up view in July of CommandoKelly and Lieutenant Childers when they visited,

the Smelter at Anaconda as guests of the Com-mittee there. The luncheon was in their honor..

.Last month you paid a visit to the Committee atthe Creat falls Reduction Works. This ,roup has

done an outstanding job on wartime drives.Here', a meeting of the Ceneral Committee.

You s;;aw timber rolled from the station to the air raise.

YouYOU p'aid many visits witF. us to theButte mines. Not only did we go under-ground many times, but we caught themen on surface as well. In March youwent 'underground at the Tramway andin the picture at the top you saw AI Rad-melich, shift boss, making way for lesQuinton, who was bringing in a load oftimber from the station to the air raise.Down below we made a visit to a typicalmine pay office in connection with ourseries called "Pay Day for John Doe!' Onthe opposite page you may recall the 'visityou made underground to see how proper

Visite'd·the Mines

timbering is done. A short time later youwent underground again to spend sometime with the nippers. You visited manymines and read stories and saw pictures.

Close to the end of the year, wevisited a typical mining community at thesuggestion of one of the miner's wivesand we took pictures of schools andchurches and homes and children in aneffort to show how nice a typical miningcommunity really looks.

You visited all these places' with US

and we hope you enjoyed the visits asmuch as we did.

You leamed during the year 1944 how the PayOffice, not only in Butte but in Anaconda andCreat Falla as well, haRdIed the pay check .....

employees. First you visited the offices them-selves and saw how the checks are made up on theInternational Business Machines. Thea w. went

along to various mines, as you un see above.and followed the men as they came off shift.checkin, out anel receivin& thei, pay check ..

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You went underground in January, if you will re-member, when the story of how timbers arehandled was covered in your Labor-Managementnewspaper. We went through all the varioussteps and stages and hope that you got a goodidea of what the job was like. This is the laststep shown above, where Harvey Wallace isshown lagging the set. Timbering, as we all know,is a very vital operation in mining. With laggingfinished, the boys are ready to get out the ore.

You probably found the story of the tool lockersunderground, which we wrote up for you in ourMarch 31 issue, interesting and helpful-wehope you did. At that time we took this pictureof AI Radmelich exchanging tools with CeorgeOlson, nipper at the Tramway. The nipper bringsdull tools to the locker from working places •.

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On the same trip, when we got the various shotsof timbering, we took another picture of HarveyWallace, which you probably remember seeing.

In this picture he was completing a staging inorder to finish the timbering. You should havegoHen a good idea of the s!eps in timbering.

This undergr04lnd shot was made at the Tram-way at the time we did the story on tools. Thiswas one of the most interesting trips you made.

The picture shows the t901 locker being stockedby Ceorge Olsen, attendant. That's William Tru-deau, assistant foreman, and AI Radmelich.

This picture is another one that we took inAugust at the time we did the story "Pay Day forJohn Doe:' It is a companion picture to the two

on the opposite page. You saw a lot of miners onthat trip. Formerly it was necessary for the mento come to the Pay Office on Quarts Street to

pick up their cheeks. Now a paymaster is sent. to each mine and the men from the mines and..hops receive checks at place of employment.

You Went Intot~e 'Shops

I N Butte, at the smelters at Anacondaand Great Falls, and at the Slag TreatingPlant at East Helena, over the past year,you have made many friends among thecraftsmen in the various shops. Theseare the maintenance men who, in time ofpeace or war, keep the supply lines to themines and smelters open and moving.

It was June, you will recall, whenyou visited the Local Tram at Anacondaand saw how the boys there get the ma-terials moved around. It is up to theLocal Tramming Department there tomove all materials about the Hill for thevarious departments-that's a picture ofthree of the boys above : "Bungo" Daily,Bob Parker and "Red" Nowlan. who hadbeen called over to the engine shed to dosome repairing on the engine shown. Notonly does this Local Tramming Depart-ment do the moving. but it is responsiblealso for the bin crews who load and un-load at the stock bins and the limecrusher.

There in the second picture you willprobably remember seeing some of theboys who are the pipefitters at the ZincPlant in Great Falls. You paid them apleasant visit along toward the end ofMarch last year and you saw at first handhow these fellows do the job.

It was getting along toward fallwhen you toured with us to the smelterat Anaconda and went into the Lead Shopthere. We got that picture, shown at thebottom of this page, of Walter Krimnerwho has been in the shop since 1924.

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Those of you who are. interested inelectricity must have enjoyed, as much aswe did, the trip to the Electrical Shop atButte. It had been moved a few monthsbefore to the south side of the new Par-rot Machine Shop building and. if youwill remember, a more modern electricalshop would be hard to find. You certain-ly must remember seeing Jack Bradford,among othe,rs you met there, as he re-wound a locomotive armature.

We hope you were as interested aswe were in learning about color dynamics.Probably you will recall going to the PaintShop at the smelter in Anaconda (youmade the trip there on March 31 of lastyear and saw at first hand how colordynamics is employed). Color dynamicsis the term appl ied to the use of softcomplementary colors for industrialpaints, and that second shot was takenhigh up near the roof of the MachineShop at the smelter, where the boys dida thorough-going job of applying thisnew color. '

It was at the Smelter at Anacondatoo, along in May, where you visited theCarpenter Shop and got acquainted withDuncan Matheson and his able crew ofcraftsmen-two scenes inside the smel-ter Carpenter Shop are shown at the bot-tom of this page.

These are not all the shops youvisited, by any matter of means. In thisreview of the trips you made with usduring 1944, we can only give you thehighl ights of your visi ts. But' those ofyou who have kept your copies of yourLabor-Management newspaper can re-fresh your memories of the pleasant tripswe have made together into 'the shopsin the various locations.

One of the questions your editorsare most often asked is this: "Of all the. places you have visited throughout thestate, what mine or shop did you likebest?" The answer to that is simpleenough: We liked them all. We wish allour readers might have been with us tosee how much at home all the folks in allthe places have made us feel.

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You met Jack Bradford: shown here winding anarmature in the Electrical Shop at Butte. In an-other issue of' your Labor-Management news-

paper, it was Jack whom we described as the"Globe Trotter," and you read a story about hisinteresting travels to many different countries.

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If you had seen the Machine, Boiler, Pipe andWelding Shops at the Anaconda smelter beforethese boys got busy with their paint, you would

be amazed at the wonderful results they ob4tained. Workers claim that today these shopsare easy on the eyes, thanks to color dynamics.

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At the Carpenter Shop at Anaconda, as we havealready told you in the text, no job is too toughfor the boys. According to Duncan Matheson, the

superintendent, the boys catch 'em as they pitch•em. You paid a visit to this busy shop in May. ata time when most of the fellows were out on jobs

around the hill-they are constantly on the ~o.It is more convenient fo; carpenters to go whe,...ever carpentry is needed and do the job.

When you visited the Pay Office in Butte inAugust with us, you met the men and girls be-

hind the scenes who take care of your pay checkand compute your deductions for union dues,

The series of articles on Business Machines oper-ations and making up' of payrolls included the

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folks at the Anaconda Smelter also. Here are afew of them operating Business machines.

In Februaty you visited the Zinc Operating De-partment at Creat Falls which handles all the re-ports on zinc from the time it is a concentrate

until the product is finished and ready to beshipped. The men are Ceorge Moline, JoeWagner, Cordon Ellis, Bill Mondik, Felix St. Jean.

group insurance, War Bonds, etc. That's ,. M.Fitzpatrick, chief clerk, on the phone at the right:

You Saw. theOffices'& Labs

F ROM what you folks have told us, oneof the trips you enjoyed most during thepast year in your tour with the editors ofCopper Commando was to the Pay Of-fices. Here, as we know you will recall,we went behind the scenes of a pay checkand tried to show our readers the workinvolved in getting together the largepayroll. That meant, of course, going tothe offices, where these pay checks aremade up. You saw here, on the lengthytrip which we began with you on August4 of last year, the staggering task in-volved in taking care of various deduc-tions from pay checks which have oc-curred as a result of Social Security, WarBonds, group insurance, and many, manyother items.

You' visited Butte first, as you re-call, and followed the pay check for"John Doe" straight through. Here youhad an opportunity to meet the many nicepeople who work behind the scenes mak-ing certain that your pay check arrivespromptly and made out in the properamount.

Next you traveled to Anacondawhere we saw how the smeltermen's paychecks are made up and got acquaintedwith the folks there. Your next stop willbe, of course, Great Falls where you shallsee how the folks at the Smelter thereare taken care of. This article is sched-uled for an early issue and when it hasappeared, we shall have "covered" theInternational Business Machines opera-tions at the three locations.

Another behind-the-scenes tour youtook with us was to the Telephone Of-fices. 1 Here you got acquainted with thegals with the musical voices who takecare of the deluge of calls which daily'

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At the Butte Mines Pay Office

are carried across the wires. You sawseveral of the folks in the telephone of-fices at Butte, Anaconda and Great Falls;one of the Great Falls shots we show.you on this page as typical of the opera-tors you met.

The Zinc Research Department atGreat Falls was only .one of the manylaboratories which you visited with us in1944-we show you two different viewsof the lab there in the two lower picturesat the right. Research goes on endlesslyat all of the Anaconda locations. Greatcredit is due these folks who work be-hind the scenes. The results of theiruntiring efforts seldom show themselvesin the open. The chemist, the geologist,the ventilation experts-these are onlya few of the people whose work rarelycomes before the public eye. But, in themaking up of a large organization, thereare many jobs which do not appear onthe surface to be important but whichare, in actual fact, very important.

That is why we like the chance,when we cover the mines and the shopsand the smelters, not to overlook the fol ksbehind the firing line who keep thewheels turning. During one of the visitswhich you folks made with us during theyear, we had a visit with one of ·the labworkers and he said something which wethink might fit in here. At any rate we'dlike to tell you what he said: "No mat-ter where you work or what you .do inthis world, your work ties in with a pro-gram that is bigger than your own work.Each fellow makes his contribution tothat program and he benefits because itexists. For my part, I know I am kickingin with the best I've got to make theprogram work. My doing a good job hel psthe next fellow and when the next fel-low does a good job, he helps me,"

A p~JOffice ,roup ia Butte.

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Remember b'pb Smitb ~QdTom Wever of the Zinc Researcb Labor~torrl

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WE'VE always said that, if CopperCommando gets to sermonizing, its edi-tors ought to be booted into the street.We have always liked to think of thisnewspaper, we folks from labor and man-agement who edit it, as one which shouldnever sermonize.

~ut it's only natural, when you getto the end of a year, to look back overthat year, and count your gains andlosses. We've muffed a few stories,handled a few others badly, missed theboat on others when we should havecaught it, but we think these editorialboners of ours are more than offset bysomething bigger and greater. Over thepast year we've seen lots and lots of dif-ferent locations; different mines andshops and offices. And in each of themwe have seen a new angle to an old, oldlesson. And that, to put it simply, is this:The more you see of a guy, and the moreyou understand what he does and is try-ing to do, -the more you are inclined tolike him and trust him.

If we haven't done anything elsethis year, we do feel that we havebrought people more closely together.We feel that we have helped, or at leasttrie.d to help, to bring the miner to beappreciated more by the smelterman,the smelterman by the miner, and 'shopor office worker by both. We hope thatyou at Butte have a greater appreciationnow than you did a year ago of th~ jobat Anaconda and Creat Falls and EastHelena and vice versa.

. We hope that, in this coming year,. with your help we'll be able to do more •.This country of ours faces trying timesin the days ahead. We stand to gain ifwe pull together; we fall if we pull apart.

That's all the sermonizing we'll do.

COPPER CO~DIANDO Is the official newspaper of theVictory Labor-Management Production Committees ofthe Anaconda. Copper Mining Company and its UnionRepresentatives at Butte, Anaconda, Great Falls andEast Helena, Montana. It is Issued every two weeks • • •COPPER COMMANDO is beaded by a joint committeefrom Labor and Management: its policies are shaped byboth sides and are dictated by neither • • • COPPERCO~IANDO was established at the recommendation ofthe War Department with the concurrence of the WarProduction Board. Its editors are Bob Newcomb andMarg Sammons: its safety editor is Jobo L. Boardman;its staff photographer is Les Bishop . • • Its EditorialBoard consists of: Derus ~fcCartby, CIO; John F. Bird,AFL: Ed Renouard, ACM, frOID Butte: Dan Byrne, CI.O;Joe Marick, AFL: C. A. Lemmon, ACM, frOID Anaconda;Jack Clark, CIO: Herb Donaldson, AFL, and E. S. Bard-well ACM, from Great Falls •.• COPPER COMMANDOis rr:ruled to the home of every employee of ACM in thefour locations-if you are not receiving your copy adviseCOPPER COMMANDO at 112 Hamilton Sireet, Butte, or,better stiU, drop in and tell us. This is Volume 3, No. 10.

.You Toured the Brass MillsIT was back in March, if you recall,that we started our series on the brassmills of Connecticut. You started yourlengthy visit with us on March 3.

For many weeks prior, your editorshad toured the brass mills of the Ameri-can Brass Company, which is a subsidiaryof the Anaconda Copper Mining Com-pany, in Waterbury, Torrington andother places in the Connecticut Valley.

Because so many of you workers inthe mines and smelters and shops andoffices had told us so, we felt certainthat you were interested in knowingwhat happened to the vital war materialsyou have produced so ably through thetrying days of the war.

All of us knew here, of course, thatthe metals are taken out of the ground,shipped to the smelter at Anaconda forconcentration, and then shipped, in theform of anodes, -to Great Falls where theyare converted into copper and zincshapes. At that point, when they wereshipped back to the brass mills for fabri-cation, we got a little hazy.

So when you visited the brass millsof the American Brass Company with us 'last year, you saw where your metals 'were going. They were going into shells 1and cartridges, some for the Army and " t

some for the Navy; they were going intocondenser tubes for the Navy so that ourships could deliver knock-out blows tothe Nips.

Your editors found out a most inter-esting fact when we visited these Con-necticut mills. It shouldn't have sur-prised us, but it did. This is what wediscovered:' That the workers in the brassmills back East were intensely interested'in mining and smelting, as pictured inthe pages of your Labor-Managementnewspaper. We knew, of course, becauseyou had told us, that readers in Montanawere. curious fo know about fabrication,but we didn't know the folks back therefelt the same way about us out here.

Many of our readers discovered thereal importance of the war job being donein Montana. by reading about the resultsof their work in Connecticut.

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Surely you remember your visit to the loggingcamp outside of Woodworth. Montana. Here, atthe top of the page, we see the sawyers taking

down a big fellow. Later on you moved alongwith us and the photographer to see the bulldozerclearing a path through the forest-the center

•• IT was along in the fall when you tookto the woods. We started our visit tothe lumber operations outside of Wood-worth, Montana, on September 1 and,because we thought you'd like it. wegave two full issues of Copper Comman-do to that trip. When we were done withit. we came down the canyon to the Ana-conda lumber mi II at Bonner and for sev-eral issues you have been paying visitsto the community at Bonner and to themill there where many of Butte's minetimbers are milled. Only a short time

u concluded r fori to Bonner in

You TookT

tothe-Woods

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pictures show the woodland country and the bull ..dozer at the right. In the bottom pictures we seethe logs entering the mill on the bullchain.

an issue of your Labor-Managementnewspaper.

We knew, because you told us so.that the trip to the lumber mill was oneof the most interesting trips you made inall of 1944. You didn't see mining op-erations here but you saw where minetimbers and other lumber necessary tothe operation of mines came from.

Then. in moving along to Bonner,you saw the next steps.

It may be letting you in on a littlesecret. but during 1945, we plan othervisits for locations.

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• LAST, but far from least, you learnedabout safety. For all of us know, we whoare associated with the mining industry,that it pays to work safely. It is not ser-m·onizing to remind ourselves that thegood miner takes no chances; it is justplain horse sense.

Over the year of 1944 you saw recog-nition given to mine crews which worksafely, which went for long periods oftime without accidents. That crew ofSam Casne's was at the Anselmo and youvisited them on August 4 at which timewe took their picture in recognition ofthe fact that this crew had worked a totalof 3,992 man shifts in' the six months'period from January 1 to June 30, 1944,without any member of the crew suffer;.ing a lost time injury. We know you like

You'Learned·.AboutSafety

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these pictures because you have told usso. In the year 1945 and in the yearsto follow, your editors hope that theymay be privileged to publish many pic-tures of mine crews with outstandingsafety records.

Safety isn't a matter of interest toBuHe alone by any matter of means .. AtAnaconda, at Creat Falls, and at EastHelena, safety is prea~hed and practiced-that's the Safety Sub-Committee be-low at East Helena of the Victory Labor-Management Production Com mit teethere.

And that, folks, would seem to endour year of 1944. We hope you have en-joyed revisiting these places with us andmeeting all these folks again, as much aswe have enjoyed covering the stories.

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