Fire and Brimstone

The worst hard-rock mining disaster in American history began a half hour before midnight on June 8, 1917, when fire broke out in the North Butte Mining Company?'s ?Granite Mountain? shaft.& During an effort to improve safety in the mine, a fire sparked more than 2,000 feet below ground, the fire spewed flames, smoke, and poisonous gas up the length of the wood-timbered shaft.& Tragically, Granite Mountain connected to five other mines through a labyrinth of manways.& Within an hour, more than four hundred men would be locked in a battle to survive.& Within three days, one hundred and sixty-four of them would be dead.& Fire and Brimstone is also the broader story of Butte, Montana at the outbreak of WWI.& The fire would catalyze a two month spasm of disaster, strikes, murder, and ultimately occupation by federal troops.& & & The Anaconda Copper Mining Company had long been a corrupt institution and is still considered today as one of the most abusive corporations in the history of the American West.& In response to this oppressive corporation, the IWW, a radical labor movement vowed the destruction of this capitalist system.& And from this political maelstrom and mining disaster rose a Montana lawyer who would shape local and national history.Punke, Michael is the author of 'Fire and Brimstone ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781401308896 and ISBN 1401308899.