‘Pearse-Connolly Club Honors Memory of Dead’ from the Butte Daily Bulletin. Vol. 1 No. 137. January 27, 1919.

Metal Mine Workers’ Hall Is Crowded to Capacity to Listen to Speakers Extol Virtues of Cornelius Lehane, James M. Ferriter and Other Departed Fighters in the Cause of Workers’ Emancipation.

Last night’s meeting under the auspices of the Pearce-Connolly club was great. Not a seat was vacant at 7:30 and the meeting did not start until 8 o’clock. The Metal Mine Workers’ hall, in which the workers gathered, was decorated with the flags of Ireland and America. Mr. Duggan was chairman and in line, pointed remarks stated that the meeting was in memory of departed fellow workers, Cornelius Lehane and James M. Ferriter. As usual Mr. Duggan voiced the cause of the working class and the meeting could not have had a stauncher champion to represent it.

Fellow Worker Joe Shannan was the first speaker, and in ringing language he showed the class nature of society and gave it as the reason for the death of the workers whose memory we all hell so dear. Taking the audience to the great battles for Irish freedom, he pointed to those who had really fought for the emancipation of the working class and those who had but hoodwinked them. Time and time again the audience applauded his remarks, especially when he called upon them to unite as a class into one big union.

The chairman then introduced the Hon. W. F. Dunn, who was received with great applause. He, true to his style, soon got down to the workers’ position and their historical struggle. Deeply regretting the fall in the great battle of the most courageous, still he said we must take up where they leave off and continue the fight for the great goal for which they dedicated their lives. Speaking of the independence of small nations and freedom for Ireland he eulogized the number of great fighters that country has given to the world. His words were received with applause and applause. “The workers of England are with the workers of Ireland,” he said. “It is the imperialists of Britain that are robbing and exploiting.” In ending his address he read a poem which touched the heart of the meeting which finished with “It isn’t when you did but how.”

James H. Fisher then addressed the meeting and opened by saying that at one time there was a song that went “The are killing men and women for the wearing of the green,” but soon and now it was “They are killing men and women and jailing them in the thousands for the wearing of the red.” But, he said, as they could not down the emblem of the Irish in the past, so they can never down the color of the workers of the world in the future. This meeting applauded to their hearts’ depths. He spoke on the Irish question and said it was not Ireland for the Irish that should be their slogan, but the world for the workers. Then he gave a brief outline of the life of Lehane and the clear, courageous, and class-conscious comrade Ferriter. He wound up in an appeal for the International which our comrades died in behalf of. The meeting came to a close and in doing so pulled the curtain on one of the best and most enthusiastic meetings Butte has ever witnessed.

The Butte Daily Bulletin began in 1917 in reaction to the labor wars in Montana, the Speculator Mine fire killing 168 miners; IWW organizing, and the murder of IWW organizer Frank Little in Butte. Future Communist leader and IWW organizer William F. Dunne and R. Bruce Smith, president of the Butte Typographical Union published the paper as an outgrowth of a strike bulletin with the masthead reading, “We Preach the Class Struggle in the Interests of the Workers as a Class.” It became daily in August 1918 and in September 1818 officers raided their offices and arrested Dunne and Smith on sedition charges. An extremely combative revolutionary paper, while unaligned, it supported the struggles of the Left Wing in the SP, reflecting the large radical Irish working class of Butte also supported Ireland’s and the Bolshevik revolution, as well as the continued campaigns of the IWW locally and national as well as the issues in Butte. It ran until May 31, 1921.

PDF of full issue: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045085/1919-01-27/ed-1/seq-1/

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