In this pioneering study, David Emmons tells the story of Butte's large and assertive population of Irish immigrants. He traces their backgrounds in Ireland, the building of an ethnic community in Butte, the nature and hazards of their work in the copper mines, and the complex interplay between Irish nationalism and worker consciousness.

From a treasure trove of "Irish stuff," the reports, minutes, and correspondence of the major Irish-American organizations in Butte, Emmons shows how the stalwart supporters of the RELA and the Ancient Order of Hiberians marched and drilled for Irish freedom—-and how, as they ran the town, the miners' union, and the largest mining companies, they used this tradition of ethnic cooperation to ensure safe and steady work, Irish mines taking care of Irish miners. Butte was new, overwhelmingly Irish, and extraordinarily dangerous—-the ideal place to test the seam between class and ethnicity.

|Preface xi
Introduction: Out of Ireland 1
1. From Ireland To Butte 13
2. Remembered Pasts 35
3. Butte, America: Building an Irish Community 61
4. Church, Party, and Fraternity: The Irish and Their Associations 94
5. Safe and Steady Work: The Irish and The Hazards of Butte 133
6. Irishmen and Workers: The Origins of a Western Working-Class Conservatism 180
7. Irish Worker Conservatism and The Butte Miner's Union, 1880-1910 221
8. The Aristocracy Besieged: The BMU, The Enclave, and The New Immigration, 1910-1914 255
9. The Patriot Game: Butte's Irish and The Causes of Ireland 292
10. Irishtown at War: The German Alliance and Worker Protest, 1900-1918 340
Epilogue: The Post War Years 398
Sources Consulted 413
Index 435| Winner of the 1990 Robert Athearn Award of the Western History Association and an Honorable Mention for the 1990 James S. Donnelly, Sr., Prize in History and the Social Sciences from the American Conference for Irish Studies. — the Western History Association
Winner of the 1990 Robert Athearn Award of the Western History Association and an Honorable Mention for the 1990 James S. Donnelly, Sr., Prize in History and the Social Sciences from the American Conference for Irish Studies. — the American Conference for Irish Studies
| David M. Emmons, professor of history at the University of Montana, is the author of Garden in the Grasslands: The Boomer Literature of the Central Plains.