Anaconda Copper facts for kids

The Anaconda Copper Mining Company was a very large American mining company. It was based in Butte, Montana. For much of the 20th century, it was one of the biggest mining companies in the world. From 1899 to 1915, it was known as the Amalgamated Copper Company.

Marcus Daly bought a silver mine called Anaconda in 1880. In 1881, he teamed up with George Hearst, James Ben Ali Haggin, and Lloyd Tevis. The company grew fast in 1882 when huge amounts of copper were found. In 1883, Daly started building a smelter (a factory to process metal) and a town called Anaconda. This town was built to help process the copper from Butte.

In 1899, Daly changed the company's name to Amalgamated Copper Company. He brought in Henry Huttleston Rogers and William Rockefeller. By 1910, Amalgamated owned all other copper companies in Butte. In 1922, Anaconda bought mines in Mexico and Chile. The Chilean mine was the largest in the world. For a while, it made two-thirds of the company's profits.

Anaconda also started making aluminum in 1955. In the 1950s, the company changed from digging underground to open-pit mining. This means digging a huge hole from the surface. By 1960, the company had 37,000 employees in North America and Chile.

The Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) bought Anaconda Copper in 1977. ARCO stopped production at the Anaconda smelter in 1980. Mining completely stopped in 1982. The company's old mining areas are now a huge environmental cleanup site. This is called a Superfund site.

Discovering Anaconda Copper's Past

How Anaconda Copper Began

Marcus Daly was a miner, engineer, and geologist who taught himself. In 1880, he bought a small silver mine named Anaconda. Daly worked for the Walker brothers, who were mining investors. He was a superintendent at the Alice silver mine in Butte. There, he saw a lot of high-quality copper ore.

Daly looked at the Anaconda mine and others nearby. He told the Walker brothers about the Anaconda mine. But they were not interested. So, Daly sold his share in the Alice mine to buy the Anaconda mine himself.

Butte had been a place for placer gold and silver lode mining. But its silver mining was ending. Daly needed money to develop the mine. He found help from George Hearst, a rich mining owner from San Francisco. Hearst's partners were James Ben Ali Haggin and Lloyd Tevis. In 1881, the Anaconda Company was formed. Daly owned 25% of it.

Soon, huge amounts of copper were found. Daly became a very rich copper owner. When nearby silver mines closed, Daly bought them. This created a large mining company. In 1883, Daly built a smelter in Anaconda, Montana. He also built a company town there for the workers. He connected the smelter to Butte with his own railway.

Butte became one of the richest cities in the country. People called it "the Richest Hill on Earth." From 1892 to 1903, the Anaconda mine was the biggest copper mine in the world. It produced metals worth over $300 billion in its lifetime.

The Rothschilds' Role

In 1889, the Rothschild family tried to control the world's copper market. In 1892, the French Rothschilds started talks to buy the Anaconda mine. By late 1895, the Rothschilds bought stock in Anaconda for $7.5 million. This stock was owned by Hearst's widow, Phoebe Apperson Hearst. By the late 1890s, the Rothschilds likely controlled about 40% of the world's copper sales.

The Rockefellers' Influence

The Rothschilds did not stay involved with Anaconda for long. In 1899, Marcus Daly joined with two leaders from Standard Oil. They created the Amalgamated Copper Mining Company. This company became one of the biggest business groups of the early 1900s.

The main leaders were Henry Huttleston Rogers and William Rockefeller. They were helped by a company promoter named Thomas W. Lawson. Rogers and William Rockefeller were Standard Oil directors. However, Standard Oil itself did not own a part of this business. Its founder, John D. Rockefeller, did not like these kinds of stock deals.

By 1899, Amalgamated Copper owned most of the stock in Anaconda Copper Company. The Rothschilds seemed to have no more role in the company. When Marcus Daly died in 1900, he was president of the holding company. It was worth $75 million.

Lawson later had disagreements with Rogers and Rockefeller. He wrote a book called Frenzied Finance (1905). The book showed some parts of high finance, but it was colored by Lawson's anger.

Anaconda's Copper Competition

In the early 1900s, copper was very profitable. This was because of more electricity use and Amalgamated keeping copper prices high. Copper mining grew quickly. From 1899 to 1915, Anaconda was controlled by Standard Oil leaders. It was still called Amalgamated Copper Company.

Amalgamated had conflicts with another powerful copper owner, F. Augustus Heinze. He also owned mines in Butte. In 1902, he combined his mines into the United Copper Company. Neither company could completely control copper mining in Montana. Also, even though Butte was the world's best copper-mining area, Amalgamated could not control copper from other places. These included Michigan, Utah, Arizona, or other countries.

Marcus Daly died in 1900. His widow became good friends with John D. Ryan. Ryan was a smart businessman. He became president of Daly's bank and managed his widow's money. The leaders of Amalgamated asked Ryan for help. They wanted to create a monopoly (complete control) in Butte.

Controlling the mines in the area was key to making a lot of money. Ryan convinced Heinze to leave with a lot of money. This allowed Amalgamated to take over Heinze's mines. They also took over the mines of William A. Clark, another rich copper owner in Butte. Amalgamated gained almost complete control of Butte's copper. The company was reorganized and named Anaconda again. Ryan became its president and received many Amalgamated shares.

Cornelius Kelley, a young lawyer, became John Ryan's "right hand man." He soon became the vice-president.

Henry Rogers died suddenly in 1909. But William Rockefeller brought in his son, Percy Rockefeller, to help lead.

In 1912 and 1913, a group called the Pujo Committee investigated William Rockefeller and others. They were accused of making $30 million by unfairly controlling the copper market. They also made Amalgamated Copper stock prices go up and down on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Roaring Twenties for Anaconda

During the 1920s, metal prices went up. Mining activity increased. These were great years for Anaconda. The company was led by Ryan and Kelley. It grew fast and started mining new metals like manganese and zinc. In 1922, the company bought mines in Chile and Mexico (Cananea).

The mine in Chile (Chuquicamata) was bought from the Guggenheims in 1923. It cost Anaconda $77 million. It was the largest copper mine in the world. This mine produced copper that made up two-thirds to three-fourths of Anaconda Company's profits.

In the same year, Anaconda bought American Brass Company. This was the nation's largest brass maker. It used a lot of copper and zinc. In 1926, Anaconda bought the Giesche company. This was a large mining and industrial company in Poland. At that time, Poland had become an independent country after World War I.

At this point, Anaconda was the fourth-largest company in the world. However, these good times did not last long.

Big Stock Market Changes

In 1928, Ryan and Rockefeller made big bets on Anaconda shares. They did this by controlling the amount of copper available. They reduced the supply to make shares go up. Then they sold their shares, which made prices fall. After that, they bought shares back. This is now called a "pump and dump" scheme. At the time, these actions were not illegal and happened often.

Anaconda was producing so much copper that they had huge amounts stored. To control prices, the company only sold what was asked for. Ryan and Rockefeller set up a "joint account" with almost 1.5 million shares of Anaconda Copper Company. This caused prices to change a lot. Prices went from $40 in December 1928 to $128 in March 1929.

Selling many shares quickly makes the market crash. Investors lose trust and sell their shares, causing a chain reaction. Small investors often bought shares using borrowed money. When they could not sell at a good price, they had to sell at a loss. This happened when banks asked for their loan money back.

Many small investors lost everything. This event is still seen as one of the biggest unfair financial dealings in history. The United States Senate held hearings about these stock changes. They found that these actions cost the public at least $150 million. A 1933 Senate committee called these actions the biggest financial unfairness in American banking history. They were a main cause of the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression.

The Great Depression's Impact

In 1929, Anaconda Copper Mining Co. sold new stock. They used some of the money to buy shares in other companies. When the stock market crashed on October 29, 1929, Anaconda faced big financial problems. At the same time, copper prices started to drop a lot.

During the winter of 1932–33, as the Depression grew, copper prices fell to 10.3 cents per pound. Just two years earlier, the average price was 29.5 cents per pound.

The Great Depression hurt the mining industry. Less demand meant the company had to lay off many workers. This happened in both the United States and Chile. In Chilean mines, up to 66% of workers lost their jobs. On March 26, 1931, Anaconda cut its dividend rate by 40%. John D. Ryan died in 1933. His Anaconda shares, once worth $175 each, had dropped to $3 during the worst of the Great Depression. Cornelius Kelley became the chairman in 1940.

World War II and Beyond

A committee of workers and managers at the Butte mines in September 1942. They worked together to increase production for the war effort.

Mining in Butte, like most U.S. industries, stayed slow until World War II. The war greatly increased the need for copper, zinc, and manganese. Anaconda was 58th among U.S. companies in the value of its war production contracts. This helped ease some of the money problems.

After World War II ended, the demand for copper dropped again. This caused another slowdown in the copper industry.

Changes in the 1950s

After the war, copper demand and prices fell. At the same time, mining costs went up a lot. As a result, copper production from Butte's underground mines dropped. Anaconda's engineers had to find new ways to keep mining profitable. They came up with the "Greater Butte Project" (GBP). This project would mine lower-grade copper underground using a method called block-caving. Anaconda dug a new shaft, the Kelley, and the mine started producing in 1948. This new method worked, but not for very long. They also started digging for what would become the Berkeley Pit.

In 1956, Anaconda made its highest annual income ever: $111.5 million. After that year, the quality of the ore kept getting lower. Mining costs rose each year, and profits went down. To survive, the company switched to open-pit mining. This method uses a very large area. The Berkeley Pit grew bigger and bigger, taking over older parts of Butte.

The 1970s and End of an Era

In 1971, Chile's new president, Salvador Allende, took over the Chuquicamata mine from Anaconda. This meant Anaconda lost two-thirds of its copper production. Allende was later removed from power in 1973. The new government paid Anaconda $250 million as payment.

However, the losses from Chile had seriously weakened the company's money situation. Later in 1971, Anaconda's Mexican copper mine was also taken over by the government. A bad investment in an unsuccessful mine in Arizona further weakened the company.

In 1977, Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) bought Anaconda for $700 million. But this purchase turned out to be a bad decision for ARCO. ARCO did not have experience with hard-rock mining. Also, the price of copper suddenly dropped very low. Because of this, ARCO stopped all underground mining in Butte in 1980. ARCO closed the Berkeley Pit and turned off the pumps in 1982. This allowed the pit and mines to fill with water. The Continental Pit, the last active Anaconda mine in Butte, closed in 1982. However, it started mining again in the early 2000s.

Six years after ARCO bought the "Richest Hill on Earth," Butte's mines were completely still. ARCO's founder, Robert Orville Anderson, had hoped Anaconda's resources would help him start a big shale-oil project. But a worldwide oil surplus and falling oil prices made shale oil not worth it. When ARCO bought Anaconda, Anaconda also owned large coal mines. ARCO planned to expand its energy business into coal. In 1998, Arch Coal bought ARCO's coal assets.

The Superfund Cleanup Site

Closing the mines did not end the new owner's problems. The areas of Butte, Anaconda, and the nearby Clark Fork River became very polluted. This was due to a century of mining and metal processing. The mining and smelting processes created waste with high levels of arsenic, copper, cadmium, lead, zinc, and other heavy metals.

Starting in the 1980s, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) named the Upper Clark Fork river basin and many related areas as Superfund sites. These are the nation's largest cleanup sites.

The EPA named ARCO as the company responsible for the pollution. So, ARCO had to clean up the area. Since then, ARCO and BP (who bought ARCO in 2000) have spent hundreds of millions of dollars cleaning and fixing the area. But the job is still not finished.

BP sold most of ARCO to Tesoro in 2010. But BP still has to pay for the cleanup of the Anaconda operations. It uses ARCO as a company to handle lawsuits related to Anaconda.

Anaconda's Aluminum Business

Anaconda started making aluminum in 1952. They bought the right to build an aluminum factory in Columbia Falls. After two years of building, the factory opened in August 1955. After two expansions in the 1960s, the factory could produce 180,000 tons of aluminum each year.

ARCO kept the factory open even after the Butte copper mines closed in 1982. In 1985, ARCO sold the factory to a group of investors. This was because electricity costs were high and market prices were low. The factory continued as an independent company called Columbia Falls Aluminum Company (CFAC). In 1999, a Swiss metal company called Glencore bought CFAC. Glencore kept CFAC running until 2009. Then, it temporarily closed the plant due to high electricity costs and low market prices. On March 3, 2015, the closure became permanent.

Anaconda Copper in Books and Movies

• Dashiel Hammett's 1929 book Red Harvest was based on his time as a detective. He worked at the Anaconda Mine in Butte and during the Anaconda Road massacre in 1920.
• The movie An Injury to One (2002) tells the story of Anaconda in Butte, Montana. It shows how the company tried to stop its workers from forming unions. Union organizer Frank Little was killed, and no one was ever punished for it. The film ends by talking about the Berkeley Pit.
• Michael Punke's Fire and Brimstone: The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917 talks about the Speculator Mine disaster of 1917 in Butte. It also shows how this event affected big mining companies and unions in Montana.
• The 2008 PBS movie Butte, America covers similar topics.
• In the film The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), Che Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado see very poor men being hired for dangerous work. This happens at Anaconda's Chuquicamata mine in Chile.
• The book Sweet Thunder (2013) by Ivan Doig tells about a newspaper rivalry. This happened between a union newspaper and a company newspaper in Butte in the 1920s.

Understanding "Copper Collar"

"Copper Collar" Meaning

The term copper collar was first used in the late 1800s. It was a way to describe a person or company that was directly controlled by the Anaconda Company.

Journalists at newspapers owned by the company could not write anything that went against the company's business. Lawyers and accountants, not journalists, decided what news was. This meant journalists could not use their own judgment for decades.

By 1920, the Anaconda Company owned several Montana newspapers. These included the Butte Post, Butte Miner, Anaconda Standard, Daily Missoulian, Helena Independent, and Billings Gazette. The Anaconda Company controlled money and politics in Montana well into the mid-1900s.

A diagram showing the relationship between the Anaconda Copper Company and the "copper collar" concept.

As the biggest employer in the state, Anaconda had a lot of power in Montana politics. In politics, the "copper collar" stood for influence, wealth, and power.

In 1894, Montana held an election to choose its capital city. Marcus Daly, who supported Anaconda, used his power over the newspapers to help his cause. His supporters said Helena was greedy and snobby. They promoted Anaconda as the choice for working people. Daly's campaign failed, and Helena became the state's capital.

In 1903, the Anaconda Company showed its political power again. It closed down all its operations in Montana. This left 15,000 men without jobs. The company did this until the state government passed the rules it wanted. Montanans were angry about this. From then on, suggesting a politician "wore a copper collar" could make them lose an election.

The copper collar meant oppression and control to the people of Butte. In the early 1900s, Butte's culture was a response to the company's huge power. Butte's bars, gambling places, and dance halls were some of the few public places not owned or controlled by Anaconda. People went to these places not just because of dangerous mining work. They also went because these were places where they could express themselves freely. This was not allowed elsewhere in a city controlled by the 'copper collar'.

It was impossible to avoid choosing sides in this fight. According to an article by Author Fisher, "Montana: Land of the Copper Collar," you could not live in Montana for long without deciding if you were "for the Company" or "against the Company." The fight was everywhere and never stopped.

The term "copper collar" was used in historical books from that time. In The Old Copper Collar (1957), a story about a senatorial election in Helena, Dan Cushman mentions the "copper collar." He writes about a politician being accused of wearing the "Copper Collar." Even just suggesting this caused chaos from the crowd.

Ivan Doig also mentions the "copper collar" in his book Work Song (2010). In 1919, a character named Gracie fights against the powerful Anaconda Company. They try to force her to sell her property. She says, "Leave this house at once, Whoever-You-Are Morgan. I'll not have under my roof a man who wears the copper collar." Workers under the "copper collar" are called "snakes." The Anaconda Company is called an "ogre."

The "copper collar" meant different things to different people. But the Anaconda Company used strong tactics to stop workers from forming unions. The fact that newspapers, a key part of democracy, were used in this attack is a dark time in American journalism history. In Homelands: A Geography of Culture and Place across America, John B. Wright writes that for decades, the Anaconda Company:

• mined and processed metal
• cut down forests
• owned the newspapers
• influenced the government
• set wages
• caused harm to union organizers
• took profits out of the state
• finally shut down, leaving Butte and Anaconda as very poor cities. They also became the largest EPA Superfund site in the country.

The phrase "copper collar" is also an example of metonymy. This is when a word or phrase is used to stand for something else it is closely related to. It is related to the company because it is made of copper, which the company mined. A collar is used to control, which is how the company used the "copper collar."

In the Semiotic Square for the "copper collar" (see illustration), Marcus Daly is seen as the main idea. Miners are the opposite idea. The "control" axis creates another relationship. A union, which is "not Marcus Daly," is a complex idea. The "copper collar", which is "Miner," is a neutral idea. Both a union and the "copper collar" are used to gain control. The Anaconda Company used the copper collar to control newspapers and the government. Miners wanted to form a union to gain some control over their working conditions.

See Also

In Spanish: Anaconda Copper para niños

• Anaconda Copper Mine (Montana)
• Anaconda Copper Mine (Nevada)
• Anaconda Smelter Stack
• International Smelting and Refining Company
• Speculator Mine disaster (1917)