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The moment: Butte miners win eight-hour workday in 1901.
The story: Children grew up in Butte attuned to the sounds that signaled death and disaster in the mines, sounds that could leave them fatherless, as accidents killed a miner every other day in Butte in the 1890s.
One woman lost three husbands in a row to the mines, with children from each to support on her own, wrote Janet Finn in her “Mining Childhood.” Another former child of Butte recalled a widow with 20 children who became a midwife, rustled railroad ties, had a cow, baked bread and took in washing, which her children delivered.
Mines were opportunities and peril, bread on the table and a stake in a new land for 8,000 miners pulling 210 million pounds of copper a year from five square miles. Against a rising swell of populism, Butte unions lobbied for better pay and safer conditions. Unions helped members when they were sick, paid for funerals and gave workers a voice. A campaign for a balanced day of eight hours of work, eight hours of leisure and eight hours of sleep became a rallying cry for workers around the industrialized world. A 12- to 14-hour workday was the norm.