was following the veins that apexed, according to his theory, on his land. 

 And of course, that drove Amalgamated absolutely crazy. They just 

 couldn''t stand it. So they took him to court, but he was two steps ahead. 

 He'd.>^ready bought off the judge and in those days there was no such 

 thing as legal recourse and changing venue in order to find an unbiased 

 judge. It's a really great Montana David and Goliath story. And David 

 really had them upset for quite a period of time. But sadly in Montana 

 history, Goliath won. And they won by shutting down all of their 

 operations, that is, everything except all of the newspaper chain which 

 they controlled, which gave news throughout the entire state. And they 

 put 20,000 men out of work at that time. I think this was 1903. Then at 

 that point. Governor Toole had no recourse at all of course, but to call 

 the legislature into session to have them amend the law. They amended 

 the law because 20,000 people were out of work, and of course then 

 Amalgamated was able to seek a change of venue and they were able to 

 buy out Hinzey and win their case. He died a few years later, a broke 

 and broken man. Now that's Butte. But think about it. That's only 80 

 years ago. Only 80 years ago... that's only one year older than when my 

 father was born. Excuse me, ten years--he wouldn't like that. 



Well, let's follow that up. Take 60 years ago in Butte. There was 

 another very interesting event and I think this has a very interesting 

 parallel with what's going on today in Montana. The main issue of the 

 early 1920's was the issue of taxation. No surprise. Also no surprise, 

 there was a University of Montana professor who was working on a 

 research project on the Montana tax structure and he was discovering at 

 that point that there was something very wrong with the Metal Mines Tax. 

 No surprise, but I think it is a really interesting parallel because we are 

 in court right now in this state trying to defend our coal tax. Well, he 

 said the mines' tax is not very good. It's not fair because the mines are 

 not paying their fair share. Period. But there was a company lawyer and 

 he happened to sit on the Board of Regents and he said, "I don't see 

 anything wrong with the mines' tax in this state. in fact I think they are 

 paying their fair share." In fact, he told the University of Montana 

 president, "That study is not to see the light of day." So the university 

 president said "Okay, that study is not to see the light of day." He told 

 the professor and the professor decided to print it anyway. And he was 

 promptly fired. So, time passed and we come to the early 1920's and the 

 legislature still refused to budge an inch on this thing, they wouldn't do a 

 thing. And in 1924 we had Governor Joe Dixon and he decided to take 

 that issue directly over the heads of the legislators to the people. We see 

 that quite frequently these days. He took out an initiative pointing out 

 that the mines were producing about 20 million dollars a year and they 

 were only paying about $13,000 in taxes and he said that is not fair. But 

 he had a problem in that while he was trying to promote his own initiative 

 and promote fair metal mines taxation, he was also trying to win reelection 

 as governor of the state of Montana. He was literally attacked on every 

 front. If you followed this race--and it's just a wonderful situation in 

 Montana history as he's of bull moose party fame--he was attacked on 

 every front except that they really sort of forgot that the initiative even 

 existed. This was the famous race called the gravy-boat campaign--shades 

 of carpets and so forth today. They said that he had really wasted money 



