Daily Kennebec journal., 1902-04-19
BUTTE AND CLARK.
Montana City and Senator in
Harmony.
State and a Man Greedy for Gold
and Power.
A c;tx That is on the Rush "a Hours
Daily.

r,,deness. in the name Butte IL
sounds as if something had been left
,ut which decent politeness would have
nut in; it is--to the eye at least-sug-
pestiye of the unpleasantly aggressive
tactics of the horned goat. Indeed, the
stranger in Butte has his first expert
ences and impressions handed to him
with a very goat-like violence, writes |
William r. Leighton in the Boston
Transcript.
Everyone knows that Butte is in
Montana; and Montana is place of
great attitudes. ] forget just how far 1t
is above sea-level, but after leaving the
Missouri at Omaha, your train climbs
steadily for two days. When it can
climb no farther; when the engine
pants from utter exhaustion; when
your heart throbs and your head reels,
and the end of every nerve is Tapping
with excitement; and you are ready to
cry out with an irritability that
amounts to positive pain-then you are
in Butte. 1t is a fit climax.
Butte Is a place Of sublime ugllness-
the words are chosen advisedly. Pro-
yidence contributed the sublimity; man
then laid hold upon it and made it hide
Gus. In the first place it was vast
tangle of rocky ruins, rent, torn, tor
tured into all manner of shapes, piled
away in a waste place-the very garret
room of creation. There is always
material for emotion in such hooks;
their disorder is picturesque, romantic;
so long as they remain wildernesses,
no one is likely to complain But that
barren height was not to lay undistur-
bed. BY and by some fellow with the in
stincts of a junkman went poking
around amongst the ruins and dis
covered gold. Then good-by wilderness.
native beauty, and all that. There
grew up on the site a mining camp,
then a town-and that is Butte.
One with no diviner instrument than
a fountain pen must stop far short of
realizing upon paper the sordid aspect
of the town. All the accustomed words
of Characterization seem weak and
trivial There has been no thought in
the minds of the builders save of bare
utility. When gold lies underfOot.
waiting to be dug, no one is expected
to give any time to other matters.
Butte took form merely as an adjunct
to the gold mines; it will never be any
thing else: when the mines are ex-
hausted, the town will crumbe away
and disappear. 1t is not the physical
presence of streets and buildings that
is interesting, but the mood of the peo-
pie.
There Is but one mood discoverable
anywhere-agitation; cumulative, dis
tempered fury ofexcitement. Looking at
1t as it shows itself in individual cases
1t is morbid: looking at it as it affects
an entire community. it is madness. A
whole town gone mad at once is a
curious sight.
The gold-fever Is one cause; climate
is another. Everywhere in the western
attitudes. where the air is thin, dry,
electric. the nerves are drawn to a high
tension: under every impulse they sing
like tight piano wires. The heart
quickens it's beat; all the vital functions
are accelerated; the brain will sleep
only little while. and it starts out of
its short sleep with an amazing alert
ness and vivacity. One feels intensely
alive: he wants to work; he can do
twice as much as at sea-level Take a
man in that condition, tell him there is
gold buried in the sand he stands upon,
which he may have for the digging
will he dig? In the phrase of the class
icist, will a duck swim?'' Butte, and
all that neighborhood, is peopled with
men who have had their nerves drawn
to the swapping point, by way of pre-
liminary, and who have then gone to
digging.
Into an ounce of brandy put a small
dose of cocaine: drink the mixture, and
in ten minutes you will find yourself in
the mental and nervous condition which
is the normal state Of the citizen of
Butte.
Individually, each denizen Of Butte
sleeps four or five hours out of the
twenty-four; collectively, Butte never
sleeps. 1t Is as wide awake at two in
the morning as at midday, every shop
open. every industry in full blast The
life of the town depends upon the mines
and the smelter; and these never stop.
Day in and day out, the year round,
they work continuously with three
eight-hOur shifts" of men, one step
ping In as its predecessor steps out /:
years end to years end neither indus
try ever drops a stitch. The'shift that
comes off duty at midnight must eat,
drink. and be served with it's amuse-
ments like the others. So it happens
that every door in town, of boarding
house, shop. saloon, theatre, and all the
rest. stands always ajar. So far as
business is concerned. there is literally
no day. no night. One hour is like all
the rest: every hour is an, hour of
hustle. To the stranger it appears like
delirium: to the man of Butte it is
matter of course.
The result is easily foretold:. Quick
exhaustion and early death. The man
OF Butte Is an octogenarian at forty.
senile ruin at fifty-five No one lives to
De old. in the accepted eastern use of
the word: you will never see that white
and venerable and beautiful old age
which has so firm a place in orr life
our poetry, our very religion. Over
strung nerves snap; brains crumble:
hearts yield to their load. 1t is of no
use to try to cheat death by hurryinr:
death likes nothing better than a stern
cnase after some breathless fool who
Is trying to run away. He may leave
everything else far behind-his health
his sanity; but deaths hand is always
just clutching at his coat-tails. When
other people in other places would he in
their prime just getting ready to en-