The Connecticut labor press., 1920-08-28
ARMED GUARDS
 ARE NECESSARY
 FOR LABOR PAPER
Men Getting Out the Butte Bull letin Have to Tote Guns
 Continually.
ARE CRACK SHOTS, TOO
At Night the Plant Is Carefully Guarded to Prevent
 Destruction.


 Butte, Mont, Aug. 27.--Labor speak CTS who visit this city usually find their audiences i'll Mine Workers Hall, which occupies the auditorium of the old St. PauPs M. E. church. In the basement plant, guarded day and night by armed men. Only the fear of death has kept the thugs of the Anaconda Copper Min ing Company from wrecking the Bull letin property.
 Twenty repeating rifles stand in rack behind the managing editors desk, which is in the same big room with the typesetters and the printing press that instrument alike of reaction and revolution. Each, of the Bulletins ed itors and reporters carries an automatic pistol, and all of them are dead shots and handy with their fists. They have to be to survive.
 All other newspapers in Montana bend the knee to the copper trust. The Bulletin, only three years old, IS the one anti-reactionary paper III the state. Owned by organized workers, 1t has never compromised. It plays no oppor tunist policy; day after day it strikes straight from the shoulder; speaks edi--ss forially analyzing truths about the plunderbund rule in Montana that in. any other state would mean endless libel suits.
 Heading the dynamic enterprise are two formidable men-William F. Dunn, who holds the title of editor, and R. B. Smith, who is managing editor. Dunn is two-fisted person who has been a newspaper man only since 1917, when the Bulletin started as a weekly. He got his training in the labor movement as a mine electrician. In recent years he was an organizer for the Interna tional Electricians Union.
 Dunn is forceful speaker and writer his logic is unanswerable, scattiflS, deadly. Smith is not a speaker, or at least doesn't work at it.. He is direct ing genius, a practical printer and newspaper man; swift, quiet, sure III his judgments; holding the Bulletin straight on its course through many a terrible gale
 Thanking these two are Jimmy koO-' inson. business manager, and Pat Doyle, city editor. Robinson has Scoth blood in his veins, and needs it-for he has to go out to get money when there is a big paper bill to meet at Is cents pound-last year it cost only five cents. Doyle writes telling headlines, and has fsthghts with people who assall the Bulletins policy.
 Ever since the Bulletin started the defenders of the ruling order in Mon tanas have tried to put 1t out of busi- ness During the war Dunn and Smith were indicted under the state sedition act They had published an editorial attacking individual members of the State Council of Defense for their eff forts to suppress the labor daily.
 T,1r,,, flaor, and sfi11 mem Der of the state legislature, elected by the democrats on his radical labor rec ord, and the super patriots wanted to get him out of the assembly. He also ran for mayor here at the last election, and would have won had all the votes for him been counted. But the Ana conda Copper Company's henchmen controlled the ballot boxes, and saw to it that Dunn was kept out of the city government. He was the worst mayor Butte could have had-for the copper interests.
 First, Dunn and Smith were sum- moned before the defense council, and subjected to many days of grilling. The record of that hearing aggregated 1,5OO pages, and furnished the basis for an indictment on the charge of sedition. Tried by jury, both were convicted. Dunn was fined $5 900 and Smith $4, 500, the amounts being fixed by the jury.
 They refused to pay the fine, and appealed the case, alleging extreme prejudice on the part of the trial judge, Robert Lee Word During the trial this judge repeatedly suggested that the prosecution object to certain questions put by the defense-before the prose cutting attorneys q had thought of ob- jecsing. The jury was both prejudiced and intimidated.
 It was shown that w. A.[Campbell, editor of the Helena Independent, a copper corporation paper, took the Bul- 1etIn edircra1l to the county attorney and to members of the defense council, and urged that the Bulletin editors be prosecuted.
 Both convictions were lately reversed by the state supreme court at Helena.
 Bill Dunn has a punch like cata- putt, and his fayorite target is the point of the other fellows jaw. Before the saloons here were supplanted by boot logging joints, Dunn was standing at a bar one day adjacent to three Cornish men who were discussing the Mooney case.
 Tom Mooney got what he deserved" !" said one Cornishman. He ought to be strung up."
 Dunn kIlOCKGQ LH6 II1dIl HOW'LL 1AC Cornishman didn't get up. He crawled out of the saloon under the swinging dors on his hands and knees.
 Speaking of the necessity of being a gun-fghter in Butte if one is to speak his thoughts out loud and survive, Dunn says: If you carry a gun in your hip-pocket you might as well leave it home in your suitcase" Carrying 1t inside the trousers in front is the quick way.
 When the Anaconda road massacre was perpetrated by Anaconda Copper Company gunmen April q, the Bulletin sold 10000 extras containing call for mass meeting in the hall upstairs. Miners jammed the hall till after mid night, while witnesses of the tragedy told what they had seen.
 Word came to the Bulletin editors that their plant was to be wrecked early Sunday morning. They told the strik- ing miners. Sixty of the miners armed