The circle banner. [volume] (Circle, Mont.) 1914-1939, 1922-07-21

hardly dismiss Bonner on the Black
foot with careless reference to IAN
other sawmill town" 1t would ex
; cite some degree of interest, and es
J tablish claim to a classification abov
Industrial mediocrity, If it had moth
ing to distinguish it but its sawmill
which is reputed to be the finest II
operation anywhere, and were 1t no
the manufacturing center of thu
numbering interests of the Anacond'
Copper Mining company in Montana
The fact that it represents an import
ant collateral activity of one of the
! greatest industrial organizations IL
the world, and is delivering an out
put of almost half a million feet
day to meet the enormous lumber
requirements of the Anaconda mines
and smelters in three states, alone
would challenge attention. But this
is not all there is to it-not by great
DEAL
1t is a model town, a community
that has developed an individuality
manifested in such things as COM
munity garden, cooperative COM
one of it's kind, perhaps, in the
world-which circulates thousand
books monthly among mill operatives
and lumberjacks, and a hotel-like
dormitory for unmarried employees,
With ballroom, reading rooms and
baths.
And these are only few of the
more obvious things. If the traveller
paused to talk with any of the two
or three hundred men and women
to be found in the community gar
dens every evening at this time OF
year, still another attribute of the
model town would be quickly reveal
ed, widespread feeling of mutual
confidence and respect that has ma
terialized in the form of stabilized
labor conditions and virtual self-gov-
eminent for the men.
At Bonner the mill operatives can
and do say who shall or shall not
work with them, and at Bonner they
have a smaller labor turnover prob
ably than any other industrial COM
munity in the country. Among its
people are men who have been on
the mill or yard payrolls thirty-five
or forty years, and because the roll
ing stones are few the town ranks
high as market for motor cars.
Automobile dealers in the nearby city
of Missoula say more people there are
equipped with private transportation
facilities than in any town of similar
size in the northwest One of them
sold three cars in a day to
the men working in the mill.
Bonner did not set out to be a |
model community. That character |
has been matter of gradual devel- |
opment, so gradual, indeed, that few |
Of its five or six hundred inhabitants |
seem to be aware of it's distinction. |
Possibly that is what has differen-
lated it from the numerous expert
nents in the establishment of ideal
Industrial communities which have
'ailed. There never was the slightest
suggestion of mail order flavor about
t. That is to say nobody handicap
BED it in advance by advertising a
intention and then try
ng to make it conform to precon-
eived notions of what a model town
hould be. AS part of plans to es-
ablish plant which should produce
umber expeditiously, efficiently and
economically, it was provided as a
natter of course with good, comfort
BILE, honey houses, school, churches,
tore and hotel, and apparently left !
o evolve its own future. Everything |
eside seems just to have happened,
ut that is an illusion due largely to
he human understanding of Kenneth !
loss, the man in charge of the Ana
onda company's mill property and :
IS timber lands, which comprise a
lillion acres in Montana alone.
Mr.. Ross, big, modest man who {
anne up from the ranks, probably :
ill regard this statement as an out !
ageous violation of cherished de-
eclare he had little or nothing to do
18th it. Yet almost any man or wo-
ian in Bonner will flatly contradict
i'm on that point, and say that their
,wn, as it is today, is nothing more
Or less than the embodiment of his
le-word creed, Cooperation"
In Mr.. Ross estimation only one
her word ranks in Importance with
1t also begins with
Preventing forest
res, discouraging wanton destruc-
On of timber, and protecting young
ees and Observation-Disclosures are some
the things he means by conserva-
On. The Importance of both words, |
rather the ideas they express, was
armed by him when he was a mill
md and lumberjack years ago in the |
wage, careless youth OF the lumber
dustry. And in his mind co-opera-
N is but the condensation the es-
nee of simple philosophy which
so is exemplified at Bonner:
Everybody is as good as he can
I; nobody is as bad as he might be.
AS practiced in Bonner, co-opera-
IN achieved its first striking re-
1t at the beginning of the war.
inner had its last labor trouble
en-. The disease which erupted so
)lently in Butte manifested itself
a few sporadic symptoms in the
wmill town, but Mr.. Ross preached
little sermon on his favorite text, |
of their own accord the men I'M |
rtook the task of extirpating dis
atty. 1t was thorough job, and /
sr since industrial democracy,