Sec. 562, P. L. & R.U. S. POSTAGE

Paid

CopperCOlllllIando

Meet .Joe (;opperAUGUST 13. 1943

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the editorial in the adjoining columnIndicates, this is an issue in review ofthe first year of COPPER COMMANDO.It is designed to refresh your memory asto the various operations and to show how

important to the war the production ofcopper and the man who works at it are.On these two pages we have ¥iews of thethree different locations-above we seea view of BuHe from the Montana School

of Mines; below we show a view of partof the reduction works at Creat Falls,while on the opposite page we show anunusual view of the stack at the Ana-conda smelter.

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MEETJOE

(;OPPEH!•

WHAT do you mean, "Meet Joe Copper?"Who is Joe Copper? What's he got to dowith us?

Well, Joe Copper is a worker in thecopper industry. He's you and me andthe guy across the street. He's,the fel-.low that goes underground to mine ore.He's the blacksmith that fixes the bits.He's the electrician who wires things andkeeps them that way. He's the fellowin the lamp house; he's the raise man;he's the welder. He's the smeltermanand he's the refiner. In short, he's every-body that's tied up with this job.

He's the old fellow who has been onthe hill or in the camp for years; he's theyoung fellow of draft age frozen to hisessential job. He's the copper industryand the war can't be won without him.

Because Joe Copper-and that meansyo,u and it means me-is a vital cog inour war machine and because so many ofthe Joe Coppers are doing so much to getthis war over with, we think it only rightthat we close the first year of COPPERCOMMANDO with a tribute to Joe Cop-per. For a solid year your Victory Labor-ty1anagement Production Com mit teenewspaper has worked with Joe Copper:your newspaper has tried to mirror hisactivities, to tell the miner of Butte aboutthe smelterman at Anaconda and the re-'finer at Great Falls. It's tried to let theboys at Great Falls and Anaconda knowwhat the mines are like.

. This, then, is a review of our fi rstyear and a little halt while we go backand look it over carefully. All the pic-tures which appear in this issue have ap-peared during the year-we dug into ourstoreroom and got out lots of interestingcuts we have used before and assembledthem in the hope that this picture issuewill serve as a memory tickler.

We think Joe Copper deserves awhale of a lot of credit. We've had someheadaches and some heartaches, too, ingetting out the copper, and we aren't ridof all of them yet. Many of these con-ditions have been the result of a war wedidn't start, but the results, too, of a warwe determine to finish.

The editors of COPPER COM-MAj\lDO want to thank Joe Copper forworking with us during our first year.Joe Copper has been mighty nice to us.COPPER COMMANDO believes in himand believes in the job 'he is doing.COPPER COMMANDO hopes that by thetime we finish another year, we shall bemiles along the road to victory as a resultof all the Joe Coppers in Butte, Anacondaand Great Falls, pulling together to com-plete their important job.

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COPPER COMMANDO is the official newspaper of the Victory labor-Manage~. ment Production' Committees of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company and its

Union Representatives at Butte, Anaconda, East Helena and Creat Falls, Montana.

It is issued every two weeks .••• COPPER COMMANDO is headed by a joint com ..mittee from Labor and Management; its policies are shaped by botli sides and aredictated by neither •.• COPPER COMMANDO was established at the recom ...

1mendation of the War Department with the concurrence of the War Production

Board. Its editors are Bob Newcomb and Marg Sammons; its safety editor is John -l. Boardman; its chief photographer is Bob Nesmith; its staff photographer is Les

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Bishop ••• Its Editorial Board consists of: Denis McCarthy, CIO; John F. Bird~• •

AFL; Ed Renouard, ACM, from Butte; Dan Byrne, CIO; Joe Marick, AFL; C. A'.

Lemmon, ACM, from Anaconda; Jack Clark, C.-O; Herb Donaldson, AFL, and E. S.Bardwell, ACM, from Creat Falls ••• COPPER COMMANDO is mailed to the

home of every employe of ACM in the four locations-if you are not receiving your.- .

copy advise COPPER COMMANDO at 112 Hamilton Street, Butte, or, better still,

drop in and tell us. This is Volume 1, No. 26.

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COPPER STARTS INBUTTEI

COPPER starts in Butte, as we all know.'and the 'Story of Joe Copper starts withthe miners on the sheet, waiting to belowered to their working places.

These are the Joe Coppers who,shift in and shift out, go underground tomine the ore. It's no cinch for Joe Cop-per to realize every minute of his work- .:Ingday that what he's doing is of essen-tial import!nce to getting the war won.He's a human being like everybody else,and war sometimes can seem remote to

•the fellow whose work isn't tied up withthe actual manufacture of fighting equip-ment. There doesn"t seem to be any closerelation between the rock that's hoistedand the war that's being fought in manycorners of the earth. But Uncle Samknows, and most of the Joe Coppersknow, too, that copper is a vital materialof war and it goes into practically everypiece of fighting equipment Uncle Samwants and needs. It is up to the Joe Cop-pers to keep Uncle Sam supplied.

Butte has figured in industrial his-tory for many years-it's the kind pftown that's known from coast to coastbecause it is vigorous, because it is in-formal and because it's friendly. Butnever before in the history of the com-munity has it been so essential as it istoday. The eyes of the fighting world areon this community and on the Joe Cop-pers in it, and there's no kidding aboutthat. We want Joe Copper to know whatthe world knows-that HE is important.

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UndergroundON this page and on the following page, wesee several Joe Coppers busy at their jobs-here, in pictures you have seen in our news-paper before, we find two Joe Coppers settingup preparatory to drilling and the actual drill-ing going on below. Afte,'the drilling is com--.plete, it's important that primers be ready andpowder on hand, so that nothing. will holdthem from hauling this ore and starting ittoward the fighting front. In the pictures onthe following page you can see the Joe Cop-,pers crimping blasting caps onto fuses tomake a primer, making a complete primer,and loading the holes with primers and dyna-mite getting ready to blast.

After the drilling and the blasting arefinished, tJten it's up to the boys to get theore, which has been loosened from MotherEarth, into cars so that it can be raised to thesurfat:e and sent along to the smelter in Ana-conda. In the large picture on the following,page we see a Joe Copper operating a scraperor slusher. These are some of the importantsteps, then, in the work we're all.in. Whenyou look at all these pictures, it seems a prettysimple thing to dislodge rock and get it mov-ing, but there are many steps in doing thejob in the proper way. In issues of our news-paper over the past year, you must have seenthese scenes.

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These Are.More Joe.C;oppers ~

THERE'S the ore on the way to the smel-ter. It has been raised from the minesof·Butte, dumped into ore cars, and nowis headed to the smelter for treatment.It looks like a far cry from the peaceful

scene above to the battlefronts of theworld, but it isn't very far when you stopand figure it out. When the ore leavesthe hands of the miners, it moves on tothe hands of the smeltermen who pick up

where the miners leave off and car~y on ..In the picture below, a long ore trail\wends its way up the steep banks leadingto the Anaconda smeltet. There are som.good slaps for the Japs in that ore.

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HERE are views of several steps throughwh,ich the ore passes after reaching thesmelter-the arrival of the or\e car, theweighing and the dumping of the ore in

the tipple, the conveying of the ore to thecrushers, the Hardinge ball mills and theclassifiers. which sort the ore. If it istoo bulky back it ,goes to the mill.

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TH E finely ground ore goes then to theAgitair flotation machines-you can see

. the copper bubbling off. After it floatsoff it is dewatered and it is dried then onthe Oliver filters and moved along to the

Reverberatory furnaces and then goes tothe converters where it is reduced to mol-ten metal. When it leaves the converters,the metal is free at last for the first timesince nature placed it in the ore. From the

converters the molten metal is conveyedto the furnaces and then is poured inmolds. When hardened, they become cop-per anodes. In each important step, some .,Joe Copper at the smelter is on the job.

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THE Joe Coppers at the smelter haveabout finis'hed their end of the job--thehardened anodes are raised from the cool-ing ·tank and are transported by truck tobox cars. At the left, the anodes arriveby train and are unloaded by men at theelectrolytic copper refinery at the GreatFalls Reduction Works.

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T.heseAre Joe (;oppers at Great FallsAT the electrolytic copper refinery at theCreat Falls Reduction Works, the anodesfrom Anaconda are lowered into the cop-per tanks where, through the electrolyticprocess, the copper is gathered upon the

starting sheets to become copper cath-odes. The copper cathodes are removedfrom the electrolytic tanks by means ofgiant cranes, placed on flat cars, and sentalong to the furnace refinery where they

are again melted for conversion into warmaterials. Here again we find Joe Cop-pers doing their important war job-a job

• essential if we are going to get the warwon. It cannot be won without copper.

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On to' the Fitrna~e BOOID ( v

THEcopper cathoCiesare ready now to bemoved along on the flat cars. Theseheavy sheets are dropped by crane uponthe cars which are then moved out intothe yard. A long line of ca~hodes is seenon the track outside the furnace refinery.When the furnaces are ready to becharged, these cathodes are moved in car'by car and the giant crane piles them intothe seething furnace. These pictures ~n

this page, which all of you have seen inearlier issues of our labor-managementnewspaper,- shoW' an important step incopper production. It is into these fur-naces, which you see below, where thecopper and %inc are blended to makegilding metal. Remember how the Cov-.ernment some months ago asked theCreat Falls Refinery to 'accomplish whatamounted to a major miracle and change•

over to production of a new type of prod-uct-gtlding metal, which is an alloy ofninety per cent copper and ten per c~nt%inc-so that the munition makers of ourcountry could have enough material fortheir driving bands for shells, for cart·ridge cases and for other vital war pur-poses?-fiere at Creat Falls the Joe Coppersare engaged in one of the most importantcopper operations of the country .

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AND now the copper begins to reach theend of its cycle. The pure product ispoured out into molds which take theform of wedge cakes and bars. Thesecakes and bars are dropped into a coolingbath where they are hardened, and fromthat point on they are ready to be shippedto the war markets of the world. In thepictures at the top and below, we seecopper reaching its final form-those agilding metal cakes shown in the pictureat the bottom, while the pictures in thecenter show pi'les of wire bars ready for '*shipment throughout the country. Hereagain the Joe Coppers of our industry dotheir large share. Here again the Joe Cop-pers fulfill their end of the job so that theUnited Nations can win a speedy victoryfor the preservation of peace for the restof our time. These Joe Coppers are truesoldiers of production. Uncle Sam knowshow important their work is for victory,and we want our Joe Coppers to knowit too.

Here Is theFinishedProdu~t atGreat FallsBeady forShipIDeni

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Thanks to Joe (;opper • • •THESE are wire bars, hundreds and hun-dreds of them, waiting service in thewar. Copper takes too many forms forus to show you them all. But the Joe

Coppers· of our industry know that themore copper that comes out of the mines,the more anodes come out of Anacondaand the more finished products come out

of Great Falls. It's a three-way team. Onecannot operate without the other. If anylink in the chain breaks down, the warprogram suffers. That affects all of us••

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THIS dying Jap is being given a drink of water by an American sol-dier. It shows a quality of mercy on our part that the J a ps havenever shown us. •

Maybe that's why, as time goes on, we are getting tougher. Wedon't want our boys to starve to death in Axis concentration camps.But, unfortunately, many of our boys must for the present starve inconcentration camps because we haven't won the war yet. We willwin this war through the united. all-out effort of the country-thefighting men on the battlefronts and the fighting men on the produc-tion fronts. In the latter, Joe Copper ranks as an outstanding fig-ure. Whether he's a miner or a smelterman or a refiner makes nodifference. The United Nations' war program needs copper and it

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needs the f1l11effort of every Joe Copper to provide it •

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