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5«. 562, P. L. & R.n. S.POSTAGE

Paid

THREE months ago in a decentralization plan the War Pro~'duction Board Drive Division was established to service the fourstate area of Region 12. Lewis M. Browne, a man long associ-ated with production and labor is d,irecting this division. In the'short period of three months there have been established andserviced in the Region 63 of these committees covering plantsranging from 10,000 employees down to 40 employees. Thisrange indicates that the value of Labor-Management Commit4tees is not confined to limitations of size. Management and

~ tabor alike realize that this important activity, while primarilyCleveloped for the increase in war production. is not confinedalone to this phase but has many continuing benefits for thepost ,war production. At the present time there are over 4,000~mmittees in the country.

The responsibilities of the Labor and Management Com ..mittees cannot be exaggerated. Winston Churchill recentlylummed up this significance in one sentence, "It is the sidewhich can continue to produce the most for the longest timethat will win."

Our ~ain advantage in the great struggle we face is ourlability to produce. If through unwillingness to face the facts"'e give up this advantage, if through over-optimism we slo""Clown production and relax our efforts, we may find that ouropportunity for victory has been postponed.

,Unfortunately, the ..,prevailing mood is that Cermany is as

'IOod as beaten, the defeat of Japan a sideshow that need .notinterfere with the resumption of business. To insure the ac-complishment of our war mission-the decisive defeat of Ger-many and Japan-we must have not only the whole-hearted, un-.2.

The -,

RoadAhead

•,"

What lies behittd is common knowl~edge to all of us. What lies aha-ad isimportant to everyone. The region~'..I head of the War ProductionBoard in this district is ~. PeaveyHeffelfinger and in this issue Mr.Heffelfinger directs a message tothe workers in vital metals of Mon-tana. He has a message of import-ance to all of us.

•

selfish, single-minded effort of every man and woman i.. thiscountry, but also the full utilization of every bit of productivepower and executive ability that we possess, because our 1944production scheules must be great.r than our accomploishmentsin 1943.

Our chief worry right now is apathy. As our victories pileup we sense a growi.., apathy in the attitude of people towardwar production. Every mile we advance on the enemy meansanother mile of the supplies that it takes to sustain_an army andthe navy in action, another mile of copper wire for communi-cations, another mile to haul the soup kitchens, another mile todrag up the big howitzers and ammunition, another mile ofshoe leather worn out on a million soldiers' feet. And our sup-ply lines are ~6,OOO ",iles long, and with every victory, in ahundred baHle zones, these supply Ioinesmust be extended.

The War Production Board in Region XII is particularlypleased with the Labor-Management CommiHee of the Ana-conda Copper Mining Company. They are also justly proud ofits publication "Copper Commando." Both the comrhittee andthe publication are outstanding and many times are usecl as apattern in Labor-Management activity throughout the country.

The mines and war plants, the brms and ranches of Mon-tana must not relax to normal peacetime energy. The wool andgrain as well as the ore must continue to pour into the nationalproduction stream. The War production Board, thanks to thefortunes of war, has been able to release some essential pro-ducts required in civilian life. More of these commodities willbe available in 1944, but please do not expect to have all theconveniences and necessities you desire and deserve. We mustcontinue to sacrifice as do our boys now girdling the earth.

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•MARCH 3, 1944

In This Issue:COVE R I:

Cartridge cups for' Uncle Sam's FightingForces! The interesting picture shownon our front cover was taken at the Tor-rington, Connecticut, plant of the Amer-ican Brass Company, to which COPPERCOMMANDO paid a visit last month,Read the story called "BRASS MILL" be ...ginning on page four.

THE DAYS AHEAD 2

Several months ago the War ProductionBoard established regional offices. Our.Montana activities in war productioncome under the jurisdiction of the officein Minneapolis, of which F. Peavey Hef-felfinger is chief. "Heff," in an articlespecially written for COPPER COw.MANDO, views the war from the produc-

, .tion front.

BRASS MILL z 4

What happens to the vital metals Mon-tana produces for the war program? Mostof us know that they go to the vast brassmills to be converted for war uses. 'Thisis the first of a series of articles designedto show what Montana's metals are doingto win the war, based on trips throughAmerican Brass Company plants.

PEOPLE AND PLACES ~ 8

When COPPER COMMANDO visited theBrass Mills of Connecticut to obtain ma-terial for the article, "BRASS MILL,'·-which begins in this issue, 'we ran intomany interesting folks. Some had al-ready been to Montana; many otherswanted to come. We thought you mightlike to meet some of these folks face toface.

L-M EXHI BIT 9

Our Victory Labor-Management Produc-tion Committees are prominently fea-tured in the great nation-wide exhibitionwhich has just opened in Washington.Here is the story of our fine exhibit andhow it was put together, with plenty ofpictures of the men you know and work'with in this industry.

RED CROSS 12

Once again the American Red Crossmakes its appeal to the American peoplefor support. Never before has the needbeen so great. In this, probably the mostcritical year of the war, the Red Crossmust reach the hearts and pocketbooksof each and every one of us. We mustnot fail our boys at the Fighting Front.

MARCH 3, 1944

U. S. Signal Corps Pbo~•

Units of the U. S. Army Medical Corps in combat areas perform· their duties,under as m,uch difficulty as any other bra nch of the service. Here an emergency

operation is being performed in a dugout located deep in the jungle of Bougainville

Island, in the Southwest Pacific. It is dug about four feet below the surface, thesides are built up with sand bags and it is roofed with heavy logs. The entire struc-

ture is covered with a pyramidal tent, shielding the occupants from the tropical sun.

•COPPER COMMANDO is the official newspaper of the Victory Labor-ManagementProduction Committees of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company and its Union

representatives at Butte, Anaconda, Great Falls and East Helena, Montana. It is

issued every two weeks .•• COPPER COMMANDO is headed by a joint committee'

from Labor and Management; its policies are shaped by both sides and are dictatedby neither ... COPPER COMMANPO wa s established at the recommendation of

J the War Department with the concurrence of the War Production Board. Its edi-

tors are Bob Newcomb and Marg Sammons; its safety editor is John L. Boardman;

its chief photographer is AI Gusdorf; its staff photographer is Les Bishop ... ItsEditorial 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, fromAnaconda; Jack Clark, CIO, Herb Donaldson, AFL, and E. S. Bardwell, ACM, from

Great Falls ... COPPER COMMANDO is mailed to the home of every employee ofACM in the four locations-if you are not receiving your copy advise COPPER COM-

MANDO at 112 Hamilton Street, Butte, or, better still, drop in and tell us. This isVolume 2, No. 14.

.3.

WHAT happens to the copper, zinc' decided to make a trip to the brass ~

MILL

and other vital metals after theyleave Montana? As we all know,they take another step in the direc-tion of the fighting fronts. So manyquestions have be,n ask~d us aboutjust what happens to these essentialmetals that COPPER COMMANDO

mills of the Connecticut Valley •Here, in two mills of the AmericanBrass Company, a subsidiary of An-aconda Copper Mining Company,we developed a series of picturestories on wartime uses of brass.This is the first of the series.

.

BRASS

I N THE vast mills of the AmericanBrass Company at Waterbury, Connecti-cut, the men are turning out brass prod-ucts for use against the AXis. All of theproducts of these great mills are devotedto the war program.

The first operation we turned ourattention to was the alloys. Here the vir-.,gin metals are mixed with scrap and re-duced to the .desi red forms. There is nowaste. Copper is an indestructiblemetal-that's the thing that impressesyou most.

Let's start on our trip through themill. In the picture at the top of thepage we snapped the crew at lunch hourstanding before several piles of coppercathodes. These copper cathodes areweighed, cut and mixed with other met-als and scrap, and we shall see later onhow this is done. At Great Falls cathodessimilar to these are produced and are

/ used in charging the furnaces there.These cathodes come from another mill,and are shipped in here to be used inmaking the alloys.

These copper cathodes are lifted.one by one, off the pile and prepared forweighing; you can see three of the boys. removing a cathode in the picture at theright.

Of course, copper isn't the onlything that goes into the manufacture of •brass. as we all know. Zinc is an impor-tant element also and in the picture atthe upper 'left of page six, we find twoof the boys stacking zinc for the scale.Some of these zinc slabs come di rect fromGreat Falls, and the fellows in the ZincPlant there might like to see where theirproducts wind up. The zinc slabs are alsoweighed, as we shall see later. Step bystep the various elements which go tomake up the brass are assembled andweighed.

At the center left, the cutting opera-tion is shown. This is Albert Atdazio,known as the cutter, on the shear. He iscutting the blister copper cathods for

mixing in the charge. These strips of cop-per are stacked on the other side of theshear where Louie Terni (shown in thepicture at the lower left of this page withTheodore Oniecinski l weighs out the re-qui red amount of copper and puts themin the mixing pan shown in the center of'the picture. These mixing pans movealong a runway to the next man whoweighs out the proper amount of zinc andputs the zinc in the pan as it passes. Inthe picture at the upper right of this page,the cut zinc slabs are being weighed andput in the moving pans by Antonio Sever-ino. Tony started at American Brass in1910. Actually these are zinc slabs whichhave been cut up into small pieces. In thepicture at the bottom of the page LuigiBracone is shown at the zinc weighingscales performing a similar operation.Luigi, we found out, is seventy-threeyears old and he has been thirty-threeyears on the job.

Bit by bit the charges are assembledin pans. Since each element going tomake up the charge is weighed carefully,the composition of the final metal' isknown. In the large picture at the top ofpage seven two of the boys are lifting afi lied pan onto the rack. This pan now .contains the elements required to makeup the completed charge .

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•6. MARCH 3, 1944

5

rn some special alloys, such as Ever-dur and Ambraloy, which are used forimportant aircraft and naval equipment.small percentages of manganese areadded to the mixture in amounts so smallthat they are weighed out on a very ac-curate scale and put in small paper. bags.That is Graziano Recchia in the small pic-ture at the left on this page weighingout the portions of manganese. He putsthem in the small paper bags, drops themin the pan at his left and the bags are dis-tributed in the pans. .

Now the pans are completed andready for the furnace. These furnaces.which are charged with the various met-als. are circular-shaped and heated elec-trically. In the picture at the lower right,a piece of. scrap is being fed into the.fur-nace. This particular piece of scrap wasused for stamping out shell case discs andwe shall see how these discs are manu-factured in a later article.

Two elements. then, go to make up

MARCH 3, 1944

the manufacture of this cartridge brassused for shell cases and other militaryequipment-the elements are virginmetal such as copper and zinc plus scrap.The scrap comprises metals returnedfrom American Brass Company mills andcustomers' operations. Nothing iswasted: even the chips and filings frommachinery operations are reclaimed forbattle uses. These filings or chips arestacked in huge piles resembling hay andthen are baled under pressure into squareblocks called "cabbages." This cartridgebrass is principally composed of seventyper cent copper and thirty per cent zinc.

Many of our readers will probablybe interested in knowing what the Con-necticut Valley itself looks like. It lacks.as you can probably guess, the moun-tains we know. In that section of thecountry they do have beautiful hills butthey do not compare in size, of course,wi th those of the West. Sti II anyonewould agree that the Connecticut Valleywith its rolling hills is indeed a beautifulsection of the United States. It is heavilypopulated in the area occupied by thebrass mi lis-there are any number ofgood-sized cities. The people themselveslive right in the cities or, in many cases,they have homes on the fringes of thetowns or in the rolling countryside nottoo many miles away.

The "share the car" movement inthe East is well developed for it is diffi-cult for workers to travel to and fromtheir plant unless they double up. Gaso-line rationing in the East has always been"tighter" than it has in the West. largelybecause the drains on the sources of sup-ply have been greater there.

It would be a most interesting ex-perience for every reader of COPPERCOMMANDO to make this trip person-

\

ally to these war plants in the East. Theminer would be able to see where the cop-per he mines goes-in later issues we wantto show you more specifically what the

" uses of these metals are, The smelter-man is interested in knowing where hisproducts go, as the man at Great Fallsis also.

As wesaid, the thing that impressedus most about the entire operation is thefact that nothing is wasted. The war de-mands the full and complete use of everyvital metal. When shell case discs arestamped out, the metal not used must bereturned. When chips and filings are

- created, they must be gathered up andbaled because they can be used again.

, The fellows in the eastern brassplants have a great war spirit. Each daythey see the results of their efforts godirectly to the fighting fronts. But theyall know that they could not do their jobsif the folks out in Montana did not firstdo theirs.

• .7.\

THE recent Japanese atrocity stories ,have horrified the entire nation. A lotof us had slumbered on; deluded by thethought that American pnsoners unfor-tunate enough to have fallen into thehands of the [aps were being humanelytreated. Now it'appears that we wereall wrong.

"Actually there isn't anything new inthe report of Jap atrocities. These bar-barians for the past eight years have beenindulging in mass massacre 'of Chinese,yet very little word of it filtered throughto us because of the American apathy to-ward our Chinese Allies since the startof the Chinese-Japanese war.

But we have the dope straight now.The tallies have been counted and thescore is in. We now know that, for alltime, the Jap is a scourge upon civiliza-tion. We now know that they are a racetoo few years out of savagery to be per-mitted to mingle with other races. Asthe war mounts in the Pacific, the peoplein this country seek a quick end to thething, bloody if it must be.

. A lot of civilians fume in helplesswrath over the whole miserable business.Our stomachs are turned by the reportsof the tortures inflicted upon our men.If we could only get our hands on thoselaps, we say, we'd certainly do a thing ortwo to them. Well, we on the home pro- .ducrion front can't do anything in theactual sense of physical fighting. Thatdoesn't mean, though, that there is noth-ing we can do. First of all, we can speedthe end of the war and save many Amer-ican ooys from living death by helpingto maintain a steady flow of productionof essential metals. As the war proceeds'in the Pacific, the fighting forces are go-ing to need vast quantities of copper.They look to us to provide them.

Second, we can keep investing ourmoney in War Bonds. The rumor is goingthe rounds that some people are cashingin some of their bonds as soon as theycan after their purchase. Some peopleare even cashing in bonds simply to buyother bonds so that the community recordmay be maintained.

We don't think we have to mentionhow absurd this is. No one in his rightmind wants deliberately to kid himself.

Those are two things we can do--help the boys by sticking on the job andback them up with bonds.

•.8.

People (?places.'

W E thought we'd de-vote our ..People andPlaces" department thistime to a number of inter-esting people we met inthe Waterbury and Tor-r i n g ton, Connecticut,plants of the AmericanBrass Company. You canread the first in this series

of articles beginning onpage 4 of this issue,

Meet Mrs. Booth whoworks in the Waterburyplant. She was a house-wife before the war andhas four sons in the Army.She says, "I felt that Imust do something to con-tribute to the fight theywere entering so I appliedfor a job in a war plant."

Hello, MontanaMeet two of the union

boys from Waterbury-

they are both at theFrench Tube plant and weinvited them down to sayhello. Here we find johnRossi and John Mannareading COPPER COM-MANDO, which they de-scribe as their favoritenewspaper.

John Rossi is vice presi-dent of Local 251; John

Manna is general chairmanat American Brass of the .Waterbury Brassworkers'Union of the I. U. M. M.&S. W.

Manna was in Montanaat the International con-vention last year. He says,"Tell the boys there that Iam still dreaming of thedays in Butte and that ,send my best regards tothe members of the ButteMiners' Union No.1.

Rossi says: '" didn't getto make the trip to Mon-tana last year but the boystell me it is a great coun-try. We sure like to readabout you fellows in COP-PER COMMANDO andsee what you are doing."

War EffortAs the old sayi ng goes,

Newcomb has to get his.kisser in the pictures. Herehe is at one of the Water-bury plants (Newcomb isthe fellow who needs theshave at the left) talkingwith Roy Lockhart in the

center and Peter Oates atthe right. Peter is shopsteward at the Rolling Mill.We also saw Patsy deLucia, a crane follower forforty-two years, and Wil-liam Stanton, a thin finish-ing roller-Stanton was alsoin Butte last year.

Labor-ManagementWhi Ie we were at Tor-

rington we got a picture oftwo of the boys who werehelpful to us in gettingmaterial for COP P ERCOMMANDO. Here wehave a picture of themstanding before one of thebulletin boards. at the Tor-rington plant. That is C.B. (Jake) Jacobs of the Ad-vertising Department atthe left and Z. W. (Zig)Budney', secretary of theLabor-Management Com-

...

mittee there, at the right.Jake and Zig took us allthrough the plant.

The bulletin boa r d swere particularly effective-on page 4 of th is issueyou will see a bulletinboard at Torrington whichwe thought was particular-ly good-it shows a pictureof the U. S. S. Boise, towhich the workers therecontributed the turbinebands and packing. Con-nie Hinz is in the fore-ground. ,r

War MotherDoing an important pro-

cessing step in producingcondenser tubes is Mrs.Hannah Kennelly, a work-er at Waterbury. A house-wife for twenty-five years,she raised three sons, allof whom are in the service.One son, John, is a Rangerin England-the Rangersare equivalent to the Brit-ish Commandos.

War hits close to thesepeople, as it does to us.They, like us, buy WarBonds and do all they canto bring this war to a hastyand successful end. Wewish that all of the folks inMontana might meet peo-ple back East like Mrs.Kennelly.

MARCH 3, 1944

\•There are more than 4,000 Labor-Man-agement Committees in the UnitedStates. In Washington this month Labor-Management Committees from all, overthe country are telling of their aims andaccomplishments. Ou~ own four com-mittees have assembled one of the finestexhibits ever to be shipped out of thestate. This is the story of how it was done.

•MARCH 3. 1944

THE winning of the war for the UnitedNations, once it is won, wi!1 have de-pended very heavi Iy upon the coopera-tion between labor and management.Shortly after Pearl Harbor, PresidentRoosevelt asked that Donald M. Nelson.chairman of the War Production Board.seek to enlist the full cooperation of theemployer and the employee in the interestof all-out production, Most of us knownow that much of the doubts and fearsthat existed between labor ~nd manage-ment everywhere were set aside in theinterest of getting the war won.

In Washington, the nation's capital •the committees all over the United Statesassembled e x h i bit s to show whatground they have gained. Four major ex-hibit spaces were all that were availablebut the Montana committees were as-signed one of these in recognition of the"fine job the folks out in Montana havedone."

The job of putting together an ex-hibit twenty-five feet long by ten feethigh and eight feet deep was no simplematter. By unanimous vote of the com-mittees, Arthur Linforth, assistant to themanager of mines. was put in directcharge of the building of our show. Chos-en to work with him were W. J. (Bill)McMahon, labor commissioner for theAnaconda Company and general secre-

tary of the Labor-Management group;Charles Gardner of the Butte Miners:Union, representing CIO, and John Birdof the Electricians' Union, representingAFL.

At the top of the page you have achance to see a large part of the finishedexhibit. The center board is devotedto copper, the one at the left iszinc, and the one at the right to manga-nese. The committees' official newspaper,COPPER COMMANDO. fianks the cen-tral exhibit on either side with a pictureand text story of how COPPER COM-MANDO operates. On the wings at eachend are shown in graphic form the ac-tivities of the Labor-Management Com-mittees at Butte, Anaconda, Great Fallsand East Helena.

One display tells in striking mannerof the work of the Suggestion Sub-Com-mittee. Shown on one table are labor andtime-saving devices, in addition to safetydevices which have come about throughthe medium of the suggestion box..: In-cluded are detachable bit carriers, theLane safety door. special undergroundlocks. and an underground machinewrench with a bit remover. all conceivedin efforts of labor and management tohelp speed the day of victory.

Also included are displays telling ofstudies made on absenteeism and meth-ods used to combat this hindrance to the.9.

war effort, examples of suppTtes and serv-ices secured workers through the com-mittees, and samples of posters and payroll inserts displayed and passed out at,each mine and shop in efforts to boostproduction, the sale of War Bonds and-other war endeavors.

Also shown are pictures telling ofthe processes by which copper, zinc andmanganese are mined. Specimens of theores in the various stages of operation aredisplayed.

At the top of this page we get a viewof the exhibit from the other end. At theleft is Dick Simmons and at the end ofthe picture is Dick Edwards, known a~Captain Dick, shop foreman of the Ana-conda Construction Shop .

. While it was not possible to have theLabor-Management Committee boys fromAnaconda, Great Falls and East Helenapay a visit to the exhibit, the Butte corn-mittee went up to the Anaconda Carpen-ter Shop and looked the exhibit over.There in the second picture you see rep-resentatives of labor and management infront of the exhibit.

In the picture at the 'bottom of thepage, Captain Dick, shown at the left, andJohn Davies, foreman of the Anaconda

, Paint Shop, shown at the right, pose withMr. Linforth. The Labor-ManagementCommittee could not heap enough praiseupon the shoulders of Arthur Linforthwho engineered the entire exhibit fromsimply an id~a on paper to an outstand-ing finished product .

. Now let's move over to page eleven.In the upper left Wayne Clague is shownfixing up one of the signs. Over at theright Jack Ball, a carpenter, is checkingup on some of the measurements. Inthe next picture four of the boys areshown doing the finishing touches. Fromleft to right they are Billy Rowe, DickSimmons, Vic Nyland and Frank Grist.J n the picture opposite that one two vet-eran painters are looking over the exhibit.They are AI Andreason and Bill Stenberg.In the next picture one of the panels isbeing finished. That is Sam Dunn at theleft. In the center is Jack Edwards (he isa brother of Captain Dick who is seenstanding next to him at the right.) In thethird picture at the bottom right are R. J.(Hal) Rahilly, management's chairmanfor the Labor-Management Committee,and Charlie Black, labor's chairman.

In the picture at the bottom lowerleft is the committee itself-at the leftis Oscar Baarson of the War ProductionBoard who dropped in to say hello; nextto him is Arthur Linforth, then CharlieGardner of the of -the Miners' Union;Marg Sammons of COPPER COMMAN-DO, Bill McMahon of the AnacondaCompany and John Bird of AFL. In thelower right we see Mr. Linforth pointingout the highlights of the exhibit to'CeorgeB. Holderer, one of the officials of theCopper Division of WPB, who declaredthe exhibit was an outstanding event inmining industry and worthy of winninga first prize if he had anything to do withit.

f,

t

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•

..The Red

Cross Asks

Your

Delp . ••

'0, S. Signal Oorpa Pbo~Ol>

•..hut The Bed Cross Shouldn~tDave to!ONCE again the Red Cross makes its appeal for con-tributions. Beginning March 1, this great organizatior'solicits the help of the Ameicran people to help them toreach a national goal of $200,000,000. Of this amount,eighty per cent will be spent for direct services to themen and women of our armed forces.

Nobody needs to be told that this year, the needfor funds to carry out these vital services is greater thanever before. ' r

Many of the sons of the people who read this La-bor-Management newspaper have been saved by theAmerican Red Cross. There is not the slightest doubt

but that, in the months to come, the safe return of manyof our Montana boys will be guaranteed by this wonder-ful organization. When you contribute a dollar, orwhatever you can spare, to this cause, you are helping'to make sure that lives will be saved.

The appeal of the Red Cross is something thatmust hit the heart and pocketbook of every one of the130,000,000 of us. No matter how little you give, itwill go to keeping our boys alive and well.

I

•WE shall all ~arry a heavy burdenduring the coming twelve months.It will be a costly year--costly inblood and men-but it is a fear thatwill determine the future of the

• world. The stakes are worth fight-ing for. Ihave seen the lonely graves,the wounded and sick in the hospit-als. Thousands of brave soldiers arewillning under the hardest condi-tions. We 'have pledged those menand the men fighting as our allies,the full resources of the nation tosupport them. WE MUST NOTFAIL!

Under Secretary of WarROBERT P. PATTERSON

MARCH 3, 1944• 12 •