LET'S MAKE A NEW DEAL - The Death of Capitalism

I have a few surprises for you. The Great Depression, which began in 1929, was even worse than the history books say it was.  The unemployment rate during the Great Depression is usually said to have been almost 25%.  But farmers and farm workers were not considered unemployed until they had lost their farms.   In 1933 the unemployment rate amongst non-farm workers was actually 37%.  

By 1933 the average income of American families had been cut by 40%,  Nine million savings accounts had been completely wiped out.  Sixty per cent of Americans were living below the poverty level.  One in four Americans had been evicted from their homes. And 2 million Americans were reduced to working as migrants.  

By 1934 almost half of the banks in America had failed. Corporate profits had fallen by 90%. New home construction  had dropped by 80%.  Between 1930 and 1933, prices had fallen by 20%,  and industrial output had been reduced by almost half.

The New Deal did not end the Great Depression. It cut unemployment by half, but that still left one in five Americans looking for a job, any job.  In 1929 investments by individuals, corporations and governments, a practical display of faith in the future, had been $92 billion. By 1933 that faith in the future had fallen to $10 billion.  Four years of the New Deal had returned that investment to $94 billion. 

However, it was just then that the deficit hawks insisted that the government must now “balance its books”, “pay its bills” and “live within its means”.  Federal budgets were slashed in 1937, and in 1938. Investments dropped to $61 billion.  This period is called “The Roosevelt Recession”. To quote from Wikipedia, “Unemployment jumped from 14.3% in 1937 to 19.0% in 1938, rising…to more than 12 million in early 1938…Personal income in 1939 was almost at 1919 levels…”. High levels of unemployment remained until 1943, when war work finally reduced unemployment to just 2%.

World War Two was almost as expensive on the home front as it was on the front lines. In the first 18 months of U.S. involvement in World War Two, from December 7, 1941, to April 1, 1943, 12,123 Americans died in uniform. Over that same period 65,000 civilians died in industrial accidents all across America - 4 civilian deaths for every one military death. 

These civilian workers died while making artillery shells, machine gun bullets, building bombers and digging coal. Civilian deaths declined steeply over the last two years of the war, but with American combat deaths totaling about 300,000 for all four years, the final disparity remained about three civilians for every one soldier in uniform.

Despite the drop in unemployment brought on by war production, poverty actually increased during the war years. According to a Congressional Committee, with unemployment close to just 2% during the war, 20 million Americans still went to bed hungry.  One in four wage earners was making just 64 cents an hour. Part of that was capitalistic resistance to the "new" minimum wage laws, and part was the result of a massive influx of people into the job market. Three million teenagers dropped out of high school to work in war plants.

The war did not lead to inflation because it simply was not allowed to.  In 1929 the top tax rate, applied to incomes over $100,000 a year ($16 million per year, today), was 24%. By the end of the war the top rate was 94%.   In addition there was a “Victory Tax” of 5% tacked onto all income. You could avoid paying that tax on a portion of your income, by buying “War Bonds”. They earned only 2.9% interest, but more than half of all Americans bought them to avoid the Victory Tax. This took $185.7 billion (about half the cost of the war) out of circulation for ten years, until the bonds reached maturity. The sacrifices required were shared by all Americans, as were the benefits of victory.

In economic terms, America’s Second World War was the New Deal on steroids. In 1948 President Harry Truman gave the final price tag for America’s war at $341 billion, ($4 trillion in modern currency). The most obvious expenses, such as tanks, airplanes, tents, military bases, aircraft carriers, artillery pieces and explosives, were items that had little if any peace time applications. By the last few months of the war,  aircraft went directly from the production lines, to the scrap yards. But those were, in fact, merely the most obvious expenses. Despite what conservative ditto thinkers might insist, by 1965 that enormous war debt had been repaid in full. The year before our entry into the war the national debt was 43% of the Gross Domestic Product. In 1946 it was 128%. In 1965, it was back to 45%.

The debt was repaid so quickly because we spent our way to prosperity, something the ditto thinkers still insist is an impossibility. New highways and rail lines, power plants, refineries and water systems, built to supply war plants and their workers, provided increased opportunities for profit in the post war years. More importantly, more than 7 million veterans went back to school, fully funded under public law 346, the “G.I. Bill”.  By 1951 this single piece of social legislation had educated 8 million veterans. One and a half million were given “on the job training”, two million went to two and four year colleges, including three American Presidents (including Ronald Regan) 14 Nobel Prize winners, and hundreds of thousands of teachers, doctors, nurses and businessmen. According to a 1988 Congressional Budget Office Study, for every dollar spent on the G.I. bill, $7 was repaid in increased earnings, consumer spending and taxes paid back into the government. And that does not include the result of a better educated, healthier workforce on production. The result for business was that the productivity of two man-hours in 1940 could be matched by just one man-hour in 1965.  And yet the number of employed more than increased to match the population growth.

If there is a lesson here for our current hobbled economy, it is that we should not be attempting to emulate the New Deal, but the Second World War.  We  must declare war on our own fear, bigotry, ignorance and greed. Goals must be set - sustainable energy, a smart power grids, rejuvenated transportation systems, universal health care, and lifelong free education  - goals which once met will generate new wealth. To meet those goals, limits must be set, such as limits to the level of  sacrifice required from each economic group.  On the other side of any sacrifice there must be a demonstrable healthier, stronger democracy, and not just another handful of billionaires.

At the core of this proposal is the fundamental truth that capitalism is not sustained by a wealthy few.   If that were true the Kings and Queens of old should have produced capitalism eons earlier . Merely replacing the greed of the nobility with the greed of the richest does not sustain an economy.  Capitalism is  the product of a large, healthy middle class. And if the inequities of capitalism are justified by its advantages, then it must raise the standard of living and fuel the  ambitions of the most people possible. The production of billionaires is merely a happy side effect of capitalism, it cannot be a justification for the greed and selfishness which capitalism rewards. .

Today the ratio of national debt to Gross Domestic Product exceeds 105% -  approaching what it was in at the end of World War Two.  But during the most recent spending spree (The Republican tax cut of 2018)  we made no investment in the middle class, no investment to provide for future wealth. In short, time is running out for capitalism. And if it dies, it will be suicide. The golden goose will have been killed by its most fanatic acolytes, the bankers and the CEO's, the hedge fund managers - those addicted to greed and stupidity.  And the first step in curing any addict, is to cut them off from their drug of choice.

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AUTOMATIC GUN CONTROL

I hate to call it an average day, but it was. Just about a quarter past ten that gray Thursday morning, it was a bitter 18 degrees Fahrenheit, usual for Chicago in February. The day before an inch of snow had fallen, but as Elmer Lewis struggled eastbound through traffic on North Webster Avenue, his greatest obstacle was his Chicago built Nelson-LeMoon delivery truck. As he entered the intersection with North Clark Street (above), a four door Cadillac sedan heading south ran the light.

Lewis swerved onto Clark, but the truck's (above) solid rubber tires slid on the cold pavement and Lewis' truck tapped the steel bumper of the big passenger car. Seeing the Cadillac he had just hi was a police car, Lewis pulled over in front of 2156 North Clark Street. But the uniform cop driving the big Cadillac just smiled, showing a gap in his teeth, and drove on. No damage done,  Lewis proceeded to complete his delivery for the Beaver Paper Company, and the cop proceeded with the murder of seven men in less than six seconds.

When the technocrat Colonel John Thompson (above) resigned from the U.S. army in 1914, it was with the specific intent to get rich. He immediately found employment building factories for Remington Arms Company, but also found time to form a partnership with John Blish who had invented a unique breech system for an  automatic weapon. Together, as the Auto-Ordinance Company, they spent five years in raising money and development. Their final design was just under three feet long and just under 11 pounds in weight. It fired a heavy .45 caliber lead bullet at 935 feet per second. And it could fire one thousand of those rounds in 60 seconds. But the design was finished too late to profit from the First World War.

One block further south, the sedan pulled to the west side curb in front of 2122 North Clark Street (above). The bottom half of the front window of the nondescript single story building identified it as the SMC Cartage Company. Four men climbed out. A new driver slipped behind the wheel and left the engine running.  The two men who walked into the building first wore police uniforms and were carrying shotguns. They were followed by two civilians wearing heavy overcoats. The uniformed officers purposefully strode through the unlocked front door. Past a tiny office was a second door, and through that was the 110 foot long garage. Parked head-in facing the west wall were three delivery trucks. Scattered beyond were three more trucks and two cars. A mechanic was working over one of the trucks. His dog, a German Shepard named “Highball” was tied to the bumper.  Beyond, six men wearing overcoats, were smoking, drinking coffee and talking. The cops yelled for the men to put their hands up. This, they announced, was a raid.

Initially Auto-Ordinance sold the guns for $200.00 each, with a standard 20 round “stick” magazine, or optionally circular magazines of either 50 or 100 rounds each, for another $20 - $25. Because the gun was so expensive, at half the price of a new Model T Ford, police departments, government guards, corporate strike breakers and messengers, even the United States Marine Corps, could not afford to buy many. Also war surplus Browning Automatic Rifles had depressed the market. The Thompson was heavy and inaccurate at anything over 50 yards. The company also felt the need to provide buyers with a disclaimer: “Thompson-guns are sold you with the understanding that you will be responsible for their re-sale to those on the side of law and order.” By 1925 Auto-Ordinance was reduced to marketing the gun at $175 each to western ranchers and farmers, available at gun shops, hardware stores, and by mail.  Still, by 1928, sales were so bad John Thompson was replaced as Chief Executive Officer of Auto-Ordinance.

The police officers ordered the men, including the mechanic, to line up single file and put their hands against the north wall of the garage. While one officer held a shotgun on the seven, a second patted them down for weapons, tossing their handguns to the floor. The men peacefully complied probably because police “shakedowns” like this were common. The men in the freezing garage this morning probably assumed once these rouge cops realized who they were rousting, apologies would be offered. They probably thought that - right up until they heard the bolts on two Thompson machine guns being pulled back, in preparation for firing.

In November of 1925 Auto-Ordinance shipped one Thompson Machine gun with the serial number of #2347 to Mr. Les Farmer, a sheriff's deputy in Marion Illinois. He was a known member of a St. Louis mob called “Egan's Rats”. On Monday, 28 March, 1927, two former “Rats” members, Fred “Killer” Burke (above), and Gus Winkler, used the gun in the ambush of three gangsters in Detroit, Michigan. A  4:45 that morning Frank Wright, Joseph Bloom and George Cohen knocked on the door of Room 308 of the Milaflores Apartments.  Abruptly the stairwell door at the end of the hall swung open, and Burke blasted a machine gun down the hallway. Two of the men died instantly, literally cut to pieces. Frank Wright, died 20 hours later. His only comment was, “The machine gun worked. That's all I can remember.”

Standing about  ten feet from the wall, the two men in overcoats pulled Thompson machine guns. One gun had a 50 round circular magazine, the second a 20 round stick. When they they pulled the triggers, the two guns fired their 70 rounds within six seconds. Yes, it was that quick. In that frighteningly short time each of the seven victims received at least 15 wounds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CxI2qhRk38&feature=channel_page

On the first day of July, 1928, brutal crime boss Frankie Yale, aka “The Beau Brummnel of Brooklyn”, was caught driving alone on New Urecht Avenue when a Buick sedan pulled up next to him. From the front and back passenger seats gunmen opened fire with Thompsons. The body of Frankie's Lincoln coup was armor plated, but not the windows. Still, he was able to accelerate away from the gunfire. The assailants caught up with him again at 44^th street, where shotguns joined the volley of fire.  Frankie crashed into the fence of the brownstone apartment building at 923 44^th street. When examined by police, Frankie was adorned with a 4 carat diamond ring and a large hole in the back of his head (above)..

At the end of the line, 40 year old Pete “Goosy” Gusenberg staggered to his left and fell face down on the seat of a wooden chair (above, left). Forty-two year old James (Kachellek) Clark dropped forward onto his face against the wall. Optician Dr Reinhardt Schwinner, business manager Adam Heyer (aka John Snyder), nightclub manager Albert Weinshank, and 39 year old mechanic John May fell onto their backs. The final victim, 37 year old Frank “Hock” Gusenberg, dropped face down. One police officer then stepped forward and delivered two point blank shot gun coupe de grace to John May, obliterating his face. The four intruders then purposefully strode back out of the front door, pantomiming an arrest. The Cadillac sedan then continued south on North Clark. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre was over. From start to finish it had taken less than five minutes.

On 19 October  1928, Auto-Ordinance shipped three Thompsons, (serial numbers #6926, #7580, #7699) with three 50 round magazines to Peter Von Frantzius Sporting Goods, 608 Diversey Parkway, Chicago. The shipment was recorded as received on 23 October,  and according to records, were trans-shipped that same day to a Railway Express warehouse in Elgin, Illinois, where it was to be picked up by a private customer, Mr. Victor Thompson, who supposedly resided at the Fox Hotel, in that city. However the package lay unopened and unclaimed in the warehouse until authorities opened it in the summer of 1929. The box which should have contained three Thompson machine guns and magazines, was filled with packing material and four bricks.

The first police officer on the scene, Sargent Thomas Loftus, found Frank “Hock” Gusenberg,

trying to climb into one of the straight back chairs next to his brother's body. Loftus had grown up in the same East Side neighborhood as Frank. His childhood friend was now bleeding profusely from 14 bullet wounds, but still recognized him. Loftus asked, “Who did it?” Gusenberg wheezed “I won't talk,” and then urged Loftus to take him to a hospital. Hank Gusenberg died three hours later in Akexian Brothers Hospital. Highball, the now abandoned German Shepard, was so terrified and unruly, he could not be calmed had to be destroyed.

From the beginning it was called “The Massacre”. Eight months afterward deputy police commissioner John Stege told a reporter, “When a representative of the Auto-Ordnance company...said he wanted to help me in tracing the guns...I told him the help he could give me was to go back and close the gun factory. The weapons are absolutely of no value to...anyone other than criminals We would never dare use one of them,” he added, because “too many innocent people might be killed.” The Chicago Tribune interviewed Mr V.A. Daniels, who admitted reselling Thompsons to criminals for two hundred dollars profit apiece. “It's no problem to buy machine guns. All I had to do was to send to New York for them and they shipped them to me.” Auto-Ordinance was so eager to makes sales, that even after a $180 check from Daniels bounced, they allowed him to continue buying   Peter Von Frantzius, whose store had facilitated the transfer of at least three machine guns to Chicago mobsters, and charged just $2 to file down the serial number on any weapon he sold, admitted under oath he felt no moral responsibility. He said all he cared about was making money. 

On 14 December 1929, 11 months after “The Massacre”, a minor traffic accident in St. Joseph, Michigan lead to the death of police officer Charles Skelly. The shooter's car was later found abandoned, and the registration traced back to a Mr. Fred Dane. When police searched his home they found Dane gone, but under a bed, in a large trunk, they found two Thompson machine guns, serial #2347 and #7580. They also found information indicating that Fred Dane was really Fred “Killer” Burke (above).

Peter Von Frantzius admitted selling the three missing Thompsons to Frank V. Tompson (above), who claimed to have resold them to James “Bozo” Shupe. Shupe refused to talk to authorities. But shortly afterward, on 31 July, 1929.  he and a friend were killed in a shootout outside of a tobacco store on West Madison Avenue, in New York City.

Once Fred Burke was identified as the fake police officer who waved on truck driver Elmer Lewis, the two Thompson Machine guns found in Michigan were sent to Chicago to be tested by ballistics expert Calvin Goddard (above, left). In a first for forensics science, examining ejection markings on shell casings, Goddard proved that both guns had been used in “The Massacre:, and that gun  #2347 had also killed Brooklyn's Frankie Yale and was also used in the 1927 “Milaflores Massacre” in Detroit. In addition, ammunition found at Burkes' home and produced by the United States Cartridge Company during 1927-28 was also proven to having been used in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Eight months after “The Massacre” the stock market crashed, and unable to effectively stop the Great Depression from engulfing the nation, the Republican dominated 71^st Congress of 1929 -1930 was replaced by the divided “do nothing” 72^nd Congress, (271 Ds to 271 Rs in the House and 48Rs to 46Ds in the Senate). This logjam produced the November 1933 Democratic sweep, propelling Franklin Roosevelt (above) into the White House, with the Democratic dominated 73^rd Congress (311 D's -114 R's in the House, 60 Ds to 35 Rs in the Senate). And it is interesting to note the the first two pieces of legislation introduced by this public mandate were not geared toward solving the financial crises, but first the repealed of Prohibition, which had funded the gang wars, and the second The National Firearms Act (NFA), removed the Tommy Gun from the market place.  

The NFA  did not make the gun illegal. It simply taxed it out of existence. Under the NFA any gun that fired more than one bullet with one pull on the trigger, now carried a tax of $200 – thus more doubling the price of the weapon. When added to the Thompson's weaknesses – its inaccuracy and its weight – the tax drove Auto-Ordinance to the brink of bankruptcy. It is interesting that ten years after “The Massacre”, as the United States was gearing up for World War Two, a new company, Savage Arms, took a fresh look at the Thompson design. They discovered that by removing John Blish's ingenious breech system, the weapon remained fully automatic, but this significantly reduced the price of manufacture.

The garage at 2122 North Clark Street eventually became an antique furniture store, before, finally being torn down in 1967. Today it is a parking lot. Fred Killer Burke (above) died in a Michigan prison. And the gun he made infamous is still sold by Auto-Ordinance, who are still profiting from selling a weapon of mass destruction which in comparison to modern assault weapons is now seen as a romantic historical anomaly.

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THE SILVER LINING - The Cost Of Capitalism

I have noticed that in all things, drama attracts drama. Forty miles east of Coeur de'Alene, Idaho, there is proof of this. Through fissures opened by dramatic continental collisions over a billion years ago, water percolated up through sedimentary rocks. And where it pooled and cooled it left behind veins of silver, lead, and zinc. Then 190 million years ago this shattered wreckage was struck again, theatrically folding forested ridges upward until they broke, then shoving the amputated segments atop their own abandoned limbs, stacking the veins haphazardly through the new mountains. Fifty million years ago erosion found the weak points in the fault lines, opening the land to ambition and greed and human drama.

Burke Canyon Creek, like a hundred other streams in the panhandle of Idaho, divides two of these ridges. To the southeast the 6,000 foot high twin Grouse Peaks are separate by a mile from the 6,000 foot high Tiger Peak to the northwest. Between them, at just 2,500 feet above sea level, snakes the 300 foot wide “Silver Valley”.  Burke Canyon is so narrow, in the winter the bottom receives only two hours of sunlight. Shopkeepers had to close their awnings when the narrow gauge trains carried  the ore out of the mines and down the center of the canyon. The dead had to be carried out the same way, since there was no space to bury them in the canyon.

 But by 1891, the 11 mile long, constricted, twisting valley was dotted with one-street towns and the 100 mines they served; The Bunker Hill, The Burke, The Star-Morning, The Standard-Mammoth, the Hercules, The Gem, The Poorman Tigar, The Union, The Sunshine, the Frisco, The Tamarack.and The Hecla were just the biggest of the mines.

In less than a hundred years humans would extract from this dramatic landscape $5.5 billion worth of metal, including 37,00 metric tons of silver – half of all silver mined in the United States - 8 million tons of lead, and 3 million tons of zinc These were no paper profits. This was production,  rare metals pried from the earth. But the handful of owners who risked their capital to exploit this bonanza, and the 3,500 hard-rock miners who risked their lives a mile and more beneath this canyon for $3.50 a day, were all digging their own graves.  And maybe ours.

In the fall of 1891 the railroads which transported the ore once it was out of Burke Canyon, announced they were raising their rates $2 a ton. The Mine Owners Association, which effectively owned the canyon, responded by shutting down production. Three thousand miners were laid off, and untold store clerks, cooks, maids and laundresses lost their incomes as well. The standoff continued until the following April of 1892, when a compromise was reached and the mines announced they would reopen. But because of increased overhead the mines would rehire only 2,000 men, would add six hours to an already six day workweek, and for the 500 hundred unskilled miners, there would be a pay cut of fifty cents a day.

The workers at each mine formed unions, and were unified in their demand - $3.50 a day for all workers, skilled and unskilled. The Owners Association refused, and in June began advertising for replacement workers. Soon, every train which arrived in Wallace, Idaho, at the foot of the canyon, carried miners (“scabs”) from Michigan and Wisconsin. Union miners took to greeting the new arrivals with fists and clubs. The Owners hired Pinkerton “guards” to protect the replacement workers. Tensions increased, threats increased, violence increased. Two of the mines reopened with union miners, and two, the Gem and the Frisco, reopened with non-union miners.

When the sun rose over the narrow canyon on Monday, 11 July, 1892, the hills overlooking the Gem were covered with armed union men. At first light, the shooting began. After several hours of unproductive gunfire, the miners switched to more familiar weapons. A black powder bomb exploded a building (above) housing one of the stamps which broke up the ore before shipment. After a little more shooting the company men surrendered. The human cost was three dead. 

The union men marched their prisoners across the narrow street to saloons in the town of Gem, while company men still on mine property began sniping at them. Women and children ran for their lives, fleeing either up or down the canyon. Fifty more company men arrived and surrounded the saloons where their men were held. Three more men were killed, this time union men, and eventually, the union men surrendered in their turn.

Meanwhile, shooting had also begun at the Frisco mine, and three more company men had been killed. Yet another surrender prevented further loss of life. The sheriff and Federal Marshals escorted these company men down the canyon to Wallace. Pro-union forces now occupied both mines and had captured 2,000 rounds of ammunition, to boot. All of this had isolated the largest mine further up the canyon, the Bunker Hill, in tiny Burke, Idaho.

On day two of the “Burke Canyon War”, Federal troops arrived in Cataldo, twenty miles to the west, but the union men threatened to blow up the mines if they moved any closer. That left the company men in the closed Bunker Hill Mine cut off from support, heavily outnumbered and out gunned. The company men walked out without putting up any further fight.  All non-union mines in the Silver Valley were now shut down. It was only a matter of time before all would be forced to sign union contracts. It looked like the Union had won. And then somebody did something really dramatic, and really stupid.

It happened in Cataldo, where the narrow gauge railroad met the head of navigation for the Cour d'Alene River. There had once been a Mission nearby, and as daylight began to fade that Tuesday evening, 130 company men from the Gem and Frisco mines were gathered on the dock, waiting for a boat to allow them to escape this insanity. They had already been shot at and some had even been blasted. Then, out of the shadows, men now appeared on horseback and started shooting into the unarmed crowd. Panicked men began running in every direction, some even jumping into the lake. It does not appear that anyone was actually killed in this shadowed fusillade, but it was claimed that 17 were wounded. It was labeled “The Mission Massacre”, and most public sympathy for the union cause died right there.

On Wednesday, 13 July, 1891, Idaho Governor Wiley placed the entire county under martial law. A thousand state militia appeared, followed by a small but vocal pro-owner army of reporters. Before the week was out 400 union men were under arrest. So backed up had the courts become, that it would be a year before some of prisoners would have their chance to defend themselves. Very few would be found innocent. Many served years in prison. All union men were forced out of the mines, and the Owners Association reigned triumphant. The Wallace Free Press summed up what was lost, when it noted, “Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword, is an old proverb, and labor is not trained in that school.”

Eight years later they all did it again. This time the Bunker Hill mine was blown up. But again the owners won. Six years later the two sides went at it again,  and then Governor - Frank Steunenburg - called out National Guard troops. This time,  he boasted, “We have taken the monster by the throat, and we are going to choke the life out of it.” Union men responded by blowing up the governor. It took the skills of lawyer Clarence Darrow to keep the union man convicted of the Governor's murder, out of the electric chair . But the tit for tat never really ended, which helped ensure that by 1920 the 5,000 non-union miners in Silver Valley were the highest paid workers in the state.  They had to be, to get them to stay. 

But almost unnoticed at first, the real cost of all this drama began to surface. Around 1900 farmers downstream began complaining that the spring floods on the Coeur d'Alene River had poisoned their fields and killed their livestock. By the 1930's the south fork of the Coeur d'Alene river had become a dead zone. People drinking from the river became sick, even losing their hair. The farmers sued the mine owners, but the courts, already used to crush the union, now crushed the farmers. Still, there was so much lead in the Burke Canyon Creek, the miners began calling it “Lead Creek”. After the World Wars the price of silver began to fall. The mines began to close. And as they did, their political power began to wane.

In May of 1972,  91 miners died in a fire in the Sunshine Mine. And this time the disaster brought in the new Environmental Protection Agency. And what the EPA scientists found, scared them. They could find no fish in  Burke Canyon Creek.  By measurement, the water carried 550 pounds of zinc every day into the Coeur d'Alene River – so much that when the stream pooled, the water was yellow.  Twenty miles of streams in surrounding areas could support no fish, and 10 miles of tributaries of the Coeur d”Alene River had “virtually no life” in them. In those waters outside of Silver Canyon, lead and zinc levels were fifty times the federal safe water quality standard. How had it spread so far outside the canyon?  

Every day each mine had been dumping between 40 and 60 tons of lead into the air. Rain settled this poison into the  Coeur d'Alene river, and had contaminated Lake Coeur d'Alene, which had contaminated 160 miles of the Spokane River, which flowed out of the lake. Water fowl were dying each year in thousands, 21 bird species were at risk of local extinction. And human children living in the valley had the highest levels of lead in their blood ever seen - in the world.

The result was the 21 square mile Bunker Hill Superfund Site. When this cleanup is finally finished (if ever), it could cost taxpayers $1.4 billion – or just about 20% of the value of the ore removed from the “silver canyon” over the previous century, to enrich a few mine owners. In 1996, after twenty years of cleanup effort, EPA scientists put healthy trout in water from the Burke Canyon Creek. All were dead in four hours. Today, if you take a drive up Silver Canyon, you will pass the abandoned mine buildings, surrounded by chain link fences. Those fences were erected by the EPA, to protect curious tourists from dying of curiosity.

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