The weathered epitath on Frank Little's grave in Mountain View Cemetery in Butte reads "Slain for Organizing and Inspiring His Fellow Men."

Frank Little came to Butte to persuade miners to join the One Big Union, the Industrial Workers of the World.

 

Little gave public speeches telling the miners that the Great War in Europe was a conflict that should be left to the capitalists who started it to finish. Workers, he argued, had more in common with each other, regardless of their nationality.

 

These were not tolerant times in Montana and Little had picked the wrong time and place to incite dissent and to encourage what the Company- backed newspapers called acts of sedition.

 

In the middle of the night on August 1, 1917, six men, identifying themselves as officers, abducted Little from his boarding house room. They beat him, dragged him behind a car, and finally hung him from a train trestle on city's edge. No one was ever convicted of his murder.

 

 

A procession of thousands followed his coffin as thousands more lined the streets to show their solidarity. While few workers subscribed to Little's radical message, all were uniformly outraged at the way the messenger was so brutally silenced.