Our Town One Hundred + Years Ago... July 1900

In 1900, our country was just one year shy of its 125th anniversary. Independence Day celebrations were often grand affairs with plenty of patriotic music, speeches, and a sea of U.S. flags waving in a Montana breeze. However, there was also the dirty little business of politics, not much different from the themes we hear today. Page 2 of the July 7, 1900, edition of the Jefferson Valley Zephyr did not hold back anything from the editorial about the "sordid, selfish, unsympathetic, snakey cold aggregation, thirsting for the last dollar of the laboring poor ... the Amalgamated Copper Company."...