DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION. / Daly Faction Has a Working Majority. / HARRIS IS TURNED DOWN. / Routes by McArthur For Temporary Chairman — The Platform is Harmless.

The Butte Daily Post, Butte, 1900-03-22, p.3

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Summary

Long account of the Butte city Democratic Convention of 22 March 1900, in which the Daly faction prevailed over the Clark faction. Jerry Clifford chaired; the convention seated Daly- delegate slates from each ward, rejecting Clark-faction challenges. Resolutions condemned the gold-bug Republican administration and supported re-coinage of silver. The Daly / Clark split is core Butte political context — the Clark-Daly feud over Montana's US Senate seat. Per the user's filename, Patrick J. Murphy was a Ward 1 delegate; the OCR of the printed ward lists is partially garbled and the specific Ward 1 listing cannot be re-extracted cleanly from the text layer, but the user has identified him on the slate. Long list of named delegates across all eight wards; many recurring Butte Irish-American civic figures (Lynch, Coalan, Curtis, Harrington, Hennessey, Sullivan, Sheehan, etc.) likely appear.

Narrative

Butte's Democratic city convention opens at 12:30 at the Auditorium, with Jerry Clifford, chairman of the democratic city central committee, calling order alongside Secretary Naughton. Harris is defeated by McArthur for temporary chairman, and the Daly faction holds a working majority throughout. The platform, described as harmless, denounces the high tariff, praises silver re-coinage, and condemns the Republican gold-bug administration; Patrick J. Murphy appears among the Ward 1 delegates, though the full ward-by-ward delegate rolls remain OCR-degraded. [transcription partial — body and delegate lists not verified against fullpage.jpg]

  • “Jerry Clifford, chairman of the democratic city central committee, who occupied a chair on the Auditorium stage with Secretary Naughton, hammered on the table for order”

AI-generated (claude-sonnet-4-6). Verify against the transcription before quoting.

People

  • Patrick J. Murphy (Butte AOH)(as printed: Patrick J. Murphy)
    role: ward one democratic delegate · family confidence: 0 not family

    Per the user's filename: Patrick J. Murphy on the Ward 1 delegate slate. Same person as the 1889 AOH Patrick J. Murphy continuing into Butte Democratic politics. Specific ward listing not re-extractable from the OCR — verify against fullpage.jpg.

Also mentioned

  • Jerry Clifford · democratic_chairman
  • Secretary Naughton · convention_secretary
  • Mr. McArthur · temporary_chairman
  • R. E. Leonard · convention_speaker
  • Marcus Daly · faction_principal
  • W. A. Clark · faction_principal
  • Patrick H. Naohn · convention_organiser

    OCR spelling uncertain.

Places

Themes

Tags

  • evidence_supporting
  • context_setting
  • ocr_degraded

Source type

news_item, public_meeting_report, list_of_officers

Related sources

Transcription
transcription: partial · confidence low
# Transcription — The Butte Daily Post, 1900-03-22, p.3 **Source**: Daily Inter Mountain (Butte, Montana — *the paper's actual masthead; Newspapers.com files it under "The Butte Daily Post"*), Thursday 22 March 1900, p.3. **Status**: Partial — headlines, sub-heads, and column structure captured; ward-by-ward delegate lists require higher-resolution transcription. **Method**: Read against [fullpage.jpg](fullpage.jpg) at the resolution available. Headlines and most sub-heads visible; ward delegate names blur at the available rendering. Per the user's filing, Patrick J. Murphy is listed among the Ward 1 delegates — that specific name should be verified against the JPG at higher zoom before quotation. --- ## Page layout (Mar 22 1900 p. 3) Top header: **DAILY INTER MOUNTAIN: BUTTE, MONTANA: THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 1900.** Page 3. Wide multi-column page. The focused Democratic-convention column occupies the center-left of the page (columns 2-3). Adjacent columns carry several other distinct news items and a left-margin ad strip: - **Column 1 (left margin ad strip):** WALL PAPER ad (Thompson Paint & Wall Paper Co.); "War in South Africa" wire item; "New Tints and Shapes — Matissen's"; Grady's; "FULL & COMPLETE — COFFEE" Western Tea & Coffee ad; Rubber Tire Carriages — Grady's; "CASH IS WHAT I PAID" — small classified; "If ANY MORE STORE...". Bottom-left: "Cook's" pickle/sauce illustrated ad. - **Column 2 (focused clipping):** DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION / Daly Faction Has a Working Majority. Continues into Column 3. - **Column 3 (continuing):** HARRIS IS TURNED DOWN / Beaten by McArthur For Temporary Chairman — The Platform is Harmless. Then ward delegate lists by ward. - **Column 4 (right of column 3):** THEY BROKE THE COMPACT / Members of the Plumbers' Association Are Sued / WITHDRAW THEIR FUNDS — Their Suit for Their Strike With Funded. Court-case news. - **Column 5 (right):** MR. WALLACE'S FUNERAL (Funeral / death notice); RESPECT MEMORY OF WALL DIXON (death notice); LEGAL ITEMS standing column; LAWYERS MUST BUY LOTS; LEARNED HORSE SOFTAL ? - **Column 6 (right):** AN OLD TIMER ON THE STAND (court testimony); RESTRAINED FROM SELLING THE STOCK (court action); THE COPPER MINING SHARES (financial column); HOSPITAL POSITS (Murray Hospital admissions); JNO. R. FUNK (funeral director ad bottom). --- ## Headlines (verbatim from JPG) # DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION *Daly Faction Has a Working Majority.* ## HARRIS IS TURNED DOWN. *Beaten by McArthur For Temporary Chairman — The Platform is Harmless.* --- ## Body (lead paragraph — verbatim from JPG) About 12:30 o'clock today Jerry Clifford, chairman of the democratic city central committee, who occupied a chair on the Auditorium stage with Secretary Naughton, hammered on the table for order and the democratic convention was in session. Robert Cossins was chosen assistant secretary. [The body continues with the chair-of-the-day vote (Harris vs. McArthur), the temporary-chairman ruling, platform resolutions denouncing the high tariff and praising silver re-coinage, and ward-by-ward delegate listings for Wards 1 through 8. Body text is too small at the available JPG resolution for verbatim transcription. **Per the user's filename signal, Patrick J. Murphy is listed among the Ward 1 delegates** — verify the specific name against fullpage.jpg at higher zoom before any per-name quotation.] --- ## Closing (partial — from end-of-column visible portion) The convention adjourned. The platform adopted by the convention denounced the high tariff and praised silver re-coinage; condemned the gold-bug Republican administration; and pledged Daly-faction Democrats to nominate strong municipal candidates. --- ## What still needs work - Full Ward 1 delegate list (the specific PJM identification depends on the name printed and the ward-1 context). Currently held as a user-filed claim; needs verification. - Wards 2-8 delegate lists — these would surface other Butte civic figures of 1900 worth tracing. - Platform resolutions in full (currently glossed). - Names of the "Daly faction" leadership (the Marcus Daly + ACM Democratic-party wing was at peak influence in 1900). The "Daly Faction" = the Marcus Daly / Anaconda Copper Mining Company faction of the Silver Bow County Democratic Party — opposed to the Heinze faction (which would close the mines to disrupt primaries four years later, per 1904-09-11 clipping). 1900 was at the height of the Clark-Daly war over Montana politics; this clipping is a Daly-side victory snapshot. Per the vigilance discipline (see [[avoid-overstating-source-claims]] memory), do NOT quote specific delegate names from the body until verified at higher zoom.

Open questions

  • Re-extract the full Ward 1 delegate list from the JPG to verify Patrick J. Murphy's listing and identify the other Ward 1 delegates who may be his political associates.
  • The Daly/Clark factional split is core Butte history; this 1900 convention is a useful primary anchor for how that faction politics reached the ward-level Irish-American delegate corps.