Max Baucus: “in 1882, an Irish immigrant named Marcus Daly set off an explosion that shook the world. It happened 300 feet under the…”

“in 1882, an Irish immigrant named Marcus Daly set off an explosion that shook the world. It happened 300 feet under the ground, near Warm Springs Creek, 26 miles west of Butte, MT. When the dust settled, Daly saw before him the shiny ore of the largest copper deposit ever known. The rich copper vein transformed the American economy. It made America the world's largest copper exporter. And it inaugurated an economic boom for my home State that lasted for decades. It also enriched many parts of America. Thousands of immigrants made the boom happen. They came from Ireland and Italy, Canada and Scandinavia, Serbia and Croatia, Greece and Syria. They came to America to find work in the new mining town, christened Anaconda. By 1900, immigrants made up 40 percent of Anaconda's population. These new Americans formed the backbone of the mining economy. And their descendants have woven the colorful fabric of Montana. Immigrants helped build the American economy. In the 1850s, hundreds of thousands of young Chinese men helped construct the Transcontinental Railroad. At the beginning in the 1870s, Basque shepherd immigrants helped shape the western ranching economy. Beginning in the 1890s, hundreds of thousands of Norwegian farmers lay the foundations of a competitive farming economy in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakota territories. And in the first decades of the 20th century, more than 100,000 Jewish immigrants created New York City's famous garment industry.…”