John Vukcevich, the Story of an American

WAS EIGHTEEN years old and 9000 miles away when I heard about Arizona and its mines. That was in Montenegro on the Balkan peninsula where I was born. I had been told that the cost of the trip from Kotor, the nearest seaport, to Bisbee, Arizona was $200.00 in American money and that it would take thirty days on steamboat and train to get there. This seemed a distant and expensive trip, and I thought I might get homesick before I got there.

I was single and I made up my mind quickly to go to America to the Arizona gold and silver mines. I had no money and no passport. I asked my parents to give their consent for a passport, and I needed $200.00 American money. I also wanted a bag to keep my savings in.

"When I fill the bag, I will send it to you full of silver and gold," I told them over and over. At last they gave their permission to get the passport. My parents mortgaged their property to get the money. Finally I could set the day for leaving home. I notified our neighbors and friends-I remember it was Sunday night. A crowd of old and young came in to say good-bye. Some of them were crying.

Early Monday morning, I kissed my parents good-bye and left the house. When I got outside, I fired my pistol three times. This was the custom of our country, and it meant good wishes for all. That day, I walked nine hours before I reached the seaport of Kotor on the Adriatic coast. I found me a place to eat and sleep. A steamer left the next afternoon for Trieste, Austria. The ticket cost 20 Krone, about four American dollars. I was on the boat 30 hours. I didn't have much to eat and not any place to sleep. That was the first hell for me.

At Trieste, samsars (agents) spoke to me in Italian and in Slavic dialects. One was an agent connected with a railroad that ran trains to every part of America. I told him I was going to America, but I wanted something to eat, first. In a restaurant I ate a lot of fried sardines and drank some Dalmatian wine. I told the proprietor Milo Stanishich, the fish was fine, "dobro." He gave me advice. I thanked him and went to a hotel to bed.

Next day Stanishich went with me, and I bought a ticket straight to Arizona. The train left that afternoon for Ljubljana and Innsbruck, the Tyrol, Basil in Switzerland and Paris. At Havre, I took a French steamship for New York. On Ellis Island, I heard so many languages, I said to myself, "This is going to be tough."

They asked for my passport, and ticket and how much money I had. A doctor examined my eyes and teeth and my hands, and vaccinated me. I went to another room where the people jabbered in strange tongues. I stayed there all night. I had plenty of com pany, especially cooties. The next day I went on a small boat to New York. An agent took me to the depot where I waited five hours. I got hungry. A man came along with paper bags marked "Lunch-$1.00." I bought one. It had bread, bananas and oranges in it.

When the train came, I followed the people. They had tickets in their hands, so I got mine out too. The conductor tore off half and gave me the other half. I got on the train. Night came, and I went to sleep in my seat.

Two nights later, the train got to a big city. The conductor hollered, "Chicago, all change!" I didn't know which way to go. The conductor told me to wait. In three hours the train came. Another conductor hollered "Kansas City." He took another piece of my ticket.

John Vukcevich was a miner and business man in Globe, Arizona, a fine man, and a good citizen. He is dead now but before he died he saw three of his sons grow into young manhood, and today one of his sons is a cadet in the U. S. Air Corps. John Vukcevich would have been proud to know one of his sons is going to fly and fight for Uncle Sam.

This is the story of his life as he told it to his son, Nick. The story will be con-cluded in the June issue of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS.

We are glad to tell the story of John Vukcevich. And we do it as a tribute to the many fine Arizona citizens who came to Arizona from the "old country"-Dalmatia, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Herzegovina, Bosnia-all over the Balkan states.

These fine Slav people helped dig our mines, they built homes in our mining camps Globe, Miami, Bisbee, Jerome - they sent their children to American schools and colleges, they took out their citizenship and paid their taxes and they and their children have become among our finest citizens.

Of such people is America made and be-cause of such people has America become great. .R. C.

I thought Arizona could not be very far away, because there was not much left of my ticket. But we rode across great plains for two days and two nights. Then we stopped at El Paso. They shouted "All aboard for Arizona and California."

The people in the train looked like the gypsies in my country with their long hair and big straw hats and colored clothes. I had a little dictionary in English and Serbian. I asked a man what "nationality" meant. He pointed to the gypsies and said "Indians," "Mexicans." I put the words in my notebook, because I had never heard of such people before. It was a long time before the train stopped again, where there were only five or six houses. Here I saw more of those strange people. The conductor said, "Change for Bisbee." I looked at the desert and the hills. Everything was hot and dry and wild, except some horses and burros. They hollered "All aboard for Bisbee," again. At nine o'clock that night, the whistle blew and the train stopped. I saw electric lights. I got out and stood in the depot. A man spoke to me, the word "nationality" I said, "Serbian." He said, "Come on." He had on a uniform and was a policeman. I thought, "9000 miles from a train to a jail!" But I didn't say anything at all and walked along with him. We went over a hilly trail and came to a little house. He knocked. Two men came out, and the policeman said, "Here is one of your countrymen." They asked my name, and I went in. The policeman went away. There was one room with three beds, a table, some chairs and a stove. The men said they knew my people. I felt as if I was at home. They cooked a big steak. We talked until I got sleepy. One fellow took me back to town and paid for a room in a hotel, saying he would come back the next day. In the morning someone knocked at my door, and there was my countryman. We had hot cakes and coffee at his house for breakfast. One man was in bed. He worked on night shift. The men talked half in English and half Serbian. One said he was in Arizona two years and never got a chance to work because he couldn't speak English. I asked about the gold and silver in the hills, and they said, "My dear boy, all the silver and gold is in the banks. If there is any in the mines, you can't see it. You've got to work hard to get silver and gold in money."

I asked about jobs. They told me I'd have to get one through a business man. I didn't like this idea, but I didn't say anything. They spoke about a mine in Mexico the Cananea Copper Company. I told them I had a cousin somewhere in Mexico. I said, "I have some

as told to his son, Nick FOR THE ARIZONA WRITERS' PROJECT W. P. A. BY ROSS SANTEE

money left, let's go tomorrow." We bought tickets for Cananea, $3.60 each. All you could see in that town was men with big straw hats and women covered with black veils. Most of them were smoking and carried bundles and baskets on their heads. Two men were talking Serbian. I asked them if they knew my cousin. I gave his name. One man pointed to a shack across the road. We went over and knocked. A man came out. He was my cousin. We could not speak. I held out my hand. Tears came to our eyes. We went inside and talked. Presently my cousin went out, but soon came back. He had a bottle of Mescal, Mexican liquor, the like of which I had never tasted. It burned my throat. He drank some too. He said he was "batching." That was a strange word to me; and that he had been "laid off"more strange sounding words! I asked about jobs. He said the government had to keep 80% of the workers, Mexicans. I didn't like this, and said to myself, "This is from bad to worse."

I took them to the train. Back at my cabin I felt lonesome. I fell asleep and dreamed about the old country. It came to me that I should write my parents. I wrote a long letter telling about my trip and the job in Mexico. Then I felt better.

I had worked about ten days, when one morning a timekeeper handed me a slip of yellow paper. He said, "fired." I did not understand what it was all about. I went to my cabin and laid down but I couldn't sleep thinking about losing the job. The boarding house boss told me to get my check at the office. I waited two hours. Then a man gave me a check for $81.75. I felt rich. I cashed the check at the bank in Roncio and bought a ticket for Bisbee. At Naco I went through a gate to the American side. Officers examined my passport and suitcase and marked them "OK." Two other men were examined and locked up.

At Bisbee, I went to a hotel and signed my name in a book. The landlady asked me if I wasn't Slavonian. I said "Yes ma'am." She told me a Slavonian, Martin Kristovich, had a restaurant in Brewery Gulch. I found the place and the waiter said, "zdravo zemljace," "Hello countryman!" He took me into the kitchen and told the men sitting there that I was a newcomer. We all shook hands. They were Dalmatians. Everyone asked about the old country. I felt at home right away. The waiter brought roast beef, salad, roast potatoes and coffee. I asked for honey to put on the potatoes. He laughed and said he had never heard of such a thing. I told him Montenegrins ate potatoes that way.

The next day I went to the house where the policeman took me when I first came to Bisbee. The fellow who went to Cananea with me was surprised to see me. He said the Copper Queen mine wasn't hiring new men who couldn't speak English, but the C. and A. were taking new men. My cousin had gone to Douglas and he invited me to batch with him. He showed me how to "rustle" for a job. Rustling was tough. The mine was two miles from town, and I made the trip afoot three times a day. I got discouraged. My partner told me to keep trying. After four weeks, one noon a boss came out and looked at the men; about three hundred were standing around. He

pointed to me, and called me into the office. He asked if I was a mucker. I said, “Yes.” He told me to sign a work slip for seven the next morning. He hollered “no more today!” The men started walking back to town. Some couldn't understand why a green man got a job. I guess the boss called me because I didn't talk to anyone, and because I was big, six feet, three inches and weighed 220 pounds.

Next morning the boss showed me the man I was to work with. The cage went down to the 1100 foot level. We walked 3000 feet in the drift to the face. The air was bad and gassy. I loaded cars by shovel. Two other men mucked in the face of the drift, making a place to set up the big Birley machine. I ran the full car to the station and returned with it empty. The place was as noisy as hell and the air heavy with oil from the compressor. I got a headache that first day, but I loaded twenty cars. The boss was satisfied with my work. The track and pipe man extended the rails and pipes every other day. Each shift worked eight hours. Wages were $3.50. Bis-bee had no union then. Wages were rated by the Western Federated Miners Union. I worked a month. Miners were getting jobs every day in Globe. I told my partner that the job I had was a mule's job and not a man's, and I would go to Globe. I drew my pay, but went to Douglas, a new town, instead. Two smelters were started there that year, 1904, Phelps Dodge and Calumet-Arizona. They offered me a job at $2.00 for ten hours. I refused it and went to Bisbee and bought a ticket for Globe.The train stayed in Tombstone over night. Next morning, we pulled out for Bowie, where we changed for Globe. Bowie was the place I stopped at when I first came from Europe. Nothing had changed; the same Mexicans with sombreros, and the horses and burros.

At Globe, a man spoke to me in Serbian. I asked if he knew my cousin. He said he did. We went to his house and knocked. It was a dark night. A man came out. I couldn't see him, but I knew him by his voice. The only light was a miner's candle. I thanked the man and we went in. My cousin was working in Old Dominion. He asked me to stay with him, but I told him we wouldn't sleep if I did; we would talk all night. So I went to a room-ing house.

The next morning I walked around town. Every third door was a saloon. The town was pretty lively. Every saloon had girls who rustled drinks. In the “wine rooms” for private drinking, whiskey cost 50 cents, and beer a dollar a bottle, which was only 25 cents at a bar.

There was plenty of gambling, roulette, crap tables, blackjack, poker both stud and draw, faro, Mexican-monte and other games I didn't know the names of. The women in these places were all sporting women.

The town was full of cowmen, miners and prospectors. Fights, shootings, and murders were common. Some saloons had high sounding names; White House, St. Elmo, International, Bankers Garden, Golden Eagle, Mountain View, Balkan Olilich.

The miners had a strong union in Globe, affiliated with the Western Federation. Most of the miners were English-Cousinjacks. There were some Irish, Dutch, French, Italians, Slavonians and Scandinavians. No Mexicans were allowed underground in Old Dominion. The mine had its own concentrator, smelter and main shaft. Jobs were given to white men, Mexicans, and a few Italians and Negros. All were supposed to belong to the union.

My own countrymen did not have a lodge in Arizona before my time. When the Serbians and Montenegrins began coming, I with another man started taking names of those who would join a lodge. Ours was the Serbian Benevolent Society-Prince Peter Petrovich Branch, Globe, Arizona. In a year we got 200 members.

In those days, Globe was unincorporated and Arizona was a territory. The country was free and wild. Our people liked it, because we hadn't much freedom in the countries we came from. The young men were hefty and hard-working and well liked by the bosses. Besides Old Dominion there were smaller mines in the district, Buffalo, Grey, Copper Hill, Superior and Boston, Keystone, Live Oak and Gibson Copper. Our people worked in all of these mines.

I must tell you about something terrible that happened when I worked in Old Dominion on night shift, back in 1906. I'll never forget that day, April 19th. About ten in the mornDuring, the fire whistle blew. I got up and ran to the mine. The smoke spread so fast, no one could tell how the fire started. There were two shafts then, the main one and Interloper, which I have spoken of before. Interloper wasn't used except for ventilation. Some miners were gassed and acted as though they were drunk. Three men went down a ladder through Interloper to 800 level. The air current blew the smoke in such terrible blasts, no one could stay near the opening. The smoke was black and stunk from old timbers soaked in silver and copper sulphide. Those three men lost their lives. Today their names are on a copper plaque in front of the Old Dominion Library. The mine was in bad condition. Water covered the drifts and stopes. Men with masks and electric lamps piled sand bags in the drift so the men could go down to the pumps. They could only stay below three min-utes. Some got very sick. First aid men and doctors stayed all the time at the mine.

Wages were $3.00 and up for skilled labor. Miners and muckers got $3.50 and timbermen $4.00 per foot. The only shaft in Old Dominion at that time was the Interloper, 1200 feet deep. I will tell you more about it again. I got a job, and joined the Union right away. Hundreds of Slavonians kept coming from Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Dalmatia. They spoke the same language, but different dialects. They called themselves Slavonians, zemljache (countrymen). They helped each other. It made no difference whether they were Catholics, Orthodox, Moslems or subjects of Serbia Austria or Montenegro.

Our people organized lodges. Often the Austrians and Croatians became fanatical, due to propaganda by the representatives of their government, and would split up; sometimes the Serbians and Montenegrins were no better in this respect. Each lodge had its own newspaper, the same as today, printed in the Latin and Cyrillic alphabet.

Besides the three men who were lost, a lot of mules died too. Miners began leaving Globe. I went to Live Oak mine. This mine was only a prospect then. Joe Boone and Frank Strang had taken a lease from a Dutchman, W. S. Calam-burg. In six months they had 150 on the job and employed three shifts. Six horses pulled wagons loaded with ore from the mine to Globe where it was shipped to El Paso. They paid 50 cents more than the union scale. They made $100,000 in fifteen months. Calamburg came from New York and served an injunction on Boone and Strang, charging that they were not paying him enough royalties. The mine closed by court order. Mr. Boone asked us not to leave camp. Not many left. He paid every-one's board while waiting. Not long after this, the court ruled in favor of the leasers, and we went to work. I worked for them until their lease expired. Then Calamburg padlocked the tunnel and put watchmen in the camp. I went to Globe and got a job in Old Dominion. The company had sunk two shafts for safety and ventilation. I ran a water-line machine and had a helper. The ground was plenty hard. We used three dozen steel for drilling a round in the shift and a box of 50 pound powder for each round of five feet. The bosses were good, though one boss fired more men than all the other bosses put together. I often wondered why someone didn't kill him. Anyhow, he must have been a good man for the company; he was a boss twenty-five years.

I worked at Old Dominion nine months. The day that another fellow and I arrived at the mine, the foreman came to us and gave us candles and showed us where to work. In those days, the foreman was the whole cheese in the mine. They didn't have any jiggers. This foreman was a good man. He knew how much a miner could do in a shift. Calamburg the owner, was in camp. The foreman introduced me to him as a good miner. I got jobs for other miners who I knew were good too. We saved money. We paid nothing for the bunk-house or hospital. Only a dollar a day for board. Things went pretty well. I bought a horse and went to Globe often. Copper was up to 20 and 25 cents a pound, and wages $5.00 for miners. This was the same vein Boone and Strang had made $100,000 out of. The vein went only a few feet below the tunnel level. A fellow from Colorado took a lease from Calamburg to work below the tunnel. He sunk a shaft with two compartments heavily timbered to 100 feet. He had to go down that far before he could take out ore. When he started to run the drifts, he got fooled; the ore wasn't of any value down below. He lost $40,000 on that lease. That was the way; some operators made money, others lost it. Calamburg's mine kept on mining the silica ore until the panic of 1907 hit the copper industry. Every mine closed. Money was tied up in the banks. All you could get was script. I knew trouble was coming, so I had drawn my money from the bank before this happened. I sold my horse and saddle for $40.00 to a man on the road between Live Oak and Globe. I didn't need a horse anyway. Men began leaving Globe. Some with money decided to go back to the Old Country. I got homesick myself, so I got ready and ten of us left Globe for New York. It was November. The weather was fine in Arizona. But in Chicago we had to buy warm clothing. New York was even colder. I asked my partner to go back to Arizona, but he wouldn't. The biggest ten days of worrying I ever spent in any place in the world was in New York. I never liked a big city. We boarded a French ship; it was a dirty old tub. At Havre, the officers searched us for fire-arms and knives. I was lucky-they never did find my automatic. The next day we got to Paris. The train for Basil, Switzerland, didn't leave until four. It was only eleven o'clock in the morning so I walked about looking at the sights. The beautiful buildings and the treesthey seemed so much alike, soon I realized I was lost. I showed my ticket to a gendarme. He started speaking French. I said, "No parle France." He told me which way to go. At the depot, I was ashamed to tell anyone I had been lost in the daytime. It is just as easy for a man from the country to be lost in the city, as it is for the city man to get lost in the mountains. In Basil, I went to a cafe to eat. The proprietor who spoke good English, said he had been in America once for nine years, and would like to go back, but he was making too good a living where he was. At Innsbruck, gendarmes searched us again. They made us pay duty on the new clothes we had brought from America. Some fellows had guns, and they took them. I was lucky they didn't find my gun. The train went through tunnels and rough country until it reached Ljubljana, where we changed trains for Trieste. There I found the friends where I had stayed when I was coming to America. I met some men and women at Trieste who were going to America. They asked all kinds of questions. I told them everything was fine in America and that I was going back soon. They said they had heard of a panic there. I explained that it was not in the whole country just in the copper mine section, and I knew about it because I had just come from Arizona. Some of them said they were going to Arizona and others to Montana, Minnesota and Alaska. They couldn't understand why I had come back from Arizona so soon when I liked it so much. I told them I had come back to get married. They asked me why I didn't marry an American girl, or send for a wife?I told them that 9000 miles is not too far for a young man to go, to find someone he wanted!