Company Houses Along the Picket Line

Michigan copper mining companies owned and rented more than 3,000 houses along the Keweenaw Peninsula at the time of the 1913-14 copper strike. The provision of company-constructed housing in mining districts has drawn a wide range of inquiry. Mining historians, community planners, architectural historians, and academics interested in the immigrant experience have identified miners' housing as intriguing examples of corporate paternalism, social planning, vernacular adaptation and ethnic segregation. Michigan's Copper Country retains many examples of such housing and recent research has shown that the Michigan copper mining companies championed the use of housing as a non-wage employment benefit. This paper will investigate the increasingly important role of occupancy and control of company housing during the strike. Illustrated with images collected during the strike by the fledgling U.S. Department of Labor, the presentation explores the history of company housing in the Copper Country, its part in a larger system of corporate welfare, and how the threat of evictions may have turned the tide of strike.