Social and Political Issues and the Finnish Deportees from North America

An important issue in both Canadian and United States immigration history has been the control of immigration, which includes possible quotas, immigration laws as well as denying entry, and finally, the deportation of immigrants. This paper is based on information that is available on the deportations of 167 people, most of them young adult males. Many assume politics was a key motivation for deportation. However, Finnish Americans were rarely deported for political activities. The paper discusses a few interesting cases of political deportations both during the interwar years, and after the Second World War. The information is mostly based on the correspondence between the authorities in Finland and the United States and Canada, available at the Foreign Ministry Archives in Helsinki, Finland. Special attention is directed to the social and political background of those people and of special interest are the specific reasons, social or health problems, which seem to be the basis of most deportation decisions.

“Beneath the Starry Flag”: the Flags and Songs of the 1913-14 Michigan Copper Strike as Image-making in the American Labor Movement

The 1913-14 Michigan copper strike is unlike many American labor actions of the period in that it did not include red flags or socialist anthems. Many of the most familiar photographs of the strike involve American flags, not red ones. Similarly, the songs mentioned in journalistic accounts of the strikers are American Civil War songs, not popular labor songs of the period. The few newly-written songs about the strike, published in the local newspapers, seem cautiously polite and espouse values such as patriotism, liberty and human rights. During a time when sections of the "friendly" press were concerned with labor presenting the correct image and avoiding unfavorable associations, the Copper Country strikers, and the W.F.M., seem to have been attempting to create a fresh narrative regarding what this strike was (and what it was not). This paper will consider elements of the Copper Country strike in the light of media coverage, prior to July 1913, of several American labor topics that might have influenced the way the strike was presented. Particular attention will be given to photographs, songs, and accounts from the 1912 Lawrence textile strike, as well as contemporaneous critiques of labor song lyrics. Most of this commentary will be drawn from the labor and socialist press, demonstrating that the 1913-14 Michigan copper strike occurred during a period in which the labor movement was struggling to craft and image that would display it as it wished to be seen. This paper has not yet been submitted.