Flash in the Pan: Cross-Class Cooperation in 1916 Iron Range Strike

In the Iron Range Strike of 1916, working-class wives picketed alongside their husbands in a conflict-ridden and dangerous setting. Mine deputies abused immigrant women on the picket lines and in their homes, with several disquieting reports receiving statewide attention in Minnesota. Many middle-class reformers in the Twin Cities grew sympathetic to the plight of northern mining families and became controversially involved the labor struggle. Some middleclass women worked alongside working-class wives and radical organizers from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). At the center of this gendered analysis is the cross-class cooperation between an upper-middle class woman, Lenora Austin Hamlin, a radical reformer, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and the story of a working-class housewife, Mikla Masonovich. This study will ask how authentic, prevalent, and unproblematic their stories of cross-class cohesive action actually were. In answering this, it will address and identify those factors that impeded women’s potential for unity. “Flash in the Pan” argues that as a result of both real and perceived differences, these networks of women remained isolated, inhibiting each from gaining sufficient power to work cohesively, and marginalizing their influence. Drawing upon a variety of sources, including media representations in newspapers, and archives of social, labor and women’s organizations, this regional study lends state-level insight into the larger gender-labor historiography.

Federal Authority and the Development of Corporate Mining, 1807-1847

While the 1913-1914 copper country miners’ strike undoubtedly plays an important role in the identity of the Keweenaw Peninsula, it is worth noting that the model of mining corporations employing large numbers of laborers was not a foregone conclusion in the history of American mining. Between 1807 and 1847, public mineral lands in Missouri, in the Upper Mississippi Valley, and along the southern shore of Lake Superior were reserved from sale and subject to administration by the nation’s executive branch. By decree of the federal government, miners in these regions were lessees, not landowners. Yet, in the Wisconsin lead region especially, federal authorities reserved for independent “diggers” the right to prospect virtually unencumbered. In doing so, they preserved a comparatively egalitarian system in which the ability to operate was determined as much by luck as by financial resources. A series of revolts against federal authority in the early nineteenth century gradually encouraged officers in Washington to build a system in the copper country in which only wealthy investors could marshal the resources to both obtain permits and actually commence mining operations. This paper will therefore explore the role of the federal government in establishing a leasing system for public mineral lands in the years previous to the California Gold Rush, highlighting the development of corporate mining which ultimately set a stage for the wave of miners’ strikes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Role of Fraternal Organisation in Migration and Informal Labour Organisations in Mining Communities: Cornwall, the Keweenaw, and California Compared

During the second half of the nineteenth century fraternal and benevolent associations of numerous descriptions grew and prospered in mining communities everywhere. They played an important, but neglected role, in assisting transatlantic migration and movement between mining districts as well as building social capital within emerging mining communities. They helped to build bridges between different ethnic communities, provided conduits between labour and management, and networked miners into the non-mining community. Their influence spread beyond the adult males that made up most of their membership to their wives and families and provided levels of social and economic support otherwise unobtainable at that time. Of course, the influence of these organisations could also be divisive where certain groups or religions were excluded and they may have worked to exacerbate, as much as ameliorate, the problems of community development. This paper will examine some of these issues by looking particularly at the role of Freemasonry and Oddfellowry in Cornwall, Calumet, and Nevada City between 1860 and 1900. Work on fraternity in the Keweenaw was undertaken in Houghton some years ago with a grant from the Copper Country Archive and has since been continued by privately funded research in California and other Western mining states. Some British aspects of this research can be found in my article on mining industrial relations in Labour History Review April 2006

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.

Mainari, Farmari, Lumperjäkki, Piika : “Ethnic Identity” and Earning a Living in the Keweenaw and Nickel Belts to 1930

Job seekers in resource-based economic settings like the Keweenaw Peninsula in Upper Michigan and the Nickel Basin surrounding Sudbury, Ontario faced many challenges, from the dangers of the job to corporate domination to the “boom and bust” nature of inevitably limited supplies of even “endless” natural riches. Adding to these many challenges in both settings was the employer view that you were best suited to certain tasks. This paper examines these expectations from “both” ends – how and why did employers see matters this way, and what did the “recipients” make of being cast in certain roles ? Did the newcomers also expect to earn their keep from a limited range of options ? While the last word on this issue awaits a much larger study, even a glance can inform both the scholar of resource settings and the ethnic historian about an important element of resource-based economies. This paper, then, examines the links between stereotype, preference, and necessity – to what extent did local populations fight, appreciate or succumb to expectation when “making a living.” As the title suggests, Finns get significant attention, as befits both settings under study. However, the paper looks to similar trends amongst a broad demographic swathe in each setting. Was “who” you were the crucial element in finding sustenance ? “Ethnic”, Aboriginal, or “established settler society” – what factors shaped economic expectations, choices and roles?

Gender on the Range: Feminine Strategies in the 1913 Michigan Copper Strike

In the autumn of 1913, a small, remote Michigan mining community attracted national attention as miners and management found themselves embroiled in a conflict that would prove no easy victory for either side. The strike came as a shock to management, who, with the help of a nearly perfected paternal system, had come to expect a generally docile and compliant workforce. But what was even more shocking was the involvement of the miners’ wives in the strike effort, and the lengths they went to in order to keep men from crossing the picket line. This paper focuses on that effort, arguing that the women of the Michigan copper country developed strike strategies that were derived from their domestic experience, and justified their involvement through maternal arguments. However, these public actions allowed the management to disregard the respect and courtesy generally given to the domestic sphere as police and private agents perpetrated a number of home invasions in an attempt to break the strike. The involvement of women in male dominated labor disputes (mining, steel productions) has been largely ignored in the literature due to their indirect connection to the company as wives and not workers. This paper seeks to remedy this gap, and gain a better understanding of that indirect relationship. Sources include newspaper articles, private correspondence, public investigation records, and oral histories, found largely in the Michigan Tech Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections, Michigan Technological University, Michigan.

The Copper Strike of 1968-1969

In May of 1968, workers at the Kingston mine, a branch of the Calumet Division of Universal Oil Products walked off the site in protest of a safety issue involving a man-car. Knowing their contracts were due for negotiation in just a few months, the workers quickly returned, only to find themselves striking yet again just three months later, when negotiations failed. Requesting pay equal to that of the workers at the nearby White Pine mine was unacceptable to the heads of Universal Oil, the corporation which bought the long running Calumet & Hecla just a year earlier in 1968. The strike would last for nine months, ending in a total shutdown of all mining operations on the Keweenaw Peninsula, and bring an economic hardship to the area that would take decades to recover from. The Copper Strike of 1968-1969 is often forgotten, though extremely important to the story of the copper industry in Michigan, as well as to the United States. This paper has not yet been submitted.

“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.

Finnish Fighting Words: Printing the Työmies Translation Project

The Työmies translation project involves the translation of that newspaper’s accounts of significant events from Michigan’s 1913-1914 Copper Strike. Työmies was a Finnish-language newspaper, published in Hancock, Michigan, whose socialist-unionist perspective on the strike differed markedly from that of the local English-language newspapers. This project is the first time significant portions of Työmies have been translated into English. In June of 2013, the presenter printed the translation of the Työmies account of the strike’s first day on a hand-operated Chandler & Price platen press. Thus, the presentation describes this unique project: the translation itself, the presenter’s search for necessary type and equipment, and the printing of the broadsides. The presentation will include a history of Työmies and the Strike, with an emphasis on ways in which human culture and language is reflected in the material culture of printing.

A Balance Shifted: The Unionization of Michigan’s Lake Copper District, 1935-1955

Three decades after the unsuccessful 1913-1914 strike at the Lake District copper mines of Michigan, workers organized as Local 584 of the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (Mine Mill) signed a union contract with Calumet & Hecla Consolidated Copper Company. C & H was the last and most significant of the region’s three major copper mining companies to unionize during the three-year period from 1939 to 1942. This paper tells the untold history of the successful union drives in the Lake District’s copper mines, starting with Copper Range Company in 1939 and encompassing the subsequent unionizations of Quincy Mining Company and finally C & H. The paper develops thematic connections between the 1913-1914, including Mine Mill’s lineage to the Western Federation of Miners, parallel ethnic dimensions, and, most significantly, the contrasting role of state authority between the two time periods. The paper carries the Lake District’s labor history forward to 1955 to include United Steelworkers’ successful challenge to Mine Mill in 1950 and the strike of 1955. This history also incorporates source material from the papers of highly influential union organizer and representative Eugene Saari, material which to date has not been integrated into the labor history of the region. This paper has not yet been submitted.

Relecture jakobsonienne de la distinction saussurienne langue/parole. De la constitution d'un concept à l'acceptation d'un objet donné

The Roman Jakobson’s criticism of the Saussurean langue/parole distinction, in his La théorie saussurienne en retrospection, is based on the acceptance of a given object in Bachelard’s sense: the language (langage) as a complex unity which we only have to analyze. It contains no theorization of langue as a norm. On the contrary, the Saussurean langue/parole distinction is at the same time epistemological and theoretical: It amounts to delimiting an object in the whole language (langage) and to theorizing the dimension of communication which is inherent to human language. Thus, the Saussurean distinction appears to be at the foundation of the theorization of langue, which founds linguistics, but whose necessity is dissimulated, in a linguistic theory like Jakobson’s, by the language(langage) as a given object and the langue/parole problematics following from it.

El hombre aristotélico : Una construcción retrospectiva

En la obra aristotélica la plenitud del eîdos en cada hombre no es otra cosa que el despliegue del contenido virtual de todas las posibilidades ínsitas en su realidad particular. El movimiento de su physis representa la progresiva concreción de este contenido. La vida constituye un movimiento continuo desde la generación hasta la corrupción, sólo es posible conocer las variantes, relaciones y alcances de lo que se haya en sí contenido una vez actualizado. Así, estudiar los procesos que constituyen la vida de un hombre nos llevan a revisar la tensión originaria de potencia y acto (Met. V; IX pral.; Fís. passim). La especulación respecto de dicha tensión -perdurable en una vida- introduce una particular tónica de retroactividad a las consideraciones sobre la vida humana que, a la luz de Solón (Heródoto I, xxx-xxxiii), aproximan a considerar que no es posible afirmar de un hombre que es feliz en tanto que vive; análogamente, decimos de la actualización del eîdos

El hombre aristotélico : Una construcción retrospectiva

En la obra aristotélica la plenitud del eîdos en cada hombre no es otra cosa que el despliegue del contenido virtual de todas las posibilidades ínsitas en su realidad particular. El movimiento de su physis representa la progresiva concreción de este contenido. La vida constituye un movimiento continuo desde la generación hasta la corrupción, sólo es posible conocer las variantes, relaciones y alcances de lo que se haya en sí contenido una vez actualizado. Así, estudiar los procesos que constituyen la vida de un hombre nos llevan a revisar la tensión originaria de potencia y acto (Met. V; IX pral.; Fís. passim). La especulación respecto de dicha tensión -perdurable en una vida- introduce una particular tónica de retroactividad a las consideraciones sobre la vida humana que, a la luz de Solón (Heródoto I, xxx-xxxiii), aproximan a considerar que no es posible afirmar de un hombre que es feliz en tanto que vive; análogamente, decimos de la actualización del eîdos

El hombre aristotélico : Una construcción retrospectiva

En la obra aristotélica la plenitud del eîdos en cada hombre no es otra cosa que el despliegue del contenido virtual de todas las posibilidades ínsitas en su realidad particular. El movimiento de su physis representa la progresiva concreción de este contenido. La vida constituye un movimiento continuo desde la generación hasta la corrupción, sólo es posible conocer las variantes, relaciones y alcances de lo que se haya en sí contenido una vez actualizado. Así, estudiar los procesos que constituyen la vida de un hombre nos llevan a revisar la tensión originaria de potencia y acto (Met. V; IX pral.; Fís. passim). La especulación respecto de dicha tensión -perdurable en una vida- introduce una particular tónica de retroactividad a las consideraciones sobre la vida humana que, a la luz de Solón (Heródoto I, xxx-xxxiii), aproximan a considerar que no es posible afirmar de un hombre que es feliz en tanto que vive; análogamente, decimos de la actualización del eîdos

Tech songs : the M.I.T. kommers book /

For 1-4 men's voices with and without piano acc.