In addition to mining companies providing well-built houses at low rent costs for their employees, companies also invested heavily in the communities in which they operated. Libraries, schools, hospitals, bath houses for employees, were just a few examples of investments made by companies for the benefit of their employees and the community at large.  

In its investigation of the conditions of the Michigan copper district in 1913, the Copper Country Commercial Club examined “institutions for the welfare of the employees.” Unfortunately, like so many other investigations and reports dedicated to the 1913 strike that occurred across the entire district, the Commercial Club’s investigation focused primarily on the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company (C&H) and its subsidiaries. Page 34 of the club’s report states the reason for that as: “As the present strike seemed to be centered upon the Calumet & Hecla Company and as most of the statements and claims by the strikers have been directed against the company the committee has investigated conditions as the Calumet & Hecla mine to a greater extent than at any of other mines and give a more detailed history of the welfare work carried on by that company.” 

Still, although C&H was the wealthiest company in the district and could therefore afford to be more elaborate, it was typical of other companies in what it provided for its employees and their families.  

The Commercial Club reported that C&H had built a substantial library, equipping it with some 35,000 volumes.

“The books are carefully selected and comprise works in various languages and literature which may be of interest to the employees.” The library was free to any resident of Calumet Township, including the villages of Red Jacket and Laurium, as well as the neighboring mining company communities. The Champion Mining Company also maintained a public library. 

C&H also maintained a bath house, containing tubs, showers, and a swimming pool. It was divided into two sections to accommodate “both the men and women of the community.” Children were also welcome but needed to be accompanied by an adult.  

C&H, along with most of the other companies, invested heavily in churches. The Commercial Club reported that in the Calumet district there were some 30 churches to which the company had contributed $37,762. C&H, like Quincy, Champion, Isle Royale, and many other companies, built and either operated or leased public schools. C&H, the Commercial Club reported, “now owns ten school buildings which it rents to the school district at Calumet at a moderate rental.” 

The above are just a few examples of company investments in their respective communities, but a closer reading of them makes obvious that it opens the companies to the charge of instituting social control over those communities, focusing on religion and morality, education and literacy, and even hygiene.  

All of this fell under the category of what has come to be referred to as corporate paternalism. Paternalism was by no means unique to the Copper Country. In fact, regarding paternalism, the Copper Country was a microcosm of the practice. Nor was paternalism unique to the United States. A Sept. 2021 article by Jordan Sandstrom, of Sweden, titled, Corporate paternalism on the rocks: a historical analysis of power relations in a mining town, which examines corporate paternalism in the mining town of Kiruna, located in the Swedish Arctic, from the late 19th century. The article states in part that: “A typical story about company towns is that of how the built environment reflected and reinforced a segregated community, with the company town on one side, itself marked by the company hierarchy, and a service town right next to it, as in Kiruna.” 

Corporate paternalism, at least economically, benefitted both the company and the employees, particularly at the larger companies. Churches, schools, libraries, community centers and other services, were provided by those companies. But as the Commercial Club pointed out, the books shelved in the C&H library were “carefully selected.” 

At the same time, paternalism gave the companies nearly complete control of the economic, moral, and social aspects of the communities in which they operated. In May, 1907, C&H gave employees a 10% raise in their pay; In December, they rescinded the increase and the workers returned to the same earnings they were receiving in April. The increase was not restored until May, 1912.  

While companies invested heavily in the communities as a means of attracting “a better class of workers,” once the workers were employed, the companies did very little to retain them.  

The 1913 Dept. of Labor investigation found that “most of the tramcars used in Michigan copper mines are thoroughly antiquated. Most of them are loose-wheel cars, the axles of which cannot properly be kept supplied with grease.” Additionally, the arrangement of the wheels caused the loads in the cars to distribute largely over the front wheels, which caused them to bind on the tracks. In other words, it was not just the weight of the rock in the cars that made them difficult to push, but the car wheels themselves added to the burden.  

The strike that occurred in Ontonagon County in 1907, during which the county sheriff and his posse shot and killed several strikers, was called not over wages, but over safety concerns. In that same year, the Houghton County Mine Inspector’s Report reported a total of 49 fatalities. Of those killed underground, 11 were trammers. Fourteen of the fatalities were the result of falling rock. The mine inspector also recorded that of the total of those killed while on the job, 12 of them were “Austrian” (Croatian or Slovenian), 12 were Finnish, eight were Italian, nine were English. Four were Swedes, two were Norwegians, three were Irish and one was German.  This was more than double the 23 fatalities recorded for 1898. 

Not all the fatalities were due to bad working conditions. In many instances, men were killed due to carelessness. On Dec. 5, 1906, William Goggin and John Hanley, miners at the Quincy Mine, were killed because another miner, Firlus Serula, was attempting to thaw out a box of explosives when fire fell from his lamp into the powder. Goggin and Hanley were struck by the impact of the resulting explosion and blown into the nearby shaft. 

In March, 1907, Matt Takanen fell down the Champion Mine’s E Shaft when the guard rail he was leaning over gave way. Nick Klobucher testified at the Coroner’s Inquest that he “saw them fooling around that way and of course the guard rail came out of place, and he fell in. Many evenings they were fooling around by the shaft like that, and I do not see how it didn’t happen before.”  

As in the case of the deaths of Goggin and Hanley, John Contesh was killed when a piece of a broken safety gate fell from the 11 level of the No. 1 South Kearsarge Shaft ladder way, after the gate was left in the way of a rock skip, because trammers on the 11 level had forgotten to close it.  

Corporate paternalism worked if both labor and management accepted it. But as society continued to change, paternalism came to be seen more and more as a form of social, moral, and economic control imposed on the people by the corporations. Organized labor increasingly became viewed as the most effective means of combatting the corporate system.