Ignore it and it will go away. on the surface, that seems to have been the collective thought of the Lake Superior copper mining companies during the first decade of the 20th century as attempts at organizing labor began across the mining region. In the copper region, the labor strike of 1913-14 overshadows previous activities of organized labor and accompanying strikes, which is unfortunate. Some knowledge of previous labor movements in the region prior to the 1913 strike is fundamental to a understanding attitudes of the strikers and mine managers leading up to and during the strike.

The strike occurred approximately a decade after the Western Federation of Miners had first begun recruiting Michigan copper workers. But the WFM was certainly not the first labor union to recruit in the copper region, nor did it conduct the first labor strike in the region. It was also not the first strike during which the Michigan Militia was called out. And it was not the first time the same issues were at the core of a strike.

In his 1984 book Rebels on the Range: The Michigan Copper Miners’ Strike of 1913-1914, historian and author Arthur Thurner wrote:

“Michigan copper mine owners first expressed their adamant opposition to trade unionism in 1872 when they crushed a strike which followed some local activity by members of the International Workingmen’s Association.”

Among the strikers’ demands were an increase of $10 per month and an eight-hour workday.

A May 15, 1872 article published in the Detroit Free Press reported that a strike that had begun at the Calumet and Hecla mine soon quickly spread. Miners at the neighboring Schoolcraft Mine (later to become the Centennial) engaged in the strike, and “now includes about all the mines in Houghton County and also the Phoenix, in Keweenaw County.”

C&H Superintendent R.J. Wood published a circular on April 27th to the employees, which began: “There has been much said within the last few days about striking for higher wages on May 1st.”

The wording of the circular was conciliatory in nature as well as patronizing.

“The company have always felt a deep interest in the welfare of their people, and when our president was here in February last several schemes were discussed that were to work directly for your benefit. The first scheme was to raise wages on May 1st (the day the strike was scheduled to commence). “This, it was agreed, should be done without solicitation on your part — a voluntary action on the part of the company.” The clamor that has been started, as the circular worded it, had forestalled managements initiating the plan. Production bonuses were also promised, to start in January, 1873, as well as something vaguely akin to profit-sharing.

“The objects aimed at these arrangements,” states the circular, “are to secure your cheerful co-operation in prosecuting the company’s enterprises, and encourage all in the habits of industry and thrift.”

On May 3, the miners at the Copper Falls mine struck, followed by those at the Quincy, Pewabic and Franklin mines.

Thurner wrote that soldiers were requested because of “labor turbulence” at Calumet during the strike, but they arrived as the rebellion was quieting. In his company circular, Supt. Wood wrote that several persons had left Houghton fearing violence and bloodshed.

On May 13, Houghton County Sheriff Bartholomew Shea sent a telegram to Governor H.P. Baldwin requesting troops enough to counter 1,500 men. In his circular, Wood plainly expressed the situation to C&H employees:

“It then depends on the the wisdom of the authorities and the leaders of the strike to avert a conflict between the troops and the miners, the latter of which were at last accounts some 2,000 strong, while soldiers number but 100. It is to be hoped that the disturbance may be quelled without the use of military force.”

An editorial in the May 16 edition of the Portage Lake Mining Gazette, which was pro-company in its attitudes, sounded almost radical when it declared:

“The cowardly scoundrels that were instrumental in inaugurating the Calumet & Hecla strike, and who are now prolonging it for sake of notoriety, must be brought to the bar of justice and punished to the fullest extent of the law, even if it is found necessary to call in the aid of the whole machinery of the state to do so.”

A May 9th editorial in the Gazette said that C&H Superintendent Wood spoke for the directors and stockholders when he declared that if the workers on strike are not satisfied with the wages offered them, they will be settled with and go elsewhere to work. That seems like a hard stance considering the lack of skilled labor in the district at the time.

The strike lasted approximately three weeks before it collapsed in the face of the soldiers.

The union in the copper region was crushed and the men accepted the terms offered by the company. The attitude of the companies toward the concessions they offered were bitter.

“Owing to the great scarcity of labor on the Lake,” the Directors’ Report of the Quincy Mining Company for 1872 stated, “we were compelled last April to concede a considerable advance in wages in order to keep all departments of the mine in full operation; and a very high price of labor has obtained to the present time.”

Still, while the directors bemoaned the wage increases dividends paid on Feb. 15th totaled $200,000 and on Aug. 1st totaled $150,000. But the concessions won by strikers in 1872 did not end dissatisfaction of workers.

Two years later, during another C&H labor dispute, C&H President Alexander Agassiz echoed the sentiments of Wood. C. Thurner, in Rebels on the Range, wrote that Agazzis’ response to a strike initiated by Finnish and Swedish trammers was:

“We cannot be dictated to by anyone. the mine must stop if it stays closed forever,” going on to declare: “Wages will be raised whenever we see fit and at no other time (if they don’t like it they must go get employment elsewhere.”

Many of them did and had been doing so for years, which was the principle cause of the labor shortage that had plagued the region for years.