As the second decade of the 20th century began, it approached many Copper Country residents with a cloudy uncertainty. On the north end of the copper range, the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company had made great progress in taking control of the mines in northern Houghton County, developing new mines in Keweenaw County, and even exploring old, long abandoned ventures, including the old Central Mine, which was now the Frontenac. The C&H had also begun exploratory work in the old Cliff Mine.

To be fair, C&H was not the only company absorbing and consolidating other companies, nor was it the first to take such action.

Down the range, between the Portage Lake and the Ontonagon districts, the King Philip Copper Company merged with the Winona company.

In the Ontonagon District, the Michigan Mining Company was organized in January 1899 and included the old Minesota, Rockland and Superior companies. The Mass Mine, also organized in 1899, consisted of the old Ridge, Mass and Ogima mines. In that same year, the Victoria Mining Company was organized to work the long abandoned Cushing Mine before coming under new management and being named the Forest Mine. The Adventure Mine, originally developed by the Mason group that also owned the National Mine, adjacent to the Minesota, and the Quincy Mining Company, in the Portage Lake District, was reorganized a couple of times. In 1898, it reorganized again, under the name Adventure Consolidated Copper Company, which included the original Adventure, the Knowlton and the Hilton mines. Mason had also owned the Hilton and the Knowlton. The North Lake Mining Company was organized in 1908, with Stephen R. Dow, of Boston, as its president. With the exception of the Minesota and the National, none of these mines was ever profitable, they still were major contributors to the opening and development of the Ontonagon District.

There is a difference in these consolidations, however, and those initiated by C&H in 1905. In the Ontonagon District, the consolidations involved old, flooded mines that had not been worked in years. Those consolidations didn’t pose a threat to anyone. In the case of C&H, nearly all of the mines in question were operating, employing hundreds of men and were competently managing their business and the residential and business districts around them.

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In the Portage Lake District, the Isle Royale company was reorganized in 1899 and consolidated with the Huron Mine to the south of the original Isle Royale. It also consolidated several mines within the present city of Houghton that not everyone has heard of. These included the old Shelden, Columbian, Montezuma, Cacique and Grand Portage companies. When C&H took over the companies owned by the Albert S. Bigelow group, the Isle Royale was included. C&H general manager James MacNaughton had never wanted the Isle Royale company in the C&H group of mines; it just worked out that way.

Nor was C&H the first company to engage in hostile takeovers. In 1883 in the Portage Lake District, the Pewabic Mining Company had allowed its Michigan charter to lapse. Thomas F. Mason, Quincy Mining Company president, was also a minority stockholder in the Pewabic Company. This story goes way back in the column to December 26, 2015, when we discussed Mason moving, at the annual shareholders’ meeting of the Pewabic company to dissolve the company and place the property on public sale, while the majority of the shareholders decided to form a new company, the Pewabic Copper Company, with each shareholder trading equally share for share from the old company to the new. Those members who chose not to opt into the new company could sell their shares to the new company at their face value. Not all the stockholders were happy with the proposal. They recognized it as Mason’s attempt to take control of the company. The contest got dragged through the legal system, going on to the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided in Mason’s favor in May 1892. The Pewabic Company went out of existence and was absorbed into the Quincy.

Men like Timothy O’Shea, who had lived and worked in the Copper Country since 1857, were aware of these corporate structural changes. Small, independent producers were increasingly be taken over by stronger, wealthier corporations, with no regard for the employees or how they might feel about the takeovers. At the same time, these same pioneers were also keenly aware of the changes in the makeup of the employees and the residential areas. The rise in ethnic migration from eastern and southern Europe had begun with Finns just at the end of the Civil War. By 1910, the Finns had been joined by immigrants from southern and eastern Europe including Italians, Slovenians, Croatians, Hungarians, Serbs, Poles, and from all across the Austrian and Hungarian empires. Largely from farming regions, few of these new men were familiar with mining, or industrial work of any kind. They viewed mining and company policies through an entirely different lens than the previous ethnic groups like the Cornish, Irish, Welsh and Germans. Many of the newer immigrant groups believed that big business and corporations were controlled by the government, because that was largely the political environment in their home countries. They had never earned such incomes in their native countries as they did in the Michigan mines. Nor were had they previously been offered housing of such high standards and quality. They also were free worship as they chose. These were all new experiences to former subjects of crowns and emperors. They could be easily influenced in their thoughts on these new experiences, which the pioneers also witnessed. Among those influences were labor organizations.

In the Iron Region of the Upper Peninsula, between 1897 and 1899, something called the Northern Mineral Mine Workers had a number of union locals. They also had locals in the Missouri Lead District. But the union was not gaining much popularity and in 1904 it applied for membership in the Western Federation of Miners. After the merger, locals were opened across the mining region, particularly in the Copper Country, but language barriers and cultural differences prevented them from increasing their numbers. By 1907, attempts to unionize Copper Country mine workers had failed and the locals closed up shop. They were not gone for long, though. At WFM headquarters out in Denver, recruiters who could speak the native languages of the various immigrant groups were sent to the Copper Country in 1908. They would have a profound influence on these new groups. While corporate takeovers and mergers had begun to change the face of the corporate Copper Country, immigration had begun to change the cultural landscape. Things would soon begin to escalate. The pioneers would not be impressed.