It is a common practice with historians focusing on particular regions to isolate them for the sake of study or focus. In many instances, this is important to understanding that particular region and its development. In others, it can be counterproductive, because the relationship between that region and the rest of the country is lost or neglected, which in turn skews the significance of regional events to the rest of the nation.

The Lake Superior copper region has often fallen victim to this. There have been countless books, articles and other pieces created regarding the region’s copper mines. Among them is focus on early investment capital coming from eastern cities, primarily Boston. Yet, the history of copper mining — and iron mining for that matter — in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is, in fact, another chapter in America’s westward expansion. It is also a potential study of hypocrisy and racism that is so predominant in American history.

For example, a great deal of Boston capital invested in developing the Lake Superior copper regions originated with New England textile mills that spurred the early industrialization of the country. But while many prominent Boston residents, along with others throughout New England, initiated the American Anti-Slavery movement against the southern states, many of those wealthy, self-proclaimed moralists were purchasing cotton from the region enslaving people to provide the northern mills with necessary cotton. But, once the Civil War became a war to end slavery, many northern communities and their leaders did everything in their power to prevent former enslaved people from moving to, living in, and working in, their communities, largely because they would take jobs from white community members. The immigrant Irish confronted the same bias and hostility.

As the Lake Superior copper region developed, Irish were more or less welcome, because most of them were already skilled miners when they arrived. Irish immigrant Timothy O’Shea, whom has been the subject of many recent installments of this column, is a prime example; which is why he has been such a focus.

Industrialization had begun to expand beyond the New England textile mills, and even reached the perceived isolation of the copper region, when in the mid-1840s, the Cliff Mine was the location of the first steam-powered mine engines. These engines were extremely useful in not only pumping water from the lower reaches of the mines, but also in raising copper and rock, as well as powering stamp mills and sawmills. The mines, starting in 1880, experienced expanding industrialization with the introduction of pneumatic rock drills and the air compressors necessary to power them. Mechanization of the mines allowed for greatly increased copper production just at the time when the entire nation was beginning to see rapid increases in immigration from Europe.

The rapid increase in European immigrants to the Lake Superior copper region was a microcosm of immigration to the United States in the 40-year period starting in 1880.

Charles Hirschman and Elizabeth Mogford, authors of Immigration and the American Industrialization from 1880 to 1920, examined the contribution of immigrants and their descendants to the growth and industrial transformation of the American workforce in the age of mass immigration from 1880 to 1920. The size and selectivity of the immigrant community, as well as their disproportionate residence in large cities, meant they were the mainstay of the American industrial workforce.

Hirschman and Mogford wrote:

“The industrial sector, as late as 1870, consisted primarily of small firms and workshops that relied on artisan technology to produce tools, furniture, building materials and other goods for local markets.” On the Lake Superior frontier those local markets were mining locations.

Among the first workshops erected at a prospective mining locations were blacksmith and cooper shops. In 1845, the Lake Superior Copper Company erected a water-powered sawmill on the bank of the Eagle River that produced lumber for the development of the mine site, as well as construction material for buildings in the fledgling community of Eagle River. The company also erected a water-powered ore processing plant. The nearby Cliff Mine was unfortunate in not being located near a river; it relied on steam power as soon as the mine proved itself.

Already in the 1860s, the copper region was experiencing extensive labor shortages. In the later decades, as mining increased, shortages were keenly felt, particularly in the areas of unskilled labor, mainly tramming. Skilled miners did not load and push rock cars around underground, and those who did find tramming jobs could not long stand up to their physical demands, particularly for the duration of their 10-hour work shifts.

As the European immigrant population swelled, mining companies were quick to hire thousands of Finns, Croatians, Slovenians, Serbs, Italian, Poles and others for tramming. Typically, these men had had no prior experience in an industrial setting. They had come from agricultural regions in their home countries, and they were unskilled at mining. Also, as industrialization increased mine production — and dangers. Language barriers were a hindrance underground, where English speaking supervisors could not provide instruction or training to non-English speaking workers. Adding to these factors was the same bias that African Americans and earlier Irish immigrants had encountered throughout the United States: Those who lacked skills were looked down on as inferior and were subject to incredible discrimination.

In the face of language barriers, along with ethnic discrimination — which made upward mobility in the workplace nearly difficult, many ethnic groups experienced similar discrimination when it came to finding company housing once they did find work at the mines. Faced with these discrimination, stuck in the most demanding and lowest paid jobs, forced into substandard housing, and often confronted with dictatorial petty bosses, thousands of immigrants began to look to organized labor organizations as a source of protection and a means of gaining equality. In organizations like the Knights of Labor and similar organizations, they found a source of hope in being able to bargain collectively rather than small groups of individual immigrants.

Across the industrialized American landscape, the growing number of labor organizations found themselves fighting for the same goals: shorter workdays, safer working conditions and sustainable wages. Across America, as well as in the Lake Superior copper region, labor organizations found striking as their only viable option in securing those rights. On the other hand, the companies against which they struck found their most effective tool to combat the strikes was calling on the state militia units and using the press to blame the strikers for all that was going wrong in the industrial workplace.

History is written by the victors. In many strikes which escalated into violence, the press, law enforcement, and the mining officials, invariably blamed the strikers for initiating the violence. Deeper digging into historical documents, including court dockets, strongly suggest that in many instances — but not all — strikers did not initiate violence; many were arrested for fighting back.