Several labor organizations had attempted recruiting Lake Superior copper district mine workers over the latter decades of the 19th century. Some of them were even successful in initiating strikes and walkouts. The strikes were localized, however, because the unions were not strong enough to conduct districtwide strikes and they ended without bringing about any significant permanent changes, such as safer working conditions or shorter workdays. As was typical of the time, strikes sometimes began, then escalated into violence.

In regard to strikes, mine management did not acknowledge any responsibility for any part in the dissatisfaction of their workers. Instead, they tended to accuse European immigrant workers of ignorance and their being easily influenced by unions as outside agitators. Calumet and Hecla Mining Company General Manager James MacNaughton reflected this attitude perfectly, as stated in the Report to the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, Michigan Copper District Strike, published on Feb. 7, 1914, which quoted MacNaughton as saying:

“We have Croatians, Austrians, Hungarians, Italians from northern Italy, Poles, and other nationalities working for us, and they are industrious, loyal men; but they do not know our language or our customs, our laws, nor our ideals. They have been influenced by Western Federation of Miners’ organizers and hired men who have been in here in some cases for years. Constant dropping will wear a stone.”

MacNaughton continued: “But our men, told day after day that they were being mistreated, underpaid, or otherwise oppressed, finally were persuaded.”

MacNaughton may or may not have actually believed what he said, but his statements were not accurate. The Western Federation of Miners was formed on May 15, 1893; the Lake Superior copper region experienced its first major strike in 1872, and several others throughout the 1890s.

While few of the immigrant workers MacNaughton listed came to the district with any type of industrial workplace experience, they did not need to be told by a labor organization that they were working in unsafe environments.

The 1894 Annual Report of the Houghton County Mine Inspector recorded 22 fatal accidents having occurred between Sept. 30, 1893 and Sept. 30, 1894. Of those, seven, or 31%, involved Irish, Cornish and German workers. Just one was a supervisor of any kind: William McCarthy was an Irish timber boss.

The Annual Report of the Inspector of Mines of Gogebic County for 1893 reported 17 fatal accidents, with three more in which victims subsequently died. One accident claimed the lives of 10, while another one claimed the lives of four. County Mine Inspector Clarence Boss, stated that of the total, one was due to the negligence of a co-worker, 12 to personal causes easily avoidable, and 17 to falls of ground or accidents “due to ordinary mining risks.”

Of the ethnicities or nationalities involved in those fatalities, One was Cornish, two English, one Irish, one American and one a Bohemian. Five were Swedish, two were “Austrian,” with Finns accounting for the rest. None of the fatalities included men in supervisory positions.

Clearly, MacNaughton’s theory that workers had been influenced by WFM organizers who came into the district was flawed, both in Houghton County and in Gogebic County. Further, those fatalities were not confined to nationalities who did “not know our language or customs, our laws, nor our ideals.”

Where previous attempts at unionizing Lake Superior miners had failed, WFM organizers had, in 1908, recognized MacNaughton’s statement, six years before he said it: ” — they do not know our language or our customs –.” As author and historian Arthur Thurner noted in his book, “Rebels on the Range: The Michigan Copper Miners Strike of 1913-1914”:

“Hungarian, Italian, Slavic and Finnish (WFM) organizers appealed to workers in their native tongues.” The WFM had discovered that the way to recruit Lake Superior miners was to send organizers who could speak the languages of those they sought to attract.

In defense of MacNaughton’s claim that strikers in 1913 comprised those who were not English-speaking, Thurner noted one meeting, held at Wilmers Hall, in Red Jacket, at which the only people who did not attend were “Americans and blue-bellied Yankees.”

Throughout the federal investigations of the strike, accompanying testimony from copper mine managers painted a picture of near perfect labor-management relations prior to 1913, but those who had been in the Lake Superior copper district for any length of time knew that was not true. The strike at C&H in 1872 was the first in a string of conflicts, followed by strikes in 1874, several smaller strikes in 1890 and 1893. Many of them were trammers’ strikes, protesting unsustainable wages and unsustainable workshift hours. Mine managers responded to strikes in various ways.

Historian and author Charles K. Hyde in his article, “Undercover and Underground: Labor Spies and Mine Management in the Early Twentieth Century,” wrote:

“From the Civil War through the Great Depression, employers utilized a variety of weapons during conflicts with labor, including armed guards, injunctions, strikebreakers, soldiers, and spies.”

While these methods of maintaining complete control of the work environment created conflict, often armed and violent, companies felt they were absolutely essential to remaining profitable in the face of increased competition from western mines. That was the same argument companies used in resisting wage increases and shorter workdays.

From the workers’ standpoint, however, low wages, longer than sustainable work shifts, unsafe and often fatal working conditions — were not experienced by Upper Management and Eastern Directors. It was the men underground, and not the shareholders, who assumed the risks for the profits of the company and the dividends of the shareholders. Because it was they who assumed the risks, they felt they were entitled to a greater share of the financial rewards. Corporate paternalism and providing low rent in exchange for better wages would not make the increasing dissatisfaction among workers go away.