Mining-related fatalities in the Lake Superior copper mines may have gotten mentioned in the local newspapers, but rarely. Stories that bragged up mine owners and managers seemed to take precedence over deaths.

For instance, in the December 8, 1909 edition of the Calumet News, the headline at the top of the center column of Page 3, read: “Stanton Family Donated New Bell to M.E. Church in Houghton.”

According to the article, the family of John Stanton, who had passed away in 1906, donated a bell to the church, cast out of tin and Lake Superior copper that weighed 900 pounds and cost $400.

Stanton had initially invested in Michigan copper with the Central mine, in 1863. According to the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum, he later became president of the Atlantic, Mohawk and the Wolverine and Michigan mining companies, among others, and worked with William Paine to consolidate the Copper Range Company. He was also involved in the founding of the New York Mining Stock Exchange and became its first president. In 1892, he became involved in organizing the Copper Producers Association.

Farther down the same page, in the fifth column of the paper, was a small blurb about Matt Culsoleth, an Isle Royale miner, who died the previous day when he fell into the No. 4 shaft on the second level and dropped 720 feet. Based on the 1910 annual report of the Houghton County Mine Inspector, the paper did not even get the name correct. His name was Matt Vukelic and he was not a miner, but a trammer. Also, he fell from the first level, not the second. While the Calumet News reported that Matt had walked unconscious into the shaft, shift boss Frederick Bourbonnais explained Vukelic was crossing the track at the first level, when he slipped and fell, landing in the skip pit on the seventh level.

On December 8, on Page 6, the Calumet News another paragraph, reporting the death of Nicholas Spehar, a 21-year-old worker in the Tamarack mine. Spehar was riding in a tool cage in the No.2 Shaft with two other men when a rock fell from somewhere above, striking Spehar on the head.

The Tamarack mine, which accounted for four fatalities in 1910, was more concerned with production than lives: “Accidents were few and not of such a character as to seriously interfere with operations,” the company’s annual report stated dryly.

The Calumet News, on Dec. 10, printed an article, “Notes From the Labor World.” It reported that 85% of labor in the building trades was organized, along with statistics from other regions in the U.S., as well as Spain and England. Working women in England, the report said, were joining unions at a rapid pace, with just under 200,000 having joined organized labor by 1909.

The Daily Mining Gazette, on the other hand, but rarely reported on mining deaths, and ignored organized labor altogether. Mining Companies ignored accidents as well.

The annual report of the Quincy Mining Company for 1909 cheerfully reported dividends for the year amounting to $495,000 but did not count the human cost. Quincy accounted for 16, or 25.4% of the 63 fatalities in the region that year. The following year, Quincy accounted for 10, or 17.24% of the fatalities for 1910, but again, did not include any mention of them in its report.

The Calumet and Hecla company, which accounted for 15, or just under 26% of fatalities, gave no mention of them, either.

Between Sept. 30, 1908 and Sept. 30, 1909, the Annual Report of the Houghton County Mine Inspector included the details of incidents that claimed a total of 63 lives. The following 12 months, ending on Sept. 30, 1910, an additional 58 fatalities were reported.

For the period between Sept. 30, 1909 and Sept. 30, 1910, 18 of the fatalities were trammers, 12 were miners, 11 were timbermen, including two timber bosses. While the statistics show fatalities distributed roughly evenly among the three major departments underground, they were not evenly distributed among nationalities. Of the 58 men killed underground, 15 were “Austrian,” another 15 were Finnish, 9 were English, 8 were Italians; an additional three more Hungarians and three were Swedes. One Irish worker was killed, one German, one Pole, one Norwegian and one American.

The reason for the disparity among nationalities is due to the disparity of various groups employed underground. The majority, by 1910, were Finns, Croatians, Slovenians and Italians. As hundreds of Irish and Cornish mine workers migrated to western mining camps, particularly Butte, Montana, they were replaced by eastern and southern Europeans who lacked underground work experience.

While the various Lake Superior copper companies had complained of serious labor shortages for several years previous to 1913, the Department of Labor reported that there was a greater shortage of trammers than other class of mine workers, and the shortage of trammers was a “chronic condition.” The report was titled “Strike in the copper mining district of Michigan: Letter from the Secretary of Labor, transmitting in response to a Senate resolution of January 29, 1914.”

The report found a connection between trammers and the numbers of fatalities among eastern and southern European workers: “Tramming is done mostly by Finns, Croatians, Hungarians and Poles. The work is so hard that Cornish men and other old miners will not touch it.” The Department of Labor wanted to know why. After a thorough study on the various aspects of the strike, which began on July 23, 1913, the Department of Labor found legitimate grievances from trammers going back several years, leading the to report: “I believe there are real grievances, at least upon the part of the trammers. The fill and move for distances varying from 50 to 1,500 and even, at places, 2,000 feet, a car which empty, weighs 1,900 pound and which carries 2 1/2 tons of rock.”

Next week, we will look at the findings of the DOL report on the working conditions trammers struck to improve.