The Lake Superior copper mine strike that began in July 1913 remains among the most contentious topics in the region to this day, 111 years later. Aspects of the conflict have reached mythological proportions. Yet, it was not the only labor conflict in the country, or Michigan for that matter, in that year.

On June 17, employees of the Studebaker auto company, led by the International Workers of the World initiated the first major auto industry strike that came to involve more than 6,000 workers.

There were many similarities between the Studebaker strike and the copper mine strike, reflecting organized labor strategies and trends of the time. Among them were contrasting reports of the number of strikers.

While the I.W.W. claimed numbers between 5,600 and 6,900 workers participated in the strike, the Studebaker company said numbers were less than half that, not exceeding 3,100.

The Detroit Free Press reported on June 18, 1913. In Michigan, the Western Federation of Miners claimed a membership of 9,000, but, as historian and author Arthur Thurner pointed out in his book, “Rebels on the Range,” membership in the copper locals never exceeded 7,491, many of whom were not mine workers, but farmers, businessmen, railroad workers, and employees in the service industry. Thurner wrote that according to WFM records, on the eve of the July 24 strike, the union contained 7,085 members.

At both Studebaker and in Michigan, laborers argued for higher wages, shorter hours and improved working conditions. In Detroit, the IWW demanded a return to a weekly pay schedule: in the Copper Region, the WFM demanded a $3-a-day minimum wage, and the abolition of the one-man drill.

The Studebaker strike ended in six days; the copper strike fizzled out after nine months. Both ended in devastating defeats for the unions involved.

In the copper region, thousands of workers left for Detroit to take advantage of Henry Ford’s $5-a-day wage announcement; in Detroit, the Studebaker strike led to Ford’s announcement. The IWW had initially attempted to organize Ford workers, but met with such resistance that the union shifted its focus to Studebaker. Ford, like most industrialists, was thoroughly anti-union. Studebaker’s strike was a costly affair for the company. But Ford was also concerned with other worker issues. Working on an assembly line for nine hours, doing the same repetitive tasks, took its toll. Ford soon found himself with a turnover rate of 370%.

Tom Mackaman, writing for the World Socialist website, in March 2014, provides more detail:

“In 1913, exhausted Ford workers often walked off the job in the middle of their shifts, thus bringing to a halt the entire assembly line, and with it Ford’s profits. In 1913, the Highland Park plant had a labor turnover rate of 370 percent; in order to maintain a workforce of 14,000 Ford had been compelled to hire 52,000 different workers.

A major contributor to the problem, Mackaman points out is:

“In 1913 American factories cycled through their workforces with astonishing speed. It was worse for Ford due to the monotony and brutality of the assembly line; in one year investigators at Highland Park counted more than 200 severed fingers and 75,000 burns, cuts, and puncture wounds.”

Ford initiated the $5-a-day minimum on Jan. 5, 1914, about the time many workers in the Copper Region were getting tired of the strike dragging on and on. But in addition to doubling unskilled labor wages, he also reduced working hours by creating three 8-hour shifts, and operating his assembly plant 24 hours a day.

The $5-a-day proclamation would today probably get Ford sued for false advertising. The wage increase was actually a profit sharing plan, but it came with conditions, but that is beyond this focus.

Whatever the promise made was, it spurred still more workers to leave the Copper Region.

For a number of years before the labor strike began, the Lake Superior copper mines had suffered a labor shortage. The shortage intensified around the time the labor strike started. Thurner wrote that between July 23 and August 1, 1913, about 2,500 workers left the district during the strike.

The outward migration was made up of men who did not want anything to do with unions; others wanted nothing to do with a strike; and others were just fed up with the laundry list of complaints and dissatisfaction, including corporate paternalism and mining captains cheating miners on contracts.

While the Lake Superior copper mines still produced tens of millions of pounds of copper per year, the region had passed its peak in other aspects. As the introduction of the air drill had eroded the need for skilled miners who could “read rock,” Henry Ford’s assembly line eliminated the need of skilled laborers in his auto plants.

While thousands of employees had walked off the job, thousands of unskilled laborers in the Lake Superior mines rushed to fill the vacancies in Detroit. Henry Ford was not the only auto manafacturer in Detroit, nor was he the first. Ransom E. Olds had begun producing cars in 1899. There were, in fact, 125 auto companies in Detroit in the early 20th century.

Mining was no longer the major attraction to unskilled, immigrant labor, and became less of a major stopping point on their arrival in the United States.