At the beginning of the Civil War, in 1861, the outbreak of the conflict upset the copper market and the Lake Superior copper mines cut production, cut wages by 10% and cut working hours.

The market recovered and companies enjoyed record profits, paid high wages and bonuses and struggled with severe labor shortages.

When the war ended, the copper market tanked; the companies cut production, cut wages by 10% and cut working hours, and the mines and the communities held on.

The same cycle befell the region at the beginning of the Great War, in 1914, the outbreak of the conflict upset the copper market and the Lake Superior copper mines once again cut production, wages and working hours. The market recovered.

Companies profited and compensated their employees accordingly as they struggled with severe labor shortages. When the war ended, the copper market tanked and the companies responded identically as they did at the end of the Civil War. The communities held on.

The labor shortage of the 1860s was primarily due to venture capitalists investing in new mines or opening abandoned ventures in the hopes of getting rich on inflated copper prices.

There were too many ventures for the available labor pool and demands for workers drove the wage scale up significantly. The labor shortage that plagued the Lake Superior copper companies at the beginning of the Great War was due to a number of factors.

Among them was the district-wide labor strike of 1913, during which thousands of people took the conflict as the opportunity to leave the region. Another contributing factor to the labor shortage was growing concerns in the U.S. over previously unrestricted immigration.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services states:

“Concerns over mass immigration and its impact on the country began to change Americans’ historically open attitude toward immigration. Congress strengthened national immigration law with new legislation in 1903 and 1907. Meanwhile, a Presidential Commission investigated the causes of massive emigration out of Southern and Eastern Europe and the Congressional Dillingham Commission studied conditions among immigrants in the United States.”

The National Park Service, in its article, Immigration and the Great War points out: “with the outbreak of the First World War, transatlantic steamship travel became more limited and dangerous, even as additional refugees sought to escape the conflict. British, French, German, and Italian liners that had previously carried masses of immigrants were converted to wartime use as troop and cargo transports and as hospital ships. Those steamships that remained in commercial operation were threatened by the rise of submarine warfare, as German officials felt justified in attacking ships that might be transporting military supplies to Britain and France, such as the attack on the RMS Lusitania in 1915.”

While mining company managers never hid their contempt for immigrants, particularly those from Finland and Eastern Europe, their prejudice did not prohibit employment.

Many documents refer to ethnic groups in biased terms such as Finlanders, Polanders. Immigrants from countries within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whether Croatian, Slovenian, Serb, or other, were referred to simply as “Austrians,” as they were termed in the Mine Inspector’s Report for Houghton County for 1913. In the table of casualties found on page 44, the list begins with: “Casualties apportioned among the nationalities nearly as could be ascertained, are as follows: Austrians (including some who may be Croatians …).” They included names such as Blitz, Predovitch, Manich, (Croatian), and Ofiskovic (Slovenian). Nationalities named included English, Finnish, German, Italian, Irish, Norwegian, Polish and Scotch.

The 1917 annual report of the Quincy Mining Company included mention of the labor shortage experienced in that mine. Superintendent Charles Lawton wrote that:

“The output was largest during the first four months (of 1917), before the declaration of war and the selective draft became operative, both which depleted the underground working force.”

A curious inclusion in his report, Lawton continued, saying: “The pro-German I.W.W. [Industrial Workers of the World] movement in July still further affected its morale and reduced its numbers, making it necessary to secure labor unaccustomed to the work and requireing much attention and training, thus handicapping mining operations and lessening the output of stamp rock.”

Unfortunately, Lawton did not disclose from where he had secured the labor. He wrote only that a total of 2,525 men were hired during the year, of which 805 were “secured from other sections, the largest importation of men occurring during the summer months when the turnover of labor was extreme, but by the last of the year the shortage of men was reduced to a relatively small number.”

According to a University of Washington IWW History Project’s study on the U.S. Justice Department’s campaign against the I.W.W., authored by Steven Parfitt, when the United States entered the First World War in April, 1917, the I.W.W. became one of the leading voices against the conflict.

I.W.W. organizers traveled the U.S. establihing powerful branches in two crucial wartime industries in particular – copper mining and lumber. They did so in the context of an industrial boom, stimulated by the demand for war material from the United States and Allied governments.

While the Report of the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company for 1917 did not go into as much detail as that of the Quincy’s, C&H President, Rodolphe L Agassiz, stated that the “greatley increased cost of supplies, the high scale of wages, and the general scarcity of laborers with the consequent decreased product, have materially added to production costs for the year.”

Agassiz did not mention it directly in his report, but in addition to decreasing numbers of workers, the world-renowned Calumet Conglomerate Lode was also decreasing in copper content — and had been for a number of years. In the Summary of Operations of the Calumet and Hecla Mining Co. for 1904, President Alexander Agassiz reported that the area of the Red Jacket Shaft, the extreme northern end of the mine, showed a copper decrease of about 15%. On the most southern end of the mine, all exploration work in the area of the No. 12 Shaft had been abandoned, and the work of mining out the copper-rich rock pillars protecting No. 11 Shaft had begun, as “no ground of any value” had been developed in the deepest openings of that shaft.

Eleven years later, C&H reported in its 1915 annual report that the work of removing shaft pillars and arches had been carried on throughout the year from the 55th to the 50th level of the No. 2 Calumet shaft; the No.11 Hecla shaft, above the second level, while the same work was conducted in Numbers 2,3, and 8 Hecla shafts.

Even before the outbreak of the Great War, changes were occurring in the Lake Superior copper region. Because they were gradual and far out on the periphery of mining, few people were aware of them. But there were some in the region with foresight who could see that the end of the region’s great copper economy was already in sight and they had begun the search for something that could replace it.