In the copper and iron mining districts throughout the Upper Peninsula, hundreds of Finnish immigrants left mining to establish farms. Hundreds more worked in timber industries, many who worked for other Finnish immigrants who had created their own logging and lumber companies. This was occurring at a time when mining companies increasingly found themselves critically short of workers, particularly unskilled labor.

Finnish farmers and lumber company owners were by no means alone in draining laborers from mining companies.

In 1919, Henry Ford began buying enormous tracts of forestland in the Upper Peninsula, primarily for hardwoods. The lumber was used in the manufacture of Model Ts, Model As and early Ford V-8 bodies, according to the Henry Ford Museum.

By then, the Ford Motor Company was producing more than 1 million automobiles per year. In addition to the 250 board feet of lumber required for each vehicle, states Brian Cleven in his masters thesis, wood was required for shipping containers, railroad cars, boxcars, storage bins, wood paving blocks, pallets and pattern work, adding up to more than 200 million feet of lumber per year.

Among Ford’s endeavors was the purchase and consolidation of several timberland properties in Baraga County. Ford acquired the Stems & Culver Lumber Company around L’Anse in 1923, and the Charles Hebard & Sons Lumber Company, both in 1923. The consolidation included the village of Pequaming.

Pequaming, as a community, was settled in 1878 with the organization of the Hebard and Thurber Lumber Company. But long before that, it was once an Ojibway settlement dating back more than 500 years they called Pequaquawaming.

At Pequaming, Charles Hebard, Edward Hebard and H.C. Thurber constructed a sawmill producing shingles and pine lumber. Among their goals was to draw workers to the mill from the local mines.

To achieve that, the company established parks, built churches, schools, bath houses and large community hall with an Odd Fellows Lodge upstairs, states the Beaumier Upper Peninsula Heritage Center, of Northern Michigan University.

Not far away from Pequaming was the farming community of Aura, settled by Finnish immigrants, many of whom had considered the mine labor conflict of 1913 as the right time to leave mining behind. They purchased cut-over lands from the Hebard company to convert to farms, which led to the settlement of Aura, which in Finnish means “plow.”

Also nearby was Herman, another Finnish settlement, named for Herman Keranen.

By the turn of the 20th century, labor trends had already begun shifting from the mining industry, as more large-scale operations like Ford’s timber industry were organized. Added opportunities came with the increasing traffic of motor vehicles. Auto dealerships sprang up in larger communities, gas stations and repair facilities became numerous as did hotels, restaurants, saloons, taverns, gift shops and other tourism-related businesses. Many wagon and harness shops showed great flexibility when they were expanded to include automotive repair. Carpenter shops also benefited, because of the amount of wood, including wheel spokes, often needed repair or replacement. The automobile was, essentially, a mechanical advancement of horse-drawn carriages in which a motor and its transmission replaced horses as the motive power, hence the term “car,” which was derived from the term “horseless carriage.”

The copper mining industry would remain the largest employer. But the rise of other employment opportunities siphoned off enough workers to create critical labor shortages for them.

In a very broad sense, the strike of 1913 clearly demonstrated this. At the strike’s foundation was a conflict between 19th century industrial paradigms and 20th century social change. That industrial paradigm included the corporate concept that the company knew what was best for the workers, their families and their communities. The companies built and equipped the schools, as well as influencing the and the curriculum. The companies built, equipped, and staffed, the hospitals. In most cases, only company employees and their families were granted access to company hospitals, compelling the larger communities to fund and build additional care facilities. In the workplace, workers were given little or no voice in matters of working conditions, safety, or even the equipment and materials they used in their work. For instance, if some workers were not happy with a type of explosive because the gases they produced caused illness, they had no alternatives because they purchased the explosives from the company. In many instances, the companies, purchasing explosives by the ton, selected them based more on cost than on safety.

In areas of the mines that were unsafe, workers could spend hours laboring to make them safe, which took that time from their production. In a system in which men were paid by the amount of mine rock they drilled and blasted out, and by how many tram cars were filled, in a shift, making an area safe for working, then hauling and setting up mechanical drills weighing several hundred pounds drastically reduced their production time, detracting from their ability to earn more money on their contracts. To reduce the amount of time lost, many shortcuts were taken. That became more pronounced when the companies adopted Taylorism and its “scientific management,” which translated into demands for increased production. All of it combined was one of the reasons that led to the workers’ demand for a minimum wage.

Not only did the workers want more control over their workplaces and conditions, they wanted more control over their lives, where they lived, how they lived, and even how they died.

While mining companies did tend to pay far more in earnings that non-mining jobs, more and more workers began to feel that the wage wasn’t worth what they were sacrificing for it. Thousands of workers took the increasing opportunities new employment fields offered them. The Finns, culturally, were among the most advantaged of all immigrant and ethnic groups to accept the opportunities.

In farming, converting cut over lands to agricultural fields, and in logging and timber harvest, the Finns had been doing those things for hundreds of years. Farming and forestry were as much entwined in Finnish culture as mining was to the Cornish. The Cornish and the Irish, along with the Germans, were the pioneers in opening the Lake Superior mining districts, because they were considered the most skilled for the tasks. The Finns, arriving decades later, quickly established themselves as being equal counterparts in forestry and agriculture.