When mining companies organized, they were compelled to also build housing around the mines, because there was none. In some instances, commercial areas grew up within the settlements, but in a few instances, a company-owned general store sufficed — in the early years.

As communities modernized, however, company owners and managers, in a large sense, continued to labor under the delusion that employees and their families should view the company as the center of their worlds. They built the schools, libraries, bathhouses, houses, maintained the streets, collected garbage, sold workers fuel at cost, and essentially came to emulate Medieval European manorial systems. Workers were encouraged to believe that they were partners in a central goal of making the company succeed in its endeavors to produce the most copper, maximize profits and increase dividends paid to the shareholders. The company was the father, the community was the child. Father knew best, and so long as everybody played their roles and did what they were told and lived where they were assigned, everything would be Utopian.

Most of the companies were headquartered in Boston and the mine owners tried to establish their Anglo-Saxon, Protestant New England ideals and social structures in the Lake Superior towns they controlled. It was successful in the early decades of the region’s development, but as the communities became more and more ethnically diverse, Anglo-Saxon ideals came to mean increasingly less to increasingly more residents.

As the 20th century approached its second decade, society and culture were in a progressive phase. Mining companies throughout the Lake Superior copper region struggled to maintain control of the communities they had created. Corporate paternalism as a means of social control began to face resentment by many. Others, however, found a great benefit in the system, including in housing. Yet, with the number of rental houses the larger companies owned, as the standard of living continued to rise, companies found themselves scrambling just to keep up.

In May 1914, Calumet and Hecla Mining Company president Quincy A. Shaw reported that the company owned 903 houses that were rented to employees at about $1 per room per month. The houses were equipped with running water; the large majority of them had stone or concrete cellars. Rent included all repairs and garbage removal. The company also leased, at $5 per year, 969 lots on which employees had built their own homes. The lease included water, taxes and garbage removal.

While many companies, like C&H and Copper Range, supplied their houses with running water others, residents of the houses at the La Salle Mine, and those in Mohawk, and the Isle Royale Location, drew their water from wells. At the Ahmeek Location, families drew water from wells through force pumps in their kitchens.

Where electricity was available, renters were permitted to purchase it. According to a report, Strike Investigation By the Committee of the Copper Country Commercial Club of Michigan, 1913, the majority of companies, including the Ahmeek, Osceola, Tamarack, Copper Range, did not supply their houses with electricity. The Ahmeek company did; they charged renters five cents per kilowatt hour. At the Copper Range houses, the rate was 12 cents per kilowatt hour. Though expensive, electricity became more and more important in many homes, particularly to the women who found it a great time and labor-saving tool.

The 1916 Houghton County Directories, published by the R.L. Polk Company, listed many businesses such as the Richard Rourke Jr. Electric Shop, located at 304 Reservation Street in Hancock. Rourke was a selling agent for electric appliances, including washing machines, lamps, electric drills and motors. Dover & Halvorson offered electric sewing machines, and they even sold electric pianos.

Edward Cuff, also in Hancock, was truly enmeshed in the Progressive Era. Not one was he an electrical contractor, he sold fixtures and supplies, along with automotive wiring and service.

What these advertisements demonstrate is that modern conveniences, made affordable by mass production, increased the standard of living, and made life a bit easier. Modern appliances reduced the time required for chores like laundry and ironing, and electric lighting was brighter than kerosene or candles; fewer lights provided superior lighting to more candles and oil lamps.

When the mining companies finally conceded to public demand and reduced workdays from 10 hours to eight in January 1914, the policy change meshed well with reduced time of housework, creating more leisure time for families. All of this was occurring just at the time the assembly line began reducing the cost of a Ford automobile.

Telephones, too, were popular by 1916. In fact, the Michigan State Telephone Company, which operated out of Houghton, was established in 1878, just two years after the telephone was patented.

By 1916, the Copper Country bore little resemblance to its frontier years. Fort Wilkins, the Clark Mine, the Cliff Mine location, two on a long list of once busy places, laid in ruins, long reclaimed by forest. Two-masted schooners anchoring in bays offshore had been replaced by steel-hulled, engine-powered ships that tied up to large concrete wharves, while old 16th century foot paths had been carved out to make room for automobiles. Railroads spider webbed the region. Much of the Ontonagon district had been clear cut by the Diamond Match Company.

The residents in 1916 were not concerned with the history of the copper region, however. Among its pioneers, Timothy O’Shea, who had come to the Copper Country in 1857 to work at the Cliff Mine, where he lived in a two-room log cabin with a loft for a second floor, now resided in a frame dwelling equipped with all the modern amenities available in 1916. Looking back on the past, even just 25 years before, the residents did not see history; they looked at the automobiles, movie theaters, street cars, electric street lights, and saw progress.

With the automobile, places like once forgotten Fort Wilkins would become a novel picnic spot and camping destination, while Mohawk residents would return to Central once a year for a reunion at the once busy Methodist Church, located on Stage Coach Road.

Men who had learned their trades at mining companies formed their own businesses in plumbing, heating and mechanical services. The Copper Country was expanding. It was outgrowing the 19th century industrial concept of corporate paternalism and company control. Those who were struggling to gain freedom and independence from the mining companies were happy when they did; but they had failed to consider one thing: Copper mining was still the backbone of the regional economy — and within a few decades, much of it would come to an end and so would the early 20th century prosperity.