In 1929, the Report of the Directors of the Quincy Mining Company boasted that production of 4 and a half million pounds of copper had been sold at an average price of just under 19 cents per pound. Most of the copper had come from development operations. The copper mining industry boomed after recovering from its downturn after the Great War.

“Since January 1, 1930, “production has been increased and shipments to the stamp mill are now averaging over 1400 tons of copper rock daily,” Company President W. Parsons Todd happily stated in his report, dated June 2, 1930. “Refined copper produced during the first five months for 1930 was 4,203,000 pounds.”

Todd continued: “Approximately one-half of this copper was sold prior to the decline in the price of copper from eighteen cents.Production should continue to increase steadily as new levels (of the mine) are completed –.”

Just one year later, the annual report, Todd’s report, dated May 26, 1931, started with:

“The general business depression that has affected finance and trade throughout the world has been particularly severe upon the copper industry, and has demanded the exercise of the strictest economy in all departments.”

The price of copper plummeted from a high 18 cents in December 1929 to 6.6 cents per pound in September 1931.

Quincy, like the other copper producers in the region, had taken a number of steps to reduce operating costs in the face of free falling mineral prices.

“Accordingly, the labor forces in each department were reduced and the mine was put on an operating basis of five days a week,” General Manager Charles Lawton wrote in his report for 1930.

The Minerals Yearbook for 1932 stated:

“Mining companies in Michigan made every effort to reduce the cost of production by selective mining, abandonment of exploration and construction work, reduction of salaries and wages, etc.”

In the face of falling copper prices, Quincy also suffered financial setbacks from shareholders.

Due to the decline in the selling price of the shares a number of subscribers failed to pay the second and third installments, the 1930 report states, and three of the underwriters who should have taken 3,444 shares were unable to meet their obligations to the company.

“Of the 30,000 shares of treasury stock offered to stockholders last June at $25.00 per share,” the report says, “fewer than 25,500 were paid for in full.”

In spite of all efforts to avoid it, Quincy stopped mining activities on Sept. 22, 1931. Oddly, there was no mention of the closure in either the Daily Mining Gazette or its subsidiary, the Calumet News.

Ten days earlier, the Mohawk Mining Company shut down, according to the Minerals Yearbook for 1932. At a stockholder’s meeting on March 28, 1933, a motion to proceed with liquidation of the company was approved.

The Champion mine, in Painesdale, stopped all activity in March 1932, and a month later, the Isle Royale mine, in Houghton, shut down, stopping its pumps in December, and allowing the mine to fill with water.

At Calumet and Hecla, the reclamation plants at Lake Linden and Hubbell were stopped in 1931. By 1932, all of the C&H mines were shut down, with the exception of the Calumet Conglomerate branch. There, work was confined to the continued removal of shaft pillars and old backs in the upper levels, while the pumps had been shut off and the lower levels were left to fill with water.

On Aug. 24, 1933, the L’Anse Sentinel reported that the valuation of minerals and mineral products produced in Michigan had dropped from $83 billion in 1929 to $43 billion in 1930, a 50% drop in a year.

Like the copper mines of Upper Michigan, the Lower Michigan auto industry, the destination of thousands of Copper Country emigrants, most of whom were former mine workers, was hit just as hard by the Great Depression as the mines. Detroit, by 1929, was the fourth largest city in the U.S., with a population of 1.6 million. Approximately 160,000 of them were employed in the automobile industry. By 1930, car sales had declined roughly 75%.

As reported by Jessica Ledbetter, in the Dec. 18, 2019, edition of Press & Guide, some 25,000 workers lost their jobs from Ford Motor Company’s closures and layoffs in 1932, creating unemployment rates within Dearborn and the adjacent areas higher than anywhere else in the nation.

On Sept. 29, 1931, an article in the Daily Mining Gazette stated: “Practically every county in the west end of the upper peninsula was represented at the unemployment conference held in Crystal Falls recently.”

The counties were told that, essentially, they were responsible for their own unemployed residents. In those same counties “in the west end,” the farmers were also hit hard.

In 1932, Houghton County Agriculture agent, Earl Roberts, reported that low prices on farm and livestock products was creating extreme situations.

Most of the county’s farmers had worked for the local mining companies, but with mining activities suspended, they could not fall back on those jobs for relief. The farmers, Roberts reported, received less assistance from public relief agencies than any other class in comparable circumstances.

By 1932, the bulk of farming in Houghton County had become specialized in dairy or potatoes. Dairy farmers and cattle growers had the worst time of it, because with the low price for cattle, farmers held back selling, waiting for an upturn in the market, but this meant they needed increased feed supplies. Roberts suggested they sell off the poorest stock at what prices they could obtain, sell calves for veal, or if worse came to worse, kill calves at birth to control herd sizes.

Of the nearly 2,000 farms in Houghton County in 1933, 400 had initiated changes to their farming techniques and practices, leading growers, in 1934, to begin planning to construct a potato warehouse. Under Agent Roberts’ direction, the agricultural sector would begin to recover much sooner than that of copper mining.