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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday October 9, 1913
Keweenaw County, Michigan – School Children on Strike in Copper Country
From The Calumet News of October 7, 1913
-School Children on Strike; Annie Clemenc Convicted:
[…..]
[…..]
Tag: Keweenaw County MI
Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: The Michigan Copper Miners’ Strike by Edward J. McGurty, Part II
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday September 2, 1913
“Copper Country” of Michigan – Striking Copper Miners Standing Firm
From the International Socialist Review of September 1913:
The Copper Miners’ Strike
By Edward J. McGurty[Part II of II]
So far [the mine operators] have been unable to intimidate the miners. The men are standing firmly. Parades are held every day along the 28 miles which comprise the range. Meetings of from three to six thousand are held every day in Calumet, Hancock, South Range and Mass City. There is no sign of weakening on the part of the men. They are determined upon a victory. They will refuse to submit to the slavery of the Copper Kings any longer. Thirty years of it has been enough.
The principal bone of contention at present is the recognition of the union. The men have made up their minds on this point. The mine-ownes have also apparently done so. The struggle is on in earnest. The miners are up against tremendous odds. They have absolute solidarity in their ranks, however, and that means a great deal. They are going to win! The copper barons are already desperate!
August 5th. The enclosed affidavit was sent to Ferris on the 29th of July and Ferris has absolutely refused to take the troops from this county. They are still in Keweenaw county at this writing.
Hon. W. N. Ferris, Governor,
Lansing, Michigan.I, John H. Hefting, sheriff of Keweenaw county, Michigan, hereby certify, that I was requested and urged by certain mining officials to call troops, and I refused as I did not see any necessity, inasmuch as there had been perfect peace and order and not a single infraction of the law committed since the strike commenced. The said mining officials urged me to get your permission to call upon General Abbey for troops, in case I needed them and not otherwise. My intention was not to call troops into this county. On July 29, 1913, several troops appeared at the boundary line, and I protested against troops being brought into this county as conditions did not require it. Whereupon one of the officers of the army stated to me that if I did not permit the troops to enter Keweenaw county at that time, that no matter how bad conditions became even though the location would burn down, they would not give any assistance thereafter. The telegram was made out by the attorney for the company and my attention was called to sign it. I requested them to give me time to consider the case at least one day, but their answer was that I must decide at once. Therefore I request you to withdraw all troops from this county.
Respectfully yours,
JOHN HEFTING,
Keweenaw County Sheriff.Subscribed and sworn to before me this day, the 29th of July, 1913. My commission expires March 4, 1917.
]. A. HAMILTON,
Notary Public.The newspapers here carried on a three-day campaign to form a “back-to-work” movement and yesterday got one of the company tools to act as chairman, surrounded on the platform by shift and trammer bosses, at a meeting called by the Calumet & Hecla Co., to appoint a committee from the workers to meet with the bosses, and as the chairman put it, find out on what terms the C. & H. would allow its employes to go back to work. The miners saw through the game immediately and refused to “fall” for the game. They started the cry of “scab” and left the hall for union headquarters.
Mother Jones arrived today [morning of August 5th] and was met at the depot by the strikers. They stood bare-headed in two lines two miles long, while she went through to the union hall. She refused to ride in an automobile which had been brought for her. Ten thousand strikers will pack the Palestra and neighboring halls tomorrow to hear her. She will then go over the range, addressing meetings in the various “locations.”
Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: The Michigan Copper Miners’ Strike by Edward J. McGurty, Part I
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday September 1, 1913
“Copper Country” of Michigan – Western Federation of Miners Issues Strike Call
From the International Socialist Review of September 1913:
The Copper Miners’ Strike
By Edward J. McGurty[Part I of II]
THE territory known as the “Copper Country” of Michigan is a peaked peninsula lying to the north of the Upper Peninsula. It is washed on three sides by the waters of Lake Superior, embracing the counties of Keweenaw, Houghton and Ontonagon.
The country is rich in copper and has one of the deepest incline shafts in the world, the Calumet & Hecla No. 7, at Calumet, which goes down about 8,000 feet. The Calumet & Hecla Company, with its subsidiaries, owns and controls practically all the property up here. For the past thirty years there has been no labor trouble here of any consequence. In that time the C. & H. has paid out $125,000,000 in dividends on an original capitalization of $1,200,000. The employes, many of them Cornish miners, have not revolted for years. They have submitted to every injustice and to tremendous exploitation.
For a number of years it was impossible for the Western Federation to make any headway in the Upper Peninsula. Attempts at organization have been met by the sacking and firing of men. Little could be accomplished. Gradually the Federation formed organizations at various points along the range. The Finns were very zealous in keeping activity alive. This last year especial efforts have been made to organize the men of the various nationalities. Those working in the mines are Cornish, Finnish, Croatian, Italian and Austrian. Up to May first, about 7,000 men were taken into the union.
The companies have worked a pseudo-contract system and cheated the men outright. They have paid low wages, many of the men getting as low as a $1.00 a day and some even less. The shifts have been long, running as high as twelve and thirteen hours. Last year the companies installed what is known as a “one-man” drill which is a man-killer.
It was the straw that broke the camel’s back in the copper zone. On the night of July 22, men went from one end of the range to the other, on foot and in rigs rousing the miners and making known the strike order. The next day there were 15,000 mine-workers who had laid down their tools. Smelter-men, surface-men, under-ground-men, all were out and the copper mines were tied up as tight as a drum. Then the men who had not already joined the union began to make their way to the offices and in a few days 90 per cent of the miners were organized.
Directly the men went out the sheriff of Houghton county deputized about 500 men and sent them about to create trouble. They provoked the strikers to the breaking point and there were 500 deputies without stars or guns in a short time. There were also a few of them went to the hospitals.
The papers here, under the control of the companies, have, as usual, lied about the strike, slandered the strikers, burned the “locations” up in their columns; killed law-officers, etc. The second day of the strike the sheriff acting under orders from McNaughton, $85,000-a-year-manager of the Calumet & Hecla, requested troops from Governor Ferris. Without any investigation of the situation Ferris ordered the entire state militia dispatched here. Protest after protest has been made by the people here, because the presence of the troops is for the purpose of creating trouble. But Ferris stalwartly keeps them here.
The commander of the troops is a real, dyed-in-the-wool conservative. He says that the refusal of the union men to work the pumps and keep water from flowing into the mines amounts to the DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY. Even in times of industrial war, the mine-owners are accustomed to meek wage slaves that pump the water out of the mines.
The troops have ridden up the streets of Calumet and Red Jacket at night on horse-back and have ruthlessly clubbed innocent men and women conversing on the side-walks. They knocked down an old man of 70, and threw a baby out of a buggy onto the pavement. They have shot at strikers all over the range when the strikers were doing picket duty.
Hellraisers Journal: From Miners Magazine: Mother Jones Visits Striking Michigan Copper Miners, Received with Open Arms
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 15, 1913
Mother Jones in Michigan’s Copper Country, Encourages Striking Miners and Families
From the Miners Magazine of August 14, 1913:
…..“Mother” Jones, that dauntless and fearless heroine who kept alive the courage of the strikers of West Virginia and who was held a prisoner by the military authorities for several months, entered the state of Michigan last week to cheer the strikers on to victory.
Though “Mother” Jones has passed the four-score mile-post, yet her heart still beats as strongly for the rights of man as when the fire of youth flashed from her eye, and ere the strike has become a matter of history the mine operators of Michigan will know that a woman with Spartan courage can keep alive within the breast of revolting slaves the glorious flame of freedom’s purest inspiration.
The battle in Michigan must be won.
Fifty thousand men, women and children are involved in the strike and the sinews of war are needed to care for the men, women and children who have rebelled against industrial slavery.
The fight in Michigan is not only the fight of every member of the Western Federation of miners but it is the fight of every man and woman who stands beneath the folds of labor’s flag……
[Emphasis added.]
From the Miner’s Bulletin of August 14, 1913:
GEMS FROM MOTHER JONES.
The nation was founded as the result of a strike. Lincoln brought us all on a strike against black slavery; we are out on a strike against wage slavery and feudal bonds.
Sweep away all differences of nationality. You are all Americans.
We are going to quit developing muscle and develop a brain for the working class.
Stick together! Wake up! The hour is here! The dawn has come!
[Emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones, Joseph and Laura Cannon Speak to Striking Miners and Families in Michigan Copper Country
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday August 9, 1913
Michigan’s Copper Country – “Fiery” Mother Jones and the Cannons on the Scene
From the Escanaba Morning Press of August 8, 1913:
COPPERDOM IN DREAD
CRISIS IS IMPENDING
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Houghton, Mich., Aug 7.-The general impression in the district affected by the copper mine workers’ strike is that a crisis impending through the presence of Mother Jones and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Cannon, three fiery orators of the Western Federation of Miners. Persons who have had an opportunity in other strikes to see these people in action say they likely to inflame the strikers and their families to such a pitch of enthusiasm as may result in a reoccurrence of the of the first week of the strike.
The leaders of the strike here, Messrs. Mahoney, Miller and Lowney, have counselled peace in all their recent speeches, have the strikers to preserve law and order and to wait with determination because they are going to win.
But the speeches made by Cannon and his wife [Laura Gregg Cannon] at the Kansankoti hall, Hancock, Tuesday night were certainly not pacific. They aroused more enthusiasm than any speakers previously heard here since the strike opened and gave a good forecast of the result of their later speeches.
The strikers are for the most part phlegmatic Huns, Croatians and Finns, members of races not given to vociferous outbursts. If the Jones and the Cannons of the strike forces can stir these people up something more exciting than has been seen in the past week may be expected.
Mother Jones and Mrs. Cannon have reputations for exciting the women of strike districts to a point of frenzy resulting in rioting. Something of this sort is feared.
An example of the dangerous potentiality in Mother Jones can be seen in the interview given out by her at Calumet Tuesday afternoon [August 5th]. She said:
I’m a socialist, Why shouldn’t I be? That is the party that stands ready to help the working man.
I can’t see the need for the militia. Take a plumber and make him a major and he swells up like a toad and seems to forget that he is a workingman. The struggle is between the employer and employee and the state ought to let them fight it out. The strikers don’t believe in damaging property or the destruction of lives and I always impress on the men that they shouldn’t do damage.
They threw me into the bull pen in West Virginia, but before then, I went with 16 representatives of the miners to see the governor. When they heard I was coming, the governor wired for the fire department and the police and the legislators crawled under their desks and cried, “Is she coming?” The firemen came running up the streets without their socks. I had the devil scared out of the whole bunch of sewer rats. An old woman like me, over 80 years old. They thought I was coming to murder them, I guess.
What do you think the charge was they arrested me on. Stealing a field gun, my dears, and the damn fools were looking for it in the hills for months.
Ah, boys this is a terrible thing to go through. I hope you don’t see the like here. I saw my brave boys, who I know would not commit a crime, taken from their homes to far-away jails while their wives and babies screamed for their husbands. I raised my hand to heaven and prayed for their safe return.
And they talk about the red flag, bless you. Why, don’t they know the red flag was the first flag hoisted at Lexington, that a farmer who didn’t have time to put his shirt on went into the ranks of the bloody Sassenachs [English persons] and waved his red shirt in the air to cheer his comrades. Don’t they know the red bar is the first on the flag, signifying that blood was shed for the union?
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Arrives in Michigan’s Copper Country to Support WFM Strikers, Greeted by Great Throng
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 8, 1913
Copper Country, Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan – Mother Jones Arrives
From The Calumet News of August 5, 1913:
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