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On June 2, 1916, forty mostly immigrant mineworkers at the St. James Mine in Aurora, Minnesota, walked off the job. This seemingly small labor disturbance would mushroom into one of the region’s, if not the nation’s, most contentious and significant battles between organized labor and management in the early twentieth century. Flames of Discontent tells the story of this pivotal moment and what it meant for workers and immigrants, mining and labor relations in Minnesota and beyond. Drawing on previously untapped accounts from immigrant press newspapers, company letters, personal journals, and oral histories, historian Gary Kaunonen gives voice to the strike’s organizers and working-cla...
The copper mines of Michigan's Copper Country, in the Upper Peninsula, were active for 150 years, from 1845 until 1995. Many of the mine workers attempted to unionize, in order to obtain better working conditions, wages, and hours. The Michigan miners were unsuccessful in their struggles with mine owners, which came to a climax in the 1913–14 Copper Country Strike. This nine-month battle between workers represented by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) and the three major mining companies in the region took a particularly nasty turn on Christmas Eve, 1913, at a party for strikers and their families organized by the WFM. As many as 500 people were in the Italian Benevolent Society hall ...
A mirror of great changes that were occurring on the national labor rights scene, the 1913–14 Michigan Copper Strike was a time of unprecedented social upheaval in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. With organized labor taking an aggressive stance against the excesses of unfettered capitalism, the stage was set for a major struggle between labor and management. The Michigan Copper Strike received national attention and garnered the support of luminaries in organized labor like Mother Jones, John Mitchell, Clarence Darrow, and Charles Moyer. The hope of victory was overshadowed, however, by violent incidents like the shooting of striking workers and their family members, and the bitterness of a ...
What lurks in the mysterious woods of Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula? With a history as deep and rich as the shadows in the forest, the Keweenaw—nicknamed the Copper Country—boasts ample fodder for tales of tortured spirits and playful tricksters. From ghosts of the copper mining industry to kissing specters, Haunted Copper Country whisks you away on a whirlwind tour of this Upper Peninsula treasure. A brief history of each location provides insight into the origins of the haunted tales, many never before published and culled from the author's interviews with witnesses and ghost hunters. Explore the spooky side of the Keweenaw—if you dare.
2022 International Labor History Association Book of the Year A dramatic, deeply researched account of how legal repression and vigilantism brought down the Wobblies—and how the destruction of their union haunts us to this day. In 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members. Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, the victim of the most remarkable campaign of legal repression and vigilantism in American history. Under the Iron Heel is the first comprehensive account of this campaign. Founded in 1905, the IWW offered to the millions of workers aggrieved by industrial capitalism the promise of a better world. But its growth, coinc...
"Get ready to discover the rich history of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. From its earliest days, it has evoked words of love, beauty, mystery, and legend. Drawing on oral histories, newspapers, census data, archives, and libraries, Russell M. Magnaghi has written the seminal history of a very 'special place' as seen through the eyes of the men and women who have lived here- the famous and not so famous. For the first time in over a century, a complete history of the U. P.- from prehistoric origins to the present- is available. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan: A History is an extraordinary book celebrating this unique sense of place."--Back cover.
Who are the Finland-Swedes? Defined as citizens of Finland with a Swedish mother tongue, many know these people as “Swede- Finns” or simply “Swedes.” This book, the first ever to focus on this ethnolinguistic minority living in Michigan, examines the origins of the Finland-Swedes and traces their immigration patterns, beginning with the arrival of hundreds in the United States in the 1860s. A growing population until the 1920s, when immigration restrictions were put in place, the Finland-Swedes brought with them unique economic, social, cultural, religious, and political institutions, explored here in groundbreaking detail. Drawing on archival, church, and congregational records, interviews, and correspondence, this book paints a vivid portrait of Finland-Swedish life in photographs and text, and also includes detailed maps that show the movement of this group over time. The latest title in the Discovering the Peoples of Michigan series even includes a sampling of traditional Finland-Swedish recipes.
Major General Enoch Crowder served as the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army from 1911 to 1923. In 1915, Crowder convinced Congress to increase the size of the Judge Advocate General's Office—the legal arm of the United States Army—from thirteen uniformed attorneys to more than four hundred. Crowder's recruitment of some of the nation's leading legal scholars, as well as former congressmen and state supreme court judges, helped legitimize President Woodrow Wilson's wartime military and legal policies. As the United States entered World War I in 1917, the army numbered about 120,000 soldiers. The Judge Advocate General's Office was instrumental in extending the military's re...
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, large numbers of Swedish immigrants came to Michigan seeking new opportunities in the United States and relief from economic, religious, or political problems at home. In addition to establishing early farming communities, Swedish immigrants worked on railroad construction, mining, fishing, logging, and urban manufacturing. As a result, Swedish Americans made significant contributions to the economic and cultural landscape of Michigan, a history this book explores in engaging and illustrative depth. Swedes in Michigan traces the evolution of hard-working people who valued education and assimilated actively while simultaneously maintaining their cultural ties and institutions. Moving from past to present, the book examines community patterns, family connections, social organizations, exchange programs, ethnic celebrations, and business and technical achievements that have helped Swedes in Michigan maintain a sense of their heritage even as they have adapted to American life.
Through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, employers and powerful individuals deployed a variety of tactics to control ordinary people as they sought to secure power in and out of workplaces. In the face of worker resistance, employers and their allies collaborated to use a variety of extralegal repressive techniques, including whippings, kidnappings, drive-out campaigns, incarcerations, arsons, hangings, and shootings, as well as less overtly illegal tactics such as shutting down meetings, barring speakers from lecturing through blacklists, and book burning. This book draws together the groups engaged in this kind of violence, reimagining the original Ku Klux Klan, various L...