Mine Towns: Buildings for Workers in Michigan's Copper Country

by Alison K. Hoagland

During the nineteenth century, the Keweenaw Peninsula of Northern Michigan was the site of America’s first mineral land rush as companies hastened to profit from the region’s vast copper deposits. In order to lure workers to such a remote location—and work long hours in dangerous conditions—companies offered not just competitive wages but also helped provide the very infrastructure of town life in the form of affordable housing, schools, health-care facilities, and churches. The first working-class history of domestic life in Copper Country company towns during the boom years of 1890 to 1918, Alison K. Hoagland’s Mine Towns investigates how the architecture of a company town revealed the paternal relationship that existed between company managers and workers—a relationship that both parties turned to their own advantage. The story of Joseph and Antonia Putrich, immigrants from Croatia, punctuates and illustrates the realities of life in a booming company town. While company managers provided housing as a way to develop and control a stable workforce, workers often rejected this domestic ideal and used homes as an economic resource, taking in boarders to help generate further income. Focusing on how the exchange between company managers and a largely immigrant workforce took the form of negotiation rather than a top-down system, Hoagland examines surviving buildings and uses Copper Country’s built environment to map this remarkable connection between a company and its workers at the height of Michigan’s largest land rush.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Rick B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very detailed and informative. Wish there was a similar book for iron mining towns of the UP.

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alison K. Hoagland’s Mine Towns: Buildings for Workers in Michigan’s Copper Country chronicles corporate paternalism through examining “the built environment as an unspoken negotiation between worker and management” on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan: “Copper Country” (xxiv). In what seems to be an attempt to avoid the criticism of numerous writings on environments and landscapes, Hoagland uses a Croatian immigrant family—the Putrich family—“to keep her analysis grounded in the tangible and personal” (xxvi). Hoagland covers a range of cultural topics in her documentation and analysis of these copper company towns by beginning with the buildings—using both photographs and floor plans—to get inside the daily lives of the workers and managers who occupied them. From residential spaces—saltboxes and T-plans—to community spaces of leisure and education—churches, schools, libraries, and bathhouses—Hoagland reconstructs the setting of these booming copper town communities in order to mine them of their sociopolitical significance and cultural values.

Perhaps her most interesting chapter discusses how water, heat, and light utilities, came into workers’ residential spaces by way of negotiating between managers and residents. Whereas some of her observations are fairly self-evident—managers’ houses are bigger versions of workers’ houses with more rooms, Hoagland very cleverly notes how odd it is that the C&H general manager, James MacNaughton, refused to provide utilities to company houses except on a case-by-case basis that required a hand-written request. This gross example of micromanagement was neither efficient nor cost effective, but rather, it was a power statement “reminding his workers of their subordinate status” and dependence upon a “benevolent” leader (149).
�
Reoccurring throughout the book, Hoagland discusses the eight-month miners’ strike of 1913 that involved the summoning of the National Guard, the deaths of several miners by shooting, and most infamously the trampling of 73 people—58 of whom were children—in a false “fire evacuation” at the Italian Hall. The final section connects the study to historic preservation themes of commemorating loss and remembering through buildings. The chapter begins again with the Putrich family: Joe and Elaine Putrich learned about the murder of Joe’s grandfather in Seeberville for his participation in the mine strike and as he received no grave marker at the time (despite thousands who attended his funeral service), Joe and Elaine installed a commemorative tombstone in 2004. Hoagland explains that “Joe and Elaine Putrich’s ‘memory’ of the Copper Country was not literal, as neither had lived [there]” (217). Despite the lack of material evidence of their grandparents’ existence, the erected grave marker acknowledges the past and his connection to it. These thoughts about memory bring up an interesting question: how best to commemorate past “memories” that we—and eventually no one—can remember directly? Hoagland goes on to suggest that building preservation is so much more effective than building “markers” after the fact. In her conclusion, she restates her thesis: “The hundreds of worker houses, whether built by the company or enabled by the company on its land, are the best evidence of how much the companies pervaded workers’ lives beyond the workplace” (247). The future negotiations will be between preservationists and big business to decide what buildings will remain to tell stories and what will be lost to “progress” or forgotten due to “decay.”

[Kelsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ommf. I will not lie this book had certain moments that were a real struggle for me to plow my way through. Now I am very much into History but only specific attributes and Mining isn't one I'd like to say is in my eye sight for very interesting. What made me pick up this book was because I had to do some research for class and now as most most people know I could have skimmed, but I read the whole book from front to back. Some parts were a struggle but other parts were very interesting and I'm glad that I read every bit because I feel so much more informed about Mine Towns and what all went into these towns, and the behind the scenes. I lacked a lot of knowledge and I'm glad to have gained some new information. This is one of the reasons I adore History books even in the midst of some rather not so exciting reads...I find hidden gems that can be hard to discover at first.

The Author clearly did her research and I loved all the pictures that were included throughout the Novel. It was great to be able to see what these homes looked like, I loved the pictures of the former schools, and just seeing some of the similarities that haven't changed with buildings today and then of course the differences. There were many times throughout that I was like "Oh my goodness, I want to go see this building, or this location." I have some summer trips in Michigan I can plan now. I loved reading about the families in the stories including those that went on strike, and the tragedy of some that were killed. My absolute favorite read was toward the ending with the Italian Hall. The Italian Hall being where a man shouts "Fire!" and many people scramble down stairs as they fall to their death...73 people I believe were killed...and many of these were children...a brutal thought...a shock that this actually happened in Michigan.

Of course, the book was mainly on the structure of buildings and if you are a person into architecture I certainly recommend this book for you. However, if you're not big into History I wouldn't recommend this book to you because it truly is a History book and it truly has some text book History reading to it. If you're like me and you like to hear about stories from the past, big events, I recommend a skimming of the book to find the parts that truly are interesting. I finished the book because I'm the type of person that can't leave a book unfinished no matter how long it takes me and I feel so much more informed on this topic now and I know even though it was a bit of a struggle I'll be that dork that goes around telling people the information I learned about.

I give this book three stars because 'i liked it' despite some of the parts that I struggled to get through!

[Kendra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Allison Hoagland's Mine Towns is superb. She reexamines the physical and architectural terrain on which the dynamics of capital and labor played out in Michigan's Keeweenaw Peninsula at the turn of the twentieth-century. Aided by the documents of Quincy Mining, Calumet and Hecla, and the records of the 1913 strike in the peninsula, Hoagland ably reconstructs the physical spaces - public and private, exterior and interior - and their role in mediating management-worker conflicts. Due to the "incomplete" nature of the mining companies' control (they did not house all workers), the story in the Michigan copper fields offers a useful counterpoint to other, more well-known circumstances of company towns in West Virginia or the American West. The book is conversant with scholarship in labor history, but not bogged down in it, and skillful in its architectural analysis as well.

The documents allow for intriguing glimpses of workers' negotiation of the space, especially the documents remaining from the Putrich house, which was the site of a murder of workers by company deputies.

Highly-recommended.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written and a great history book