back then When death came to the Keweenaw
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by Sonny Longtine he history of labor strikes in the United States is replete with bloodshed and violence, and the Upper Peninsula was no exception to the carnage created by the rift between labor and management. One of the most bitter and deadly strikes was the great copper strike of 1913-14. Fifteen thousand miners labored in the copper mines; they struck in order to secure better wages and safer working conditions. Although long past, the residents of the Keweenaw Peninsula still remember the catastrophic strike over the rich copper veins that were embedded in the Keweenaw Peninsula. Thousands of European immigrants were lured to the copper-laden land with the promise of jobs in the underground mines. In the later half of the 20th century, Croatians, Poles, Czechs, Slavs, Finns and English flooded a 60-mile stretch from Delaware to Painesdale in the hope of making a better life. Often the miners’ meager wages were sent back to their homeland to remaining family members to secure passage to the United States. Copper mining began in earnest in the peninsula in 1848, but was discovered earlier in the 1820s by Henry Schoolcraft and geologist Douglass Houghton. By the turn of the century, mining companies employed thousands who toiled underground in harsh working conditions. In the bleak winter months, the dank caverns were home for immigrant miners; daylight
was a rare and precious commodity that miners saw little of. Death lurked around every corner in the subterranean shafts. Poverty-level incomes forced families to live in cramped conditions in company housing, while single men were herded into ethnic boarding houses. Miners were aware of the huge profits that the corporations were reaping from their backbreaking labor and they wanted a larger piece of the pie, something they felt the mine proprietors owed them…and could easily afford. Recalcitrant mine owners were adamant: there would be no negotiations with any labor union over wages and working conditions. A precipitous chasm between labor and management grew larger—something had to give. The day of reckoning came on July 23, 1913. On that day, renegade miners, without approval from their union, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), went on strike. They were disgruntled with their paltry $2.50 a day wage and long 10- to 11-hour work day, but mostly they wanted the deadly “widow-maker” to continue to be a two-man operation. The widow-maker was a copper extract tool that mining company officials converted to a one-man operation. The miners felt that a one-man operation would not only be dangerous, but would reduce the number of miners needed to operate the mine. The name alone (widow-maker) is telling and ominous. In addition, the miners wanted the recognition of the
Putrich boarding house, site of the Putrich and Tijan killings.
Sheriff James Cruse hired the Waddell-Mahon men for security. The unionists called them strikebreakers. (Photos courtesy of the MTU Archives)
WFM. Calumet & Hecla, the owners of the mine, refused to acknowledge the strike, to do so would have been to recognize the union and legitimize the strike, something they vowed they would never do. An unlikely strike leader emerged during the crisis: six-foot-two-inch Anne Clemenc, a miner’s wife and household servant, led thousands of strikers in protest marches through the streets in Red Jacket (now Calumet). As with many strikes, arrests were common and violence inevitable. But on August 14, 1913, things got worse—much worse. The conflict turned deadly. Events took a grave turn when two Croatians—Alois (Louis) Tijan and Steve Putrich— were gunned down in a miners’ boarding house in Seeberville by men from the sheriff’s department and their hired security guards (miners called them strikebreakers and worse), the Waddell-Mahon men. Earlier that day, 10 strikers with nothing more to do, had gathered in a Seeberville park and leisurely drank beer on the grass. They consumed 24 quarts of beer before they disbanded and headed back to their boarding house. Miners John Kalan and John Stimac straggled behind the others and decided to take a shortcut though
December 2021
mine property. Anticipating sabotage, mine owners declared mine property off limits to the non-working miners. Kalan and Stimac were told to stop by company guard Humphrey Quick. Not drunk, but perhaps a tad tight, they defied Quick’s warning and continued on. In a parting shot, Kalan turned to Quick and said, “Look out for yourself, you son-of-a-$#&!%. I fix you…I fix you for sure [sic].” Quick told nearby Waddell-Mahon guard Thomas Raleigh what had just happened. Waddell-Mahon guards were private security guards hired by the sheriff’s office to keep peace during the strike. The miners, however, viewed the Wadall-Mahon men as nothing but goons and strikebreakers. Earlier, Calumet & Hecla General Manager James MacNaughton rejected Waddell-Mahon guard service, believing that hiring private security guards would only heighten an already tense situation. MacNaughton felt the militia that was sent to Calumet could adequately keep the peace. But County Sheriff James Cruse said he was understaffed and couldn’t get local men to intervene in the strike. As a result, he felt he had no choice but to hire the Waddell-Mahon men. After speaking with Raleigh, Quick then alerted his su-
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