Calm or Conflicted? Labor-Management Relations on Michigan's Iron Ranges in the Nineteenth Century

by
Terry S. Reynolds

Source: Charles K. Hyde, The Upper Peninsula of Michigan: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office/Historic American Engineering Record, 1978), xvi. Upper Peninsula Mining Districts
On Tuesday, July 11, 1865, Frank Mills, superintendent of the Cleveland Iron Mining Company, cowered in his office near the company's mining pits outside the Upper Peninsula village of Ishpeming, scribbling a panicked, disorganized, rambling letter to J. C. Morse, the company's agent in the nearby port city of Marquette. Mills described himself as "not in a proper frame of mind," for the company's men had gone on strike and the "state of things is frightful. They are just passing the office & all have a club (I should judge 150 men) on their way to the New York Mine." 1	1
Nearly thirty years later on July 3, 1894, at Ironwood, Michigan, the Norrie Mining Company, represented by fifteen nonstriking workers who were protected by fifteen deputies, attempted to use steam shovels to load iron ore from a company stockpile, only to be surrounded by a mob of around fifteen hundred striking miners. A mining captain, seeking to determine if there was an escape route, was hit by a rock. He rolled down an embankment and was fired upon as he lay at the bottom, which caused both sides to begin shooting. No one was killed, but six men were wounded; one man had part of his ear shot off, and another had a bullet furrow across his forehead. Within five minutes, deputies and nonstriking workmen were "obliged to fly for their lives." The miners then marched to downtown Ironwood, threatening to hang both the people who had attempted to operate the steam shovels and the hastily deputized officers who had tried to protect them. These events prompted Gogebic County's sheriff to ask Michigan's governor to send militia companies from outside the area to restore law and order. When the militiamen arrived on July 4, they were met at the station by strikers whom the soldiers had to force back with fixed bayonets. 2	2
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