page_title: Calumet and Hecla Mining Company
section_title: Labor issues
hierarchical_section_title: Calumet and Hecla Mining Company / Labor issues
caption_attribution_description: English: The C&amp;H Mining Company provided a library and bathhouse for its employees.
context_page_description: The Calumet and Hecla Mining Company was a major copper-mining company based within Michigan's Copper Country. In the 19th century, the company paid out more than $72 million in shareholder dividends, more than any other mining company in the United States during that period.
context_section_description: Historian Larry Lankton wrote that Calumet and Hecla's success resulted in increased benefits that "trickled down" to workers. This made the company the preferred employer, and it generally had its pick of the best workers. Lankton also noted that the company was willing, when necessary to "control labor management relations", to use "coercion, covert manipulation, armed deputy sheriffs, or mass firings.
  Calumet & Hecla strived to create ideal communities around its mines and mills, in the hope that pleasant living conditions would help the company maintain a loyal and productive workforce. Historian Lankton wrote that In an era and an industry known for hard working conditions, the Michigan copper companies treated their employees better than most: “… they remained known for being among the most enlightened, fair, humane, and paternalistic employers in the American mining industry.” Some credited Calumet & Hecla, as the district’s leading company, for setting the pattern of improved living conditions followed by the others.
  In 1868 C&H built the first industrial hospital in the United States. In 1877 Calumet and Hecla started an employee aid fund to aid ill and injured employees. Participation was voluntary. Each participating worker contributed 50 cents per week, which the company matched. Some writers credit C&H with being one of the first, or even the first, American company to set up an employee health benefits fund. Other Michigan copper companies ran employee aid funds, but C&H was the only Michigan copper mining company to match contributions.
  By 1908, the company provided a staff of physicians and its hospital for employees and their families, worker clubhouses with bowling alleys; and employee libraries with reading material in 20 languages. The company also contributed to construction of schools and churches in the community. When the company supplied consumer goods to employees, it used its buying power to provide coal, firewood, and electricity for its tenants at wholesale prices.
  Its treatment of employees brought praise from outside the Copper Country. A writer for Harper’s Magazine visited a number of iron and copper mines of upper Michigan in 1882, but singled out Calumet & Hecla’s labor policies for particular praise. He wrote: “But the Calumet Company have no reason to fear strikes among any portion of their force.” In 1898, the Michigan Commissioner of Mineral Statistics enthused: “No mining company in the world treats its employees better than Calumet & Hecla.” In 1916 the Arizona Bureau of Mines wrote of Calumet & Hecla, which had no operations in Arizona: “Probably no mining company in the country has paid more attention to welfare work than has the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company, and its subsidiaries, in the upper Michigan peninsula.” The Arizona Bureau of Mines followed with more than a page detailing the employee benefits at C&H in Michigan.
  But Calumet & Hecla, like the other mining companies in the Copper Country, was accused of paternalism. The charge of paternalism was not disputed by those in favor of C&H, who even embraced the term, and saw it as the policy of enlightened capitalism. Company paternalism was most evident in company housing. C&H built hundreds of company houses, and provided them to married employees at low rents that left no room for any company profit. The company also allowed employees to build about a thousand houses on rented C&H land, but under terms by which the company could force them to vacate their houses on short notice. Whether in rented company housing, or their own houses located on rented company land, the employees and their families were dependent on the continued good will of the company for the literal roof over their heads. The provision of housing to favored employees also fostered jealousies among those not so favored. Although continued employment with C&H was required for occupancy of company housing, Calumet and Hecla, unlike the Quincy and Copper Range companies, did not evict strikers during the 1913-1914 strike.
caption: The company library and bathhouse for its employees.
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