The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1915-06-04
HOW THE HECKLA
MINING COMPANY
GOT THEIR START
BY OSCAR AMERINGER

Dy OOSAlt
The Calumet and Hecla company
was organized under the laws Of the
state of Michigan in 1871. 1t started
with an authorized capital of $780,
900. The par value was $25 per share,
but only $1,000 was paid in on each
share. So the actual investment was
really $1.2O0,OOO From this it may
be seen that the patriotic sons Of the
Boston tea party paid to themselves
$1,3O0,O00 for the trouble of raising
s1,2OO,0O0. Pretty good for starter.
Since 1871 the company has paid
$121, 100000 in dividends. Besides this
it invested net earnings (clear rake
Off amounting to $75,000,000 in other
properties. Most of the money went
to people who couldn't tell the differ
ence between a mining shaft and a
badger hole. For the pay of man
ayers, superintendents, presidents and
directors of the company was paid out
of the running expenses of the COM
pany. The wages of these gentlemen
run anyway between $4,000 to $780,
900 per year.
Now when people take 5000, 100000
out of hole without going into the
hole it stands to reason that the folks
who do the actual work can't expect
too much. If they did they were dis
appointed, for l see by the govern
ment report lying before me that the
copper miners received on an aver
age $2.9S per day while they worked.
When they didn't work the pay stop
ped, but the living expenses went on
just the same So this cuts the living
average pretty close to the hunger
line. The working hours average be-
tween ten and eleven per day. Do
you wonder they started strike?
WHAT SAVING WILL DO FOR A
FELLOW
Now what does it all mean? 1t
means that King George during his
whole life never got as much money
out Of the American colonists as few
Boston buccaneers have got out Of
the Calumet and Hecla miners. 1t
means that if Adam and Eve and Cain
and Abel had started to earn their
living in the sweat of their brows and
had made 500 per day on the job and
put every cent of that daily wage in
their socks, they would now have just
about $2O0,000,000 plunks put away. 1t
means that if every man, woman and
child who lived in Boston in 1775 was
still living, and had saved 500 every
year until this very day., all of them
the stockholders of the Calumet and
Hecla mines squeezed out of couple
thousand miners in forty years. 1t
means that the American people are
just about the biggest aggregation of
pure and unadulterated damphools to
be found in all the world.
Here is a piece of dirt which gla-
cier scooped out of Lake Superior
couple of million years or so ago. In
this dirt is copper ore. The Boston
baked d-beans-sons of the revolution
didn't make the glacier, the hole in
Lake Superior, the dirt, or the ore in
the dirt. From all accounts they swip
ed the land No, not even that, but
lust a piece of paper called title
deed, and on the strength of this sheet
of paper the American people allow
themselves to be stone blind.
Well, the free and independent Am
ericans who dig up the coin to pa,
for the copper don't seem to mind get
ting skinned They are so darnet
busy trying to skin each other tina
they don't notice when someone take'
their hide off.
The Ignorant" foreigners, however
who dig the copper got notion int
their imported noodles that 1t wa
about time to put an end to the ski
ming business. Most of them wer
brought up under the Car of Russi
and got taste of real liberty. 1t
hard for them to get used to the An