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

3. “Home for the Working Man”: Strategies for Homeownership

“Home for the Working Man” Strategies for Homeownership After the strike, Joseph and Antonia Putrich stayed in their house in Seeberville, and Joseph went back to work for the company. In 1917, though, they moved to St. David, Illinois, where Joseph’s brother John and father, Matthew, had immigrated to work in the coal mines. In St. David, Joseph and Antonia paid $1,025 in cash for three lots and a house (Figure 3.1). The one-and-a-half-story frame house, on a stone foundation, had four bedrooms. Joseph and Antonia lived there with their seven children. They cultivated extensive gardens on their large property, with vegetables, fruit trees, berry patches, a chicken coop, and a smoke house. For a few years, they took in a couple of boarders, but most importantly, they owned their house free and clear. Joseph and Antonia lived there for the rest of their lives, dying in 1949 and 1950.1 Homeownership—the very opposite of company housing—was perceived as an American ideal. As historian Olivier Zunz has shown, it was more often an immigrant ideal, with homeownership rates for that group outpacing native-born Americans during this period. Reformers promoted homeownership as a way to make good citizens. Company management promoted homeownership as a way to make loyal workers, through their implicit need for a steady income. Paradoxically , activist workers saw it as a way to gain independence from the company, which the promanagement newspapers noted in the waning days of the 1913–14 strike: “Not a few of the men that remained with the Federation since the strike was called last July own their homes, so the hardships inflicted on this element have not been so severe as others.”2 In a paternalistic setting, though, where mining companies owned much of the land, homeownership became one more negotiation with the company. The management–worker relationship, so obvious in company housing, where the rent is deducted from the paycheck, was also a factor when the worker bought land or a house from the company. 90 3 The option that afforded the greatest independence from the company was to own land outside the company’s influence. Many immigrants, especially the Finns, used mining as a stopgap job on the way to acquiring farms, where they could be self-sufficient. In 1926 one geographer estimated that more than 80 percent of the farmers in Houghton County began as miners. With the wages earned in mining they could buy some unimproved land. Wives and children would begin clearing the land and cultivating a few crops. The husband would continue to work at the mine, then shift to seasonal employment as the farm became more established, and finally become a full-time farmer.3 Most mine employees, though, lived closer to the mines and negotiated their housing arrangements in a variety of ways. Early in the development of the 91 “Home for the Working Man” Figure 3.1 Putrich house in St. David, Illinois, photographed 2006. After leaving their company house in Seeberville in 1917, the Putriches bought their own house in St. David, where Joseph worked as a coal miner. Copper Country, the companies platted land for sale to private individuals. The villages that resulted provided a full range of commercial activities as well as accommodations for workers. The companies retained some control over the situation by charging low rents for their own housing on their own land, thus trying to keep the private rental market in check. At times the companies operated their own stores in an effort to keep costs of food and merchandise down. As sites for privately owned workers’ homes, though, these villages were not fully satisfactory because the demand was so great. As early as 1890 the Calumet newspaper declared that “houses in the village are at a premium.” In 1900 the newspaper deplored the housing situation for workers: “Rents are far too high within a reasonable walking radius of either of the big mines and only the successful business or professional man can afford to pay the high rentals demanded for flats and dwellings in either Laurium or Red Jacket.” In 1910 in the village of Red Jacket, 41 percent of households were owner occupied, higher than the nationwide nonfarm rate of 38.4 percent. But none of them were owned by miners or underground workers, and only twelve (3 percent) by men employed at the...