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

Company housing along with the company town and the company store are touchstones of control in the history of mining communities. Management policies, be they autocratic, paternalistic, or otherwise, found expression in the places miners slept and ate. Traditionally, housing in mining communities served to attract and retain miners, especially married men with families. In general, the more of the housing stock controlled by the companies, the greater their control over the lives of the workers. The places where miners ate, washed, slept and eliminated were as important to the men and their families as the places they worked. Given its total control of the landscape beyond the scope of the Michigan mining companies, Hoagland argues that paternalism as practised on the Copper Range between 1890 and 1918 was ‘a two-way street’ allowing workers to make rational choices in where they lived, what rights they held to their residences, and what conveniences they might claim as their due.

Mine Towns is a useful and engaging study of company housing available to miners and others employed in the Upper Michigan copper mines. The majority of the existing studies of miners and housing focus on coal mines in which the company town was the norm. In most of the coal camps, there were no independent housing opportunities, public or private. The material culture of a single industry town was limited. One employer and one place to buy the necessities made for a limited existence. The mixed pattern of land ownership in the Michigan copper mines and the number of different companies providing housing for employees allowed a more nuanced approach to housing, furnishings, and the other trappings of life in a hard-rock mining community.

The mining companies never exercised complete control over housing in the Michigan copper fields. Private property and self-governing communities were mingled with mine properties. By 1913, slightly more than 3,500 houses were rented to employees by the 21 active mining companies. The three largest mines – Calumet & Hecla, Quincy, and Copper Range – accounted for about half of the company-owned rental housing stock. The earliest homes built as early as 1848 were rude affairs, constructed out of necessity as the mines opened raw land. By the early 20th century company housing had changed from small, two-room log affairs to larger frame structures with more rooms, frequently on two floors, and some creature comforts. The amenities available to the renters changed over time. Privies and the wash pail were increasingly replaced by running water and indoor toilets. Mine workers and their families in company housing could start obtaining other amenities previously reserved to the middle class. The installation of the three piece bath – toilet, tub, and sink – set the standard, as the full bath usually required the presence of other, necessary pleasantries such as hot water, sewage, and electric power.

Mine workers could occupy company housing by various means, which Hoagland identifies as strategies amenable to negotiation between company and employee. While renting a company house was the primary means of occupying company property, some elected to rent only the land and erect their own houses, paying only a ground rent. Most rented the house and land. Some mining families capitalized on the company’s investment in housing and transformed their homes into boarding houses for other miners, thereby increasing the family income. Amenities such as indoor toilets were not installed uniformly. Rather, individual renters would petition the company for newer facilities. At first, many of the installations were ad hoc; toilets were located in basements accessible by ladders. Separate bathrooms came later. The examples of requests for improvements reveal a marked deference to the company. Even when renters obviously felt the new conveniences were theirs by right, be it a toilet or electrical power, there was an assumed need on the part of the renter to demonstrate the utility of the improvement, the worthiness of the petitioner, and the long-term benefit to the company.

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