An Immigrant's Arrival to Copper Country, Michigan: The 1912 Reminiscences of Petar Stanković

The Michigan Historical Review 40:2 (Fall 2014): 101-113©2014 Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved An Immigrant’s Arrival to Copper Country, Michigan: The 1912 Reminiscences of Petar Stanković Translated and Edited by Stan Granic An estimated thirty-three million European immigrants chose the United States as their destination between 1821 and 1924. Beginning in the mid-1880s, the number of immigrants arriving from Southern and Eastern Europe began to overtake those arriving from Northern and Western Europe. In 1912, sixteen-year-old Petar Stanković, from Brinje, Lika region, Croatia, was one of them. Borrowing money for the passage to the promised land, he began his new life in America by working in a copper mine near Calumet, Michigan. In the reminiscences that follow, Stanković describes his optimism for a better future in America as he made his steamship passage across the Atlantic with his fellow countrymen. This optimism would be somewhat dampened both by his experiences in third class and by the treatment of immigrants at Ellis Island. Although he did not have immediate family members waiting for him, news had filtered back to his native village about the Croatian community in Copper Country as this chain migration spread throughout the villages of the Old Country. The success of the copper mining industry in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula during the late 1800s and early 1900s attracted unskilled Croatian, Finnish, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Slovenian, and other immigrant laborers looking for a better life. Many of these, like Stanković, frequently took work in the mines as trammers. Often regarded as little more than human beasts of burden, the trammers’ job was to muck out the blasted rock, place it into their tram cars, and then push their loads to the shaft. By working as a trammer, Stanković quickly came to understand that unskilled immigrants had the low-end jobs. But, as he had borrowed the money for his overseas voyage, he had no choice other than to stay and stick it out. Like most South Slavic peasant immigrants, he left behind the small family plots in his village only to be thrown into a completely unfamiliar setting. Though language barriers in the mines made the transition much more difficult, the presence of other experienced Slavic miners helped him adjust to his new work and surroundings. These immigrant miners, usually single, often lived in boarding houses operated by their fellow countrymen and their spouses. Here, with other immigrant laborers of the 102 The Michigan Historical Review same ethnic origin, they found a social support structure that helped them adapt to their new and unfamiliar surroundings. Stanković started writing his reports while he was still in Calumet and they appeared in the lively Croatian press active in the United States at the time. In the aftermath of the violent and bitter strike of 1913–1914, many miners left Copper Country; Stanković was one of them. He departed Calumet for Tonopah, Nevada, and found work as a gold miner before traveling on to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Arizona. He then settled in Chicago in 1917. Following his stay in Chicago, and then Pittsburgh, he returned to Croatia in 1925 and worked as a journalist. There he began laying plans to immigrate to Canada and launch a newspaper that would serve Croatian migrant laborers, as many were increasingly choosing Canada as their preferred destination after the United States tightened its immigration quota in 1921 and again in 1924. In 1928 he led a group of Croatian and South Slavic laborers to Canada under the immigration and colonization scheme of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The following year he launched the weekly “Kanadski glas” (“Canadian Voice”) in Winnipeg, Manitoba, renaming it “Hrvatski glas” (“Croatian Voice”) in 1933.1 Departure for America It was during the stormy period of the Balkan War [of 1912] and accompanying assassinations that I succeeded in crossing the border of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire unnoticed.2 I laughed with delight 1 These reminiscences first appeared in the 1927 Christmas issue of Narodni val (Zagreb) and were reprinted under the title “Pod zemljom: do novog svijeta – rad u rudnicima – prvi Božić u Ameriku” (“Underground: To the...