Interviews done in the 1970's with people who were there during the strikes against the Mining Companies in Copper Country.

Al Harvey. 18 June 1973.
http://www.kentsgenealogy.com/finnamericanoralhistories/Harvey1.mp3
Italian Hall Disaster eye-witness account.


William Parsons Todd. 19 March 1975.
http://www.kentsgenealogy.com/finnamericanoralhistories/WmTodd1.mp3
Air blasts. Stope height. “I don’t know if we ever lost a man from air blasts, directly.” Underground deaths. Miner dying from chasing pigeon. “[Deaths] underground very seldom really anything but men’s own fault.”

http://www.kentsgenealogy.com/finnamericanoralhistories/WmTodd2.mp3
“Q: How strong was the union at its peak?” One-man machine. The strikers were after “the easy life…” Meeting with Union leaders. Wages. Corporate paternalism (doctors, drug stores). Working conditions.

http://www.kentsgenealogy.com/finnamericanoralhistories/WmTodd3.mp3
Mining Companies stick together during strike. Condition of unemployed men. Correspondence with Michigan governor in 1913. National Guard and militia of Michigan. World War II Unions. State of workers after strike. Mobs at shaft houses, “most men had to have their wives take them to work.”

http://www.kentsgenealogy.com/finnamericanoralhistories/WmTodd4.mp3
Communism. The strike and World War I. Contracting agencies to hire strikebreakers (scabs). The problem of transporting and keeping strikebreakers.


Robert Olander. 30 June 1975. Interviewed by Peter Oikarinen

http://www.kentsgenealogy.com/finnamericanoralhistories/Olander1.mp3
Lived behind Italian Hall and brought a ladder to the Hall during the night of the 1913 disaster. Waddell Detective agency.


Henry Luokkanen. 6 August 1973. Interviewed by Wally Anderson in Eagle River

http://www.kentsgenealogy.com/finnamericanoralhistories/Luokkanen1.mp3
Did not attend the Italian Hall Christmas Party during the disaster. 1913 Copper Strike. National Guard, militia, and Waddell men. Violence directed at strikebreakers. Home remedies. Cupping.


Arthur Oinas. 3 August 1972. Interviewed by Arthur Puotinen

http://www.kentsgenealogy.com/finnamericanoralhistories/Oinas1.mp3
Mining company political pressure. The difficulty of voting if one was a miner. Serving as Justice of the Peace for Stanton Township. Farming in 1910’s through the Great Depression. Prices of farm products during the Depression.


Frank Walli. 26 June 1977 Union Organizer. Interviewed by Deborah Barnhart in Mesaba Park, Minn.

http://www.kentsgenealogy.com/finnamericanoralhistories/Walli1.mp3
Union Organizing. National Miner’s Union. Wagner Act. International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers. Steelworkers' Union. Työmies newspaper. Recruitment of Finns and Italians. Bruno Hall. Treatment of strikers. Unemployment Committees.


Alex Nelson. 28 July 1972.

http://www.kentsgenealogy.com/finnamericanoralhistories/Nelson1.mp3
The mine's immigration services. Norwegian language in Sunday School. 1913 Strike and the strikers' parades. Alexander Agassiz (President of Calumet-Hecla Mining Company) and corporate paternalism. Calumet-Hecla Library and the Librarian, Mrs. Grearson.