The Women of the Copper Country, page 1
Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
* * *
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
For Agnes Shanklin and Richard Cima, of blessed memory, and for all the union thugs who teach high school English
The laborer is worthy of his wage.
—MATTHEW 10:10
Prologue
Turn tears to fires
—Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
The dream is always simple. The memory never is.
It’s an echo from 1903 when she was almost sixteen. A rare family outing down to the county fair in Houghton, Michigan.
Her father probably expected the excursion to cheer her up. There were horse races and ox pulls, all day long. A merry-go-round and a Ferris wheel. Games of chance. Vendors calling their wares. Quilts, pies, and jams vying for blue ribbons. The promise of fireworks after dark. But there were crowds as well. Strangers. People who’d never before seen the girl called Big Annie up in Calumet.
At twenty-five, Anna Klobuchar Clements would be known around the world as America’s Joan of Arc. Ten thousand miners would march behind her in a wildcat strike against the richest, most powerful copper company on earth. But that day at the Houghton fair? She was just a big, gawky girl—tired to tears of being pointed at, remarked upon, ridiculed.
Being tall didn’t bother her when she was five. She liked being the biggest in her kindergarten class. She liked school. She didn’t mind at all when the teachers started calling her Big Annie. It never occurred to anyone that she might be embarrassed by the nickname. It was simply meant to distinguish her from another—much smaller—Annie in her class.
The tall American daughter of tall Slovenian parents, Anna Klobuchar had topped six feet at fifteen. In a mining town increasingly populated by underfed, undersized immigrants fresh off the boat, she could never escape the goggle-eyed notice. The endless, stupid teasing of boys her own age was the worst. As she got taller, they began to feel diminished by her. Intimidated. Irritated by the existence of a girl who was bigger and stronger than they were.
Her younger sister, Maritza, was already engaged. She was barely fourteen but she would marry in a month, long before she reached her full height and got bigger than her husband. And Annie was supposed to be happy about it.
So. That awful county fair in 1903. Which was supposed to cheer her up.
Everybody stared. Grown men came to a stop and demanded, “Jeez, how tall are you anyways?” as though her height were both a marvel and an affront. Women and girls shook their heads and gave silent thanks that they themselves were dainty little things, or at least appeared so when compared to that poor girl. Boys laughed and pointed, calling out familiar taunts, along with new ones that were more hateful. Freak. Giant. Monster. Holy cripes! Look at the size of her! Oughta be in the sideshow with that bearded lady . . .
She stood it as long as she could. Finally, a couple of hours before dusk, she fled toward the cornfields and cherry orchards and pastures beyond the fair. Her sight was still blurred with tears when she heard her father’s voice, just behind her. “Anna, don’t—”
She shattered into frustrated, embarrassed, angry weeping. When the storm passed, she sucked in snot and wiped her nose on the back of her hand and waved toward the crowds. “I’m taller than every boy in Calumet. I’m probably taller than every boy in Michigan! Nobody will ever marry me. Why do I have to be so tall?”
“Your mother’s tall,” he said. “She got me.”
Which didn’t help.
It was a relief to the pair of them when they were startled by the hushed roar of a gas-fired burner behind them, just over a little hill. They turned, and looked up, and saw a huge balloon rising. Red, white, and blue silk, billowing.
“Let’s go for a ride,” he suggested. “Just us. Me and you.”
Years later, she would ask herself, Where did he find the wisdom? But that day in Houghton, she wondered where he’d found the cash. Tickets were a day’s pay—each—for a copper miner. She tried to talk him out of it. They both knew her mother would be infuriated by an indulgence like that; nevertheless her father told the balloonist, “Two,” and handed him the money. Together they clambered up and over the edge of a big wicker basket and waited for the other passengers to do the same. The balloon would be tethered— “So you won’t drift out over the lake!” When the basket was full of paying customers, the pilot released the moorings. There were little shrieks of excitement and fear when the basket rocked off the ground. Everyone ducked and laughed nervously when the pilot opened the burner for a fresh blast of heat. And then . . . no sound except for their own breathing as the huge balloon lifted them higher and higher, its colors aglow in the slanting sunlight.
Below them, the merry-go-round and Ferris wheel seemed like wind-up toys made of tin, and people on the fairgrounds looked like tiny flowers on a vast colorful tablecloth laid out for a picnic.
Summer evenings in Upper Michigan are often brilliant with orange and purple and golden clouds. That spectacle can become ordinary to those who live in the far north. What surprised Big Annie was how pretty the land itself was when you could see it from above: greened by the scrubby brush that grew around countless tree stumps, laced by white waves edging the stony shoreline of the Keweenaw Peninsula, surrounded by Lake Superior’s blue depths.
And that is what her dream always feels like. Like floating into the silence, leaving mockery and fear and anger far below. Like soaring upward without the slightest effort and seeing an unexpectedly beautiful world stretched out in all directions . . .
In the next decade, she would more commonly awaken with her heart pounding from a different kind of dream, one in which she runs toward some urgent task, increasingly frantic because she is late and there is always an obstacle of some kind. A train blocking the road. A locked door. Knots of men standing in her way. But now and then, that dream of silent floating would come to her, like a father’s blessing. And she would remember, when she woke, what her father told her that day as they floated far above the Copper Country.
“Stand up straight, Anna. Hold your head high,” he told her. “That’s your strength. You are tall for a reason. When your head is high, you can see farther than anyone else.”
June 1913
1
* * *
Two households, both alike in dignity
—Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
The birds disappeared when the forests went underground. There is no dawn chorus, no melodious robin-song, no cheerful cardinal-chant to greet the brightening sky. It is the first pink flush of light that rouses James MacNaughton.
The windows are open, covered only by fly screens and gauzy curtains. Rolling onto his back, stretching, he fills his chest with cool, fresh air. When he breathes out, he is awake.
Sunrise. Early summer.
Best time of the day, he thinks. Best time of the year.
His family is at their summer house on the Lake Superior shore, but James MacNaughton is a man of iron habits; even alone, he eases out of bed as though his wife were sleeping next to him and might be disturbed if he is not careful. Drawing on a dressing gown, he slides bare feet into carpet slippers and pads noiselessly down the hallway, stopping for a moment at each child’s door. The girls’ beds are made and their rooms have been neatened; still, he pictures the pillowed faces and tousled hair of his two absent daughters and smiles inwardly as he continues toward the bathing room.
His morning rituals never vary. Nearing fifty, he is determined to remain fit and limber. Ten minutes of vigorous calisthenics start every working day. To accommodate this healthful habit, two small rooms formerly used by servants have been combined to create a large bathing and exercise space. The servants have been moved to a new wing at the back of the property; this change has achieved a more decorous division between family and staff, well worth the disruption endured as the house was remodeled.
Tiled in gleaming white ceramic, the bathing room is equipped with porcelain fixtures and a modern chrome-piped shower stall that was his own particular requirement. There is a clock on the wall but, like the bathtub, only the ladies of the house use it. Years of time-and-motion studies have given James MacNaughton an uncanny sense of the exact duration of any interval between a single second and a full hour.
When he reaches the ninth minute of exercise, he pauses to turn the sink tap, bringing heated water up from the boiler in the cellar. Sixty seconds later, he begins his shave, having determined that buying blades for a Gillette safety razor is more efficient and economical than wasting time and money at a public barbershop. He showers next, methodically soaping his body: center, left, right. A rotation of 360 degrees to rinse away the suds, front and back, and then he allows himself exactly one additional minute to appreciate the sensation of hot water sluicing over his shoulders.
James MacNaughton is a great believer in showers. It pleases him to have provided this sensible element of twentieth-century sanitation to those employed by the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company. Ladies like his wife and daughters might well indulge in a long soak; for hardwor king men, showering away daily sweat and grime is more hygienic than sitting in murky water once a week. Accordingly, the company bathhouse has been fitted with large communal shower rooms. At the end of their shift, workers exit the mine shafts, strip off their heavy canvas work clothes, scrub with company soap, and rinse off under hot company water. Afterward, they will pass through to the lockers where their street clothes are stored, returning to company homes refreshed.
Twenty-two minutes after leaving his bed, James MacNaughton turns off the water and steps onto the bath mat. In the kitchen one flight below, coffee is percolating, its aroma rising to meet him as he rubs his skin briskly with a Turkish towel. In the adjacent dressing room, his butler is laying out clothing in the order in which it will be donned. Undergarments. Stockings and garters. A white shirt, starched and pressed. A fresh collar. Trousers, vest, suit coat, each well brushed. Shoes, buffed to a high gloss.
In the cellar, his maid has been ironing creases from newspapers: the Boston Globe, the Detroit News, and the Chicago Tribune, evening editions of which are delivered overnight on the Calumet & Hecla express train, arriving at the MacNaughton home by six A.M., along with the morning edition of the Daily Mining Gazette and the Calumet News. Having stacked all five papers neatly, the maid will lay them on the dining table to the left of Mr. MacNaughton’s place setting. His spectacles, gently polished, will be positioned above the Globe’s headline. This done, the maid will ascend the service stairway at the back of the house and make Mr. MacNaughton’s bed, finishing that task just in time to clean the bathroom only moments after her employer has moved to the dressing room, thus forestalling the development of mold or mildew.
Meanwhile, the cook will have prepared Mr. MacNaughton’s breakfast. She shares her employer’s Scottish heritage as well as his conviction that hot oatmeal is the only proper start to the day, even in midsummer. And none of your fripperies like molasses or raisins—just good, plain, hot oatmeal with a little salt and some fresh, cool cream. Unlike the rest of the staff, which is in constant flux, the cook has been with Mr. MacNaughton since 1901, when he became the general manager of Calumet & Hecla and took up residence in this home. The cook was initially puzzled and not a little resentful when her employer spent two full days analyzing her work habits. She herself has always been a methodical person and took pride in explaining why she did things in a particular manner, but she was intrigued to learn that Mr. MacNaughton was a pioneer in the field of scientific industrial management who intended to run his household just as he did the world’s largest copper mining company.
He adheres to a simple principle: minimize wasted time and motion to maximize efficiency and productivity. “Everything is properly stored at the point of first use,” he told her. Glassware, cutlery, and dishes were relocated to new corner cabinets, custom-built for their purpose, each forty-eight inches from the dining room table. With service items out of the kitchen, space was freed for a set of logical work stations: pantry, icebox, preparation counter, stove, sink. Every pot and pan, each mixing bowl, and all the cook’s tools are stored such that she need not take more than one step from station to station. She never wastes a moment looking for a rarely used item. Everything is where it ought to be.
It was the cook’s own idea to time the preparation of Mr. MacNaughton’s oatmeal so that it has reached the correct temperature just as he arrives at the table. He was pleased by her enthusiasm for his methods and raised her salary by a nickel a day when he noticed. It was a princely gesture and she was grateful. Twelve years ago.
* * *
Thirty-seven minutes after rising, James MacNaughton is dressed and on his way down to breakfast, but it is his custom to tarry on the broad staircase landing before descending to the dining room. Standing before the large window, he clasps his hands behind his back like a soldier at ease: shoulders straight and feet planted. He does not own the immense domain before him, but as general manager of Calumet & Hecla, he presides over it with viceregal authority.
The Copper Country, it’s called—written and spoken with capital letters. So remote, it is almost a nation unto itself. On maps, it is labeled the Keweenaw Peninsula, a blade of land thrusting north by northeast into the frigid waters of Lake Superior. Running lengthwise down the peninsula’s center, like the blood gutter of a bayonet, are the richest copper deposits on earth. Ancient Indians collected chunks of the red metal from streams and shallow pits: float copper so pure it hardly needed refining at all, so beautiful and malleable that it could be made into jewelry and vessels that were traded as far south as Arkansas.
The savages and the surface veins are gone now. It took Anglo-Saxons to make something useful out of the godforsaken wilderness, he thinks with pride.
With vigor and vision, men of his own kind cleared vast forests, turning pine into cordwood and maple into timber for buildings and tunnel supports. With shovels and explosives, they sank shafts and blasted out miles-long corridors and cross-cutting drifts. With hand tools and muscle, they carved out cavernous, ore-rich stopes deep within the earth. Breaking up the rock with sledgehammers, they hauled out conglomerate to be milled and smelted on the surface, where they built railways and shipyards to carry ton after ton after ton of copper ingots to factories around the globe. Copper for cooking pots and coins and buttons and candlesticks. Copper to roof buildings and sheathe the hulls of ships. Copper to alloy with tin for bronze hardware and great bronze statues; copper to alloy with zinc for brass band instruments, machinery bearings, ship fittings, and munitions. Copper for telegraph and telephone and electrical wiring, and for indoor plumbing. Copper to transform America from an agrarian backwater to a nation that will soon be more wealthy and powerful than any European empire.
Accomplishing all this in little more than half a century has been neither cheap nor easy. Mining is a lottery. How many mining companies have formed and failed since the Civil War? A hundred? Maybe more. The Keweenaw Peninsula is riddled with exploratory trenches and abandoned shafts, the landscape littered with collapsing buildings and rusting iron machinery. Today, only a dozen deep-shaft mines run in the black often enough to avoid bankruptcy; of that dozen, only three are consistently profitable. The Quincy is called Old Reliable for a reason: it has paid out every year since 1862. The Copper Range is new and benefits from modern methods and equipment. But Calumet & Hecla outshines them all, for C&H does not merely own the Keweenaw’s most productive deposits. It has the immense capital, the long experience, and the extraordinary leadership required to compete with the open-pit mines of Montana and Arizona.
What lies above the ground is equally impressive. Calumet is not a mining camp or a village or even a city, but a metropolis of forty thousand residents—an asset owned in its entirety by the company. Few things are so gratifying to James MacNaughton as showing Calumet to investors when they arrive in this remote outpost for the first time. “Paris on Mars,” he murmurs when jaws drop and eyes widen at the sight of the grand sandstone edifices that house professional offices, banks, elegant stores, restaurants, and hotels. A fine library provides uplifting reading material in nearly all of the thirty-some languages spoken by the miners and their families. The Civic Theater is Calumet’s crown jewel. Widely acknowledged to be the most beautiful lyceum west of New York City, it is more than worthy of the luminaries who’ve performed there: Sarah Bernhardt and Lillian Russell, Enrico Caruso and John Philip Sousa, Douglas Fairbanks and Lon Chaney.
The thriving business district is a neat grid of paved streets lined by telephone poles, illuminated by electric lamps, and served by streetcars that run around the clock. Farther out, there are orderly ranks and files of sturdy clapboard houses, built strongly enough to withstand a century or more of winter storms. These are rented to married miners for just two days’ pay per month. C&H sells the families coal, firewood, and gas at wholesale prices. Clean, clear Lake Superior water is piped into the homes for a small fee. Thus, Calumet & Hecla rewards marriage, for married men are steadier, more dependable. And James MacNaughton always draws visitors’ attention to the industriousness of his employees’ wives, as well. Nearly every small fenced yard boasts a vegetable garden and a fruit tree or two. Some have little smokehouses and coops for chickens and rabbits. The company charges no fee when employees’ families clear fields in the outlying scrub to set up pigsties and put in stands of corn.
