Talk:Calumet and Hecla Mining Company

Union representation

I am deleting the following sentence:

"It is important to note that the Western Federation of Miners did not represent the miners of the Michigan Copper Country; they had not yet have official support of the miners."

Legal union representation elections did not come into being until many years later, so at the time there was no way possible for the WFM to have the "official support of the miners." At any rate, divisions among the miners are noted in the following sentence:

"... the workers were said to be sharply divided on the strike question."

Plazak (talk) 23:32, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I think that there is a kernel of truth in that sentence. Most Copper Country miners were not even members of the WFM when the strike was called -- many joined during the strike instead. It may be worthwhile to mention that, even though formal representation was decades in the future. -- dcclark (talk) 03:48, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

According to contemporary accounts, workers were highly divided on the strike, which should be (and is) noted in the article. My point was that it is meaningless to say that WFM lacked the "official support of the miners" when there was no such legal mechanism at the time. If there are any reliable numbers on union membership during the strike, that should certainly have a place in the article.Plazak (talk) 13:41, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

To elaborate on my previous comments, these days it is easy to determine the level of worker support of unions: there is a federally supervised representation election, and so many percent support the union, and so many do not. Back then, however, nothing was so straightforward. Union membership is one gauge, but many may have not joined the union for fear of being blacklisted. If there are any reliable estimates of union membership at the time of the strike, it would certainly be worth mentioning in the article, but I suspect that the WFM kept membership lists secret for fear of blacklisting, and of course both sides would have incentives for skewing the numbers one way or another. Perhaps a more accurate gauge of union support would be the numbers that stayed out after the National Guard moved in to prevent violence against those reporting to work - this would be another valuable addition to the article. But even this is a not perfect measure of union support, as some union supporters may have gone back to work because they saw it as a lost cause once the Guard moved in. To sum up, there are a lot of useful facts that could be added to the article on this topic, but a flat statement that the union lacked "official support of the miners" is misleading, and imprecise to the point of being meaningless.Plazak 15:55, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that the current article with "The workers were said to be sharply divided..." is good. It's interesting to note that, before the strike ended, the mines were working at nearly full capacity again. -- dcclark (talk) 16:41, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Long uncited material is overdue to be sourced or removed

In certain places especially, this article has a serious POV problem. However, Rome wasn't built in a day. For now, I'm making an appeal to anybody interested, if there is material in this article that has been tagged for years for lack of citations and you want to keep it here, please provide citations. This rule is not negotiable--not subject to consensus. It's one of three cornerstones of WP. One especially troublesome statement IMO is,

"Calumet and Hecla was a pioneer in providing employee benefits. The company built and ran a hospital for employees. It established an Employee Aid Fund for disability and death benefits; each employee paid in 50 cents per month, and the company matched the amount. The company maintained employee clubhouses and free libraries, and donated land and funds for churches. However, the all-encompassing company presence also led to charges of “paternalism.”

Even if there are cites for this, and there certainly IS for at least part of it, it needs to be told in an accurate and reasonably complete way. For instance, "the company maintained .... clubhouses ...free libraries...",etc., while technically true, lacks sufficient detail to inform how things actually operated with C&H. Paavo273 (talk) 05:13, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Deleted info until it can be stated correctly with historical accuracy and with sources cited

"Calumet and Hecla was a pioneer in providing employee benefits. The company built and ran a hospital for employees. It established an Employee Aid Fund for disability and death benefits; each employee paid in 50 cents per month, and the company matched the amount. The company maintained employee clubhouses and free libraries, and donated land and funds for churches. However, the all-encompassing company presence also led to charges of “paternalism.” "

Paavo273 (talk) 05:19, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, I know a place I could drag up a cite for the paternalism, but I don't immediately know about a source for the rest. Whole article might be a good project at some point ;). Chris857 (talk) 14:35, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, there's is "a ton" of source materials out there, ranging from white to red and all shades in between. What IMO is far more offensive than that the blurb I deleted reads like an advertisement for the long-defunct mining co. is that it totally IGNORES the ugly brutal conditions that were the reality not just for C&H workers but unskilled labor throughout industrialization. I hope all would agree the purpose of an encyclopaedia is to inform, not perpetuate ignorance, esp. ab. s.thing so integral to the subject.

BTW there was an IMO informative film shown on PBS on Tuesday (called The Red Metal...) about the WFM strike, C&H, the I.H. Massacre, etc., featuring f/ex two Mich. Tech. profs. & other scholars. The citable info from that film alone could transform this and related articles. Paavo273 (talk) 06:53, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Saw the film too. At my library (since I live in the area), I have access to books by Lehto, Lankton, and Hoagland (featured in the documentary), as well as the university archives. However, I want to wrap up my overhaul of the Italian Hall disaster article first. Then, other projects to work on would probably be C&H, Quincy, and the strike. Chris857 (talk) 14:54, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Great! 'Look forward to reading what you come up with. 'Don't know when I'd get to it. Paavo273 (talk) 21:06, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Rel latest addition to the labor crisis section, several of the problems identified under this talk heading remain. Firstly, page 201 of Lankton simply does not say the things attributed to him on that page. Next, WP:NPOV requires that opinions not be stated as facts. And then there's the issue of whether CONTEMPORARY mining journal sources and a record from 1909 are even worthy sources for a 21st Century encyclopaedia entry about labor issues of that era. In the latest contribution, they are stated as FACT. If the fellow contributor would kindly qualify these early 20th Century mining industry sources as the OPINIONS that they obviously are, they can be properly rebutted, challenged, etc. Paavo273 (talk) 07:46, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

You are correct that p.201 of Lankton did not contain the cited quote; it is, instead, on Lankton's page 144. I'll restore it later with a better source. As to using Horace Steven's 1909 Copper Handbook as a source for company benefits, it is cited for facts, not opinions; certainly the existence or non-existence of such things as employee hospitals and libraries are questions of fact: either the hospitals were there or they were not. I have yet to see your challenges and rebuttals of the Copper Handbook's description of company benefits. But most importantly, your suggestion to eliminate all contemporary sources from this section is nothing short of bizarre. Certainly, Professor Lankton, as befits a professional historian, cites many contemporary sources as to labor conditions, including contemporary opinions. Wikipedia should do likewise. Plazak (talk) 15:50, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Finally got around to re-adding some stuff. Your turn. Plazak (talk) 03:39, 31 March 2014 (UTC)