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44-787: The Reclaiming Sand Dredge was constructed for the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company in 1914 by the Bucyrus Company of South Milwaukee, Wisconsin , and designated the Calumet and Hecla Dredge Number One. The dredge was used to reclaim previously-milled sand deposited in the lake after it had gone through the stamp mill . The dredged sand contained copper that earlier stamping technology had not been able to separate out. Improvements in stamping efficiency and cost increases in traditional shaft mining made these sand tailings economically feasible to reclaim and re-stamp. Calumet and Hecla used

88-466: A 141-foot (43 m) suction pipe that could work in 115 feet (35 m) of water. The dredge is currently sunk into shallow water, and canted over to one side. Most of the superstructure and the large boom are visible above the waterline. Calumet and Hecla Mining Company The Calumet and Hecla Mining Company was a major copper -mining company based within Michigan's Copper Country . In

132-543: A household in the village was $ 24,234, and the median income for a family was $ 30,000. Males had a median income of $ 29,327 versus $ 18,654 for females. The per capita income for the village was $ 14,189. About 16.6% of families and 17.8% of the population were below the poverty line , including 20.1% of those under age 18 and 20.1% of those age 65 or over. This climatic region is typified by large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and cold (sometimes severely cold) winters. According to

176-463: A large ore treatment facility at Lake Linden, Michigan . The first smelter was built at Hancock, Michigan , but in 1887, the company moved its smelting to the new smelter at Lake Linden. The company later built a second smelter in Buffalo, New York , which took advantage of the cheap electricity generated from Niagara Falls to electrolytically refine copper. The Buffalo Smelting Works was listed on

220-486: A much smaller proportion of them joined the federation." Fewer Calumet and Hecla employees joined the strike than employees of other mines, and more employees of Calumet and Hecla returned to work than employees of other companies after the Michigan National Guard arrived to protect strikebreakers. The mines reopened under National Guard protection, and many went back to work. The companies instituted

264-834: A song about the Italian Hall disaster. His son Arlo Guthrie also recorded the song. Lake Linden, Michigan Lake Linden is a village in Houghton County in the U.S. state of Michigan . The population was 1,020 at the 2020 census . The village is mostly within Schoolcraft Township , though a tiny portion lies in Torch Lake Township . Lake Linden was named for an early settler. A fire destroyed most of Lake Linden in 1887. [1] Lake Linden hosted minor league baseball from 1904 to 1906. The Lake Linden Lakers played as members of

308-630: The Class C level Northern-Copper Country League and Copper Country Soo League . Lake Linden was the site of a large plant to process the copper ore of the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company . Calumet and Hecla shut down the operation in 1968. A portion of the village was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Lake Linden Historic District in 2009. According to the United States Census Bureau ,

352-541: The Copper Country Strike of 1913–1914 , although the workers were said to be sharply divided on the strike question. The union demanded an 8-hour day, a minimum wage of $ 3 per day, an end to use of the one-man pneumatic drill , and that the companies recognize it as the employees' representative. Although Calumet and Hecla paid high wages by Copper Country standards, at the time of the 1913 strike, their wages were lower, and labor hours longer, than those at

396-542: The Great Depression , copper prices dropped, and as a result most copper mines in the Copper Country closed, including Calumet and Hecla. Many mines reopened during World War II , when wartime demand raised the price of copper. After the war copper prices plummeted, and most copper mines closed almost immediately. However, Calumet and Hecla was able to stay afloat due to their practice of acquiring many of

440-434: The National Register of Historic Places in 2011. Electrolytic refining had the advantage that it separated out the silver from the copper. By 1897, the Calumet and Hecla's Red Jacket shaft had reached a vertical depth of 4,900 ft (1,500 m), making it the deepest mine in the world. The neighboring Tamarack mine became the world's deepest mine for some years; it was bought by Calumet and Hecla, and became part of

484-499: The census of 2000, there were 1,081 people, 485 households, and 307 families living in the village. The population density was 1,646.8 inhabitants per square mile (635.8/km ). There were 569 housing units at an average density of 866.8 per square mile (334.7/km ). The racial makeup of the village was 97.41% White , 0.09% African American , 0.65% Native American , 0.46% Asian , 0.19% from other races , and 1.20% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.93% of

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528-606: The 19th century, the company paid out more than $ 72 million in shareholder dividends, more than any other mining company in the United States during that period. In 1864, Edwin J. Hulbert discovered a copper-bearing section of what became known as the Calumet Conglomerate dating back to the Precambrian age. The find was in Houghton County, Michigan , between the rich Cliff mine to the northeast, and

572-562: The 8-hour day, but refused to set a $ 3 per day minimum wage, refused to abandon the one-man drill, and also refused to employ Western Federation of Miners members. On Christmas Eve 1913, the Western Federation of Miners organized a party for strikers and their families at the Italian Benevolent Society hall in Calumet. The hall was packed with between 400 and 500 people when someone shouted "fire". There

616-693: The Calumet Company have no reason to fear strikes among any portion of their force." In 1898, the Michigan Commissioner of Mineral Statistics enthused that "no mining company in the world treats its employees better than Calumet and Hecla." In 1916, the Arizona Bureau of Mines wrote of Calumet and Hecla, which had no operations in Arizona: "Probably no mining company in the country has paid more attention to welfare work than has

660-473: The Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, and its subsidiaries, in the upper Michigan peninsula." The Arizona Bureau of Mines followed with more than a page detailing the employee benefits at Calumet and Hecla in Michigan. However, Calumet and Hecla's labor policy, like that the other mining companies in the Copper Country, was rife with paternalism . The charge of paternalism was not disputed by those in favor of

704-415: The Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, with Quincy Adams Shaw as its first president. In August of that year, Shaw retired to the board of directors and Agassiz became president, a position he held until his death. The town of Red Jacket (now named Calumet ) formed next to the mine. Calumet and Hecla built itself into a copper mining colossus. From 1868 through 1886, it was the leading copper producer in

748-529: The Calumet and Hecla mine, opened in 1949. Calumet and Hecla sold the mine to the Eagle-Picher Company in 1954. The company also diversified into copper-based products, including a copper tube manufacturing business and fertilizers. Calumet and Hecla opened the Kingston mine in 1965, the first new native copper mine opened in more than 30 years. By 1967, the company was operating six mines in

792-650: The Calumet and Hecla system. The Tamarack/Calumet and Hecla remained the world's deepest mine until about 1915, when its vertical depth of 5,500 ft (1,700 m) was exceeded by the 5,824 ft (1,775 m) depth of the Morro Velho gold mine in Brazil. Annual copper production from the mines peaked in 1906 at 100 million pounds (45,000 metric tons), then declined to 67 million pounds (30,000 metric tons) by 1912 in response to lower prices. Output dropped to 46 million pounds (21,000 metric tons) of refined copper in

836-534: The Calumet conglomerate in April 1921. Copper production rebounded in 1922, and rose steadily through the 1920s. Calumet and Hecla grew in the 1920s by buying and merging with neighboring copper mines. In 1923, Calumet and Hecla merged with the Ahmeek, Allouez, and Centennial mining companies. The combined entity was renamed the Calumet and Hecla Consolidated Copper Company . The merged company essentially controlled all

880-478: The United States, and from 1869 through 1876, the leading copper producer in the world. From 1871 through 1880, Calumet and Hecla turned out more than half the copper produced in the United States. In each year save one between 1870 and 1901, Calumet and Hecla made the majority of the copper produced in the Michigan copper district. By 1901, the underground mining complex had 16 shafts. The company operated

924-447: The community. When the company supplied consumer goods to employees, it used its buying power to provide coal, firewood, and electricity for its tenants at wholesale prices. Its treatment of employees brought praise from outside the Copper Country. A writer for Harper's Magazine visited a number of iron and copper mines of upper Michigan in 1882, but singled out Calumet and Hecla's labor policies for particular praise. He wrote: "But

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968-411: The company could force them to vacate their houses on short notice. Whether in rented company housing, or their own houses located on rented company land, the employees and their families were dependent on the continued good will of the company for housing. The provision of housing to favored employees also fostered jealousies among those not so favored. Although continued employment with Calumet and Hecla

1012-419: The company, who even embraced the term, and saw it as the policy of enlightened capitalism. Company paternalism was most evident in company housing. Calumet and Hecla built hundreds of company houses, and provided them to married employees at low rents that left no room for any company profit. The company also allowed employees to build about 1,000 houses on rented Calumet and Hecla land, but under terms by which

1056-627: The copper mines of Portage Lake to the southwest, but a long way from either. Hulbert formed the Hulbert Mining Company in 1864 to acquire the land rights, before creating the Calumet Company in 1865, with investment capital from Boston. The company spun off the Hecla Company the following year, and assigned shares in the new company to Calumet shareholders. Hulbert was a major shareholder in both companies, and

1100-473: The district’s leading company, allegedly setting the pattern of improved living conditions followed by other mining operations. In 1868, Calumet and Hecla built the first industrial hospital in the United States. In 1877, Calumet and Hecla started an employee aid fund for ill and injured employees. Participation was voluntary. Each participating worker contributed 50 cents per week, which the company matched. Some writers credit Calumet and Hecla with being one of

1144-490: The dredge at their Lake Linden Reclamation Plant until 1951. In 1951, the Quincy Mine purchased the dredge and designated it as Quincy Dredge Number Two, using it at their own reclamation facility, which had been in operation since 1943. The mine's Quincy Dredge Number One sank in 1956, and Dredge Number Two was used until 1967, when it too sank during a winter lay-up. By this time, copper prices had fallen low enough that

1188-515: The first, or even the first, American company to set up an employee health benefits fund. Other Michigan copper companies ran employee aid funds, but Calumet and Hecla was the only Michigan copper mining company to match contributions. By 1908, the company provided a staff of physicians and a hospital for employees and their families, worker clubhouses with bowling alleys; and employee libraries with reading material in 20 languages. The company also contributed to construction of schools and churches in

1232-582: The formerly great mines in the Keweenaw during and before the Depression, and as a result outlasted nearly all other mining companies. The company branched into other minerals after World War II. Calumet and Hecla geologists drilled into a major lead-zinc ore body in Lafayette County in southern Wisconsin in 1947. Ore minerals were galena, sphalerite, calcite, and marcasite. The mine, named

1276-498: The hope that pleasant living conditions would help the company maintain a loyal and productive workforce. Historian Lankton wrote that in an era and an industry known for hard working conditions, the Michigan copper companies treated their employees better than most: "… they remained known for being among the most enlightened, fair, humane, and paternalistic employers in the American mining industry." Some credited Calumet and Hecla, as

1320-407: The operating copper mines north of Hancock, Michigan . The company had always disposed of the mill tailings (locally called stamp sands ) in lakes adjacent to the mills, but about 1900 began investigating methods to recover the copper remaining in the waste tailings. Beginning in 1915, Calumet and Hecla began reprocessing the stamp sands at Lake Linden, using a finer grind and ammonia leaching. Once

1364-490: The population. 22.2% were of Finnish , 21.5% French , 14.3% French Canadian , 12.9% German , 9.0% English and 5.3% Italian ancestry according to Census 2000 . There were 485 households, out of which 26.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 48.9% were married couples living together, 11.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 36.7% were non-families. 34.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 19.0% had someone living alone who

Quincy Dredge Number Two - Misplaced Pages Continue

1408-667: The process proved profitable, the Tamarack mill also began reprocessing tailings. Through 1949, the company had recovered 535 million pounds (243,000 metric tons) of copper by reprocessing tailings. One of the dredges used, Calumet and Hecla Dredge Number One , is currently sunk in shallow water in Torch Lake . By 1902, Calumet and Hecla had 5,000 employees, and the towns of Calumet (then named Red Jacket), Laurium , and Lake Linden were virtual company towns . The mining superintendents (called "captains") were traditionally Cornishmen ;

1452-608: The reclamation process was not profitable, and the Quincy Mine abandoned both the dredge and its reclamation facility. The dredge is a large, box-like vessel that was used to remove sand from the bottom of the lake. The vessel has a steel hull measuring 110 feet (34 m) long, 56 feet (17 m) wide, and nine feet (2.7 m) deep. The decking overhangs the hull by eight feet (2.4 m) per side, giving an overall width of 72 feet (22 m). The dredge could process over 10,000 short tons (9,100 t) of sand per day, and had

1496-667: The region. However, the company by this point was not even able to produce enough copper for its internal uses. Universal Oil Products ( U.O.P. ) bought Calumet and Hecla in April 1968. In August of that same year, the more than 1,000 Calumet and Hecla employees went on strike. In the wake of this strike, the last of Calumet and Hecla's copper mines shut down, and the company shut down the dewatering pumps in 1970. The mines have remained idle ever since, and most are permanently capped. Today, many Calumet and Hecla company mines and buildings are part of Keweenaw National Historical Park . Folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote and sang " 1913 Massacre ",

1540-569: The strike year of 1913, but rebounded due to high copper prices during World War I to 77 million pounds (35,000 metric tons) in 1917. The boost in production was attained partly by purchase of the Tamarack Mining Company in 1917. Copper prices fell drastically after the war, and in 1921 copper production fell to 15 million pounds (6,800 metric tons) as the company shut the Osceola (amygdaloid) mine in 1920, and shut down mining on

1584-465: The unionized copper mines of Butte, Montana . After the strike started, the mining companies maintained that it had already been considering a reduction of the work day to eight hours. The company claimed that lower wages were more than made up by the lower cost of living compared to Butte. The US Department of Labor report on the strike noted: "The employees of the Calumet and Hecla Co. were better satisfied than those of any other company, and therefore

1628-466: The village has a total area of 0.89 square miles (2.31 km ), of which 0.77 square miles (1.99 km ) is land and 0.12 square miles (0.31 km ) is water. As of the census of 2010, there were 1,007 people, 481 households, and 263 families living in the village. The population density was 1,307.8 inhabitants per square mile (504.9/km ). There were 568 housing units at an average density of 737.7 per square mile (284.8/km ). The racial makeup of

1672-558: The village was 97.4% White , 0.7% Native American , 0.2% Asian , 0.2% from other races , and 1.5% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.8% of the population. There were 481 households, of which 24.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 36.8% were married couples living together, 13.3% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.6% had a male householder with no wife present, and 45.3% were non-families. 41.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 20.8% had someone living alone who

1716-597: The workers were often Finns, Poles, Italians, Irish, Slovenes, and other immigrant nationalities. Historian Larry Lankton wrote that Calumet and Hecla's success resulted in increased benefits that "trickled down" to workers. This made the company a preferred employer, and it generally had its pick of the best workers. Lankton also noted that the company was willing, when necessary, to "control labor management relations", to use "coercion, covert manipulation, armed deputy sheriffs, or mass firings". Calumet and Hecla strived to create ideal communities around its mines and mills, in

1760-455: Was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.23 and the average family size was 2.84. In the village, the population was spread out, with 23.6% under the age of 18, 6.5% from 18 to 24, 23.8% from 25 to 44, 24.9% from 45 to 64, and 21.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 42 years. For every 100 females, there were 92.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 84.4 males. The median income for

1804-404: Was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.07 and the average family size was 2.78. The median age in the village was 44.1 years. 21.4% of residents were under the age of 18; 7.4% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 22.8% were from 25 to 44; 25.4% were from 45 to 64; and 23.4% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the village was 51.0% male and 49.0% female. As of

Quincy Dredge Number Two - Misplaced Pages Continue

1848-607: Was in charge of mine operations. But despite the rich ore, Hulbert did not have the practical knowledge to dig out the ore, crush it, and concentrate it. Frustrated with Hulbert's lack of success, the company sent Alexander Agassiz , son of famous geologist Louis Agassiz , to Michigan to run the mine. Under Agassiz' expert management, the Hecla company paid its first dividend in 1868, and the Calumet company began paying significant dividends in 1869. The two companies merged in May 1871 to form

1892-539: Was no fire, but 73 people, the vast majority of them children, were crushed to death trying to escape. This became known as the Italian Hall Disaster . The strikers held out until April 1914, but then gave up the strike. Calumet and Hecla employees were not again unionized until 1943, when the company signed an agreement with the CIO -affiliated International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers. During

1936-639: Was required for occupancy of company housing, Calumet and Hecla, unlike the Quincy and Copper Range companies, did not evict strikers during the 1913-1914 strike. In July 1913, the Western Federation of Miners called a general strike against all mines in the Michigan Copper Country. Hundreds of strikers surrounded the Calumet and Hecla mine shafts to prevent others from reporting to work. All Calumet and Hecla mines shut down during

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