The Women of the Copper Country

Set in 1913 in Calumet, Michigan, a company-owned city of 40,000 on the remote Keweenaw Peninsula, this novel tells the story of Anna Klobuchar Clements, a 25-year-old miner's wife who leads a strike against the world's most powerful copper mining corporation.

A 1903 prologue establishes Annie's character. At nearly 16, already over six feet tall, she endures mockery at a county fair. Her father takes her on a tethered hot-air balloon ride, and from above, the mining region around Calumet reveals itself as unexpectedly beautiful. He tells her to stand up straight and hold her head high, because her height lets her see farther than anyone else.

The narrative opens in June 1913 with parallel morning routines that expose the chasm between management and labor. James MacNaughton, the general manager of Calumet & Hecla Mining Company (C&H), awakens in a mansion staffed by servants whose movements he has optimized through time-and-motion studies. He surveys his company-owned metropolis and bristles at the threat of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), a national labor union, but reassures himself it will gain no foothold here.

Annie rises before dawn in a cramped company house she shares with her husband, Joe Clements, a crew boss, and three Italian boarders. Married seven years without conceiving, she serves as president of the Women's Auxiliary of Local 15, the WFM's Calumet chapter, though Joe refuses to join the union. When Joe comes home drunk, Annie learns of another mining death: Solomon Kivisto, killed by a rockfall. A long-suppressed fury breaks loose inside her.

Kivisto's death galvanizes the community. Eva Savicki, a nearly 14-year-old Polish orphan in love with Sol's eldest son, Jack Kivisto, watches as Jack learns of his father's injury. At the funeral, 15-year-old Jack forces his younger brother to look at their father's destroyed face, declaring the boys will enter the mine in turn to keep the family's company house. Union membership surges, with 300 new men signing up in two days.

Annie pushes for an immediate strike against the advice of Charlie Miller, the WFM's experienced organizer, who wants two more years to build the strike fund. At a meeting in the Italian Hall, a community gathering space, Annie asks: "What is the price of copper?" Women rise to name their dead. Annie calls for an end to the one-man drill, a heavier machine that doubles underground danger while halving the workforce, and demands an eight-hour day and three dollars a day for all underground workers.

In July, 9,000 miners vote to strike and all the mines go idle. Photographer Michael Sweeney, an Irishman invited by Charlie, arrives to document the movement and recognizes Annie's potential as its public face. He advises the union to carry American flags in their parades. MacNaughton refuses to acknowledge the union and pressures Governor Woodbridge Ferris, a progressive Democrat, into sending the Michigan State Guard.

In August, Annie leads a march of women and children in white past the Guard encampment. Carrying an enormous American flag donated by Moishe Glass, a Jewish storekeeper barred by MacNaughton from operating inside city limits, she pulls the flag across her body and dares the troops to fire, declaring she will die wrapped in it. Major Henry Van Den Broek, the Guard commander, lets the procession pass. Sweeney photographs Annie for the Associated Press, and the image circulates nationally.

As autumn arrives, the strike settles into stalemate. MacNaughton forces businesses to join an anti-union Citizens' Alliance or face eviction. The strike fund drops to $1,827, and Annie discovers MacNaughton knows the exact figure, implying a spy in the union. Father Albin Horvat, a Jesuit priest, offers his parish hall as the union's new headquarters. Eva's letter to the legendary labor organizer Mother Jones bears fruit: The 76-year-old agrees to come to Calumet, electrifying the strikers.

Mother Jones arrives in October to a crowd of 15,000, announcing $20,000 from the United Mine Workers. Privately, she warns Annie that MacNaughton will unleash private armies and that Annie will take the blame when the strike fails. Annie breaks down, admitting she fears she has made a terrible mistake. Mother Jones comforts her but tells her bluntly to let others carry more of the burden.

MacNaughton hires Tom Fisher, a professional strikebreaker. In early November, Fisher orchestrates a riot, bringing confused, intoxicated immigrants to Calumet and inciting them against the marchers. Annie's flag goes down and she is dragged away; Eva's brother Kazimir is struck in the head; Sweeney's camera is smashed. Armed goons ransack union houses, the church hall, and Glass's store. The riot coincides with the worst blizzard in recorded history, which kills hundreds and buries the Calumet news.

Annie is arrested, beaten, and sentenced to the workhouse after a sham hearing. She undertakes a hunger strike. Kazimir dies without regaining consciousness. Ella Bloor, a socialist organizer sent by Mother Jones, deposits $36,000 into the union's account, collected from trade unions at General Electric in Schenectady, New York. She shepherds the released union leaders to Lansing, where Governor Ferris, shocked by their injuries, agrees to send a negotiator.

Sweeney waits in Marquette for Annie's release. When she emerges, gaunt and passive, they become lovers. He begs her to leave Joe, but Annie says she cannot yet abandon the strikers.

Annie returns to Calumet in December. At a welcome party, she holds a newborn named after her and tells the children, "You are all my children." She proposes one final act of solidarity: a Christmas party for the union children. In Houghton, collecting donations, she secretly meets Sweeney, and they agree to disappear together after Christmas.

Before the party, Jack Kivisto proposes to Eva, showing her a letter offering him a machinist apprenticeship in Dayton, Ohio. Eva connects the pieces she has missed for months: Jack was MacNaughton's spy, not Joe. His house was spared during the riot, and he was absent that day. She tells him she never wants to see him again.

Nearly 700 children fill the Italian Hall on Christmas Eve. A recently fired hardware store employee, drunk and wearing a Citizens' Alliance button, stumbles to the building and shouts "Fire!" at the top of the stairs. Panic erupts as parents and children rush for the single staircase. A child stumbles, others pile on, and within half a minute, bodies fill the stairwell 20 feet high. The disaster kills 73 people, 57 of them children.

MacNaughton dismisses the catastrophe as "a union affair." His household staff quits in outrage, with his maid Loretta Devlin revealing she has been spying for the union. At an Alliance-controlled inquiry, eight eyewitnesses corroborate a man with a Citizens' Alliance button shouting "Fire," but 61 others claim they saw no such person. The panel finds no proof and blames overcrowding. When Charlie refuses to recant his testimony, Sheriff Cruse's deputies kill him. Sweeney witnesses the murder and flees with help from Father Horvat.

Annie, now pregnant with Sweeney's child, inadvertently reveals her condition to Father Horvat. The priest arranges Sweeney's escape and promises to help Annie leave as well. On April 12, 1914, Easter Sunday, the Western Federation orders the nine-month strike to end. Miners who wish to return must renounce the union and contribute to a gold watch inscribed to MacNaughton for "NO COMPROMISE."

Calumet hollows out as families leave for Detroit, where Ford offers five dollars a day. Annie disappears with help from Moishe Glass, who hides her in his delivery van. The Women's Auxiliary sends its last funds through Father Horvat. No word comes back. Eva, apprenticed to midwife Lucia Caretto and inspired by Jane Addams's Twenty Years at Hull-House, writes to Addams requesting a place at Hull-House, a pioneering social settlement in Chicago. The reply arrives at once: "Yes, my dear. There is a place for you here. Come to us as quickly as you can. The need is great." Standing as tall as she can, Eva pledges aloud to carry the flag for Annie, wherever Annie may be.