Another Finns in Michigan Review...From Finland No Less

Click on the images to enlarge and read the review, top is first page of the review, bottom second

Above is another review of Finns in Michigan sent to me by the good folks at Michigan State University Press. This review was done by Dr. Mika Roinila, a professor at Bethel College in Mishawaka, Indiana. A kind of cool thing about this review is that it was done for the Finnish quarterly Siirtolaisuus/Migration, which is published by The Institute of Migration located in Turku, Finland. Dr. Roinila did a great job on the review. He wrote about some things he liked in the book, and also gave a good critique of what he would have liked to see more of in the book. As an author, I really enjoy reading a good, well thought out and well-written critique because I recognize there is always room to grow as a historian and writer. Critiques are a good chance to learn if you will allow yourself to listen.

Michigan State University Press Catalogue Entry

Striker's gathering outside the Western Federation of Miners headquarters in Calumet, 1913

Challenge Accepted is about ready to hit the presses. This week I received the text for the Michigan State University Press catalogue entry...it reads as follows:

A fresh view of Michigan’s Copper Country through the eyes of Finnish immigrants

Challenge Accepted
A Finnish Immigrant Response to Industrial America in Michigan’s Copper Country
Gary Kaunonen

Michigan’s Copper Country, once one of the world’s major copper-producing regions, is located on the Upper Peninsula, in the northern reaches of the state. There were active copper mines in the area for 150 years, from 1845 until 1995. Many of the mine workers in this region were immigrants to the United States. Like workers in other low-paying and hazardous occupations in the early twentieth century, mineworkers in Copper Country attempted to unionize, in order to obtain better working conditions, wages, and hours.

The Michigan miners were unsuccessful in their struggles with mine owners, which came to a climax in the 1913–14 Copper Country Strike. This nine-month battle between workers represented by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) and the three major mining companies in the region took a particularly nasty turn on Christmas Eve, 1913, at a party for strikers and their families organized by the WFM. As many as 500 people were in the Italian Benevolent Society hall in Calumet, Michigan, when someone reportedly shouted “fire.” There was no fire, but 73 to 79 people, over 60 of them children, died in the stampede for the exit.

Against this dramatic backdrop, Gary Kaunonen tells the story of Finnish immigrants to Copper Country, who arrived during the late 19th and early 20th centuries with little understanding of the American copper mining industry. By examining the written record and material culture of Finnish immigrant proletarians—analyzing buildings, cultural institutions, and publications of the socialist-unionist media—Kaunonen adds a new depth to our understanding of the time and place, the events and a people.

/author/Gary Kaunonen earned his Master’s in Industrial History and Archaeology from Michigan Technological University and is currently in MTU’s Ph.D. program in Rhetoric and Technical Communication. Both of his grandfathers worked in the mines of the Mesabi Iron Range in northeastern Minnesota and, before becoming an academic, Kaunonen, himself, charged blast furnaces and operated a bull-ladle in an iron foundry. He is the author of Finns in Michigan (MSU Press).

Challenge Accepted Cover

A while back I got a chance to preview the cover for Challenge Accepted and it is spot-on. The person who did the cover really captured the essence of the book. The designer used a sort of strike poster template and added an image I sent to Michigan State University Press. The image is from a Työmies publication that has not seen the daylight in probably 90 or more years. The labor cartoon depicts the awakening of mineworkers in the Copper Country.

The really unique aspect of this cartoon, drawn by Konstu Sallinen, is that it shows this "mental" awakening by depicting a physical event that portrays a mineworker standing up to shake the very foundations of the Copper Country's ground. This action, by the purposefully enlarged laborer, sends the copper bosses running. The theme of proletarian awakening and revolt is one that was sounded frequently by Finnish immigrant socialist-unionists and one that the book explores in-depth.

Challenge Accepted Synopsis and Chapter List

The Työmies Publishing Company printed the English language newspaper the Wage Slave in an attempt to join and influence the American socialist movement

A 500-or-so-word synopsis of Challenge Accepted:

Generally, Finnish immigrants entered Michigan’s Copper Country during the late 19th and early 20th centuries with little understanding of the American industrial setting. Their experiences with Copper Country industry and society led some of these immigrants to formulate a proactive response via direct action against the hegemony of Copper Country monopoly capital. Challenge Accepted explores the Finnish immigrants’ clash with the Copper Country industrial setting by examining the written record and material culture of Finnish immigrant proletarians through analysis of buildings, cultural institutions, and publication of socialist-unionist media.

This collective response by Finnish immigrant proletarians was in essence an answer to an unspoken challenge issued by the Copper Country’s mining oligarchy to Finnish immigrants, beguiling them to struggle for the betterment of their lives in America. Finnish immigrant proletarians accepted this tacit challenge from the mining companies facing great odds. Resistance to this challenge came fast and furious from the mining companies and at times, even from within their own organizations as the movement struggled with equality within its ranks, creating a focused direction, recognizing a guiding ideology, and utilizing agreed upon strategy and tactics.

Finnish immigrant proletarians wagered the success of their organizational efforts by agitating for and participating in the bitter, sometimes bloody 1913-14 Copper Country Strike. This 9-month struggle between organized labor (Western Federation of Miners) and the mining companies created great fits of passion and sorrow. No event created more anguish than the tragic events at Italian Hall. Challenge Accepted examines the events of the 1913-14 Strike and Italian Hall using often-overlooked proletarian Finnish immigrant sources.

Challenge Accepted concludes that the most noteworthy accomplishment of the Finnish immigrant socialist-unionists in the Copper Country was that as a largely unskilled group of immigrant laborers, newspaper employees, and “hobo” socialists, they had a very considerable impact on the history of a place dominated by powerful mining companies and the men who ran those companies. Finnish immigrant socialist-unionists in Hancock grew a small upstart cultural organization, with a small upstart publishing company, into a force that could contend with the power of monopoly capital in the Copper Country.

This was truly remarkable, a challenge accepted by Finnish immigrant socialist-unionists to have a say in their own working conditions in a place dominated by a mining oligarchy; but embedded in this study of ethnic political-labor history is also a story of division and decline that ultimately and terminally fractured a truly proletarian movement dedicated to working-class solidarity. This demise is significant when recounting the capabilities and vulnerabilities of the American labor movement in the early twentieth century.

Chapter List:

Introduction

Chapter 1. Finnish Immigration and Settlement in a Hancock, Michigan, Neighborhood
Chapter 2. Finnish Immigrant Cultural Organizations and the “Finn Hall”
Chapter 3. Finnish Immigrant Socialist-Unionists in Hancock
Chapter 4. The Early Existence of the Työmies Publishing Company, 1904–1909
Chapter 5. The Työmies Publishing Company Reaches Maturity, 1910–1913
Chapter 6. The 1913–14 Copper Country Strike
Chapter 7. Gun Hounds, Scabs, and Tragedy
Conclusion
Epilogue
Appendix 1. Työmies Publishing Company Staff and Contributors, 1909
Appendix 2. Työmies Publishing Company Interior Use of Space
Appendix 3. Copper Territory Strikers’ March Song, 1913
Appendix 4. Työmies Publishing Company’s Composite List of Italian Hall Deceased, 1913

Finns in Michigan Hits #3 on Amazon's Hot New Releases and Two Reviews

Review of Finns in Michigan by Pam Brunfelt from the Finnish American Reporter (click on the image to enlarge)
Review (left hand side of page) of Finns in Michigan from Michigan History magazine (click on the image to enlarge)

Finns in Michigan has hit #3 on Amazon.com's Hot New Releases for Michigan. The book has been in the Top 10 of that category for over 12 weeks. I want to thank those who have purchased the book and have really enjoyed the feedback I have been getting regarding the book and its topics.

Speaking of feedback, two reviews of the book have come out. The first is in the July issue of the Finnish American Reporter. Pam Brunfelt (professor of history at Vermillion Community College and a great historian to boot) wrote the review and did a really good job of capturing the essence of the book. The second review came out in the May/June issue of Michigan History magazine. In that review, they use a quote from the book.

I am pretty happy that the book has been well received, but even more excited that Finnish American history and the working folks who made that history are getting some well-deserved press. You can click on the images to enlarge the articles.

Why Write Challenge Accepted?

Hibbing, MN, Finnish Socialist Federation local's Workers' Hall

As I am putting the final touches on edits to Challenge Accepted, it occurred to me to answer in print a question a number of people have asked, "Why would anyone write a book like Challenge Accepted? Why are you interested in this topic?"

It is a potentially controversial history about socialist, union minded, and anarchist "Finns," who were a group of people that many may well rather forget...but, and this is a huge but, the contributions and impact of these immigrant socialist-unionist Finns is an important piece in the historical fabric of America.

There have certainly been a number of other books written about the Finnish immigrant socialist-unionist movement and there have been many other books written about labor history, a topic that should be especially dear to Finnish Americans, but Challenge Accepted is a different type of history that analyzes a working class group on its own terms using material culture as a tool of analysis along with the documentary record.

Why material culture? An incredibly influential guru of material culture studies, Thomas Schlereth, writes that material culture creates a, "more democratic, populist, even proletarian history.”

As an extension of social history, which delves into organizations, people, and topics previously disregarded by customary histories, Schlereth writes that, "…both social history and material culture studies challenge the older view of history as past politics, both have sought to demonstrate the great diversity of the American people and their lifestyles, and both have been anxious to expand (some would say explode) the traditional boundaries of American historical scholarship and thereby actually redefine what constitutes American history."

This is my reason for writing a book like Challenge Accepted. It uses the buildings, machines (printing presses, typesetting machines, etc.), and publications of Finnish socialist-unionist immigrants to expand the historical record. I want to bring to light that there are other avenues available when doing the process of history. Authors do not have to be limited by how things have been done in the past, there are alternative methods of research that yield great results for increasing the knowledge base if a person is willing to put in the effort and time to find and work with the not-so-well known resources.

Challenge Accepted is designed to uncover materials, research methodologies, and resources that have up to this point been ignored or scantly accessed in examination of the Finnish immigrants' socialist-unionist movement. It is my hope that the book will stimulate conversation, reveal alternative research methods such as material culture analysis, reserve a place in history for this important immigrant group that challenged the status quo, and hopefully uncover sources that are less traveled or often overlooked.

Is Challenge Accepted the end all authority on Finnish immigrant-socialist-unionists? Of course not, anyone who might claim there work is untouchable or without fault is not grounded in reality or just concerned with making a profit. I think the writing of Challenge Accepted using material culture and ethnic sources is a starting point in opening up non-traditional analysis of history for people or groups like the Finnish immigrant socialist-unionists.

Challenge Accepted Steams Ahead

1909 collage of Työmies annual serial publications, which were offered in addition to the newspaper, they are in order from left to right, Köyhälistön Nuija (Proletarian Hammer), Vappu (May Day), Työmiehen Joulu (Workingmen's Christmas), and Punanen Juhannus (Red Midsummer).

It has been a while since the last entry, but I've been busy with a couple of side projects. But first, a status update on Challenge Accepted. I've received an edited manuscript and will work on getting final edits ready for publication, this brings production very close and way ahead of schedule. The folks at Michigan State University Press are moving it along and I think it may be ready by the end of 2009.

The side projects: 1) I've joined a great social networking site by the name of Union Book for union minded, collective action folks. Its an incredible forum for union activity and open to membership to all so join today. A link to the site: http://www.unionbook.org/. One of the best features of Union Book is that it is an international site for union minded folks, I've learned so much about organized labor in its international context, which has been exciting.

Out of my Union Book activities I befriended a Canadian union member with Finnish background. Together we have begun blogging about North American working class issues at: http://canusafinn.blogspot.com/. His name is Ilpo and he belongs to Canada Union of Public Employees Local 1356 (CUPE), which represents full-time and part-time workers of York University in Toronto, Ontario. Ilpo is a very smart fella, check out our blog.