300 of the 10,000 workers for Oliver Mining Company could speak English fluently in 1907. The three largest immigrant groups were 2500 Finns, 1800 Croatians, and 1200 Austrian Slovenians.
Initially, the lack of a common language for communication probably produced the greatest risks: orders and directions were often not understood, blasts were premature, moving ore cars ran workers over, and machinery caught others. Accidents related to non-mechanical structure based issues included: cave-ins, pit walls collapses and falls.
In the outdoor open pits, work was seasonal with winter layoffs. Wages were paid monthly for 10 hour shifts with six day work weeks. In the underground mines, a contract system was used.
The contract system had miners organized into “gangs” supervised by a foreman. Each gang was assigned an area to work in with quotas for the number of cars and a pay rate per car. Although the pay rate is given ahead of time, the rate could be changed at any time by the mine captain as the character of the ore changed.
At the end of the month, wages were based on the a miner’s share of the number of cars loaded at the given rate(s) minus the cost of explosives, fuses, blasting caps, candles and carbide used that month.
Abuses occurred in this system. A miner was given a monthly bill stating the amount of pay. There were no itemizations indicating varying rates or deductions made for supplies. Without these details, complaints of amounts paid being less then what was expected were common.
If the companies raised wages and the miners agreed with the increased rate in the contract work, the miners claimed they still received the same pay. This caused suspicions that the pay rate increases had been offset by increased deductions. However, without a detailed due bill this was not arguable. In the coal mines, an itemized bill is given to each miner.
Boss favorites were given softer richer ores to mine. If you weren’t a favorite, bribes of cigars, whiskey, money and sometimes access to spouses (anecdotal) were another method for obtaining a good area to mine.
After the 1907 strike, the Oliver Mining Company, a subsidiary of United States Steel, issued a 1908 ruling that any foreman accepting money from an employee for a better working area must be discharged at once.
A lesser practice observed was the laying off laborers then immediately reemploying them after a reinstatement charge was paid.
The timing of the June 1916 strike could not have been better planned. America was entering World War I, the immigrant influx providing workers was low, and steel markets were high; the country was vulnerable. 60 percent of the iron ore of the United States came from 120 mines in northern Minnesota.
The miner demands were to eliminate the contract system for an 8 hour work day, twice a month pay, a minimum wage of $3 for dry work and $3.50 for wet work in the underground mines and $2.75 for open pit work.
The three month strike ended in September 1916. The employers commented the event as remarkably absent of violence. Minnesota avoided the extremes of industrial warfare which included pitched battles, vigilante action, and herding of workers into bull pens. Even in the 1907 strike, the beatings, lynchings, and gun fights in the freewheeling capitalism of western mining towns were limited on the Iron Range.
Bruce Mine Incident 