Review

Abstract

158 Michigan Historical Review Grant has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of the significance of railroads in this mostly neglected early-twentiethcentury period of new construction. Richard Saunders Clemson University Alison K. Hoagland. Mine Towns: Buildings for Workers in Michigan’s Copper Country. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Pp. 336. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Maps. Notes. Paper, $25.00. The built environment in which workers lived has often been ignored or at best understudied by social historians and others interested in working-class life; they have left this subject to architectural historians or historic preservationists. (The work of Tamara K. Hareven and Randolph Langenbach on Amoskeag, New Hampshire, is one major exception.) Alison K. Hoagland‘s Mine Towns: Buildings for Workers in Michigan’s Copper Country makes a strong case for including the investigation of the built environment in studies of working-class and industrial communities. Hoagland, Professor Emerita of History and Historic preservation at Michigan Technological University (MTU), taught in MTU‘s outstanding industrial archeology graduate program. That program‘s faculty and students have produced a remarkable body of work on the Copper Country. Mine Towns is a welcome addition to that research and uses a number of the theses and monographs from the program to good effect. The first five chapters are a systematic study of the built environment of the Copper Country; they are organized around the theme of the paternalism of the various large mining companies, focusing most closely on the years between 1890 and 1918. Attracting a sufficient workforce to the Keweenaw was a significant challenge for the mining companies. The region was remote from population centers, and its harsh climate combined with its isolation worked against building a diverse economy. Hoagland demonstrates the ways in which corporate paternalism initially developed to address the need for housing and later faced the necessity of providing various modern amenities in company housing. Paternalism was not allencompassing on the Keweenaw. Hoagland makes a solid case for the reluctance of the mining companies to provide services that could be supplied by individual entrepreneurs, contradicting the Book Reviews 159 classic image of the all-sufficient company store as a fixture of the company town. The mining companies also donated land for schools and churches, but they left the organization of these establishments to workers and local government units, even when company officials served in those offices and on school boards. Hoagland‘s research blends field work with research in the mining companies‘ archival and published records to furnish detailed descriptions of the architecture of a wide array of structures, both residences and buildings reserved for public use. These chapters show the complex nature of company paternalism in the Copper Country and the diverse approaches taken by the different mining companies. The findings complement other recent work on the Copper Country— especially that of Larry Lankton. The sixth and final chapter, ―Preservation and Loss,‖ addresses efforts to preserve the historical resources of the region, which led to the creation of the Keweenaw National Historical Park. Although it is interesting and informative, this chapter is not well integrated into the book and is therefore somewhat problematic. Rather than pulling together the many points raised by the author in the previous five chapters, it introduces new questions and diffuses rather than focuses Hoagland‘s research. There are two small errors that should be corrected: Gwinn is about one hundred miles east of the Copper Country, not west (p. xx), and the first name of historian John Bodnar is omitted in the bibliography (p. 286). Also, the method used for footnotes does not follow the Chicago Manual of Style. The author uses a short form of citation for the first as well as subsequent references rather than providing the standard full citation the first time. One hopes this is not a trend in publishing. I would not want to end this review on a negative note. Mining Towns will appeal to readers who wish to know more about the history of the Copper Country, as well as provide a valuable resource for those interested in corporate paternalism more generally. William H. Mulligan, Jr. Murray State University ...