FAQs
Unfortunately, archival employment records do not exist for all men and women known to have worked at Calumet & Hecla. It is not always possible to explain why a particular record is absent. Certain documents are known to have been lost in a 1936 office fire at Calumet & Hecla. Others, especially for those employed after 1957, may have been destroyed by Universal Oil Products, the parent company of Calumet & Hecla at the end of its life, or remained in that company’s possession even after the other materials were donated to the Michigan Tech Archives.
In its prime, Calumet & Hecla acquired a number of smaller competitors, including the Osceola, Tamarack, and Centennial mining companies. Generally speaking, biographical employment records do not survive for workers at those companies who did not remain on the payroll after C&H acquired their employer. A miner who worked at Tamarack up through 1911, for example, would almost certainly not be documented in the Calumet & Hecla employment records unless he subsequently worked at C&H.
No, not at this time. Calumet & Hecla employment records held by the Michigan Tech Archives consist of several distinct sets of cards prepared at various times in the company’s history. Some documented employees are represented in several of the sets, while others appear in just one. Although the nearly 40,000 records scanned for CMEC constitute the largest set of Calumet & Hecla employment documents, several thousand additional cards from earlier periods have not yet been digitized for this website. Others are under embargo under the terms described in question #8. Cards not available on CMEC may be viewed in hard copy at the Michigan Tech Archives or scanned individually for patrons upon request.
Each of the yellow Calumet & Hecla (C&H) employment records consists of two sides. One side features mostly biographical data, such as name, date and place of birth, names of immediate family members (and where they worked, if it was for a Michigan copper mine), and current residence. This page may also include a physical description of the employee and the name of his or her most recent prior employer.
The second side features information specific to the employee’s time at C&H. Job titles, dates that this job was held, wages, and departments within C&H are common to this side of the card. Some cards may also feature details about any workmen’s compensation paid, money received from the company aid fund, reasons that an employee left a position, and notes related to disciplinary actions or company awards.
To express all this information as concisely as possible, C&H developed an internal shorthand for job titles, company divisions, and other items, especially in the employment section. Some of these terms can be obscure and difficult to decipher. Please contact the Michigan Tech Archives if you would like assistance in understanding a note on an employment card.
The “Employment” section on the back of each card lists the jobs held by the employee over time. C&H clerks used abbreviations to fill in the job title, wages, departments within the company, and reasons for leaving the job. The abbreviations, which were often developed internally and refer to specific technical positions, can be difficult to understand. For many of the cards, the employment section has already been deciphered and transcribed and can be seen in the “Occupation” field of the results table. Searches performed in CMEC will search this “Occupation” field, so users can search for employees who worked as a “trammer” or “mill hand” for instance. These results will return only cards whose employment sections have been transcribed to date. Archival staff and students continue to decipher and transcribe this section of the cards, and records will be added as they are completed. If you have questions about the meanings of abbreviations or terms in the occupation field, please contact the Michigan Tech Archives at copper@mtu.edu or (906) 487-2505.
The Calumet & Hecla Mining Company employed several clerks in its general office building, which now serves as the headquarters for the Keweenaw National Historical Park. Potential employees would come to this office to apply for work. One of the company clerks would fill in the “Application for Employment” section. The recording of this information was witnessed and validated with signatures of two office workers, one of which was almost always the clerk filling out the card. These witness signatures allow archivists to recognize the handwriting of most of the clerks, often over several decades.
Today, equal employment opportunity laws prevent employers from asking certain kinds of personal questions in order to avoid discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, and other categories. These laws were not passed until the 1960s and did not exist when these records were created. As a result, these employment cards provide interesting windows into the working experiences of people in the past, and they also help us appreciate today’s equal employment laws.
C&H asked specific questions based on its officers’ beliefs about who made the best employees. They believed, as was common at the time, that people with certain ethnic and national backgrounds were better suited for different kinds of work, so they asked about a person’s birthplace and parents’ birthplaces. They also believed that married men often made better employees because they were less likely to leave town unexpectedly, and their obligation to feed a wife and children would keep them in a job even if it became very difficult. Interestingly, the company also asked about a potential employee’s relatives. If they had a father, grandfather, or uncle working for the company it could indicate family stability and perhaps a certain loyalty to the company or the work. On the other hand, the company could also deny employment to someone whose relatives had angered the company in the past, such as during the 1913-14 Miners’ Strike. For instance, some cards note an employee’s affiliation with the Western Federation of Miners (WFM).
After a person was hired, the company clerks continued to make notations to keep track of an employee’s children. This practice could identify future employees as boys came of age. It also kept employees from seeking death or retirement benefits for non-existent (or deceased) dependents.
Incorrect information on an employment record could have several causes. In the case of erroneous birth years, a common occurrence, the employee may have had reason to obscure his or her date of birth. Older men applying for positions requiring manual labor may have felt that presenting as younger than they really were would render them more competitive. On the other hand, young men or boys trying to obtain jobs may have represented themselves as more mature to secure a position. It is also possible that certain workers genuinely did not know how old they were. The modern American focus on age was not shared by all cultures from which Calumet & Hecla workers came, and some simply did not have good documentation of their year of birth.
It was also common for Calumet & Hecla clerks completing the record to mishear, misspell, or otherwise err in documenting given names, family names, and places of birth, especially from cultures where English was not spoken. If the clerk were unfamiliar with a name or place given by a new employee, he or she would try to guess at the spelling, sometimes with inaccurate results. In addition, dissolving empires and other geopolitical changes in the 20th and 21st centuries have altered many place names, with local communities often reasserting traditional names in their native languages.
Although incorrect information can be challenging or frustrating, the employment records are artifacts of their time and of Calumet & Hecla’s understanding of each employee. As a result, the Michigan Tech Archives and CMEC do not correct or edit data on an employment card. If you observe a potential discrepancy between what is written on an employment record and the transcription provided by the CMEC team, please email the Michigan Tech Archives at copper@mtu.edu to discuss your concern.
Some cards in the collection are not available right now in order to protect sensitive personal information. There are two kinds of sensitive personal information found in about 15% of the cards in this collection: 1) Social Security numbers are listed for employees hired after the Social Security Act of 1935, and 2) personal information and/or major life events of people who may still be alive. The Michigan Tech Archives protects this information through a system of restriction and embargo.
Cards with Social Security numbers are permanently restricted.
While there is no explicit national or state legislation that restricts the access to Social Security numbers in historical records, the project team sees the access and dissemination of Social Security records as ethically irresponsible and in violation of the Society of American Archivists’ code-of-ethics. Therefore, any card containing a social security number will not be available online.
Cards with information more recent than 72 years are not released on CMEC until the information becomes old enough to share publicly (“embargoed”).
Public Law 95-416 of 1978 gave direction to the U.S. Bureau of the Census to not release personally identifiable information about an individual to any other individual or agency until 72 years after it was collected for the decennial census. The National Archives and Record Administration releases census information in accordance with this rule. This “72 year rule” has become an informal standard of practice for many archives and libraries offering public access to records with personally identifiable information. The Michigan Miners at Home and Work Project CMEC follows the 72-year-rule standard of practice when preparing digital images and collecting descriptive metadata found on the employee cards. All information located on the employee cards that are tied to dates more recent than 72 years will be embargoed until it becomes older than 72 years. Embargoed cards will be released on January 1 of the year after its most recent information becomes 72 years old.
Researchers may contact the Archives to acquire non-sensitive information in any individual restricted or embargoed card at copper@mtu.edu. Please allow 1 week for a response.
This project embraces the legal imperatives of protecting sensitive information while at the same time uplifting the core values of professional ethics outlined by major professional associations including the Society of American Archivists. Archivists promote access and use, history and memory, responsibility, responsible custody, and service, among other key values. This project has incorporated those values by creating a digitization project that considers the record series for their physical and informational value as well as protecting the privacy and personal information of subjects and their descendants described in the collection. For more information about how this project protects potentially sensitive information, see the answer to FAQ “Why are some employee cards from MS-002 unavailable on CMEC?”
Yes! The original documents are available for review by the public at the Michigan Tech Archives. Please email copper@mtu.edu or call (906) 487-2505 to arrange an appointment to visit.
The Keweenaw Time Traveler is an online historical atlas created by researchers at Michigan Tech that you can explore from home on your computer or on your mobile device when exploring the landscape. It combines historical maps with archival records — including the C&H employee cards! — about the people who lived and worked in Houghton and Keweenaw counties from 1880-1940. You can search by name and explore maps representing their houses, neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces along with connections to family members, classmates, and co-workers. In addition, you can add what you know about your favorite places in the Keweenaw and see the stories that other users have shared. Try it now: KeweenawHistory.com.