Michigan, United States: Thousands of members of the Western Federation of Miners paraded through the streets of towns throughout the Copper Country on September 13, 1913.
Nearly all of them were immigrants from Finland, Croatia, Italy, Serbia, and other southern and eastern European nations. Many of them were militant in their attempts to defeat the mining companies.
Yet just 11 months later, they would forget the strike and what they were fighting for. By August 11, 1914, the countries of their origins, with the exception of Finland, were at war. Along with this, the war would also include homelands of other immigrant Copper Country residents, including Germany, Austria, Great Britain, and Belgium.
The governments of those countries were brash enough to believe their migrant men still owed allegiance to their homelands and sent orders to the Copper Country for them to return to fight for their “fatherlands.”
Many Germans, Italians and Slavs, particularly the Croatians, actually responded and returned to Europe. Others announced that they would not return and die for the empires that had forced them to leave friends, family and culture behind to find peace and freedom in a new country.
But while America as a nation felt isolated from a war an ocean away, for the 10s of thousands of resident immigrants in Michigan’s copper district, the world had become small, and the war was, indeed, very close at hand.
According to Wikipedia, the Copper Country which is located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan state of the United States of America, including Keweenaw County, Michigan, Baraga, Houghton and Ontonagon nations and part of Marquette County. Moreover, the place is named as copper mining was prevalent there from 1845 until the late 1960s, with one mine, the White Pine mine continuing through 1995.
