One Day for Democracy : Independence Day and the Americanization of Iron Range Immigrants [1 ed.] 9780821442241, 9780821417300

Citation preview

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One Day for Democracy

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mary Lou nemanic Ohio University Press Athens

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One Day for

Democracy independence day and the americanization of iron range immigrants

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Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701 www.ohio.edu/oupress © 2007 by Ohio University Press Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper ƒ ™ 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nemanic, Mary Lou, 1950– One day for democracy : Independence Day and the americanization of Iron Range immigrants / Mary Lou Nemanic. p. cm. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN-: ---- (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-: --- (cloth : alk. paper) . European Americans—Minnesota—Social life and customs. . European Americans—Cultural assimilation—Minnesota. . Fourth of July celebrations— Minnesota—History. . Immigrants—Minnesota—Social life and customs. . Miners—Minnesota—Social life and customs. . Iron ranges—Minnesota— History. . Minnesota—Social life and customs. . Minnesota—Emigration and immigration—Social aspects—History. . Europe, Eastern—Emigration and immigration—Social aspects—History. . Europe, Southern—Emigration and immigration—Social aspects—History. I. Title. F6.EN  .'—dc



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To Doug Nemanic, who taught me how to really see, to Lary May, who taught me to look for the big picture, in loving memory of my son, Geoffrey Nemanic, and in memory of my beloved “Pa,” Frank Nemanic

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Contents ix xiii

List of Illustrations Preface introduction one

“Toivo’s Airbus, 1992” Early Fourth of July Celebrations From Rites of Resistance to Celebrations of American Nationalism

two

epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

67

The Great Depression Hard Times, the New Deal, and a New Nationalism, ‒

five

37

One Day for Democracy Independence Day as a Festival of Freedom in an Era of Labor Oppression, ‒

four

19

The Frontier Period Celebrations of Diversity in an Isolated Wilderness Region, ‒

three

1

106

The Queens of the Fourth of July Mass Culture Comes to the Iron Range, ‒ 

131

Looking into the Twenty-first Century

160 163 225 241

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Illustrations map The Minnesota Iron Range xii plates Following page  1

Toivo’s Airbus group in Aurora, 1992

2

“We Found Freedom,” 1996

3

Mr. American and the Ethnics, 1992

4

“Stewardess” from Toivo’s Airbus, 1992

5

Eveleth Clown Band, 1992

6

Biwabik Clown Band, 1992

7

Toivo’s Homeland Security float, Aurora, 2003

8

Toivo’s Homeland Security Jeep, 2003 figures

0.1

Mountain Iron, July 4, 1914 15

1.1

Woman with fashionably high hairdo, 1776 20

1.2

Declaration of Independence 24

1.3

“Raising the Liberty Pole,” 1876 engraving 31

2.1

Merritt, 1892 38

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Illustrations 2.2

Canton location, 1895 40

2.3

Early Iron Range location 42

2.4

Parade on Ely’s main street, July 4, 1891 43

2.5

July Fourth “squaw” race in Ely, 1891 52

2.6

Native American powwow, Ely, 1891 53

2.7

Extracts from Ely Times and Ely Iron Home, 1891 58

2.8

Program from Duluth News Tribune, 1895 63

2.9

Sparta clown band, 1902 65

3.1

Extract from Biwabik Times, 1915 71

3.2

IWW march, Hibbing, 1916 86

3.3

Advertisement from Duluth News Tribune, 1900 91

3.4

Logrolling, Coleraine, 1910 93

3.5

Tug-of-war, Cuyuna Range, circa 1900 94

3.6

Races on Main Street, possibly Ely or Sparta, circa 1900 94

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3.7

“Light of Education” float, Ely, 1914 98

3.8

Boy on rocket, Hibbing Daily News, 1923 108

4.1

Drugstore magazine rack, Cook, 1937 111

4.2

Woman with milk can, Aitkin County, 1939 114

4.3

Creamery owner, Coleraine, 1939 115

4.4

Extracts from Gilbert Herald, 1932 117

4.5

Fireworks advertisement, 1937 123

4.6

Hull-Rust-Mahoning Mine pit, 1939 129

5.1

Mayor Frank Bolka and Miss Taconite I, 1952 132

5.2

Miss Taconite II and Miss Taconite III 135

5.3

McKinley firefighters, Aurora, 1978 137

5.4

Eveleth Fourth of July schedule, 1947 144

5.5

Miss Biwabik advertisement, 1954 147

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Illustrations 5.6

Stanley “Pye” Sherek, circa 1950s 150

5.7

“He who drinks . . . ,” Aurora, 1978 151

5.8

Welcome notice, Biwabik celebration, 1968 152

5.9

Biwabik Fourth of July schedule, 1966 153

5.10

Men’s bathing beauty contestant, 1984 156

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Less than one hundred years ago, the Minnesota Iron Range was seen as a land of opportunity by thousands of Europeans who comprised the last mass immigration movement into the United States. (Illustration by Steve Johnson, , for Tamarack Iron Range Project.)

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Preface When I was growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota, during the 1950s, the Fourth of July was a big holiday. I looked forward to the constant popping of firecrackers, the family picnics, the parades, the fireworks, and the pungent smells of the big bright red railroad flares, burning into the night. As I reached adolescence, the Fourth was becoming a memory as St. Paul and many other towns and cities across America stopped holding public celebrations. Citywide celebrations cost too much and required too much volunteer time. The Fourth was becoming just another day off from work instead of a celebration of our nation’s birthday. What happened? Where did all the fun go, and why didn’t people seem to look forward to Independence Day any more? Not until 1978, when I was working as a documentary photographer, did I again find the Fourth of July. That year I traveled from the Twin Cities 250 miles north to Aurora, the hometown of my husband, Doug. There, in a small town in the multiethnic mining region called the Iron Range, I learned that Independence Day was not only alive and well but absolutely festive! I was amazed at how important this holiday was to the life of a town of less than two thousand as well as to many of the other small towns scattered throughout this mining region. Although Aurora and several other Range towns had parades, athletic events, games, and fireworks similar to what St. Paul used to have, things were definitely different on the Iron Range. There, big hairy men prancing around in tutus and silly floats that poked fun at social situations had me wondering what this had to do with Independence Day. On the morning of parade day in Aurora, a town of about 1,500, people waited,

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Preface jammed together along the sidewalks of the short Main Street—some set up their lawn chairs, and others used blankets and rugs to stake out their places hours in advance. Iron Rangers from tots to senior citizens gathered together to kick off the Fourth. The street buzzed with excitement as people chattered away before the start of the big event. When the color guard appeared carrying the flag, the people became silent and rose to attention. They had seen this before, some of them eighty or more times, but they reacted as if it were new. Later in the day, the three blocks of Main Street’s sidewalks were dotted with large and small clusters of people. Sometimes the groups spilled out onto the middle of Main Street—ignoring the accommodating traffic as it moved slowly around them. Aurora’s sidewalks were lined with vendors’ stands that were swarmed with young and old buying corn-onthe-cob on sticks, Polish sausage, burgers, and porketta sandwiches.1 Everywhere the town was alive with talking, drinking, eating, and loud, sustained laughter. The bars were packed like sardine cans, but the people inside were enjoying each other’s company so much that no one complained—they just doubled or tripled their drink orders. I was amazed at how many people had come home to the Range for the Fourth; some traveled hundreds, even thousands, of miles to celebrate the holiday with relatives and friends or to attend all-family and all-class reunions. What was most intriguing to me was that the Fourth of July remained so important to community life in this region of northeastern Minnesota. It was fascinating that the holiday was so big here and so engaging to this entire town, when only 250 miles to the south, one might have no idea it was Independence Day.2 Throughout the 1980s, Doug and I continued to document Iron Range life, especially Independence Day. Over the years, we traveled more than 50,000 miles of back roads while researching and documenting all three iron ranges. Eventually we created a collection of 35,000 photographs, along with old photographs, hundreds of feet of 16 mm film, several hours of videotape, and about forty hours of oral histories. Although we officially completed our Iron Range documentation project in 1987, we were

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Preface not finished for long. Returning to the University of Minnesota for a doctorate in American studies, I decided that my dissertation would be the cultural history of Independence Day and its relationship to the Minnesota Iron Range. Over four years, I traveled back and forth from the Twin Cities to the Iron Range, often staying with my father-in-law, Frank Nemanic. Pa was born on the Range in 1910 and had an amazing memory.3 His historical recollections, his involvement in organized labor, his knowledge of the mines, his work on Fourth of July committees, and his love for the Iron Range people and the land had inspired me to take on my dissertation project despite the dearth of historical records and the need to spend at least two years doing fieldwork. Over the course of four years, he helped me identify many old-timers for oral histories. After resuming work on the Iron Range collection, Doug and I added at least 2,000 photographs to it. In 2003, we finally finished the second phase of our project by documenting the centennial of Doug’s hometown of Aurora—commemorated over the Fourth of July. I owe a great deal of thanks to numerous people who helped me with this book. First and foremost, I want to thank my husband, Doug. His great affinity for and knowledge of the Minnesota Iron Range inspired me to undertake this research, and none of this work would have been done without his sustained help, support, and encouragement. Doug has given me endless suggestions and resources for this study. I really do not have the words to express my gratitude, so I will just say thanks. Professor Lary May, my thesis adviser at Minnesota, was an outstanding adviser and is a good friend who has continued to support and encourage me over the years. His insightful perspectives on the connections between the Iron Range and the national culture have been invaluable. Lary pushed me to make larger connections and to consistently contextualize my work. I will always be grateful for his help and his friendship. Special thanks must go to Professor Elaine Tyler May for her important scholarly insights and for being a great mentor, supporter, and friend.

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Preface When this book was yet a thesis-in-progress, I was most fortunate that Lary and Elaine May opened their home to a thesis group in which I was included. We shared insights, laughs, and excellent potluck fare. Besides expressing my gratitude to Lary and Elaine May, I would like to express my appreciation to my colleagues for their input and encouragement: Scott Zimmerman, Larry Samuel, Jonathan Munby, Joy Barbre, Joe Austin, Cindy Richter, Michiko Hase, Carrie Krasnow, Julia Mickenberg, Carla Bates, Randy Hanson, and Tony Smith. Professor David Noble also deserves special mention for his suggestions, his encouragement, his outstanding scholarship in intellectual history, and his devilish sense of humor. In addition, I am very grateful to Gillian Berchowitz, senior acquisitions editor at the Ohio University Press, for her help, support, and outstanding advice. I am also indebted to Sally Bennett and Nancy Basmajian for their excellent copyediting. I also wish to thank the Iron Range people who allowed me to come into their homes and businesses to record oral histories and ethnographies and who gave me valuable research information; they include Carl Urick, Peter Fugina, Veda Ponikvar, Mae Knute, Ann and Stanley (Pye) Sherek, David (Mose) and Linda Sherek, Conrad and Lenora Holter, Andy Larson, Tom Henderson, Louis Pazzelli, Anna Mismash, Lance and Janet Nemanic, Mario Colletti, Francis Houtala, Mary Anderson, Al Zdon, Nicholas Gosdonovic, Charles and Dixie Babin, Hank Paulisch, Vincent Lacer, June and Tom Duich, Dorothy Jamnick, Betty Orazem, Dolly Anderson, Tootsie Kotzian, Lillian Isaacson, Leland Seaman, Rose Bolca, Susan Beck, Helen Larson, Shelly Berts, Jill Dickinson, Gene Foote, Tom Swenson, John and Jean Kjelstrom, and Jerry Fink. I would also like to thank Federico U. Acceri, who helped me find many important research materials. Numerous libraries, historical societies, newspapers, and research institutions deserve acknowledgment. I would particularly like to thank Kathy Bergen of the Iron Range Historical Society in Gilbert, Minnesota, who tirelessly searched for obscure articles and photographs and spent many long hours hand-copying material when the photocopier was down. I

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Preface am also indebted to the Immigration History Research Center, especially Professor Rudy Vecoli, curator Joel Wurl, and the late Timo Rippa. In addition, I wish to thank Al Zdon of the Hibbing Daily Tribune, Kitty Anderson of the Biwabik Times, and Carol Pratt of the Eveleth Range Scene; Penn State Altoona’s librarians Cindy McCarty and Mila Su; and Western State College librarians Patrick Muckleroy and Nancy Gauss. I am also grateful to Dr. Kenneth Womack and Dr. Lori Bechtel of Penn State Altoona for their help and support on this book. Penn State Altoona generously contributed publication support to fund the printing of color photographs. I also wish to thank staff assistants Betty Agee and Gratia Lee at the University of Minnesota, Joanne Aliosi at Western State College, and Gail Dodson at Penn State Altoona for their help, support, and excellent company. Finally, I would be remiss if I neglected to mention my stepson, Geoffrey Nemanic, who traveled to the Iron Range with us for many years. We tragically lost him before this book could be completed. His memory is still an inspiration, and he is deeply missed.

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introduction

“Toivo’s Airbus, 1992”

T    is a rugged mining region of northeastern Minnesota. It was a remote, unsettled frontier just before the turn of the twentieth century, when iron ore discoveries there attracted more than thirty ethnic groups, mostly from central, southern, and eastern European countries. The Iron Range is the home of the world’s largest iron ore pit, Hull-Rust-Mahoning Mine (see fig. .), and was once known for having the world’s largest iron ore deposits, which provided most of the ore for America’s efforts in both world wars. Outside Minnesota, the Iron Range is primarily known for some of its illustrious natives and former residents, including the legendary entertainer Judy Garland, musician and composer Bob Dylan, basketball star Kevin McHale,  Olympic hockey gold medalist Mark Pavelich, billionaire food executive Jeno Paulucci, godfather of American hockey John Mariucci, and U.S. Communist Party leader and five-time presidential candidate Gus Hall.

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introduction By far the most famous former resident of the Iron Range is Bob Dylan, who was raised in the town of Hibbing from the age of six. His house on Seventh Avenue East is a big tourist attraction, especially during Bob Dylan Days.1 Interestingly, some of Dylan’s biographies partially attribute his rebellious, iconoclastic image to his early years among the tough and resilient multiethnic people of the Minnesota Iron Range.2 But because of Dylan’s passion for music, this isolated single-industry region, the Iron Range could offer very little to keep him there beyond high school. Yet for others, work in the mines and the love of this ethnically diverse subculture rooted them to the Iron Range for their entire lives. Nonetheless, living in this remote region (which, on the eastern end, extends north to the Canadian border) is a challenge even for those with a deep love of the land. This book is about those immigrants and their children who created their own regional subculture. It examines more than a hundred years of Independence Day celebrations as a lens through which to view how these diverse immigrant groups created their own version of American identity, reflecting their ethnic and class interests. This is not a typical story of assimilation or ethnic separation but instead details the formation of an alternative Americanism expressing the needs and values of ethnic groups whose members shared identities as both workers and new Americans. It is also the story of the changes in Independence Day rituals nationally as well as on the Iron Range. As chapter  emphasizes, many of the Iron Range Fourth of July traditions resemble early America’s rowdy, carnivalesque practices, which have largely been purged from modern commercialized Fourth of July celebrations. As the country has grown away from its radical roots, the deradicalization of Independence Day has resulted in part from the privatization of leisure and from the standardization of Independence Day celebrations to accommodate urban and industrial order in response to the bourgeois standards and the homogenizing process that dominate contemporary mass-mediated culture. The primary purpose of this book is to lend insight into the history of the Fourth of July and its ritual styles and functions, with specific at-

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“Toivo’s Airbus, ” tention to what Independence Day on the Minnesota Iron Range can tell us about how ethnic Americans see themselves and what being American means to them. Because differing Fourth of July celebration styles represent different class interests as well as differing conceptions of American identity, this study also serves as a reminder that class is an important aspect of identity despite the appearance of our classless culture, which represents the American people as one enormous middle class.3 american identity and mass culture This book poses a number of questions: What does it mean to be an American, and how does this change with the passage of time? How has the phenomenon of mass culture influenced the development of American identity? More specifically, how has the Iron Range working-class population been able to preserve its subculture and its own version of American identity when much of America has moved toward an urbanized consumerist identity reflecting the influence of mass culture’s images, discourse, and material goods? Finally, why does Independence Day continue to be a significant holiday on the Iron Range when it has become merely a day off from work in many parts of the United States? Before elaborating on these questions, I must first define a few slippery terms. For years, scholars have debated definitions of mass culture, but the term has not yet been standardized. Some define mass culture in relation to class, with mass culture as the top-down official culture, as opposed to popular culture (also referred to as vernacular or folk culture), which is portrayed as a grassroots creation. Others see mass culture as a generic term interchangeable with popular culture. Increasingly, scholars have also been conflating mass culture, popular culture, and folk culture— no longer distinguishing between the cultural production from the grassroots and that of the middle-class hegemony as expressed in official or commercialized culture. Further, some scholars use popular culture to describe a broader category inclusive of both mass culture forms and nonmediated cultural forms,

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introduction such as theater, amusement parks, nightclubs, crafts and folk culture, festivals, and other community and regional events.4 I am using the term mass culture to describe mass-mediated and mass-produced products, cultural forms, icons, and discourse, which is a top-down process reflecting middle-class values and norms. In contrast, I am using popular culture as a term for the bottom-up process through which, according to John Fiske, people act as producers of their own meanings and satisfy their needs using the resources of the dominant culture by subverting, resisting, or evading the dominant norms.5 While it is generally agreed that mass culture brought about profound changes during the twentieth century, scholars are still assessing its influence on how we express our identities, on the ways in which we see ourselves as Americans, and on how we view the world. Although acknowledging mass culture’s pervasive impact, I take issue with scholarship that defines mass culture as merely a conservative, top-down phenomenon that has been used to inculcate immigrants and the working class with middle-class values. Instead, my study of the Minnesota Iron Range reveals a more complex relationship between mass culture and its audiences during the post–World War II era.6 Although scholars have traditionally agreed that exposure to mass culture results in a certain amount of cultural homogenization and reinforcement of the status quo, some scholars have focused on the agency of individuals and groups as they use the resources of mass culture for their own interests. While it is true that much of popular culture deals with fantasy and light entertainment reflecting hegemonic values, it is also true that such entertainment must reflect the values and interests of audience members to remain popular and to engage the largest possible audience. In other words, alternative interpretations and values embedded within the mass culture allow people to resist the status quo both directly and symbolically through popular culture. In studying mass culture, it would be ideal to be able to find a remote region of the country with limited exposure to mass culture and with a diverse immigrant demographic. The Minnesota Iron Range is as close

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“Toivo’s Airbus, ” as we can get in these days of satellite television and the Internet. The people of this northern region, comprising small towns separated by densely wooded areas, simultaneously accept, resist, and appropriate mass culture forms and influences. Their resistance to mass culture is especially evident in long-standing Fourth of July traditions, which reinforce their community bonds and also serve as venues for social criticism, satire, and parodies. These traditions include carnivalesque and rowdy celebration of Independence Day, rejecting middle-class values such as moderation, order, decorum, and deference to authority. Nonetheless, the relationship of the Iron Range people to mass culture is not simply a matter of resistance or appropriation of mass culture in their own interests. They have also embraced many of its icons and customs, especially the ideology of consumerism, which promises happiness through consumption.7 One of the most powerful and overlooked components contributing to and reinforcing the links among the diverse people of the Iron Range has been the Fourth of July. For these immigrant workers, the Fourth has been a day on which to express their identities as Americans and Iron Rangers, reaffirming their regional/community ties. These ties are evident in the subculture’s distinctive characteristics, including the sharing of a variety of ethnic foods such as potica and porketta, their own dialect, and their own version of English, called “mine English,” created to protect each other from the hazards of working in the mines when so many groups spoke so many different languages.8 Their distinctively pluralistic version of American identity is expressed on Independence Day as they share carnivalesque European festive traditions such as noisy wake-up rituals, rough games, clown bands, and callithumpian parades.9 Ethnic foods are also distinctive of Iron Range syncretism, or its mixture of ethnic customs and practices attached to its intertwining regional and American identities. Notably, several people whose oral histories were recorded for this book emphasized that Iron Range Fourth of July traditions—such as visiting and family reunions—revolve around sharing ethnic foods at picnics, potlucks, and smorgasbords. Common to festive

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introduction menus are potica (Slovenian), porketta (Italian), apple strudel (German and Slavic), pasties (Cornish), Slovenian potato salad, sauerkraut (German), lasagna, Italian sausage, krofe (Slovenian), Polish sausage, and American Indian fry bread. Some interviewees also recalled distinctive family holiday food traditions passed on from generation to generation. Francis Houtala, an Iron Range native of Finnish descent, described doughnuts made from a special European recipe that was traditional with her family on the Fourth of July.10 Homemade wine and whiskey, common in European festive culture, are also traditional on Independence Day. In addition, Iron Range Independence Day feasts can include American foods such as hot dogs, pigs in a blanket, hamburgers, and ham, making this truly a day of eclectic cuisine. Significantly, another customary way to express freedom on the Fourth is to skip the three-meal routines of everyday life and eat continually throughout the day. Ethnic music is also traditional on the Fourth; in addition, clown bands (often with homemade instruments) and button-box bands (named for the accordion-type instrument they play) have been very popular.11 As the Iron Range became modernized, Independence Day concerts and parades also came to feature contemporary musicians and bands, such as Mr. American and the Ethnics, a group that plays both traditional American and ethnic tunes. early iron range history Although immigrant histories of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries typically depict uprooted people coming to America in search of the American Dream, many of the earliest immigrants to Minnesota’s Iron Range did not come with the intention of staying. The first to mine were mostly young men who had been recruited to the richest iron ore region in the world. They had hoped to stockpile enough money to enable their return to their family and friends in the Old Country. Although such a fluid population typically hampers community development, some

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“Toivo’s Airbus, ” of these immigrants never left, and the pioneer towns of Tower and Ely and (later) Merritt grew rapidly. In addition, a common class base was a powerful incentive for these diverse workers to obscure their differences and forge strong community ties along the ore veins of northern Minnesota. Yet community building was constantly challenged by the mining company’s practice of recruiting men from a variety of cultures who spoke different languages, an industrial practice common across America in this era.12 Although this antiunion strategy was successfully used elsewhere to keep workers apart, survival in this harsh land and the common identities that Iron Range immigrants shared as miners and as new Americans largely bridged their differences. Consequently, despite the temporary status of many of the early miners, strong community and regional ties developed rapidly, and the mining boom soon began to attract families as well as men looking for a new start. The land they settled was particularly rugged, and its hills and rocky ridges were dotted with evergreens and pine stands. Its lowlands were covered with lakes, peat bogs, and cedar or tamarack swamps. Although this was a beautiful, pristine wilderness, the soil was so poor and the growing season was so short that farming was mostly limited to hay and potatoes.13 The harshness of the Iron Range climate is reflected in an annual average temperature of only °F. In January, the coldest month of the year, temperature averages range from °F to °F but have been registered in the 2° range. Because of the high winds throughout the winter months, the wind chill can range from 2°F to 2°F. The Iron Range also holds the distinction of having Minnesota’s heaviest snowfall: – inches annually.14 Summer offers only short-lived relief from the cold, with a growing season of approximately one hundred days. Summer is typically extremely hot and humid, with temperatures at times rising to more than °F. During this time, the foliage, streams, and swamps are perfect breeding grounds for a large variety of biting and stinging insects, including wasps, bees, hornets, mosquitoes, gnats, horseflies, and deerflies. Stories

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introduction still circulate about swarms so thick that they have been known to drive both men and animals into panic, causing them to run screaming from the woods to search for relief in a lake or stream. This is hardly an easy environment in which to settle and start a new life. Yet the hardy population survived and prospered, forging unique alliances and building a regional subculture.15 In the midst of summer, the Fourth of July reinforced their bonds, providing them with a time to celebrate both being Americans and surviving the harsh environment of northern Minnesota. Notably, while this region is often referred to as a single range, it is really three separate iron ranges: the Vermilion, the Mesabi, and the Cuyuna. Settled in the mid-s, the Vermilion is the northernmost range. In the s, the Mesabi was settled. It is the most populous and most prosperous range and has the largest ore deposits. The third iron range, the Cuyuna, was settled in the first decade of the twentieth century (see chapter ). The Mesabi Range in the early s was a sparsely populated wilderness area, in the same condition as the Vermilion a decade earlier. Formerly, these areas had served as a hunting and gathering region for the Ojibway, but the Native Americans had been removed to reservations by the s. In the s, the Vermilion’s primary residents were lumbermen who worked seasonally and moved between camps set up in the wooded areas that were scheduled to be cut.16 Because of huge U.S. labor shortages in the early days of the Iron Range, the mining companies had to recruit overseas. They promised workers good jobs in the land of opportunity. Of course, their recruiting efforts often downplayed the harshness and isolation of this land in northern Minnesota and instead focused on the region’s great resources and untapped potential. According to one recruitment brochure, the Iron Range had the “greatest possibilities known to the world.” Another recruiting pitch euphemistically associated the Range with parkland: “Northeastern Minnesota was originally covered with a growth of timber of all varieties on the uplands while frequent lakes and streams served to beautify this district to such an extent that it has been termed ‘Park Region.’”17

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“Toivo’s Airbus, ” The first settlements on the Iron Range were small boomtowns, carved out of a thick forest of virgin pine. They emerged along the rich ore veins and were mostly populated by diverse groups of workers from southern, central, and eastern Europe as well as some northern European groups that included Swedes, Norwegians, and Finns. On both the Vermilion and the Mesabi ranges, the mining companies recruited the majority of immigrant workers from the older mining areas of the Upper Peninsula of northern Michigan. Later some were recruited directly from Europe or through arrangements with labor agents in other American cities. During this time, the Italian labor agents, called the padrone, were particularly notorious for their harsh treatment of Italian immigrants and for often cheating the immigrants of their wages.18 Some immigrants were also enticed by chain migration, encouraged by exaggerated letters from relatives and friends who had emigrated.19 First the Vermilion and then the Mesabi drew diverse groups, mostly from northern and central Europe in the early years, and later from southern, central, and eastern Europe. The first groups to settle were primarily northern Europeans: the Cornish and other English, the Welsh, the Irish, and Swedes, Finns, and Norwegians. After , the emigrating groups consisted mostly of southern, central, and eastern Europeans, including Slavs, Croats, Serbs, Montenegrins, Italians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Poles, and Russians. In , when the Iron Range population reached its peak, about thirty-five different ethnic groups were identified, with no single group being in the majority across the region.20 toivo’s airbus: the radical spirit of the fourth of july Looking back at the documentary photographs I have taken during more than twenty-five years of documenting American cultural history, I continue to be fascinated by the silly group shown in plate . Some of the people are in mechanics’ suits, a man is dressed as a woman, and another man wears a captain’s hat and an obviously fake beard. They are all

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introduction clustered around a gray cardboard contraption that turns out to be a homemade “replica” of an airplane called the airbus. Other props include window fans, a clothesbasket on a cart, and a garbage can. At first glance, the tableau could be mistaken for a political demonstration, a guerrilla theater group, or even a band of eccentric musicians, but it is none of these. Instead, it is a unit competing for prizes in a Fourth of July parade on the Minnesota Iron Range. What I find fascinating is that this group seems out of sync with contemporary celebrations of Independence Day. There is no order to the group’s formation; there are no American flags or Uncle Sam images; nor is solemn patriotism expressed. Nonetheless, to me this multiethnic group, which appeared under the name “Toivo’s Airbus,” embodies the radical spirit of the Fourth of July. “Toivo” is a common name for Finnish boys, but it also refers to a stock character in Finnish American jokes who is often paired up with a character named Eino. According to folklorist and historian James P. Leary, Toivo can be either a fool or a trickster and has been prominent in Finnish American jokes dating back to at least the s in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, in northern Wisconsin, and in northern Minnesota.21 On the Iron Range, “Toivo” can mean a stupid person, the butt of Finnish jokes, or a trickster or “wise fool.” The Toivo’s Airbus display uses Toivo as a wise fool to lampoon Minnesota’s state aid package to the financially troubled Northwest Airlines, proposed in exchange for building a high-tech airbus maintenance base in the region. The cardboard airbus, the cheap window fans, and the garbage can for donations mock the loan, which people feared would come from their iron ore tax reserve. In return for the loan, Northwest promised jobs in the financially depressed region, which had been in decline since the early s. The can, labeled “Put your $[hand]outs here,” and the sign with the text “Lotta Jobs, Cheeper for D[the]-Range” caustically recall the money previously wasted on rejuvenating the Iron Range economy, including such ill-fated plans as the construction of a chopsticks factory.22 While the humor of this display makes it easy to dismiss as goodnatured fun, one should note that the group departs from the orderly, commercialized public spectacles of urban holiday celebrations. Instead of

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“Toivo’s Airbus, ” delivering accolades to the nation on its “birthday,” this group communicates social commentary. In a world of commercialized public spectacles, this group articulates different, noncommercial values—working-class or vernacular values—in its observance of Independence Day. Significantly, scholars of festive culture tell us that although vernacular or popular culture seems apolitical, it is in fact interactive, communal, informal, and unofficial: characteristics that reject middle-class standards of public behavior typified by such traits as rationality, individualism, moderation, and deference to authority.23 In the case of the Toivo group, working-class values move Independence Day beyond a mere holiday spectacle into the realm of community dialogue relating to a current issue in regional public discourse. The message is part of a larger, continuing critique of corporate middle-class hegemony. This criticism is rooted in European festive traditions, especially practices such as social criticism in carnival and popular street festivities, and it reflects the larger context of disorder and popular radicalism upon which America developed.24 The intertwining of Independence Day and community is key to understanding the process of Americanization on the Minnesota Iron Range and explains why Fourth of July celebrations retained popularity there even as they died out in many other places. In this ethnically diverse region, the communities that made up these small towns were often populated by culturally clashing groups, and many of these groups had immigrated to the region without knowing English. Yet as new Americans they came together and formed communities tied to traditions so strong that more than a century later, the Fourth of July is still important in the community life of many of its surviving towns.25 Further, the Toivo’s Airbus group shows how community and the Fourth of July are linked on the Iron Range, with these celebrations reflecting a working-class value system that is inclusive, informal, and outspoken. This, of course, runs counter to the urban culture of contemporary America and its middle-class value system, expressed in commercialized parades and events based on hierarchy, order, solemnity, and formality. Significantly, the social criticism, clowning, and disorder of Toivo’s Airbus are hallmarks of the carnival style of celebration. And while this

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introduction informal style may seem strange in comparison to commercialized urban standards that require order and conformity, it has been part of Iron Range Fourth of July rituals since the area’s settlement in the late nineteenth century and can be traced hundreds of years further into the past.26 carnival and the fourth of july To understand how Iron Range immigrants constructed their own version of American identity, as reflected in their Independence Day celebrations, one must focus on carnival and its ties to popular radicalism.27 Carnival is a grassroots festive form that involves disorderly processions, revelry, competitions, and rough games dating back at least to the Middle Ages in Europe. Carnival is a truly popular festive form that suspends the norms of everyday life and enables ordinary people to control public spaces, to express political and social criticism, and to temporarily overturn the social hierarchy. In both early America and on the Iron Range in the late nineteenth century, these characteristics made carnival a particularly suitable format for celebrating Independence Day and its spirit of popular radicalism.28 Significantly, unlike the classic Americanization story based on multitudes of urban immigrants pressured to assimilate by breaking with their pasts, adopting English as their primary language as well as adopting middle-class norms associated with American identity, Iron Range Americanization did not require a complete dismissal of Old World customs and values.29 Instead, becoming new Americans involved assuming an American identity, which embraced the traits and values both of ethnic origin and of America. Because carnival’s mocking laughter can uncrown the powerful and provide temporary relief from social control, it allows people to imagine an alternative to everyday life free from its restrictions and inequities. Through parody, satire, and other forms of festive humor, carnival dissolves class barriers; anyone can become the target of humor. Besides its unofficial, informal, and communal characteristics, carnival also features bodily pleasures and excess while it provides an outlet for opposing and

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“Toivo’s Airbus, ” mocking official and ceremonial culture through its inversions of class, gender, and other aspects of the social order.30 Undoubtedly, class inversions and social critiques in the form of parody and satire are carnival’s most subversive elements. Inversions reverse the power relationships of everyday life and call attention to the inequities of the dominant culture. They can include reversals of gender, age, class, race, and even what is considered animal as opposed to human. By far the most subversive inversion is that of class, which is considered a protest against class exploitation.31 Despite the popularity of carnival and carnivalesque street festivities, as the cities and towns in the United States grew in population, these forms—with their emphasis on disorder and reversals of everyday life— increasingly interfered with urban order. In addition, the development of capitalism, which necessitated orderly and rational behavior in the public sphere, also made carnival problematic. For modern societies to thrive and for the powerful to remain in power, carnival needed to be suppressed or contained, and new celebratory traditions emphasizing gentility, order, and moderation had to eventually replace it. Significantly, carnival’s demise in the United States parallels the deradicalization of Fourth of July celebrations as Independence Day observances evolved from rites of resistance to solemn civic ceremonies and finally to mere holidays from work.32 The Minnesota Iron Range provides an excellent venue for examining the relationship of carnival and other Old World festive traditions to American identity. The remoteness of this area also makes it a unique site for examining how mass culture’s images and messages, when removed from their commercial contexts, can take on a life of their own both locally and regionally as part of the popular culture and can also be used both for patriotic expression and for parody or criticism of the commercial culture from which they emerged.33 And because mass culture is familiar to younger generations, by incorporating it into Fourth of July celebrations, older generations could attract youths to the celebrations to maintain the subculture’s traditions. Thus, this grassroots co-optation process of mass culture can create interesting juxtapositions of mass culture

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introduction with folk culture in Iron Range Fourth of July celebrations. This is evident in the  photo of two girls in Slovak-style peasant costumes posing with Raggedy Ann and Andy in the background (plate ). The message “We Found Freedom” speaks to a creative view of American identity in which the mixture of Old World and New World cultures expresses both American identity and Iron Range identity. ethnicity and american identity This book’s perspective on American identity is based on the idea that one’s American identity is dynamic, sharing prominence at different times with other identity aspects such as ethnicity of origin, class, gender, and race.34 In providing a look at American identity as an immigrant construction reflected in an annual holiday, this study spans more than one hundred years with the hope of recovering some of the regional notions of American identity, which include alternative expressions of class and ethnicity. While the scholarly definitions of class and ethnicity are numerous and at issue, this book uses specific definitions for these terms. By class I am referring to a categorization combining economic level and social status.35 Although a bit more slippery, ethnicity can mean either an identity based on country of origin or an identity based on a combination of American and ethnic components. John Higham’s “pluralistic integration” paradigm of American identity and ethnicity is particularly appropriate for the Iron Range because it departs from the classic view of ethnicity and American identity as mutually exclusive. While Higham sees American identity and ethnicity of origin as distinctive, he also sees them as having overlapping components. This challenges the traditional notion that American identity is uniquely characterized by new customs and a new worldview that breaks with Old World traditions and worldviews. Pluralistic integration aptly describes an Iron Range American identity in which core Old World traditions and values are blended into a nucleus of identity that is surrounded by layers of identity, flexible enough to accommodate “new traditions.”36

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“Toivo’s Airbus, ” According to the late Robert Harney, Iron Rangers are unique because of their ties to their land and because their ethnic boundaries are porous. Although they are proud of their separate ethno-cultural backgrounds, their ethnicities are no longer distinct from their Iron Range (American) identity.37 From Harney’s perspective, what matters for Iron Rangers “is not so much that one’s father was a Slovene miner, but that he was a Slovene miner from the Iron Range.”38 Ethnicity/American identity on the Iron Range can be visualized via two Fourth of July photographs. The first is the photograph of Mr. American and the Ethnics, taken on July ,  (plate ). Here we can see how American identity can coexist with ethnicity of origin. This band’s name highlights a pluralistic view of American identity, as does the fact that it was known for playing both American and ethnic tunes. An earlier example of the pluralism and cultural tolerance evident in the American identity of the Iron Range is reflected in a photograph from the  Fourth of July celebration in the town of Mountain Iron (fig. .). There, both

figure 0.1. This photograph taken on July 4, 1914, in Mountain Iron displays the flags of countries of origin along with the American flag. (Courtesy of Iron Range Research Center, Chisholm, Minnesota.)

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introduction American flags and flags from countries of origin were flown over the main street. This inclusive, culturally tolerant view of American identity was eloquently described by Harney, who encapsulated Iron Range identity into a descriptive term: “Tuteshi,” or “the people from here.” Tuteshi connotes “a marriage of population and locale to create a shared identity.” The Range, according to Harney, “is not a place for a separate definition of ethnicity. . . . In terms of values, networks, and folkways everybody on the Range belongs at one level, to a single ethnos, whatever their different ethnic origins.”39 methodology and structure While the Iron Range is basically a configuration of numerous small towns, this book features the town of Biwabik and its Fourth of July celebrations, cast against the backdrop of the national culture. Across the Iron Range, Biwabik is known as the town with the most elaborate, popular, and traditional of the Iron Range Fourth of July celebrations. The centerpiece of its program is the callithumpian parade—a costumed, disorderly, and humorous parade common in European festive culture. For breadth, Biwabik’s celebrations are complemented by the celebrations of other Iron Range towns.40 One Day for Democracy begins with a history of the Fourth of July, from its first celebrations when America was born, up to the late nineteenth century, when Independence Day celebrations had just begun on the Iron Range. The focus then moves from Biwabik’s birth in  to its centennial in . Because the Fourth of July occurs only once a year, a span of more than one hundred years makes it possible to trace patterns of change over time. My methodology is interdisciplinary, drawing from anthropology, history, folk culture and folklore studies, cultural studies, sociology, and mass communication. Cultural history and anthropological methodologies have been most useful for analyzing the meanings and constructions of rituals,

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“Toivo’s Airbus, ” symbols, and images and for recording and interpreting oral interviews. I conducted these interviews with members of the first- through the thirdgeneration born Iron Rangers; the interviews took place over a four-year period and produced more than fifty hours of audiotape. Other primary sources for this book include photographs; newspapers; regional, town, and ethnic group histories; and other research materials.41 My rationale for using the Fourth of July as a cultural text or cultural artifact is based on the notion that products of cultures are imprinted with the cultural tensions and ambiguities of particular time periods. Because cultural texts reflect both normative and non-normative aspects of a particular era, they can be used as free spaces where people can derive the pleasure of resisting, subverting, or evading the status quo as it is presented in various cultural texts. Because audiences of mass culture can choose alternative meanings and individualized uses, they cannot be considered as mere “cultural dupes” or mindless victims, which many critics have dubbed them. Instead, as demonstrated by the carnivalesque style of Iron Range Fourth of July celebrations, people can be active producers of meaning whether they are participating in public festivities or consuming mass-produced products.42 This study relies on photographs as important primary sources. Between  and , I took many of these for the Tamarack Iron Range Collection. Others have been copied (with permission) from the collections of historical societies in different Iron Range towns, from the Minnesota Historical Society, and from the albums of Iron Range families. As with newspapers and other research material, I have adopted a “close reading” of photographs for their cultural patterns as well as for their factual data.43 In conclusion, by examining the Fourth of July over time, One Day for Democracy argues that this holiday provides important insights into what it means to be American, particularly from the neglected perspective of immigrant workers. It also shows how July Fourth has been used to reflect and shape American nationalism from the bottom up. Significantly, this

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introduction study also looks at the influence of mass culture on American life and identity in the second half of the twentieth century and shows how even isolated areas such as the Iron Range could not escape the influence of mass culture. Yet it also emphasizes that the relationship between Iron Rangers and mass culture is complex. In this region, mass culture’s messages, icons, and values are not just passively absorbed. Rather, some of its components, such as its cold war rejection of radicalism (see chapter ), are incorporated by the people, while other components, such as those used within parody, are used to subvert mass culture. As Michael Holquist says in his prologue to Rabelais and His World, the subversive character of carnival laughter should not be underestimated in its relationship to freedom, so we must recognize that “necessary to the pursuit of liberty is the courage to laugh.” 44 Finally, this book argues that although Independence Day’s popularity rises and falls with cycles of patriotism, the Fourth of July will continue to provide insight into how people see themselves as Americans and to function as an important instrument in understanding American cultural history.

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chapter one

Early Fourth of July Celebrations From Rites of Resistance to Celebrations of American Nationalism

O  , , the second anniversary of American independence, a humorous yet culturally significant event was taking place in the streets of Philadelphia. After the morning’s official parade and while members of the Continental Congress and high society celebrated with an elegant formal dinner at the City Tavern, an unruly mob of radicals was assembling a carnivalesque parade to enact an Old World tradition called “rough music.” They created this noisy ritual procession to uphold the community standards of Whig loyalty and republican simplicity by a social inversion that involved taking control of the streets and mocking elite fashion.1 Known in France as charivari and in Britain as skimmington, this rowdy ritual procession, led by a barefoot, dirt-smeared woman sporting an elaborate and towering hairstyle, parodied the outlandish high hairdos that aristocratic American women borrowed from British couture (fig. .). Cheered on by laughing and taunting crowds along the route,

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early fourth of july celebrations

figure 1.1. High hair fashion for elite women, 1776. (From the Collection of the Philadelphia Historical Society and published in Scharf and Wescott, History of Philadelphia, .)

she was accompanied by a noisy drummer and followed by a rowdy bunch of men, many of them foot soldiers of the Revolutionary Army. They paraded through the city, eventually arriving at the City Tavern, the site of the elite gathering for the elegant dinner and ball. Among the tavern’s celebrants were the targets of this mockery—the women who had socialized with British officers during the city’s occupation and now accompanied elite men of both the Whig and Tory persuasions. These stylish ladies

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From Rites of Resistance to Celebrations of American Nationalism were known for bodacious high hairdos, sometimes stacked almost a foot above their heads.2 Significantly, this early American parody accomplished its purpose, as noted in a letter written on July , , by Richard Henry Lee to Francis Lightfoot Lee, which comments that “it lessened some heads already and will probably bring the rest within the bounds of reason, for they [the hairdos] are monstrous indeed.”3 Historical accounts of the parade leader do not identify her by name, and both her identity and her outlandish costuming have become the subject of scholarly debate. According to historian Simon Newman, whose sources included elite diaries and letters, she was “a prostitute whom they dressed in all the finery displayed in the Quaker city by the wives and mistresses of British officers.”4 Historian and folklorist Susan Klepp disagrees that the woman was a prostitute, arguing that she was merely a plebeian in scruffy and ragged clothes.5 Klepp’s interpretation convincingly traces the incident’s evolution in letters, diaries, and newspaper accounts written by mortified elites who were attempting to dissipate social criticism and to repair the damage to their public images. By casting her as a prostitute, elites could evoke moral condemnation, thus neutralizing the true meaning of the satire. Further, Klepp’s argument reveals the process through which elite accounts of the dirt-smeared white woman transformed her into a black prostitute, evoking both racial and moral condemnation and even more effectively diffusing the public critique. Klepp explains that “the change from the popular disciplining of the frivolous elite through symbolic street theater to a limited and narrow burlesque of an invented black woman . . . robbed the incidence of rough music of its meaning and of its social and political resonance.”6 Despite this debate, scholars agree that the woman in question wore what Lee described as an incredibly extravagant and “monstrous head dress” with “a profusion of curls” accenting her trendy hairdo, which towered almost three feet above her head.7 Because such an elaborate hairstyle required a great deal of time and money to create, this fashion parody was not merely a humorous display but an expression of deep class

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early fourth of july celebrations hostility. As Klepp points out, outrageous fashions such as high hair signaled the “growing division of Americans along the lines of wealth and privilege. High hair was absurd, promoted licentiousness, diverted goods from the needy, and was a British imposition on American manners.”8 Consequently, this woman was bound to evoke what Lee described as “much mirth” from the crowds cheering her on along the procession route, as they openly expressed their derision for the aristocratic affectations of elite women.9 Adding insult to injury, the rough music procession ended in front of a tavern frequented by high society to ensure that the message created as much embarrassment and public humiliation as was possible. It could be argued that the racial misrepresentation in aristocratic diaries and letters describing the woman as black might simply have been a misinterpretation of her dirty appearance. Yet Klepp contends that only later accounts in diaries and letters describe her as an African American prostitute. Klepp also convincingly explains that in festive culture, the practice of smearing dirt on effigies and on characters in parodies symbolized shame or revulsion for wrongdoing. Dirt besmirched one’s reputation, and in this patriarchal society, according to Klepp, “men’s political virtue rested in a large measure on the behavior of their wives and daughters.”10 Thus, the transformation of a white plebeian into a black prostitute highlights the power of the elite print culture to project a virtuous image as well as dissipate class conflict.11 Within a broader context, this high hair parody and other class-based critiques signify festive culture’s spirit of popular radicalism, which some historians of early America such as Simon Newman, Peter Shaw, and David Waldstreicher consider instrumental in setting the stage for the revolution.12 Through satire, parody, and inversions of British culture, the colonists called attention to British elitism and oppression and to their status as second-class subjects of the king. In the high hair procession as well as in numerous other examples of carnivalesque practices, parody was a venue for social criticism through which the populace could express their disdain for the elites.

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From Rites of Resistance to Celebrations of American Nationalism The high hair parody and other carnivalesque customs of rowdiness, parody, and satire common to early America call to mind similar carnivalesque festivities on Independence Day more than two hundred years later on Minnesota’s Iron Range, such as the Toivo’s Airbus parody (see plate ). On the Iron Range, social commentary continues to be an Independence Day tradition. Taking a closer look at one of the members of the Toivo’s Airbus group in Aurora’s  celebration we see a crossdressing flight attendant engaged in a mockery of Northwest Airlines’ plan to build a maintenance base in the region, ostensibly to help the failing economy (plate ). This “stewardess” embodies the group’s message that the company’s proposal is as ridiculous as he is. The fact that he is a man dressed as a woman parading around in the traditionally male public domain signals carnival’s suspension of the rules and hierarchical order of everyday life, while also calling attention to the gender inequities of everyday life.13 As the group’s clown, the stewardess embodies a particularly subversive carnival figure because clowns represent class reversals in which fools become the temporary centers of everyone’s attention. A close reading of this photograph reveals more of the parody. Besides his frumpy appearance, there is a unique non–fashion statement expressed in the saggy nylons, the hairy legs, the dumpy frock, the cheesy high hairdo, the sloppy makeup, and his Vogue-ish pose. His offer of “service” enhances the parody, as do his props—a metal coffee thermos and a wooden tray with decorative plastic cupcakes. Interestingly, although this photograph is fairly recent, cross-dressing on Independence Day is not new practice on the Minnesota Iron Range. As a key component in European festive tradition for hundreds of years, festive cross-dressing practices were brought over by immigrants settling the region and appear in Fourth of July celebrations dating back to the first towns established on the Iron Range.14 Besides being humorous, the stewardess is intriguing because of the responses he evokes. Often people from other parts of Minnesota and from other states are surprised when I tell them this photograph was

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figure 1.2. The spirit of popular radicalism echoes in the words of the Declaration of Independence. Its famous radical statement declares that “all men are created equal” and proclaims that when the government abuses the people, they have the right to “alter or abolish” it. Early in the nation’s history, the Declaration of Independence was the centerpiece of Fourth of July commemorations across America. (Downloaded from the website of the National Archives, Washington, D.C.: www.archives.gov.)

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From Rites of Resistance to Celebrations of American Nationalism taken on the Fourth of July, because typical Independence Day recollections do not include men in drag or social criticism. As a holiday from work, the Fourth is often a day for barbeques, family picnics, and trips to the lake for relief from the summer heat. Of course, Independence Day fireworks are still traditional, even in places where there are no other Independence Day events or activities scheduled. Also common to both urban and small-town July Fourth recollections are parades, including precision marching bands; red, white, and blue floats carrying queens and dignitaries; happy-faced politicians waving from convertibles plastered with campaign signs; military units marching stoically behind enormous American flags; red-nosed clowns with gigantic shoes; and novelty acts such as the Shriners in miniature cars maneuvering in complicated patterns throughout the parade route without running over the spectators along the way. Although individual memories of contemporary Fourth of July celebrations may vary, most people tell me that they definitely do not associate the holiday with the popular radicalism reflected in disorder, in cross-dressing, or in social critiques such as those expressed by the Toivo’s Airbus group. The Fourth is generally not considered a day for such subversive practices; instead, it is considered a harmonious day when people get together to celebrate their nation’s birthday privately or as spectators of Independence Day parades and fireworks. Nonetheless, the history of July Fourth celebrations highlights the fact that carnival customs were once common across America, reminding us that the New World was not entirely new and did not require a clean break from the customs and traditions of the Old World. In fact, I believe that many of the colonists in early America might have found the Iron Range stewardess quite amusing and certainly not an unfamiliar holiday fixture, given the heritage of parody, social inversions, and political satire embedded in their popular celebrations.15 As subversive features of festive culture, parody and self-parody deserve a more detailed explanation. According to literary critic M. M. Bakhtin, parody and self-parody in carnival must be understood within the context

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early fourth of july celebrations of laughter as the ultimate equalizer. They reflect “democratic” traditions because they can be directed at anyone. Carnival’s parody, class inversions, and critiques are especially troubling to elites. Elites in early America not only feared that such practices could lead to unruly holiday mobs, but also feared the general unraveling of the people’s social conditioning as a result of their temporary liberation from what Bakhtin calls “the norms of etiquette and decency imposed at other times.”16 In early America, the carnival customs of the populace expressed resistance and opposition to the solemnity and sobriety imposed on them by the Puritans and other elites. In contemporary times on the Iron Range, parody has been used to critique the powerful and mock corporate powers, such as the Twin Cities–based Northwest Airlines, with its “altruistic” plan to bail out the depressed region. Significantly, self-parody is evident in the Toivo group’s comic depiction of Iron Range workers who would be employed by the airline if the plan were implemented. The portrayal warns fellow Iron Rangers that they are being duped and will get little in return for supporting another corporate institution. Further, their parody articulates deep class resentments and suspicion of corporate benevolence after decades of oppression by the mining companies of the region.17 Their antiauthoritarian attitude emphasizes an Old World philosophy that the community is responsible for speaking out publicly to prevent social, political, or economic tyranny.18 Another notable aspect of the complex Toivo parody relates to the reputation given to the region by other parts of the state. Long considered primitive, crude, and unsophisticated by the people in other parts of Minnesota, the Iron Range has been lampooned frequently by residents of the Twin Cities metropolitan area. In this photograph, the Iron Range stereotype is prominent in the exaggerated and ridiculous costume worn by the “stewardess.”19 His choice of men’s work boots, the display of the tops of his nylon stockings, the disarray of his lipstick as it overflows his lipline, his garish multicolored sunglasses, his ill-fitting frock, and an incredibly fake-looking s bouffant hairstyle (see plate ) all enhance this stereotype. In addition, note that the red, white, and

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From Rites of Resistance to Celebrations of American Nationalism blue of his costume function as accent colors rather than focal points, indicating that parody is his primary intent rather than an expression of patriotism or birthday salutations to the nation.20 The signs carried by the Toivo group are also infused with self-parody, because they are written in the Iron Range dialect, reflected in such phrases as “Lotta jobs, cheeper for D-Range” and “Da Air for Da Bus.” Another element of self-parody appears in the sign held by the stewardess, also written in Range dialect, which reads, “Coffee Cake Pieces or Me.” This is a parody of the Old World holiday visiting tradition transplanted to the Iron Range in which guests are served coffee and baked goods. Finnish old-timers often refer to this custom as “Coffee Cups and Cake Pieces.” Flashing back to the colonial era, when the carnivalesque style was brought to America, street demonstrations like the high hair parody of  were also common on holidays such as Pope’s Day, election days, and New Year’s Eve.21 These were characterized by the hallmarks of the carnivalesque style: excessive noise, revelry, and drinking; cross-dressing; masking to ensure anonymity or to allow for new or invented identity; charivaris or noisy demonstrations to humiliate someone publicly; and callithumpian parades—humorous, costumed processions making “rough music” that mocks the music of everyday life. Interestingly, the subversive carnival tradition of cross-dressing, especially by males, was a common practice, inverting both power and gender because it allowed “female” figures to temporarily dominate the public sphere, a traditionally male domain, becoming the centers of attention instead of men. Further, male-to-female inversions such as the “stewardess” strip patriarchal authority of its ability to impose order, sobriety, and dignity as acceptable behavior. Also, through this ritual practice, women (who have long been stereotyped as out of control, impulsive, and emotional) can temporarily rule the streets, turning respectable public behavior on its head. In addition, the outrageous costuming of the cross-dresser also disrupts the status quo through carnivalesque garishness and excess, calling attention to the norms of moderation and restraint.22

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early fourth of july celebrations Notably, before America was born and despite elite control of official civic celebrations, there were popular holidays such as Guy Fawkes Day (later renamed Pope’s Day in America), court days, New Year’s Day, and election days on which people took to the streets in their traditional and unruly vernacular style.23 On Pope’s Day, traditions of festive inversion—the carnivalesque practices that turned the world upside down— were particularly disorderly. Therein the routines of everyday life and the restrictions of social order were suspended, as people performed their festive rituals, often roaming the streets in masks and silly costumes, drinking, laughing, and breaking the boundaries of public respectability. Pope’s Day’s challenge to authority and social hierarchy is epitomized by the effigy processions that parodied the custom of leading criminals through the streets for public censure and by the custom of raising unofficial taxes from the wealthy to pay for constructing these effigies.24 Other ritual traditions also challenged authority, especially when men and boys invaded the homes of the wealthy, performing silly acts and reciting rhymes for which they expected liquor and food. On Pope’s Day, it was even customary for the people to enforce their festive custom of candlelit windows by breaking unlit windows, often at the homes of the wealthy.25 These festive inversions of social hierarchy allowed the people to express their class resentments and also reminded the wealthy of their mutual obligation to provide for the people in return for the deference and cultural authority the people accorded them.26 Significantly, elites tolerated popular inversions because of the common belief that the lower classes need to suspend their routines of everyday life to temporarily vent their frustrations and pent-up resentments rather than revolt against the social, political, and cultural injustices and inequities of everyday life. Because festive street practices were relatively short-lived and minimal damage was done to individuals and property, many elites believed that tolerating these practices served as a safety valve that ultimately left their cultural and political authority unchallenged and prevented a popular revolution.27 Yet on Independence Day, the combination of carnivalesque practices and the rhetoric of freedom proved to be a particularly volatile mix. The

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From Rites of Resistance to Celebrations of American Nationalism patriotic elite found America’s earliest celebrations very troublesome because people were inspired by literal interpretations of the freedoms articulated in the Declaration of Independence. Elites were also concerned that people were not expressing their patriotism in a solemn and reverential manner but instead by disorder, revelry, humor, and inversions of the norms of public respectability. In combination with the tenets of freedom and equality evoked by Independence Day, the carnivalesque celebrations gave people the opportunity to express the utopian democratic ideals of the early republic while lampooning class distinctions with practices such as parody, mock coronations, and mock elections. To the patriotic elite, carnival was incompatible with the harmony, order, and stability required for unity among such a diverse populace. During the Revolutionary War, the common enemy created a bridge across classes and ethnic boundaries, and carnivalesque celebrations of Independence Day reflected this unity as people gathered together in spontaneous, noisy, and enthusiastic rites of resistance to British oppression. These rites inverted and thus highlighted all things British as the colonists temporarily and symbolically assumed power in the public sphere. While these practices were necessary to affirm independence across classes, the patriotic elite continued to fear that popular street celebrations would erupt into mob violence.28 Such was the case when people first heard the news about the Declaration of Independence. Spontaneous celebrations broke out throughout the colonies, although on different days depending on when the news reached a particular town. In this era predating mass communication, elites were well aware that such street celebrations would be necessary to demonstrate the commitment of all classes to the independence effort.29 Although the first celebrations of independence did not occur simultaneously on July Fourth and varied with each town, certain aspects of these festivities were common to most of them. Typically, there was a public reading of the Declaration of Independence in the town square or at the town’s liberty pole (a symbolic gathering place for revolutionary activities). In addition, bells tolled, guns were fired saluting the thirteen colonies, and jubilant people filled the streets to celebrate.

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early fourth of july celebrations In New York on July , , the declaration was first read during the day, and in the evening a mob tore down a fifteen-foot statue of George III on horseback and chopped it to bits. The people then sent its parts to Connecticut for a meltdown into bullets for the Revolutionary War effort.30 The feverish pitch of the wartime ethos is particularly apparent in the account of the celebration on July , , in Huntington, Long Island, when the people finally received word of the declaration as part of the area was occupied by British troops and the British fleet was moving toward New York.31 After a reading of the Declaration of Independence, the people removed the Union flag from the liberty pole (erected to symbolize popular radicalism). They took the Union flag, with the words “liberty” on one side and “George III” on the other, and ripped off and discarded the letters spelling out the king’s name. Next they constructed an effigy of the king, blackening his face to symbolize his shame and soiled reputation in the eyes of the people.32 Adding to their carnival inversion, the townspeople adorned his head with a “wooden crown stuck full of feathers” and, after wrapping the body in the Union flag, which had been lined with gunpowder, they hung it on a gallows and “exploded” it and “ burnt [it] to ashes.”33 Significantly, Independence Day’s popularity appears to follow a cyclical pattern throughout American history, rising and falling with the waxing and waning of patriotic sentiment. Public displays of patriotism have become increasingly prominent during times of intense social and/or political change, particularly during wartime.34 The cyclical pattern first became apparent in the years after the revolution, when popular radicalism no longer seemed relevant and the struggle for independence had begun fading from people’s memories. During this period of weak nationalism, fewer and smaller celebrations were held, and various regional and local festive traditions took center stage, including the Old World carnivalesque rituals that had been customary in colonial America. As July Fourth’s popularity continued to decline in the s and as class divisiveness intensified in the post–Revolutionary War era, the elites began aggressive efforts to create national unity and diffuse class tensions by recasting and refining the celebration into a solemn and respectable

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From Rites of Resistance to Celebrations of American Nationalism style. By standardizing Independence Day into a solemn, dignified public spectacle, elites believed that they could build and reinforce national unity through the creation of a civil religion emphasizing reverence for the nation, deference for authority, and a sense of common heritage binding the diverse populace.35 This was intended to educate the “lower orders” on the virtuous principles of republicanism, which were reflected in good manners, dignity in public, solemn patriotism, and deference to authority.36 To refashion the celebration of popular radicalism into a rite of nationalism, elites planned to supplant carnivalesque celebrations with official public ceremonies built around solemn orations and processions of elite volunteer militia units. Not only did this require the gradual suppression of carnival, but it also disconnected this holiday from its revolutionary spirit and its radical rhetoric and symbols such as liberty trees, liberty poles (fig. .), and liberty caps.37

figure 1.3. Raising the liberty pole was a symbol of popular radicalism in colonial America as well as during the federal era, when it was used to express opposition to Federalism. Engraving by John C. McRae from an original by F. A. Chapman, 1876. (Courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia.)

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early fourth of july celebrations Nonetheless, because the vernacular festive traditions were firmly rooted in both British and American popular culture, efforts to suppress carnival folk practices proved difficult and met with a great deal of popular resistance, which sometimes turned violent.38 Thus, the Fourth of July became a site of contestation, reflecting the political and class conflicts of this period, especially in the intensely partisan battles between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. By the end of the decade, elite efforts to recast the Fourth into a solemn civic celebration were stalled as their ranks became divided over the ideological war between the Federalists, who supported a centralized government, and the Anti-Federalists, who supported a decentralized government.39 Hoping to develop an aristocracy, the Federalists attempted to gain control of Independence Day celebrations across the country to further their agenda and to promote the republican virtues of good order and assert their political and cultural authority. The Anti-Federalist elites, along with marginalized groups such as low-income white men, women, and African Americans, resisted by taking their politics to the streets in rowdy, disorderly demonstrations and celebrations of Independence Day.40 The intensity and duration of partisanship during the Federal era led to many chaotic street incidents as well as some violence, especially when the Anti-Federalists disrupted celebrations controlled by the Federalists. Significantly, by the end of the century, the partisanship had become so extreme that many towns held separate partisan celebrations of independence, often resembling boisterous political rallies instead of solemn celebrations of the nation’s anniversary. Class complicated these political battles because the Federalists were mostly elites who hoped to use the power of the Washington administration to reassert an aristocracy.41 By the time the Constitution was ratified in , their opponents had grown into a national political party called the Democratic-Republicans by building a coalition that included urban craftsmen, urban workers, and white farmers.42 In  the ratification of the Constitution put Federalists firmly in control of many of that year’s Fourth of July celebrations.43 Yet the ap-

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From Rites of Resistance to Celebrations of American Nationalism pearance of liberty poles and liberty caps in Philadelphia’s enormous Grand Federal Procession indicated that national unity was still elusive. Despite the parade’s appearance of unity as the populace and the elites all participated in an orderly and decorous procession, this was a temporary situation. Although the Federalists were not entirely successful in replacing all the unruly popular carnivalesque practices with solemn rites of civil religion and respectability, they were successful in suppressing some social inversions and curtailing many subversive crowd actions with orderly processions led by the militia and civic authorities, intended to model acceptable, rational American festive behavior. They also modified other popular practices that challenged their authority, such as replacing the popular and disorderly practices of burning bonfires and blowing off homemade firecrackers (“squibs”) with civic fireworks displays under their control. Also, instead of entirely abolishing parades, they often replaced rowdy carnivalesque parades with orderly processions.44 As the s ended and populist Thomas Jefferson was elected, many Independence Day programs came under Republican control. However, despite their rise to power, Republicans still needed to make some political compromises relating to Independence Day celebrations to preserve their hegemony, to build national unity, and to ensure Federalist cooperation. This meant moderating the tenor of July Fourth celebrations by discouraging popular street politics, despite the important role that street politics and the marginalized groups had played in bringing them to power.45 Notably, these Republican attempts to moderate Independence Day sparked carnivalesque parodies of the militia, of orations, and of the solemn, respectable style of celebration being advocated.46 Over the course of the nineteenth century, revolutionary changes in society, politics, economics, and culture transformed everyday life, including celebrations of July Fourth. Innovations such as railroads, the telegraph, photography, and motion pictures changed lifestyles and worldviews as America shifted from a country dominated by small towns and agriculture into one dominated by large urban centers and industry. In addition, the growth of industrial capitalism changed not only America’s economic

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early fourth of july celebrations structure but also its social structure as the rise of corporations expanded the middle class, widening even further the country’s class disparities, leading at times to violent public confrontations between labor and capital.47 Undoubtedly, one of the most significant changes in the nineteenth century is the mass immigration movement that started in the early s and lasted until the end of the century. The diverse cultural and religious heritage of these immigrants challenged white Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance, which surfaced in class and ethnic conflicts over respectable versus rowdy celebration styles on Independence Day as well as other public holidays.48 During the century-long immigration wave, as many as  million people came to the United States, and along with them came the carnivalesque festive culture of the Old World, which had earlier clashed with respectable celebrations and public behavior standards established by the native-born middle class and considered norms for Americanization.49 Overall, the nineteenth-century struggle over festive styles was not merely a conflict over preferences but a conflict over what constituted American identity and over the appropriate way to express this identity. In terms of maintaining hegemony, the stakes for the middle class were particularly high, given the overwhelming challenge to Protestantism and to middle-class standards posed by the immigrants, many of whom were Catholic and from the lower classes of southern, central, and eastern Europe. Consequently, nativism surfaced in Anglo-conformist reform efforts dedicated to “Americanizing” immigrants. Most notable was the Safe and Sane Fourth of July movement, which promoted noise abatement, banned firecrackers, and standardized a respectable style for celebrating Independence Day, which revolved around didactic orations and solemn patriotic expression.50 The long-standing working-class festive tradition of drunkenness was a particularly large obstacle to assimilating immigrants into middle-class norms. Despite numerous elite temperance movements that culminated in the ill-fated Eighteenth Amendment and Prohibition of the s, the working class firmly resisted bans on alcohol as they sought to escape the

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From Rites of Resistance to Celebrations of American Nationalism monotony and dissatisfaction of their lives as factory workers. Nationally, temperance efforts were complicated by the fact that taverns served not only as drinking establishments but also typically as social centers for American workers.51 Over the course of the nineteenth century, Independence Day’s popularity waned as fewer public celebrations were held and as the urban middle class and the wealthy left the cities for the peaceful countryside on the Fourth of July or engaged in new genteel traditions, such as picnics, private gatherings, excursions on boats, and games including croquet and lawn tennis. These practices increasingly estranged them from the working class, which still favored rowdy, carnivalesque festivities characterized by unruly parades, rough games, drunkenness, and noisy discharges of firecrackers and fireworks. By midcentury, many urban Independence Days had become primarily working-class holidays dominated by unstructured, informal styles of celebration and public drunkenness.52 America’s declining interest in official Fourth of July celebrations was interrupted briefly by the centennial celebrations of  and then continued through the end of the decade.53 The transportation revolution was partially responsible for this trend, enabling people to travel to amusement parks or to attend other commercial holiday activities rather than participate in hometown Independence Day celebrations. In the last two decades of the century, new commercialized leisure options such as theater productions, vaudeville, circuses, Wild West shows, amusement parks, and dance halls became increasingly popular on the Fourth. For urban areas in particular, Independence Day was fast becoming more a day for amusement than a day for official commemoration. Not until the Progressive reform movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did efforts to revive solemn civic ceremonies on Independence Day increase popular interest in public celebrations again.54 At the turn of the twentieth century, urban lifestyles, the middle-class hegemony, and the emerging mass culture led to even greater efforts to suppress and contain rowdy carnival styles and to a greater disconnection of Independence Day from its radical roots. Yet there continued to

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early fourth of july celebrations be places, especially in small towns and rural areas, where the enthusiastic revelry on this holiday could reignite the radical spirit of the Fourth of July. One such place comprised small towns along the iron ore veins of northeastern Minnesota’s mining country. There, in the remote forested frontier of the Iron Range, diverse immigrant groups came to find work, become Americans, and celebrate their new holiday of freedom in the rowdy carnival style brought with them from the Old World.

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chapter two

The Frontier Period Celebrations of Diversity in an Isolated Wilderness Region, ‒

I , Fredrick Jackson Turner shocked the historical profession by proclaiming the end of the American frontier. This meant the end of a common metaphor for American progress—the end of envisioning the frontier as a place for regeneration and new beginnings, and the end of the promise of a democracy distanced from the corruptions and oppressive social and political milieu of Europe.1 However,  was a year of new beginnings in the remote woodlands of northeastern Minnesota, where frontier settlement had just begun on the Mesabi Iron Range. There the Mesabi’s first town, Merritt, celebrated its first Independence Day. According to the town’s newspaper, the Mesaba Range, the people raised $ to ensure that this would be an “exceedingly creditable affair.” At a time when miners were earning less than $ a day, this impressive sum speaks to the significance of the holiday.2 These new Americans began their celebration early—on the night of July third—with festivities in the rowdy style of the European working

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the frontier period

figure 2.1. Merritt, as seen in this 1892 photograph, was carved out of the wilderness in northeastern Minnesota. (Courtesy of the Iron Range Historical Society collection, Gilbert, Minnesota.)

classes that expressed their patriotism with noise and enthusiasm. The Mesaba Range described the start of the celebration: “Early in the evening of the third the firing of blasts and firecrackers put the people in mind that the coming day would be the Glorious Fourth of July. Some of the blasts fired off were so heavy as to make the buildings tremble while the reports echoed and reechoed around the shores of the lake. The cannonading was continued in a lively manner on the morning of the Fourth, and certainly there was noise enough to satisfy the most exacting.”3 Despite “considerable drinking” in this young town of three hundred men and thirteen saloons—or a saloon for every twenty-three men—the newspaper noted that few problems occurred. In fact, the sole arrest of the day involved a naked man, identified only as “Shorty,” who was booked for both drunkenness and indecent behavior.4 Merritt’s first celebration was planned by a small group of mining managers who were the town’s elite. It featured demanding physical games

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Celebrations of Diversity, ‒ that were well suited to the environment and sure to appeal to the tough, unskilled laborers who made up the majority of the town’s population. Representing more than ten different ethnic groups from countries such as England, Ireland, Italy, and Slovenia, most of these young men had recently arrived from the mining region of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where dynamite that was stolen from the mines had rocked towns on both the evening of July  and the day of July .5 Unlike most American towns with Independence Day celebrations at this time, Merritt did not have a parade down its main street, a formal program of speeches and orations, or the reading of the Declaration of Independence. Instead, there were sporting events, which included a Cornish wrestling tournament and a tug-of-war match between the Irish and the Canadians. And despite being the opening event, the Cornish wrestling tournament was reported in the town newspaper as having had “some difficulty” attracting participants until athletes were enticed by the healthy sums of $ and $ for the first- and second-place prizes. The tug-of-war match was also disappointing, described by the newspaper as “rather uninteresting owing to the fact that the teams had no other appliance than a one-inch rope.”6 Other events included a boat race on Lake Embarrass and foot races, which proved difficult because of numerous stumps and roots along the course. The Mesaba Range reported that the climax of the day was a splendid “pyrotechnic display” from an island on the lake just outside town. The evening was capped with a “ball” attended by numerous men and at least eighteen women. These women were described as “ladies who in appearance, dress, and manners would do credit to a much older community.” In highlighting their sophistication, the newspaper was carefully distinguishing them from the “women of the evening” who frequented the frontier towns across the Iron Range.7 While the newspaper’s emphasis on the civilized aspects of town life can be viewed as an attempt to make Merritt more attractive for settlement, it also spotlights the concerns of mining management, along with their affiliates who staffed the newspaper, that this ethnically diverse

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the frontier period working-class population might get out of control during a public celebration in the wilderness. Given the large worker population in comparison to the population of middle class and elites willing to live in this remote region, social control was a challenging task. While such holiday celebrations surely allowed the workers to let off steam, elite fears persisted that the rowdy, disorderly celebrations could erupt into mob rule, thus necessitating socialization into the orderly and genteel public standards established by the American middle class. the first settlements Living conditions in the early years were primitive, and miners lived free of charge in mining camps or rented homes in “locations,” which were permanent residential areas built by the mining companies. Life was so difficult in this harsh environment that ethnic groups learned early on that they would need to drop their long-standing rivalries and band together. Unlike the circumstances of many urban immigrants or the immigrant miners in less isolated areas of America, survival on the Iron Range necessitated interdependence and strong community bonds.

figure 2.2. Canton location on the Mesabi Range, 1895. The Iron Range was not an easy place to live during the frontier period. (Courtesy of the Iron Range Historical Society collection, Gilbert, Minnesota.)

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Celebrations of Diversity, ‒ Because mining, with its high mortality and injury rates, was the sole industry on the Iron Range, local and subcultural ties between the various groups developed quickly. Immigrant workers, regardless of their group or town affiliation, thus found common ground on which to interact as a class in their struggles against the mining companies for better working conditions. To their advantage was the fact that few company towns had been established because most of the early mining operations were small, highly speculative ventures. Consequently, various ethnic groups could help in developing the numerous small-town buildings and the main streets. By the turn of the century, many non-English-speaking immigrants had learned the language, and some, along with a number of the English-speaking immigrants, had begun to dominate town politics and to control the disbursement of the Range’s lucrative iron ore taxes.8 It should be noted that although the frontier period of the Mesabi Iron Range lasted roughly until , civic organization was not generally established until around . This is partially attributable to the area’s explosive population growth. For example, soon after the discovery of iron ore on the Mesabi Range, over the course of only three years—from  to —the population increased from , men to more than , people. By the turn of the century, the Mesabi’s population had ballooned to ,.9 Because the earliest Iron Range towns included many migratory workers, community populations were fluid until the late s. Similarly, until the turn of the twentieth century, the small population of mining managers there was also fluid, because many of the mining companies had short life spans. After that time, mining was consolidated under the powerful umbrella of the U.S. Steel Corporation, which gained control over virtually all of the industry in this region (see chapter ). The Mesabi’s frontier era was particularly primitive and rough, marked by frequent fights and drunken brawls as well as many suicides, accidents, and incidents of counterfeiting and check forging. Accounts of the early frontier detail the lives of lumberjacks, adventurers, gamblers, saloon owners, and prostitutes and the lawlessness in which they lived. Lumberjacks and miners would frequently get “rolled” by bartenders

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the frontier period

figure 2.3. An early location on the Mesabi Iron Range. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.)

and women of ill repute and would then be dumped penniless into the streets. Notably, until family life developed, the saloon was the center of community activity.10 The frequent fires that spread from the surrounding forests added to the difficulty of Iron Range life. During particularly dry summer seasons, entire towns (including Merritt and Chisholm) burned down. Unpaved main streets, wooden sidewalks, a lack of sewage systems, and crude, tarpaper outhouses were common to Iron Range towns. As a result, immigrants settling this hinterland lived in stark contrast to many of their urban counterparts across America, who lived with such modern conveniences as paved streets, indoor plumbing, and community sewage systems.11 One example of these conditions is the town of Ely, about fifty miles north and east of Biwabik. A nineteenth-century photograph highlights the town’s crude buildings and its unpaved main street (fig. .). The town’s mayor, Captain Pengilly, led its first Fourth of July parade of horse-drawn and festooned wagons. Few extensive accounts of Mesabi frontier life are available, because oral traditions dominated and fire destroyed many of the written records.

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Celebrations of Diversity, ‒

figure 2.4. Parade on Ely’s main street, July 4, 1891. From Brownell, Pioneer Life in Ely. (Courtesy of the Iron Range Historical Society collection, Gilbert, Minnesota.)

However, there are detailed accounts available from approximately a decade earlier on the Vermilion Range, reflecting the harsh conditions common to both ranges during their successive frontier eras. The Vermilion Range borders the Mesabi to the north, and its town of Tower is located approximately twenty-five miles northeast of Biwabik. Tower, established in , is one of the few “company” towns on the Iron Range.12 Despite the company’s initial concerns about the morality of building a saloon in Tower, in consideration of the leisure needs of its workers, it eventually erected one on the former site of a “French den,” or brothel, that had cropped up next to the mining pits. However, the loss of their site did not deter the enterprising women of ill repute for long—soon after the saloon was built, they set up a “tent of ill fame” nearby. And despite the mining company’s promotion of temperance, by the time the town was incorporated in , Tower officials had issued licenses for an additional seventeen saloons to prevent a black market from being established.13 Similarly, during the frontier period on the Mesabi, the saloon was the center of community life. The sale of liquor was so profitable that Biwabik called its first town council meeting in  to issue liquor licenses

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the frontier period to eleven individuals at $ per license. This high price attests to the centrality of alcohol in working-class lives and the profit potential seen by saloon owners and liquor distributors. Significantly, the saloon’s full commercial potential was most apparent on holidays such as the Fourth of July, which is considered the most profitable day of the year for bar owners. Although no figures are available on Independence Day alcohol consumption during this era, an  Virginia Sentinel article (quoted in Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns) states that in Hibbing, located thirtyfive miles west of Biwabik, “over a carload of Fitger’s Beer was consumed daily” in its thirty bars. Some old-timers have speculated that doubling or tripling this amount may be necessary to approximate the town’s July Fourth demand for beer.14 Initially the Mesabi’s frontier saloons were segregated by ethnic group, and the frequent fights that occurred within saloons remained largely within each group. In Rudy Vecoli’s words, “drunkenness was common among all nationalities,” and drinking was the primary leisure activity. In addition, the young, single men would go to the saloons after work or on Sundays and holidays because the saloons also served as community centers. Consequently, saloon owners became powerful community figures, with many controlling early town politics. John Landis wrote about numerous incidents in which penniless lumberjacks and miners, who had carelessly spent all their pay or were rolled while drunk, ended up in city jails. The saloon owners typically paid for their room and board and later, “on election day, they [the men] were treated to drinks and told how to vote.”15 Although fighting was a routine part of daily life, early Fourth of July newspaper stories report only a few such incidents. This is partially attributable to the working-class code of festive culture designating holidays and carnivals as occasions during which to set aside differences and to celebrate community as well as suspending fighting out of respect for America on its birthday.16 Despite the primitive frontier state of early Iron Range towns, the businessmen, most of whom were immigrants, took great pains to decorate

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Celebrations of Diversity, ‒ their establishments for the Fourth of July. Besides being a day for patriotism, Independence Day was an occasion to reap huge profits if one was willing to gamble against periodically bad weather. For example, in Biwabik in , the Mesaba Range reported that the rain made the preparations and decorations by businessmen “almost a total loss.” Yet in other years when the weather was good, the rewards were bountiful. In  in Virginia, twelve miles west of Biwabik, the town newspaper boasted that its successful Fourth of July festivities had attracted “an immense throng which lined our streets and gave our business places an additional appearance of life and bustle.” Because of Independence Day’s potential for profit, early businesses often advertised special Fourth of July sales in Iron Range newspapers.17 Fred M. Seeley, a second-generation American who wrote a column on the history of Biwabik for the Biwabik Times, described this town in the s as a place where practically every business on the street decorated the front of their places. Some used red, white and blue bunting. Others used crepe paper on the inside of their windows. Those places handling pyrotechnics placed them in their display windows. There was another decoration used by several of the business places. In those years the streets were not yet brought up to grade and the sidewalks were all wood up on posts. So many of the businessmen would go out and bring in a load of poplar and birch trees in full foliage. They stuck the butts into the ground at the edge of the walks making a kind of bower or arbor in front of their place. They did create a hazard however in one respect. One couldn’t throw a lighted firecracker through them into the street. They would spring back onto the walk among the crowd.18 Only a few women, mostly prostitutes, lived in the wilderness locations of Merritt and Biwabik during the first few years of Mesabi settlement.

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the frontier period On both the Mesabi and the Vermilion ranges, the men were initially housed in camps, basically tarpaper frame buildings built by the mining companies. These included a cooking area and a sleeping room with double-decked bunks for twenty-five to thirty men. The camps were free of charge, and their conditions ranged from filthy to extremely filthy. In the early years, sanitation was such a problem that garbage and manure piled up in the alleyways. Arnold Alanen wrote about the conditions on the Vermilion Range, describing horses fleeing into homes to “seek refuge from the hordes of insects attracted to the sewage.” Company policemen and mining company managers often inspected these areas and periodically required the miners to clean them up.19 Tar paper buildings called “squatters locations” were constructed by the men rather than by the mining companies. However, the mining companies charged the squatters rent ranging from fifty cents to a dollar a month to prevent them from claiming land rights. In addition, the mining companies built platted locations, or residential areas, and rented the homes to married employees. Eventually, as the Range population swelled, many small villages emerged and were incorporated. These usually remained small because they were near the mines, which required a great deal of space for their operations.20 While similar class and rural backgrounds linked the diverse ethnic groups on the Iron Range, their differences, especially within groups, were major sources of conflict; as a consequence, communities developed a philosophy of survival that social historian John Sirjamaki calls “antagonistic cooperation.” This term describes the belief that the common interest must have priority over the “minor antagonisms” that must be ignored in the best interest of a community.21 Despite antagonistic cooperation, when the men were drunk, Mesabi Range ethnic saloons continued to be the sites of frequent fights. Later, when the rapid influx of different ethnic groups into the locations forced the men to intermingle, conflicts emerged among the different groups. Because no single group dominated on the Mesabi, this prevented the ethnic segregation patterns typical of other immigrant settlements, espe-

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Celebrations of Diversity, ‒ cially in urban areas, across America. However, when family life and the imposition of civic order tightened class lines, segregated residential areas emerged in some Iron Range villages.22 As settlement became permanent and populations stabilized, provincialism within groups decreased, particularly because of extensive intermarriage among the groups with extremely high male-to-female ratios. These imbalances (as many as eight men for each woman) were quite high compared to the imbalances typical of urban immigrants during this time. In addition, the growth of schools and civic organizations also strengthened community ties across ethnic groups.23 At first, many of the churches were ethnically segregated, but as the population grew, multiethnic congregations also strengthened community ties. In this working-class region and in immigrant enclaves throughout the Midwest and the West, socialism (with the Finns in the vanguard) became increasingly popular as settlement progressed. As socialist halls were erected across the Range, socialism became a unifying factor because of its emphasis on class consciousness and on the collective action of the working class. Ethnic groups also used socialist halls as community centers and as sites for cultural as well as political activities. Because many of the small mining companies initially failed and turnover was frequent, disability and death benefits were nonexistent. Consequently, the miners had to establish their own mutual aid and ethnic societies to cover the costs of injury and death, and these societies also strengthened their local and regional ties.24 Yet contentiousness persisted despite the developing Iron Range subculture and its increasingly powerful links to community. The small numbers of native-born Americans, along with the English-speaking immigrants who normally held management and supervisory positions in the mines, often clashed with the larger population of non-English-speaking immigrants who dominated Range society. Consequently, some towns became socially segregated.25 During this era of Anglo-conformity, class hostilities and a growing nativism were prevalent across America, being most intense in urban areas.

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the frontier period Nativism was triggered by the arrival of more than  million immigrants from southern, central, and eastern European countries. Many of these new arrivals were dark skinned and came to be referred to as “black” or new immigrants. Although class conflict was less pronounced on the Iron Range than in many parts of the country, English-speaking immigrants often expressed disdain for, suspicion of, and superiority toward these newcomers.26 On both the Mesabi and the Vermilion ranges, class distinctions were also evident in the designation of black and white towns. A town’s designation depended on its population mix. Virginia and Hibbing had many northern Europeans, and with the exceptions of the Finns, they were thus considered “white.” Towns such as Eveleth and Biwabik were considered “black” towns because they were settled largely by Finns and by southern and eastern European groups. Tower was also considered a white town.27 Significantly, the animosity felt by some of the northern Europeans, or “old” immigrants, over the influx of the new immigrants and immigrants from Finland was tempered by the knowledge that the newcomers would help alleviate the labor shortages and create economic and social mobility opportunities for the old immigrants.28 In keeping with a general concern for projecting and maintaining a good town image to ensure business prosperity, few instances of racial and class frictions were reported in Fourth of July newspaper articles. However, one candid recollection, from “The History of Biwabik” by Fred Seeley, hints at the biases.29 Seeley recalled, “One Fourth Matt Kershall was appointed orator. Matt was an Austrian, a rather timid sort, he spoke brokenly, hanging his head first on one side then the other. His appointment was a rather derisive move but it backfired. Matt had evidently studied up on American history and while speaking in his usual manner he made a fine address.”30 Such instances in which race and class frictions are acknowledged on the Fourth of July are rare. Suppression of these frictions indicates not only the damage control exerted by newspapers in omitting these accounts but also, and more significantly, the focus on community and on the suspension of conflict on the Fourth of July

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Celebrations of Diversity, ‒ whenever this was possible. Communication difficulties, cultural clashes, and class barriers were evident, yet antagonistic cooperation dictated that a superficial cordiality would be maintained on the streets.31 Given the incredible diversity of this region and the potential for ethnic conflict, it is truly remarkable that these people could create a subculture blending their diverse customs and could collaborate on adopting new American customs for daily life as well as for festive occasions such as Independence Day. For women who began settling the Vermilion in the late s and the Mesabi in the late s, there were many difficult adjustments to the harshness of the region and its primitive mining settlements. Lynn Maria Laitala, a third-generation Iron Ranger, elaborated on this point in “Carrying the Burden: An Historical Reminiscence of Vermilion Range Women”:32 This male culture created a real challenge for the immigrant women who came to raw towns to marry and raise families. Some women followed husbands to the Range. A few followed brothers or other relatives. Many came by themselves, like most of the men. They were women with a sense of desperation or a sense of adventure. Most did not speak English. They found an ugly, cut-over forest; cold, crude frame buildings, and rutted dirt streets, filled with dirty men representing scores of nationalities, as alien as Europeans could be to one another.33 Iron Range women did not usually remain single very long, because the physical demands of mining restricted it to men, and women who wished to support themselves had few legitimate alternatives to marriage other than working in boarding- and rooming houses. However, married life came with what Laitala describes as a “staggering” workload. Laitala wrote about the grueling routines for women, which included hauling water, tending cows, washing clothes by hand in winter and in summer,

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the frontier period keeping a garden, baking several times a week, and sewing the clothing. The slow process of building friendships was made particularly difficult because the women came from diverse ethnic backgrounds and few spoke English.34 In the face of these difficulties and more, Laitala applauded the frontier women for “making societies out of mining camps” and beginning the work of “weaving the threads of their diverse cultures into a new social fabric.” As stabilizing forces on the Vermilion and the Mesabi, women played central roles in establishing community institutions such as churches, schools, fraternal organizations, and civic groups as well as becoming increasingly active on Independence Day planning committees.35 Another difficult adaptation for some women involved marrying beneath their status. Laitala describes immigrant women who felt they had stepped down by marrying unskilled miners of southern and eastern Europe. Marrying well meant marriage to an American-born “Yankee” or to a mining official or a businessman. Although intermarriage among ethnic groups was a necessity, initially the segregated ethnic churches reinforced prejudices by discouraging “mixed” marriages. In addition, some women were too prejudiced to marry a new immigrant or, in Laitala’s words, “someone of another race. Race meant Slovenian, Italian, Finnish, Serbian, Swedish or whatever. To give up one’s customs to be American, yes. To trade them for those of some bizarre superstitious backwards people (as each group was to the other) was a real loss.” 36 Furthermore, because of their prejudices, women had difficulty accepting the community ties across ethnic groups and insisted on remaining detached. According to Sirjamaki, “The women were repelled by the customs and living standards of the various European groups, and because their contact with the immigrants was less than that of the men, did not come to understand or sympathize with them. Through their influence associations between the native and the foreign groups became restricted, and exclusive class activities developed among the Englishspeaking sections of the population. Some degree of residential segregation, as far as possible, was also secured.”37

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Celebrations of Diversity, ‒ Gradually, however, some of the barriers among the women of the various ethnic groups began to break down and communication lines opened up. Some even overcame language barriers to build relationships. According to Laitala, “it was said of my father’s mother that she and her neighbor could talk for hours over the back fence, though neither understood a word of the other’s language.”38 While these relationships made life more tolerable, women constantly struggled with the challenge of civilizing the frontier. Laitala’s accounts detail very difficult lives, often compounded by inattentive and insensitive husbands. Her grandmother, she recalled, was the envy of many women when she was widowed young.39 By contrast, some women strayed from traditional roles as wives because they were unable to resist the abundance of men, and they openly took “boy friends” while their husbands endured this “betrayal in silence.” Of course, not all the women who settled the Range were models of genteel society or even civilized behavior. Fred Seeley, the Biwabik Times columnist, recalled an Austrian woman named Mary Ann Skuil who ran a saloon in town in the s. Besides her “amazon proportions,” she had the ability to “keep things on an even keel” in her saloon “with her size and weight behind the wielding of a sawed off billiard cue butt.”40 Over time, as the Iron Range population grew, so did the regional subculture despite ethnic and class conflicts along the way. The diverse population came together annually under the umbrella of their American identity in boisterous celebrations of both unity and diversity. In , for example, the Ely Iron Home reported that Ely’s Grande Parade included three hundred Chippewa “squaws” and “braves” on wagons; the Finnish Temperance Society; the Swedish Society, in uniform; and the Austrian Society, in uniform. All marched together in a procession to “celebrate the glorious Fourth.”41 In , two years later and forty-five miles of bad road to the south of Ely, Biwabik’s second Fourth of July celebration also demonstrated the power of this holiday to unify its diverse workers as Americans and as community members. That year the Fourth commemorated not only

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figure 2.5. A July Fourth “squaw” race in Ely in 1891. This event and others, including powwows, are evidence of Native American involvement in Iron Range Independence Day celebrations. (Courtesy of the Iron Range Historical Society collection, Gilbert, Minnesota.)

the nation’s birthday but also “the deliverance of the town from forest fires,” which had ravaged the area during the  drought.42 Despite the regional bonds forming across the Iron Range, some towns developed rivalries that were played out in Independence Day competitions such as baseball games and tug-of-war tournaments. However, the rivalries never eclipsed Iron Range identity, as noted by newspapers reporting that visitors from across the region traveled to various towns to celebrate. In fact, special holiday trains even stopped in most of the towns on both the Vermilion and the Mesabi ranges to accommodate this visiting tradition.43 Adding to the diverse character of the region were its Native Americans, who often traveled to Iron Range towns wearing non-Indian clothing.44 Native American powwows were regularly featured in many July Fourth programs beginning around the late s on the Vermilion and the mid-s on the Mesabi (fig. .). Significantly, the Ojibway often

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Celebrations of Diversity, ‒

figure 2.6. Native American powwow featured in Ely’s 1891 Independence Day celebration on the Vermilion Range. Note that the Indians are dressed in non-Indian clothes, presumably in keeping with the custom of Iron Rangers of European descent, who wore their Sunday best out of respect for the Fourth of July. Native Americans celebrating the Fourth in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan were also known to wear non-Indian attire. (Courtesy of the Iron Range Historical Society collection, Gilbert, Minnesota.)

traveled twenty to fifty miles from their outlying reservations over narrow, rocky roads to participate in these celebrations. Carl Gawboy, a Chippewa (Ojibway) from the Bois Fort Band on the Vermilion Range, wrote about the ties between Indians and immigrants, explaining why Indians would travel so far to Iron Range towns, often from distant reservations, to celebrate the Fourth of July. According to the Chippewa worldview, which revolved around community and inclusiveness, one’s ties to the community were determined by marriage as well as one’s bloodlines: “the Chippewa society has continued to incorporate outsiders, Finns, Slovenes, Swedes, and Norwegians have married into the tribe, reflecting the cultural synthesis that the Vermilion Range is known for.”45 Because the Ojibway were Iron Rangers, it was natural for them to participate in town celebrations across the region. “Like all

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the frontier period Iron Rangers,” Gawboy observed, “the Chippewa talk about ethnicity and community, who married who and when; what the children and the old folks are doing. They talk about the young people they lose to the city. They’re proud of their dances, their foods, and would like above all else to stay, and make a living from the resources close at hand.”46 Native American participation on Independence Day dates back to the earliest Iron Range celebrations. In  Biwabik’s program featured a three-hour Indian minstrel show, which was to include an entire Chippewa band. Unfortunately, rain forced the program’s cancellation.47 The Fourth of July’s role in strengthening community bonds and in affirming America’s tenets of freedom and democracy was prominent in this book’s oral histories and ethnographies with first- and secondgeneration born Iron Rangers. Mary Anderson, born in Kinney in , served for many years as the mayor of this small town of , nineteen miles west of Biwabik. As the daughter of a tavern owner and then as the owner of Mary’s Bar, she typically worked on the Fourth of July and had many fond memories of early celebrations. She recalled that her parents and their immigrant neighbors looked on the Fourth of July “as a symbol of freedom and a day to do or say anything one wanted. It was a day that made you realize this is what freedom is all about. Foreigners, especially, appreciated this because they never had the freedoms as in this country.”48 The late Peter Fugina, a state legislator and a first-generation native born in , agreed, stating that despite disagreements on how towns would celebrate the Fourth, the celebration was regional. “It’s a strange thing . . . everybody was at it. It is the only activity which involved practically everybody.” To Iron Rangers, Independence Day embodied what he described as “the spirit of the group and the communities of the Iron Range.”49 Traditionally, this spirit of popular radicalism has continued to be expressed through incessant noise, rough games, and drunken revelry. Interestingly in this era of cultural conformity, social reform efforts across the country were often devoted to suppressing these practices and socializ-

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Celebrations of Diversity, ‒ ing immigrants into moderate and deferential public behavior, particularly as urban populations rapidly expanded and urban order required public space regulations to prevent mob violence. Consequently, although reform efforts elsewhere were transforming the Fourth of July into more of a solemn, respectable commemoration of the nation’s birthday, Iron Range celebrations maintained their rowdy characteristics.50 Nonetheless, the influence of the national culture can be detected in town promotions that featured celebrations in the “proper style,” reflecting order and decorum. According to the Mesaba Range, for example, in  Merritt and its sister town of Biwabik, one mile away, cosponsored a program described as a celebration in the “proper style.” This solemn formal program featuring orations was planned by Biwabik town officials to balance the array of rugged sporting events and games designed to engage the diverse groups of young miners. The tug-of-war, a greasedpole climbing event, a three-hour Indian minstrel show, and a powwow were emphasized in program promotions. Although no parade was planned, a dance and fireworks were expected to cap off the evening. Unfortunately, according to the newspaper, a “cold and drizzly rain” came down all day, so the formal program of speeches and the dance were cancelled and it was too wet for the fireworks. Nonetheless, the weather did not deter the men from carrying on with their rough games in the rain and the mud. The newspaper reported that the Cornish wrestling tournament and the horse race were held, as well as the tug-of-war between Merritt and Biwabik, which lasted “fully  minutes,” with the Merritt team ending up victorious. After this match, the victors marched the mile back to their town carrying brooms and flags in a makeshift parade. They ended their day with a supper served at the Merritt Hotel.51 Despite promotions describing celebrations in the “proper style,” Iron Range Independence Days were dominated by a rowdy and informal style. In contrast, many urban areas across the United States were sites for clashes between immigrants, celebrating in the rowdy style of the working class, and the native-born middle class, attempting to enforce the respectable style as the proper standard for American behavior. Even the

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the frontier period festivities in Duluth, only about fifty miles south of Biwabik, were celebrated in the proper or respectable style.52 Newspaper accounts of Vermilion Range celebrations in Tower and Ely describe a mix of both the respectable and the rowdy July Fourth styles, with the different ethnic populations of these towns producing a differing mix of these styles. Ely and Tower also differed because Tower was a company town while Ely was an unplanned town. Tower was founded in  for a select population of native-born Americans and a few northern European groups. In contrast, Ely was founded almost a decade later and comprised mostly southern and eastern Europeans. One of the first accounts of Tower’s celebrations, in , describes an event planned in the “proper style,” with a formal program, games, and a dance. Despite its promise of a solemn celebration, the town’s distinctively Iron Range character was apparent, reflecting the diversity of its population and the frontier state of the region. The day began with a hierarchical parade led by the mayor, the town dignitaries, and program officials, who represented the orderly and dignified elements in the parade. The disorderly units, in particular the “callithumpians,” came at the end. Callithumpian bands and parades originated in the European festive custom of rough music characterized by parody, disorder, and humorous costuming.53 These revelers were known for their carnivalesque mockery of all things solemn and for turning everyday life upside down, by opposing the norms of public respectability.54 After the parade, the town held a solemn ceremony, which included prayer and what the Vermilion Iron Journal called an “eloquent” lecture on the origins of the Declaration of Independence delivered by the mayor. A speech by a mining company official was also recounted by the newspaper, creating for him the “enviable name as an orator, a scholar, and above all, a gentleman.” In the afternoon, races and sporting events were capped off by a “great Indian powwow.” Finally, the program ended with a dance, which because of some inappropriate behavior compelled Tower’s newspaper to castigate revelers and planners alike: “Some of the boys in the city might remember that gentlemen are courteous to ladies.

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Celebrations of Diversity, ‒ This ought to be taken as a given. . . . the management of the ball might have excluded the disciples of the tough element from the start.”55 An even rowdier ethos prevailed in  in the unplanned town of Ely. This first Fourth of July celebration, held in the year of the town’s incorporation, earmarked a whopping $ of its $, budget for fireworks. This was a significant sum when one considers that $ is roughly equivalent to $, in  dollars. This celebration was promoted as far away as Duluth, and a special train ran between Duluth and Ely to bring in the port city’s visitors.56 The noisy wake-up ritual, a common European festive custom, ushered in Ely’s first Independence Day. According to the Ely Iron Home, the town’s rowdy celebration of “the greatest American holiday” began at four a.m. when the Ely Cornet Band “paraded the streets, making the air ring with national music” (fig. .). Adding to the band’s noise was a cannon blast at daybreak. This “belched forth in thunderous tones that another year of national independence had passed, everybody in this charming young city was prepared to celebrate the day in the most patriotic manner he or she is capable of.”57 Under the boldface headline “Hurrah!” the newspaper account detailed the importance of the wakeup ritual, a festive custom related to the rough music tradition, and proclaimed the significance of this celebration of democracy: “Amid the blare of the trumpets and monstrous music of the guns, the spirits of the people rose to the highest pitch, and the shout, ‘Hurrah!,’ went up from innumerable throats, showing a spirit of thankfulness that they were permitted to make their homes in a country where the people rule and not an oppressive tyrant.”58 Ironically, the phrase the people rule speaks to the freedom that these people could rarely experience except on this one day for democracy, when they could take to the streets in revelry. Ely’s first celebration was so elaborate, it included two morning parades. The Callithumpian Parade began at : a.m. and stretched out almost a quarter mile. This rowdy, costumed procession featured parodies as humorous revelers presented “amusing burlesques” of the celebration held by the company town of Tower. In midmorning, the Grande

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figure 2.7. Celebration notice in the Ely Times, June 19, 1891, 1 (left); and extract from article in the Ely Iron Home, July 7, 1891, 1 (right).

Parade added a respectable tone to the festivities. There followed a solemn ceremony, which included a priest reading the Declaration of Independence and two ministers orating in both English and Finnish. In the evening, the people danced to schottisches, waltzes, and polkas at a grand ball. The newspaper reported that this was “enjoyed so much” that

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Celebrations of Diversity, ‒ the participants “refused to leave,” causing the postponement of the $ fireworks display until the following evening.59 Significantly, the diversity of Ely’s celebration was evident not only in its array of events but also in the composition of its planning committee. The chairman, two of its members, and the Speaker of the Day were all born in Austria. In addition, the town band members, who just hours before had learned American music, were all born in Finland.60 Both Tower’s and Ely’s celebrations reflect a mix of the respectable and the rowdy styles found in Iron Range celebrations—but with a greater emphasis on the rowdy style. This is significant because in the years when formal, organized programs were not planned, the Fourth was kept alive in an informal, rowdy manner. For example, during the nationwide depression of the mid-s, when the Range was hit particularly hard, formal public Fourth of July celebrations were held only sporadically in Iron Range towns. Despite this, many Iron Rangers were determined to celebrate, traveling by train to towns farther down the ore veins to participate in these public programs. During the depression years when no formal celebrations were held in Biwabik, its newspaper reported that the residents commemorated informally. Such was the case in , when Merritt was destroyed by fire and Biwabik had no formal celebration planned. That year, the baseball team traveled twelve miles to the town of Virginia and played a game that ended in dispute. In addition, it was reported that later “around the outskirts of town there was considerable cannonading . . . with dynamite.”61 Despite the good times on the Iron Range on Independence Day, life on the frontier continued to be difficult for women and men alike. For men the toll was evident in alcohol abuse, which made saloons across the Iron Range profitable, especially on festive occasions such as the Fourth of July.62 Nationally, the working-class holiday custom of getting “gloriously drunk” presented a public problem, causing arrest statistics for public drunkenness and fighting to soar. Across the country, especially in urban areas, the public intoxication of immigrants led to backlash from

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the frontier period native-born middle-class residents, who designed social control initiatives to eradicate this problem, including temperance movements and Progressive reform programs such as the Safe and Sane Fourth of July. Besides advocating a ban on firecrackers, the Safe and Sane program promoted orderly and solemn celebrations.63 In addition, an ongoing concern for Progressive reformers across the nation was noise reduction, particularly in urban areas, where they promoted ordinances and regulations enforcing the norm of quiet, genteel public behavior. In contrast, Iron Range Independence Days were typically noisy affairs paying tribute to America’s tenets of freedom and democracy. Even in the company town of Tower, where officials tried to promote a more respectable style, people were customarily awakened by thirteen gunfire salutes at sunrise on the Fourth of July.64 Given the rural environment of the Iron Range, the prevalence of firearms for hunting, and the access to dynamite for mining, controlling noise was virtually impossible. For example, in  in Eveleth, a town about eleven miles west of Biwabik noted for its rowdy Fourth of July celebrations, patriotic noisemaking punctuated the local minister’s address on liberty. Eveleth’s newspaper scolded the perpetrators: “It is to be regretted that the orator was not accorded the more respectful silence. The everpresent dynamite cane—the most diabolical instrument of torture that was ever invented—popped incessantly all day long.”65 In addition to dynamite, noise from firecrackers was incessant on the Fourth. Fred M. Seeley’s childhood memories of Biwabik emphasize a tradition in which his father and another man from town would take five or six cases of firecrackers and spend “a couple of hours” firing them off at his father’s store. Comparing his early Fourth of July memories to modern celebrations, Seeley remembered that there were no parades in those early days of unpaved streets, unless you considered a parade to be “the band making a couple of turns the length of main street while we kids tried to drop a firecracker into the bell of the tuba or get another bang out of the bass drum.” In other recollections from the s, Seeley described the varieties of firecrackers used in Biwabik on the Fourth of July:

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Celebrations of Diversity, ‒ Firecrackers of all sizes from little ones no bigger than a wooden match to those four or five inches in length were in order. We all had them of all sizes. The little ones had to be fired in bunches and what they lacked in size they made up in noise. The next size could be fired singlely or in bunches. The more daring kids would hold one in his hand. The trick was to pinch the rear end of it hard between thumb and first finger. The larger ones known as Salutes had the power to blow a hand off. Their fuses were short so they had to be gotten rid of quickly. There were also torpedoes. A big cap done up in a little tissue paper filled with fine gravel. You threw them down hard on a solid substance and unless one wore long trousers the fine gravel would pepper your legs. . . . In spite of all the explosives we had, I don’t recall any kid coming through with more than singed fingers.66 People in different Iron Range towns adopted their own noisemaking customs for the Fourth of July. Some of these were practiced regularly, while others were less frequent. Seeley recalled that during his childhood in the s, he witnessed something called “firing the anvil,” a practice common to other parts of the country as well.67 This spectacle was performed by the town blacksmith, who placed two anvils in the center of a road on top of a half stick of dynamite. He would then thrust a “redhot poker” into the dynamite, creating a huge explosion, which sent the top anvil fifty to seventy-five feet straight up into the air.68 Celebrations in Duluth, only about fifty miles away, stood in stark contrast, with less noisy, more subdued celebrations in the respectable style. Duluth epitomized the national trend in which solemn public celebrations became the norm because of a number of factors, including increasing restrictions on public spaces.69 Typically, in the late nineteenth century, Duluth’s Fourth of July programs would start with hierarchical parades led by the police or town officials, who set the tone for the formality, order, and decorum expected on this occasion (fig. .). Following the

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the frontier period parade would be a formal ceremony, which included orations, speeches, and readings of the Declaration of Independence by the town elites, business leaders, and clergymen. In this program, the elites were the center of attention, and crowd participation was limited to the singing of patriotic tunes.70 Typically, in the afternoon Duluth provided only a few events, such as a bicycle race or footraces held at its pavilion. This lull allowed people to engage in individual activities such as picnics, steamboat excursions on Lake Superior, and other genteel activities for a quiet, restful period before the evening’s fireworks display and the exhibition of hot air balloons. Significantly, Duluth newspapers rarely referred to the holiday as “Independence Day” or “The Fourth,” instead calling it “Declaration Day” or “Patriot’s Day,” possibly to downplay the disorderly elements associated with Independence Day, including drunkenness, fighting, and incidents with firecrackers. In newspapers from the Iron Range, there were many references to “making the eagle scream” on the Fourth of July (see fig. ., left), while Duluth newspapers advised readers to “Shake the Moths Out of Your Patriotism” in “grand, old-fashioned Fourth of July” celebrations (see fig. .).71 By the turn of the century, Duluth, like many other American cities, had abandoned its large public celebrations, and many residents, particularly the wealthy and many of the middle class, left the city for the countryside or held private observances. Those Duluth residents who wanted to party had to go to West Duluth or to West Superior (a few miles away) or travel even farther, to Iron Range towns, on special excursion trains running throughout the day.72 As settlement of the Iron Range progressed, Fourth of July celebrations gradually became less rowdy, largely because practicality demanded a more subdued style to keep large crowds in check. Orderly celebrations were also necessary to accommodate the increasing numbers of “visitors” from surrounding Iron Range towns who would sample different Independence Day celebrations. Nonetheless, the bastion of discord, the callithumpian parade, still persisted.

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Celebrations of Diversity, ‒

figure 2.8. Program published in the Duluth News Tribune, July 3, 1895, 1.

As an Old World festive custom common to working-class groups, the callithumpian parade was the essence of informality and carnival. Traditional in many parts of America prior to the mid-nineteenth century, this humorous costumed parade had all but died out by the time its popularity began to grow on the Iron Range. Well suited to the In-

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the frontier period dependence Day tenets of freedom and equality, this parade form was carnivalesque and egalitarian, emphasizing both parody and self-parody and using humor to equalize all individuals and groups. Across the country, until the early nineteenth century, callithumpian processions were popular with urban working-class groups on public holidays, especially the Fourth of July. Emphasizing revelry, debauchery, and disguise, callithumpian parades featured crude costumes and rough music played on makeshift instruments, mocking the order and precision of units such as military and marching bands.73 However, the nativeborn middle class viewed such customs as a violation of public respectability and a rejection of the industrial order, which relied on rationalism and control. In Europe, elites tolerated the parody and the gender and class inversions in callithumpian processions and carnival misrule because they believed that these rituals functioned as safety valves by allowing the masses to temporarily vent, after which they would be expected to return to normal standards of public respectability and deference to authority. However, by the nineteenth century in both England and the United States, working-class people, in particular young males, increasingly used disorderly rituals, such as callithumpian holiday parades, to mock and harass those whom they considered arrogant or those who abused their power.74 Consequently, urban order dictated the demise of the callithumpian parade along with other rowdy festive practices. Yet in the s on the Iron Range, the callithumpian tradition had just begun to spread to the towns along the ore veins, moving south from Ely and Tower to Biwabik, Eveleth, and Virginia and as far west on the Mesabi as Hibbing. Across the region, callithumpian parades were the featured events in Independence Day festivities.75 The masking and clowning of the callithumpian style are depicted in the Sparta City Band (fig. .). Note the rough and makeshift costumes, the rather grotesque masks, and the birch-bark top hats, which all stand in stark contrast to Uncle Sam on the left.76 As traditional figures in European festive culture, clowns represent inversion because fools become the

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Celebrations of Diversity, ‒

figure 2.9. Sparta clown band, 1902. (Courtesy of the Iron Range Historical Society collection, Gilbert, Minnesota.)

centers of attention. Significantly, by evoking humor and disorder, they challenge the social order, making light of everyone and everything.77 Clowning took center stage in Ely’s  callithumpian parade, especially on a float spoofing Tower’s July Fourth solemnity and its contrast to Ely’s lively and spirited celebrations. With the rise in popularity of these callithumpian processions across the region, towns promoted them in newspaper ads and boasted of bigger and better parades than those of their neighboring towns. For example, in  Biwabik called its parade a “monster calithumpian [sic]. . . the like of which has not been seen in these parts.” This parade even eclipsed the enormously popular one-hour contortionist act by Professor J. Jerry, which in the past had earned accolades for Biwabik’s Fourth of July planning committee.78 In the late s, as Independence Day celebrations grew in size, elites began losing control of the programs and were replaced by numerous volunteer committees comprising both elites and immigrants, which became responsible for planning the programs in different Range towns. As

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the frontier period more women immigrated into the region, they, too, worked on these committees, opening up the games to women and girls and dividing up children’s events by age group and gender. In some towns, the volunteer fire departments took over the planning committees, in part because of their expertise in handling the fires that often resulted from fireworks.79 At the dawn of the twentieth century, the towns on the Vermilion and the Mesabi ranges were rapidly growing, and a subculture was developing from a blending of diverse European customs and the new American customs that they were creating. Regional ties were also rapidly developing, reinforced by the area’s geographic isolation and the poor conditions of the roads separating it from the rest of Minnesota as well as from the influences of the national culture. As early as , this regional identity was apparent, as exemplified in an incident on the Vermilion demonstrating the significance of festive life to these immigrant workers and portending the radicalism that would develop in the new century. That year several hundred Italian and Slovenian immigrants refused to work on a major holiday, Corpus Christi Day, shutting down a mine of , men. Because they had come to America to find work, their refusal to work constituted a major act of defiance and a strategy of last resort. As the new century turned, similar incidents occurred more frequently, as the growing industrialization of mining meant that miners had less control over the pace of their work, yet had virtually no protection from the high mortality and injury rates of this dangerous occupation. Consequently, the Corpus Christi Day work stoppage hints at what was to come in the new century, highlighting the key role that festive culture would play in fueling radicalism.80

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chapter three

One Day for Democracy Independence Day as a Festival of Freedom in an Era of Labor Oppression, ‒

On july , , despite plans for another elaborate array of events including a callithumpian parade, rough games, a street dance, and fireworks, Biwabik’s Fourth of July program was abruptly canceled.1 A wildcat strike had broken out in early June when a Biwabik miner walked off the job and the entire shift followed after him. Soon the strike had spread down the length of the Mesabi Iron Range and eventually to both the Cuyuna and the Vermilion ranges, spurred on by a seventy-five-mile march by Aurora strikers, including some of their wives and children, spreading the news across the region.2 And although the leaders of the radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) had been driven out of northern Minnesota three years previously, the union sent its top leaders to organize the Mesabi strikers and expand their strike.3 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, labor radicalism was growing as workers across America came together to organize unions and to form socialist organizations that would end their abuse at the hands

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one day for democracy of monopoly capital. As the mining companies continued to reap huge profits from the land’s iron ore, immigrant workers increasingly walked off the job or went on strike to protest the inhumane labor conditions, the low wages, the long days, and the lack of benefits.4 This era is known for its labor unrest and class contestation, and on the Minnesota Iron Range, this meant conflicts in the mines between workers and the mining companies and friction in the towns between the immigrants and the elites. These relations are reflected in both the tenor of and the changes in Independence Day celebrations throughout the period. This extremely volatile time was marked by violence between strikers and the mine guards, the armed police of the U.S. Steel Company, and by a climate of fear as workers covertly organized in the face of an elaborate and costly spy network that had been set up by the mining companies nine years earlier after ten thousand Mesabi Rangers went out on strike.5 By the beginning of July , the small Iron Range town of Biwabik had become a hotbed of labor radicalism, attracting the attention of the nation (especially the industrial sector), as radical leaders such as Carlo Tresca and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn descended on the remote mining region to ensure the strike’s success. In the second decade of the twentieth century, the IWW aggressively organized unskilled workers, especially immigrant workers, who were typically underpaid and considered expendable by American industry.6 Organizing primarily in the West, the Midwest, and the East, this union was an enormous threat to monopoly capital because of its expressed goal to “do away with capitalism” and “build a new society.”7 Its rise in this era, peaking at a hundred thousand members in , drove industry and the government to stop its spread. This Mesabi Range strike—a key battle between radical forces and the steel trust—was described by one of the IWW’s founders, Bill Haywood, as a “great event in the history of the I.W.W.,” and its success seemed likely to propel the union to new heights in the quest to destroy capitalism and create “one big union.”8 By late June, with at least eight thousand men out on strike, conflict between the mining company police and the strikers continued to escalate

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ until the night before the Fourth of July, when a mine guard and a bystander (who was caught in the cross fire) were killed just outside of town.9 The town’s pro-mining company newspaper, the Biwabik Times, blamed the IWW for the deaths and for the cancellation of what it called the “most important day of the year.”10 Of course, the IWW’s version of the incidents differed considerably. The union blamed the mining company for its brutal harassment of strikers and for an incident in which a number of armed mine guards and armed special deputies raided the home of an unarmed striker without warrants on the pretext of suspicion of an illegal liquor still. In the confrontation that resulted, a mine guard was killed and a soda pop delivery man was fatally shot by a stray bullet. According to Foner, the raid was an excuse for arresting the IWW leaders to weaken the strike by removing the union’s leadership at a critical time.11 Nonetheless, after weeks of planning and publicizing the program, cancellation of this celebration at the last minute was a decision of major consequence, attesting to the potential of the Fourth of July, in the carnival tradition of the Iron Range, to inspire disorderly and radical expressions that might erupt into more violence or even rioting.12 The irony of this situation is that a celebration of America’s radical heritage was cancelled for fear of radicalism. This tells us a great deal about how far Independence Day had evolved from its roots as a festival of radicalism and how volatile relations had become between workers and their employers as well as workers and management across the country during this era of industrial warfare. The cancellation also foregrounds the antiradical nationalism that began in the late nineteenth century and culminated in the Great Red Scare of World War I and the early postwar years, a response to the growing radicalism that had increasingly taken hold in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.13 Antiradical nationalism permeated the national culture as industry and every level of government allied with industry became determined to stamp out radicalism once and for all by using force, spy networks, harassment, arrests, and deportations. Reinforcing these actions were a number of antiradical laws passed during

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one day for democracy and after World War I, which often infringed on the civil rights of immigrants and radicals. Workers’ efforts to unionize and to join socialist organizations were so threatening to the hegemonic forces in government and business that murders, arrests, and deportation of radicals became common tactics for defeating them.14 In addition, the cancellation speaks to the fact that Independence Day was a key community event, intertwined with everyday life, especially in its carnivalesque inversions and the parodies that were traditional in its callithumpian parades. Literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin’s interpretation of carnival as a subversive tool of oppressed people is particularly useful here.15 In carnival, humor is directed at everyone through parodies, selfparodies, and satire as well as inversions of class, race, or gender. All of these forms of carnival humor call attention to the inequities of everyday life by their very reversals and by their refusals to be deferential to authority or to take life too seriously. In volatile times, violence has erupted during carnival festivities as inequities and issues have been expressed publicly. Consequently, the Iron Range Fourth of July, as a celebration of America’s radical heritage, could certainly be considered a powder keg on the verge of exploding during unsettled times. Accounts of Independence Day in , the year preceding the cancellation, reveal no glaring indications of the labor and social unrest percolating throughout the Minnesota Iron Range. Closer examination, however, does foreground the instability of an era of increasing class conflict and of antiradicalist nationalism, which was so powerful and so pervasive that it even infected such remote areas as this northern Minnesota region.16 clues from the 1915 celebration With clichés common to its Independence Day coverage, the Biwabik Times proclaimed that the  celebration was the most successful in the town’s history. Its front-page headline—“Biggest and Best Fourth Celebration . . . Was Best In History of the Town”—highlighted a story brimming with the details of activities starting at dawn and ending well into

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ the night (fig. .). The event’s Range-wide popularity jammed the tiny village of one thousand with townspeople and visitors from the surrounding Mesabi Range towns; they all came together to celebrate what newspapers billed as “the most important holiday of the year.”17 A particularly rollicking affair, Biwabik’s parade even featured a unit of suffragettes marching for women’s voting rights. Following the parade, “hotly contested” athletic events culminated in a baseball game in which the single men annihilated the married men. Other events of note included races for the railroad men, a potato race, a race for farmer boys, and an oldtimers’ race.18

figure 3.1. Extract from article in the Biwabik Times, July 2, 1915, 1.

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one day for democracy Some aspects of the  program, especially the location for the formal program and the rhetoric in its oration, stand out as clues to growing class hostilities, which had drawn the immigrant workers to radicalism. This solemn ceremony was held outdoors, with the crowd gathering in front of the Finnish Socialist Hall to listen to patriotic oratory. During this era, socialist halls were common in many parts of the country as the movement grew, from the mid-nineteenth century into the early twentieth century.19 Socialism’s major appeal came from its emphasis on a redistribution of wealth and the social benefits it espoused. Because local units were often organized by ethnic groups, not only did socialism provide a political alternative for workers, but also its halls provided a place for workers to gather to fulfill their social and cultural needs. According to Clarke Chambers, beginning around , Finns and Slovenes typically built socialist halls “to counter the autocratic power of the companies.”20 In , the rousing oration resounding from the steps of Biwabik’s Finnish Socialist Hall reminded the crowd of the events leading to the Revolutionary War, of the struggle for independence, and of the creation of a new republic, which was “of, by, and for the people.” The ceremony’s emphasis on the revolution’s popular radicalism was no coincidence. Iron Range workers were creating new communities in the face of oppression by monopoly capitalism and found inspiration through celebrating the radical spirit of the revolutionary era.21 The  celebration also reveals another indicator of unrest typical of this era, in that twelve fearless Iron Range women joined other women across the nation to lobby for voting rights on Independence Day.22 Uniquely, these Iron Range women marched in the callithumpian, Biwabik’s humorous costume parade; in contrast to the women who demonstrated more seriously in other parts of the United States, the women of the Iron Range put a humorous spin on their message despite its seriousness. Some carried teddy bears or rolling pins, and others carried signs reading “Idiots, convicts, and women cannot vote.” In a disparaging attempt at humor, the Biwabik newspaper, a steadfast supporter of the status quo, described one of the women as “one who

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ took to lassoing from a cowboy correspondence school in Walla Walla, Washington, and took a rope out intending to lassoo a man to drag him through the parade bound with rope to show the power of woman over man—but the man ran and the rope broke. ‘You should have used a wire clothesline,’ said the ring leader of the women’s society.”23 Their humorous presentation won first prize, and the newspaper reported they were cheered along the entire parade route. In defense of the status quo, however, the writer of this acount could not resist diffusing the accolades by noting that their contingent did not get organized without a few “snags,” including an incident in which one of the women found an “aperture in her hose.” Following the dictates of fashion, she felt a need to rush home to fix it. In the interests of solidarity, the leader refused her request, explaining that they all had holes in their hose and that if one woman left, the rest might also abandon the unit to darn their hose.24 Of course, by highlighting this incident, the “reporter” successfully undercut the seriousness of the women’s message. Nonetheless, in an extremely patriarchal society such as the Iron Range, where a male-dominated industry is central and women are extremely dependent on men economically, it took a great deal of courage for these women to march. Interestingly, this  celebration highlights the multifunctionality of the Fourth of July as a site of social commentary, satire, and dissent and a venue for what scholar George Lipsitz has described as the “conditions of possibility” for resistance to the status quo that are embedded in folk rituals and festive occasions.25 Because the Fourth of July was virtually the only public space for expressing radicalism during this period, resistance to the status quo was largely covert, via displays of unity and the use of satire, parody, and inversion. Lipsitz relates the elite fear of civil disobedience and mob rule to the fact that holiday rituals can be spaces that catalyze radical action. Iron Range Fourth of July rituals, with their European working-class origins, clearly express oppositional aspects through traditional social and political inversions and through parody, satire, and social commentary. During the  strike (a time of extreme instability), elites must consequently have feared that Independence Day might move

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one day for democracy the immigrant majorities to rise up against the status quo and could thus escalate the climate of violence. In light of this, the cancellation of the Independence Day celebration, although a last-resort alternative, was seen as a means to avoid what the newspaper described as a “bloody clash.”26 the age of industrial warfare In the first two decades of the twentieth century, life was extremely harsh for unskilled workers in America, especially for the immigrants who were relegated to the most dangerous and the lowest-paying jobs.27 Life for Iron Range workers in this single-industry region was particularly oppressive because the mining companies controlled their work lives and dominated the politics in their towns. Around , as corporations across America consolidated into enormous trusts, the U.S. Steel Company hardened its grip over the miners’ lives and created a virtual monopoly by buying out or forcing out the small Iron Range mining operations. Utilizing a common corporate strategy to enforce industrial discipline and to prevent collective action of any kind, the company established a private, armed police force to maintain control over the workers.28 Although there were only a few company towns built on the Iron Range, the steel trust gained control of many town governments across the entire region, including Biwabik’s.29 Reinforcing the repressive ethos, many of the region’s town newspapers were pro-company, regularly blaming outside agitators for the increasing labor unrest and characterizing the miners as their dupes. The Biwabik Times, the town’s only newspaper, was a powerful mining company ally. It declared its allegiance by frequently condemning strikes and work stoppages and by advocating mining company interests in its “reportage.” Historians often describe the early twentieth century as a period of industrial warfare when rebellious employees struggled against their repressive employers. This period was marked by violence and bloodshed and by labor strikes, government and industrial suppression of labor organization, race riots, and the growth of monopoly capitalism, widening the

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ gap between the classes.30 Life for Iron Range miners was not only repressive but also very dangerous. At that time, mine safety was virtually nonexistent, and the mine bosses had enormous power, even demanding the sexual favors of miners’ wives and daughters as well as bribes, moose or deer hunted by the miners, and free drinks.31 Wages were less than $ per day for backbreaking work in harsh environments.32 In addition, according to Philip Foner, “it was the callous, driving attitude of the bosses that the miners most resented. They pushed men to the limit day in and day out. ‘Always they are driving us in all manners of way,’ protested an Eveleth miner. ‘We must work like former slaves in the South . . . until the sweat rolls off every hair on our head.’ A miner recalled years later that ‘mules used for tramming in the mines were treated better than the men.’”33 Former Biwabik mayor Carl Urick said the power of the mine bosses was so great that he also recalled stories of their demands to sleep with the miners’ wives. “They were a vicious bunch,” he said. “If a man didn’t seem to be working hard enough, the foreman sent him home as an example to the rest of the men. The men had no breaks, except to eat, and had to work outside in the rain in twelve- to fourteen-hour shifts.” In addition, the workers felt the company’s contract system was particularly unjust. This system paid the miner by the railroad car rather than by the hour, pitting miner against miner in a competition for wages. Also, “poor record-keeping” often led to miners being cheated, according to Frank Nemanic. He explained that “a miner might get only half of what he expected and if he complained, he was fired.”34 According to historian Clarke Chambers, pro-company politicians in local governments also added to the repressive conditions. These elites “dominated every aspect of the society, culture, and government.”35 Their use of physical intimidation and their threats of termination coerced workers to vote for company candidates in the open ballot elections. Frank Nemanic described an incident in the late s that illustrates the intensity of this repression. When he and another young man from Aurora went to the nearby town of Eveleth to look for work, they were told

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one day for democracy there were no jobs because they were from Aurora and the people there “voted wrong.” When Nemanic explained that he didn’t vote, because he was too young, the foreman replied, “Yeah, but your parents do.”36 Struggling against repression and looking for an alternative route to the American Dream, many Iron Range immigrants (like other immigrant workers across the nation) embraced socialism.37 Because America is the land of the free, they assumed that they could choose between capitalism and socialism without rejecting democracy or being un-American. Yet in the nineteenth century as socialism grew in popularity among the working classes and the immigrants, it moved from an acceptable political philosophy to an un-American political philosophy; a new xenophobic, antiradical version of American nationalism emerged, linking American identity with capitalism, industrial discipline, and Anglo-conformity.38 The power of the mining companies over almost every aspect of Iron Range life cannot be understated, as they exerted their influence through local politicians and local newspapers and enforced their will through their private police forces and their spy networks, which even infiltrated ethnic groups and labor organizations.39 Following the lead of other American corporations, the mining companies’ strategies to defeat unionism included rhetoric branding all union activities as un-American and by firing workers who were involved in union activities. The mining companies also recruited from diverse ethnic groups that often clashed culturally and spoke different languages, complicating the efforts of members of different groups to communicate with each other.40 In addition, they utilized welfare capitalism or paternalism, a system through which workers became dependent on the companies to provide health, sanitation, and civic improvement programs. This strategy was dedicated to the philosophy that “good” Americans make good workers and Americanizing these immigrants would reinforce industrial discipline.41 In addition, the mining companies, like other corporations across America, sponsored night classes in civics education to Americanize immigrant workers. The idea was to transform them into orderly and deferential citizens dependent on the beneficence of the mining companies.

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ While paternalism may have seemed altruistic on the company’s part, like other aspects of welfare capitalism at this time, it was established primarily to increase corporate efficiency rather than for humanitarian reasons. As one Oliver Mining Company official explained, his company subscribed to U.S. Steel’s corporate policy because “welfare was an antidote to the poison of radicalism and unions and because welfare was at the heart of the Iron Range spirit and because the men of Oliver lived in small town America.” As could be expected, the benefits of corporate welfare did not come without strings attached. For example, while the company provided a doctor, there was no company contribution for this medical assistance; the doctor’s entire salary had to be covered by mandatory deductions from miners’ paychecks.42 Iron Rangers nevertheless resisted this oppression with periodic strikes, which were usually short-lived because of their difficulty in countering the vast resources and power of the mining companies and their allies. Major strikes, labor unrest, and work stoppages developed nationally as workers expressed their dissatisfaction with industry, and the national culture reflected less and less tolerance for labor activism, radicalism, and immigrant workers in general.43 Following various revolutions of European workingmen and uprisings against capitalism in the s, socialism had begun to take hold in America with the establishment of the Socialist Party, and its popularity grew as economic conditions deteriorated in the depressions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, the depression of – underscored the sharpening contrasts between the rich and the poor under capitalism, spawning waves of strikes and continuous labor unrest.44 Because immigrants were prominent in many of the strikes and stoppages, they were stereotyped as agitators, radicals, and reds.45 The Haymarket Square bombing of  also reinforced the nativistic antiradicalism of nationalism in the late nineteenth century.46 This incident occurred in Chicago when a bomb exploded during an anarchist meeting, attended mostly by immigrants. Because this incident occurred at a time when thousands were on strike, it intensified fears of radicals,

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one day for democracy many of whom were immigrants, and was then used as a rationale for nativism, legitimating corporate and government repression of immigrant workers who were active in the labor movement. Still, socialism continued to grow in the early twentieth century; in , the Socialist candidate on the presidential ballot won the highest number of votes ever cast for a Socialist presidential candidate.47 In addition, a depression lasting from  to  gave an additional thrust to the socialist movement. Thus, by the time of the  strike, socialism had not only taken hold in the Mesabi mines but also had moved to Iron Range towns as some immigrant politicians, running as Socialists, rose to power by winning election to town governments.48 As labor unrest continued in the late nineteenth century and the elite power brokers continued to wage war against the growing number of unions and radical organizations, the IWW was at the top of their hit list. The IWW’s preamble clearly spells out its threat to the status quo: The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among the millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things in life. . . . It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the every-day struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.49 With membership on the rise, and having an aggressively anticapitalist orientation, the union’s involvement in the  strike focused national attention on the Iron Range in a year when a wave of strikes had spread across America. That year, the IWW’s “Declaration of War” against the steel trust and the independent mining companies in Minnesota received attention in newspaper coverage across the country.50 This made it all

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ the more imperative for the steel trust to break the strike and stop the union’s growth. An additional problem that industry had with the IWW was the union’s opposition to U.S. engagement in World War I, which was favored by American businesses. The IWW preached against involvement in the European war, calling it the invention of greedy capitalists and promoting the belief that “class war at home should have priority over military conflict in Europe.”51 The war in Europe was also a major issue during the  presidential campaign as the candidates—Democrat Woodrow Wilson, Republican Charles Hughes, and Socialist A. L. Benson—debated this volatile issue. According to historian Donald Winters, “although most Americans still opposed intervention, the manufacturing interests, who had extended huge amounts of credit to the Allies, pushed vigorously for war.”52 Yet with Allied armament orders continuing to fuel American industry, labor unrest persisted as a wave of strikes erupted throughout America, nearly driving the “war news off the front pages of the daily papers.”53 While the labor unrest of  was not limited to the IWW, what Winters describes as “massive demonstrations, picket-line solidarity and heroic resistance to the terrorism of the mining company” made the union a major thorn in the side of American corporations.54 Symbolically, the IWW used Finnish socialist halls across the Iron Range as meeting headquarters.55 Thus, the cancellation of Biwabik’s Independence Day celebration in  speaks volumes about the instability of the times and about the hegemonic struggles to crush radicalism. Blaming the IWW for the cancellation of July Fourth, the pro-mining newspaper, the Biwabik Times, denounced it with the headline, “Fourth of July Celebration is Killed by Outlaw I.W.W.” Journalistic detachment is clearly not a concern, as the paper’s antiradical bias is prominent in the accompanying story: “The Fourth of July celebration at Biwabik was not held. The outlaw I.W.W. is responsible. The outlaws staged a double murder at the Chicago location on the afternoon of the third and it was concluded by the committee that it was best to postpone the celebration. The feeling is so bitter

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one day for democracy against the outlaws and their associates that it was considered there would be a bloody clash if crowds were allowed to gather. At that if the red flag element should start anything there will be a cleanup that will long be remembered.”56 Here we see the rhetoric of the Big Red Scare coverage typical of newspapers during the war and postwar years, with reference to the Fourth being “killed” and references to the IWW as “outlaw” and as the “red flag element.” Significantly, the cancellation decision highlights the potential of parades and orations, typical of Independence Day celebrations at that time, to erupt into mob violence and civil disobedience. Orations were especially potent tools in inciting riots and demonstrations. In fact, the top leaders of the IWW were well known for having public speaking abilities that catalyzed worker activism, a major advantage the union used to successfully organize immigrants. Helen Gurley Flynn and Carlo Tresca were known as particularly gifted orators. In addition, IWW leaders typically spoke in foreign languages as well as English, making their audiences all the more receptive to their messages. An incident during the  strike illustrates this. Under the guise of patriotism, mine deputies fired on strikers who paraded with a red flag, killing one of them. The funeral for one of the victims, a Slovenian miner from Virginia, evolved into a demonstration of solidarity as three thousand people paraded to the cemetery. Following the parade was a funeral oration by Tresca promising that “we will take a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, or a life for a life.”57 With the long Iron Range winter only a month away, the strike ended in September , and the mining company’s victory over the workers virtually put an end to overt union activities and radical expressions on the Iron Range. But crushing the strike was a costly endeavor, as hundreds of strikebreakers were recruited directly from Europe; more than one thousand armed mine police were enlisted from Duluth, Minneapolis, and St. Paul to attack picketers and parades; and thousands of dollars were invested in spy networks, which infiltrated most of the ethnic groups, most town governments, and even the IWW to create a climate

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ of fear.58 This network was so cleverly designed that its spies had no knowledge of each other’s identities, generating paranoia and suspicion for years to come, while driving Iron Range workers underground in organizations such as the Unified Units to continue their fight.59 Significantly, the three-month strike was not only intense but also pervasive, spreading from the Mesabi to the Vermilion and Cuyuna ranges. It ended partly because of the steel trust’s strikebreaking strategies, partly because the IWW leaders who came to the Range were all arrested and jailed, and partly because the miners feared winter’s onset. Because most of the mining was seasonal, by ending the strike in the fall, the miners were able to work for a short period before the annual shutdown.60 Iron Range old-timers and Iron Range labor histories recalled the blacklisting of union activists, particularly union leaders, and the arrests, incarcerations, and deportations of IWW members. In addition, the Immigration and Naturalization Service constantly harassed unnaturalized immigrant activists as the steel trust expended huge amounts of resources and manpower to break the strike.61 From the workers’ perspective, the reinforcement of regional and community bonds was a positive outcome of the strike, involving not only the miners but also their wives and children. Across the Mesabi, women were active in raising funds and staffing the relief stores and strike kitchens. When the men were jailed, the women walked the picket lines with their children. Some carried placards reading “We Want Milk!” and “We Are Human Beings!” Other women even defied religious authority to support the strike. One account tells of a priest who tried to shame some women for participating in the strike, but they only laughed at him and continued with their picketing.62 Nineteen-sixteen and the years leading up to it were also known for their social turbulence and for their nativist backlash as the waves of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe continued to stream into industrial areas across the nation; old-stock Americans, fearing the immigrant challenges to the Anglo-Saxon Protestant hegemony, established nativist organizations, supported legislation to restrict immigration and

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one day for democracy suppress radicalism, and increased assimilation efforts in schools and in corporate Americanization programs, which socialized immigrants into the bourgeois value system and linked patriotism and industrial discipline.63 As historian John Higham describes it, “by Western European standards, the masses of southern and eastern Europe were educationally deficient, socially backward, and bizarre in appearance.”64 As a result, by the World War I years, American nationalism had shifted from celebrating diversity and inclusiveness to reasserting middle-class, Anglo-Saxon values, whiteness, and Protestantism as characteristic of “true” American identity.65 The vigorous efforts of hegemonic forces in business, government, and social reform to Americanize the masses of immigrants were not, however, met with passivity. This was especially the case in urban industrial areas, which drew thousands of southern and eastern European immigrants. The rowdy and informal customs and traditions of these immigrant groups were an assault on both industrial discipline and the AngloSaxon values of moderation, formality, and deference to class status.66 As a result, class conflicts erupted in the workplace and in public, especially during celebrations on holidays including the Fourth of July. By the time the United States entered the war in , nativists had succeeded in linking national security to undivided immigrant loyalty, or  percent Americanism, adding further pressure for Anglo-conformity.67 Reinforcing the elite’s rationale for excluding immigrants from white privilege in America were the racial distinctions they had began to apply to the second-wave immigrants to distinguish them from first-wave immigrants. First-wave immigrants came to America in the earlier part of the nineteenth century and to the Vermilion and Mesabi ranges during the years of earliest settlement, in the late s.68 They were called “white” immigrants because they were typically from northern or western Europe, often spoke English, and their cultures were considered assimilable by American elites. New immigrants settled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were typically from southern and eastern Europe, usually did not speak English, and were considered unassimilable

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ by the hegemonic culture. These immigrants were labeled “black” and were described as inferior races in the same category as African Americans.69 This racial nationalism was so prevalent that according to historian John Higham, “no part of the United States was immune to the spirit of white supremacy, in all sections native born and northern European laborers called themselves ‘white men’ to distinguish themselves from southern Europeans whom they worked beside.”70 Although the Iron Range immigrants experienced race and class prejudice similar to that experienced by industrial workers across America, the region’s class structure was atypical. Because few wealthy people settled permanently in this undeveloped region, instead of three classes, there were primarily two class tiers—the workers and the middle class. Consequently, the Iron Range elites comprised a small group of middleclass mining company managers and their affiliates in town governments and businesses, native-born “Yankees” (old-stock Americans) and foreignborn northern Europeans (with the exclusion of the Finns) as well as western Europeans such as the Germans. The other class, the workers, constituted a majority of the region’s population and was mostly foreign born.71 Despite the power of the mining companies, Iron Range immigrants could still look to Independence Day as the most important event of the year, on which they continued their celebration tradition of “making the eagle scream.”72 This holiday was not only a literal celebration of the radical heritage of America’s revolutionary era but also virtually the only venue for immigrants to express and confirm their solidarity outside the reach of the mining companies. And despite the increasing power of big business in the workplace as well as in town governments, Iron Range immigrants never relinquished control over their ever-growing Independence Day celebrations, developing complicated programs requiring more of them to serve on planning committees. As one former state legislator, the late Peter Fugina, described it, the Iron Range workers may not have had much control over their work lives or their town governments, but they did control their celebrations of Independence Day. “People wouldn’t stand for interference in their

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one day for democracy party,” Fugina explained.73 In this repressive era, the Fourth was indeed a day of democracy when workers could freely express themselves, control the public streets, invert the order of everyday life, make fun of the privileged, and get gloriously drunk. Consequently, this era spotlights the role of Independence Day in covertly expressing and catalyzing radical activism and in giving workers a venue to symbolically resist the status quo through the carnival aspects of their celebrations, especially parody, satire, social commentary, and inversions of everyday life. As a day of freedom and a day to promote their interests, Independence Day was the highlight of the Iron Range calendar. In mine English (the dialect that developed in the region), the Fourth of July was referred to in a single word. Some groups, especially the Finns, called it “Fort-Chew-lie.” Others called it “Fort-chuly.”74 As immigrant populations across the region grew and as immigrant politicians rose to power to represent them, Iron Rangers created elaborate committees of elites and immigrant workers to plan events from games to parades. In some towns, celebrations were planned by the volunteer fire departments, and eventually some celebrations were planned by civic groups such as the American Legion. While Iron Range Fourth of July celebrations were indeed community events rooted in European holiday traditions, the people also infused them with innovations born in America, such as using dynamite instead of the traditional guns and cannons used in wake-up rituals, a custom that always attracted the attention of town residents.75 The immigrants also developed codes of behavior for Independence Day, including making the day a community obligation with the expectation that personal conflicts would be set aside for at least this one day of the year. July Fourth was a day to come together to acknowledge one’s community and the American spirit and to express patriotism by suspending grudges, avoiding the fistfights common in this confrontational society, and celebrating loudly and enthusiastically.76 Veda Ponikvar, an Iron Ranger from Chisholm, described it as a time when everyone came together and as a “melding of nationalities . . . a U.N. before .”77 In the early twentieth century as the mining companies consolidated and mining profits increased, resentment also increased among unskilled

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ immigrant laborers, who struggled against the steel trust’s refusal to devote some of its vast resources to ensuring worker safety and providing worker benefits. In the first decade of the twentieth century, accident and death rates were extremely high, with injuries averaging – per , annually and mortality rates at about  per ,. Harsh living and working conditions including ten-to-fourteen-hour shifts six days a week, low wages, hazardous work environments, and no sickness, accident, or death benefits resulted in abnormally high suicide rates.78 These conditions made it clear to many Iron Range immigrants that capitalism was corrupt and that the absentee owners of the mining companies symbolized this corruption.79 community, class conflict, americanization, and public disorder Across America, conflict between the classes was not confined to the workplace but also surfaced in residential segregation, especially in urban industrial areas where ethnic groups clustered together in low-income neighborhoods (separate from the middle class and wealthy) and held fast to their cultural heritages and native languages. Thus, these ethnic groups were considered unassimilable and became the targets of nativists. While segregation could not be accommodated in the limited space of the small Iron Range towns built near the edges of the open pit mines, “attitudes of superiority” by the privileged groups did cause friction. Ellen Gainey, a second-generation Virginia resident born in , recalled an Independence Day “Grande Parade” in which elite women rode in “tastefully decorated” carriages in “silk and feathered elegance . . . and smiled faintly in gracious condescension at the peasants lining the curb.” Certainly the Fourth of July’s rhetoric of freedom and equality reinforced the new immigrants’ resentments of the privilege of the old immigrants and Yankees.80 In fact, in the first two decades of the twentieth century, class friction had grown to such intensity that historian Clarke Chambers described both the  strike and the Mesabi Range strike of  as “more class warfare than bargaining contests.”81 The Western Federation of Miners,

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one day for democracy

figure 3.2. IWW members march through the north end of Hibbing in the summer of 1916. (Photograph from the Hibbing Daily Tribune, Centennial Edition, July , ,  A.)

a radical union, organized the  strike with Finnish socialists in its vanguard. Significantly, strikers across the Iron Range used Finnish socialist halls as their strike headquarters and marched from mine to mine to spread news of the strike throughout the region.82 The year before the  strike, the Iron Range town of Hibbing had hosted a conference to establish a national organization of Finnish-immigrant socialist clubs, and the conference drew immigrants from places as far away as Seattle and Philadelphia. After the conference, the federation began organizing Iron Range workers and demanding an end to hazardous working conditions, low pay, and long hours.83 Acting to stop socialism’s growth, the mining company fired three hundred of the union’s members.84 Ultimately the mining companies broke a strike that lasted two months and involved ten thousand workers.85

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ To crush the  strike, the mining companies had to employ several strategies, including violence and intimidation of picketers, recruitment of strikebreakers directly from Europe, and the creation of a spy network whose members reported not only union activists but also socialists and even those who dared to read the leftist newspapers of the Finns, the South Slavs, or the Italians. The cost to break the strike was considerable: the steel trust spent $,. to defeat the workers.86 In a recollection of the  strike, journalist Frank Palmer in his book Spies in Steel described the spy network as incredibly devastating, creating “fear and suspicion” everywhere. “No one dares to trust his closest friend or his nearest neighbor,” he wrote in , twenty-one years after the strike.87 In a book dedicated to the rank and file, Palmer detailed how the mining companies held the Mesabi Range in “a deadly grip of fear” during and after the  strike:88 We see strong, well-fed, well-trained men sitting in Duluth, and with the power of Steel behind them, reaching into the little homes of the Iron Range and crushing the honor of men who do not have the background, the education, the wealth with which to defend themselves. We see neighbors hating and suspecting each other, whole communities living in fear and suspicion, while the great Steel machine digs the iron out of the souls of men as ruthlessly as it digs the iron out of the fields of the Mesaba, and leaves them the same—marred, dirty, broken, gashed beyond all repair.89 To solidify its position of power, the companies also had union leaders and activists jailed and maintained a blacklist, which was particularly devastating to the Finnish strikers. Many of the blacklisted Finnish people, unable to find work in the mines, were forced into the surrounding wilderness area to homestead and farm the heavily forested, rocky soil.90 After the  strike was suppressed, strikes continued but were usually short-lived. In  on the Cuyuna Iron Range, where settlement had

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one day for democracy begun just seven years earlier, a thousand men went on strike to protest low wages and too many hours. Although socialists from throughout Minnesota assisted in the strike, it was “settled” in less than two weeks.91 Significantly, this era foregrounds the hegemonic efforts to link industrial violence and labor radicalism to immigrants and to link the Americanization of immigrants to antiunionism, antiradicalism, and social reform programs that would “strip the masses of their foreign ways and their allegedly radical beliefs.”92 Progressive reform, a major movement to Americanize immigrants, emerged in the late nineteenth century and peaked in the early twentieth century. Allied with business and nativist groups, these middle-class reformers launched social control efforts in education and in the leisure sphere to “Americanize” immigrants.93 Their programs included public school curricula for children and night school curricula for adults promoting the values of hard work, sobriety, and moderation, which were expected to transform immigrants into good Americans and good workers.94 Because social reformers believed holidays could be powerful venues to Americanize immigrants and to teach all Americans the “art of celebration,” they attempted to standardize public holidays, including Independence Day, to ensure the expression of solemn patriotism and a standard of moderation, dignity, and sobriety in public, according to historian Ellen Litwicki.95 Immigrants therefore felt a great deal of pressure to demonstrate their undivided loyalties to America and to display their willingness to assimilate according to Anglo-American norms on public holidays. In , the Council for Immigrants in America came up with one such loyalty venue by creating Americanization Day. This was established to recast the Fourth of July as a solemn occasion by incorporating naturalization ceremonies into the schedule of events. While there were about  Americanization ceremonies across the country, Americanization Day was not adopted on the Iron Range, with the exception of Hibbing, one of the larger towns that had a larger middle-class population than most Mesabi Range towns. Hibbing’s Americanization Day was primarily instituted to stem political corrup-

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ tion by countering the practices of Duluth politicians (who initially represented the Iron Range), who naturalized miners en masse at various locations to acquire votes. Outraged, the Mesaba Ore ran an editorial on July , , castigating politicians who “used to peddle citizenship papers like campaign cigars.” The newspaper also applauded the  ceremony, advocating it as a future Fourth of July event, a “public ceremony fitting the solemn rite.” However, the editorial’s recommendation was ignored, and after  there were no other references to Americanization Day in the many Iron Range newspapers surveyed for this book.96 Although Americanization Day was unsuccessful—as were other Progressive reform efforts, such as the Safe and Sane Fourth of July—the elites did not abandon their efforts to Americanize the rowdy workers, as examples from various Independence Day programs indicate. In Biwabik’s  celebration, this is clearly indicated in accounts of the solemn, patriotic ceremony planned by the elites for the town’s residents. Lyrics for “The Star Spangled Banner” and “America the Beautiful” were passed out so the crowd could sing along with the city band. Recounting the event, the Biwabik Times could not resist an editorial comment on the men’s behavior, chiding them for their frontier ways in neglecting to stand and remove their hats during the songs.97 In addition, inserting an editorial comment into the text of its story covering Biwabik’s oration and formal exercises in , the newspaper expressed its hopes that the program’s singing and honoring of the flag would continue in the future “to give an understanding of what this country stands for and breeds that nationality spirit that is necessary.” The italicized phrase is a reference to the need for the native born to instill the “true” American spirit into these immigrant hordes and seems to double as a veiled reference to eugenics, a popular belief at this time in which “superior” (Anglo-Saxon) races were encouraged to reproduce and “inferior” races were discouraged from reproducing, sometimes by sterilization.98 In another example from , a judge named Solon Perrin, from Superior (in Wisconsin), delivered a Fourth of July oration in Eveleth touting socialization of the immigrant masses. Deviating from his “chosen

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one day for democracy topic” of the flag and “what it stands for,” he called for the tightening of marriage laws to curb the high divorce rates and to “develop a better breed of children” to prevent juvenile delinquency problems. He concluded his remarks with this nativist advice for ensuring the assimilation of immigrants: “Help where you can. . . . A cake of Castile soap, the Ten Commandments, and a tooth brush will work wonders for the advancement of the nation.”99 It is easy to see why such attitudes of superiority and nativism would provoke immigrants’ resentment and fuel class conflict. duluth’s genteel fourth of july In the port city of Duluth, to which the ore was shipped by rail, Progressive reform efforts were more successful. In the early twentieth century, following the national trend toward the privatization of holidays, Duluth’s official Independence Day programs were on the wane.100 It was then fashionable for many of Duluth’s middle-class residents to spend the Fourth on Lake Superior boat excursions and to hold private picnics and gatherings. Newspaper advertisements for Independence Day feature Victorian fashions including high-necked dresses, parasols, corsets, and button-down shoes, which reveal the genteel nature of the city’s holiday traditions (see fig. .). Gentility and moderation had become so customary that the Duluth News Tribune condemned the noisy and boisterous celebrations of  in nearby West Duluth, with a heavily immigrant and working-class population, as well as West Superior (Wisconsin). The newspaper also scolded Duluth police for their lax enforcement of a three-week-old town ordinance banning firecrackers. Highlighting the gory details of a man’s finger being blown off by a firecracker, the paper expressed intolerance for the incessant firecrackers, which were “frequently thrown under horses feet, close to crowds of people or in fact, anywhere that there was a chance of seeing someone jump, without very great danger.”101 Although Duluth Independence Days were moving away from noisy, boisterous celebrations, the rowdy carnival style still prevailed on the nearby

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figure 3.3. Advertisements in Duluth’s Sunday News Tribune, July , , .

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one day for democracy Iron Range. Recalling the tenor of Iron Range Fourth of July celebrations, the late Frank Nemanic of Aurora, a retired miner in his nineties, said that when he was growing up, people were startled awake on Independence Day when a dynamite wake-up call would explode around  a.m. These blasts, set off by pranksters with dynamite filched from mine powder sheds, shook the entire town, rattling all the windows—but, amazingly, seldom destroying them.102 Despite Americanization pressures, Iron Range immigrants could still look forward to Independence Day as a free space to celebrate democracy in their own informal carnival style. These festivities resisted the era’s Progressive reform efforts to standardize public celebrations in the respectable style, which modeled the Anglo-American middle-class norms of solemnity, hierarchy, order, and respectability. As a free space for the Iron Range immigrant workers, the celebration of the Fourth of July would ensure that the American values of freedom and democracy were passed on to subsequent generations. These values were literally embodied in the custom that allowed elementary school children the freedom to set their own July Fourth agendas and to freely spend the money they received from friends and relatives on luxuries such as candy and firecrackers.103 They were also free to pull pranks such as planting firecrackers in cow pies to splatter in all directions.104 One could argue that Iron Range July Fourth programs in this period were similar to other programs across the country because of such standard elements as: parades, formal programs of orations, athletic and novelty games, and fireworks. However, closer examination highlights the distinctively multiethnic carnivalesque character of Iron Range celebrations. For example, even the most orderly of parades had units such as Italian bands and Finnish floats with intoxicated men in towels sharing a sauna.105 Ellen Gainey, born in , recalled that in the town of Virginia in the second decade of the twentieth century, the “crowd favored the brewery wagons, with kegs piled in high pyramids atop them, which were always near the end of the parade and drew the loudest cheers.” Rough, physically demanding games such as logrolling (fig. .) and

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figure 3.4. Logrolling, July 4, 1910, Coleraine. (Courtesy of the Iron Range Historical Society collection, Gilbert, Minnesota.)

tug-of-war were also typical of the informal, rowdy Iron Range style of celebration, which in effect was a rejection of middle-class gentility. Pictured above is a logrolling event from Coleraine’s  program.106 Despite the overall rejection of middle-class values, Sunday dress was worn in events such as tugs-of-war (fig. .) and races (fig. .) out of respect for the Fourth of July. Also distinctive was the Old Country holiday visiting tradition, which was expanded as the automobile and road construction made travel between Iron Range towns more convenient and as more railroad connections were added between the towns. These innovations contributed to regional solidarity because the Fourth of July programs could be sampled in several towns. Visiting multiple celebrations became so popular that some adjoining towns would stagger their parade and event schedules to accommodate visitors from neighboring Iron Range towns. Of course, the commercial possibilities of this regional visiting tradition also reinforced its persistence.107

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one day for democracy

figure 3.5. Tug-of-war between men of two mining companies, circa 1900, Cuyuna Range. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.)

figure 3.6. Participants racing in their Sunday best on July 4, circa 1900, possibly in Ely or Sparta. (Courtesy of the Iron Range Historical Society collection, Gilbert, Minnesota.)

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ While the growing popularity of Independence Day can be partially attributed to this era’s population growth, one should also note that the holiday’s festive format was common to many of the Range’s diverse ethnic groups. As a thread tying together the disparate Iron Range groups into a regional subculture, its carnivalesque rituals celebrated community on local and regional levels. Rather than breaking from Old World traditions, it accommodated a mix of old and newly created traditions, reflecting the people’s identity as ethnic Americans rather than assimilated Americans.108 The rise in the celebration’s popularity is also related to its history as a commemoration of the tenets of freedom and equality in the Declaration of Independence. To immigrants, this holiday was literally a day for freedom of expression, the only outlet for uninhibited celebration outside the regimented, hierarchical world of work, and beyond the control of the ubiquitous mining conglomerate.109 Given the significance of Independence Day to community life, its cancellation in Biwabik in  indicates that the elites understood what Independence Day had come to mean to the immigrant workers and highlights the fear of the ruling corps of Yankees and old immigrants that mob violence might erupt under the influence of this radically charged holiday.110 Across America in this era, the radical spirit of Independence Day was fading from memory as the dictates of urban order, the privatization of leisure, and the commercialism of the holiday became prevalent (see chapter ). Most significant in its demise, however, was the new national spirit, which was both antiradical and nativistic. This emerged in the nineteenth century and peaked in the early twentieth century, purging the country of radicalism during and after World War I and finishing it off after World War II when communism expanded in Europe and McCarthyism in America ultimately disconnected the holiday from its very roots. Yet many new immigrants, including those on the Iron Range who were learning about America’s roots through Americanization programs, were taking inspiration from America’s revolutionary heritage, which resonated with the radical heritage that they had brought with them from the Old Country.

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one day for democracy Historian Gary Gerstle makes this argument in Working-Class Americanism, in which he examines the lives of working-class immigrants in the textile industry of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, who attended Americanization programs around the turn of the century. Gerstle’s argument rejects the classic descriptions of Americanization as a conservative process promoting passivity and assimilation into middle-class Anglo-Saxon norms. While he acknowledges the conservative influence of Americanization programs, he also points out that immigrants were empowered by the stories of America’s revolutionary era.111 Gerstle argues that by stressing Revolutionary War history, the establishment of the Constitution, and tenets of freedom and equality in the Declaration of Independence, public school curricula and adult citizenship classes inadvertently presented material that the immigrants could literally interpret as a call to radicalism. Being in the literal phase in their acquisition of English skills, they could find similarities between their own situations and that of the revolutionary era Americans.112 The mining companies on the Iron Range were particularly supportive of Americanization programs in the schools and were sponsors of adult citizenship classes, which emphasized the efficiency and discipline of the “American” work ethic. The curricula for these programs were established to “defuse [sic] the potential threat of foreign values from undermining the American way” with content that “leaned heavily toward patriotism and English literature,” according to Lynn Maria Laitala, a second-generation Iron Ranger born on the Vermilion Range.113 As the country moved toward involvement in World War I, the national culture’s influence on this isolated region became more significant as the demand for iron ore propelled the sagging economy into prosperity. But by far the most profound impact that the national culture had on the Iron Range was the suppression of radical traditions as the Big Red Scare of the war and postwar years stamped out radicalism across the nation and diffused its power on the Iron Range. America’s engagement in World War I also intensified the growing link between the Iron Range and the national culture, creating temporary bonds across regions, classes,

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ and ethnic groups as the nation came together for the war effort. Nativism also eased as the immigrant stream stopped during wartime, as full employment made job competition no longer an issue, and as immigration restriction laws passed prior to the war proved effective in diminishing the cultural challenge of new immigrants to the middle-class hegemony.114 Although historians consider this the most repressive period in Iron Range history, the immigrant workers were able to carve out a power base (aided by lucrative ore taxes) as their communities grew and immigrant politicians rose to power. These politicians astutely recognized the value of controlling the ore taxes mandated by the state from the mining companies and challenged the pro-mining politicians across the region. In addition, they understood the significance of July Fourth to community life, gaining power and visibility by riding in parades and participating in Independence Day ceremonies and events.115 Thus, in the second decade of the twentieth century, even as the mining companies’ power grew, so too did the power of the immigrant politicians. Many used ore taxes to gain patronage, to fund civic improvements, and, of course, to support elaborate Fourth of July celebrations, which politicians found to be extremely effective campaign venues.116 Because of the seasonal nature of mining and its periodic depressions, ore taxes also went into the town coffers that politicians distributed for civic relief projects. Although much smaller in scale than New Deal initiatives such as the Works Progress Administration, these projects provided at least a small amount of aid and hope to the most desperate families and could sometimes supplement the sickness and death benefits provided by the ethnic and fraternal organizations.117 Most significantly, the abundant ore taxes had no maximum limits initially, allowing towns to construct lavish public schools and make numerous civic improvements. It is particularly ironic that the immigrants found empowerment by using tax money from the mining companies to improve their towns and to open the doors of opportunity through education for their children by building outstanding school systems to serve as launching pads for the American Dream. This dream, however, was a

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one day for democracy dream for their offspring but no longer for themselves. Fourth of July celebrations often reflected the significance of education in Iron Range life (as in fig. .). Even though this era’s repression of the workers eased a bit as communities developed and as immigrant politicians challenged pro-company power blocs in the towns across the Iron Range, many immigrant politicians had difficulty in remaining uncorrupted by the vast resources of the mining company.118 In addition, the steel trust solidified its grip on the region by enlisting the aid of religious groups in its fight against radicalism and collective action. Through large donations to most of the Iron Range denominations, the trust was able to ally with Iron Range clergy to promote stability by encouraging conformity to Anglo-Saxon norms and industrial discipline and by discouraging radicalism and union activism. Some churches did not even wait to be solicited by the mining companies. One church, taking the initiative to request funds from the Oliver Mining Company, submitted a proposal for money “to make loyal Americans out of foreigners.”119

figure 3.7. The “Light of Education” float in the 1914 Fourth of July parade in Ely indicates the importance of education to the first generation. (Courtesy of the Iron Range Historical Society collection, Gilbert, Minnesota.)

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ In the year following Biwabik’s cancelled celebration, the war tempered class conflict and the workers and mining management forged a temporary truce. Accordingly, Independence Day’s style and tone changed with America’s entrance into the war. Nineteen-seventeen was the first year in which southern and eastern European immigrants were encouraged to participate alongside the elites in such activities as war bond drives and Red Cross volunteer projects. But with a new spirit of cooperation between the classes, Independence Day became a bit more subdued, as expressions of civic unity and solemn patriotism were emphasized in programs across the region.120 In addition to a more solemn and orderly tenor to wartime July Fourth celebrations, Clarke Chambers described the  and  celebrations as even “grander” than before because “every immigrant society seized on the occasion to demonstrate by outward and visible sign their spiritual allegiance to the stars and stripes.”121 Across America in , under pressure by nativists to prove their undivided loyalty to America, immigrant leaders allied with Progressive reformers to launch a national effort recasting ’s Fourth of July into Loyalty Day. This featured parades with ethnic and historic floats and “massive demonstrations of immigrant loyalty to their adopted land.”122 One of these massive demonstrations was held in Philadelphia and drew , immigrants.123 President Woodrow Wilson was enlisted to officially proclaim this day Loyalty Day and to deliver a keynote address, while a uniform program was planned for other cities and towns across the nation. However, instead of merely demonstrating ethnic loyalty to America, the immigrant parades also reinforced the ethnicities of origin of their participants, who proudly rode in Fourth of July parades wearing their native costumes. Although Iron Range immigrants turned out in large numbers for  Fourth of July parades, it became evident that wartime class unity was only temporarily masking nativism and class disharmony. This is clear in the patronizing tone of a Biwabik Times article describing Biwabik’s multiethnic procession, which “said louder than words that many of the foreign-born population are really appreciative of the liberty that they

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one day for democracy enjoy in the United States” but also noted that the immigrants had not yet learned the proper way to express patriotism and allegiance to the flag.124 The article illustrated this by pointing out that two policemen had marched on either side of the honor guard and had forcibly removed men’s hats if they did not tip their hats to the flag. In addition, the newspaper could not resist a bit of reformist commentary by scolding all the men on their frontier mores: “This should be a lesson to all. Even American born, accustomed to paying little attention to nationality matters, are nearly as bad in this regard as those born across the seas. But while the war is on is a good time to teach them there must be [a] certain respect shown the Stars and Stripes.”125 the big red scare Undoubtedly, one of the national culture’s most profound influences on the Iron Range was the ethos of antiradicalism culminating in the Big Red Scare during and after World War I. Iron Range activists felt a need to mask their radical histories and to distance themselves from other radicals to stay employed and to demonstrate their loyalty to America. Ironically, by the time of World War I, the nation’s radical spirit of the Fourth of July had ceased to be associated with the holiday, as government on all levels enacted antiradical legislation and carried out strategies to quash radicalism that routinely violated the civil rights of activists and immigrants, who were often arrested, jailed, and deported.126 Despite this, in the year after the war, radical activities arose again, and the Red Scare escalated in , peaking in . In Minnesota, the Commission of Public Safety was created as an extension of the state “to identify the defense of the existing order with patriotic obligation.” In its short life between  to , the commission arrested, jailed, and deported individuals who had been branded “subversive,” particularly numerous Iron Range radicals and union activists.127 The Red Scare proved so effective that it profoundly changed the political tenor of the nation, severing its last frail connections to its radical

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ heritage. The pervasiveness of the Red Scare extended even into remote regions such as the Minnesota Iron Range, once nationally in the vanguard of radicalism. Consequently, as America turned away from its roots in popular radicalism and propaganda campaigns against radicalism succeeded in linking it to outsider agitators and unpatriotic behavior, the movement declined. The fact that the Red Scare had penetrated the isolated Iron Range and was still a powerful force in the s is also a testament to the disconnection of radicalism from American nationalism and from the radical spirit of Independence Day. This ethos was so powerful that three years after the demise of the Commission of Public Safety, the Red Scare’s impact was still strong. Illustrating this is a story on vandalism that appeared in the July , , issue of the Hibbing Daily News next to an article previewing the upcoming Independence Day events. This incident involved ten American flags, put up as Independence Day decorations, which were torn down and cut into “six inch bits.” The culprit was described as an intoxicated man and a “fiend” who was believed to be a “radical red” with a “soul defiled with hatred to the country, its flag, and people.” The descriptions speak to the antiradical discourse in the national culture that continued into the early s.128 Although union activity was forced underground on the Iron Range after the  strike and the war temporarily subdued Iron Range Independence Day celebrations, the region’s enthusiastic patriotic traditions came to the fore again after the war.129 What changed was how the holiday reflected the immigrants’ focus on the American Dream, which had shifted to a vision of a better life, not for themselves but for their children, many of whom had been born in America. Fourth of July celebrations increasingly emphasized engaging the younger generation in the celebration of freedom and democracy. This is clearly illustrated by a drawing of a young boy riding a skyrocket (fig. .), an image that dominates the front page of a  issue of the Hibbing Daily News. This image of informality and noisy, boisterous celebration emphasizes the rowdy and disorderly elements of Hibbing’s Fourth of July celebration. This

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one day for democracy front page radiates the promise of excitement in its bold headline punctuated by exclamation points. In a news story that could easily pass for a press release, the paper previewed Hibbing’s Independence Day program: Hurrah for the Glorious Fourth! That’s the way every redblooded, virile American feels on that day. And it’s a day that makes every American proud of the fact that the nation’s absolute freedom was never so recognized as today when the country leads the world in power, prosperity, commercial prominence, and worldwide respect. . . . Hear the guns that usher in the Great Independence Day Celebration and the events that have been carded—a legion bazaar, dancing and events of all kinds and in the evening fireworks . . . A wonderful display . . . Be here.130 The mix of Iron Range subculture and national culture influences stands out in this text. Both cultures’ association of American identity with masculine identity is evident in references to “red-blooded, virile” Americans. Of course, the Iron Range influence is evident in the informal, noisy and enthusiastic tenor of the celebration and the twin emphases on commemorating freedom and community. In addition, the national culture’s influence is obvious in its exceptionalistic rhetoric touting America’s worldwide prowess. Notably similar exceptionalistic rhetoric also appears in this same newspaper issue in a large proclamation from the president of Hibbing, dubbing America as the “greatest union of people and lands under one government, one constitution, and one flag.”131 Despite the region’s shift away from radicalism under the influence of the national culture, the working-class tradition of holiday drinking continued on the Iron Range, resisting the national ban on alcohol, especially on “the most important day of the year.”132 While on the surface Prohibition seemed intended to eliminate alcohol consumption across America, its anti-immigrant reform objectives are well documented, as

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒

Figure 3.8. “Fourth of July—Hurrah! Hurrah!” Hibbing Daily News, July 3, 1923, 1.

temperance organizations and Progressive reform programs emerged in the wake of the huge influx of southern and eastern European immigrants. Beginning in , Prohibition was one of several Anglo-conformist strategies for assimilating immigrants into middle-class norms for dignified and deferential public behavior and for enforcing public order. But in the isolated region of the Iron Range, enforcement was lax because of the deep-rooted traditions of wine and spirit making and because of the region’s proximity to Canada, where alcohol was easily procured.133 Consequently, despite Prohibition, a story on Hibbing’s  celebration points out that “not all the celebrating was done with fireworks . . .

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one day for democracy and there was much ‘firewater’ in evidence according to police today.” The Hibbing Daily News also reported on four arrests related to that year’s celebration. One arrest was made after a man was found naked in the ballpark. Three men were arrested for being drunk and disorderly. One of them even “celebrated by getting flippant and attempting to tear up an officer. A few blows to the head brought him into submission.”134 Interestingly, resistance to Prohibition was not seen as defiance of the federal government. Instead, many Iron Rangers considered drinking as the exercise of their freedom. Both oral histories and Iron Range histories indicate that Prohibition had little impact, especially on Independence Day. Peter Fugina of Aurora explained that the Iron Range was always an “open society” where “anyone wanting a drink could get one because drinking didn’t interfere with a democratic society.”135 Here the concept of freedom continues to be literally associated with the rowdy, carnival style of working-class celebrations. In a parody of Prohibition, a float with a coffin appeared in the  callithumpian parade in Biwabik, taking second prize.136 As the s progressed, Iron Range immigrants became more involved in civic affairs, especially through volunteer committees that planned Independence Day celebrations. The changes they initiated included shortening or eliminating formal programs of orations and solemn patriotic exercises and focusing more on youth and family activities with programs dominated by callithumpian and kiddie parades, games, and athletic events. During this decade, Independence Day’s popularity continued to expand, along with its commercial success, making multiple-day celebrations attractive for many towns. In addition, newspapers began running more advertisements in larger sizes to advertise town celebrations, and businesses sponsored events or held Fourth of July sales. Regional identity also expanded along with July Fourth celebrations as towns promoted their programs in each other’s newspapers and some towns joined together to cosponsor programs or alternated in hosting the annual festivities.137 In conclusion, undoubtedly the national culture’s suppression of radicalism had a profound effect throughout the country and across the Iron

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Independence Day in an Era of Labor Oppression,  ‒ Range, indicating its pervasive reach into all parts of America, including isolated regions such as the Iron Range. The impact of this antiradicalism reverberated in celebrations of Independence Day, which no longer commemorated America’s spirit of popular radicalism except in isolated areas as well as some small towns and rural areas such as the Iron Range, where carnival’s indestructible nature kept popular radicalism alive. And although worker activism on the Iron Range was forced underground, Independence Day still provided immigrants with some measure of empowerment, especially through their roles in shaping and controlling its festivities as a day for expressing freedom and community, which indeed made this holiday one day for democracy.

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chapter four

The Great Depression Hard Times, the New Deal, and a New Nationalism, 1925–41

On july 4, 1941, with World War II on the horizon, the patriotic words of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt rang out from loudspeakers along the main streets of the Iron Range towns of Gilbert and Eveleth. The president’s solemn radio address called for the American people to rededicate themselves to liberty. Following this, the townspeople joined President Roosevelt in singing the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Capping off the patriotic program, the people again joined the president—this time in reciting an Oath of Allegiance to the United States. Incorporating this radio program into the July Fourth programs, which allowed the Iron Range to join the rest of the nation in commemorating Independence Day, was no small task. In Gilbert, late afternoon events had to be moved to the front of the village hall so that everyone could hear the airing of the presidential program. Gilbert’s mayor issued a proclamation urging everyone to listen to the broadcast, which he described as a “rededication of the American people to liberty.” Similarly,

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Hard Times, the New Deal, and a New Nationalism, 1925–41 in Eveleth, loudspeakers had to be strung up along the main street so that all participants in the games and activities could hear the president’s remarks. This program linked the Iron Range and the rest of America to the president via the radio in a simultaneous observance of the Fourth of July, symbolic of America’s heritage of liberty and, according to the Gilbert Herald, “a cause for which they [the American people] fought and proclaimed won in 1776.” Obviously in anticipation of America’s engagement in World War II, the radio program focused on unity by including the singalong of the national anthem and the recitation of the Oath of Allegiance. For America, and especially for the Iron Range, the radio provided a major technological link to a “new nationalism” with its harmonious, homogeneous vision of American identity.1 The incorporation of the presidential program within the spectrum of games and revelry is quite significant. The broadcast was sandwiched between both towns’ traditional raucous and rowdy Fourth of July activities, which displayed sharp contrasts to the presidential solemnity. That year’s events included a tug-of-war, watermelon eating, balloon races, sock races, leapfrog races, beanbag throwing, pie eating, dog calling, pushmobile contests, shoe scrambles, coin diving, and blind boxing. Gilbert’s final event was a torchlight and grotesque parade, which featured both grotesque and wildly humorous costumes.2 These 1941 celebrations are notable not only for the juxtaposition of the solemn wartime ethos and the rowdy Iron Range traditions but also because of their incorporation of radio. This media form was more than merely a communication vehicle; it was a bridge to mass media messages and influences, which eventually led to the homogenization and standardization of the cultural expressions, rituals, and icons of mass culture that were pervading the nation. Although radio had been available to the Iron Range since the 1920s, much of its programming was local and reflected ethnic interests, especially in its foreign language offerings.3 By the 1940s, it had become a national force with standardized programming and national ownership.4 Thus, the central role of radio in these 1941

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the great depression Iron Range celebrations accents its power as a disseminator of mass culture and its ability to reach into and influence every corner of America, even isolated regions such as the Minnesota Iron Range. President Roosevelt was keenly aware of the media’s power when he initiated his popular Depression-era Fireside Chats on the radio. These frequent broadcasts were aimed at helping the nation cope with the effects of the Depression, helping rekindle a sense of hope for the American people, who had been devastated by prolonged unemployment.5 Transcending their roots as information and entertainment vehicles, media forms such as radio, motion pictures, newspapers, and magazines played a major role in shaping the new nationalism promoted by the New Deal, built on a coalition of immigrants, women, and other minorities.6 This New Deal nationalism—although inclusive, pluralistic, and supportive of labor activism—was still a conservative force, upholding capitalism and ultimately stemming the rise of radicalism that developed as an alternative in the wake of capitalism’s failure in the 1930s. In cultural terms, this meant that the interests of national recovery and national unity would be couched in middle-class values disseminated by mass culture (including consensus, moderation, and order) and that class lines would be blurred, altering the essential character of Iron Range American identity. The New Deal’s outreach to depressed areas such as the Iron Range, along with the rapidly emerging mass media culture, created major cultural change. Both the New Deal and the media were instrumental in shifting Americans, including those on the Minnesota Iron Range, away from radicalism and moving them toward a new harmonious and homogenous sense of being American. The country’s shift away from radicalism also helped bring about its final disconnection from its radical heritage, facilitating the transformation of Independence Day into more of a ritual of civic religion than a carnivalesque, free-spirited celebration of freedom. And although the Iron Range Fourth of July celebrations mostly resisted this trend by continuing to exhibit firmly entrenched rowdy traditions, this region, too, fell under the influence of the national

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Hard Times, the New Deal, and a New Nationalism, 1925–41 culture and the consensus imperatives triggered by the Great Depression and the outbreak of World War II.7 For the Iron Range people, this meant that their American identity could no longer be primarily local or regional, because they were experiencing a kinship with other Americans across the country who shared the experience of economic hardship and were uniting on threshold of a world war.8 The wartime ethos cut across classes, bringing virtually all Americans together, even those who controlled monopoly capitalism— the corporate powerbrokers whose profit was gleaned from exploiting the workers.9 This new alliance between the workers and big business was reinforced by a common cultural base forged by the emerging mass media through which consensus and the myth of a classless society were promoted.10 But how could this alliance develop on the Iron Range despite the geographic isolation of the region and its history of being in the vanguard of labor radicalism in America? A major factor in this drastic change was patriotism, because these immigrants had yearned for acceptance as Americans even as nativism, burgeoning in the early twentieth century, and the Americanization efforts by middle-class reformers relegated them to the status of secondclass Americans. Immigrant patriotism in the World War II era was “a double-edged sword,” says historian Gary Gerstle, because seeking inclusion as Americans required immigrants to express their loyalty by putting aside their class grievances and making peace with all Americans for a united war effort.11 In other words, while their patriotic expression helped them gain acceptance as Americans, it required them to postpone or even abandon ambitions of controlling the country’s economic institutions or of advancing a redistribution of wealth. Many other factors were also responsible for America’s shift away from radicalism and for the growth of the alliance between workers and corporations. Among the most significant were the rise of corporate attacks on radicalism and unionism in the early part of the twentieth century and the Red Scare during and following World War I.12 Labor conflict was also dissipated as a result of the enormous loss of jobs during the

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the great depression Great Depression, when approximately a quarter of the workforce was unemployed, along with the precipitous drop in wages for those who were employed.13 In this era of political and labor activism, much has been written about marginalized groups such as immigrant workers who were increasingly unified under the aegis of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and had been attracted to radicalism as an alternative to capitalism after its collapse in the Great Depression.14 Reinforcing their unity was the New Deal, which historians such as Lizabeth Cohen and Richard Oestreicher have argued provided the immigrant workers with even more than programs and initiatives. To immigrants, the New Deal was a symbol of hope and a platform for a working-class agenda, mobilizing them in both labor and politics.15 Yet while the New Deal did stimulate worker activism, its programs operated within the confines of capitalism. This ultimately diffused the interest in socialism and communism as alternatives for American workers while precipitating enormous cultural change across America, reaching even into its most remote regions.16 Growing in tandem with the national culture came a force that had a profound and pervasive impact: mass culture. The inception of national advertising in the 1920s brought the messages and persuasions of corporate America to mass audiences, spreading the ethos of consumerism, which promoted constant consumption as a leisure activity and as a mark of success.17 Consumerism developed from consumer engineering, a big business strategy to create a mass market of American consumers for an oversupply of mass-produced goods and services.18 By making installment credit available to low-income groups and by developing advertising strategies geared to erode the Victorian taboo against liberal consumption and the Protestant work ethic’s bias against leisure and leisure spending, consumerism achieved success by permeating the popular culture with mass media messages and icons. Eventually it helped transform America into a gigantic mass market. This transformation coincided with the expansion of mass communication, facilitated by innovations in printing, photographic equipment, and photographic reproduction, which

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 .. A drugstore magazine rack from 1937 indicates the penetration of mass culture into Iron Range life during the 1930s. Farm Security Administration photograph by Russell Lee, Cook, Minnesota, 1937. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

triggered an explosion of newspapers, books, and magazines emphasizing the visual image, including the enormously popular Life magazine, which depicted America as primarily a middle-class nation.19 Other venues for consumerism were radio and motion pictures, which gained increasing popularity as film moved from silents to the talkies.20 Although mass culture’s effects on isolated regions such as the Iron Range were delayed in comparison to urban America, its messages eventually penetrated most of the country, bringing promises of future abundance and linking consumption to the American Dream. early beginnings of the great depression Although the stock market crash of 1929 is often used to mark the beginning of the Great Depression, agriculture and industries such as

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the great depression mining experienced economic decline earlier in the 1920s.21 In addition, cycles of prosperity and decline had consistently characterized the history of the volatile Iron Range mining industry and had created financial hardships for miners throughout the decade, leaving entire towns virtually unemployed.22 In addition, mining on the Range was seasonal, and survival necessitated relying on each other, sharing, and conserving precious resources. Iron Rangers had to live off the land by hunting, fishing, picking berries, and gathering other plant foods such as nuts, mushrooms, and wild greens. Women typically canned and made the family clothing. With the help of other family members, immigrant women also tended gardens, which were usually large enough to provide summer food for a large family or for the members of a boardinghouse. Canning garden produce extended this food source for the rest of the year.23 Consequently, the people were not totally unprepared to survive after the loss of jobs brought on by the Depression. Several Iron Rangers interviewed for this book even admitted that the seasonal nature of mining and the unemployment of the Great Depression, both of which required survival strategies, had a positive side because the increasing interdependence of the people united the diverse groups of the region and created an intense appreciation for community.24 Yet contestation was still a part of Iron Range life. As the economy declined, fierce competition developed over the few town jobs available. Bitter and corrupt local politics were added to the other hardships, as employment in the mines was tied to regularly voting in open ballot elections for affiliates of the mining companies. According to historian John Sirjamaki, the workers opposed this practice by establishing secret organizations to “counteract powerful political groups which dominated town politics in the 1930s.” One such group, the Unified Units, was set up to protect members from the spy networks using a system in which members of individual units did not know who comprised the memberships of other units.25 In addition, racial conflicts resulting from the “not quite white” status of southern and eastern Europeans, the privilege enjoyed by the Yankee and northern European elites, and nativist

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Hard Times, the New Deal, and a New Nationalism, 1925–41 demonstrations staged by the Ku Klux Klan periodically surfaced during this era.26 Working in favor of regional and community solidarity were the immigrant politicians, who were gaining control of Iron Range towns and municipal ore taxes. In the Depression’s early years, they expanded town payrolls to hire the unemployed for civic improvements—a system similar to the Works Progress Administration (WPA) under the New Deal, which created jobs through civic improvement projects.27 In the vanguard of these politicians was Victor Powers, who became the mayor of Hibbing in 1913; he raised ore taxes to make Hibbing “the richest little village in the world.” Although he was a Republican, his policies paved the way for Iron Range acceptance of New Deal programs.28 While ethnic and fraternal organizations also provided relief for mining families through most of the 1920s, during the depths of the Depression, neither town payrolls nor local relief programs were able to provide enough to meet the needs of the people. Consequently, New Deal programs such as the WPA and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) were welcomed across the Range and brought critical relief to one of the hardest-hit areas of the United States. In addition, these programs had regional as well as local impact because they often involved construction or improvement of roads and telephone lines between Range towns. Improved transportation and communication lines also intensified the ties among the towns along the ore veins, stimulating a growing sense of Iron Range identity across the region.29 Yet as regional identity grew, so did the link between the Iron Range and the rest of the nation, which was evident in the people’s expressions of loyalty for President Roosevelt, the region’s block voting for his Democratic Party, and Iron Range participation in New Deal programs. After the precipitous decline in ore production, culminating in a total shutdown in 1932, the economy started up again in 1933, propelled in part by a rapid implementation of New Deal projects. The WPA jobs created civic improvements from sidewalk repair to telephone line extensions as well as road construction, forestry work, and even social services

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the great depression

figure 4.2. This 1939 photograph taken by Farm Security Administration photographer John Vachon shows a woman from Aitkin County approaching the home she and her daughter had built on cut-over forestland provided by the government. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

such as visiting nurse programs and the distribution of government surplus food.30 Another government intervention benefiting workers was the Wagner Act of 1935, which allowed Iron Range labor activism to generally resurface following years of underground activities after the unsuccessful 1916 strike.31 This act legitimated collective bargaining, allowing the workers to begin actively organizing under the CIO. However, although the CIO became a major labor force on the Iron Range, its impact was delayed because union activism had long been suppressed and mining company control over this single-industry region was strong. In Philip Foner’s Story of American Freedom, the author quotes a letter written to the secretary of labor in the 1930s in which a Mesabi Range miner complains about low wages and mining company suppression of unions and observes, “I’m in the U.S.A. but the Mesabi range isn’t Americanized yet.”32 Widespread organization of the region was not accomplished until 1943, when an

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figure 4.3. A creamery owner from Coleraine unloads milk cans in 1939. His business was made possible by a loan from the Farm Security Administration. Photograph by John Vachon, Farm Security Administration. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

agreement was reached between U.S. Steel Corporation and the United Steelworkers of America.33 According to historians Joseph Stipanovich and Russell Menard, the Depression was a watershed era for Iron Range regional solidarity because the people were beginning to see themselves as “a distinct social group within the state.”34 As a result of the New Deal, the rise of unionism, and increasing political activity, the Iron Range became affiliated with the radical Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party. Regional ties also solidified as intermarriage rates accelerated because the second generation, raised together in small towns and educated together in public schools, were even less resistant than the first generation to marrying outside of their ethnic groups.35 In addition, a major overlooked factor in building the regional subculture was the Fourth of July. Its growth created a commercial windfall for businesses and gave towns the incentive to design programs that would attract crowds from across the region.

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the great depression While the national influence of legislation such as the Wagner Act, the impact of the New Deal, and the growth of unionism helped to stimulate class consciousness, they ultimately served to dissipate 1930s radicalism because they kept workers under the umbrella of capitalism. In addition, in the wake of the growth of the Communist Party, which exceeded 100,000 in the 1930s, antiradicalism efforts began appearing and in the late 1930s were percolating across the country. Antiradicalism grew to a full-blown Red Scare in the late 1940s and early 1950s with the rise of McCarthyism.36 Yet even before the inception of organized antiradical initiatives, other factors deflating Iron Range radicalism and the radical spirit of Independence Day were at work. These included the high unemployment rate, the ensuing poverty, and the outmigration of workers, which also minimized class conflict and diffused radicalism. In the late 1920s and into the mid-1930s, people were in a survival mode, focusing on their families, particularly their children. Referring to the emphasis on children during this era, Peter Fugina recalled that Independence Days during the 1930s paid “special attention” to the children.37 In 1932, when all mining shut down on the Iron Range, Gilbert’s Independence Day celebration was clearly family oriented (fig. 4.4). The town’s program featured a “mammoth parade” that began at the village hall and ended at the socialist worker’s hall. There people listened to a county judge who predicted that the Depression was only a “temporary” barrier to America’s march to prosperity. A baseball game followed the town’s formal program, and various events were held throughout the afternoon for children, women, and men of all ages.38 That same year, Biwabik (seven miles to the east of Gilbert) held both a patriotic parade and a callithumpian parade. A newspaper account of Biwabik’s celebration made no mention of the Depression, nor did it mention a curtailed program because of the economy, but it did report on an interesting detail that suggests the influence of mass culture and the growth of motion picture theatres in the region. In a listing of prize winners for the callithumpian parade, first place for an individual went to Lauretta Eno as “Mickey the Mouse.” Here Old World humorous parody takes aim at a cartoon character who represented America’s interest

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Hard Times, the New Deal, and a New Nationalism, 1925–41

figure 4.4. Extracts from the Gilbert Herald, June 30, 1932, 1 (left); and July 7, 1932, 1 (right).

in escapism and fantasy in 1930s popular culture. Similar interesting juxtapositions of European festive culture and American mass culture emerged increasingly in the 1930s, becoming prevalent during World War II and the postwar years.39

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the great depression Looking back at the festivities held by both towns during the most severe Depression years highlights the persistence of Independence Day and its importance to Iron Range community life. Incredibly, despite economic devastation and a declining population, Independence Day celebrations became even larger and more popular in the 1930s. The increased number of events, multiple-day programs, and greater numbers of participants attest to its growth. Carl Urick, former mayor of Biwabik, recalls Independence Day as a day on which to forget the bad times and also described it as “one big meal.”40 During the Depression years, Independence Day provided a platform for commemorating the utopian goals of freedom and equality despite the numerous social problems of the decade. The Fourth of July was still one day in the year when Iron Range towns could disconnect from the dire circumstances of everyday life and celebrate a better set of possibilities, a day for celebrating the American Dream of prosperity and abundance.41 Iron Rangers interviewed for this book recalled Independence Days consistently being held throughout the Depression, with few towns canceling their programs.42 Helen Larson, born in 1916 and the daughter of Slovenian immigrants, has fond recollections of Depression-era Fourth of July celebrations: “Even though we had no money to buy anything else, all the kids had flags on the Fourth. There were always lots of decorations in red, white, and blue. There were flags on the houses and flags on the fences . . . there were flags all over.”43 Urick, born in Biwabik in 1916, remembers smaller Independence Day celebrations in the leanest years, but he also remembers the larger purses, which made the participation in the games more intense and more competitive.44 In addition, in the mid-1930s in Gilbert, the prize money came in the form of savings accounts at local banks.45 Despite the strengthening of community ties, conflicts did surface for a brief period as the Ku Klux Klan launched nativist attacks against Catholics. In addition, class antagonism continued between the immigrant majorities and the elites of the mining company management and their affiliates in town governments.46 Complicating the problems of eco-

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Hard Times, the New Deal, and a New Nationalism, 1925–41 nomic decline, corrupt politicians—both immigrant and native born— took advantage of the instability of the times. Yet even in the midst of the contentiousness of everyday life, the hard times of the Depression brought people closer together.47 Frank Nemanic fondly recalled this era because although money was scarce, people learned to cope and to be resourceful. Necessity strengthened community ties. “The people got closer together when the Depression was worst. Everybody was helping each other then, especially in the early thirties. I don’t know how many basements I dug or how many sewers I put in or how much foundation I laid in those years,” Nemanic said. “Doing that was common—you had the time to do it then. I also gave away lots of wild meat and fish. There were no food stamps and there was no welfare then.” Nemanic also recalled that the Fourth of July was “always held during the Depression. There was less money for firecrackers, but since everything was volunteer, there was plenty of time to do it.”48 Also, because of the custom that differences be set aside on the Fourth of July, the holiday regularly reinforced community bonds in the Depression years. According to Nemanic, the Fourth of July was always an occasion when people made an effort to talk to people they might ordinarily avoid. “Everybody came out and had a good time. There were no fights like there were during the rest of the year.”49 Dorothy Jamnick, born in 1920 in Aurora, remembered that during the Depression Fourth of July celebrations were times when “everybody was one big family.”50 Mario Colletti, also of Aurora, recalled that on those Independence Days, it was “one big family reunion . . . everyone got together and forgot their problems.”51 Referring to the visiting traditions on Independence Day, according to Francis Houtala, “The coffee pot was always on.”52 A former newspaper publisher named Veda Ponikvar, born in 1919 in Chisholm, said, “The Depression gave us direction, made us stronger, and left us with great determination.”53 Other second-generation Iron Rangers also had positive recollections of the Depression years. In particular, Lynn Maria Laitala, a writer from Ely who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, recalled,

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the great depression Nearly any one of those kids, growing up through the hard times of the twenties and the Depression, will tell you it was the best of times. If you were lucky, you could get work at a resort or at the Civilian Conservation Corps. If you didn’t have work, you were lucky anyway. The woods were free . . . there was something for everyone: swimming, trapping, hunting, berry picking, parties, ice fishing, trips by canoe, and snow shoe. During the drought years of the thirties, there were winter years without snow, when kids could skate the whole chain of border lakes.54 Especially to the children, Independence Day was one of the most exciting and important days of the year, regardless of whether the mines were open or closed. Helen Larson said most children, especially those planning costumes for the patriotic parades, looked forward to the “big day” months in advance. The Fourth of July became even more important during the Depression years, when it was one of the few occasions to celebrate during difficult times.55 The custom of instilling the second generation with an appreciation for Independence Day as a day of freedom and a day of community had certainly taken hold by the 1930s. Colletti fondly recalled that children had the most freedom on Independence Day because they were allowed to set their own agendas for the entire day.56 Throughout the 1930s, as the popularity of July Fourth increased, so did Iron Range solidarity. For example, in 1935, Biwabik’s callithumpian parade was described as the “talk of the Range” and was regularly attended by visitors from across the region.57 Regional identity was also apparent when adjoining towns alternated sponsorship of their Fourth of July celebrations. A Hibbing Daily Tribune article reported that 1935 was the first time in the town’s history that its streets were deserted on the Fourth of July, because nearby Chisholm was hosting the annual festivities. Chisholm’s celebration drew more than ten thousand people, including many Hibbing residents as well as “hundreds of people from across the Range.” The newspaper ran an editorial stating that the celebration’s popularity

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Hard Times, the New Deal, and a New Nationalism, 1925–41 was so great that year that “never had there been so many programs” planned for a single celebration. Multiple-day celebrations also indicate Independence Day’s increasing popularity. Depending on the day’s proximity to the weekend, the Fourth of July might be celebrated over a twoor even a three-day period.58 During these years, Independence Day programs featured events for the entire family, with a particular emphasis being placed on children. As family events took precedence, formal ceremonies were deemphasized or eliminated altogether. Typically, the festivities would begin with a noisy wakeup ritual followed by a patriotic parade. Afterwards, a formal ceremony might be held that included orations and readings from the Declaration of Independence. The afternoon offered an array of contests, concerts, and sporting events. In the evening, a callithumpian parade or a torchlight parade might be held. Some towns held indoor dances, and some roped off portions of the main street for dancing and socializing. Fireworks ended most celebrations. Overall, true to Iron Range tradition, these were informal and noisy festivities, and drinking and drunkenness continued to be common even during the years of Prohibition.59 The reunion tradition was also common during the Depression years. It developed once mining began to decline in the mid-1920s and an outmigration of Iron Rangers depleted the region’s small-town populations.60 Reunions provided a connection between the community and those who had left and ensured that Independence Day would continue to be well attended.61 The link between reunions and the Fourth of July demonstrates the successful use of an innovative strategy for community survival.62 This tradition was so ingrained that on the July 2, 1941, the Eveleth Clarion reported that Edward Hatch, former mayor of both Duluth and Eveleth, had returned “home” on the Fourth of July for the forty-first time. Incredibly, he had once even hitchhiked 1,700 miles over questionable roads from El Paso, Texas, to the Iron Range to “return home” for Independence Day.63 There were also new events and novelties added to celebrations in the 1930s. Mario Colletti, born in Aurora in 1912, recalled that Aurora’s torchlight nightshirt parade drew a Range-wide audience. Other events included

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the great depression bun-eating contests, women’s nail-driving contests, back-to-back races, cracker-eating contests, leapfrog races, stab-the-spud races, and blind boxing.64 In addition, Aurora gave away “Depression prizes,” which often included such things as a box of apples, an oil change, five gallons of gas, or a sack of flour.65 Despite the stronger community ties, hard times intensified social problems, including racial antagonisms, rivalries between towns, and stresses on marriages and family life. These became primary community concerns, with many fearing that such problems were contributing to the “demoralization” of Iron Range youth. Consequently, the youth emphasis of the 1930s celebrations provided some attention for Iron Range youngsters and a short period of relief from hard times. The July 3, 1930, edition of the Virginia paper previewed a youthoriented Fourth of July program featuring a treasure hunt in addition to a wide array of sporting events for children.66 This program also dropped the tradition of holding formal ceremonies with orations, so that “better attention can be paid to the children.” A preview article in the Mesabi Daily News stated, “Young Virginia will occupy the spotlight in the most elaborate program for children in years.” While it might be assumed that the festivities would have been downsized because of the economy, the newspaper also reported that the town planning committee had allotted the astonishing sum of $1,000 for fireworks alone.67 Children were also in the spotlight in a Biwabik Times article previewing the 1935 celebration, which announced, “All children are urged to march in the morning parade.” In Biwabik’s morning patriotic parade in 1930, the most prize money went to the children’s category for Decorated Doll Buggies. The first prize was the hefty sum of $5; second prize was $3; and third was $2. All other individual categories in the parade, including Decorated Bicycles, Decorated Coaster Wagons, and the Best Patriotic Costume, offered less prize money: these were awarded $3, $2, and $1 for the first through the third places. In addition, the newspaper reported that twenty-five cents would be given to all children up to the eighth grade who participated in the parade but were not prizewinners.

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Hard Times, the New Deal, and a New Nationalism, 1925–41 The grand sum of ten cents was even given to children who did not participate in the parade.68 The town of McKinley also focused on children on Independence Day, which in 1936 was billed as “a fun day for the kiddies.”69 Urick noted that the custom of giving money to children who took part in parades increased participation in 1930s celebrations when each child was given a quarter. Considering the times, “that was very good money,” he recalled.70 Commercial interests also capitalized on the youth emphasis. An example of this appears in a 1937 advertisement for fireworks in the Eveleth Clarion (fig. 4.5). Emphasizing both the rowdy celebratory style and nostalgia, it aimed to trigger the first generation’s memories of the “thrill” of fireworks, urging them, “Pass that joy along to your youngsters now . . . Prices are most reasonable.”71 Reinforcing the youth emphasis was the customary money given to children by parents and relatives for firecrackers and candy.72 Such traditions that were invented for the children were quite successful in attracting their participation. This was apparent in Eveleth’s 1935 celebration. This town of only 7,484 people hosted 1,000 costumed children marching in their callithumpian parade.73

figure 4.5. Advertisement in the Eveleth Clarion, July 1, 1937, 7.

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the great depression Municipal distribution of ice cream and candy to the children was another custom attracting children because ice cream was a major luxury during the Depression years.74 Children were also the focus of many new games and races, which were continually being added to town programs. In 1929, Biwabik added a stilt race for boys, a camel race for boys, and a monkey race for girls. In 1930, Gilbert added bobbing for money. Rollerskating races were added in 1938. In 1940, Biwabik had a molasses donut race for boys and girls and the Blindfold Swat Bag event: “not a contest, but a novelty.”75 Gilbert and Eveleth included many other events for children in the late 1930s and early 1940s; these included the Free for All for girls, coin diving, the Happy Hooligan Race, chain races, backward running races, and can croquet.76 Silly and rowdy family events featured in town programs during this period included the ladies’ nail-driving contest, the old man’s race, the greased-pole climb, and the fat woman’s and fat man’s races. Generally, programs across the Iron Range reflected a concern for the family, with promotions such as Biwabik’s in 1930 that billed the Fourth of July as entertainment “for young and old.” However, this emphasis on the family was not just a regional concern. The breakdown of capitalism, resulting in high divorce rates and the postponement of marriage, was a national issue as Americans coped with hard times. Literature, magazines, and motion pictures dealt with the breakdown and the restoration of the family, the high number of single working women, and ambivalence toward married women in the workforce.77 Throughout the Depression, silly and rough events and games dominated Iron Range Independence Day festivities. One of the most popular events continued to be the callithumpian parade, a feature regularly held in many towns including Gilbert, Eveleth, and Biwabik. Also popular were greased-pig races, greased-pole climbing, and food-oriented events such as watermelon- and pie-eating contests.78 Of course, the power of 1930s Independence Days to attract crowds did not escape Iron Range immigrant politicians, who used the holiday to campaign or to gain visibility between campaigns. Fugina, a former Iron

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Hard Times, the New Deal, and a New Nationalism, 1925–41 Range state legislator from Virginia, recalled immigrant politicians’ appearances in the early 1930s celebrations and described the Fourth of July crowds as “the best audiences for a politician.” The holiday, he said, provided politicians with great opportunities to ride in cars or march in the parades as well as to present orations during the formal ceremonies. Fugina also said that political speakers were usually featured in Iron Range celebrations because they “were easy to get and they didn’t cost any money.”79 But Iron Range politicians were not the only ones using Independence Day for visibility. Across the country, it also became customary for politicians to ride in convertibles in July Fourth parades, give speeches, and participate in various events.80 Baseball and softball games were particularly popular in 1930s Independence Day celebrations, with games reflecting rivalries between Iron Range towns. Although these competitions could get quite intense, there were few serious incidents reported in the newspapers or in oral histories. This was indeed a “community day,” when the people could set aside their differences and celebrate their lives together. Community spirit was also the subject of a preview article on Biwabik’s 1940 celebration, when the town’s newspaper warned readers to maintain harmony by avoiding discussions of Prohibition (which had been repealed in the early 1930s) and religion on the Fourth of July.81 Prohibition was a dicey issue on the Iron Range, especially as it related to Independence Day. This national ban on alcohol, which was in effect between 1920 and 1933, was ignored in many parts of the country and opposed by the Democratic Party, in part because it was seen as an antiimmigrant measure designed to promote conformity to Anglo-Saxon Protestant values of moderation and rationality.82 Because drinking and revelry were common to European festive traditions, Iron Range immigrants generally refused to abide by Prohibition. “It was business as usual during Prohibition,” according to Frank Nemanic, who noted that immigrants either continued their European winemaking traditions or bootlegged liquor from nearby Canada, less than a hundred miles from the Range.83 A word of advice in a Biwabik

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the great depression Times column next to a preview article for the town’s 1930 Fourth of July program is telling: “Be careful coming back from Ontario. A customs officer knows a quart when he seize [sic] it.”84 Shortly after the repeal of Prohibition, drinking took on more prominence. The town of Keewatin even added a beer-drinking contest to its Independence Day program.85 The refusal to abide by Prohibition laws, the continuing popularity of rowdy, informal traditions, and the de-emphasis on formal programs was not because of any lack of respect for America. In fact, participants in the rough games continued to wear their Sunday best out of respect for the nation’s birthday (see figs. 3.5 and 3.6). Despite the hardships of the Great Depression, patriotic references were prominent in newspaper stories and editorials on the Fourth of July. A 1929 editorial in the Biwabik Times, for example, resonates with American exceptionalism and its link to Fourth of July festivities: Next Thursday is the Fourth of July—the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of this United States. This anniversary gladdens and unites all American hearts . . . The Declaration of Independence is the grandest, the bravest, and the profoundest political document that was ever signed by representatives of the people . . . No matter how you look at it—the Fourth is the one day of the year that tells the American story. The day commemorates the clean, straight-fromthe-shoulder character of the men and women who gave us the Land of the Free. Free to do and be the best that is in us. Let us fling Old Glory to the breeze. Hail the Fourth of July!86 Note that the influence of the national culture is apparent in the exceptionalistic rhetoric about America, especially in its descriptions of the Declaration of Independence as the “grandest, the bravest, and the profoundest political document that was ever signed by representatives of the people.” Yet other aspects of regional nationalism offset the language

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Hard Times, the New Deal, and a New Nationalism, 1925–41 of solemnity and grandiosity of official Americanism, especially in the references to freedom and the enthusiastic recommendation to “fling Old Glory to the breeze.”87 The first generation in particular was intensely patriotic on Independence Day, according to Veda Ponikvar: “They wanted the kids to know what it meant to be an American.” Ponikvar said patriotism was reinforced in the schools as well, recalling that the Fourth of July received heavy promotion there throughout the 1930s.88 Helmi Mavis, from Tower, described her family’s patriotic practice dating back to the 1920s in which her father fastened a cluster of American flags to the family car’s radiator cap for the drive to town on Independence Day. “Their fluttering signaled there was a car full of Americans proclaiming their patriotism.”89 According to Frank Nemanic, patriotism increased in the 1930s because of the growing desire of the first generation to pass on to the second generation their love of America and their appreciation for its freedom.90 Increasing patriotic fervor was also fueled by the expanding connection between the Iron Range and the national culture during the New Deal years. A growing sense of kinship with the rest of the nation is apparent in Iron Range newspaper editorials and stories interlaced with descriptions of America’s unique and exceptional characteristics. This became particularly emphatic in the late 1930s, when the war in Europe began to escalate. The broadening of American identity under influences beyond the Iron Range also included growing ties to the rest of the state. Although Minnesota was known for its radical politics in the 1930s, antiradical campaigns and the approach of World War II, when national unity became a priority, decreased the state’s radicalism. This shift is apparent in a comparison of the featured speaker for Gilbert’s 1936 Fourth of July celebration with the presidential radio address in 1941. In 1936, the speaker was John T. Bernard, a socialist and Farmer-Labor candidate for Congress.91 Bernard—as a representative of the marginalized groups, which coalesced in the Farmer-Labor Party (later the Democratic Farmer-Labor

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the great depression Party)—spoke to a receptive audience on the radical spirit of 1776. The increasingly conservative influence of the national ethos had become apparent with the incorporation of President Roosevelt’s solemn patriotic address into Gilbert’s 1941 program, expressing a new version of American identity that stressed harmony, consensus, and order.92 In conclusion, the Depression era was a period of great change culturally as well as economically on the Iron Range and across the nation. A particularly significant change came from the continuing assault on radicalism, which forced workers to express their patriotism without their traditional emphasis on class interests. In terms of Independence Day, the growing link between the Iron Range, the national culture, and mass culture created a new sense of national consciousness in the region, but this linkage also diffused the Rangers’ radicalism, foregrounding instead more orderly middle-class values and undercutting the rowdy and radical ethos of Independence Day celebrations. Yet through their connections with the national culture and in exchange for their moderation, the Iron Range people received the benefits of relief during hard times and new power in the labor arena. As the 1930s drew to a close, the end to Iron Range isolation also brought another reward—prosperity, resulting from the growing demand to supply iron ore for the war in Europe, which jump-started the region’s economy. Consequently, the link between the Iron Range and the rest of the nation created not only a new nationalism stressing unity, harmony, and order but also a new prosperity.93 Yet despite the powerful influences changing Iron Range life, the people managed to retain many rowdy and informal Independence Day traditions as well as utilize reunions and establish new family events to strengthen their subcultural and community bonds. By 1940, the Biwabik Fourth of July committee, already responding to the new prosperity, had increased the prize money for its callithumpian parade “to encourage more and better entries not only from Biwabik but from out of town.”94 As America was perched on the threshold of another world war, the juxtaposition between the Iron Range’s traditional rowdy ethos and the

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figure 4.6. Prior to America’s entrance into World War II, the Iron Range came out of the Great Depression as mines resumed production to meet demand for U.S. resources resulting from the war in Europe, 1941. Photograph by John Vachon, Farm Security Administration. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

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the great depression solemnity of the national culture persisted, with the solemn emphasis dominating once America went to war. This solemn tenor and a sense of civil religion are reflected in an oration by the mayor of Biwabik with the sobering reminder that freedom should not be taken for granted: “We are all proud of our country, we love and uphold it and especially at this time when Europe is in a war upheaval, we thank God that we live in the good old USA.”95

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chapter five

The Queens of the Fourth of July Mass Culture Comes to the Iron Range, 1941–92

She wore a ballerina-length gown of lavender net and satin and a white satin robe, her costume accented by a rhinestone and sequined crown. It was July 3, 1952, and Diana Grebenc, the granddaughter of European immigrants, was being crowned Miss Taconite I by George Watts, superintendent of the Erie Preliminary Taconite Plant (fig. 5.1).1 Her “reign” over Aurora’s Fourth of July festivities not only added a new feature to the town’s celebration but also set a trend for Biwabik, Virginia, and other Iron Range towns to add this invented tradition to their programs in subsequent years.2 In even broader terms, the queens highlighted a new tenor in Iron Range Fourth of July celebrations that reflected the profound influence of the mass culture that began in the 1920s and 1930s.3 Queens ascended to the throne on the basis of selling the most tickets to their towns’ Fourth of July program. “Her distinguished highness” Miss Taconite was created by Aurora’s civic and business groups to honor

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the queens of the fourth of july

figure 5.1. Mayor Frank Bolka and Miss Taconite I, Diana Grebenc, Aurora, July 4, 1952. (From the collection of Anna Mismash, Aurora. Used by permission.)

an ore process in its experimental stages. The new process, taconite, promised a profitable way to mine the abundant low-grade iron ore that remained on the Iron Range after World War II.4 Because the wartime demands had drained the Range of its high-grade red ore, the mines had begun closing in the early postwar years, and taconite became the region’s hope for the future.5 While Miss Taconite could be seen as having purely an honorary reign over Aurora’s Independence Day festivities, she really represents more than a mining process. She represents the impact of the mass culture in which queen contests were successful marketing strategies popularizing a female version of the American Dream. This dream emphasized the popular culture values of glamour, sophistication, and a focus on the latest fashions.6 These new values, and the hierarchy of royalty, clashed with the working-class carnival culture and its traditional values of infor-

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Mass Culture Comes to the Iron Range, 1941–92 mality, equality, and community inclusiveness. These contests also symbolized a new direction in the development of American identity constructed by the region’s diverse immigrant people, as evident in the irony of having symbolic royalty for a celebration that literally commemorates the end of royalty in America and the establishment of democracy.7 The queen competitions also spotlight the growing commercialization of the United States, because they were based primarily on sales rather than descent or election. In general terms, commercialization and the consumer ethic permeated the United States in the post–World War II years, reaching isolated areas such as the Iron Range and transmitting values that equated democracy with capitalism and conflated citizenship with consumption. These values and the consensus they demanded contrasted sharply with the traditional separations between republicanism and monopoly capital.8 Mass culture’s consumerist values are evident in the photograph of Miss Taconite I (see fig. 5.1). Taken from a low angle, it focuses on her highness as well as on the mayor of Aurora. Both are seated together on a throne, elevated and apart from the crowd. She represents mining, the single industry of the Range. He is not only the town figurehead but also, as the owner of a dry cleaners, a representative of small business. Significantly, the Fourth of July is not emphasized in this photograph. No details other than a small flag positioned at the mayor’s foot, which seems more of a decoration than a symbol of Independence Day in America, indicate that it’s the Fourth. Although mass culture’s influence in this era is profound, queen contests and other new events did not replace many of the traditional Iron Range Fourth of July events and customs, some of which had continued for more than five decades.9 As cultural theorist Raymond Williams has explained, cultural forms and rituals are very complex and dynamic, and they rarely change entirely. They contain both residual and emergent elements that are often in juxtaposition.10 In the post–World War II era, the intensity of change in Fourth of July celebrations resulting from national influences can be seen in a comparison of Aurora’s 1950s celebrations with its 1930s celebrations. Because

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the queens of the fourth of july the 1930s was a decade of economic decline before the prosperity of the war years, people were concerned with survival and with keeping families intact.11 Consequently, town celebrations emphasized community inclusiveness and family activities, featuring events designed especially for the second generation. Although formal programs with orations and readings of the Declaration of Independence were still prominent in some parts of the country, these were deemphasized on the Iron Range. Instead, programs there were mostly informal and included a variety of athletic competitions and novelty games with cash prizes. Significantly, in the 1950s when the queens were added to programs, the focus shifted away from the children. Queen contests singled out a young woman to reign above the chaos and informality of the celebration. These contests inject celebrity, hierarchy, and solemnity into the holiday. And because ticket sales were part of the competition process, commercialism gained increasing prominence in town celebrations. Queen contests also highlight a new type of female image for young Iron Range women. The queen is regal and above manual labor. She is no longer a woods woman or a simple small-town housewife or mother. Attired in an evening gown, this new woman is reminiscent of Cinderella in fairy tales or a young woman attending her senior prom (fig. 5.2).12 She reflects the popular culture image of the glamorous and refined young urban woman ready for nightlife. She is set apart from the laborious routines and monotonies of everyday life. And, as an alluring young woman, she calls to mind America’s emerging youth culture depicted in images in the movies, in magazines, and in literature.13 In addition, the queen represents white privilege. Rather than representing the ethnic Americans of the Iron Range working class, she can be seen as a symbol of the recent acceptance of ethnic Americans into the middle class and their graduation into the category of “white,” designating full membership as Americans.14 The fact that Miss Taconite embodies a tribute to the mining company also highlights how prominent this former adversary had become on Independence Day. Mining’s participation went far beyond that of

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Mass Culture Comes to the Iron Range, 1941–92

figure 5.2. Miss Taconite II, Lola Allen, and Miss Taconite III, Anna Marie Brown. (From the collection of Anna Mismash, Aurora. Used by permission.)

previous years, which typically was limited to the occasional parade floats or modest donations to town celebrations. Mining came to be embodied in a central figure reigning over a celebration that also represented the new national spirit of cooperation and coalition between workers and businesses emerging in the World War II and postwar eras. This cooperation also contributed to the historical amnesia of the period, which seemed to erase the radicalism, violence, and discord of the region’s history. Across America, the war created a powerful sense of unity attributable in part to the attack on the homeland, which was reinforced by wartime rhetoric pitting freedom and democracy against fascism.15 Wartime unity required people and groups to forgo their past differences and work together in a concerted effort. The unified home front helped fuse the notions of capitalism and democracy as intertwining concepts in the national discourse.16 Consequently, the war sealed

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the queens of the fourth of july the link between the Iron Range and the national culture quickly and profoundly, and by the early 1950s, the impact had become quite evident in Fourth of July celebrations. Miss Taconite also represented a new image for corporations on the Iron Range. Gone were the days when armed company police and their spies kept workers from organizing and mobilizing on issues of wages and safety. Gone was the extensive blacklisting network. Business and labor shared the same vision of postwar peace and prosperity, united as consumers contributing to the American way of life. Notably, in the postwar years when workers were legitimately organized and the power balance had begun to shift in their favor, mining was in a depression. The high-grade Iron Range ore resources had been depleted. Through taconite, however, the company could mine the plentiful low-grade ore and shift the Iron Range economy from recession to prosperity. Put simply, taconite meant jobs—and the memories of the Great Depression, during which there were no jobs, were still fresh in the people’s minds. Along with the introduction of queens, there was an astonishing transformation of philosophy on the Iron Range. Within a few years of the end of the war, the radical and activist ethic was suppressed under the influence of the national culture. The Cold War expansion of communism in Europe and the powerful postwar Red Scare created historical amnesia as people purged their personal histories of any affiliations with communists, socialists, or other radical groups (see chapter 3). The Iron Range people quickly began to embrace the anticommunist doctrine of the McCarthy era, which branded radicalism as un-American. Instead of asserting their rights as workers and focusing on their independence, they were acquiring a new nationalism that required class harmony, order, and consensus to reinforce America’s increasing global influence in which capitalism and democracy were intertwined in the fight against communism.17 Anticommunism permeated America in the 1950s and was evident in Iron Range Fourth of July celebrations as early as 1951, when one of the

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figure 5.3. McKinley firefighters, Aurora, 1978. (Photograph by Doug Nemanic, , Tamarack Iron Range Collection.)

winners in Biwabik’s callithumpian parade carried a sign that read, “John Parks and Fight Communism.”18 This anticommunist ethos persisted in later years as well. In Aurora’s 1978 parade, a group dressed as the McKinley Fire Department carried a sign that read, “Fighting Commies or Fighting Fire, Our Style Leaves Little to Desire” (fig. 5.3). This incredible departure from Iron Range radicalism attests to the power of the national culture to influence conceptions of American identity, which no longer allowed ideological diversity.19 Nationally and regionally, the war and the postwar eras were marked by enormous change. On the Iron Range, the war brought an end to the final stages of Iron Range isolation because better communication and transportation systems were put into place to extract and ship iron ore for the war effort. During these years, regionalism was declining throughout the country as waves of workers migrated to wartime production plants. These dislocations, along with the draft, disrupted family and social life on massive levels, yet while grief for the tragic loss of lives cast a pall over these years,

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the queens of the fourth of july the war also had a positive side in bringing an end to the Depression and stimulating full employment. In some parts of the country, there were labor shortages, which opened up new opportunities for women and for people of color as well. On the Iron Range, wartime demands for iron ore “transformed conditions . . . virtually overnight” from depression to full employment.20 This situation even allowed a few women to break some gender barriers in mining and to work at peripheral jobs such as truck gang workers.21 A large body of scholarship has been devoted to the phenomenon of national consolidation during the war and early postwar years. Much of this relates to the “ideological reawakening” in the national discourse in which the beliefs in democracy, equality, and justice were stressed as unifying factors despite the diverse backgrounds of the American people. While pluralism and diversity were given lip service in this discourse, these values were subordinated to the notions of unity and consensus.22 Consensus values permeated radio broadcasts, movies, and the print media and were particularly prominent in national advertising. Referring to the “American Way of Life,” advertisers tied consumption to patriotic duty; the war became an effort to fight for the American way of life, as symbolized by homes, appliances, and the latest consumer goods.23 Despite the national consolidation trend and full employment, wartime was a period of rapid union growth, with membership increasing from 10.5 million in 1941 to 14.5 million in 1945.24 Numerous labor stoppages and strikes occurred during the war and early postwar years, sparked by frustration over wartime sacrifices and wage ceilings, as well as racial tension over the integration of the workplace. These incidents involved millions of workers.25 Complicating workers’ lives was the need to reconcile their labor demands with fulfilling their patriotic duty—a duty that required harmonious relations with management and sacrifice of class interests to support the war effort.26 Quite surprisingly—in light of its radical history—the Iron Range was not the site of labor unrest, work stoppages, or strikes during the war.27 The intense level of patriotism of the Iron Range people, reinforced and

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Mass Culture Comes to the Iron Range, 1941–92 expressed annually on the Fourth of July, was a major reason for this labor stability. During the war, Iron Rangers worked in an “essential” industry, and they considered working to be their patriotic obligation. Significantly, their willingness to work on Fourth of July holidays attests to this intense patriotism, especially in light of the holiday’s place as the most important celebration of the year. Adding to Iron Range labor stability was the fact that full employment provided miners with steady jobs for the first time in almost two decades and made issues of wages and benefits a low priority despite the fact that this was a big concern for workers across the nation. This labor stability is also not surprising given the labor situation during the years before the war, when the Great Depression had closed the mines. Because the Range was a single-industry area, the population decreased considerably as workers left to find jobs in other parts of the country. Frank Nemanic, born in 1910 to Slovenian immigrant parents, left to find work in industrial cities such as New York, Detroit, and Cleveland.28 Just after the war was declared, Nemanic was working in a Detroit airplane factory. He asked for a change from an hourly wage job on the day shift to a piecework (and higher-paying) job on the night shift. To avoid losing such a productive worker, his foreman refused to give him the work release he needed for a transfer within this “essential” war-related industry. The foreman’s refusal infuriated Nemanic, who felt that his basic freedom had been denied and that the work release system was being abused. So he obtained a work release to leave the company altogether and return home to the Iron Range. There he joined other displaced Iron Rangers mining for the war effort and organizing the mines along the way. This was a goal many Iron Rangers had had since the failure of the 1916 strike forced the union organizations underground.29 World War II also brought profound change to the Iron Range in the form of a new national consciousness resulting from the region’s ties to the rest of the country.30 This broader version of national identity carried with it more solemn and less festive expressions of patriotism evident in

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the queens of the fourth of july wartime Independence Day celebrations. In addition, evidence of the national culture’s consumption ethic, which was linked to patriotism, spotlights a more commercialized tenor to Iron Range wartime celebrations. For example, war bonds sometimes replaced cash prizes for games and athletic contests, and civic officials often promoted bond sales.31 Just after its 1944 Fourth of July celebration, the Biwabik Times defended the town’s sale of bonds, emphasizing the intensity of patriotism triggered by the war: “Every War Bond drive brings forth a few individuals who, clothed with defeatism, either wittingly or unwittingly make some disparaging remarks about the value of the War Bond campaign and do damage which, while not intended (we hope) is nevertheless serious. Biwabik, intensely patriotic, has few such individuals in its midst and their influence is not helping the sale of War Bonds. The bonds of the United States are gild-edge [sic]. They are the best investment anyone can buy. . . . They are a vote of confidence in our great nation.”32 Wartime grief and the solemnity of the new nationalism embraced by the Iron Range brought a more subdued tenor to celebrations during the war. In both 1943 and 1944, the Gilbert Herald described the town’s celebration as quiet as a gesture in recognition of the war effort.33 Biwabik’s 1942 celebration, for example, featured an Honor Roll of men involved in the war effort.34 Interestingly, preview articles on the 1942 program urged war veterans, army nurses, auxiliary members, and military personnel on furlough to march in its parades.35 These military people had planned their furloughs for the Fourth of July in accordance with the custom of “coming home on the Fourth.” Additionally, some Iron Range celebrations honored war heroes and military officers in their parades. Some towns also resurrected formal programs of orations featuring military officers as keynote speakers.36 The Marshall of the Day for Eveleth’s 1945 program was Major James Tapp, “a flying pilot hero.” Also featured was Dwight Lambert, “another local flying ace recently liberated as a German prisoner of war.”37 The war’s need for gunpowder eliminated fireworks from many celebrations, adding to the subdued character of wartime Independence Days.

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Mass Culture Comes to the Iron Range, 1941–92 In 1945, Hibbing was the only town on the Range to have fireworks. Its program committee boasted a $1,000 fireworks display, a stunt-flying exhibition, and a “Jap jeep” recovered from the war.38 Gas rationing also contributed to what many described as less festive and smaller Fourth of July festivities. This ethos was reinforced by an increased military presence and more marching bands in parades, adding a more ordered, disciplined style to these events.39 Many Iron Rangers recalled scaled-back celebrations during the war years and attributed this to the fact that many men were either fighting or working in the mines. Gas rationing put a damper on visiting customs as well as the customary sampling of various town celebrations. Nonetheless, Biwabik’s famous callithumpian parade drew a Range-wide crowd in 1944: “The streets were lined up with cars filled with visitors from nearby Range towns to witness the calithumpian [sic] and we can be assured that they got plenty of laughs and left with a feeling that their trip to Biwabik to view this country’s best parade and using precious gasoline was well worth it.”40 Despite the typical solemnity, formality, and sadness of wartime celebrations, humor and satire could still be found in Biwabik’s callithumpian parade, including one of the prizewinners, who carried a mop and a sign that read, “Mop up Japs.” Another contestant in the callithumpian parade was called “Hitler’s soldier”; a description in the newspaper account was unavailable, but one can assume that this was a humorous representation.41 As the war’s end neared, new concerns were voiced. The president of the Hibbing Safety Council cautioned in 1945 that the end of gas rationing did not mean that people should prematurely and carelessly end their vigilance when celebrating the Fourth of July: We ask these people to remember that the Japs couldn’t ask for anything better than this. A Fourth of July holiday that would pile up a big accident toll and thus slow down our war effort would be a better holiday to hurt their efforts. Our boys out there in the Pacific will be fighting on Independence Day

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the queens of the fourth of july this year to preserve that independence. The least we can do on the home front is not to use the holiday to hurt their efforts. Let’s take it easy, put victory first on the Fourth, and be back on the job on the fifth.42 Significantly, this statement by the safety council president indicates an attempt to use wartime discipline to control a potentially explosive victory celebration that seemed assured. Indeed, the war had brought an orderly, subdued character to the Fourth of July that some public officials found preferable to the carnival ethos common in previous years. Reacting against the solemnity and outside influences brought to the Iron Range in this era, the Eveleth Clown Band emerged in 1946 to reaffirm Iron Range Fourth of July traditions. As traditions within European festive culture, clowns and clown bands are known for their parody and disorder. The band’s founder, Louis Pazzelli, was born to Italian immigrants in Eveleth in 1920. He described the “funny band” as a “goofy” group organized to “have fun.”43 Dressed in traditional clown costumes (and sometimes cross-dressing), these clowns were all members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. They played Slovenian tunes such as “Moia Decla” and upbeat polkas such as “Roll Out the Barrel” or “My Wife Is Drunk and I Have to Take Her Home.” Their leader used a toilet plunger for a baton in a parody of military units. The clowns also performed “maneuvers,” during which they would stop and lie on their backs in the middle of the street while they continued playing (see plate 5).44 Beyond the simple need to have fun, clown bands represent a strong reaction to the wartime Fourth of July celebrations with their increasing order, solemnity, and discipline. Reinforcing the need for fun was the letdown of the postwar recession. People were fearful that taconite would not be developed in time to save the Iron Range because the postwar economic slump had already taken its toll on the population. For example, between 1940 and 1950, Aurora had lost 10.6 percent of its population and Biwabik had lost 4.5 percent.45

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Mass Culture Comes to the Iron Range, 1941–92 Victory finally turned around the subdued tone of wartime celebrations, and vitality and enthusiasm returned to Biwabik in 1946, the first Fourth of July after the war ended. To commemorate the war’s end, Mayor Ray F. Woods flew over the town ballpark dropping more than one hundred paper bags to Biwabik’s children waiting below. The bags were filled with prize vouchers from town merchants.46 Besides being an entertaining event, the mayor’s flight reflects the growing links between government and business in this era, as well as the increasing commercialization of the Fourth of July. Commercialization is especially prominent in the postwar marketing strategy using images of women to promote this holiday. Eveleth’s 1947 Independence Day program is a good example of this trend (fig. 5.4). Since the early part of the twentieth century, attractive young women had proven successful in promotions ranging from resorts to war bonds. Glamorous Hollywood actresses as well as Miss America were particularly successful in war bond campaigns. In the case of Miss America, the War Finance Department was so impressed with her sales that it approved the continuation of the Miss America Pageant throughout the war years despite the fact that the pageant was classified as a “nonessential” business.47 A few years after the war, Iron Range small businesses began to prosper because of the Korean War’s demand for iron ore and the construction of taconite plants. During this time, queen contests became effective tools for promoting towns and businesses and raising money for Fourth of July celebrations. As taconite construction progressed, an influx of businesses and professional people arrived on the Iron Range to start the commercial boom and to form a new middle class. Consequently, it is not surprising that the first queen of Aurora’s Fourth of July bears the title of the process that held considerable promise for prosperity. Thus, in a dignified, solemn, and orderly pageant, the alliance between business and workers was honored. During the first coronation of Miss Taconite, two assistant superintendents of the Erie Experimental Preliminary Taconite Plant escorted “her

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figure 5.4. Parade notice, Eveleth News, July 3, 1947, 2.

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Mass Culture Comes to the Iron Range, 1941–92 royal highness” down a white-carpeted aisle. The Biwabik Times’ description of the ceremonies reflects the tenor of the occasion: “Standing guard for the entrance of the queen and her attendants were mining personnel dressed in mining clothes and wearing steel helmets.” Adding to the meld of civic and business representatives present was Fred Cina, a state legislator and local attorney, who acted as master of ceremonies. He praised taconite as the door to prosperity and also praised her “most distinguished Royal Provincial Majesty,” whom the assembled crowd did “humbly honor . . . who is the symbol of the rich, red earth about us.”48 Crowned by “his Royal Highness” the superintendent of the taconite plant, Miss Taconite ascended to the throne, being seated next to Mayor Bolka (see fig. 5.1). This photo reflects a symbolic merger between civic and commercial interests. It also highlights the patriarchal gender relations of Iron Range everyday life because men always crowned the queens. Significantly, this ceremony was designed to incorporate disparate elements to form its spectacle—the four attendants, who were the runnersup, were regally attired. Each was given a title merging royalty with the four stages of taconite processing. A Biwabik Times article detailed the blending of the industrial process with the latest fashions in evening wear: The Duchess of Mining and Guardian of the Sea, Janet Johnson, was gowned in frosty organdy white of floor-length featuring a Peter Pan collar and the waist accentuated with a blue sash. Her jewelry was of rhinestones. Duchess of Milling and Guardian of the Air, Estelle Holman, wore a gown of frosted green organdy, Peter Pan collar and green sash. Rhinestone jewelry was worn. Duchess of Pelletizing and Guardian of the Sea, Joanne Putzel, was dressed in a gown of permanent pink organdy, ballerina-style. Duchess of Shipping and Guardian of the Land, Francine Yarich, selected a strapless gown of white nylon net with jacket. She wore rhinestone jewelry.49

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the queens of the fourth of july Even more regal was 1954’s Miss Taconite III pageant, in which the queen wore a “floor-length ballerina dress of white net over satin featuring an iridescent bodice with white sequins, white nylon gloves, and matching rhinestone necklace and earrings.”50 The final touch was a corsage of blue-tinted carnations. Her escort, Mayor Bolka, wore “a white robe trimmed in fur and a crown of white and red rhinestones.”51 Besides the focus on taconite, the postwar era marked an increase in the populations of many Iron Range towns. Many of the newcomers were construction workers recruited to build the massive beneficiation plants that dominated mining in the 1960s. Initially, most of these workers were young native-born men from low-income groups who were recruited during the construction phase as long-term temporary workers. Many of them lived clustered together in a trailer park just outside of Aurora. At first they were welcomed by the Iron Rangers, especially the merchants, but the situation soon soured as the young men, bored during their leisure time and having nothing to do but drink in the numerous taverns, caused problems through drunkenness and fighting. As some of the newcomers showed disrespect for the local customs or mocked the dialect of the old-timers, many residents began to resent them and to call them “packsackers.” This term refers to a transient person who comes to town with everything he owns in a packsack and exploits the local culture to make money, eventually planning to leave. Sometimes there were instances of vandalism and robberies of the homes, which by custom were kept unlocked. According to Doug Nemanic, a third-generation Iron Ranger born in Aurora in 1942, these packsackers “spoiled it for the good people who came at the same time and all the others who came after them . . . all the new people started to get lumped together as packsackers.”52 Nemanic said it was always easy to tell who the packsackers were because they did not have Iron Range accents. Yet despite deep resentments toward the mining company for recruiting the outsiders, the alliance between the towns and the company was not greatly strained, because taconite meant jobs and jobs meant the

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Mass Culture Comes to the Iron Range, 1941–92 survival of the Iron Range. Throughout the 1950s and the early 1960s, taconite continued to hold promise for the Iron Range, and the mining company waged a massive and costly lobbying effort to persuade the state legislature to pass the Taconite Amendment. This would lower taxes levied on the low-grade ore, making it more profitable to mine.53 As the Range geared up for taconite production, newspaper accounts described the business boom emerging across the Range, particularly in Aurora and Biwabik. Where once town rivalries were waged only over sporting events, commercial rivalries developed that were particularly intense on the Fourth of July. Both towns had callithumpian parades and similarly structured programs. After Aurora established Miss Taconite, Biwabik soon followed with a Miss Biwabik contest for its 1954 program. However, this contest was less regal and less solemn than Aurora’s. Befitting Biwabik’s wild reputation for its Independence Day celebrations, the queen was crowned at the close of the costumed callithumpian ball, and she was chosen on the basis of selling the most buttons to the ball (fig. 5.5). However, Biwabik’s contest became more democratic in the late 1950s, when the queen was chosen by ballot rather than by button sales.54 By , reflecting the informal ethos of the counterculture years

figure 5.5. Miss Biwabik advertisement, Biwabik Times, May 21, 1954.

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the queens of the fourth of july and the Iron Range ties to the national culture, Miss Biwabik’s coronation was moved to the beach and included a talent competition and an interview session. Modeled after the nationally televised Miss America Pageant, the interviews posed questions about topics ranging from “the Paris Peace talks to dancing etiquette.”55 In contrast, the Miss Taconite contest continued to be a ticket sales competition until the early 1960s, at which time, under the influence of the Miss America Pageant, talent, poise, and beauty were added to the contest’s judging criteria.56 Typically, a mining company superintendent or manager crowned Miss Taconite. Often her coronation featured a king. The first year, the king was the superintendent of the Preliminary Taconite Plant. In 1958, the father of the queen was designated as king. This male emphasis reflects an interesting connection to 1950s popular culture, which idealized the family, with fatherhood receiving a new emphasis and more prominence in domestic life. During this era, fathers became more prominent in movies, in the print media, in advertising, and on television in shows such as “Father Knows Best” and “Ozzie and Harriet.”57 During the 1950s, both Aurora’s and Biwabik’s Fourth of July celebrations reflected the influence of television and the movies. In fact, Aurora’s torchlight parade even had a category for television, movie, or radio personalities.58 Prizewinners included names such as Woody Woodpecker, The Lone Ranger, Liberace, Men from Mars, and Miss Atomic Age. In the 1950s, television and motion pictures (as visual media) were particularly potent forms of communication, having a profound influence on American life. Critics have blamed their power on contributing to the demise of community. Many Iron Range old-timers concurred, pointing to television for making children passive and less interested in participating in the Fourth of July.59 The juxtaposition of Iron Range Fourth of July traditions with mass culture elements indicates not only the presence of residual and emergent cultural components but also the fact that people did not passively accept mass culture. Instead, elements of mass culture were intentionally used

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Mass Culture Comes to the Iron Range, 1941–92 to attract crowds to celebrations and keep Independence Day alive. Although much of the scholarly theory devoted to an understanding of mass culture describes its growth as a process that subsumes subcultures such as the Iron Range, this region proves otherwise. These July Fourth celebrations show that Iron Rangers used the icons and rhetoric of mass culture to further their own interests.60 The work of historian George Lipsitz and cultural theorist John Fiske details the ways in which working-class groups use cultural forms for their own survival and to promote class and ethnic interests, which provides a matrix from which to understand the rationale of the Iron Range people for embracing mass culture.61 In addition, their adoption of mass culture did not escape the parody of Iron Range festive traditions. For example, although Miss Taconite was created to echo a popular marketing trend, she also became the subject of callithumpian parody. In the 1954 parade in Aurora, for example, a man won a prize in the female impersonator category by dressing as Miss Taconite.62 Despite the increasing influence of mass culture, many traditional Fourth of July customs continued throughout the postwar era; these include callithumpian parades and clown bands. Besides the Eveleth Clown Band, clown bands were created in Biwabik and Ely as well. A distinctively “traditional” element of these bands is cross-dressing, which could also be found in individual entries in callithumpian parades.63 Stanley “Pye” Sherek, born to Slovenian immigrants in Biwabik in 1914, began participating in Fourth of July parades as a youth to get over his shyness.64 As an adult, he regularly appeared in Biwabik’s callithumpian parade, sometimes carrying humorous signs and often dressing like a woman. Nonetheless, he maintained that he was “not a transvestite” and that dressing like a woman was part of what he called “fun our way.”65 A photograph from his family album bears this out (fig. 5.6). Although cross-dressing was more common for men than for women, women have been identified in newspaper reports of prizewinners including a woman dressed as George Washington and a woman wearing men’s red long underwear and a fireman’s hat.66 It is interesting to note

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the queens of the fourth of july

figure 5.6. Stanley “Pye” Sherek of Biwabik, circa 1950s. (From the Sherek family album. Used by permission.)

that Aurora’s nightshirt and callithumpian parades had categories throughout the 1940s and 1950s for both male and female impersonators, reflecting not only carnival inversion but also resistance to the growing reassertion of Victorian gender roles of postwar popular culture.67 Other traditional aspects of parades reflecting regional identity included Iron Rangers dressing as miners, loggers, or ore train engineers or riding on homemade floats with outhouses or Finnish saunas. In 1950, a Biwabik resident in an Austrian uniform even led the callithumpian parade.68 Also, drinking references and parodies of the “drinking culture”

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figure 5.7. “He who drinks . . .” parade entry, Aurora, July 4, 1978. (Photograph by Doug Nemanic, Tamarack Iron Range collection.)

of the region reflect its traditions, as in a 1978 photograph that includes two women carrying a sign in Aurora’s parade that reads, “He who drinks . . . gets drunk. He who gets drunk . . . sleeps. He who sleeps does not sin. He who doesn’t sin will go to heaven. So if you want to go to heaven, drink!” (fig. 5.7). Street dances were also traditional Fourth of July elements persisting in the postwar era. These events attest to the importance of community in Iron Range Fourth of July festivities. In Biwabik, for example, a Fourth of July dance was held in 1950 to benefit a family of eight whose home had recently burned down. People also passed the hat for the family at Biwabik’s baseball game that day.69 Although many old-timers complain about the Fourth of July’s commercialization, some have argued that this has kept the celebration alive because of the increasing amounts of money spent by many town businesses to expand the holiday. In the 1950s and the 1960s, many businesses took over the Fourth of July program sponsorship from town

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the queens of the fourth of july volunteer committees. They held large celebrations with bigger parades and more fireworks. They promoted the reunion tradition, drawing even larger numbers “home for the Fourth.” Setting aside the custom of closing on the Fourth of July, the merchants in both Biwabik and Aurora added business hours right before and on the Fourth of July. This helped accommodate the increased business from former Iron Rangers returning home for the holiday.70 Bigger celebrations and more dependable automobiles also brought traffic jams and resulted in the need for extra police patrols. According to Doug Nemanic, “reunions got much bigger in the 1950s and the population went way up on the Fourth. People came home to stay with parents and grandparents and visit with relatives and friends.”71 In fact, Biwabik merchants found the reunion business so profitable that they began running full-page ads welcoming visitors to town on the Fourth. Some advertisements even suggest that tourism takes precedence over celebrating the nation’s birthday or expressing patriotism (fig. 5.8).

figure 5.8. Welcome notice, Biwabik Times, June 27, 1968.

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 .. Fourth of July schedule, Biwabik Times, June 23, 1966.

As Fourth of July celebrations became more commercialized, consumption and leisure interests gained prominence in such features as prefabricated home displays, barbecues, and beach days.72 The influence of California culture is reflected in the program announcement for Biwabik’s 1966 celebration, which features a young woman in a two-piece bathing suit with a sign reading “fun begins here” (fig. 5.9). Highlighted in the program are a canoe derby, a water show, fishing, horseshoe playing, music by the Biwabik High School band, and a teenagers’ dance. Although the “Bathing Beauty” image on this 1966 program seems to suggest that a queen contest will be held, this is merely an illustration for the Beach Day to attract young people. That year, the Miss Biwabik coronation was not held, although no explanation for its absence appears in newspaper reports of the celebration. One could surmise that there was little support for a queen contest given the informality of the beach party

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the queens of the fourth of july theme, which replaced the more formal teen dances of previous years. In addition, the program resonates with the popular culture’s emphasis on youth culture and informality, as a rejection of the formality of the 1950s.73 Furthermore, the featured rock band for the beach party, the Electric Prunes, echoes the psychedelic hippie culture popular in America at this time. The Miss Biwabik contest did return in 1967, but as a commercially sponsored event. That year the Minnesota Brewers Association included the event in its promotion of the “fun image” of beer. A former Miss Minnesota and Miss America finalist, Pat Smiley, served as the “Minnesota Hostess” for the association for ten years. It was her responsibility to crown the new queen. Mrs. Smiley’s appearance was linked to a campaign to promote the “family image of beer and its adaptability in cooking and entertaining.”74 She was eminently qualified for the mistress of ceremonies role because of her background as a “teacher of charm, poise, makeup and voice control” and as a pageant consultant. Although Smiley could have been seen as a model of female assertiveness in an era when the passive roles for women were being challenged by the feminist movement, her family-oriented message actually reflects the 1950s emphasis on domesticity and patriarchal gender roles. Biwabik’s pageant added a talent component in 1968, following the lead of television’s Miss America Pageant. Billed as the Miss Biwabik Pageant and Talent Show, the 1968 coronation illustrates the intense influence of the popular culture, particularly television. Interestingly, during this time women’s rights groups across the nation were actively protesting against beauty pageants. Their efforts culminated in 1968 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, when a demonstration was staged outside the Miss America Pageant in which several “angry feminists” charged the pageant with sexual exploitation. The women even managed to get past security to lob a stink bomb onto the pageant runway.75 Biwabik’s addition of a talent show, although short-lived, shows an attempt to diffuse the charges of sexual exploitation against beauty pageants that were taking place in both national and local discourse, because talent shows added redeeming social and entertainment values to the program.

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Mass Culture Comes to the Iron Range, 1941–92 In 1971, the last year the talent show was included in the Miss Biwabik Pageant, Shelly Berts, the niece of Pye Sherek, was crowned queen. That year the fire whistle blew most of the time while she was singing, and she joked that she won because the judges felt sorry for her.76 Comparing hers with the pageants of the 1990s, Berts noted that modern contests have been more “low profile” and not nearly “as big a deal” for the more sophisticated young women who compete. She felt that the major reason for the changed tenor of the contest related to the 1990s popular culture de-emphasizing beauty pageants and to commercial sponsorship of individual candidates.77 The queen contests in Aurora changed as well. By the 1980s, the Miss Taconite pageant had been renamed the Miss Aurora pageant, and these queen ceremonies were often held in the town’s steelworkers hall. This change reflects the town’s rupture with the mining industry as demand for U.S. ore declined. The decline began in the 1970s and evolved into an industry-wide depression by the early 1980s. This decline foregrounds the unfulfilled promise of prosperity that was linked to taconite back in the 1950s. Miss Aurora also highlights the town’s need to establish its identity in shifting to tourism as its new economic base. Despite the nationwide recessions of the 1970s and 1980s, Iron Range Fourth of July celebrations continued in popularity and maintained their characteristic carnival humor. In 1984, the first day of Biwabik’s multiday Independence Day program, a Fourth of July queen coronation was featured in the town’s pavilion. The celebration’s last day was Beach Day, featuring a men’s bathing beauty contest (fig. 5.10). Although the men’s event could be seen as a response to the gender inequity concerns of the times, it is more likely a reassertion of the callithumpian tradition of inversion and parody rooted in European festive culture. This contest also indicates that core Fourth of July traditions were not totally subsumed by the forces of mass culture. Parody and the callithumpian tradition also highlight the ongoing empowerment of the Iron Range people in their festive life as they combine old and new elements in their own versions of the Fourth of July.

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the queens of the fourth of july

figure 5.10. Men’s bathing beauty contestant, Biwabik Times, July 5, 1984.

biwabik goes bavarian: tourism and the resurrection of the callithumpian parade The national economic recession of the early 1980s and a series of complex foreign and domestic circumstances created a reduced demand for American iron ore that plunged the Iron Range into a deep depression. By 1982, unemployment and outmigration reached “levels that had not been encountered on the Iron Range since the 1930s.”78 The Iron Range

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Mass Culture Comes to the Iron Range, 1941–92 Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB), a commission established by the State of Minnesota to support development projects using Iron Range ore tax funds, focused its energies on the promotion of recreation and tourism. Consequently, in 1985 the availability of redevelopment funding and a concern for lost traditions prompted David “Mose” Sherek, a thirdgeneration Iron Ranger and member of the Biwabik City Council, to resurrect the callithumpian parade. A highlight of Biwabik’s Fourth of July program for decades, the parade had been dropped from the schedule in 1979, pending litigation after the large July Fourth crowds inadvertently delayed an emergency vehicle responding to a traffic accident injury. As Mose considered the need for revitalization of Biwabik’s economy in those difficult years, he recalled that the callithumpian parade had been an annual tradition for his father, Stanley; various other family members, including Mose, had periodically appeared in the parade as well. Stanley, who entered his first callithumpian parade in the 1920s, was a consistent prizewinner. In addition, it was traditional for him to keep his elaborate costume a secret from his family, and Mose remembered many years when he could not even identify his own dad in this small town’s parade.79 Thus, Mose and a few other Biwabik leaders resurrected the Great Callithumpian Parade. Although the new version of the parade was more commercialized—in fact, it was even sponsored by Schmidt Beer for a few years—it represented the ability of the town to preserve a core set of traditions while adapting to tourism for economic survival.80 Although many social critics have bemoaned the commercialization of small towns in the name of tourism, this case clearly shows empowerment rather than cultural dilution.81 In addition to the callithumpian parade, Mose and other town activists developed a tourism plan that included the renovation of the main street. They hired a consultant to create a theme. He determined that it should be the Bavarian Alps, which would complement the IRRRB and

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the queens of the fourth of july state-funded Giants’ Ridge Ski Hill complex, recently built a few miles away. Despite resistance to the change from some of Biwabik’s old-timers, who felt that the alpine theme did not reflect the town’s demographics, Mose argued for saving the town with tourism because mining would never return to its former levels, given the global competition in the iron ore market.82 In addition, Mose felt that the alpine theme complemented the winter activities that they had planned to secure, including the Pepsi Challenge Cross Country Ski Race and a national sled dog competition. In addition, the renovation would especially complement plans for adding Wiehnachtsfest, a German winter outdoor festival of lights. This festival featured elaborate Christmas lighting displays along the main street, a parade, and a number of outdoor events to capitalize on the winter season.83 biwabik’s centennial celebration in 1992 In 1992, the year of Biwabik’s Centennial Independence Day celebration, the callithumpian was again drawing up to 15,000 spectators to this town with a population of just more than 1,000. Crowds comprised people from across the Iron Range as well as former residents from across the nation. Clowns were prominent that year as they competed individually for prizes in the callithumpian and patriotic parades and appeared as members of the Biwabik Clown Band. As the last unit in the Great Callithumpian Parade, this costumed group of ten to fifteen men, many in women’s clothing, musically represented the town while symbolizing core European festive traditions (see plate 6). The band displayed a dazzling array of costume colors and styles—from print frocks and housecoats favored by the older “ladies” to the more risqué style of miniskirts and tight tops of the fashion-conscious members, who often used oversized balloons to exaggerate their more-than-ample bosoms. One musician wore a hot pink curly wig to go with his ensemble; while another chose pale blue and yet another sea-foam green. The more conservative members opted for imitation Eva Gabor–style wigs. In addition, some

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Mass Culture Comes to the Iron Range, 1941–92 men wore bras and girdles—one even wore them on the outside. Other enhancements included balloons to round out a member’s rear end. The risqué acts of the adult-audience clowns in Biwabik’s band and the Eveleth Clown Band (after which this band was modeled) directly bring the disorder, vulgarity, revelry, and parody of carnival to the fore.84 The Biwabik band’s routines, like those of the Eveleth Clown Band, revolve around contemporary tunes such as “The Stripper” as well as traditional numbers like polkas. These songs provide an amusing complement to their display, which juxtaposes cross-dressing traditions with polyester clothing and contemporary accessories. In addition, the emergence of the Eveleth Clown Band, the Biwabik Clown Band, and later the Ely Klown Band during these years indicates a pattern of resiliency and a reaffirmation of core Iron Range Fourth of July traditions despite the impact of mass culture. As the Iron Range recovered from another period of economic decline, the words of historian Robert Harney ring true: “The Range and its people are not exhausted, they survive and continue to be a model of what polyethnic America is.”85

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epilogue

Looking into the Twenty-first Century

Although this book’s ending was intended to fit into a neat study package of one hundred years that would have ended in 1992, my fascination with the Minnesota Iron Range has overflowed the confines of that time span, and I have continued to research, update my work, and photograph Iron Range Independence Day celebrations up to the present. To paraphrase Peter Fugina, you can travel the world but you won’t see any other July Fourths celebrated like those on the Minnesota Iron Range.1 In 2003, I returned with my camera to photograph the hundredth anniversary celebration of the City of Aurora, my husband’s hometown, which was held on the Fourth of July. After a hiatus of about three years, the Toivo group said that they were appearing in Aurora’s Independence Day parade to celebrate the town’s centennial. This time they had a special message directed at the national government, especially Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, in light of the department’s

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Looking into the Twenty-first Century recommendation that Americans stock their homes with plastic and duct tape in the event of a bioterrorist attack.2 For their return, the Toivo group constructed an Independence Day parade float on which was mounted an outhouse, called a “Fall-in Shelter,” covered with duct tape and plastic sheeting. Labeled as “Toivo’s Homeland Security,” the float flew the American and Finnish national flags (see plate 7). Taking aim at duct tape and plastic as deterrents for terrorist attacks, the group focused on the absurdity of these recommendations. They also commented on the U.S. government’s inability to find and apprehend the ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, Osama Bin Laden, with the message “Lookin for Eino Ben Loggin” (see plate 8)—also a reference to the Finnish character Eino, Toivo’s sidekick in Finnish folklore.3 Here we see the spirit of popular radicalism kept alive in the small towns of the Minnesota Iron Range in which Old World carnival customs persist. As cultural theorist John Fiske has said, “popular culture is the culture of the subordinate who resent their subordination.” 4 Thus parade humor becomes a vehicle of expression for those denied access to media and other large-scale communication modes in popular culture.5

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Notes preface 1. Porketta is a heavily spiced pork roast brought to the Range by Italians. It is a traditional food for all Iron Rangers on holidays and at festive times. 2. On other distinctive regional Fourth of July celebrations, see Nemanic, “Fourth of July Celebrations,” in St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, 2:146–48. 3. Frank Nemanic died in January 2006.

introduction: “toivo’s airbus, 1992” 1. For more information on Bob Dylan Days, see www.hibbing.org. 2. Note that although some biographies acknowledge the influence of the Iron Range on Bob Dylan, he might well have felt some degree of alienation from most of the people in this multiethnic region, which had few Jewish people and a large core of Catholics and several Protestant denominations. For more details on Bob Dylan, see Barker, ISIS, especially “Robert Shelton’s Minnesota Transcripts,” 15–36. See also Heylin, Biography; and Spitz, Dylan. 3. For more on America’s classless consumer culture, see Marchand, “Visions of Classlessness.” 4. On the use of popular culture as an all-encompassing term inclusive of mass culture, see Mukerji and Schudson, Rethinking Popular Culture. Historian Michael Kammen makes a distinction between popular culture and mass culture based on audience: localization (popular culture) versus nationalization (mass culture) and participatory (popular culture) versus passive

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Notes to Page 4 (mass culture). See Kammen, American Culture, American Tastes. Although the local/national dichotomy makes sense, his second dichotomy is not convincing, because interactivity is increasingly becoming part of our digitized mass culture with innovations such as Web TV and the Internet opening up new feedback mechanisms from the marketplace and new participatory opportunities for audiences. For details on the debate on the definitions of folk culture, see Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow. Current scholarship also focuses on the ways in which people incorporate mass culture into their local and regional customs and discourse or how individuals and groups use it for their own interests and gratifications. See uses and gratifications theories in Gunter, Media Research Methods. Despite the controversy surrounding mass culture, most scholars agree that the consumerist ideology not only permeates its cultural messages and symbols but also commercializes everyday life and influences the way we see ourselves as Americans. Since World War II, mass culture has been a pervasive presence in the United States, particularly in urban areas. Small towns and subcultural regions with strong community traditions have been somewhat resistant to its impact, but there is hardly a place in America that has not felt the influence of mass culture through its icons, symbols, and rhetoric—from Mickey Mouse to the Nike “swoosh.” Take, for example, the yellow happy face that was everywhere in the 1970s. When people began wearing T-shirts of the happy face with a bullet in its forehead, this version became a popular culture symbol reflecting popular resistence to the meaningless message of “be happy.” This example highlights the complexity of mass culture’s influence on audiences and how people use mass culture’s symbols and messages in ways outside of the original intent. Of course, the fact that the wounded happy face T-shirt soon became a mass-produced product also indicates that capitalism and commercialism are still intertwined in a dynamic relationship with mass culture to constantly co-opt and co-modify resistances from the fringes of society, thus neutralizing them. 5. For more on popular culture, see Fiske, Reading Popular Culture, and Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture. 6. For more on mass culture and society, see Czitrom, Media and the American Mind; Barnouw, Tube of Plenty; Ewen, Captains of Consciousness; Ewen, Channels of Desire; Fischer, “Ethnicity and the Post-Modern Arts”; Jameson, Political Unconscious; Lipsitz, Time Passages; Marchand, Advertis-

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Notes to Pages 5 – 6 ing the American Dream; L. May, Screening Out the Past; Newcomb, “On the Dialogic Aspects of Mass Communication”; and Schiller, Communication and Cultural Domination. For more details on immigrants and the middleclass hegemony in mass culture, see Cohen, “Encountering Mass Culture”; and Kammen, American Culture, American Tastes. Because mass culture’s traits and values are embedded within cultural forms, expressions, and rhetoric created by the culture industries (including broadcasting, cable, motion pictures, Madison Avenue, and the print media), many scholars have focused on how it reinforces and promotes middle-class hegemony. Mass culture’s prevalence has led to studies on its cultural homogenization aspects and its tendency to mask diversity as it engages mass audiences or millions of consumers. It has also been condemned for promoting urban and consumerist middle-class values and for inducing leisure-time passivity. In addition, mass culture has been blamed for the death of community in America as passivity and privatization in leisure life have replaced community activism. On the concept of hegemony in mass culture, see Gramsci, Letters from Prison. On the debates surrounding mass culture’s definitions and influences, see Kammen, American Culture, American Tastes. 7. On consumerism, see Ewen, All Consuming Images; Ewen, Captains of Consciousness; and Ewen, Channels of Desire. 8. On “mine” English, see Holmquist, They Chose Minnesota. 9. On the origins of the callithumpian parade form, see S. Davis, “Making the Night Hideous”; and Korson, Black Rock. For callithumpian traditions in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, from which many Iron Range miners emigrated, see Reimann, Between the Iron and the Pine. For details on callithumpian-type parades in central Pennsylvania, see Shoemaker, “Fantasticals.” 10. Details on traditional Fourth of July foods and customs come from several oral history/ethnography interviews, including those of Dollie Anderson, Mary Anderson, Susan Beck, Shelly Berts, Mario Colletti, Jill Dickinson, Francis Houtala, Tootsie Kotzian, Andy Larson, Anna Mismash, Veda Ponikvar, Ann Sherek, and Carl Urick. On the evolution of the pasty, which originated as a Cornish meat pie and also became a regional dish in the mining region of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, an area from which many Iron Rangers emigrated, see Stern and Cicala, Creative Ethnicity, 3–20.

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Notes to Pages 6 – 8 11. Button boxes are also called button accordions. Another traditional instrument used by Iron Range musicians is the kantele, a Finnish stringed instrument; see Hakala, Memento of Finland. 12. On the corporate union-busting practices utilizing diversity and language barriers, see Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree, 264–66; and Foner, History of the Labor Movement. See also Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism”; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” 13. On the geography of the Iron Range, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 23. 14. Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” The average wind-chill figures are based on ranges described in oral histories for this study and on information relating to the 1996 record low set in Tower, Minnesota, of –60°F, measured on February 2, 1996. See Minneapolis Star-Tribune, February 3, 1996, 1. Information on the climate of the Iron Range is available on several websites, including the National Weather Service and that of the University of Minnesota Duluth at www.climate.umn.edu. 15. Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 23; and Sirjamaki, “People of the Mesabi Range.” Stories on insect swarms are from oral history/ethnography interviews with Frank Nemanic, conducted in January and March 1989. 16. For the history of Native Americans in this area and the reservations to which they were removed, see Holmquist, They Chose Minnesota. See also Gawboy, “Men of the Thick Fir Woods.” Besides Native Americans, other seasonal residents of the area at this time were trappers and those who came for the short-lived gold rush on the Vermilion around 1865; see Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns. On the lumber industry, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities”; and Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns. Landis emphasizes that by 1895, the lumber industry had exhausted most of the huge resources of the Mesabi, leaving behind “stumps, underbrush, and burned over areas. They did not build a single city of permanence in this forest, not even a permanent dwelling. With the passing of lumber, they, like the ‘lumberjacks’ migrated to virgin supplies of the west or turned to other enterprises in nearby cities. Many timber barons allowed the land to revert to the state to avoid taxes, or sold it for what they could get.” Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns, 12. 17. Minnesota State Board of Immigration, Minnesota’s Fiftieth Anniversary. For specifics on Iron Range immigration, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Com-

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Notes to Pages 9 – 10 munities”; and Holmquist, They Chose Minnesota. These Iron Range labor shortages were interrupted by depressions in the mid-1880s on the Vermilion Range and the mid-1890s on both the Vermilion and the Mesabi ranges; see Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns. 18. On the padrone, see Vecoli, “Italians”; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 267. Both emphasize that the padrone were instrumental in early labor recruitment but disappeared after 1912. 19. In the early 1880s, the mining companies exclusively recruited European immigrants, capitalizing on the second wave of European immigration. For details on the first and second immigration waves, see Higham, Send These to Me. On chain migration, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 267. On the early development of the Iron Range and its populations, see Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns; Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities”; and Walker, Iron Frontier. 20. Sirjamaki, “People of the Mesabi Range,” 262. At first, jobs on the ranges depended on previous experience and the ability to speak English. This led to a complex “ethnic succession” in which a person’s ethnic group determined his position in the mining hierarchy. For example, Cornish men were first recruited as shift bosses and mine captains because their skills were needed for underground mining. By the turn of the century, when the Iron Range had shifted from underground to open pit mining, which required a great number of unskilled laborers, the lack of skilled jobs caused most of the Cornish to move to other mining areas in the United States; then Americanborn workers or British typically held most of the supervisory positions in the mines. Few Canadian English or British became miners; they were usually in business or professional positions or were involved in the lumber business, which was on the wane when mining began. For more details on mining management and ethnic groups in the mines, see Alanen, “Years of Change.” On ethnic succession, see Vecoli, “Italians,” 456; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” For more on ethnic hierarchies in the mines, see Vecoli, “Italians,” 456; and Sirjamaki, “People of the Mesabi Range.” 21. For more on Toivo in Finnish culture, see Leary, So Ole Says to Lena. See also Dorson, Bloodstoppers and Bear Walkers. 22. I photographed the Toivo’s Airbus group in Aurora before the Fourth of July parade on July 3, 1992. Finnish jokes on the Iron Range are akin to

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Notes to Pages 10– 12 the ethnic slurs of Polish jokes in contemporary popular culture. Douglas Nemanic, a third-generation Iron Ranger born in Aurora in 1942, described instances in which someone in a car might pull up behind another car sitting at a green light and yell, “Hey, Toivo, green means go!” (oral history/ethnography interview, November 22, 1995). The chopsticks factory was one of many bailout ideas proposed in the late 1980s and early 1990s to revive the Iron Range economy. Also note that there is a debate about whether the funds for the airbus maintenance base would have come from Iron Range tax coffers or from state airport commission funds. See editorial, Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 30, 1995. 23. On vernacular values in popular culture in contrast to bourgeois values, see Burke, Popular Culture; S. Davis, Parades and Power; Falassi, Time Out of Time; Handelman, Models and Mirrors; and Pencak, Dennis, and Newman, Rioting and Revelry. 24. Historian Len Travers argues that street festivities and Independence Day celebrations in particular were “vital for the maintenance of collective belief in the national community”; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth, 10. On traditions of disorder and the development of American nationalism, see Dennis, Red, White and Blue Letter Days; Gilje, Rioting in America; Gilje, “Common People and the Constitution”; Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; Newman, Parades; Pencak, Dennis, and Newman, Rioting and Revelry; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth; Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes; and Waldstreicher, “Rites of Rebellion.” For more on values and rituals in festive culture, see Falassi, Time Out of Time; Handelman, Models and Mirrors; MacAloon, Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle; and Turner, Celebrations. 25. My usage of the term Americanization in relation to the Iron Range refers to becoming an American while retaining traits and values of one’s ethnicity of origin rather than assimilation, which requires replacement of ethnicity of origin traits with those of the dominant middle-class culture of American society. On Americanization as a mix of American identity and identity related to ethnicity of origin, see Higham, Send These to Me. For more on celebrations reflecting community values and the connections between celebrations and collective memory, see Connerton, How Societies Remember; and Gillis, Commemorations. 26. On public celebrations and class values, see Bodnar, Remaking America; S. Davis, Parades and Power; Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; and Glassberg,

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Notes to Pages 12– 13 American Historical Pageantry. For more on clowning and carnival, see Babcock, Reversible World; and Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. 27. Cultural studies scholars Peter Stallybrass and Allon White define carnival as “an amalgam of processions, festivities, competition, games and spectacle,” which takes on a variety of forms depending on the locale. Stallybrass and White, Politics and Poetics of Transgression, 178. 28. Along with scholars in cultural studies, sociology, history, and anthropology, historians of early America have recognized that the politics of resistance and rebellion transcends the seemingly apolitical surface characteristics of festive rituals. On rituals in the festive culture of early America, see Newman, Parades; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth; and Turner, Celebrations. According to these scholars, festive rituals are repeated stylized actions and symbols that directly or indirectly communicate the stories societies and groups tell about themselves and the hardships they must endure. 29. On American identity as a break with past, see Noble, End of American History. On the process of local identities extending to a national identity, which resembles the identity formation of the Iron Range, see Bodnar, Transplanted; Gleason, “American Identity and Americanization”; Higham, Send These to Me; and Higham, Strangers in the Land. 30. On carnival, see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. In “On the Carnivalesque,” historian Robert Stam elaborates on carnival as a “profoundly democratic and egalitarian” cultural form reflecting the adversarial relationship between vernacular or popular culture and official culture or the status quo (47). Stam also writes that “the carnivalesque principle abolishes hierarchies, levels social classes and creates an alternative second life free from conventional rules and restrictions” (47). See also Bennett, “Thousand and One Pleasures.” For more on carnival and popular culture, see Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture. Although elites often describe carnival and other popular culture forms as vulgar and tasteless, John Fiske points out that taste is merely “social control and class interest masquerading as a naturally finer sensibility.” Fiske, Reading Popular Culture, 6. 31. For more on these practices, see Kungle, “World Upside Down.” 32. On popular radicalism in early America, see Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; Newman, Parades; Pencak, Dennis, and Newman, Rioting and Revelry; Shaw, American Patriots; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth; Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes; and Waldstreicher, “Rites of Rebellion.” On the

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Notes to Pages 13– 17 political aspects of popular culture, see Newman, Parades; Lipsitz, Time Passages; and Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. On carnival, see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World; Burke, Popular Culture; and N. Davis, Society and Culture. On the containment of carnival in mass culture, see Lears, Fables of Abundance; and Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. 33. For more detail on both hegemonic and counterhegemonic components of popular culture, see Fiske, Reading Popular Culture, and Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture. 34. See Cohen, Making a New Deal, introduction. 35. For more on the definition of class, see Fiske, Reading Popular Culture, and Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture. 36. For more on the classic paradigms of American identity and Americanization, see Gleason, “American Identity and Americanization,” 4. For more details on the pluralistic integration paradigm, see Higham, Send These to Me. On ethnicity as a dynamic, negotiable construction, see Conzen et al., “Invention of Ethnicity.” See also Stern and Cicala, Creative Ethnicity. For an understanding of emergent and residual aspects of culture, see Williams, “Base and Superstructure.” 37. Harney, “Tuteshi,” 4. 38. Ibid., 2. 39. Ibid., 4. 40. Newspaper records as well as oral history/ethnography interviews identified Biwabik as having the most popular and traditional Independence Day celebrations on the Iron Range. On the origins of the callithumpian parade form, see S. Davis, “Making the Night Hideous.” 41. My methodology is informed by Braudel, On History, which argues for an emphasis on examining the lives of ordinary people over long periods of time for patterns of change that evolve gradually. The newspapers surveyed for this book include the Biwabik Times, Ely Miner, Ely Iron Home, Virginia Enterprise, Duluth News Tribune, Duluth Herald, Range Facts, Hibbing Tribune, Hibbing Daily News, Aurora Journal, Mesaba Ore, Mesaba Range, Grand Rapids Herald, Crosby Courier, and Vermilion Iron Journal. 42. Many cultural studies scholars including John Fiske, Michel de Certeau, and Stuart Hall utilize cultural texts in analyzing popular culture. For more details, see de Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life; Fiske, Reading Popular Culture; Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture; and Hall, “Encod-

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Notes to Pages 17– 19 ing/Decoding.” See also Lipsitz, Time Passages. Using Fiske’s description, these scholars view culture as an “active process of generating and circulating meanings and pleasures within the social system”; Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture, 32. This definition highlights political as well as social aspects of cultural forms or texts and situates them as sites of contestation because of their capacities for multiple meanings and uses and their relationships to particular time periods. This concept is further elaborated by Fiske in Reading Popular Culture, in which he describes popular culture as both a cultural and a political process through which the people make meanings “that are those of the subordinate, and the pleasures involved are those of resisting, evading or scandalizing the meanings proposed by the forces of domination” (134). Further, Fiske sees popular culture as a bottom-up process and uses the theories of de Certeau to describe how people can “make do” with what the system provides to fulfill their own needs and interests, which are varied and change over time. See de Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life. Fiske and de Certeau argue that people choose alternative meanings and individualize their uses of popular culture, making them active consumers rather than passive receptacles of messages and values of the mass-mediated popular culture. For more on Fiske’s explanation of the contradictory forces within popular culture and the process of excorporation by which subordinates make their own culture from the dominant culture’s resources by recombining and reusing cultural forms in a kind of bricolage, see Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture. 43. The Tamarack Iron Range Collection was produced primarily between 1977 and 1987, but my research necessitated taking additional photographs from 1991 to 1996. My husband, Doug Nemanic, and I are cofounders of the Tamarack Iron Range Project, a nonprofit documentary effort that created this collection of photographs, oral histories/ethnographies, research materials, films, videos, and old photographs. 44. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, xiii.

chapter 1: early fourth of july celebrations 1. This incident was constructed from various accounts in primary and secondary sources including Klepp, “Rough Music on Independence Day”; Lee, “Letter to Francis Lightfoot Lee,” 224; Newman, Parades, 36; and

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Notes to Pages 19– 23 Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes, 39. The term rough music refers to a set of practices from European festive culture using noise, parades, physical intimidation, and sometimes violence to police community standards. For more details on rough music, see Alford, “Rough Music”; S. Davis, “Making the Night Hideous”; S. Davis, Parades and Power; Klepp, “Rough Music on Independence Day”; and McConville, “Rise of Rough Music.” 2. Klepp, “Rough Music on Independence Day”; and Lee, “Letter to Francis Lightfoot Lee.” 3. Lee, “Letter to Francis Lightfoot Lee.” 4. Newman, Parades, 36. See also Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes, 39. Both of these sources describe the woman in question as a prostitute in a parody of the women who were Tory sympathizers and fraternized with the British. 5. Klepp, “Rough Music on Independence Day.” 6. Ibid., 170. On blackface, see Shaw, American Patriots, 216. In Reversible World, Barbara Babcock elaborates on cross-dressing and other inversions utilizing Emil Durkheim’s theories detailing how deviance and disorder both define and question the status quo. Gender inversions such as the “stewardess” as well as other inversions are typical of festive culture worldwide. Babcock explains that “all symbolic inversions define a culture’s lineaments at the same time as they question the usefulness and the absoluteness of this ordering. Clown or trickster or transvestite never demands that we reject totally the orders of our sociocultural worlds; but neither do these figures simply provide us with a cautionary note as to what would happen should the ‘real’ world turn into a perpetual circus or festival. Rather, they remind us of the arbitrary condition of imposing an order on our environment and experience, even while they enable us to see certain features of that order more clearly simply because they have turned inside out” (29). 7. Lee, “Letter to Francis Lightfoot Lee.” See also high-hairdo details in Klepp, “Rough Music on Independence Day.” 8. Klepp, “Rough Music on Independence Day,” 158. Susan Klepp points out that plebeian culture was particularly offended by high hairdos because of the fashion’s associations with “the libertine life of flirtation, entertainment, and excitement” (157). This was particularly significant given the depressed economic climate of the era, because of the expectation that patriotic

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Notes to Pages 23– 25 women should sacrifice luxury for what Klepp calls the “patriotic austerity” symbolized by simple hairstyles and clothing (168). Not all elite women were approving of high hair, however, as at least one called this hairdo a “very foolish fashion.” See Drinker, Diary (entry for July 4, 1778), 1:314. 9. Lee, “Letter to Francis Lightfoot Lee.” 10. Klepp, “Rough Music on Independence Day,” 165. 11. Ibid., 170. As a result of transforming this woman into a black prostitute, Klepp points out, this “playful street theater and the people who created it” were thus erased from historical memory as the “history of the Revolution was drained of its revolutionary content.” Besides emphasizing class tensions, this historical distortion also sheds light on the inferior status of women and blacks in early America and the vigorous efforts by elites to create the illusion of national unity by commodifying carnival elements in festive life and by diffusing their class critiques through print culture. 12. Historians who consider carnivalesque festivities “a rehearsal for revolution” (to use Peter Shaw’s terminology) include David Waldstreicher, Simon Newman, and Paul Gilje. See Shaw, American Patriots, 231. On popular radicalism and street culture, see Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; Gilje, Rioting in America; Gilje, “Common People and the Constitution”; Hoerder, Crowd Action; Newman, Parades; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes. 13. On festive culture and cross-dressing, as well as the blackening of a person’s face to signal the suspension of the rules and restrictions of everyday life, see Alford, “Rough Music”; Babcock, Reversible World, especially chapters 1 and 7; N. Davis, Society and Culture; S. Davis, “Making the Night Hideous”; S. Davis, Parades and Power; Shoemaker, “Fantasticals”; and Stallybrass and White, Politics and Poetics of Transgression. 14. Oral histories/ethnographies for this study include recollections of cross-dressing in early twentieth-century Fourth of July celebrations and stories about cross-dressing in the late nineteenth century told by the first generation; however, no written records are available to confirm this prior to the turn of the century. On clowns and clown bands, see chapter 2. On clowns in festive culture, see Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination. On class and festive culture, see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. 15. On satire and parody in colonial America, see Granger, Political Satire in the American Revolution; and Yerkes, “Satire, Ideology, and Dissonance.”

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Notes to Pages 25– 27 For more details on parody, inversion, and other humorous carnival practices, see Newman, Parades; Pencak, Dennis, and Newman, Rioting and Revelry; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes. 16. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 16. Bakhtin’s work reveals the basis for the elite fear of street culture, which the aristocracy was attempting to reform even back in the Middle Ages. Then, carnival operated at the intersection of life and art and was based on rituals of laughter opposing and challenging the solemnity and dignity of official ceremonies and public events. No individual or institution was free from carnival’s mocking laughter. Even religious institutions were targets of mockery, through such carnival memes as the liturgy of drunkenness and parodies of gospels and popular prayers. 17. On resistance to industrial order expressed in festive culture, see Gutman, Power and Culture. See chapter 3 for details on the most oppressive years for workers on the Iron Range. 18. On antiauthoritarian attitudes, see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. For more on these rowdy practices in certain seasons, such as Christmas, see S. Davis, “Making the Night Hideous”; S. Davis, Parades and Power; and Nissenbaum, “Visit from St. Nicholas.” For practices by various ethnic groups, see Santino, All Around the Year. On the rowdy practice of Christmas julebukking by Norwegian Americans, see Stokker, Keeping Christmas. 19. Note that the people of the mining country of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are subject to similar stereotypes. References about “Da Region,” “Da U.P.,” and “Da Yoopers” resemble references to “Da Range” and “Da Raynch” in Minnesota. For details on the U.P., see Dorson, Land of the Millrats. 20. On carnival costuming, see Lipsitz, Time Passages. In the case of the “stewardess” and his group, they are calling attention to the disruptions of traditions and community life by additional corporate encroachment into their subculture. 21. On popular holidays and street celebrations, see Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; Gilje, Rioting in America; Gilje, “Common People and the Constitution”; Hoerder, Crowd Action; Newman, Parades; Shaw, American Patriots; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes. On court and election days, see Waldstreicher, “Rites of Rebellion,” 37–39. On social inversions in festive culture, see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World; S. Davis, Parades and Power; and N. Davis, Society and Culture.

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Notes to Pages 27– 28 22. On Medieval European carnival customs including cross-dressing, see S. Davis, “Making the Night Hideous,” 188. See also Burke, Popular Culture; and N. Davis, Society and Culture. On rowdy carnival practices and social commentary, see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World; Burke, Popular Culture; and N. Davis, Society and Culture. 23. Historian Paul Gilje has examined the eighteenth century’s public rituals, including Pope’s Day, and the subsequent nineteenth-century trend toward suppression of such public disorder by elites who feared both unruly mobs in control of the streets and the violence that could result as humorous parodies of grievances crossed the fine line from celebration to chaos. Gilje identifies four such types of rituals, all of which inverted the social order. One of these, charivari, involved crowds shouting, screaming, and pounding on pots and pans to single out those who violated the social codes, such as wife beaters and sexual deviants. See Gilje, Road to Mobocracy. See also Newman, Parades; and Travers, Celebrating the Fourth. 24. Pope’s Day originated in fifteenth-century England as Guy Fawkes Day and initially celebrated Protestantism by commemorating the failed attempt of the Catholic Guy Fawkes to blow up Parliament. In the colonies, it became known as Pope’s Day, featuring an effigy procession with the pope replacing Guy Fawkes and with the addition of the Pretender, who portrayed either a servant to the pope or a challenger to the throne, and the devil, who tempted or harangued the pope. Through these symbols of the aristocracy and its corruption, the colonists could covertly express their hostility toward and resentment of the aristocracy and authority in general. In the late 1700s, when revolutionary ire was surfacing, the king was sometimes substituted for the pope in this celebration. According to Shaw, as the first official patriotic holiday in the colonies, Pope’s Day also featured bonfires, the firing of cannons, masqueraders (also known as mummers) who invaded homes and recited Pope’s Day rhymes, as well as candlelit windows symbolizing support of the celebration. Mob captains, in particular, controlled public space by organizing and supervising the festivities. Rituals of misrule are popular carnivalesque practices featuring outrageous, garish costuming and rowdy behavior and such customs as cross-dressing and parody. Inversions of class hierarchy and the norms of public respectability were also expressed in the ritual of reversal, in which the mobs elected a mock king or authority figure to lead their processions. Significantly, Pope’s Day, the most

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Notes to Page 28 notorious of the rituals of reversal, was known at times to erupt into violence. On Pope’s Day, see also Gilje, Road to Mobocracy, 19; Newman, Parades, chapter 1; Shaw, American Patriots; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes. 25. See Gilje, Road to Mobocracy, introduction and chapter 1; and Newman, Parades, 20–23. On breaking windows to express disapproval of a resident’s refusal to commemorate a holiday or as a symbol of loyalty to the Whig cause, see Drinker, Diary (entries for July 4, 1777, and July 4, 1778), 1:225 and 314; Faris, When America Was Young; Wainright, “Diary” (entry for July 4, 1778), 437; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes. Notably, breaking windows on the Fourth struck “a blow against those with wealth and power who had been less than enthusiastic in their support of the struggle for independence that had been hard and costly for many at the bottom of society”; Newman, Parades, 88. 26. Despite the variety of early American street customs, the occasions for such popular festivities were few and far between in the Puritan-dominated colonies. Maybe that is why plebeian holidays such as Pope’s Day, court days, and election days often evoked such extreme venting behavior, and also why they were popular across the colonies. In seventeenth-century Boston, mobs swarmed the streets on Pope’s Day typically carrying effigies of the pope, the devil, and the Pretender, and chaos reigned as people extorted money from the wealthy to support their excessive eating and drinking festivities. In addition, violence escalated each year as rival gangs paraded their own effigies through town, climaxing their processions with fighting to assert a claim to all of the effigies for burning in a victory bonfire. On Pope’s Day violence, see Gilje, Rioting in America; Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; Newman, Parades; Shaw, American Patriots; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth; Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes; and Waldstreicher, “Rites of Rebellion.” 27. Although the safety valve philosophy was popular in the eighteenth century, Gilje emphasizes that the deteriorating class relations of the nineteenth century called for a radical change in the patterns of public disorder and suppression of public control of the streets. Because rioting and crowd actions were legitimate ways to enforce community standards and prevent tyranny, they had to be suppressed. These traditions of “corporate communalism” allowed people to express their grievances in the streets, symboli-

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Notes to Pages 28 – 30 cally using effigy processions and rough music as vehicles to communicate with their “betters.” For more on venting and the safety valve theory, see Gilje, Rioting in America; Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; Hoerder, Crowd Action, introduction; and Newman, Parades. On mob rule and elite fears, see Gilje, Rioting in America; Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; and Newman, Parades. 28. Historian David Waldstreicher has written about the dilemma faced by the patriot elites, who preferred orderly, respectable celebrations but realized that they needed the assent expressed by popular street revelry, with its subversive rites of inversion, to legitimate and underscore their popular mandate; see Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes. On street festivities and Independence Day, both of which Travers contends were “vital for the maintenance of collective belief in the national community,” see Travers, Celebrating the Fourth, 10. On traditions of disorder and the development of American nationalism, see Dennis, Red, White and Blue Letter Days; Gilje, Rioting in America; Gilje, “Common People and the Constitution”; Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; Newman, Parades; Pencak, Dennis, and Newman, Rioting and Revelry; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth; Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes; and Waldstreicher, “Rites of Rebellion.” On values and rituals in festive culture, see Falassi, Time Out of Time; Handelman, Models and Mirrors; MacAloon, Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle; and Turner, Celebrations. 29. Patriotic elites could not have avoided feeling mixed emotions about declaring independence, because the document had been crafted by Thomas Jefferson to be read aloud to legitimate its enactment. The custom of publishing and declaring political documents and legislative enactments was a key element in the colonial cultural milieu, and this was sure to spark spontaneous street demonstrations across the colonies. See Fliegelman, Declaring Independence. Matthew Dennis elaborates on how “indeed it was a ‘publication’—the act of making the Declaration public, through the performance of public readings—and popular acclamation through spontaneous celebration that gave the Declaration its power, which made it less a document than an event” (Dennis, Red, White and Blue Letter Days, 16). On how localism was projected into an “imagined national community,” see Anderson, Imagined Communities. 30. This New York incident highlights the fact that the Declaration of Independence served as a catalyst for these treasonous and treacherous public

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Notes to Page 30 demonstrations, which voiced the community’s acceptance of the formation of a new nation. On early celebrations, see Deshler, “How the Declaration Was Received,” 172 and 173. See also Applebaum, Glorious Fourth, 14; Fleming, Liberty, 76; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes, 30–33. Deshler’s “How the Declaration Was Received” is a detailed collection of newspaper accounts of the first Independence Days in the colonies. As historian David Waldstreicher has noted, spontaneous celebrations served as votes of confidence in independence, and the newspaper reports of the celebrations completed the process of legitimation and thus played a key role in reinforcing the sense of emerging national identity. Waldstreicher maintains that early American newspapers consistently downplayed or suppressed accounts of festive disorder, instead highlighting solemn commemorations of civic religion. This strategy effectively deflects criticism and helps maintain elite cultural authority, simultaneously promoting solemnity and suppressing other styles. See Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes, and Waldstreicher, “Rites of Rebellion.” See also Newman, Parades, chapter 5. 31. Deshler, “How the Declaration Was Received,” 178. 32. Ibid., 179. On blackening faces in festive culture, see Klepp, “Rough Music on Independence Day.” 33. Deshler, “How the Declaration Was Received,” 179. Despite the fact that distinctive local customs were created for the 1778 celebrations, there were similarities among the celebrations, which included orderly elements such as military reviews, orations, and solemn toasts, along with disorderly, noisy elements such as bonfires, the breaking of unlit Tory windows, the pealing of church bells, militia parades firing thirteen-volley salutes, and sometimes even cannons blasting from military ships in the harbors. Note that although rare during the Revolutionary War and postwar eras, fireworks were occasionally displayed in a few early American towns. On fireworks, see Travers, Celebrating the Fourth, chapter 2. 34. Folklorists and anthropologists emphasize the role of festive culture and ritual in providing stability in times of transition or during wartime. On rituals, see Bocock, Ritual in Industrial Society; Turner, Celebrations; and Turner, Ritual Process. On patriotism, see Curti, Roots of American Loyalty. On the increase of patriotism during war years, see Bodnar, Remaking America. See also Appelbaum, Glorious Fourth; Newman, Parades, chapter 1,

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Notes to Page 30 especially p. 38; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes. For recent examples of patriotism and patriotic display during war, see epilogue. On celebration styles, see Appelbaum, Glorious Fourth, chapter 3, especially p. 26; and Newman, Parades, chapter 1, especially p. 38. 35. On civil religion, see Albanese, Sons of the Fathers; Bercovitch, American Jeremiad; and Noble, End of American History. On the invention of new traditions to promote nationalism, see Hobsbawm and Ranger, Invention of Tradition. On commodification, see Ewen, All Consuming Images. 36. On elite strategies to recast Independence Day, see Newman, Parades, chapter 1; Pencak, Dennis, and Newman, Rioting and Revelry, chapter 1; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth, chapter 2; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes, chapter 2. Significantly, although the Fourth of July came to be considered an essential venue for promoting national unity, the term nation referred primarily to property-holding men of middle-income levels and higher. These elite white males typically planned July Fourth celebrations, enjoying full participation in parades and ceremonies as grand marshals and orators. Despite variations in the respectable style, these celebrations included street processions led by the elites and ceremonies revolving around orations and solemn commemorations. Later these men of influence and power would retire to private gatherings while the common people, mostly white males of lower income levels (and a few white females), ruled the streets in their own rowdy celebrations, which revolved around drinking, clowning, gaming, and revelry and continued in the streets and taverns until the wee hours. See Newman, Parades; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth; Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes; and Waldstreicher, “Rites of Rebellion.” Significantly, the clash of celebratory styles in the early national period and the resistance of the populace to new traditions of civil religion necessitated compromises evident in the juxtaposition of solemn, respectable ceremonies with raucous, rowdy street celebrations. Travers describes these early celebrations as a mix of “solemn ceremony and civic abandon as citizens glorified the mythic past, hyperbolized the contemporary and breathlessly imagined America’s future”; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth, 4. See also Newman, Parades; and Waldstreicher, “Rites of Rebellion.” 37. As David Waldstreicher points out, the rites of nationalism were reflected in the respectable style of July Fourth commemorations that “thrived

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Notes to Pages 30 – 32 on denial of the very things that had made it possible—the denial of what continued to infuse it with practical effectiveness and ever-new meanings: that is, contest”; Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes, 52. On suppression of carnival, see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. On suppression of carnival in the marketplace, see Lears, Fables of Abundance. Liberty trees, liberty poles, and liberty caps were Revolutionary War symbols that AntiFederalists resurrected during the Federalist period. See details in Newman, Parades, chapter 5. 38. On elite strategies to moderate the Fourth, see Travers, Celebrating the Fourth, 66–68 and 33–35. See also Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes, chapter 2. On violence in festive culture, see Gilje, Rioting in America; Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; Newman, Parades; Shaw, American Patriots; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes. For a detailed discussion of the respectable and the rowdy styles and the class contestation over festive culture, see Gilje, Rioting in America; Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; and S. Davis, Parades and Power. 39. The Federalists were mostly elites supporting upper-class rule, and the Anti-Federalists were a coalition of popular politicians who supported states’ rights and feared that a strong centralized government might reassert the elite tyranny. Both vied for control of the national holiday to legitimate their political agendas; Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes, 12. On Federalists and Anti-Federalists, see Newman, Parades; Pencak, Dennis, and Newman, Rioting and Revelry; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes. There is confusion over the labels for these political factions, however. In Miller and Pencak, Pennsylvania, the editors state that Pennsylvania Federalists were at first called moderates or republicans and advocated solemn and hierarchical rites (142–44). This group’s influence peaked in the 1790s, aggressively opposing the populist constitution of Pennsylvania and its distribution of political power to the “lower orders.” The opposition, the Anti-Federalists, were originally called radicals or constitutionalists. In addition, in the 1790s, the moderates in Pennsylvania became known as the Federalists. Between 1780 and 1800, this group developed several strategies to “restore prosperity, along with elite authority” by creating banks, economic development societies, various business ventures, and social reform organizations. Their primary political goal was to create a federal constitution (see pp. 121, 133, 142–44).

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Notes to Page 32 40. Travers details this “new national popular political culture” of the streets in Celebrating the Fourth. Significantly, he notes that with the battle for control of Independence Day being waged in the streets, the increased popular participation in politics eventually engaged even marginalized groups such as women, African Americans, and white males of the “lower” orders (67). Travers also explains that newspapers reinforced the solemn respectable style by reporting on celebrations that reflected “good order” and unity and rarely reporting on disorderly celebrations. For more on Federalists and the newspapers’ roles in promoting in reinforcing national unity, see Dennis, Red, White and Blue Letter Days; Hoerder, Crowd Action; Newman, Parades; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes. See also Waldstreicher, “Rites of Rebellion,” 54. Throughout the 1780s and 1790s, also known as the Federalist period, the Anti-Federalists again looked on the Fourth as a rite of resistance, but this time resistance would be directed at the Federalists rather than the British. Ironically, the Anti-Federalists, and later the Democratic-Republicans, expressed resistance through revolutionary-era symbols of popular radicalism such as the liberty tree, the liberty pole, the tricolored cockade, and the liberty cap, which the Federalists often referred to as the “anarchy cap.” On these symbols, see Newman, Parades, chapter 5. Travers (in Celebrating the Fourth, 69–70) discusses liberty trees as derivatives of the maypole folk tradition. Liberty trees and liberty poles—the portable version of liberty trees, which could be erected anywhere in a community—were used during the revolutionary period to display opposition to the British rule and to establish a town meeting place where both the elites and the lower classes could mobilize. Many Democratic-Republicans also wore tricolored cockades and sang revolutionary songs borrowed from the French Revolution to oppose the Federalists. See Newman, Parades, chapters 3 and 5. On liberty caps, liberty poles, and liberty trees and their connections to the French Revolution, see Harden, “Liberty Caps and Liberty Trees.” See also Albanese, Sons of the Fathers, 58–67. For more on partisanship and Federalist attempts to suppress Anti-Federalists through tactics such as Alien and Sedition Acts, see Newman, Parades; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth, chapter 3, especially p. 11; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes, chapter 3. Despite the intense partisanship and persistent threats of violence, violence only occasionally erupted. 41. During the early part of Washington’s administration, his Federalist supporters tried to mold the Fourth of July after their celebrations of

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Notes to Pages 32– 33 Washington’s Birthday, which they had shaped into rites of patriotism and unity. They envisioned both holidays as times to express deference to authority and social harmony as in festive tributes to monarchs and royalty. Although the Federalists’ Fourth of July celebrations, like those of the Republicans, could be merely boisterous and enthusiastic political rallies, the party members generally preferred solemn ceremonies for Independence Day to maintain order in the streets; see Newman, Parades. The Washington administration began in 1789 and ended in 1797. Although some towns also celebrated Washington’s Birthday, it was not widely celebrated until the 1790s; see Newman, Parades, 61–67. 42. On the formation of the Democratic-Republican coalition, see Newman, Parades. 43. Although ratification represented a Federalist victory, partisanship was not dead. By far the biggest celebration, Philadelphia’s Grand Procession (which on the surface appeared to be an enormous, elaborate one-and-onehalf-hour show of national unity), failed to mask class conflict and special interest agendas of the populace. For more details, see Hopkinson, “Grand Federal Procession”. See also Applebaum, Glorious Fourth, chapter 2; Cohen, “Myth of Consensus”; Dennis, Red, White and Blue Letter Days, chapter 1; Gilje, “Common People and the Constitution”; Koschnik, “Political Conflict and Public Contest”; Newman, Parades, chapter 1; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth, chapter 3; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes, chapter 1. The appearance of symbols of popular radicalism such as liberty caps and liberty trees as well as subversive slogans indicated that this procession was not without dissent. For more details, see Newman, Parades, 40–43. See also Travers, Celebrating the Fourth, chapter 3; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes, chapter 1. 44. As historian Simon Newman has pointed out in Parades and the Politics of the Street (chapters 3–6), elites in the Federalist Party (and later in the Democratic-Republican Party, after it came to power) retooled popular festive culture in many places, appropriating and moderating some popular customs and eliminating the unruly and radical elements. This allowed them to keep the people in check and maintain their cultural authority. See Travers, Celebrating the Fourth, chapter 3; and Applebaum, Glorious Fourth, chapter 4. For a detailed discussion of crowd action and fears of mob rule, see Gilje, Rioting in America, and Gilje, Road to Mobocracy. Despite Inde-

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Notes to Page 33 pendence Day’s traditional rhetorical emphasis on equality and freedom and increased popular political participation in support of the DemocraticRepublican Party, social hierarchy was still an accepted aspect of everyday life. Ironically, throughout the eighteenth century, despite the street politics that engaged marginalized groups, full participation in Fourth of July programs of both parties continued to be limited to white males of privilege. Women, low-income white men, African Americans, and Native Americans were totally excluded from official programs or participated only indirectly, as spectators. However, by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the participation of women was gradually increased, as they were included in toasts and dinners. On excluded groups, see Newman, Parades, chapter 3; Pencak, Dennis, and Newman, Rioting and Revelry, chapter 10; Travers, Celebrating the Fourth, chapter 4; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes, chapter 2. 45. On the Federalists’ downward spiral, see Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree. Unity between the parties was reinforced by mutual sentiment against the French; see Newman, Parades, chapter 6. To ensure national unity, Republicans realized that political radicalism had to be abandoned and their symbols of opposition (including the liberty tree, the liberty pole, and the liberty cap) had to be replaced with symbols communicating American unity, particularly the Declaration of Independence and the American flag—both of which could be embraced by Republicans and Federalists alike. On the suppression of street politics, see S. Davis, Parades and Power; Gilje, Rioting in America; and Newman, Parades, chapter 6. 46. On parodies of Fourth of July orations, see Baskerville, “Nineteenth Century Burlesque of Orations.” On eighteenth-century parody and humor used as social criticism, see Applebaum, Glorious Fourth, chapter 6; Glassberg, American Historical Pageantry, chapter 1; and S. Davis, Parades and Power. On suppression of carnival humor, see S. Davis, Parades and Power; and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. On parodies of the militia, which were especially popular in New England towns, see Applebaum, Glorious Fourth. Applebaum notes that these parodies continue today in some parts of New England. On racism and the Fourth, note that racism also accelerated in the nineteenth century, surfacing in efforts such as that of the American Colonization Society, which used the Fourth of July to promote its plan to end slavery by transporting blacks to Africa. Linking religion to the Fourth of July,

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Notes to Page 33 the campaign’s organizers asked ministers to preach Fourth of July sermons favoring colonization and to take up collections to fund the effort. This highlights the fact that American identity was tied to whiteness despite the egalitarian rhetoric of Independence Day. See Applebaum, Glorious Fourth, chapter 6; Dennis, Red, White and Blue Letter Days, chapter 1; and Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes, chapter 5. For an introduction to whiteness and American identity, see Gleason, “American Identity and Americanization”; Roediger, Toward the Abolition of Whiteness; and Roediger, Wages of Whiteness. 47. Because the social and economic changes of the nineteenth century were especially pronounced in large cities, the increasing gap between the rich and the poor led to recurring social conflicts. In Susan Davis’ study of Philadelphia, the elites and the middle class of Philadelphia were particularly fearful that labor demonstrations and street rioting would develop out of working-class street gatherings and holiday parades. To maintain their cultural authority, they gradually standardized popular festive customs, molding these traditions into more moderate forms, while reinforcing their control over the streets through zoning, public ordinances, and the establishment of police forces. Of course, this was met with a great deal of opposition because the streets were the only places where those marginalized by the white male hegemony could express their grievances and their resentments about their exclusion, expressions made directly or symbolically through parody and satire. On the growing need for enforcing urban order and the creation of police forces in the face of working-class street activities on holidays, see S. Davis, Parades and Power; S. Davis, “Making the Night Hideous”; Nissenbaum, “Visit from St. Nicholas”; Gilje, Rioting in America; and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. 48. On mass immigration, see Higham, Send These to Me. On Angloconformity and nativism, see Higham, Send These to Me, and Higham, Strangers in the Land. On immigrants and festive culture, see Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays, chapters 3–6. 49. On the clash of festive styles, see S. Davis, Parades and Power; and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. Unlike the people who arrived during the first wave of immigration to the United States in the late 1600s to the late 1700s, many of the second-wave immigrants were Catholics, of working-class or peasant origins, and few spoke English. Consequently, these groups were

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Notes to Pages 34 – 35 more difficult to assimilate than the groups that migrated during the first wave of immigration. On first- and second-wave migrations, see Higham, Send These to Me, and Higham, Strangers in the Land. 50. On the Safe and Sane Fourth of July, see Dennis, Red, White and Blue Letter Days, chapter 1; Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays, chapter 6; Rosenzweig, Eight Hours; and Smilor, “Creating a National Festival.” Social historian and folklorist Susan Davis emphasizes the nineteenth-century class differences in urban festive culture, arguing that parades and public celebrations communicated messages about the political and social issues of the times, including the nativism of the elite and the street culture of workers, immigrants, and marginalized groups. Examining the contested uses of public space, Davis found that working-class forms of festive culture, which resisted the emerging urban culture, were often moderated and appropriated into public urban holiday rites; thus elites could ensure that the workingclass festivities reflected order, politeness, sobriety, and deference to authority and reinforced middle-class control over the public spaces. On nineteenthcentury urban festive culture, see S. Davis, Parades and Power, chapter 1; and Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays, chapter 6. 51. On immigrants, alcohol, taverns, and community life, see Gutman, Power and Culture; and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. On temperance and immigrants, see Applebaum, Glorious Fourth, chapter 6; Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays, chapter 6; and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. On the search for order in the Progressive era, see Wiebe, Search for Order. Along with other holidays in the nineteenth century (including Labor Day and May Day), the Fourth of July became a forum for labor activism. Workers displayed their class unity and their cultural heritage through raucous street celebrations and carnival humor. On labor activism and the Fourth, see Applebaum, Glorious Fourth, chapter 6; Dennis, Red, White and Blue Letter Days, chapter 1; Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays, chapters 3 and 5; Rosenzweig, Eight Hours, chapters 3 and 6; and Santino, All Around the Year, 139–41. Litwicki notes that Labor Day was not an official holiday until the late 1880s. Also, May Day was never a legislated holiday, and its “un-American” associations with revolution and the condemnation of capitalism led to its demise in popularity. 52. See Applebaum, Glorious Fourth, 7. Urban mass amusements of the nineteenth century also changed the way Independence Day was celebrated.

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Notes to Page 35 As the country’s population began moving from rural to urban areas, community involvement declined while the commercialization of leisure gave rise to multiple options for holiday activities, including museum exhibitions, animal shows, and steamboat excursions. Official celebrations have persisted in many small towns where community involvement continued to be strong and volunteers have been available to plan Independence Day celebrations and keep alive such traditions as Independence Day wake-ups to pealing church bells or cannon blasts at dawn as well as a wide array of events including parades, bike races, band concerts, ball games, regattas, and fireworks. On nineteenth-century celebrations, see Applebaum, Glorious Fourth, chapter 10. Historian David Glassberg, in American Historical Pageantry, argues that the trend of declining interest in public Independence Day celebrations was countered somewhat by the Gilded Age trend of historical pageantry on holidays. This was especially popular in large cities and revived some interest in public Fourth of July celebrations in the late nineteenth century. 53. By the end of its first hundred years, the country had grown enormously—from thirteen colonies to thirty-seven states, with borders stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Many centennial celebrations featured “old-fashioned Fourths,” which to the communities meant solemn, respectable ceremonies rather than celebrations in the older, disorderly carnival style. In Philadelphia, the centennial festivities were particularly elaborate, beginning on July 1 and climaxing on the Fourth. See Applebaum, Glorious Fourth. 54. On Fourth of July leisure options, see Applebaum, Glorious Fourth, chapter 10. See also Brunwald, American Folklife, 388–89; Conig and Coffin, Folklore of American Holidays, 223–27; Dennis, Red, White and Blue Letter Days, chapter 1; Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays, chapter 6 and conclusion; and Santino, All Around the Year, 129–35. On Progressive reform of the Fourth of July, see Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays, chapter 6 and conclusion; Rosenzweig, Eight Hours, chapters 3 and 6; Smilor, “Creating a National Festival”; and chapters 2 and 3 in this book.

chapter 2: the frontier period 1. For an analysis of historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis, see Noble, End of American History. Although the American frontier was con-

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Notes to Pages 37– 41 sidered effectively closed by 1890, when mining began on the Mesabi Iron Range, this area was one of many small, undeveloped American regions still in their frontier stages. Most unique about the Iron Range was its combination of boom demographics, its rural yet industrialized environment, and its geographic isolation. The frontier has held a special prominence in American history as a metaphor for the creation of a free and unfettered lifestyle physically distant from the corruptions of capitalism and its bureaucracy and materialism. Because the frontier offered freehold property rather than the capitalistic, speculative property dominant in industrialized areas, the frontier had symbolized the promise of democracy and equality, with a free space for people to live in a virtually classless society away from the “robber barons” who controlled huge corporations and the extreme poverty endured by the urban working classes. Despite its increasingly industrialized operations over time, mining on the Iron Range was quite distant from both urban centers and the absentee owners of the mining companies. 2. Mesaba Range, July 4, 1892, 2. On wages in this era, see Rachleff, “Turning Points”; and Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism.” 3. Mesaba Range, July 14, 1892, 1. 4. Ibid. Drunkenness was typically downplayed in town newspapers for public relations reasons, but Paul Landis (in Three Iron Mining Towns) notes that drunkenness was common in the frontier era and that arrests were made only if other disorderly conduct or damage to property resulted from intoxicated behavior. Consequently, newspaper reports of arrests are not accurate gauges on the level of alcohol use for a particular celebration. 5. Reimann, Between the Iron and the Pine, 102. 6. Mesaba Range, July 14, 1892, 1. Reimann (in Between the Iron and the Pine, 102) describes Fourth of July celebrations in the mining region of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that included similar rough games, which are customary in European festive culture. 7. Mesaba Range, July 4, 1892, 1. 8. On early mining companies, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” For details on the lack of “company” stores relating to the history of speculative and short-lived mining companies on the Iron Range, see also Stipanovich and Menard, Report of the Iron Range. For accounts of early immigrant politicians in various Mesabi towns, see Sirjamaki, “Mining Communities”; and Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns.

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Notes to Pages 41– 44 9. On civic organization, see Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns. On the Mesabi’s population, see Sirjamaki, “People of the Mesabi Range,” 262. On the Lake Superior District and general mining output statistics, see Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns, 15; and Stipanovich and Menard, Report of the Iron Range. 10. For more on frontier lawlessness, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities”; and Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns. 11. Merritt burned down in 1893; Biwabik Diamond Jubilee Book, –, p. 3. Chisholm and Virginia are other Mesabi towns plagued by fires. For details on early towns and locations, see Alanen, “From Tower to Soudan”; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” 12. For more on Tower, see Alanen, “From Tower to Soudan,” 33. 13. For more on leisure on the frontier, see Alanen, “From Tower to Soudan.” Stipanovich and Menard (in Report of the Iron Range) point out that because of the boom populations and the frontier environment, company towns were not controlled as closely and were not as prevalent on the Iron Range as in other mining regions in the United States. 14. On Biwabik’s first council meeting, see Biwabik Times Centennial Issue, July 1992. The Fourth of July is still considered the most profitable day of the year for bars and saloons, according to Hank Paulisich, born in Ely in 1900 and the owner of Hank’s Bar in Aurora between 1930 and 1978 (interviewed on July 3, 1994). The Virginia Sentinel story is cited in Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns, 65. Speculation about beer consumption on the Fourth of July is based on several oral history/ethnography interviews with Iron Rangers, including saloon owners and a former police officer. Also, literature on European festive culture describes the vernacular custom of excessive eating and drinking on holidays and during carnival as reversals of everyday life. See especially Burke, Popular Culture; N. Davis, Society and Culture; and Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. 15. Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 274. On saloons, see Vecoli, “Italians,” 456; and Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns. My examination of the 1888–1891 judicial records for Tower indicated that few arrests were made for drunkenness, suggesting that the ubiquity of drunkenness kept it from being an offense in and of itself. In the case of Tower, the only arrests made relating to alcohol were those described as arrests for “notorious drunkenness.” Tower records are housed at the Iron Range Research Center in Chis-

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Notes to Pages 44 – 47 holm, Minnesota. On election day, see Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns, 64–65. 16. Accounts of fighting and drinking are detailed in Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities”; as well as in the oral history/ethnography interviews recorded for this project. The communal nature of holidays is detailed in Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, and in contemporary articles such as Conzen, “Ethnicity as Festive Culture.” 17. For more about immigrant businesses, see Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” For details on the 1893 celebration in Biwabik, see Mesaba Range, July 6, 1893, 1. On Virginia’s 1895 celebration, see Virginia Enterprise, July 5, 1895, 1. Data were compiled from various Iron Range newspapers, including Hibbing Tribune, Virginia Enterprise, Ely Miner, Ely Iron Home, Biwabik Times, and Vermilion Iron Journal. 18. Seeley, “History of Biwabik.” 19. On early town conditions, see Alanen, “Years of Change,” 161–69; and Virtue, Minnesota Iron Range, 356–57. 20. Virtue, Minnesota Iron Range, 358. On open pit operations, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 43. By the turn of the century, the Mesabi Range had become the “greatest ore production center in the world.” Open pit mining became dominant on the Range in this era; the requirement for large expanses of land necessitated small-town configurations for worker residences. 21. On antagonistic cooperation, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 245 and 255. 22. On provincialism in immigrants, see Vecoli, “From the Uprooted to the Transplanted,” 43, and Vecoli, “Contadini in Chicago.” On provincialism and conflict in ethnic saloons, see also Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 241 and 274. On residential zones, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 241. 23. For more on sex ratios, see Stipanovich and Menard, Report of the Iron Range, 125. Accurate statistics are not available for this era, but as late as 1910, sex ratio imbalances on the Mesabi were as high as 8:1 for Serbs and as low as 2:1 for Slovenes. For sex ratios of specific ethnic groups, see Stipanovich and Menard, Report of the Iron Range; and Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns. 24. Socialism peaked on the Iron Range around 1900; see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 250. On Finnish radicalism, see Karni et al., Finnish

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Notes to Pages 47– 48 Experience. On socialist halls, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” and see also chapter 3 in this book. On ethnic and mutual aid societies on the Range, see Berman, “Education for Work”; Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” 25. Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 246. 26. On “black” and “white” immigrants, see Higham, Send These to Me, 22. Rudolph Vecoli (in “The Italians”) contends that this “invidious distinction came to be made on the Range between ‘white men’ meaning Northern Europeans and ‘the black races,’ meaning people from Southern and Eastern Europe. Opportunities for advancement in the mines for Italians (for example) were slight. The ‘white men’ had a monopoly on supervisory and skilled jobs” (456). In addition, the association of anti-Catholicism with black immigrants was also evident, because southern Europeans were largely of the Catholic religion. See Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 257. Because of the unavailability of sources relating to the lack of African Americans on the Iron Range, it can only be speculated that the Range labor recruitment policies conformed to the policies of mining companies generally. See Lewis, Black Coal Miners in America, 189: “Blacks were exploited by operators in the South, but they were entirely excluded by white miners in the north. When the operators did attempt to employ blacks, the established white miners physically resisted, sparking some of the bloodiest conflicts in the industry’s history.” 27. On “black” and “white” towns, see Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” Exploring the construction of “whiteness” and its relation to the process of Americanization, an emerging body of scholarship has focused on the designations of “ old” and “new” immigrants as “white” and “black” immigrants, respectively, and questions of how “whiteness,” or at least the adoption of white cultural norms (i.e., middle-class, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant), has been a requisite of Americanization. In terms of public behavior, this has translated into a polite norm of public gentility with attendant traits of moderation, sobriety, civility, and order in public. In Toward the Abolition of Whiteness, historian David Roediger has emphasized that understanding the Americanization of immigrants in this era requires understanding the history of “whiteness” generally, as well as its regional manifestations. See also Roediger, Wages of Whiteness; Orsi, “Religious Boundaries”; and Vecoli, “Are Italians Just White Folks?” On Americaniza-

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Notes to Pages 48 – 49 tion, Progressive reform, and public behavior, see S. Davis, Parades and Power; Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. For details on Tower as a white town, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” This was also verified in oral history/ethnography interviews, particularly a December 10, 1994, interview with Professor Susan Beck of River Falls, Wisconsin (formerly of Biwabik), who stated that even in the 1950s and 1960s, towns were still stratified by ethnicity, which also meant class. She referred to towns as “low class” or rough (such as Eveleth, Aurora, and Gilbert) and “upper class,” or those dominated by “fancy folk” (such as Biwabik, Virginia, and Hibbing). She also noted that Biwabik was more on the border between a low-class and upperclass town; this observation makes its callithumpian Independence Day parade, which included leading citizens in drag or in diapers, even more salient. On Finns as “black” immigrants, see Bercovici, On New Shores. 28. For “old” and “new” immigrant designations, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 4 and 245. See also Conzen et al., “Invention of Ethnicity,” 44. 29. On the bias problems presented by town newspapers, see the introduction to this book. 30. Seeley, “History of Biwabik.” 31. Oral histories/ethnographies highlight the community emphasis on the Fourth of July and the customary suspension of conflict on that day. Other informal codes of behavior associated with the Fourth of July are detailed in chapter 3. The national context of nativism and the conflict between ethnic groups is evident in Hibbing Tribune articles of 1904 and 1905 detailed by historian Arnold Alanen in “Years of Change,” 179. Alanen discovered frequent examples of ethnic slurs in reports of conflicts between ethnic groups and native-born Americans. 32. The Vermilion frontier phase was about eight to ten years earlier than the frontier phase of the Mesabi Range; Stipanovich and Menard, in Report of the Iron Range. Although the Cuyuna Range was established after the turn of the century, mining began in a previously settled area, so a frontier phase was not a stage of its history; see Walker, Iron Frontier. See also Laitala, “Carrying the Burden.” 33. Laitala, “Carrying the Burden,” 40. 34. Ibid. On the gender restrictions in mining attributable to the physical demands, as well as the limited number of opportunities for wives of

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Notes to Pages 50 – 52 miners to obtain income, see Haines, Fertility and Occupation. On women’s chores, see Laitala, “Carrying the Burden,” 40. 35. On the civilizing influence of women on the frontier, see Laitala, “Carrying the Burden,” 41–42. See also Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” 36. Laitala, “Carrying the Burden,” 41 and 43. 37. Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 473–74. 38. Laitala, “Carrying the Burden,” 40. 39. Ibid., 41. 40. For details on Mary Ann Skuil, see Seeley, “History of Biwabik.” For more on married women taking boyfriends, see Laitala, “Carrying the Burden,” 41. 41. Ely Iron Home, July 7, 1891, 1. 42. Mesaba Range, June 29, 1893, 1. 43. Data are from a survey of Iron Range newspapers published between 1892 and 1906, including Hibbing Tribune, Virginia Enterprise, Ely Iron Home, Ely Miner, Biwabik Times, and Vermilion Iron Journal. 44. Lewis Reimann (in Between the Iron and the Pine) describes nonIndians in a Fourth of July parade wearing loincloths and war paint, carrying bows and arrows and tomahawks, and riding ponies painted like Indian war ponies (103). They were joined in the parade by a group of Chippewas who had come to celebrate the Fourth dressed in non-Indian clothes. The author calls the contrast between the two groups “ludicrous.” On Native American participation in Independence Day celebrations, see Dennis, Red, White and Blue Letter Days. Dennis also focuses on the 1800s, when the government used Independence Day to attempt to assimilate Native Americans by insisting that they celebrate in the respectable style and wear “citizen’s clothes” (57). Yet Dennis notes that because the Indians could not relate to the meaning of Independence Day, they injected their own customs—such as grass dances, war dances, and powwows—into the holiday. Dennis also details how the Fourth of July festivities were used by Indians as “havens for traditional practices” that the government sought to repress in their everyday lives (60). Furthermore, he discusses the subversive nature of Native Americans’ use of the holiday to stage mock raids and sham battles and to promote pantribal national identities rather than American identity (64). For more details, see Dennis, Red, White and Blue Letter Days, chapter 1.

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Notes to Pages 53– 54 45. Gawboy, “Men of the Thick Fir Woods,” 9. Gawboy also discusses the Chippewa tradition of encouraging intermarriage with immigrants, 6–7. 46. Ibid., 11. 47. On Biwabik’s 1893 celebration, see Mesaba Range, July 7, 1893, 1. Oral history/ethnography interviews for this project indicate that powwows were still part of many town celebrations well into the 1930s; also emphasized by June Duich, interviewed July 28, 1994, and Mario Colletti, interviewed June 16, 1993. No exact date or reason for the discontinuance of powwows has been identified by interviewees, but some speculated that the tradition ended in the Depression years, when outmigration forced scaled-back Fourth of July programs in some towns. In addition, the lack of money for transportation during the Depression may have also kept Native Americans from traveling into town for celebrations. I was unable to determine what exactly an Indian minstrel show was, despite numerous conversations with old-timers and extensive research. 48. Oral history/ethnography interview with Mary Anderson on September 10, 1993. She was then mayor of the town of Kinney and satirically launched an effort in the late 1970s for Kinney to secede from the United States to qualify for foreign aid to fix the town sewage system. 49. Oral history/ethnography interview with former state legislator Peter Fugina, of Virginia, Minnesota, on April 22, 1992. Quote on Independence Day from Mesaba Range, July 7, 1893, 1. In contrast to the Iron Range, by the late 1880s, newspaper reports for Duluth had begun to indicate a privatization of the holiday, with only periodic city programs occurring. Rosenzweig, in Eight Hours, describes the “genteel” Fourth of July, which the Duluth programs reflect. Reports of the holiday, labeled “Declaration Day,” imply endorsement of the privatization trend and reflect fear by the middle class and wealthy of mob disorder, violence, fires, and even gang warfare with firecrackers. For concerns for urban order and suppression of rowdy working-class traditions, see S. Davis, Parades and Power; Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. A report in the Duluth Evening Herald for July 5, 1888, provides a good example of this: “Duluth was never so thoroughly emptied of its people as yesterday. All day long the excursion steamers, small boats, and railroad trains were conveying their human freight out into the lake and bays, down to Minnesota Point, and along the shore to Lester Park and Spirit Lake. There was no general local celebration,

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Notes to Pages 54– 56 no time-honored scream of the eagle, and no march of fire companies, militia, and secret societies. And, perhaps as a consequence, there were not more than the usual number of drunks in the police court this forenoon and no general conflagration in a wooden city. . . . Taken altogether, it was the most enjoyable Declaration Day ever spent in Duluth and the old custom of a special observance of the day by public exercises will probably never be again attempted there.” 50. On European festive traditions, see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. On Progressive reform programs and social control, see Bodnar, Remaking America; Glassberg, American Historical Pageantry; and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. On the Safe and Sane Fourth of July movement, see Smilor, “Creating a National Festival.” 51. For more details on Merritt’s 1893 celebration, see Mesaba Range, July 6, 1893, 1. The article does not specify the nature of an Indian minstrel show. 52. On the rowdy versus respectable style of celebration and Progressive reform, see Bodnar, Remaking America; S. Davis, Parades and Power; Rosenzweig, Eight Hours; and Smilor, “Creating a National Festival.” The Safe and Sane program was designed to impose social order as well as safety on the holiday and was aimed at legitimating the respectable style as “American.” It advocated banning all firecrackers and promoted noise abatement. The celebration was standardized with the formal portion of the program of speeches and orations devoted to inculcating the values of order, solemn patriotism, and moderation. Despite clashes over public space, urban ethnic groups often preferred to celebrate holidays such as the Fourth of July among themselves as a way of reaffirming their ethnicities of origin. 53. Vermilion Iron Journal, July 5, 1888, 1. On the origins of callithumpian parades, see S. Davis, “Making the Night Hideous.” See also Nissenbaum, “Visit from St. Nicholas.” Nissenbaum identified both hegemonic reinforcement and oppositional aspects reflected in callithumpian processions, but these were used increasingly for opposition to the status quo in nineteenth-century America. Nissenbaum traced the origins of this procession to the Greek word “calli,” meaning beautiful, as a satirically applied use of the word describing the “rough music” of the callithumpian participants and their mockery of social order (30). In European tradition, originally “rough music” was part of public rituals in which this music was directed against

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Notes to Pages 56 – 60 those who seemed arrogant or abused their authority. In nineteenth-century America, holidays became days on which callithumpian bands of young male workers were popular, and the noise, violence, and rejection of urban order sparked fears of mob rule. Fear of disorder led the Christmas misrule tradition to be co-opted by urban authorities, and it evolved into a private event characterized by a visit from the mythic figure of St. Nicholas rather than roving bands of immigrant working-class youths inspiring fear in the middle class and the wealthy. 54. Lewis Reimann (in Between the Iron and the Pine) describes callithumpian rituals on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, from which many Iron Range miners were recruited (103). 55. Vermilion Iron Journal, July 5, 1888, 1. 56. For more on Ely’s 1891 celebration, see Ely Times, June 19, 1891, 1, and June 26, 1891, 1. Inflation is calculated on the Inflation Calculator: www.westegg.com/inflation/. For more on the special trains from Duluth to Ely, see Brownell, Pioneer Life in Ely. 57. Ely Iron Home, July 7, 1891, 1. For details on the European tradition of noisy wake-ups on holidays, see S. Davis, “Making the Night Hideous”; and Nissenbaum, “Visit from St. Nicholas.” 58. Ely Iron Home, July 7, 1891, 1. 59. For more on Ely’s first celebration, see Ely Times, July 10, 1891, 1; and Brownell, Pioneer Life in Ely. 60. Brownell, Pioneer Life in Ely. 61. For more details on the depressions of the 1890s, see Stipanovich and Menard, Report of the Iron Range; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” Data on celebrations were compiled from a survey of selected issues of the Ely Miner, Ely Iron Home, Biwabik Times, and Vermilion Iron Journal between 1884 and 1992. Quote is from Mesaba Range, July 4, 1892, 1. 62. Newspaper accounts throughout this period detail licenses issued for saloons and the numbers of saloons in different Range towns. For more details on drunkenness, see Vecoli, “Italians,” 456. 63. On social reform and immigrants, see Rosenzweig, Eight Hours, 71. On temperance, see Bodnar, Remaking America, 32. 64. On noise reduction and urban order enforcement, see S. Davis, Parades and Power; Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. On Tower’s celebration, see Vermilion Iron Journal, June 27, 1889, 1. The

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Notes to Pages 60 – 64 prevalence of firearms has been verified in oral history/ethnography interviews recorded for this book. 65. Eveleth News, July 11, 1903, 1. 66. Seeley, “History of Biwabik.” 67. Firing the anvil is referenced in New Year’s festive customs of the Pennsylvania Dutch in Yoder, American Folklife, 130. See also Pellowski, First Farm in the Valley, 179. 68. Seeley, “History of Biwabik.” 69. On urban order and restrictions on public spaces, see Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; and S. Davis, Parades and Power. 70. Duluth News Tribune, July 3, 1895, 1. Data were compiled from a survey of selected issues of the Duluth Evening Herald and Duluth Daily News between 1880 and 1910. 71. “Making the eagle scream” is an idiomatic reference to a rowdy Independence Day celebration typically found in newspaper accounts across the country at this time. See Applebaum, Glorious Fourth. On the genteel Fourth of July and clashes between immigrant workers and the middle-class native born over style of celebration, see Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. On Duluth’s 1895 celebration, see Duluth News Tribune, July 3, 1895, 1. Also note that by 1890 Duluth had only periodic celebrations. This may be attributable to incidents of gang warfare with firecrackers (such as the one detailed in the July 5, 1893, edition) that related to cancellation of programs on the Fourth of July. 72. For details on the practice of the wealthy and the middle class to leave town on Independence Day in the late nineteenth century to avoid the noise and rowdyism of the working classes, see Rosenzweig, Eight Hours, and chapter 3 of this book. Data on Duluth, West Duluth, and West Superior celebrations were compiled from a survey of selected issues of the Duluth Evening Herald and Duluth Daily News between 1880 and 1910. 73. On the origins of callithumpian parades, see S. Davis, “Making the Night Hideous”; and Nissenbaum, “Visit from St. Nicholas.” See also Korson, Black Rock, 251–52; Reimann, Between the Iron and the Pine, 103; and Green, Wobblies, Pile Butts, 322–27. 74. On the safety valve theory, see Burke, Popular Culture, 20. Callithumpian rituals resemble the charivari described by Natalie Davis in Popular Culture in Early Modern France. In the United States, the visiting

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Notes to Pages 64– 66 tradition on holidays was used by costumed immigrant working-class males to harass middle-class people. This was eventually subverted into a Christmas celebration with visits by a costumed St. Nicholas; see Nissenbaum, “Visit from St. Nicholas.” Town programs and reports on event schedules typically mention visitors being welcome or room being made to accommodate visitors. Across the nation, the trends of historical pageantry and the emphasis on military units and marching bands in parades were indicative of the development of urban order in this era. On historical pageantry, see Glassberg, American Historical Pageantry. On urban order and restrictions over public space, see S. Davis, Parades and Power; Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. The callithumpian parade still distinguishes Iron Range Fourth of July programs today and is the featured event in Biwabik’s Independence Day program, in particular (see epilogue). 75. On the callithumpian tradition, see S. Davis, “Making the Night Hideous,” and S. Davis, Parades and Power. See also Nissenbaum, “Visit from St. Nicholas.” In an oral history/ethnography interview conducted with former Biwabik resident Susan Beck, she described the callithumpian as an “orgiastic celebration” in which the “demons rise once a year.” She also recalled a variety of ethnic costumes in the callithumpian parade, emphasizing a “unified world.” 76. Dr. James P. Leary speculated that the birch-bark hats might have been borrowed from the Chippewas, who were known as the birch-bark people because of their extensive use of birch bark (comments from October 2003). The exchange of traditions between Indians and Iron Rangers is evident in the inclusion of Native American powwows in Independence Day celebrations and the non-Indian attire worn by Indians in Fourth of July celebrations. 77. On clown types, see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World; and Handelman, Models and Mirrors. In Rabelais and His World, Mikhail Bakhtin focuses on the egalitarian aspects of laughter and the links created by laughter and informality among people, in contrast to the festive styles evoking solemnity and hierarchy, which distance them. 78. Biwabik Times, June 28, 1907, 1. 79. Ely Iron Home, July 7, 1891, 1; Biwabik Times, June 28, 1907, 1. Data were compiled from surveys of newspapers from Biwabik, Ely, Eveleth, Aurora, Tower, Virginia, and Hibbing as well as from oral history/ethnography

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Notes to Pages 66 – 68 interviews conducted for this book. Surveys of names, numbers of committees, and types and numbers of games/events were compiled from Mesaba Range, Virginia Enterprise, Ely Miner, Ely Iron Home, and Hibbing Tribune. Women’s categories were listed in only a few town programs. Why they lacked opportunities for participation is unclear, but the male dominance of public space, the women’s lack of English, and their heavy workloads may have contributed to this nonparticipation. On volunteer fire departments and the Fourth of July, see Bodnar, Remaking America, 32. Oral history/ethnography interviews indicate that because of their isolation, the Iron Range people (unlike their urban cohorts in this era) had few movies, radio stations, or records available. In addition, radio programming and records were often in foreign languages. Consequently, the conditioning influence of mass culture that they experienced was minimal. On the conditioning influence of mass culture, see Lipsitz, Time Passages. 80. On the Corpus Christi Day work stoppage, see Alanen, “Years of Change,” 181; and Walker, Iron Frontier, 72.

chapter 3: one day for democracy 1. For more details on callithumpian and burlesque parades, see S. Davis, Parades and Power. 2. Foner, History of the Labor Movement, 494. 3. On the arrest in Duluth of an IWW leader in 1913 as a warning to the union to leave the area, see Winters, Soul of the Wobblies, 118–19. Winters argues that the area was too repressed for further organizing, and the IWW leadership did not return until the wildcat strike of 1916, three years later. For the involvement of the IWW in the 1916 strike, see also Foner, History of the Labor Movement; Karni, “Finnish Immigrant Leftists”; and Rachleff, “Turning Points.” 4. On the Iron Range strikes in the 1890s and early 1900s, see Foner, History of the Labor Movement; Karni, “Finnish Immigrant Leftists”; Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism”; and Rachleff, “Turning Points.” 5. On labor unrest and conflict during this period, see Alanen, “Years of Change”; Berman, “Education for Work”; Industrial Workers of the World, One Big Union; Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism”; Murray, Red

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Notes to Pages 68– 71 Scare; Preston, Aliens and Dissenters; and Rachleff, “Turning Points,” 195–222. In accounts of the 1916 strike, its origins are attributed to an incident in which Joe Greeni, a miner from Biwabik, walked off the job in midshift in disgust upon receiving his paycheck and finding that he was underpaid. He was followed by the rest of the miners on his shift. 6. Foner, History of the Labor Movement, 490. 7. Winters, Soul of the Wobblies, 138. 8. Ibid., 114. 9. On the 1916 strike, see Foner, History of the Labor Movement; Karni, “Finnish Immigrant Leftists”; Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism”; and Rachleff, “Turning Points.” 10. Biwabik Times, July 9, 1915, 1. For the IWW’s version of the 1916 strike, see Winters, Soul of the Wobblies, 121. See also Karni, “Finnish Immigrant Leftists,” 219. Note that my argument here refers to the interconnection between the Fourth of July and everyday life and does not assert that the holiday directly reflects everyday life. This is apparent in social criticism customs and in the inversions of everyday life in European festive traditions generally, which symbolize cultural and political tensions and issues. 11. Foner, History of the Labor Movement, 501. 12. On the connection between carnival and violence, see Burke, Popular Culture; and Stallybrass and White, Politics and Poetics of Transgression. 13. On the Red Scare, see Chrislock, Progressive Era in Minnesota; Chrislock, Watchdog of Loyalty; O’Leary, To Die For; Foner, History of the Labor Movement; Foner, Story of American Freedom; Ross, Finn Factor; and Wiebe, Search for Order. 14. On antiradical legislation, murders, arrests, and infringements on the civil rights of immigrants and radicals, see Higham, Send These to Me, and Higham, Strangers in the Land. 15. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. 16. See Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” and Sirjamaki, “People of the Mesabi Range.” 17. In numerous newspaper accounts of the Fourth and in oral histories recorded for this book, the holiday is referred to as “the most important day of the year.”

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Notes to Pages 71– 74 18. Biwabik Times, July 9, 1915, 1. Having examined hundreds of Iron Range newspapers on Fourth of July celebrations, I have found that conventional rhetoric used in each year’s write-up refers to the celebration as “the best in the history of the town” or “bigger than ever.” 19. For more on socialist halls on the Iron Range, see Chambers, “Social Welfare Policies”; Chambers, “Welfare on Minnesota’s Iron Range”; and Karni, “Finnish Immigrant Leftists.” 20. Chambers, “Welfare on Minnesota’s Iron Range,” 6. See also Karni, “Finnish Immigrant Leftists.” 21. Biwabik Times, July 9, 1915, 1. 22. Ibid. 23. Biwabik Diamond Jubilee Book, –, 31; and Biwabik Times, July 9, 1915, 1. 24. Biwabik Times, July 9, 1915, 1. 25. Lipsitz, Time Passages, 16. On festive culture as a rehearsal for revolution, see Shaw, American Patriots, introduction. On community dialogue, see the introduction to this book. 26. Biwabik Times, July 9, 1915, 1. Lipsitz, Time Passages, 16 and 17; see also Jameson, “Reification and Utopia.” On European festive culture, especially carnival, see Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World; Burke, Popular Culture; and N. Davis, Society and Culture. These sources generally emphasize that the disruption of social order in festive culture both reinforces the hegemonic structure and provides a site for vernacular opposition. 27. On labor unrest in this era and the IWW, see Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree, chapter 11; Foner, History of the Labor Movement, chapter 22; and Foner, Story of American Freedom, chapter 6. On holidays and their reflections of labor struggles in this era, see Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays, chapters 2 and 3; and O’Leary, To Die For, chapter 11. 28. On union busting in this era, see Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree; Foner, History of the Labor Movement; and Foner, Story of American Freedom. 29. On anti-union strategies, see Berman, “Education for Work”; Rachleff, “Turning Points”; Palmer, Spies in Steel; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” On the elite minority rule, see Chambers, “Welfare on Minnesota’s Iron Range”; Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns; Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities”; and Smith, “Factors Affecting the Social Development.”

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Notes to Pages 74– 77 30. See Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree; Foner, History of the Labor Movement; Foner, Story of American Freedom; O’Leary, To Die For, chapter 11; and Rachleff, “Turning Points.” 31. Foner, History of the Labor Movement, 490. 32. Biwabik Times Centennial Issue, July 1992. On wages and mine safety, see Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism”; and Berman, “Education for Work.” Material also derived from oral history/ethnography interviews with Carl Urick, July 3, 1992, and Frank Nemanic, May 2, 1993. 33. Foner, History of the Labor Movement, 490. See also p. 491. 34. Oral history/ethnography interviews with Carl Urick, May 2, 1993, and Frank Nemanic, July 19, 1992. 35. Chambers, “Welfare on Minnesota’s Iron Range,” 4. 36. On the power of the elites on the Iron Range, see Chambers, “Welfare on Minnesota’s Iron Range,” 4. Material also from oral history/ethnography interview with Frank Nemanic, July 19, 1992. 37. On immigrants and socialism, see Higham, Strangers in the Land, chapters 7 and 8. See also Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree; Foner, History of the Labor Movement; Foner, Story of American Freedom; O’Leary, To Die For; and Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays. 38. On nativism, see Higham, Strangers in the Land. American industrial discipline required some adjustment because (unlike the practices of previous decades or immigrant experiences in Europe) workers were no longer in control of the pace of their work and alcohol was banned from the workplace. On alcohol and control of the work pace, see Gutman, “Time, WorkDiscipline, and Industrial Capitalism”; and Rachleff, “Turning Points.” 39. Foner, History of the Labor Movement, 492. On spies and stool pigeons, see Palmer, Spies in Steel. 40. On labor practices, see Alanen, “Years of Change”; and Rachleff, “Turning Points.” See also Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree, chapter 11; and Ross, Finn Factor. 41. On welfare capitalism, see Chambers, “Welfare on Minnesota’s Iron Range,” and Chambers, “Social Welfare Policies.” On paternalism, see Ross, Finn Factor. 42. Chambers, “Welfare on Minnesota’s Iron Range,” 10. On paternalism and corporate efficiency policies for productivity, see Rachleff, “Turning Points”; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.”

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Notes to Pages 77– 81 43. On labor activism, see Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree; Foner, History of the Labor Movement; and Foner, Story of American Freedom. 44. Higham, Send These to Me, 37–39. 45. On this period, see Higham, Send These to Me; and Higham, Strangers in the Land. 46. On the Haymarket affair, see Higham, Strangers in the Land, 54–55; and O’Leary, To Die For, 61–62. 47. Higham, Strangers in the Land, 176. See also Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree; and O’Leary, To Die For. 48. See Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns; Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism”; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” 49. Winters, Soul of the Wobblies, 137–38. 50. Foner, History of the Labor Movement, 502. 51. Winters, Soul of the Wobblies, 113. 52. Ibid. On war factions, see Peterson and Fite, Opponents of War. 53. Winters, Soul of the Wobblies, 113 (quotes Symes and Clement from Rebel America). 54. Ibid., 122. 55. Foner, History of the Labor Movement. 56. The original copies of the 1916 Biwabik Times were mysteriously missing from the archives of this pro-company newspaper. However, a book on Biwabik published in 1967 provided a summary of the newspaper coverage; Biwabik Diamond Jubilee Book, –, 31. 57. Foner, History of the Labor Movement, 500. The Biwabik Times account of the 1916 strike blames the workers for inciting the violence, unlike accounts in Berman, “Education for Work”; Foner, History of the Labor Movement; Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism”; and Rachleff, “Turning Points.” See also Karni, “Finnish Immigrant Leftists,” 219. 58. Details on the cost of breaking the strike were not available; however, the cost of breaking the 1907 strike is detailed in Palmer, Spies in Steel: it amounted to well over $200,000. See also Foner, History of the Labor Movement, 497. 59. The Unified Units were among the underground labor organizations discussed by former state legislator Peter Fugina, born in Virginia in 1909, in an oral history/ethnography interview on April 22, 1992. For more on unionism that went underground after the 1916 strike, see Ross, Finn Factor.

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Notes to Pages 81– 84 60. Rachleff, “Turning Points,” 200. See also Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” In the long term, the 1916 strike set workplace activism back so far that union activities were forced underground until the late 1930s and early 1940s. On unions in the 1930s, see chapter 4 of this book. 61. On industrial conflict and labor and government involvement in preventing unions and work stoppages, see Rachleff, “Turning Points.” On the mining company’s armed police force and suppression of radicalism, see Alanen, “Years of Change”; Berman, “Education for Work”; Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism”; Palmer, Spies in Steel; and Rachleff, “Turning Points.” See also Chrislock, Watchdog of Loyalty. 62. Rachleff, “Turning Points,” 200. According to Doug Nemanic in an interview on August 29, 2003, despite the fact that the 1916 strike failed, miners’ families talked of the strike with pride and passed down its stories to the younger generations. 63. See Higham, Strangers in the Land, chapters 7 and 8; Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays; and O’Leary, To Die For, chapter 12. 64. Higham, Strangers in the Land, 65. 65. On American identity, see Higham, Strangers in the Land, chapters 7 and 8; and O’Leary, To Die For, chapter 12. 66. Higham, Strangers in the Land, 68–69. 67. Ibid., chapters 7 and 8; Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays; and O’Leary, To Die For, chapter 12. 68. On first- and second-wave immigrants, see Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree, chapter 11; and Higham, Strangers in the Land. 69. On “black” and “white” immigrants, see Higham, Strangers in the Land, chapter 7. 70. Ibid., 173. 71. On the more than thirty ethnic groups that settled on the Iron Range, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” 72. For “making the eagle scream,” see note 71 to chapter 2. 73. Former Iron Range legislator Peter Fugina in an oral history/ethnography interview, April 22, 1992. 74. On “Fort-Chew-lie,” see Gainey, Poplar Street Finns, 27; on “Fortchuly,” see Mavis, Finnish-American Girlhood, 60. 75. For similar use of firearms and dynamite on Independence Day, see Reimann, Between the Iron and the Pine.

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Notes to Pages 84– 87 76. “Informal codes” for the Fourth of July (although not referred to as such in the oral history/ethnography interviews) emerged as customs associated with Independence Day throughout this study. The majority of older Iron Rangers interviewed for this book indicated that the mining companies were detached from the planning and the celebration of Independence Day. Former Biwabik mayor Carl Urick, interviewed on May 2, 1993, did refer to mining company complaints that Biwabik sometimes spent too much money on Independence Day celebrations, but basically, he said, the complaints were not acted upon. 77. Oral history/ethnography interview with Veda Ponikvar, April 19, 1992. 78. In Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns, the suicide rates for Mesabi Range towns are described as “excessively high” compared to the national average of between 13 and 16 per 100,000, ranging between 13 and 73 per 100,000 (depending on the town) in the first two decades of the twentieth century (see graph, p. 138). 79. On U.S. Steel’s consolidation, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” Although the corporate culture influence was reaching the Iron Range via U.S. Steel, the exposure of the Range to the conditioning influence of mass culture was not major until the 1930s (see chapter 4). On accident and suicide rates, see Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns, 135 and 136. 80. On residential segregation, see Vecoli, “Italians on Minnesota’s Iron Ranges,” 186; Gainey, Poplar Street Finns, 27. On class hostilities, see Holmquist, They Chose Minnesota, 55; Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities”; and Vecoli, “Italians.” On “black” and “white” immigrants, see Higham, Strangers in the Land; Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities”; and Vecoli, “Italians.” 81. Chambers, “Welfare on Minnesota’s Iron Range,” 12. 82. Foner, History of the Labor Movement, 492. 83. On the 1907 strike, see Alanen, “Years of Change”; Berman, “Education for Work”; Foner, History of the Labor Movement; Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism”; Rachleff, “Turning Points”; and Winters, Soul of the Wobblies. 84. Karni, “Finnish Immigrant Leftists,” 210–11. 85. Alanen, “Years of Change,” 181. 86. Palmer, Spies in Steel, 62. 87. Ibid., 55.

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Notes to Pages 87– 89 88. Palmer, Spies in Steel, 5. 89. Ibid., 64. 90. Alanen, “Years of Change”; Berman, “Education for Work”; Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism”; and Rachleff, “Turning Points.” On the blacklist, see Ross, Finn Factor. 91. See Hansen, Cuy-Una! See also Alanen, “Years of Change,” 181. 92. On Americanization of immigrant workers, see Gerstle, Working-Class Americanism, 3. Gerstle notes that the “immigrant problem” was not “solved,” according to the national discourse, until the strike wave of 1919–22 was stopped and immigration restriction was enacted in 1924. On nativism, see Higham, Strangers in the Land. 93. On Progressive reform, see Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree; Foner, History of the Labor Movement; Foner, Story of American Freedom; Gerstle, Working-Class Americanism; Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays; Noble, Progressive Mind; O’Leary, To Die For; and Wiebe, Search for Order. 94. On Iron Range civic education and night classes to Americanize immigrants, see Chambers, “Social Welfare Policies.” For other parts of the country, see Gerstle, Working-Class Americanism. 95. Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays, 207 and 205. The Safe and Sane Fourth of July movement promoted standardized Fourth of July programs as part of a larger crusade dedicated to organized use of public space. It was designed by middle- and upper-class women in 1903 to reduce the number of deaths and accidents from firecrackers and fireworks. The program succeeded in attaining legislative bans on firecrackers and in creating a standardized format for Independence Day celebrations, which was disseminated nationally. Some historians have emphasized its role in the promotion of Victorian values via the “genteel” Fourth of July, with emphasis on the values of noise reduction, civility, and public order; see Bodnar, Remaking America; Glassberg, American Historical Pageantry; Rosenzweig, Eight Hours; and Smilor, “Creating a National Festival. 96. On Americanization Day, see Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays, 223–26; and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. Newspaper quote from Mesaba Ore, July 3, 1915, 1. 97. Biwabik Times, July 9, 1915, 1. 98. On radicalism, see Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism”; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” Accounts of the 1915 celebration are from

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Notes to Pages 89– 92 Biwabik Times, July 9, 1915, 1. On Progressive reform, eugenics, and family planning policies relating to immigrants, see E. May, Barren in the Promised Land. 99. Eveleth Clarion, July 7, 1921, 1. The views expressed by the judge reflect Progressive reform efforts devoted to Americanizing immigrants in the public sphere by infusing orderliness, gentility, solemnity, and moderation. Only a few references to the Safe and Sane program appear in a survey of selected Iron Range newspapers of this era; these merely indicate a concern for safety rather than for socialization into Anglo-American norms. One example of this appeared in the newspaper for Hibbing, a larger Mesabi Range town with a significant middle-class, native-born population compared to most Iron Range towns but still substantially smaller than in towns and cities in many other parts of the United States. Another account referred to adopting Safe and Sane habits for driving and for handling fireworks. A reference to “safe and sane” boating on the Fourth appeared in the Hibbing Tribune, July 6, 1923, 1. On the Safe and Sane program, see Bodnar, Remaking America; Glassberg, American Historical Pageantry; Rosenzweig, Eight Hours; and Smilor, “Creating a National Festival.” 100. On trends affecting public celebrations, see Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays. 101. Duluth News Tribune, July 5, 1900, 1. 102. In oral history/ethnography interviews with second-generation Iron Rangers, there were only vague recollections of the Safe and Sane Fourth of July Program, especially as it applied to noise abatement. Indeed, an account of dynamite blasts appears in a March 1989 oral history/ethnography interview with Frank Nemanic. On the use of dynamite on the Fourth of July on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, from which many Iron Rangers emigrated, see Reimann, Between the Iron and the Pine. 103. Oral history/ethnography interviews for this study emphasize the literal freedom of children on the Fourth of July, especially second-generation Rangers such as Frank Nemanic, interviewed on July 19, 1992; Carl Urick, interviewed on May 2, 1993; and Mario Colletti, interviewed on June 16, 1993. On Progressive reform programs, see chapter 2 and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. See also Chambers, “Social Welfare Policies.” While Independence Day was a free space for Iron Range immigrants, Anglo-conformity pressures continued through Americanization programs in the public schools.

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Notes to Pages 92– 95 However, other nationwide Progressive reform efforts, such as temperance programs and park and playground programs (designed to promote orderliness, discipline, and sobriety in public) did not take hold on the Iron Range. These were more effective and certainly more pervasive in urban areas than in small towns and isolated regions such as the Iron Range. On the Iron Range, this is attributable to the scarcity of middle-class native-born residents who initiated and enforced reform efforts, the demographic dominance of southern and eastern European immigrants, and the constant influx of new immigrants throughout this time period. In addition, few reformers were likely to move to this isolated, undeveloped area, and many businesspeople were immigrants or were second generation and would thus ally themselves with the new immigrants and their value systems. Consequently, cultural reformers were largely ineffective in imposing Anglo-conformity on the immigrant “masses” of the Iron Range. 104. Oral history/ethnography interview with Nicholas Gosdonovic, July 29, 1994. For details on lax enforcement of firecracker bans in other parts of the country in the early twentieth century, see Applebaum, Glorious Fourth, chapter 10. Public interest in maintaining the tradition of liberty on Independence Day, especially for young boys, led police to rarely make arrests for violating firecracker ordinances on the Fourth. 105. Descriptions of sauna floats on Independence Day were taken from several oral history/ethnography interviews, including those with Jill Dickinson, December 1995; Lillian Isaacson, June 1993; Andy Larson, February 15, 1993; and Dave Torrell, June 1993. 106. Some examples include oral history/ethnography interviews with Doug Nemanic (born in Aurora in 1942) in March 1989; and Stanley “Pye” Sherek (born in 1914) on February 25, 1994. The brewery wagon float is detailed in Gainey, Poplar Street Finns, 27. 107. On visiting traditions in European festive culture, see S. Davis, “Making the Night Hideous”; Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; Nissenbaum, “Visit from St. Nicholas”; and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. 108. On the metaphor of two worlds and the exceptionalistic historiography relating to America representing a break from Europe, see Noble, End of American History. 109. Oral history/ethnography interviews for this study, including those with Peter Fugina and Frank Nemanic, confirm that Independence Day was

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Notes to Pages 95– 97 the most important public holiday and that May Day and Labor Day were not as widely celebrated. On the decline of May Day (and its association with radicalism) and Labor Day, see Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays. 110. On fear of mob disorder and class conflict on holidays in urban America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see S. Davis, Parades and Power; Gilje, Road to Mobocracy; Lipsitz, Time Passages; and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. See Lipsitz especially on opposition to the status quo imbedded in the festive culture of the Mardi Gras Indians (233–53). 111. On the purging of radicalism from Independence Day celebrations, see Waldstreicher, “Rites of Rebellion.” On cycles of popularity related to the Fourth of July as a public event, see Bodnar, Remaking America. For classic works in sociology and history on assimilation, see Park, Race and Culture; Handlin, The Uprooted; Gordon, Assimilation in American Life; Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress; and Gerstle, Working-Class Americanism, introduction. 112. For more on Americanization of immigrants, see Cohen, Making a New Deal; Higham, “Mobilization of Urban Immigrants”; and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. On collective mobilizations and the need for symbols, rhetoric, and organizations from which to mobilize, see Oestreicher, “Urban Working-Class Political Behavior”; and Higham, “Mobilization of Urban Immigrants.” 113. On immigrant work styles versus “American” work styles, see Gutman, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism”; and Rachleff, “Turning Points.” On the Iron Range, Americanization programs were also offered through ethnic and fraternal organizations and adult night classes in the public schools; see Chambers, “Welfare on Minnesota’s Iron Range”; Holmquist, They Chose Minnesota, 10–11; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” On Americanization in the public schools, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” Quote is from Laitala, “Carrying the Burden,” 42. 114. On wartime unity, see Chambers, “Welfare on Minnesota’s Iron Range,” 1–39. For more on immigration restriction, see Higham, Strangers in the Land. On immigration restriction in 1924, see Higham, Send These to Me, and Higham, Strangers in the Land. This chapter begins in 1906: this periodization is presented in Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” On the decline in mining in the 1920s, see Sirja-

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Notes to Pages 97– 99 maki, “Mesabi Communities”; and Stipanovich and Menard, Report of the Iron Range. 115. See Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” Peter Fugina, an Iron Range politician born in Aurora in 1909, described the Fourth as an exceptional opportunity for visibility and noted his appreciation of the Fourth for its role in his own career. Oral history/ethnography interview with Peter Fugina, April 22, 1992. 116. Biwabik Diamond Jubilee Book, ‒, 31. Other references to this as a repressive period in Iron Range history can be found in Berman, “Education for Work”; Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism”; Rachleff, “Turning Points”; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” On ad valorem taxes on the Iron Range and the increase in tax bases from ore mined to ore reserves, see Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” 117. See Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” introduction. On the New Deal and immigrants, see Cohen, Making a New Deal. 118. On Iron Range politicians in this era, see Chambers, “Social Welfare Policies”; Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” 119. On politicians and corrupt politics, see Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” Corrupt politicians are also discussed in an oral history/ethnography interview with Peter Fugina, April 22, 1992. See also Chambers, “Social Welfare Policies.” 120. For a discussion of flags of countries of origin no longer being flown on Independence Day, see Rosenzweig, Eight Hours, 156. Wartime conformity also came in the form of promotion of Americanization programs by employers and the association of allegiance to America through class harmony in July Fourth orations and naturalization ceremonies. For the effect of this wartime pressure on immigrant workers to abandon class activism in Worcester, Massachusetts, see Rosenzweig, Eight Hours, 161. On class harmony on the Iron Range during this era, see Chambers, “Welfare on Minnesota’s Iron Range,” 11; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” The only exceptions to this new unity were certain nationalities, especially the Germans, who were excluded because of their country’s wartime affiliation or because they had recently arrived. 121. Chambers, “Social Welfare Policies,” 29.

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Notes to Pages 99– 104 122. Litwicki, America’s Public Holidays, 231. On the 1918 immigrant parades on Independence Day, see also Conig and Coffin, Folklore of American Holidays, 225. 123. O’Leary, To Die For, 236. 124. Biwabik Times Centennial Issue, 1992, 13; and Biwabik Times, July 5, 1918, 1. 125. Biwabik Times, July 5, 1918, 1. 126. On antiradicalism, see Foner, History of the Labor Movement; Higham, Strangers in the Land; and O’Leary, To Die For. For details on the Espionage Act, which was used to jail and deport radical immigrants, see Foner, History of the Labor Movement. 127. Chrislock, Watchdog of Loyalty, xi. For more details on the Commission of Public Safety, see Ross, Finn Factor. 128. Hibbing Daily News, July 3, 1923, 1. 129. On the underground union movement after the 1916 strike was quashed, see Ross, Finn Factor. 130. Hibbing Daily News, July 3, 1923, 1. 131. Ibid. 132. Iron Range histories, newspapers, and oral histories idiomatically refer to Independence Day as “the most important day of the year.” 133. On temperance and social reform, see Glassberg, American Historical Pageantry; Gerstle, Working-Class Americanism; and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours. On the jailing of Finns during Prohibition, see Bercovici, On New Shores. 134. Hibbing Daily News, July 3, 1923, 1. 135. Oral history/ethnography interview with Peter Fugina, April 1992. 136. Biwabik Times, June 29, 1919. 137. Patterns in sizes and numbers of ads and types of celebrations were obtained through a survey of various Iron Range newspapers, cited in the early part of this chapter.

chapter 4: the great depression 1. Eveleth Clarion, July 2, 1941, 1; and Gilbert Herald, July 31, 1941, 1. On the expectation of America’s entrance into World War II, see Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree, chapter 14, especially p. 347. 2. Eveleth Clarion, July 2, 1941, 1; and Gilbert Herald, July 31, 1941, 1.

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Notes to Pages 107– 109 3. On the localized radio operations and programming in foreign languages and geared to the interests of ethnic groups, see Cohen, “Encountering Mass Culture.” See also Cohen, Making a New Deal. 4. For details on ownership of radio (and later television) and standardized programming, see Barnouw, Tube of Plenty. 5. On Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats and the use of media in the 1930s, see L. May, Big Tomorrow; and Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America. 6. For more on this coalition, see Cohen, Making a New Deal; L. May, Big Tomorrow; Higham, “Mobilization of Urban Immigrants”; and Oestreicher, “Urban Working-Class Political Behavior.” In many accounts of the New Deal’s impact on urban areas, it is often stressed that programs had less direct impact on workers and more impact on the morale of workers through the saturation of New Deal symbols, programs, and rhetoric in the print and electronic media. This was also true of the Iron Range. However, the difference between mass culture’s influence on urban areas and its influence on the Iron Range is one of depth and conditioning time. The isolation of the Iron Range initially limited the availability of the print media, radio reception was poor without a combination of good weather conditions and very large antennas to eliminate static, and many movie theaters were forced to close during the Depression; nonetheless, mass culture extended to the Iron Range in the 1930s and 1940s, and its influence was both pervasive and profound. On the conditioning influences of mass culture, see Cohen, Making a New Deal. Details on media availability on the Iron Range from oral history/ethnography interviews for this study include interviews with Al Faragher, May 3, 1993; Doug Nemanic, January 8, 1993; and Frank Nemanic, June 5, 1992, October 20, 1992, and May 27, 1996. 7. On ethnic workers perceiving the war as an opportunity for full recognition as both Americans and “white” ethnics and subverting their class interests, see Gerstle, “Working Class Goes to War.” On the propaganda effect by government and the film industry to promote consensus as “the nation’s core value,” see L. May, “Making the American Consensus.” 8. On the concept of nationalism and kinship of different parts of the nation, see Anderson, Imagined Communities. 9. For more details on the new alliance between government and corporate leaders brokered by President Roosevelt, see Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree, chapter 14.

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Notes to Pages 109– 110 10. For more detail on the classless society myth, see Marchand, Advertising the American Dream; Marchand, “Visions of Classlessness”; and Susman, Culture as History. 11. Gerstle, “Working Class Goes to War.” 12. On radicalism in this era, see Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree; Foner, History of the Labor Movement; and Foner, Story of American Freedom. 13. On the Depression and unemployment, see Carroll and Noble, The Free and the Unfree; and Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America. On Iron Range unemployment during the Depression, see Stipanovich and Menard, Report of the Iron Range. 14. On immigrants and labor, see Cohen, Making a New Deal; and Rachleff, “Turning Points.” On the Depression, see Fleishhauer and Brannan, Documenting America, 18–19. On the New Deal and working-class interests, see Cohen, Making a New Deal. 15. See Cohen, Making a New Deal; and Oestreicher, “Urban WorkingClass Political Behavior.” Historian John Higham, in “The Mobilization of Urban Immigrants,” has emphasized the mobilization of second-generation Americans in urban areas in the 1930s, resulting in their support for the New Deal (a shift from a Republican affiliation), and their labor organization under the aegis of the Wagner Act. On the Iron Range, according to Sirjamaki and some oral history/ethnography interviews, immigrants also shifted support to the Democratic Party as the Australian ballot was adopted to provide secrecy, removing the ability of the mining companies and their affiliates to tie voting to job retention. However, in contrast to the urban immigrants in Higham’s study, Iron Range immigrants had mobilized against the mining company earlier in the century and were driven underground until collective bargaining was legitimated by the Wagner Act; they did not actually organize until the 1940s. 16. For details on radicalism during the Great Depression, see Foner, Story of American Freedom, chapters 9 and 10. 17. See Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, and Marchand, “Visions of Classlessness.” 18. See Marchand, Advertising the American Dream; and E. May, Homeward Bound.

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Notes to Pages 111– 113 19. On Life’s depictions of Americans as generally middle class, see Kozol, Life’s America. On innovations in mass communication, see DeFleur and Dennis, Understanding Mass Communication. 20. On radio, see DeFleur and Dennis, Understanding Mass Communication. On the transition from silents to talkies, see L. May, Screening Out the Past. 21. For more details on the Depression era, see Fleischhauer and Brannan, Documenting America. 22. On Iron Range economic cycles, see Stipanovich, Report of the Iron Range; and Rachleff, “Turning Points.” 23. On survival measures by families of miners in other areas of the country to compensate for the cycles of prosperity and decline in mining, see Haines, Fertility and Occupation. 24. Interdependence and community during the Depression were emphasized in oral history/ethnography interviews with several Iron Rangers, including Peter Fugina, Helen Larson, Frank Nemanic, Veda Ponikvar, and Carl Urick. 25. The Unified Units and underground collectivism during this era were discussed in oral history/ethnography interviews, including those with Peter Fugina and Frank Nemanic. For details on the Unified Units, see the Hibbing Daily Tribune, Centennial Edition, July 22, 1993, 6c. 26. Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 365. For more details on these hostilities, see Alanen, “Years of Change”; and Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns. On “white” and “black” designations of European immigrants and details on racial antagonisms of the era, see Roediger, Toward the Abolition of Whiteness; Roediger, Wages of Whiteness; Orsi, “Religious Boundaries”; Vecoli, “Are Italians Just White Folks?” and Vecoli, “Italians on Minnesota’s Iron Ranges.” 27. On the Iron Range version of the New Deal in the 1920s and 1930s, see Hibbing Daily Tribune, Centennial Edition, July 22, 1993, 10c; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” On the New Deal and immigrants, see Cohen, Making a New Deal; and Higham, “Mobilization of Urban Immigrants.” 28. On Iron Range civic welfare, see Chambers, “Welfare on Minnesota’s Iron Range,” 7 and 9. On corrupt Iron Range politicians, see Chambers, “Social Welfare Policies”; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” The mayor

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Notes to Pages 113– 115 of Eveleth, Vic Essling, became more popular after he helped the town establish a professional hockey team comprising mostly Canadians who were supported on the town payroll and became national champions; Chambers, “Welfare on Minnesota’s Iron Range,” 9. See also Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns, 43–44. 29. On New Deal projects, see Alanen, “Years of Change,” 184. 30. For more on the New Deal, see Alanen, “Years of Change,” 184. Alanen also states that New Deal programs were so pervasive that they actually replaced many of the private and public relief sources, which had been in place prior to the 1930s to compensate for the mining industry’s seasonal and cyclical shutdowns. 31. On labor on the Iron Range following the 1916 strike, see Berman, “Education for Work”; Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism”; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” 32. Foner, Story of American Freedom, 211. 33. Although some scholars such as Lizabeth Cohen see the New Deal and union organization as indicators that becoming more American made immigrants become more radical or class conscious, I disagree. My reasons stem from the fact that these political and labor innovations operated within the capitalist structure and that ultimately radicalism was defeated. On labor organization on the Iron Range, see Alanen, “Years of Change.” See also Berman, “Education for Work”; and Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism.” Historian Gary Gerstle’s work also features an examination of labor activism by immigrant groups in the 1930s and their development of working-class consciousness despite barriers, which included ethnicity, race, skill level, and geography. Gerstle focuses on the common patriotic rhetoric during this era, which masked a myriad of ideologies, including radicalism. Community, working-class consciousness, and patriotic rhetoric were linked together much earlier for Iron Rangers than for urban immigrants. Gerstle’s argument about patriotic rhetoric masking socialist ideologies is also true of the Iron Range because the immigrants often considered patriotism and socialism compatible (see Gerstle, Working-Class Americanism). This thesis argues that mass culture’s major influences did not fully emerge on the Iron Range until the World War II era (see chapter 5; see also Cohen, Making a New Deal ). 34. Stipanovich and Menard, Report of the Iron Range, 126.

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Notes to Pages 115– 119 35. On intermarriage rates, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 448. On the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota, see Valelly, Radicalism in the States. 36. Foner, Story of American Freedom, chapter 10. Notably, the Iron Range was the birthplace of Gus Hall, a long-time official in the American Communist Party and a former presidential candidate representing the Communist Party in the 1950s and 1960s. For more details, see Hibbing Daily Tribune, Outlook, 1984, 18. 37. Oral history/ethnography interview with Peter Fugina, April 22, 1992. 38. Gilbert Herald, July 7, 1932, 1. 39. Biwabik Diamond Jubilee Book, –. On 1930s escapism and fantasy in popular culture, see Susman, Culture as History. For more on mass culture, see chapter 5. 40. Oral history/ethnography interview with Carl Urick, May 2, 1993. 41. Alanen, “Years of Change,” 158; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” 78. 42. Data were compiled from surveys of Biwabik Times, Virginia Enterprise, Eveleth News, Eveleth Clarion, Gilbert Herald, Hibbing Tribune, Hibbing Daily News, Ely Iron Home, and Ely Miner. 43. Oral history/ethnography interview with Helen Larson, October 1992. 44. Oral history/ethnography interview with Carl Urick, May 2, 1993. 45. Gilbert Herald, July 5, 1935. 46. Chambers, “Social Welfare Policies”; Rachleff, “Turning Points”; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” 47. For more details on hostilities, see Alanen, “Years of Change”; Landis, Three Iron Mining Towns; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” 48. Oral history/ethnography interviews with Frank Nemanic, June 5, 1992, and October 20, 1992. 49. Oral history/ethnography interview with Frank Nemanic, October 20, 1992. 50. Oral history/ethnography interview with Dorothy Jamnick, July 1992. 51. Oral history/ethnography interview with Mario Colletti, June 16, 1993. 52. Oral history/ethnography interview with Francis Houtala, June 1993. 53. Radio interview with Veda Ponikvar on KSJN Radio on April 22, 1996.

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Notes to Pages 120 – 123 54. Laitala, “Carrying the Burden,” 43. 55. Oral history/ethnography interview with Helen Larson, October 1992. 56. Oral history/ethnography interview with Mario Colletti, June 16, 1993. 57. Biwabik Times, June 22, 1935. 58. Biwabik Times, June 28, 1935, 1; Hibbing Tribune, July 3, 1935, 1; and Hibbing Tribune, July 3, 1935, 4. 59. Data were compiled from a survey of Iron Range newspapers; see introduction and chapter 1. Hank Polisich, former owner of Hank’s Bar in Aurora, maintained (in an oral history/ethnography interview on July 3, 1994) that there was a great deal of drinking on Independence Day throughout the 1920s and 1930s. 60. On the Depression outmigration, see Alanen, “Years of Change”; and Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities.” 61. In my contacts with Iron Rangers in Minneapolis, about 250 miles to the south, Rangers continue to ask each other whether they have plans to return “home for the Fourth.” And, as the wife of an Iron Ranger living in the Twin Cities for nearly twenty years, I have witnessed an annual conversation between my husband and his brother about plans to return “home” to the Iron Range on the Fourth. Oral history/ethnography interviews with Mario Colletti, June 16, 1993, and Frank Nemanic, June 5, 1992. 62. On working-class survival strategies, see Lipsitz, Time Passages. 63. Eveleth Clarion, July 2, 1941. 64. Gilbert Herald, June 27, 1935; Eveleth Clarion News, July 1932; and Gilbert Herald, July 3, 1941. 65. Oral history/ethnography interview with Mario Colletti, June 16, 1993. 66. On social problems, see Sirjamaki, “Mesabi Communities,” describing the demoralization of Iron Range youths and the juvenile delinquency problems in this era as well as the alienation of the second generation from their parents as they were Americanized in the public schools. 67. Mesabi Daily News, July 3, 1930, 1. Because of the unavailability of town records, it is unclear which towns used ore taxes for Fourth of July program sponsorship, but many town programs appear to have been sponsored by a combination of ore taxes and funds from the commercial sector. 68. Biwabik Times, June 22, 1935, 1, and June 30, 1930, 1. 69. Gilbert Herald, July 2, 1936.

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Notes to Pages 123– 127 70. Oral history/ethnography interview with Carl Urick, July 3, 1992. 71. Eveleth Clarion, July 1, 1937, 7. 72. Oral histories/ethnographies emphasized this custom, especially interviews with Frank Nemanic in January 1989 and March 1990 and with Carl Urick on July 19, 1992, and May 3, 1993. Although no one seemed to be able to pinpoint when this custom started, most said they believed it started in the 1920s. 73. Eveleth News, July 9, 1935, 1. On the population of Eveleth, see Stipanovich and Menard, Report of the Iron Range, 71. 74. Gilbert Herald, June 27, 1935. This point is also emphasized in oral history/ethnography interviews for this study. 75. Biwabik Times, June 28, 1940, 1. 76. “Free for All” listed in the Eveleth Clarion, July 6, 1939, 1. Other events are listed on the front page of the Gilbert Herald, July 3, 1941, and July 3, 1939. 77. Biwabik Times, June 28, 1929, June 30, 1930, 1, and June 28, 1940; and Gilbert Herald, June 30, 1938, and July 5, 1929. On the popular culture themes relating to the family and working women, see E. May, Homeward Bound. On 1930s culture, see Susman, Culture as History. 78. Examples of these can be seen in the Gilbert Herald, July 3, 1938, as well as other newspapers, including the Eveleth Clarion and the Biwabik Times, in the late 1930s. 79. Oral history/ethnography interview with Peter Fugina, April 22, 1992. 80. The use of Independence Day by politicians continues in recent times as well. 81. Biwabik Times, June 28, 1940, 1. 82. On prohibition as an anti-immigrant measure, see Higham, “Mobilization of Urban Immigrants.” 83. Oral history/ethnography interview with Frank Nemanic, March 1989. 84. Biwabik Times, June 30, 1930, 4. 85. Hibbing Tribune, July 3, 1935, 1. 86. Biwabik Times, June 28, 1929, 1. 87. Biwabik Times, June 28, 1929, 1. 88. Oral history/ethnography interview with Veda Ponikvar, April 19, 1992.

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Notes to Pages 127– 133 89. Mavis, Finnish-American Girlhood, 60. 90. Oral history/ethnography interview with Frank Nemanic, June 5, 1992. See also Gerstle, “Working Class Goes to War.” 91. Gilbert Herald, July 9, 1936, 1. For the history of the radical FarmerLabor coalition and its merger with the Democratic Party as the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, see Valelly, Radicalism in the States. 92. Gilbert Herald, July 3, 1941, 1. For details on the shift in nationalism from socialist orientations to consensus, see L. May, “Making the American Consensus”; and Gerstle, “Working Class Goes to War.” 93. On the new nationalism in the national discourse, see the introduction to Erenberg and Hirsch, War in American Culture. 94. Biwabik Times, June 28, 1940, 1. 95. Ibid.

chapter 5: the queens of the fourth of july 1. Biwabik Times, July 11, 1952, 1. 2. On “invented tradition,” see Hobsbawm and Ranger, Invention of Tradition, introduction. Although this concept is used to describe official culture’s use of selected traditions for political means, I am taking liberties with this term in the case of the Iron Range, and describing instead vernacular constructions of ritual and customs in Fourth of July celebrations. 3. On the national culture, see Marchand, “Visions of Classlessness.” On queen pageants in Minnesota festivals, queens as representatives of communities, and pageants as rites of passage for young women, see Lavenda, Corn Fests and Water Carnivals. 4. Biwabik Times, July 11, 1952, 1. 5. Minnesota Historical Society, “Iron Range in Transition.” 6. Bivans, Miss America. 7. See chapter 4 on these values in Fourth of July celebrations, the deemphasis or elimination of formal programs, and the community emphasis of the Depression years. 8. For details on the shift from the suspicion of monopoly capitalism to a coalition with business in the national discourse, see Noble, End of American History; and L. May, Recasting America.

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Notes to Pages 133 – 138 9. These traditions, detailed in previous chapters, include the “informal codes” of behavior for the Fourth of July, including visiting customs, suspending grudges, and celebrating loudly and enthusiastically. 10. Raymond Williams (in “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory”) presents a general model that is useful but does not exactly fit the Iron Range because of the scarcity of the middle class on the Iron Range, and because of its lack of an indigenous population once the Indians were removed to reservations. Nonetheless, the concepts of emergent and residual elements in cultural forms are helpful in analyzing Iron Range rituals and cultural expressions. 11. Depression-era celebrations detailed in chapter 4 focus on informal programs and youth activities as well as regionwide “community” interactions. 12. Although Miss Taconite I’s dress is covered, note the evening gown detail in the photographs of Miss Taconite II and III. 13. For details of aspects of the youth culture and developing attractiveness in young women in this era, see E. May, Homeward Bound. 14. For more on ethnic Americans’ transitions from “not quite white” to white status during the World War II and postwar period, see Roediger, Toward the Abolition of Whiteness, and Roediger, Wages of Whiteness. 15. Gleason, “Americans All.” 16. See ibid. See also Blum, V Was for Victory; Marchand, Advertising the American Dream; and L. May, Recasting America. 17. See L. May, Recasting America; and Noble, End of American History. 18. Biwabik Times, July 6, 1951, 1. 19. See Gleason, “Americans All.” Note that the Iron Range shift away from radicalism was in the political arena only; in the labor arena, Iron Range radicals continued to be active throughout the 1940s and 1950s. 20. Alanen, “Years of Change,” 185. 21. For more details on women working in mining, see ibid. On women in the workplace in America during World War II, see E. May, “Rosie the Riveter Gets Married.” 22. Gleason, “Americans All.” See also Gleason, “American Identity and Americanization.” 23. Marchand, Advertising the American Dream; E. May, Homeward Bound; and L. May, Recasting America.

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Notes to Pages 138 – 142 24. Blum, V Was for Victory, 140. 25. Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight. 26. See Gerstle, “Working Class Goes to War.” 27. See Marolt, “Development of Labor Unionism.” 28. Oral history/ethnography interview with Frank Nemanic, November 21, 1994. 29. America’s labor unrest also resulted from integration of the workplace. This, however, was not a major issue on the Iron Range, because the mining companies for the northern mining regions rarely recruited people of color, especially African Americans. For more details on the unrest in mining, see Lewis, Black Coal Miners in America. This details discriminatory hiring practices in mining and the racism directed by white miners against blacks preventing integration in northern mining regions. 30. Benedict Anderson (in Imagined Communities) details the “fictive kin” concept, which refers to national consciousness as an imagined extension of local relationships. 31. Biwabik Times, July 7, 1944, 1. 32. Biwabik Diamond Jubilee Book, ‒, 33. 33. Gilbert Herald, June 29, 1943, and July 1, 1943. 34. Biwabik Diamond Jubilee Book, ‒, 33. 35. Eveleth and Virginia had formal programs during the war but eliminated them after the war. 36. Eveleth News, July 5, 1945, 1. 37. Ibid. 38. Hibbing Tribune, June 28, 1945, 1. 39. Oral history/ethnography interview with Mario Colletti, June 16, 1993. 40. Biwabik Times, July 7, 1944, 2. 41. Biwabik Times, July 7, 1944, 2; and June 29, 1941, 1. 42. Hibbing Tribune, June 28, 1945, 1. 43. Oral history/ethnography interview with Louis Pazzelli, June 11, 1994. 44. The Eveleth Clown Band has been and continues to be positioned at the rear of the parade because the group’s maneuvers interfere with the parade’s pacing and crowds often join in behind the band, following the clowns into the various taverns along the main parade route. Louis Pazzelli also noted in his interview of June 11, 1994, that the Eveleth Clown Band at-

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Notes to Pages 142– 149 tracted national attention, performing in the 1949 Orange Bowl and winning the world competition for clown bands that same year. 45. “The Iron Range in Transition,” Biwabik Times, June 23, 1950, 1. 46. Biwabik Diamond Jubilee Book, –, 34. 47. See Dworkin, Miss America, ; and Riverol, Live from Atlantic City. 48. Biwabik Times, July 11, 1952, 1. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Oral history/ethnography interview with Doug Nemanic, March 24, 1994. 53. For more on taconite, see Alanen, “Years of Change”; and E. W. Davis, Pioneering with Taconite. 54. The balloting process appears to have been started around 1958. 55. Biwabik Times, July 4, 1968, 1. 56. Ibid. Talent and poise were components of the revamped Miss America Pageant in the 1960s. See Riverol, Live from Atlantic City. 57. On fatherhood in popular culture, especially television shows in this era, see E. May, Homeward Bound. 58. Biwabik Times, June 25, 1954, 1. 59. Criticism of TV is reflected in oral history/ethnography interviews, especially interviews with Carl Urick and Frank Nemanic. 60. Williams, “Base and Superstructure.” In The Invention of Tradition, Erik Hobsbawm’s concept of invented tradition (if applied to vernacular rather than official culture) also stresses the adaptability of traditions invented for public rituals, which contain both modern and traditional elements. 61. George Lipsitz (in Time Passages) explains that the blending of new and traditional elements is part of “complicated strategies to preserve the resources of the past by adapting them to the needs of the present” (136). See also Fiske, Reading Popular Culture; Fiske and Hartley, Reading Television; and Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture. 62. Miss Taconite impersonator is detailed in Biwabik Times, July 9, 1954. 63. On cross-dressing in European festive culture, see N. Davis, Society and Culture. Significantly, some rituals incorporating cross-dressing include mock weddings. St. Urho’s Day, a celebration of a fictional Finnish “saint” who drove the grasshoppers (or alternatively the frogs) out of the vineyards

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Notes to Pages 149 – 158 of Finland, also features cross-dressing. This festive occasion is a parody of St. Patrick’s Day, which commemorates the legend of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland. St. Urho’s day is celebrated on March 16 in Minnesota, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and throughout the Upper Midwest. It includes parades, toboggan races, and a queen contest with men in drag. See Santino, All Around the Year. 64. Oral history/ethnography interview with Stanley Sherek, February 25, 1995. 65. Ibid. 66. Biwabik Times, July 9, 1948, 1. 67. For details on the reassertion of Victorian gender restrictions in the 1950s, see E. May, Homeward Bound. 68. Biwabik Times, June 30, 1950, 1. 69. Biwabik Times, June 30, 1950, 1. 70. Reunions are emphasized in several issues of the Biwabik Times and other Iron Range newspapers in the 1950s and 1960s. 71. Oral history/ethnography interview with Doug Nemanic, November 24, 1994. 72. On beach days, see Biwabik Times, June 27, 1968, 1. On prefabricated home displays, see Biwabik Times, June 25, 1954. 73. On the formal ethos of the 1950s and the rejection of this in the 1960s, see E. May, Homeward Bound. 74. Biwabik Times, June 22, 1967, 1. 75. Bivans, Miss America, 25–26. 76. Oral history/ethnography interview with Shelly Berts, December 1, 1995. 77. Ibid. 78. Alanen, “Years of Change,” 188. 79. Oral history/ethnography interview with David Sherek, December 1, 1995. 80. Biwabik Times, June 23, 1988, 5; and oral history/ethnography interview with David Sherek, December 1, 1995. 81. For a discussion of working-class use of complex strategies to preserve the past and also adapt to the present, see Lipsitz, Time Passages, 237–53. 82. Oral history/ethnography interview with David Sherek, December 1, 1995.

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Notes to Pages 158 – 161 83. Ibid. Interestingly, this festival of lights has been held annually since 1988 and features a fireworks display just outside of town. On the Fourth of July, however, there are no fireworks displays in Biwabik. 84. Oral history/ethnography interview with Tom Henderson, former Biwabik Clown Band member, in June 1994. 85. Harney, “Tuteshi,” 5.

epilogue: looking into the twenty-first century 1. From oral history/ethnography interview with Peter Fugina, April 22, 1992. 2. For a few of the many examples of satire and humor relating to the duct tape and plastic recommendations from the Department of Homeland Security, see Garrett, “Fear of War becomes Reality,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 28, 2003, H1; Associated Press, “Small towns have role in homeland security,” dateline, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, October 16, 2003; and St. Louis-Post Dispatch Copely News Service, editorial, “Tom Ridge’s job as first secretary of the Department of Homeland Security was a mission impossible,” December 2, 2004. 3. For more details on Eino and Toivo in Finnish folklore, see Leary, So Ole Says to Lena. See also Dorson, Bloodstoppers and Bear Walkers. 4. Fiske, Reading Popular Culture, 7. 5. For more on parade humor and its political implications, see S. Davis, Parades and Power.

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Bibliography primary sources Biwabik Diamond Jubilee Book, –. Published by the town of Biwabik, 1967. Brownell, Lee. Pioneer Life in Ely. Gilbert, MN: Iron Range Historical Society Press, 1981. Consumer Price Index. U.S. Government Department of Commerce, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1995. Deshler, Charles. “How the Declaration Was Received in the Old Thirteen.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1892, 165–87. Drinker, Elizabeth. The Diary of Elizabeth Drinker. Edited by Elaine Forman Crane. 3 vols. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991. Hopkinson, Francis. “Grand Federal Procession.” (July 8, 1788.) In The Miscellaneous Essays and Writings of Francis Hopkinson, Esq., 349–422. Philadelphia: T. Dobson, 1792. Lee, Richard Henry. “Letter to Francis Lightfoot Lee.” In Letters of Delegates to Congress, vol. 10, 1774–1789, edited by Paul Hubert Smith, 224. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1983. Minnesota State Board of Immigration. Minnesota’s Fiftieth Anniversary, brochure, pp. 6–7. St. Paul: n.p., 1908. Palmer, Frank L. Spies in Steel: An Expose of Industrial War. Denver: Labor Press, 1928. Reimann, Lewis, C. Between the Iron and the Pine: A Biography of a Pioneer Family and a Pioneer Town. Ann Arbor: L. C. Lewis, 1951. Seeley, Fred M. “The History of Biwabik.” Two undated columns from the Biwabik Times, unpaginated. Archived in Iron Range Historical Society, Gilbert, MN.

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secondary sources Alanen, Arnold. “From Tower to Soudan: Townsites and Locations on the Vermilion Iron Range.” In Entrepreneurs and Immigrants, edited by Michael Karni, 32–39. Chisholm, MN: Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board, 1991. ———. “Years of Change on the Iron Range.” In Minnesota in a Century of Change: Its People since , edited by Clifford E. Clark Jr., 155–94. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1990. Albanese, Catherine. Sons of the Fathers: The Civil Religion of the American Revolution. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976. Alford, Violet. “Rough Music.” Folklore 70 (1959): 505–18. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. Applebaum, Diana Karter. The Glorious Fourth of July: An American Holiday, An American History. New York: Facts on File, 1989. Babcock, Barbara. Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978. Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination. Translated by Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. ———. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. First published, 1936. Barker, Derek, ed. ISIS: A Bob Dylan Anthology. London: Helter Skelter Publishing, 2004. Barnouw, Erik. Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. Baskerville, Barnet. “Nineteenth Century Burlesque of Orations.” American Quarterly 20, no. 4 (winter 1968): 726–43. Bennett, T., L. Bland, V. Burgin, T. Davies, J. Donald, and S. Frith. “A Thousand and One Troubles: Black Pool Pleasure Beach.” In Formations of Pleasure, 138–55. London: Routledge, 1983.

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Bibliography Benson, Susan Porter, Stephen Brier, and Roy Rosenzweig, eds. Presenting the Past: Essays on History and the Public. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986. Bercovici, Konrad. On New Shores. New York: Century, 1925. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The American Jeremiad. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978. Berman, Hyman. “Education for Work and Labor Solidarity: Immigrant Miners and Radicalism on the Mesabi Range.”Unpublished paper in the collection of the Immigration History Research Center, St. Paul, 1969. Bivans, Ann-Marie. Miss America: In Pursuit of the Crown: The Complete Guide to the Miss America Pageant. New York: Master Media, 1991. Blum, John Morton. V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture during World War II. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1976. Bocock, Robert. Ritual in Industrial Society: A Sociological Analysis of Ritualism in Modern England. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1974. Bodnar, John. Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. ———. The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1985. Boorstin, Daniel. The Americans: The Democratic Experience. London: Phoenix, 1973. Braudel, Fernand. On History. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980. Brunwald, Jan Harold, ed. American Folklife: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing, 1996. Burke, Peter. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. New York: New York University Press, 1978. Calhoun, Craig. “The Radicalism of Tradition: Community Strength or Venerable Disguise and Borrowed Language?” American Journal of Sociology 88, no. 5 (March 1983): 886–914. Carroll, Peter N., and David W. Noble. The Free and the Unfree: A Progressive History of the United States. New York: Penguin Books, 2001. Chambers, Clarke A. “Social Welfare Policies and Programs on the Minnesota Iron Range, 1880–1930.” Unpublished paper in the collection of the Immigration History Research Center, St. Paul, 1969.

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Index African Americans: and Independence Day, 173 n.11; and mining, 190n26, 220n29 airbus, 10, 167–68n22 Alanen, Arnold, 46, 191n31, 214n30 alcohol, 33–34, 43–44, 59, 92, 104, 125, 201n38; wine and liquor making, 6, 103, 125 All Around the Year (Santino), 221–22n63 “America the Beautiful,” 89 American Colonization Society, 183–84n46 American Communist Party, 1, 116, 215n36 American Dream, 6, 76, 97, 101, 111, 118, 132 American exceptionalism, 102, 126–27, 207n108 American flag (Old Glory), 10, 15–16, 25, 100, 126–27, 133, 161 American foods on Independence Day, 5–6, 116–18 American identity, 2–3, 5, 8, 11, 51, 95; and class, 7, 14; and festive culture, 14, 34, 51, 59; and immigrants, 14, 34, 51, 54, 82; and Iron Range identity, 7, 12, 14–15, 52, 76, 109, 115, 118–27, 136–37; and masculinity, 102; and mass culture, 3, 5, 109; and whiteness, 134, 183–84n46. See also American nationalism; Americanization American Legion, 84 American nationalism, 17, 19, 76, 82, 95, 101, 106–11, 116, 133, 135–37,

139, 163–64n4; and Independence Day, 135, 179n36 American way of life, 136, 138 American work ethic, 96 Americanization, 2, 11–12, 76, 82, 85, 88, 92, 95–96, 109, 114, 168n25, 54, 190–91n27, 206n99, 206–7n103, 209n120; and middle-class norms, 33, 96, 114; and mining companies, 76 Americanization Day, 1915, 88–89 Anderson, Benedict, 177n29 Anderson, Mary, 54, 193n48 Anglo-conformism/Anglo-conformity, 34, 47, 76, 81–82, 92, 98, 103, 125, 206n99, 207n103 anticommunism, 136 Anti-Federalists and Independence Day, 32, 180n39, 181n40 antiradical nationalism, 69–70, 76–77, 79–81, 95, 98, 100, 106–11, 116–18, 128, 136–37 antiradicalism and churches, 98 antiunion strategies, 7, 76, 80–81, 86–87, 112 assimilation, 2, 54, 82, 88, 90, 95–96 Atlantic City, NJ, 154 Australian ballot, 212n15 Austria, 59, 150 Austrian Society, 51 Aurora, MN, 23, 67, 75–76, 92, 104, 119, 121, 131–33, 137, 142, 145–49, 152, 155, 160, 188n14, 190–91n27, 209n115, plates 1–3 Aurora’s Centennial celebration, 160; and parade, plates 7 and 8

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Index Babcock, Barbara, 171n6 Bakhtin, M. M., 25–26, 70, 174n16 “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory,” 219n10 Bavarian Alps, 157 beauty queens. See queens Beck, Susan, 190–91n27, 197n75 beer, family image of, 154 Benson, A. L., 78 Bernard, John T., 127 Berts, Shelly, 154 Biwabik, 16, 42–45, 51, 54–56, 59–61, 64–65, 67–68, 71–72, 74, 79, 88, 95, 98, 104, 118, 120, 122, 124, 128, 130–31, 137, 140–43, 147–50, 152–55, 157–59, 188n14, 190–91n27, 198–99n5, 204n76, plate 1; and Bavarian theme, 157–58 Biwabik City Council, 157 Biwabik Clown Band, 149, 158–59, plate 6 Biwabik High School Band, 153 Biwabik parade, 170n40, plate 2 Biwabik Times, 45, 51, 69–72, 74, 79, 88, 99, 122, 125–26, 140, 145, 147, 152–53, 156, 202n56, 202n57 Biwabik’s Centennial Independence Day celebration, 158 Black Coal Miners in America, 220n29 black immigrants. See new immigrants black towns, 48 blackface and festive culture, 21–22, 30, 173n13 blacklisting, 81, 87 Bob Dylan Days, 2 Bolka, Frank, 131–32, 145–46 bonfires, 33, 176n26, 178n33 Boston, 176n26 bourgeois standards and Independence Day. See class: and American identity; middle-class values Braudel, Fernand, 170n41 breaking windows, holiday custom of, 28, 175n24, 176n25 brewery wagons, 92 British, 167n20

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button box, 166n11 button box bands, 6 California culture 153 callithumpian parades, 5, 16, 27, 56–57, 63–65, 67, 72, 104, 116, 120–21, 123, 137, 141, 144, 147, 149–50, 155–58, 190–91n27, 194–95n53, 196–97n74, 197n75; and Upper Peninsula of Michigan, 195n54; and central Pennsylvania, 165n9; discontinued in Biwabik, 157 Canada, 103, 125 Canadians, 39, 167n20, 213–14n28 Canton location, 40 capitalism and corruption, 85 Captain Pengilly, 42 carnival, 12, 63–64, 95; and class, 12, 25, 29, 56, 82, 132, 142, 169n30, 184n47; and cross dressing, 9, 23, 25, 27, 149–50, 159, 172n6, 173n14, 179n36, 221–22n63; and demise, 13, 31, 35, 173n11, 179n36; and disorder, 11, 13, 23, 25, 32, 35, 64, 186n53; and inversions, 13, 21–22, 25–26, 28–30, 56, 64–65, 70, 73, 84, 142, 155, 159, 161, 188n14, 194–95n53, 196–97n74, 199n10; and laughter, 23, 26, 64, 70, 72–73, 155, 173n11, 174n16, 175n24, 197n77; and popular radicalism, 12, 22, 26–27, 35, 70, 173n12, 185n51; as a celebration style, 11, 19, 28, 90, 159, 161, 197n77 carnivalesque, 2, 5, 17, 23, 27, 29, 33, 35–36, 172n6, 56, 92, 108, 159, 161 Castile soap, 90 Catholics, 33, 184–85n49, 190n26 celebration in the “proper style,” 55 chain migration, 9 Chambers, Clarke, 75, 85, 99, 213–14n28 charivari, 19, 27, 175n23, 196–97n74 check forging, 41 Chicago, IL, 77 Chicago location, 79 Chippewa. See Ojibway

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Index Chisholm, MN, 42, 84, 119–20, 188n11, 188–89n15 chopsticks factory plan, 10, 167–68n22 Christmas misrule, 194–95n53 churches and ethnic segregation, 50 Cina, Fred, 145 City Tavern, 19, 20 civil religion, 31, 33, 35, 108, 177–78n30, 178n36 Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 113, 120 Cleveland, OH, 139 clown bands, 5–6, 65, 142, 149, 158–59 clowns and clowning, 23, 25, 64–65, 142, 149, 158–59, 172n6, 179n36 class: and American identity, 7, 14, 149; and classless society myth, 3, 109, 111, 186–87n1; defined, 14; and hostilities, 21–22, 26, 46–48, 50–51, 68, 70, 75, 82–83, 85, 173n12, 184n47; and Independence Day, 3, 84, 99, 134, 173n12, 183–83n44, 184n47, 196n72; and inversions, 13, 26, 28, 84, 176–77n27, 177n28, 194–95n53; on the Iron Range, 83; and mining, 7, 46–47, 50, 85. See also working class clothing, Sunday best, 33, 192n44 codes of behavior on Independence Day, 84, 204n76 Cohen, Lizabeth, 110, 214n33 Cold War, 136 Coleraine, MN, 94, 115 Colletti, Mario, 119–21, 197n47, 206–7n103 commercialization: and agency, 157; and Independence Day, 11, 35, 44–45, 95, 123, 133, 143, 151, 157, 185–86n52; and queen contests, 156 Commission of Public Safety, 100 communism, 109, 136–37; in Europe, 95 Communist Party. See American Communist Party community on the Iron Range, 40–41, 44, 46, 48, 50–51, 54, 70, 81, 84, 97–98, 102, 118–28, 148 company stores, 187n8

company towns, 41, 43, 56–57, 74, 188n13 Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), 110, 114 consensus values, 135–38 Constitution, 96; ratification of, 32 consumer engineering, 110 consumerism, identity/ideology, 2, 5, 110–11, 133, 138, 140, 152–53, 164n4, 170–71n42 Continental Congress, 19 contract system of wages, 75 Cornish, 167n20, 39 Corpus Christi Day, 66 Council for American Immigrants, 88 counterfeiting, 41 cross dressing, 9, 23, 25, 27, 149–50, 157–58, 172n6, 173n14, 221–22n63 cultural texts, 17 cultural tolerance and the Iron Range, 15 Cuyuna range, 8, 67, 81, 87, 191n32 Davis, Natalie, 196–97n74 Davis, Susan, 184n47, 185n50 de Certeau, 170–71n42 Declaration Day, 62, 193–94n49 Declaration of Independence, 21, 24, 29–30, 39, 56, 58, 62, 95–96, 121, 126, 134, 177n29, 177–78n30, 178n33, 183n45 democracy and capitalism linked, 133, 136 Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, 127 Democratic Party, 113, 125, 212n15 Democratic-Republicans, 32, 181n40, 182–83n44 Dennis, Matthew, 177n29, 192n44 Department of Homeland Security, 160–61 deportations of radicals, 81, 100 Depression (the Great Depression), 106–30, 136, 138–39, 211n6 Depression of 1893–96, 77 Depression prizes on Independence Day, 122 deradicalization of Independence Day, 13, 95, 101, 135–36 deradicalization of labor, 134–36 Deschler, Charles, 177–78n30

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Index Detroit, MI, 139 diversity on the Iron Range, 38, 47, 51, 56, 59 documentary photographs, 9 domesticity in popular culture, 154 dominant culture, 4, 13, 33 dominant norms, 4, 12, 17 drunkenness and drinking, 34–35, 38, 41, 44, 54, 59–60, 84, 92, 101, 104, 121, 125, 146, 150–51, 187n4, 188n14, 188n15, 193–94n49; and being “rolled,” 41, 44 duct tape and plastic and bioterrorist attacks, 161 Duluth, MN, 56–57, 61–62, 87, 90, 121, 196n71, 198n3 Duluth Evening Herald, 193–94n49 Duluth News Tribune, 63, 90–91 Duluth politicians, 88 Durkheim, Emil, 172n6 Dylan, Bob, 1–2, 163n2 dynamite, 38, 59–60, 92 early town conditions, 42 education on the Iron Range, 97–98 effigies, 22, 28, 30, 176–77n27 Eight Hours for What We Will, 193–94n49 Eino, 10, plate 8 “Eino Ben Loggin’,” 161, plate 8 El Paso, TX, 121 election days, 27–28 Electric Prunes, 154 elites, 21–22, 26, 28–29, 32, 82, 173n11, 175n23, 177n28, 177n29; and social control, 65, 75, 179n36, 182–83n44, 184n47, 185n50; on the Iron Range, 38, 40, 65, 68, 75, 82, 84, 99, 112 Ely, MN, 42–43, 51–52, 56–57, 59, 64–65, 94, 98, 119, 149 Ely Cornet Band, 57 Ely Iron Home, 51, 57–58 Ely Klown Band, 149, 159 Ely Times, 58 Ely’s Grande Parade, 51 emergent and residual cultural elements, 219n2

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England, 39, 64 Erie Preliminary Taconite Plant, 131, 143 Essling, Vic, 213–14n28 ethnic conflict/rivalries, 40, 46, 50, 191n31 ethnic dances, 58 ethnic foods, 5 ethnic groups, 1, 9, 47–48, 50, 72 ethnic loyalty to America, 99 ethnic music, 6 ethnic segregation, lack of, 46 ethnic succession, 167n20 ethnicity, defined, 14 ethnicity of origin and American identity, 12, 15–16, 72, 134, 194n52 eugenics, 89 European festive culture/traditions, 5, 16, 23, 37, 57, 117, 125, 142, 155, 158, 171–72n1, 187n6, 199n10 Europeans, 48, 50, 81–83, 99, 103, 112, 206–7n130 Eveleth, MN, 48, 60, 64, 75, 89, 106–7, 121, 123, 124, 140, 142, 149, 190–91n27, 213–14n28, 220–21n44 Eveleth Clarion, 121, 123 Eveleth Clown Band, 142, 149, 159, plate 5 Eveleth News, 144 Farmer-Labor Party, 127 farming, 7, 87 Father Knows Best, 148 fatherhood in popular culture, 148 Federalists and Independence Day, 32–33, 180n39, 181n40, 181n49, 182n43, 182–83n44 feminists, 154 fights, 41, 43–44, 46, 84, 196n71 Finnish Temperance Society, 51 Finns, 27, 47–48, 46, 50, 53, 72, 86–87, 92; and Finland, 59; and Finnish flag, 161; and Finnish language, 58; and Finnish Socialist clubs, 86; and Finnish Socialist halls, 72, 79, 86; and folk culture, 150, 161, plate 8

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Index firecrackers, 33–35, 38, 45, 60–61, 90, 92, 119, 194n52, 196n71, 205n95, 207n104 Fireside Chats, 108 fireworks, 25, 35, 39, 55, 57, 59, 62, 66–67, 92, 103, 122–23, 140–41, 152, 178n33, 185–86n52, 205 n.95, 206n99, 223n83 firing the anvil, 61 Fiske, John, 4, 149, 161, 169n30, 170–71n42 Fitger’s Beer, 44 flight attendant. See stewardess Flynn, Helen Gurley, 68, 80 folk culture, 2, 14, 218n2, plate 2 Foner, Philip, 75, 114 forest fires, 42, 52, 188n11 Fourth of July, see Independence Day French den, 43 frontier, 34, 37, 39, 41, 56, 59, 186–87n1; civilization of, 39; and democracy, 37, 186–87n1 Fugina, Peter, 54, 83, 104, 116 124, 160, 202n59, 206–7n109, 209n115 Gainey, Ellen, 85, 92 Garland, Judy, 1 Gawboy, Carl, 53–54, 166n16, 193n45 gender inversions, 27, 172n6, 149–50. See also cross dressing; carnival; inversions gender restrictions and mining, 191–92n34 genteel Fourth of July celebrations, 35, 60, 62, 90, 193–94n49, 196n71, 205n95 George III, 30 Germans, 83, 209n120 Gerstle, Gary, 96, 109, 205n92, 214n33 Gilbert, MN, 106, 116, 118, 124, 127–28, 190–91n27 Gilbert Herald, 107, 117, 140 Gilje, Paul, 175n23 Glassberg, David, 185–86n52 “Glorious Fourth of July,” 38, 51, 102 government and business alliance, 143 governmental and industrial suppression, 74

Grand Federal Procession, 33, 182n43 Grande Parade, Tower, 57, 85 Great Calithumpian Parade, 157–59 Great Depression. See Depression Great Red Scare. See Red Scare Grebenc, Diana, 131–33 Greeni, Joe, 198–99n5 gunfire on Independence Day, 60 gunpowder shortage, 140–41 Guy Fawkes Day. See Pope’s Day Hall, Gus, 1, 215n36 Hank’s Bar, 188n14 Harney, Robert, 15–16, 159 Hatch, Edward, 121 Haymarket Square bombing, 77 Haywood, Bill, 68 hegemony, 2, 10, 33, 82, 97, 103, 165n6, 169n30, 172n6, 184n47, 194–95n53. See also dominant culture; mass culture Hibbing, MN, 2, 44, 48, 64, 85, 88, 101–3, 113, 120, 141, 206n99 Hibbing Daily News, 101, 103–4 Hibbing Daily Tribune, 120 Hibbing Safety Council, 141 Hibbing Tribune, 191n31, 85 high hair, and debate, 21–22, 172n8; and parody, 19, 20–23, 27, 172n8 Higham, John, 14, 82, 212n15 Hobsbawm, Eric, 218n2, 221n60 hockey in Eveleth, 213–14n28 holidays on the Iron Range, 3, 44 Holman, Estelle, 145 Holquist, Michael, 18 Homeland Security. See Department of Homeland Security Houtala, Francis, 6, 119 Hughes, Charles, 79 Hull Rust Mahoning Mine, 1, 129 Huntington, Long Island, 30 identity. See American identity; Iron Range identity; ethnicity of origin ideology of consumerism. See consumerism identity/ideology

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Index immigrants/immigration, 2, 34, 166–67n17, 167n19, 184–85n49; and assimilation, 54; and diversity on the Iron Range, 4; and “imagined community,” 171n29, 177n29; and immigration restriction, 81, 97, 205n92; and Independence Day, 5–6, 115–18; and radicalism, 77 Immigration and Naturalization Service, 81 Independence Day, and activities, 25, 52–54, 56, 59, 62, 71, 93, 104, 106–7, 116–18, 133,139–42, 149–55, 185–86n52; and alcohol, 34, 43–44; and American foods, 6, 163n1; and American identity, 2, 51, 54, 128; and carnivalesque style, 2, 5, 17, 29–30, 35, 56, 64–65, 72, 142, 149–50, 155, 199n10; and cancellation of celebration, 1916, 67, 69–70, 74, 79–80, 88–89, 95, 99–100; and commercialism, 11, 104, 133, 143, 152–55; and community, 10, 51, 53–54, 191n31; as cultural text, 17; and Declaration of Independence, 21, 24, 29, 30, 56, 62, 96; decorations, 44–45; and discrimination, 182–83n44, 183–84n46; disorder, 10, 30; and ethnic music, 15, plates 5–6; and family emphasis, 116, 118–28; and freedom, 6, 28, 36, 54, 57, 60, 64, 67, 84–85, 92, 95–96, 102, 104, 108, 118, 126–27, 130, 182–83n44; and juxtapositions of modern and traditional elements, 133, 148, 221n60, 221n61; and middle-class values, 2–4, 11–12, 35, 56, 62, 88, 92, 97, 108, 154, 165n6; and noise, 34; and parades, 6, 10, 15, 25, 65, 197n75; and planning committees, 50, 59, 65–66, 83, 89, 104, 204n76; and popular culture, 10, 62, 218n2; and popularity, 11, 18, 30, 35, 95, 120–21, 155; and privatization of leisure, 2; and radical roots, 2; and religion, 183–84n46; and respectable style, 29; and rough games, 5, 12, 52, 92–93; and rowdy

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style, 29–30; and standardization, 2, 34, 88, 92, 99, 107, 184n47, 205n95; and traditional foods, 5–6 industrial discipline, 74, 76, 98, 201n38 industrial warfare, 69, 74 invented traditions, 131, 218n2, 221n59 Invention of Tradition, 218n2, 221n59 Ireland/Irish, 39, 221–22n63 iron ore output, 132, 189n20 iron ore tax, 10, 97, 113 Iron Range, 1; alliance of workers and big business, 109, 131–34, 143, 145–46; and animals, 8; and churches, 47; and climate, 7, 45, 166n14; and demographics, 9, 39, 41, 146, 186–87n1; and dialect, 27; and diversity, 7, 9, 11, 39; and economy, 10, 23, 96, 128, 133–34, 142–43, 147, 155–59; and early sanitation, 46; and family life, 47; and foliage, 7; and geography, 7; and insects, 7; and Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB), 157; and isolation, 8, 18, 41, 66, 70, 96, 103, 108–9, 111, 128, 137, 186–87n1, 211n6; and lumber industry, 166n16; and ore discovered, 7; and politicians, 41, 78, 84, 98; and rupture of alliance of workers and big business; and small towns, 46, 52; and stereotyping, 26; and subculture, 47, 52, 115; and underground mining, 167n20; and women, 50–52 Iron Range Research Center, 188–89n15 iron ranges, northeastern Minnesota, 8 Italians, 50, 66, 87, 92, 142 Italy, 39 IWW, 67–68, 78–78, 80–81, 86, 198n3; and arrests of IWW leaders, 198n3 Jamnick, Dorothy, 119 Jefferson, Thomas, 33, 177n29 Jerry, Professor J., 65 Johnson, Janet, 145 Kammen, 163–64n4 Kantele, 166n11

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Index Keewatin, MN, 126 Kershall, Matt, 48 Kinney, MN, 54, 193n48 Klepp, Susan, 21–22, 173n11 Korean War, 143 Krofe, 6 Ku Klux Klan, 113, 118 labor activism, 47, 67–70, 74, 76–81, 86, 100–101, 109–12, 114–16, 136, 138, 198n3, 201n57, 203n60, 205n92, 209n120, 214n33, 219n19; and Independence Day, 79; and labor stability on the Iron Range, 138–39; underground union activism on the Iron Range, 101, 112, 114, 139, 202n59, 203n60, 212n15, 214n33. See also union organization on the Iron Range Labor Day, 185n51, 207–8n109 labor shortages, 8, 48, 167n17 labor unrest, 67–69, 77, 79 Laitala, Lynn Maria, 49, 51, 96, 119 Lake Superior excursions, 90 Lambert, Dwight, 140 Landis, Paul, 44, 166n16, 187n4 Larson, Helen, 118, 120 lawlessness, 41 Leary, James, 10, 197n76 Lee, Richard Henry, 21 Lewis, Ronald, 220n29 Liberace, 148 liberty cap, 31, 33, 179–80n37, 181n40, 181n43, 183n45 liberty pole, 29, 30–31, 33, 179–80n37, 181n43, 183n45 liberty tree, 31, 179–80n37, 181n40, 181n43, 183n45 Life magazine, 111 Lipsitz, George, 73, 149, 221n61 liquor licenses, 43–44 Litwicki, Ellen, 88, 185n51 localism, 163–64n4, 178n33 locations, 40, 46 loggers/lumberjacks, 8, 41, 44, 166n16 Lone Ranger, 148 Loyalty Day, 99

“making the eagle scream,” 62, 83, 193–94n48, 196n71 Mariucci, John, 1 Mary’s Bar, 54 masks and masking, 28, 64, 175n24 mass culture, 2–4, 110, 131, 133, 149, 155, 159, 163–64n4, 197–98n79, 204n79, 211n6, plate 2; and alternative interpretations, 4, 17; and appropriation, 5, 116; cultural homogenization, 4, 35, 107–8, 111, 164n4, 165n6; and gender representations, 134, 143, 149–50, 153–55; in juxtaposition with European festive culture, 117, 158–59, 219n2, 221nn60–61; and mass amusements, 185n51; and mass-mediated popular culture, 2, 15, 18; and resistance to, 5, 13, 18 mass immigration. See immigration mass media and influence on the Iron Range, 106–9, 110–11, 116, 133, 147–49, 155, 161, 211n6 Mavis, Helmi, 127 May Day, 185n51, 207–8n109 McCarthyism, 95, 116, 136 McHale, Kevin, 1 McKinley, MN, 123, 137 McKinley volunteer fire department group, 137 Menard, Russell, 115 men’s Bathing Beauty contest, 155–56 Merritt, MN, 7, 37, 38–39, 42, 45, 54, 59, 187n11 Merritt Hotel, 55 Mesaba Ore, 89 Mesaba Range, 38–39, 45, 55, 193n49 Mesabi Daily News, 122 Mesabi Range, 8–9, 37, 40–42, 44, 46, 48–50, 52, 64, 66, 88, 114, 166n16, 167n17, 186–87n1, 188n11, 189n20, 206n99 Mesabi strike of 1907, 85–87 methodology, 16 Mickey Mouse, 164n4 Mickey the Mouse, 116 middle class on the Iron Range, 40, 219n2

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Index middle-class values, 2–4, 11–12, 33, 40, 55, 64, 82, 88, 92, 94, 97, 103, 108, 128, 134, 139, 165n6, 186n50, 206n99, 206–7n103 mine deputies, 80 mine guards, 68–69 mining: and camps, 40, 46; and lack of benefits, 47, 68, 74–75, 85–86, 97; and mine bosses, 75; and recruiting, 7–9, 76, 167n19, 220n29; and safety, 41, 66, 68, 74–75, 85–86; and shutdowns, 113, 132. mining company/companies: and Independence Day, 131–36, 204n76; and mining company police, 68, 74, 76, 80; mining managers, 38–39, 41, 47, 83, 118; and oppression, 26, 41, 67, 74, 76, 80, 86; and town politics, 74, 118–19, 212n15 Minneapolis, MN, 80, 216n61 Minnesota Brewers Association, 154 Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party, 115 Minnesota Historical Society, 17 Minnesota Iron Range. See Iron Range Miss America, 143, 154 Miss America Pageant, 143, 148, 154 Miss Aurora, 155 Miss Biwabik, 147–48 Miss Biwabik Pageant and Talent Show, 154 Miss Minnesota, 154 Miss Taconite as mass culture symbol, 131–36, 145, 148–49, 154 Miss Taconite I, 131–36 Miss Taconite II, 135 Miss Taconite III, 135, 146 Mr. American and the Ethnics, 6, 15, plate 3 Mr. Biwabik, 155–56 mixed marriages, 50 mob rule, elite fears of, 21, 32, 73–74, 40, 47, 73–74, 80, 95, 175n24, 176n26, 179n36, 193n49 “Mobilization of Urban Immigrants,” 212n15 mock coronations, 29 mock elections, 29

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“Moia Decla,” 142 monopoly capital/capitalism, 67–68, 72, 74, 76, 84, 109, 133, 136 Mountain Iron, 15 Mukerji, Chandra, 163–64n4 multiple-day programs, 118 “My wife is drunk and I have to take her home,” 142 national consolidation, 138, 140 national culture, influence of, 55, 66, 69, 96, 101–2, 104, 106–17, 125–28, 130, 133, 135–40, 154, 205n92, 211n6, 212n15 Native Americans, 8, 52–53, 166n16; as Iron Rangers, 53–54, 56, 192n44, 193n45, 197n76; and reservations, 53–54 native-born Americans, 48, 55, 64 nativism, 34, 48, 77–78, 81, 83, 85, 89–90, 95, 97, 99–100, 112, 118, 185n50, 191n31 Nemanic, Douglas, 146, 152, 167–68n22, 203n62 Nemanic, Frank, 75–76, 92, 119, 125, 127, 139, 163n3, 166n15, 202n102, 206–7n103, 207–8n109 New Deal, 97, 106–10, 113, 115–16, 127, 211n6, 212n15, 214n30, 214n33 new immigrants, 48, 50, 82–83, 112, 190n26, 190–91n27, 206–7n103 New World vs. Old World culture, 25–26, 66 New Year’s Eve/Day, 27–28 New York, NY, 30, 139, 177–78n30 Newman, Simon, 21–22, 176n25, 182–83n44, 183n45 newspaper biases, 39, 44, 48, 69, 72, 74, 76, 79, 177–78n3, 201n56 newspapers and respectable styles of celebration, 181n40, 187n4 Nike, 164n4 9/11, 161 1916 strike, 67–70, 73, 78, 80–81, 95, 101, 139, 198n3, 198–99n5, 202n57, 203n60, 203n62

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Index noise on Independence Day, 34–35, 38–39, 54, 59–61, 90, 101, 171–72n1, 178n33, 194n52, 196n72 northern Europeans. See Europeans; old immigrants Northwest Airlines, 10, 23 Norwegians, 53 Oath of Allegiance, 106–7 Oestreicher, Richard, 110 Ojibway (Chippewa), 51–54, 192n44, 197n76; and Independence Day customs, 192n44 old immigrants, 48, 82, 85, 95, 190n26, 190–91n27 Old World customs and values, 6, 12–14, 19, 26, 30, 33, 36, 45, 56, 66, 84, 161, 176–77n27; and visiting traditions, 27, 52, 62–63, 196–97n74, 197n75, 92, 95, 116, 119–20, 141 Old World vs. New World metaphor of two worlds, 37, 186–87n1, 207n108 old-fashioned Fourth of July, 186n53, 62 Oliver Mining Company, 77, 98 One Hundred Percent Americanism, 82 Ontario, Canada, 126 open pit mining, 85, 189n20 open-ballot elections, 75, 112 oral history and ethnography interviews, 17 oral traditions, 42 Orange Bowl, 220–21n44 orations, 33–34, 55, 58, 62, 72, 80, 88, 92, 104, 121–22, 130, 178n33, 194n52, 209n120 ore taxes. See iron ore taxes Osama Bin Ladin, 161, plate 8 packsackers, 146 padrone, 9, 167n18 Palmer, Frank, 87 Parks, John, 137 parody, 12–13, 17, 23–28, 64, 70, 73, 104, 116, 142, 150–51, 159, 183–84n46, 184n47; and prostitute, 21–22, 171n4, 173n11; of beauty contests, 155–56; of military, 142

pasties, 6, 165n10 paternalism. See welfare capitalism patriarchy and patriarchal society, 22, 73, 148, 154 patriotism, 10, 18, 27, 29, 30, 38, 45, 60, 62, 72, 80, 84, 88–89, 100, 109, 126–28, 139, 172n8, 194n52, 214n33; and consumerism linked, 133, 138, 140, 152 Patriot’s Day, 62 Paulisich, Hank, 188n14 Paulucci, Jeno, 1 Pavelich, Mark, 1 Pazzelli, Louis, 142, 220–21n44 Pepsi Challenge Cross Country Ski Race, 158 Perrin, Solon, 89 Philadelphia, PA, 33, 86, 99, 184n97, 186n53 plebeians, 22; and culture, 172n8, 176n26 pluralistic integration, 14 politicians, 75–76, 78, 84, 89, 97–98, 113, 118–19, 124–25, 209n115 Ponikvar, Veda, 84, 119, 127 Pope’s Day, 27–28, 175n23, 175n24, 176n26 popular culture, 3, 10, 13, 153–55, 163–64n4, 169n30, 170–71n42 popular radicalism, 11–12, 22, 24, 25, 28, 30–31, 34, 36, 54, 66, 72, 101, 104, 161, 170–71n42, 173n12, 181n40, 182n43, 182–83n44, 183n45 porketta, 5–6 potica, 5–6 Powers, Victor, 113 powwows, 52–53, 56, 192n44, 193n47, 197n76 print culture of the elites, 22 privitization of leisure, 2, 90, 95, 165n6, 193n49 Prohibition, 34, 102–4, 121, 125–26; and parody of, 104 Progressive reform, 34–35, 60, 88–90, 99–100, 103, 109, 194n52, 205n95, 206n99, 206–7n103. See also social control; social reform

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Index Protestant work ethic, 110 Protestantism, 82 psychedelic (hippie) culture, 154 public disorder, suppression of, 175n23, 176n26 public schools on the Iron Range, 97 Putzel, Joanne, 145 queens and queen contests, 131–37, 143, 145–49, 154–55 Rabelais and His World, 18 radical spirit of the Fourth of July, 10, 36, 72, 95, 100, 101, 104, 116, 128, 161 radicalism, 2, 18, 66–69, 72–73, 77, 79, 83–84, 95–96, 100–102, 127, 134, 136, 198n3, 214n33, 219n19; and demise on the Iron Range, 116, 134, 136, 138; suppression of, 70, 77, 104, 109 radio, influence of, 106–8 Red Cross, 99 Red Scare, 69–70, 80, 96, 100–101, 104, 109, 116, 136 regional subculture of the Iron Range, 2, 5, 8, 14, 41, 48, 51–52, 54, 59, 66, 71, 81, 86, 94, 101–2, 104, 113, 115, 120, 122, 125–26, 141, 150, 158 regionalism 2, 7, 52, 137, 164n4 Reimann, Lewis, 187n6, 192n44, 195n54 Republican Party, 33, 181–82n41, 183n45, 212n15 Republican simplicity tradition, 19, 31 Republicanism, 133 respectable vs. rowdy Independence Day styles, 29–31, 34, 40, 55–59, 61, 92, 177n28, 179n36, 179–80n37, 190–91n27, 192n44, 194n52 respectability in public, 56, 60, 64, 103, 175n24, 190–91n27; on Independence Day, 27, 186n53; and solemnity and sobriety, 26, 30, 33–34 Rethinking Popular Culture, 163–64n4 reunion tradition on Independence Day, 5, 119, 121, 128, 152, 216n61

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Revolutionary Army, 20 Revolutionary War, 29–30, 72, 96 Ridge, Tom, 160 ritual styles, 2, 175n23, 175n24, 177n28 Roediger, David, 190–91n27 “Roll Out the Barrel,” 142 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 106, 108, 113, 128 Rosenzweig, Roy, 193–94n49 rough games and Independence Day, 5, 12, 35, 38–39, 52, 54–55, 67, 92–93, 124, 126, 187n6 rough music, 19, 22, 27, 56, 64, 171–72n1, 176–77n27, 194–95n53 rowdy Independence Day style, 37, 40, 55–57, 59–60, 82, 90, 101, 104, 107, 123, 126, 128, 193–94n49 royalty, symbolic, 133–34 Safe and Sane Fourth of July, 34, 60, 89, 194n52, 205n95, 206n99, 206n102; and boating, 206n99 Saint Nicholas, 194–95n53 Saint Patrick’s Day, parody of, 221–22n63 Saint Paul, 80 Saint Urho’s Day, 221–22n63 saloons, 38, 41–44; and ethnic segregation, 44, 46; and owners, 41, 44 Santino, Jack, 221–22n63 satire, 5, 12, 22, 25, 73, 84, 184n47 Schmidt Beer, 157 Seattle, WA, 86 second-generation on the Iron Range, 101, 104 Seeley, Fred M., 45, 48, 51, 60–61 segregation, 47, 85 self-parody, 25–27, 64 Serbians, 40, 189n23 sex ratios, 189n23 Shaw, Peter, 22, 173n12 Sherek, David (Mose), 155–58 Sherek, Stanley “Pye,” 149–50, 157 Shriners, 25 Sirjamaki, John, 46, 50, 112, 212n15 Skimmington, 19

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Index Skuil, Mary Ann, 51 Slovenia, 39 Slovenian music, 142 Slovenians, 50, 53, 66, 72, 80, 118, 139, 149, 189n23 Smiley, Pat, 154 social control, 40, 60, 88 social criticism and social commentary in festive culture, 5, 11–12, 21–23, 25, 73, 84, 199n10 social reform, 54, 60, 88–89, 109, 194n52, 194–95n53, 205n95, 206n99, 206–7n103 socialism, 47, 67, 70, 72, 76–78, 80, 86, 88, 109, 189–90n24, 214n33; and economic decline, 77, 109; and red flag, 80 socialist halls, 47, 72, 79, 116 Socialist Party, 77 Soul of the Wobblies, 198n3 South Slavs, 87 Sparta, MN, 64, 94 Sparta clown band, 65 special deputies and mining companies, 69 spy networks and mining companies, 68–69, 76, 80, 87, 112 squatters’ locations, 46 Stallybrass, Peter, 169n30 Stam, Robert, 169n30 “Star-Spangled Banner,” 89, 106 stewardess, 23, 25–26, 174n20, plate 4 Stipanovich, Joseph, 187n8, 189n23 street festivities, 27–29, 33, 67, 84, 151, 174n16, 176n26, 176–77n27, 177n28, 177n29, 179n36, 181n40, 182–83n44, 184n47 strikes. See labor activism “The Stripper,” 159 suffragettes, 71–73 suicides 41, 204n78 Sunday best, 94, 126 survival strategies on the Iron Range, 112, 120–21, 149, 157–59, 221n60, 221n61 Swedes, 50, 53 Swedish Society, 51 syncretism on the Iron Range, 5

Taconite, 132, 146–47; and Taconite Amendment, 147 Tamarack Iron Range Collection, 17 Tapp, James, 140 temperance, 34, 43, 60, 103 Ten Commandments, 90 Three Iron Mining Towns, 44, 166n16, 187n4, 204n78 torchlight nightshirt parade, 121 Toivo, 161 Toivo’s Airbus group, 9–11, 23, 25–27, 160–61, plates 1, 4, 7, and 8 Toivo’s Homeland Security float, plate 7 Toivo’s Unit Command, plate 8 Tory, 20 tourism, 152, 155–58 Tower, MN, 166n14, 43, 48, 56–59, 65, 127, 188–89n15 town rivalries, 52, 125, 147 trains on Independence Day, 52, 59, 62, 94 Travers, Len, 168n24, 177n28, 179n36, 181n40 Tresca, Carlo, 68, 80 tricolored cockade, 181n40 Turner, Fredrik, Jackson, 37, 186n1 Twin Cities, 216n61 Un-American, 76, 136 Uncle Sam, 10, 65 Unified Units, 81, 202n59, 112 union activism. See labor activism union organization on the Iron Range, 136, 138–39 United Nations (U.N.), 84 United States Communist Party. See Communist Party United States Steel Corporation, 41, 68, 74, 77, 115, 204n79 Upper Peninsula of Michigan, 9–10, 39, 53, 165n9, 165n10, 174n19, 187n6, 192n44, 195n54, 221–22n63 urban order, 13, 55, 64, 95, 184n47, 193–94n49, 194–95n53 Urick, Carl, 75, 118, 123, 204n76, 206n103 uses and gratifications theories, 164n4

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Index Vecoli, Rudolph, 44, 59, 190n26 Vermilion Iron Journal, 56, 194–95n53 Vermilion Range, 8–9, 43, 46, 48–50, 52–53, 66, 81–82, 96, 166n16, 167n17, 191n32 vernacular culture. See folk culture Veterans of Foreign Wars, 142 Victorian fashions, 90 Victorian values, 11, 150, 205n95 Virginia, MN, 45, 59, 64, 80, 85, 89, 122, 125, 131, 187n11, 190–91n27, 202n59 Virginia Sentinel, 44, 188n14 visiting tradition on Independence Day, 27, 52 volunteer fire departments and Independence Day, 66, 84, 193–94n49 Wagner Act (1935), 114, 116, 212n15 wake-up rituals, 5, 57, 59, 84, 92, 121, 185–86n52 Waldstreicher, David, 22, 177n28, 177–78n29, 179–80n37 Walla Walla, WA, 73 Washington, George, 149 Washington administration, 32 war bonds, 140 Washington’s Birthday, 181–82n41 Watts, George, 131 welfare capitalism, 76–77 West Duluth, 62, 90 West Superior, 62, 90 Western Federation of Miners, 85 Whigs, 19, 20 white immigrants. See old immigrants

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white towns, 48 whiteness and Americanization, 82–83, 134, 190–91n27 Wiehnachtsfest, 158 Williams, Raymond, 133, 219n10 Wilson, Woodrow, 79, 99 Winters, Donald, 79, 198n3 women, and class formation, 47, 50; and community development, 47, 49–51; and Independence Day, 149, 173n11, 197–98n79; and intermarriage, 48, 50–51, 115, 124; and suffrage, 72–73; and women’s rights, 154; and work routines, 49–50; and the workplace, 138 Woods, Ray F., 143 Woody Woodpecker, 148 Woonsocket, RI, 96 work release system, 139 working class, and festive traditions, 34–35, 55, 63, 73, 102, 185n50; and identity, 2, 51; and populations, 3, 40, 184–85n49; and values, 4, 11, 38, 63–64, 132–34. See also class Works Progress Administration (WPA), 97, 113 World War I, 69, 79, 95–96, 100, 109, 209n120 World War II, 95, 106–9, 127–30, 132, 135, 137, 139, 140–43 “Yankee,” 50, 83, 85, 95, 112 Yarich, Francine, 145 youth emphasis on Independence Day, 121–24, 133