Spirit in Action

Workers vs Owners: Shafted

In Incident at the Bruce Mine Shaft, Stephen Ivancic uses historical fiction to highlight the real life issues around workers, unions, and opportunistic capitalists. Set in the iron mines of Northern Minnesota in the 1920s and focusing on the Finnish workers, some communist, some not, Stephen helps us to understand the dynamics of individualism, community, and power.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 03 May 2015
Audio Format:: other

[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service Of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. [music] Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song [music] I grew up in a working-class family Very aware of the importance of united labor unions as a force to balance the power of the owners. It's hard for many people today to imagine what it was like back when the situation with labor unions was much more tenuous than it is even now when unions are far declined from their heyday in the mid-1900s. Understanding our past and its implications for the present is so important in order to make a better future with fair wages and equal opportunity. So I'm pleased to welcome Stephen Avanchak, author of a new book, The Incident at the Bruce Mindshaft. It's historical fiction, chock full of people and events involved in the early 20th century struggles of the iron ore mine workers of northern Minnesota. I guarantee you'll learn a lot of lessons valuable to the workers' struggles of today. Right now, we go to the phones to speak to Stephen Avanchak. Stephen, I'm delighted to have you here today for Spirit in Action. Thank you, Mark. I'm glad to be here, too. I believe in transparency, so I want to say up front for all you listeners out there. Stephen and I have a special relationship. He's on the board of directors for Northern Spirit Radio. So not only has he been a friend for a number of years now, but he's actively involved in helping make the witness that Northern Spirit Radio, the kind of news and music that you get through Northern Spirit Radio, he makes it possible as part of the board. So thank you, Stephen, also for that work up front. Well, you're welcome, Mark. It's been a pleasure for me. I've learned a lot from you in the shows that you've done. I was kind of shocked when I found out that you were an author, because I didn't know that you were doing any writing. I knew some of the work that you'd done at various points in your life. How did you get to being a writer as in the incident at the Bruce Mindshaft? First of all, it was a big part of my life. I was raised in the area, and I was a steel worker for four years of my life before I went to education, so it always stuck with me. You're raised in it, my father worked in it, my grandfather worked in it, and even my mother, even though she's from Missouri, her relatives worked in the lead mines, and saw the beast of famous Missouri. So it's kind of in the blood you might say, Mark? So you did four years as a steel worker, and what does that mean that you were doing, actually? You could have been an accountant, I guess, for the steel workers. That's correct. Yeah, there's a variety of jobs. I think when I was a steel worker, there are 24 job classifications you can have. The jobs I did were more on the semi-skilled level. I was a crane operator, overhead crane operator, the position I left. I was what they called a sampler, where we go to the processing labs, where the rock is crushed to take up samples of various points in the process, so they could analyte, make sure there's enough iron ore in the content. And then I started off, there's everybody else that usually has a labor, and the open pit mine just was my start. There are proposals now for opening mines in this area of northern Minnesota, and quite controversial for many of us. Has there been a fallow period where there hasn't been much mining? How big is the interval where mining hasn't been a primary part of the economy there? It always has been. Market hasn't changed. Probably 20 years ago, they started a tourism venture with having people there for other reasons, but basically that's what drives the area, like a one industry town. A really big part of the book is dealing with laborers versus capitalists, the big mine owners, and the poor people. You said that the mining hasn't changed much, that it's been a subtle part of the economy there. Have labor disputes been a big part of the history as well? Yes, they have, and that's what got me interested in trying to write a novel that would go in that period where there were a lot of labor disputes, and play with a young lady in a young man named John Theron, and how do they live through this period? What do they think? To me, it was kind of like their 60s. I had my 60s, like their 60s. What do you mean when it's like your 60s? It's because that's when you got wild and free love and rock music, and I guess for Joe and Sarah in your book, I guess their 60s, free love equivalent is going in the sauna. Yeah, we didn't have that in the 60s here, but I was thinking maybe bigger terms in terms of national change taking place. The times they are changing is Bob Dylan kind of articulated, and it was from giving Minnesota where this novel is staged, it happens. I think we better sketch out the plot of the book. I don't want to give away too much of what goes on in the book, so you tell me when I should stop, but it takes place in the late 1920s. It does center around Joe and Sarah and their families, and a few other families that are all part of the community. McFarland, the sheriff, has certainly got a central part in it. It's taking place, as you said, around Hiving, Minnesota, and we're talking about a labor crisis, labor disputes that are going on, and you name the mining company. Is that a real mining company of the day? Yes, it is all for mining is. But that's somehow connected with Rockefeller, I guess, up the food chain. There's a lot of people connected with it, and once again, this is historical fiction, so I like to word Rockefeller because it's a well-known name. Andrew Carnegie is probably a name most people would relate to, and he was a part of the configuration too. Where Rockefeller came into is where the initial iron ore was found. It was found by a group of family called the Merit Brothers. And the Merit Brothers didn't have a lot of money, but they realized they had stumbled into quite a fine with the iron ore in the area, and the amounts of it in the purity of it. So they went to Rockefeller to get loans to build a railroad to haul the ore down to Lake Superior to ship it out. And the process of being loaned out to Rockefeller, they defaulted on loan theoretically in Rockefeller inherited a lot of the mineral rights, and it gets complicated like that. But one of the original companies that was there was Oliver Mining before everything was consolidated to US Steel by Andrew Carnegie. So this was a period where Oliver Mining, having such a principal place on the economic landscape, had a lot of sway, you know, in the book, you know, the company pays for the local school. So, you know, of course, people got to be appreciating that. And so you don't talk down. You're not supposed to bite the hand that feeds you. And they're viewed as who's feeding the people. But the finished people don't seem to have this attitude in the book. They don't seem to be quite as in awe of that. And why not? You know, that's a question that everybody's always asked and can't figure out. There's one book written on called "The Fin Factor" by Carl Ross, and he tries to explore that. He doesn't come to any strong conclusions other than the finished people who are more of a free thinker in terms of how they conducted their lives and their work. And nationalism wasn't a crucial issue to them. In fact, the finisher known for establishing a lot of what they call community centers wherever they went in the upper peninsula with the acres, they were up there in the northern Minnesota. They created their own cultures within the cultures that they ended up in. Or this wasn't true for the other ethnic groups. For example, my ethnic background, Slovenian, didn't create centers or community centers. The closest thing we would come to that would be a bar. That would be run by some of you bought a bar. And that's typically what was done in mining areas as bars were started. But the fins were the first to start community centers and temperate the variety in the area. And the temperate society, huh? Okay. That's correct. So again, there's this mining dispute that's going on. It's the company imposing its will. It doesn't want the labor unions to have too much strength. And you refer in the book regularly to the 1906 and 1916 mining strikes that were defeated, that were not successful in fighting against the company's dominion, I guess you'd say. Is there a point at which they are successful, that transformed it? I tend to think of the 1940s and the '50s as the heyday of labor unions. At what point did the miners come into their own? Well, I don't know if they ever came into their own market. That's what I would argue with the book and the way it's written. However, what happened because of the strikes is you might see it awakening the consciousness of the people in the area to think about how they were conducting their businesses and the mines. And for the Finnish people, they were the only group that really aligned with Bill Hayward, who was the leader and champion for the industrial workers of the world, which is known or has been kind of historically as anarchists and fairly chaotic, and they're going to rescind all their politics. And the IWW, which you refer to, people aren't so aware of or they don't tend to think that it even exists anymore, the Wobblies. I mean, back in the 1920s, though, the Wobblies were going great guns. I happen to know a couple of people who are actually members of the IWW. The international workers of the world is still around. If I'm not mistaken, a European coal who likes those kind of Wobbly folks. I mean, I think you're on the labor side of this argument, aren't you? Yes, I am. And for a particular reason, I think when we talk about union history, Mark, we often think of what I would call the skill traits, electricians and plumbers. What was unique about the IWW was that they were concerned about the common laborer. Nobody wanted to organize them. There were already plumber unions on the air and range at this time. They're electrician unions nationally. The crafts people, like the machinists, have their union. In fact, there are other areas, too, but what nobody would touch were the laborers, the people that were considered unskilled, the people that didn't speak English, and the people that didn't have formal education. And so Bill was the first, and probably the last, I would say in a real sense to try to organize that part of the labor force that probably has bad stereotypes. And Bill Hayward does show up as a character in "Incident at the Bruce Mine" shaft. When was his demise? Did he go on to be a great victor for those folks? Or I don't even know the history of what eventually happened with Bill Hayward. Well, after the 1916 strike that failed on the air and range, and he basically off the start of Virginia, Minnesota, and Hibbing, Minnesota, out of the finish, what you would call community centers or theaters there, would do his lecturing and teaching. He ended up in a murder trial for the Federation of Mines Union. He had run earlier in Colorado for supposedly shooting and murder someone, and then he skipped bail and went to Russia at that time in the Russian Revolution, and he ended up living there and dying there in Russia right after the period of this book. Probably the late 20s or early 30s. So, again, to come back to the central question, why did you write this book? Is it just so that we want to know about that chapter of history, or is there something more that you're hoping to do with this book? I would like to think there's something more. I think the book is just fun as a read. It's a good evening read. And what makes it fun, I think, is it's related to actual things that have happened in history, and it changed the names and the locations of the events that they have happened. Well, what I think it tells us is there's that constant interplay between the employer and the employee, or we could say the capitalist and the socialist. We could frame that in a lot of different ways. That always seems to be antagonistic. And so that's the first reason why it is the common theme that takes place. And then once I got closer to the story and realized that the basic face-offs were between, we might even say, like I said earlier, the educated and the uneducated, I began to see the dynamics of even something that's sociological, dealing with those who are educated versus those who are not, or the haves and the have-nots. And to me, the most recent issue of that, although it's much bigger than that, would be the 99% and the 1% that that has always been with us than this book kind of typifies what it might have looked like in the late '20s. It strikes me that you did a whole lot of research in learning in the historical documents to come up with what you have here. Again, you've got a fictional story. Joe and Sarah and their families. But how much do you think of the context that you have in the book? How much of it is just directly out of the research that you've done? What you're having, Mark, is now what you have is a lot of anecdotal information, too, which if you use a historical reading, nobody wants to see whether it really happened or not. And some of the anecdotes that I use aren't considered historical, but nobody has said that they're not. Does that make sense? Well, I think so, yeah. I mean, make clear what you're referring to a couple of kind of anecdotes. Well, perhaps the biggest thing that happens in the book, there's the incident at the Bruce mine shaft where some miners are killed and the laborers, the Finnish people there, feel that they were assassinated or executed by the mining company. When I was raised and my grandfather condensed me and my brother that this was commonplace in the organizing days, that accidents would happen, quote unquote, in the underground mines shafts or an open pit. And they were always reported as and thought of as accidents, but if one took some time to look at when they occurred with time of the year, where they occurred, in what location, what mine, one might put together a picture that these are maybe a little more premeditated than they appeared on the surface. What I grew up with, and I think it's hard for people to understand when you haven't been raised in a one into three corners, if a union contract is going to be negotiated, let's say in July is coming up right now, after the first year, you would begin to see a pattern of layoffs, layoffs and rehiring and layoffs and rehiring. And other types of things happen in the community that don't seem directly related to the contract company, but what they are are ways to, and dynamics, introduced into the community to make people a little afraid, a little insecure, so when it becomes negotiating time, the negotiations go much smoother for the company and in their favor. Is there somewhere, someone who is charted? At one point, you know, you refer in the book, or the characters in the book actually refer to the fact that the people who seem to be getting killed in these accidents in the mines seem to be disproportionately the people who are the activists, the leaders of the workers. Did someone chart that and actually document that, "Oh, yeah, if you're an organizer, you're 200% more likely to be involved in that accident." I don't know if there's any charts like that, Mark. I haven't run across them. This might be a suggestion for your next book. I mean, maybe the chart will be in there because you'll have gone back to the historical cases and said, "Oh, yeah, that one, activist, oops." Well, you know, one of the problems with doing that, because I did try to do it a few times, is you have a problem with who does all the recording of this on the Bruce Mine incident website, support site that I have. I've got a little piece on types of accidental deaths in 1904. I did happen to find a report written by the author of St. Louis County, 1904, reporting what types of deaths happened in that county. And once I read it, I said to myself, "Oh, I don't know. Here I'm dealing with some documentation on who knows how much is history, and how much has been left out, or how much is real." But in 1904, theoretically, there were only 160 accidental deaths in St. Louis County, which is where the most of the story takes place. And when you look at the types of deaths that took place out of that 160, they got roughly about 35 of those deaths were mine related. About 15 are related to the railroads, and the rest of them go all over the place. So when you talk about charting it out, one of the things that happens back then is the people that did write the news that were in leadership in the community were the people that were attached to the minds too. So I think in terms of maybe getting an accurate picture, they might not happen. This was something my grandfather pressed on, you know? So in other words, the media sources are connected with the man. They're part of that. And I guess at least today, that's no longer the case, right? No, the media has no connection with anything. It's valid reporting. It's very investigative. I do tend to think that 30, 40 years ago, it was much more likely that the media was closer to independent, was not as it is now. I mean, what is there, five or something? Major media conglomerations who control 90% plus of the media that we get, radio, and television, and newspapers. That's correct. Certainly back in the day that you're talking about, you know, 100 years ago, it was not nearly that concentrated. But within the town, that linkage of the newspaper with the company, was that controlled as strong back then as it is now, say with Fox News? Oh, I would say it is, yes, 100%. The only difference was, is there were a few, we may call it, call it, call it or culture, newspapers alternative newspapers that try to report on what was happening from the labor's perspective. But any newspaper that had the market share was not pro-labor or labor support, even though it appeared to be in the articles. And spell that out for me. What are you saying? Are you saying that the big newspapers were all, that they really did lean, pro the big business, and they weren't for the people, because after all, I mean, they've got to sell more copies to the people than they do to the mine owners, just a few of the people in the management of the mines. So why weren't they people leaning as opposed to 1% leaning? I think because information was just, was distanced differently in that day than all, Mark. Now we've got the internet, we've got so many options to get information from the newspapers that the main needs that we have. In fact, at this time, telephone connections to individual homes wasn't even commonplace. The only place you did have to go would be the newspapers. A good example I got on the site is Elizabeth Scurney Flynn was up in the earlier in the 1916 strike. Bill had brought her, because she's the fiery speaker, to get them to speak. Now, when she was reported in the Habing Tribune of being in town, they let the people know that she was in town to speak, and she was speaking to the miners. But at no point in any of the articles is any excerpt taken from her speech. At no point is there an abstract on what she said or how she said it. And I think that was kind of telling to me, saying, "Here he is, somebody who's a national figure, making it all the way up to a small little town in northern Minnesota, and you'd think that would be big news, but it wasn't." And I think that's kind of telling right there. So censorship, I've watched that in, and we think we have a free society. But in fact, with the media, who are supposed to be what's called the fourth estate, they're supposed to be the ones who get us the news so that we can make a good informed decision in a democracy. So how's your take on how the media goes now? We do have the internet as an alternative. So are we still captured by the fourth estate, which is captured by the 1%? Well, I would say yes, I would. What made me be more like this, Mark, is when I did do the research on this just to find out that, I don't know if anything's really changed, Mark. We may think it as, but I wonder how much really has changed. Businesses of business is a business sense. That's the way it goes. Those that have the business aren't those that work for the business or those that really benefit from the business in a sense in terms of a huge profit that's made. And so I would go about it that way. So Stephen, what were the years when you were working in the mines? When was that? I worked from roughly 1970 to 1975. And what was neat about that period of doing it is when the mines first started taking female steel workers into the plant and into the mines, and that's where the moving north country came from. In fact, it's based on what happened in my hometown there. It was very interesting for me to see because I thought in the 70s we're supposed to become more enlightened about who really can work and who can't work. I didn't have gender biases, but it was very hard on the women who first came. I remember watching this happen to like, I'm not getting this. They just want to work like everybody else. And I thought I was back in 1920. In a different way only, this time it was a union of preference as opposed to the company of pressing. Evidently, the workers did unionize in the mines. When did that actually happen that they were successful? In the 30s. But it happens in different types of stages and different places. But a lot of the reasons would be that we have the federal legislative mandates that allow for unions to be organized too, so that created a better atmosphere for it. I think that in this novel that the owners of the mines did know that this time was going to come in sooner or later they would have to deal with this type of an arrangement with the workers. So I don't think it came as a surprise to them, but they still wanted to stretch the game out as long as they could until they were forced to deal with the situation. Again, folks, we're speaking with Stephen Evanchak, incident at the Bruce mineshaft. And it's historical fiction, but in fact, there's an awful large component of history in there. Very relevant to what's going on, particularly I think in Wisconsin right now and maybe in Minnesota, but certainly a lot of other states all around the United States. This is Spirit in Action. I'm your host, Mark Helps-Meet for the Snowden Spirit Radio Production on the web at northernspiritradio.org, where we have almost 10 years of our programs for free listening and download. We've got links to our guests. So today, for instance, you're going to find the link to the WordPress site for incident at the Bruce mineshaft. That website, BruceMineIncident.wordpress.com. But the easiest way to get there is going to be come via northernspiritradio.org. You'll also find the link there, for instance, for this book to the Monarch Tree Publishing documentation about each of the chapters. The history, the documentation for this book is well laid out for you on those sites. Also on the northernspiritradio.org site, you'll find placed post comments. And we do love it when you share your thoughts with us. So when you visit, please do post your comments or social place to support Northern Spirit Radio. This is funded by your donations. It's not by the corporations. They're not the ones who want to get the message out. So please support when you come. But even more important than supporting Northern Spirit Radio is to support your local community radio station. They bring you a slice of the news and of music that you get nowhere else on American airwaves. And just as we've talked about before, media control is essential to getting the truth out. So start by supporting your local community radio station. Again, Stephen Avanchak is here with us today. As I mentioned earlier, he's on the board of Northern Spirit Radio because he is supporting the alternate message getting out. I wanted to highlight a little bit of the rest of your journey, Steve. Because even though you did work in the mines, you are now an ivory tower intellectual, are you not? Let me look outside where I live. See this ivory on the exterior. But truthfully spoken, you did go on to get your higher level degrees and all that kind of thing. You didn't work in the mines all your life. It's not iron ore dust on your hands every day these days. No, it is, in fact, I'm very proud of what I've been able to do, Mark. I had never thought about higher education. And I think that's a part of the culture of the two. When you're in a culture that's run by one industry, you think about your life and your dreams and your visions and who you are in terms of that one industry that's in front of you. There aren't those other options for you, so you don't think much, especially in terms of higher education. I'll go in that way with your life and your career. In fact, when I went to school to get my bachelor's degree in education teaching or the high school English teacher originally, there weren't too many people that went back to college when they're 25 years old back in the 70s. In fact, it was kind of odd to think that you would go back to school once you quit or to complete. And mention a couple of the other places where you've worked along the ways. You were an English teacher and? And then that was in South Dakota. I taught there for a while because English teachers were more of a commodity than a specialty. So if you had to find a spot where you could be a teacher after some experience where I came back to the Twin Cities in the opposite particular and worked for a technical institute called Dunwoody College of Technology now. And I spent 25 years there, and I got to watch an institution that actually started in 1914 during this period of time turn from being a technical training institute in school college and be able to experience that and work with that type of transition. Then after that, I spent roughly five years with World University in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, helping them start the campus there. That was an intentional choice of why because legally the organizers of a for-profit organization. And I was really curious to see what was the difference between a nonprofit like Northern Spirit Radio or a Dunwoody Institute was like that or a for-profit institution like Gold University. And I had already worked in a public high school setting and then a part of that. One of the reasons I did take the job was I was really curious to see how that works and are there really, I don't want to see philosophical because they're there in legal differences. But is there an operational difference in how those three different sectors work? So that was the last of my career and education at that point. Now I do some online teaching and other types of work that I would like to see I'm in semi-retirement mark. You mentioned about labor colleges in the Dunwoody Institute, which does play a role in the book or at least is referred to several times in the book. What was that at the time back in the early 1900s when you're referring to what kind of institution was this? Well, back then they called this type of education vocational education and it was very focused on learning skills and skill based. In other words, if there was a class in mathematics, there wouldn't be one. But instead you take the parts of the math that was needed to put an able to work on a house and just take those parts that do that. But you wouldn't find that taught in a math class, it would be taught in an occupational class. So the biggest difference with the industrial institutes at that time was training for careers. The things that you're referring to in the books though sound like they're particularly connected with the workers, the labor unions. They're not something given from the intelligentsia to the common folks. It's the common folks seem to have their own institutions. That's correct. In fact, I'd make a point of one of the institutions as being the Duluth Labor College, which was the only official IWW college that was ever organized or founded. But once again, that college was in a technical institute and I think you made a good difference there, Mark. If we're insensitive or aware of education, this education that's done for career purposes and education that's done for, if you want to call it, the betterment of man, you'll kind of a liberal view of education. So the type of college that the IWW had started contrary to what we think, which would be a technical, it actually was a college where they were taught economics. They were taught sociology. Those types of subjects, they weren't skill-based. And yes, it was a radical organization. You know, I still don't know that I have a clear view of what that time is like because I grew up in the 1960s and 70s taking labor unions for granted. There wasn't this big thing where the government was always going to try and get rid of the labor unions. It wasn't until Ronald Reagan became president that I found the all-out assault on the labor unions happening. The period you're talking about, I think, labor unions are still in the ascendancy in the 1910s and 1920s. That's when they're coming up to their greatest strength. If I recall correctly, I think by the mid-1900s that maybe it was almost 50% or maybe it was 40% of the people were in labor unions. Do I remember correctly? Yeah, you're doing well there. I was saying Ronald, the most debt labor was organized was 40%. It's the highest it's ever been. And right now, it's running roughly about 15%. And what do you think are the consequences of that? In the story that you wrote, "Incident at the Bruce Meincha," and now, what are the implications of that and how our society works? I think when a person thinks of a union nowadays, they think of a union as a negotiating agent for the worker with a company. In other words, it's concerned with how much do I make per hour in working conditions. Back when the book was set, there was a whole different way that people looked at unions. They saw unions as a community, as an organization that they could belong to. That was bigger than just their wages. They carried them when they got sick. They would help them funding if they were on strike. Then we saw it as more in terms of opportunities. The only way I could say it was that you would get together after the job and talk about the job, but not because you work there, but because you wanted to be with the other workers that were with you on the job. I think that the slogan for the idea to be dropping an empty egg in front of me marked with something like "a hurt for one is a hurt for all." There's a sense of solidarity. This is perhaps a more progressive term we could use among men. It just wasn't about "I got the more money." One of the things that you mentioned amongst the Finns, particularly in the book, is that a number of them evidently are not churchgoers. You do have a particular scene where a pastor gets up there and gives a speech, and they seem to be supportive. He's ready to be booed by them because these Finns are anti-church. Yet, I've said many times on this program that I think that in essence, labor unions are a form of religion. You have your common beliefs. You have the common body of the people who all work together. A hurt for one is a hurt for all. It's kind of like you love your neighbor as yourself. What are your thoughts about religion, spirituality, and labor unions? Does that fit at all for you to think of them as a kind of a church in essence? Oh, exactly what I mean. I think that we're a community and take it to a church. I agree with you, Mark, and I think that while the unions were able to even do what they did or find the strength within themselves, it persists through some of the things that are portrayed in the book there, where they're dealing with men that have more money than them, men that control their lifestyle, men that might even murder you, if you caught out of line. And I think it takes some hotspot to stand up to the act and want to go ahead with it. And it came from those very ideas here saying that church sounds like a fun term, but, you know, the Duluth labor college that I mentioned in the book that was in Duluth Minnesota originally was a Lutheran theological seminary. It's what it started off to be. But because of that era, he saw the religion in terms of having to be more active in their community and had to be bigger than just going to church. It's a rather interesting story. I will something to write a little book about that someday. Because when the finished moved here, they didn't have money to start the seminary. Now, they sold shares in the church, and it came to a point where they had a vote, and those that wanted the seminary to turn political into a labor college won the vote. And so the one pastor that I have in the last part of the book that's doing the dedication to services is sure right from the pastor, they got expunged in a lot of this job, couldn't be this whole church and seminary turned into a labor college. So within the ranks of what we can call the radical movement, we have these other currents going on, too. So it's not as simple as it looks, you know, the rich guys versus the poor guys. There's a lot of things going on. This is also the era during suffrage women wanting the right to vote. We have the sports trial during this time and dealing with science and religion and everything. It's a very tumultuous time, and a lot of funny things were going on. So I think because of that, too, meno is easier for the workers to bond together as workers, and use that as their meaningful experience, their spiritual experience, or something like that. Mark, I don't know quite what the right words are, but I think what you're driving at, hinting at is true. Yeah, I mean, for many people, church means one thing. I have a broader view on it because I'm Quaker. So, you know, I don't -- most of the things that most people identify as a church isn't part of my religion, and I think you experience quite a few differences, too. I mean, I think you grew up Catholic. Is that right, Stephen? And then maybe you identify most with unity now? Are there other steps along the way? Do you want to fill in that picture? Oh, we just do a biography on needle, Mark. Okay. Of course, you're a famous author now. [ Laughter ] You know, I was raised pretty traditional for Northern Minnesota. I was raised a Roman Catholic, which was one of the faiths that wasn't considered, maybe the right faith of the country early on during this period. There's a great movie on that. Of course, he did on gangs in New York City, where when the Irish Catholics come to New York City, what a turmoil that was. I was raised DFL Democrat because my father was Union, my grandfather, helped organize. So, as part of that type of thinking. But my journey was bigger than that because I began to realize that there was something bigger than maybe the DFL. There was something bigger than Roman Catholicism, that when you start thinking about what gives you meaning and what makes you alive as a person, it isn't about dogma. It isn't about belief. It's about the people around you and how do you connect with them and how do you treat them? And I think the best question that maybe we should be asking yourselves is not what dogma do I have, or what to understand about who God is, but how do I treat my neighbor? I mean, that's the most telling and the most important conversion experience. That's called that way that anybody can act. And it's not necessarily religious, as we would think of traditionally. Did you have a conversion experience of some sort to a point where it became clear that the dogma that you had been raised with didn't work and that you saw the shining light towards which you were going to move? I wouldn't say there was a sign in the sky, no, Mark, I would say about it. It came from a lot of hard knocks trying to figure out what was worth doing and what has meaning for me. But religiously, spiritually, you continued on your journey. Where else did you go? Well, for a while, I did nothing. I just, I guess you might say, believe that there was another reality besides this one. During the time that it was a steelwork where I ran into the Jesus people movement was big. And then there were a particular group of them up in my area who were also kidding-ish in ex-luprens that started more of a non-denominational type of approach with a religion. And I liked that because I had a say in it. I could vote in it. I could participate in it. Much like a few Quaker meetings I've gone to, you know, where anybody can hear from God or have an idea of maybe what it means. And so that was my first step. And then when I came to the university, I kept them running into groups like this that might call them more non-traditional. And they're approaching that mainstream. And do you identify generally with the unity churches these days? To me, that puts me in a box again, Mark. I would identify myself as a Christian for sure. I would say that. Although I know that term could be misleading to us used in a million ways. Maybe it could be more pointed with the questions, I guess. Well, I'm just looking for the major influences, religious and spiritual in your life. So I'm just asking where you've traveled. Well, see, I don't see myself as going down a religious road. I just see myself as going down the road of life. And whether I was in a church or I was in a union or I was working on my doctorate, that was life. And in those experiences is where you meet meaning and where you meet your spirituality. You start to define it. What does it mean, practical sense? You don't have to go to a building to find it. It may help. By the way, you use the letters DFL. And I'm thinking for people outside of Minnesota, they might not know the Democratic Farm Labor Party. DFL, which I don't know. Is there any other state besides Minnesota, which has a DFL? It didn't occur to me. I'm so used to being a Minnesota. Yeah, sure. You betcha. That's good. That's good. Again, the book is "Incident at the Bruce Mine Shaft" by Stephen M. Van Check. You can find the link on nordenspiritradio.org. So in drawing out this story about Joe and Sarah and what happens at the Bruce Mine and what Joe is part of witnessing and gets mixed up in and labor unions, it's not just a pretext to look at those things. You highlight certain aspects of the community, which I think we've lost a fair amount of. You talk about cooperatives, the co-ops. And I have to mention, Steve, where I live right here, I mean, I tend to shop primarily at mega foods, which most people don't think of as a co-op, but is, in fact, a co-op. My electricity is from Eau Claire Energy co-op. My telephone company is West Wisconsin co-operative. My bank is Royal Credit Union, which is a credit union. It's kind of a co-op, I believe, too. I don't know if they're organized on a different statute. And just local food is a co-operative where I shop for food. So my life is embedded in cooperatives, but I don't think that most people in the U.S. think about that. What's been the role of co-ops in your life, as well as what you talk about in the book? This is a fun topic, too, and I think you bring up a good point that the way a person sees the term "co-op" nowadays is different than that. I believe the way they thought it this time. A co-op for them, this was an alternative to the logic grocery store. It was a political philosophy and ideology where everybody who shopped in this place got to participate in the governing of the place and the running of the place, even the selection and the buying of the food. So it became more than just some place you went to for food. In fact, it wasn't intentionally done that way to provide an alternative to what was in the local towns. And if you had tried to organize and you were blackballs, as they call it, and lost your job, you wouldn't have money as much as you would have if you were working for the mines. And so you had to find some place to go to get your goods. And the co-ops would offer this option for you, where you could barter, volunteer, work for food. You could carry maybe. We call nowadays a credit line, but they'd be open to letting you purchase some food and not fully pay for it. And at the same time, participate in the process of running it. So to me, that's a cooperative spirit, which is different than perhaps the legal definition of what a co-op is. And in your hometown, were there a lot of co-ops around? Were you involved with them? I got to tell you a good story on this one, because I remember this one to this day. My father was always wanting to teach me the economics for part of living. You always shopped in your hometown first, supported your hometown people, but we didn't have a co-op in our hometown. So we have to go to the next town to do our cooperative shopping. And then he showed me at that time that there are two types of co-ops. There are red co-ops and white co-ops. The red co-op is a determined plan that would be your socialist co-op, and a white co-op is more just like a grocery store like made of food. And he told me that I should never go into a red co-op, and he walked me by once. And I remember looking in the window trying to figure out why I shouldn't go in this place. What's so terrible about it is that I looked in, and they looked just like any other store like that, but were shocked behind the butcher counter, instead of men being there, out of the three workers there, two of them were women. And they had the white guards on it, a lot of them were things, and I thought, "Oh my God, women can be butchers here. No wonder, my dad's supposed to go there." He was afraid of your mother. Or whatever, I'm not sure. But I remember me just staring like, "Oh my God, I had never seen a female butcher before." And so I thought that was the problem, because I didn't know what it was. I was in the young community on stand, but different politically. But I remember being warned that I should get a red co-op. Today I would enter a red co-op, if there is such a thing. And you trust women with knives, I guess. That's great, yeah. Well, that's another aspect of both the history at the time, that incident at the Bruce Mindshaft, that you've written it to be at, the late 1920s. And in 1917, I believe it is, that the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia takes place. And so for the first time, this communist ideal has a foothold in a government. And evidently, this affects the Finns. I mean, the Finns are right over the water. They're very near this whole thing going on with Russia. So people speak openly of wanting to be communist, as if this were a good thing, as opposed to in the 1950s in the United States, when, you know, dirty communist was, I mean, those were like two words that didn't get separated. Yeah, I didn't know. What was the attitude when you grew up in Round Hiving? You know, what was the attitude about communists when you're growing up versus what's in this book? It was mixed, Mark. It was very mixed, because in the book I don't touch on it, the one of the characters I do have in the book is modeled after Gus Hall, who was president of the American Communist Party for years, who grew up just outside of Huebing in a little talk about Sherry Minnesota. And so it was mixed. Like I said, my father, who was a very pro-union, also a very pro-American, and also was afraid of communists, yet believed in co-op the value. So it was confusing for me growing up. I thought you had to be one or the other, but I realized, no, I guess you don't. I don't know what you're supposed to be on the winning side, maybe. I was always trying to figure it out. Why do we make so many things up? You know, what they're talking about, these good Finns, who are very pro-communist because they're red Finns, not white Finns, like the co-op you're describing, what do you think they're portraying as the essence of communism versus what I think it serves in the popular imagination today? Boy, this could be, I suppose, of course, that our college couldn't mark the difference between socialism, communism, progressive thinking, what those differences are. I would make it very simple. I would take the two-word socialism capitalism and bring it down to definition 001, where the term socialism, the first part of that word is social, and the first part of the word of the capitalism is capital. And if you think about primary drivers, you know, what's the most important point about that word, I think the word speak to what's the most important about. If you line up with that word or the other word, what comes first? It's not that money isn't good, it's not that we don't need money. The live is not that we don't want a good strong economy. It's a matter of what comes first in that system. Do people come first? Or does capital come first? In the book I go back to how Joe's father, Gustav, takes it all the way back to the story of the Bible about Cain and Mabel, and he takes Cain as the archetype of the capitalist because he's willing to kill, to get ahead, and please God, he's a religious capitalist, I guess. And that thinking wasn't too far from a lot of these people at this time. You know, if you read some writings by Eugene Dabbs, you'll see that in there that they even look through these kind of religious models to try to figure out what the difference was. You know, why were they different? What was the difference? What's going on as something? Is it political? Is it religious? What's happening here? That, as opposed to what we think of communism as today, and now we think of communism as the evil despot, or the despotic party that rules over you. So you've got communist China, which I think people tend to look at more softly than they did when you and I were growing up. But I think perhaps Kim Jong-un, however he's pronounced, of North Korea. That's what's really evil about communism, I guess. So when you're growing up, communism, there are mixed views about it, not from your father. No, not from him. But if you talk to people in the movement, what I picked up as a young man talking with people was the idea, should this type of thinking, decentralized? Or should it stay collaborative or more democratic? And that was a major split with a lot of the red thinkers, you know? A lot of more afraid when you centralized your ideologies into a top-down organization, you're going to have problems. It just leads to despots. It leads to centralizing everything. It goes away from individuals making decisions on their own in the regional or local groups. It goes like, I guess the political metaphor marked me as the difference between a federal mandate and a state mandate, you know, the jurisdiction of those things. I think that was simplified. What I understood, it was simplified there. And that's where you would have the reds that lead in centralizing everything and the reds that didn't. And it was a major difference in the ones that are the ones that like to centralize. Well, I was wondering if actually it was the reverse that. But the centralized, I mean, communism, they did centralize all of the control. As opposed to the capitalists in the United States who say, you know, there are likely also to be states, rights, advocates. And no, let's get the government out of our heads so we can all each individually make our decision. Well, when we say centralization, I'm not talking government. I'm talking about where the power for governing comes from. Does the power for governing in an agency and organization come from a small elite group or is it shared equally across the whole organization? And so capitalism, they may be against government intervention, but as an organization, they're being driven by a small elite. And I don't care what we say about shareholders nowadays and how they will be participate in the going of a company. It's not democratic process. It's not one where things are being shared equally and collaborative. You mentioned about the park where this takes place. And I learned so many things about history. Like, how did they cut ice? I had no idea how that really happened. I learned so many things. But the park where the events of the last chapter take place could you say some things about that park? Because I don't think we even think of this kind of thing as a possibility anymore. No, we don't. And that was an interesting part for me, too. There's a place called Masavi Coa Park in the book. And this was a result of the co-ops in the area. Actually, 17 of them got together and bought 150 acres of land outside of hitting Minnesota to use as quote on quote their state park. You want to think of the battling modern terms where they could go camping with their families, have speakers and types of music they enjoy, and celebrate the life that they were living. It was basically about probably 80% finished, but there are other people that did participate in it in gold there for recreation for good time. Yeah, it's really cool that that kind of exist. And we don't even think of it as a possibility these days. The people can band together and do a lot of things that we can't do individually. And I think that actually the capitalism of our day has led us to be less and less community organized and more individually focused, which has been to our poverty. Yeah, I would say that happened, too. And plus, it's more convenient. It's hard to organize something like this, and it's hard to keep it going and sustain it. And I think people feel so pressured nowadays to the idea that that we've been motivated to this is probably draining to them. But what's neat about this park is that it's still in existence today, and you can still camp there and go there and see the original building that was there at the time the book was there. Another thing that you mentioned, right, the very last page of "Incident the Bruce Mine" shaft on the back cover, it says, "This is the first in a series. Tell me where you're going." I think there's some points that you want to make along the way. So we started and we're in the late 1920s in "Incident Bruce Mine" shaft. Where are we going from here? I'm guessing the 1930s. You got it. And not much beyond that. I think the last chapter is very telling there, because we have Joel, who is what's called our major young person character, probably making a pretty big decision about going back to Finland. Not that he was ever from there, but back to where his parents are from to support the Bolshevik Revolution. What's cool about this chapter Mark, and a lot of people don't know that this is historically correct. From Northern Minnesota alone, they said there were over 3,000 Finnish people that went back to Finland to join Russia and be a part of that. In fact, the person I told in their Oscar Corgan, who does the talk, his daughter actually wrote a book about their lives and going back to Russia, the amount of people that went back with him, to fight. They finally thought they had a place where they could live off the political ideology. And of course, Stalin was suspicious of them because they were from America, and basically most of them were genocided with what happened to them. And I think that the moral of that story is, if you live up to your ideals, you'd get killed for it? Yes, that's what it says. Because you're going to be misunderstood. And that's the complexity, isn't it? The complexity of it, you know. When I heard that, and Malcolm would tell me stories about that. I felt so sad inside Mark, but here are people that came across the ocean over here, fought language barriers, tried to make it a better place. They didn't work for them, so they found another place where they could maybe do it, and they go there, and then they become martyrs when they thought they were going to be saviors or something. I felt very sad about that, as a young man, thinking that that happens to people. Well, there's a whole mixture of emotion, folks, in "Incident at the Bruce Meinchaff" by Stephen of Ancheck. We're really delving into history, so our minds are being opened to things that are part of our history here in the United States, the currents, the political currents. And I think it's especially valuable to know this kind of history, in particular with all the labor unions, and the one versus the 99%. And all of that, which is so, so very with us these days in the United States. So I highly recommend that you read "Incident at the Bruce Meinchaff". I'll have a link on Nordenspiritradio.org to the website, BruceMeinincident.wordpress.com. Again, the easiest way, Nordenspiritradio.org will get you there. Stephen, thank you so much. First of all, for being part of the Nordenspirit Radio Board of Directors. Thank you for your years of education, for going through the trenches to get to the place where, when you talk about labor unions, when you talk about the common people working, you're talking from your own experience as well as that of your family. And thank you for writing this book to help us remind us of our roots and what the possibilities are for the future. And thanks for joining me for Spirit in Action today. Thank you, Mark. I had a great time, and I hope you did too, Mark. I always do. You're a great one to spend time with Stephen, and I recommend that to any of our listeners. Thank you, Mark. Thank you. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing.