Copper Divide

Copper Divide is one woman’s story of friendship tested by a society torn apart by a labor strike that resulted in the 1913 Italian Hall Disaster. In 1913 a massive and violent copper miners’ strike has split the once peaceful community surrounding Calumet, Michigan. Thousands are protesting and rioting in the streets. The National Guard is sent in and stays for months. Hannah Weinstein is a Jewish merchant’s daughter, confronted by the divide between her family’s relative comfort and that of her Finnish friend Nelma Jokela. Nelma is married to a striker and on the front lines of the dispute. Hannah bides her time hosting illicit gambling games while her college education is put on hold by the strike. Late one evening, Hannah watches as a night train pulls into the station, and over one hundred scab miners climb into waiting carriages. Russell Toll is one of these men, who hopes to make enough money to marry his fiancée. The murder of two scab miners compels Hannah to join a Citizens’ Alliance opposing the strike and puts Hannah and Nelma on different sides of the conflict. A tragic accident caused by Russell forces the two friends to reassess the value of their friendship.

In Across the Great Divide, some of our leading historians look to both the history of masculinity in the West and to the ways that this experience has been represented in movies, popular music, dimestore novels, and folklore.