U.P. Colony E-Book

Phil Bellfy

• Herausgeber: Modern History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 100

Beschreibung

In the 1980s, Phil Bellfy pondered the question: Why does Sault, Ontario, appear to be so prosperous, while the "Sault" on the American side has fallen into such a deplorable state? Could the answer be that the "American side" was little more than a "resource colony"-or to use the academic jargon of "Conflict and Change" Sociology-an "Internal Colony." In UP Colony, Bellfy revisits his graduate research to update us the state of the Sault.
The ultimate question: why has the U.P.'s vast wealth, nearly unrivaled in the whole of the United States, left the area with poverty nearly unrivaled in the whole of the United States? None of the conventional explanations from "distance to markets," to "too many people," to "disadvantageous production costs," have any credibility. Simply put: "Where did the $1.5 billion earned from copper mining, $1 billion from logging, and nearly $4 billion in iron ore go?"
To get to the bottom of these thorny questions, Bellfy looks at the possible economic pressures imposed by "external colonial powers." The pressure-points examined in this book include presence of a complimentary economy, lopsided investment in one sector, monopoly style management, disparity of living standards, a repressive conflict-resolution system, and the progressive growth of inequality over time.
In UP Colony, Dr. Bellfy has revisited his MA Thesis and brought this analysis up-to-date in conjunction with the Sault's Semisepticentennial-the 350th anniversary of its French founding in 1668.

Leseprobe

UP Colony

The Story of Resource Exploitation in Upper Michigan

Focus on Sault Sainte Marie Industries

By Phil Bellfy, PhD

Ziibi Press

Sault Ste. Marie, MI

UP Colony: The Story of Resource Exploitation in Upper Michigan — Focus on Sault Sainte Marie Industries

Copyright © 1981, 2021 by Phil Bellfy. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 978-1-61599-606-3 paperback

ISBN 978-1-61599-607-0 eBook

Ziibi Press is an imprint of

Modern History Press

5145 Pontiac Trail

Ann Arbor, MI

[email protected]

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Distributed by Ingram (USA/CAN/AU), Bertram’s Books (EU/UK)

Contents

Table of Figures

ABSTRACT

NEW INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

The Colony Concept

Gonzales-Casanova: The Internal Colony Concept

THE UPPER PENINSULA EXPERIENCE

The Colonial Fur Trade

Statehood

Copper

Lumber

Iron

The Gonzales-Casanova Paradigm

The Post-World War I Upper Peninsula

The Gonzales-Casanova Paradigm: The Final Three Points

THE SAULT STE. MARIE EXPERIENCE

1600 to 1800: Early Colonial Outpost

1800 to 1880

1880 to 1890: The Boom Decade

1890 to 1900: Beginnings of an Industrial Age

1900 to 1910: Industrial Expansion

1910 to 1940: Decline and Depression

1940 to 1950: The Prosperity of the War Years

1950 to 1960: Industrial Decline

1960 to 1970: The End of the Industrial Age

Synthesis

The Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Experience

The 1970s: The Decline Continues

INTERNAL COLONY

NEW CONCLUSION

Iron Mining

Nickel and Copper Mining

Timber Resource Utilization

Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, 2018

Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, 2018

Abitibi Paper Mill

Essar Steel Algoma Mill

Internal Colony Redux

Concluding Remarks

About the Author

About the Ziibi Press

2018 – Sault Ste. Marie’s Semiseptennial

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Table of Figures

Fig. 1: Soo Woolen Mill

Fig. 2: Union Carbide Company (circa 1960)

Fig. 3: Northwestern Leather Company (circa 1930)

Fig. 4: Cadillac-Soo Lumber Company

Table 1: Early 1950s Employment Figures for Sault Ste. Marie’s Major Employers (various sources).

Fig. 5: Our Own Bakery

Fig. 6: Lock City Marine & Machine (Hickler Machine)

Fig. 7: Algoma Steel Mill, 1954

Fig. 8: Abitibi Power & Paper; Sault, Ontario (circa 2012)

Fig. 9: Former Kincheloe AFB, 2006

Fig. 10: Abitibi paper mill site after demolishment, 2012

ABSTRACT

The exploitation and poverty of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the industrial growth and decline of the Upper Peninsula city of Sault Ste. Marie are examined within an internal colony framework using a six-point paradigm developed by Pablo Gonzales-Casanova. The six points are: (1) the economy of the internal colony is structured to complement that of the colonial center; (2) the “development” is tied to one predominant sector; (3) the monopoly structure is controlled by one colonial center; (4) there exists an obvious disparity in the standards of living between colony and center; (5) there exists a repressive conflict-resolution structure; and (6) there is a tendency for existing inequalities to increase over time. After a thorough examination of the Upper Peninsula’s and Sault Ste. Marie’s experiences, it is concluded that the internal colony appellation is appropriate when speaking of the history of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

NEW INTRODUCTION

This book evolved out of my Master’s Thesis, completed in 1981. I have resisted the temptation to change the body of the original text (other than cleaning up the typos, spelling errors, etc.). But this “New Introduction” should give the reader some background.

As is the case with almost all “academic” work, this study suffers from a kind of “tunnel vision,” given that, almost by necessity, academic work is very narrowly focused, and, again by “the standards” of the Academy, the work is very often based on obscure theory, and even more obscure research.

This thesis is no different. My MA is in Sociology, and the sub-area of this work was in the field of “Conflict and Change.” This field was in direct contrast to the other “concentration” that was offered at Michigan State University, at the time: “Rural Sociology.” It’s not like the two fields were incompatible; it’s just that “Conflict and Change” took a more Marxist approach to the study and understanding of social institutions.

I grew up in the Detroit suburb of Livonia, the whitest community of its size in the US (Detroit, the “blackest” city of its size in the US, is right next-door). In the fall of 1970, after my military service, and spending just over a year in Detroit, I moved to Sault Ste. Marie, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, right on the Canadian border, with Sault, Ontario, just a short bridge-ride away.

I was immediately struck by the contrast between these two cities –which was a wholly different contrast than that between Livonia and Detroit. Sault Michigan was clearly a city on the decline, while Sault Ontario shared none of the malaise that infected the Michigan half of these “Sister Cities.” (Detroit’s decline was not yet evident.)

I was also struck by the raw beauty of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and, perhaps, even more struck by the raw beauty of the landscape across the St. Marys River. So, while I pursued an undergraduate degree at Lake Superior State College (LSSU, today), I became deeply enmeshed in the contrasting histories of these “Twin Saults,” and their stark contrasts — one declining, one thriving — and the study that follows was a direct result of that fascination and interest.

When I arrived in the Sault (Michigan), the population of Sault, Ontario, was about 76,000; Sault, Michigan, about 15,000. Sault, Ontario, enjoyed two major industrial employer — a steel mill, and a paper mill (both could be seen from the Michigan side). At the same time, Sault, Michigan, had just gone through the heart-wrenching pain of seeing all its major employers close, its population and its fortunes on the decline. At the same time, the entire Upper Peninsula was also under severe economic threat with its “abundant” natural resources found to be much less than “inexhaustible.”

So, what follows is the result of that interest and inquiry — why did Sault, Ontario, appear to be so prosperous, while the “Sault” on the American side was in such a deplorable state? The answer, or so I thought at the time, was that the “American side” was little more than a “resource colony” — or to use the academic jargon of “Conflict and Change” Sociology, an “Internal Colony.”

As I said, what follows is my unrevised Thesis, and you can judge its historic worth (or lack thereof, if that’s your conclusion). I will return at the end of this volume with a “New Conclusion” and an update on the conditions of the “Twin Saults” along with a brief discussion of the state of the “Internal Colony” we affectionately call the “UP.”

Note: The photographs accompanying this study were added for this printing.

INTRODUCTION

The fact that Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP) is an area of serious and persistent poverty is unquestioned (Haber, 1935);(KISS, 1976). The reasons given to explain this poverty sound very much like the answer the old man gave when asked about the secret of his longevity. He replied, “Living a long time.” When asked why the UP is poor, the standard answer is “lack of money.” The answer is representative of the miasma that a critical social scientist is confronted with while studying UP poverty. The “explanations” of UP poverty run the gamut from “distance from markets” (Garrison, 1966) and “too many people” (Haber, 1935) to “disadvantageous production costs” (Strassmann, 1958). But “lack of resources” is never given as an explanation for UP poverty for the simple reason that the UP, during its 350-year history of exploitation, gave up a number of fortunes in fur, lumber, copper, and iron ore.

The ultimate question: why has the UP’s vast wealth, nearly unrivaled in the whole of the United States, left the area with poverty nearly unrivaled in the whole of the United States? In order to answer this question, it may be wise to abandon traditional economics and sociology. The answer may lie in an analysis of the UP’s historical and ongoing role as a colony of the moneyed interests of the eastern and lake states.

The outward signs of the UP’s colonial pattern are evident: persistent poverty, tremendous exploitation of natural resources, political impotence, lack of an integrated economy, etc. The problem, of course, is whether such a colonial appellation would be upheld by a detailed analysis of the UP’s underdevelopment. Al Gedicks speaks of the upper Great Lakes region (UGLR) as an internal resource colony. He presents a picture of exploitation in the mining sector, which convincingly points to a colonial pattern (CALA, 1974; Gedicks, 1973, 1976a, 1976b). The evidence he marshals is informative but apparently he has yet to publish a detailed analysis of the colonial patterns that existed (and continue to exist) in the upper Great Lakes region. This paper is an attempt to present that detailed analysis with respect to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula played a central role in the upper Great Lakes resource exploitation of which Al Gedicks speaks. Historically the Upper Peninsula was exploited for fur, copper, lumber, and iron ore. But the reader should keep in mind that (1) the fur exploitation covered an area much greater than the UP; (2) the lumber exploitation, while devastating the Upper Peninsula, had harsher effects on the northern half of Michigan’s lower peninsula and spread to northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin as well; and (3) the Upper Peninsula supplied the majority of the iron ore exports of the UGLR until nearly the turn of the century when Minnesota became the dominant source of Lake Superior iron ore. Copper exploitation was essentially an Upper Peninsula phenomenon.

The Colony Concept

The concept of “colony” is an emotional one, steeped in the five-hundred-year history of European expansion and exploitation. Yet, due to this same long history, the colony concept can be of enormous value to the social scientist who is confronted with the question of poverty, exploitation, and underdevelopment. It is true that the historical concept of “colony” evokes images of one country exploiting another — clearly not the case with Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Yet most of the accounts of classic country-over-country exploitation sound hauntingly similar to the UP experience.

For example, Andre Gunder Frank writes of an area of northeast Brazil that witnessed a “Golden Age of Development.” Frank notes that the development was “neither self-generating nor self-perpetuating” (Frank, 1972, p. 7) and this form of growth could only, in the long run, lead to a decline in the area. This pattern of growth and decline describes precisely the UP experience. Further, we see that in this type of development, the tendency for a colonial area that was exploited primarily for its mineral wealth was a degeneration into “ultra-under-development” when the extractive activity was abandoned by the colonial power (Frank, 1972).

A clear description of this process is provided by Samir Amin in his book, Unequal Development (Amin, 1976). He states that history shows that areas that are important for the development of capitalism at the center may “experience brilliant periods of very rapid growth. But … as soon as the product in question ceases to be of interest to the center, the region falls into decline: its economy stagnates, and even retrogresses … an ‘economic miracle’ that led nowhere” (Amin, 1976, p. 238-9). The upper Great Lakes region was once the world’s major supplier of iron ore and copper, yet no thriving industrial community exists there.

Instead, these regions, in spite of enormous out-migration, have slid to the depths of poverty and unemployment (CALA, 1974). The “Copper Country” — an economic miracle that led nowhere.