Have you ever done something wrong and felt terrible about it? Are there things that you’ve done many years ago that you still think about? Little things like breaking your sibling’s favorite toy, stealing from a store, or saying something hurtful to a friend. Those things can gnaw at you in the days, weeks, or even months later.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone, it’s more common than you think, and don’t worry, it isn’t your fault. As humans, our brains have been hardwired through evolution to focus on the negative. The bad news is that constant rumination has been shown to be very detrimental to our well-being. According to the American Psychiatric Association, rumination or “repetitive thinking or dwelling…can contribute to the development of depression or anxiety and can worsen existing conditions.” So how do you stop this cycle and improve your mental health? There’s plenty of research out on combating the rumination cycle and it appears one former employee of the Quincy Smelting Works may have tapped into a solution for himself, but first it begins with a crime….
Tucked into one of the Michigan Tech Archives’ boxes is a very small collection consisting of only five letters, most in Finnish, that tell a very interesting story about theft and forgiveness. In 1923, former Quincy Smelting Works employee, Charles Heikkinen, now living in Finland, mailed his former employer confessing that sixteen years prior he had committed theft. In fact, Heikkinen confessed that he had stolen 16 pounds of copper from the Quincy Smelter. His letter to the company was one asking for forgiveness so that his “conscience would be at peace” as it “[had] been troubled.” Heikkinen goes on to ask the company to let him know how much was owed to clear his debt.
A reply from the Quincy Superintendent a month later notes the receipt of the letter, an appreciation of the acknowledgement of his wrongdoing, and lists the value of the stolen copper at $2, the equivalent of $36.73 in 2024. The saga continued and in March 1924, Heikkinen replied with another letter, which included the owed $2, plus interest. The last letter from Quincy to Heikkinen acknowledges the money and interest with a note of gratitude that “there are such honest men in Finland.”
Clearly Heikkinen’s copper heist in 1907 had weighed heavily on his mind all these years; so much so that he sought forgiveness sixteen years after the fact. It’s hard to know how and to what extent the repayment of this sum impacted Heikkinen, but one can speculate that his conscience was finally clear of at least this one wrongdoing.
The above comes from the Quincy Mining Company Smelter Theft Letters collection (MS-771), Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections, Houghton, Michigan.