5: The Storm Before the Storm

Power in The Wilderness

Victor Power quickly implements the most ambitious slate of public improvements in the history of Hibbing, unprecedented for a village of this size anywhere in the United States. He does this by doing the one thing that the Oliver Iron Mining Company can’t stand: raising taxes. Streets get paved and bright, beautiful new lights are installed. New sanitary sewers and water lines snake under the village, improving public health, while spectacular new public parks welcome all of Hibbing’s citizens, rich or poor. Power says he’s not being extravagant; he’s just making up for the years the mines wouldn’t allow Hibbing to grow. But the mines form a new lobbying organization, the Lake Superior Taxpayers Association, which seeks to control men like Victor Power and villages like Hibbing through the state legislature. Power bests the mines during his first year in office, but his success invites the fight of his life as the world’s largest corporation plans its revenge.