Cyprus Mines Corporation

The Cyprus Mines Corporation was an early twentieth century American mining company based in Cyprus. In 1914, Charles G. Gunther began prospecting in the Skouriotissa area after reading in ancient books that the island was rich in copper and noticing promising ancient Roman slag heaps in the area. The company was established in 1916 by Colonel Seeley W. Mudd, his son, Harvey Seeley Mudd, and mining engineer/business partner, Philip Wiseman, whose family, along with the Mudd's, were the primary owners of Cyprus Mines until the early 1970s when it was sold to Amoco.

Initially the mine struggled, but eventually obstacles were overcome and the mine produced money. Turkish and Greek Cypriots were hired, and the town of Skouriotissa became a hub as many miners moved there. The corporation took an old-style, paternalistic attitude towards workers, building a company town around the mine. Harvey Seeley Mudd claimed his experience with the Cyprus Mines Corporation influenced him to push the study of humanities in the engineering college he started, Harvey Mudd College. The Cyprus Mines Corporation provided copper to Nazi Germany right up until the start of the World War II. Although the company knew that some of its copper sales to Germany would be used to produce weapons for the Nazi military, at a time before the war when Germany traded for resources with many countries, the owner of the mine argued that stopping those exports would have adversely affected Cyprus. They were, however, disturbed by Hitler's policy of Jewish persecution, and in late 1938, CMC established a relief fund along with their agent to help former business associates get out of Germany.

Long strikes took place in 1948, organized by the Pancyprian Federation of Labour and the Turkish Cypriot trade unions. After extending the initial five-day strike, the union asked for government intervention. The government declared that they could not start an inquiry since wages were not substandard. As of 1955, the company's copper mines on Cyprus had become the island's largest industry, exporting nearly a million tons of copper a year. Mudd's copper mines on Cyprus supported 2,000 of the island's inhabitants and provided more than 25 percent of the island's entire annual revenue. Cyprus Mines paid its employees 15–20 percent above the island average. The company ran an up-to-date, 65-bed hospital for its employees, built scores of low-cost houses for them to live in, and helped to run schools, sports clubs, welfare centers, and summer camps for their families. One of the operating mines and the company's processing plant fell north of the cease-fire line in Northern Cyprus following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, whilst the rest of the company's mines were the other side of the Green Line. Given this insurmountable problem, the Cyprus Mines Corporation pulled out of Cyprus and the Mavrovouni mine and processing plant remained in an area not controlled by the government of the Republic of Cyprus.

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