Today In Labor History: December 24

“Take a trip with me in nineteen thirteen
To Calumet, Michigan, in the copper country.
I'll take you to a place called Italian Hall
Where the miners are having their big Christmas ball.”

So begins the song “1913 Massacre,” written by Woody Guthrie in 1941 after reading about the Italian Hall tragedy that occurred in Calumet on Christmas Eve, 1913, where 74 people died in a stairway after an unidentified person shouted a false cry of fire. The panic was caused by company stooge at Calumet, Mich. The stooge shouted “fire” up the stairs into a crowded hall where strikers’ children had gathered. The children were crushed against closed doors when they tried to flee.

Read more: The Italial Hall Disaster and Copper Strike 1913-14