Henry's Songbook

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

I'll take you in a room, it's up a high stair
Singing and dancing is heard everywhere
You can shake hands with the people you see
And watch the kids dance round their big Christmas tree

You ask about work and you ask about pay
They tell you they make less than a dollar a day
Working the copper claims, risking their lives
So it's fun to spend Christmas with children and wives

Talking and laughing is heard everywhere
And the spirit of Christmas is there in the air
Before you know it you're friends with us all
And you're dancing around and around in the hall

A little girl sits down by the Christmas tree lights
To play the piano, so you've got to keep quiet
To hear all this fun you would not realize
That the copper boss thug-men are milling outside

The copper boss thugs stick their heads in the door
One of them yelled, and he screamed, There's a fire
A lady she hollered, There's no such a thing
Keep on with your dancing, there's no such a thing

A few people rushed, but it was only a few
It's just the scabs and the thugs fooling you
A man grabbed his daughter and carried her down
But the thugs held the door and they could not get out

Then others followed, a hundred or more
Though most of the people remained on the floor
The gun-thugs they laughed at their murderous joke
And the children were smothered on the stairs by the door

Such a terrible sight I never did see
We carried the children back up to their tree
The scabs outside still laughed at their spree
And the children that died there were seventy-three

The piano played a slow funeral tune
And the town was lit up by the cold Christmas moon
The parents they cried and the miners they moaned
Oh see what your greed for money has done

Repeat 1

(as sung by Iain MacKintosh)

[1961:] In 1913, northern Michigan was rocked by a series of strikes of copper mines. The bosses used every trick in the book to break the solidarity of the workers. In Calumet, on Christmas Eve, company thugs broke up a strikers' Christmas party by shouting "fire" and then barring the door. In the subsequent panic, 73 children were smothered to death. Woody Guthrie has immortalized this instance of the violence of class war [...]. (Reprint Sing Out 3, 150)

[1980:] [In late 1944, Woody] suggested to [Moe] Asch that he might even try a regular musical newspaper, with ballads describing the major events of the week or month. Asch was enthusiastic, and decided the series would be called "American Documentary". Woody tuned up for the project by writing several ballads about important events in American radical history, taken from Mother Bloor's autobiography. One ballad described [an] obscure incident: in 1913, during a copper strike in Calumet, Michigan, company thugs disrupted a Christmas party for the miners' children by shouting "Fire!" and then locked all the doors. According to Mother Bloor, seventy-three children were trampled and smothered in the crush. Woody's ballad, "1913 Massacre", was one of his most delicate, affecting, and personal works. (Klein, Woody Guthrie 281f)

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