1913 Massacre

Woody Guthrie © 1961 (renewed) Woody Guthrie Publications Inc

Carnegie Chapter Hall, NYC - 4.nov.1961  

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.

I'll take you through a door and up a high stair
Their singing and dancing is heard everywhere
I'll let you shake hands with the people you'd see
And watch the kids dance 'round that big Christmas tree.

There's singing and dancing and songs in the air
And the spirit of Christmas is there everywhere
Before you know it, you're friends with us all
And you're dancing around and around in the hall.

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

A little girl sits by the Christmas tree lights
To play the piano, she gotta keep quiet
To hear all this fun you would not realize
That the copper-boss thug-men are milling outside.

The copper-boss thugs stuck 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 party, there's no such a thing."

A few people rushed and it's only a few
It's jsut the scabs and the thugs fooling you
A man grabbed his daughter and carried her down
But the thugs held the door and he could not get out.

And then others followed, a hundred or more
But most everybody remained on the floor
The scabs and the thugs they still laughed at their joke
While the children were smothered on the stairs by the door.

Such a terrible sight I never did see
We carried our children back up to their tree
The scabs and the thugs they're still laughed at their spree
And the children that died there were seventy-three.

The piano played a slow funeral tune
But the town was lit up by a cold Christmas moon
The parents they weeped and the miners they moaned
To See what your greed for money has done.