December 24, 1913: A crowded Christmas party turns into a disaster -- possibly a massacre -- in Calumet, Michigan.
Calumet is on the Keweenaw Peninsula, on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, near Lake Superior. This region of the Upper Midwest -- the U.P., northern Wisconsin, northeastern Minnesota, and the section of Canada's Ontario on the other side of the Lake -- was copper-mining country in the early 20th Century. In 1913, there were 15,000 men working for the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company (C&H), about 9,000 of them belonging to a union, the Western Federation of Miners.
The WFM went on strike on July 23, 1913, demanding recognition of their union, and adjustments to wages, hours and working conditions. On December 24, Christmas Eve, many of the striking miners and their families had gathered for a holiday party, sponsored by the WFM's Ladies Auxiliary. It was held on the 2nd floor of Calumet's Italian Hall, built in 1908.
A steep stairway was the only way to the 2nd floor. However, there was a poorly-marked fire escape on one side of the building, and ladders down the back of the building, which could be reached only by climbing through the windows.
Over 400 were in the room, and someone yelled, "Fire!" Except there was no fire. Still, attendees panicked, and rushed for the stairs. In the ensuing stampede, 73 people were killed -- 59 of them children. So much for "Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men."
No one knows who yelled, "Fire!" or why. It is conjectured by some historians that an anti-union ally of mine management did it to disrupt the party. On March 7, 1914, a Congressional Subcommittee came to the area to investigate. Eight witnesses testified that the man who first yelled, "Fire!" wore a button for the Citizens' Alliance, an anti-union organization, on his coat. But no one was ever prosecuted in connection with the disaster.
The folksinger Woody Guthrie was just 1 year old at the time, but, during his career, he always on the lookout for subjects about which to write, and he wrote "1913 Massacre" about the disaster, releasing it in 1945. Clearly, he believed the union-buster story, writing the line, "It's just the thugs and the scabs fooling you."
One story about the disaster that has lingered is that the doors at the bottom of the Hall's stairs opened inward, making it hard to open them to let the people out. This wasn't true: They opened out. Eleven years to the day later, doors opening inward would be part of the reason so many died in a school fire in Babbs Switch, Oklahoma.
The Italian Hall remained in use until it was demolished in 1984. The archway, shown at the bottom left of the photo above, was preserved for a memorial park.
It is 566 miles northwest of Detroit, 278 miles northwest of the Mackinac Bridge, 428 miles north of Chicago, 338 miles north of Milwaukee, 223 miles north of Green Bay, 339 miles northeast of Minneapolis, and 231 miles east of Duluth. It's also about 300 miles west, across Lake Superior, from the site of another disaster, the final resting place of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank in 1975.
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December 24, 1913 was a Wednesday. Baseball was out of season. Professional football and basketball barely existed. There were no college football games played that day. There was no hockey, either: The National Hockey Association season began 3 days later, and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, while already underway, had no games scheduled. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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