Forgotten History: The Calumet Italian Hall Christmas Eve Tragedy

 

Dec. 24, 1913, it looked like a hard, blue Christmas in the city of Calumet, Michigan with the Western Federation of Miners striking against the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company. The strike had been going on for six months by Christmas and things were grim. The union’s ladies' auxiliary sponsored a holiday party at the Hall owned and operated by a mutual benefit society for Italians. Sadly, this party that was to provide emotional relief ended in tragedy.

At approximately 5 PM the ladies started the evening festivities when a large, bearded man yelled “FIRE” in both English and Austrian creating a panic. The man was never found. His alarm though caused a panic and the 400 to 700 people crowding the hall tried to escape. Like so many early 20th Century buildings the fire exits were nonexistent and the doors inadequate for the crush of such a mass of people. Worse, it was the children who got knocked down and crushed on this night.

By the time order was restored 73 people were dead including 59 children, most died of suffocation, but the coroner refused to provide a cause of death because most of those who were at the party and worked in the mines were Italian immigrants who spoke little to no English and this created an extreme prejudice. Also to a large degree, the strike was unsupported by officials because much of copper country and northwest Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula were company towns for the three large mining companies, particularly the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company.

Ladies Auxiliary president Mrs. Annie Clemenc and others felt the man who yelled fire was an anti-union activist from what was known as the Citizen’s Committee for Calumet. However, while a great many people believed this, including folk singer Woody Guthrie no one was ever able to prove such.

In the days that followed the disaster, the people of Calumet and the other mining communities raised over $20,000 to assist the families with burials and recovery. However this too became a matter of contention as The Calumet and Hecla Mining Company stockholders such as Quincy Shaw, and the Agassiz brothers gave nearly $10,000. Still, the union was against the people using it. This created a giant division between the workers and the union.

There were four investigations of the incident and the city requested the Department of Labor help settle the strike but President Woodrow Wilson told Secretary of Labor William Wilson to stay out of it.

The aftermath was another four months of a strike but it ending with the union folding. There were bitter feelings for decades. The folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote the song, “1913 Massacre” about the disaster.

  

Sources: 

https://www.mlive.com/news/2017/12/photos_from_michigans_italian.html

http://www.geo.mtu.edu/KeweenawGeoheritage/CalumetGeosites/Italian_Hall.html

https://www.newspapers.com/image/735645576/