1913 Massacre

by Woody Guthrie

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

And the miners are having their big Christmas ball

I'll take you in a door and up a high stairs

Singing and dancing is heard ev'rywhere

I'll let you shake hands with the people you see

And watch the kids dance 'round the big Christmas tree.

There's talking and laughing and songs in the air

And the spirit of Christmas is there ev'rywhere

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 they make less than a dollar a day

Working their copper claims, risking their lives

So it's fun to spend Christmas with children and wives.

A little girl sits down by the Christmas tree lights

To play the piano so you 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 there's only a few

"It's just the thugs and the scabs fooling you."

A man grabbed his daughter and he carried her down

But the thugs held the door and he could not get out.

And then others followed, about a hundred or more

But most everybody 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 our children back up to their tree

The scabs outside still laughed at their spree

And the children that died there was seventy-three

The piano played a slow funeral tune,

And the town was lit up by a cold Christmas moon

The parents, they cried and the men, they moaned,

"See what your greed for money has done?"