1913 Massacre

Take a trip with me to 1913

To Cal Michigan and the Copper Country

I'll take you 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 stairs

Singing and dancing is heard everywhere

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

Watch the kids dancing round the big Christmas tree

You talk about work and you talk about pay

They 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 their children and wives

A little girl sits down by the Christmas tree lights

To play the piano so you've got to be quiet

To watch all the fuss you don't realize

That the copper boss's thugs are waiting outside

And one of them thugs puts his head round the door

And he yells and he screams and he roars there's a fire

A woman she hollered there's no such a thing

Keep up with your party there's no such a thing

But a few people move, only a few

It's only them thugs and them scabs fooling you

A man grabbed his daughter and carried her down

But the scabs held the door and he couldn't get out

Then more people followed a hundred or more

Almost everyone left the floor

But the scabs kept on with their murderous joke

And the children were smothering on the stairs by the door

Such a terrible sight I never did see

They carried them back to the big Christmas tree

The scabs still laughed at their murderous spree

And the children that died numbered seventy-three

The piano plays a slow funeral tune

And the town is lit up by a cold Christmas moon

The women they cry and the men they do mourn

See what your greed for money has done