1913 Massacre

Take a trip with me to 1913
Down to Michigan and 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 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 have to be quiet
To watch all the fuss you don’t realize
The copper boss’s scabs they are waiting outside
And one of them scabs 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 on with your party there’s no such a thing
But a few people move, there was only a few
It’s only them scabs and them thugs fooling you
A man grabbed his daughter and he carried her down
But the scabs held the door, they couldn’t get out
Then more people followed a hundred or more
Till almost everyone left the floor
But the scabs they kept on with their murderous joke
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
Them scabs they still laughed at their murderous spree
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, the men they mourn
See what your greed for the money has done
Yes the women they cry, the men they mourn
See what your greed for the money has done