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