Italian Hall Disaster (1913)

Wed Dec 24, 1913

Image

On this day in 1913, the Italian Hall Disaster took place when someone falsely shouted “fire” at a crowded workers’ party, resulting in the deaths of seventy-three members of working class families, mostly children, in Calumet, Michigan.

The Christmas party was mostly attended by workers striking against the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company. Of the seventy-three people who were killed by the stampede of panicked party-goers, fifty-nine were children.

These workers had been on strike since mid-July, after management refused workers’ demands for formal union recognition and a “conference with the employers to adjust wages, hours, and working conditions in the copper district of Michigan”.

When the false cry of “Fire!” was yelled, there were over four hundred people in the crowded party, and the stampede occurred when people rushed the staircase to the 1st floor.

Although the culprit was never found, eight witnesses testified that the person who shouted it was wearing a “Citizen’s Alliance” pin, a local anti-union group, and this claim is believed by some labor historians (Steve Lehto, in particular).

The event was memorialized by Woody Guthrie in the song “1913 Massacre”.