This is Bob Myers from the Historical Society of Michigan with a Michigan history moment. The Copper country strike was long and bitter, and it culminated in one of the worst tragedies in Michigan history. In Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula, the Western Federation of miners had unionized 9,000 of the 15,000 men working in the copper mines. In 1913, the union called for a conference with the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company to bargain over wages and working conditions. Mine owners refused. In July, the miners went on strike. The strike was bitter. Mine owners brought in non union scab workers. After a shooting at a boarding house where scab workers lived, a vigilante citizens committee formed. The Citizens alliance was composed of businessmen and managers with help from Houghton county law enforcement members. It was sanctioned by mining company officials and its goal was to intimidate the strikers. On Christmas Eve 1913, striking miners and their families gathered in Calumet's Italian hall for a Christmas party sponsored by the Ladies Auxiliary of the Western Federation of miners. More than 400 people packed into the second floor room during the party. A man stepped into the room. Many witnesses claimed that he wore a Citizens alliance badge. He cried fire and ran. Panicked people raced down the steep staircase and jammed together in a doorway at the bottom of the stairs. Nearly 80 people, 59 of them children, died, crushed and suffocated. No one ever determined who cried fire to start the panic. The Copper country strike ended in April 1914. The miners failed to achieve their goals and had to tear up their union cards. It was decades before the mine workers successfully unionized. The Calumet and Hecla Company mines closed permanently in 1969. The Italian hall where the tragedy occurred no longer stands. It was torn down in 1984. The arched doorway where the miner's children died was saved and stands today in a park near a historical marker that commemorates the tragedy. In 1941, folk singer Woody Guthrie commemorated the disaster with a ballad entitled 1913 Massacre. It ends with the verse. The piano played a slow funeral tune, and the town was lit up by a cold Christmas moon. The parents, they cried and the miners, they moaned. See what your greed for money has done. This Michigan history moment was brought to you by michiganhistorymagazine.org.