Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part I-The Fighting Finns

Quote re Annie Clemenc at Mass Funeral Calumet, Day Book p4, Jan 6, 1914 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 2, 1914
“Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part I-The Fighting Finns

From the International Socialist Review of February 1914:

[Part I of II]

SEVENTY-TWO copper miners, with their wives and children, met death at these doors on Christmas Eve in Calumet, Michigan.

A brief hour before this little company of silent ones had passed up the stairs into the Italian Hall to join hundreds of other strikers and their families. A Christmas tree had been arranged by the Women’s Auxiliary of the Western Federation of Miners to put a bit of cheer into the hearts of the kiddies and perhaps to encourage the men and women in their struggle against the copper barons for more bread and better working conditions.

But “Peace on earth and good will toward men” is not down on the capitalist program. For months past imported thugs and gun-men, in the pay of the copper companies, as guards, had gone about shooting up strikers, breaking up union headquarters, disrupting meetings and otherwise “establishing law and order.”

It should surprise no one then to learn that upon this occasion a “mysterious” stranger appeared suddenly in the doorway of Italian Hall with a false cry of “fire!”

Comrade Annie Clemanc [Clemenc] had just finished her address of welcome; the toys were still on the tree-when forty-eight pairs of little feet arose at the alarm and ran down the stairway. They were met by “deputies,” who blocked the doors to escape. In the crush and panic that followed seventy-two human beings were killed.

* * * *

A bleak mining region and the rigors of a Lake Superior winter, with the hardship of five months’ strike, made still more poignant the crushing sorrow. Over the two miles of road from Calumet to the bit of ground owned by the Western Federation of Miners marched the procession with hearse, undertakers’ wagons and an automobile truck carrying a few coffins, followed by 480 miners, in squads of four, carrying 67 coffins. They lowered them into two long trenches that yawned in the snows of the copper country. Behind them came fifty Cornish miners chanting hymns, their voices thick with emotion. Thousands of miners with their wives and children formed the procession. All but a dozen of the burials were in common graves dug by members of the union.

Came the Finns to the fair state of Michigan about sixty years ago-to spend their lifetime and labor time in the mines.

Emigration agents of our “infant” copper industry enticed thousands of “foreigners” from all over Europe to come across to share the copper prosperity of this new land with our “free born” American workers. For years the Finns were “desirable” mine workers, being largely controlled by their priests.

However, the Finns came from fighting stock; for years the Finnish people had resisted the Russian czar, who flooded their country with spies. They were accustomed to illegal arrests and banishments, and the suppression of their newspapers was the order of the day. By a national strike in November, 1905, the Finns wrested constitutional rights from the czar and at the first election 40 per cent of the representatives were Socialists.

About this time, ten years ago, Socialism began to spread rapidly among the Finns in the copper country, despite the antagonism of the church, and what they did to the czar, in Finland, they will do one day to the copper barons in this country-for conditions are now much the same in Michigan as they were in Finland. “Constitutional government no longer exists where the rights of our citizens under our constitution and laws are overthrown, and the laws and the constitution defied.”

A Finnish Socialist daily was established in Hancock called “Tyomies” (The Working Man), and the plant is today valued at $40,000. This paper, and the fighting rank and file of Finns, are the brains and backbone of the copper strike; their strikers are always on the picket line; their paper has been an invincible barricade.

On December 27, 1913, two days after the killing of the 72 members of the working class, Tyomies published sworn statements as follows :

Investigators employed by ”Tyomies” questioned many of the persons who were present at the Italian Hall on Christmas eve and their affidavits given under oath prove the following:

1. That one gentlemanly looking, rather largely built and stout man, well clothed and wearing a sealskin hat which was pulled down close to the eyes, entered the hall from outside. He had yelled twice “Fire.”

2. This created a pour-out from the hall, there being not much rush at the beginning.

3. That the women and children coming out of the hall formed a pile of about four feet high. Two persons testified that this happened because something had been dropped or pushed in the way of the women and children scrambling to get out.

4. Two men at the door had started to take apart the pile, pulling some out alive, and if they had been allowed to continue, everybody would have been rescued.

5. The deputies drove these two rescuers forcibly away.

6. The deputies made no effort to do any rescue work, but, on the contrary, they let the human pile grow so that the deputies in front were supported by those behind, thus stopping the outpouring of the people, and so more and more victims fell in the pile, and finally the pressure became so great that one Vestola, for instance, died in a standing position, his face being against the face of the witness, whose face was burned by a lighted cigar that was in Vestola’s mouth, because he could not free his hands on account of the pressure.

7. Deputies had closed the doors, and thus the work of rescue had to be started from the top, and those in the pile had to stay there so long that they suffocated.

8. In the hall a deputy had broken the neck of a 5 or 6 year old child by twisting her by the neck under his arms. Also another deputy dragged a man, holding him by the throat and his thumbs pressed against the man’s weasand.

9. A group of deputies and those with the Citizens’ Alliance buttons had been mocking and waving their hats down below.

10. A man who tried to shout from below that there was no fire was clubbed in the head.

* * *

And now came High Lord Sheriff Cruse with his crew of gunmen-deputies with twenty warrants for the arrest of editors and employes of “Tyomies.” “The peace and dignity of the people of the state of Michigan” had been “unlawfully, wickedly, falsely, feloniously and maliciously” conspired against, in the printing of the above statements.

Seven were arrested and jailed, including three editors. Thirteen escaped from the county-but the paper never missed a single daily issue! The Strike Bulletin appeared regularly every morning! We are amazed to find no mention made in the report of the Socialist Investigating Committee of the splendid, fearless work of “Tyomies” and the persecutions heaped upon our comrades of the press.

After the Christmas disaster, came the Citizens Alliance with its degrading offer of a $25,000 burial gift. This was indignantly spurned by the striking miners, who refused to accept a donation of “blood money” from their enemies.

A committee of eminently respectable citizens from the Citizens Alliance waited upon President Charles F. Moyer of the Western Federation of Miners, in his room at the hotel, and, upon being informed by him that the miners had turned down the peace offering, they left the room in great anger. Sheriff Cruse with a deputy remained behind to assure Mr. Moyer that he would have full protection in his comings and goings while in Calumet.

The sheriff had been gone but a few moments when there was a knock at the door and in filed several plug-uglies and gunmen. Moyer had his back turned toward them, as he was using a telephone. He was struck in the back of the head with the butt end of a heavy pistol, and fell to the floor and was taken forcibly from the hotel.

E. J. MacDowell, under Attorney Geo. E. Nichols, appointed by Governor Ferris of Michigan, as a special investigator, and who has spent three months in the copper country, in his report says: “I investigated the Moyer deportation thoroughly, and to my mind the treatment accorded him is almost beyond belief. He was kicked and mauled and dragged a mile through the dirt, and I found one man who pointed out more than twenty-five people who admitted they had witnessed the attack on Mover. But when they were brought before the grand jury they were as mum as oysters.“

With a bullet in his body, he was put aboard the train by the mob and threatened with death if he ever returned.

Chas. H. Tanner, auditor of the Western Federation, was also badly beaten up and deported, along with Mr. Moyer. Together they reached Chicago, where they were rushed to a hospital. Ten days after, they returned to Calumet. So much for “law and order” in the copper kingdom.

* * * * * * *

The Citizens’ Alliance is composed of small storekeepers, who sympathized with the strikers until the union men opened up their own commissary stores. This competition aroused the anger of these little trades people and they were easily organized by Attorney Peterman of the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company into a benevolent organization for the “conservation of law and order, flag and country.”

The Calumet and Hecla Mining Company control the banks and are arbiters of credit -of business life and death-in the copper region. The butchers, bakers, clothiers and grocers who do not stand shoulder to shoulder, ready to fight for the interests of the copper companies, find their credit cut off and failure staring them in the face. As a result the Citizens’ Alliance has proved a powerful tool for the mine owners.

* * * * * * *

[Emphasis added.]