July 2009
I have been spending much more time these days promoting my Douglass Houghton book but still think about the Italian Hall quite often. I am working on a book-length project right now about the murders at Seeberville and have found that the Hall and other strike-related issues have been coming up over and over again in my research.
Interest in the Hall is still quite high. There are even some revisionis historians who are actively trying to rewrite the known history of the Hall. Why they are doing this is unclear to me and the others in the history community. Some have gone so far as to say that we need to “re-think” whether there was even a cry of Fire at all. Very strange.
There is a blog dedicated to some of this. See
http://finlaboramhistory.blogspot.com/
History is like economics. You can push it around a little bit but eventually, the truth will come out. (You can try and ‘regulate’ the economy, but for the most part, economic forces will always overcome the regulation.) Those revisionists in Hancock and Eagle Harbor will eventually be quieted by the overwhelming truth.
Steve