The Italian Hall Tragedy

I will be speaking at Finlandia on November 1st.  The book should be out shortly before that so this will be the first official trip to the Copper Country after the book comes out.  I will talk at Finlandia and then shake hands, sign books etc at North Wind Books.  It should be a lot of fun.  I wonder if Pops Lehto ever thought his youngest grandchild would ever speak at Suomi?!

Keep an eye out for posters and more information, which I will pass along as soon as it’s available.

Steve

One of the more interesting aspects of the web is that it is already getting “old”.  It doesn’t seem that long ago that it was a new idea, but it has been a decade or so . . . I mention that because some of the sites on the internet are likewise getting old.  And one in particular comes to mind when I think of this issue.  Tom Katona’s Italian Hall site.

 http://www.angelfire.com/mi2/1913/1913T.html

His is one of the better-known sites about the incident, and Tom was a leading figure in the drive to keep the memory of the event in the public eye.  Sadly, Tom passed away in 2004.  I know the guys at 1913 Massacre corresponded with him, but I never did.  His site — which is publicly/freely hosted on angel fire will go on forever.  That, of course, has its upsides and downsides.  I would have loved to be able to discuss the door issue with him (his site says the doors opened inward) and the issue of the deathbed hoaxes (he did not take a position on them: he merely reported them).

Otherwise, he posted a LOT of photos of the event on his site and drew a lot of attn to the event as well.  I’m just sorry that I never got to know him.

Steve

It seems that every time I poke around on the ‘net, I find more disinformation on the Hall.  Some of it is serious and some of it is not.  Even so, here is a note I found yesterday: this is a letter to the Editor of American Heritage magazine.  AH had run an article on the Italian Hall in the 1980s (the article was pretty good, although it too contained errors).  The person wrote (regarding the song 1913 Massacre):

“Guthrie, born in 1912, didn’t get all the facts straight (the inquest disproved that deputies held the doors of the Italian Hall shut, and the number of children killed was sixty-three), but his song is certainly an effective condemnation of the forces that may have caused this tragic event.”

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1986/5/1986_5_6.shtml

The number 63 is wrong as we have discussed previously.  If he meant the number of children – then the question is, “What age does a child become an adult?  16? 17? 18?  Few people would refer to a 17 year old as a “child”.   Even so, the number of children is usually given as 59 (or less, depending on your definition.)

I find it odd that American Heritage didn’t even bother to doublecheck this number, but then again, their articles do not contain footnotes or source references either.

Steve

One of the problems with this story is that much of what has been written in the past was mistaken. One of the best examples is Arthur Thurner’s book, Rebels on the Range. Although I think the book has much merit, it also contains many errors. Among the most troublesome regarding the tragedy at Italian Hall are Thurner’s claims that there really was a fire at the Hall (Page 168: “There were reports by men on the street outside the hall shortly after the panic began that there had been a chimney fire at Italian Hall.”) and that there was evidence of a fire.

THERE WAS NO FIRE, NOR WAS THERE EVER ANY EVIDENCE OF A FIRE.

The cry of Fire was false, and the man who first raised the cry did so – not because there really was a fire – because he wanted to cause panic.

Thurner’s statements about “reports by men on the street . . .” is not endnoted. Where did these “reports” come from? Who made these reports and where were they recorded?

Thurner also reports the story of a Herman Bibber (Rebels, p. 160) who, according to Thurner, was the man who called the fire station to report the fire. The problem with this is that Bibber never testified at either the inquest or the subcommittee hearing, and was only mentioned in passing in the local papers (who were known to embellish and make up anti-union stories.) According to Thurner, “He [Bibber] said he was sure there was a fire.” Bibber never officially said any such thing – and that’s assuming Bibber was the one who called in the alarm (the man at the firehouse who took the call later testified he wasn’t even sure if the caller was a man or a woman.)

Where does the confusion come from? Much of it comes from the fact that the local papers at the time were NOT unbiased reporters of the news – they were tools for the mine management (See Larry Lankton’s “Cradle to Grave” for a great discussion on this) and could not be counted on for accurate information. I corresponded briefly with Mr. Thurner on this and a few other topics and he indicated to me that some of the things in his books were “mistaken” but he did not elaborate much more than that.

I suppose I’ll just have to wait and see what he thinks of my book.

Steve

Chris from Chicago reminded me of the Iroqouis Theater disaster and how it plays into all of this.  For those who don’t know, there was a tragedy in Chicago in 1903 where over 600 (six hundred!) people died in a fire at a theater.  There, it was well-documented that the theater had both inward-opening doors AND many of them were locked at the time of the fire.  It seems the management wanted to keep people from sneaking in during the performance.

At the inquest there, they discussed the doors at length — one reason is that they had found people crowded up against the doors who couldn’t get out.  For more details on this event see

http://www.inficad.com/~ksup/iroquois.html

This well-documented tragedy — in 1903 — was actually the primary reason laws were changed around the country to make doors open out.  And, this is one of the reasons we know that in 1908, when the Italian Hall was built — that the doors were designed to swing outwards. 

When I was at the Copper Country Homecoming I had quite a few people ask me about the connection between the change in the laws and the Italian Hall.  Although folklore has held for many years that the Hall was the impetus of change, I told them that no, it was the Iroqouis Theater.  And, of course, since the doors of the Hall swung the correct direction, they could not have played a part in raising the issue either.

Steve

Kathie wrote me a note and said: 

“Here is an article with a picture taken the day after the Italian Hall Disaster. It shows there were two sets of doors side by side. One opened in and one opened out. The link also states that it was and unusual design.

kathie”

She is referring to the pic of the doors that I had posted earlier:

On the site that she refers to, it says: “You can see the odd design of the doors in this photo, taken the next day.  One set opened towards the street, the other in toward the stairs.  That is why they would not open . . .”

As I said earlier, this photo is an optical illusion.  If you follow the top of the “inside” door on the left, you will see that it lines up with the doorframe in the back, NOT the door in the front.  If both doors on the left swung into the front doorframe, the doors would line up at the top.  (See enlargement below.)

and I’m not an artist, but see if this helps

I have a photo — taken at the same time as this one by the same photographer — that CLEARLY shows these doors and the one in the rear clearly swings toward the street as well.  I cannot publish it on the net but I brought a blowup of it to the Copper Country Homecoming.  EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO LOOKED AT IT WHILE I WAS THERE AGREED WITH ME THAT IT CLARIFIES THIS ISSUE AND THAT THE DOORS ALL, INDEED, SWING TOWARD THE STREET.  (The photo will be published in my book.)

If you are not inclined to believe a photograph, then ask yourself this:

1) Why did no one mention the doors (swinging in) in the newspapers after the event?

2) Why did no one mention the doors at the inquest?

3) Why did no one mention the doors at the subcommittee hearings in 1914?

4) Why does no reference in print about the doors swinging the “wrong way” appear in print until after the 1940s?

5) Why did the rumors of the doors being held shut from the outside gain traction?  (If they swung “in” they couldn’t have been held shut from the outside).

6) Why does the newspaper article about the Hall being built (in 1908) say specifically that the doors all swung toward the street?

The evidence that the doors all swung out is overwhelming; the only “evidence” that they swung in is one over-exposed photograph taken from a bad angle.  And even that photo — when it was included in the stereo slide set — was labelled “The tragic staircase” — NOT “The tragic doors.”

Steve

I just returned from my annual trip to the Keweenaw.  This was the 16th year in a row that my brothers and I have visited in the second week of August to bike the area.

One of the highlights was afirst for us — we went to visit Bare Bluff.  I had never heard of it until this year, but it is AMAZING.  If you want a view that rivals Brockway (although it is a little harder to get to:)

Take the road from 41 down towards Lac Labelle and Bete Gris to the Smith Fisheries Rd (the same dirt road you take to the Montreal Falls).  Two miles down SF Rd there is a turn off parking area and a MNA sign.  Park there and hike the trail in.  It is well marked and after about 20 minutes, you pop out onto a rock outcropping that is several hundred feet above the forest floor and the lake.  The view to the South and East is awesome — just like the one from Brockway, but the other side of the peninsula.  It is WELL WORTH the hike.  Bring a camera but watch your step!  It’s a long way down.

Steve

One of the lingering questions about the Italian Hall tragedy is “Which way did the doors open?”  Simply, the doors at the bottom of the stairs (there were three sets at the bottom: one to at the foot of the stairs, one to the outside world and stairs to the sidewalk, and one set into Vairo’s Saloon) all opened outwards.

For some strange reason, someone invented the story that doors at the bottom of the stairs swung inward and contributed to the catastrophe.  This legend appears to have been invented in the 1950s.  Neither of the early books that address this event mention the doors opening the wrong way: Murdoch’s Boom Copper doesn’t mention the doors (1943) and Bloor’s We Are Many specifically says that they opened outward (1940).  I could not find a reference to the doors opening inward until after these two.

At the Dee this past week, I had quite a few people tell me that “everyone knew” that the doors opened inward, and some said they had read newspaper accounts that verified it.  To those people (and anyone else) I said: show me the article.  To date, no one has produced any such article.  However, here is an article from 1908 — the year the Italian Hall was built — that specifically mentions that the doors swung out.  Click on the article to enlarge and read it.

My apologies to the late Jack Foster who told great stories of firemen taking their axes to the doors to get at the victims — the doors were undamaged the next day as all the photos show — the stories were wonderful, but factually inaccurate.

And yes, I know that the historical marker claims that the doors swung in.  The marker is simply wrong.

As a historian, the question of the doors is interesting: Why are people so prone to believe something that is clearly not true?  I believe that in this case, many people would rather place blame on the doors (an inanimate object) than on the person who yelled Fire.  No one really wants to believe that there is such evil in the world.

Steve

One of the great things about visiting the Keweenaw is how there is history everywhere.  Right before the interview on WMPL I stopped by at this famous landmark: the Scott Hotel. 

This is the former Hotel in Hancock where many important out-of-towners stayed during the 1913 Strike.  It was from the Hotel that a mob of men kidnapped, beat and shot Moyer (the out of state representative of the Western Federation of Miners union) after he had made it known that he believed mine management was behind the Italian Hall disaster.  Even though the kidnapping was witnessed by dozens of people, no one was ever prosecuted for this crime either.  Although Moyer was dumped onto a train and told never to return, he did come back a few days later and continue his efforts in the copper Country.

There have been recent efforts to renovate this building and it looks like it has some tenants.  It is just unfortunate that the Italian Hall didn’t receive this kind of attention before it was torn down in the 1980s.

Steve