In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

π xv Introduction I came in through the door and went to the back part of the hall and sat down with Mrs. Warminen and took the children in our laps and sat down in the back part of the hall. We were waiting for the program and simply sat there . . . [The program] had singing and dancing. The old people had some kind of a circular dance and some were singing. Could not hear the program in the back part of the hall. It was all full . . . A lady came and announced that the children go through that door and get their presents and then go out through the other [door] . . . A man in Finnish made the same announcement.1 Ina Karna, a Finnish immigrant and the person who made the above statement, was at the Italian Hall Christmas Eve party for striking mineworkers’ families in Red Jacket or Calumet, Michigan, that day in 1913. She was one of hundreds of Finnish immigrants who were attending the multiethnic Christmas party for the children of striking Michigan copper workers. So was Charles Olson, who had just come to the Italian Hall from a funeral only blocks away on Pine Street in Red Jacket. He was looking for his wife and two daughters in the mass of people celebrating at Italian Hall that day. You xvi π Introduction can almost hear the brogue of an immigrant describing what were to become the horrifying details of a sadly eventful day: I come to the hall, I was looking all over and could not see them. My neighbor woman had five or six children and my other brother was there too, and asked that lady if she had seen my wife and child. She said they were just going in. They were going in the door. There was children on both sides by the wall just as tight as could be, standing on chairs and most the seats were pretty close and there was an alley where they pass. There was not very many women, it was mostly children. So I got up on the stool or one of them seats and I began to look out, and could not see them. I said to myself they must be gone through the other side [of the hall] . . . [I was] in the middle of the hall on the north side looking up here to the door leading to the stage on the north side and then looking at the same time out to the main entrance door, that’s the door going to the stairway to see whether or not my children and wife were passing through. When I was standing a fellow come through the door, quite a big man, sealskin cap on and shook his hands and hollered, “FIRE!,” “FIRE!,” and turned back, and a lady took hold of him by the shoulders and wanted to keep him back but they [the crowd] got so excited they started to run.2 Mrs. Mary Lantto was in the Italian Hall from early on that day: I went there about two thirty, around that time; and when I went there the hall was full and I had seven children with me and then I stand there near the door for a while with my children, and then a little at a time I went through the crowd [to get] near the stage and then when I got near the stage it was so crowded I had to stand on a chair and put my baby on the edge of the stage and kept my baby there. While I was there for a while again I seen a lady on the side of the hall, right hand side, and she was standing on that desk and was motioning towards the door. That’s all I heard her say, “Every-body go out.” I did not hear her say fire. I did not understand what was up but I seen the people run towards the door. Introduction π xvii Then I was knocked off [the chair] with my baby from that stage and went on my knees near that heater. Got up from there as fast as I could and tried to hold my baby with one hand and the heater with the other so the crowd would not bring me down with them.3 Andrew Saari, who was in the hall with his two boys, one who was almost six years old and the other who was almost eight...

Share