12/17/2006

Book Review

'Death's Door' sheds new light

Author probes Christmas Eve tragedy in U.P.

By ELIZABETH KANE BUZZELLI

Special to the Record-Eagle

A man with his hat pulled down over his eyes, wearing a dark coat with a white "Citizen's Alliance” button on it, stuck his head in the door and yelled, "FIRE!”

Children at the Italian Hall in Calumet, there to receive Christmas presents, panicked and ran for the doors to the hall, then down the steep stairs toward two sets of doors leading to the street. Many didn't make it. Bodies piled high on the steps. Children, who were at the bottom of the pile of people, were crushed.

When it was over, 73 were dead — 11 adults and 62 children of immigrant miners. No one was charged. The strike raging through the copper mines that year went on.

As if the Christmas Eve tragedy were only a blip in the saga of the strike, life continued in the Keweenaw. The mines eventually reopened. But the deaths of all those children have never been forgotten. The cemetery still holds the small headstones, and what's left of the Italian Hall — a stone arch standing at the site — marks the place that seems to tell of evil and shame and an old, old sorrow.

In his new book, "Death's Door,” Michigan author Steve Lehto hasn't settled, as other historians have, for rehashed accounts from the mine-biased newspapers of the day. He's dug deeply into what happened, who was behind it, and unearthed believable evidence that uncovers who orchestrated the murders of some of the miners, the kidnapping and beating of a union official and the deaths of so many children.

Over the years, stories have grown and changed and much was done at the time to muddy the waters. Lehto, with monumental patience, went over all records and found things which had been thought missing for years. There is, to this day, argument about whether the second set of doors leading to the stairs opened in or opened out. Evidently the mine owners and a group they'd backed called The Citizen's Alliance wanted those doors to open inward. That explains why the children couldn't get out — they'd piled up against the doors. Mine owners, afraid of being implicated in the disaster, used their bought-and-paid-for newspapers to run headlines absolving the union of guilt.

According to Lehto, "It wasn't just the bribery of reporters that created positive press coverage for the mines. The Evening Journal from Hancock expected to — and did — receive cash with its "thank you” notes after each piece it wrote — positive, of course — about the Quincy mine.”

Those there at the hall that day swore, despite the newspaper's slanted coverage, that the doors opened out. There was talk that deputies or hired strike-breakers, employed by the mine owners, held the doors closed and laughed.

I don't think even Lehto has settled all the facts satisfactorily. He's proven the doors opened out, but the proof that they were held closed isn't overwhelming. What is overwhelming is that someone did yell fire, whether with evil or simply nasty intent. And he's proven that is was someone wearing that Citizen's Alliance button on his coat.

In the ensuing years people have claimed to know who that man was. Deathbed confessions were reported, but always secondhand. Someone knew someone who'd been there. The murders were never solved.

At the center of the evil done in Calumet that year stands the figure of the manager of the largest mine, the Calumet & Hecla copper mine.

"Not only did C&H employ most of the male population of the area, it owned the land the mines sat on as well as the surrounding area. It owned the homes the families lived in and reserved the right to evict the families for any reason,” according to Lehto.

Over this empire ruled James MacNaughton, a Canadian whose own salary, when the $3-a-day miners went on strike, was $100,000 per year. He had a lot to protect and did so with a vengeance.

MacNaughton's story begins with the strike. It was 1913. If you worked in the mines and didn't speak English, you were relegated to back-breaking jobs like "tramming” — pushing carts filled with rock up narrow, underground tracks. It was mostly the immigrant Finns and Italians who did the work of the mines. They worked long hours in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. At the time, there was at least one death a week in the mines.

When the union came to Calumet, the men were ready. A list of complaints was drawn up. The union men wanted to present their grievances to the mines, but MacNaughton refused to meet with them and led the other mine managers to follow suit. The strike dragged on. The government sent people to Calumet to see what was going on. The mine owners brought in strike-breakers. One union official, Charles Moyer, was beaten, shot, put on a train out of town, taken to the state line and told never to come back.

Also in the pocket of the mine owners was the local sheriff, James Cruse.

"Critics would later point out,” Lehto said, "that he botched investigations into crimes what were committed by pro-management forces. He never arrested anyone for the Italian Hall tragedy or the kidnapping and shooting of ... Moyer.”

An inquest was called after that terrible Christmas Eve, but it was more of the same. One juror addressed a woman who testified, asking, "The purpose of this jury is to find out what caused this and what brought it on and probably the children themselves are to blame ...” From this jury, 29 indictments against union officials were issued, "almost all based on testimony given by mine officials.”

The story is a sad one, of misuse of power, of the terrible treatment of immigrants who had come to better themselves and their families through back-breaking work. It is the story of why the union movement eventually gained control of mines and factories across America.

Though Lehto's research is extensive and calls into question what other historians have concluded, perhaps even this isn't the last word. But, with people who were only 6 or 7 years old in 1913 now dying off, one wonders if anything will be left to discover, or if speculation will be the final word on what Lehto calls "the largest mass murder in Michigan history.”

Steve Lehto, now an attorney in Royal Oak, has deep roots here. His grandfather was a dean of Suomi College, where his father met his mother "a few decades after the Italian Hall tragedy.”

"When the Italian Hall was mentioned,” he said, "conversations often shifted into hushed tones, and among the older generation, into Finnish. It bordered on the unmentionable.”

Steve Lehto will be signing copies of "Death's Door” at Horizon Books in downtown Traverse City on Dec. 22 at 7 p.m.

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Jo Anne Wilson, of Leelanau County and southern France, has written a charming little book about walking with a dog named Maggie over the dunes and lanes of Leelanau County. "Walks with Maggie: Living and Wandering in Leelanau County” is available at Horizon Books in Traverse City and The Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor.

Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli can be reached at ebuzzelli@aol.com