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1913 Massacre
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Ramblin' Jack Elliott
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1
Take a trip with me in nineteen thirteen
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To Calumet, Michigan, in the copper country.
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I'll take you to a place called Italian Hall
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Where the miners are having their big Christmas ball.
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I'll take you through a door, and up a high stairs.
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Singing and dancing is heard everywhere,
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I will let you shake hands with the people you see
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And watch the kids dance round that big Christmas tree.
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You ask about work and you ask about pay;
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They'll tell you that they make less than a dollar a day,
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Working the copper claims, risking their lives,
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So it's fun to spend Christmas with children and wives.
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There's talking and laughing and songs in the air,
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And the spirit of Christmas is there everywhere,
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Before you know it, you're friends with us all
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And you're dancing around and around in the hall.
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Well, a little girl sits down by the Christmas tree lights
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To play the piano, so you gotta keep quiet.
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To hear all this fun you would not realize
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That the copper-boss thug-men are milling outside.
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The copper-boss thugs stuck their heads in the door
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One of them yelled and he screamed, "There's a fire!"
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A lady, she hollered, "There's no such a thing!
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Keep on with your party, there's no such a thing."
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A few people rushed, and it was only a few
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"It's only the thugs and the scabs fooling you."
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A man grabbed his daughter and carried her down
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But the thugs held the door and he could not get out.
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And then others followed, a hundred or more
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But most everybody remained on the floor.
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The gun-thugs they laughed at their murderous joke,
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While the children were smothered on the stair by the door.
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Such a terrible sight I never did see
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We carried our children back up to their tree.
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The scabs outside still laughed at their spree
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And the children that died there were seventy-three.
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The piano played a slow funeral tune
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And the town was lit up by a cold Christmas moon,
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The parents they cried and the miners they moaned,
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"See what your greed for money has done."
Woody Guthrie - 1913 Massacre
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