Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Oh hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 2: The only podcast. It's not the only podcast that does this,
Speaker 2: but it's this the podcast that does this, the podcast
Speaker 2: that tries to remind you when there's bad things happening,
Speaker 2: that there's people who do good things in the face
Speaker 2: of those bad things and try to make the situation
Speaker 2: better for everyone and actually succeed all of the time,
Speaker 2: even though the winds aren't always as measurable as we
Speaker 2: want them to be. There's one thing that I talk
Speaker 2: about over and over again on the show, so there's
Speaker 2: no bottom to how bad things can be. Every little
Speaker 2: bit of not bad in our lives is because of
Speaker 2: people like we're talking about today and people like you,
Speaker 2: people who are trying to fight in whatever ways against
Speaker 2: all of the bad things. It's not hopeless, it's not pointless.
Speaker 2: Every fight is worth fighting. And I am your host,
Speaker 2: Margaret Kiljoy, and this week and last week, this week
Speaker 2: we are continuing and finishing the story of the nineteen
Speaker 2: thirteen strike against the copper barons, and it's really the
Speaker 2: strike that reading about this, there's something new I add
Speaker 2: to my worldview every week when I do this show.
Speaker 2: And what it's meant this time is really understanding barons,
Speaker 2: understanding copper barons, coal barons, all of these barons of
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century. And I have to admit, Okay, here's
Speaker 2: the terrible thing I'm going to tell you. I was
Speaker 2: walking around some big old libraries past couple of weeks,
Speaker 2: and you know, a lot of them were built by
Speaker 2: Andrew Carnegie. That's why they're called Carnegie libraries. And you
Speaker 2: know how everything used to be like decorated. It's a
Speaker 2: little bit because we were run by barons and not
Speaker 2: by pure capitalists. It's a little bit that people wanted
Speaker 2: to show off their wealth by you know, ornamenting things
Speaker 2: and making things for the public good, beautiful. It's possible
Speaker 2: that pure rock capitalists are even worse somehow. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know what's worse. It's just
Speaker 2: two bad things. And where we last left last week,
Speaker 2: our plucky heroes and anti heroes had just decided to
Speaker 2: go on strike fifteen thousand workers, the entire workforce of
Speaker 2: the main copper producing region of the country during the
Speaker 2: middle of electrification. Well, not the middle, it's probably about
Speaker 2: the middle. I remember reading that, like, you know, nineteen ten,
Speaker 2: only ten percent of US households had electricity, and by
Speaker 2: nineteen forty nine it was like eighty percent. Don't quote
Speaker 2: me on those numbers. I just read that last week,
Speaker 2: and I remember statistics for about a week and then
Speaker 2: they disappear from my brain. But in the middle of
Speaker 2: the electrification of the country, every copper worker in one
Speaker 2: of the most important copper regions in the country, it's
Speaker 2: no longer the only important copper region in the country.
Speaker 2: They all go on strike. And if the copper barons
Speaker 2: had really and truly been capitalists at heart, entirely motivated
Speaker 2: by profit, they likely would have recognized the union. At
Speaker 2: this point, well, Kieina is no longer the single most
Speaker 2: important copper area in the country. It's a huge fucking deal.
Speaker 2: These guys, the barons, they own nine thousand foot deep mines.
Speaker 2: They need to get them running again. But for both sides,
Speaker 2: the strike was about the balance of power. At least
Speaker 2: as much as it was about money for the owners.
Speaker 2: It was about control for the workers. It was about
Speaker 2: control too, but just control over themselves. It is about dignity.
Speaker 2: It's also look, these are Europeans. They come from a
Speaker 2: more feudal society, most of them. Of them, even the leftists,
Speaker 2: took the promise of American democracy seriously. It's about not
Speaker 2: being ruled by feudalism. And the strike is remembered as
Speaker 2: particularly violent these days. If you look it up, it's
Speaker 2: like one of the most violent strikes in US history.
Speaker 2: But that violence was almost entirely, but not entirely, directed
Speaker 2: against the workers, and it started off actually very peaceful.
Speaker 2: The Union, in one of their papers put it like
Speaker 2: this quote, it is doubtful if there ever was a
Speaker 2: strike of equal magnitude that was initiated so peacefully and
Speaker 2: remains so or so thoroughly approved by the workers, because,
Speaker 2: like if a lot of the violence and strikes is
Speaker 2: preventing strike breakers from working and the entire workforce walks out,
Speaker 2: there's not as much violence required, right but right away
Speaker 2: the owners freaked out. Before there was a National Guard,
Speaker 2: there were state militias groups which later became the National Guard,
Speaker 2: and so the entire Michigan militia, all twenty five hundred soldiers,
Speaker 2: was mobilized up to the far northern tip of the
Speaker 2: state within days. And even worse and more impactfully, the
Speaker 2: companies hired the services of a professional strike breaking company,
Speaker 2: the Wattle Mahon Corporation. Six hundred strike breakers showed up.
Speaker 2: And these weren't just sometimes what we say when we
Speaker 2: meet scab, like someone is going to do the work.
Speaker 2: These six hundred strike breakers that showed up are people
Speaker 2: who showed up to break the strike physically. Since the
Speaker 2: companies owned the town, those six hundred strike breakers were
Speaker 2: immediately deputized by the local sheriff, which meant they had
Speaker 2: the power of the law behind them. And it also
Speaker 2: it meant that the public paid for the repression of
Speaker 2: the strike, not the owners. This is the deal that
Speaker 2: the state and capitalists have made with one another since
Speaker 2: basically forever you privatize the gains and you publicize the costs.
Speaker 2: The canals and then the railroads of this country were
Speaker 2: built in this way. Our tax money funds private ventures
Speaker 2: that then keep the profits. That's why Elon Musk is rich.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting too write because it leads us to
Speaker 2: the question of, like, well, what has changed since feudalism,
Speaker 2: Like what has changed since we just like take all
Speaker 2: of the money produced by everyone and then give it
Speaker 2: to the rich people. And in this particular case, the
Speaker 2: strike breakers, the people from the Wattlemehon Corporation were likely
Speaker 2: and they were widely reported to be literal gangsters from
Speaker 2: New York City, So they basically are like, Hey, we're
Speaker 2: going to get the mob to show up here and
Speaker 2: fuck up the workers. If the striking workers were violent
Speaker 2: in scare quotes yelling at and throwing rocks and getting
Speaker 2: into fistfights with scabs, the strike break brought guns to
Speaker 2: a fistfight. Less than a month into the strike, the
Speaker 2: strike breakers shot up a union boarding house. It was
Speaker 2: August fourteenth, nineteen thirteen. Two Croatian miners striking miners. They're
Speaker 2: wanted for questioning for they took a short cut home
Speaker 2: through company property, so they're like wanted for trespassing, and
Speaker 2: a deputized gang of strike breakers showed up to this
Speaker 2: Croatian boarding house without any warrants and demanded that the
Speaker 2: men hand themselves over. They refused, and unfortunately, the comparisons
Speaker 2: to the modern day ring very obvious. Right like immigrants
Speaker 2: are being approached by people who are representatives of the
Speaker 2: law but do not have judicial warrants and being told
Speaker 2: that they have to hand themselves over or violence will ensue.
Speaker 2: To this day, a lot of websites describing this take
Speaker 2: the side of the strike break. For some reason, a
Speaker 2: lot of the local history websites, not really the books,
Speaker 2: but a lot of the local history websites are like
Speaker 2: basically on the side of the managers of this whole basue.
Speaker 2: And so they'll talk about how these deputies who showed
Speaker 2: up they were outnumbered and scared of the probably unarmed miners,
Speaker 2: which actually, okay, the question of how armed the strike
Speaker 2: was is not one I found much consensus on from
Speaker 2: sources at the time or modern sources, but everyone agrees
Speaker 2: that the Croatian Union miners didn't present any firearms in
Speaker 2: this particular confrontation. So the outnumbered and scared strike breakers
Speaker 2: surrounded the boarding house and shot in through every window
Speaker 2: until their guns were empty. Again as soon as someone
Speaker 2: who's deputized says, I was afraid, they are allowed to
Speaker 2: shoot in through windows of unarmed people and murder them.
Speaker 2: And this time they killed two different men, not the
Speaker 2: two that they were there without warrants to arrest, and
Speaker 2: they also wounded two adults and a baby. The two
Speaker 2: dead strikers were Alois Tishan, who was eighteen, and Steve Putrich,
Speaker 2: who is forty and Putrich didn't die right away. His
Speaker 2: last words to his family as he went out to
Speaker 2: the hospital were, I am shot, and if anything happens
Speaker 2: to me, send my money to my children. But remember
Speaker 2: how the hospitals are owned by the feudal lords of
Speaker 2: the region. Well, maybe the hospital's being pretty isn't enough
Speaker 2: to make the whole barren thing worth it. Because at
Speaker 2: the hospital, the doctor tried to blackmail Peutrich's brother, telling
Speaker 2: him quote, if I operate on your brother and he
Speaker 2: gets well, he will just go out and fight again.
Speaker 2: You go and tell your Croatian people to go back
Speaker 2: to work, and I will treat your brother. And it's
Speaker 2: not surprising that his brother did not survive that doctor's care.
Speaker 2: And also, just like, what does it mean if you're
Speaker 2: blackmail to work? Right? Like, what does it mean if
Speaker 2: you don't actually have the right to refuse work? And
Speaker 2: I've read some confusing and contradictory stuff about the outcome
Speaker 2: of that shooting, but I do know that the sheriff
Speaker 2: did not arrest the killers, but instead one of the
Speaker 2: men who was still wanted for trespassing. But do you
Speaker 2: know what will seamlessly cut over to ads it's me.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna seamlessly cut over to ads. No one will
Speaker 2: even notice the seams. They'll be like. That was the
Speaker 2: smoothest transition she's ever done, and we're back. Despite two
Speaker 2: of the striking miners having been shot dead in their home,
Speaker 2: the strike carried on. Most of the public actions were
Speaker 2: either picket lines and attempting to intimidate scabbing workers in
Speaker 2: public parades. Every day, hundreds and thousands of people held
Speaker 2: marches across the region. These weren't the protest marches that
Speaker 2: were used to today. The workers were fighting to be taken seriously,
Speaker 2: to have some dignity, and they showed it as best
Speaker 2: they could, marching in orderly lines in their Sunday best clothes.
Speaker 2: At the front of nearly every march, a six foot
Speaker 2: two Slovenian woman marched with a giant American flag held
Speaker 2: on a ten foot pole. She carried that thing for miles.
Speaker 2: She was a socialist absolutely through and through, but she
Speaker 2: held the American flag as the strike symbol because part
Speaker 2: of what they were trying to say is that we
Speaker 2: may not be from here though she was, although honestly
Speaker 2: she probably wasn't an American citizen. One, I suspect that
Speaker 2: she wasn't an American citizen because when she came back
Speaker 2: from Europe they probably were like, you're an Austrian on
Speaker 2: the passport, despite where she was born. And two also
Speaker 2: she married an immigrant, and at the time that meant
Speaker 2: that she would have had to give up her American
Speaker 2: citizenship even if she had it. But she was sure
Speaker 2: a shit born in America and by all actual rights,
Speaker 2: well inasmuch as borders of any legitimacy, should have been
Speaker 2: an American citizen. So she's carrying this flag to say it,
Speaker 2: we may not be from here, but we're as American
Speaker 2: as anybody. Because so much of the hatred against them
Speaker 2: was essentially xenophobia, it was also a provocation to carry
Speaker 2: the flag, and her and another flag bearer were physically
Speaker 2: attacked routinely for carrying it. She was cut by an
Speaker 2: officer's bayonet for refusing to give him the flag she carried,
Speaker 2: like she was slashed I think on the arm, like
Speaker 2: through the flag by someone who was like, how dare
Speaker 2: you carry the flag? And I find this okay. As tangent,
Speaker 2: I find this really interesting because just the way that
Speaker 2: people have used American flags for a political protest, have
Speaker 2: it's changed meaning and context so many times. I remember
Speaker 2: talking to a radical Union coal miner in West Virginia
Speaker 2: a long time ago, and he had just been arrested
Speaker 2: protesting mountaintop removal coal mining, and he was a retired miner,
Speaker 2: and I was talking to him about how he had
Speaker 2: been a protester in the sixties, and among the things
Speaker 2: that he said, I've probably told this story before. He
Speaker 2: talks about how there he was on one street corner
Speaker 2: and protesting the Vietnam War, and on the other street
Speaker 2: corner black people fighting for black power, and another street
Speaker 2: corner were gay people fighting for gay rights, and they
Speaker 2: realized all of them be better off if they all
Speaker 2: stood on the same street corner. I fucking love that.
Speaker 2: But one of the other stories that he told me
Speaker 2: was about how they actually put the American flag on
Speaker 2: everything as a sign of disrespect to the flag, because
Speaker 2: at the time, something like an American flag swimsuit would
Speaker 2: be disrespectful. Right, the flag. You have certain rules. You're
Speaker 2: not allowed to let it touch the ground. You can't.
Speaker 2: You certainly can't just like pattern things on it, right,
Speaker 2: And so at one point he got pulled over and
Speaker 2: he had an American flag draped over his car is
Speaker 2: like a car seat basically, and I think he got
Speaker 2: beat up up by the cop for having disrespected the
Speaker 2: American flag by having it as this car seat. Whereas
Speaker 2: now you tell that same story and you don't provide
Speaker 2: any context, and it'll sound like they were really into
Speaker 2: American symbolism. And so I only half understand what it
Speaker 2: meant for these socialists to be marching carrying the American
Speaker 2: flag at the time. You know, read a lot about it,
Speaker 2: and she sure shit was stabbed for it, and she
Speaker 2: fought physically. She described one day of picketing with her
Speaker 2: and the other wives of miners. Quote, we took a
Speaker 2: lunch and threw it in the face of two scabs.
Speaker 2: We jumped at them and fought with them. One of
Speaker 2: them said, God damn you all smash your head in.
Speaker 2: One ran away and the other went in the auto.
Speaker 2: I caught the latter by the coat and pulled so
Speaker 2: hard that I am sure I tore it. Then they
Speaker 2: pulled one of the ladies in the automobile and I
Speaker 2: pulled her out. Then we went back of the automobile
Speaker 2: and I lifted her up to pull the scab's hair,
Speaker 2: but the auto went off, and she was up every
Speaker 2: morning at five am on the picket line, well before
Speaker 2: the sun rose. She was arrested so many times the
Speaker 2: police lost track. She was convicted three times, twice with
Speaker 2: a fine, once with jail time for hitting a scab
Speaker 2: with an umbrella. And when I say she was a
Speaker 2: diehard socialist, there's one story of her laughing at a
Speaker 2: striking worker being beat by the sheriff. Someone asked her
Speaker 2: why she was laughing, like, okay, so this sheriff is
Speaker 2: beating this striking worker and she's literally laughing at it.
Speaker 2: She's like, Ahaha, fucked that guy. And someone's like, aren't
Speaker 2: you on his side? Why are you laughing at him?
Speaker 2: And she said, and I paraphrase, I told him to
Speaker 2: vote for the socialists, and he voted instead for the
Speaker 2: sheriff who's now beating him. Big Annie and the other
Speaker 2: women organized three different women's locals of the Western Federation
Speaker 2: of Miners. The Western Federation of Miners consider them auxiliaries, though,
Speaker 2: and at least eight hundred card carrying women who participated
Speaker 2: weren't allowed to come to the strike planning meetings or
Speaker 2: vote on major issues. The male. Historian Lynden Comstock presents
Speaker 2: the argument that the women were, on the whole substantially
Speaker 2: more committed to the cause and would likely have voted
Speaker 2: to continue the strike longer than the men. That the
Speaker 2: ratio of men to women change substantially during the course
Speaker 2: of the strike, as more men left and more women joined.
Speaker 2: And I want to unfortunately go on a little small
Speaker 2: tangent about Lynden Comstock in his book. He wrote a
Speaker 2: book called Annie Clements and the Great Kiniwah Copper Strike,
Speaker 2: and that's one of my main sources for this particular episode,
Speaker 2: especially a lot of the research about Big Annie herself
Speaker 2: comes from that book. And unfortunately, there's more to that
Speaker 2: book than I immediately know about. And I can truly
Speaker 2: tell you with certainty because if you look up the
Speaker 2: reviews of that book. When I read a history book,
Speaker 2: I try to read what actual historians have to say
Speaker 2: about that book, and you know, see what people agree
Speaker 2: about or disagree with. And local history books have an
Speaker 2: entirely different culture of how that work is done than
Speaker 2: other books. And so the main comments I found on
Speaker 2: that book are in Amazon reviews, and one woman who's
Speaker 2: not named in the review because it's just an Amazon
Speaker 2: user name states that she actually did the majority or
Speaker 2: a lot of the research for that book and was
Speaker 2: left essentially uncredited, including the acquisition of several of the
Speaker 2: photos of Big Annie that were used, including on the cover.
Speaker 2: And if so, that's a shame. I tried to believe
Speaker 2: that men can write books about women and be respectful.
Speaker 2: But if that's the case, that was not a respectful move.
Speaker 2: And I just haven't had the opportunity to do more
Speaker 2: research about that. But back to the actual story, the
Speaker 2: strike dragged on. In a well organized strike by a
Speaker 2: well funded union, strikers get strike benefits. They're basically paid
Speaker 2: some percentage of the usual wage for their work as picketers.
Speaker 2: Like so if you're usually paid to work in the minds,
Speaker 2: you might get to, use a modern example, sixty percent
Speaker 2: of your income to show up as a picketer instead,
Speaker 2: because you sure aren't getting paid for mining while you're
Speaker 2: on strike. And I've got a little bit of a
Speaker 2: bias against the Western Federation of Miners in this era.
Speaker 2: I'm a member of the IWW. They had just left
Speaker 2: the IWW, so I have to be careful not to
Speaker 2: talk too much shit like the fact that women's locals
Speaker 2: had to be fought for by the women and who
Speaker 2: weren't allowed to vote. Right. It's the kind of thing
Speaker 2: that frustrates me when I read about this. So keep
Speaker 2: my bias in mind when I'm talking about how the
Speaker 2: Western Federation of Miners led this strike. The Western Federation
Speaker 2: of Miners didn't have the resources for this strike, not really.
Speaker 2: Strike benefits were rare and sparse, and you know, there's
Speaker 2: all of these people talking about being like, well, I
Speaker 2: went in for strike benefits and they just didn't have
Speaker 2: anything for me today. And you know, so people are
Speaker 2: really hungry. And it's probable, just like with an armchair
Speaker 2: looking back one hundred and thirteen years later, it's probable
Speaker 2: they called the strike too early because their coffers had
Speaker 2: been drained by strikes further west in recent months before
Speaker 2: this one. They hadn't had a chance to rebuild their
Speaker 2: war chest, their strike chest as it were. Still, the
Speaker 2: strikers knew what they were getting into, you know, they
Speaker 2: knew that there was going to be hardship involved. That's
Speaker 2: what a strike is. And the snows came. A November
Speaker 2: blizzard brought ten inches of snow in one day, but
Speaker 2: still they paraded through town and shut down mine entrances,
Speaker 2: and eighty people were arrested during the storm. There'd been
Speaker 2: an injunction past saying no one was allowed to pick it,
Speaker 2: not even peacefully, but that injunction was ignored every single day,
Speaker 2: and at least in the first weeks, the only period
Speaker 2: I found information about the strike was complete and successful,
Speaker 2: and not a single mind was running. And so in November,
Speaker 2: a third force, after the militia and the strike breaker,
Speaker 2: was put together to fight them. So you've got the military,
Speaker 2: you've got the cop gangsters, and now you have a
Speaker 2: counter union, the sort of thing that happens every single
Speaker 2: time I've talked about it again and again on the show. Basically,
Speaker 2: a astro turf that is fake grassroots community group comes together,
Speaker 2: financed and directed by the bosses. Literally happens every time.
Speaker 2: This was called the Citizens Alliance, and the name wasn't
Speaker 2: a coincidence either. It sounds like just sort of a
Speaker 2: generic title, right, But they were saying we're the citizens,
Speaker 2: were the real Americans, born and bred, and they were
Speaker 2: financed by the mining companies, and they attacked the Western
Speaker 2: Federation of Miners, officers and anybody associated with them, And
Speaker 2: when I say attacked, I mean attacked like they're going
Speaker 2: to shoot somebody pretty soon, right, And they exist to
Speaker 2: make it seem like the whole story is two sided,
Speaker 2: that some locals were against the unions and some were
Speaker 2: in favor of them, Like, oh, it's who's to say,
Speaker 2: you know, the overwhelming majority of the people who work there,
Speaker 2: or a couple other people who are like the children
Speaker 2: of rich people, and both of equal weight. It's technically
Speaker 2: true that some locals were against the unions and some
Speaker 2: were in favor, but it is a lie by presenting
Speaker 2: two very uneven groups as equally valid. And as workers
Speaker 2: got more desperate, some decided to meet gunfire with gunfire. Again,
Speaker 2: I've run into conflicting information about how armed the strike was.
Speaker 2: Most of the history that I've read seems committed to
Speaker 2: making the strike seem palatable to the modern audience, And
Speaker 2: I don't even want to get mad at those historians.
Speaker 2: Almost every labor historian I've ever read does this, Like
Speaker 2: everyone downplays the fact that things were spicy, right, because
Speaker 2: everyone wants the miners, the strikers to be the sort
Speaker 2: of poor, innocent victims of the evil, big bad barons
Speaker 2: and by doing that, we remove people's agency. And I'm
Speaker 2: not going to try and make the strike seem palatable
Speaker 2: to you. I'm going to have my biases. They're going
Speaker 2: to come through, but I'm going to try not to.
Speaker 2: And when I read socialist and anarchist speakers talking about
Speaker 2: the strike a few years afterwards, I run across people
Speaker 2: saying things like the mistake that workers in Calumet made
Speaker 2: was that they put down their weapons, so there were
Speaker 2: probably more weapons involved than most people will say. It's
Speaker 2: true that the Western Federation of Miners was very explicit
Speaker 2: that they didn't want gunfighting. Throwing hands was probably fine,
Speaker 2: but they made statements to the workers like it's better
Speaker 2: to get shot and die than to shoot back, which
Speaker 2: goes well with the fact that Mother Jones showed up
Speaker 2: at this whole thing. I believe that Mother Jones was
Speaker 2: essentially a fraud, seeing my episodes about her, Like in
Speaker 2: West Virginia, for example, she worked very hard to keep
Speaker 2: miners from getting too rowdy, including blind to them about
Speaker 2: concessions that have been made in their favor, being like,
Speaker 2: oh no, don't rise up violent. I heard from the
Speaker 2: President himself that everything is going to be fine, and
Speaker 2: she's just lying because she doesn't want people to get
Speaker 2: too rowdy. I have a very low opinion of mother Jones,
Speaker 2: and a lot of accusations against embezzlement were levied against her.
Speaker 2: She gets credit for having been a founder of the IWW.
Speaker 2: She left very shortly after and disavowed it. Mother Jones
Speaker 2: showed up at one point. My best read of the
Speaker 2: situation is that the somewhat reformist union didn't want the
Speaker 2: miners armed and encouraged them to disarm themselves even as
Speaker 2: they were being gunned down in their own homes. I
Speaker 2: don't even want to say specifically that they are inherently
Speaker 2: bad for having done that. I just am trying to
Speaker 2: I believe that that's what happened. They looked at the situation,
Speaker 2: and with their set of values, they said that it
Speaker 2: is a much better idea if this does not become
Speaker 2: a two way armed conflict. But not everyone listened to them.
Speaker 2: The Workers Federation of Miners may have technically represented all
Speaker 2: the miners, but not everyone is actually truly invested in
Speaker 2: that particular bureaucracy. On December seventh, three men, two of
Speaker 2: them Finish, went to a boarding house that hosted scabs
Speaker 2: and fired into the building, killing three men. One modern
Speaker 2: historian I found again, who I think is looking for
Speaker 2: ways to make this story palatable, suggested that this might
Speaker 2: have been a false flag attack, that the strike breakers
Speaker 2: might have fired on the non striking workers in order
Speaker 2: to make the union look bad. I don't believe that
Speaker 2: for a second. I also, to be clear, don't think
Speaker 2: it's an ethical thing to do to shoot into a
Speaker 2: boarding house like that. I think that physically stopping scabs
Speaker 2: from working through rowdy picket lines is a perfectly reasonable thing.
Speaker 2: I don't think that shooting people in their houses for
Speaker 2: being lured up by promises of work when they're broke
Speaker 2: this is an ethical thing to do. But the thing
Speaker 2: about war is that it's not ethical. And the three
Speaker 2: shooters were sought immediately.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: In contrast to the shooters who shot the striking workers,
Speaker 2: one of these shooters escaped, the other two got life
Speaker 2: in prison. I believe the two Finns and the Citizens
Speaker 2: Alliance went into overdrive after this. The Union wanted a
Speaker 2: uniting working class of people who worked for a living,
Speaker 2: defending themselves from the people who owned things for a living.
Speaker 2: The Citizens Alliance instead worked to split the working class
Speaker 2: between the good, hard working anti union citizens and them
Speaker 2: damned foreign agitators from overseas. If the area wasn't so
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly white, I'm sure they would have used race for
Speaker 2: that too. English speaking foreigners, like miners of English descent
Speaker 2: from Canada, weren't included in the anti foreigner hatred, like
Speaker 2: a lot of the scabs were English miners from Canada,
Speaker 2: and they're somehow included as good Americans because it was
Speaker 2: about culture and ethnicity and native language more than it
Speaker 2: was actually about things like law or citizenship. Who was
Speaker 2: literally born there didn't speak English as a first language,
Speaker 2: so she's more on the outside than English immigrants who
Speaker 2: are literally coming from Canada, like they're like several steps
Speaker 2: removed immigrants. But do you know what doesn't care where
Speaker 2: you're from, it's the products and services that support the show.
Speaker 2: And did you know that the word sucker can both
Speaker 2: be spelled like you're a sucker, but it can also
Speaker 2: be spelled like succo r which might be pronounced differently,
Speaker 2: but I'm not sure. And that means to try and
Speaker 2: provide for you, to offer you what you need. Who's
Speaker 2: to say which one of those two uses of that word.
Speaker 2: These particular ads are attempting and or back and then
Speaker 2: and Christmas Eve, the deadliest attack of the entire strike
Speaker 2: took place, and it didn't even require guns or any
Speaker 2: weapons at all. It's called the Italian Hall massacre, and
Speaker 2: honestly it's one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever read.
Speaker 2: To say that it had been a rough year for
Speaker 2: the striking families would be a criminal understatement. And of course,
Speaker 2: when the husband is on strike in a traditional household,
Speaker 2: the entire family is on strike. If women are bringing
Speaker 2: in any money, it's not nearly as much. Christmas is
Speaker 2: coming up and the families are destitute, but they want
Speaker 2: almost desperately to provide a good Christmas. So Big Annie
Speaker 2: Clemmens and the rest of the WFM women's locals plan
Speaker 2: two Christmas parties to raise everyone's spirits. The first on
Speaker 2: Christmas Eve was for the children, the second on Christmas
Speaker 2: Day was for the adults. In Finnish culture, Christmas is
Speaker 2: a big deal, like most Christian cultures, of course, but
Speaker 2: Finland does claim to be where Santa Claus lives, and
Speaker 2: there's some stuff about him being derived from a Christian
Speaker 2: must go to fertility symbol prankster man. But that's a
Speaker 2: deep dive I'm not going down today. But I'll have
Speaker 2: you know, it took all of my commitment and discipline
Speaker 2: to not fall down the rabbit hole about the Christmas
Speaker 2: go to the fertility symbol prankster man that predates Santa Claus.
Speaker 2: That's how much I love being committed to the specific
Speaker 2: cause of what I'm reading about. I'm sure I'll come
Speaker 2: back to it. Maybe I'll do another series of Christmas episodes.
Speaker 2: Christmas Eve is the more important holiday in Finnish culture,
Speaker 2: and that was the one that they said, all right,
Speaker 2: this party is for the children, and local storekeepers donated
Speaker 2: candy and gifts for the children because regardless of what
Speaker 2: the Citizens Alliance claimed and also what rude Marxism claims,
Speaker 2: the local talentspeople, including small business owners, supported the workers.
Speaker 2: This is this whole thing in Marxist class analysis that
Speaker 2: I find frustrating, to say the least, where it implies
Speaker 2: that all small business owners are inherently like on the
Speaker 2: side of the you know, evil bosses or whatever, and
Speaker 2: that just like I find it over and over again
Speaker 2: all across the world, when there's a legitimate people's revolt.
Speaker 2: It often comes from the workers, although not always. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it comes from other disenfranchised groups like women. But you know,
Speaker 2: if the workers rise up, the small business owners very
Speaker 2: routinely will open their stores and provide for people. There
Speaker 2: is a step higher than that, which of course will
Speaker 2: form the counter unions and like the citizens, alliance themselves.
Speaker 2: But anyway, that's my complaint about simplified, outdated class analysis.
Speaker 2: People want to fit everything in the world in neat categories.
Speaker 2: And I recognize that it's necessary to fit things into
Speaker 2: categories in order to build systems and create knowledge. But
Speaker 2: we have to remember that those systems, the categories that
Speaker 2: we've created are social fictions, and at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, they are not what we should measure people's
Speaker 2: value based on is social fictions. Anyway, the local business
Speaker 2: owners donated candy and gifts for the children, and women
Speaker 2: knitted all the children new mittens. Hundreds, maybe four or
Speaker 2: five hundred kids came to this party. There was a
Speaker 2: few hundred adults as well. They were packed into the
Speaker 2: Italian Hall, which is a second story events space that
Speaker 2: has a stage. It was a modern building and well designed.
Speaker 2: This is important to how all of the things like
Speaker 2: happen afterwards. The way that all this is discussed, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of untrue statements about how this building was designed.
Speaker 2: It was modern building, It was well designed. There was
Speaker 2: a fire exit out the window, and the stairway was
Speaker 2: six feet wide, and the doors opened outward toward the street.
Speaker 2: And the party was early. I think people were early
Speaker 2: risers if they were picketing. By five am thirty pm,
Speaker 2: the party was almost over. Kids were waiting in line
Speaker 2: to get presents from Santa Claus, and Annie was watching
Speaker 2: the kids carefully to make sure that they weren't just
Speaker 2: looping back around to stand in line to get the presence. Twice,
Speaker 2: the sun was still up. I looked it up. Though
Speaker 2: the days are short in Calumut, Michigan, in winter, the
Speaker 2: sun was still up at four thirty pm on December
Speaker 2: twenty fourth, nineteen thirteen. There had been security stationed outside,
Speaker 2: but that was mostly to make sure only kids from
Speaker 2: striking families came in to get presents. At this point,
Speaker 2: no one was watching the doors anymore, like literally. Okay,
Speaker 2: so the Citizens Alliance and strike breakers had been harassing
Speaker 2: and attacking union meetings and social events for months, but
Speaker 2: this was a Christmas party for children. Surely, if the
Speaker 2: other side had even a trace of dignity, no one
Speaker 2: was going to fuck with the kid's Christmas party, right,
Speaker 2: just there's a reason that the only security happening was
Speaker 2: people making sure kids didn't try and get to that's
Speaker 2: a presence, you know. But they were wrong when they
Speaker 2: fought at the other side had even a trace of
Speaker 2: dignity and that no one was going to fuck with
Speaker 2: the kid's Christmas party. Someone would, in fact fuck with
Speaker 2: the kid's Christmas party. And I genuinely hate to break
Speaker 2: the story on this particular cliffhanger. It's not what I
Speaker 2: wanted to do, but I had to divide this story
Speaker 2: into equalish parts. So how all of this tragedy unfolds,
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about on Wednesday, and in the meantime,
Speaker 2: I don't know. Be nice to each other, don't fuck
Speaker 2: with kids Christmas parties, even the ones run by people
Speaker 2: that you are vehemently opposed to, And don't cross picket lines.
Speaker 2: That's what picket lines are for, to prevent people from crossing,
Speaker 2: and so in order to have a basic solidarity with
Speaker 2: the people who are trying to make the world a
Speaker 2: better place, don't cross them. I have all kinds of
Speaker 2: critiques of unions. You've heard a bunch of them on
Speaker 2: this show. My feelings about modern unions are even worse
Speaker 2: than my feelings about unions in nineteen thirteen that are
Speaker 2: kind of more reformist. Because if you think that the
Speaker 2: Western Federation of Minors in nineteen thirteen is reformist, wait
Speaker 2: till you hear about modern unions. You still shouldn't cross
Speaker 2: picket lines. There's a difference between being like, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes unions aren't as cool as we want them to
Speaker 2: be and trying to break working class solidarity. Fuck Ice,
Speaker 2: Free Palestine, death of fascism. See y'all on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. M