SS Eastland Tribute

“SS Eastland On 24 July 1915, the Eastland and two other Great Lakes passenger steamers, the Theodore Roosevelt and the Petoskey, were chartered to take employees from Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois, to a picnic in Michigan City, Indiana. This was a major event in the lives of the workers, many of whom could not take holidays. Many of the passengers on the Eastland were Czech Bohemian immigrants from Cicero, Illinois. In 1915, the new federal Seaman’s Act had been passed