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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday July 20, 1909
McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania – Strikers Seek Settlement
-As the Pressed Steel Car strikers seek a settlement through Socialist Attorneys, we learn that “one a day” is the death toll for the workers within the plant.
From The Pittsburg Press of July 16, 1909:
From page 1:
PEACE MOVE BY STRIKERS
—–
Committee of Four, One from Each
Nationality, to Confer, Through
Socialist Party Attorneys,
With Officials
—–RENEWAL OF RIOTING IF OFFERS ARE SPURNED
—–
Attorney Piekarski Offers His Services to
the Sheriff-Undercurrent of Excitement
in Schoenville This Afternoon
—–
Rioting at McKees Rocks has for the present given place to an effort at compromise, and a committee of four, representing the striking employes, is now conferring with attorneys of the Socialist party, who will take up the matter of settlement with officials of the Pressed Steel Car Co.
“We demand pay by the hour-no other way,” is the only demand made by the strikers.
Failing in this overture for peace, it is feared that the lawless element again will control the situation and plunge the strikers into a desperate conflict with the State troops.
At a mass meeting held by the strikers on the Indian mound this morning, four committees were appointed to present their grievances. Each committee represents a nationality.
Early this afternoon, these four committees met and those from each nationality selected one representative, making finally a committee of but four men. This quartet came to Pittsburg, to the head1quarters of the Socialist party, on Sixth street. It was said there that attorneys for the party will take up the matter of settlement with the car company officials late this afternoon, if possible…..
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“ONE A DAY”
DEATH TOLL AT CAR PLANT
—–
Former Coroner Armstrong Makes This
Estimate of Fatalities Formerly
Among Pressed Steel Co. Employes
—–CONDEMNS PAYROLL INSURANCE SYSTEM
—–That the Pressed Steel Car Co. was strangely indifferent to the value of human life, when he was coroner of the county, is the plain deduction from statements made today by Joseph G. Armstrong, who resigned the office of coroner last April to become the director of the Pittsburg department of public works. Director Armstrong believes that a system of payroll insurance, which relieved the company form payment of damages in case of accidents, was largely responsible for conditions that brought about many deaths.
So little interest did the company show, director Armstrong said, when an employe was killed, that the coroner could not obtain for a time the attendance of foremen at the plant as witnesses at inquests. This finally resulted in him taking drastic measures culminating in the arrest of five men who were wanted as witnesses.
[Said Mr. Armstrong:]
The many fatal accidents at the plant of the Pressed Steel Car Co., attracted my attention soon after I became coroner. It seemed to me that the deaths averaged about one a day. Many of the deaths resulted from men being struck by the heavy moving cranes and the dogs suspended from the cranes. Investigation made it look to me as though a lot of young fellows who were operating the cranes did not care much whether or not a “hunky” laborer was hit every now and then……
[Emphasis added.]
From page 7:
SYMPATHY OF PEOPLE WITH THE STRIKERS
—–
McKees Rocks Citizens Aroused to Vehement
Denunciation by Stories Told of
Alleged Mistreatment of Workmen
—–THINK STRONG METHODS ARE THE ONLY REMEDY
—–Citizens of McKees Rocks all are in sympathy with the strikers. Groups of men and women, too, for that matter, when discussing the strike and the cause which led up to it, become vehement in the denunciations.
Perhaps a former employe or two of the company will be the spokesman of the little groups that gather here and there along the street on porches and in front of the stores, and his tales of alleged treatment received in the works will cause many ejaculations of anger and exclamations.
McKees Rocks is aroused over the alleged injustice that has been done to so many of its inhabitants. Allegations of men killed in the works and quietly put away, of bribery to obtain, and what is perhaps worse, a weekly bribe to hold jobs, have become current and have added to the general indignation.
The majority of the people of McKees Rocks say that the conditions in Schoenville and Preston are awful. The foreigners are crowded seven or eight persons in one sleeping room on the bare floor. During the summer they sleep on the bare ground in the field on the river bank. Tales of what the company, it is alleged, charges these ignorant foreigners to live, if they wish to hold their jobs, have incensed a great many of the hotheaded Americans.
EXCESSIVE RENTS.
It is said that not only the man with a family renting a house has part of his wages taken from his envelope, but if he boards any of his friends, each have the same amount taken from their envelopes. The company sometimes obtains the rent six or seven times over for one house, it is alleged. Either the company gets this money or some of the cashiers graft it, as it is asserted. McKees Rocks people have heard that kind of talk for years and they are willing to believe anything concerning the alleged methods of the Pressed Steel Car Co.
The residents of McKees Rocks say that the swearing in of the special policemen has done more harm than good during the course of the strike thus far. The American workmen, although gathering in little groups here and there and talking quietly over the situation, have not made any disturbance. The foreigners also remained quiet until aroused by taunts and insults by passersby near their own homes.
Everybody in the town, merchant, baker, professional man and private citizen, is hoping that the present situation will result on better conditions for the working man. The working man is the man who makes the town, say the citizens. In spite of bloodshed, rioting and a fusillade of rule bullets, the people seem to think that things are going right. There is a feeling extant that rioting and killing are the only way to eradicate the deplorable conditions existing heretofore.
[Emphasis added.]
From The Pittsburg Press of July 17, 1909:
MORE RIOTS; MANY HURT
—–SHOP FOREMAN’S EAR IS SHOT OFF DURING BATTLE
—–
More Strikers Put Under Arrest
-Big Fund To Aid Them Started
at Early Morning Mass Meeting
—–PLANT NOT OPERATED YESTERDAY OR TODAY
—–Two more riots, during the course of which many men were injured, marked the progress of the strike at McKees Rocks late last night and early this morning. Shortly after 11 o’clock last night, Morris Hill, general foreman of the erection shop, stepped from behind the protection of the stockades at the company’s offices in Preston and was set upon by a crowd of strikers. During the melee several shots were fired, a portion of Hill’s ear being taken off by a bullet.
Chief of the Stowe Township Police T. A. Farrell, rushed to the foreman’s assistance and a general riot ensued, as the result of which 14 men were placed under arrest and put in the box car lockup, in the yards of the company.
The office force of tho company, also, had a narrow escape at an early hour this morning. The men were crossing the river from the Woods Run side to the offices in a launch. When close to the shore a foreigner on the bank waved a white handkerchief. This was the signal for attack and for a few moments the air was thick with stones, bricks and bolts, which were hurled at the occupants of the launch by a crowd of strikers. Again Chief Farrell rushed the crowd, knocking one man down with a club.
In spite of the announcement that the plant is being operated, it is declared positively by those in a position to know that it is not working today, nor was it yesterday. Although great clouds of black smoke are belching from the chimneys this is believed to be merely a ruse to deceive the men into the belief that work is going on…..
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, Parasites Too Lazy, UMWC Jan 27, 1909
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=aiAtAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA380
The Pittsburg Press
(Pittsburg, Pennsylvania)
-July 16, 1909, Evening
https://www.newspapers.com/image/141323297
-July 17, 1909, Evening
https://www.newspapers.com/image/141324224
See also:
TAG: McKees Rocks Pressed Steel Car Strike of 1909
“A Window of Solidarity in Steel
McKees Rocks, 1909”
-by Andrew Snyder
Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2000
https://knowledge.library.iup.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=honors_theses
Re Schoenville (from wiki):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressed_Steel_Car_strike_of_1909
In all, some 5,000 workers of the Pressed Steel Car Company’s plant at McKees Rock went out on strike. These were joined by 3,000 others who worked for the Standard Steel Car Company of Butler and others in New Castle.[14]
An adjacent company-owned community, Presston (called Schoenville at the time and popularly referred to as “Hunky Town”), was at the heart of the strike.
More from The Pittsburg Press:
July 16, 1909, page 1:
July 16, 1909, page 7:
July 17, 1909, page 1:
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We Have Fed You All For A Thousand Years – Bruce Brackney