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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday August 24, 1909
McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania – Bloody Sunday Leaves Six Dead
From The Pittsburg Press of August 23, 1909:
Detail 1: McKees Rocks Strikers Battle “Cossacks”
Detail 2: McKees Rocks Strikers Battle “Cossacks”
Signature of Artist:
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege, Ab Chp III
https://www.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/3
The Pittsburg Press
(Pittsburg, Pennsylvania)
-Aug 23, 1909
https://www.newspapers.com/image/141330566
NOTE: I believe the artist is Rowland R. Murdoch, see obit:
The Pittsburg Press of March 26, 1917
https://www.newspapers.com/image/143536693/
See also:
Tag: McKees Rocks Pressed Steel Car Strike of 1909
https://weneverforget.org/tag/mckees-rocks-pressed-steel-car-strike-of-1909/
Foner: McKees Rocks Bloody Sunday
The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905-1917
by Philip S. Foner
International Publishers, 1965
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Industrial_Workers_of_the_World_1905.html?id=e-KlAAAAMAAJ
-See pages 289 & 290, sources from page 576, notes 29-32:
On August 15, the I.W.W. openly entered the strike [and sent in] W. E. Trautmann, I.W.W. general organizer….who came to McKees Rocks [for a mass meeting on August 17] with B. H. Williams and Charles McKeever… [See New York Call of August 18, 1909]
On August 20, at another mass meeting, the Car Builders’ Industrial Union, I. W. W., was organized. Three thousand strikers immediately signed up… [See New York Call of August 29, 1909.]
Up to this time, the McKees Rocks strike had not aroused too much interest outside of Pennsylvania. Then, during the week of August 22, the picture changed, and the labor and Socialist press throughout the country carried headlines like: “Bloody Sunday at McKees Rocks! Worse Than in Russia.” [See St. Louis Labor of August 28, 1909.] On Sunday, August 22, a squad of strikers had boarded a street car entering the strike zone in search of scabs. Harry Exler, a deputy sheriff notorious for strikebreaking, was ordered to leave the car. He denounced the strikers in vile language, pulled a gun and fired at the strikers.
In the battle that followed, Exler was killed. A company of state troopers rushed in, and fired at the retreating strikers. In the battle between the strikers and their wives against the “Cossacks,” 11 lives were lost; eight strikers and sympathizers, two scabs and one mounted trooper. Forty strikers were wounded and many were arrested, including the wounded, who were dragged off to jail with the blood streaming from their wounds. Others were “manacled to the troopers’ horses and dragged through the streets,”
On the following day, the troopers stormed through “Hunkeyville [Schoenville],” the name of the community where most of the company houses were located, and attacked men and women in the shacks, driving them out of their homes. All strike meetings were raid and strikers dispersed. [See, New York Call of August 24, 1909 & New York Tribune of August 24, 1909.]
[Emphasis added.]
Sadly St. Louis Labor not yet available online.
The New York Call
“A Newspaper for the Workers”
(New York, New York)
-Aug 24, 1909
http://fultonhistory.com/Newspaper%2014/New%20York%20NY%20Evening%20Call/New%20York%20NY%20Evening%20Call%201909/New%20York%20NY%20Evening%20Call%201909%20-%200294.pdf
http://fultonhistory.com/Newspaper%2014/New%20York%20NY%20Evening%20Call/New%20York%20NY%20Evening%20Call%201909/New%20York%20NY%20Evening%20Call%201909%20-%200296.pdf
New York Tribune
(New York, New York)
-Aug 24, 1909
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1909-08-24/ed-1/seq-1/
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-ISR Sept 1909]
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.
Re B. H. (Ben) Williams and other IWWs at McKees Rocks Strike, see:
Annual Reports of Departments and Offices
of the City of Pittsburgh
Murdoch-Kerr Company, 1914
https://books.google.com/books?id=4SMtAQAAMAAJ
Annual Report Bureau of Police Department
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=4SMtAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA343
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=4SMtAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA347
They [the IWW] remained dormant until the big strike of 1909 at the Pressed Steel Car plant in McKees Rocks, and shortly after the strike was called a large number of the organizers and agitators appeared upon the scene and constituted themselves the managers of the strike….Among the organizers and agitators present at the McKees Rocks strike were Daniel DeLeon, now dead; William [Ben?] Fletcher; Vincent St. John; General Secretary and Treasurer of the I. W. W.; Ben Schrader, editor of the Polish I. W. W. paper; Ben Williams, editor of the Solidarity, the official organ of the I. W. W.; Harry Gough, a local organizer, who has locked horns with the Pittsburgh police upon several occasions, and also a number of lesser lights.
Pittsburg Press of August 23, 1909, pages 1+2:
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