Hellraisers Journal: Standard Oil Strikers Yet Again Shot Down in the Streets of Bayonne, New Jersey

You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Monday October 16, 1916
Bayonne, New Jersey – Strikers Shot Down Yet Again

From the Duluth Labor World of October 14, 1916:

EIGHT OIL STRIKERS
AND FOUR GUARDS ARE KILLED
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BAYONNE, N. J., Oct. 12.-Police, armed with Winchesters, automatics and sawed off shotguns patrolled the “hook district,” near the Standard Oil company’s plants, where eight strikers and four police men were wounded during a clash between the armed guards and employes of the company, yesterday.

The fighting occurred when several hundred strikers pushed a flat car across a street car track in an attempt to block traffic and isolate the entire industrial district, at the lower end of the long peninsula on which the city lies. Eighty guards, armed with Winchesters and sawed-off shotguns, rushed the strikers in an attempt to remove the car.

Throughout the district, which was a storm center in a similar strike of Standard Oil workers, years ago [July 1915], when six strikers were killed, police and strikers alike, attempted to draw picket lines today.

What They Want.

The strike started when the men were refused an increase in wages of 30 per cent for employes receiving under $3 a day, and 20 per cent for those receiving over that amount. Three thousand men went out on the first call. Strikers report 6,000 out today with a prediction of heavy additions to their ranks before night.

Hudson county boulevard police, who were called to strike duty during the night, were relieved early today, but were instructed to be ready for instant call.

Barricades Built.

The strikers claimed today to have established a picket line which absolutely closed the southern end of the peninsula, isolating the Standard Oil, Tidewater Oil, General Chemical and International Nickel plants. Barricades were being built to make this siege effective.

George B. Hennessy, superintendent of the Standard Oil plant, announced the plant would remain closed until the men are willing to come back to work at their old wages.

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[Drawings by Robert Minor added.]