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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday August 12, 1919
North Clairton, Pennsylvania – Iron and Steel Organizers Arrested
From the Duluth Labor World of August 9, 1919:
PITTSBURGH, Aug. 7.-When President Samuel Gompers and other officers and organizers at the Atlantic City convention all arose and pledged themselves to go to jail if necessary to unionize the iron and steel workers of the country they evidently were fully aware of the extremes to which the steel barons would go to prevent their men from organizing.
Last Sunday [Aug. 3rd], the first arrests were made at North Clairton, a suburb of Pittsburgh. Secretary Foster [Secretary of the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers] and several other organizes were thrown into jail and a union meeting held on a private lot, the owner of which presided at the meeting, was broken up.
Steel Men Swarm Into Unions.
The struggle to secure the rights of free speech and free assembly in this section of Pennsylvania has been unending and discouraging. Yet the committee appointed by President Gompers to organize the iron and steel workers has made some progress, for in spite of the many arrests that have been made and the other harassing tactics that have been resorted to good progress is being made. For the first time in years union meetings are permitted in McKeesport, Rankin, Braddock and Homestead. In all of these places meetings have been held and men are swarming into the unions by the thousands.
But, surrounding Pittsburgh are boroughs and boroughs. Nearly all are important steel centers and all are bad. Some are worse than others. The worst one so far discovered is North Clairton.
North Clairton is a typical one-man steel town. It is a place where the steel trust has always had its own sweet, unhampered, autocratic way. The casual visitor to the Pittsburgh section would not likely ever hear of North Clairton. Yet, within its tyrannical borders, some 4,000 steel workers live out their miserable existences working in 10 and 14-hour shifts with its crushing, killing 24-four shifts at the weekly changes. The national committee could not ignore the plea for organization on the part of these enslaved human beings.
