Tag: Great Steel Strike of 1919

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for October 1919, Part I: Found with Steel Strikers in New York, West Virginia, & Pennsylvania

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones GSS American Liberty, Bff Eve Tx p4, Oct 3, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday November 20, 1919
Mother Jones News for October 1919, Part I
Found with Steel Strikers of New York, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania

From the New York Daily News of October 1, 1919:

GSS Mother Jones, WZF, NY Dly Ns p2, Oct 1, 1919

From the Buffalo Courier of October 4, 1919:

USES DISCRETION IN HER UTTERANCES
AT LACKAWANNA
—–
‘Mother’ Jones Heeds Warning and
Refrains From Fiery Words.
—–

COUNSELS STRIKERS TO BE CALM
—–
Companies Say More Men Are
Reporting For Work.
—–

“Mother” Jones’ visit to Lackawanna yesterday afternoon was the occasions for a display of the police and state constabulary which watched all her movements and never let her get out of their sight.

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Hellraisers Journal: The Nation: Mary Heaton Vorse on Civil Liberty, Steel Strikers and Pennsylvania Cossacks

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote MHV Immigrants Fight for Freedom, Quarry Jr p2, Nov 1, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 18, 1919
Pennsylvania Cossacks, Steel Strikers, and Civil Liberty

From The Nation of November 15, 1919:

Civil Liberty in the Steel Strike

By MARY HEATON VORSE

GSS, PA Cossacks in Clairton, Lt Dg p10, Oct 4, 1919

THE steel strike has been marked by the orderliness of the strikers on the one hand, and on the other by the sweeping denial of their civil rights, and by the brutality of that extraordinary body of men, the State Constabulary of Pennsylvania. When one states that in Homestead, for example, there was a reign of terror, that men were beaten for no cause and chased down the street into strange houses; that men and women were arrested and fined for no cause and their fines remitted under promise that they would go back to work; and that posters fomenting race hatred are even now in current circulation in the steel mills, the statements sound fantastic. Let the documents, however, speak for themselves. One may choose almost at random from a wealth of material. The cases cited are not isolated; town after town had its own story of terrorism to tell.

In spite of Judge Gary’s statement to the contrary, men were persecuted and dismissed for union activities.

Not only were such methods used to discourage the men from organizing, but the rights of free speech and free assembly were denied them. No meetings were allowed in Farrell, Monessen, and Donora. In McKeesport people were arrested while attending a meeting and fined excessively. Rabbi Wise was refused a permit to hold a meeting in Duquesne, the burgess of this town remarking with naive truth: “Jesus Christ couldn’t hold a meeting in Duquesne.” Since September 22 [the date the Steel Strike began] no meetings have been allowed in Pittsburgh except at the Labor Temple. The strike in that city is unpopular with the authorities. Because the sheriff does not like Mr. Foster, he arbitrarily takes away the workers’ civil liberties, though at no time has there been even a suggestion of disorder in Pittsburgh.

Before the strike was actually in progress, the State Constabulary was called in and an extra police force of 5,000 was deputized in Allegheny County alone. Among these deputies were Negro strike breakers—in the towns of Donora and Monessen—and this during a time when an epidemic of race riots had swept the country.

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Hellraisers Journal: “Closed Towns” by S. Adele Shaw for The Survey: Pittsburgh Steel District Contrasted with Ohio

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Strikes are not peace Clv UMWC p537, Sept 16, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday November 13, 1919
Intimidation in Pittsburg Steel District Contrasted with Ohio

From The Survey of November 8, 1919:

Closed Towns

Intimidation as It is Practised in the Pittsburgh
Steel District:—the Contrast in Ohio

By S. Adele Shaw

[Parts III-V of V]

GSS, Mother Jones, WZF, Organizers, Survey p64, Nov 8, 1919

III

THIS interlocking of mill and town officials explains not only the ease with which normal civil rights have been shelved, but the ease with which, under the guise of law enforcement, deputies and troopers get away with reckless action in the streets and alleys, and with which the petty courts turn trumped-up grounds for the arrest of labor organizers and strikers into denials of justice.

In Allegheny county Sheriff Haddock had, according to his own statement on October first, deputized 300 men for service under control of his central office and 5,000 mill deputies. Newspapers placed the figure early in the strike at 10,000. The mill police who in ordinary times are sworn in under the state provision for coal and iron police for duty in the mills only, are, since the strike, sworn in by the sheriff at the request of the companies. They have power to act anywhere in the county. They are under the direction of the mill authorities. Companies are required to file a bond of $2,000 for each man so deputized and are responsible for his actions.

It is the state constabulary, however, who have set the pace for the work of intimidation in the mill towns of Allegheny county. Responsibility for calling them in is difficult to fix. Since last February squads had been stationed at Dravosburg within easy reach of the steel towns; and the Saturday before the strike patrols were brought down into them. The sheriff denies that he called on the state for the troopers. The burgess of Braddock and the chiefs of police in Homestead and Munhall professed ignorance of the responsibility for their coming.

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Hellraisers Journal: “Closed Towns” by S. Adele Shaw for The Survey: Intimidation in Pittsburgh Steel District

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Strikes are not peace Clv UMWC p537, Sept 16, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 12, 1919
Intimidation as Practiced in the Pittsburgh Steel District

From The Survey of November 8, 1919:

GSS Arrests at Homestead, Survey p58, Nov 8, 1919

Closed Towns

Intimidation as It is Practised in the Pittsburgh
Steel District:—the Contrast in Ohio

By S. Adele Shaw

[Miss Shaw spent the first two weeks of the strike in the Pittsburgh district for the SURVEY, and then crossed from Pennsylvania to the steel centers of Ohio, where civil liberties are preserved in the midst of the industrial conflict. A native of Pittsburgh, member of the staff of the Pittsburgh Survey, Miss Shaw brings experience as a social worker and as a journalist to her task of interpretation. The first draft of her article was submitted for criticism to public officials, strike leaders and mill executives. Facts were then checked up and incidents carried to their sources, and her narrative can be depended upon as the findings of a trained observer.—EDITOR.]

[Parts I-II of V]

I ARRIVED in Pittsburgh the evening of the third day of the steel strike [September 24th]. Through a gate to one side of me, as I stood in the Union Station, a line of foreigners perhaps twenty-five in number, Slavs and Poles, dressed in their dark “best” clothes, with mustaches brushed, their faces shining, passed to the New York emigrant train. Each man carried a large new leather suitcase, or occasionally the painted tin suitcase—a veritable trunk—appeared in the line. And there, not quite concealed by its wrapping, was the unmistakable portrait which one could picture in its setting over the mantle in the boarding-house just left. Men and baggage were leaving, as every night they leave from that station on that same train for New York and the “old country.”

Scarcely had the gate closed on the emigrant workers when a guard threw open an entrance gate through which marched, erect and brisk, a squad of state constabulary “Cossacks” they are called in the mill towns. Young men they were in perfect training—men with great projection of jaw developed, it almost seemed, to hold the black leather straps of their helmets firmly in place.

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones, William Z. Foster and Speakers for Pittsburgh District of Great Steel Strike

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones GSS American Liberty, Bff Eve Tx p4, Oct 3, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday November 10, 1919
Pittsburgh District Organizers of Great Steel Strike with Mother Jones

From The Survey of November 8, 1919:

Mother Jones and William Z. Foster with Steel Strike Speakers

GSS, Mother Jones, WZF, Organizers, Survey p64, Nov 8, 1919

Close-Up of Mother Jones and William Z. Foster:

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Hellraisers Journal: Mary Heaton Vorse: A Woman’s View of Conditions Among the Steel Strikers of Pittsburgh, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote MHV Immigrants Fight for Freedom, Quarry Jr p2, Nov 1, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday November 2, 1919
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – Steel Strikers’ Fight for Freedom Goes On

From The Quarry Workers Journal of November 1919:

CONDITIONS AMONG COAL STRIKERS
AS SEEN BY A WOMAN
—–
By Mary Heaton Vorse,
Author of “The Prestons.” Etc.
—–

[Part II.]

MHV, Author of Prestons, ed, NYS p37, Dec 1, 1918

Life is hard enough under ordinary conditions for the steel workers’ wives. They live in joyless towns, their men never had a chance to get really rested; there is always a new baby, and most of them remain forever strangers for they never have time or opportunity to learn English.

Lately the senators have talked about Americanization of the foreign workers. They will have to humanize the steel industry first. They will have to teach such men as Judge Gary the elementary things concerning Americanism.

In times of strike, terror and suspense are added to the lives of the women. Fear of want is their constant companion. How do they stick it out? How can they have such endurance and fortitude? In every town the men are constantly being arrested. The shadow of the constabulary is forever over the strikers.

The bosses make house to house canvasses and play upon the fears and credulity of the women, and yet you find them-like the mother of the laughing children-ready to wait two or three weeks more so that someone needier than herself would have first chance at commissary stores. Holding on in the face of sneering threats, holding on with want just around the corner, holding on with hunger waiting in ambush. Holding on in spite of the appealing hands of children plucking forever at their skirts, reminding them that it is they in the last analysis who are going to suffer.

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Hellraisers Journal: Mary Heaton Vorse: A Woman’s View of Conditions Among the Steel Strikers of Pittsburgh, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote MHV, Women of Steel Strike ed, Quarry Jr p2, Nov 1, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday November 1, 1919
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – The Steel Strikers: Courageous Men, Enduring Women

From The Quarry Workers Journal of November 1919:

CONDITIONS AMONG [STEEL] STRIKERS
AS SEEN BY A WOMAN
—–
By Mary Heaton Vorse,
Author of “The Prestons.” Etc.
—–

[Part I.]

MHV, Author of Prestons, ed, NYS p37, Dec 1, 1918

This week the commissary stores are being opened in all the steel towns. For six weeks the strikers had nothing. They have been living on their savings; some who have had no savings, have existed from hand to mouth, picking up a chance bit of work here and there and being helped out by their friends.

The first strike relief which will have been given will be the groceries given out twice a week from the commissary stores. Not everyone can have these groceries. They are for those who are starving or on the edge of want, for it would be unthinkable at this stage of organized labor that any one should be forced to scab by hunger.

You do not need much imagination to understand what endurance it has taken on the part of the rank and file to stay out on strike for six weeks without strike benefit or relief. It is going to take even more endurance from now on, when the narrow line will have to be drawn between those actually in want and those nearly in want.

Yesterday I saw how that was being done. When a striker applies for re lief, one of the strike committee goes around to talk the matter over with the family. I went out in Pittsburgh with a Polish fellow-worker who was going out to make such visits of investigation.

We had some difficulty in finding the house where the strikers live. We went down back alleys, past refuse dumps that seemed as venerable as the dilapidated meeting house on the corner. Like everything else in this neighborhood, it was falling to pieces. The paint had scaled from its pillars, but it spoke of a former day before all the mild red brick of the houses had been defiled with the grime soot, and when the well to do, comfortable families lived a family in a house, instead of a family in a room.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for September 1919, Part III: Found Wherever a Good Fight For Freedom Is Going On

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Home Good Fight Going On, Ptt Prs p17, Sept 24, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Friday October 31, 1919
Mother Jones News for September 1919, Part III
Her Home? “Wherever there is a good fight for freedom going on.”

From The Pittsburgh Post of September 24, 1919:

Mother Jones, crpd, Chg Tb p120, Oct 26, 1919

‘Mother’ Jones Heard
in Labor Trial
—–

“Mother” Jones, aged organizer for the United Mine Workers, appearing yesterday as a witness before Judge Richard H. Kennedy, gave her address as “wherever there is a good fight for freedom going on.”

She testified in the hearing of a large number of appeals from fines imposed by Mayor James S. Crawford in connection with a meeting held in Duquesne last September 7.

After leaving the stand “Mother” Jones declared that had been her first experience as a witness in “a regular court trial.” She was one of the organizers arrested, but was not fined. That was the first time, she said, that she had been placed behind bars, although she had been arrested more than once.

———-

[Photograph added.]

From The Pittsburgh Press of September 24, 1919:

“MOTHER” JONES FREED FOR LABOR ACTIVITY.
—–

“Mother” Jones was freed today following her arrest in the steel mill districts Sept. 7. She came before Judge Kennedy and was permitted to go without a fine.

“What is your age?” queried the court.

“Ninety on the first day of next May.”

“Where is your home?”

“Wherever there is a good fight for freedom going on,” replied the old lady, vigorously.

“You may go.”

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for September 1919, Part II: Found in Cleveland Addressing Mine Workers’ Convention

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Strikes are not peace Clv UMWC p537, Sept 16, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday October 30, 1919
Mother Jones News for September 1919, Part II
Cleveland, Ohio – Mother Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers 

From the New York Tribune of September 17, 1919:

Mine Workers Urged To Aid Steel Strike
—–
Appeals Made to Convention by Fitzpatrick
and “Mother” Jones, Who Oppose Delay

Mother Jones Crpd Women in Industry, Eve Ns Hburg PA p2, Jan 6, 1919

CLEVELAND, Sept. 16.-John Fitzpatrick, chairman of the national committee for organizing the iron and steel workers, and “Mother” Jones, the aged mine worker representative, appealed to-day to the convention of the United Mine Workers of America to support the steel workers in the projected steel strike. “Mother” Jones argued openly against any postponement, telling the miners to pay no attention to contrary reports, because the strike would come off as arranged next Monday. Rescinding of the strike call, she declared, would wreck the confidence of the steel workers in their organization.

Fitzpatrick refrained from mentioning the question of possible postponement, except indirectly, in his speech, but in conversations with delegates he declared himself firmly opposed to postponement of the walkout beyond Monday as weakening the chances of success.

———-

[Photograph added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for September 1919, Part I: Arrested for Organizing Steel Workers at Duquesne, Pennsylvania

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Kaiser n Steel Barons, Clairton PA Aug 10, Ptt KS Wkrs Chc p5, Sept 5, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal –Wednesday October 29, 1919
Mother Jones News for September 1919, Part I
Duquesne, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Arrested for Organizing Steel Workers

From the New York Sun of September 8, 1919:

RAID ENDS MEETING OF STEEL WORKERS
—–
Mother Jones and Other Organizers
Seized in Duquesne.
—–

Special Dispatch to THE SUN.

PITTSBURG, Sept. 7.-Duquesne was the scene of much excitement on the part of the police and union organizers this afternoon when Police Chief Thomas Flynn and a squad of patrolmen appeared at an open air meeting at Linden and River avenues, where more than 1,000 steel workers had assembled, and arrested four labor organizers, including “Mother” Jones, the veteran organizer, and forty steel workers. The organizers were charged with holding a public meeting without a permit and the workmen were charged with illegal congregating. After staying in the Duquesne police station four hours they were released on forfeits for a hearing to-morrow.

Mother Jones n WZF Couple of Reds, Chg Tb p120, Oct 26, 1919
Mother Jones with William Z. Foster

The organizers arrested besides “Mother” Jones were William Z. Foster, secretary of the national committee for organizing iron and steel workers; J. L. Beaghen, president of the Pittsburg Bricklayers Union, and an American Federation of Labor organizer, and J. M. Patterson, vice-president of the Brotherhood of Railway Car Men.

The organizers said the meeting was being held on a vacant lot, the owner of which had given permission.

———-

[Photograph added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for September 1919, Part I: Arrested for Organizing Steel Workers at Duquesne, Pennsylvania” →