Tag: Youngstown OH

Hellraisers Journal: “Behind the Picket Line, The Story of a Slovak Steel Striker” by Mary Heaton Vorse, Part II

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

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 11, 1920
Youngstown, Ohio – Mary Heaton Vorse Visit the Home of a Striker

From The Outlook of January 21, 1920:

BEHIND THE PICKET LINE

THE STORY OF A SLOVAK STEEL STRIKER
-HOW HE LIVES AND THINKS

BY MARY HEATON VORSE

[Part I of II.]

[Leaving the Picket Line in Youngstown, Ohio:]

MHV, NYS p37, Dec 1, 1918It was seven o’clock. The morning vigil was over; the strike was unbroken. The deluge had not occurred. The men, weary with watching, broken with inaction and with suspense, drifted to their homes.

“You’re cold, ma’am,” my guide said to me, gently; “I want you should come to my house to get breakfast; my house it ain’t far.”

It seemed to me an imposition to appear in a strange woman’s house at that hour in the morning, especially as Mike let fall casually that he had eight children. A strike and eight children and a husband seemed to me quite enough for any woman to cope with, but he would not let me go without a cup of coffee. We walked past little detached dwellings, small frame houses and some of concrete.

These have been lately built. They show the modern impulse toward better housing. Here and there a rambler was planted over a door; there were porches, and plots of ground surrounded the houses. This was the most meritorious community, from the point of view of decency, that I have seen in any steel town.

Later we met a handsome lad coming out of the gate—Steve’s oldest boy on his way to high school. Then we went into the kitchen, and my first impression was of rows and rows of brightly polished shoes all ready to be hopped into—any amount of brightly polish-little shoes standing neatly two by two.

Now, any student of domestic life will know what this means. How many families are there who can get the boys to black their shoes the night before? I can’t in my household—indeed, it takes savage pertinacity to st shoes blacked at all. Just the sight of those shoes made me realize that my hostess was no ordinary woman. In the meantime Mike was calling up the stairs:

Mother, come down and see who’s here! Come down and see what I’ve got in the kitchen!” To hear him one would have supposed that I was a birthday present. And when “mother” appeared there was nothing that could have shown a third person that I was not an old friend. The owners of the shiny shoes came into the room with their shy “good mornings.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Behind the Picket Line, The Story of a Slovak Steel Striker” by Mary Heaton Vorse, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: “Behind the Picket Line, The Story of a Slovak Steel Striker” by Mary Heaton Vorse, Part I

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

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 10, 1920
Youngstown, Ohio – Mary Heaton Vorse Observes the Picket Line

From The Fresno Morning Republican of February 8, 1920:

Mary Heaton Vorse can see-and tell what she sees. Her study of a Slovak steel striker is mighty well done, entitled “Behind the Picket Line,” in the Outlook for January 21.

[Emphasis added.]

From The Outlook of January 21, 1920:

BEHIND THE PICKET LINE

THE STORY OF A SLOVAK STEEL STRIKER
-HOW HE LIVES AND THINKS

BY MARY HEATON VORSE

[Part I of II.]
[Note: see Introduction by “The Editors” below.]

MHV, NYS p37, Dec 1, 1918
When I got out of the street car, he detached himself from the darkness and murmured:

“Ma’am, I come to meet you.”

It was not yet five, and black as midnight, except as the fiery salvos of the newly started blast-furnace of the Ohio plant shattered the night with glory. No need to ask how he knew me. Women do not usually get off the cars at five in the morning at this point.

On my way to the picket line I had been alone, with the exception of two uneasy-looking scabs. I didn’t look at them. I didn’t like to. The right of the individual workman to work when and how he wished seemed a rather hypocritical theory to me at that moment. It seemed about as tenable as the right of the individual citizen to desert to the enemy in war time.

For weeks I had been immersed in the strike. I had gone merely as an observer, rather skeptically even, and the thundering immensity of the thing had caught me up.

The people—that is to say, the public, those not directly interested—look on strikes as unchancy occurrences, violent manifestations which interfere with the ordered flow of existence. Something that wouldn’t happen at all if it were not for “outside agitators”—that most slippery of all explanations.

What had happened to me was that I had looked at the strike close to, and it had resolved itself into the lives of human beings—thousands of human beings thinking the same thing, thousands of human beings hoping the same thing, thousands and thousands of human beings hoping and willing the same thing, with the terrible patience of the simple. It is a dramatic thing when thousands of men all through the country, men in eight different States, men in fifty different towns and communities, all decide to stay home, all decide to do nothing, because they wish to alter certain conditions.

Men who never saw each other, men who never will see each other, many men who couldn’t understand each other if they were to meet, all doing the same thing, sitting quiet—abstaining violently from action, all bound together by the same thought—the men in all these widely sundered communities thinking together about the same thing. That is one of the things a strike resolves itself into when you look at it close to.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Behind the Picket Line, The Story of a Slovak Steel Striker” by Mary Heaton Vorse, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mary Heaton Vorse on the Great Steel Strike: “Their Weapons and Ours” -Unity, “Almost a Miracle”

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

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 20, 1919
Mary Heaton Vorse on Organizing Steel Workers in Youngstown

From the Pittsburg [Kansas] Workers Chronicle of December 19, 1919:

THEIR WEAPONS AND OURS.
—–

(By Mary Heaton Vorse.)

MHV, NYS p37, Dec 1, 1918

Not long ago a friend of mine came to Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania] who wanted to know about the strike. He wanted me to tell him first of all what had impressed me most. My answer was the answer that anyone who had watched the strike must have given. What had impressed me the most was the courage of the men; what had impressed me the most was their endurance; what had impressed me most was their uncomplaining patience.

It had seemed almost a miracle to me that men of a dozen or more nationalities and half a dozen states, separated into isolated communities, should one fine day have struck altogether, 350,000 strong.

The longer I stayed and the more knew about the strike, the more in credible did the strike seem, for as I went from town to town staying a few days now in one community and now in another, I realized how little organization they had before the strike started.

Take Youngstown for instance. No one had ever organized Youngstown and everyone said that Youngstown never could be organized.

In Youngstown and East Youngstown and the nineteen small communities surrounding it where steel is made, there are about 70,000 steel workers. The first large meeting ever held of the National Committe occurred in January of this year. Between that time and September 22 there was never a larger force of organizers in this whole district than six. Six men organized Youngstown and the surrounding country. Six men and that was all.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mary Heaton Vorse on the Great Steel Strike: “Their Weapons and Ours” -Unity, “Almost a Miracle”” →

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.

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

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” →

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for August 1919, Part II: Arrested for Organizing Steel Workers at Homestead, Pennsylvania

Janet RayeFannie Sellins
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Quote Mother Jones, Kaisers here at home, Peoria IL Apr 6, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal –Friday October 17, 1919
Mother Jones News for August 1919, Part II
Homestead, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Arrested for Speaking to Steel Workers

From the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader of August 21, 1919:

SEIZE MOTHER JONES
—–

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

Pittsburgh, Aug. 21.-“Mother” Jones, J. G. Brown, of Seattle; J. L Boghan [J. L. Beaghen], of Chicago, and R. W. Riley, of Homestead, organizers of the American Federation of Labor, were arrested last night in Fifth avenue, Homestead, when they attempted to hold a mass-meeting on the street. Acting Chief of Police Hood, who made the arrests, charged them with violating a borough ordinance when they were unable to produce a permit for the meeting.

When the automobile from which “Mother” Jones was speaking when she was ordered to stop by Chief Hood carried her and the other speakers toward the Homestead police station, a crowd of 1000 persons, mostly foreigners, who had gathered in Firth avenue,followed. Amity street in front of the police station, was blocked by the crowd for half a block on either side of the station.

“Mother” Jones and the others were released on forfeits. Mounting the rear seat of the automobile which carried her to the police station, “Mother” Jones addressed the crowd and advised them to “go home and be good boys”. After the crowd had cheered her, “Mother” Jones asked that they give three cheers for the United States and then told them to go home.

[Photograph added.]

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

Hellraisers Journal: From Ohio Socialist: Eastern City Fathers Pass Ordinances to Ban Red Flag, But Cannot Yet Ban Ties

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Mother Jones Quote, Red Flag, DNT Aug 11, 1907, p7

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday December 19, 1918
New York, Youngstown, Cleveland, Etc., Seek to Ban Red Flag

From The Ohio Socialist of December 18, 1918:

“THE RED FLAG ROAD”

Red Flag, ed, Wiki Socialism

We stole the caption because it sounded good. And now listen to our story.

You’ve heard of the Red Flag. You may never have seen one but we are sure you have heard about it. A Red Flag is a piece of cotton, wool or silk that’s been dyed red and in appropriate size is then hoisted to enjoy the breezes that blow.

There is a certain class of people in this land that go mad at sight of the Red Flag just as a bull does at sight of a red rag, and they chase it around with mouthings and ordinances.

The sport began in New York some weeks ago and seems to be traveling westward. The city fathers of Youngstown, Cleveland, Detroit and other cities have seen red and with heroic mien are chasing the Red Flag around and around.

We feel sorry for the Red Flag, folks. Poor, inanimate thing! Can neither talk back nor defend itself while it’s being banished and disgustingly discussed by those whom people have deemed wise enough to run cities.

Passing ordinances that the Red Flag shall fly no more is acting much like the fellow who cut off his little finger to make his hand quit stealing. The Red Fag is only an appendage. The real stuff is a matter of brains. And when brains accept the Red Flag as the insignia for Industrial Democracy then, whether the Red Fag flies or not, the trick is done.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From Ohio Socialist: Eastern City Fathers Pass Ordinances to Ban Red Flag, But Cannot Yet Ban Ties” →