The Pressed Steel Car strike of 1909, also known as the 1909 McKees Rocks strike, was an American laborstrike which lasted from July 13 through September 8. The walkout drew national attention when it climaxed on Sunday August 22 in a bloody battle between strikers, private security agents, and the Pennsylvania State Police. At least 12 people died, and perhaps as many as 26.[2] The strike was the largest and most significant industrial labor dispute in the Pittsburgh area since the famous 1892 Homestead strike and was a precursor to the Great Steel Strike of 1919.
Frank Norton Hoffstot's Pressed Steel Car Company, sited downstream from Pittsburgh on the south bank of the Ohio River in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, manufactured passenger and freight railroad cars on an assembly-line basis. It was America's second-largest rail car producer.[3] Pressed Steel employed a workforce of 6,000 people, mostly foreign born comprising 16 distinct ethnicities. The firm was infamous for its style of industrial peonage with immigrant workers.[4]
Working conditions in the plant were primitive even by Pittsburgh standards.[5] Pressed Steel Car Company was locally called "The Last Chance" and "The Slaughterhouse". In an interview with The Pittsburgh Leader, Rev. Father A.F. Toner, a priest at St. Mary Roman Catholic Church in McKees Rocks, said, "Men are persecuted, robbed, and slaughtered, and their wives are abused in a manner worse than death ... all to obtain or retain positions that barely keep starvation from the door." The local coroner, Joseph G. Armstrong, estimated that deaths in the plant averaged about one a day and were often caused by moving cranes. One of the charges made by Slavic immigrant workers was that their wives and daughters were subject to sexual harassment and preyed upon to deliver sexual favors as a way to repay food and rental debts, or forestall their collection, to the company agents.[6]
Anti-Hoffstot cartoon about the 1909 strike
Particularly galling to the workers was the use of the Baldwin contract, commonly known as "pooling." Under this system, jobs were parceled out in lots by a foreman who contracted that it be done for a given sum, with the money paid to be divided pro rata by the men under him.[7] The system was rife with corruption, with workers often paying substantial kickbacks to the foreman to retain their jobs.[8] The system resulted in unpredictable and often insufficient rates of pay, as one sympathetic journalist reported:
President [Frank N.] Hoffstot says that it has proven to be a very satisfactory arrangement. And it has — for the company. As evidence of this we saw several pay envelopes showing that many of the workers slave for practically nothing. One envelope showed that the owner worked nine days, ten hours a day, and got $2.75; another eleven days and received $3.75; another three days and got $1.75; another four days and got $1, and the fifth, who had been idle for two months, worked three days and received nothing.... The company manages the pooling system through the foreman — and the workers are skinned until their bones shine. * * * Two years ago, before the pooling system was introduced, the men were making $3, $4, and $5 a day. Today most of them make 50 and 75 cents and $1 a day."[9]
Adding further to the destabilizing misery was the company-owned housing, ramshackle dwellings housing six families and renting for $12 a month.[8] Moreover, the company owned the stores from which the workers had to buy their provisions at inflated prices, lest they lose their jobs.[8] The system of economic domination was particularly severe and there came a day when the breaking point was reached.
The strike begins
Mounted members of the Pennsylvania constabulary were deployed during the McKees Rocks strike. These officers were called "Cossacks" by the strikers.
The strike was triggered on Saturday July 10, a payday on which many workers were shorter in their pay than usual. The men demanded an explanation; management refused to speak with the workers' representatives. James Rider, manager of The Pressed Steel Car Company, responded by hiring Pearl Bergoff, the notorious owner of strike-breaking paramilitary force.[10] The first fatality was an immigrant striker named Stephen Horvat, shot and killed by a black strikebreaker called Major Smith.[11] Two days later Berghoff had deployed 500 strikebreakers to the plant, most entering quietly by rail, although a boat called Steel Queen carrying 300 was rebuffed, at least initially, by strikers' gunfire on the shore.
The next day 200 state constables and 300 deputy sheriffs insured the safety of the strikebreakers and also began evicting strikers from company houses. The New York Times reported, "The illiterate foreigners were like so many savages today when they first caught sight of the khaki-clad constabulary who had come in during the night."[12]
The strikers were joined by members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), especially William Trautmann, one of its founders. Trautmann later published a novel, Riot, about the McKees Rocks strike. After Trautmann's arrest for strike organizing activities, Joe Ettor replaced him, and IWW leader Big Bill Haywood also arrived to rally strikers.[13]
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.[9]
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. Presston workers were kept in constant debt to the company store and those behind in rent were evicted. On Saturday August 21 Deputy Sheriff Harry Exley assisted in one eviction by placing a baby buggy on top of a wagon laden with a Presston family's possessions. A photographer captured the moment. When it was printed in a Pittsburgh newspaper, the photo whipped up public sympathy for the strikers.
This set up the confrontation of the next day, August 22, "Bloody Sunday". A crowd of thousands of strikers who'd set up a checkpoint identified Exley, in civilian clothes, and targeted him for retaliation. In a fury the mob killed him, and clashed with Pennsylvania State Police mounted on horseback, called "Black Cossacks" by immigrant Slav workers.[14] One local source put the number of dead at sixteen, which includes Exley, two state troopers, and three strikers. Perhaps ten others were gravely hurt, "while scores were wounded by being shot in the legs, hit by bricks and clubbed into unconsciousness by the constabulary."[15] Martial law was declared the next day.
Striker workers evicted from Presston homes, 1909
Settlement of the strike
The strike was settled on September 8 when Pressed Steel Car agreed to a wage increase, the posting of wage rates, and ending abuses in company housing practices.
Legacy
Before the strike was over,[16] and then in more detail in 1911, the strikebreakers appeared before federal panels to describe their own living and working conditions after they were brought to the conflict.[17] Held inside the plant or in boxcars against their will, fleeced, stolen from, physically threatened, and given rotten food, one hearing witness collapsed and was diagnosed with ptomaine poisoning.[16] Two hundred of the strikebreakers had responded by banding together in their own improvised union. They'd quit work and were camping on the nearby banks of the Ohio River in an attempt to collect back wages, naming Chief of Police Farrell of the Coal and Iron Police and Pearl Bergoff's lieutenant Sam Cohen as those most responsible. Lawyer for the strikebreakers was the ambitious William N. McNair, who alleged that this treatment amounted to peonage. McNair would later serve one chaotic term as Mayor of Pittsburgh in 1934.
↑ "PHMC Historical Markers Search"(Searchable database). Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Retrieved 2014-01-25.
↑ Marylynne Pitz, "Pressed Steel Car strike in McKees Rocks reaches centennial anniversary". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 16, 2009, pg. E1.
↑ Edward Levinson, I Break Strikes: The Technique of Pearl L. Bergoff. New York: Robert M. McBride & Co., 1935; pg. 71.
↑ Charles McCollester, The Point of Pittsburgh: Production and Struggle at the Forks of the Ohio. Pittsburgh: Battle of Homestead Foundation, 2008; pg. 181.
↑ Crystal Eastman, Work-Accidents and the Law. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Publications, 1910.
↑ Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Vol. 4: Industrial Workers of the World. New York: International Publishers, 1965; pg. 235.
McKees Rocks, also known as "The Rocks", is a borough in Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania, United States, along the south bank of the Ohio River. Part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, its population was 5,920 at the time of the 2020 census.
The Homestead strike, also known as the Homestead steel strike, Homestead massacre, or Battle of Homestead, was an industrial lockout and strike that began on July 1, 1892, culminating in a battle in which strikers defeated private security agents on July 6, 1892. The governor responded by sending in the National Guard to protect strikebreakers. The dispute occurred at the Homestead Steel Works in the Pittsburgh-area town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers and the Carnegie Steel Company. The final result was a major defeat for the union strikers and a setback for their efforts to unionize steelworkers. The battle was a pivotal event in U.S. labor history.
William Ernst Trautmann was an American trade unionist who was the founding general-secretary of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and one of six people who initially laid plans for the organization in 1904.
The Great Railroad Strike of 1922, commonly known as the Railway Shopmen's Strike, was a nationwide strike of railroad workers in the United States. Launched on July 1, 1922, by seven of the sixteen railroad labor organizations in existence at the time, the strike continued into the month of August before collapsing. A sweeping judicial injunction by Judge James Herbert Wilkerson effectively brought the strike to an end on September 1, 1922.
Joseph James "Smiling Joe" Ettor (1885–1948) was an Italian-American trade union organizer who, in the middle-1910s, was one of the leading public faces of the Industrial Workers of the World. Ettor is best remembered as a defendant in a controversial trial related to a killing in the seminal Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912, in which he was acquitted of charges of having been an accessory.
The Pressed Steel Car Company was a builder of railroad cars and equipment based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that was founded in 1899, and had facilities in Pittsburgh and Chicago. It operated until 1956.
The Great Steel Strike of 1919 was an attempt by the American Federation of Labor to organize the leading company, United States Steel, in the American steel industry. The AFL formed a coalition of 24 unions, all of which had grown rapidly during World War I. In the lead role would be the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers (AA) with a five-member steering committee. The strike began on September 22, 1919, and finally collapsed on January 8, 1920. The opposition led by Elbert H. Gary, president of U.S. Steel had triumphed.
Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (AA) was an American labor union formed in 1876 to represent iron and steel workers. It partnered with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee of the CIO, in November 1935. Both organizations disbanded May 22, 1942, to form a new organization, the United Steelworkers.
The 1983 Arizona copper mine strike began as a labour dispute between the Phelps Dodge Corporation and a group of union copper miners and mill workers, led by the United Steelworkers. The subsequent strike lasted nearly three years and resulted in the replacement of most of the striking workers and decertification of the unions. It is regarded as an important event in the history of the United States labor movement.
The Westmoreland County coal strike of 1910–1911, or the Westmoreland coal miners' strike, was a strike by coal miners represented by the United Mine Workers of America. The strike is also known as the Slovak Strike because about 70 percent of the miners were Slovak immigrants. It began in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, on March 9, 1910, and ended on July 1, 1911. At its height, the strike encompassed 65 mines and 15,000 coal miners. Sixteen people were killed during the strike, nearly all of them striking miners or members of their families. The strike ended in defeat for the union.
The General Strike of 1910 was a labor strike by trolley workers of the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company that grew to a citywide riot and general strike in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Mrs. Beautiful is an historical novel by the American writer Lester Goran set in 1909 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The history of union busting in the United States dates back to the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution produced a rapid expansion in factories and manufacturing capabilities. As workers moved from farms to factories, mines and other hard labor, they faced harsh working conditions such as long hours, low pay and health risks. Children and women worked in factories and generally received lower pay than men. The government did little to limit these conditions. Labor movements in the industrialized world developed and lobbied for better rights and safer conditions. Shaped by wars, depressions, government policies, judicial rulings, and global competition, the early years of the battleground between unions and management were adversarial and often identified with aggressive hostility. Contemporary opposition to trade unions known as union busting started in the 1940s, and continues to present challenges to the labor movement. Union busting is a term used by labor organizations and trade unions to describe the activities that may be undertaken by employers, their proxies, workers and in certain instances states and governments usually triggered by events such as picketing, card check, worker organizing, and strike actions. Labor legislation has changed the nature of union busting, as well as the organizing tactics that labor organizations commonly use.
The Indianapolis streetcar strike of 1913 and the subsequent police mutiny and riots was a civil conflict in Indianapolis, Indiana. The events began as a workers strike by the union employees of the Indianapolis Traction & Terminal Company and their allies on Halloween night, October 31, 1913. The company was responsible for public transportation in Indianapolis, the capital city and transportation hub of the U.S. state of Indiana. The unionization effort was being organized by the Amalgamated Street Railway Employees of America who had successfully enforced strikes in other major United States cities. Company management suppressed the initial attempt by some of its employees to unionize and rejected an offer of mediation by the United States Department of Labor, which led to a rapid rise in tensions, and ultimately the strike. Government response to the strike was politically charged, as the strike began during the week leading up to public elections. The strike effectively shut down mass transit in the city and caused severe interruptions of statewide rail transportation and the 1913 city elections.
Pearl Louis Bergoff was an American strikebreaker noted for violent tactics from the early 1900s through the 1930s.
The 1927 Indiana bituminous strike was a strike by members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against local bituminous coal companies. Although the struggle raged throughout most of the nation's coal fields, its most serious impact was in western Pennsylvania, including Indiana County. The strike began on April 1, 1927, when almost 200,000 coal miners struck the coal mining companies operating in the Central Competitive Field, after the two sides could not reach an agreement on pay rates. The UMWA was attempting to retain pay raises gained in the contracts it had negotiated in 1922 and 1924, while management, stating that it was under economic pressure from competition with the West Virginia coal mines, was seeking wage reductions. The strike proved to be a disaster for the union, as by 1929, there were only 84,000 paying members of the union, down from 400,000 which belonged to the union in 1920.
The Pittsburgh railway strike occurred in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as part of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. It was one of many incidents of strikes, labor unrest and violence in cities across the United States, including several in Pennsylvania. Other cities dealing with similar unrest included Philadelphia, Reading, Shamokin and Scranton. The incidents followed repeated reductions in wages and sometimes increases in workload by railroad companies, during a period of economic recession following the Panic of 1873.
When union violence has occurred, it has frequently been in the context of industrial unrest. Violence has ranged from isolated acts by individuals to wider campaigns of organised violence aimed at furthering union goals within an industrial dispute.
The Coal miners' strike of 1873, was a strike against wage cuts in the Mahoning, Shenango, and TuscarawasValleys of northeastern Ohio and northwestern Pennsylvania. In the Tuscarawas Valley, the labor action lasted six months, and in the Mahoning Valley four and a half months, but the walkouts failed. The introduction of imported strikebreakers and manufacturers finding substitutes for the area's special block-coal, forced the organized miners back to work at prevailing wages.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
