New Castle, Pennsylvania outside of Pittsburgh was a center of labor militancy and the site of numerous I.W.W. publications, including for a while the national ‘Solidarity’ weekly newspaper. Those revolutionary editors were under constant state harassment.

‘The Class War in New Castle’ by Louis Duchez from the International Socialist Review. Vol. 10 No. 10. April, 1910.

Realizing the power of a revolutionary press in the very heart of industrial America, the Steel Trust has set its blood hounds on the trails of Solidarity, the I.W.W. weekly and the Free Press the local Socialist Party paper both of New Castle, Pa., thinking that by putting’ these papers out of business a long step will be made in preventing the tremendous interest in industrial unionism that is spreading throughout the State of Pennsylvania most rapidly at the present time.

The editor of Solidarity, A. M. Stirton, the manager, C. H. McCarthy and the press committee were arrested on the first of last month. Also several members of the Socialist Party connected with the Free Press, including Charles McKeever, the newly elected councilman. There were eleven in all “pinched.” Four refused bail and remained in the county jail three days when they were given a hearing; gave bail and were held for court. They are Stirton, McCarthy, and Moore of Solidarity, and McKeever who is now the editor of the Free Press,

The charge upon which they are held is a technical violation of a state law requiring papers to print the name of the publishers and editors of newspapers at the head of the editorial column. While the Free Press did not entirely live up to the law in this respect—and there are many capitalists papers in the state that have not done so— Solidarity did, yet it was held that the press committee’s names should have appeared, also.

However, it is seen, the arrest is but a pretext to put the socialist papers out of business by hook or crook.

But that is not all. Finding that this charge was too weak, since the socialists retaliated by bringing the same charges against the ‘Herald,’ a capitalist paper of the same place, another line of attack was adopted.

On the following Saturday evening five more arrests were made in connection with articles that appeared in the Free Press regarding the tin mill strike and the attitude of the city and county officials in behalf of the steel trust which owns the tin mills there. The charge against the socialists is “criminal libel” and the information contains about 5,000 words and is signed by chief of police Gilmore of the city. The names of the socialists arrested on the second charge are Charles McCarthy, Charles McKeever, William White, Frank Hartman and Evan Evans. The cases will come up before the grand jury in June.

It has been discovered that detectives have been working on the cases against the socialists for several months and that it is thought an effort will be made to involve several other active socialists before the steel trust is through. Thugs broke into the desks at the socialist headquarters and took the names of the 300 or more Socialist Party members on the books and many of these will, doubtless, be called up in the case.

The whole is part of a well laid plan to kill, before it gets any stronger, the revolutionary propaganda emanating from New Castle. Whether or not the Steel Trust will succeed depends upon the amount of publicity and financial assistance that the New Castle revolutionists receive from the outside. If the revolutionary press of New Castle can be strangled to death by a too heavy financial burden imposed by litigation—which is, doubtless, the tactics of the Steel Trust a heavy blow will be dealt to the revolutionary movement in the most strategic revolutionary point in America. The Steel Trust is out for blood. Will it succeed? The New Castle revolutionists say it won’t. But they are expecting the assistance of the revolutionary movement at large. They must have this assistance if they are to win. The issue involved is a national one.

In this connection it should be remembered that in sending funds to the defense of Solidarity and the Free Press, those intended for the former should be labeled, “Solidarity Defense Fund” and those intended for the latter, “Free Press Defense Fund.” Solidarity is owned and controlled by the local unions of the I.W.W. in New Castle, while the Free Press is owned and controlled by Local Lawrence County Socialist Party. The Free Press Publishing Company simply does the press work for Solidarity.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v10n10-apr-1910-ISR-gog-EP-cov.pdf