‘Buried in Honor’ from The People (S.L.P.). Vol. 19 No. 21. August 21, 1909.

Steve Horvath, Murdered McKee’s Rocks Striker, Interred.

Pittsburg, Pa., August 13. One of the largest and most impressive funerals that has ever been held in McKee’s Rocks will take place tomorrow when 5,000 strikers will escort the body of Steve Horvath, the striker who was murdered Wednesday morning, to its last resting place in Allegheny cemetery.

At 7:30 o’clock the escort will begin to assemble along Nichol Avenue and the long line will be arranged by the strike leaders, who have taken charge of the funeral. They have decided to pay the highest honors to the first victim of the Shoenville strike.

Strike breakers imported by the Pressed Steel Car Company are deserting.

The men had been lured here by deception on the part of the company and when they discovered the true conditions they wanted to get out.

Twelve of the men escaped from the yards of the plant by jumping over the fences this afternoon and immediately got into communication with the strike leaders.

They stated that they had been employed by agents of the Pressed Steel Car Company at the rate of $1.75 a day, with board and lodging in addition.

This looked good to them, inasmuch as the agents did not mention the strike but stated that the company was short of men and had an extra amount of work to be done.

The men who have deserted all come from Philadelphia. They were provided with lunch by the commissary committee and it is understood that they will be given aid to return to their homes.

The yards of the car company are being guarded and the deserters were forced to use the only means open to them, that of scaling the high board fence and making their escape from the prison-like surroundings which was represented to them as a workshop.

New York Labor News Company was the publishing house of the Socialist Labor Party and their paper The People. The People was the official paper of the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), established in New York City in 1891 as a weekly. The New York SLP, and The People, were dominated Daniel De Leon and his supporters, the dominant ideological leader of the SLP from the 1890s until the time of his death. The People became a daily in 1900. It’s first editor was the French socialist Lucien Sanial who was quickly replaced by De Leon who held the position until his death in 1914. Morris Hillquit and Henry Slobodin, future leaders of the Socialist Party of America were writers before their split from the SLP in 1899. For a while there were two SLPs and two Peoples, requiring a legal case to determine ownership. Eventual the anti-De Leonist produced what would become the New York Call and became the Social Democratic, later Socialist, Party. The De Leonist The People continued publishing until 2008.

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