As the Great Depression laid low the region’s industry, with destitution and real hunger the consequence. Steubenville, seat of Ohio’s Jefferson County, hosts the area’s hard-hit as hunger marchers prepare for the 1931 winter campaign.

‘Jefferson County Hunger March’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 8 No. 280. November 21, 1931.

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio, Nov. 20. The Jefferson County Hunger March, originally scheduled for Tuesday, November 24th, has been postponed until November 27th, Friday to allow better time for mobilization. Miners and steel workers from Adena, Piney Fork, Bradley, Dillonville, Yorkville, Tiltonville, Rayland, Brilliant, Mingo Junction, Toronto, Empire and Stratton will unite with the workers of Steubenville, 11 a.m., Friday, Nov. 27, where a committee will be elected to appear before the County Commissioners with the demands of the unemployed and part-time workers. Mass meetings in every one of the above towns are endorsing the march and mobilizing the unemployed for participation.

Broke Terror Before.

It was the march of the striking miners last summer which first broke the sharp police terror in Steubenville and established for the steel workers and miners of Steubenville at least temporary freedom of speech and assemblage.

These “rights” have been recently denied the Steubenville workers who are organizing a big protest meeting and demonstration Tuesday night Nov. 24th on the courthouse step 6. An attempt to hold a meeting there 12 days ago was unsuccessful due to strong police concentration and a lack of workers’ defense committees.

But the Steubenville workers have learned from that experience and next Tuesday they will be prepared to protect their meeting.

Hearing and Mass Trial.

Attempts are being made to secure a hall in Steubenville for a Public Hearing on unemployment Monday night Nov. 23. The workers of Arena are arranging a Mass Trial of local authorities whom they charge with the murder of the war veteran and unemployed coal miner who died of starvation the end of last week. This trial will be held Thursday, Nov. 26.

A mass meeting in Yorkville, Tuesday night unanimously endorsed the County Hunger March and also the National March to Washington. A member of the Yorkville unemployed committee reported how the Mayor had superficially examined the information presented to him and the town council concerning 38 families who needed relief. Of one man he said, “Too old—let him go to the poor house.” Another, he dismissed with: “Lazy, he wouldn’t work if he had a job,” despite the fact that this unemployed miner worked on the city streets the last time he could. As for the others he demanded a petition, signed by the citizens of Yorkville, asking relief for them, and he said he would send one copy of this petition to Washington and another copy to Columbus.

The meeting applauded one of the speakers, who, after exposing the war preparations in the Far East, called upon the workers to refuse to fight against the Soviet Union but, on the contrary, to defend it. Unemployed mass meetings are arranged, in part, as follows: Today, 2 p.m. Mingo Junction, Ballfield; Monday, 7 p.m., Columbia Hall, Toronto. Tuesday 7:30 p.m., Courthouse, Steubenville.

On November 29th, there will be regional United Front conferences in support of the National Hunger March in Steubenville and Bridgeport.

The Steubenville Conference includes Jefferson County, Ohio, and Hancock and Broke Counties, West Va., while the Bridgeport Conferences includes Ohio and Marshall Counties, West Va., and Belmont County, Ohio.

Credentials from local unions and workers’ fraternal organizations are beginning to come into the headquarters of the Committee, at room 4 Cilles Bldg. Workers in the Ohio Valley that have not yet elected delegates should do so at once. If there is no time to regularly elect, have your executive committee appoint delegates.

The National Hunger March stops over in Wheeling Friday night, December 3, and proceeds through the Ohio Valley on Route No. 7 Saturday, crossing the river at Steubenville, demonstrating through Weirton to Pittsburgh.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n280-NY-nov-21-1931-DW-LOC.pdf