An update on the hugely consequential McKees Rocks strike of largely Eastern European immigrant workers against the Pittsburgh-area U.S. Pressed Steel Car Co.

‘Strikers Vow to Fight to the Death’ from The New York Daily Call. Vol. 2 No. 171. July 19, 1909.

McKees Rocks Slaves of Steel Stand By Their Guns Despite Company’s Bluff.

PITTSBURG, July 18. “Fight or starve!” is the slogan of the 5,000 striking workmen at the Pressed Steel Car Company’s works at McKees Rocks. It was taken up yesterday after a mass meeting at Indian Mound, where the strikers were addressed by their leaders and counseled to do no violence.

Representatives of the Austro-Hungarian consulate told the men that if they had rights they would be easily served. This is taken to mean that the matter probably will be brought to the attention of the State Department at Washington, with a view to having the Government prevent the men from being robbed by the “pooling system” under which they are now paid, and which is the cause of all the trouble. A contribution fund was started to keep up the fight for month.

To bring the adjudication of the men’s rights to a quick settlement, the public Defense Association, through its attorneys, filed an action against the Pressed Steel Car Company, representatives of the striking workmen and Sheriff Gumbert. It set forth that the company had instituted the pooling system of payments; that the men alleged that the system robbed them and left them in total ignorance of just how much money they were making every day, and that this made it a matter of grave public concern that the rights of the parties be settled at court at once in a bill of equity.

Would Enjoin Strikebreakers

It then recited that the Sheriff is unable to maintain peace and order owing to the attitude of the workmen, and that as a result the lives and property of innocent citizens because of this condition will fall as a cost upon the taxpayers. It therefore asks that an injunction issue against the importation of strikebreakers, which, it alleges, will make the situation more dangerous; that the company be restrained from discharging striking workmen arbitrarily, and prays that the matter be heard and settled within the next five days to avoid a great public calamity.

The strikers have issued a statement of their grievances, setting forth their pay checks in extenso, and calling upon the American people to investigate their charges and see how they are being treated. These checks show a strange situation–in some instances the workmen are paid as low as two cents an hour for their work, the check being numbered, say, 8014, and the pay for forty-five hours’ work being 90 cents. The average pay seems to be about 11 ½ cents an hour, but there are many instances where it goes below 10 cents.

The Strikers Appeal.

Referring to this system the strikers’ statement says:

“Is it possible to live on such wages in a decent manner and provide for a family?.

“Under the present conditions this is impossible, and if any person can show us how a man and family can exist on such wages, we are willing to obey all the rules of the company and return to work.

“The methods of paying are scandalous, and everyone familiar with the proceedings feels only contempt for the men who direct the affairs of the company.

“We shall fight to a finish, as it is our right.

“We shall not make concessions, and fear no threats of the company. We promise that during this fight between labor and capital we shall conduct ourselves peacefully, and we beg all the workingmen and citizens to help us in our victory.

“Do not listen to false and lying reports.

“Help the workers in this struggle, for this is not a fight only for ourselves, but also to save our wives and children from starvation.”

The Democratic County Committee, of Pittsburg, with a view to making political capital out of the situation. adopted a resolution calling upon Congress to appoint a committee to investigate the strike, and asking why American workmen should not be protected and foreigners preferred. They assert that it is a clear attempt upon the part of President Hoffstot and the American Tin Plate Company gradually to eliminate the American workman from their two industries and import men at the cheapest wages to take their places.

Militia to Be Called

The fact that preparations for encamping the Second Brigade in and about the town became patent when local National Guard officers Saturday and today made surveys on the heights above Bellevue, on the north side of the Ohio River, directly across from the Pressed Steel Car Company’s plant at Schoenville, for the location of a battery. The spyglasses of the officers attracted the attention of men about the Schoenville plant and the sun shone on them. Second Brigade officers were later found laying out site for a camp on the hill, and their work was guarded by pickets of state constables who kept strangers from interfering.

The site for the battery is directly across from the mill, and a shell can be dropped from the hill overlooking the mill to any part of Preston, or the works where trouble is anticipated.

The New York Call was the first English-language Socialist daily paper in New York City and the second in the US after the Chicago Daily Socialist. The paper was the center of the Socialist Party and under the influence of Morris Hillquit, Charles Ervin, Julius Gerber, and William Butscher. The paper was opposed to World War One, and, unsurprising given the era’s fluidity, ambivalent on the Russian Revolution even after the expulsion of the SP’s Left Wing. The paper is an invaluable resource for information on the city’s workers movement and history and one of the most important papers in the history of US socialism. The paper ran from 1908 until 1923.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-new-york-call/1909/090719-newyorkcall-v02n171-DAMAGED.pdf