Nearly not a euphemism for the U.S. Pressed Steel rail car factory in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania as the daily deaths in the plant earned it the name, the ‘Slaughter House.’ The summer of 1909 saw the ‘hunkies’ of the Last Chance stand up for their lives in a history-making strike.

‘The Slaughter House’ from The Weekly People. Vol. 19 No. 17. July 24, 1909.

TERRIBLE NICKNAME OF PRESSED STEEL CO.’S PLANT

Infernal Conditions, Which After Years Have Flared Out in the Present Revolt at McKees Rocks–Men Men Killed Daily, It Is Declared, and None Ever Knows Where They Go To.

Pittsburg, Pa. July 20. The years of patient slavery, embracing every form of degradation at the McKees Rocks plant of the Pressed Steel Car Company, which broke into the strike of 5,000 men Tuesday, represent conditions which shame Pittsburg.

It is only in this twentieth century, and under the capitalist system that such conditions could exist in a community that claims a reputation for philanthropy, charity, decency of living among its poor, and for the ordinary principles of justice and equity.

Of all those who have heard even hints of the murderous working conditions and heartlessness of the Pressed Steel Car plant, only the Pressed Steel Car Company is not ashamed.

Even today, with the eyes of the whole country riveted upon its works, it brazenly repeats what it said from the start:

“We have no statement to make of anything.”

The Pressed Steel Car Company is not able to make any statement that will explain away the name “Slaughter House,” and “The Last Chance,” fastened upon the gloomy big shops that look like a prison. The first name is bloodily descriptive in itself. The second is like unto it.

To thousands of workers it means in addition to the “slaughter house” element that no man who works there is able to get work anywhere else. That is why he is in the Pressed Steel Car plant.

The minute he can get work elsewhere, he goes.

The lowest wages, the worst working conditions, the most brutal treatment, looking to the deadening of every human impulse and instinct, graft, robbery, and even worse, the swapping of human souls, the souls of women for the lives of their babies, have for years marked the Pressed Steel Car works as one of the most outrageous of all the outrageous industrial plants in the United States. And it is not on record that the most industrially degraded sections of degraded Europe have its like.

Human lives are given up in the industrial army every year under the present conditions. But nowhere, not even in the ravaging steel mills of the steel trust, are living men, women and babies literally picked up and thrown into the devouring jaws of death in every one of its sickening forms.

That is what happens every day at the Pressed Steel Car works.

A human life is worth less than rivet. Rivets cost money. Not much, but they cost something.

The “Slaughter House” is the most expressive name that could be given to the plant, although it has other claims to rank as a strong side show of Inferno.

The majority of the workers are Hungarian or Slavish, or some other nationality which absorbs the English language and the American life slowly. They are unknown by name except to their families and their intimates. To others they are known as “No. 999,” or some other furnished on a check by the “Slaughter House” company for the convenience of its paymasters.

These simple people are slaughtered every day, not simply killed, but slaughtered. Their very deaths are unknown to all save the workers who see their bodies hacked and butchered by the relentless machinery and death traps which fill the big works. Their families, of course know that the bread stops coming. But the public, the coroner, everybody else, is ignorant of the hundreds of deaths by slaughter which form the unwritten record of the Pressed Steel Car plant. Their deaths are never reported. They are slaughtered every day in every conceivable way.

That’s why “The Slaughter House.” And there are other angles even of this bloody condition. Killing men is merely an incident in every big industrial plant, but everywhere, except in the “Slaughter House,” some care is taken to protect men’s lives with at least makeshift safeguards.

When some poor “Hunky.” as they even familiarly call themselves now, is maimed and mangled at his work, some foreman, or other petty “boss,” pushes the bleeding body aside with his foot to make room for another living man, that no time be lost in the turning out of pressed steel cars. The new man often works for some minutes over the dead body until a gang takes it away. Every day there are throngs of idle men standing in line at the “slaughter house” gate waiting for a crook of the finger of some petty grafting boss or special policeman to come in and be slaughtered. Usually when a new man gets a job it is because some other poor fellow has been slaughtered.

Those who are admitted are stood in a place kept for that purpose and told to wait a few minutes. Their job is not quite ready. “There’ll soon be somebody killed,” they are told, “then you can go to work.”

In a few minutes the slaughter has been accomplished, another lot of children and a stony-faced woman are left with possibly 24 hours’ food that some other woman and children may have something to eat until “her man” is slaughtered. It is not simply a question of whether they will be slaughtered, but when. The fact is certain, as all facts are. The only question is as to the time.

The one cause which has driven these men to desperation, meaning the strike, is the “pooling” system of pay. This is unknown outside the Pressed Steel Car works. It means, in a few words, that the company fixes the cost of its cars. That is, it fixed the costs once, and they have remained fixed ever since. Conditions mean nothing at the “slaughter house” in the matter of costs. This cost is divided among the various “gangs” in the several departments. Whether a man works much or little, hard or not all day, day work or piece work, no man in the plant knows what he has earned until he gets his pay envelope. Then he finds that whatever he had counted himself he gets much less. In a word, he never knows what the “slaughter house” company chooses to let him have until the work is all done. He may get $2 a day or he may get $1. The average workmen get as near nothing as will allow him to keep alive.

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.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-slp/090724-weeklypeople-v19n17.pdf