Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

at which the 'incendiary' utterances were alleged to have been made. He was sentenced to the State Prison for a period of two to seven years.

On March 15, 1915, Attorney Carless presented a petition signed by 21,000 citizens of New Jersey, to Judge Klenert, requesting Quinlan's release on the ground of his innocence, and ill-health. Judge Klenert reserved decision pending the decision of the Pardon Board which was then considering Quinlan's request for a parole. On April 2, 1915, the Pardon Board decided not to grant a parole.

In May Quinlan addressed a letter to President Wilson, reviewing his case, and requesting an investigation.

Judge Klenert denied the petition for parole, and President Wilson never acted in the matter. Quinlan is still in prison.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, arrested at the same time, and tried with substantially the same evidence against her was acquitted by a jury drawn from another county. The Quinlan case has every ear-mark of special persecution, instead of legal prosecution.

STRIKES.

BY CHESTER M. WRIGHT.

ROOSEVELT.

While the United States Commission on Industrial Relations was in session in New York City a strike broke out among 700 employes of the William and Clark plant of the American_Agricultural Fertilizer Chemical Company at Chrome, N. J. On January 19, 1915, strike guards employed by the company fired into a gathering of strikers, killing two and wounding eighteen, three of them seriously. One of the men killed was found to have six bullets in his body.

The men were organized into the Chemical Workers Union of the American Federation of Labor. Immediately after the shooting appeals for help were sent to the American Federation of Labor and Congressman Meyer London, and a request was sent to the United States Commission on Industrial Relations asking for an immediate investigation of the strike. On the following day 31 deputy sheriffs were arrested, charged with murder in the first degree, and held without bail.

On this day it was shown also that the strikers who had been fired upon were unarmed. The strike guards had been furnished by Sheriff Houghton, and most of them were unknown to him when they were engaged. Mayor Hermon, of Chrome, was openly sympathetic with the strikers, and maintained that attitude throughout the strike.

Eventually the strikers returned to work, having gained

an increase in wages of approximately 20 cents a day. Before the strike the wages had averaged $1.60 a day. The work was of the hardest kind, performed under the most adverse conditions. The strike, too, came at a time when unemployment throughout the country was intense. The immediate cause of the strike was a reduction in wages to $1.60 from $2.00 a day. Perhaps the whole psychology created by the action of the company can be summed up no better than in the words of one of the strikers, who testified later on before the United States Commission on Industrial Relations. He said:

"For three years I work all the week and every Sunday, too. My wife, she take in washing. We have five children. I am a Polak and I don't drink, chew, just smoke a pipe. My name is Antonio Wiater, and I work at Liebig's before the strike. They pay $2. Then the boss say 'I pay you $1.60'-then we strike."

One of the most significant facts brought to light during the strike was the fact that the Rockefeller Foundation was the owner of $500,000 worth of stock in the American Agricultural Fertilizer Chemical Company, which owned the plant at Chrome where the strike took place. It was clearly shown that Rockefeller dominated the policy of the plant, and this policy, with its resulting violence, bloodshed, and death, was singularly in accord with that in force in other Rockefeller dominated plants that impressed themselves on history during the year, notably the Rockefeller oil works at Bayonne, N. J., and the Rockefeller mining interests in Colorado.

Five months later nine of ten deputy sheriffs indicted for first degree murder were found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced by Justice J. J. Berger to prison terms from two to ten years each. The tenth deputy was acquitted.

BAYONNE.

Strikes of 1915 seem to have been uniformly of a dramatic character. Like the strikes in Roosevelt and Youngstown, the strike of 5,000 employes of the Standard Oil Company in Bayonne, N. J., was marked by violence of a highly sensational nature. The strike began about July 18, but it was not until July 20 that public notice was really directed to it. On that day the company brought in a detachment of guards, who had seen duty in the strike at Roosevelt, and also brought a number of strikebreakers into the plant.

On that day the police first began the use of guns, and a volley of several hundred bullets was fired close to the heads of the strikers. In a clash between strikers and strike breakers, the latter guarded by police, several strike breakers emerged the worse for the clash. On the following day,

1

July 21, there was a much more serious clash between the strikers and the company guards. The guards were hired by the oil company from the Bergoff agency. They had at all times the class co-operation of the Bayonne police force.

In the clash on July 21 one boy striker was killed, eight others received serious wounds, and probably fifty escaped with superficial injuries. The casualties, if any, on the other side never became known, because of the policy adopted by the company of shielding every operation of its guards.

Met with a policy of extreme brutality on the part of the company, the strikers adopted a like policy. When the shooting occurred on July 21, the strikers descended upon the police force with such violence that the police threw up their hands in token of surrender, whereupon they were disarmed by the strikers and allowed to go.

On July 25 the Rockefeller interests were instrumental in securing the suppression of The New York Call in Bayonne, and for several days it was impossible to secure copies of that newspaper on the news stands of Bayonne. The paper was taken into Bayonne, however, by roundabout methods, and distributed to the strikers surreptitiously. The Call had openly espoused the cause of the strikers, and was regarded as the strongest weapon they had. So intense was the company's resentment against The Call that the warden of the Hudson County jail stated over the telephone to a reporter of The Call on July 26 that if he came within his jurisdiction he would be arrested.

The strike continued with more or less violence until on July 27 the men voted to return to work, allowing the company 10 days in which to make good on a promise given by it to substantially increase the wages of the workers. Subsequently an increase in wages ranging from 10 to 15 per cent a day was granted to about 16,000 Standard Oil Co. employes in New Jersey. This came after the Bayonne strike had been broken and after there had been sporadic outbreaks or threats of them at several of the Standard Oil Company's other New Jersey plants.

The active force in the breaking of the strike was wielded by Sheriff Kinkead. His fanatic brutality, backed up by the use of all the force that he could muster, was something that the strikers could not meet on equal terms. The strikers, to be sure, used what physical force they could muster for the simple reason that they were driven to it. Their courage was magnificent. On one occasion strikers armed with nothing but their bare fists went up to the very walls of the company's plants, while inside were men armed with modern rifles and revolvers.

A total of five men died as the result of police and strike guard brutality during the course of the strike. Four of the

deaths were caused by bullets fired either by police or company guards. The fifth was caused by a brick that may have been thrown by a striker. The death in this case was that of a man who had refused to strike until the strike had been on for about a week. He had just quit work to join the strikers when he received his fatal injury.

Sheriff Kinkead's conduct during the strike was as erratic as it was vicious. He gave his conduct semblance of fairness, at one time promising to remove all of the Rockefeller gunmen from the plant of the company, and at another time by attempting, at great personal risk, to prevent clashes between his own deputies and the strikers. At still another time Kinkead placed P. Leo Bergoff, head of the private detective agency bearing his name, and Samuel Edwards, superintendent of the Tidewater Oil Refining Company, under arrest. Kinkead placed 99 strike guards under arrest, too, and threw them into jail. But this was not done until the Standard Oil Company had practically no further need for their services.

On the other hand Kinkead practically compelled sympathizers with the strikers to leave Bayonne, and it was established that several persons prominent in Bayonne whose sympathies were with the strikers felt it the part of wisdom to leave the place until the strike had been ended. The grand total of official influence and brutality was emphatically on the side of the employing oil company, and whatever weight seemed to have been thrown against the company either was of no importance or was of a character to justify the assertion that it was done merely for effect on public opinion.

COPPER MINERS' STRIKE OF ARIZONA.

Shortly after the organization of the copper miners of the camps of Morenci, Clifton and Metcalf, Arizona, in the fall of 1915, the companies issued notices to the men that they must sever connections with their union and sign a blank form to that effect. The men refused and were obliged to strike. An unusual feature of the strike was the fact that the Governor of the State, Geo. W. P. Hunt and the Sheriff of Grenell County showed sympathy with the strikers and kept them from demoralization by the importation of strikebreakers. The men stood solidly and won the strike in March, 1916.

1

THE CHICAGO GARMENT WORKERS' STRIKE.

The strike of 20,000 members of the Amalgamated Garment Workers Union in Chicago in the fall of 1915 and winter of 1916 was one of the most spectacular of the year in respect to the unusually brutal treatment given the strikers by strike breakers and police: The workers went on strike for a 25% raise in wages, 48 hours of work weekly and recognition of the union. Over 1,200 arrests were made of strikers and sympathizers and the police brutally handled the women. The public supported the strike to an unusual degree.

YOUNGSTOWN.

One of the most dramatic strikes of 1916 began very quietly at Youngstown, O., on December 27 of the year previous, and reached its climax in a riot on January 7, 1916, in which the lives of several workers were lost and a vast amount of property completely destroyed.

This strike began when 300 unskilled workers walked out of the plant of the Republic Iron and Steel Company, of Youngstown, demanding advances in pay from 1912 to 25 cents per hour, time and a half for overtime, and double time for Sunday work. The strike spread steadily until at the highest point 13,500 men were idle. Of this number approximately 6,000 were strikers, and the rest were forced into idleness because of the strike.

Working conditions, hours, and wages in this plant had been those usually obtaining in the steel industry. Wages throughout the steel industry were uniform at the time. But little attention had been given the strike outside of Youngstown until the riot of January 7.

It is doubtful whether any authority has been able to establish the exact immediate cause of the riot of that day. The weight of evidence supports the following conclusion:

A mass of parading strikers had congregated at the end of a bridge over which all employes had to pass in going to and coming from the plant of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company. At the approach to the bridge a number of company guards were stationed. At least two of these guards were members of the State militia, but serving as guards in a private capacity. A stone or other missile seems to have been thrown by some person in the crowd, either a striker or a sympathizer, at one of the guards. J. M. Woltz, chief of the company's forces of guards, fired a shot at the strikers, whereupon there was a general fusillade from all of the guards.

Following this shooting there was an evening of wild rioting. One of the features that cannot be overlooked in connection with the rioting is that the rioters were given

« НазадПродовжити »