1909 Pressed Steel Car strike

American labor strike August 2026 February 2025 Pressed Steel Car strike of 1909 300px McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania July 10 - September 8, 1909 Funeral procession in McKees Rocks for Bloody Sunday victims wages Strikes, Protest, Demonstrations Wage increase; end to housing abuses Industrial Workers of the World Pennsylvania State Police; Strikebreakers William Trautmann, Norton Hoffstot; Pearl Bergoff Deaths: 12Injuries: 26+Arrests: Deaths: 2Injuries: 3 Arrests, etc yes Pennsylvania October 14, 2000http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/pennsylvania_historical_marker_program/2539/search_for_historical_markers PHMC Historical Markers Search Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Searchable database 2014-01-25 The Pressed Steel Car strike of 1909, also known as the 1909 McKees Rocks strike, was an American labor strike which lasted from July 13 through September 8. The walkout drew national attention when it climaxed on Sunday August 22 in a bloody battle between strikers, private security agents, and the Pennsylvania State Police. At least 12 people died, and perhaps as many as 26.Marylynne Pitz, "Pressed Steel Car strike in McKees Rocks reaches centennial anniversary". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 16, 2009, pg. E1. The strike was the largest and most significant industrial labor dispute in the Pittsburgh area since the famous 1892 Homestead strike and was a precursor to the Great Steel Strike of 1919. History of the strike Background Frank Norton Hoffstot's Pressed Steel Car Company, sited downstream from Pittsburgh on the south bank of the Ohio River in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, manufactured passenger and freight railroad cars on an assembly-line basis. It was America's second-largest rail car producer.Edward Levinson, I Break Strikes: The Technique of Pearl L. Bergoff. New York: Robert M. McBride & Co., 1935; pg. 71. Pressed Steel employed a workforce of 6,000 people, mostly foreign born comprising 16 distinct ethnicities. The firm was infamous for its style of industrial peonage with immigrant workers.Charles McCollester, The Point of Pittsburgh: Production and Struggle at the Forks of the Ohio. Pittsburgh: Battle of Homestead Foundation, 2008; pg. 181. Working conditions in the plant were primitive even by Pittsburgh standards.Crystal Eastman, Work-Accidents and the Law. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Publications, 1910. Pressed Steel Car Company was locally called "The Last Chance" and "The Slaughterhouse". In an interview with The Pittsburgh Leader, Rev. Father A.F. Toner, a priest at St. Mary Roman Catholic Church in McKees Rocks, said, "Men are persecuted, robbed, and slaughtered, and their wives are abused in a manner worse than death ... all to obtain or retain positions that barely keep starvation from the door." The local coroner, Joseph G. Armstrong, estimated that deaths in the plant averaged about one a day and were often caused by moving cranes. One of the charges made by Slavic immigrant workers was that their wives and daughters were subject to sexual harassment and preyed upon to deliver sexual favors as a way to repay food and rental debts, or forestall their collection, to the company agents.McCollester, The Point of Pittsburgh, pg. 182. 250px|right|Anti-Hoffstot cartoon about the 1909 strike Particularly galling to the workers was the use of the Baldwin contract, commonly known as "pooling." Under this system, jobs were parceled out in lots by a foreman who contracted that it be done for a given sum, with the money paid to be divided pro rata by the men under him.Louis Duchez, "The Strikes in Pennsylvania," The International Socialist Review, vol. 10, no. 3 (September 1909), pg. 194. The system was rife with corruption, with workers often paying substantial kickbacks to the foreman to retain their jobs.Duchez, "The Strikes in Pennsylvania," pg. 195. The system resulted in unpredictable and often insufficient rates of pay, as one sympathetic journalist reported: President [Frank N.] Hoffstot says that it has proven to be a very satisfactory arrangement. And it has — for the company. As evidence of this we saw several pay envelopes showing that many of the workers slave for practically nothing. One envelope showed that the owner worked nine days, ten hours a day, and got $2.75; another eleven days and received $3.75; another three days and got $1.75; another four days and got $1, and the fifth, who had been idle for two months, worked three days and received nothing.... The company manages the pooling system through the foreman — and the workers are skinned until their bones shine. * * * Two years ago, before the pooling system was introduced, the men were making $3, $4, and $5 a day. Today most of them make 50 and 75 cents and $1 a day."Duchez, The Strikes in Pennsylvania, pp. 194-195. Adding further to the destabilizing misery was the company-owned housing, ramshackle dwellings housing six families and renting for $12 a month. Moreover, the company owned the stores from which the workers had to buy their provisions at inflated prices, lest they lose their jobs. The system of economic domination was particularly severe and there came a day when the breaking point was reached. The strike begins thumb|300px|Mounted members of the Pennsylvania constabulary were deployed during the McKees Rocks strike. These officers were called "Cossacks" by the strikers. The strike was triggered on Saturday July 10, a payday on which many workers were shorter in their pay than usual. The men demanded an explanation; management refused to speak with the workers' representatives. James Rider, manager of The Pressed Steel Car Company, responded by hiring Pearl Bergoff, the notorious owner of strike-breaking paramilitary force.Levinson, I Break Strikes, p. 70. The first fatality was an immigrant striker named Stephen Horvat, shot and killed by a black strikebreaker called Major Smith.Sheriff Refuses to Evict Strikers https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1909/08/13/101818901.pdf 29 March 2016 New York Times 12 August 1909 Two days later Berghoff had deployed 500 strikebreakers to the plant, most entering quietly by rail, although a boat called Steel Queen carrying 300 was rebuffed, at least initially, by strikers' gunfire on the shore. The next day 200 state constables and 300 deputy sheriffs insured the safety of the strikebreakers and also began evicting strikers from company houses. The New York Times reported, "The illiterate foreigners were like so many savages today when they first caught sight of the khaki-clad constabulary who had come in during the night."Levinson, I Break Strikes, pg. 77. The strikers were joined by members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), especially William Trautmann, one of its founders. Trautmann later published a novel, Riot, about the McKees Rocks strike. After Trautmann's arrest for strike organizing activities, Joe Ettor replaced him, and IWW leader Big Bill Haywood also arrived to rally strikers.Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Vol. 4: Industrial Workers of the World. New York: International Publishers, 1965; pg. 235. In all, some 5,000 workers of the Pressed Steel Car Company's plant at McKees Rock went out on strike. These were joined by 3,000 others who worked for the Standard Steel Car Company of Butler and others in New Castle. An adjacent company-owned community, Presston (called Schoenville at the time and popularly referred to as "Hunky Town"), was at the heart of the strike. Presston workers were kept in constant debt to the company store and those behind in rent were evicted. On Saturday August 21 Deputy Sheriff Harry Exley assisted in one eviction by placing a baby buggy on top of a wagon laden with a Presston family's possessions. A photographer captured the moment. When it was printed in a Pittsburgh newspaper, the photo whipped up public sympathy for the strikers. This set up the confrontation of the next day, August 22, "Bloody Sunday". A crowd of thousands of strikers who'd set up a checkpoint identified Exley, in civilian clothes, and targeted him for retaliation. In a fury the mob killed him, and clashed with Pennsylvania State Police mounted on horseback, called "Black Cossacks" by immigrant Slav workers.McCollester, The Point of Pittsburgh, pg. 184. One local source put the number of dead at sixteen, which includes Exley, two state troopers, and three strikers. Perhaps ten others were gravely hurt, "while scores were wounded by being shot in the legs, hit by bricks and clubbed into unconsciousness by the constabulary."More Troops Desired at Schoenville https://www.newspaperarchive.com/us/pennsylvania/new-castle/new-castle-news/1909/08-23/page-4?tag=pressed+steel+strike+1909+exley&rtserp=tags/pressed-steel-strike-1909-exley?psb=relavance 29 March 2016 New Castle (PA) Times 23 August 1909 Martial law was declared the next day. thumb|Striker workers evicted from Presston homes, 1909 Settlement of the strike The strike was settled on September 8 when Pressed Steel Car agreed to a wage increase, the posting of wage rates, and ending abuses in company housing practices. Legacy Before the strike was over,Tell Stories of Brutality - Strikebreakers Complain of Bad Treatment at Schoenville https://www.newspaperarchive.com/us/ohio/east-liverpool/east-liverpool-evening-review/1909/08-28/page-7?tag=pressed+steel+strike+1909+killed 30 March 2016 Evening Review, East Liverpool, Ohio 28 August 1909 and then in more detail in 1911, the strikebreakers appeared before federal panels to describe their own living and working conditions after they were brought to the conflict.Peonage in Western Pennsylvania: Hearings Before the Committee on Labor of the House of Representatives, Sixty-second Congress, First Session, on House Resolution, Issue 90 1911 U.S. Government Printing Office https://books.google.com/books?id=0hUoAAAAMAAJ 30 March 2016 Held inside the plant or in boxcars against their will, fleeced, stolen from, physically threatened, and given rotten food, one hearing witness collapsed and was diagnosed with ptomaine poisoning. Two hundred of the strikebreakers had responded by banding together in their own improvised union. They'd quit work and were camping on the nearby banks of the Ohio River in an attempt to collect back wages, naming Chief of Police Farrell of the Coal and Iron Police and Pearl Bergoff's lieutenant Sam Cohen as those most responsible. Lawyer for the strikebreakers was the ambitious William N. McNair, who alleged that this treatment amounted to peonage. McNair would later serve one chaotic term as Mayor of Pittsburgh in 1934. On August 22, 2009 the Pennsylvania Labor History Society and the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission dedicated a state historical marker there to commemorate the strike's centennial.Pitz Marylynne Historical marker commemorates Presston http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/sectionfront/life/historical-marker-commemorates-presston-353689/?print=1 23 November 2012 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette August 16, 2009July 2026 medicmedic See also Murder of workers in labor disputes in the United States Footnotes External links Pressed Steel Car strike in McKees Rocks reaches centennial anniversary 1909 McKees Rocks Strike Historical Marker http://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-1AA Explore PA History 23 November 2012 Pennsylvania Labor History Society United Steelworkers Category:1909 labor disputes and strikes Category:1909 in Pennsylvania 1909 Category:Labor disputes in Pittsburgh 1909 Category:Manufacturing industry labor disputes in the United States Category:July 1909 in the United States Category:August 1909 in the United States Category:September 1909 in the United States Category:1900s strikes in the United States Category:1900s in Pittsburgh