The Gem worker and the Idaho labor herald. (Boise, Idaho) 1914-1917, 1916-05-18
PITTSBURGH STRIKE
Guards and Thugs Fire VOLey After VOney Into
Crowds Of Men, MOmen and Children

ton. Inc workers declared that the
eight hour day was not subject of
arbitration They demanded it as of
right.
But back of the eight hour day de-
mand is the realization by the work
ers that the opportunity of Labor to
assert itself to control its own pay
and is conditions of work and Of life
is here now in the United States.
Practically without organization
there were fewer than 1000 members
of the American Federation of La
Dor among the 10000 employees of all
the Westinghouse plants-the work
ers of all grades and of both sexes
threw themselves into the strike
| movement. The great mass of them
were still getting low wages; but they
and the skilled mechanics, and some
favored few workers receiving as high
as from ten to even eighteen or TWEEN
ty dollars a day for long hours of
overtime in the manufacture of war
munitions, joined simultaneously in
the strike for the eight hour day.
Gains of big and increasing impor-
tance have already been made by the
workers. Starting with practically
no organization, great numbers of the
strikers have joined the International
Association of Machinists and other
unions affiliated with the American
Federation of Labor. Andrew T. Nc
Namara, an organizer for the Ma
chinists, and Patrick ]. Kelly, of the
Machinists Local No 6 of Pittsburgh
estimate that in the first week of the
struggle 1000 machinists, skilled
workers, had left the several plants
involved in the strike. Requests for
many hundreds of these machinists to
go to work in other cities had been
received. For a year the Westing-
house employers had advertised for
skilled workers, and in a day they
lost more men from their labor mar
ket than they had added in the year.
Until the new demand for labor,
and especially skilled labor in the
Pittsburgh district had arisen along
with the mad-scramble of the mill
owners for war profits, the condition
OF the great army of the workers in
the district had been frightful A
survey of a typical residence section
of the unskilled mill workers was tax
en- very recently under the direction
of the Rev. c. r. Zahnizer, Secretary
OF the Christian Social Service Union
of the 500 Protestant Churches of the
Pittsburgh district This section is
known as "the Strip" 1t is in the
heart of Pittsburgh 1t extends from
1lth Street to 34th Street and lies be-
tween the Allegheny River and the
Pennsylvania Railroad tracks. In the
whole of it there is only 81 of a
square mile, and a little more than
half of it is occupied by great indus
trial plants, big Carnegie plant be-
ing one of them. In less than Y
square mile left dwelling of the
poor more than $4,000 persons live
An intensive study of the half blocl
between Smallman Street and Mul
berry Alley and between 31st Stree
and 32nd Street showed 43 industria
Z homes, of which 81 kept boarders. Il
, 81 houses, containing III rooms
there were 40 members of the sew
eral families, and ia men boarders-
total of 284 persons living in II
rooms. Eight families, each famil
! living in three rooms and keepin
. Doarders, averaged six persons to
three-room apartment
, From January /, 1915, to Septem
Der IS, 1915, the average wage pal
to the 155 men living in that hal
block was 5000 a week But th
average pay received by each Of th
i55 men was only $4.66 a week, as th
men were given employment for onl
four ninths of the time.
Such terrible facts Of brutalizin
' poverty and oppression are entirel
: ignored by the Westinghouse an
Steel Trust and other Pittsburgh il
: dustries who have been advertisin
: in the Pittsburgh newspapers d;
/, now there are hundreds of thousaut
I, of dollars, and millions Of dollars
& wages being lost to the workers
!, Continued to page four