The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-12-20
The Rebellion of the Oil Slaves
By Fred Ellis

workers and a little boy. Bricks,
cobblestones, anything, were picked
up by the Infatuated workers, who
drove the thugs back into the stock
AIDES.
That night, Constable Hook
seethed. The strikers ranks were
swelled by thousands of workers
from Bayonne and neighboring in
dustrial cities in Jersey. Police and
thugs sniped from the housetops,
picking off worker here and there.
Chalked on the sidewalks turnout
the city were the signs, "Our broth
ers have been killed by the bosses
and the police. Do your work now"
Strikers Rule City.
A headline in the arch-reactionary
New York Times on Thursday, July
%, spoke volumes. "Bayonne in
hands of oil strikers"
1t was now life and death fight
for the oil workers, and they real
lied that they must arm to protect
themselves and their families from
the merciless thugs and police of
Rockefeller; the same Rockefeller
thugs who had proved their disdain
for workers lives year before in
the Ludlow, Colorado, coal mines.
Over 1000 workers at the Vacuum
refineries Joined the men of the
Standard and the Tidewater.
Another fight was precipitated by
the oil bosses the next day, when
the city firemen turned their hoses
on the pickets, following which the
company thugs on the housetops
killed 2 more workers and a little
boy, and wounded a score. The
strikers tore up the embankment
around the stockades of the Stand
ard Oil, and charged the guards, but
police brought in from neighboring
cities drove them back. State troops
came and martial law existed.
In order to discredit the strik-
ers, fires were set by the company
guards in some of the oil sheds, and
Outside agitators acting as German
spies" were declared by the COM
panies and the police to be leading
the strike.
Victory.
But the Standard was weakening.
When the $50 workers at the Ber-
genport and General Chemical
Works, a Standard subsidiary, de,
manded Is per cent increase, they
got it. The 1000 Vacuum oil work
ers were granted their Is per cent
increase by the Rockefellers, but de-
cided to stay out until the Standard
and Tidewaters workers got their
increase. The strike spread to the
1900 workers in the Eagle Oil Co.,
another Rockefeller concern, in
Caven Point, Jersey City. Troops
surrounded the Standard Oil plants
in Long Island City, when the
workers there indicated their inten-
ton to strike, and delegates from
the Bayonne strikers were impris-
oned. But the Rockefellers knew
they were beaten, and granted a 10
per cent increase on Tuesday, July
~, little over a week after one
of the greatest American labor
struggles had begun.
On that day, John E. Roach, gen.
eral organizer of the A. F. of L.,
a bosom friend of Gompers, said to
the sheriff, II want to thank you
for your fair behavior during the
strike. We have every confidence
in the Standard Oil Co." He then
announced that "a campaign will be
waged by the A. F. of L. to or.
ganize the oil workers of Bayonne."
1t never was, needless to say.
The 1915 oil strike was a splendid
example of several things. 1t illus
trated what determined solidarity
could accomplish for the workers,
even against a power as strong as
that of the Rockefellers. 1t brought
into the spotlight the treachery of
the reactionary Gompers machine.
The aftermath of the strike, the
gradual stripping of all the advan-
tages won by the workers in the
strike, illustrated the effects of
lack of organization into militant
union.