Strikes Archives - Bob on Books

40 Patchtown, Damian Dressick. Huron, Ohio: Bottom Dog Press, 2020.

Summary: Set during a coal strike in Windber, Pennsylvania in 1922, captures the hardship striking miners faced in their resistance to mine owners, their efforts to form unions and gain better wages for dangerous work.

My family and that of my wife traces its history to towns between Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Youngstown, Ohio. Many had associations with either the coal or steel industries. I was reminded in reading 40 Patchtown of the stories we heard at family gatherings of mine and mill owners, strikes and strike-breakers, Pinkerton’s, the hardships and the violence that came with encounters between powerful corporations and workers who risk their lives to dig coal out of the earth and to forge the steel that built the nation. There were the ethnic rivalries between eastern Europeans who arrived earlier, and Italians who came later. Company housing, rooming houses, and camps for evicted strikers. Finally, I encountered words I used to hear as a kid, but rarely since like studda-bubba (old woman) and dupa (your butt).

Damian Dressick, a writing professor at Clarion College (Pa.), grew up in coal country and through interviews with retired miners and their families and archival research, captures the hardships, the dangers, the family bonds, and the struggles to maintain worker solidarity during a grinding strike. His novel is set in Windber, Pennsylvania, a small mining town three miles south of Johnstown, in Somerset County during a coal miner strike in 1922. The novel opens with main character Chet Pistakowski joining his older brother Buzzy and a friend to go after “scabs” being brought in to take over the jobs of strikers. Buzzy ends up killing one of the men. The death of this replacement worker intensifies the conflict between the strikers seeking recognition for their union and the company. A train with more replacement workers is surrounded by armed guards who violently suppress and disperse the workers. Meanwhile, Chet struggles in his conscience over the killing of the Italian “scab,” who didn’t know he was taking the job of another.

After Buzzy is apprehended and killed, Chet’s family faces eviction. Dressick takes us into the worker camps and the efforts of union organizers to support the workers and the grinding poverty into which they descended. Chet takes over Buzzy’s job hauling bootlegged alcohol, running risks both with law enforcement and the bootlegging gangs themselves. The job brings in a lot of money, but the illicit activity, what his family and girl friend think of what he is doing, and the time it takes away from the union creates tension within Chet. This all comes to head with the death of a union organizer, confronting him with choices that could change his life or end it.

Dressick tells a riveting story that evokes the conditions of this era without becoming a documentary. The novel raises questions about the moral choices facing those subject to the overwhelming use of power and violence. Do oppressive conditions justify violence? Is violence folly when the oppressor has overwhelmingly superior force? Our understanding of how terrible the conditions these miners faced is intensified when we realize that it is a fourteen year old Chet who must wrestle with questions like these.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

William Gropper, “Youngstown Strike” 1937, Butler Institute of American Art

This past week was significant in Youngstown working class history. On January 7, 1916, a steel strike against Youngstown Sheet and Tube descended into tragic violence. A crowd of strikers and their wives had gathered on Wilson Avenue by bridge at the north entrance to the plant to prevent “scabs” from entering. Stories vary as to how the tragedy unfolded. Either rocks were thrown or a shot was fired from the crowd toward the security forces protecting the entrance to the plant. Then guards fired into the crowds. When the shooting was done 3 were dead and at least 27 injured.

This was only the beginning. Workers broke into company headquarters, burning records, looking for “blacklists” of union organizers target for violence. The enraged workers then turned their anger on local businesses, looting and destroying nearly 100 business blocks and residences in East Youngstown (present day Campbell) with losses in excess of $1 million dollars. Two thousand National Guard troops were called in to restore order.

Hundreds of rioters were arrested and many drew prison sentences. Workers were blamed but records do not show where those arrested worked. There were rumors of foreign agents and union instigators, none proven. A fascinating detail was that the grand jury that returned indictments against the rioters also indicted heads of the major steel companies (the strike involved not just Youngstown Sheet and Tube, but U.S. Steel, Brier Hill, and Republic Steel).

What led to this outbreak? The strike, which began on December 27, 1915 was over wages. Despite a thriving economy with wartime manufacturing, wages had been cut 9 percent the previous year and unskilled labor earned just 19.5 cents per hour. Growth of the industry had led to crowded housing, and these costs and the cost of living left most families earning less than it cost to live. The workers had asked for a wage of 25 cents an hour, time and a half overtime, and double overtime for Sundays.

The irony? Hours before, company leaders had announced a wage increase to 22 cents an hour, which went into effect after the riots. But other changes followed. Youngstown Sheet and Tube helped rebuild East Youngstown and built better worker housing that included electricity and indoor plumbing when outdoor facilities were the norm. The village was eventually renamed Campbell after James A. Campbell, chairman of Youngstown Sheet and Tube.

Not all was sweetness and light. Wages rose and fell with the economy but did not progress over the next twenty years. Another violent confrontation occurred twenty-one years later in the “Little Steel Strike” of 1936-37. Artist William Gropper visited Youngstown during the strike and published sketches and an article in The Nation. He painted Youngstown Strike during this time, but what it depicted was the events of 1916. The painting is part of the collection at the Butler.

To write of these strikes is to write of events from another time before my own. Strikes during my growing up years did not have the violence of these early confrontations. Mostly, it was an unexpected vacation at first, and increasing belt tightening when unions and management couldn’t reach settlements. Guys made ends meet by painting houses and other handyman work. Until Black Monday.

We are unquestionably in a different time. Philosopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The violence of 1916, inexcusable on all sides, reminds us of the consequences when there are tremendous disparities between wealth and poverty and hard working people cannot earn enough to live. It seems at least to some extent Youngstown Sheet and Tube learned that they had to make workers’ situations livable. Will today’s companies remember these lessons from the past? Or will they repeat them?