You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Tuesday July 20, 1915
Bayonne, New Jersey - Striking Stillcleaners at Standard Oil Joined by 900 Coopers
Bayonne Strikers and their families
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From
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of July 19th:
900 MEN STRIKE AT BAYONNE
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Nine hundred men working in the barrel and case departments of the big plant of the Standard Oil company at Bayonne, N. J., struck today because their demands for an increase of 11 per cent, in wages had not been granted.
The strike is the second to occur in a few days, the still cleaners having left work late last week when they failed to get a 15 per cent increase in wages which they had asked for.
These strikers, it was said today, may tie up the entire plant and affect 6,000 men in all.
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SOURCE
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
(Brooklyn, New York)
-July 19, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGE
Bayonne Strikers
(Date of this photo unknown,
used here to represent the strikers of 1915.)
https://miningawareness.files.wordpress.com/...
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Some Back Ground on the Bayonne Standard Oil Strike of 1915
Boy picking up a stone.
During Bayonne Standard Oil Strike of 1915
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From Foner's History of the
Labor Movement, Vol. 6:
[During the summer of 1915], the growing dissatisfaction at Standard Oil first found expression among the stillcleaners, a group of one hundred men, nearly all Polish workers, whose function was to enter the stills soon after they had been emptied and scrape from the interior walls the tarry substances left from the distilling process. The stillcleaners were paid on a piece-rate basis and earned about $2.25 a day. They worked in the stills at temperatures ranging from 200 to 300 degrees. To protect their bodies from the intense heat they wore several layers of thick clothing, and swathed their faces with cloths. During a shift of seven hours they drank from ten to fourteen quarts of coffee each, to stimulate perspiration in order to withstand better the intense heat.
A special grievance of the still cleaners was the treatment they received at the hands of foremen. They complained that the foremen was continuously insulting them, and punished them when they voiced resentment. A common form of punishment was to force the stillcleaner to remain inside the super-heated vats for extended periods of time. It was not uncommon under these circumstances to see workers carried from the vats unconscious. But all complaints to Standard Oil on this issue were simply ignored.
...The stillcleaners at Standard Oil decided to apply to the management for a similar increase, and for relief from the tyrannical actions of the foremen. They held a meeting and decided to engage Paul Supinsky to draw up their demands. These included a fifteen percent increase in wages and the immediate discharge of a particularly obnoxious foreman. An answer was to be given in twenty-four hours.
The written demands were presented to Superintendent Hennessy by a committee of six stillcleaners. Supinsky accompanied the committee when it presented its demands. Superintendent Hennessy refused to hear the demands, launched into a tirade against the committee chairman for engaging an outside agent, discharged every member of the committee, and issued a statement warning the workers agains "outside agitators," declaring that the company would adamantly refuse to deal with any outsider.
On July 15, 1915, all the stillcleaners walked off the job, demanding a fifteen percent wage increase and better treatment by the hated foremen. They were joined by nine hundred coopers who demanded a similar wage increase...
SOURCE
History of the Labor Movement in the United States Vol. 6
On the Eve of America's Entrance into World War I
-by Philip S Foner
International Pub, 1982
https://books.google.com/...
IMAGE
Bayonne Standard Oil Strike of 1915,
boy picking up a stone
https://en.wikipedia.org/...)
See also:
The New Republic
-Aug 14, 1915
"The Bayonne Strike"
https://books.google.com/...
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A Hard Rains A Gonna Fall - Bob Dylan
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
-Bob Dylan
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