WE NEVER FORGET
Desederio Alesandro/Alesandro Tessitore-28
Carman Patty/Kalman Batyi-38
The Names of the Martyrs
The Labor Martyrs project seeks to record, at a minimum, the names and ages of those who lost their lives in freedom's cause and on behalf of the working class. This is not always possible. My research has led to two different names for each of the Martyrs of the Roosevelt (New Jersey) Massacre of January 19, 1915. If a gravestone is found engraved with their name, by the family at the time of their death, then that would be the definitive answer to the question of which name they were known by as they took up their place on the picket line and laid down their lives in the struggle for justice.
The day after the Roosevelt Massacre, the New York Times identified the two strikers as:
ALESANDRO, DESEDERIO. Chrome. N. J.; 28 years old; shot in the leg and back; died at 6 o'clock [January 19] in Alexian Brothers Hospital, Elizabeth....
PATTY, CARMAN, Chrome, 38, married; shot in left arm and abdomen; may die.
As the trial of their attackers got under way,
The Times of May 25, 1915, reported their names to be Alessandro Tessitore and Kalman Batyi.
In 1916, New Jersey Supreme Court documents identified the murdered men as Alesandro Tessitore and Kalman Batyi. (State v. Bavier)
Remembering Our Martyrs
Sadly, little information can be found about Brother Tessitore, other than that, according to the
Times, he was a young man, 28 years old.
Brother Batyi was 38 years old and left a wife and four little children in Hungary. He had a nephew, Anthony Lenezl, who lived in Bayonne. The New York Sun of January 22, 1915 reported:
The Elizabeth morgue authorities have received instructions to send the body of Patty to-morrow morning to Anthony Lenezl, a nephew of the dead striker, at Chrome. Lenezl, who resides in Bayonne, said to-night that the funeral of Patty would take place Saturday morning at the same time as that of Aleosandro, and would be public.
The Funeral
The Boston Globe of January 24, 1915, described the funeral:
At 2 p m the funeral of Desederio Alesandro and Carman Patty, the victims of the shooting on Tuesday, took place. Religious services were held at the church of their faith; afterward the bodies were taken to the union hall. Long before the arrival of the bodies every inch of space in the building was occupied. The chairs were removed and all those present stood during the half-hour services.
The coffins were covered with flowers, a large wreath of red roses with a ribbon inscribed "Sacrificed to the Gunmen of Capitalism" being conspicuous. Officials of the union made short addresses, during which the dead men were termed "the martyrs of an awakening that will result in the driving of gunmen from the State of New Jersey." The men at the meeting were admonished to maintain peaceful measures in the conduct of the strike.
Two hearses bearing the bodies, were followed to the cemetery, three miles distant, by a crowd of several hundred men, women and children marching, through mud and rain, the funeral cortege being headed by a band.
All along the line of march through Chrome and Carteret, respective sections of Roosevelt borough, business houses were closed and blinds drawn as the funerals passed.
From the Coast Seaman's Journal of March 10, 1915:
INDUSTRIAL RULE BY GUNMEN.
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The totally unjustifiable and cold blooded murder of striking workmen by armed guards supplied by private "detective agencies" to a fertilizer plant on January 19, adds another chapter to the rapidly swelling list of crimes perpetrated by hired mercenaries brought by employers into industrial communities for the purpose of “settling labor disturbances." These have been occurring with alarming frequency of late, but this latest instance for deliberate criminal callousness seems to come very near to the limit of human endurance.
Prior to last October, the employes working in this plant (known as the Williams & Clark Co.) received a wage of $2.00 a day, which wage they succeeded in establishing by a strike in 1912. Although it had been agreed that a month's notice was to be given by either party desiring a change, this fertilizer company, on a four days’ notice, reduced the wages of its employes to $1.60 a day. This reduction in wages was made during a dull period in this trade and the employes accepted the reduction without serious protest on the assurance that commencing January 1 of this year the $2.00 a day wage would be restored.
On January 1 the company again failed in the promise to its employes. So on January 3 the employes went out on strike to compel a restoration of their former wage. What followed thereafter is only a repetition of scenes and events which transpired in West Virginia, Calumet, Mich., and Colorado. Instead of an industrial conflict, we find an “industrial war." Nine days after the inauguration of the strike, approximately 200 strikers met a train at the depot, located near the Williams & Clark plant. These strikers anticipated the arrival of strike breakers and they hoped to enlist the sympathetic response of these men in their cause. Upon arrival of the train, a committee of the strikers, with the permission of the train crew, went through the train. As the committee reported that no strikebreakers were on the train, the enthusiastic strikers set up a shout of satisfaction. The message “No scabs have arrived" filled every one of these industrial warriors with joy. To them, this pleasant incident meant new hope, greater encouragement—ultimate success of restoring the $2.00 a day wage. Little did these strikers realize that this enjoyment and pleasure, hope and ambition would soon end in a tragedy—in the loss of life and blood. Without provocation and immediately following their shout of exultation, about thirty deputies (hired gunmen from New York City), under the cloak of official authority, rushed out from the Williams & Clark plant, pounced upon the strikers and deliberately shot right and left to kill and maim these peaceful citizens.
When the one-sided battle was over two strikers were found dead and over twenty-five men injured and maimed. Two indisputable facts have since been clearly established; first, that not one of the deputies was injured to the slightest degree—not even scratched: secondly, that all the wounds inflicted on the strikers were located in their backs and legs. In addition, the chief of police, who immediately after the shooting searched over 150 strikers, declared that not one of the strikers was armed or carried a weapon of any kind. A more wanton and brutal murder plot cannot be conceived.
Fortunately, public sentiment seems to have been fairly well aroused by this latest exploit of gunmen. At any rate, one would arrive at that conclusion after reading a review of press comment, compiled and published in a recent issue of the Literary Digest as follows:
Another instance of bloodshed in a labor dispute reopens in the press columns the discussion of the use of armed guards supplied by private “detective agencies." This time New Jersey is the scene of the tragedy. and from the accounts in the New York, Newark, and Philadelphia papers. it appears that 900 employes in the fertilizer works of Liebig & Company and Williams & Clark, situated in the swampy country along the New Jersey Central Railroad between Elizabeth and Perth Amboy, had been on strike since January 2. They had not been accused of resorting to violence: but they were on the watch for strikebreakers. And both factories were guarded by a force of deputy sheriffs hired from a Newark detective agency. On the morning of January 19, a crowd of the strikers were waiting for the arrival of the New York train at the station nearest the Williams & Clark plant. John Dowling, a member of the police force of the Borough of Roosevelt, was on duty at the station. Some say the men blocked or flagged the train, but this is what happened, according to Dowling's story, told to a New York World reporter:
‘‘I saw the strikers gathering at the station, and I am positive that not a man carried a revolver or any other sort of weapon unless it was a pocket-knife. The men seemed most peaceful. and I knew they were not bent on making trouble. Several of them told me that they simply were going to do picket duty, as they expected strikebreakers to come from New York, and were going to try to persuade them to return to their homes or join the strikers.
“The men assembled on public property and were peaceful. I had no authority to interfere with them. When the train drew in there certainly were no ties on the rails, nor did any one wave a red sweater in front of the locomotive.
“I saw several men board the train, and they did it without the least disorder. Then I saw these men get off the rear platform of the last train and make a report to the other strikers. There still wasn’t the slightest sign of disorder.
“About this time the big gates of the Williams & Clark mill were thrown open, and out rushed the deputies. The shooting began at once. If those deputies say they fired in the air and that the strikers fired at them first, they lie. The strikers did not fire. They had nothing with which to fire. They simply were butchered. It's impossible to describe how those unarmed defenseless men were shot down. Some ran and escaped injury. Those who were unable to get to high ground made for the swamps, and it was those men that were shot, beaten, and then shot again.
"I got into the thick of the trouble, but one man in that frantic mob and desperate crowd of gunmen was nothing. The deputies shot until their leader gave the signal. At that time men were all about, wounded and screaming for help. The deputies made not the slightest effort to aid the men they had shot. They simply marched back into the plant and locked themselves in."
Physicians and ambulances were at once called. Two strikers died from gunshot wounds, several others lie seriously injured in the Elizabeth hospitals, and over a score in all were hit by the bullets of the deputies. Defenders of the deputies say they were fired on first and acted in self-defense, but local feeling in Carteret, Chrome, and the Borough of Roosevelt seems to sustain the strikers. The New York Sun has never been accused of undue leanings toward the employes’ side in labor disturbances, but it believes the shooting “to have been wanton and outrageous,” since “no evidence to date shows justification or even provocation for it." In an editorial on "The New Jersey Massacre,” the Boston Transcript declares that this thing “would have been inexcusable in the new States of Arizona and New Mexico, where traces of the old processes of settling differences perhaps still remain. In New Jersey it stands forth as a reproach that it will not be easy to explain satisfactorily.” The Transcript calls it “more indefensible than anything that has happened in Colorado during the past year.” It was worse, agrees the New York Tribune, than the “Ludlow battle" in the Colorado coal strike, and for these reasons:
“There the miners were armed and organized for resistance. Here the employes of the fertilizer plants were ready for demonstrations against strikebreakers, but nothing in the course of the strike went to show that they were armed or organized for resistance to the authorities. When fired on they attempted no violence in return; their sole concern was to get away from the whistling bullets. News accounts of the shocking affair declare that nevertheless the sniping at the fleeing strikers continued for some time.
“Nothing more brutal and outrageous ever came out of a labor disturbance. It is patent that the deputies who did the shooting lost their heads completely...Ethically, what they did differs no jot from cold-blooded murder.”
In New Jersey, the Jersey City Journal calls the affair “an unwarranted use of power by so called deputies, who were in reality thugs and gunmen.” With this the Newark News emphatically agrees, but it adds a word of defense against some of the editorial criticisms of its State:
“The prompt arrest of twenty-two deputies and their holding for the Middlesex Grand Jury on charges of manslaughter, together with the prosecutor's statement that he believes all the deputies who took part in the Roosevelt shooting are included in this number. forfends the State of New Jersey from the criticism, already sought to be made, that the affray of Tuesday might prove to be another Colorado affair. New Jersey will not permit itself to be classed with Colorado in this regard."
Yet another Newark daily, The Evening Star, remembers that “it has been the custom for criminal officers in this State to palliate crimes of this character, and although there has been wanton shooting by private 'deputies,' we believe that in no case was any punishment inflicted.” The Star continues:
"The laws of the State have permitted mercenary private agencies to recruit gunmen squads and battalions and hire them out to carry on war in industrial and other labor troubles. It has permitted the imported gun man to be judge and executioner...
“Private detective agencies and strikebreakers are placed in the same category. One is dependent upon the other for their means of livelihood—means that other men despise. The strikebreaker looks upon the private detective agency as his friend, and the private detective agency treats the strikebreaker as his benefactor. Both should he banished from New Jersey...
“The ways of the ‘Woolly West' should not be permitted to become operative in the State of New Jersey."
And the New York World, taking up the same point, wonders how much longer our State governments are "going to tolerate the private employment of hired gunmen to deal with labor troubles.” As a substitute, the Boston Transcript, Philadelphia Telegraph, New York Tribune, Times, Evening Post, and Evening Mail call for the establishment of State constabularies.
But though the New York Call appreciates the denunciation of the Roosevelt “gunmen" in all the “capitalistic press," it has no patience with their remedy for situations like that which developed in New Jersey. Pennsylvania State constabulary, it says, “have again and again committed wanton, unprovoked murder, and the testimony of police chiefs of Pennsylvania towns to that effect is on the record for all who care to examine."
"In a word, what The Tribune wants is to give the workingmen some variety in the matter of being shot. Murder by deputy sheriffs is getting monotonous. Let us have State constabulary butchers, who know their business better, and who can always be defended by the press on the ground that they never ‘lose their heads’ and are more regularly ‘official’ than the haphazard killers picked up any old where to ‘settle labor disturbances.'"
Appeals for Federal investigation or intervention in connection with the Roosevelt shooting affair are deprecated by the New York and New Jersey press, though the Senior Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Martine, naturally considers this an opportune time to urge immediate action by the Senate on his bill introduced last summer making it unlawful for any person, firm, or corporation to employ armed men on their premises for any purpose.
[photographs added]
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SOURCES
The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-Jan 20, 1915
http://query.nytimes.com/...
-May 25, 1915
http://query.nytimes.com/...
Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court And, at Law, in the Court of Errors and Appeals of the State of New Jersey, Volume 89
-New Jersey. Supreme Court
Soney and Sage, 1917
(search separately: tessitore, batyi; all pages are relevant)
https://books.google.com/...
New York Tribune
(New York, New York)
-Jan 22, 1915
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
The Boston Globe
(Boston, Massachusetts)
-Jan 24, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Seamen's Journal: (1914-1915), Volume 28
Sailors' Union of the Pacific, 1915
(search: industrial rule by gunmen, & choose p.8)
https://books.google.com/...
Coast Seamen's Journal
(San Francisco, California)
March 10, 1915
https://books.google.com/...
IMAGES
Wives and children of Roosevelt Strikers
(used here to represent the family left behind by Brother Batyi)
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
Roosevelt Massacre of Jan 19, 1915,
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
Roosevelt Massacre of Jan 19, 1915
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
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Hold the Fort-One of Labor's Oldest Songs
Quite possibly played by the union band as it led the funeral cortege for the Roosevelt Martyrs.
We meet today in Freedom's cause,
And raise our voices high;
We'll join our hands in union strong,
To battle or to die.
Chorus:
Hold the fort for we are coming-
Union men, be strong.
Side by side we battle onward,
Victory will come.
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12:46 PM PT: Big H/T and thank you to Bill Roberts for this comment:
"I can't find a burial citation, but I did find an immigration record for Kalman Batyi, born in Hungary about 1877, arrived in the United States 9 May 1903 aboard the passenger ship Graf Waldersee; departure port Hamburg, Germany; arrival port New York, New York."
