Ohio History Journal

An Iron Workers' Strike in

The Ohio Valley, 1873-1874

 

By HERBERT G. GUTMAN*

 

 

 

DURING THE EARLY MONTHS of the depression of 1873, a

serious strike of iron workers took place in the Ohio Valley.

The stoppage affected iron mills in southern Ohio and north-

ern Kentucky and in Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Tennes-

see as men left work in mills in large cities like Cincinnati,

Indianapolis, and St. Louis and in smaller industrial towns

like Ironton and Portsmouth, Ohio, Newport and Covington,

Kentucky, and New Albany, Indiana. Several thousand men

and fifteen iron mills were involved in the dispute.¹ Starting

in November 1873 and continuing through the spring months

of the following year, the crisis in the Ohio Valley tested the

strength of those mill owners who belonged to the Ohio Valley

Iron Association, a regional trade association, and that of

their skilled workers who were members of a tiny national

trade union of heaters and rollers. The incident reveals a

great deal about the influence of the social structure in the

industrial hinterlands on conflicts between labor and manage-

ment after the Civil War.

* Herbert G. Gutman is an assistant professor in the department of social

science at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

1 The iron mills involved were the following: Swift Iron and Steel Works, New-

port; Globe Rolling Mill Company, Cincinnati; Kentucky Rolling Mill Company

and Louisville Rolling Mill Company, Louisville; Gaylord Rolling Mill, Ports-

mouth; Phillips and Jordan Iron Company and Mitchell, Tranter, and Company,

Covington; Butsch, Deutsch, and Company, Indianapolis; Ohio Falls Iron Works,

New Albany; Ironton Iron and Steel Company and Lawrence Iron Works, Ironton;

Vulcan Iron Works, Chattanooga; Belleville Nail Works, Belleville; Helmbach-

er's Forge and Rolling Mill and St. Louis Bolt and Iron Company, St. Louis.

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354        THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

The immediate cause of the trouble lay in the competitive

disadvantage that the Ohio Valley iron manufacturers faced.

In 1872 the Pittsburgh iron heaters and rollers as well as

those employed in certain northern Ohio iron mills had ac-

cepted a wage agreement under which their pay rate fluctuated

according to the market price of common bar iron. No such

arrangement existed in the Ohio Valley, and wages were less

flexible there. When the price of bar iron was high, labor

costs rose in the Pittsburgh mills, and the Ohio Valley

manufacturers benefited. On the other hand, it was just the

opposite if the price of bar iron fell.² In most post-Civil War

iron factories, furthermore, the wages earned by skilled work-

ers were a considerable cost to their employers, for the lesser

skilled and unskilled workers, who helped the skilled hands,

were paid from     their wages.   In the Swift Iron and Steel

Works, a large mill in Newport, Kentucky, which employed

610 men, there were only twelve rollers and sixteen heaters,

but the wages paid these twenty-eight skilled "boss workers"

also included the earnings of another 110 unskilled and semi-

skilled laborers.³ A "boss" heater or roller working for the

Globe Rolling Mills in Cincinnati often had as many as eight

men working with him.⁴ If the skilled heater or roller in a

Pittsburgh mill received a lower wage than his Ohio Valley

counterpart, therefore, the Pittsburgh manufacturer was at a

distinct cost advantage relative to his Ohio Valley competitor.

At the start of the depression the market price for bar iron

fell sharply, and the wages of those heaters, rollers, and labor-

ers outside of the Ohio Valley also dropped. Wages in the

Ohio Valley iron mills, however, did not go down, and the

manufacturers there soon complained that their higher costs

 

2 Interview with J. L. Pfau, general superintendent, Swift Iron and Steel Works,

Newport, in Cincinnati Enquirer, March 1, 1874; Cincinnati Commercial, January

15, 18, 19, 20, 1874; A Disinterested Party, Covington, to the editor, ibid., January

18, 1874; Cincinnati Merchant's and Manufacturer's Bulletin, January 24, 1874,

reprinted in the Portsmouth Tribune, January 28, 1874.

3 Interview with J. L. Pfau, in Cincinnati Enquirer, March 1, 1874; Cincinnati

Commercial, January 15, 16, 18,19, 20, 1874.

4 David I. Saunders to the editor, in Cincinnati Commercial, January 16, 1874.

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AN IRON WORKERS' STRIKE                355

for labor made competition with the Pittsburgh mills impos-

sible. "If manufacturing can not be carried on [here] . . . as

cheaply as elsewhere," explained the Cincinnati Commercial,

"the works must go elsewhere or cease to exist. There is no

alternative."⁵ In an effort to neutralize the advantages of

their Pittsburgh competitors, the Ohio Valley iron masters,

therefore, cut the wages of their heaters and rollers. Early

in November 1873 the Ohio Valley Iron Association, a trade

association made up of most of the important iron mill owners

in the valley, announced that the wages of all skilled hands

except the puddlers and boilers would be reduced at least

twenty percent on the first of December. At that time the

scale of wages for Ohio Valley heaters and rollers would be

fixed at ten percent above the Pittsburgh scale.⁶

Almost immediately the Ohio Valley iron workers expressed

dissatisfaction with the new wage policy. They complained

that since they were paid by the ton and worked with inferior

fuels they labored more hours than the Pittsburgh men to

turn out the same amount of rolled iron and earned less per

hour than the Pittsburgh workers.⁷ In Portsmouth, Ohio,

the heaters and rollers were especially unhappy, for they

remembered that they had allowed the owners of the Gaylord

Rolling Mill to withhold part of their cash wages until the

following spring so that the firm could remain solvent.⁸

Further west, the workers at the Ohio Falls Iron Works in

New Albany, Indiana, protested against the wage cut and

lost their jobs.⁹ The day that the new wage scale went into

 

5 Ibid., January 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 1874. See also the Cincinnati Merchant's and

Manufacturer's Bulletin, January 24, 1874, reprinted in the Portsmouth Tribune,

January 28, 1874.

6 American Manufacturer, December 4, 1873, p. 3; Workingman's Advocate,

January 10, 1874; editorial, "Slavery in Newport," and Roller to the editor,

in Cincinnati Commercial, January 15, 16, 1874; Cincinnati Enquirer, February 25,

1874.

7 George B. Davis, "To the Board of Trade of Ironton," Iron Age, April 2,

1874, p. 9. See also David I. Saunders to the editor, and Roller to the editor, in

Covington, Ky., Convention," in Workingman's Advocate, January 10, 1874.

8 Portsmouth Times, January 10, 1874.

9 Chicago Times, November 6, 1873; Workingman's Advocate, January 10, 1874.

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356     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

effect, therefore, representatives of the Ohio Valley iron heat-

ers and rollers, meeting in convention at Covington, Ken-

tucky, unanimously declared that the offer by the manufactur-

ers was "not just." "Our respective employers," the heaters

and rollers insisted, "are trying to take undue advantage of us,

owing to the present financial trouble."¹⁰ The manufacturers

answered this complaint by cutting the wages of the heaters

and rollers another ten percent and also by announcing that

they would receive the same rate of pay as the Pittsburgh

men and no more.11 After the iron workers turned down

the second offer, the manufacturers closed their factories,

and a strike began.¹²

The iron mill owners worked out a common plan to defeat

the strikers. They decided to close all the mills for a month

or so early in December, reopen them in January, and then

offer the workers the Pittsburgh scale again. The manufac-

turers reasoned that since the nation's iron industry lan-

guished and unemployment was widespread it would be easy

in the meantime to bring new skilled workers into the Ohio

Valley from other areas.¹³ The operators had another part

to their plan, for at the same time that they closed the mills

they tried to divide the ordinary laborers from the skilled

heaters and rollers. They blamed the trouble on the skilled

men and called them "heartless . . . pampered 'bosses,' " who

ruled over the unskilled workers just as the plantation owners

had managed their slaves. According to the managers, the

unskilled laborers who joined the heaters and rollers in oppos-

 

10 "Resolutions of the Ohio Valley Iron Heaters and Rollers Passed at the

Covington, Ky., Convention," in Workingman's Advocate, January 10, 1874.

11 Cincinnati Merchant's and Manufacturer's Bulletin, January 24, 1874, reprinted

in the Portsmouth Tribune, January 28, 1784; Cincinnati Commercial, January 15,

18, 19, 20, 1874; "Resolutions of the Ohio Valley Iron Association," in Working-

man's Advocate, January 10, 1874; interview with J. L. Pfau, in Cincinnati

Enquirer, March 1, 1874.

12 Workingman's Advocate, December 20, 1873; Frank Cowan's Paper, Decem-

ber 24, 1873; Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics, First Annual Report, 1877 (Colum-

bus, 1878), 85.

13 Cincinnati Merchant's and Manufacturer's Bulletin, January 24, 1874, reprinted

in the Portsmouth Tribune, January 28, 1874.

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AN IRON WORKERS' STRIKE             357

ing the reduction were merely the "dupes" of "bosses," who

had filled their stomachs with "vile whiskey and their addled

heads with inflammatory sophisms."¹⁴

The iron mills reopened early in January 1874, but in most

of the small industrial towns of the Ohio Valley the manu-

facturers found it extremely difficult to carry through their

objectives. For one thing, the unskilled workers turned aside

the suggestion that they were being "used" by the skilled

heaters and rollers. "These men," a Newport, Kentucky,

iron worker wrote in discussing the opposition of the un-

skilled workers to the manufacturers, "have as much interest

in restricting this sliding scale [of wages] as the bosses have,

as it affects them in the same way and would reduce their

wages to a very miserable pittance, indeed."¹⁵ The manufac-

turers in the small iron towns had another kind of trouble,

too. Though the mill owners in the large cities of St. Louis,

Indianapolis, and Cincinnati found it rather easy to bring

in new workers from the outside, it was another story in

small towns.¹⁶ All of the manufacturers could get new hands

in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and other eastern cities, but

the Covington, Portsmouth, Newport, and Ironton manufac-

turers had a great deal of trouble in keeping them.

The social structure of these small iron towns as well as

the ideology of many residents of these towns strengthened

the hand of the local workers and worked to the disadvantage

of the manufacturers. Many of the persons who lived in

these towns and were not directly connected with the iron

industry did not share the values or the outlook of the indus-

trialists and manufacturers. The employers, often out of

sheer economic necessity, had to deal with their workers as

factors of production in a competitive economy, but the

 

14 See, for example, "Slavery in Newport," in Cincinnati Commercial, January

15, 1874. See also Cincinnatus to the editor, in Workingman's Advocate, January

24, 1874, and the Cincinnati Commercial, January 18, 19, 20, 1874.

15 Cincinnatus to the editor, in Workingman's Advocate, January 24, 1874.

16 Cincinnati Merchant's and Manufacturer's Bulletin, January 24, 1874, reprinted

in the Portsmouth Tribune, January 28, 1874.

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358    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

townspeople were not motivated by such considerations and

spoke of the workers as fellow citizens and judged them by

non-economic criteria. After the Ironton mills discharged

their strikers, for example, the Ironton Register sadly com-

plained that these workers were "upright and esteemed . . .

citizens." The Ironton newspaper was upset because "warm

and old associations" had been sacrificed "to the cold demands

of business."¹⁷ Similarly, after the heaters and rollers struck

against the Gaylord Rolling Mill, the Portsmouth Times re-

minded mill owner Benjamin Gaylord that his wealth had

"been made by the strong arms and willing hearts of as indus-

trious a lot of mill men as ever bared themselves to the heated

bars of iron."¹⁸ The structure of the small iron towns weak-

ened the manufacturers in yet another way. The iron work-

ers often derived a certain kind of "power" just because they

lived in small towns and not in large cities. In such an en-

vironment they were a relatively homogeneous group. They

made up a large part of the total population of the town. The

workers, moreover, were a compact social community and

usually lived near each other. In the early years of industrial

development such an environment often engendered a "primi-

tive" sense of social solidarity among workers that in part

made up for the relative weakness or total absence of trade

unions. Finally, the anonymity that cloaked social and eco-

nomic relationships in the large city was entirely absent in

the small industrial town. When a small number of workers

struck in Philadelphia or Cincinnati, they hardly caused a

stir among their fellows in that city. It was different in the

small mill towns, for when workers agitated, paraded the

streets, or engaged in one or another kind of collective activ-

ity, their behavior hardly went unnoticed. The workers in

these towns were too much a part of them to be ignored.

 

17 Ironton Register, reprinted in Iron Age, March 5, 1874, p. 9. See also the

Ironton dispatches in the Cincinnati Commercial, January 29, February 3, 1874.

18 Portsmouth Times, January 10, 1874. A defense of Gaylord appeared in the

Portsmouth Tribune, January 14, 1874.

• 6
 

AN IRON WORKERS' STRIKE          359

The difficulties that the iron manufacturers faced in these

small towns beset especially Alexander Swift, owner of the

Swift Iron and Steel Works in Newport, Kentucky, a small

town across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. Though the

workers suffered from almost indescribable poverty after

Swift closed his factory, they still held out and made trouble

for him. "Some of them," wrote the hostile Cincinnati Com-

mercial of the Newport strikers, "have sold their bedding to

obtain food, and their little children shiver in loose straw at

night." House rent often went unpaid, and some strikers

pawned valuables to buy food and fuel. Hundreds of their

wives and children visited the Newport soup kitchens, and

every day more than one thousand persons received public

aid in the ward where the strikers mostly lived. In some

instances strikers and their families "begged passage" on

the Cincinnati ferry so that they could visit the Cincinnati

soup kitchens, too.¹⁹ In spite of these trying experiences the

Newport workers proved a formidable obstacle to the plans

of Alexander Swift.

When Swift reopened his mill in January 1874, he found

it impossible to hold on to the new iron workers whom he

brought in from the outside. His mill was guarded by a

number of armed "special policemen" when sixty new hands

arrived from Pittsburgh and Steubenville, Ohio. No sooner

did some of these men learn of the strike than they left New-

port.²⁰ The others stayed on, and the police accompanied

them to and from work. The strikers, however, made New-

port uncomfortable for them. There was no violence at first,

but many of the strikers and their wives, especially the Eng-

lish and Welsh workers, gathered near the mill and in the

streets, where they "howled" at the "black sheep" as they

went to and from work. "The wives of the strikers shout

'black sheep' after them," wrote a reporter in the Cincinnati

Commercial of the treatment afforded the new men. "These

 

19 Cincinnati Commercial, January 15, 18, 1874.

20 Ibid., January 15, 17, 18, 1874; Cincinnati Enquirer, February 25, 1874.

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360    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

excellent matrons," he went on, "have also been known to

distill their feelings upon the 'black sheep' in the odoriferous

form of pails of slops. . . . When a "black sheep" is persistent,

he is waited on by a 'committee' at night and told that if he

don't 'knock off' he'll have a 'head put on him' some night."²¹

Whatever the truth of these allegations, the Newport strikers

exerted pressure on the new workers in "the hundred ways

peculiar to workingmen's demonstrations." Many of the new

hands, therefore, left Newport, and those who stayed on were

subjected to continual harassment and public ridicule. The

Cincinnati Commercial complained of the "power" of the

strikers when it told its readers that Cincinnati had "the

horrors of the Sheffield [England] unions . . . at our doors."²²

Alexander Swift of course also made known his displeasure

with the strikers. He assailed the Newport police and the

city authorities for not fully protecting his new workers, and

he even talked of bringing in immigrant German laborers

and Negroes from Richmond, Virginia, to replace the strikers.

Swift's complaints were unsuccessful, for at the end of Jan-

uary, nearly a month after he reopened the mill, only a few

men worked in it.²³

Swift was not alone in his troubles, for the mill owners

in Covington, Ironton, and Portsmouth were in similar diffi-

culty. Early in February, therefore, the Ohio Valley Iron

Association, after reaffirming the Pittsburgh wage scale,

said that unless the strikers returned to work on or before

February 20 they would lose their jobs and never again

be hired in any of the Ohio Valley iron mills. "A printed

list of such workmen, who are so discharged," the manu-

facturers declared in a public statement, "will be furnished

other members of this association, who will not employ

them."²⁴

21 Cincinnati Commercial, January 18, 1874.

22 "Slavery in Newport," ibid., January 15, 1874.

23 Cincinnati dispatch, dated January 21, 1874, in Chicago Tribune, January 22,

1874.

24 Portsmouth Times, February 14, 1874; Cincinnati Commercial, February 11,

1874.

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AN IRON WORKERS' STRIKE            361

The threatened region-wide "blacklist" proved ineffective,

for in all of the iron towns most of the strikers refused to

return to work. The employers, thereupon, fired them.²⁵

Soon after, the manufacturers started bringing in more new

workers, and again the old hands persuaded many of them

to leave the valley towns.²⁶ At the same time, the "blacklist"

technique was harshly condemned by some of the local news-

papers. The Portsmouth Times asked whether or not the

manufacturers had a "right" to circulate the names of the

strikers in the same manner as "the name of a thief is sent

from one police station to another." The Times called such

action "cowardly . . . intimidation" and asked, "Does not

continued and faithful service deserve better treatment at the

hands of men whose fortunes have been made by these work-

men they would brand with the mark of CAIN?" "Is this to

be the reward for men who have grown gray in the service of

these velvet-lined aristocrats," the Times went on. "Out on

such hypocrisy!"27

After the "blacklist" was announced, attention again

focused on Newport, where Alexander Swift was determined

to reopen his mill. Toward the end of February, a few days

after the new policy went into effect, he brought twenty-four

Pittsburgh iron workers to Newport. Swift housed these

workers and the other men who had stayed on in a houseboat

that was docked in the Licking River. He demanded special

police protection for these workers from the Newport coun-

cil, but the city authorities only assigned the regular Newport

police force to guard the workers as they went to and from

work.²⁸ When the men left the boat for the mill on February

21, a number of jeering strikers met them, a scuffle ensued,

 

25 Chicago Tribune, February 21, 1874; Ironton Register, reprinted in Iron Age,

March 5, 1874, p. 9; Cincinnati Enquirer, February 11, 1874; Iron Age, March 12,

1874, p. 9.

26 See, for example, Chicago Tribune, February 21, 1874, and Portsmouth Times,

February 21, 1874.

27 Portsmouth Times, February 14, 1874.

28 Cincinnati Enquirer, February 21, 1874.

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362     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

and three of the strikers were arrested.²⁹ Twenty of the

new workers, however, quit Swift, and the manufacturer

again condemned the city authorities for not putting down

the strikers. Swift was especially annoyed because those

workers who remained were still ridiculed by the strikers

and their families. He asked the police not to permit the

strikers to gather in the Newport streets.³⁰ Each day, how-

ever, the strikers congregated in the streets and mocked the

new hands. "We never went any further with those fellows,"

one of the strikers told a reporter, "than calling them 'black

sheep' and 'little lambs.' . . . When they'd be going to work

in the morning with the policemen on each side of them,

we'd cry 'Ba-a-a-a.'"31

In the end, Swift would have no more of this kind of

pressure. Unable to prevent the workers from gathering

in the streets and unable to exact special protection from the

city authorities, he armed all of the new workers with pistols.

The events that followed were tragic if not inevitable. On

February 24 the armed workers left the mill for the house-

boat, and a crowd of strikers again mocked them. One of

Swift's new workers pulled out his revolver, shot wildly into

the crowd, and killed an innocent bystander, a young butcher's

helper.³² The enraged crowd chased Swift's men out of the

city, and Swift, after blaming the shooting on the failure

of the Newport authorities to guard his men properly, closed

the mill.³³

Swift's decision to arm his workers and the events that

 

29 Ibid., February 24, 1874. Two of the arrested strikers were freed on the

motion of the Newport city prosecutor. The third man was probably released

after a short trial. Ibid., February 27, 1874.

30 Ibid., February 24, 1874.

31 Ibid., February 25, 1874.

32 Ibid.; Heater, Covington, to the editor, in Workingman's Advocate, March

14, 1874. A completely distorted account of the shooting appears in the Chicago

Tribune, February 25, 1874. When the young man was buried, between 350 and

400 iron workers from Newport, Covington, and Cincinnati attended his funeral

"to express sympathy with the bereaved parents." The Newport Barracks Band

led the funeral procession. Cincinnati Enquirer, February 27, 1874.

33 Cincinnati Enquirer, February 28, 1874.

• 10
 

AN IRON WORKERS' STRIKE                 363

 

followed from his action hardly went unnoticed in the Ohio

Valley towns. The Newport strikers blamed Swift for what

had happened. One of them told a reporter: "Why, Swift

furnished all his men with revolvers and ammunition and

encouraged them to use them, too. . . . Didn't Swift bring a

case of Sharpe's pistols down to the mills . . . and tell his

scabs to 'shoot the G--d d--d sons of b--s'? Those were

his very words, and there's the fruit of them."³⁴ The Ports-

mouth Times also attacked Swift. It referred to him    as a

"blood-letter" and mocked "the Christian training" that al-

lowed him to give "powder and lead" to men who did not

"scruple to shed blood without a moment's warning." The

Times argued that neither Swift nor the men he brought in

to replace the strikers belonged in the Ohio Valley. The

same newspaper admitted that violence was "wrong in theory

and practice," but nevertheless told the Portsmouth striking

iron workers that "if the gathered up assassins from the

slums and alleys of the corrupt cities of the East are brought

here to do deeds of lawlessness and violence, the stronger the

opposition at the beginning the sooner they will be taught

that the city of Portsmouth has no need of them."³⁵

Seemingly immune from such criticism, Swift continued

his efforts at breaking down the strength of the Newport

strikers after the fatal shooting.        A   worker complained

that "he [Swift] tried to get the priests to use their influence

with the Catholic rolling men and make them go back to

work."³⁶ Another time, Swift went to the courts for help

and, after charging that two of the important strikers hurt

 

34 Ibid., February 25, 1874. Another striker told a reporter: "The idea of those

fellows carrying revolvers! Most of us come from the old country, and we know

how to use our hands pretty well. A man who knows how to use his hands don't

care a damn for a revolver if he gets his man.... There's that [David] Porter, a

scab, who often passes me on the street with a seven-shooter in his pocket, and if

I wanted to any time I could take that revolver and crack his nut with the butt

end of it before he knew who hit him. If we wanted to offer violence, revolvers

wouldn't keep us from it; and besides we know how to handle the weapons our-

selves. But nobody wants to hurt the mutton-heads." Ibid., March 1, 1874.

35 Editorial, "Some Plain Language," in Portsmouth Times, February 28, 1874.

36 Cincinnati Enquirer, March 1, 1874.

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364    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

his business and drove away new workers by "interferences,

annoyances, hootings, offensive epithets, intimidation, and

threat," instituted a twenty thousand dollar suit of damages

against them.³⁷ Finally, and most important, Swift realized

that the only way he could weaken the strikers was by sup-

pressing their power of public demonstration. The strength

of the strikers came from their ability to use the

Newport streets to    their advantage.   Swift, therefore,

called on the Newport mayor to enforce local ordinances

against dangerous and "riotous" crowds, asked the governor

of Kentucky to send state militia to Newport, and even

demanded troops from the federal government. Even after

the mayor of Newport acceded to Swift's demand and banned

"all unusual and unnecessary assemblages" in the streets, he

still asked for state troops.³⁸ On March 5, four days before

Swift planned to reopen his mill and guard it with twenty

armed private "policemen," the Kentucky governor ordered

twenty-five members of the Lexington division of the state

militia to Newport. The governor warned Mayor R. D.

Hayman to exercise "great care lest the evil you seek to

avert be aggravated rather than lessened" by the use of

troops.³⁹ Mayor Hayman acted quickly and firmly. A public

proclamation from his office warned local citizens to "strictly

abstain from all words, demonstrations, . . . or acts of violence

. . . [and] annoyance." "It is determined," Hayman went on,

"that the . . . manufacturing and mercantile and financial

interests of our city shall no longer be held in check or

crippled."⁴⁰

The arrival of the militia weakened the power of the strikers

and created an environment that made it easy for Swift to

bring in an entirely new labor force. The soldiers, aided by

the mayor and the local police, forbade street demonstrations

37 Ibid.; Cincinnati Commercial, March 18, 1874. "The defendants," wrote the

Commercial, "do not seem at all alarmed."

38 Cincinnati Enquirer, February 28, 1874. Swift justified his request for federal

troops by saying that his company made snagboats for the federal government.

39 Ibid., March 7, 1874.

40 Ibid., March 8, 1874. See also Cincinnati Commercial, March 8, 1874.

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AN IRON WORKERS STRIKE              365

of any kind. Hayman ordered the city police to guard the

mill and told them to disperse "all unusual crowds and arrest

all persons using threatening or provoking language." "The

State Militia," Hayman explained, "will render you assistance

in executing this order."⁴¹ Now, for the first time since the

strike had started, Swift knew that "local conditions" favored

him in his conflict with the rollers and heaters. The mill

reopened and he brought in new workers. Arrangements for

the shipment of a Gatling gun to Newport proved unnecessary,

for Swift already had neutralized the power of the strikers.⁴²

When a number of the unskilled strikers offered to return

at the lower Pittsburgh wages, Swift turned them away. He

also rejected efforts by a member of the city council to effect

a compromise with the old workers. Within a week after

the troops had arrived and three and a half months after the

strike had started, Swift fully controlled the local situation.

New men worked in his factory, and the strikers finally

admitted defeat.⁴³

Swift's plea for state troops and the action of the Kentucky

governor, however, were condemned in and near Newport.

The strikers insisted that the troops were not needed and said

that "the process of law has not been resisted, and a single

policeman can make any arrest in any part of the city."⁴⁴

Non-strikers also questioned the need for troops. A reporter

for the Cincinnati Enquirer said that the "general opinion" in

Newport was that Swift's maneuver was "little else than a

clever piece of acting intended to kindle public sentiment

against the strikers and . . . gain the assistance of the law

in breaking up a strike."⁴⁵ A judge in Newport also assailed

the Kentucky governor.⁴⁶ Even local poets sang of the abuse

of state power, and one of them wrote:

41 Cincinnati Enquirer, March 9, 1874.

42 Cincinnati Commercial, March 9, 1874.

43 Ibid., March 8, 9, 11, 13, 17, 1874; Cincinnati Enquirer, March 9, 11, 12, 13,

17, 1874. By mid-April Swift had a full force of men in his mill. Ibid., March 25,

April 14, 1874.

44 H. & B. to the editor, in Cincinnati Enquirer, March 7, 1874. See also ibid.,

March 9, 1874.

45 Ibid., March 1, 1874.

46 Judge J. R. Hallam to the editor, in Cincinnati Commercial, March 8, 1874.

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366       THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Sing a song a sixpence

Stomachs full of rye,

Five-and-twenty volunteers,

With fingers in one pie;

When the pie is opened

For money they will sing,

Isn't that a pretty dish

For the City Council Ring?47

In a similarly critical vein a second local bard penned

another verse:

God save our town!

Ah, bright that day,

We are now saved.

 

And the Twenty-five hold the passes all,

While we calmly sleep these vernal nights,

And the bold Six Hundred [strikers] forget their rights,

Awed by the bold, malische men!

In nearby Portsmouth the Times joined in the chorus of

criticism. "Swift needs the militia," fumed the Portsmouth

weekly, "to protect the murderer who shot an inoffensive boy

in the streets of Newport." The Times sarcastically advised

the Ohio and Kentucky legislatures "to pass a law allowing

the members of the Ohio Valley Iron Association to drive

workmen in shackles to their labor."⁴⁹

There was less drama in the other Ohio Valley iron towns

than in Newport, but the manufacturers in Portsmouth,

Ironton, and Covington faced much of the same kind of

trouble as did Alexander Swift. Local opinion in these towns

did not endorse the decisions of the mill owners, and the

striking heaters, rollers, and unskilled laborers were strong

enough to hold out for at least five and a half months. The

manufacturers reached out of the valley for new workers,

and iron workers were brought in from Pittsburgh and from

47 Unattributed poem, ibid., March 11, 1874.

48 Ibid., March 8, 1874.

49 Portsmouth Times, February 28, 1874.

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AN IRON WORKERS' STRIKE                   367

 

such distant places as Philadelphia, Chester, and Lancaster,

Pennsylvania, as well as Oxford, New Jersey.⁵⁰ In one

instance, in Covington, some of the new workers were armed

with pistols, but in each of these towns the manufacturers

found it extremely hard to hold on to the new workers.⁵1

In these towns the strikers persuaded many of the new

workers to leave the region. In Ironton it was much like

Newport. "A     few men who try to work," wrote an observer,

"are 'bah-d' at from the cross streets as they go to and from

the shops." "To have a lot of boys follow one up with cries of

'bah, black sheep,'" he explained, "is a torment few workmen

can endure."⁵² The Ironton Iron and Steel Company brought

fourteen new workers from Philadelphia in mid-March, but

after these men learned of the strike for the first time they

all left the city. The strikers paid their passage back to

Philadelphia, and the fourteen workers explained their decision

in a public statement that was printed in the Ironton news-

papers:

 

At Philadelphia ... these gentlemen [who hired them] said there was

no difficulty of any kind, no strike, no disagreement about wages. ...

They said the company was just reorganized and had not yet fully

started up. We asked the question several times, whether there was a

difficulty of any kind, and they said no.... If these statements were not

correct, they promised in a written contract to pay our way back to

Philadelphia but now [they] refuse to do it. ... There has been no

intimidation whatever offered by the workingmen of Ironton against us.⁵³

 

50 See, for example, Portsmouth Times, March 28, 1874.

51 Cincinnati Commercial, March 24, 1874; Cincinnati Enquirer, April 14, 1874.

52 Beadle, "The Mining Regions of Ohio," in Cincinnati Commercial, April 25,

1874.

53 Statement of Alfred Greenhalgh, John Coyol, William Carey, William Har-

rison, Edmund Wilkinson, Robert Iles, Richard Hollis, James Sharp, Henry Baird,

Pat Murther, John Collins, James Hoffman, Sylvester Parkin, and Kelly Burgher,

Ironton, March 14, 1874, in Ironton Commercial, reprinted in Cooper's New

Monthly, I (April, 1874), 10. For a copy of the agreement between the Phila-

delphia men and the Ironton Iron and Steel Company, see Daniel R. Wolfe,

secretary, Ironton Iron and Steel Company, and Alfred Greenhalgh and Crew,

"Agreement," Philadelphia, ibid. See also the Cincinnati Commercial, March 17,

1874.

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368       THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

In Portsmouth a number of new hands also left that city,

charging that the managers of the Gaylord Rolling Mill had

misled them. Some of these men addressed a letter to the

Cincinnati Enquirer in which they supported the strikers and

insisted that "as men of honor and principle" they could not

"go to work under the circumstances."              "A  nobler, truer,

better class of men never lived than the Portsmouth boys

who were standing out for their rights," the departing workers

explained. "May God, in His infinite wisdom and mercy,

bless them," they concluded, "and bring about an amicable

settlement of the difficulties now existing," so that "the boys

have plenty of work."⁵⁴

The Covington, Portsmouth, and Ironton manufacturers

also had trouble winning the struggle because significant

elements among the non-strikers in these towns were not in

full sympathy with their decisions and actions. Each week,

for example, the Portsmouth Times criticized the manufac-

turers. "We are not living under a monarchy," the Times

wrote, and the "arbitrary actions" of the mill owners were

not "as 'unalterable as the edicts of the Medes and Per-

sians.' "⁵⁵ A Covington justice of the peace acted in a manner

that illustrated something of the hostility toward that city's

iron manufacturers. At one time, after three strikers had been

arrested for molesting some of the new workers, he freed

one of them and fined the other men a single dollar each and

court costs.⁵⁶ Soon after, a new worker was fined twenty

dollars for disorderly conduct and for carrying a deadly

weapon. This same person also had to post a five hundred

dollar bond as a guarantee that he would keep the peace.⁵⁷

In Ironton and Portsmouth the local boards of trade did not

side with the iron manufacturers but intervened in the conflict

and sought a compromise. Each group of local businessmen

54 Reprinted in the Portsmouth Times, March 28, 1974. But see also the "certifi-

cate" signed by the same men before they left Portsmouth. Ibid.

55 See editorials in the Portsmouth Times, March 14, 21, 28, April 4, 11, 1874.

56 Cincinnati Enquirer, March 21, 22, 1874; Cincinnati Commercial, March 21,

1874.

57 Cincinnati Enquirer, March 24, 1874.

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AN IRON WORKERS' STRIKE              369

 

took testimony from the strikers as well as their employers,

and in their recommendations these boards of trade did not

favor the viewpoint of the manufacturers. The Ironton Board

of Trade unsuccessfully urged the disputants to submit their

points of disagreement to an impartial board of arbitrators.⁵⁸

One of the members of the Portsmouth Board of Trade told

the mill owners that "we prefer to have the old hands remain

here instead of strangers coming." A judge, who was also a

member of the Portsmouth Board of Trade, called the methods

of the Gaylord Rolling Mill "pretty rough." The intercession

of the Portsmouth businessmen failed, however, after the iron

manufacturers rejected any compromise that meant more

than the scale of wages in Pittsburgh.⁵⁹ Still, the neutral and

often critical outlook of non-participants in the strike in

Covington, Ironton, and Portsmouth made it hard for the

manufacturers to gain their point.

Except for Newport, where Alexander Swift's successful

use of outside pressure had enabled him to gain a complete vic-

tory by mid-March 1874, the strike lasted through the follow-

ing month in all the Ohio Valley iron towns. The exact

terms of the final settlement are not known, but certain evi-

dence suggests that a compromise was worked out. In early

April the strikers held a regional convention in Covington and

supported a wage settlement that was half way between the

old scale and the Pittsburgh rates.⁶⁰ It is not known whether

this served as the final basis for agreement between the

workers and their employers. Certain of the mills succeeded

in bringing in some new men, but, according to the Ports-

mouth Times, some of the manufacturers withdrew the black-

list and rehired their striking workers.⁶¹

58 C. Ellison, president, Lawrence Iron Works, and R. Scott, president, Ironton

Iron and Steel Works, to the Ironton Board of Trade, March 20, 1874; George B.

Davis, "For the Skilled Workers," to the Ironton Board of Trade; and report of

the committee of the Ironton Board of Trade, in Iron Age, April 2, 1874, p. 9.

59 Proceedings of the Portsmouth Board of Trade, in Portsmouth Tribune, April

??, 1874. See also the Portsmouth Times, April 4, 1874.

60 Portsmouth Times, April 11, 1874.

61 Ibid., April 4, 11, 1874; Beadle, "The Mining Regions of Ohio," in Cincinnati

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370    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Whatever the exact terms of the settlement, the length of

the strike and many of the incidents that were a part of the

strike reveal that the small-town manufacturers in the Ohio

Valley did not have an easy time of it. Their freedom of action

was hardly absolute, for they were often checked by the

social structure in their towns, by the strength of the workers,

and by the outlook and actions of the non-industrial classes.

Commenting on the development of the strike, a friend of the

Ohio Valley iron manufacturing interest complained, "Things

of this sort make one ask whether we are really as free a

people as we pretend to be." He was convinced that the iron

workers had too much power and that the manufacturers were

not fully free entrepreneurs. "If any individual cannot dis-

pose of his labor when and at what price he pleases," this

exponent of classic laissez-faire doctrine concluded, "he is

living under a despotism, no matter what form the govern-

ment assumes."62

Commercial, April 25, 1874; Ironton dispatch, ibid., April 21, 1874; W. G. C.,

Ironton, to the editor, in Portsmouth Times, May 9, 1874.

62 Beadle, "The Mining Regions of Ohio," in Cincinnati Commercial, April 25,

1874.

• 18