1915-16 Steel strike

Campbell, O. On today’s date in 1916, the strike against the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. that began 20 days earlier came to a head. East Youngstown, as Campbell was then known, saw it’s business district along Wilson Avenue burned to the ground.

Youngstown Vindicator

The image below shows Wilson Ave lit by flames and engulfed in smoke. I’d assume this was taken from Sheet & Tube property; outside of the strike the vantage point could be reversed and the mill would look like this.

Courtesy Ohio memory collection

The labor force at the Youngstown Sheet & Tube mill had gone out on strike due to a 9% wage cut while the company was flush with war work. A description of East Youngstown (Campbell) from Men & Steel: “ In East Youngstown life is scraped down to the bone: there are the mills, there are the workers-and formerly there were the saloons. There is nothing else. Here are no fine houses, only the steel workers' dwellings. Most of them are ugly frame buildings, climbing muddy streets.

In East Youngstown you realize that men are here not to live but to tend the mills. Humanity is dwarfed; the machines which make the industry are exalted. In East Youngstown is nothing but steel; there is a pillar of cloud by day and there is a saffron glare in the sky by night that forever reminds you of this...”

Youngstown Vindicator

Some accounts say that J.M. Woltz., safety supervisor of YS&T - also named police chief of East Youngstown, fires the first shot as a “warning”. Three dead as a result. He was also called to testify before Congress for sending spies into the mills and labor meetings ahead of the deadly 1937 steel strike.

A wage increase resulted from this strike, as well as the construction of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company homes and the renaming of East Youngstown to Campbell after James Campbell - president of the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co.

Images of the aftermath below.

Courtesy Ohio Memory Collection

Courtesy Ohio Memory Collection

Courtesy Ohio Memory Collection

STEELTON

Youngstown, O. - The image below seems to me like two different places and times melted together. The man in the photo is Michael Volinchak who was born in Odessa, Ukraine and came to the US in 1908. The photo was taken at the family home on Broadview Avenue; Mr. Volinchak posing in front of his rows of corn with one of the Carnegie-Illinois/US Steel Ohio Works blast furnaces in the background.

Courtesy “Bubba Poonyuk” via FB

Youngstown was a true melting pot in its heyday. Immigrants flocked to the city from all over Europe, others migrated north from southern states and Puerto Rico for the same reason: good paying jobs in the mills. Men of similar nationalities worked in specific departments, and lived in the same neighborhoods as their countrymen.

The Steelton area of the lower West Side was primarily Eastern European, with the exception of Imperial and Elberne Streets that Italian immigrants called home. According to the 1940 census below Mr. Volinchak lived between the Balinsky [sp] family from Hungary and the Ferrara family from Italy. The patriarchs of those two families worked down the mill at that time. Mr. Volinchak was 66 and likely retired from the same mill.

The homestead pictured was just steps from the AUP (American Ukrainian Progressive) Club. The proprietor, Charles “Gezzy” Hankavich, was known amongst other things for sponsoring Ukrainian immigrants. He let them stay in the apartments above the bar until they could get hired on at the mill across the street. A full post on that social club, which I was lucky enough to photograph, is to come but a few images are below.

Figure 1 is a hat that I came to find out belonged to my buddy’s grandpa and still sat on top of the bar - “Hunky Town U.S.A. Steelton, Ohio”

Figure 2 shows a taste of what records are still in the jukebox - local polkas right next to Sinatra.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

P&LE Gateway Yard

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Youngstown, OH. Today is the 50th anniversary of a milestone for the now defunct Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad. Per the Youngstown Vindicator, "Railroad officials gather at the Gateway Yard in Youngstown for the "humping" of the 5 millionth car (enough to circle the earth). Humping is the act of shoving a line of freight cars over a hill onto multiple tracks, to be divided into a new train. 

The P&LE got it's nickname, The Little Giant, because they moved so much tonnage in relation to the amount of track they controlled. While they did offer passenger service, they primarily moved steel, and the ingredients to make it in its raw form: coal, limestone and iron ore. 

I have photographed what is left of the Gateway Yard many times, but on an occasion such as this anniversary, I wanted to show it in it's prime, not the post industrial wasteland I know it as. Check out the video below from YouTube user Erie1264.

Typical North East Ohio Day! P&LE at Gateway Yard Youngstown,Ohio.

Sunday Creek Coal Company

Millfield, O.  - I found this place completely by accident. My buddy had to go somewhere in southern Ohio, and it was a beautiful day, so I grabbed my camera and called it a road trip. We were somewhere down near Athens and we see a sign that just says “Mine Disaster ->”. We turn and follow the signs through these back roads and see a smokestack peeking up over the trees. There was a historical marker right near the stack so I hop out and tell my buddy ill call him in a while.

Turns out this is a place where 82 men died. Four executives that made big news, four of their guests, and 73 miners. In the group of 73 working men there were lots of fathers and sons, I read the obituaries. There was a huge rescue attempt, including self contained breathing apparatuses, but I suspect they wouldn't have pulled out all of the stops if the owner of the company wasn't down in that hole. The coal companies historically didn't give a fuck about the miners; it is said that if you killed a man you kept your job, if you killed a mule you were fired. Mules were expensive, men were expendable.

It was kind of disturbing being down there by myself, knowing I was standing on top of the mine that took all those lives. I've been in some haunting places, but this one made me feel uneasy the entire time. After I photographed what was left of the mine, I walked through the town of Millfield. You could tell it died when they closed the mine. The homes that still stood were original coal camp houses the company built long before they mined out the area. People live there still; it reminded me of walking down Steel Street, just more poverty.

Here is a very detailed account of the disaster, along with a full list of the men killed. The amount of people with the same last name kind of makes me want to throw up.