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

Youngstown Sheet and Tube Brier Hill Works

Youngstown, O. - Congratulations to the blast furnace department at Sheet and Tube's Brier Hill works for logging 1,000,000 man hours without a major injury!

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Photo circa 1955 - Image courtesy of Ohio History Connection

Ghost Signs

Steel Valley, O. - I was in Youngstown a couple weekends back, and went ghost sign hunting. Found some gems I want people to see so here you go.

Youngstown, O. - The William B. Pollock Company.

Never thought I would find something this historically significant. I came across this on accident, was down the bottom of Himrod Avenue looking for this company, but was looking at the wrong building. Gave up and went next door to photgraph the old 10/90 warehouse (a dress factory converted to a semi legal skate park in the 90s), looked up and saw something painted on the wall of the building across the street. Sure and begorrah it was the logo for the William B. Pollock Co. You can barely make out the logo on the wall, but check out the Pollock ad below and compare the two. Founded in 1863, this company built America. They engineered and built blast furnaces and hot metal cars. This plant right at the end of Federal St. had a hand in revolutionizing the steel industry. They were responsible for engineering and building the Trumbull Cliffs furnace, which I believe at that time was the largest blast furnace in the world. This furnace was owned by Republic Steel, WCI Steel, Severstal and RG Steel. She is the last blast furnace in the Steel Valley, and is in the midst of demolition. 

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Girard, O. - Youngstown Sheet and Tube Brier Hill Works. 

This is a two for one bonus. Behind the fading "Syro Steel Brier Hill Div" ghost sign, you can see the yellow and black sign they painted over peeking through. The original sign proudly read "Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company". I know this because there was an identical Sheet and Tube sign on the side of the Struthers works that faced the river/Wilson Ave. That building is gone, but I photographed it 15 years ago or so, see bottom photo (old photo, excuse poor quality). If you zoom in on the current photo, you will see the "Syro Steel Entrance" sign on the sloped building that is dwarfed by that roof vent that is sitting on the ground. This was an underground entrance into the mill, and man I want to go down there.  

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Niles, O. - Republic Steel 

I took this photo just over 10 years ago. I went back recently to photograph it again with a better camera, only to find they painted it over. Glad I got this when I did.

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Youngstown, O. - The Snyder-Bentley Co.

I don't know much about this company, except they are located across the street from what was Carnegie Steel's Upper Union Mills. The were an industrial distributor of some sort formed in the 20's, and they have a cool looking sign.

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Youngstown, O.- Brier Hill Slag Co.

This isn't a ghost sign in the traditional sense I suppose, but it's gone so it applies to me. Damn I wish I would have preserved this thing. This sat in front of what was Sheet and Tube Brier Hill works. I took this as they were tearing down the YST office building in the background. I think Youngstown Steel Heritage ( http://www.todengine.org/ ) has the engraved stone sign that was at the top of the building that read "Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company".

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Warren, O. - Copperweld Steel Co. 

This isn't a ghost sign either, but my grandpa worked here 33 years so you're going to have to deal with looking at it. Did you know during WWII Copperweld rolled and stretched uranium for the war effort? My grandpa was away fighting ze Germans, but when he came home he worked a rolling mill out there. Wonder if it was one that rolled the radioactive material for the Manhattan Project.

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Republic Steel Warren Works

Republic Steel Warren Works; Warren, O. My grandpa on my Mom’s side applied here in the 40’s. Part of the hiring process was to weigh you, and they told him to “go home, eat a steak and a bag of potatoes, and try again”. He was skinny like me, so he wound up doing his 30 some years out at Copperweld. They ran me off of the property, so here are some detail shots, and some houses around the mill to show the ripple effect.

They tore down almost all of the BOF side of the mill. It is so strange to me to drive down Pine Ave and be able to see the blast furnace over on Main. Gone are the days of waiting half an hour for a mile long coke train to back into the mill across Pine. The place just looks bombed out. To quote Bruce Springsteen, “My daddy came on the Ohio works when he came home from World War II, now the yards just scrap and rubble.. guess them big boys did what Hitler couldn’t do”

From the Vindicator, regarding the 1937 Little Steel Strike at the Republic Mills: “On June 20, the day after two strikers were killed at Stop 5 on Poland Avenue, and on several other occasions, Republic Steel ran an ad offering a $500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone threatening families of employees of the company or destroying property of employees at its Warren or Niles plants. Even the boys in Warren complained that pickets had bought all the baseball bats, according to a story published in The Vindicator on June 15, 1937. Planes were used to drop food to management and steelworkers who stayed inside the plants. One of the planes crashed while attempting to land on Republic Steel property in Warren, an event caught on camera by Vindicator photographer Lloyd Jones.Whether the plane malfunctioned or was shot down by pickets was long debated, too; but Republic Steel offered a $1,000 reward in a Vindicator ad for information leading to the arrest of anyone shooting at their planes.”

Weirton Steel Corporation

Weirton Steel. Weirton WV. These are pretty old, took them while they were tearing down the blooming mill building. I was one of, if not the, last person to photograph the engine that drove the blooming mill (last photo). That TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND HORSEPOWER monster I was standing on was built by the William Tod Company. It was built in the big grey mill building under the Market Street bridge in beautiful Youngstown, Ohio. You know the historic building the downtown gentrifiers want torn down to build a dog park or something. There are 2 Tod engines left in the world, one of them is preserved on Hubbard road if you wanted to see how insanely massive they are. http://www.todengine.org/