Ohioan Slain in Strike Warfare
Article taken from The Lima News, June 23, 1936
Portsmouth, O., June 23--(AP)-- One company guard was slain and at least four other persons were wounded today by high-powered rifle bullets in an outbreak of rioting between pickets and guards at the Portsmouth plant to the Wheeling Steel Corp. Two of the wounded were company guards.
Company officials identified the dead guard as George Meyers. They said he was slain by a bullet fired from a high-power gun. Sheiff Arthur Oakes rushed to New Boston, scene of the fierce exchange of bullets, and read the state riot act to a huge crowd assembled there and ordered the streets cleared immediately.
The shooting broke out about 10:15 a.m. when company guards sought to transport food on a company train from one part of the plant property across a New Boston Street to another section of the company's grounds.
Gunfire met the locomotive as it started across West-av in New Boston, two miles east of here, and it stopped in the middle of the street.
Strike pickets and sympathizers lined up across the street poured a steady stream of shots toward the locomotive and a flat car. It was met by bullets from the guns of about a dozen company guards headed by Adams Johns.
Two guards and a bystander were reported by Police Cheif Clarence Highfield to have been hit. Whistling bullets, Highfield said, sailed as far as 3 blocks, endangering motorist on the Atlantic and Pacific highway, a trans-continental route. The police chief and two patrolmen, William Hook and Charles Burton, were caught in the line of fire, which lasted about 10 minutes.
Highfield said they had gone to the scene to advise pickets to let the locomotive cross the street, but arrived a few minutes too late.
They rushed back to New Boston police headquarters and notified Sheriff Arthur Oakes, who sped there with a squad of deputies. There were conflicting reports as to who fired the first shots.
The locomotive had been force to stop just before it entered West-av by a derailer, which had been placed on the tracks.
Johns, chief of the company police, used a blow torch to remove the obstacle from the tracks. the locomotive had moved only a few feet when the burst of firing began.
Guards lined up behind the engine and flat car.
Strike Pickets Tighten Siege
Article taken from The Lima News, June 24, 1936
PORTSMOUTH, O., June 24--(AP)A tense air hung over the industrial suburb of New Boston today, with city and county authorities watching and preparing for new trouble at the strike-closed plant of the Wheeling Steep Corp.
Sheriff Arthur Oakes jailed James Sexton, 51, member of Alalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin workers, for investigation.
The sheriff said Sexton was the only person with a gun seen following a riot in which George Meyers, 38, a company guard, was slain and four other persons wounded in a gun battle yesterday at an entrance to the company's plant.
About 180 workers and company guards remained inside the plant, besieged and hungry. After yesterday's riot and desperate gun battle, resulting in the fatal shooting of George Meyers, 38, and the wounding of four other men, union pickets cancelled the permission for the daily "allotment" of 20 men to leave the plant to get food.
Neither police nore pickets would make any definite predictions
of immediate developments, but little groups of men gathered on Portsmouth
and New Boston corners, expressing fear of more violence.
PLEAS REFUSED
Law enforcement officials held a long meeting last night but came to no decision on future action. The strike committee flatly refused to remove a single picket from the line surrounding the huge plant but promised to try to prevent another outbreak. Some of the pickets were in skiffs on the Ohio river, on which the plant fronts.
Strike leaders made plain their determination to see the strike
thru. It started the nigth of MZay 22 and threw 5,500 men out of work
in the efforts of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin workers
to enfore demands for collective bargaining rights.
RIGHTS DEMANDED
The union contended the company denied these rights in defiance of a National Labor Relations board order. The company contended the Wagner Labor Relations act establishing the board was unconstitutional.
J. C. Harris, youthful secretary of the strike committee, expressing the union's determination to make the strike a success, said:
"We started this strike lagally and we intend to end it in the same way. And we're going to stay out until the company gives us the rights due every man."
Death Charges Are Filed in Riot Inquiry
Article taken from The Lima News, July 26, 1936
Portsmouth, O., July 24 - (AP) - Deputy Sheriff Frank Purdy filed first degree murder charges today against five steel workers following investigation of the slaying of a guard on a food train, June, 23, during a strike at the Portsmouth works of the Wheeling Steel Corp.
Carmen Newell, Clifford Dupuy, Charles Weiss, James Fleming, and Ellis Williams were accused in the court of Magistrate E. L. Benner of Lucasville. Similar charges previously had been filed against Robert Malone, Lye Mullens and James Sexton. The eight defendants are held without bond in the Scioto-co jail.
Sheriff Arthur Oakes said he had information that the eight men were on picket duty on Westav, New Boston, prior to the slaying. Oakes also said he had evidence that some of the defendants fired guns at the train.