Siege Lifted at New Boston

200 Steel Workers Rush Barbershop as Strike Pickets Relent

Article taken from The Lima News, June 29, 1936

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PORTSMOUTH, OH, June 29 (AP) Some 200 executives and maintenance workers of the strike closed New Boston plant of the Wheeling Steel Corp., free to come and go at last, rushed barber shops today for deferred shaves and haircuts.

Under virtual siege in the plant since the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin workers called the strike May 22, they weregiven permission by the strike committee yesterday to pass thru picket lines at any time.

Sheriff Arthur Oakes warned the strike committee in a law enforcement conference that while he was not interested in halting the strike or interfering with either side, he was ready to enforce a strict anti-violence rule.

Members of the committee then agreed, he said, to allow food to be taken into the plant and offered superintendents, foremen, and men engaged in keeping up the machinery in the vast plant the privilege of free passage thru the lines.

While Sheriff Oakes held 100 special deputies in readiness should any further wilence break out, the association issued a long statement blaming the company for lasy Tuesday's violence, in which one company guard was shot fatally and four other men were wounded.

Meanwhile Claude Burkes, a ditching machine operater for the Norfolk and Western railroad, told railroad detectives pickets stoned and threatened him when he rode an N. & W. train along the huge plant. They did not harm him after he obeyed their orders to leave the train, he said.