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Wednesday January 19, 1916
Chicago, Illinois - Report by George P West Exposes Conditions at Youngstown

From The Day Book of January 18th:

East Youngstown Burning, January 7-8, 1916
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The living conditions among the steel workers at Youngstown, O., have been so rank that the mothers there couldn't even raise babies. Sanitary, conditions have been putrid. Putrid is a nasty sounding word, but it is the only word that just fits the condition. Families have been packed together like cattle or pigs in a pen. The workers have been tolling around the molten steel for $500 a year. In the meantime, it is asserted, that during the past two and a half years the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. has paid 12 per cent dividend.

That is the answer to the reason for the recent riots at Youngstown, when a man was killed and property was burned and looted. That explains why East Youngstown went suddenly mad to such an extent that the Ohio state militia had to be called out.

Many personal and phone calls have come into The Day Book for the real cause of all the trouble down there in the steel district. The claim was made that the real blame was just resting on the fence and had not really been placed.

A committee on industrial relations came through today from Washington with a report that places the blame as shown in the first paragraph.

[Says the report:]

Low wages and excessive hours of labor so brutalized the foreigners employed in the steel plants of East Youngstown that the recent rioting and wholesale destruction of property was but the natural ending of an intolerable situation.

The revolt in Ohio, said George P. West, author of the committee report, so alarmed the United States Steel Corporation that as a direct result Judge Gary immediately ordered a 10 per cent increase of the 230,000 employes of his corporation, so as to prevent the strike from spreading.

Guards of the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. are charged in the report with being hasty in opening fire on the crowd of strikers around the gates of the company bridge.

The steel industry of the country is scored for its opposition to unions.

[Said the report:]

So long as the steel employers could maintain, with the aid of charity, two men for every job, discontent was smothered.

Forty-one per cent of all deaths in Youngstown during 1913 were of children under five years.

[Photograph, paragraph breaks and emphasis added.]

SOURCE
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Jan 18, 1916
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1916-01-18/ed-2/seq-1/

IMAGES
Youngstown Steel Strike, Day Book Headline, Jan 18, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/77795514/
East Youngstown, OH, Burning, Jan 7-8, 1916
http://www.ohiomemory.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p267401coll36/id...

See also:

The New Republic
(New York, New York)
-Jan 29, 1916
pdf! https://www.unz.org/Pub/NewRepublic-1916jan29-00316?View=PDF
"Youngstown" by George P West
https://www.unz.org/Pub/NewRepublic-1916jan29-00330?View=PDF

George West, watercolor portrait by Cornelia Barns
https://books.google.com/books?id=gEcOFd47AA0C&pg=PA16&dq=George+West+Co...

George Parsons West, married to Isabelle Clark Percy from 1917-1934
http://womenoutwest.blogspot.com/2015/05/isabelle-clark-percy-artist-and...

George West (1884-1943), married to Marie Welch after 1934:
https://books.google.com/books?id=Bwq6a0b3PXAC&pg=PT443&dq=%22george+wes...

In 1918 West contributed to a pamphlet defending the I. W. W.
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=G1I2AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcove...
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=G1I2AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcove...

Note: Information on the life of George P. West is sketchy,
but I will continue to search.

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Homestead Strike Song - Performed by Pete Seeger
Lyrics: http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/folk-song-lyrics/Homestead_Strike.htm

Now the man that fights for honor,
none can blame him.
May luck attend wherever he may roam.
And no son of his will ever live
to shame him.
Whilst Liberty and Honor rule our Home.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuM_YYA2rYA width:560 height:315]