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Monday January 10, 1916
Youngstown, Ohio - Three Killed as Guards Open Fire on Striking Steel Workers

Our information, thus far, on the Massacre at Youngstown comes from two Pittsburgh newspapers which are clearly hostile to the striking steel workers and their supporters. What we know so far is that, according to a reporter on the scene, the first shot may have been fired by the supervisor of the company guards, which supervisor is now chief of Police in East Youngstown:

...T. J. Kinney,chief of police of East Youngstown, has resigned and his place has been taken by James M. Woltz, safety director of the Tube company. Woltz, formerly a postoffice inspector, has been in charge of 100 guards at the Tube Company's East Youngstown plant for the past week. It is said Woltz fired the first shot, but a later report had it that a guard precipitated the trouble...

From The Gazette Times of January 8, 1916:

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35 PERSONS WOUNDED;
SIX BLOCKS BURNED IN EAST YOUNGSTOWN
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Strikers Clash With Police Guarding Sheet and Tube Plant; Buildings Set on Fire by Torches; Scores of Places Are Looted, Including Saloons Which Are Burned; Women and Children in Reign of Terror Flee to Hills For Safety; Fire Loss Placed at $800,00.

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TROUBLE IS CULMINATION OF DISPUTE OVER WAGES
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Special Telegram from ARTHUR G. BURGOYNE, JR., Staff Correspondent

YOUNGSTOWN, O., Jan. 7.-Rioting, which broke out this evening between guards and strikers of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube company at East Youngstown, has already resulted in the death of three persons, the probable fatal injuring of five others and the wounding of at least 30.

Six business blocks of East Youngstown have been destroyed by fire, which is still raging. The property loss has been estimated at more than $800,000. Twenty-five buildings, among them the postoffice and a bank, have been burned to the ground.

Six companies of the Fifth Regiment, Ohio National guard, and two companies of United and Alliance, Ohio; the regulars from the barracks at Columbus. The Cleveland companies are said to be bringing a machine gun.

Women and Children Flee to Hills.

A state bordering on anarchy reigns in east Youngstown. Women and children have fled to the hills for safety. The rioters, numbering several thousand, mostly foreigners, are fired with liquor. Ten saloons which were closed at 4 o'clock this afternoon were looted and then burned. A jewelry store was looted and the torch applied. The foreigners, according to witnesses, would knock in the head of a barrel of whisky and then scoop it out with their hands and drink it.

A posse of citizens armed with revolvers and rifles, headed by Oscar Diser, city solicitor of East Youngstown, were fighting with the rioters at a late hour tonight.

The guardsmen are not expected to arrive until early Saturday morning. Word was received that the Cleveland companies left there at 1 a. m., and that they would pick up two companies at Alliance.

T. J. Kinney,chief of police of East Youngstown, has resigned and his place has been taken by James M. Woltz, safety director of the Tube company. Woltz, formerly a postoffice inspector, has been in charge of 100 guards at the Tube Company's East Youngstown plant for the past week. It is said Woltz fired the first shot, but a later report had it that a guard precipitated the trouble.....

From The Pittsburgh Post of January 8, 1916:

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3 KILLED; 19 WOUNDED IN BATTLE WITH POLICE
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Repulsed in Attack on Youngstown Sheet and Tube Plant, Drink-Crazed Rioters Fire Business Section of Steel Town-$800,000 Damage Done by Flames Thus Far-Leaders Steal Dynamite and Threaten to Use It.

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YOUNGSTOWN, Jan. 27 [note: this date is an error and should be Jan. 7].-Three men were killed, 19 persons wounded, including two women, and six city blocks in the business section of East Youngstown had been burned at midnight tonight with an estimated loss of $800,000, following a battle between strike sympathizers and armed guards at the plant of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company earlier in the evening.

Three regiments of state militia were ordered to the scene by Governor Willis after the city authorities had admitted themselves unable to cope with the situation, and were expected about 3 o'clock tomorrow morning.

MOB USES DYNAMITE.

Rioters stole 500 pounds of dynamite and have dynamited several houses, it is reported. The bridge from East Youngstown to Struthers was burned to prevent rioters from entering the town. Two companies of United States regulars from Columbus are reported to have been ordered to East Youngstown because of the looting and burning of the postoffice.

The five men killed were shot during the looting that followed the battle at the mill.

The trouble was the culmination of a strike of laborers which began at the plant of the Republic Iron & Steel Company a week ago, and spread to the plants of the tube company, the Youngstown Iron & Steel Company and the Brier Hill Steel Company, all "independent" concerns. The men demand 25 cents an hour, the companies offer an increase from 19 1/2 cents to 22 cents per hour.

TROUBLE STARTS EARLY.

The three men killed have not been identified. Two were shot in drunken fights in East Federal street, East Youngstown, about midnight. The third man, a foreigner, was shot and killed instantly a short time earlier, when he hurled a bottle through the window of a store and attempted to loot it. An unidentified man on the second floor of the building shot the foreigner when the latter tossed the bottle. A mob of drunken foreigners, after removing their companion's body, surrounded the building and ignited it. Whether the man who fired the shot escaped is not known.

The trouble started early this morning, when strike sympathizers and workers at the sheet and tube plant clashed. Stones were thrown and several shots were fired, but no one was injured. Later in the afternoon a riot occurred just outside the tube company plant and two men were injured so badly they were taken to a hospital.

The most serious trouble broke out tonight when the day shift at the sheet and tube mills left work. A crowd of 6,000 gathered at the entrance to the works and stoned a squad of private police in charge of Chief J. M. Woltz, of the sheet and tube company force. Woltz said he fired a shot in the air to scare the crowd.

BATTLE BEGINS.

Then the real trouble started. Revolvers were produced by men in the crowd and a round of shots were sent back. The crowd made a rush to storm the mill gates and get at the police on the bridge. The guards answered by firing into the crowd. Men and women, wounded, fell amid the rain of bullets. Men in crowd fired back, but the guards knelt on the bridge, using the framework as shelter and they escaped injury.

Finally the fire from the bridge became so hot that the crowd fell back. Being unable to get at the guards the mob next vented its fury by applying the torch to building in the neighborhood....

SOURCES

The Gazette Times
(Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
- Jan 8, 1916
http://www.newspapers.com/image/85762389/

The Pittsburgh Post
(Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
-Jan 8, 1916
http://www.newspapers.com/image/86548395

IMAGES
Youngstown Steel Strike, Massacre, Headline-Pittsburg Gazette Times, Jan 8, 1916
http://www.newspapers.com/image/85762389/
Youngstown Steel Strike, Massacre, Headline-Pittsburg Post, Jan 8, 1916
& List
http://www.newspapers.com/image/86548395/

See also:

The American Labor Year Book, 1916
Rand School of Social Science, 1916
https://books.google.com/books?id=vZ41AQAAMAAJ
"Youngstown."
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=vZ41AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcove...

Men and Steel
by Mary Heaton Vorse
Labour Publishing Company, 1922
(Note: my copy is 1922 edition, link is 1920 edition.)
https://archive.org/stream/mensteel00vors#page/n5/mode/2up
"Youngstown"
https://archive.org/stream/mensteel00vors#page/38/mode/2up

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...

In 1916 the discontent welled over. From one day to another Youngstown was on strike. No one knew why; there were no leaders. From one day to another men quit work and streamed down the streets. The mills stopped. There was rioting. Strikers were killed. Houses were burned. The strike flared up like a furnace blast. Like the fire of the blast furnace their discontent has never gone out.

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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.