The Pressed Steel Car Strike of 1909 was an American labor dispute which ran from July to September in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The strike was triggered on July 10th, a payday on which many workers were shorted by the Pressed Steel Car Company.
The strike began on July 13th, and grew to include more than 8,000 workers, 3,000 of whom were also from the Standard Steel Car Company. By the next day, 500 cops began working to protect strikebreakers and evict strikers from company houses. The New York Times called the immigrant workforce “savages” and “illiterate foreigners”.
Management refused to speak with the workers’ representatives and James Rider, manager of the Pressed Steel Car Company, responded to their strike by hiring Pearl Bergoff, a notorious owner of a strike-breaking paramilitary force.
The workers were joined by members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), including founders William Trautmann and “Big Bill” Haywood, as well as “Smiling Joe” Ettor.
The walkout drew national attention when, on this day in 1909, a bloody battle took place between strikers, private security agents, and the Pennsylvania State Police. The violence began after strikers boarded a trolley to search for scabs and they were confronted by an armed deputy, who opened fire. In the fighting that followed, between 12 and 26 people were killed.
The strike was settled on September 8th when Pressed Steel Car agreed to a wage increase, the posting of wage rates, and ended abuses in company housing practices. This labor dispute would be a precursor to the Great Steel Strike of 1919.
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Here’s some ongoing events from Germany’s culture industry: One little literary magazine, Lettre International, decided to sue another little magazine, Sinn und Form, for being funded by the state. For context: Lettre International published an interview with one of Germany’s most prominent racists a decade ago while Sinn und Form was the premier literary magazine of the GDR
, so you can already guess who’s the bad guy here. The claim is that public funds being used to fund specific publications is anti-competitive and violates the freedom of the press. This concerns like only a handful of cultural and scientific magazines, so it’s not exactly a matter of the state controlling all public media. Nevertheless, a court forbade Sinn und Form from publishing any further issues for arcane legal reasons, but they recently managed to appease the court for the moment by changing their constitution. However, the bigger issue is still hanging in the air until all the legal battles are fought. Obviously, lots of authors, academics etc. are on the side of publicly funded cultural magazines, which are apparently also the norm in many other European countries. I think all this is a neat illustration of capitalism destroying the culture it is claimed to uphold.
i dont suppose you have any ideas on where to get issues of it for free? i use libgen for most stuff but idk if it’s the best place for periodicals
or for that matter are there any other good german literary magazines? i dont ever read german these days its sad
I don’t think there’s any free issues floating around online, unfortunately. A German library would probably be your best bet. Paying for an online subscription is 45 € a year, which is not horribly expensive and includes issues from the last 4 years.
Other than that, there’s a number of German literary magazines (this website shows a few dozen). Two that have articles you can read online for free are Merkur and Wespennest. Two other old magazines that might be worth a look are Akzente and Literatur und Kritik, while some newer ones I’ve heard of include Schreibheft, die horen, BELLA triste and Edit. If there’s anything specific you need help with acquiring, I can see if I can scan it in the library for you.