STRIKE VIOLENCE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19365, 1 July 1937, Page 5

STRIKE VIOLENCE

MORE CLASHES IN U.S. 120 PERSONS INJURED WOMEN ATTACK POLICE COMMENT BY ROOSEVELT (Fife. Tel. Copyright—Unilod Tress Assn.) (Reed. July 1, noon.) WASHINGTON, June 30. A message from Cleveland, Ohio, states that 120 persons were injured, 20 seriously, in a street battle in which the police attempted to separate the Committee for Industrial Organisation strikers and American Federation of Labour workers, who were seeking to return to the local knitting mills. The battle started when 100 police attempted to prevent a clash between 300 non-strikers and 900 pickets and strike sympathisers. Nearly 100 women participated, scratching and pulling the hair of the police. At Canton, Ohio, the Republic Steel Corporation reopened the gates of the mills after the militia ended a picket barrage of- stones <in which a dozen returning workers were injured. Hundreds of . strikers and sympathisers hurled stones and bolts at the workers until the soldiers charged the crowd and arrested eight. The management said that 1300 men had returned, the normal personnel being 8000. President Roosevelt, in a conference with press representatives to-day, when asked to comment on the steel, works’ strike crisis, said: “The general opinion of the country is that there is a plague in both houses.” . This remark was interpreted by the spokesman of White House to mean a plague of extremists on both sides — those who want violence and those who do not want to negotiate. Offer of £2OOO Reward President Roosevelt jestingly evaded the question whether he would accept nomination for a third term. A message from Johnstown states that the Bethlehem steel plant, which announces that 6000 persons have been thrown out of work, has offered a reward of £2OOO for the apprehension of persons who, as previously reported, placed dynamite under the stone of the water tunnels in the mountains - a few miles from the city, with the result that the water supply to the plant was cut off and the company was forced to suspend operations in the middle of the baek-to-work movement. The Mayor of Johnstown, Mr. Shields, has telegraphed to President Roosewelt as follows: “It seems preposterous that Mr. John L. Lewis, president of the Committee for Industrial Organisation, has your support in his ruthless activities. If Mr. Lewis does not withdraw his highly objectionable representatives, the people of Johnstown may take the law into their own hands.”

At an emergency meeting of the City Council, Messrs. James Mark and C. Jones, the leaders of the steel wdrks and railway strikers, were summoned and were warned that they remained at Johnstown at their own risk.