STRIKES IN AMERICA

Hokitika Guardian, 7 April 1926, Page 1

STRIKES IN AMERICA

WAR .METHODS USED. SAN FRANCISCO, March 19. I’rnlilting hy experience gained in the World War. tear gas and bombs have been used in one of the bitterest, strikes ever known in the United States, the difficulty which has arisen over wage disputes with tiie employees of woollen and worsted factories in New Jersey. After successfully withstanding ;i fear gas attack, a crowd of 2500 striking textile workers was driven back by six lines of tire hose from file vicinity of the Botany Worsted Mills at Passim:. Tun demonstration of the strikers was marked by no further violence, than the tear gas and hose assaults launched b.v the police and firemen of Pttssiae repcctivel.v. ’lhe mass movement of the strikers started from a meeting ball in the afternoon. As the demonstrators reached the mill they were met by 75 policemen, mounted and on foot, who ordered them to break up. Tile crowd stood their ground and jeered. After about, five minutes of this exchange of words and jeers. Chief of Police. Richard Zobor, look charge of tho situation and ordered his mounted men to ride upon the sidewalk among the strikers. Members of the crowd gave way before the advance, but resumed their places when the posses had moved. The strikers remained on the sidewalk, hurling boots, and Chief Zober seemed to be increasingly nervous. His pockets were bulging with tear gas bombs. Three times Zober feinted as if to throw a gas bomb and a fourth time he hurled the missile at the feet of the strikers on the kerb. Then he hurled two more. But there was a strong wind blowing and the strikers managed to dodge the clouds of gas, resuming their places as the gas lifted. Neglecting to throw his other bombs, the chief then rang in two alarms from the nearest fire box, and live companies of apparatus—all the tirefighting facilities of Pussiac—responded. Six nozzle lines were laid from the pumper and turned upon the crowd. Several persons, including two or three children, were knocked from their feet, but no one seemed to have been seriously injured. The mob was driven back by sheer force of water a.s the police broke up efforts of stragglers to congregate in groups. Pushed across the town line into Clifton, the soaked crowd was disposed of by a cordon of Clifton police sent there for the purpose. Undaunted by two clashes with police in a.s many days, Albert AYeisbord, leader of the striking textile workers, directed that mass pickets should continue at the seven chief mills. Several hundred strikers, wearing iron trench hats and carrying gas masks, assembled at the Hungarian workers’ home, for a parade past the Botany mills at Passinc to Garfield, where a demonstration was planned lit front of the New Jersey Worsted Mills. Accompanying the procession was a news photographer in an armoured IJ C was among those attacked the previous night, when 5000 dollars worth of photographic apparatus was destroyed. One of the photographers, employed by an Eastern newspaper syndicate, was mobbed and all Inequipment smashed, as one of his assailants exclaimed; “A ou shall _n°t got a picture of this strike affair.