This Day in Labor History: January 19, 1915
By 
On January 19, 1915, armed thugs hired by the Williams & Clark fertilizer plant in Roosevelt, New Jersey (now known as Carteret) killed two striking workers. The Roosevelt Massacre is not so known today, but it should be a huge deal in New Jersey’s labor history and it is an example of the lost violence that dominates our national history, most of which is completely forgotten today.
Shortly before the strike, the company cut workers wages from $2 to $1.60 a day. This was supposed to be a short-term drop to deal with economic troubles. The workers begrudgingly accepted the situation. But then the company refused to raise the wages again when things improved. When that happened, workers began organizing. They struck to get their wages back. Seeing the writing on the wall if the Williams & Clark workers did not win, workers at the nearby Liebig fertilizer plant went on strike too, preemptively protecting their own wages.
It did not take long for the fertilizer plant owners to both hire scabs and to hire a private detective firm to protect the factory from the strikers. They hired a local firm, based out of Newark. There were really so many private detective firms ready to do the bidding of capital in these years. This all gets reduced to the Pinkertons in the modern imagination and that’s understandable, but it was far more broad a problem than just a single agency. Lots of ex-cops and general thugs found a great economic opportunity in assisting capital in times of strikes, whether by starting an anti-union detective agency or working for one when the job arose. These agencies were not exactly choosy in who they hired either. Anyone who wanted to bust heads would do. Criminal records? Great! Just take the orders from above and beat up the workers when asked, or maybe just when you feel like it.
Well, the workers were determined to not let scabs into the plant. They searched the train station and didn’t find any, which made them happy. Then they started placing obstructions on the track going to the factory gates in order to halt any train load of scabs who might show up. At the same time, about 40 armed deputies, led by a man named Thomas Revolinsky, rushed the workers from inside the plant as they were on the tracks and opened fire. This was just a completely unprovoked act of violence. Whatever one thinks about labor and stopping scabs from taking your job, this was just outright murderous violence.
The thugs killed two workers and at least twenty more were wounded. The two men killed were a 28 year old workers named Alessandro Tessitore and a 38 year old worker named Kalman Bayti. This was so outrageous, even for the terrible labor standards of this time, that many of the deputies were arrested–at least twenty-eight. Amazingly, nine were convicted of manslaughter and received prison sentences of between two and ten years. This is a very rare case of thugs being convicted and sentenced for killing workers. But it is worth noting that in 1915, in a state like New Jersey, the Progressive Era was in full force and this was exactly the kind of thing that Progressives felt needed to stop. Many of these largely middle and upper class reformers were not really pro-union, but they were pro-order and this was a case when the disorder came from unreasonable and murderous owners, not radical unions. After all, the workers were not pushing any kind of radical politics. They just wanted their old wage back.
The workers got that old wage rate too. In the aftermath of the massacre, the owners caved. The workers got their wages back. So that’s a victory, but there’s no way such a win should have to require death and injuries.
There’s not much more to say here–this is a moment almost completely undiscussed by historians. That’s not on the historians–there are really so many examples of this kind of thing, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the bigger scheme of our national labor history, an incident like this isn’t particularly important. But the workers who suffered and died in smaller engagements need to be remembered too and this is a moment to do that.
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