Credit: Archives and Labor Collection, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh
In September 1919, Pennsylvania Governor W. C. Sproul declared that a state police assault upon striking steelworkers and bystanders was necessary for maintaining control of the "agitators" and "evil-disposed." In response to the brutal measures that Pennsylvania's powerful steel companies, with the aid of state and local government, employed to suppress striking workers, union organizers in 1919 stepped up their attempts to elect public officials sympathetic to their cause.
