[Clipping from the Port Hume Beacon of Thursday, 20 July 1922. Front page, three columns above the fold.]

VIOLENCE AT BLACKWELL GATES

Three Dead in Strike Shooting

Outside Agitators Blamed; Arrests Expected

By Our Own Correspondent.

Three workmen were shot dead and five wounded, two of them gravely, in a burst of gunfire at the main gate of the Blackwell Iron Works yesterday afternoon, bringing to a shocking close the sixth week of the strike that has idled the Blackwell furnaces since the second of June.

The dead are Janusz Vasko, rolling-mill foreman, of Little Warsaw; Piotr Rekas, stoker, also of Little Warsaw; and Franciszek Zieliński, open-hearth man, of the Ward. All three were among the original picket organizers of the strike. All three were of Polish birth.

The gunfire, according to Harbor Police officers arrived on the scene, is believed to have issued from within the picket line itself, directed at those nearest the Blackwell gates. The Beacon has learned, from sources close to the investigation, that the responsible parties are not Blackwell men but outside agitators — Wobbly elements from Chicago and points west, understood to have infiltrated the striking workers for purposes of fomenting precisely the kind of outrage that occurred yesterday.

"It is the oldest pattern in the book of labor trouble," said Mr. Julian C. Thorpe, president of Blackwell Iron Works, in a statement issued from his Crescent residence late last evening. "Men who have no concern for the actual conditions or the actual families of the strikers come in from the outside, use our workers as their occasion, and cost us the lives of good men. The responsibility is theirs. I will not permit it to be laid at the door of Blackwell."

Mr. Thorpe added that the Company would continue to negotiate in good faith with the strike committee, and that Blackwell stood ready to reopen the furnaces as soon as public order was assured.

Chief Donal Keane of the Harbor Police, whose jurisdiction includes the Ironside gate district, was not available for comment last evening. Detective Henry Ostermann of the City Police, who has been placed in investigative charge of the incident, said only that "we are gathering information and following the obvious lines."

The Clarion, this newspaper's contemporary, is understood to be preparing a feature in which the outside-agitator theory will be subjected to the scrutiny the events require. The Beacon invites the Clarion to that scrutiny and awaits its findings with due interest.

Meanwhile the funerals of Vasko, Rekas, and Zieliński will be held on Saturday morning at ten, at St. Casimir's Polish Catholic Parish. Father Wiktor Jarzembek will officiate. The strike committee has asked the community to refrain from demonstration at the funerals out of respect for the families. The Beacon seconds that request.

A striking worker's family will be provided for from the Blackwell Widows' and Orphans' Fund, Mr. Thorpe confirmed yesterday evening. The Fund was established by the late Cornelius Thorpe in 1907 and has paid out, to date, more than $38,000 in benefits.

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