Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 206, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1919 — STRIKE NEGOTIATIONS STARTED AT HAMMOND. [ARTICLE]

STRIKE NEGOTIATIONS STARTED AT HAMMOND.

, Hammond, Ind., Aug. 25.—Efforts to settle a strike of employes at the Standard Steel Car company ’ plant here, which still includes about ' 1,600 pf an original 2,00 Q men, I were begun here this afternoon after ' the arrival of P. G. Jenks, of Pittsburg-, first assistant to the president of the concern. I In the meantime eleven com- ■ panies of Indiana militiamen,' with a ■combined strength of 750 men, sent here last Thursday by Governor Goodrich to prevent further dis- [ orders, remain on guard in the plant, where approximately 400 persons are working. , Re-ports current among the strikers that there would be wholesale i evictions from the company’s houses ! unless the men returned to work have been denied iby Harry B. Smith, of Indianapolis, adjutantgeneral of Indiana, in charge of the troops. The eviction threat was printed in an interview by G. H. Vincett, acting works manager, in a Chicago newspaper. Major Vincett, when called before General Smith, denied the authenticity of the interview. “There may be solitary cases where the company has served notice on its workmen to vacate houses, but lit was for purely business reasons ,and I denounce the story of wholesale evictions as false,” said General Smith later. One thousand of the strikers met at Coy’s park Sunday afternoon, and six of them said they had been served with dispossess notices. . After a meeting of the general strikers’ committee, at which Fred Feick, federal labor mediator, told the committee, who later reported it at the Coy’s park mass meeting, that Mr. Jenks and nobody else would sign an agreement for the company, the strikers were angered. They said they had been treating with. Major Vincett on the assumption that he had authority to dispose of all points brought up for settlement. The militiamen put in a quiet day Sunday. A large crowd of Hammond, Gary and East Chicago people witnessed the regimental review and changing guard. *