Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 81, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1899 — CLEVELAND CARS TIED UP. [ARTICLE]

CLEVELAND CARS TIED UP.

Strikers Completely Stop Traffic on Fourteen Line*. What promised to be a long and bitter contest between the Cleveland, Ohio, Electric Railway Company and its 900 employes was inaugurated at 4 o’clock Saturday morning by a strike which tied up all the fourteen lines operated by the company. These lines reach all sections o£ the city and they form the only means of transportation for more than 100,000 persons living in a territory five miles long and three miles wide at the south end. There were several riotous demonstrations Saturday, but none of a really serious nature, except one on Ontario street in the afternoon, when William Steffen, division superintendent of the Big Consolidated road, was seriously injured by being hit on the head with a bottle thrown from the crowd while he was trying to move a car which had been disabled by a mob. The wounded man was taken to his home in an unconscious condition. Jacob Kratz was also struck on the head by a stone thrown from the mob and is in a serious condition. The strike is mainly for the recognition of the union, and the men have been preparing for it for several weeks. President Henry A. Everett says he is willing to concede all the other demands of the men and will adjust all other grievances when presented by his employes, but he declares,.that he will never recognize the union, whose demands he characterizes as tyrannical.