I had some maintenance work at a tank shell manufacturer. There safety provisions seemed pretty good. They had one fatality in thirty or so years; would have been worse except for very good compartmentalization, blast walls, vents, and stuff. Still, couldn't wait to get the fuck out of there.
Oh, look, it's American History™, brought to you by capitalist negligence and a steaming pile of xenophobia. Welcome to the Eddystone Explosion of 1917, where 139 mostly women and girls died in a Pennsylvania ammunition factory, and the first thing we did was blame the foreigners because it couldn't be shoddy safety practices or corporate greed, not in this sacred land of opportunity and upward immolation.
Let’s be blunt: this wasn’t sabotage. It was standard operating procedure in a system where immigrant labor was cheap, expendable, and blamed the minute things went boom. It was easier to scream “German saboteurs!” than to admit your factory floor was a tinderbox built on underage labor and unsafe chemical storage.
The media ran with the hysteria like a toddler with scissors. This was yellow journalism’s favorite trick: blame brown people or foreign-sounding names to dodge the pesky truth that capitalists don’t value lives, just margins. And when Germans didn’t stick? We got creative. “Bolsheviks did it!” said the patriotic fever dream. And when no culprit could be named? Quietly bury 55 bodies in a mass grave and move on to the next labor atrocity.
No reparations. No reform. Just repression. By 1924, the anti-immigrant sentiment sparked by incidents like this helped throttle immigration with racist quotas, all while the companies who endangered lives faced zero accountability.
You want to know what makes this burn extra hot? We’ve been here before. We’re here again now. Every time there's a crisis, the finger points to immigrants. Trump raids the farms, ICE snatches kids, and Fox News clutches its pearls over “illegals” while billionaires fly workers in on guest visas and pay them dirt.
This wasn't just a tragedy. It was a policy blueprint: exploit the vulnerable, blame them when things go wrong, and use the crisis to tighten the noose.
I used to live within ten miles of the Radford Arsenal in Radford, Virginia. I think they stored stuff, I don't think they made anything there, but there was one explosion that cracked two windows in my house, and broke windows of homes closer, but fortunately only killed two people.
You knew exactly what it was when you heard that blast though!
Sister has a small farm within sight of the Radford plant. The F-18s turn south at the lighted dragon on her barn roof! It is rumored to be the third target for nuclear destruction after DC and NYC because of what they manufacture there.
This story (and that other one about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory) are un possible. Every good "conservative" knows that no woman ever worked outside their homes, ever, ever, ever, until the woke feminists and hippies came along and made them all get jobs. They were all at home, having babies and baking bread.
Great article. Because the early industrial and trade unions (Knights of Labor, AFL, CIO) had prohibitions against women members, the history of wage-working women is even less understood than the history of wage-working men.
Prior to the emigration of the Irish to the USA due to potato famine (circa 1845-1850), there was a severe labor shortage in the USA. Men, even poor men, had far more labor options than women and, for the most part, worked in trades, on farms, and in business. Early factories turned to women and children as a cheap labor source; almost all manufacturing workers were women and children. All documented labor strikes in the USA prior to the Civil War were predominantly women and children.
Records of women working for wages are either unclear and nonexistent. Until 1855, it was illegal for married women to collect their own wages and the wages of unmarried women were paid to their nearest male relative. This confounds the records because historians assume that wage payment records can double for the person actually doing the work. Except that close examination of wage records for factories and outwork show that men received the wages while women's names are listed as the workers. Similar to crediting the plantation owner with the product of slaves.
OT correction. The USS Maine was powered by two reciprocating triple expansion steam engines. Such an engine would break not blow up. Boilers blow up not engines. Hyman Rickover commissioned an analysis that resulted in a 1976 report that concluded that a coal bunker fire adjacent to a 6" naval gun ammunition magazine (not a clip) had set off the ammunition resulting in the explosion. A 1998 Advanced Marine Enterprises (an engineering and consulting firm) conducted another analysis for National Geographic magazine (not a clip) that utilized computer tools that didn't exist in 1974. That report said it was an external naval mine. So, the jury is still out. I subscribe to bunker fire theory since that points to a fuck up rather than an act of provocation.
Most people have never heard of the Lead Belt Riots of 1917. There is a region of southeast Missouri called "The Lead Belt" where at one time 90% of the world's lead was mined. My grandfather was a lead miner there. Well when WWI started and the military desperately needed all the lead they could get, the miners, who were exempt from the draft because it was a protected industry, saw their chance and went on strike, which the mining companies resolved by bringing in hundreds of Hungarian immigrants (and their families) to break the strike. The locals took matters into their own hands one evening and rounded up all the "Hunkies" (as the Hungarians were referred to by the locals) and forced them onto trains and shipped them all out. Nobody died, but some heads were broken, and many hundreds of people were homeless, including many women and children.
My grandfather never had a good word to say about Hungarians after that incident. What he obviously did not know was that his own great-grandparents had emigrated from Hungary after the 1848 Hungarian Revolution, which failed to achieve independence for Hungary, and everyone who was in any way involved had to flee the country. I only found this out by searching old Census records, but Grandpa never knew. I wish I could see his face if he had lived long enough to find out he was part Hungarian. And of course his own grandfathers were known to be emigrants from Germany, Ireland, Denmark and France, so he had no right to throw stones.
Germany's "Operation Pastorius" sabotage operation failed, but a few home-baked Nazi sympathizers did do some damage.
An embarrassingly large slice of the American public had pro-Nazi sympathies, because (1) they were bigots and (2) they wanted in on the Master Race perks. Apparently, not much has changed out there. Read Maddow's book "Prequel" - the parallels to today's fascist MAGA movement are spooky. The topic made for one of Terry Gross' more gripping interviews, too: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/15/1143078657/rachel-maddow-uncovers-a-wwii-era-plot-against-america-in-ultra
I love all the labor history posts. Are there any labor history books for kids? They never teach you about the labor history crackdowns in school. Its all blah blah triangle factory and poof labor laws passed and everything was great!
I recall getting a page's worth on the Pullman strikes (that landed Eugene Debs in jail), but that's about all you get in schoolbooks. As you say, "poof".
School books have always whitewashed the really bad stuff, and people like DeSantis desperately want to keep it that way.
There's an astonishing Wikipedia page I've had occasion to consult on largest non nuclear explosions. Most of the entries are accidental explosions of gunpowder stores; the probable record was a cargo ship full of fertilizer that went up in the last 10 years or so. Something else that comes to my mind by free association is an astonishing and uncomfortable book called Dr Seuss Goes To War. Many/ most German Americans who had been on the wrong end of nativism in the First World War saw through the fascists, the isolationist and eventually the homegrown racists. The exceptions included the ancestors of Drumpf.
I had some maintenance work at a tank shell manufacturer. There safety provisions seemed pretty good. They had one fatality in thirty or so years; would have been worse except for very good compartmentalization, blast walls, vents, and stuff. Still, couldn't wait to get the fuck out of there.
Oh, look, it's American History™, brought to you by capitalist negligence and a steaming pile of xenophobia. Welcome to the Eddystone Explosion of 1917, where 139 mostly women and girls died in a Pennsylvania ammunition factory, and the first thing we did was blame the foreigners because it couldn't be shoddy safety practices or corporate greed, not in this sacred land of opportunity and upward immolation.
Let’s be blunt: this wasn’t sabotage. It was standard operating procedure in a system where immigrant labor was cheap, expendable, and blamed the minute things went boom. It was easier to scream “German saboteurs!” than to admit your factory floor was a tinderbox built on underage labor and unsafe chemical storage.
The media ran with the hysteria like a toddler with scissors. This was yellow journalism’s favorite trick: blame brown people or foreign-sounding names to dodge the pesky truth that capitalists don’t value lives, just margins. And when Germans didn’t stick? We got creative. “Bolsheviks did it!” said the patriotic fever dream. And when no culprit could be named? Quietly bury 55 bodies in a mass grave and move on to the next labor atrocity.
No reparations. No reform. Just repression. By 1924, the anti-immigrant sentiment sparked by incidents like this helped throttle immigration with racist quotas, all while the companies who endangered lives faced zero accountability.
You want to know what makes this burn extra hot? We’ve been here before. We’re here again now. Every time there's a crisis, the finger points to immigrants. Trump raids the farms, ICE snatches kids, and Fox News clutches its pearls over “illegals” while billionaires fly workers in on guest visas and pay them dirt.
This wasn't just a tragedy. It was a policy blueprint: exploit the vulnerable, blame them when things go wrong, and use the crisis to tighten the noose.
I used to live within ten miles of the Radford Arsenal in Radford, Virginia. I think they stored stuff, I don't think they made anything there, but there was one explosion that cracked two windows in my house, and broke windows of homes closer, but fortunately only killed two people.
You knew exactly what it was when you heard that blast though!
Sister has a small farm within sight of the Radford plant. The F-18s turn south at the lighted dragon on her barn roof! It is rumored to be the third target for nuclear destruction after DC and NYC because of what they manufacture there.
Yeah, we always said that it would definitely get bombed if we had a shooting war here.
:D
Thanks for the stuff to read for more info. I am a sucker for history bits.
And yesterday was the anniversary of Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Sadly, since then, things have not worked out as they should.
Ta, Erik. This Union Maid is always pleased to learn more labor history, even when it's horrific. Solidarity Forever.
This story (and that other one about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory) are un possible. Every good "conservative" knows that no woman ever worked outside their homes, ever, ever, ever, until the woke feminists and hippies came along and made them all get jobs. They were all at home, having babies and baking bread.
Great article. Because the early industrial and trade unions (Knights of Labor, AFL, CIO) had prohibitions against women members, the history of wage-working women is even less understood than the history of wage-working men.
Prior to the emigration of the Irish to the USA due to potato famine (circa 1845-1850), there was a severe labor shortage in the USA. Men, even poor men, had far more labor options than women and, for the most part, worked in trades, on farms, and in business. Early factories turned to women and children as a cheap labor source; almost all manufacturing workers were women and children. All documented labor strikes in the USA prior to the Civil War were predominantly women and children.
Records of women working for wages are either unclear and nonexistent. Until 1855, it was illegal for married women to collect their own wages and the wages of unmarried women were paid to their nearest male relative. This confounds the records because historians assume that wage payment records can double for the person actually doing the work. Except that close examination of wage records for factories and outwork show that men received the wages while women's names are listed as the workers. Similar to crediting the plantation owner with the product of slaves.
OT correction. The USS Maine was powered by two reciprocating triple expansion steam engines. Such an engine would break not blow up. Boilers blow up not engines. Hyman Rickover commissioned an analysis that resulted in a 1976 report that concluded that a coal bunker fire adjacent to a 6" naval gun ammunition magazine (not a clip) had set off the ammunition resulting in the explosion. A 1998 Advanced Marine Enterprises (an engineering and consulting firm) conducted another analysis for National Geographic magazine (not a clip) that utilized computer tools that didn't exist in 1974. That report said it was an external naval mine. So, the jury is still out. I subscribe to bunker fire theory since that points to a fuck up rather than an act of provocation.
Most people have never heard of the Lead Belt Riots of 1917. There is a region of southeast Missouri called "The Lead Belt" where at one time 90% of the world's lead was mined. My grandfather was a lead miner there. Well when WWI started and the military desperately needed all the lead they could get, the miners, who were exempt from the draft because it was a protected industry, saw their chance and went on strike, which the mining companies resolved by bringing in hundreds of Hungarian immigrants (and their families) to break the strike. The locals took matters into their own hands one evening and rounded up all the "Hunkies" (as the Hungarians were referred to by the locals) and forced them onto trains and shipped them all out. Nobody died, but some heads were broken, and many hundreds of people were homeless, including many women and children.
My grandfather never had a good word to say about Hungarians after that incident. What he obviously did not know was that his own great-grandparents had emigrated from Hungary after the 1848 Hungarian Revolution, which failed to achieve independence for Hungary, and everyone who was in any way involved had to flee the country. I only found this out by searching old Census records, but Grandpa never knew. I wish I could see his face if he had lived long enough to find out he was part Hungarian. And of course his own grandfathers were known to be emigrants from Germany, Ireland, Denmark and France, so he had no right to throw stones.
But people just LOVE to throw stones...
Immigrants! I knew it was them!
Even when it was the bears
I knew it was them!
Texas City anniversary coming up.
https://www.tshaonline.org/texas-day-by-day/entry/376
I recall Rachel Maddow mentioning a couple of arsenal explosions pre-WW2 in her Ultra series that were blamed on sabotage. I think.
Germany's "Operation Pastorius" sabotage operation failed, but a few home-baked Nazi sympathizers did do some damage.
An embarrassingly large slice of the American public had pro-Nazi sympathies, because (1) they were bigots and (2) they wanted in on the Master Race perks. Apparently, not much has changed out there. Read Maddow's book "Prequel" - the parallels to today's fascist MAGA movement are spooky. The topic made for one of Terry Gross' more gripping interviews, too: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/15/1143078657/rachel-maddow-uncovers-a-wwii-era-plot-against-america-in-ultra
I love all the labor history posts. Are there any labor history books for kids? They never teach you about the labor history crackdowns in school. Its all blah blah triangle factory and poof labor laws passed and everything was great!
I recall getting a page's worth on the Pullman strikes (that landed Eugene Debs in jail), but that's about all you get in schoolbooks. As you say, "poof".
School books have always whitewashed the really bad stuff, and people like DeSantis desperately want to keep it that way.
National Weather Service announced that thirteen languages used to give storm
warnings will be canceled because budget cuts. Apparently just merikkkan language will used for storm warnings now.
Moar zone flooding...
If it kills immigrants, it becomes Trump policy.
Did they lay off the mechanized voices?
There's an astonishing Wikipedia page I've had occasion to consult on largest non nuclear explosions. Most of the entries are accidental explosions of gunpowder stores; the probable record was a cargo ship full of fertilizer that went up in the last 10 years or so. Something else that comes to my mind by free association is an astonishing and uncomfortable book called Dr Seuss Goes To War. Many/ most German Americans who had been on the wrong end of nativism in the First World War saw through the fascists, the isolationist and eventually the homegrown racists. The exceptions included the ancestors of Drumpf.