IWW Labor Militancy Reeks Havoc On pre-WWII Gary, Indiana
Previously written as ‘The Gary Trainwreckers’
It was the fifth month of the Great Railroad Strike of 1922. The Railroad Labor Board had cut wages by 7 cents an hour, which initiated the strike in stages. Eventually, an official nationwide work stoppage was initiated that July. Shopworkers — 400,000 strong —did not anticipate that their strike would have significant ‘corpora-socio’ consequences. One of the consequences suffered was railroad companies hiring strikebreakers — primarily African Americans from the South — further inflaming tensions.
Some African Americans permanently moved to areas such as Gary, Indiana, to replace the strikers at their jobs. Their concern for labor rights was next to null — being at the bottom of the socioeconomic chain. As a result, violence erupted against railroad companies in seven states. National Guard and U.S. Marshals were out in full force monitoring protests and sharply watching striker meetings. Even President of the United States Warren G. Harding felt powerless to break the strike.
The largest railroad strike since the Pullman Strike of 1894 was angry, bitter, and malicious. Soon working train crew members who were not a part of the strike began discovering small acts of sabotage on their trains. For example, air hoses were cut to burst when applying air. The burst hoses would stop trains dead on the track, requiring affected cars to be taken off the train and repaired, which slowed service and affected profits. In addition, saboteurs packed journal boxes with sand. The strikers didn’t only want to muddy corporate operations. They tried to purposefully cause derailments that would kill their coworkers and paying passengers.
Employees who didn’t join the strike were jeered and treated with contempt. There were even isolated attacks on individual non-striking workers — who were beaten, had rocks thrown into their homes, their family members followed in public — some workers were even tarred and feathered while on the clock. Railroads companies and law enforcement agencies tried to be as vigilant as possible, carefully guarding terminals, freight railway yards, and depots. Some saboteurs were captured — but with so many to look out for — it was only a matter of time before someone slipped through the cracks and be successful in actually wrecking a train.
Industrial Workers of the World
The IWW was highly active in the Midwest — especially in the Chicagoland area. IWW leadership authorized strikers to use violence and spread their philosophy of industrial freedom and working-class rights. An IWW bulletin read:
“As the light spreads, we say again, industrial organization and solidarity spread among the workers. Soldiers and guns are helpless against ideas…”
In the words of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, an IWW propagandist:
“I am not going to attempt to justify sabotage on any moral ground. If the workers consider that sabotage is necessary, that in itself makes sabotage moral. Its necessity is its excuse for existence. For us to discuss the morality of sabotage would be as absurd as to discuss the morality of the strike or the morality of the class struggle itself.” — Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.
Secret, off-the-books IWW union meetings were held in Chicago and elsewhere in the Northwest Indiana/Calumet region, including a low-key headquarters in Gary, Indiana. It is unknown when — but five men (or more) were singled out for special missions during these meetings. First, the men hashed an Elkhart, Indiana derailment plot. Next, the five men were to travel to New York Central’s Robert R. Young Yard and Shops (now Norfolk Southern’s Elkhart Yard), located in Elkhart, and pose as strikebreakers looking for work. Once hired, they would use their credentials to obtain access needed to wreck New York Central’s famed 20th Century Limited passenger train. However, the men first targeted Gary’s Michigan Central mainline (now called the CSX Porter Branch).
The Plot Thickens
August 18th. Gary, Indiana
On the day before the wreck, a non-striking New York Central maintenance crew went to work on a section of the Michigan Central tracks located at the far east side of Gary. Section Forman John Draves, who supervised this section of track where the crash occurred, led an unremarkable crew of workers, as he has done numerous times on numerous different days all around the region. The workers toiled all day in the summer humidity in direct sunlight, replacing damaged rail ties and dampening gravel ballast just east of the spot where 16th Avenue & Central Avenue meets Martin Luther King Drive. The maintenance crew’s work was grueling but routine. When inspections were finished, the workers departed the area.
Back in 1922, there was no Martin Luther King Drive. This street wouldn’t exist until the late 1950s. It was named Indiana Street. Gary changed the name in the mid-’80s. In 1922, however, this area was not populated. A few scattered ram-scrabble shacks hid behind extremely dense forested areas and swampy, low-lying bogs hidden amongst gigantic dunes. Only a down-trodden gravel road near to what’s now 16th and Central Avenue led back to Gary and its urban/residential areas.
August 18th. Chicago, Illinois
As planned, the five chosen men attended an IWW meeting at Armitage Hall, 5845 (or 5445) S. Ashland. Today it may be 3636 Armitage Avenue. Romanticized statements nor poetic providence were heard during this particular meeting. The five chosen men were:
- Joseph Papourvitch, 44, 343 W. 43rd — Carman’s Union, New York Central, LaSalle Street Station
- Charles Uselis, 42, 5434 S. Rockwell — Machinist’s Union, New York Central, Englewood
- John Petrowski, 42, 1802 (or 1812) S. Halsted — Carman’s Union, New York Central, 12th Street Station
- Albino (or Alvin) Alessio, 38, 1241 W. 51st (or 2046 Washington Blvd) — Carman’s Union, New York Central hostler
- James Prohetsh, 41, 1653 N. Halsted
Four of the men were Russian-born striking New York Central shop workers out of Chicago. However, only Albino Alessio had rank within the IWW. An unnamed member of the IWW meeting, probably W. Z. Foster, chewed the four Russian immigrants out — accusing them of loafing and doing nothing to further their cause or the strike in general. Eager to prove their worthiness, they teamed up with Alessio — who was made to be in charge of the attacks in Indiana. They were to wreck the 20th Century Limited at Elkhart and crash a Michigan Central passenger train in Gary.
The rationale behind the plan was to create chaos of such magnitude that customers would fear riding trains. Secondly, they wanted non-striking employees to be fearful of work. They hoped this would negatively affect New York Central’s bottom line. Allegedly, Foster helped the five men refine the plan himself. Once he was satisfied, he authorized them to proceed with the plan immediately. Congratulated for their “ingenuity”, Foster sent them out to execute the plan.
What’s Done In The Dark
Gary, Indiana. August 19th, 1922.
Forman Draves was back in Gary with his crew of workers. They engaged in the same sort of work that was conducted the day before. When the day’s toil was completed, Draves himself walked the entire length of track worked on from this day and the day before. He visually inspected and physically spot-checked any mistakes, which were few. Draves and his crew took up all of their equipment and headed back to the Michigan Central freight house in Gary. Once there they locked up the tools and went about their evening.
The Michigan Central Gary freight house was located just northeast of 11th & Massachusetts Street. In 1922, there was no 11th & Massachusetts. Massachusetts Street stopped at 8th Avenue. South of this sat the Wabash Railroad Fourth District’s Gary Yard. South of the yard was the elevated Gary & Western line. South this sat the Michigan Central freight yard. The Michigan Central Gary freight house (which doubled as their passenger depot) was located northwest of this yard. Massachusetts Street would be extended from 8th Avenue to 11th Avenue in the late 1950s. The street ran straight through the freight house. 1/3rd was cut off to facilitate its construction. Today it’s a burnt-out heap of wood.
Chicago, Illinois. August 19th, 1922.
The five terrorists left Chicago around 9 pm, arriving in Gary hours later via streetcar. According to reports, four of the men — that would be all but Albino Alessio — had no idea what they were about to do when they left Chicago — later signing affidavits stating as much. They all pointed at Alessio as the mastermind behind the entire plot and the one who led them out of Chicago. Nevertheless, all parties were in Gary drinking at taverns before heading to the Michigan Central tracks.
Gary, Indiana. August 20th, 1922. Midnight.
As the men made their way up the Michigan Central tracks, they saw a westbound New York Central train speeding through Gary at 12:28 am. An eastbound train ran through Gary at 1:35 am. This eastbound train crew told authorities they did not notice anything amiss, see any people, nor report anything strange when passing. They did not sabotage the tracks at this time. Yet somewhere in the Gary darkness, five men were waiting to do a sinister thing.
As careful as they thought they were, the men had been spotted by several people. The east side of Gary was sparsely populated — but there were people around. The only statement about this article I could find was from an unnamed black woman. She claimed she witnessed five men walking up the tracks from her kitchen window. The woman wondered why these men were walking up the tracks — away from the city — at such a late hour. It was not kosher at the time for blacks to question five white men — especially ones walking in the middle of the night. As they got farther away, she saw their silhouettes stop on the tracks, but could not make out what they were saying or doing.
The men finally arrived at a desolate location along the tracks. The spot they chose was surrounded by tall sand dunes, scrub brush, black oak trees, and swamps. This was one of the sections that Forman Draves’ crew worked on earlier in the day. Convinced they were completely alone and beyond prying eyes, the men went to work. They later claimed Alessio was the one who provided the tools. Armed with crowbars, the terrorists began to rip out railroad spikes. As four men handled the spikes, Alessio himself took a wrench and began to unscrew fishplate bolts on the westbound track meticulously. The other men came behind him, taking the fishplates and tossing them aside. They left the spikes lying carelessly on the side of the tracks. In total, about 37 spikes were removed over a distance of about 330 feet.
Alessio himself twisted the loosened rail, misaligning and skewing it only about six inches. This was to avoid severing the block signal wires. If the saboteurs broke these wires, it would trigger the nearest westbound signal to display a red aspect before the point of sabotage, stopping any train before they reached the trouble zone. Then, satisfied the job was done well enough, all men boarded streetcars and returned to Chicago.
This is the point of the story where I stop talking about the saboteurs. It’s not that I’m not interested in their account. There are many things to review when discussing the accident itself, the train, crew, and what happened afterward.
2:10 am
New York Central №39, nicknamed “Million Dollar Special,” sped through East Gary, Lake Station, Indiana today. It was a Detroit-originated freight train that hauled special cargo. Gold, jewels, a million dollars in cash, a million dollars in silk and satin, beer, wines, oysters, imported fruits and shoes, and other types of highly valuable cargo…thus the nickname. It was led by New York Central steam locomotive №8317. Because it was unscheduled, it was labeled with the ‘extra’ designation — Extra 8317. Extra 8317 hauled behind it 22 express railcars and one coach car.
In charge of the train was Conductor P. F. Foote, and Engineer E. J. Coy. There were six other crewmen, including Coy’s fireman, Ernest (or Elmer) Lubs. Coy and Lubs occupied the locomotive. E. C. Flubell, C. H. Stockwell, and A. D. Heath — all U.S. Postal Service messengers — rode in the single coach car. Foote, Brakeman Elwell, Station Agent Harry Coleman, and Flagman E. H. Becker rode in the caboose. Coleman was in charge of the messengers in the coach car.
Foote was involved with the infamous Porter Wreck of 1921 about a year earlier — in which 40 people were killed. Foote was the Conductor of the Michigan Central train that ran through two signal blocks that had stop indications set against it. This caused the New York Central Canadian Limited passenger train — which had the right-of-way and no time to stop — to plow through the middle of Foote’s Michigan Central train, crossing an interlocking simultaneously, killing and injuring scores of people.
Extra 8317 was running five hours late — with the crew only being on duty three hours, well-rested and alert. They were only running an hour ahead of the following fast Michigan Central limited train. Despite this, all was well with the crew in the back of the train as it entered into the desolate eastern reaches of Gary’s city limits.
Hell Breaks Loose
2:18 am
As Conductor Foote finished some paperwork in the caboose, a familiar sound entered his ears. The hiss of brakes going into an emergency application…followed soon after by the wrathful sound of freight cars slamming into each other. As the force of the crash shot back through his train, the reverberating screech of metal grinding and scraping got louder and closer...faster. Suddenly — before Foote could react — his caboose derailed! It rocked and shimmied violently as its wheels and axles tore up the newly repaired railroad ties, throwing large shards of wood and thousands of pieces of gravel everywhere. The entire train had just crashed, jumping off the track and destroying the brand-new work done by Section Foreman Draves’ maintenance crew over the past two days.
Newton’s third law of motion kicked in. The coach car and caboose's momentum stopped so suddenly threw all the crewmen at the back of the train forward violently! In the coach car, Stockwell and Heath were injured — being flung straight down the car's center and landing 15 feet from where they were sitting. Packages and parcels also were thrown with them — trapping the two men against the forward wall. Fortunately for the caboose crew in the back of the train, it remained upright.
Foote didn’t know that the track was rigged to spread when a train hit the tampered-with section. The counterbalances of Extra 8317’s drive wheels had struck the outer edge of the first severed piece of rail (the one Alessio twisted six inches off-center), pushing that rail aside. This caused a chain reaction with other rails that had been loosened just enough by the saboteurs. The rails spread too far for the locomotive to retain its balance and 8317’s wheels grounded themselves upon the railroad ties. Every car behind the locomotive followed it off the rails. No. 8371 had not remained upright for more than a few seconds before the locomotive struck an intact piece of rail, which toppled it onto its side — burying it in a nearby sand dune on the side of the tracks. The force of the train’s momentum, initial crash dynamics, and momentum and weight of the freight cars behind the locomotive caused the coal tender to jackknife. The cars behind the tender pushed it beyond capacity, breaking its connecting knuckles and causing the tender to flip over the top of the locomotive. This event crushed Engineer Coy and Fireman Lubs, who died immediately from the tender crushing the cab, or by being buried under the wreck. The tender ended up about 30 feet away from the front of the locomotive.
Foote quickly took control of the situation and ordered Flagman Becker out of the caboose with fusses and torpedoes, instructing him to protect the train from oncoming traffic (remember, a fast train was behind them). As Becker leaped out the caboose with his safety measures in hand, Foote, Coleman, and Brakeman Elwell checked on the mail messengers in the coach car. Discovering that Stockwell and Heath were gravely injured and trapped, Coleman was ordered to help free them as much as possible. Foote and Elwell then ran towards the front of the train to assess the situation and figure out what the train could have hit to cause all of the damage. Unfortunately, they didn’t have to make it all the way to figure out Extra 8317 was involved in a significant incident.
Half of the express cars were toppled and twisted; at the front of the train, all cars were obliterated utterly. Debris was everywhere but there was no sign of the locomotive in the darkness. Horrified, Conductor Foote left Ewell at the wreck site — walking west up the track to a call box that was a mile away. While Foote was gone, Ewell searched frantically for the engineer and fireman — but they were nowhere to be seen. Racking his brain, he tried to figure out why the train had crashed at this particular spot. Sabotage of the tracks had not occurred to him, and his initial investigation did not include any actions that would have uncovered the deception. He was not a detective — the signs of sabotage were hidden from him in the twisted-up debris in the darkness. Finally, Foote arrived at the call box and informed Michigan Central’s Gary and Chicago offices of the crash.
Aftermath
What else was done during the immediate aftermath of the crash is not known. No articles written about this crash go that deep. There’s a several-hour-long gap. The story picks back up just after sunrise. Wrecking cranes and associated crews from Indiana Harbor Belt’s Gibson Yard in Hammond, Indiana, arrived to begin clearing debris away from the locomotive to recover the bodies of Coy and Lubs. Later, wrecking crews from Niles, Michigan, and Chicago arrived. There were hundreds of workers. Considering the strike, the presence of these workers weirdly was not questioned or debated. Debris piled up in a three-story pyramid. Broken axels, iron parts, steel bars, pieces of railcar, rail, and ties were all twisted together into a jumble of worthless junk on top of the locomotive. Welders — armed with acetylene torches — began to cut their way through the debris slowly.
Crowds of people from all over the region began to trickle to the site. News of the crash spread slowly at first, but upon sunrise, there were thousands of people gathered on the embankment, watching with horror and wonder at the chaotic piles of steel and freight in front of them. They arrived by streetcar (which ran parallel to the Michigan Central tracks) and made the trek from the closest stop to the crash site. Everyone packed together like sardines in a can to witness a train wreck in the middle of — what was then — nowhere. Soon the numbers bloated to 15,000! This was twice as many people who gathered to witness the Hagenbeck-Wallace crash at Ivanhoe just four years prior. Many gathers at this wreck had been to the circus crash as well — and just like the circus crash — they lugged their children along to gawk and point.
Railroad detectives and MoW crews discovered that the saboteurs had removed 37 spikes and several fishplates from the inside of the southernmost rail of the westbound track. This caused track spread, which derailed the train. Through all of the destruction, certain items survived the crash, including cages filled with pigeons, whom all survived. In addition, crates of fish ruptured in the crash. As the hot day wore on, the smell of the decaying fish filled the air, causing people to gag. Water boys supplied a constant supply of water for the hot, hard-working MoW crews. Venders arrived to feed and replenish hungry lookers-on, which further ensured very few people left.
Around 2 pm, the wrecking crews had cleared the area around the cab. They discovered the crushed body of Lubs first. His body was mangled. Shortly afterward, the body of Engineer Coy was discovered under the locomotive. His foot protruded from under the locomotive, but tons of debris still piled around him in a manner that required wrecking cranes to lift the locomotive and clear more junk to get his body — which would take more time.
Three people, an engineer from the “J” (EJ&E), named Jack Lyainger and two reporters, volunteered to crawl under the locomotive in an attempt to enter the crushed cab and find precisely how Coy’s body was pinned. After a time, a passage into the debris was discovered that led into the cab, where they found Coy’s body hanging head down with his legs crushed under rubble, preventing his extraction. Finally, welders burned away the exact area needed and successfully extracted Coy’s depleted body. After they hauled the men’s bodies to the morgue, work immediately began clearing the debris from the mainline. New track segments and ties were moved in and stacked up.
Containers of valuable cargos remained more-or-less intact. The car containing gold headed for the Chicago Federal Reserve was placed under extremely heavy armed police and railroad guard. Gary & Interurban and Gary & Valparaiso streetcar service volunteered cars to haul the cargo to freight depots, where the goods were loaded onto trucks and sent where they were going to be delivered. They operated exclusively in that capacity until all the cargo was removed from the scene.
The contents of the express cars — gold and jewels — were not taken. They were piled separately. Michigan Central boxcars were switched onto the Gary & Valpo line in East Gary. These boxcars were then taken to as close to the crash site as possible. The gold and other valuables were loaded into these boxcars and after all the goods were in place, the boxcars were hauled back to East Gary. There they were switched onto the next Michigan Central train bound for Chicago. All-in-all it took two days to completely clear all of the debris, replace damaged segments of rail and ties, and bring the area back to working condition.
At least Foote walked to the Michigan Central Station in Gary — where he talked to the station agent while waiting for a train to take him home. He told the agent that the train was “going a good clip” when the crash happened. Authorities estimated the train was traveling around 45 miles an hour. Media outlets state the train was going between 50 and 60 miles an hour. This was based on the word of the EJ&E engineer who assisted with Coy’s extraction — Jack Lyainger. His quote was:
“The throttle was wide open and the reverse lever was fixed at the point where the engine sustains its greatest speed”. — Jack Lyainger
Lyainger also stated that the way the loco was buried in the sand, which was enough by itself is enough to come to the conclusion that the train was traveling at a very high rate of speed when it crashed. A Gary detective, James Mather, stated he once worked under Coy in 1892 for Rock Island.
Not every detail is true-to-life accurate. I made a few assumptions to help craft an exciting story based on facts from various newspapers, an ICC accident report, railroad magazines, books, periodicals, etc. This was the first successful train wreck that the IWW was behind. There were hundreds of other incidents of all sorts, including bombings, riots, random acts of violence, different types of sabotage…you name it.
Sadly, this was not the last attempt to sabotage trains in Gary. There were many more instances of sabotage or attempted sabotage for various reasons — such as dynamiting rail yards and tampering with train movements. However, authorities discovered most of the plots before they were executed.