2009 Movies at the Pump House

This free monthly Thursday night film series is sponsored by the Battle of Homestead Foundation (BHF), a charitable and educational organization whose purpose is “to interpret, preserve and promote labor and people’s history and provide a forum for speakers and events at the historic Pump House, site of the Battle of Homestead on July 6, 1892.” (Source: the By-Laws of the BHF)

Thursday May 28, 2009,

7:30 p.m.

Valley Town (1940). Black & White. 27 minutes. Director: Willard Van Dyke

This social documentary that premiered at the Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee’s convention in Chicago in May 1940 portrays life in New Castle, Pa., during the Great Depression. Unemployment and poverty transformed the town and its people as automation made its impact in the steel industry. Because of what was considered an anticorporate view, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which funded the film, withdrew it from release and redid the film. Two very different versions, the original director’s cut and the remake, exist.

Aliquippa: The Union Comes to "Little Siberia."
30 minutes

This half-hour documentary, part of the PBS “Great Depression” program series, tells the dramatic story of the struggle at J&L Steel that led to the famous Supreme Court decision to uphold the constitutionality of the Wagner Act. After the win at Aliquippa extended the union beyond U.S. Steel surrendering without a shot in secret negotiations between John L. Lewis and Myron Taylor, the steelworkers’ union hit up against Tom Girdler’s extreme resistance. The Memorial Day massacre of 1937, just weeks after the victory at Aliquippa, kept the unions inside “Little Steel” without a contract until 1941.

Battle of Homestead Foundation