During the New Deal of the 1930s, the Congress of Industrial Organizations formed the Steel Workers Organizing Committee under the leadership of CIO president John L. Lewis. Following successful CIO strikes in the rubber and automobile industries, SWOC signed hard-won contracts with U.S. Steel and Jones and Laughlin Steel in early 1937, then on May 26 struck three Little Steel companies for similar recognition: Inland, Republic, and Youngstown Sheet and Tube, many of whose operations were concentrated in eastern Ohio. By early June, the strike idled more than 28,000 steelworkers in Canton, Massillon, Warren, and Youngstown in the first major steel strike since 1919. Despite the intervention of Governor William Davey and the federal Steel Mediation Board, no negotiated settlement emerged and violence escalated in many Little Steel towns. In Massillon, police, special deputies, and Republic Steel security forces confronted strikers in front of SWOC headquarters with tear gas and gunfire on the evening of July 11, killing three strikers and wounding five. Unfavorable publicity and the National Guard ended the strike by mid-July, but SWOC later charged Little Steel with unfair labor practices before the new National Labor Relations Board and eventually won signed contracts in the Ohio mills by 1942. As one of the most violent strikes of the 1930s, the Little Steel Strike led to a break between organized labor and the New Deal-era Democratic Party.