with responsible representatives of the Brotherhoods and laid the
situation before them. In reply they stated that their policy was
strictly to observe their contracts wherever they had such, and that
their men would be forbidden to do work around the mills not done by
them prior to the strike. It was up to the men on the non-contract roads
and yards to decide for themselves about joining the strike. We informed
them then that the situation was such, with the men scattered through
many locals, that merely leaving it up to them was insufficient; it
would be impossible for them to act together without direct aid and
encouragement from their higher officials. We made the specific request
that each of the organizations send a man into Pittsburgh to take a
strike vote of the men in question, who are all employees of the steel
companies. They took the matter under advisement; but nothing came of
it, although long afterwards, when the opportune moment had passed,
organizer J. M. Patterson of the Railway Carmen (also of the Trainmen)
was authorized to take a strike vote. Thus was lost the chance to close
down these strategic switching lines and with them, in all likelihood,
several big mills in the most vital district in the entire steel
industry.
Throughout the strike zone general disappointment was expressed by the
steel workers at the apparent lack of sympathy with their cause shown by
the officials of the Brotherhoods. The steel workers, bitterly oppressed
for a generation and fighting desperately towards the light in the face
of unheard-of opposition, turned instinctively for aid to their closely
related, powerfully organized fellow workers, the railroad men. And the
latter could easily have lent them effective, if not decisive assistance
without violating a contract or in any way endangering their standing.
It was not to be expected that the trunk line men, working as they were
under government agreements, would refuse to haul the scab steel; but
there were many other ways, perfectly legitimate under current
trade-union practice and ethics, in which help could have been given;
yet it was not. From Youngstown and elsewhere the railroad men who did
go on strike in the mill yards complained with bitterness that they were
neglected and denied strike benefits, and that the rule that no road man
should do work around the mills not customary before the strike was
flagrantly violated. Usually the rank and file were strongly disposed to
assist the hard-pressed steel workers, and they could have everywhere
wonderfully stiffened the strike, but the necessary encouragement and
cooperation from the several headquarters was lacking. Truth demands
that these unpleasant things be set down. Labor can learn and progress
only through a frank acknowledgment and discussion of its weaknesses,
mistakes and failures.
In addition to all their other handicaps the Pittsburgh district
strikers had to contend with a particularly treacherous local press.
Everywhere our daily papers are newspapers only by courtesy of a
misapplied term. They are sailing under false colors. Pretending to be
purveyors of unbiased accounts of current happenings, they are in
reality merely propaganda organs, twisting, garbling and suppressing
facts and information in the manner best calculated to further the
interests of the employing class. The whole newsgathering and
distributing system is a gigantic mental prostitution. Consequently,
considering the issues involved, it was not surprising to see the big
daily papers take such a decided stand against the steel workers.
Everywhere in steel districts the papers were bad enough, but those in
the Pittsburgh district outstripped all the rest. They gave themselves
over body and soul to the service of the Steel Trust.
From the first these Pittsburgh papers were violently antagonistic to
the steel workers. Every sophistry uttered by Mr. Gary to the effect
that the strike was an effort to establish the "closed shop," a bid for
power, or an attempt at revolution, the papers echoed and re-echoed _ad
nauseum_. They played up the race issue, virtually advising the
Americans to stand together against the foreigners who were about to
overwhelm them. They painted the interests of the country as being
synonymous with those of the steel companies and tried to make
Americanism identical with scabbery. For them no further proof of one's
patriotism was needed than to go back to the mills. Every clubbing of
strikers was the heroic work of the law-abiding against reckless mobs.
Strike "riots" were manufactured out of whole cloth. For instance, when
the senators investigating the strike were visiting the Homestead mills,
a couple of strike-breakers quarreling with each other, several blocks
away, fired a shot. An hour later screaming headlines told the startled
populace of Pittsburgh that "STRIKERS SHOOT AT SENATORS" and "MOB
ATTACKS SENATE COMMITTEE." Even the stand-pat senators had to protest
that this was going it too strong.
In revenge for an alleged dynamiting in Donora, Pa., the authorities
swooped down upon the union headquarters, arrested 101 strikers present,
including organizer Walter Hodges, and charged them with the crime.
Since there was not a shred of evidence against the accused, they were
all eventually discharged. Then the Donora _Herald_, which forever
yelped that the organizers advocated violence, had this to say:
One of the reasons we have sedition preached in America is
because we have grand juries like that at Washington (Pa.)
this week which ignored the dynamiting cases. Possibly the
biggest mistake of all was made in not using rifles at the
time instead of turning the guilty parties over to the very
sensitive mercies of the grand jury.
But the journalistic strike-breaking master-stroke was an organized
effort to stampede the men back to work by minimizing the strike's
effectiveness. First the papers declared that only a few thousands of
Pittsburgh's steel workers went out. Then they followed this for weeks
with stories of thousands of men flocking back to the mills. Full page
advertisements begged the men to go back; while flaming headlines told
us that "MEN GO BACK TO MILLS," "STEEL STRIKE WANING," "MILLS OPERATING
STRONGER," "MORE MEN GO BACK TO WORK," etc. It became a joke, but the
patient Pittsburgh people couldn't see it. Said Wm. Hard in the
_Metropolitan_ for February, 1920:
"Mr. Foster," I said, "I am going to be perfectly frank with
you. I know your strike's a fizzle of course, but I know
more. I not only take pains to read the telegraphic
dispatches of the news from the managers of the steel mills,
but I keep the clippings. I have the history of your strike
in cold print. Hardly anybody struck anyhow, in most places,
except some foreigners; and then they began at once to go
back in thousands and thousands and new thousands every day
for months. If you claim there were 300,000 strikers, I
don't care. I've counted up the fellows that went back to
work, and I've totalled them up day by day. They're a little
over 4,800,000. So you're pretty far behind."
But despite everything--the suppression of free speech and free
assembly, Cossack terrorism, official tyranny, prostitution of the
courts, attacks from the lying press, and all the rest of it--the steel
workers in the immediate Pittsburgh district (comprising the towns along
the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers from Apollo to Monessen) made a
splendid fight. The very pressure seemed to hold them the better
together. Their ranks were never really broken, the strike being
weakened only by a long, costly wearing-away process. The stampede back
to work, so eagerly striven for by the employers, did not materialize.
In the beginning of the strike the Pittsburgh district was the weakest
point in the battle line; at the end it was one of the very strongest.
* * * * *
The Chicago district struck very well, but it weakened earlier than
others. This was because the employers scored a break-through at Indiana
Harbor and Gary, particularly the latter place, which shattered the
whole line.
Gary, the great western stronghold of the United States Steel
Corporation, was the storm center of the Chicago district at all times.
Hardly had the organization campaign begun in 1918, when the Gary
_Tribune_ bitterly assailed the unions, accusing them of advocating
evasion of the draft, discouragement of liberty bond sales, and general
opposition to the war program. These lies were run in a full page
editorial in English, and repeated in a special eight page supplement
containing sixteen languages, a half page to each. Many thousands of
copies were scattered broadcast. Other attacks in a similar vein
followed. It was a foul blast straight from the maw of the Steel Trust.
Incidentally it created a situation which shows how the steel men
control public opinion.
The new unions immediately boycotted the _Tribune_. Result: the Gary
_Post_, somewhat friendly inclined, doubled its circulation at once. The
_Post_ then became more friendly; whereupon, it is alleged, a leading
banker called the editor to his office and told him that if he did not
take a stand against the unions his credit would be stopped, which would
have meant suspension within the week. That very day the _Post_ joined
the _Tribune's_ campaign of abuse. Apparently the _Post's_ youthful
editor had learned a new wrinkle in journalism.
The Steel Trust did all it could to hold Gary from unionizing; but when
the strike came the walkout was estimated to be 97 per cent. At first
everything went peacefully, but the Steel Corporation was watching for
an opportunity to get its strategic Gary mills into operation. The
occasion presented itself on October 4, when strikers coming from a
meeting fell foul of some homeward bound scabs. Local labor men declare
the resultant scrimmage "did not make as much disturbance as ordinarily
would occur in a saloon when two or three men were fighting." It was a
trivial incident--a matter for the police. Only one man was injured, and
he very slightly. But the inspired press yelled red murder and pictured
the hospitals as full of wounded. The militia were ordered in. The
unions offered to furnish 700 ex-service men to enforce law and order;
but this was rejected. Later the militia were transferred to Indiana
Harbor; on October 6, a provisional regiment of regular troops, under
command of General Leonard Wood, came to Gary from nearby Fort Sheridan,
and martial law was at once proclaimed. The Steel Corporation now had
the situation in hand; and the Gary strike was doomed.
Grave charges were voiced against the misuse made of the Federal troops
in Gary. John Fitzpatrick writes me as follows, basing his statements
upon reliable witnesses:
Now we have military control, the city of Gary being placed
under martial law. The strike leaders and pickets were
arrested by the soldiers and put to work splitting wood and
sweeping the streets. This was most humiliating, because the
camp was across the street from the city hall and in the
most frequented part of the city.
When street-sweeping here did not break their spirits, these
men were taken to the back streets, where they had their
homes and where their own and the neighbor's children
watched them through the windows.
The so-called foreigners have great respect for law and
authority, especially military authority, which plays such a
big part in their native environments. The U. S. Steel
Corporation did not fail to take advantage of this. In the
first place they gave out the impression that the letters
"U. S." in the corporation's name indicated that it was
owned by the U. S. Government, and that the Government
soldiers being in town meant that any one interfering with
the steel company's affairs would be deported or sent to
Fort Leavenworth.
Then a mill superintendent would take a squad of soldiers
and go to the home of a striker. The soldiers would be lined
up in front of the house; the superintendent would go in. He
would tell John that he came to give him his last chance to
return to work, saying that if he refused he would either go
to jail or be deported. Then he would take John to the
window and show him the row of soldiers. John would look at
the wife and kids and make up his mind that his first duty
was to them; that was what the strike was for anyway. So he
would put on his coat and go back to the mills. Then the
superintendent would go to the next house and repeat the
performance.
Such tactics, coupled with spectacular midnight raids to "unearth" the
widely advertised "red" plotters,--conveniently ignored until the
strike,--the suppression of meetings, limitations on picketing, and the
hundred forms of studied intimidation practiced by the soldiery, in a
few weeks broke the backbone of the strike. And while the regular troops
operated so successfully and systematically against the workers in Gary,
the militia did almost as well in Indiana Harbor, where the strike also
cracked.
The great reactionary interests which backed General Wood for the
Republican presidential nomination, including the Steel Trust, are
giving him boundless credit for breaking the steel strike in Gary.
Consequently there are many workers who believe the whole affair was
staged to further his political fortunes. If not, how did it happen that
the militia, who could have handled the situation easily, were sent out
of Gary to make room for his regulars? And why was it that before there
was a sign of trouble General Wood had formed his provisional regiment,
shipped it from Fort Dodge to Fort Sheridan, and made other active
preparations to invade Gary? And then, how did it come that he took
charge of the situation in person, when at best it was only a colonel's
job? In fact, how about the whole wretched business? Was it merely a
political stunt to give General Wood the publicity that came to him for
it?
The collapse at Gary and Indiana Harbor affected adversely South Chicago
and almost the whole Chicago district. Worse still, it weakened the
morale everywhere; and thus undermined, the strike rapidly
disintegrated. By the middle of November, district secretary De Young
reported that all the mills in the district, except those in Joliet and
Waukegan, were working crews from 50 to 85 per cent. of normal,
although, due to green hands and demoralized working forces, production
averaged considerably lower. And the situation gradually grew worse.
Joliet and Waukegan, however, held fast to the end, making a fight
comparable with that of the men in Peoria and Hammond, who had gone out
several weeks before September 22. It was at the latter place that
police and company guards brutally shot down and killed four strikers on
September 9.
* * * * *
In the immediate Youngstown district the strike was highly effective,
hardly a ton of steel being produced anywhere for several weeks. This
was due largely to the walkout of the railroad men employed in the mill
yards, who acted on their own volition. Many of these belonged to the
Brotherhoods, and others to the Switchmen's Union, while some were
unorganized; but all struck together. Then they held joint mass
meetings, got an agreement from the A. F. of L. unions that they would
be protected and represented in any settlement made, and stuck loyally
to the finish. They were a strong mainstay of the strike.
The weakening of the strike began about November 15. In a number of
plants, notably those of the Trumbull Steel Company and the Sharon Steel
Hoop Company, the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers
had agreements covering the skilled steel making trades, but when the
laborers struck these skilled men had to quit also. The break in the
district came when the Amalgamated Association virtually forced the
laborers back to work in these shops in order to get them in operation.
This action its officials justified by the following clause in their
agreements:
It was agreed that when a scale or scales are signed in
general or local conferences, said scales or contracts shall
be considered inviolate for that scale year, and should the
employees of any departments (who do not come under the
above named scales or contracts) become members of the
Amalgamated Association during the said scale year, the
Amalgamated Association may present a scale of wages
covering said employees, but in case men and management
cannot come to an agreement on said scale, same shall be
held over until the next general or local conference, and
all men shall continue work until the expiration of the
scale year.
Relying upon their rights under this clause, the companies naturally
refused to give the laborers any consideration whatever until the end of
the scale year. This meant that the latter were told to work and wait
until the following June, when their grievances would be taken up. The
result was disastrous; the laborers generally lost faith in the
Amalgamated Association, feeling that they had been sacrificed for the
skilled workers. They began to flock back to work in all the plants.
Then men in other trades took the position that it was foolish for them
to fight on, seeing that the Amalgamated Association was forcing its men
back into the mills. A general movement millward set in. By December 10
the strike was in bad shape. In passing it may be noted that in
Pittsburgh and other places where it had contracts, the Amalgamated
Association took the same action, with the same general results,
although not so extensive and harmful as in the Youngstown district. In
Cleveland the charters were taken from local unions that refused to
abide by this clause.
The other trades affiliated with the National Committee protested
against the enforcement of the clause. They declared it to be invalid,
because it violated trade-union principles and fundamental human
rights. Seeing that no consideration was given the laborers under the
agreement, their right to strike should have been preserved inviolate.
It verged upon peonage to tie them up with an agreement that gave them
no protection yet deprived them of the right to defend themselves. These
trades freely predicted that to enforce the clause would break the
strike in the Youngstown district, as it was altogether out of the
question to ask men who had been on strike two months (especially men
inexperienced in unionism) to resume work upon such conditions. But all
arguments were vain; the Amalgamated Association officials were as
adamant. They held their agreements with the employers to be sacred and
to rank above any covenants they had entered into with the co-operating
trades. They would enforce them to the letter--the interests of the
laborers, the mechanical trades, and even the strike itself, to the
contrary notwithstanding. Being a federated body, the National Committee
had to bow to this decision and stand by, helpless, while its effects
worked havoc with the strike.
Into Youngstown, in common with all the other districts, armies of scabs
were poured. It was the policy of the United States Steel Corporation to
operate, or at least to pretend to operate its mills, regardless of
cost. So all the "independents" had to do likewise. Word came to the
National Committee of several companies which, rather than try to run
with the high-priced, worthless strike-breakers, would have been glad
either to settle with the unions or to close their plants. But they were
afraid to do either; Gary had said "Operate," and it was a case of do
that or risk going out of business.
The demand for scabs was tremendous. Probably half the strike-breaking
agencies in the country were engaged in recruiting them. Thousands of
negroes were brought from the South, and thousands of guttersnipe whites
from the big northern cities. But worst of all were the skilled steel
workers from outlying sections. There were many of such men who went on
strike in their own home towns, sneaked away to other steel centres and
worked there until the strike was over. Then they would return to their
old jobs with cock-and-bull stories (for the workers only) of having
worked in other industries, thus seeking to escape the dreaded odium of
being known as scabs. These contemptible cowards, being competent
workers, wrought incalculable injury to the strike everywhere,
especially in the Youngstown district.
The Youngstown authorities, to begin with, were reasonably fair towards
the strikers; but as the strike wore on and the steel companies and
business men became desperate at the determined resistance of the
workers, they began to apply "Pennsylvania tactics." In Youngstown and
East Youngstown, Mayors Craver and McVey prohibited meetings, "the
object of which is discussion of matters pertaining to prolonging the
strike."[14] On November 22, district secretary McCadden, and organizers
John Klinsky and Frank Kurowsky were arrested in East Youngstown,
charged with criminal syndicalism and held for $3,000 bonds each. Later
a whole local union, No. 104 Amalgamated Association, was arrested in
the same town for holding a business meeting. "Citizens' committees"
were formed, and open threats made to tar and feather all the organizers
and drive them out of town. But the steel companies were unable to
inflame public opinion sufficiently for them to venture this outrage.
Afterward the organizers were discharged; and in releasing the men
arrested for holding a business meeting, Judge David G. Jenkins said:
I regard the ordinance (E. Youngstown anti-free assembly) as
a form of hysteria which has been sweeping the country,
whereby well-meaning people, in the guise of patriots, have
sought to preserve America even though going to the extent
of denying the fundamental principles upon which Americanism
is based, and free assemblage is one of those fundamentals.
In the principal outlying towns of the Youngstown district, namely
Butler, Farrell, Sharon, Newcastle and Canton, the strikers were given
the worst of it. The first four being Pennsylvania towns, no specific
description of them is necessary. Suffice it to say that typical Cossack
conditions prevailed. In Canton it was not much better. The companies
turned loose many vicious gunmen on the strikers. The mayor was removed
from office and his place given to a company man; and a sweeping
injunction was issued against the strikers, denying them many
fundamental rights.[15] The district, nevertheless, held remarkably
well.
Cleveland from the first to the last was one of the strong points in
the battle line. On September 22 the men struck almost 100 per cent. in
all the big plants, and until the very end preserved a wonderful
solidarity. Under the excellent control of the organizers working with
Secretary Raisse there was at no time a serious break in the ranks, and
when the strike was called off on January 8, at least 50 per cent. of
the men were still out, with production not over 30 per cent. of normal.
Thousands of the men refused to go back to the mills at all, leaving
them badly crippled.
The backbone of the Cleveland strike was the enormous mills of the
American Steel and Wire Co. This calls attention to the fact that, as a
whole, the employees of this subsidiary of the U. S. Steel Corporation
made incomparably a better fight than did the workers in any other
considerable branch of the steel industry. Long after the strike had
been cracked in all other sections of the industry, the rod and wire
mill men of Cleveland, Donora, Braddock, Rankin, Joliet and Waukegan
stood practically solid. Even as late as December 27, only twelve days
before the end, the companies were forced to the expedient of assembling
a rump meeting in Cleveland of delegates from many centres, for the
purpose of calling off the strike. But the men voted unanimously for
continuation under the leadership of the National Committee. When the
strike was finally ended, however, they accepted the decision with good
grace, because they were penetrated with the general strike idea and
realized the folly of trying alone to whip the united steel companies.
The remarkable fight of the rod and wire mill men was due in large
measure to the peculiar circumstances surrounding their organization.
These are highly important and require explanation: The regular system
used by the National Committee resulted usually in organization from the
bottom upward; that is, in response to the general appeals made to the
men in the great mass meetings, ordinarily the first to join the unions
were the unskilled, who are the workers with the least to lose, the most
to gain, and consequently those most likely to take a chance. Gradually,
as the confidence of the men developed, the movement would extend on up
through the plants until it included the highest skilled men. Given time
and a reasonable opportunity, it was an infallible system. It was far
superior to the old trade-union plan of working solely from the top
down, because the latter always stopped before it got to the main body
of the men, the unskilled workers.