from the steel plants, but in freights from general mills
and factories which, failing to get their steel supplies,
could not maintain their production and fulfill their own
deliveries. There was the loss in wages in such mills and
factories due to that failure to get their material on which
their wage-earners could work. There was the loss in such
communities to trade folk whose customers thus had their
spending power reduced by the steel strike.--Hence this loss
of steel tonnage begins at once to widen until the loss
eventually could be figured in the billions.
For the privilege of having an autocracy in the steel industry the
American people pay not only huge costs in unearned dividends each year,
but also, occasionally, such monster special charges as the above.
Garyism is an expensive luxury.
The foregoing figures and statements merely serve to point out the
immensity of the steel strike by indicating its approximate cost to the
strikers, the steel companies, and the public. Admittedly they are but
loose estimates, based upon scanty data. Absolute accuracy is not
claimed for them. The expenditures of the labor movement in the campaign
can be more closely calculated, although they, too, are far from
definite. They fall into three general classes: (1) those by the general
office of the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers;
(2) those by the A. F. of L. and co-operating international steel trades
unions not through the office of the National Committee; (3) those by
local steel workers' councils and unions from their own treasuries. Of
these the latter may be eliminated as impossible of estimation, there
being so many local organizations involved and the after-strike
conditions so unfavorable to statistics gathering. They were a minor
element of expense compared to the other two, which we will try to
approximate as closely as may be.
1. From the beginning of the steel campaign, August 1, 1918, until
January 31, 1920, the total net disbursements of the National Committee
for all purposes, after making deductions for refunds, transfers, etc.,
amounted to $525,702.72. This stretch of time may be divided into two
parts: (a), Organizing period, from August 1, 1918, until September 22,
1919--during which time virtually all the 250,000 men enrolled in the
campaign (see end of Chapter VII) had joined the unions; (b), Strike
period, from September 22, 1919, until January 31, 1920--during which
time the heavy special strike expenses were incurred. This period is
extended three weeks past the date of the strike's close, because the
commissariat was still in operation and other important strike expenses
were going on.
The total net disbursements made by the National Committee during the
organizing period were $73,139.66, which amounts to a small fraction
over 29 cents for each of the 250,000 men organized. The total net
disbursements of the National Committee during the strike period were
$452,563.06, or $1.81 for each of the 250,000 average strikers. Adding
these two figures together gives $2.10 as the cost to the National
Committee of organizing each steel worker and taking care of him during
the whole strike.
2. The disbursements of the National Committee covered general
organizing and strike expenses, such as commissary, legal, rent,
printing, salaries, etc. The A. F. of L. and the co-operating
international unions also incurred heavy expenses upon their own
account, whose chief items were for keeping organizers in the field,
paying strike benefits, and making lump donations to strike-bound local
unions. At this date these expenditures may be only approximated.
For the above bodies almost the sole expense during the organizing
period was for maintaining organizers. Forty would be a fair average of
the number of these men actually kept at the steel industry work. In the
earlier part of the campaign the number was far less; in the later part,
considerably more. The cost of maintaining them per month may be set at
not more than $400.00 each, for salaries and general expenses. Thus, for
the 13-3/4 months of the organizing period the expense to the A. F. of
L. and co-operating unions for this item would be about $220,000, or 88
cents per man organized. This is a top figure.
During the strike period, on an average, 75 organizers were kept in the
field by these bodies. Due to increases in wages, etc., their upkeep
should be calculated at about $500.00 per month each. For 4-1/4 months,
September 22 to January 31, our strike period, this would amount to
$159,375. To this should be added $100,000, which according to reports
received approximates what the organizations paid in strike benefits and
donations direct to their strikers and not through the office of the
National Committee. This would make their total expenditures for the
strike period $259,375, or slightly less than $1.04 per striker. Adding
together the amounts for the organizing period and the strike period, we
arrive at a grand total of $479,375, or $1.92 per man, spent during the
entire campaign by the A. F. of L. and co-operating internationals.
The figures for the A. F. of L. and co-operating internationals are
estimates,--the constant shifting of organizers during the campaign,
their widely varying rates of pay, etc., making accuracy impossible. But
from my knowledge of what went on I will venture that the figures cited
are close enough to the reality to give a fair conception of this class
of expenditures.
Combining the National Committee expenditures with those of the A. F. of
L. and co-operating unions, we arrive at the following totals:
ORGANIZING PERIOD:
_Expenditures_ _Per Man_
By Nat. Com. $ 73,139.66 $.29
By A. F. L. & Unions 220,000.00 .88
------------------------- -------------
Total cost of organizing work $293,139.66 $1.17
STRIKE PERIOD:
By Nat. Com. $452,563.06 $1.81
By A. F. L. & Unions 259,375.00 1.04
------------------------- ------------
Total cost of strike $711,938.06 $2.85
WHOLE CAMPAIGN:
Total cost to Nat. Com., ------------------------- ------------
A. F. L. & Unions $1,005,007.72 $4.02
In order to approximate more closely the actual cost of the campaign to
the A. F. of L. and the twenty-four co-operating internationals forming
the National Committee, the total of $479,375, figured in a previous
paragraph as their independent expenditures, must be increased by
$101,047.52, the amount they contributed directly to the National
Committee for organizing and for strike expenses during the course of
the campaign;[28] making a grand total outlay for them of $580,422.52.
This in turn should be reduced by $118,451.23, the amount in the
National Committee treasury on January 31, 1920. Against the remaining
$461,971.29 must be checked off what the steel workers paid into these
organizations in initiation fees and dues.
Inasmuch as the co-operating internationals received directly $1.00 to
$2.00 (mostly the latter) from the initiation fees of the approximately
250,000 steel workers signed up during the campaign, not to speak of
thousands of dollars in per capita tax from armies of dues payers over a
period of many months, it is safe to say that their net outlay of
$461,971.29 would be nearly if not altogether offset by their income. It
is true that some of the organizations, like the Miners and the A. F. of
L. itself made large expenditures, with little return; and that others,
like the Structural Iron Workers, broke about even; while the
Amalgamated Association put a huge sum in its treasury. All things
considered, taking the twenty-four organizations as a whole, one is not
much wrong in saying that so far as their national treasuries were
concerned, the great movement of the steel workers, including the
organizing campaign and the strike, was, financially speaking, just
about self-sustaining.
Was the steel strike, then, worth the great suffering and expenditure of
effort that it cost the steel workers? I say yes; even though it failed
to accomplish the immediate objects it had in view. No strike is ever
wholly lost. Even the least effective of them serve the most useful
purpose of checking the employers' exploitation. They are a protection
to the workers' standards of life. Better by far a losing fight than
none at all. An unresisting working class would soon find itself on a
rice diet. But the steel strike has done more than serve merely as a
warning that the limit of exploitation has been reached; it has given
the steel workers a confidence in their ability to organize and to fight
effectively, which will eventually inspire them on to victory. This
precious result alone is well worth all the hardships the strike cost
them.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] Exceptions to this were the cases of the Molders' and Coopers'
Unions. These organizations were compelled by constitutional
requirements to pay regular strike benefits. But they included only a
very small percentage of the total number of strikers.
[24] The commissariat was suggested by John Fitzpatrick, as a result of
his experiences in the Chicago Garment Workers' strike of a decade ago.
[25] In addition to the regular commissaries, the local organizations,
grace to their own funds or occasional donations from their
international unions, had relief enterprises of various sorts, such as
soup kitchens, milk, clothes, rent and sickness funds. In Monessen and
Donora the strikers actually served a big turkey dinner on Thanksgiving
Day. Strikers paid five cents a plate for all they wished to eat.
Sympathizers donated liberally according to their means. But the
commissary system was the main source of strike relief.
[26] It is true, as noted above, that several other unions besides the
Molders and Coopers made occasional contributions to their strike-bound
locals, but when measured against the vast armies of strikers, these
funds dwindled almost into insignificance.
[27] This was largely because the men were sober. In fact, prohibition
helped the steel campaign in several important respects; (1) because
having no saloons to drown their troubles in, the workers, clear-headed,
attended the union meetings and organized more readily; (2) when the
strike came they did not waste their few pennies on liquor and then run
back to work in the old way; they bought food with them and stayed on
strike; (3) being sober, they were the better able to avoid useless
violence and to conduct their strike effectively.
[28] This sum represents the actual cash given by these affiliated
organizations directly to the National Committee throughout the entire
movement. It divides itself as follows:
Blacksmiths $ 6,273.28
Boilermakers 10,448.92
Bricklayers 4,199.05
P. & S. Iron Workers 7,335.78
Coopers 907.76
Electrical Workers 6,138.80
Engineers 100.00
Firemen 2,395.53
Foundry Employees 1,030.51
Hod Carriers 1,350.00
Iron, Steel and Tin Workers 11,881.81
Machinists 16,622.33
Mine, Mill, Smelter Workers 3,583.53
Mine Workers 2,600.00
Molders 4,199.05
Pattern Makers 615.52
Plumbers 2,581.04
Quarry Workers 412.50
Railway Carmen 10,448.30
Seamen 3,081.04
Switchmen 4,115.52
Sheet Metal Workers 100.00
Steam Shovelmen 627.25
-----------
Total $101,047.52
XIII
PAST MISTAKES AND FUTURE PROBLEMS
LABOR'S LACK OF CONFIDENCE--INADEQUATE EFFORTS--NEED OF
ALLIANCE WITH MINERS AND RAILROADERS--RADICAL LEADERSHIP AS
A STRIKE ISSUE--MANUFACTURING REVOLUTIONS--STRIKES:
RAILROAD SHOPMEN, BOSTON POLICE, MINERS, RAILROAD YARD AND
ROAD MEN--DEFECTION OF AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION
In preceding chapters I have said much about the injustices visited upon
the steel workers by the steel companies and their minions; the mayors,
burgesses, police magistrates, gunmen, State Police, Senate Committees,
etc. But let there be no mistake. I do not blame the failure of the
strike upon these factors. I put the responsibility upon the shoulders
of Organized Labor. Had it but stirred a little the steel workers would
have won their battle, despite all the Steel Trust could do to prevent
it.
By this I mean no harsh criticism. On the contrary, I am the first to
assert that the effort put forth in the steel campaign was wonderful,
far surpassing anything ever done in the industry before, and marking a
tremendous advance in trade-union tactics. Yet it was not enough, and it
represented only a fraction of the power the unions should and could
have thrown into the fight. The organization of the steel industry
should have been a special order of business for the whole labor
movement. But unfortunately it was not. The big men of Labor could not
be sufficiently awakened to its supreme importance to induce them to sit
determinedly into the National Committee meetings and to give the
movement the abundant moral and financial backing so essential to its
success. Official pessimism, bred of thirty years of trade-union failure
in the steel industry, hung like a mill-stone about the neck of the
movement in all its stages.
At the very outset this pessimism and lack of faith dealt the movement a
fatal blow. When the unions failed to follow the original plan of the
campaign (outlined in Chapter III) to throw a large crew of organizers
into the field at the beginning and thus force a settlement with the
steel companies during war time, as they could easily have done, they
made a monumental blunder, one for which Organized Labor will pay
dearly. Notwithstanding all their best efforts in the long, bitter
organizing campaign and the great strike, the organizers could not
overcome its effects. It was a lost opportunity that unquestionably cost
the unionization of the steel industry.
And the same pessimism which caused this original deadly mistake made
itself felt all through the steel campaign, by so restricting the
resources furnished the National Committee as to practically kill all
chance of success. Probably no big modern trade-union organizing
campaign and strike has been conducted upon such slender means.
Considering the great number of men involved, the viciousness of the
opposition and the long duration of the movement (18 months), the
figure cited in the previous chapter as covering the general expenses,
$1,005,007.72, is unusually low. It amounts to but $4.02 per man, or
hardly a half week's strike benefits for each. Compared to the sums
spent in other industrial struggles, it is proportionally insignificant.
For example, in the great coal miners' strike in Colorado, begun
September 23, 1913, and ended December 10, 1914, the United Mine Workers
are authoritatively stated to have spent about $5,000,000.00 As there
were on an average about 12,000 strikers, this would make the cost
somewhere about $400.00 per man involved. And in those days a dollar was
worth twice as much as during the steel strike. Had a fraction of such
amounts been available to the steel workers they would have made
incomparably a better fight.
The unions affiliated with the National Committee have at least two
million members. Even if they had spent outright the total sum required
to carry on the organizing campaign and strike it would not have
strained them appreciably. But they did not spend it, nor any
considerable part of it. In the previous chapter we have seen that with
donations from the labor movement at large, and initiation fees and dues
paid in by the steel workers, the movement was virtually self-sustaining
as far as the co-operating unions were concerned--taking them as a
whole. Now, in the next campaign, all that must be different. The unions
will have to put some real money in the fight. Then they may win it.
When I say that there was a shortage of resources in the steel campaign
I include particularly organizers from the respective international
unions. Of these there were not half enough. Often the National
Committee had to beg for weeks to have a man sent in to organize a local
union, the members for which it had already enrolled. Hundreds of local
unions suffered and many a one perished outright for want of attention.
Whole districts had to be neglected, with serious consequences when the
strike came.
Moreover, the system used by many internationals in handling their
organizers was wrong. They controlled them from their several general
headquarters, shifting them around or pulling them out of the work
without regard to the needs of the campaign as a whole. This tended to
create a loose, disjointed, undisciplined, inefficient organizing force.
It was indefensible. Now, in the next drive there are two systems which
might be used. (1) The international unions could definitely delegate a
certain number of organizers to the campaign and put them entirely under
the direction of the National Committee. This was the plan followed by
the A. F. of L., the Miners, and the Railway Carmen. It worked well and
tended to produce a homogeneous, well-knit, controllable, efficient
organizing force. (2) The organizers definitely assigned to the steel
campaign by the internationals could be formed into crews, each crew to
be controlled by one man and charged with looking after the needs of its
particular trade. The Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, Machinists, and
Electrical Workers used this system to some extent. A series of such
crews, working vertically along craft lines while the National
Committee men worked horizontally along industrial lines, would greatly
strengthen the general movement. When the strike came it would not only
be an industrial strike but twenty-four intensified craft strikes as
well. Of the two systems, the first is probably the better, and the
second, because of the individualism of the unions, the more practical.
Either of them is miles superior to the plan of controlling the field
organizers from a score of headquarters knowing very little of the real
needs of the situation.
But more than men and money, the steel workers in their great fight
lacked practical solidarity from closely related trades. In their
semi-organized condition they were unable to withstand alone the
terrific power of the Steel Trust, backed by the mighty capitalistic
organizations which rushed to its aid. They needed from their organized
fellow workers help in the same liberal measure as Mr. Gary received
from those on his side. And help adequate to the task could have come
only by extending the strike beyond the confines of the steel industry
proper.
When the steel unions end their present educational campaign and launch
the next big drive to organize the steel workers (which should be in a
year or two) they ought to be prepared to meet the formidable employer
combinations sure to be arrayed against them by opposing to them still
more formidable labor combinations. The twenty-four unions should by
then be so allied with the miners' and railroad men's organizations that
should it come to a strike these two powerful groups of unions would
rally to their aid and paralyse the steel industry completely by
depriving it of those essentials without which it cannot operate, fuel
and rail transportation. How effective such assistance would be was well
indicated by the speedy and wholesale shutting down of steel mills,
first during the general strike of bituminous miners in November and
December of 1919, and then during the "outlaw" railroad strike in April,
1920. With such a combination of allied steel, mine and railroad workers
confronting them, there is small likelihood that the steel companies (or
the public at large) would consider the question of the steel workers'
right to organize of sufficient importance to fight about. Mr. Gary
might then be brought to a realization that this is not Czarist Russia,
and that the men in his mills must be granted their human rights.
That the miners and railroaders have sufficient interests at stake to
justify their entrance into such a combination no union man of heart
will attempt to deny. Not to speak of the general duty of all unionists
to extend help to brothers in trouble, the above-mentioned groups have
the most powerful reasons of their own to work for the organization of
the steel industry. The United States Steel Corporation and so-called
"independent" steel mills are the stronghold of industrial autocracy in
America. Every union in the labor movement directly suffers their evil
effects in lower wages, longer hours and more difficult struggles for
the right to organize than they otherwise would have. No union will be
safe until these mills are under the banner of Organized Labor. Beyond
question the organization of the steel workers would tremendously
benefit the miners and railroaders. The latter cannot possibly do too
much to assist in bringing it about. It is their own fight.
For the miners and railroad men to join forces with the steel workers
would mean no new departure in trade-unionism. It would be merely
proceeding in harmony with the natural evolution constantly taking place
in the labor movement. For instance, to go no further than the two
industries in question, it is only a few years since the miners
negotiated agreements and struck, district by district. Even though one
section walked out, the rest would remain at work. And as for the
railroaders, they followed a similar plan upon the basis of one craft or
one system. Each unit of the two industries felt itself to be virtually
a thing apart from all the others when it came to common action against
the employers. It was the heyday of particularism, of craft unionism
complete. And anyone who did not think the system represented the acme
of trade-union methods was considered a crank. But both groups of
organizations are fast getting away from such infantile practices. We
now find the miners striking all over the country simultaneously, and
the railroad men rigging up such wide-spreading combinations among
themselves that soon a grievance of a section hand in San Diego,
California will be the grievance of an engineer in Bangor, Maine. The
man who would advocate a return to the old method of each for himself
and the devil take the hindmost would be looked upon today, to say the
least, with grave suspicion.
During the recent steel strike the National Committee tried to arrange a
joint meeting with the officials of the miners and railroad brotherhoods
to see if some assistance, moral if nothing else, could be secured for
the steel workers. But nothing came of it. In the next big drive,
however, these powerful organizations should be allied with the steel
workers and prepared to give them active assistance if necessary. And in
the tuning and timing of movements to permit of such a condition, so
that no lots, legal or contractual, need be cut across, there are
involved no technical problems which a little initiative and
far-sightedness on the part of the labor men in control could not
readily overcome.
In order to cover up their own inveterate opposition to Organized Labor
in all its forms and activities, and to blind the workers to the real
cause of the defeat, namely lack of sufficient power on the employees'
side, great employing interests caused to be spread over the whole
country the statement that the steel strike failed because of radical
leadership, and that if such "dangerous" men as John Fitzpatrick and
myself had not been connected with it everything would have been lovely.
They were especially severe against me for my "evil" influence on the
strike. But somehow their propaganda did not seem to strike root among
labor men, especially those who were backing the steel campaign. The
workers are getting too keen these days to let the enemy tell them who
shall or shall not be their officials; and when they see one of these
officials made the target of bitter attack from such notorious interests
as the Steel Trust they are much inclined to feel that he is probably
giving them a square deal.
As for myself, and I know John Fitzpatrick took the same position
regarding himself, I was willing to resign my position on the National
Committee the very instant it was indicated by those associated with me
that my presence was injuring the movement. I felt that to be my duty.
But to the last, that indication never came. When I finally resigned as
Secretary-Treasurer on January 31, it was entirely of my own volition.