STRUGGLE AND LOSE: STRUGGLE AND WIN
The steel strike was over. That is, the men were forced back to work.
Only in bible stories can David conquer the giant Goliath. But the
strike in the steel workers’ hearts is not over. Back to the forges,
to the great caldrons, to the ovens, to the flame and the smoke go
the “hands.” But their hearts and their minds are outside the high
fences--fences that shut in the worker and shut out justice.
The strike is not over. Injustice boils in men’s hearts as does steel
in its caldron, ready to pour, white hot, in the fullness of time.
Meanwhile in Kansas, legislators, subservient to the money powers, were
busy making laws. They wanted the workers to be life serfs of the old
days, attached to their job, and penalized when they left or struck.
Governor Allen signed the bill of slavery. The law was called by a
fancy name and given a fair face. It forbade the workers striking. It
made striking a punishable offense.
A coal strike was coming on. Governor Allen said Kansas should have
coal even if the workers did not have justice. Coal was more important
than those who dug it. The coal operators said so too.
Throughout Kansas, striking for better conditions, more adequate wages
to meet the high cost of living that the war had brought about, for
anything in fact, was forbidden, and he who called a strike must go to
jail.
President Howat of one of the districts of the United Mine Workers sent
for me to come arouse the workers to a sense of their slavery. I went
about speaking on the Industrial Slave Law, explaining to the workers
just what it meant to them to have the right to strike taken from them
by law.
President Howat was indicted and sentenced to jail for calling a
strike, a strike voted for by the rank and file. Because he resisted
the law he was called a rebel.
In the early part of 1922, the United Mine Workers held their
convention. I attended. Questions of wages and agreements were
discussed. The operators in the central bituminous coal fields and the
union officials had been enjoined from making an agreement with one
another by Judge Anderson. Miners dig up coal for the money kings and
judges dig up decisions and injunctions. But the judges get better
wages.
The question of whether the strike for April 1st, unless the operators
signed agreements, should be called by the Convention or left to a
vote of the rank and file, was before the assembly.
Howat and his friends wanted the Convention to set a strike date
immediately--April first. The conservatives, led by president Lewis,
wanted the body of miners themselves to vote on the issue.
Everyone was howling and bellowing and jumping on his feet and yelling
to speak. They sounded like a lot of lunatics instead of sane men with
the destiny of thousands of workers in their hands.
Although I sympathized with Howat, I felt that the National President
should be obeyed. I rose and pushed my way to the platform. I stood
there waiting for the men to become quiet. They did so. It was very
still. I said:
“Boys stop howling like a lot of fiends and get down like men and do
business: You are wasting time here; wasting time that ought to go to
your families and babies. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Quit
this noise!”
Some one called “Speech!”
“This is not the time for me to speak,” I said. “It is time for you to
act. Trust your president. If he fails we can go out and I will be with
you and raise Hell all over the nation!”
After that the Convention got down to business and voted to leave the
matter of striking to those who had to do the sacrificing: the rank and
file.
The operators refused to meet the miners, broke their sworn agreement
that they would do so. There was nothing to do but strike. The rank and
file voted it.
In Kansas, against the law, the miners nevertheless went out. Governor
Allen ordered them back, just as the slaves of old used to be ordered
back into the cotton fields. Again they refused. Refused to desert
their brothers and produce scab coal. The Governor called upon the soft
collar fellows, the rah-rah boys from the colleges, the drug clerks and
undertakers, the ex-soldiers and sailors who were out of work, waiting
for their bonuses,--and these mined the coal. A lark it was for them.
A day’s picnic. They could afford to take the job with light heart
and no conscience for it was but a brief job ... not a lifetime to be
spent under the ground. They would not pass on their shovel and lamp to
their sons, so it was no matter to them that they left the job a little
better for those who were to follow.
The government, under Hoover, opened up scores of scab mines. Non-union
coal was dumped on the market. The miners believed that the Federal
Government was against them. They set about organizing the non-union
fields. I went here and there. I went to West Virginia. Thousands of
dollars had been spent in that field. I went among the women in the
tent colonies on the hills.
The story of coal is always the same. It is a dark story. For a
second’s more sunlight, men must fight like tigers. For the privilege
of seeing the color of their children’s eyes by the light of the
sun, fathers must fight as beasts in the jungle. That life may have
something of decency, something of beauty--a picture, a new dress, a
bit of cheap lace fluttering in the window--for this, men who work down
in the mines must struggle and lose, struggle and win.