The Great Steel Strike and its Lessons
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Title: The Great Steel Strike and its Lessons
Author: William Z. Foster
Release date: May 5, 2011 [eBook #36032]
Language: English
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THE
GREAT STEEL STRIKE
AND ITS LESSONS
by
WILLIAM Z. FOSTER
THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE AND ITS LESSONS
[Illustration: PENNSYLVANIA LAW AND ORDER State Police driving peaceful
citizens out of business places, Clairton, Pa. _Photo by
International_]
THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE AND ITS LESSONS
BY
WILLIAM Z. FOSTER
INTRODUCTION BY
JOHN A. FITCH
NEW YORK
B. W. HUEBSCH, INC.
MCMXX
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY B. W. HUEBSCH, INC.
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
INTRODUCTION
Half a million men are employed in the steel industry of the United
States. At a period in which eight hours is rapidly coming to be
accepted as the standard length of the working day, the principal mills
in this industry are operating on a 12-hour work schedule, and many of
their workmen are employed seven days in every week. These half million
men have, for the most part, no opportunity to discuss with their
employers the conditions of their work. Not only are they denied the
right of bargaining collectively over the terms of the labor contract,
but if grievances arise in the course of their employment they have no
right in any effective manner to take up the matter with their employer
and secure an equitable adjustment.[1] The right even of petition has
been at times denied and, because of the organized strength of the steel
companies and the disorganized weakness of the employees, could be
denied at any time.
The right of workers in this country to organize and to bargain
collectively is unquestioned. On every hand the workers are exercising
this right in order to protect and advance their interests. In the steel
mills not only is the right generally denied but the attempt to exercise
it is punished by expulsion from the industry. Through a system of
espionage that is thoroughgoing and effective the steel companies know
which of their employees are attending union meetings, which of them are
talking with organizers. It is their practice to discharge such men and
thus they nip in the bud any ordinary movement toward organization.
Their power to prevent their employees from acting independently and in
their own interest, extends even to the communities in which they live.
In towns where the mayor's chair is occupied by company officials or
their relatives--as was the case during the 1919 strike in Bethlehem,
Duquesne, Clairton and elsewhere--orders may be issued denying to the
workers the right to hold meetings for organizing purposes, or the
police may be instructed to break them up. Elsewhere--as in Homestead,
McKeesport, Monessen, Rankin and in Pittsburgh itself--the economic
strength of the companies is so great as to secure the willing
cooperation of officials or to compel owners of halls and vacant lots to
refuse the use of their property for the holding of union meetings.
One who has not seen with his own eyes the evidences of steel company
control in the towns where their plants are located will have difficulty
in comprehending its scope and power. Social and religious organizations
are profoundly affected by it. In many a church during the recent
strike, ministers and priests denounced the "agitators" and urged the
workmen in their congregations to go back to the mills. Small business
men accepted deputy sheriffs' commissions, put revolvers in their belts
and talked loudly about the merits of a firing squad as a remedy for
industrial unrest.
For twenty or more years in the mill towns along the Monongahela--since
1892 in Homestead--the working men have lived in an atmosphere of
espionage and repression. The deadening influence of an overwhelming
power, capable of crushing whatever does not bend to its will, has in
these towns stifled individual initiative and robbed citizenship of its
virility.
The story of the most extensive and most courageous fight yet made to
break this power and to set free the half million men of the steel mills
is told within the pages of this book by one who was himself a leader in
the fight. It is a story that is worth the telling, for it has been told
before only in fragmentary bits and without the authority that comes
from the pen of one of the chief actors in the struggle.
Mr. Foster has performed a public service in setting down as he has the
essential facts attendant upon the calling of the strike. The record of
correspondence with Judge Gary and with President Wilson indicates
clearly enough where responsibility for its occurrence lies. It answers
the question also of who it was that flouted the President--the strike
committee that refused to enter into a one sided truce, or Judge Gary,
who would not accept Mr. Wilson's suggestion that he confer with a union
committee, but who was willing to take advantage of the proposed truce
to undermine and destroy the union.
This thoughtful history, remarkably dispassionate upon the whole,
considering the fact that the author was not only an actor in the events
he describes but the storm center of a countrywide campaign of
slanderous falsehood, is an effective answer to those whose method of
opposing the strike was to shout "Bolshevism" and "Revolution." Not thus
are fomenters of revolution accustomed to write. It is this very quality
which will make the book of great value both to the student and to the
labor organizer. Never before has a leader in a great organizing
campaign like the one preceding the steel strike sat down afterward to
appraise so calmly the causes of defeat. Explanations of failure are
common, usually in the form of "alibis." Mr. Foster has been willing to
look the facts steadily in the face and his analysis of the causes of
the loss of the strike--laying the responsibility for it at the doors of
the unions themselves--cannot fail to be helpful to every union leader,
no matter what industry his union may represent. On the other hand his
account of such a feat as the maintenance of a commissary adequate to
meet the needs of the strikers at a cost of $1.40 per man is suggestive
and encouraging to the highest degree. This achievement must stand as a
monument to the integrity and practical ability of the men who conducted
the strike.
It is with no purpose of underwriting every statement of fact or of
making his own every theory advanced in the book that the writer
expresses his confidence in it. It is because the book as a whole is so
well done and because the essential message that it conveys is so true,
that it is a pleasure to write these words of introduction. Other books
have been written about the steel industry. Some have concerned
themselves with metallurgy, others with the commercial aspects of steel
manufacture, and still others with certain phases of the labor problem.
This book is different from all the others. It sets forth as no other
book has, and as no other writer could, the need of the workers in this
great basic industry for organization, and the extreme difficulty of
achieving this essential right. It shows also in the sanity, good
temper, and straightforward speech of the author what sort of leadership
it is that the steel companies have decreed their workers shall not
have!
JOHN A. FITCH.
_New York, June 4, 1920._
FOOTNOTE:
[1] See for example Judge Gary's testimony before the Senate Committee
investigating the steel strike--October 1, 1919, pp. 161-162, of
committee hearings. He told of a strike which occurred because a
grievance remained unadjusted after a committee of the workers had tried
to take it up with the management. The president of the company involved
was for crushing the strike without knowing what the grievance was or
even of the existence of the committee.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION v
CHAPTER
I. THE PRESENT SITUATION 1
The strike--"Victory" of the employers--Industrial
democracy abroad, industrial serfdom at home--What
the workers won--The outlook.
II. A GENERATION OF DEFEAT 8
The urge for mastery--Democratic resistance--The
Homestead strike--The strikes of 1901 and 1909--
The Steel Trust victorious.
III. THE GIANT LABOR AWAKES 16
A bleak prospect--Hope springs eternal--A golden
chance--Disastrous delay--The new plan--A lost
opportunity--The campaign begins--Gary fights
back.
IV. FLANK ATTACKS 28
A sea of troubles--The policy of encirclement--Taking
the outposts--Organizing methods--Financial systems--
The question of morale--Johnstown.
V. BREAKING INTO PITTSBURGH 50
The flying squadron--Monessen--Donora--McKeesport--
Rankin--Braddock--Clairton--Homestead--Duquesne--The
results.
VI. STORM CLOUDS GATHER 68
Relief demanded--The Amalgamated Association moves--A
general movement--The conference committee--Gompers'
letter unanswered--The strike vote--Gary defends steel
autocracy--President Wilson acts in vain--The strike call.
VII. THE STORM BREAKS 96
The Steel Trust Army--Corrupt officialdom--Clairton--
McKeesport--The strike--showing by districts--A
treasonable act--Gary gets his answer.
VIII. GARYISM RAMPANT 110
The White Terror--Constitutional Rights denied--
Unbreakable solidarity--Father Kazincy--The Cossacks
--Scientific barbarity--Prostituted courts--Servants
rewarded.
IX. EFFORTS AT SETTLEMENT 140
The National Industrial Conference--The Senate
committee--The red book--The Margolis case--The
Interchurch World Movement.
X. THE COURSE OF THE STRIKE 162
Pittsburgh district--The railroad men--Corrupt
newspapers--Chicago district--Federal troops at Gary
--Youngstown district--The Amalgamated Association--
Cleveland--The Rod and Wire Mill strike--The Bethlehem
plants--Buffalo and Lackawanna--Wheeling and Steubenville
--Pueblo--Johnstown--Mob rule--The end of the strike.
XI. NATIONAL AND RACIAL ELEMENTS 194
A modern Babel--Americans as skilled workers--Foreigners
as unskilled workers--Language difficulties--The Negro
in the strike--The race problem.
XII. THE COMMISSARIAT--THE STRIKE COST 213
The Relief organization--Rations--System of distribution
--Cost of Commissariat--Steel Strike Relief Fund--Cost of
the strike to the workers, the employers, the public, the
Labor movement.
XIII. PAST MISTAKES AND FUTURE PROBLEMS 234
Labor's lack of confidence--Inadequate efforts--Need of
alliance with miners and railroaders--Radical leadership
as a strike issue--Railroad shopmen, Boston police, miners,
railroad brotherhood strikes--Defection of Amalgamated
Association.
XIV. IN CONCLUSION 255
The point of view--Are trade unions revolutionary?--Camouflage
in social wars--Ruinous dual unionism--Radicals should
strengthen trade unions--The English renaissance--Tom Mann's
work.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Pennsylvania Law and Order _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
National Committee Delegates 38
Strike Ballot 78
Cossacks in Action 122
Mrs. Fannie Sellins, Trade Union Organizer 148
Steel Trust Newspaper Propaganda 188
John Fitzpatrick 216
A Group of Organizers 244
THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE AND ITS LESSONS
THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE AND ITS LESSONS
I
THE PRESENT SITUATION
THE STRIKE--"VICTORY" OF THE EMPLOYERS--INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY
ABROAD, INDUSTRIAL SERFDOM AT HOME--WHAT THE WORKERS
WON--THE OUTLOOK
The great steel strike lasted three months and a half. Begun on
September 22, 1919, by 365,600 men quitting their places in the iron and
steel mills and blast furnaces in fifty cities of ten states, it ended
on January 8, 1920, when the organizations affiliated in the National
Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers voted to permit the
100,000 or more men still on strike to return to work upon the best
terms they could secure.
The steel manufacturers "won" the strike. By forcing an unconditional
surrender, they drove their men back to the old slavery. This they
accomplished in their wonted and time-honored way by carrying on a reign
of terror that outraged every just conception of civil and human rights.
In this unholy task they were aided by a crawling, subservient and
lying press, which spewed forth its poison propaganda in their behalf;
by selfish and indifferent local church movements, which had long since
lost their Christian principles in an ignominious scramble for company
favors; and by hordes of unscrupulous municipal, county, state and
federal officials, whose eagerness to wear the steel collar was equalled
only by their forgetfulness of their oaths of office. No suppression of
free speech and free assembly, no wholesale clubbing, shooting and
jailing of strikers and their families was too revolting for these Steel
Trust[2] hangers-on to carry out with relish. With the notable exception
of a few honorable and courageous individuals here and there among these
hostile elements, it was an alignment of the steel companies, the state,
the courts, the local churches and the press against the steel workers.
Upon the ending of the strike the steel workers got no direct
concessions from their employers. Those who were able to evade the
bitter blacklist were compelled to surrender their union cards and to
return to work under conditions that are a shame and a disgrace. They
were driven back to the infamous peonage system with its twelve hour
day, a system which American steel workers, of all those in the world,
alone have to endure. In England, France, Italy and Germany, the steel
workers enjoy the right of a voice in the control of their industry;
they regularly barter and bargain with their employers over the
questions of hours, wages and working conditions; they also have the
eight hour day. One must come to America, the land of freedom, to find
steel workers still economically disfranchised and compelled to work
twelve hours a day. In this country alone the human rights of the steel
workers are crushed under foot by the triumphant property rights of
their employers.
Who can uphold this indefensible position? Are not our deposits of coal
and iron immeasurably greater, our mills more highly developed, our
labor force more numerous and more skilled than those of any other
country? Who then will venture to assert that American workingmen are
not entitled to exercise all the rights and privileges enjoyed by
European workingmen? If the steel workers of England, or France, or
Italy, or Germany can practice collective bargaining, why not the steel
workers of America? And why should the steel workers here have to work
twelve hours daily when the eight hour day obtains abroad?
There are a hundred good reasons why the principles of collective
bargaining and the shorter workday should prevail in the steel industry
of America, and only one why they should not. This one reason is that
the industry is hard and fast in the grip of absentee capitalists who
take no part in production and whose sole function is to seize by hook
or crook the product of the industry and consume it. These parasites, in
their voracious quest of profits, know neither pity nor responsibility.
Their reckless motto is "After us the deluge." They care less than
naught for the rights and sufferings of the workers. Ignoring the
inevitable weakening of patriotism of people living under miserable
industrial conditions, they go their way, prostituting, strangling and
dismembering our most cherished institutions. And the worst of it is
that in the big strike an ignorant public, miseducated by employers'
propaganda sheets masquerading under the guise of newspapers, applauded
them in their ruthless course. Blindly this public, setting itself up as
the great arbiter of what is democratic and American, condemned as
bolshevistic and ruinous the demands of almost 400,000 steel workers for
simple, fundamental reforms, without which hardly a pretense of freedom
is possible, and lauded as sturdy Americanism the desperate autocracy of
the Steel Trust. All its guns were turned against the strikers.
In this great struggle the mill owners may well claim the material
victory; but with just as much right the workers can claim the moral
victory. For the strike left in every aspiring breast a spark of hope
which must burn on till it finally bursts into a flame of
freedom-bringing revolt. For a generation steel workers had been
hopeless. Their slavery had overwhelmed them. The trade-union movement
seemed weak, distant and incapable. The rottenness of steel districts
precluded all thought of relief through political channels. The
employers seemed omnipotent. But the strike has changed all this. Like
a flash the unions appeared upon the scene. They flourished and expanded
in spite of all opposition. Then boldly they went to a death grapple
with the erstwhile unchallenged employers. It is true they did not win,
but they put up a fight which has won the steel workers' hearts. Their
earnest struggle and the loyal support, by money and food, which they
gave the strikers, have forever laid at rest the employers' arguments
that the unions are cowardly, grafting bodies organized merely to rob
and betray the workers. Even the densest of the strikers could see that
the loss of the strike was due to insufficient preparation; that only a
fraction of the power of unionism had been developed and that with
better organization better results would be secured. And the outcome is
that the steel workers have won a precious belief in the power of
concerted action through the unions. They have discovered the Achilles'
heel of their would-be masters. They now see the way out of their
slavery. This is their tremendous victory.
No less than the steel workers themselves, the whole trade-union
movement won a great moral victory in the steel strike and the campaign
that preceded it. This more than offsets the failure of the strike
itself. The gain consists of a badly needed addition to the unions' thin
store of self-confidence. To trade-union organizers the steel industry
had long symbolized the impossible. Wave after wave of organizing effort
they had sent against it; but their work had been as ineffectual as a
summer sea lapping the base of Gibraltar. Pessimism regarding its
conquest for trade unionism was abysmal. But now all this is changed.
The impossible has been accomplished. The steel workers were organized
in the face of all that the steel companies could do to prevent it. Thus
a whole new vista of possibilities unfolds before the unions. Not only
does the reorganization of the steel industry seem strictly feasible,
but the whole conception that many of the basic industries are immune to
trade unionism turns out to be an illusion. If the steel industry could
be organized, so can any other in the country; for the worst of them
presents hardly a fraction of the difficulties squarely vanquished in
the steel industry. The mouth has been shut forever of that insufferable
pest of the labor movement, the large body of ignorant, incompetent,
short-sighted, visionless union men whose eternal song, when some
important organizing project is afoot, is "It can't be done." After this
experience in the steel industry the problem of unionizing any industry
resolves itself simply into selecting a capable organizer and giving him
sufficient money and men to do the job.
The ending of the strike by no means indicates the abandonment of the
steel workers' battle for their rights. For a while, perhaps, their
advance may be checked, while they are recovering from the effects of
their great struggle. But it will not be long before they have another
big movement under way. They feel but little defeated by the loss of the
strike, and the trade unions as a whole feel even less so. Both have
gained wonderful confidence in themselves and in each other during the
fight. The unions will not desert the field and leave the workers a
prey to the demoralizing propaganda of the employers, customary after
lost strikes. On the contrary they are keeping a large crew of
organizers at work in an educational campaign, devised to maintain and
develop the confidence the steel workers have in themselves and the
unions. Then, when the opportune time comes, which will be but shortly,
the next big drive will be on. Mr. Gary and his associates may attempt
to forestall the inevitable by the granting of fake eight hour days,
paper increases in wages and hand-picked company unions, but it is safe
to say that the steel workers will go on building up stronger and more
aggressive combinations among themselves and with allied trades until
they finally achieve industrial freedom. So long as any men undertake to
oppress the steel workers and to squeeze returns from the industry
without rendering adequate service therefor, just that long must these
men expect to be confronted by a progressively more militant and
rebellious working force. The great steel strike of 1919 will seem only
a preliminary skirmish when compared with the tremendous battles that
are bound to come unless the enslaved steel workers are set free.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Throughout this book the term "Steel Trust" is used to indicate the
collectivity of the great steel companies. It is true that this is in
contradiction to the common usage, which generally applies the term to
the United States Steel Corporation alone, but it is in harmony with the
facts. All the big steel companies act together upon all important
matters confronting their industry. Beyond question they are organized
more or less secretly into a trust. This book recognizes this situation,
hence the broad use of the term "Steel Trust." It is important to
remember this explanation. Where the writer has in mind any one company
that company is named.
II
A GENERATION OF DEFEAT[3]
THE URGE FOR MASTERY--DEMOCRATIC RESISTANCE--THE HOMESTEAD
STRIKE--THE STRIKES OF 1901 AND 1909--THE STEEL TRUST
VICTORIOUS
The recent upheaval in the steel industry was but one link in a long
chain of struggles, the latest battle in an industrial war for freedom
which has raged almost since the inception of the industry.
The steel manufacturers have always aggressively applied the ordinary,
although unacknowledged, American business principles that our
industries exist primarily to create huge profits for the fortunate few
who own them, and that if they have any other utility it is a matter of
secondary importance. The interests of society in the steel business
they scoff at. And as for their own employees, they have never
considered them better than so much necessary human machinery, to be
bought in the market at the lowest possible price and otherwise handled
in a thoroughly irresponsible manner. They clearly understand that if
they are to carry out their policy of raw exploitation, the prime
essential is that they keep their employees unorganized. Then, without
let or hindrance, wages may be kept low, the work day made longer,
speeding systems introduced, safety devices neglected, and the human
side of the industry generally robbed and repressed in favor of its
profit side; whereas, if the unions were allowed to come in, it would
mean that every policy in the industry would first have to be considered
and judged with regard to its effects upon the men actually making steel
and iron. It would mean that humanity must be emphasized at the expense
of misearned dividends. But this would never do. The mill owners are
interested in profits, not in humanity. Hence, if they can prevent it,
they will have no unions. Since the pioneer days of steel making their
policy has tended powerfully on the one hand towards elevating the
employers into a small group of enormously wealthy, idle, industrial
autocrats, and on the other towards depressing the workers into a huge
army of ignorant, poverty-stricken, industrial serfs. The calamity of it
is that this policy has worked out so well.
Against this will-to-power of their employers the steel workers have
fought long and valiantly. In the early days of the industry, when the
combinations of capital were weak, the working force skilled,
English-speaking and independent, the latter easily defended themselves
and made substantial progress toward their own inevitable, even if
unrecognized goal of industrial freedom; but in later years, with the
growth of the gigantic United States Steel Corporation, the displacement
of skilled labor by automatic machinery and the introduction of
multitudes of illiterate immigrants into the industry, their fight for
their rights became a desperate and almost hopeless struggle. For the
past thirty years they have suffered an unbroken series of defeats.
Their one-time growing freedom has been crushed.
At first the fight was easy, and by the later '80's, grace to the
activities of many unions, notable among which were the old Sons of
Vulcan, the Knights of Labor and the Amalgamated Association of Iron,
Steel and Tin Workers, considerable organization existed among the men
employed in the iron and steel mills throughout the country. The
Amalgamated Association, the dominating body, enjoyed great prestige in
the labor movement generally. It consisted almost entirely of highly
skilled men and paid little or no attention to the unskilled workers. In
the heyday of its strength, in 1891, it numbered about 24,000 members.
Its stronghold was in the Pittsburgh district. Its citadel was
Homestead. During the period of its greatest activity some measure of
democracy prevailed in the industry, and prospects seemed bright for its
extension.
But about that time Andrew Carnegie, grown rich and powerful, began to
chafe uneasily under the restrictions placed upon his rapacity by his
organized employees. He wanted a free hand and determined to get it. As
the first step towards enshackling his workers he brought into his
company that inveterate enemy of democracy in all its forms, Henry C.
Frick. Then the two, Carnegie and Frick, neither of whom gave his
workers as much consideration as the Southern slave holder gave his
bondmen--for chattel slaves were at least assured sufficient food, warm
clothes, a habitable home and medical attendance--began to war upon the
union. They started the trouble in Homestead, where the big mills of the
Carnegie Company are located. In 1889 they insisted that the men accept
heavy reductions in wages, write their agreements to expire in the
unfavorable winter season instead of in summer, and give up their union.
The men refused, and after a short strike, got a favorable settlement.
But Carnegie and Frick were not to be lightly turned from their purpose.
When the contract in force expired, they renewed their old demands, and
thus precipitated the great Homestead strike.
This famous strike attracted world-wide attention, and well it might,
for it marked a turning point in the industrial history of America. It
began on June 23, 1892, and lasted until November 20 of the same year.
Characterized by extreme bitterness and violence, it resulted in
complete defeat for the men, not only in Homestead, but also in several
other big mills in Pittsburgh and adjoining towns where the steel
workers had struck in support of their besieged brothers in Homestead.
This unsuccessful strike eliminated organized labor from the mills of
the big Carnegie Company. It also dealt the Amalgamated Association of
Iron, Steel and Tin Workers a blow from which it has not yet recovered.
It ended the period of trade-union expansion in the steel industry and
began an era of unrestricted labor control by the employers. At
Homestead Carnegie and Frick stuck a knife deep into the vitals of the
young democracy of the steel workers.
Recuperating somewhat from the staggering defeat at Homestead, the
Amalgamated Association managed to retain a firm hold in the industry
for a few years longer. Its next big setback, in 1901, was caused by the
organization of the United States Steel Corporation. Foreseeing war from
this monster combination dominated by the hostile Carnegie interests,
the union, presided over at that time by Theodore J. Shaffer, decided to
take time by the forelock and negotiate an agreement that would extend
its scope and give it a chance to live. But the plan failed; the
anti-union tendencies of the employers were too strong, and a strike
resulted. At first the only companies affected were the American Tin
Plate Company, the American Sheet Steel Company and the American Steel
Hoop Company. Finally, however, all the organized men in all the mills
of the United States Steel Corporation were called out, but to no avail;
after a few weeks' struggle the strike was utterly lost.
The failure of the 1901 strike broke the backbone of the Amalgamated
Association. Still, with characteristic trade-union tenacity, it
lingered along in a few of the Trust plants in the sheet and tin section
of the industry. Its business relations with the companies at this stage
of its decline, according to the testimony of its present President, M.
F. Tighe, before the Senate Committee investigating the 1919 strike,
consisted of "giving way to every request that was made by the companies
when they insisted upon it." But even this humble and pliant attitude of
the once powerful Amalgamated Association was intolerable to the haughty
steel kings. They could not brook even the most shadowy opposition to
their industrial absolutism. Accordingly, early in the summer of 1909,
they served notice upon the union men to accept a reduction in wages and
give up their union. It was practically the same ultimatum delivered by
Carnegie and Frick to the Homestead men twenty years before. With a last
desperate rally the union met this latest attack upon its life. The
ensuing strike lasted fourteen months. It was bitterly fought, but it
went the way of all strikes in the steel industry since 1892. It was
lost; and in consequence every trace of unionism was wiped out of the
mills not only of the United States Steel Corporation, but of the big
independent companies as well.
Although the union was not finally crushed in the mills until the strike
of 1909, the steel mill owners were for many years previous to that time
in almost undisputed control of the situation. During a generation,
practically, they have worked their will unhampered; and the results of
their policy of unlimited exploitation are all too apparent. For
themselves they have taken untold millions of wealth from the industry;
for the workers they have left barely enough to eke out an existence in
the miserable, degraded steel towns.
At the outbreak of the World war the steel workers generally, with the
exception of the laborers, who had secured a cent or two advance per
hour, were making less wages than before the Homestead strike. The
constant increase in the cost of living in the intervening years had
still further depressed their standards of life. Not a shred of benefit
had they received from the tremendously increased output of the
industry. While the employers lived in gorgeous palaces, the workers
found themselves, for the most part, crowded like cattle into the filthy
hovels that ordinarily constitute the greater part of the steel towns.
Tuberculosis ran riot among them; infant mortality was far above normal.
Though several increases in wages were granted after the war began,
these have been offset by the terrific rise in the cost of living. If
the war has brought any betterment in the living conditions of the steel
workers, it cannot be seen with the naked eye.
The twelve hour day prevails for half of the men. One-fourth work seven
days a week, with a twenty-four hour shift every two weeks. Their lives
are one constant round of toil. They have no family life, no opportunity
for education or even for recreation; for their few hours of liberty are
spoiled by the ever-present fatigue. Furthermore, working conditions in
the mills are bad. The men are speeded up to such a degree that only the
youngest and strongest can stand it. At forty the average steel worker
is played out. The work, in itself extremely dangerous, is made still
more so by the employers' failure to adopt the necessary safety devices.
Many a man has gone to his death through the wanton neglect of the
companies to provide safeguarding appliances that they would have been
compelled to install were the unions still in the plants.[4] Not a
trace of industrial justice remains. The treatment of the men depends
altogether upon the arbitrary wills of the foremen and superintendents.
A man may give faithful service in a plant for thirty years and then be
discharged offhand, as many are, for some insignificant cause. He has no
one to appeal to. His fellow workers, living in constant terror of
discharge and the blacklist, dare not even listen to him, much less
defend his cause. He must bow to the inevitable, even though it means
industrial ruin for him and his family.
Such deplorable conditions result naturally from a lack of unionism. It
is expecting too much of human nature at this stage of its development
to count on employers treating their employees fairly without some form
of compulsion. Even in highly organized industries the unions have to be
constantly on guard to resist the never-ending encroachments of their
employers, manifested at every conceivable point of attack. For the
workers, indeed, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Hence
nothing but degradation for them and autocracy for their employers may
be looked for in industries where they are systematically kept
unorganized and thus incapable of defending their rights, as is the case
in the steel industry. This system of industrial serfdom has served the
steel barons well for a generation. But it is one the steel workers will
never accept. Regardless of the cost they will rebel against it at every
opportunity till they finally destroy it.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Students desiring a full account of the early struggles of the steel
unions are advised to read Mr. John A. Fitch's splendid book, "The Steel
Workers."
[4] The practice of the different steel companies varies with respect to
safety devices. Some of them are still in the dark ages that all were in
a few years ago, with reckless disregard of human life. Others have made
some progress. Of these the U. S. Steel Corporation is undoubtedly in
the lead, for it has installed many safety appliances and has safety
committees actively at work. At best, however, steel making is an
exceedingly dangerous industry and the risk is intensified by the great
heat of the mills and the long hours of work--the twelve hour day and
the seven day week--which lead inevitably to exhaustion.
III
THE GIANT LABOR AWAKES
A BLEAK PROSPECT--HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL--A GOLDEN CHANCE
--DISASTROUS DELAY--THE NEW PLAN--A LOST OPPORTUNITY--THE
CAMPAIGN BEGINS--GARY FIGHTS BACK
From just previous to, until some time after the beginning of the world
war the situation in the steel industry, from a trade-union point of
view, was truly discouraging. It seemed impossible for the workers to
accomplish anything by organized effort. The big steel companies, by
driving the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers from
the mills, had built up a terrific reputation as union crushers. This
was greatly enhanced by their complete defeat of Labor in the memorable
strikes of the structural iron workers, the lake sailors, the iron
miners, and the steel workers at McKees Rocks in 1909, Bethlehem in 1910
and Youngstown in 1915-16. It was still further enhanced by their
blocking every attempt of the individual trades to re-establish
themselves, and by the failure of the A. F. of L. steel campaign,
inaugurated by the convention of 1909, to achieve even the slightest
tangible results. The endless round of defeat had reduced almost to zero
the trade unions' confidence in their ability to cope with the militant
and rapacious steel manufacturers.
But as the war wore on and the United States joined the general
slaughter, the situation changed rapidly in favor of the unions. The
demand for soldiers and munitions had made labor scarce; the Federal
administration was friendly; the right to organize was freely conceded
by the government and even insisted upon; the steel industry was the
master-clock of the whole war program and had to be kept in operation at
all costs; the workers were taking new heart and making demands--already
they had engaged in big strike movements in the mills in Pittsburgh
(Jones and Laughlin Company), Bethlehem and Birmingham (U. S. Steel).
The gods were indeed fighting on the side of Labor. It was an
opportunity to organize the industry such as might never again occur.
That the trade union movement did not embrace it sooner was a calamity.
The writer was one of those who perceived the unparalleled opportunity.
But being at that time Secretary-Treasurer of the committee organizing
the packing industry I was unable to do anything substantial in the
steel situation until the handing down of Judge Alschuler's decision
giving the packing house workers the eight hour day and other vital
concessions enabled me to slacken my efforts in that important movement.
Immediately thereafter, on April 7, 1918, I presented a resolution to
the Chicago Federation of Labor requesting the executive officers of the
American Federation of Labor to call a general labor conference and to
inaugurate thereat a national campaign to organize the steel workers.
The resolution was endorsed by twelve local unions in the steel
industry. It was adopted unanimously and forwarded to the A. F. of L.
The latter took the matter up with the rapidly reviving Amalgamated
Association, and the affair was slowly winding along to an eventual
conference, with a loss of much precious time, when the resolution was
resubmitted to the Chicago Federation of Labor, re-adopted and sent to
the St. Paul convention of the A. F. of L., June 10-20, 1918. It
follows:
RESOLUTION #29
WHEREAS, the organization of the vast armies of
wage-earners employed in the steel industries is vitally
necessary to the further spread of industrial democracy in
America, and
WHEREAS, Organized Labor can accomplish this great
task only by putting forth a tremendous effort; therefore,
be it
RESOLVED, that the executive officers of the A. F.
of L. stand instructed to call a conference during this
convention of delegates of all international unions whose
interests are involved in the steel industries, and of all
the State Federations and City Central bodies in the steel
districts, for the purpose of uniting all these
organizations into one mighty drive to organize the steel
plants of America.
The resolution was adopted by unanimous vote. Accordingly, a number of
conferences were held during the convention, at which the proposed
campaign was discussed and endorsed. The outcome was that provisions
were made to have President Gompers call another conference, in Chicago
thirty days later, of responsible union officials who would come
prepared to act in the name of their international unions. This involved
further waste of probably the most precious time for organizing work
that Labor will ever have.
From past events in the steel industry it was evident that in the
proposed campaign radical departures would have to be made from the
ordinary organizing tactics. Without question the steel workers' unions
have always lacked efficiency in their organizing departments. This was
a cardinal failing of the Amalgamated Association and it contributed as
much, if not more than anything else to its downfall. If, when in its
prime, this organization had shown sufficient organizing activity in the
non-union mills, and especially by taking in the unskilled, it would
have so intrenched itself that Carnegie and his henchman, Frick, never
could have dislodged it. But, unfortunately, it undertook too much of
its organization work at the conference table and not enough at the mill
gates. Consequently, more than once it found itself in deadly quarrels
with the employers over the unionization of certain mills, when a live
organizer working among the non-union men involved would have solved the
problem in a few weeks.
Nor had the other unions claiming jurisdiction over men employed in the
steel industry developed an organizing policy equal to the occasion.
Their system of nibbling away, one craft at a time in individual mills,
was entirely out of place. Possibly effective in some industries, it was
worse than useless in the steel mills. Its unvarying failure served only
to strengthen the mill owners and to further discourage the mill
workers and Organized Labor. It is pure folly to organize one trade in
one mill, or all trades in one mill, or even all trades in all the mills
in one locality, when, at any time it sees fit to do so, the Steel Trust
can defeat the movement by merely shutting down its mills in the
affected district and transferring its work elsewhere, as it has done
time and again. It was plain, therefore, that the proposed campaign
would have to affect all the steel mills simultaneously. It would have
to be national in scope and encompass every worker in every mill, in
every steel district in the United States.
The intention was to use the system so strikingly successful in the
organization of the packing industry. The committee charged with
organizing that industry, when it assembled, a year before, to begin the
work, found three possible methods of procedure confronting it, each
with its advocates present. It could go along on the old, discredited
craft policy of each trade for itself and the devil take the hindmost;
it might attempt to form an industrial union; or it could apply the
principle of federating the trades, then making great headway on the
railroads. The latter system was the one chosen as the best fitted to
get results at this stage in the development of the unions and the
packing industry. And the outcome proved the wisdom of the decision. In
the steel campaign the unions were to be similarly linked together in an
offensive and defensive alliance.
But all this relates merely to the shell of the plan behind Resolution
No. 29. Its breath of life was in its strategy; in the way the
organization work was to be prosecuted. The best plans are worthless
unless properly executed. The idea was to make a hurricane drive
simultaneously in all the steel centers that would catch the workers'
imagination and sweep them into the unions _en masse_ despite all
opposition, and thus to put Mr. Gary and his associates into such a
predicament that they would have to grant the just demands of their men.
It was intended that after the Chicago conference a dozen or more
general organizers should be dispatched immediately to the most
important steel centers, to bring to the steel workers the first word of
the big drive being made in their behalf, and to organize local
committees to handle the detail work of organization. In the meantime
the co-operating international unions were to recruit numbers of
organizers and to send them to join the forces already being developed
everywhere by the general organizers. They should also assemble and pay
in as quickly as possible their respective portions of the fund of at
least $250,000 to be provided for the work. The essence of the plan was
quick, energetic action.
At the end of three or four weeks, when the organizing forces were in
good shape and the workers in the mills acquainted with what was afoot,
the campaign would be opened with a rush. Great mass meetings, built up
by extensive advertising, would be held everywhere at the same time
throughout the steel industry. These were calculated to arouse hope and
enthusiasm among the workers and to bring thousands of them into the
unions, regardless of any steps the mill owners might take to prevent
it. After two or three meetings in each place, the heavy stream of men
pouring into the unions would be turned into a decisive flood by the
election of committees to formulate the grievances of the men and
present these to the employers. The war was on; the continued operation
of the steel industry was imperative; a strike was therefore out of the
question; the steel manufacturers would have been compelled to yield to
their workers, either directly or through the instrumentality of the
Government. The trade unions would have been re-established in the steel
industry, and along with them fair dealing and the beginnings of
industrial democracy.
The plan was not only a bold one, but also under the circumstances the
logical and practical one. The course of events proved its feasibility.
The contention that it involved taking unfair advantage of the steel
manufacturers may be dismissed as inconsequential. These gentlemen in
their dealings with those who stand in their way do not even know the
meaning of the word fairness. Their workers they shoot and starve into
submission; their competitors they industrially strangle without
ceremony; the public and the Government they exploit without stint or
limit. The year before the campaign began, 1917, when the country was
straining every nerve to develop and conserve its resources, the United
States Steel Corporation alone, not to mention the many independents,
after paying federal taxes and leaving out of account the vast sums that
disappeared in the obscure and mysterious company funds, unblushingly
pocketed the fabulous profit of $253,608,200.
It now remained to be seen how far the unions would sustain such a
general and energetic campaign. The fateful conference met in the New
Morrison Hotel, Chicago, August 1-2, 1918. Samuel Gompers presided over
its sessions. Representatives of fifteen international unions were
present. These men showed their progressive spirit by meeting many
difficult issues squarely with the proper solutions. They realized fully
the need of co-operation along industrial lines, from the men who dig
the coal and iron ore to those who switch the finished products onto the
main lines of the railroads. Plainly no trade felt able to cope
single-handed with the Steel Trust; and joint action was decided upon
almost without discussion. Likewise the conference saw the folly of
trying to organize the steel industry with each of the score of unions
demanding a different initiation fee. Therefore, after much stretching
of constitutions, the international unions, with the exception of the
Bricklayers, Molders and Patternmakers (who charged respectively $7.25,
$5.00 and $5.00), agreed to a uniform initiation fee of three dollars,
one dollar of which was to be used for defraying expenses of the
national organization work.
At the same meeting the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel
Workers was formed. It was made to consist of one representative from
each of the co-operating international unions. Its given function was to
superintend the work of organization. Its chairman had to be a
representative of the A. F. of L. Mr. Gompers volunteered to fill this
position; the writer was elected Secretary-Treasurer. Including later
additions, the constituent unions were as follows:
International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths, Drop-Forgers
and Helpers
Brotherhood of Boilermakers and Iron Ship Builders
and Helpers of America
United Brick and Clay Workers
Bricklayers', Masons' and Plasterers' International
Union of America
International Association of Bridge, Structural and
Ornamental Iron Workers
Coopers' International Union of North America
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
International Brotherhood of Foundry Employees
International Hod Carriers', Building, and Common
Laborers' Union of America
Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin
Workers
International Association of Machinists
International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter
Workers
United Mine Workers of America
International Molders' Union of North America
Patternmakers' League of North America
United Association of Plumbers and Steam Fitters
Quarry Workers' International Union of North America
Brotherhood Railway Carmen of America
International Seamen's Union of America
Amalgamated Sheet Metal Workers' International Alliance
International Brotherhood of Stationary Firemen and
Oilers
International Union of Steam and Operating Engineers
International Brotherhood of Steamshovel and Dredgemen
Switchmen's Union of North America.
This group of unions, lined up to do battle with the Steel Trust,
represents the largest body of workers ever engaged in a joint movement
in any country. Their members number approximately 2,000,000, and
comprise about one-half of the entire American Federation of Labor.
So far, so good. The conference had removed the barriers in the way of
the campaign. But when it came to providing the large sums of money and
the numerous crews of organizers that were immediately and imperatively
needed to insure success, it failed dismally. The internationals
assessed themselves only $100 apiece; they furnished only a corporal's
guard of organizers to go ahead with the work; and future reinforcements
looked remote.
This was a facer. The original plan of a dashing offensive went to smash
instanter, and with it, likewise, the opportunity to organize the steel
industry. The slender resources in hand at once made necessary a
complete change of strategy. To undertake a national movement was out of
the question. The work had to be confined to the Chicago district. This
was admittedly going according to wrong principles. The steel industry
is national in scope and should be handled as such. To operate in one
district alone would expose that district to attacks, waste invaluable
time and give the employers a chance to adopt counter measures against
the whole campaign. It meant playing squarely into Mr. Gary's hands. But
there was no other way out of the difficulty.
The writer had hoped that the favorable industrial situation and the
organization of the packing industry, which had long been considered
hopeless, would have heartened the trade-union movement sufficiently for
it to attack the steel problem with the required vigor and confidence.
But such was not the case. The tradition of defeat in the steel industry
was too strong,--thirty years of failure were not so easily forgotten.
Lack of faith in themselves prevented the unions from pouring their
resources into the campaign in its early, critical days. The work in the
Chicago district was undertaken, nevertheless, with a determination to
win the hearty support of Labor by giving an actual demonstration of the
organizability of the steel workers.
During the first week of September the drive for members was opened in
the Chicago district. Monster meetings were held in South Chicago, Gary,
Indiana Harbor and Joliet--all the points that the few organizers could
cover. The inevitable happened; eager for a chance to right their
wrongs, the steel workers stormed into the unions. In Gary 749 joined at
the first meeting, Joliet enrolled 500, and other places did almost as
well. It was a stampede--exactly what was counted upon by the movers of
Resolution #29. And it could just as well have been on a national scale,
had the international unions possessed sufficient self-confidence and
given enough men and money to put the original plan into execution. In a
few weeks the unions would have been everywhere firmly intrenched; and
in a few more the entire steel industry would have been captured for
trade unionism and justice.
But now the folly of a one-district movement made itself evident. Up to
this time the steel barons, like many union leaders, apparently had
viewed the campaign with a skeptical, "It can't be done" air. But
events in Gary and elsewhere quickly dissipated their optimism. The
movement was clearly dangerous and required heroic treatment. The
employers, therefore, applying Mr. Gary's famous "Give them an extra cup
of rice" policy, ordered the basic eight hour day to go into effect on
the first of October. This meant that the steel workers were to get
thereafter time and one half after eight hours, instead of straight
time. It amounted to an increase of two hours pay per day but the actual
working hours were not changed. It was a counter stroke which the
national movement had been designed to forestall.
Although this concession really spelled a great moral victory for the
unions its practical effect was bad. Just a few months before the United
States Steel Corporation had publicly announced that, come what might,
there would be no basic eight hour day in the steel industry. Its sudden
adoption, almost over night, therefore, was a testimonial to the power
of the unions. But this the steel workers as a whole could not realize.
In the Chicago district, where the campaign was on, they understood and
gave the unions credit for the winning; but in other districts, where
nothing had been done, naturally they believed it a gift from the
companies. Had the work been going on everywhere when Mr. Gary attempted
this move, the workers would have understood his motives and joined the
unions _en masse_,--the unions would have won hands down. But with
operations confined to one district he was able to steal the credit from
the unions, partially satisfy his men, and strip the campaign of one of
its principal issues. No doubt he thought he had dealt it a mortal
blow.
IV.
FLANK ATTACKS
A SEA OF TROUBLES--THE POLICY OF ENCIRCLEMENT--TAKING THE
OUTPOSTS--ORGANIZING METHODS--FINANCIAL SYSTEMS--THE
QUESTION OF MORALE--JOHNSTOWN
Pittsburgh is the heart of America's steel industry. Its pre-eminence
derives from its splendid location for steel making. It is situated at
the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join their murky
waters to form the Ohio, this providing excellent water transportation.
Immense deposits of coal surround it; the Great Lakes, the gateway to
Minnesota's iron ore, are in easy reach; highly developed railway
facilities make the best markets convenient. In the city itself there
are only a few of the larger steel mills; but at short distances along
the banks of its three rivers, are many big steel producing centers,
including Homestead, Braddock, Rankin, McKeesport, McKees Rocks,
Duquesne, Clairton, Woodlawn, Donora, Midland, Vandergrift,
Brackenridge, New Kensington, etc. Within a radius of seventy-five miles
lie Johnstown, Youngstown, Butler, Farrell, Sharon, New Castle,
Wheeling, Mingo, Steubenville, Bellaire, Wierton and various other
important steel towns. The district contains from seventy to eighty per
cent. of the country's steel industry. The whole territory is an amazing
and bewildering network of gigantic steel mills, blast furnaces and
fabricating shops.
It was into this industrial labyrinth, the den of the Steel Trust, that
the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers moved its
office on October 1, 1918, preparatory to beginning its work. Success in
the Chicago district had made it imperative to overcome the original
tactical blunder by extending the campaign, just as quickly as possible,
to a national scope.
The outlook was most unpromising. Even under the best of circumstances
the task of getting the enormous army of steel workers to thinking and
acting together in terms of trade unionism would be tremendous. But the
disastrous mistake of not starting the campaign soon enough and with the
proper vigor multiplied the difficulties. Unfavorable winter weather was
approaching. This was complicated by the influenza epidemic, which for
several weeks suspended all public gatherings. Then came the end of the
war. The workers had also just been given the basic eight hour day. All
these things tended to still them somewhat and to weaken their interest
in organization. What was left of this interest was almost entirely
wiped out when the mills, dependent as they were on war work, began to
slacken production. The workers became obsessed with a fear of hard
times, a timidity which was intensified by the steel companies'
discharging every one suspected of union affiliations or sympathies.
And to cap the climax, the resources of the National Committee were
still pitifully inadequate to the great task confronting it.
But worst of all, the steel companies were now on the _qui vive_. The
original plan had been conceived to take them by surprise, on the
supposition that their supreme contempt for Labor and their conceit in
their own power would blind them to the real force and extent of the
movement until it was too late to take effective counteraction. And it
would surely have worked out this way, had the program been followed.
But now the advantage of surprise, vital in all wars, industrial or
military, was lost to the unions. Wide awake and alarmed, the Steel
Trust was prepared to fight to the last ditch.
Things looked desperate. But there was no other course than to go ahead
regardless of obstacles. The word failure was eliminated from the
vocabulary of the National Committee. Preparations were made to begin
operations in the towns close to Pittsburgh. But the Steel Trust was
vigilant. It no longer placed any reliance upon its usual methods--its
welfare, old age pension, employees' stockholding, wholesale discharge,
or "extra cup of rice" policies--to hold its men in line, when a good
fighting chance to win their rights presented itself to them. It had
gained a wholesome respect for the movement and was taking no chances.
It would cut off all communication between the organizers and the men.
Consequently, its lackey-like mayors and burgesses in the threatened
towns immediately held a meeting and decided that there would be no
assemblages of steel workers in the Monongahela valley. In some places
these officials, who for the most part are steel company employees, had
the pliable local councils hurriedly adopt ordinances making it unlawful
to hold public meetings without securing sanction; in other places they
adopted the equally effective method of simply notifying the landlords
that if they dared rent their halls to the American Federation of Labor
they would have their "Sunday Club" privileges stopped. In both cases
the effect was the same--no meetings could be held. In the immediate
Pittsburgh district there had been little enough free speech and free
assembly for the trade unions before. Now it was abolished altogether.
At this time the world war was still on; our soldiers were fighting in
Europe to "make the world safe for democracy"; President Wilson was
idealistically declaiming about "the new freedom"; while right here in
our own country the trade unions, with 500,000 men in the service, were
not even allowed to hold public meetings. It was a worse condition than
kaiserism itself had ever set up. This is said advisedly, for the German
workers were at least permitted to meet when and where they pleased. The
worst they had to contend with was a policeman on their platform, who
would jot down "seditious" remarks and require the offenders to report
next day to the police. I remember with what scorn I watched this system
in Germany years ago, and how proud I felt to be an American. I was so
sure that freedom of speech and assembly were fundamental institutions
with us and that we would never tolerate such imposition. But now I have
changed my mind. In Pennsylvania, not to speak of other states, the
workers enjoy few or no more rights than prevailed under the czars. They
cannot hold meetings at all. So far are they below the status of pre-war
Germans in this respect that the comparative freedom of the latter seems
almost like an unattainable ideal. And this deprival of rights is done
in the name of law and patriotism.
In the face of such suppression of constitutional rights and in the face
of all the other staggering difficulties it was clearly impossible for
our scanty forces to capture Pittsburgh for unionism by a frontal
attack. Therefore a system of flank attacks was decided upon. This
resolved itself into a plan literally to surround the immediate
Pittsburgh district with organized posts before attacking it. The
outlying steel districts that dot the counties and states around
Pittsburgh like minor forts about a great stronghold, were first to be
won. Then the unions, with the added strength, were to make a big drive
on the citadel.
It was a far-fetched program when compared with the original; but
circumstances compelled it. An important consideration in its execution
was that it must not seem that the unions were abandoning Pittsburgh.
That was the center of the battle line; the unions had attacked there,
and now they must at least pretend to hold their ground until they were
able to begin the real attack. The morale of the organizing force and
the steel workers demanded this. So, all winter long mass meetings were
held in the Pittsburgh Labor Temple and hundreds of thousands of
leaflets were distributed in the neighboring mills to prepare the
ground for unionization in the spring. Besides, a lot of noise was made
over the suppression of free speech and free assemblage. Protest
meetings were held, committees appointed, investigations set afoot,
politicians visited, and much other more or less useless, although
spectacular, running around engaged in. These activities did not cost
much, and they camouflaged well the union program.
But the actual fight was elsewhere. During the next several months the
National Committee, with gradually increasing resources, set up
substantial organizations in steel towns all over the country except
close in to Pittsburgh, including Youngstown, East Youngstown, Warren,
Niles, Canton, Struthers, Hubbard, Massillon, Alliance, New
Philadelphia, Sharon, Farrell, New Castle, Butler, Ellwood City, New
Kensington, Leechburg, Apollo, Vandergrift, Brackenridge, Johnstown,
Coatesville, Wheeling, Benwood, Bellaire, Steubenville, Mingo,
Cleveland, Buffalo, Lackawanna, Pueblo, Birmingham, etc. Operations in
the Chicago district were intensified and extended to take in Milwaukee,
Kenosha, Waukegan, De Kalb, Peoria, Pullman, Hammond, East Chicago,
etc., while in Bethlehem the National Committee amplified the work
started a year before by the Machinists and Electrical Workers.
Much of the success in these localities was due to the thoroughly
systematic way in which the organizing work was carried on. This merits
a brief description. There were two classes of organizers in the
campaign, the floating and the stationary. Outside of a few traveling
foreign speakers, the floating organizers were those sent in by the
various international unions. They usually went about from point to
point attending to their respective sections of the newly formed local
unions, and giving such assistance to the general campaign as their
other duties permitted. The stationary organizers consisted of A. F. of
L. men, representatives of the United Mine Workers, and men hired
directly by the National Committee. They acted as local organizing
secretaries, and were the backbone of the working force. The floating
organizers were controlled mostly by their international unions; the
stationary organizers worked wholly under the direction of the National
Committee.
Everywhere the organizing system used was the same. The local secretary
was in full charge. He had an office, which served as general
headquarters. He circulated the National Committee's weekly bulletin,
consisting of a short, trenchant trade-union argument in four languages.
He built up the mass meetings, and controlled all applications for
membership. At these mass meetings and in the offices all trades were
signed up indiscriminately upon a uniform blank. But there was no "one
big union" formed. The signed applications were merely stacked away
until there was a considerable number. Then the representatives of all
the trades were assembled and the applications distributed among them.
Later these men set up their respective unions. Finally, the new unions
were drawn up locally into informal central bodies, known as Iron and
Steel Workers' councils. These were invaluable as they knit the movement
together and strengthened the weaker unions. They also inculcated the
indispensable conception of solidarity along industrial lines and
prevented irresponsible strike action by over-zealous single trades.
A highly important feature was the financial system. The handling of the
funds is always a danger point in all working class movements. More than
one strike and organizing campaign has been wrecked by loose money
methods. The National Committee spared no pains to avoid this menace.
The problem was an immense one, for there were from 100 to 125
organizers (which was what the crew finally amounted to) signing up
steel workers by the thousands all over the country; but it was solved
by the strict application of a few business principles. In the first
place the local secretaries were definitely recognized as the men in
charge and placed under heavy bonds. All the application blanks used by
them were numbered serially. They alone were authorized to sign
receipts[5] for initiation fees received. Should other organizers wish
to enroll members, as often happened at the monster mass meetings, they
were given and charged with so many receipts duly signed by the
secretaries. Later on they were required to return these receipts or
three dollars apiece for them. The effect of all this was to make one
man, and him bonded, responsible in each locality for all paper
outstanding against the National Committee. This was absolutely
essential. No system was possible without this foundation.
The next step was definitely to fasten responsibility in the transfer of
initiation fees from the local secretaries to the representatives of the
various trade unions. To do so was most important. It was accomplished
by requiring the local secretaries to exact from these men detailed
receipts, specifying not only the amounts paid and the number of
applications turned over, but also the serial number of each
application. Bulk transfer of applications was prohibited, there being
no way to identify the paper so handled.
The general effect of these regulations was to enable the National
Committee almost instantly to trace any one of the thousands of
applications continually passing through the hands of its agents. For
instance, a steel worker who had joined at an office or a mass meeting,
hearing later of the formation of his local union, would go to its
meeting, present his receipt and ask for his union card. The secretary
of the union would look up the applications which had been turned over
to him. If he could not find one to correspond with the man's receipt he
would take the matter up with the National Committee's local secretary.
The latter could not deny his own signature on the receipt; he would
have to tell what became of the application and the fee. On looking up
the matter he would find that he had turned them over to a certain
representative. Nor could the latter deny his signature on the detailed
receipt. He would have to make good.
To facilitate the work, district offices were established in Chicago
and Youngstown. Organizers and secretaries held district meetings
weekly. Local secretaries at points contiguous to these centers reported
to their respective district secretaries. All others dealt directly with
the general office of the National Committee.
It will be recalled that the co-operating unions, at the August 1-2
conference, agreed that the sum of one dollar should be deducted from
each initiation fee for organization purposes. The collection of this
money devolved upon the National Committee and presented considerable
difficulty. It was solved by a system. The local secretaries, in turning
over to the trades the applications signed up in their offices or at the
mass meetings, held out one dollar apiece on them. For the applications
secured at the meetings of the local unions they collected the dollars
due with the assistance of blank forms sent to the unions. Each week the
local secretaries sent reports to the general office of the National
Committee, specifying in detail the number of members enrolled and
turned over to the various trades, and enclosing checks to cover the
amounts on hand after local expenses were met. These reports were duly
certified by the representatives of the organizations involved, who
signed their names on them at the points where the reports referred to
the number of members turned over to their respective bodies. The whole
system worked well.
Practical labor officials who have handled mass movements understand the
great difficulties attendant upon the organization of large bodies of
workingmen. In the steel campaign these were more serious than ever
before. The tremendous number of men involved; their unfamiliarity with
the English language and total lack of union experience; the wide scope
of the operations; the complications created by a score of international
unions, each with its own corps of organizers, directly mainly from
far-distant headquarters; the chronic lack of resources; and the need
for quick action in the face of incessant attacks from the Steel
Trust--all together produced technical difficulties without precedent.
But the foregoing systems went far to solve them. And into these systems
the organizers and secretaries entered whole-heartedly. They realized
that modern labor organizations cannot depend wholly upon idealism. They
bore in mind that they were dealing with human beings and had to adopt
sound principles of responsibility, standardization and general
efficiency.
But another factor in the success of the campaign possibly even more
important than the systems employed was the splendid morale of the
organizers. A better, more loyal body of men was never gathered together
upon this continent. They knew no such word as defeat. They pressed on
with an irresistible assurance of victory born of their faith in the
practicability of the theory upon which the campaign was worked out.
[Illustration: NATIONAL COMMITTEE DELEGATES
YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO MEETING, Aug. 20, 1919.--Standing, left to
right: F. P. Hanaway, _Miners_; D. Hickey, _Miners_; C. Claherty,
_Blacksmiths_; R. J. Barr, _Machinists_; H. F. Liley, _Railway Carmen_;
R. L. Hall, _Machinists_; R. T. McCoy, _Molders_; R. W. Beattie,
_Firemen_; J. W. Morton. _Firemen_; P. A. Trant, _Amalgamated
Association_. Seated, left to right: E. Crough, J. D. Cannon, _Mine,
Mill and Smelter Workers_; F. J. Hardison, _Blacksmiths_; J. Manley,
_Iron Workers_; Wm. Hannon, _Machinists_; John Fitzpatrick, _Chairman_;
Wm. Z. Foster, _Sec.-Treasurer_; C. N. Glover, _Blacksmiths_; T. C.
Cashen, _Switchmen_; D. J. Davis, _Amalgamated Association_.]
The organization of workingmen into trade unions is a comparatively
simple matter when it is properly handled. It depends almost entirely
upon the honesty, intelligence, power and persistence of the organizing
forces. If these factors are strongly present, employers can do little
to stop the movement of their employees. This is because the hard
industrial conditions powerfully predispose the workers to take up any
movement offering reasonable prospects of bettering their miserable lot.
All that union organizers have to do is to place before these
psychologically ripe workers, with sufficient clarity and persistence,
the splendid achievements of the trade-union movement, and be prepared
with a comprehensive organization plan to take care of the members when
they come. If this presentation of trade unionism is made in even
half-decent fashion the workers can hardly fail to respond. It is
largely a mechanical proposition. In view of its great wealth and latent
power, it may be truthfully said that there isn't an industry in the
country which the trade-union movement cannot organize any time it sees
fit. The problem in any case is merely to develop the proper organizing
crews and systems, and the freedom-hungry workers, skilled or unskilled,
men or women, black or white, will react almost as naturally and
inevitably as water runs down hill.
This does not mean that there should be rosy-hued hopes held out to the
workers and promises made to them of what the unions will get from the
employers once they are established. On the contrary, one of the first
principles of an efficient organizer is never, under any circumstances,
to make promises to his men. From experience he has learned the extreme
difficulty of making good such promises and also the destructive
kick-back felt in case they are not fulfilled. The most he can do is to
tell his men what has been done in other cases by organized workingmen
and assure them that if they will stand together the union will do its
utmost to help them. Beyond this he will not venture. And this position
will enable him to develop the legitimate hope, idealism and enthusiasm
which translates itself into substantial trade-union structure. The wild
stories of extravagant promises made to the steel workers during their
organization are pure tommyrot, as every experienced union man knows.
The practical effect of this theory is to throw on the union men the
burden of responsibility for the unorganized condition of the
industries. This is as it should be. In consequence, they tend to blame
themselves rather than the unorganized men. Instead of indulging in the
customary futile lamentations about the scab-like nature of the
non-union man, "unorganizable industries," the irresistible power of the
employers, and similar illusions to which unionists are too prone, they
seek the solution of the problem in improvements of their own primitive
organization methods.
This conception worked admirably in the steel campaign. It filled the
organizers with unlimited confidence in their own power. They felt that
they were the decisive factor in the situation. If they could but
present their case strongly enough, and clearly enough to the steel
workers, the latter would have to respond, and the steel barons would be
unable to prevent it. A check or a failure was but the signal for an
overhauling of the tactics used, and a resumption of the attack with
renewed vigor. At times it was almost laughable. With hardly an
exception, when the organizers went into a steel town to begin work,
they would be met by the local union men and solemnly assured that it
was utterly impossible to organize the steel mills in their town. "But,"
the organizers would say, "we succeeded in organizing Gary and South
Chicago and many other tough places." "Yes, we know that," would be the
reply, "but conditions are altogether different here. These mills are
absolutely impossible. We have worked on them for years and cannot make
the slightest impression. They are full of scabs from all over the
country. You will only waste your time by monkeying with them." This
happened not in one place alone, but practically everywhere--illustrating
the villainous reputation the steel companies had built up as union
smashers.
Side-stepping these pessimistic croakers, the organizers would go on to
their task with undiminished self-confidence and energy. The result was
success everywhere. The National Committee can boast the proud record of
never having set up its organizing machinery in a steel town without
ultimately putting substantial unions among the employees. It made
little difference what the obstacles were; the chronic lack of funds;
suppression of free speech and free assembly; raises in wages;
multiplicity of races; mass picketing by bosses; wholesale discharge of
union men; company unions; discouraging traditions of lost local
strikes; or what not--in every case, whether the employers were
indifferent or bitterly hostile, the result was the same, a healthy and
rapid growth of the unions. The National Committee proved beyond
peradventure of a doubt that the steel industry could be organized in
spite of all the Steel Trust could do to prevent it.
Each town produced its own particular crop of problems. A chapter apiece
would hardly suffice to describe the discouraging obstacles overcome in
organizing the many districts. But that would far outrun the limits of
this volume. A few details about the work in Johnstown will suffice to
indicate the tactics of the employers and the nature of the campaign
generally.
Johnstown is situated on the main line of the Pennsylvania railroad,
seventy-five miles east of Pittsburgh. It is the home of the Cambria
Steel Company, which employs normally from 15,000 to 17,000 men in its
enormous mills and mines. It is one of the most important steel centers
in America.
For sixty-six years the Cambria Company had reared its black stacks in
the Conemaugh valley and ruled as autocratically as any mediaeval baron.
It practically owned the district and the dwellers therein. It paid its
workers less than almost any other steel company in Pennsylvania and was
noted as one of the country's worst union-hating concerns. According to
old residents, the only record of unionism in its plants, prior to the
National Committee campaign, was a strike in 1874 of the Sons of Vulcan,
and a small movement a number of years later, in 1885, when a few men
joined the Knights of Labor and were summarily discharged. The
Amalgamated Association, even in its most militant days, was unable to
get a grip in Johnstown. That town, for years, bore the evil reputation
of being one where union organizers were met at the depot and given the
alternative of leaving town or going to the lockup.
Into this industrial jail of a city the National Committee went in the
early winter of 1918-19, at the invitation of local steel workers who
had heard of the campaign. A. F. of L. organizer Thomas J. Conboy was
placed in charge of the work. Immediately a strong organization spirit
manifested itself--the wrongs of two-thirds of a century would out. It
was interesting to watch the counter-moves of the company. They were
typical. At first the officials contented themselves by stationing
numbers of bosses and company detectives in front of the office and
meeting halls to jot down the names of the men attending. But when this
availed nothing, they took the next step by calling the live union
spirits to the office and threatening them with dismissal. This likewise
failed to stem the tide of unionism, and then the company officials
applied their most dreaded weapon, the power of discharge. This was a
dangerous course; the reason they did not adopt it before was for fear
of its producing exactly the revolt they were aiming to prevent. But,
all else unavailing, they went to this extreme.
Never was a policy of industrial frightfulness more diabolically
conceived or more rigorously executed than that of the Cambria Steel
Company. The men sacrificed were the Company's oldest and best
employees. Men who had worked faithfully for ten, twenty or thirty years
were discharged at a moment's notice. The plan was to pick out the men
economically most helpless; men who were old and crippled, or who had
large families dependent upon them, or homes half paid for, and make
examples of them to frighten the rest. The case of Wm. H. Seibert was
typical; this man, a highly skilled mechanic, had worked for the Cambria
Company thirty years. He was deaf and dumb, and could neither read nor
write. He was practically cut off from all communication with his fellow
workers. Yet the company, with fiendish humor, discharged him for being
a union agitator. For every worker, discharge by the Cambria Company
meant leaving Johnstown, if he would again work at his trade; for most
of them it brought the severest hardships, but for such as Seibert it
spelled ruin. With their handicaps of age and infirmities, they could
never hope to work in steel mills again.
For months the Company continued these tactics.[6] Hundreds of union men
were thus victimized. The object was to strike terror to the hearts of
all and make them bow again to the mastery of the Cambria Steel Company.
But the terrorists overshot the mark. Human nature could not endure it.
They goaded their workers to desperation and forced them to fight back,
however unfavorable the circumstances. The National Committee met in
Johnstown and ordered a ballot among the men. They voted overwhelmingly
to strike. A committee went to see Mr. Slick, the head of the Company,
who refused to meet it, stating that if the men had any grievances they
could take them up through the company union.
This company union played a large part in the drama of Johnstown. It was
organized late in 1918 to forestall the trade unions. Such company
unions are invariably mere auxiliaries to the companies' labor-crushing
systems. They serve to delude the workers into believing they have some
semblance of industrial democracy, and thus deter them from seeking the
real thing. They consist merely of committees, made up for the most part
of hand-picked bosses and "company suckers." There is no real
organization of the workers. The men have no meetings off the property
of the companies; they lack the advice of skilled trade unionists; they
have no funds or means to strike effectively; they are out of touch with
the workers in other sections of the industry. Consequently they have
neither opportunity to formulate their grievances, nor power to enforce
their adjustment. And little good would it do them if they had, for the
lickspittle committees are always careful to see that they handle no
business unless it relates to "welfare" work or other comparatively
insignificant matters.
Company unions are invariably contemptible. All of them are cursed with
company dictation, and all of them lack the vivifying principles of
democratic control; but it is doubtful if a more degraded specimen can
be found anywhere than that of the Cambria Steel Company. Without a
murmur of protest it watched the company abolish the basic eight hour
day late in 1918. Nor did it raise a finger to help the multitude of
unfairly discharged union men. It habitually pigeonholed all real
grievances submitted to it. But what else could be expected of a
committee from which the company boldly discharged every man who dared
say a word for the workers?
By referring the men's grievances to the despised company union, Mr.
Slick only added fuel to the fire. A strike loomed threateningly, but
just as it was about to break, Mr. Slick lost his job, presumably
because of his unsuccessful labor policy. He was supplanted by A. A.
Corey, Jr., formerly general superintendent of the Homestead Steel
Works. Thinking perhaps the change in personnel might involve a change
in policy, the committee approached Mr. Corey. He, too, refused to meet
with it, stating publicly that the management would not deal with the
representatives of outside organizations, but would take up the men's
grievances, either through the company union, or "through any other
accredited committee selected by the men in any way that is agreeable to
them from among their own number." The last proposition was acceptable,
and with joy the men held big open mass meetings of union and non-union
men, and elected their committee. But their joy was short-lived. Mr.
Corey, unashamed, wrote the committee that he had acted hastily before,
and said, "I have had no previous experience with arrangements in the
nature of collective bargaining, but a careful survey of this plan
(company union), which I have since had time to make, convinces me that
it makes full and complete provision for every contingency which can
arise between the company and its employees." And then to make the men
like this bitter medicine, the Company discharged an active member of
the committee. All these events consumed many weeks and wore away the
late winter and early spring months.
Mr. Corey's double-dealing provoked a fresh strike crisis; but by heroic
measures the organizers repressed it. At all times a strike in Johnstown
alone against the united steel companies was considered a move of
desperation, a last resort to be undertaken only because nothing else
could be done. But now relief was in sight. Spring was at hand and the
national movement fast coming to a head. Its committees were knocking at
the doors of the steel companies. The exposed and invaluable Johnstown
position had to be held until this main army could come up and relieve
it. So the Johnstown workers were told that they must refrain from
counter-attacking, that they had to take all the blows heaped upon them
and hold their ground at all costs.
And right nobly they did it. In spite of the bitterest hardships they
built up and developed their organizations. In this they were
unwittingly but powerfully aided by the company union. Several weeks
before the big strike the officials took the hated general committee to
Atlantic City, wined them and dined them and flattered them, as usual,
and then had them adopt a set of resolutions condemning the national
movement of the steel workers and endorsing long hours, low wages and
heavier production as the remedy for prevailing bad conditions. This
betrayal was the last straw. It provoked intense resentment among the
men. Whole battalions of them, the most skilled and difficult in the
plant to organize, walked down and joined the unions in protest. Almost
3000 enrolled the week after the resolutions were adopted. But it was
always thus. Every move that the Cambria made the unions turned to their
advantage. They outgeneraled the Company at every turn.
It was almost pitiful to watch the later antics of the haughty and
hitherto unchallenged Cambria Company, humbled in its own town by its
own workers. A few weeks before Labor day the unions, innocently
presuming the mills would be closed as usual on that day, decided to
have a parade. Then the strategical experts of the Company became
active. A warning was issued that every man marching in the parade would
be summarily discharged. The unions would not brook this unwarranted and
cold-blooded attack. They promptly sent word to the Company that if a
single man was discharged the whole plant would be stopped the next day.
It was a clear-cut issue, and Johnstown held its breath. When Labor day
came the city saw the biggest demonstration in its history. Fifteen
thousand organized workers defied their would-be masters and marched.
The Company swiftly backed water. And the next day not a man was
discharged. It was a victory well worth the heroic efforts and suffering
of the previous eight months.
When the great strike broke on September 22 the Johnstown workers went
into the fight almost one hundred per cent. organized, and with about
the same percentage of grievances. So few men were left in the plant
that the Company had to ask the unions to give them help to shut down
their furnaces, and to keep the fire protection in operation. All the
power of the great corporation, which had made $30,000,000 the year
before, could not forestall the unions. It had no arrow in its quiver
that could strike fear to the hearts of its workers; no trick in its
brain pan that could be substituted for industrial democracy.
And Johnstown was only one point in the long battle line. Its
experiences were but typical. Each steel town had its own bitter story
of obstacles encountered and overcome. Youngstown, Chicago, Bethlehem,
Cleveland, Wheeling, Pueblo, Buffalo and many other districts, each put
up a hard fight. But one by one, despite all barriers, steel towns all
over the country were captured for unionism.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] As a side light on organizing methods, it may be noted that the
temporary receipts were red, white and blue cards. The patriotic
foreigners were proud to carry these emblematic cards pending the time
they got their regular cards. More than one man joined merely on that
account.
[6] In its war against unionism the Cambria Steel Company held nothing
sacred, not even the church. During the campaign the Reverend George
Dono Brooks, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Johnstown, took an
active part, speaking at many meetings and generally lending
encouragement to the workers. For this crime the company punished him by
disrupting his congregation and eventually driving him from the city,
penniless.
V
BREAKING INTO PITTSBURGH
THE FLYING SQUADRON--MONESSEN--DONORA--McKEESPORT--RANKIN
--BRADDOCK--CLAIRTON--HOMESTEAD--DUQUESNE--THE RESULTS
The time was now ripe for a great drive on Pittsburgh, a district which
had been the despair of unionism for a generation. The new strategy of
the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers was
succeeding. Pittsburgh had been surrounded by organized posts,
established during the winter. The Chicago district had also been held.
The committee's finances were improving. The crew of organizers was
larger and more enthusiastic than ever. The mills were operating
stronger and stronger. And spring was here. The movement was now ready
for a tremendous effort to capture Pittsburgh, and thus overcome, as far
as might be, the original mistake of not starting the campaign soon
enough and everywhere at the same time. This done, it would put the work
squarely upon the essential national basis. So the assault was ordered
on the stronghold of the Steel Trust.
First free speech and free assembly had to be established; for the towns
about Pittsburgh were still closed tight against the unions. During the
winter incessant attempts had been made to break the embargo by
political methods, but without avail. In vain a special convention of
all the unions in Western Pennsylvania had appealed to the Governor for
assistance. For a moment the federal Department of Labor displayed a
languid interest and sent a dozen men to investigate conditions. But
until this day their report has never appeared. In answer to inquiries,
the Secretary of Labor is reported to have said that "its publication at
this time would be inadvisable." That may be one reason, and another may
be that the Department, in its eager cooperation with Attorney General
Palmer, in deporting hundreds of workingmen without trials, is so busy
that it hasn't time to attend to such trifles as the wholesale
suppression of constitutional rights in Pennsylvania.
But in seeking relief no appeal was made to the courts to set up the
rights of the unions. This was for two reasons. First, it would involve
such a loss of time that the chance to organize the steel workers would
have passed long before any decision could be secured. Then, again,
there was no faith that the courts of Pennsylvania would be just, and
the National Committee had no money to carry the fight higher. The
unions conceived their rights to speak and assemble freely too well
established to necessitate court sanction at this late date. Hence, they
determined to exercise them, peacefully and lawfully, and to take the
consequences. At Atlantic City, where the A. F. of L. was in convention,
a dozen presidents of international unions in the steel campaign
expressed their willingness to enter the steel districts, to speak on
the streets, and to go to jail if necessary.
To carry on the difficult and dangerous free speech fight, and to
oversee generally the organization of the immediate Pittsburgh district,
a special crew of organizers was formed. This was known as "The Flying
Squadron," and was headed by J. L. Beaghen, A. F. of L. organizer and
President of the Pittsburgh Bricklayers' Union. The following brief
references to the fights in the various towns will illustrate the forces
at play and the methods employed.
Monessen, forty miles from Pittsburgh on the Monongahela river, the home
of the Pittsburgh Steel Company and several other large concerns, and
notorious as the place where organizer Jeff. Pierce got his death blow
in a previous campaign, was the first point of attack. Wm. Feeney,
United Mine Workers' organizer and local secretary in charge of the
district for the National Committee, superintended operations. Several
months previously the Burgess of Monessen had flatly refused to allow
him to hold any meetings in that town. So he was compelled to operate
from Charleroi, several miles away. But as soon as spring peeped the
question was opened again. He called a meeting to take place square in
the streets of Monessen on April 1st. The Burgess forbade it with
flaming pronunciamentos and threatened dire consequences if it were
held. But Feeney went ahead, and on the date set marched 10,000 union
miners from the surrounding country into Monessen to protest the
suppression of free speech and free assembly. Mother Jones,[7] James
Maurer, President of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor, Philip
Murray, President of District No. 5, U. M. W. A., Mr. Feeney, the writer
and others spoke. The demonstration was a huge success. Public opinion
was clearly on the side of the steel workers, and the Burgess had to
recede from his dictatorial attitude and allow them to exercise their
constitutional rights. This they hastened to do with gusto. The affair
established the unions in the big mills of Monessen.
In Donora, an important steel town a few miles down the river from
Monessen, and part of organizer Feeney's district, the fight was not so
easily won. The United States Constitution provides that not even
Congress may pass laws abridging the rights of free speech and free
assembly; but in Pennsylvania the Constitution is considered a sort of
humorous essay; hence the lickspittle Donora council, right in the face
of the steel campaign, passed an ordinance forbidding public meetings
without the sanction of the Burgess, which sanction, of course, the
unions could not get. But nothing deterred, the indomitable Feeney hired
a couple of lots on the edge of the town and held meetings there. The
company officials left nothing undone to break up these gatherings. They
held band concerts and ball games at the same hour, and set dozens of
their bosses and police to picket the meetings. But it was no use; the
workers attended and joined the unions in droves.
This lasted a couple of months. And all the while a local paper was
villainously assailing Feeney. Finally, the steel company agents got the
business men to sign an ultimatum to Feeney, demanding that he leave the
district at once. Feeney took this matter up with his miners, and they
decided that not he, but they, would quit Donora. Organized solidly,
they easily put a strict boycott on the town, and it was not long before
the same business men, with their trade almost ruined, made a public
apology to Feeney, and ousted their own officials who had been
responsible for the attack.
Naturally these events heartened the steel workers. They organized very
rapidly, and soon had a majority of the men in the mills--a large plant
of the American Steel and Wire Company. They also became a big factor in
the local fraternal associations, which controlled all the halls; and
suddenly the Lithuanian Society deposed its President, who was friendly
to the steel company, and voted to give its hall to the unions, permits
or no permits. In the face of this situation the Burgess reluctantly
granted sanction for union meetings. And thus free speech and free
assembly were established in the benighted town of Donora, and with
them, almost complete organization of the steel workers.
But the heart of the conspiracy against free speech and free assembly
was in McKeesport, twenty miles from Pittsburgh. When the organizers
tried to hold meetings in that city they could hire no halls without
the Mayor's permission, and this the latter, George H. Lysle, stubbornly
refused to give. He feared a revolution if the staid A. F. of L. unions
were permitted to meet; but the Socialist party and other radical
organizations went ahead with their gatherings without opposition. The
truth was that he knew the unions would organize the workers if they
could but get their ear, and this he determined to prevent. Nor would he
shift from his autocratic position. Appeals by the organizers to the
Federal government, the Governor and the local city council were alike
fruitless. No meetings could be held in McKeesport. And the officials of
all the steel towns along the Monongahela river, drawing inspiration
from the little despot, Lysle, took the same stand. Free speech and free
assembly were stifled in the whole district.
The Federal authorities being so active setting the outside world aright
that they could find no time or occasion to correct the most glaring
abuses at home, the unions resolved to attend to the free speech and
free assembly matter themselves. Knowing that Lysle could knife the
workers' rights only so long as he was allowed to work in the dark, they
determined to drag him into the daylight and let the public judge of his
deeds. They would hold meetings on the streets of McKeesport in spite of
him; give him a few hundred test court cases to handle, and finally find
out whether the A. F. of L. is entitled to the same rights as other
organizations.
The fight opened as soon as the weather permitted. May 18 was the date
set for the first meeting. The Mayor stormed and threatened all
concerned with instant arrest; but the preparations went on just the
same. When the fated day arrived thousands turned out to hear the
speakers. But the Mayor, failing to defend his course, dared not molest
the meeting. After this, meetings were held on the streets each Sunday
afternoon, always in the face of the Mayor's threats, until eventually
the latter, seeing that he was the laughing stock of the city and that
the street meetings were organizing hundreds of the workers,
shame-facedly granted the following niggardly permit for meetings:
CITY OF McKEESPORT.
Department of Police.
McKeesport, Pa., July 7, 1919.
Mr. Reddington,
Chief of Police,
McKeesport, Pa.,
Dear Sir:
This is to certify that the McKeesport Council
of Labor has permission to hold a mass meeting in
Slavish Hall on White Street on July 8, 1919.
Permission is granted subject to the following conditions,
and also subject to police regulation.
(1st) That no speaker shall talk in any other
languages, except the English language.
(2nd) That a list of the speakers be submitted
to the Mayor before the meeting is held.
Very truly yours,
(Signed) Geo. H. Lysle
Mayor
Disregarding the three provisions of this contemptible document, the
unions held their meetings under the auspices of the A. F. of L. (not of
the McKeesport Council of Labor), had their speakers talk in whatever
languages their hearers best understood, and submitted no list to Lysle.
Then the big steel companies rushed to the aid of the hard-pressed
Mayor. All the while they had discharged every man they could locate who
had either joined the unions or expressed sympathy with them, but now
they became more active. As each meeting was held they stationed about
the hall doors (under the captaincy of Mr. William A. Cornelius, Manager
of the National Tube Company's works) at least five hundred of their
bosses, detectives, office help, and "loyal" workers to intimidate the
men who were entering. About three hundred more would be sent into the
hall to disrupt the meetings. And woe to the man they recognized, for he
was discharged the next morning. The organizers, running the gauntlet of
these Steel Trust gunmen, carried their very lives in their hands.
Under these hard circumstances few steel workers dared to go to the
meetings or to the union headquarters. But the organizations grew
rapidly nevertheless. Every discharged man became a volunteer organizer
and busied himself getting his friends to enroll. A favorite trick to
escape the espionage was to get a group of men, from a dozen to fifty,
to meet quietly in one of the homes, fill out their applications, and
send them by a sister or wife to the union headquarters--the detectives
stationed outside naturally not knowing the women. Conditions in the
local mills were so bad that not even the most desperate employers'
tactics could stop the progress of the unions. McKeesport quickly became
one of the strong organization points on the river.
Sweeping onward through the Pittsburgh district, the unions gained great
headway by the collapse of the petty Czar of McKeesport, for all the
little nabobs in the adjoining steel towns felt the effects of his
defeat. Rankin fell without a blow. A few months before the hall had
been closed there by the local board of health, when the Burgess refused
to act against the unions. But now no objections were made to the
meetings. Braddock also capitulated easily. At a street meeting held in
the middle of town against the Burgess' orders, organizers J. L.
Beaghen, R. L. Hall, J. C. Boyle, J. B. Gent and the writer were
arrested. The Burgess, however, not wishing to meet the issue, found it
convenient to leave town, and the Acting Burgess, declaring in open
court that he would not "do the dirty work of the Burgess," postponed
the hearings indefinitely. That settled Braddock.
Burgess Williams of North Clairton, chief of the Carnegie mill police at
that point, swore dire vengeance against the free speech fighters should
they come to his town. But the National Committee, choosing a lot owned
by its local secretary on the main street of North Clairton, called a
meeting there one bright Sunday afternoon. But hardly had it started
when, with a great flourish of clubs, the police broke up the gathering
and arrested organizers J. G. Brown, J. Manley, A. A. Lassich, P. H.
Brogan, J. L. Beaghen, R. L. Hall, and the writer. Later all were fined
for holding a meeting on their own property. But the Burgess, learning
that the speaker for the following Sunday was Mother Jones of the
Miners' Union, and that public sentiment was overwhelmingly against him,
decided not to fight. Instead he provided a place on the public commons
for open air meetings. The contest resulted in almost all of the local
steel workers joining the unions immediately.
In Homestead, however, that sacred shrine of Labor, the unions had to
put up a harder fight. The Burgess there, one P. H. McGuire, is a
veteran of the great Homestead strike, and for many years afterwards led
the local fight against the Carnegie Steel Company. But he has now fully
recovered from his unionism. He has made peace with the enemy. It was in
the early winter of 1918 that the unions first tried to hold meetings in
his town. But they were careful to make tentative arrangements for a
hall before asking a permit from McGuire. The latter stated flatly that
there would be no union meetings in Homestead, saying no halls could be
secured. "But," said the organizers, "we have already engaged a hall."
The next day the rent money was returned with the explanation that a
mistake had been made. Later the unions managed to sneak by the guard of
the ex-union man Burgess and hold a meeting or two--said to be the first
since the Homestead strike, twenty-six years before--but nothing
substantial could be done, and the fight was called off for the winter.
During the big spring drive on Pittsburgh the Flying Squadron turned
its attention to Homestead as soon as the McKeesport and many other
pressing situations permitted. Mass meetings were held on the main
streets. At first the Burgess, with a weather eye on McKeesport, did not
molest these; but when he saw the tremendous interest the steel workers
showed and the rapidity with which they were joining the unions, he
attempted to break up the meetings by arresting two of the organizers,
J. L. Beaghen and myself. At the trial McGuire, as magistrate, was shown
that his ordinance did not cover street meetings. "But," said he, "it's
the best we've got, and it will have to do." He fined the defendants,
and a day or two later had an ordinance adopted to his liking. Such
trifles don't worry the executives in steel towns.
But such an enormous crowd assembled to witness the next street meeting
that McGuire had to agree to permit hall meetings. No sooner were they
attempted however, than he broke his agreement. He would allow no
languages other than English to be spoken--the object being to prevent
the foreign workers from understanding what was going on. Of course all
other organizations in Homestead could use what tongues they pleased.
The unions balked, with the result that more street meetings were held
and Mother Jones, J. G. Brown, R. W. Reilly and J. L. Beaghen were
arrested. Public indignation was intense; thousands marched the streets
in protest; the unions grew like beanstalks. And so the affair went on
till the great strike broke on September 22.
That curse of the campaign since its inception, the lack of resources,
bore down heavily on the work in the crucial summer months just before
the strike. At least one hundred more men should have been put in the
field to take advantage of the unparalleled opportunity. But the
National Committee could not beg, borrow or steal them. The organizers
in the various localities fairly shrieked for help, but in vain.
Especially was the need keenly felt in the big drive on Pittsburgh.
Instead of eight or ten men, which was all that the Flying Squadron
could muster, there ought to have been at least fifty men delegated to
the huge task of capturing the score of hard-baked steel towns on
Pittsburgh's three rivers. The consequence was that the work everywhere
had to be skimped, with disastrous effects later on in the strike. In
those towns where the unions did get started lack of help prevented
their taking full advantage of the situation. And then some towns had to
be passed up altogether, although the men were infected with the general
fever for organization and were calling for organizers. It was
impossible to send any one to either Woodlawn or Midland, both very
important steel towns. Even the strategic city of Duquesne, with its
enormous mills and blast furnaces, could not be started until three
weeks before the strike.
Duquesne is just across the river from McKeesport and only four miles
from Homestead. It gave the organizers a hot reception. Its Mayor, James
S. Crawford, is President of the First National Bank. His brother is
President of the Port Vue Tinplate Company. Besides being Mayor, Mr.
Crawford is city Commissioner, President of the city council, Director
of Public Safety, and Magistrate. He makes the laws, executes them and
punishes the violators. He is a true type of Pennsylvania steel town
petty Kaiser and exercises his manifold powers accordingly.
So eager was the Mayor, popularly known as "Toad" Crawford, to give the
world a demonstration of Steel Trust Americanism that he challenged the
organizers to come to his town. He even offered to meet in personal
combat one of the men in charge of the campaign. Of course he
insultingly refused to grant permits for meetings. The organizers, who
could not hire an office in the place, so completely were the property
owners dominated by the steel companies, managed to lease a couple of
lots in an obscure part of town. But when they attempted to hold a
meeting there Mr. Crawford jailed three of them, J. L. Beaghen, J.
McCaig, and J. G. Sause. The next day he fined them each $100 and costs.
Rabbi Wise of New York was the speaker billed for the following Sunday.
But the Steel Trust Mayor forbade his meeting. And when it was proposed
to have Frank Morrison, with whom Crawford boasted a slight
acquaintance, confer with him about the situation, he declared, "It
won't do you any good. Jesus Christ himself could not speak in Duquesne
for the A. F. of L!" It so happened that Rabbi Wise was unable to come
to Pennsylvania for his scheduled lectures on behalf of the steel
workers, and the organizers held the Duquesne meeting themselves.
Crawford had his whole police force on hand and immediately arrested the
speakers, Mother Jones, J. L. Beaghen and the writer. Forty-four steel
workers, all the jail would hold, were arrested also, for no other
reason than attending the meeting. Organizer J. M. Patterson, who had
nothing to do with the gathering, was thrown into jail merely for trying
to find out what bail we were held for. The next day the organizers were
each fined $100 and costs, and the rest from $25 to $50 apiece.[8] In
sentencing Mr. Beaghen, Mayor Crawford declared that nothing would be
more pleasurable than to give him 99 years, and then be on hand when he
got out to give him 99 more.
The Mayor was going it strong; but he was riding fast to a hard fall.
The unions were planning to bring to Duquesne some of the most prominent
men in the United States and to give Crawford the fight of his life,
when the outbreak of the great strike swamped them with work and
compelled them to turn their attention elsewhere.[9]
Whatever its general disadvantages, in some respects, at least, the
free speech fight was very good for the unions. For one thing, it served
wonderfully well to infuse the necessary hope and confidence into the
steel workers. So tremendous had been the manifestations of the Steel
Trust--its long record of victory over the trade unions, its vast wealth
and undisputed political supremacy, its enormous mills and furnaces--so
tremendous had been all these influences that they had overcome the
individual workers with a profound sense of insignificance and
helplessness, and practically destroyed all capacity for spontaneous
action. What the steel men needed to rouse them from their lethargy was
a demonstration of power from outside, a tangible sign that there was
some institution through which they could help themselves. Throughout
the campaign this consideration was borne in mind, and bands and other
spectacular methods of advertising were used to develop among the steel
workers a feeling of the greatness and power of the unions. Nor were
these methods unsuccessful. Most effective of all, however, was the free
speech fight in Pennsylvania. That gave the unions a golden opportunity
to defeat the Steel Trust so easily and spectacularly that the steel
workers couldn't help but be encouraged thereby. They simply had to cast
in their lot with a movement able to defeat so handily their autocratic
masters. And once they came in they felt the utmost confidence in their
leaders, the men they had seen jailed time and again for fighting their
battle.
In consequence of The Flying Squadron's heroic battles in the immediate
Pittsburgh district the whole campaign was put practically upon a
national basis, where it should have been at the start. Almost every
steel centre in America was being organized simultaneously. Members were
streaming into the co-operating unions by thousands. The entire steel
industry was on the move. Perhaps it may be fitting to introduce at this
point an official digest of the general report of the number of men
organized by the National Committee during the whole campaign. The
report covers the period up to January 31, 1920, but almost all of the
men were enrolled before the strike started on September 22.
GENERAL REPORT
on
250,000 members enrolled by the National Committee for
Organizing Iron and Steel Workers during the
American Federation of Labor Organizing
Campaign in the Steel Industry, from
August 1, 1918, until January
31, 1920.
_By Localities_ _By Trades_
South Chicago 6,616 Blacksmiths 5,699
Chicago Heights 569 Boilermakers 2,097
Misc. Chicago Dist 3,871 Brick & Clay Workers 187
Pittsburgh 8,970 Bricklayers 581
Johnstown 11,846 Coopers 138
Butler 2,519 Electrical Workers 8,481
Monessen & Donora 8,665 Foundry Employees 2,406
New Castle 2,710 Hod Carriers 2,335
Homestead 3,571 Iron, Steel & Tin Wkrs. 70,026
Braddock & Rankin 4,044 Iron Workers 5,829
Clairton 2,970 Machinists 12,406
McKeesport 3,963 Metal Polishers 349
Gary 7,092 M. M. & Smelter Wkrs. 15,223
Indiana Harbor 4,654 Mine Workers 1,538
Joliet 3,497 Moulders 1,382
Milwaukee 681 Pattern Makers -
Waukegan 1,212 Plumbers 1,369
DeKalb 332 Quarry Workers 725
Aurora 242 Railway Carmen 5,045
Pullman 4,073 Seamen -
Kenosha 585 Sheet Metal Workers 377
Hammond 1,102 Stationary Engineers 2,194
Wheeling Dist. 5,028 Stationary Firemen 5,321
Farrell & Sharon 3,794 Steam Shovelmen 2
Cleveland 17,305 Switchmen 440
Sparrows Point 93 Unclassified 12,552
Brackenridge & Natrona 2,110
East Pittsburgh 146
East Liverpool 50
Warren & Niles 474
Minnesota Dist. 185
Pueblo 3,113
Coatesville 828
Steubenville Dist. 4,108
Birmingham Dist. 1,470
Canton & Massillon 5,705
Vandergrift 1,986
Buffalo & Lackawanna 6,179
Youngstown 19,040
Peoria 984
Decatur 320
------- -------
_Total by Localities_ 156,702 _Total by Trades_ 156,702
This report includes only those members actually signed up by the
National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers, and from whose
initiation fees $1.00 apiece was deducted and forwarded to the general
office of the National Committee. It represents approximately 50 to 60
per cent. of the total number of steel workers organized during the
campaign, and is minimum in every respect.
The report does not include any of the many thousands of men signed up
at Bethlehem, Steelton, Reading, Apollo, New Kensington, Leechburg and
many minor points which felt the force of the drive but where the
National Committee made no deductions upon initiation fees. In Gary,
Joliet, Indiana Harbor, South Chicago and other Chicago District points
the National Committee ceased collecting on initiation fees early in
1919, hence this report makes no showing of the thousands of men signed
up in that territory during the last few months of the campaign.
Likewise, at Coatesville and Sparrows' Point, during only a short space
of the campaign were deductions made for the National Committee. Many
thousands more men were signed up directly by the multitude of local
unions in the steel industry, that were not reported to the National
Committee. These do not show in this calculation. Nor do the great
number of ex-soldiers who were taken into the unions free of initiation
fees--in Johnstown alone 1300 ex-soldier steel workers joined the unions
under this arrangement. Of course no accounting is here included for the
army of workers in outside industries who became organized as a result
of the tremendous impulse given by the steel campaign.
In view of these exceptions it may be conservatively estimated that well
over 250,000 steel workers joined the unions notwithstanding the
opposition of the Steel Trust, which discharged thousands of its
workers, completely suppressed free speech and free assembly in
Pennsylvania and used every known tactic to prevent the organization of
its employees.
WM. Z. FOSTER,
Secretary-Treasurer
National Committee for Organizing
Iron & Steel Workers.
Certified by
Enoch Martin
Auditor, District No. 12
United Mine Workers of America.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Throughout the latter part of the organizing campaign and the first
two months of the strike, Mother Jones lent great assistance to the
steel workers. This veteran organizer (she testified in court to being
89 years old) of the United Mine Workers labored dauntlessly, going to
jail and meeting the hardships and dangers of the work in a manner that
would do credit to one half her age.
[8] Relative to this meeting there occurs the following dialogue on page
508 of the report on the Senate Committee's Hearings on the Steel
Strike:
Senator Sterling. "Was Mr. Foster here prior to the strike?"
Mr. Diehl (Gen. Manager Duquesne Works, Carnegie Steel Co.). "Yes; he
was here trying to hold a meeting, but the meeting was not held."
The Chairman. "What happened to the meeting?"
Mr. Diehl. "Well, we simply prohibited it."
And naturally so. Mr. Diehl and other company officials shut off
meetings in the halls and on the lots of their towns just as readily as
they would have done had attempts been made to hold them in the mill
yards.
[9] Now that the strike is over and spring is again at hand, the unions
have resumed the battle for free speech and assembly in Duquesne and
promise to fight it to a conclusion.
VI
STORM CLOUDS GATHER
RELIEF DEMANDED--THE AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION MOVES--A GENERAL
MOVEMENT--THE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE--GOMPERS' LETTER
UNANSWERED--THE STRIKE VOTE--GARY DEFENDS STEEL AUTOCRACY
--PRESIDENT WILSON ACTS IN VAIN--THE STRIKE CALL
Surging forward to the accomplishment of the "impossible," the
organization of the steel industry, the twenty-four co-operating
international unions found themselves in grips with the employers long
before they were strong enough to sustain such a contest. It is almost
always so with new unions. In their infancy, when their members are
weak, undisciplined and inexperienced, and the employers are bitterly
hostile and aggressive, is exactly the time when they must establish
principles and adjust grievances that would test the strength of the
most powerful unions. Inability to do so means dissolution, either
through a lost strike or by disintegration. Following in the wake of the
newly formed steel workers' unions came a mass of such difficulties
requiring immediate settlement. The demand for relief from the evils of
long hours, low wages and miserable working conditions was bad enough;
but infinitely more serious was the need to take care of the army of men
discharged for union membership. Thousands of these walked the streets
in the various steel towns clamoring for protection. And the men on the
job demanded it for them. Nor could these appeals be ignored. Whether
they deemed the occasion propitious or not, the steel workers' unions,
on pain of extinction, had to act in defence of their harassed
membership.
So bad was the situation by early spring that, lacking other means of
relief, local strikes were threatening all over the country. To allow
these forlorn-hope walkouts to occur would have meant disintegration and
disaster to the whole campaign. They had to be checked at all costs and
the movement kept upon a national basis. Therefore, the National
Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers called a general
conference of delegates of steelworkers' unions of all trades through
the entire industry, to take place in Pittsburgh, May 25, 1919. The
object was to demonstrate to the rank and file how fast the national
movement was developing, to turn their attention to it strongly, and
thus hearten them to bear their hardships until it could come to their
assistance.
Right in the face of this general movement of all the trades the
Amalgamated Association made a bid for separate consideration by the
steel companies. By instruction of its convention, President Tighe wrote
the following letter to Mr. Gary:
Convention Hall, Louisville, Ky., May 15, 1919
Honorable Elbert H. Gary, Chairman,
Executive Officers, United States Steel Corporation,
Hoboken, N. J.
_Dear Sir_:
The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers
of North America, in National Convention assembled, have by
resolution, instructed the undersigned to address you as
Chairman of the Executive Officers of the United States
Steel Corporation on a matter which in the opinion of the
representatives of the Amalgamated Association of Iron,
Steel and Tin Workers, is of vital importance to the
Corporation you have the honor to represent and to the
Amalgamated Association.
As you no doubt are aware, there is a serious disturbing
element in the industrial world at the present time, a great
spirit of unrest has spread over our common country. It is
becoming more and more acute, and there is no telling when
or where the storm clouds will break. It is the judgment of
the representatives of the Amalgamated Association that it
is the patriotic duty of all good citizens to use their
every effort to stem the tide of unrest, if possible.
The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers
have admitted many thousands of the employees of the United
States Steel Corporation into their organization; these
members are asking that they be given consideration by the
Corporation you are the Honorable Chairman of, in their
respective crafts and callings, and also that as law-abiding
citizens who desire the privilege of having their
representatives meet with the chosen representatives of the
Corporation you represent, to jointly confer on questions
that mutually concern both.
Sincerely believing that the granting of their request on
your part will not only be the means of allaying that
unrest, but will also promote and insure that harmony and
co-operation that should at all times exist between employer
and employee to the end that all will share in the glorious
triumphs so lately achieved in the war and thereby add still
more to the lustre and glory of our common country.
Trusting that you will give this request on the part of the
aforesaid employees of your Corporation your most earnest
consideration, I await your pleasure.
M. F. TIGHE, International President
Hotel Tyler, Louisville, Ky.
To this letter Mr. Gary replied as follows:
UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION
Chairman's Office,
New York, May 20th, 1919
Mr. M. F. Tighe,
International President,
Amalgamated Association of
Iron, Steel and Tin Workers,
Pittsburgh, Pa.
_Dear Sir_:
I have read with interest your letter of May 15th inst. I
agree that it is the patriotic duty of all good citizens to
use their efforts in stemming the tide of unrest in the
industrial world whenever and wherever it exists.
As you know, we do not confer, negotiate with, or combat
labor unions as such. We stand for the open shop, which
permits a man to engage in the different lines of
employment, whether he belongs to a labor union or not. We
think this attitude secures the best results to the
employees generally and to the employers.
In our own way, and in accordance with our best judgment,
we are rendering efficient patriotic service in the
direction indicated by you.
With kind regards, I am,
Yours respectfully,
E. H. GARY, Chairman
The Amalgamated Association's action threatened the existence of the
general movement, but Mr. Gary's refusal to deal with its officials kept
them in the fold. Where the principle of solidarity was lacking outside
pressure served the same end. It would be interesting to hear the
Amalgamated Association officials explain this attempt at desertion.
At the conference of May 25 there assembled 583 delegates, representing
twenty-eight international unions in eighty steel centers, the largest
gathering of steel worker delegates in the history of the industry. The
reports of the men present made it clearly evident that action had to be
taken to defend the interests of their constituents. Consequently,
disregarding the rebuff given the Amalgamated Association by Mr. Gary,
the conference, which was only advisory in character, adopted the
following resolution:
RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, We have now arrived at a point in our
nation-wide campaign where our organizations control great
numbers of the workers in many of the most important steel
plants in America, and
WHEREAS, Various officials of the iron and steel
industry, including Judge Gary, Charles Schwab, and other
heads of these gigantic corporations have expressed their
solicitude for the welfare of the workers in this industry,
and
WHEREAS, They have been continuously quoted as
defenders of the rights of the workers in industry, and
WHEREAS, The corporations, to block our progress,
are organizing company unions, discharging union men
wholesale and otherwise trying to break up our organization,
thus compelling us to take action to escape destruction,
therefore be it
RESOLVED, That it be the will of this conference
that a joint effort be made by all unions affiliated with
the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers
to enter into negotiations with the various steel companies
to the end that better wages, shorter hours, improved
working conditions and the trade-union system of collective
bargaining be established in the steel industry; and be it
further
RESOLVED, That this resolution be submitted for
action to the National Committee for Organizing Iron and
Steel Workers at its next meeting in Washington, D. C., May
27.
Two days later the National Committee met in Washington and adopted this
resolution. The following were appointed as a conference committee to
have charge of the preliminary negotiations with the steel companies:
Samuel Gompers, Chairman of the National Committee; John Fitzpatrick,
Acting Chairman; D. J. Davis, Amalgamated Association; Edw. J. Evans,
Electrical Workers; Wm. Hannon, Machinists; Wm. Z. Foster, Railway
Carmen. As the first approach, Mr. Gompers addressed the following
letter to Mr. Gary, requesting a conference:
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR
The Alamac Hotel,
Atlantic City, N. J., June 20, 1919
Mr. Elbert H. Gary, Chairman,
Board of Directors, U. S. Steel Corporation,
New York, N. Y.
_Dear Sir_:
Of course you are aware that upon the request of a number of
men in the employ of the United States Steel Corporation,
and realizing the need of it, the convention of the American
Federation of Labor decided to respond and give such
assistance as is possible in order to bring about more
thorough organization of the workers in the iron and steel
industry, particularly those employed by your Corporation.
A campaign of organization was begun in June, 1918, and
within that period we have secured the organization of more
than 100,000 of the employees in the iron and steel
industry. The prospects for the complete organization are, I
am informed, exceedingly bright.
Of course, knowing the policy of the Organized Labor
movement I have the honor in part to represent, we aim to
accomplish the purposes of our labor movement; that is,
better conditions for the toilers, by American methods, and
American understandings, not by revolutionary methods or the
inauguration of a cataclysm.
We believe in the effort of employer and employees to sit
down around a table and, meeting thus, face to face, and
having a better understanding of each other's position in
regard to conditions of labor, to hours, standards, etc.,
and after reaching an amicable understanding to enter into
an agreement for collective bargaining that is to cover
wages, hours of labor, conditions of employment, etc.
At the Atlantic City convention of the American Federation
of Labor just closed, the committee reported upon the
progress made, and I am instructed and authorized to suggest
to you whether you will consent to hold a conference with a
committee representing not only the iron and steel workers
who are organized, but representing the best interests of
the unorganized men in the employ of your Corporation. The
names of the committee I am asking you to meet are:
Assistant President Davis, Amalgamated Iron and Steel and
Tin Workers.
William Hannon, member executive board, International
Association of Machinists.
Edward Evans, representing International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers.
Wm. Z. Foster, secretary of the National Committee for
Organizing Iron and Steel Workers and representing the
Brotherhood of Carmen of America.
John Fitzpatrick, president Chicago Federation of Labor.
If you can advise me at your early convenience that the
request contained in this letter meets with your approval
and that a conference can be held, I am sure I shall be
additionally appreciative.
Kindly address your reply, which I trust may be favorable,
to the American Federation of Labor Building, Washington, D.
C.
Respectfully yours,
SAMUEL GOMPERS,
President American Federation of Labor
This letter was sent during the A. F. of L. convention at Atlantic City.
About the same time Mr. Gompers resigned the chairmanship of the
National Committee and appointed in his stead John Fitzpatrick, hitherto
Acting Chairman. Mr. Fitzpatrick has been President of the Chicago
Federation of Labor for many years. He is a horseshoer by trade and one
of America's sterling union men. Possessed of a broad idealism,
unquestioned integrity, a magnetic personality and a wide knowledge of
trade-union practice, his services were beyond value as Chairman of the
committees that carried on the organization work in the steel and
packing industries. He is now taking an active part in the launching of
the new Labor party.
To Mr. Gompers' courteous letter Czar Gary did not deign to reply. This
was bad. It looked like war. But the unions had no alternative; they had
to go ahead. Conditions in the steel industry were so unbearable that
they had to exert their utmost power to right them, come what might.
Therefore, after waiting several weeks for word from Mr. Gary, the
National Committee met, gave the situation profound consideration, and
adopted the following resolution:
RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, Working conditions in the steel industry
are so intolerable and the unrest arising therefrom so
intense that they can only be remedied by the application of
the principles of collective bargaining; and,
WHEREAS, All efforts have failed to bring about a
conference between the heads of the great steel corporations
and the trade unions, representing many thousands of
organized steel workers, for the purpose of establishing
trade union conditions in the steel industry; therefore, be
it
RESOLVED, That the National Committee for
Organizing Iron and Steel Workers recommends to its 24
affiliated unions that they take a strike vote of their
local unions throughout the steel industry; and, be it
further
RESOLVED, That a special meeting be held in the
Pittsburgh Labor Temple, July 20th, at 10 A. M., of
representatives of all the co-operating international unions
for the purpose of taking action on this matter.
The National Committee meeting of July 20th, called in accordance with
the above resolution, approached the situation from every possible angle
and with the keenest sense of responsibility. But it had to recognize
that the matter was wholly in the hands of Mr. Gary and his associates.
The resolution to take a strike vote of the men was re-adopted. Also the
following general demands, based on accurate surveys of the situation,
and subject to revision over the conference table, were formulated:
1. Right of collective bargaining
2. Reinstatement of all men discharged for union activities
with pay for time lost
3. Eight hour day
4. One day's rest in seven
5. Abolition of 24-hour shift
6. Increases in wages sufficient to guarantee American
standard of living
7. Standard scales of wages in all trades and
classifications of workers
8. Double rates of pay for all overtime after 8 hours,
holiday and Sunday work
9. Check-off system of collecting union dues and assessments
10. Principles of seniority to apply in the maintenance,
reduction and increase of working forces
11. Abolition of company unions
12. Abolition of physical examination of applicants for
employment
So plain, fair and equitable are these demands that to reasonable
people they require no defence. The only explanation they might need
relates to #9 and #12. The check-off was to apply only to the mining end
of the steel industry, and the abolition of the physical examination was
to put a stop to the rank discrimination practiced by the companies
through their medical departments.
A month was allowed in which to take the vote. Each trade looked after
its own members, with the National Committee voting those men who were
enrolled but not yet turned over to their respective unions, and in some
cases the unorganized also. Enthusiasm was intense. The steel workers
saw a glimmer of hope and welcomed with open arms the opportunity to
right their crying wrongs. When the vote was tabulated in Youngstown,
Ohio, on August 20, it was found that every trade had voted
overwhelmingly for a strike in case no settlement could be reached.
Whole districts voted to a man in the affirmative. Of all the thousands
of ballots cast in Homestead, Braddock, Rankin, McKeesport, Vandergrift,
Pittsburgh and Monessen not one was in the negative. Donora produced one
"no" vote, with the great Youngstown, Chicago and Cleveland districts
about the same. Everywhere the sentiment was practically unanimous to
make a stand. The vote was calculated conservatively at 98 per cent. for
a strike. The Conference Committee was accordingly instructed to request
a conference with the heads of the United States Steel Corporation and
the big independent companies, and if at the end of ten days no such
meeting had been arranged, to set the strike date. [Illustration:
STRIKE BALLOT]
Taking no further chances on unanswered letters, the Committee bearded
Mr. Gary in his lair at 71 Broadway. He was in but refused to meet the
Committee, requesting that its proposition be submitted in writing. The
Committee thereupon sent him the following request for a conference:
New York, August 26, 1919
Hon. Elbert H. Gary, Chairman Finance Committee,
United States Steel Corporation,
71 Broadway, New York City
_Dear Sir:_
During a general campaign of organization and education
conducted under the auspices of the American Federation of
Labor, many thousands of men employed in the iron and steel
industry made application and were enrolled as members of
the various organizations to which they were assigned.
This work has been carried on to a point where we feel
justified in stating to you that we represent the sentiment
of the vast majority of the employees in this industry, and,
acting in behalf of them, we solicit of you that a hearing
be given to the undersigned Committee, who have been
selected by the duly accredited representatives of the
employees, to place before you matters that are of vital
concern to them, and concerning hours of labor, wages,
working conditions and the right of collective bargaining.
The committee called at your office at 3 P. M., Tuesday,
August 26, and requested a conference. We were advised by
your messenger that you wished to be excused from a personal
interview at this time and requested us to have our business
in writing and whatever matters we wished to submit would
be taken up by yourself and your colleagues and given
consideration.
Therefore we are submitting in brief the principal subjects
that we desired to have a conference on. The committee has
an important meeting in another city on Thursday next and
will leave New York at 5 o'clock on August 27, 1919. May we
respectfully request that your answer be sent before that
time to Mr. John Fitzpatrick, Continental Hotel, Broadway
and Forty-first Street, New York City.
Very truly yours,
John Fitzpatrick
D. J. Davis
Wm. Hannon
Edw. J. Evans
Wm. Z. Foster
Committee
To this letter Mr. Gary replied as follows:
UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION
Office of the Chairman,
New York, August 27, 1919
Messrs. John Fitzpatrick, David J. Davis, William
Hannon, Wm. Z. Foster, Edw. J. Evans, Committee
_Gentlemen_:
Receipt of your communication of August 26 instant is
acknowledged.
We do not think you are authorized to represent the
sentiment of a majority of the employees of the United
States Steel Corporation and its subsidiaries. We express no
opinion concerning any other members of the iron and steel
industry.
As heretofore publicly stated and repeated, our Corporation
and subsidiaries, although they do not combat labor unions
as such, decline to discuss business with them. The
Corporation and subsidiaries are opposed to the "closed
shop." They stand for the "open shop," which permits one to
engage in any line of employment whether one does or does
not belong to a labor union. This best promotes the welfare
of both employees and employers. In view of the well-known
attitude as above expressed, the officers of the Corporation
respectfully decline to discuss with you, as representatives
of a labor union, any matter relating to employees. In doing
so no personal discourtesy is intended.
In all decisions and acts of the Corporation and
subsidiaries pertaining to employees and employment their
interests are of highest importance. In wage rates, living
and working conditions, conservation of life and health,
care and comfort in times of sickness or old age, and
providing facilities for the general welfare and happiness
of employees and their families, the Corporation and
subsidiaries have endeavored to occupy a leading and
advanced position among employers.
It will be the object of the Corporation and subsidiaries to
give such consideration to employees as to show them their
loyal and efficient service in the past is appreciated, and
that they may expect in the future fair treatment.
Respectfully yours,
E. H. GARY, Chairman
In a last effort to prevail upon Mr. Gary to yield his tyrannical
position, the committee addressed him this further communication:
New York City, Aug. 27, 1919.
Hon. Elbert H. Gary, Chairman
Finance Committee, United States Steel Corporation,
71 Broadway, New York, N. Y.
_Dear Sir_:
We have received your answer to our request for a conference
on behalf of the employees of your Corporation, and we
understand the first paragraph of your answer to be an
absolute refusal on the part of your corporation to concede
to your employees the right of collective bargaining.
You question the authority of our committee to represent the
majority of your employees. The only way by which we can
prove our authority is to put the strike vote into effect
and we sincerely hope that you will not force a strike to
prove this point.
We asked for a conference for the purpose of arranging a
meeting where the questions of wages, hours, conditions of
employment, and collective bargaining might be discussed.
Your answer is a flat refusal for such conference, which
raises the question, if the accredited representatives of
your employees and the international unions affiliated with
the American Federation of Labor and the Federation itself
are denied a conference, what chance have the employees as
such to secure any consideration of the views they entertain
or the complaints they are justified in making.
We noted particularly your definition of the attitude of
your Corporation on the question of the open and closed
shop, and the positive declaration in refusing to meet
representatives of union labor. These subjects are matters
that might well be discussed in conference. There has not
anything arisen between your Corporation and the employees
whom we represent in which the question of "the closed shop"
has been even mooted.
We read with great care your statement as to the interest
the Corporation takes in the lives and welfare of the
employees and their families, and if that were true even in
a minor degree, we would not be pressing consideration,
through a conference, of the terrible conditions that exist.
The conditions of employment, the home life, the misery in
the hovels of the steel workers is beyond description. You
may not be aware that the standard of life of the average
steel worker is below the pauper line, which means that
charitable institutions furnish to the pauper a better
home, more food, clothing, light and heat than many steel
workers can bring into their lives upon the compensation
received for putting forth their very best efforts in the
steel industry. Surely this is a matter which might well be
discussed in conference.
You also made reference to the attitude of your Corporation
in not opposing or preventing your employees from joining
labor organizations. It is a matter of common knowledge that
the tactics employed by your Corporation and subsidiaries
have for years most effectively prevented any attempt at
organization by your employees. We feel that a conference
would be valuable to your Corporation for the purpose of
getting facts of which, judging from your letter, you seem
to be misinformed.
Some few days are still at the disposal of our committee
before the time limit will have expired when there will be
no discretion left to the committee but to enforce the
decree of your employees whom we have the honor to
represent.
We submit that reason and fairness should obtain rather than
that the alternative shall be compulsory upon us.
Surely reasonable men can find a common ground upon which we
can all stand and prosper.
If you will communicate with us further upon this entire
matter, please address your communication to the National
Hotel, Washington, D. C. where we will be Thursday and
Friday, August 28 and 29.
Very truly yours,
JOHN FITZPATRICK
D. J. DAVIS
WM. HANNON
EDW. J. EVANS
WM. Z. FOSTER
Committee
No reply came to the last letter. Mr. Gary, behind the smoke screen of
his hypocrisies about the "open shop," was determined to have the strike
go on. But the committee, fully conscious of the tremendous
responsibility resting upon it, was equally decided to exhaust every
possible means of adjustment before things came to a rupture. The
committeemen went to Washington, appeared before the Executive Council
of the A. F. of L., and received its endorsement and praise for the
manner in which the campaign had been conducted.
Mr. Gompers was delegated by the Council to go with the committee to
present the matter to President Wilson, and to request him to arrange a
conference with the steel people.
When President Wilson was informed of the true situation in the steel
industry, that all the men were asking for was a conference at which to
present their grievances--absolutely no other demand having been made
upon Mr. Gary--he immediately admitted the justice of the committee's
position. He stated frankly that he was entirely out of sympathy with
employers who refused to meet with representatives of their workers for
the purpose of bargaining collectively on labor conditions, and he
definitely agreed to use all his influence privately to have Mr. Gary
alter his decision and to arrange the conference. In order to give him a
chance to work the unions withheld the setting of the strike date.
A week passed, with no word from the President. Conditions in the steel
industry were frightful. The companies, realizing the importance of
striking the first blow, were discharging men by the thousands. The
unions could wait no longer. They had to move or be annihilated. On
September 4, the National Committee met and sent to President Wilson,
who was on his ill-starred trip through the West advocating the League
of Nations, the following telegram, in the meantime calling a meeting of
the Presidents of all the international unions co-operating in the steel
campaign to consider the critical situation:
Washington, September 4, 1919
Honorable Woodrow Wilson,
President of the United States,
Indianapolis, Ind., _en route_
The Executive Committee representing the various
international unions in the iron and steel industry met
today to consider the awful situation which exists in many
of the iron and steel industry centres. The coercion, the
brutality employed to prevent men and unions from meeting in
halls engaged, upon private property, in the open air, the
thuggery of the Corporations' emissaries, the wholesale
discharge of numbers of men for no other reason than the one
assigned, that they have become members of the unions, have
brought about a situation such that it is exceedingly
difficult to withhold or restrain the indignation of the men
and the resistance they declare it is their purpose to
present. The Executive Committee, relying upon the case as
presented to you last week and your earnest declaration to
endeavor to bring about a conference for the honorable and
peaceful adjustment of the matters in controversy, have thus
far been enabled to prevail upon the men not to engage in a
general strike. We cannot now affirm how much longer we will
be able to exert that influence; but we urge you, in the
great work in which you are engaged, to give prompt
attention to this most vital of issues; for if the men can
no longer be restrained it is impossible to foretell what
the future may hold in store for an industrial crisis which
may ensue and frustrate the project which you have worked at
for a peaceful and honorable adjustment of industrial
affairs in our country. A meeting of all the Presidents of
the twenty-four international unions in the steel industry
has been called to take place on Tuesday, September 9th in
Washington, D. C. to take such action as they deem
necessary. May we not have your reply on or before that time
as to whether or not a conference with the Steel Corporation
is possible.
SAMUEL GOMPERS
JOHN FITZPATRICK
D. J. DAVIS
WM. HANNON
EDW. J. EVANS
WM. Z. FOSTER
The international presidents met on September 9. A telegram from
Secretary Tumulty was laid before them, to the effect that President
Wilson had not yet been successful in arranging the requested
conference; that he was somewhat discouraged, but was continuing his
efforts. The general opinion took this to be final, that Mr. Gary had
definitely refused the President's request. But in order to make
assurance doubly sure and to convince all involved that everything
possible had been done to avert a break, the following further telegram
was sent to Mr. Wilson, over the objections of some who felt it was
practically asking him to declare the strike:
Washington, September 9, 1919
Honorable Woodrow Wilson,
President of the United States,
St. Paul Hotel,
St. Paul, Minnesota
Secretary Tumulty's telegram of September fifth to Samuel
Gompers was read today at the meeting of the presidents of
the twenty-four international unions in the steel industry,
and given the most careful consideration. After a long and
earnest discussion of it the undersigned were instructed to
wire you requesting a more definite statement as to the
possibility of an early conference being arranged by your
efforts between the heads of the United States Steel
Corporation and of the unions involved. Large numbers of men
are being discharged and otherwise discriminated against and
abused, and it will be impossible to hold our men much longer
from defending themselves by striking unless some genuine
relief is vouchsafed them. Our meeting will remain in session
here for forty-eight hours awaiting your reply before taking
final action. Please send answer to John Fitzpatrick,
Chairman of National Committee, American Federation of Labor
Building, Washington, D. C.
JOHN FITZPATRICK
M. F. TIGHE
WM. HANNON
WM. Z. FOSTER
On the day following Secretary Tumulty's answer was laid on the table
before the meeting, practically repeating what his first telegram had
said. It held out no definite hope for a conference, neither did it
suggest any alternative.[10] Clearly the unions had to act. President
Gompers and others had warned of the great power of the Steel Trust and
the eagerness with which the employing class would unite to give
Organized Labor a heavy blow in the steel industry. The union
representatives keenly realized the gravity of the situation and their
heavy responsibilities. It was in this frame of mind that they could see
no honorable way out of the difficulty except to strike. Accordingly
President Tighe of the Amalgamated Association moved that the strike be
set for September 22. His motion was unanimously adopted. The die was
cast. After telegraphing the strike order broadcast, the union men
scattered to their respective posts to organize the walkout.
Then came a bolt from the blue. Next morning the newspapers carried a
telegram from Secretary Tumulty to President Gompers requesting that the
strike be held off until after the Industrial conference, beginning
October 6. The committeemen could hardly believe their eyes, because the
telegram they had received from Mr. Tumulty had said absolutely nothing
about postponing the strike. Besides, since the President had asked Mr.
Gary privately to grant his workers the conference they were seeking,
and so gave him an opportunity to decline without publicity, it was
incredible that he would publicly make a request upon the unions which
involved their destruction, and which they would have openly to refuse,
thus putting them in a bad light and giving their opponents a powerful
weapon. But all doubts were set at rest by this communication from Mr.
Gompers:
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR
Washington, D. C., Sept. 11, 1919
Mr. John Fitzpatrick, Chairman,
National Committee For Organizing Iron
and Steel Workers,
Washington, D. C.
_Dear Mr. Fitzpatrick_:
This morning I received a telegram as follows:
Dickinson, N. Dak., Sept. 10, 1919
Hon. Samuel Gompers,
President American Federation of Labor,
Washington, D. C.
In view of the difficulty of arranging any present
satisfactory mediation with regard to the steel situation,
the President desires to urge upon the steel men, through
you, the wisdom and desirability of postponing action
of any kind until after the forthcoming Industrial conference
at Washington.
J. P. TUMULTY.
You are aware of the reason which prevented my
participating further, the past few days, in the conferences
with the representatives of the various national
and international unions involved in this question.
In transmitting the above to you (which I am doing
by long distance telephone from New York) I want to
express the hope that something can be done without
injury to the workers and their cause to endeavor to
conform to the wish expressed by the President; that
even though the corporations may endeavor to provoke
the men to action, that they may hold themselves in
leash and under self-control, consciously demonstrating
their stamina and willingness to abide by the justice of
their cause and that their rights will be finally protected.
Fraternally yours,
SAMUEL GOMPERS,
President
American Federation of Labor
Upon the receipt of this letter a meeting of the National Committee was
at once called to consider the situation. And a serious one it was
indeed. Before the Committee lay two requests to postpone the strike;
one from President Wilson, clear and categoric; the other from Mr.
Gompers, qualified by the hope that it could be done "without injury to
the workers and their cause." To deny these powerful requests meant to
be accused, in the first instance, of hasty and disloyal action, and in
the second, of practical revolt against the officials of the A. F. of L.
It would be to start the strike under the handicap of an unduly hostile
public opinion. Yet to grant them meant ruin complete.
Conditions in the steel industry were desperate. Everywhere the
employers were making vigorous attacks on the unions. From Chicago,
Youngstown, Newcastle, Steubenville, Wheeling, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and
many other points large numbers of men were being thrown out of work
because of their union membership. Johnstown was a bleeding wound. In
the towns along the Monongahela river thousands of discharged men walked
the streets, and their number was daily being heavily increased.
In the face of this situation it would have been folly to have the steel
workers abandon their strike preparations, even if it could have been
done. It was like asking one belligerent to ground arms in the face of
its onrushing antagonist. The employers gave not the slightest sign of a
truce. Long before anything could be hoped for from the Industrial
conference, they would have cut the unions to pieces, had the workers
been foolish enough to give them the opportunity.
This the steel workers were determined not to do. Immediately after the
story got abroad that the strike might be postponed, they met in their
unions and notified the National Committee that they were going to
strike on September 22, regardless of anything that body might do short
of getting them definite concessions and protection. Many long weary
months they had waited patiently, under the urgings of the organizers,
for a chance to redress their grievances. And now when they had built
their organizations; taken their strike vote; received their strike call
and were ready to deliver a blow at their oppressors, the opportunity of
a generation was at hand, and they were not going to see it lost. They
would not postpone indefinitely, and in all likelihood break up
altogether, the movement they had suffered so much to build, in the
vague hope that the Industrial conference, which they had no guarantee
would even consider their case, and which was dominated by their arch
enemies, Gary and Rockefeller, would in some distant day do something
for them. Their determination to have the strike go on was intensified
by the constant ding-donging of the Steel Trust propaganda in the mills
to the effect that the A. F. of L. unions were cowardly and corrupt;
that they would make no fight for the steel workers, and that a
postponement of the strike would be proof positive that they had sold
out. Under such circumstances the workers could not consent to the
withholding of the strike. Practically all the steel districts in the
country solemnly warned the National Committee that they would strike on
September 22, in spite of any postponement that was not based on
positive assurances that justice would be done. The control of the
situation was in the hands of the rank and file.
The field secretaries and organizers present at the National Committee
meeting, men intimately acquainted with actual conditions, emphasized
the impossibility of postponement. Many of them, among whom were some of
the best and most conservative men in the whole campaign, declared that
an attempt to delay the strike, merely upon the strength of possible
action by the Industrial conference, would result in the swift
destruction of the movement under the worst of circumstances. The
workers would be bound to consider it a gigantic sell-out and to act
accordingly. As for themselves, they declared they would have nothing to
do with it, and would be compelled to present their resignations the
minute a motion to postpone prevailed. Dozens of them took this stand.
To the National Committee two courses were open: (1) It could postpone
the strike with the absolute certainty that it would break the steel
movement by so doing, because the strike would have gone ahead anyway in
a series of wild, uncontrolled, leaderless revolts, waged in an
atmosphere fatally charged with accusations of cowardice and graft. In
all probability the A. F. of L. would suffer one of the worst defeats in
its history, and gain such an evil reputation among the steel workers
that it could not approach them for many years, if ever, with an
organization project. Or (2) it could go ahead with the strike, with a
fighting chance to win. In any event, even if the strike were lost, it
would be through a clean fight and the honor of the movement would be
preserved. The steel workers would be convinced that everything possible
had been done for them. Thus the unions would retain their confidence
and be enabled to re-organize them at an early date.
Between certain, ignominious defeat and possible victory, or at the
worst honorable failure, the National Committee had only one choice.
Practically all the delegates present were of the opinion that the
strike had to go on. But some had to wire their international offices to
cancel their instructions to vote for postponement. On September 18, D.
J. Davis, Assistant President of the Amalgamated Association moved that
September 22 be reaffirmed as the strike date. This was carried.[11]
Then the Conference Committee addressed a long letter to President
Wilson, explaining in detail the situation as the union men saw it and
outlining the reasons for not postponing the strike. The letter closed
as follows:
Mr. President, delay is no longer possible. We have tried to
find a way but cannot. We regret that for the first time
your call upon Organized Labor cannot meet with favorable
response. Believe us the fault is not ours. If delay were no
more than delay, even at the cost of loss of membership in
our organizations, we would urge the same to the fullest of
our ability, notwithstanding the men are set for an
immediate strike. But delay here means the surrender of all
hope. This strike is not at the call of the leaders, but
that of the men involved. Win or lose, the strike is
inevitable and will continue until industrial despotism will
recede from the untenable position now occupied by Mr. Gary.
We have faith in your desire to bring about a conference and
hope you will succeed therein. We fully understand the
hardships that meanwhile will follow and the reign of terror
that unfair employers will institute. The burden falls upon
the men, but the great responsibility therefor rests upon
the other side.
After agreeing that all settlements made with the employers should cover
all trades, and sending a letter to the independent steel companies
inviting conferences with them, the meeting adjourned and the organizers
and delegates left to make good the following strike call, of which
200,000 copies, in seven languages, had been scattered broadcast
throughout the entire steel industry:
STRIKE SEPTEMBER 22, 1919
The workers in the iron and steel mills and blast furnaces,
not working under union agreements, are requested not to go
to work on September 22, and to refuse to resume their
employment until such time as the demands of the
organizations have been conceded by the steel corporations.
The union committees have tried to arrange conferences with
the heads of the steel companies in order that they might
present our legitimate demands for the right of collective
bargaining, higher wages, shorter hours and better working
conditions. But the employers have steadfastly refused to
meet them. It therefore becomes our duty to support the
committees' claims, in accordance with the practically
unanimous strike vote, by refusing to work in the mills on
or after September 22, until such time as our just demands
have been granted. And in our stoppage of work let there be
no violence. The American Federation of Labor has won all
its great progress by peaceful and legal methods.
IRON AND STEEL WORKERS! A historic decision confronts us. If
we will but stand together now like men our demands will
soon be granted and a golden era of prosperity will open for
us in the steel industry. But if we falter and fail to act
this great effort will be lost, and we will sink back into a
miserable and hopeless serfdom. The welfare of our wives and
children is at stake. Now is the time to insist upon our
rights as human beings.
STOP WORK SEPTEMBER 22
NATIONAL COMMITTEE
FOR ORGANIZING IRON AND STEEL WORKERS.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Out of courtesy to the President the National Committee has never
made public these telegrams.
[11] After he had been made fully acquainted with the situation Mr.
Gompers said before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor,
investigating the steel strike: (Hearings, page 109) "Notwithstanding
what any of the officials of the trade unions would have done,
regardless of what the Committee would have done, the strike would have
occurred anyway, a haphazard, loose, disjointed, unorganized strike,
without leadership, without consultation, without advice. It was simply
a choice whether the strike would take place under the guidance and
leadership of men who have proven their worth, or under the leadership
of some one who might spring up for the moment."
VII
THE STORM BREAKS
THE STEEL TRUST ARMY--CORRUPT OFFICIALDOM--CLAIRTON--McKEESPORT
--THE STRIKE--SHOWING BY DISTRICTS--A TREASONABLE ACT--GARY
GETS HIS ANSWER
As the memorable twenty-second of September approached a lurid and
dramatic setting developed for the beginning of the great steel strike.
Everywhere the steel companies made gigantic preparations to crush their
aspiring workers back to slavery. The newspapers shrieked revolution.
The whole country was a-tremble with anxiety and apprehension.
Pittsburgh was the storm center. There, in its stronghold, the Steel
Trust went ahead with strike-breaking measures unprecedented in
industrial history. It provisioned and fortified its great mills and
furnaces, surrounding them with stockades topped off with heavily
charged electric wires, and bristling with machine guns. It assembled
whole armies of gunmen. Brute force was to be used in breaking the
solidarity of the workers. Said the New York _World_ editorially
September 22: "In anticipation of the steel strike, what do we see? In
the Pittsburgh district thousands of deputy sheriffs have been recruited
at several of the larger plants. The Pennsylvania State Constabulary
has been concentrated at commanding points. At other places the
authorities have organized bodies of war veterans as special officers.
At McKeesport alone 3,000 citizens have been sworn in as special police
deputies subject to instant call. It is as though preparations were made
for actual war."
Along the Monongahela river from Pittsburgh to Clairton, a distance of
twenty miles, there were not less than 25,000 armed men in the service
of the Steel Trust. In the entire Pittsburgh district, practically all
the petty parasites who prey upon the steel workers--the professional
and small business men--had been sworn in as deputies and furnished
firearms to defend their great overlord, to whom they all do
unquestioning service no matter how dirty the job. During the strike
Sheriff Haddock of Allegheny county stated to the Senate Committee
investigating the strike that there were 5,000 deputy sheriffs and 5,000
strikers in his jurisdiction, or one deputy for each striker. His totals
should have been multiplied by at least ten in each case; 50,000
deputies and 50,000 strikers would have been well below the mark. It is
noteworthy that although the danger of an uprising in the Pittsburgh
district was widely advertised no appeal was made for troops, nor was
there even any talk of an appeal. The reason was that the Steel Trust
had a vast army of its own, officered by its own officials, and it
needed no outside help.
Western Pennsylvania is controlled body and soul by the Steel Trust. The
whole district has the psychology of a company-owned town. All authority
centers in the steel industry. From there practically every institution
takes its orders. Local governmental agencies are hardly more than
public service departments of the Steel Trust. Their officials, city,
county, state and federal, obey the mandates of the steel magnates just
about as readily and naturally as do the superintendents and mill
bosses. No less than the latter they felt it to be their duty to break
the strike by whatever means their masters told them to use.
With the approach of the strike these lackey officials hastened _en
masse_ to the aid of the Steel Trust. Sheriff Haddock, besides swearing
in an army of guards and turning them over to the steel companies to
carry out their plan of terrorism, issued a flaming proclamation
practically setting up martial law and making it a riotous assembly for
three steel workers to meet together. Next day, September 21, the
organizers tried to hold a meeting in North Clairton--with the Burgess'
permission, and at a place on the public commons especially set aside by
the authorities for union meetings. About 3,000 steel workers gathered
to hear the speakers. Everything was going as peacefully as a Sunday
school picnic, when suddenly a troop of State Constabulary appeared upon
the scene, and without a word of warning, rode full tilt into the crowd,
clubbing and trampling men and women indiscriminately. They tore down
and threw in the mud the American flag floating above the speakers'
stand. Scores were arrested (including organizers J. B. Etchison and P.
H. Brogan) and held for heavy bonds on charges of rioting.[12] Many
were seriously injured, but fearing to report their cases to the doctors
and thus court arrest, as the latter were nearly all deputies, they
cured themselves as best they could. This crying outrage was perpetrated
under the authority of the Sheriff's proclamation. It was endorsed and
lauded by Governor Sproul, than whom the Steel Trust has no more willing
champion.
At the same hour as the Clairton outrage a similar attack was made on
the workers at Glassport, adjoining McKeesport. Not being allowed to
meet at the latter city the organizers had leased a plot of ground in
Glassport and had been holding regular meetings there, with the full
sanction of the local authorities. For the meeting in question they had
an official permit. But just as it was about to begin the State
Constabulary broke it up in true Cossack fashion, almost riding down the
Burgess in so doing. They arrested all they could seize. These were held
as rioters under bail of from $1,000 to $3,000 each. The venal
Pittsburgh papers screamed about the outbreaks that had been crushed by
the gallant State police, and praised them for their bravery in facing
the "rioting mobs."
Despite all these terroristic methods the Steel Trust could not break
the will of its workers. On September 22 they struck throughout the
entire industry with a discipline and universality that will be
remembered so long as steel is made in America. On Tuesday, the
twenty-third, 304,000 had quit their posts in the mills and furnaces.
All week their ranks were augmented until by September 30, there were
365,600 on strike. It was a magnificent effort for freedom, and twice as
big a strike as this country had ever known. By cities and districts,
the numbers of strikers were as follows:
Pittsburgh 25,000
Homestead 9,000
Braddock 10,000
Rankin 5,000
Clairton 4,000
Duquesne & McKeesport 12,000
Vandergrift 4,000
Brackenridge 5,000
New Kensington 1,100
Apollo 1,500
Leechburg 3,000
Donora & Monessen 12,000
Johnstown 18,000
Coatesville 4,000
Youngstown district,
including Youngstown, E. Youngstown,
Struthers, Hubbard, Niles, Canton,
Alliance, Massillon, Warren, Farrell,
Newcastle, Sharon, Butler, etc. 70,000
Wheeling district 15,000
Cleveland 25,000
Steubenville district 12,000
Chicago district,
including Gary, Joliet, DeKalb,
South Chicago, Indiana Harbor, East
Chicago, Hammond, Evanston, Sterling,
Peoria, Milwaukee, etc. 90,000
Buffalo district 12,000
Pueblo 6,000
Birmingham 2,000
5 Bethlehem Plants 20,000
-------
Total 365,600
The shut-down was almost complete. Throughout the country the industry
was stricken with paralysis. On an average the strike was at least 90
per cent. effective. In the great Chicago district practically all the
men struck, hamstringing the big plants in the various steel towns of
that section, Gary, Joliet, Indiana Harbor, South Chicago, etc. The
holding of the organizations in this district for a year, in the face of
Steel Trust opposition, by the organizers under Secretary Evans, and
later, De Young, was one of the most notable achievements of the whole
campaign. When the pent-up force was finally released it swept the
district like a flood, leaving hardly a wheel turning anywhere.
Youngstown is another place where great difficulties had been
encountered in the organizing work, the workers being deeply discouraged
by recently lost local strikes, and the authorities at some points so
hostile that it was impossible to hold meetings in the strategic places.
But so widespread was the discontent at the miserable working
conditions, and so well had the district crew of organizers under
Secretaries McCadden and Hammersmark done their work that when the
strike clarion sounded, the masses of steel workers responded almost to
a man. Trust plants and "independents" alike had to shut down. The steel
working population of the entire Mahoning Valley went on holiday. It was
a clean walkout. In the outer Youngstown district, as established by the
National Committee system, the companies, by the use of desperate
tactics, succeeded in keeping some of their men at work; in Sharon,
Farrell and Newcastle probably twenty per cent refused to obey the
strike call. But in Canton and Massillon, John Olchon and the other
organizers brought all the important mills to a dead stop.
Without exception, the enormous Cleveland mills and furnaces shut down
tight. In Johnstown the Cambria Company was so hard hit that, swallowing
its pride, it had to ask the hated unions for a detachment of workers to
protect its plants. The Buffalo district men struck almost 100 per
cent., after a bitter organizing campaign and an eight months' free
speech fight. The Wheeling and Steubenville districts' steel mills and
blast furnaces were abandoned altogether by their crews. In Coatesville
and Birmingham, the response was poor, in the first locality because of
insufficient organization; and in the second because of discouragement
due to a lost local strike the year before. But in far away Colorado,
the steel workers, hearkening to the voice of freedom abroad in the
land, expressed their contempt for the company-union slavery of John D.
Rockefeller, Jr., by tieing up every department in his big Pueblo
mills.
In the immediate Pittsburgh district, though here more strenuously
opposed by the Steel Trust, the strike ranged from 75 to 85 per cent.
effective. That it did not go as strong as other districts was purely
because of the denial, by the companies and the authorities, of the
workers' rights to meet and to organize. In the "Black Valley" section
of the district, comprising the towns lying along the Allegheny river,
Apollo, Vandergrift, Leechburg, Brackenridge, Natrona and New
Kensington, and notorious as the scene of the brutal murder of organizer
Mrs. Fannie Sellins, the strike went 90 per cent. or better; but in the
Monongahela river section it was not so good. Of the steel towns in that
district, Donora and Monessen took the lead with a 100 per cent. strike.
Due to the terrorism prevailing exact figures were almost impossible to
get for the other towns, but according to the best information
procurable they averaged about as follows; Clairton 95, Braddock 90,
Homestead 80, Rankin 85, McKeesport 70, and Duquesne 50 per cent. In
Pittsburgh itself all the larger mills and furnaces, except those of the
Jones and Laughlin Company, either suspended operations altogether or
lost heavily of their employees during the first two days of the strike.
The Jones and Laughlin men had been profoundly discouraged by a lost
strike two years previously, and had responded poorly to the organizers'
efforts. But when they saw the magnitude of the strike they took heart
somewhat, and by strenuous efforts in a rapid fire campaign, the
organizers had at least 60 per cent. of them on strike by the end of the
first week.
In the plants of the Bethlehem Steel Company the strike did not become
effective until September 29. The cause was to be found in local
conditions. In the early spring of 1918, before the National Committee
began its campaign, ruthless exploitation by the company had resulted in
a strike of machine shop employees. The National War Labor Board settled
the strike, erecting a shop organization to handle grievances. In the
meantime the National Committee came into the field and began active
operations. Up till this time the organized movement, led by David
Williams and Patrick Duffy, had been confined principally to the
Machinists, Electrical workers and a few other skilled trades; but now
it spread to the main body of the employees. To head it off the company
proposed to the National Committee that a Rockefeller union be set up in
the plants. Naturally this was unacceptable. Then they offered to sign
an agreement covering all their shipyard employees if the organization
of their steel plants was given up, feeling no doubt that the shipyard
boom was only temporary. For the National Committee, John Fitzpatrick
spurned this shameful trade, and the organization campaign went on--with
the shipyard men getting their agreement later on just the same.
Technically the employees of the Bethlehem Company should have struck
under the first strike call, as they had no union agreement; but being
tied up with futile negotiations under their "collective bargaining"
arrangement, they did not get out until the twenty-ninth. When they did
strike the response was not so good. A fair average for the plants in
South Bethlehem, Steelton, Reading, Lebanon and Sparrows' Point would
be a 50 per cent. strike.
On the whole the strike affected practically the entire industry,
seventy important steel centres being involved. About the only mills of
consequence to escape it were those located at Midland, Woodlawn, Lorain
and Duluth. And the only reason for this was lack of sufficient
organizers to cover them. It is noteworthy that the strike followed
strictly the lines of organization. In hardly a single instance did the
unorganized go out spontaneously, even though they had previously been
clamoring for the unions to help them. This tends to show how completely
the steel companies dominated their unorganized workers and how hard it
was for the latter to act in concert.
For the most part the great walkout was concentrated on the smelting and
rolling branches of the steel industry. It had been the original
intention to make the movement thoroughly industrial, taking in all the
workers from those who mine the coal and iron to those who transfer the
finished products to the railroad lines. But insufficient resources
compelled the modification of this program, and forced the unions to
confine their work principally to the blast furnaces and rolling mills.
However, where the company mines or fabricating works lay close to the
general plants, or were part of them, the essentially industrial
character of the campaign manifested itself and these departments were
organized along with the rest. In various places, including Gary,
Chicago, Homestead, etc., bridge, car, and other fabricating shops were
an integral part of the drive. The iron miners working close in to
Birmingham responded to some extent, but a big defeat of the local
metal trades in the mills a couple of years previously held them back
from making a strong demonstration. The coal miners struck in several
places. In Johnstown, 2,000 of them working in the Cambria Steel
Company's mines organized during the campaign, became affiliated with
the local mill workers' council, and walked out 100 per cent. on the
historic twenty-second of September.
Although the United States Steel Corporation was recognized as the arch
enemy of the unions, the strike was not directed against it alone. Every
iron and steel mill and furnace in the country not working under union
agreements was included. This meant at least 95 per cent. of the
industry, because the only agreements of any consequence were between
some of the smaller companies and the Amalgamated Association. A number
of these concerns were affected also, their agreements relating only to
skilled workers, and the plants having to close when the laborers
struck. This occurred quite extensively in the Cleveland, Youngstown and
Pittsburgh districts.
Considering the large number of them involved and their traditions of
isolated action, the unions displayed reasonably good solidarity in
going "over the top" against the Steel Trust. The battle line was far
from perfect, however. Much harm was done the morale of the strikers by
local unions here and there that were under the sway of ignorant
blockheads or designing tools of the bosses, refusing to recognize the
National Committee's strike call and insisting upon getting instructions
from their own headquarters, meanwhile scabbing it in the mills. And
the worst of it was that sometimes it was difficult, or even impossible
to have the necessary instructions issued.
Far more serious than this, however, was the action of the executive
officers of the International Union of Steam and Operating Engineers.
Just as the strike was about to begin President Snellings and Secretary
Comerford sharply condemned it by letter and through the press, urging
their men to stay at work upon the flimsy pretext that the President's
industrial conference would attend to their interests. Roused to
indignation by this cold-blooded course, the local unions of engineers,
almost without exception, repudiated their international misleaders and
stuck with the rest of the steel workers. After President Gompers had
been quoted in the newspapers as pledging the support of the A. F. of L.
to the strike (two days after it started) and Labor generally had shown
its determination to stick by the steel workers, the officers of the
Engineers' international were compelled to publicly endorse the strike.
But throughout its duration they nevertheless privately encouraged their
strategically situated tradesmen to return to work, thus doing
incalculable harm when the strikers had begun to weaken a little. This
plain case of official scabbery was inspired by a jurisdictional dispute
between the engineers and the electrical workers over the disposition to
be made of electrical crane-men signed up in the campaign. Because they
could not have their unreasonable way in the matter, the officials of
the engineers deliberately knifed the strike and lent aid and comfort
to the bitterest opponents of Organized Labor on this planet. To such
extremes will union men go in internecine wars over trade demarcations.
But in spite of opposition, blundering and treachery, the steel workers
had spoken. Mr. Gary was answered. Previous to the strike, he declared
that the unions represented only an insignificant minority of his men,
the great bulk of his working force being satisfied. He compelled the
Committee to show its credentials. Result: 365,600 steel workers laid
down their tools. This estimated total has never been disputed by the
steel companies. Here and there, in some individual town or district,
they pointed out a figure occasionally as being excessive; but although
importuned by newspaper men to do so, they never ventured to issue a
statement of the number on strike at all points. The reason was that
they feared to print the grand total which even their lying press bureau
would have to admit. Word came to the Committee from reliable sources
that the steel manufacturers considered the union figure well within the
real total.
While not accurately ascertainable, the number of Mr. Gary's employees
actually taking part in the strike may be closely approximated. Mr. Gary
stated to the Senate Committee that the total number employed by the
United States Steel Corporation in the departments affected by the
strike was 201,065. Against this number should be checked off about half
of the total number of strikers, or 182,500. This is based upon the
theory that the official U. S. Steel Corporation plants form
approximately 50 per cent. of the industry, and that the strike was
just as effective against them as against those of any other company. It
is not asserted that these figures are absolutely accurate; but they
will serve to indicate that the claim of a 90 per cent. strike in the
plants of the Steel Corporation is a fair one. It is exceedingly
doubtful if as many as 10 per cent. of Mr. Gary's employees remained at
their posts and failed to heed the strike call. Fully 125,000 of them
were members of the unions before the strike started, and most of the
rest would have been also, had they dared brave the anger of their
bosses.
The great steel strike thoroughly exposed the hypocrisies of Mr. Gary
and his ilk that in some mysterious way labor policies and conditions in
the steel industry depend upon the wishes of the body of the workers. It
made plain that in the autocratic system now prevailing the democratic
principles of majority and minority do not enter. It is a case pure and
simple of the absolute sway of property rights over human rights. A
handful of social parasites hidden away in Wall street, with no other
interest in the steel industry than to exploit it, settle arbitrarily
the vital questions of wages, hours and working conditions, while the
enormous mass of the workers, actual producers whose very lives are
involved, have no say whatsoever. No matter how bitter their grievances,
when they raise their voice to ask redress, they are discharged,
blacklisted, starved, beaten, jailed and even shot, until they bend the
knee again and yield to the will of their industrial masters.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] In this connection occurred one of the finest incidents in the
strike: Wm. J. Brennan, an able, conscientious attorney of Pittsburgh,
and one of the counsel who defended the Homestead strikers in 1892, went
to Clairton to get the "rioters" released on bonds. But such a state of
terror existed that no one dared to go their bail. Thereupon, Mr.
Brennan himself, without knowing a single one of the defendants, but
smarting under the injustice of it all, pledged his entire property
holdings, amounting to $88,000, to get them set free.
VIII
GARYISM RAMPANT
THE WHITE TERROR--CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS DENIED--UNBREAKABLE
SOLIDARITY--FATHER KAZINCY--THE COSSACKS--SCIENTIFIC
BARBARITY--PROSTITUTED COURTS--SERVANTS REWARDED
It was the misfortune of the steel strike to occur in the midst of the
post-war reaction, which still persists unabated, and which constitutes
the most shameful page in American history. Ours are days when the
organized employers, inspired by a horrible fear of the onward sweep of
revolution in Europe and the irresistible advance of the labor movement
in this country, are robbing the people overnight of their most precious
rights, the fruits of a thousand years of struggle. And the people, not
yet recovered from war hysteria and misled by a corrupt press, cannot
perceive the outrage. They even glory in their degradation. Free speech,
free press, free assembly, as we once knew these rights, are now things
of the past. What poor rudiments of them remain depend upon the whims of
a Burleson, or the rowdy element of the American Legion. Hundreds of
idealists, guilty of nothing more than a temperate expression of their
honest views, languish in prison serving sentences so atrocious as to
shock the world--although Europe has long since released its war and
political prisoners. Working class newspapers are raided, denied the use
of the mails and suppressed. Meetings are broken up by Chamber of
Commerce mobs or thugs in public office. The right of asylum is
gone--the infamous Palmer is deporting hundreds who dare to hold views
different from his. The right of the workers to organize is being
systematically curtailed; and crowning shame of all, workingmen can no
longer have legislative representatives of their own choosing. In a
word, America, from being the most forward-looking, liberty-loving
country in the world, has in two short years become one of the most
reactionary. We in this country are patiently enduring tyranny that
would not be tolerated in England, France, Italy, Russia or Germany. Our
great war leaders promised us the New Freedom; they have given us the
White Terror.
Realizing full well the reactionary spirit of the times, the steel
companies proceeded safely to extremes to crush the steel strike, dubbed
by them an attempt at violent revolution. To accomplish their end they
stuck at nothing. One of their most persistent and determined efforts
was to deprive the steel workers of their supposedly inalienable right
to meet and talk together. Throughout the strike, whenever and wherever
they could find municipal or court officials willing to do their
bidding, the steel barons abolished the rights of free speech and free
assembly, so precious to strikers. Few districts escaped this evil, but
as usual, Pennsylvania felt the blow earliest and heaviest. Hardly had
the strike started when the oily Schwab prohibited meetings in
Bethlehem; the Allegheny and West Penn Steel Companies did the same at
Natrona, jailing organizer J. McCaig for "inciting to riot"; in the
Sharon-Farrell district the steel workers, denied their constitutional
rights in their home towns, had to march several miles over into Ohio
(America they called it) in order to hold their meetings.
Along the Monongahela river the shut-down was complete. Following
Sheriff Haddock's proclamation and the "riots" at Clairton and
Glassport, it was only a few days until the city and borough officials
had completely banned strike meetings in all the territory from
Charleroi to Pittsburgh. The unions' free-speech, free-assembly victory
of the past summer was instantly cancelled. For forty-one miles through
the heart of America's steel industry, including the important centers
of Monessen, Donora, Clairton, Wilson, Glassport, McKeesport, Duquesne,
Homestead, Braddock, Rankin, etc., not a meeting of the steel workers
could be held. Even in Pittsburgh itself meetings were prohibited
everywhere except in Labor Temple. The steel-collared city officials
never could quite muster the gall to close Labor's own building--or
perhaps because it is so far from the mills and so poorly situated for
meetings they felt it to be of no use to the strikers. Thus the Steel
Trust gave its workers a practical demonstration of what is meant by the
phrase, "making the world safe for democracy."
Not only were mass meetings forbidden, but so also were regular business
meetings under the charters of the local unions. To test out this
particular usurpation, Attorney W. H. Rubin, then in charge of the
strike's legal department and possessed of a keener faith in
Pennsylvania justice than the Strike committee had, keener probably than
he himself now has, prayed the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas to
enjoin Mayor Babcock and other city officials from interfering with a
local union of the Amalgamated Association holding its business meetings
on the south side of the city where its members lived and where several
large mills are located. At the hearing the Mayor and Chief of Police
freely admitted that there had been no violence in the strike, and even
complimented the men on their behavior, but they feared there might be
trouble and so forbade the meetings. The honorable Judges Ford and
Shafer agreed with them and denied the writ, saying among other things:
It is the duty of the Mayor and Police Department to
preserve the peace, and it must be sometimes necessary for
that purpose to prevent the congregating in one place of
large numbers of people such as might get beyond the control
of the Police Department, and it must be left to the
reasonable discretion of the officers charged with keeping
the peace when such intervention is made.
In other words, the sacred right of the workers to meet together depends
upon the arbitrary will of any politician who may get into the office
controlling the permits. Shortly before Judges Ford and Shafer handed
down this noble conception of free assembly, Judge Kennedy of the
Allegheny County Court, ruling on the appeal of Mother Jones, J. L.
Beaghen, J. M. Patterson and Wm. Z. Foster in the Duquesne free speech
cases of several weeks prior to the strike, had this to say:
It cannot be questioned that the object of these
meetings--increasing the membership in the American
Federation of Labor--is a perfectly lawful one, but the
location of the meetings in the Monongahela valley, built up
as it is for mile after mile of an unbroken succession of
iron and steel mills, and thickly populated with iron
workers, many of whom obviously are not members of this
association, and among whom, on both sides, there are, in
all probability, some who upon the occasion of meetings such
as these purported to be, might through excitement
precipitate serious actions of which the consequences could
not be foreseen and might be disastrous, presents questions
which are sufficient to cause the court to hesitate before
interfering with the exercise of discretion on the part of
the Mayor in refusing to permit such meetings at this time.
The Court is still hesitating to interfere with Mayor Crawford's
tyranny, and the defendants had to pay $100 and costs each for trying to
hold a meeting on ground they had leased. One would think that the
remedy in the case conjured out of thin air by the learned judge (for in
the thousands of meetings held in the steel campaign he cannot point to
one incident of violence) would be for the local authorities to provide
ample police protection to insure order. But no, in Pennsylvania the
thing to do is to set aside the constitutional rights of the workers.
Would such action be taken in the case of members of a Chamber of
commerce? Wouldn't the governor, rather, order out the state troops, if
necessary, to uphold their right of assembly?
In the hope of getting some relief, or at the least some publicity about
the unbearable situation, a committee of 18 local labor men,
representing the largest trade unions in Western Pennsylvania, went to
Washington and presented to the Allegheny County congressional
delegation a petition expressing contempt for the judges and other
officials in their part of the State and asking Congress to give them
the justice these men refused to mete out. Surely, the Allegheny County
congressmen were exactly the ones to bring the Steel Trust to time. With
a grand flourish they introduced a resolution into the House calling for
an investigation--then they forgot all about it.
The official tyranny and outlawry along the Monongahela was so bad that
the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor had to voice its protest. On
November 1-2 it held a special convention in Pittsburgh, attended by
several hundred delegates. A resolution was adopted demanding that
protection be given the rights of the workers, and that if the
authorities failed to extend this protection, "the Executive Council of
the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor shall issue a call for a State-wide
strike, when in its judgment it is necessary to compel respect for law
and the restoration of liberty as guaranteed by the Constitution of the
United States and of the State of Pennsylvania." For this action
President Jas. H. Maurer of the Federation was hotly assailed and even
menaced with lynching by the lawless business interests.
By some inexplicable mental twist the ex-union man Burgess of Homestead
eventually allowed the unions to hold one mass meeting each week--to
this day the only ones permitted in the forty-one miles of Monongahela
steel towns. They were under the supervision of the State police. At
each meeting a half dozen of these Cossacks, in full uniform, would sit
upon the platform as censors. Only English could be spoken. As the
saying was, all the organizers were permitted to talk about was the
weather. When one touched on a vital strike phase a Cossack would yell
at him, "Hey, cut that out! You're through, you--! Don't ever come back
here any more." And he never could speak there again.
Judging from past experiences the strike in the Pittsburgh district
should have been impossible under such hard circumstances. With little
or no opportunity to meet for mutual encouragement and enlightenment,
the strikers, theoretically, should have been soon discouraged and
driven back to work. But they were saved by their matchless solidarity,
bred of a deep faith in the justice of their cause. In the black,
Cossack-ridden Monongahela towns there were thousands of strikers who
were virtually isolated, who never attended a meeting during the entire
strike and seldom if ever saw an organizer or read a strike bulletin,
yet they fought on doggedly for three and one-half months, buoyed up by
a boundless belief in the ultimate success of their supreme effort. Each
felt himself bound to stay away from the mills, come weal or come woe,
regardless of what the rest did. These were mainly the despised
foreigners, of course, but their splendid fighting qualities were a
never-ending revelation and inspiration to all connected with the
strike.
Through the dark night of oppression a bright beacon of liberty gleamed
from Braddock. There the heroic Slavish priest, Reverend Adelbert
Kazincy, pastor of St. Michel's Roman Catholic church, bade defiance to
the Steel Trust and all its minions. He threw open his church to the
strikers, turned his services into strike meetings, and left n
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