The Great Steel Strike and Its Lessons

Part 1

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THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE AND ITS LESSONS

WILLIAM Z. FOSTER

THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE AND ITS LESSONS

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. 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:

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.

Part 2

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.

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