CHAPTER XIV

THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE During the World War, there began to gather on the industrial horizon a cloud no bigger at first than a man’s hand, but one that grew fast in size until it broke in a storm the effects of which made themselves felt in every corner of the globe. This was a general feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction, by no means confined to one country or one class of people, but having its most virulent manifestations among the laboring classes, the proletariat. This unrest was fostered and seized upon by radical leaders everywhere to further their own ambitions, their object being the overthrow of capital, the nationalization of industry, and their own aggrandizement. Nor were they without considerable success in some countries. Russia, of course, provided the most notable example, and England to-day is suffering by reason of the same forces; but the United States, notwithstanding its aloofness from the centre of disturbance, its prosperity, and the general high average of common sense among its inhabitants, did not entirely escape. Here the radical manifestations took the form of industrial strikes which broke out sporadically in all quarters. It was natural that the steel industry should not be immune. In fact, it was inevitable that steel, more than any other industry, should be selected for especial attention by those who hoped to do away with private ownership and to establish mob rule. Among the reasons that may be cited for the selection of the steel industry, and the United States Steel Corporation in particular, for a grand attack by the radical forces were the following: Steel was “open shop.” Since 1892, when the Carnegie Steel Co., in one of the bloodiest and bitterest industrial conflicts in history, crushed the Homestead strike, the labor leaders unions had never succeeded in regaining a foothold in the trade, and it was looked upon as a lost province by labor leaders who never abandoned the hope of some day organizing the steel workers. This fact gave the radicals in the labor ranks confidence that they could count upon the support of the usually conservative heads of organized labor in America to further their plans if steel were chosen as a battle-ground. And the events proved that their confidence was not misplaced. Further, the physical necessities of steel making are hard on the worker. Although employers have done much to ameliorate conditions in the mills and mines, it is impossible to make the work really pleasant and it was therefore comparatively easy to give verisimilitude to distorted statements regarding the hard lot of the steel worker. Again, a large percentage of the common labor in the steel plants was of alien birth, usually lacking in education and easily influenced by inflammatory doctrines. Labor leaders, doubtless, also believed that the long litigation which the Government had conducted against the Steel Corporation had turned public sentiment against the big company. If this was a factor in their calculations they were sadly deceived. So, briefly, we have the genesis of the steel strike--the determination of organized labor to absorb steel workers and the seizing upon this by the radicals as the tool to further their own anarchistic ends. The strike, when it came, was inaugurated ostensibly to compel the manufacturers to grant recognition to union “representatives” of the workers. Steel company officials claimed that its real object was twofold--to force upon the industry the “closed shop,” and to overthrow the social scheme upon which the American Republic was grounded. Labor leaders throughout the struggle consistently denied any intention of forcing a closed shop. And it is true that they at no time demanded this in so many words; but the closed shop would have resulted inevitably had they won. One has only to examine their demands to realize this. And the lust for power on the part of the leaders of organized labor was used by the radicals as a tool with which they hoped to gain a much greater goal than the closed shop--the nationalization of the steel industry and, using that as a wedge, of all American industry. In fighting and smashing the strike the Steel Corporation performed an invaluable service, not alone to its stockholders or to capital, but to the vast majority of workers who claimed the right to work at their own volition and not the dictates of self-appointed leaders; a service to the American public at large. Says Mr. Charles Piez, one-time head of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, in a recent article in _The Independent_: The real or imaginary wrongs of the workers played not the slightest part in the decision to organize the steel industry. It was a citadel of the open shop that was the subject of attack, it was the last barrier against complete and final unionization of American industry, against which Foster and Fitzpatrick combined their wits and resources. And it is to the everlasting credit of Judge Gary that he successfully resisted this attack, for it is to the interests of the public that the principle of the open shop be sustained. [Illustration: (_Upper_) Part of the Duquesne Works] [Illustration: (_Lower_) Detail of Unloading Ore--a Hulett Machine] How important to the labor unions was the hope for organization of the Steel Corporation is obvious. Between 500,000 and 600,000 workers are engaged in the industry, the Corporation alone employing about 275,000. Possibly another half million are employed in closely allied industries. And the steel trade, as well as these allied industries, has for years looked to the Corporation for guidance on important questions of public polity. Hence, United States Steel’s adherence to the open-shop principle was a deep and rankling wound in the side of the labor unions. [Illustration: Making Wire Rods--Old Method] So long as the big enterprise of which Judge Gary is head remained outside of the union’s fold there was small hope of herding into it any material number of workers in other plants. U. S. Steel was a citadel of the open shop, the bulwark between free and union labor. If it could be converted from “open” to “closed” shop, the early unionization, not of the steel trade merely, but of all American industry, would follow, and the power of the union leaders would be expanded to an almost illimitable extent. It is doubtful if the older and wiser among the union chieftains would have forced the issue at the time they did had they been left to their own decisions. But they were not. They had the radical element to reckon with. It is perhaps unnecessary to explain that organized labor in the United States is divided into two parts: On the one hand, there is the American Federation of Labor, headed by Samuel Gompers, and including the great majority of unionized workers. This organization recognizes property rights and is loyal to the principles of American government. But its leaders, being only human, are apparently determined to bring all industry under its sway and are impatient of the ideas of those workers who prefer to stand on their own feet. On the other hand, there is a smaller organization, the Industrial Workers of the World, better known as the I. W. W. or, sometimes, the “I Won’t Works.” “The wobblies,” as they prefer to call themselves, are as bitterly opposed to the principles of the larger Federation as they are to capital. Chief among their tenets is the Marxian fallacy that labor produces all and capital nothing and that, therefore, capital must be abolished. Some years ago there arose to prominence in the councils of the I. W. W. one William Z. Foster, a man of unquestioned ability but of principles dangerous and subversive to government. These principles he set forth in a book on “Syndicalism,” a book which constitutes one of the most extreme examples of anarchistical literature. Foster characterizes the wage system as “the most brazen and gigantic robbery ever perpetrated since the world began.” Although advocating the most drastic measures for the overthrow of capital, Foster was apparently sufficiently astute to realize that a vast majority of the American people, and even of organized labor, would not and could not accept his views, and that the I. W. W. which did was not a powerful enough weapon with which to achieve his ends. He believed, however, and events proved that he was not mistaken, that the American Federation of Labor could be inoculated with radicalism if the poison were spread from the inside. He therefore publicly advocated what he described as the process of “boring from within,” urging that the radicals join the more conservative Federation and, once inside that body, disseminate their vicious doctrines from within. Not long after this we find Foster a member of the Federation, ostensibly converted from his I. W. W. leanings, enjoying the confidence of Gompers and his co-workers, and high in their councils. His “boring” process had met with eminent success. Meanwhile, the World War was approaching its end, leaving in its wake a world-wide wave of industrial unrest. Russia was being misgoverned by its most radical element, who held their power in the midst of a sea of blood. Communistic doctrines were being preached, openly or _sub rosa_, in every land and clime. American labor was restless, and the foreign element, particularly, showed that it had been infected with the fever of anarchism that was rampant in parts of Europe. The time had come for the radicals to strike, for the “boring-from-within” process to bear fruit. In the early summer of 1918, only a few months before the war ended, the American Federation of Labor held its annual convention at St. Paul, Minn., and there passed a resolution offered by Foster for the organization of the steel industry. A committee was appointed to take charge of the work and the converted radical, Foster, was made a member of this committee. For a full year the committee’s work was carried on quietly. At the next annual convention of the Federation, this time at Atlantic City, N. J., John Fitzpatrick, one of Foster’s associates, reporting to the Federation, claimed that 100,000 steel workers had affiliated themselves with one or other of the unions belonging to the Federation. Fitzpatrick was a man of an entirely different type from Foster. Mr. Piez thus describes him: “He has in the ten years I have known him never to my knowledge advanced or even advocated any constructive piece of legislation, and he has held his position with the Chicago Federation (Fitzpatrick is president of this Federation) because he is honest and because he is a skilled labor politician. John Fitzpatrick hasn’t the slightest idea of the problems of industry, he can’t conceive of overhead expense as anything more than graft, and lacks all knowledge of the problems of production, distribution, and the sale of the products of industry. His horizon begins and ends with the wrongs that labor has suffered, and he usually refers to wrongs that wise legislation and a changed relationship have remedied years ago.” But while the labor leaders had been busy collecting dues from and enlisting sympathy for the “oppressed” steel workers there had, strange to say, come no call for help from the steel workers themselves. They made no claim of being down-trodden; rather did many of them resent, as a slur on their manhood, the insinuation that they were. The union chiefs have since claimed that they were appealed to by the workers, but not one iota of evidence has ever been adduced to support this claim. Whether or not Fitzpatrick’s report of 100,000 enlistments was correct--subsequent events indicate that it was grossly exaggerated--the ruling powers in the American Federation evidently believed that they now had sufficient strength in the field to attempt an issue, and events consequently moved forward quickly after the Atlantic City convention. Their first move was the sending of a letter by Samuel Gompers to Judge Gary, asking the head of the Steel Corporation to meet a union deputation to discuss question affecting the welfare of the workers. This letter was never answered. Judge Gary’s refusal to reply to Gompers has been severely criticized by union sympathizers and others. For example, by some of the members of the Senate Committee that later investigated the strike. Gompers, who, in the past, had seen legislatures bow to labor’s mandate, was not unnaturally shocked at the “discourtesy.” But Judge Gary had enjoyed a previous experience in corresponding with union representatives. A courteous reply to a letter on somewhat similar lines from Michael F. Tighe, president of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, in which the Judge had said that the Corporation did not negotiate with labor unions as such, had been used as a basis for a report that the big company was “in communication” _ergo_, negotiating, with the unions, and the Judge did not want this experience repeated. Whether it might not have been wiser had Judge Gary answered Mr. Gompers’ letter and obviated the possibility of any misunderstanding by giving the correspondence to the press is an open question. But he was probably averse to being drawn into what would likely prove the beginning of a long epistolatory controversy with the head of the Labor Federation. This could not but have had an unsettling effect on the more easily influenced among the steel workers, playing into Gompers’ hands. It is also not unlikely that Judge Gary believed the labor unions were resolved on forcing the issue of organizing the steel industry and that any verbal preliminaries to the conflict would be worse than useless. After this abortive attempt on the part of the union to start negotiations with the steel industry through Judge Gary, and, _ipso facto_, to gain recognition from the leaders of the industry, events moved quickly to a climax. Early in July, 1919, the steel-trade organizers announced that they were taking a vote of the workers, and not long after made the claim that 98 per cent. of the men employed in steel making had approved a strike unless the Corporation yielded to a set of twelve demands drawn up by Foster and his associates. As soon as these demands were made public it became plain that a steel strike was inevitable unless the labor organizers receded from their position. The demands were: