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.