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.
(Upper) Part of the Duquesne Works
(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.
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.