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:
1. Right of collective bargaining.
2. Reinstatement of men discharged for union activities.
3. An eight-hour day.
4. One day’s rest in seven.
5. Abolition of twenty-four-hour shifts.
6. Increase in wages sufficient to guarantee American standard of living.
7. Standard scales of wages in all trades and classifications of workers.
8. Double rate of pay for all overtime, holiday, and Sunday work.
9. Check-off system of collecting union dues and assessments.
10. Principles of seniority to apply in maintenance, reduction, and increase of working force.
11. Abolition of company unions.
12. Abolition of physical examination of applicants for employment.
Some of these demands were merely camouflage, inserted to give the public an idea of imaginary wrongs against the steel worker. The steel companies generally have been trying for years to institute a real eight-hour day and have made the eight-hour day the basis of wage payments. Practically all steel workers work only six days a week. The twenty-four-hour shift is borne by a very small percentage of the workers and by these only on widely separated occasions. The Corporation and its competitors as well, following its lead, have repeatedly advanced wages without solicitation from the men, and the claim that the wage they pay is insufficient to permit American standards of living has not borne investigation.