United States Steel: A Corporation with a Soul

by Arundel Cotter

The steel companies expressed quiet confidence in the outcome, while their opponents loudly boasted of certain victory. The officials of the Steel Corporation and of the other companies threatened must have known that a considerable element among their foreign-born employees had been led astray by the radical preachings of labor organizers, but they believed that the best element among their men was satisfied with conditions and would continue at work. And this confidence proved justified.

The steel trade, outside the Corporation, had been watching the issue with some misgiving, but as it became plain that Judge Gary was standing firm in his attitude, general satisfaction was evident and confidence in the final result increased. For the trade was not unduly worried as to the outcome in the event of a showdown. The opinion generally expressed was that the issue must be forced sooner or later, and that it was probably best to have it settled as speedily as possible by a decisive conflict. But in many quarters apprehension was felt that the Judge, realizing his immense responsibility, might allow himself to be persuaded into a compromise.

However, Judge Gary was firm, as those who knew him best were sure he would be. For there was a matter of principle involved, the right of the independent worker to work when, where, and with whom he desired and could obtain employment. And for Judge Gary, compromise on questions of principle was out of the question. As this became realized, all misgivings vanished. Judge Gary’s already recognized position as leader of the steel industry was made more secure than ever before. The trade left the issue in his hands, assured as to the result, and this assurance was not abused.

It is not too much to say that the entire country waited with bated breath for the events of September 22nd. It was recognized that this was not a mere skirmish between employer and employee, but a gigantic struggle between capital and radical labor. As time wore on it developed that there was another and stronger party to the conflict, the vast mass of unorganized workers; and this threw its strength on the side of the Corporation, dooming the hopes of the strike leaders.

At first the strike organizers unquestionably struck hard and with considerable result. Between the conflicting claims from all sides it is impossible to say just how many men went out in the steel mills, voluntarily or through intimidation, but it is certain that at many centres, such as Youngstown, where the Corporation and some of the larger independents—Republic Iron & Steel, Youngstown Sheet & Tube and Brier Hill Steel—have big plants, operations were practically suspended in toto. At Gary, the Corporation’s largest plant, operations were reduced to a low point, and at many other centres, the results, at the outset, were apparently in favor of the strikers.

But Pittsburgh, the world’s steel centre, was almost unaffected. At Homestead, Braddock, Duquesne, and other big Corporation plants the workers unequivocally proved their loyalty by sticking to their jobs, and the strike leaders failed utterly to make headway. Day after day the smoke ascending in volumes from the stacks of these plants gave assurance that the steel companies were far from crippled and sent to the union chiefs the message of certain defeat unless they could succeed in quenching these furnaces.

Although, ostensibly, the strike was directed against the Steel Corporation and no attempt had been made to negotiate with the heads of other concerns, all steel companies west of the Alleghanies were affected by the walk-out as much as or more than was the Corporation. So far as the big company was concerned the greatest number of men out when the strike was at its worst, or within a few days of its inception, was 28 per cent. of its total of employees or 40 per cent. of its manufacturing force. These were the figures given by Judge Gary in his testimony at Washington in October, and undoubtedly they are as nearly accurate as possible. And of the men out there is no question that many were kept from work not by persuasion but by intimidation, the strikers having used threats freely to keep the loyal workers from the mills.

Such tactics are not at all a new thing in similar conditions. Steel workers who sought to report for duty were sent letters threatening them with injury or death to themselves or families. In some cases the threats were sent to the men’s wives or other dependents where their effect was perhaps greater.

The strike had not been in progress two days before its genesis became patent. The American public soon realized that probably 98 per cent. of the strikers were alien-born and that the native worker, with few exceptions, and large numbers of naturalized foreigners, were sticking to the steel companies. This, together with the inflammatory utterances of the strikers themselves, convinced the public that the strike was not what it claimed to be, an effort to get fair wages and improved living conditions for the workers—the American workers who remained at their posts insisted that they already had these and the evidence adduced by the steel companies verified the statement—but an attempt to deliver the steel mills and factories into the hands of the radical foreign element among our industrial workers. It was, in a word, but the first step toward the seizure of the means of production by labor.

And the public, with the example of Russia before it, could not and did not sympathize with the strikers.