United States Steel: A Corporation with a Soul

by Arundel Cotter

With some notable exceptions the strike was a bloodless one. This was due principally to the prompt action taken by the local public authorities at the various points affected to prevent trouble and to the refusal of the steel companies generally to attempt to bring in strike breakers. Because of this passive attitude on the part of the employers the strikers were robbed of the opportunity to make sufficient trouble to force intervention by the Government.

In no previous conflict between capital and labor, it is likely, has the public had as excellent an opportunity of judging the rights and wrongs as in the steel strike. One day after the struggle eventually began the Senate of the United States passed a resolution instructing the Committee on Education and Labor to investigate the strike and report on its causes. The committee conducted public hearings in Washington where Judge Gary and a number of loyal workers were heard on the side of the Steel Corporation, while Foster, Fitzpatrick, Gompers, and other union leaders had equal opportunity, which they availed themselves of, to present their case. The committee also visited the affected districts to secure first-hand evidence on conditions there.

In an essentially fair and complete report, submitted to the Senate on November 8, 1919, the committee reviewed the claims of the strike leaders and of the Corporation. While criticizing the steel companies on the question of too long work hours and suggesting that the six-day week could be extended to include all workers the report characterized some of the statements of the strike organizers as false and dismissed their claim of pauper wages, expressing the opinion that the employees of the steel industry were fairly well satisfied with wages received and that the question of wages was not persuasive at all in the consideration of a strike. The committee, in fact, in its own language found little to complain of as to conditions in general outside of long work hours.

On the other hand, the committee reported the underlying cause of the strike to be “the determination of the American Federation of Labor to organize the steel workers in opposition to the known and long-established policy of the industry against organization,” and “the seizing upon this cause by some radicals who are seeking to elevate themselves to power in the A. F. of L.”

On this point the committee further found that “behind this strike there is massed a considerable element of I. W. W.’s anarchists, revolutionists, and Russian Soviets,” and expressed the opinion that the American Federation of Labor had “made a serious mistake by permitting the leadership of this strike movement to pass into the hands of some who have entertained most radical and dangerous doctrines.”

Still further pursuing this point the committee reported: “There may be, in view of the radical utterances and actions of certain strike leaders, some warrant for the belief that the strike in the steel industry is a part of a general scheme and purpose on the part of radical leaders to bring about a general industrial revolution. The committee, however, do not go to that extent because they feel there were some real grievances.” This, of course, is just what steel men and the greater part of the public believe.

While this report served to prove that the conclusions arrived at long before by the great mass of the public were correct the strike was dying out before it was presented. In fact, the majority of the steel mills of the country had resumed nearly full operations by early in November. The strike gradually lessened in importance from the end of September and, although it was not actually called off by its leaders until nearly the middle of January it was to all practical purposes dead long before the end of the year.

The story of the Industrial Conference called by President Wilson in an effort to bring together the conflicting forces of capital and organized labor and to work out a new industrial scheme rightly belongs with that of the steel strike. The decision of the President was unquestionably due, to some extent at least, to the imminence of the strike, his plans for the Conference having been announced at the time when the union organizers were attempting to get recognition from Judge Gary. While the conference was not called, ostensibly, to deal with the particular situation it is obvious that Mr. Wilson, realizing what a danger the strike would be to the country’s prosperity if it occurred, sought to avert it and at the same time to reduce to a minimum the danger of other conflicts between the two great opposing industrial forces. That he had the steel situation in mind was further indicated by his request to the labor leaders to postpone action until after the Conference—a request that was refused.

To the Industrial Conference the President invited a number of men supposed to represent the three great groups concerned in industrial disputes—labor, capital, and the public. The country’s workers were represented officially only by the leaders of organized labor, Samuel Gompers, Matthew Woll, Frank Morrison and other prominent members of the American Federation, with some representatives of the railroad unions. The interests of capital were in the hands of the so-called employers’ group which included representatives of various commercial bodies, of the railroads, and of farmers’ organizations. The so-called public group also included a number of employers, among whom were Judge Gary; the late Henry B. Endicott, the Massachusetts shoe manufacturer who had gained a reputation for the interest he took in the welfare of his employees, and others; social workers and writers such as Ida M. Tarbell and Gertrude Barnum; two prominent Socialists, Charles Edmund Russell and John Spargo. To these were added Dr. Charles W. Eliot, educator; Thomas M. Chadbourne and Gaven McNab, lawyers; Bernard M. Baruch, erstwhile stockmarket operator but lately head of the War Industries Board, and several others.

Sincere as was the desire of the President to create amicable relations between capital and labour and equally sincere as was the attitude of the majority of the participants to the Conference to reach an understanding that would reduce to a minimum the danger of industrial disputes and establish a satisfactory method of settling them when they did arise, it was obvious from the outset that the Conference would be abortive; that a panacea for industrial ills would not be discovered by it.