This report includes only those members actually signed up by the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers, and from whose initiation fees $1.00 apiece was deducted and forwarded to the general office of the National Committee. It represents approximately 50 to 60 per cent. of the total number of steel workers organized during the campaign, and is minimum in every respect.
The report does not include any of the many thousands of men signed up at Bethlehem, Steelton, Reading, Apollo, New Kensington, Leechburg and many minor points which felt the force of the drive but where the National Committee made no deductions upon initiation fees. In Gary, Joliet, Indiana Harbor, South Chicago and other Chicago District points the National Committee ceased collecting on initiation fees early in 1919, hence this report makes no showing of the thousands of men signed up in that territory during the last few months of the campaign. Likewise, at Coatesville and Sparrows' Point, during only a short space of the campaign were deductions made for the National Committee. Many thousands more men were signed up directly by the multitude of local unions in the steel industry, that were not reported to the National Committee. These do not show in this calculation. Nor do the great number of ex-soldiers who were taken into the unions free of initiation fees—in Johnstown alone 1300 ex-soldier steel workers joined the unions under this arrangement. Of course no accounting is here included for the army of workers in outside industries who became organized as a result of the tremendous impulse given by the steel campaign.
In view of these exceptions it may be conservatively estimated that well over 250,000 steel workers joined the unions notwithstanding the opposition of the Steel Trust, which discharged thousands of its workers, completely suppressed free speech and free assembly in Pennsylvania and used every known tactic to prevent the organization of its employees.
Wm. Z. Foster,
Secretary-Treasurer
National Committee for Organizing
Iron & Steel Workers
Certified by
Enoch Martin
Auditor, District No. 12
United Mine Workers of America.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Throughout the latter part of the organizing campaign and the first two months of the strike, Mother Jones lent great assistance to the steel workers. This veteran organizer (she testified in court to being 89 years old) of the United Mine Workers labored dauntlessly, going to jail and meeting the hardships and dangers of the work in a manner that would do credit to one half her age.
[8] Relative to this meeting there occurs the following dialogue on page 508 of the report on the Senate Committee's Hearings on the Steel Strike:
Senator Sterling. "Was Mr. Foster here prior to the strike?"