The Great Steel Strike and its Lessons

by William Z. Foster

Without exception, the enormous Cleveland mills and furnaces shut down tight. In Johnstown the Cambria Company was so hard hit that, swallowing its pride, it had to ask the hated unions for a detachment of workers to protect its plants. The Buffalo district men struck almost 100 per cent., after a bitter organizing campaign and an eight months' free speech fight. The Wheeling and Steubenville districts' steel mills and blast furnaces were abandoned altogether by their crews. In Coatesville and Birmingham, the response was poor, in the first locality because of insufficient organization; and in the second because of discouragement due to a lost local strike the year before. But in far away Colorado, the steel workers, hearkening to the voice of freedom abroad in the land, expressed their contempt for the company-union slavery of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., by tieing up every department in his big Pueblo mills.

In the immediate Pittsburgh district, though here more strenuously opposed by the Steel Trust, the strike ranged from 75 to 85 per cent. effective. That it did not go as strong as other districts was purely because of the denial, by the companies and the authorities, of the workers' rights to meet and to organize. In the "Black Valley" section of the district, comprising the towns lying along the Allegheny river, Apollo, Vandergrift, Leechburg, Brackenridge, Natrona and New Kensington, and notorious as the scene of the brutal murder of organizer Mrs. Fannie Sellins, the strike went 90 per cent. or better; but in the Monongahela river section it was not so good. Of the steel towns in that district, Donora and Monessen took the lead with a 100 per cent. strike. Due to the terrorism prevailing exact figures were almost impossible to get for the other towns, but according to the best information procurable they averaged about as follows; Clairton 95, Braddock 90, Homestead 80, Rankin 85, McKeesport 70, and Duquesne 50 per cent. In Pittsburgh itself all the larger mills and furnaces, except those of the Jones and Laughlin Company, either suspended operations altogether or lost heavily of their employees during the first two days of the strike. The Jones and Laughlin men had been profoundly discouraged by a lost strike two years previously, and had responded poorly to the organizers' efforts. But when they saw the magnitude of the strike they took heart somewhat, and by strenuous efforts in a rapid fire campaign, the organizers had at least 60 per cent. of them on strike by the end of the first week.

In the plants of the Bethlehem Steel Company the strike did not become effective until September 29. The cause was to be found in local conditions. In the early spring of 1918, before the National Committee began its campaign, ruthless exploitation by the company had resulted in a strike of machine shop employees. The National War Labor Board settled the strike, erecting a shop organization to handle grievances. In the meantime the National Committee came into the field and began active operations. Up till this time the organized movement, led by David Williams and Patrick Duffy, had been confined principally to the Machinists, Electrical workers and a few other skilled trades; but now it spread to the main body of the employees. To head it off the company proposed to the National Committee that a Rockefeller union be set up in the plants. Naturally this was unacceptable. Then they offered to sign an agreement covering all their shipyard employees if the organization of their steel plants was given up, feeling no doubt that the shipyard boom was only temporary. For the National Committee, John Fitzpatrick spurned this shameful trade, and the organization campaign went on—with the shipyard men getting their agreement later on just the same.

Technically the employees of the Bethlehem Company should have struck under the first strike call, as they had no union agreement; but being tied up with futile negotiations under their "collective bargaining" arrangement, they did not get out until the twenty-ninth. When they did strike the response was not so good. A fair average for the plants in South Bethlehem, Steelton, Reading, Lebanon and Sparrows' Point would be a 50 per cent. strike.

On the whole the strike affected practically the entire industry, seventy important steel centres being involved. About the only mills of consequence to escape it were those located at Midland, Woodlawn, Lorain and Duluth. And the only reason for this was lack of sufficient organizers to cover them. It is noteworthy that the strike followed strictly the lines of organization. In hardly a single instance did the unorganized go out spontaneously, even though they had previously been clamoring for the unions to help them. This tends to show how completely the steel companies dominated their unorganized workers and how hard it was for the latter to act in concert.

For the most part the great walkout was concentrated on the smelting and rolling branches of the steel industry. It had been the original intention to make the movement thoroughly industrial, taking in all the workers from those who mine the coal and iron to those who transfer the finished products to the railroad lines. But insufficient resources compelled the modification of this program, and forced the unions to confine their work principally to the blast furnaces and rolling mills. However, where the company mines or fabricating works lay close to the general plants, or were part of them, the essentially industrial character of the campaign manifested itself and these departments were organized along with the rest. In various places, including Gary, Chicago, Homestead, etc., bridge, car, and other fabricating shops were an integral part of the drive. The iron miners working close in to Birmingham responded to some extent, but a big defeat of the local metal trades in the mills a couple of years previously held them back from making a strong demonstration. The coal miners struck in several places. In Johnstown, 2,000 of them working in the Cambria Steel Company's mines organized during the campaign, became affiliated with the local mill workers' council, and walked out 100 per cent. on the historic twenty-second of September.

Although the United States Steel Corporation was recognized as the arch enemy of the unions, the strike was not directed against it alone. Every iron and steel mill and furnace in the country not working under union agreements was included. This meant at least 95 per cent. of the industry, because the only agreements of any consequence were between some of the smaller companies and the Amalgamated Association. A number of these concerns were affected also, their agreements relating only to skilled workers, and the plants having to close when the laborers struck. This occurred quite extensively in the Cleveland, Youngstown and Pittsburgh districts.

Considering the large number of them involved and their traditions of isolated action, the unions displayed reasonably good solidarity in going "over the top" against the Steel Trust. The battle line was far from perfect, however. Much harm was done the morale of the strikers by local unions here and there that were under the sway of ignorant blockheads or designing tools of the bosses, refusing to recognize the National Committee's strike call and insisting upon getting instructions from their own headquarters, meanwhile scabbing it in the mills. And the worst of it was that sometimes it was difficult, or even impossible to have the necessary instructions issued.

Far more serious than this, however, was the action of the executive officers of the International Union of Steam and Operating Engineers. Just as the strike was about to begin President Snellings and Secretary Comerford sharply condemned it by letter and through the press, urging their men to stay at work upon the flimsy pretext that the President's industrial conference would attend to their interests. Roused to indignation by this cold-blooded course, the local unions of engineers, almost without exception, repudiated their international misleaders and stuck with the rest of the steel workers. After President Gompers had been quoted in the newspapers as pledging the support of the A. F. of L. to the strike (two days after it started) and Labor generally had shown its determination to stick by the steel workers, the officers of the Engineers' international were compelled to publicly endorse the strike. But throughout its duration they nevertheless privately encouraged their strategically situated tradesmen to return to work, thus doing incalculable harm when the strikers had begun to weaken a little. This plain case of official scabbery was inspired by a jurisdictional dispute between the engineers and the electrical workers over the disposition to be made of electrical crane-men signed up in the campaign. Because they could not have their unreasonable way in the matter, the officials of the engineers deliberately knifed the strike and lent aid and comfort to the bitterest opponents of Organized Labor on this planet. To such extremes will union men go in internecine wars over trade demarcations.

But in spite of opposition, blundering and treachery, the steel workers had spoken. Mr. Gary was answered. Previous to the strike, he declared that the unions represented only an insignificant minority of his men, the great bulk of his working force being satisfied. He compelled the Committee to show its credentials. Result: 365,600 steel workers laid down their tools. This estimated total has never been disputed by the steel companies. Here and there, in some individual town or district, they pointed out a figure occasionally as being excessive; but although importuned by newspaper men to do so, they never ventured to issue a statement of the number on strike at all points. The reason was that they feared to print the grand total which even their lying press bureau would have to admit. Word came to the Committee from reliable sources that the steel manufacturers considered the union figure well within the real total.