While not accurately ascertainable, the number of Mr. Gary's employees actually taking part in the strike may be closely approximated. Mr. Gary stated to the Senate Committee that the total number employed by the United States Steel Corporation in the departments affected by the strike was 201,065. Against this number should be checked off about half of the total number of strikers, or 182,500. This is based upon the theory that the official U. S. Steel Corporation plants form approximately 50 per cent. of the industry, and that the strike was just as effective against them as against those of any other company. It is not asserted that these figures are absolutely accurate; but they will serve to indicate that the claim of a 90 per cent. strike in the plants of the Steel Corporation is a fair one. It is exceedingly doubtful if as many as 10 per cent. of Mr. Gary's employees remained at their posts and failed to heed the strike call. Fully 125,000 of them were members of the unions before the strike started, and most of the rest would have been also, had they dared brave the anger of their bosses.
The great steel strike thoroughly exposed the hypocrisies of Mr. Gary and his ilk that in some mysterious way labor policies and conditions in the steel industry depend upon the wishes of the body of the workers. It made plain that in the autocratic system now prevailing the democratic principles of majority and minority do not enter. It is a case pure and simple of the absolute sway of property rights over human rights. A handful of social parasites hidden away in Wall street, with no other interest in the steel industry than to exploit it, settle arbitrarily the vital questions of wages, hours and working conditions, while the enormous mass of the workers, actual producers whose very lives are involved, have no say whatsoever. No matter how bitter their grievances, when they raise their voice to ask redress, they are discharged, blacklisted, starved, beaten, jailed and even shot, until they bend the knee again and yield to the will of their industrial masters.
FOOTNOTE:
[12] In this connection occurred one of the finest incidents in the strike: Wm. J. Brennan, an able, conscientious attorney of Pittsburgh, and one of the counsel who defended the Homestead strikers in 1892, went to Clairton to get the "rioters" released on bonds. But such a state of terror existed that no one dared to go their bail. Thereupon, Mr. Brennan himself, without knowing a single one of the defendants, but smarting under the injustice of it all, pledged his entire property holdings, amounting to $88,000, to get them set free.
VIII
GARYISM RAMPANT
THE WHITE TERROR—CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS DENIED—UNBREAKABLE SOLIDARITY—FATHER KAZINCY—THE COSSACKS —SCIENTIFIC BARBARITY—PROSTITUTED COURTS—SERVANTS REWARDED
It was the misfortune of the steel strike to occur in the midst of the post-war reaction, which still persists unabated, and which constitutes the most shameful page in American history. Ours are days when the organized employers, inspired by a horrible fear of the onward sweep of revolution in Europe and the irresistible advance of the labor movement in this country, are robbing the people overnight of their most precious rights, the fruits of a thousand years of struggle. And the people, not yet recovered from war hysteria and misled by a corrupt press, cannot perceive the outrage. They even glory in their degradation. Free speech, free press, free assembly, as we once knew these rights, are now things of the past. What poor rudiments of them remain depend upon the whims of a Burleson, or the rowdy element of the American Legion. Hundreds of idealists, guilty of nothing more than a temperate expression of their honest views, languish in prison serving sentences so atrocious as to shock the world—although Europe has long since released its war and political prisoners. Working class newspapers are raided, denied the use of the mails and suppressed. Meetings are broken up by Chamber of Commerce mobs or thugs in public office. The right of asylum is gone—the infamous Palmer is deporting hundreds who dare to hold views different from his. The right of the workers to organize is being systematically curtailed; and crowning shame of all, workingmen can no longer have legislative representatives of their own choosing. In a word, America, from being the most forward-looking, liberty-loving country in the world, has in two short years become one of the most reactionary. We in this country are patiently enduring tyranny that would not be tolerated in England, France, Italy, Russia or Germany. Our great war leaders promised us the New Freedom; they have given us the White Terror.