But despite everything—the suppression of free speech and free assembly, Cossack terrorism, official tyranny, prostitution of the courts, attacks from the lying press, and all the rest of it—the steel workers in the immediate Pittsburgh district (comprising the towns along the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers from Apollo to Monessen) made a splendid fight. The very pressure seemed to hold them the better together. Their ranks were never really broken, the strike being weakened only by a long, costly wearing-away process. The stampede back to work, so eagerly striven for by the employers, did not materialize. In the beginning of the strike the Pittsburgh district was the weakest point in the battle line; at the end it was one of the very strongest.
The Chicago district struck very well, but it weakened earlier than others. This was because the employers scored a break-through at Indiana Harbor and Gary, particularly the latter place, which shattered the whole line.
Gary, the great western stronghold of the United States Steel Corporation, was the storm center of the Chicago district at all times. Hardly had the organization campaign begun in 1918, when the Gary Tribune bitterly assailed the unions, accusing them of advocating evasion of the draft, discouragement of liberty bond sales, and general opposition to the war program. These lies were run in a full page editorial in English, and repeated in a special eight page supplement containing sixteen languages, a half page to each. Many thousands of copies were scattered broadcast. Other attacks in a similar vein followed. It was a foul blast straight from the maw of the Steel Trust. Incidentally it created a situation which shows how the steel men control public opinion.
The new unions immediately boycotted the Tribune. Result: the Gary Post, somewhat friendly inclined, doubled its circulation at once. The Post then became more friendly; whereupon, it is alleged, a leading banker called the editor to his office and told him that if he did not take a stand against the unions his credit would be stopped, which would have meant suspension within the week. That very day the Post joined the Tribune's campaign of abuse. Apparently the Post's youthful editor had learned a new wrinkle in journalism.
The Steel Trust did all it could to hold Gary from unionizing; but when the strike came the walkout was estimated to be 97 per cent. At first everything went peacefully, but the Steel Corporation was watching for an opportunity to get its strategic Gary mills into operation. The occasion presented itself on October 4, when strikers coming from a meeting fell foul of some homeward bound scabs. Local labor men declare the resultant scrimmage "did not make as much disturbance as ordinarily would occur in a saloon when two or three men were fighting." It was a trivial incident—a matter for the police. Only one man was injured, and he very slightly. But the inspired press yelled red murder and pictured the hospitals as full of wounded. The militia were ordered in. The unions offered to furnish 700 ex-service men to enforce law and order; but this was rejected. Later the militia were transferred to Indiana Harbor; on October 6, a provisional regiment of regular troops, under command of General Leonard Wood, came to Gary from nearby Fort Sheridan, and martial law was at once proclaimed. The Steel Corporation now had the situation in hand; and the Gary strike was doomed.
Grave charges were voiced against the misuse made of the Federal troops in Gary. John Fitzpatrick writes me as follows, basing his statements upon reliable witnesses:
Now we have military control, the city of Gary being placed under martial law. The strike leaders and pickets were arrested by the soldiers and put to work splitting wood and sweeping the streets. This was most humiliating, because the camp was across the street from the city hall and in the most frequented part of the city.
When street-sweeping here did not break their spirits, these men were taken to the back streets, where they had their homes and where their own and the neighbor's children watched them through the windows.
The so-called foreigners have great respect for law and authority, especially military authority, which plays such a big part in their native environments. The U. S. Steel Corporation did not fail to take advantage of this. In the first place they gave out the impression that the letters "U. S." in the corporation's name indicated that it was owned by the U. S. Government, and that the Government soldiers being in town meant that any one interfering with the steel company's affairs would be deported or sent to Fort Leavenworth.