Chapter IV: Part 4

At the same hour as the Clairton outrage a similar attack was made on the workers at Glassport, adjoining McKeesport. Not being allowed to meet at the latter city the organizers had leased a plot of ground in Glassport and had been holding regular meetings there, with the full sanction of the local authorities. For the meeting in question they had an official permit. But just as it was about to begin the State Constabulary broke it up in true Cossack fashion, almost riding down the Burgess in so doing. They arrested all they could seize. These were held as rioters under bail of from $1,000 to $3,000 each. The venal Pittsburgh papers screamed about the outbreaks that had been crushed by the gallant State police, and praised them for their bravery in facing the "rioting mobs."

Despite all these terroristic methods the Steel Trust could not break the will of its workers. On September 22 they struck throughout the entire industry with a discipline and universality that will be remembered so long as steel is made in America. On Tuesday, the twenty-third, 304,000 had quit their posts in the mills and furnaces. All week their ranks were augmented until by September 30, there were 365,600 on strike. It was a magnificent effort for freedom, and twice as big a strike as this country had ever known. By cities and districts, the numbers of strikers were as follows:

Pittsburgh 25,000
Homestead 9,000
Braddock 10,000
Rankin 5,000
Clairton 4,000
Duquesne & McKeesport 12,000
Vandergrift 4,000
Brackenridge 5,000
New Kensington 1,100
Apollo 1,500
Leechburg 3,000
Donora & Monessen 12,000
Johnstown 18,000
Coatesville 4,000
Youngstown district,
including Youngstown, E. Youngstown,
Struthers, Hubbard, Niles, Canton,
Alliance, Massillon, Warren, Farrell,
Newcastle, Sharon, Butler, etc. 70,000
Wheeling district 15,000
Cleveland 25,000
Steubenville district 12,000
Chicago district,
including Gary, Joliet, DeKalb,
South Chicago, Indiana Harbor, East
Chicago, Hammond, Evanston, Sterling,
Peoria, Milwaukee, etc. 90,000
Buffalo district 12,000
Pueblo 6,000
Birmingham 2,000
5 Bethlehem Plants 20,000
-------
Total 365,600

The shut-down was almost complete. Throughout the country the industry was stricken with paralysis. On an average the strike was at least 90 per cent. effective. In the great Chicago district practically all the men struck, hamstringing the big plants in the various steel towns of that section, Gary, Joliet, Indiana Harbor, South Chicago, etc. The holding of the organizations in this district for a year, in the face of Steel Trust opposition, by the organizers under Secretary Evans, and later, De Young, was one of the most notable achievements of the whole campaign. When the pent-up force was finally released it swept the district like a flood, leaving hardly a wheel turning anywhere.

Youngstown is another place where great difficulties had been encountered in the organizing work, the workers being deeply discouraged by recently lost local strikes, and the authorities at some points so hostile that it was impossible to hold meetings in the strategic places. But so widespread was the discontent at the miserable working conditions, and so well had the district crew of organizers under Secretaries McCadden and Hammersmark done their work that when the strike clarion sounded, the masses of steel workers responded almost to a man. Trust plants and "independents" alike had to shut down. The steel working population of the entire Mahoning Valley went on holiday. It was a clean walkout. In the outer Youngstown district, as established by the National Committee system, the companies, by the use of desperate tactics, succeeded in keeping some of their men at work; in Sharon, Farrell and Newcastle probably twenty per cent refused to obey the strike call. But in Canton and Massillon, John Olchon and the other organizers brought all the important mills to a dead stop.

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.

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[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.

Realizing full well the reactionary spirit of the times, the steel companies proceeded safely to extremes to crush the steel strike, dubbed by them an attempt at violent revolution. To accomplish their end they stuck at nothing. One of their most persistent and determined efforts was to deprive the steel workers of their supposedly inalienable right to meet and talk together. Throughout the strike, whenever and wherever they could find municipal or court officials willing to do their bidding, the steel barons abolished the rights of free speech and free assembly, so precious to strikers. Few districts escaped this evil, but as usual, Pennsylvania felt the blow earliest and heaviest. Hardly had the strike started when the oily Schwab prohibited meetings in Bethlehem; the Allegheny and West Penn Steel Companies did the same at Natrona, jailing organizer J. McCaig for "inciting to riot"; in the Sharon-Farrell district the steel workers, denied their constitutional rights in their home towns, had to march several miles over into Ohio (America they called it) in order to hold their meetings.

Along the Monongahela river the shut-down was complete. Following Sheriff Haddock's proclamation and the "riots" at Clairton and Glassport, it was only a few days until the city and borough officials had completely banned strike meetings in all the territory from Charleroi to Pittsburgh. The unions' free-speech, free-assembly victory of the past summer was instantly cancelled. For forty-one miles through the heart of America's steel industry, including the important centers of Monessen, Donora, Clairton, Wilson, Glassport, McKeesport, Duquesne, Homestead, Braddock, Rankin, etc., not a meeting of the steel workers could be held. Even in Pittsburgh itself meetings were prohibited everywhere except in Labor Temple. The steel-collared city officials never could quite muster the gall to close Labor's own building--or perhaps because it is so far from the mills and so poorly situated for meetings they felt it to be of no use to the strikers. Thus the Steel Trust gave its workers a practical demonstration of what is meant by the phrase, "making the world safe for democracy."

Not only were mass meetings forbidden, but so also were regular business meetings under the charters of the local unions. To test out this particular usurpation, Attorney W. H. Rubin, then in charge of the strike's legal department and possessed of a keener faith in Pennsylvania justice than the Strike committee had, keener probably than he himself now has, prayed the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas to enjoin Mayor Babcock and other city officials from interfering with a local union of the Amalgamated Association holding its business meetings on the south side of the city where its members lived and where several large mills are located. At the hearing the Mayor and Chief of Police freely admitted that there had been no violence in the strike, and even complimented the men on their behavior, but they feared there might be trouble and so forbade the meetings. The honorable Judges Ford and Shafer agreed with them and denied the writ, saying among other things:

It is the duty of the Mayor and Police Department to
preserve the peace, and it must be sometimes necessary for
that purpose to prevent the congregating in one place of
large numbers of people such as might get beyond the control
of the Police Department, and it must be left to the
reasonable discretion of the officers charged with keeping
the peace when such intervention is made.

In other words, the sacred right of the workers to meet together depends upon the arbitrary will of any politician who may get into the office controlling the permits. Shortly before Judges Ford and Shafer handed down this noble conception of free assembly, Judge Kennedy of the Allegheny County Court, ruling on the appeal of Mother Jones, J. L. Beaghen, J. M. Patterson and Wm. Z. Foster in the Duquesne free speech cases of several weeks prior to the strike, had this to say:

It cannot be questioned that the object of these
meetings--increasing the membership in the American
Federation of Labor--is a perfectly lawful one, but the
location of the meetings in the Monongahela valley, built up
as it is for mile after mile of an unbroken succession of
iron and steel mills, and thickly populated with iron
workers, many of whom obviously are not members of this
association, and among whom, on both sides, there are, in
all probability, some who upon the occasion of meetings such
as these purported to be, might through excitement
precipitate serious actions of which the consequences could
not be foreseen and might be disastrous, presents questions
which are sufficient to cause the court to hesitate before
interfering with the exercise of discretion on the part of
the Mayor in refusing to permit such meetings at this time.

The Court is still hesitating to interfere with Mayor Crawford's tyranny, and the defendants had to pay $100 and costs each for trying to hold a meeting on ground they had leased. One would think that the remedy in the case conjured out of thin air by the learned judge (for in the thousands of meetings held in the steel campaign he cannot point to one incident of violence) would be for the local authorities to provide ample police protection to insure order. But no, in Pennsylvania the thing to do is to set aside the constitutional rights of the workers. Would such action be taken in the case of members of a Chamber of commerce? Wouldn't the governor, rather, order out the state troops, if necessary, to uphold their right of assembly?

In the hope of getting some relief, or at the least some publicity about the unbearable situation, a committee of 18 local labor men, representing the largest trade unions in Western Pennsylvania, went to Washington and presented to the Allegheny County congressional delegation a petition expressing contempt for the judges and other officials in their part of the State and asking Congress to give them the justice these men refused to mete out. Surely, the Allegheny County congressmen were exactly the ones to bring the Steel Trust to time. With a grand flourish they introduced a resolution into the House calling for an investigation--then they forgot all about it.

The official tyranny and outlawry along the Monongahela was so bad that the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor had to voice its protest. On November 1-2 it held a special convention in Pittsburgh, attended by several hundred delegates. A resolution was adopted demanding that protection be given the rights of the workers, and that if the authorities failed to extend this protection, "the Executive Council of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor shall issue a call for a State-wide strike, when in its judgment it is necessary to compel respect for law and the restoration of liberty as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States and of the State of Pennsylvania." For this action President Jas. H. Maurer of the Federation was hotly assailed and even menaced with lynching by the lawless business interests.

By some inexplicable mental twist the ex-union man Burgess of Homestead eventually allowed the unions to hold one mass meeting each week--to this day the only ones permitted in the forty-one miles of Monongahela steel towns. They were under the supervision of the State police. At each meeting a half dozen of these Cossacks, in full uniform, would sit upon the platform as censors. Only English could be spoken. As the saying was, all the organizers were permitted to talk about was the weather. When one touched on a vital strike phase a Cossack would yell at him, "Hey, cut that out! You're through, you--! Don't ever come back here any more." And he never could speak there again.

Judging from past experiences the strike in the Pittsburgh district should have been impossible under such hard circumstances. With little or no opportunity to meet for mutual encouragement and enlightenment, the strikers, theoretically, should have been soon discouraged and driven back to work. But they were saved by their matchless solidarity, bred of a deep faith in the justice of their cause. In the black, Cossack-ridden Monongahela towns there were thousands of strikers who were virtually isolated, who never attended a meeting during the entire strike and seldom if ever saw an organizer or read a strike bulletin, yet they fought on doggedly for three and one-half months, buoyed up by a boundless belief in the ultimate success of their supreme effort. Each felt himself bound to stay away from the mills, come weal or come woe, regardless of what the rest did. These were mainly the despised foreigners, of course, but their splendid fighting qualities were a never-ending revelation and inspiration to all connected with the strike.

Through the dark night of oppression a bright beacon of liberty gleamed from Braddock. There the heroic Slavish priest, Reverend Adelbert Kazincy, pastor of St. Michel's Roman Catholic church, bade defiance to the Steel Trust and all its minions. He threw open his church to the strikers, turned his services into strike meetings, and left nothing undone to make the men hold fast. The striking steel workers came to his church from miles around, Protestants as well as Catholics. The neighboring clergymen who ventured to oppose the strike lost their congregations,--men, women and children flocked to Father Kazincy's, and all of them stood together, as solid as a brick wall.

Reverend Kazincy's attitude aroused the bitterest hostility of the steel companies. They did not dare to do him bodily violence, nor to close his church by their customary "legal" methods; but they tried everything else. Unable to get the local bishop to silence him, they threatened finally to strangle his church. To this the doughty priest replied that if they succeeded he would put a monster sign high up on his steeple: "This church destroyed by the Steel Trust," and he would see that it stayed there. When they tried to foreclose on the church mortgage, he promptly laid the matter before his heterogeneous congregation of strikers, who raised the necessary $1200 before leaving the building and next day brought in several hundred dollars more. Then the companies informed him that after the strike no more Slovaks could get work in the mills. He told them that if they tried this, he would do his level best to pull all the Slovaks out of the district (they are the bulk of the mill forces) and colonize them in the West. The promised blacklist has not yet materialized.

Father Kazincy and the clergymen who worked with him, notable among whom was the Reverend Molnar, a local Slavish Lutheran minister, constituted one of the great mainstays of the strike in their district. They are men who have caught the true spirit of the lowly Nazarene. The memory of their loyal co-operation will long live green in the hearts of the Pittsburgh district steel strikers.

A description of the repressive measures taken by the Steel Trust against its workers during the early period of the strikes necessarily relates almost entirely to Western Pennsylvania. With few exceptions, the other districts were in a deadlock. So tightly were the mills shut down that the companies could hardly stir. It took them several weeks to get their stricken fighting machinery in motion again. But it was different in Western Pennsylvania, in what we call the greater Pittsburgh district; that has always been the key to the whole industry, and there, from the very first, the steel companies made a bitter fight to control the situation and to break the strike. The tactics used there are typical in that they came to be universally applied as the strike grew older, the degree of their application depending upon the amount of control exercised by the Steel Trust in the several localities.

To carry on the terror so well begun by the suppression of free speech and free assembly, the Steel Trust turned loose upon the devoted strikers in Western Pennsylvania the great masses of armed thugs it had been recruiting since long before the strike. These consisted of every imaginable type of armed guard, official and unofficial, except uniformed troops. There were State Constabulary, deputy sheriffs, city police, city detectives, company police, company detectives, private detectives, coal and iron police, ordinary gunmen, armed strike-breakers, vigilantes, and God knows how many others. These legions of reaction, all tarred with the same brush--a servile, mercenary allegiance to the ruthless program of the Steel Trust--vied with each other in working hardships upon the steel workers. In this shameful competition the State Constabulary stood first; for downright villainy and disregard of civil and human rights, these so-called upholders of law and order easily outdistanced all the other plug-uglies assembled by the Steel Trust. They merit our special attention.

The Pennsylvania State Constabulary dates from 1905, when a law was enacted creating the Department of State Police. The force is modelled somewhat along the lines of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police. The men are uniformed, mounted, heavily armed and regularly enlisted. For the most part they consist of ex-United States army men. At present they number somewhat less than the amount set by law, 415 officers and men. Their ostensible duty is to patrol the poorly policed rural sections of the state, and this they do when they have nothing else to take up their time. But their real function is to break strikes. They were organized as a result of the failure of the militia to crush the anthracite strike of 1902. Since their inception they have taken an active part in all important industrial disturbances within their jurisdiction. They are the heart's darlings of Pennsylvania's great corporations. Labor regards them with an abiding hatred. Says Mr. Jas. H. Maurer (_The Cossack_, page 3):

The "English Square" is the only open-field military
formation of human beings that has ever been known to
repulse cavalry. All other formations go down before the
resistless rush of plunging beasts mounted by armed men, mad
in the fierce excitement induced by the thundering gallop of
charging horses. A charge by cavalry is a storm from
hell--for men on foot. A cavalry-man's power, courage and
daring are strangely multiplied by the knowledge that he
sits astride a swift, strong beast, willing and able to
knock down a dozen men in one leap of this terrible rush.
Hence, the Cossacks, the mounted militiamen--for crushing
unarmed, unmounted groups of men on strike.

But the State Police do not confine themselves merely to the crude business of breaking up so-called strike riots. Their forte is prevention, rather than cure. They aim to so terrorize the people that they will cower in their homes, afraid to go upon the streets to transact necessary business, much less to congregate in crowds. They play unmercifully upon every fear and human weakness. They are skilled, scientific terrorists, such as Czarist Russia never had.

On a thousand occasions they beat, shot, jailed or trampled steel workers under their horses' hoofs in the manner and under the circumstances best calculated to strike terror to their hearts. In Braddock, for instance, a striker having died of natural causes, about two hundred of his fellows assembled to accompany the body to the cemetery. To stop this harmless demonstration all the State Police needed to do was to send a word to the union. But such orderly, reasonable methods do not serve their studied policy of frightfulness. Therefore, without previously informing the strikers in any way that their funeral party was obnoxious, the Cossacks laid in wait for the procession, and when it reached the heart of town, where all Braddock could get the benefit of the lesson in "Americanism," they swooped down upon it at full gallop, clubbing the participants and scattering them to the four winds.

Similar outrageous attacks occurred not once, but dozens of times. Let Father Kazincy speak of his experiences:

Braddock, Pa., Sept. 27, 1919
W. Z. Foster,
Pittsburgh, Pa.,

_Dear Sir_:

The pyramidal impudence of the State Constabulary in denying
charges of brutal assaults perpetrated by them upon the
peaceful citizens of the borough of Braddock prompts me to
send a telegram to the Governor of Pennsylvania, in which I
have offered to bring forth two specific cases of bestial
transgression of their "calling."

On Monday last at 10 A. M. my congregation, leaving
church, was suddenly, without any cause whatever, attacked
on the very steps of the Temple of God, by the Constables,
and dispersed by the iron-hoofed Huns. Whilst dispersing
indignation and a blood frenzy swayed them, a frenzy
augmented by that invisible magnetic force, the murmuring,
raging force of 3,000 strong men. One could feel that
helpless feeling of being lifted up by some invisible force,
forced, thrown against the flux of raging, elemental passion
of resentment, against the Kozaks of this State.

Nevertheless, it was the most magnificent display of
self-control manifested by the attacked ever shown anywhere.
They moved on, with heads lowered and jaws firmly set, to
submit. Oh, it was great; it was magnificent. They, these
husky, muscle-bound Titans of raw force walked home ... only
thinking, thinking hard. Oh, only for one wink from some
one, would there be a puddle of red horseblood mixed with
the human kind.

But no. We want to win the strike. We want to win the
confidence of the public.

Tuesday afternoon the little babies of No. 1 were going to
the school. They loitered for the school bell to summon
them. And here come Kozaks. They see the little innocents
standing on the steps of the school-house, their parents on
the opposite side of the street. What a splendid occasion to
start the "Hunkey's" ire. Let us charge their babies--that
will fetch them to an attack upon us.

They did. But the "Hunkey" even at the supreme test of his
cool-headedness, refused to flash his knife to save his
babies from the onrush of the cruel horses' hoofs.

I am relating to you, Mr. Foster, things as they happened.
You may use my name in connection with your charges against
the Constabulary.

Sincerely yours,
REV. A. KAZINCY,
416 Frazier St.,
Braddock, Pa.

Brutal and unprovoked assault upon Rudolph Dressel, Homestead, Pa., Sept. 23, 1919.

_Photo by International_]

Governor Sproul paid no attention to Father Kazincy's protest, nor did he to a long letter from Jas. H. Maurer, reciting shocking brutalities fully authenticated by affidavits--unless it was to multiply his public endorsements and praises of the State Police.

A favorite method of the Constables was to go tearing through the streets (foreign quarter), forcing pedestrians into whatever houses they happened to be passing, regardless of whether or not they lived there. Read these two typical affidavits, portraying a double outrage:

STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA }
COUNTY OF ALLEGHENY } SS.

Before me, the undersigned authority, personally appeared
John Bodnar, who being duly sworn according to law deposes
and says that he lives at 542 Gold Way, Homestead, Pa., that
on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 1919, at about 2 P. M. he
went to visit his cousin on Fifth Avenue, Homestead, Pa.:
that he did in fact visit his cousin and after leaving the
house of his cousin was accosted on the street by a member
of the State Police who commanded him, the deponent, to
enter a certain house, which house was not known to the
deponent; that deponent informed said State Policeman that
he, deponent, did not live in the house indicated by the
State Policeman; nevertheless, the said State Policeman
said, "It makes no difference whether you live in there or
not, you go in there anyhow"; thereupon in fear of violence
deponent did enter the said house, which house was two doors
away from the house of the cousin of deponent; that after a
time deponent came out of the house into which he had been
ordered, thereupon the same State Policeman returned and
ordered deponent to re-enter the house aforesaid and upon
again being informed by deponent that he, the deponent, did
not live in said house, the said State Policeman forthwith
arrested the deponent and brought him to Homestead police
station, and at a hearing at said station before the burgess
was fined the sum of nine dollars and sixty-five cents,
which amount was paid by deponent.

JOHN BODNAR

Sworn to and subscribed before me
this first day of October, 1919.
A. F. Kaufman, Notary Public.

Here is what happened in the house into which Bodnar was driven:

STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA }
COUNTY OF ALLEGHENY } SS.

Before me, the undersigned authority, personally appeared
Steve Dudash, who being duly sworn according to law deposes
and says that he resides at 541 E. 5th Ave., Homestead, Pa.;
that on Tuesday September 23, 1919, in the afternoon of said
day, his wife, Mary Dudash, was severely scalded, burned,
and injured by reason of a sudden fright sustained when a
State Policeman forced John Bodnar into the home of the
deponent and his wife, Mary Dudash; that said Mary Dudash,
the wife of the deponent, was in a very delicate condition
at the time of the fright and injury complained of, caused
by the State Police and that on Sunday, Sept. 28, 1919,
following the date in question, namely the 23rd, the said
Mary Dudash, wife of deponent, gave birth to a child; that
on account of the action of the State Police in forcing John
Bodnar with terror into the home of deponent and his wife,
Mary Dudash, she, the said Mary Dudash, wife of the
deponent, has been rendered very sick and has suffered a
nervous collapse and is still suffering from the nervous
shock sustained, on account of the action of the State
Police, above referred to.

STEVE DUDASH

Sworn to and subscribed before me
this first day of October, 1919
A. F. Kaufman, Notary Public.

When on a mission of terrorism the first thing the State Troopers do is to get their horses onto the sidewalks, the better to ride down the pedestrians. Unbelievable though it may seem, they actually ride into stores and inner rooms. Picture the horror a foreign worker and his family, already badly frightened, at seeing a mounted policeman crashing into their kitchen. The horses are highly trained. Said an N. E. A. news dispatch, Sept. 26th, 1919:

Horses of the Pennsylvania State Constabulary are trained
not to turn aside, as a horse naturally will do, when a
person stands in its way, but to ride straight over any one
against whom they are directed. Lizzie, a splendid black
mare ridden by Trooper John A. Thorp, on duty at Homestead,
uses her teeth as well as her heels when in action. Her
master will sometimes dismount, leaving Lizzie to hold a
striker with her strong jaws, while he takes up the pursuit
of others on foot.

If this is thought to be an overdrawn statement, read the following affidavit:

Butler, Pa., October 3, 1919

I, Jacob Sazuta,
21 Bessemer Ave.,
Lyndora, Pa.

Commenced work for the Standard Steel Car Company in
September, 1913, as laborer. About October 1916 was promoted
to car fitter in the erection department; in February, 1919,
was then taken and placed as a wheel roller, and I worked in
this capacity until August 6th, 1919 [the date the steel
strike began there].

On August 25, after receiving my pay, I was standing looking
in a store window, when State Trooper No. 52 rode his horse
upon me, THE HORSE STEPPING ON MY LEFT FOOT. Trooper No. 52
ordered me to move on, BUT AS THE HORSE WAS STANDING ON MY
FOOT I COULD NOT MOVE. He then struck me across the head
with his club, cutting a gash in the left side of my head
that took the doctor three stitches to close up the wound.
After hitting me with his club, he kept chasing me with his
horse.

JACOB SAZUTA

Sworn and subscribed before me
this third day of October, 1919.
E. L. Cefferi, Notary Public.

A few affidavits, and extracts from affidavits, taken at random from among the hundreds in possession of the National Committee, will indicate the general conditions prevailing in the several districts:

Clairton, Pa.

John Doban, Andy Niski and Mike Hudak were walking home
along the street when the State Police came and arrested the
three, making ten holes in Mike Hudak's head. Were under
arrest three days. Union bailed them out, $1,000.00 each.

* * * * *

Butler, Pa., Oct. 3, 1919.

I, James Torok, Storekeeper,
103 Standard Ave.,
Lyndora, Pa.,

On about August 15, 1919, I saw State Troopers chase a
crippled man who could not run as fast as his horse, and run
him down, the horse bumping him in the back with his head,
knocked him down. Later three men were coming to my store to
buy some things; the State Troopers ran their horses right
on them and chased them home. One of the men stopped and
said: "I have to go to the store," and the Trooper said:
"Get to hell out of here, you sons -- ----, or I will kill
you," and started after them again, and the people ran home
and stayed away from the store.

JAMES TOROK

Sworn to and subscribed before me
this 3rd day of October, 1919.
E. L. Peffer, Notary Public.

* * * * *

Homestead, Pa.

... two State Policemen made a forcible entry into the home
of deponent, Trachn Yenchenke, at 327 Third Ave, Homestead,
Pa., and came to the place where deponent was asleep, kicked
him and punched him, and handled him with extreme violence
and took deponent without any explanation, without
permitting deponent to dress, dragged him half naked from
his home to waiting automobile and conveyed him against his
will to the Homestead Police Station.... Fined $15.10.

TRACHN YENCHENKE.

* * * * *

Monessen, Pa.

... Concetta Cocchiara, 8 months advanced in a state of
pregnancy, was out shopping with her sister. Two State
Policemen brusquely ordered them home and when they did not
move fast enough to suit, followed them home, forced himself
into the house and struck affiant with a stick on the head
and grabbed her by the hair and pulled her from the kitchen
and forced her into a patrol wagon and took her to the
borough jail.... Sworn to before Henry Fusarini, Notary
Public, October 11, 1919.

* * * * *

Newcastle, Pa.

John Simpel,
1711 Morris Ave.,
Newcastle.

On Sept. 22, about 5.30 P. M. he was walking along
towards his home on Moravia Street. Hearing shots fired he
stopped in the middle of the street and was instantly struck
by bullets three times, one bullet going through his leg,
one through his finger, while the third entered his back and
went through his body, coming out through his abdomen. The
shots were fired from inside the gates of the Carnegie Steel
Company's plant. Mr. Simpel believes the shots were fired
from a machine gun, because of their rapid succession. He
fell on the ground and lay there for about ten minutes,
until he was picked up by a young boy.... He is now totally
disabled. He has a wife and a child and is 48 years of
age....

JAS. A. NORRINGTON, Secretary.

* * * * *

Farrell, Pa.

... There were four men killed here, one in a quarrel in a
boarding house and three by the Cossacks. Half a dozen were
wounded, one of them a woman. She was shot in the back by a
Cossack, while on her way to the butcher shop....

S. COATES, Secretary.

Many hundreds of similar cases could be cited. In the steel strike a score were killed, almost all on the workers' side; hundreds were seriously injured, and thousands unjustly jailed. To the State Constabulary attaches the blame for a large share of this tyranny. The effect of their activities was to create a condition in Western Pennsylvania, bordering on a reign of terror. Yet it is extremely difficult to definitely fasten their crimes upon them. No matter how dastardly the outrage, when the Steel Trust cracks its whip the local authorities and leading citizens come forth with a mass of affidavits, "white-washing" the thuggery in question, and usually sufficing to cast serious doubts on the statements of the few worker witnesses courageous enough to raise their voices. What is to be thought of the following incident?

Testifying before the Senate Committee investigating the strike, Mr. Gompers related how, in an organizing campaign in Monessen, Pa. several years ago, A. F. of L. organizer Jefferson D. Pierce was bludgeoned by Steel Trust thugs, receiving injuries that resulted in his death. Mr. Gompers had his facts straight. Yet the very next day, Mr. Gary, testifying before the same Committee, produced a sworn statement from the son of Mr. Pierce containing the following assertions:

I was with my father the night he received his injuries in
Monessen, Pa., and wish to state very emphatically that his
injury was not caused by any one connected with the United
States Steel Corporation. On the contrary, it was caused by
a member of the I. W. W. organization from out of town, who
was sent there at the time to create trouble, as the I. W.
W. organization was then trying to gain control of the
organizing situation. I wish again most emphatically to
refute Mr. Gompers' statement that this injury was caused by
some one connected with the United States Steel Corporation.

Upon being questioned, Mr. Gary "thought" that Mr. Pierce is employed at Worcester, Mass. by the American Steel and Wire Company, a subsidiary of the U. S. Steel Corporation.

Fortunately, however, in the steel strike the photographer secured a proof of State Police brutality which the most skilled Steel Trust apologists cannot explain away--a picture of the typically vicious assault upon Mr. R. Dressel, a hotel keeper of 532 Dickson St. (foreign quarter), Homestead, Pa. I quote from the latter's statement in connection therewith:

I, Rudolph Dressel, of the aforesaid address, do hereby make
this statement of my own volition and without solicitation
from any one. That on the 23rd day of September I was
standing in front of my place of business at the aforesaid
address and a friend of mine, namely, Adolph Kuehnemund,
came to visit and consult me regarding personal matters. As
I stood as shown in the picture above mentioned with my
friend, the State Constabulary on duty in Homestead came
down Dickson St. They had occasion to ride up and down the
street several times and finally stopped directly in front
of me and demanded that I move on. Before I had time to
comply I was struck by the State Policeman. (The attitude of
said Policeman is plainly shown in the aforesaid picture,
and his threatening club is plainly seen descending towards
me.)

My friend and I then entered my place of business and my
friend a few minutes afterwards looked out on the street
over the summer doors. The policeman immediately charged him
and being unable to enter my place of business on horseback,
dismounted and entered into my place of business on foot.

My friend being frightened at what had happened to me
retired to a room in the rear of my place of business. The
Policeman entered this room, accompanied by another State
Police, and without cause, reason or excuse, struck my
friend and immediately thereafter arrested him. I was
personally present at his hearing before Burgess P. H.
McGuire of the above city, at which none of the aforesaid
policemen were heard or even present. Burgess asked my
friend what he was arrested for, and my friend referred to
me inasmuch as he himself did not know. The Burgess
immediately replied, "We have no time to hear your
witnesses," and thereupon levied a fine of $10.00 and costs
upon him. My friend having posted a forfeit of $25.00, the
sum of $15.45 was deducted therefrom.

The State Constabulary were sent, unasked for, into the quiet steel towns for the sole purpose of intimidating the strikers. The following took place at the meeting of the Braddock Borough Council, October 6:

Mr. Verosky: (County detective and council member) "Mr.
Chairman, the citizens of the borough wish to know by whose
authority the State Constabulary was called into Braddock to
take up their quarters here and to practically relieve the
police of their duties, by patrolling the streets on foot,
mounted, and always under arms."

Mr. Holtzman: (President of Council) "I surely do not know
who called them into town, but were I the Burgess, I would
make it my business to find out, in view of the fact that
the Constabulary is neither wanted nor needed here."

Mr. Verosky: "Well, in that case, the Burgess may throw some
light on the subject."

Mr. Callahan: (Burgess) "The question comes to me as a
surprise and I am sure that I don't know by whose authority
the Constabulary was called in."

Everything was calm in Braddock until the State Police came in. Then the trouble began. It was the same nearly everywhere. The arrival of these men was always the signal for so-called riots, and wholesale clubbing, shooting and jailing of strikers.

Great praise has been poured upon the State Constabulary for their supposedly wonderful bravery and efficiency, because a few hundred of them, scattered thinly through a score of towns, have been able apparently to overawe many thousands of strikers. But the credit is undeserved. In strikes they always form, in point of actual weight, an insignificant part of the armed forces arrayed against the strikers. For instance, in a steel town, during the strike, there would usually be a dozen or so State Police and from 3,000 to 4,000 deputy sheriffs, company police, etc. The latter classes of gunmen make up the body of the real repressive force; the State Police are merely raiders. It is their particularly dirty job to harass the enemy; to break the strike by scientifically bulldozing the strikers in their homes and on the streets. Thus they are thrown into the limelight, while the company thugs remain in comparative obscurity.

The State Police feel reasonably sure of their skins when carrying on their calculated campaigns of terrorism, for behind them are large numbers of armed guards of various sorts ready to spring to their support at an instant's notice, should the workers dare to resist them. Besides, they know they have _carte blanche_ to commit the greatest excesses, since the highest state officials, not to speak of local courts and other authorities, give them undivided support. They are above the law, when the rights of the workers are concerned. Moreover, they realize fully that they can depend upon trade-union leaders to hold the strikers in check from adopting measures of retaliation. Few of them are hurt during their depredations. Once in a while, however, they drive their victims to desperation and get themselves into trouble.