Chapter VII: Part 7

The indifference, verging often into open hostility, with which negroes generally regard Organized Labor's activities, manifested itself strongly in the steel campaign. Those employed in the industry were extremely resistant to the trade-union program; those on the outside allowed themselves to be used freely as strike-breakers.

According to the Immigration Commission's Report, which furnished the latest official figures (period 1907-08), 4.7 per cent. of the total number of steel industry employees at that time were negroes, most of whom were located in the Alabama and Maryland districts. Since then, however, considerable additions to their numbers have been made, and in many northern mills will be found groups of them, ranging in strength from 1 to 20 per cent. of the whole working force. They work mostly at hard, rough, unskilled labor, especially in the blast furnace department.

Generally speaking, these bodies of negroes took small part in the movement. In certain districts, notably Cleveland and Wheeling, it is true that they organized 100 per cent. and struck very creditably; but in most places, and exactly those where their support was needed the worst, they made a wretched showing. Consider the situation, for instance, in the Homestead Steel Works. In these plants (including the Carrie Furnaces at Rankin), of the 14,687 employees, 1,737 are negroes. Making deductions for office forces, bosses, etc., this would make them from 12 to 14 per cent. of the actual workers, a most important factor indeed. During the organizing campaign, of all these men, only eight joined the unions. And of these but one struck. He, however, stayed loyally to the finish. The degree of this abstention from the movement may be gauged when it is recalled that of the white unskilled workers in the same plants at least 75 per cent. joined the unions, and 90 per cent. struck.

Throughout the immediate Pittsburgh district, where the unions operated under such great handicaps and had to rely so much on the initiative of the individual workers, the same condition prevailed. In Duquesne, of 344 negroes employed, not one struck; in Clairton, of 300, six joined the unions and struck for two weeks. Of the several hundred working in the Braddock plants, not one joined a union or went on strike; and a dozen would cover those from the large number employed in the mills in Pittsburgh proper who walked out with the 25,000 whites on September 22. Similar tendencies were shown in the Chicago, Youngstown, Buffalo, Pueblo, Sparrows' Point and other districts. In the entire steel industry, the negroes, beyond compare, gave the movement less co-operation than any other element, skilled or unskilled, foreign or native.

Those on the outside of the industry seemed equally unsympathetic. National Committee secretaries' reports indicate that the Steel Trust recruited and shipped from 30,000 to 40,000 negroes into the mills as strike-breakers. Many of these were picked up in Northern cities, but the most of them came from the South. They were used in all the large districts and were a big factor in breaking the strike. The following statement illustrates some of the methods used in securing and handling them:

Monessen, November 23, 1919

Eugene Steward--Age 19--Baltimore, Md.

My native place is Charleston, South Carolina.

I arrived in Monessen on Wednesday, November 19. There were
about 200 of us loaded in the cars at Baltimore; some were
white; and when we were loaded in the cars were told that we
were being taken to Philadelphia.

We were not told that a strike was in progress. We were
promised $4.00 a day, with the understanding that we should
be boarded at $1.00 a day.

When we took the train a guard locked the doors so that we
were unable to get out, and no meals were given us on the
way, although we were promised board.

We were unloaded at Lock 4 and had a guard placed over us,
and were then marched into the grounds of the Pittsburgh
Steel Products Co. We were then told to go to work, and when
I found out that there was a strike on I got out. They
refused to let me out at the gate when I protested about
working, and I climbed over the fence, and they caught me
and compelled me to go back and sign a paper and told me
that I would have to go to work. I told them that I would
not go to work if they kept me there two years. I was placed
on a boat. There were about 200 other people there. The
guards informed me that if I made any attempt to again run
away that they would shoot me. I got a rope and escaped, as
I will not work to break the strike.

his
Eugene X Steward
mark

Witness Jacob S. McGinley

Few, however, of the imported negro strike-breakers showed the splendid spirit of this unlettered boy. Most of them seemed to take a keen delight in stealing the white men's jobs and crushing their strike. They clashed badly with the pickets, where picketing was allowed. And between them and the white strike-breakers many murderous encounters occurred in the mills, although the companies were very careful to suppress news of these outbreaks.

So serious was the race situation in the steel strike that the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers requested President Gompers to arrange a conference between prominent negro leaders and trade-union officials, to the end that the proper remedies may be indicated. The need for action looking towards better relations between whites and blacks in the industrial field should be instantly patent; for there can be no doubt but that the employing class, taking advantage of the bitter animosities of the two groups, are deliberately attempting to turn the negroes into a race of strike-breakers, with whom to hold the white workers in check; on much the same principle as the Czars used the Cossacks to keep in subjection the balance of the Russian people. Should they succeed to any degree it would make our industrial disputes take on more and more the character of race wars, a consummation that would be highly injurious to the white workers and eventually ruinous to the blacks.

For the tense situation existing the unions are themselves in no small part to blame. Many of them sharply draw the color line, thus feeding the flames of race hatred. This discriminatory practice is in direct conflict with the fundamental which demands that all the workers be organized, without regard to sex, race, creed, politics or nationality. It injures Labor's cause greatly. Company agents harp upon it continually, to prevent negroes from joining even the organizations willing to take them in. This was the case in the steel campaign. Moreover these same company agents cited this discriminatory practice most effectively to induce thousands of outside colored workers to come into the industry as strike-breakers. Such a condition cannot be allowed to persist. But to relieve it the unions will have to meet the issue honestly and broad-mindedly. They must open their ranks to negroes, make an earnest effort to organize them, and then give them a square deal when they do join. Nothing short of this will accomplish the desired result.[22]

This action by the unions will be a step in the right direction, but it alone will not solve the vexed problem. The best negro leaders must join heartily in destroying the pernicious anti-union policies so deeply rooted among their people. It is a lamentable fact, well known to all organizers who have worked in industries employing considerable numbers of negroes, that there is a large and influential black leadership, including ministers, politicians, editors, doctors, lawyers, social workers, etc., who as a matter of race tactics are violently opposed to their people going into the trade unions. They look upon strike-breaking as a legitimate and effective means of negro advancement. Time and again, they have seen their people, by use of it, readily work their way into trades and industries previously firmly sealed against them by the white workers' and white employers' prejudices. Nor can they see any wrong in thus taking advantage of the white man, who has so brutally oppressed them for centuries. On the contrary, they consider it a justified retaliation. They are in a race war. Inasmuch as the steel strike resulted in more negroes being in the industry than was the case before, they look upon the outcome as a victory. For these elements, and they are numerous and powerful among negroes, the color line clauses in the union constitutions are meat and drink; such leaders don't want them abolished,--they make too strong an argument against the unions.

Consider the situation faced by the unions in the campaign to organize the Chicago packing houses in 1917-18. The negroes in this industry are a strong factor (numbering 14,000 of a total of some 65,000 employees), and the unions were determined to organize them. But no sooner had organizers begun the work than they met the firm opposition of the negro intelligencia above-noted. These warned their people to have nothing to do with the movement, as their interest lay in working with the packers to defeat the unions. They said that was how the negroes came into the packing industry, and that was how they would progress in it.

Naturally, they repeated the accusations about white men not taking negroes in their unions, a charge which was not true in the packing industry. The organizers replied by launching a vigorous campaign to get them into the unions. Then the propaganda was sent forth that the only reason the whites were willing to take the blacks into their locals was because the latter, being in a minority, could exert no control; that the whites would not dare to give them a local of their own, etc. This was met by the establishment of a negro local of miscellaneous workers in a convenient neighborhood. Then the Jim Crow cry was raised that the whites wanted the blacks to herd by themselves. This the organizers answered by insisting that a free transfer system be kept up between the white and black locals. These were affiliated with the basic organization of the industry, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America.

But even this did not satisfy; the anti-union propaganda went on undiminished and with tremendous effect. It is true that some far-sighted negro intellectuals defended the unions; but they were as men crying in the wilderness; the others prevailed. And although the unions kept a crew of negro organizers in the field, and won many concessions for the packing house workers, including the eight hour day, right of collective bargaining, large increases in wages, 40 hour weekly guarantee, retroactive pay, seniority rights, etc., they have never succeeded in organizing the negroes.

They know little of the race problem in industry who declare that it can be settled merely by the unions opening their doors to the negroes. It is much more complex than that, and will require the best thought that conscientious whites and blacks can give it. The negro has the more difficult part to solve, in resisting the insidious efforts of unscrupulous white employers and misguided intellectuals of his own race to make a professional strike-breaker of him. But I am confident that he will win out and will take his place where he belongs in the industrial fight, side by side with the white worker.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Senate Committee Steel Strike Hearings, page 532.

[19] In steel industry usage (followed in this book unless otherwise noted) the term "foreigners" applies chiefly to the nationalities of the later immigrations, including the Slavic races, Roumanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Greeks, Italians and others from Eastern and Southern Europe. These are the so-called "hunkies." The peoples of the earlier immigrations--the English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Germans and Scandinavians--who speak our language, hold good jobs, and are generally well established, are not exactly considered Americans, but they are rarely called foreigners.

[20] The brazen frankness with which this policy was carried out is illustrated by the following advertisement, which appeared in the Pittsburgh _Gazette-Times_, July 15, 1909, during the big steel strike of that time:

MEN WANTED--Tinners, catchers and helpers to work in open
shops. Syrians, Poles and Roumanians preferred. Steady
employment and good wages to men willing to work. Fare paid
and no fees charged.

[21] During the great organization drive in the Chicago packing houses in 1917-18, this method was used for several months in the large local union of car builders and repairmen, fully 90 per cent. of whom, born in Eastern Europe, were supposedly non-English-speaking. As a result they acquired such confidence in their ability to use the language that they dropped the customary practice of translating all their business into several languages and took to using English only.

[22] The Miners, Building Laborers and several other unions are taking the lead in this direction and are getting good results. Negroes are joining their ranks in considerable numbers and are proving themselves to be excellent union men.

XII

THE COMMISSARIAT--THE STRIKE COST

THE RELIEF ORGANIZATION--RATIONS--SYSTEM OF DISTRIBUTION
--COST OF COMMISSARIAT--STEEL STRIKE RELIEF FUND--COST OF
THE STRIKE TO THE WORKERS, THE EMPLOYERS, THE PUBLIC, THE
LABOR MOVEMENT

In all strikes the problem of keeping the wolf from the door is a pressing one. Usually it is met by the unions involved paying regular benefits of from $5.00 to $15.00 per week to each striker. But in the steel strike this was out of the question.[23] The tremendous number of men on strike and the scanty funds available utterly forbade it. To have paid such benefits would have required the impossible sum of at least $2,000,000 per week. Therefore, the best that could be done was to assist those families on the brink of destitution by furnishing them free that most basic of human necessities, food. Ordinarily in strikes the main body of men are able to take care of themselves over an extended period. The danger point is in the poverty-stricken minority. From them come the hunger-driven scabs who so demoralize and discourage the men still out. Hence, to take care of this weaker element was scientifically to strengthen the steel strike, and to make the best use of the resources available.

The great mass of strikers and their incomplete organization making it manifestly impossible for each union to segregate and take care of its own members, the internationals affiliated with the National Committee (with the two exceptions noted) pooled their strike funds and formed a joint commissariat.[24] They then proceeded to extend relief to all needy strikers, regardless of their trades or callings, or even membership or non-membership in the unions. To get relief all that was necessary was to be a steel striker and in want. This splendid solidarity and rapid modification of trade-union tactics and institutions to meet an emergency is probably without a parallel in American labor annals.

The commissariat was entirely under the supervision and direction of the National Committee. Its national headquarters was in Pittsburgh, with a sub-district in Chicago. Goods were shipped from these two points. In Pittsburgh they were bought and handled through the Tri-State Co-operative Association, with National Committee employees making up the shipments. In Chicago the same was done through the National Co-operative Association. As Bethlehem, Birmingham, Pueblo and a few other strike-bound towns lay beyond convenient shipping distance from the two distributing points, the men in charge there were sent checks and they bought their supplies locally.

The General Director of the commissariat was Robert McKechan, business manager of the Central States Wholesale Co-operative Association. He was paid by the Illinois Miners, District No. 2. He was ably assisted by A. V. Craig (Ass't. Director), Enoch Martin (Auditor--also paid by Illinois miners), Wm. Orr (Warehouse Manager), and E. G. Craig. Secretary De Young was in charge of the Chicago sub-district. The local distributing centres were operated altogether by National Committee local secretaries and volunteer strike committees, with an occasional paid assistant.

All told, 45 local commissaries were set up throughout the strike zone. This elaborate organization was created and put in motion almost over night. Within a week after Mr. McKechan arrived in Pittsburgh, he and officials of the National Committee had devised the commissary system--with hardly a precedent to go by,--organized its nation-wide machinery, and started the first shipment _en route_ to the many strike centres. To break in this machinery, a small pro rata of provisions, based upon the number of men on strike, was sent to each place. The following week this was doubled, and each succeeding week it was increased to keep pace with the growing need. It finally developed into a huge affair. Few strikers had to be turned away for lack of food, and these only for a short while until the necessary additional stuff could be secured from the shipping points. Throughout the fourteen weeks it was in operation the commissariat, despite the tremendous difficulties it had to contend with, worked with remarkable smoothness. It was one of the greatest achievements of the entire steel campaign.

The wide extent of the relief work made it necessary to develop the most rigid simplicity and standardization in the apportionment of food to the strikers. Hence, only two sizes of rations could be used; one for families of five or less, and the other for families of six or more. These were varied from time to time, always bearing in mind the cooking facilities of the strikers and the many food likes and dislikes of the various nationalities. To facilitate the carrying away of the food and to make it last the better, two commissary days were held each week, in each locality. The rations were listed on large posters (white for families of five or less, and green for families of six or more) which were prominently displayed in the local commissaries in order that the strikers could see exactly how much provisions they were entitled to. The following are typical rations:

FAMILIES OF FIVE OR LESS

First Half Week Second Half Week

Potatoes 15 lbs. Bread 4 loaves
Bread 4 loaves Tomatoes 1 can
Tomatoes 1 can Corn 1 can
Peas 1 can Peas 1 can
Navy beans 4 lbs. Red beans 4 lbs.
Oatmeal 1 box Kraut 2 cans
Bacon 1 lb. Dry salt meat 1 lb.
Coffee 1 lb. Syrup 1 can
Milk 1 can

FAMILIES OF SIX OR MORE

First Half Week Second Half Week

Potatoes 10 lbs. Potatoes 10 lbs.
Bread 5 loaves Bread 5 loaves
Tomatoes 1 can Tomatoes 1 can
Corn 1 can Corn 1 can
Peas 1 can Peas 1 can
Navy beans 5 lbs. Kraut 2 cans
Oatmeal 2 boxes Red beans 5 lbs.
Bacon 1 lb. Dry salt meat 1 lb.
Coffee 1 lb. Milk 1 can
Milk 1 can Syrup 1 can

It was not contended that these rations were enough to sustain completely the recipients' families; but they helped mightily. Few, if any, went hungry. Single men in need received a half week's rations to last the week. The greatest care was taken to have the supplies of the best quality and in good condition. Whatever the unions gave they wanted the strikers to understand was in the best spirit of brotherly solidarity.[25]

The provisions were distributed strictly according to the following card system:

1. Identification card: An applicant requesting relief would be referred to a credentialed volunteer relief committee. If this committee deemed the case a needy one, it would issue the striker an identification card. This he was required to show when dealing at the commissary.

2. Record card: In addition, the relief committee would write out the data of the case upon a record card and turn it over to the local secretary in charge of the commissary, who would keep it on file.

3. Commissary card: When the applicant presented his identification card at the commissary, the local secretary, referring to the record card on file, would make him out a commissary card, white or green, accordingly as his family was of five or less, or six or more members. This commissary card entitled him to draw supplies.

The commissary card had a stub attached. When a striker got his first half week's supplies, this stub would be detached and retained by the commissary clerk. Upon his next visit the body of the card would be taken up. Two important purposes were served by this collection of the commissary cards--rather than having permanent cards and merely punching them. First, the canceled cards being sent to the commissariat national headquarters, it proved conclusively that the strikers had actually received the provisions shipped to the district; and second, by compelling the strikers to get new commissary cards each week, it enabled the local secretaries to keep in close touch with those on the relief roll.

To lighten the load upon the many inexperienced men working in the various commissaries, a special effort was made to do as much of the technical work as possible in the main offices of the National Committee. Otherwise the commissariat could not possibly have succeeded. This consideration was a prime factor in restricting the buying of provisions to Pittsburgh, Chicago and the fewest practical number of outlying points. It also caused the adoption of the package system, all bulk goods, except potatoes, being prepared for delivery before leaving the warehouses. Likewise, the local bookkeeping was simplified to the last degree. In fact, for the most part the secretaries in charge of the commissaries hardly needed books at all. The whole system checked itself from the central points.

As an example of its working, let us suppose that the allotment of a certain town was 1000 rations. Accordingly, there would be shipped to that place exactly enough of each article to precisely cover the allotted number of rations. Then, if the secretary simply saw to it that he got what he was charged with and issued his supplies carefully in the right proportions, the whole transaction would balance to a pound, with hardly a scratch of a pen from him. The bookkeeping was all done at the general offices. The latter's assurances that each striker had received his proper ration and that the right number of rations had been issued were, in the first place, the ration posters hanging on the walls of the commissary; and in the second, the returned canceled commissary cards. Barring an occasional slight disruption from delayed shipments, spoiled goods, shortages, and a little carelessness here and there, the system worked very well.

The commissariat was in operation from October 26 until January 31, three weeks after the strike had ended. It was continued through this extra period in order to help to their feet the destitute strikers who had fought so nobly. Probably nothing done by the unions in the entire campaign won them so much good will with the steel workers as this one act.

The total cost of operating the commissariat was $348,509.42. The significance of this figure stands out when it is reduced to a per man basis. At the strike's start there were 365,600 men out, and at its finish about 100,000. Considering that few serious breaks occurred until the eighth to tenth weeks, a fair average for the whole period would be about 250,000. Accordingly, this would give (disregarding the three weeks after January 8) a total relief cost of a fraction less than $1.40 per man for the entire fifteen weeks of the strike, or about one day's strike benefits of an ordinary union. Reduced to a weekly basis, it amounts to but 9-1/3 cents for each striker. Just how unusually small this sum is may be judged from the fact that the International Molders' Union paid the few men it had on strike regular benefits of $9.00 per week after the first week. The fact is that, except for a small, impoverished minority, the steel workers made their long, hard fight virtually upon their own resources.[26]

To help finance the commissariat the American Federation of Labor was requested to issue a general appeal for funds, which it did. Then, to add force to this call, the National Committee recruited and put in the field a corps of solicitors, including among others, Anton Johannson, J. D. Cannon, J. W. Brown, J. G. Sause, Jennie Matyas and G. A. Gerber. At a meeting in Madison Square Garden on November 8 a collection of $150,000 was taken up. Many local unions, notably those of Altoona, Pa., gave half their local treasuries and assessed their members one day's pay each. The Marine Engineers, local 33 of New York, contributed $10,000; the International Fur Workers' Union $20,000; the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union, $60,000; and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, $100,000. All these donations were highly praiseworthy, but especially the last one mentioned, because the organization making it is not affiliated to, nor even in good grace with, the A. F. of L.

The total amount collected and turned over to the National Committee was $418,141.14. This more than covered the entire cost of the commissariat, leaving $69,631.42 to be applied to other expenses. Thus, taking them as a whole, the co-operating international unions in the National Committee were not required to pay a penny to the feeding of the strikers and their families. The commissariat was a monument to the solidarity of Labor generally with the embattled steel workers.

Naturally, the employers bitterly hated the commissaries. They sneered at the quantity and quality of the food given out by them, and in many places printed handbills in several languages advising the strikers to go at once to union headquarters and demand strike benefits in cash. And by the same token, the strikers held the commissaries in high esteem. The foreign-born among them especially, would stand around watching with never-ceasing wonder and enthusiasm the stream of men and women coming forth laden with supplies. To them there was something sacred about the food. Many of them in desperate circumstances had to be practically compelled to accept it; not because they felt themselves objects of charity, but because they thought others needed help worse than they. They conceived the whole thing as a living demonstration of the solidarity of labor. The giving of the food produced an effect upon their morale far better than could have come from the distribution of ten times its value in money. The commissariat enormously strengthened the strikers. Without it the strike would have collapsed many weeks before it did. Unions in future great walkouts will do well to study the steel strike commissary plan.

* * * * *

Strikes, even the smallest, affect so many people in so many ways that it is difficult under the best of circumstances to compile accurate data upon their cost. In the case of the steel strike it is next to impossible to do so. The great number of steel companies and the armies of men involved; the wide scope of the strike; the condition of outlawry in many steel districts; the fact that the strike was lost; the workers' numerous nationalities and imperfection of organization--all these and various other factors make it exceedingly difficult, at least at this early date, to give more than a hint of the strike's cost.

In the steel strike, as in all others, the burden of suffering fell to the workers' lot. To win their cause they gave freely of their lives, liberty, blood and treasure. A poll of the National Committee local secretaries yields the following list of strike dead:

Buffalo 2
Chicago 1
Cleveland 1
Farrell 4
Hammond 4
Newcastle 2
Pittsburgh 1
West Natrona 2
Wheeling 1
Youngstown 2
--
Total 20

The killed were all on the strikers' side, except two. The above list properly includes Mrs. Fannie Sellins. But it does not include the scores of scabs who, because of their own or other incompetent workers' ineptness, were roasted, crushed to death, or torn to pieces in the dangerous steel-making processes during the strike. Although the steel companies were exceedingly alert in suppressing the names of these ignoble victims to their greed, it is a well-known fact that there were many of them. There was hardly a big mill anywhere that did not have several to its account.

How many hundreds of strikers were seriously injured by being clubbed and shot will never be known, because most of them, especially in Pennsylvania, healed themselves as best they might. With good grounds they feared that disclosing their injuries to doctors would lead to their arrest upon charges of rioting. The number of arrested strikers ran into the thousands. But so orderly were the strikers that few serious charges could be brought against them. They were jailed in droves and fined heavily mostly for minor "offenses." Except in Butler, Pa., where a score of strikers were arrested for stopping a car of scabs on the way to work (framed-up by the State Police) and sent to the penitentiary, no strikers anywhere in the whole strike zone received heavy jail sentences. Considering the terrific provocations offered the men and the extreme eagerness with which the courts punished them, this remarkable record is an eloquent testimonial to their orderliness.[27] Of course, the companies did not neglect to avail themselves of the heartless blacklist. Just now hundreds of their former employees, denied work and forced to break up their homes and leave town, are criss-crossing the country looking for opportunities to make new starts in life.

As for the cost to the strikers in wages, the Philadelphia _Public Ledger_ of January 10, two days after the strike was called off, carried a special telegram from Pittsburgh, stating (authority not quoted) that the wage loss in that district was $48,005,060.35, specified as follows:

Clarksburg, W. Va. $310,000.00
Wheeling District 6,100,000.00
Donora 1,200,000.00
Steubenville dist. 2,260,000.00
Youngstown 15,500,000.00
Monessen 2,660,000.00
Brackenridge 450,000.00
New Kensington 375,000.00
McKeesport 597,869.00
Port Vue 900,000.00
Sharon-Farrell 1,250,000.00
New Castle 705,000.00
Homestead 737,840.00
Duquesne 55,030.00
Johnstown 5,712,321.35
Ellwood City 35,000.00
Butler 1,450,000.00
Aliquippa 10,000.00
Pittsburgh 5,715,000.00
Sharpsburg, AEtna 435,000.00
Vandergrift 357,000.00
Clairton 165,000.00
Rankin 375,000.00
Braddock 650,000.00

To the above, the New York _Herald_ of January 12 editorially adds an estimate of $39,000,000 for steel districts other than Pittsburgh, making a grand total of $87,000,000 as the strikers' wage loss. But these figures, bearing the earmarks of Steel Trust origin, are too low. On the basis of the minimum figures of an average of 250,000 strikers for 90 working days (actual strike length 108 days) at $5.00 per day per man, we arrive at a total of $112,500,000.00, or $450.00 per average striker. Doubtless these figures are also too low, but they will serve to indicate the tremendous sums of money the already poverty-stricken steel workers were willing to sacrifice in order to change the conditions which Mr. Gary so glowingly paints as ideal.

The loss to the steel companies must have been enormous. Without doubt it runs into several hundred millions of dollars. The items going to make up this huge bill are many and at this time impossible of accurate estimate. There must have been not only a complete cessation of profits during the strike period, but also a vast outlay of money to finance the strike-breaking measures, such as maintaining scores of thousands of gunmen to guard the plants; paying rich graft to employment offices and detective agencies for recruiting armies of scabs, who, receiving high strike wages, idled for weeks around the plants, shooting craps, playing cards, pitching quoits, and absolutely refusing to work; keeping on the payroll great staffs of office workers with nothing to do, and high paid skilled workers doing the work of common laborers; corrupting police and court officials to give the strikers the worst of it, etc., etc. Besides, there should be added the cost of repairing the great injuries done the furnaces by their sudden shutting down, this item alone amounting to many millions of dollars. But a more important factor than all, perhaps, in counting the cost of the strike to the companies was the serious injury done to their wonderful producing organization by the permanent loss of thousands of competent men who have quitted the industry; the dislocation of many thousands more from jobs for which they were well fitted and the substitution in their places of green men; the lowering of the men's morale generally, due to disappointment and bitterness at the loss of the strike, etc. We may depend upon it that the companies, following out their policy of minimizing the strike's effects, will so juggle their financial and tonnage statements as to make it impossible for years to figure out what it really cost them, if it can ever be done.

The cost to the people at large is indicated by the New York Sun, quoted by the _Literary Digest_, January 31, 1920, as follows:

There was the loss to the railroads not only in freights
from the steel plants, but in freights from general mills
and factories which, failing to get their steel supplies,
could not maintain their production and fulfill their own
deliveries. There was the loss in wages in such mills and
factories due to that failure to get their material on which
their wage-earners could work. There was the loss in such
communities to trade folk whose customers thus had their
spending power reduced by the steel strike.--Hence this loss
of steel tonnage begins at once to widen until the loss
eventually could be figured in the billions.

For the privilege of having an autocracy in the steel industry the American people pay not only huge costs in unearned dividends each year, but also, occasionally, such monster special charges as the above. Garyism is an expensive luxury.

The foregoing figures and statements merely serve to point out the immensity of the steel strike by indicating its approximate cost to the strikers, the steel companies, and the public. Admittedly they are but loose estimates, based upon scanty data. Absolute accuracy is not claimed for them. The expenditures of the labor movement in the campaign can be more closely calculated, although they, too, are far from definite. They fall into three general classes: (1) those by the general office of the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers; (2) those by the A. F. of L. and co-operating international steel trades unions not through the office of the National Committee; (3) those by local steel workers' councils and unions from their own treasuries. Of these the latter may be eliminated as impossible of estimation, there being so many local organizations involved and the after-strike conditions so unfavorable to statistics gathering. They were a minor element of expense compared to the other two, which we will try to approximate as closely as may be.

1. From the beginning of the steel campaign, August 1, 1918, until January 31, 1920, the total net disbursements of the National Committee for all purposes, after making deductions for refunds, transfers, etc., amounted to $525,702.72. This stretch of time may be divided into two parts: (a), Organizing period, from August 1, 1918, until September 22, 1919--during which time virtually all the 250,000 men enrolled in the campaign (see end of Chapter VII) had joined the unions; (b), Strike period, from September 22, 1919, until January 31, 1920--during which time the heavy special strike expenses were incurred. This period is extended three weeks past the date of the strike's close, because the commissariat was still in operation and other important strike expenses were going on.

The total net disbursements made by the National Committee during the organizing period were $73,139.66, which amounts to a small fraction over 29 cents for each of the 250,000 men organized. The total net disbursements of the National Committee during the strike period were $452,563.06, or $1.81 for each of the 250,000 average strikers. Adding these two figures together gives $2.10 as the cost to the National Committee of organizing each steel worker and taking care of him during the whole strike.

2. The disbursements of the National Committee covered general organizing and strike expenses, such as commissary, legal, rent, printing, salaries, etc. The A. F. of L. and the co-operating international unions also incurred heavy expenses upon their own account, whose chief items were for keeping organizers in the field, paying strike benefits, and making lump donations to strike-bound local unions. At this date these expenditures may be only approximated.

For the above bodies almost the sole expense during the organizing period was for maintaining organizers. Forty would be a fair average of the number of these men actually kept at the steel industry work. In the earlier part of the campaign the number was far less; in the later part, considerably more. The cost of maintaining them per month may be set at not more than $400.00 each, for salaries and general expenses. Thus, for the 13-3/4 months of the organizing period the expense to the A. F. of L. and co-operating unions for this item would be about $220,000, or 88 cents per man organized. This is a top figure.

During the strike period, on an average, 75 organizers were kept in the field by these bodies. Due to increases in wages, etc., their upkeep should be calculated at about $500.00 per month each. For 4-1/4 months, September 22 to January 31, our strike period, this would amount to $159,375. To this should be added $100,000, which according to reports received approximates what the organizations paid in strike benefits and donations direct to their strikers and not through the office of the National Committee. This would make their total expenditures for the strike period $259,375, or slightly less than $1.04 per striker. Adding together the amounts for the organizing period and the strike period, we arrive at a grand total of $479,375, or $1.92 per man, spent during the entire campaign by the A. F. of L. and co-operating internationals.

The figures for the A. F. of L. and co-operating internationals are estimates,--the constant shifting of organizers during the campaign, their widely varying rates of pay, etc., making accuracy impossible. But from my knowledge of what went on I will venture that the figures cited are close enough to the reality to give a fair conception of this class of expenditures.

Combining the National Committee expenditures with those of the A. F. of L. and co-operating unions, we arrive at the following totals:

ORGANIZING PERIOD:
_Expenditures_ _Per Man_
By Nat. Com. $ 73,139.66 $.29
By A. F. L. & Unions 220,000.00 .88
------------------------- -------------
Total cost of organizing work $293,139.66 $1.17

STRIKE PERIOD:
By Nat. Com. $452,563.06 $1.81
By A. F. L. & Unions 259,375.00 1.04
------------------------- ------------
Total cost of strike $711,938.06 $2.85

WHOLE CAMPAIGN:
Total cost to Nat. Com., ------------------------- ------------
A. F. L. & Unions $1,005,007.72 $4.02

In order to approximate more closely the actual cost of the campaign to the A. F. of L. and the twenty-four co-operating internationals forming the National Committee, the total of $479,375, figured in a previous paragraph as their independent expenditures, must be increased by $101,047.52, the amount they contributed directly to the National Committee for organizing and for strike expenses during the course of the campaign;[28] making a grand total outlay for them of $580,422.52. This in turn should be reduced by $118,451.23, the amount in the National Committee treasury on January 31, 1920. Against the remaining $461,971.29 must be checked off what the steel workers paid into these organizations in initiation fees and dues.

Inasmuch as the co-operating internationals received directly $1.00 to $2.00 (mostly the latter) from the initiation fees of the approximately 250,000 steel workers signed up during the campaign, not to speak of thousands of dollars in per capita tax from armies of dues payers over a period of many months, it is safe to say that their net outlay of $461,971.29 would be nearly if not altogether offset by their income. It is true that some of the organizations, like the Miners and the A. F. of L. itself made large expenditures, with little return; and that others, like the Structural Iron Workers, broke about even; while the Amalgamated Association put a huge sum in its treasury. All things considered, taking the twenty-four organizations as a whole, one is not much wrong in saying that so far as their national treasuries were concerned, the great movement of the steel workers, including the organizing campaign and the strike, was, financially speaking, just about self-sustaining.

Was the steel strike, then, worth the great suffering and expenditure of effort that it cost the steel workers? I say yes; even though it failed to accomplish the immediate objects it had in view. No strike is ever wholly lost. Even the least effective of them serve the most useful purpose of checking the employers' exploitation. They are a protection to the workers' standards of life. Better by far a losing fight than none at all. An unresisting working class would soon find itself on a rice diet. But the steel strike has done more than serve merely as a warning that the limit of exploitation has been reached; it has given the steel workers a confidence in their ability to organize and to fight effectively, which will eventually inspire them on to victory. This precious result alone is well worth all the hardships the strike cost them.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] Exceptions to this were the cases of the Molders' and Coopers' Unions. These organizations were compelled by constitutional requirements to pay regular strike benefits. But they included only a very small percentage of the total number of strikers.

[24] The commissariat was suggested by John Fitzpatrick, as a result of his experiences in the Chicago Garment Workers' strike of a decade ago.

[25] In addition to the regular commissaries, the local organizations, grace to their own funds or occasional donations from their international unions, had relief enterprises of various sorts, such as soup kitchens, milk, clothes, rent and sickness funds. In Monessen and Donora the strikers actually served a big turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day. Strikers paid five cents a plate for all they wished to eat. Sympathizers donated liberally according to their means. But the commissary system was the main source of strike relief.

[26] It is true, as noted above, that several other unions besides the Molders and Coopers made occasional contributions to their strike-bound locals, but when measured against the vast armies of strikers, these funds dwindled almost into insignificance.

[27] This was largely because the men were sober. In fact, prohibition helped the steel campaign in several important respects; (1) because having no saloons to drown their troubles in, the workers, clear-headed, attended the union meetings and organized more readily; (2) when the strike came they did not waste their few pennies on liquor and then run back to work in the old way; they bought food with them and stayed on strike; (3) being sober, they were the better able to avoid useless violence and to conduct their strike effectively.

[28] This sum represents the actual cash given by these affiliated organizations directly to the National Committee throughout the entire movement. It divides itself as follows:

Blacksmiths $ 6,273.28
Boilermakers 10,448.92
Bricklayers 4,199.05
P. & S. Iron Workers 7,335.78
Coopers 907.76
Electrical Workers 6,138.80
Engineers 100.00
Firemen 2,395.53
Foundry Employees 1,030.51
Hod Carriers 1,350.00
Iron, Steel and Tin Workers 11,881.81
Machinists 16,622.33
Mine, Mill, Smelter Workers 3,583.53
Mine Workers 2,600.00
Molders 4,199.05
Pattern Makers 615.52
Plumbers 2,581.04
Quarry Workers 412.50
Railway Carmen 10,448.30
Seamen 3,081.04
Switchmen 4,115.52
Sheet Metal Workers 100.00
Steam Shovelmen 627.25
-----------
Total $101,047.52

XIII

PAST MISTAKES AND FUTURE PROBLEMS

LABOR'S LACK OF CONFIDENCE--INADEQUATE EFFORTS--NEED OF
ALLIANCE WITH MINERS AND RAILROADERS--RADICAL LEADERSHIP AS
A STRIKE ISSUE--MANUFACTURING REVOLUTIONS--STRIKES:
RAILROAD SHOPMEN, BOSTON POLICE, MINERS, RAILROAD YARD AND
ROAD MEN--DEFECTION OF AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION

In preceding chapters I have said much about the injustices visited upon the steel workers by the steel companies and their minions; the mayors, burgesses, police magistrates, gunmen, State Police, Senate Committees, etc. But let there be no mistake. I do not blame the failure of the strike upon these factors. I put the responsibility upon the shoulders of Organized Labor. Had it but stirred a little the steel workers would have won their battle, despite all the Steel Trust could do to prevent it.

By this I mean no harsh criticism. On the contrary, I am the first to assert that the effort put forth in the steel campaign was wonderful, far surpassing anything ever done in the industry before, and marking a tremendous advance in trade-union tactics. Yet it was not enough, and it represented only a fraction of the power the unions should and could have thrown into the fight. The organization of the steel industry should have been a special order of business for the whole labor movement. But unfortunately it was not. The big men of Labor could not be sufficiently awakened to its supreme importance to induce them to sit determinedly into the National Committee meetings and to give the movement the abundant moral and financial backing so essential to its success. Official pessimism, bred of thirty years of trade-union failure in the steel industry, hung like a mill-stone about the neck of the movement in all its stages.

At the very outset this pessimism and lack of faith dealt the movement a fatal blow. When the unions failed to follow the original plan of the campaign (outlined in Chapter III) to throw a large crew of organizers into the field at the beginning and thus force a settlement with the steel companies during war time, as they could easily have done, they made a monumental blunder, one for which Organized Labor will pay dearly. Notwithstanding all their best efforts in the long, bitter organizing campaign and the great strike, the organizers could not overcome its effects. It was a lost opportunity that unquestionably cost the unionization of the steel industry.

And the same pessimism which caused this original deadly mistake made itself felt all through the steel campaign, by so restricting the resources furnished the National Committee as to practically kill all chance of success. Probably no big modern trade-union organizing campaign and strike has been conducted upon such slender means. Considering the great number of men involved, the viciousness of the opposition and the long duration of the movement (18 months), the figure cited in the previous chapter as covering the general expenses, $1,005,007.72, is unusually low. It amounts to but $4.02 per man, or hardly a half week's strike benefits for each. Compared to the sums spent in other industrial struggles, it is proportionally insignificant. For example, in the great coal miners' strike in Colorado, begun September 23, 1913, and ended December 10, 1914, the United Mine Workers are authoritatively stated to have spent about $5,000,000.00 As there were on an average about 12,000 strikers, this would make the cost somewhere about $400.00 per man involved. And in those days a dollar was worth twice as much as during the steel strike. Had a fraction of such amounts been available to the steel workers they would have made incomparably a better fight.

The unions affiliated with the National Committee have at least two million members. Even if they had spent outright the total sum required to carry on the organizing campaign and strike it would not have strained them appreciably. But they did not spend it, nor any considerable part of it. In the previous chapter we have seen that with donations from the labor movement at large, and initiation fees and dues paid in by the steel workers, the movement was virtually self-sustaining as far as the co-operating unions were concerned--taking them as a whole. Now, in the next campaign, all that must be different. The unions will have to put some real money in the fight. Then they may win it.

When I say that there was a shortage of resources in the steel campaign I include particularly organizers from the respective international unions. Of these there were not half enough. Often the National Committee had to beg for weeks to have a man sent in to organize a local union, the members for which it had already enrolled. Hundreds of local unions suffered and many a one perished outright for want of attention. Whole districts had to be neglected, with serious consequences when the strike came.

Moreover, the system used by many internationals in handling their organizers was wrong. They controlled them from their several general headquarters, shifting them around or pulling them out of the work without regard to the needs of the campaign as a whole. This tended to create a loose, disjointed, undisciplined, inefficient organizing force. It was indefensible. Now, in the next drive there are two systems which might be used. (1) The international unions could definitely delegate a certain number of organizers to the campaign and put them entirely under the direction of the National Committee. This was the plan followed by the A. F. of L., the Miners, and the Railway Carmen. It worked well and tended to produce a homogeneous, well-knit, controllable, efficient organizing force. (2) The organizers definitely assigned to the steel campaign by the internationals could be formed into crews, each crew to be controlled by one man and charged with looking after the needs of its particular trade. The Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, Machinists, and Electrical Workers used this system to some extent. A series of such crews, working vertically along craft lines while the National Committee men worked horizontally along industrial lines, would greatly strengthen the general movement. When the strike came it would not only be an industrial strike but twenty-four intensified craft strikes as well. Of the two systems, the first is probably the better, and the second, because of the individualism of the unions, the more practical. Either of them is miles superior to the plan of controlling the field organizers from a score of headquarters knowing very little of the real needs of the situation.

But more than men and money, the steel workers in their great fight lacked practical solidarity from closely related trades. In their semi-organized condition they were unable to withstand alone the terrific power of the Steel Trust, backed by the mighty capitalistic organizations which rushed to its aid. They needed from their organized fellow workers help in the same liberal measure as Mr. Gary received from those on his side. And help adequate to the task could have come only by extending the strike beyond the confines of the steel industry proper.

When the steel unions end their present educational campaign and launch the next big drive to organize the steel workers (which should be in a year or two) they ought to be prepared to meet the formidable employer combinations sure to be arrayed against them by opposing to them still more formidable labor combinations. The twenty-four unions should by then be so allied with the miners' and railroad men's organizations that should it come to a strike these two powerful groups of unions would rally to their aid and paralyse the steel industry completely by depriving it of those essentials without which it cannot operate, fuel and rail transportation. How effective such assistance would be was well indicated by the speedy and wholesale shutting down of steel mills, first during the general strike of bituminous miners in November and December of 1919, and then during the "outlaw" railroad strike in April, 1920. With such a combination of allied steel, mine and railroad workers confronting them, there is small likelihood that the steel companies (or the public at large) would consider the question of the steel workers' right to organize of sufficient importance to fight about. Mr. Gary might then be brought to a realization that this is not Czarist Russia, and that the men in his mills must be granted their human rights.

That the miners and railroaders have sufficient interests at stake to justify their entrance into such a combination no union man of heart will attempt to deny. Not to speak of the general duty of all unionists to extend help to brothers in trouble, the above-mentioned groups have the most powerful reasons of their own to work for the organization of the steel industry. The United States Steel Corporation and so-called "independent" steel mills are the stronghold of industrial autocracy in America. Every union in the labor movement directly suffers their evil effects in lower wages, longer hours and more difficult struggles for the right to organize than they otherwise would have. No union will be safe until these mills are under the banner of Organized Labor. Beyond question the organization of the steel workers would tremendously benefit the miners and railroaders. The latter cannot possibly do too much to assist in bringing it about. It is their own fight.