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