The Great Steel Strike and its LessonsFoster, William Z.
History
The Great Steel Strike and its Lessons
Foster, William Z.
Steel Strike, U.S., 1919-1920; United States Steel Corporation
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:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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