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
In Donora, an important steel town a few miles down the river from
Monessen, and part of organizer Feeney's district, the fight was not so
easily won. The United States Constitution provides that not even
Congress may pass laws abridging the rights of free speech and free
assembly; but in Pennsylvania the Constitution is considered a sort of
humorous essay; hence the lickspittle Donora council, right in the face
of the steel campaign, passed an ordinance forbidding public meetings
without the sanction of the Burgess, which sanction, of course, the
unions could not get. But nothing deterred, the indomitable Feeney hired
a couple of lots on the edge of the town and held meetings there. The
company officials left nothing undone to break up these gatherings. They
held band concerts and ball games at the same hour, and set dozens of
their bosses and police to picket the meetings. But it was no use; the
workers attended and joined the unions in droves.
This lasted a couple of months. And all the while a local paper was
villainously assailing Feeney. Finally, the steel company agents got the
business men to sign an ultimatum to Feeney, demanding that he leave the
district at once. Feeney took this matter up with his miners, and they
decided that not he, but they, would quit Donora. Organized solidly,
they easily put a strict boycott on the town, and it was not long before
the same business men, with their trade almost ruined, made a public
apology to Feeney, and ousted their own officials who had been
responsible for the attack.
Naturally these events heartened the steel workers. They organized very
rapidly, and soon had a majority of the men in the mills--a large plant
of the American Steel and Wire Company. They also became a big factor in
the local fraternal associations, which controlled all the halls; and
suddenly the Lithuanian Society deposed its President, who was friendly
to the steel company, and voted to give its hall to the unions, permits
or no permits. In the face of this situation the Burgess reluctantly
granted sanction for union meetings. And thus free speech and free
assembly were established in the benighted town of Donora, and with
them, almost complete organization of the steel workers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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