Very truly yours, (Signed) Geo. H. Lysle Mayor Disregarding the three provisions of this contemptible document, the unions held their meetings under the auspices of the A. F. of L. (not of the McKeesport Council of Labor), had their speakers talk in whatever languages their hearers best understood, and submitted no list to Lysle. Then the big steel companies rushed to the aid of the hard-pressed Mayor. All the while they had discharged every man they could locate who had either joined the unions or expressed sympathy with them, but now they became more active. As each meeting was held they stationed about the hall doors (under the captaincy of Mr. William A. Cornelius, Manager of the National Tube Company's works) at least five hundred of their bosses, detectives, office help, and "loyal" workers to intimidate the men who were entering. About three hundred more would be sent into the hall to disrupt the meetings. And woe to the man they recognized, for he was discharged the next morning. The organizers, running the gauntlet of these Steel Trust gunmen, carried their very lives in their hands. Under these hard circumstances few steel workers dared to go to the meetings or to the union headquarters. But the organizations grew rapidly nevertheless. Every discharged man became a volunteer organizer and busied himself getting his friends to enroll. A favorite trick to escape the espionage was to get a group of men, from a dozen to fifty, to meet quietly in one of the homes, fill out their applications, and send them by a sister or wife to the union headquarters--the detectives stationed outside naturally not knowing the women. Conditions in the local mills were so bad that not even the most desperate employers' tactics could stop the progress of the unions. McKeesport quickly became one of the strong organization points on the river. Sweeping onward through the Pittsburgh district, the unions gained great headway by the collapse of the petty Czar of McKeesport, for all the little nabobs in the adjoining steel towns felt the effects of his defeat. Rankin fell without a blow. A few months before the hall had been closed there by the local board of health, when the Burgess refused to act against the unions. But now no objections were made to the meetings. Braddock also capitulated easily. At a street meeting held in the middle of town against the Burgess' orders, organizers J. L. Beaghen, R. L. Hall, J. C. Boyle, J. B. Gent and the writer were arrested. The Burgess, however, not wishing to meet the issue, found it convenient to leave town, and the Acting Burgess, declaring in open court that he would not "do the dirty work of the Burgess," postponed the hearings indefinitely. That settled Braddock.