A modern Babel--Americans as skilled workers--Foreigners as unskilled workers--Language difficulties--The Negro in the strike--The race problem. XII. THE COMMISSARIAT--THE STRIKE COST 213 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. XIII. PAST MISTAKES AND FUTURE PROBLEMS 234 Labor's lack of confidence--Inadequate efforts--Need of alliance with miners and railroaders--Radical leadership as a strike issue--Railroad shopmen, Boston police, miners, railroad brotherhood strikes--Defection of Amalgamated Association. XIV. IN CONCLUSION 255 The point of view--Are trade unions revolutionary?--Camouflage in social wars--Ruinous dual unionism--Radicals should strengthen trade unions--The English renaissance--Tom Mann's work. ILLUSTRATIONS Pennsylvania Law and Order _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE National Committee Delegates 38 Strike Ballot 78 Cossacks in Action 122 Mrs. Fannie Sellins, Trade Union Organizer 148 Steel Trust Newspaper Propaganda 188 John Fitzpatrick 216 A Group of Organizers 244 THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE AND ITS LESSONS THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE AND ITS LESSONS I THE PRESENT SITUATION THE STRIKE--"VICTORY" OF THE EMPLOYERS--INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY ABROAD, INDUSTRIAL SERFDOM AT HOME--WHAT THE WORKERS WON--THE OUTLOOK The great steel strike lasted three months and a half. Begun on September 22, 1919, by 365,600 men quitting their places in the iron and steel mills and blast furnaces in fifty cities of ten states, it ended on January 8, 1920, when the organizations affiliated in the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers voted to permit the 100,000 or more men still on strike to return to work upon the best terms they could secure.