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 great steel strike thoroughly exposed the hypocrisies of Mr. Gary
and his ilk that in some mysterious way labor policies and conditions in
the steel industry depend upon the wishes of the body of the workers. It
made plain that in the autocratic system now prevailing the democratic
principles of majority and minority do not enter. It is a case pure and
simple of the absolute sway of property rights over human rights. A
handful of social parasites hidden away in Wall street, with no other
interest in the steel industry than to exploit it, settle arbitrarily
the vital questions of wages, hours and working conditions, while the
enormous mass of the workers, actual producers whose very lives are
involved, have no say whatsoever. No matter how bitter their grievances,
when they raise their voice to ask redress, they are discharged,
blacklisted, starved, beaten, jailed and even shot, until they bend the
knee again and yield to the will of their industrial masters.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] In this connection occurred one of the finest incidents in the
strike: Wm. J. Brennan, an able, conscientious attorney of Pittsburgh,
and one of the counsel who defended the Homestead strikers in 1892, went
to Clairton to get the "rioters" released on bonds. But such a state of
terror existed that no one dared to go their bail. Thereupon, Mr.
Brennan himself, without knowing a single one of the defendants, but
smarting under the injustice of it all, pledged his entire property
holdings, amounting to $88,000, to get them set free.
VIII
GARYISM RAMPANT
THE WHITE TERROR--CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS DENIED--UNBREAKABLE
SOLIDARITY--FATHER KAZINCY--THE COSSACKS--SCIENTIFIC
BARBARITY--PROSTITUTED COURTS--SERVANTS REWARDED
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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