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
Shortly after the strike was called off the Pittsburgh
papers carried a story to the effect that the city policemen
working in the Soho district had been "paid" $150 each by
the National Tube Co. It was stated also that the same men
were paid a like amount by the Jones and Laughlin Company.
This explains, perhaps, why justice was so blind in this
section.
On the opposite side of the Monongahela river, where the
Jones and Laughlin Company has other immense works the
police were equally bad, the police magistrate even worse.
The Police Commissioner was boss of the situation. And now
come the Pittsburgh papers with the story that this very
Commissioner, Peter P. Walsh, has made application to be
retired from the Pittsburgh police force on half pay in
order that he might accept the appointment as chief of the
mill police of the Jones and Laughlin Company. The half pay
allowance gives, according to reports, $1800 per year. The
new position Mr. Walsh is to fill is popularly understood to
carry with it a salary of $5000 per year.... The Central
Labor Council is making an effort to have this matter
investigated, but without serious hope of success.
When a labor committee demanded that Mayor Babcock of Pittsburgh
investigate the situation, the honorable gentleman refused. He admitted
that the action of the steel companies was ill-advised; the money should
have been given to the pension fund, instead of to a few men; however,
the matter was now past history, and there was nothing to be added to
the fair name of Pittsburgh by airing it in public. The Mayor admitted,
though, that he would object to having labor unions raise funds to pay
policemen to favor them during strikes. So reason public officials in
the steel districts.
* * * * *
Suppression of the rights of free speech and free assembly; gigantic
organized campaigns of outlawry by the State Police and armies of
selected plug-uglies; subornation and intimidation of city, county,
state and federal officials and police; prostitution of the
courts--these are some of the means used to crush the strike of the
steel workers, and to force these over-worked, under-paid toilers still
deeper into the mire of slavery. And the whole monstrous crime was
hypocritically committed in the name of a militant, 100 per cent.
Americanism.
IX
EFFORTS AT SETTLEMENT
THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL CONFERENCE--THE SENATE COMMITTEE
--THE RED BOOK--THE MARGOLIS CASE--THE INTERCHURCH WORLD
MOVEMENT
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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