Labor History Archives
The Steel Strike of 1919
The Autobiography of Mother Jones (Born 1830)
You will recognize this is written from a very definite perspective. When you have been beaten down enough, you become very polarized. We can learn from this. Things aren’t all that bad today in America. But if we continue unabated toward Corporate Values and Corporate control of our Government, this gives some idea of we have to look forward to.
During the war the working people were made to believe they amounted to something. . . Up and down the land the workers heard the word, "democracy." They were asked to work for it. To give their wages to it. To give their lives for it. They were told that their labor, their money, their flesh were the bulwarks against tyranny and autocracy.
So believing, the steel workers, 300,000 of them, rose en masse against Kaiser Gary, the President of the American Steel Corporation. The slaves asked their czar for the abolition of the twelve-hour day, for a crumb from the huge loaf of profits made in the great war, and for the right to organize.
Czar Gary met his workers as is the customary way with tyrants. He could not shoot them down as did Czar Nicholas when petitioned by his peasants. But he ordered the constabulary out. He ordered forth his two faithful generals: fear and starvation, one to clutch at the worker's throat and the other at his stomach and the stomachs of his little children.
The strike in the steel industry was called in September, 1919. Gary as spokesman for the industry refused to consider any sort of appointment with his workers. What did it matter to him that thousands upon thousands of workers in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, worked in front of scorching furnaces twelve long hours, through the day, through the night, while he visited the Holy Land where Our Lord was born in a manger!
The style of writing is a little dated, but the events and strategy by the corporations is still the same. Mother is speaking of the war profiteering by private contractors in the steel industry. Now we have companies like Halliburton doing the same thing, not to mention all the sub-contractors getting in on the deal. Employers have tremendous power and will use that power any way necessary to fill their coffers. This is one of the reasons labor unions were made legal. Corporations are stupid and will so oppress people that they eventually rebel against, not only the bosses, but the government that supposedly works for them. That is scary.
I traveled up and down the Monongahela River. Most of the places where the steel workers were on strike meetings were forbidden. If I were to stop to talk to a woman on the street about her child, a cossack would come charging down upon us and we would have to run for our lives.
In the towns of Sharon and Farrell, Pennsylvania, the lick-spittle authorities forbade all assembly. The workers by the thousands marched into Ohio where the Constitution of the United States instead of the Steel Corporation’s constitution was law.
This is important to take note of. From the previous events we have studied, it is clear the government has a history of working principally for the wealthy. Think of what is going on today with the swing toward Corporate Values in America. All of what we have can vanish as lawmakers change the most basic aspects of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, not to mention labor laws set up to protect our rights.
I asked a Pole where he was going. I was visiting his sick wife; taking a bit of milk to her new baby. Her husband was washing his best shirt in the sink.
"Where I go? Tomorrow I go America," he said, meaning he was going on the march to Ohio.
Considering all the changes to the law, Constitutional violations and breaches of the three branches of government called for by our Founding Fathers, where do you think America is?
I spoke often to the strikers. Many of them were foreigners but they knew what I said. I told them, "We are to see whether Pennsylvania belongs to Kaiser Gary or Uncle Sam.
"Our Kaisers sit up and smoke seventy-five cent cigars and have lackeys with knee pants bring them champagne while you starve, while you grow old at forty, stoking their furnaces.
"If Gary wants to work twelve hours a day let him go in the blooming mills and work. What we want is a little leisure, time for music, playgrounds, a decent home, books, and the things that make life worth while."
I was speaking in Homestead. A group of organizers were with me in an automobile As soon as a word was said, the speaker was immediately arrested by the steel bosses' sheriff I rose to speak. An officer grabbed me.
We were taken to jail. A great mob of people collected outside the prison. There was angry talk. The jailer got scared. He thought there might be lynching and he guessed who would be lynched. The mayor was in the jail, too, conferring with the jailer. He was scared. He looked out of the office windows and he saw hundreds of workers milling around and heard them muttering.
Basic freedom of speech was denied. Today we must get a permit to assemble and speak. Was that what our Founding Fathers had in mind? We can now use the internet to speak, but for how long?
The jailer came to Mr. Brown and asked him what he had better do.
"Why don't you let Mother Jones go out and speak to them," he said. "They'll do anything she says."
Note the trust the workers had in Mother. Why? Because she was there with them and had a history of being there with them right where the action was. Anybody can talk the talk, but Mother was the real thing. She actually believed and felt passionately about her beliefs. Of course management hated her. Where are all the 'Mothers' today? Do we have any budding 'Mothers' in our ranks? Mother was a troublemaker of course. Do we have any bad-ass Mothers out there?
AFL-CIO's 50-Year Organizing Record under Meany, Kirkland and Sweeney One problem is that the current "reformers" were in charge during labor's decline and want to maintain their "frozen" leadership for the next four years and beyond. Union members cannot afford an ossified leadership. Another problem is that neither Meany, Kirkland or Sweeney have had a warm relationship with the nation's union members. They operated primarily within a circle of top national leaders. Meany avoided contact with workers who were struggling to organize or were on strike. He even boasted he had never been on a picket line. What is urgently needed is a few articulate, dynamic leaders who are respected by union members across the board, and who can involve them in the struggle to regain their former strength. (Business Unionism)
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/033105LC.shtml (Labor Educator)
"Yes, sir," said I. "I had a permit."
"Who issued it?" he growled.
"Patrick Henry; Thomas Jefferson; John Adams!" said I.
The mention of those patriots who gave us our charter of liberties made the old steel judge sore. He fined us all heavily.
You see union activists and truly great Americans. They always have been. They have always supported American Values and the Family Values which are part of America. Corporations always want to take away freedoms on the job or in every other aspect of life. What is happening today has happened before. Just think how much stronger regular Americans would be if we had a free press too.
Companies-threatened to drive them out. Never had a strike been led by more devoted, able, unselfish men. Never a thought for themselves. Only for the men on strike, men striking to bring back America to America.
“. . . men striking to bring back America to America." That is it. Unions are all about being American. Unions are about freedom and justice. These are Family Values. You see the difference between the steel bosses and Bush’s Corporate Values can’t you? And using Orwellian doublespeak Bush misnames Corporate Values as Family Values. We don’t have to let these amoral corporations get away with it by remaining silent.
The workers were divided from one another. Spies working among the Ohio workers told of the break in the strike in Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, they told of the break in Ohio. With meetings forbidden, with mails censored, with no means of communication allowed, the strikers could not know of the progress of their strike. Then fear would clutch their throats.
One day two men came into Headquarters. One of them showed his wrists. They told in broken English of being seized by officers, taken to a hotel room. One of them was handcuffed for a day to a bed. His wrists swelled. Ho begged the officers to release him. He writhed in pain. They laughed and asked him if he would go to work. Though mad with pain he said no. At night they let him go without a word, without redress.
Organizers would come in with bandages on their heads. They had been beaten. They would stop a second before the picture of Fanny Sellins, the young girl whom the constabulary had shot as she bent protectingly over some children. She had died. They had only been beaten.
Foreigners were forever rushing in with tales of violence. They did not understand. Wasn't this America? Hadn't they come to America to be free?
Young members think this is just an old outdated story. It is the past after all and what does that have to do with anything in their lives now? Wait! Just do nothing and wait?
We could not get the story of the struggle of these slaves over to the public. The press groveled at the feet of the steel Gods. The local pulpits dared not speak. Intimidation stalked the churches, the schools, the theaters. The rule of steel was absolute.
Although the strike was sponsored by the American Federation of Labor, under instructions from the Steel Trust, the public were fed daily stories of revolution and Bolshevism and Russian gold supporting the strike.
By now we know that Corporations own the press and the press puts out what the owner wants put out. And of course labels were used to scare people and program them to not listen to the truth. Same as today. Liberal is the bad word now. Ask any neocon what a liberal is and listen closely to the answer. They will recite labels but they will not usually be able to give you an actual definition.
I saw the parade in Gary. Parades were forbidden in the Steel King's own town. Some two hundred soldiers who had come back from Europe where they had fought to make America safe from tyrants, marched. They were steel workers. They had on their faded uniforms and the steel hats which protected them from German bombs. In the line of march I saw young fellows with arms gone, with crutches, with deep scars across the face -- heroes they were! Workers in the cheap cotton clothes of the working class fell in behind them. Silently the thousands walked through the streets and alleys of Gary. Saying no word. With no martial music such as sent the boys into the fight with the Kaiser across the water. Marching in silence. Disbanding in silence.
The next day the newspapers carried across the country a story of "mob violence "in Gary.
See how this works? We did not have a free press in 1919 and we do not have one now. The Founding Fathers of our Country made it clear that a Democracy cannot exist without a free press. We can all see first hand what is happening today without a free press. However, the internet, Air America Radio, and AM 1090 in Seattle, are a singular voice or Progressive perspective. Listen to it and read our news posted on the web.
"Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind."
Henry Miller
(1891-1980) American writer
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes.nsf/quotes5/
8b89c45716d40b4f85256e77000fa7ec