William Z. Foster
The Great Steel Strike and Its Lessons

XI
National and Racial Elements

A MODERN BABEL—AMERICANS AS SKILLED WORKERS— FOREIGNERS AS UNSKILLED WORKERS—LANGUAGE DIFFICULTIES—THE NEGRO IN THE STRIKE—THE RACE PROBLEM

In order to prove its charge that the purpose of the steel strike was contrary to the spirit of our institutions, the Steel Trust’s great propaganda organization never ceased asserting, (1) that the strike was a movement of foreigners, (2) that the Americans in the mills were opposed to it for patriotic reasons and were taking no part therein. The vicious press made much capital of these allegations, using them heavily against the strike. Now let us see how much truth there was in them:

1. Unquestionably the foreign-born were in the majority among the strikers; but how could it be otherwise in view of the fact that they make up the bulk of the working force in the industry? The following table, submitted to the Senate Committee by Mr. A. F. Diehl, General Manager of the Duquesne Works of the Carnegie Steel Co., illustrates this fact:⁽¹⁾

RECAPITULATION OF NATIONALITIES, AS OF AUG. 1ST, 1919, FOR TOTAL PLANT, DUQUESNE WORKS

This condition is typical of steel mills generally in the greater Pittsburgh and Middle West districts, where the body of the industry is located. In Clairton, of 4,600 employees, divided into 39 nationalities, 35 per cent. are Americans. On page 480 of the report of the Senate Committee Steel Strike Hearings, appears a table covering the employees of the Homestead Steel Works, Howard Axle Works, and Carrie Furnaces (an industrial unit), submitted by General Manager J. S. Oursler. It shows a total of 14,687 employees, of 54 nationality divisions. Of these employees, 5,799, or 39.45 per cent. are stated to be American whites. But as Mr. Oursler re-iterated in his testimony that he had classed as Americans all those who had their citizenship papers, both these figures should therefore be considerably reduced. Besides, it must be borne in mind that these several tables include the office forces, bosses, etc., which are almost entirely American, and which were not involved in the strike. In the steel districts in question it is exceedingly doubtful if over 25 per cent. of the actual workers are American-born whites. How, then, can a general strike of steel workers be anything else than largely a strike of foreigners?

2. Regarding the alleged non-participation of Americans in the movement: Although in many districts where the strike was practically 100 per cent. effective, the Americans struck almost to a man with the other workers and fought gamely to the finish, nevertheless it must be admitted that in the main, when compared with the foreigners,⁽²⁾ they made a poor showing. To begin with they organized slowly; then they struck reluctantly and scatteringly; and finally, they showed little tenacity as strikers. But this general sluggishness originated, however, not in patriotic objections to the movement or lack of sympathy with its aims; but chiefly because the Americans, as skilled workers, were naturally slower and less determined in action than the foreigners, or unskilled workers.

In the steel industry the most skilled men are to be found in those trades actually engaged in the making and rolling of iron and steel—the melters, puddlers, shearmen, rollers, roughers, heaters, Bessemer blowers, etc. These men are paid upon a tonnage basis and generally receive considerably higher wages than the mechanical tradesmen—bricklayers, machinists, boilermakers, riggers, firemen, engineers, electrical workers, blacksmiths, etc., who build, maintain and generally operate the plants. It is among the favored tonnage trades that the Americans are especially intrenched.

In the old days these highly skilled workers took the initiative in the struggle for human rights in the steel industry—the mechanical trades and unskilled workers playing a very minor part. Homestead was one of their great battles, only 752 of the 3800 men employed being union members in good-standing. They were then bold, militant and tenacious as bull dogs. But since those times they have been defeated so often, due to a weakening of their proportional strength and strategical position, that they have lost much of the independent spirit which once characterized them. They now fear the power of the Steel Trust; they dread its pitiless blacklist; they hesitate to put in jeopardy their comparatively good jobs, which they secured only after long years of service in minor positions, and which, once lost, are so hard to regain. They want better conditions now as much as they ever did, but they lack the self-confidence to fight for them. All through the campaign their attitude, barring the exceptions here and there, was to wait until the lesser skilled men had so far perfected the organization as to make it seem safe for them to join it. When the strike came the unskilled workers led the way; then came the mechanical trades; with the aristocratic steel workers bringing up the rear. But in scurrying back to scab in the mills, the order was just the reverse. This was the experience in virtually every section of the industry.

It would be wrong, however, to say that the failure of American workers to participate more heartily in the movement was due solely to their favored position in the industry. To some extent race prejudice also came into play, especially in those districts where the organization had not yet reached far enough up into the plants to include the skilled workers. Everywhere American-born workingmen, unfortunately, are prone to look with some suspicion, if not contempt and hatred, upon foreigners, whom they have been taught to believe are injuring their standard of living. The companies made the most of this. Dubbing the walkout a “hunky” strike, they told the Americans that if it succeeded the latter would have to give over to the despised foreigners all the good jobs and shop privileges they enjoyed. Their slogan was “Don’t let the ‘hunkies’ rule the mills.” They openly circulated handbills inciting to race war. The following, from Elwood, Pa., where a National Tube Company plant is located, is typical:

WAKE UP AMERICANS!!

Italian Laborers, organized under the American Federation of Labor are going to strike Monday and are threatening workmen who want to continue working.

These foreigners have been told by labor agitators that if they would join the union they would get Americans’ jobs.

They are being encouraged by ITALIAN MERCHANTS, who are in sympathy with them. ARE YOU GOING TO SLEEP AND LET MOB RULE THREATEN THE PEACE OF OUR TOWN?

In towns where often the foreign population is three-fourths of the whole, such propaganda was most inflammatory. The newspapers did all they could to make it more so. They solemnly warned of the danger of a foreign uprising and advised a campaign of militant, 100 per cent. Americanism; which meant, on the one hand for the local authorities, gunmen, and business men to set up a reign of terror, and on the other, for the workers all to go back to work at once. The courts and so-called peace officers did their part. They jailed, clubbed and shot the foreigners and left the Americans, even if they were strikers, in comparative immunity. Nothing was left undone to create a race issue, and it is not surprising that many American workers, unorganized and ignorant, were mislead by this and inveigled back to the mills.

It has been charged that the unions neglected the American steel workers and concentrated upon the organization of the foreigners. If anything, the reverse is true; for by far the weight of the appeal made was to the English speaking elements. Every piece of literature put out stressed heavily the English language. Of twenty-five National Committee district and local secretaries, only three were born in Europe; of a dozen Amalgamated Association organizers, not one spoke anything but English, and of the crew as a whole, over 80 per cent. were American born. By its very nature such an organizing force had to make strong appeal to the American workers. In fact, the foreigners constantly insisted upon this, because, strangers in a strange land, they always crave and seek American co-operation in their union movements. That this co-operation was not more in evidence in the steel campaign was the cause of much bitter complaint among them.

But if the Americans and skilled workers generally proved indifferent union men in the steel campaign, the foreign, unskilled workers covered themselves with glory. Throughout the whole affair they showed an understanding discipline, courage and tenacity of purpose that compared favorably with that shown in any organized effort ever put forth by workingmen on this continent. Beyond question they displayed trade-union qualities of the very highest type. Their solidarity was unbreakable; their fighting spirit invincible. They nobly struggled onward in the face of difficulties that would try the stoutest hearts. They proved themselves altogether worthy of the best American labor traditions. Thousands of them were intending to return to Europe shortly and apparently had slight reason to establish good conditions here; but they fought on, many spending their little savings during the strike, and thus postponing indefinitely the long-looked-for trip to the homelands.

This attitude of the foreign workers is a bitter pill for the Steel Trust. For many years it had scoured the countries of Eastern and Southern Europe, and packed its mills with poor, dispirited, ignorant immigrants of three score nationalities, in the hope that it was finally supplanting its original crew of independent American and Western European workmen by a race of submissive, unorganizable slaves. And for a long time this shameful policy worked well. Wages sank to nowhere; conditions became unspeakably wretched; every strike of the old-time, organized workers was smothered by an avalanche of job-hungry immigrants.⁽³⁾ But now these foreigners are waking up; in consequence of hard economic conditions, a better acquaintance with our language and institutions, an inherent class solidarity, the example of union men in other industries, and the social upheavals in Europe, these men are opening their eyes; and they are fast taking their place in the very front rank of the working class fighters for industrial liberty. And now the Steel Trust, discovering that its hoped-for-scabs are in truth highly rebellious workingmen, is making the welkin ring with inconsistent denunciation of the “revolutionary foreigners,” with whom just a short while ago it was so anxious to crowd its plants. The biter has been very badly bitten.

For the unions the nationality problem was serious throughout the entire campaign—the employers had worked for years to make it an insoluble one. Something of the situation may be gleaned when it is recalled that the steel industry comprises hundreds of mills, scattered through a dozen states, and employing half a million workers. These speak dozens of widely differing languages, worship through many mutually antagonistic religions, and are moved by numberless racial and national animosities. Yet the National Committee, with the skimped resources it had in hand, had to and did weld together this vast polyglot, heterogeneous mass into a voluntary organization, kept it thinking alike, and held it in strong discipline for months in the face of the bitter opposition of the Steel Trust, which sought in every conceivable way to divide the workers by playing upon their multiplicity of fears and prejudices.

In accomplishing this huge task the first requisite was to overcome the language difficulty sufficiently to permit the message of trade unionism to be brought forcefully to the many diverse elements. Because doing so would have rendered the meetings ruinously cumbersome and unwieldy, it was out of the question to utilize all the languages or any considerable number of them; so the plan was followed of using only the predominant ones; the theory being that if the large bodies of workers speaking them could be reached, they in turn would find means to influence the minorities speaking other languages.

As the various foreign groups tend strongly to colonize in certain districts, the basic languages spoken in a given plant, regardless of how many nationalities work therein, ordinarily number not more than four or five, including always English, usually a couple of the Slavic tongues (Slavish, Polish, Russian, Croatian, Lithuanian, Serbian, etc.), often Hungarian, and occasionally Italian, Roumanian or Greek. For example, among the fifty-four nationalities in the big Homestead plants, the principal languages spoken are, in the order of their numerical importance, English, Slavish, Russian, Hungarian and Polish. Move these predominate language groups and you move the whole working force; that was the system in the steel campaign. Seldom was a piece of literature issued, even for national circulation, with as many as six languages upon it; the vitally important strike call had but seven, while four was the customary number.

About twenty-five organizers who spoke these predominating languages were put in the field. Great care was taken by the A. F. of L., National Committee and co-operating unions to select reliable, level-headed men of influence and standing among their respective peoples, men who could be depended upon to go along with the general program, and not to work upon some destructive side-issue of their own. Besides, efforts were made to take every possible advantage of the fact that practically all the foreign workers have some slight smattering of English. Accordingly, the English-speaking organizers were coached to get rid of all trade-union technical expressions and to confine their talks to fundamentals; to speak slowly, distinctly, and in the simplest, even “pidjinized” terms, to illustrate the whole with sign language, and to follow out a system of repetition and restatement that was bound to make their meaning plain to the most unknowing. Such talks, while not calculated to stir the emotions, made clear the situation and were greatly appreciated by the foreigners, thousands of whom, during the steel campaign, for the first time felt the pleasure and encouragement of understanding the despairingly difficult English spoken from a platform. The steel workers’ meetings were schools in practical Americanization.⁽⁴⁾

With the language problem solved in even this imperfect way, the persistent advocacy of labor union principles, backed up by a few thoroughgoing, common-sense systems of organization, did the rest. Gradually the great armies of linguistically, religiously, racially divided steel workers were united into the mighty force which threw itself against the Steel Trust. In the main the foreign workers were simple, sincere, earnest minded folk, naturally disposed to co-operative effort. While the individualistic, sophisticated American workers all too often attended the ball games and filled the pool rooms, the foreigners packed the union meeting halls. Their worst fault was a woeful unacquaintance with trade-union methods. This the organizers diligently labored to overcome by patient instruction and a faithful attendance to their duties. The general result was that the foreign workers developed a confidence in the organizers and a loyalty to the unions, which not even the heavy shock of the loss of the strike has been able to destroy.

The indifference, verging often into open hostility, with which negroes generally regard Organized Labor’s activities, manifested itself strongly in the steel campaign. Those employed in the industry were extremely resistant to the trade-union program; those on the outside allowed themselves to be used freely as strike-breakers.

According to the Immigration Commission’s Report, which furnished the latest official figures (period 1907-08), 4.7 per cent. of the total number of steel industry employees at that time were negroes, most of whom were located in the Alabama and Maryland districts. Since then, however, considerable additions to their numbers have been made, and in many northern mills will be found groups of them, ranging in strength from 1 to 20 per cent. of the whole working force. They work mostly at hard, rough, unskilled labor, especially in the blast furnace department.

Generally speaking, these bodies of negroes took small part in the movement. In certain districts, notably Cleveland and Wheeling, it is true that they organized 100 per cent. and struck very creditably; but in most places, and exactly those where their support was needed the worst, they made a wretched showing. Consider the situation, for instance, in the Homestead Steel Works. In these plants (including the Carrie Furnaces at Rankin), of the 14,687 employees, 1,737 are negroes. Making deductions for office forces, bosses, etc., this would make them from 12 to 14 per cent. of the actual workers, a most important factor indeed. During the organizing campaign, of all these men, only eight joined the unions. And of these but one struck. He, however, stayed loyally to the finish. The degree of this abstention from the movement may be gauged when it is recalled that of the white unskilled workers in the same plants at least 75 per cent. joined the unions, and 90 per cent. struck.

Throughout the immediate Pittsburgh district, where the unions operated under such great handicaps and had to rely so much on the initiative of the individual workers, the same condition prevailed. In Duquesne, of 344 negroes employed, not one struck; in Clairton, of 300, six joined the unions and struck for two weeks. Of the several hundred working in the Braddock plants, not one joined a union or went on strike; and a dozen would cover those from the large number employed in the mills in Pittsburgh proper who walked out with the 25,000 whites on September 22. Similar tendencies were shown in the Chicago, Youngstown, Buffalo, Pueblo, Sparrows’ Point and other districts. In the entire steel industry, the negroes, beyond compare, gave the movement less co-operation than any other element, skilled or unskilled, foreign or native.

Those on the outside of the industry seemed equally unsympathetic. National Committee secretaries’ reports indicate that the Steel Trust recruited and shipped from 30,000 to 40,000 negroes into the mills as strike-breakers. Many of these were picked up in Northern cities, but the most of them came from the South. They were used in all the large districts and were a big factor in breaking the strike. The following statement illustrates some of the methods used in securing and handling them:

Monessen, November 23, 1919

Eugene Steward—Age 19—Baltimore, Md.

My native place is Charleston, South Carolina.

I arrived in Monessen on Wednesday, November 19. There were about 200 of us loaded in the cars at Baltimore; some were white; and when we were loaded in the cars were told that we were being taken to Philadelphia.

We were not told that a strike was in progress. We were promised $4.00 a day, with the understanding that we should be boarded at $1.00 a day.

When we took the train a guard locked the doors so that we were unable to get out, and no meals were given us on the way, although we were promised board.

We were unloaded at Lock 4 and had a guard placed over us, and were then marched into the grounds of the Pittsburgh Steel Products Co. We were then told to go to work, and when I found out that there was a strike on I got out. They refused to let me out at the gate when I protested about working, and I climbed over the fence, and they caught me and compelled me to go back and sign a paper and told me that I would have to go to work. I told them that I would not go to work if they kept me there two years. I was placed on a boat. There were about 200 other people there. The guards informed me that if I made any attempt to again run away that they would shoot me. I got a rope and escaped, as I will not work to break the strike.

his
Eugene X Steward
mark

Witness Jacob S. McGinley

Few, however, of the imported negro strike-breakers showed the splendid spirit of this unlettered boy. Most of them seemed to take a keen delight in stealing the white men’s jobs and crushing their strike. They clashed badly with the pickets, where picketing was allowed. And between them and the white strike-breakers many murderous encounters occurred in the mills, although the companies were very careful to suppress news of these outbreaks.

So serious was the race situation in the steel strike that the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers requested President Gompers to arrange a conference between prominent negro leaders and trade-union officials, to the end that the proper remedies may be indicated. The need for action looking towards better relations between whites and blacks in the industrial field should be instantly patent; for there can be no doubt but that the employing class, taking advantage of the bitter animosities of the two groups, are deliberately attempting to turn the negroes into a race of strike-breakers, with whom to hold the white workers in check; on much the same principle as the Czars used the Cossacks to keep in subjection the balance of the Russian people. Should they succeed to any degree it would make our industrial disputes take on more and more the character of race wars, a consummation that would be highly injurious to the white workers and eventually ruinous to the blacks.

For the tense situation existing the unions are themselves in no small part to blame. Many of them sharply draw the color line, thus feeding the flames of race hatred. This discriminatory practice is in direct conflict with the fundamental which demands that all the workers be organized, without regard to sex, race, creed, politics or nationality. It injures Labor’s cause greatly. Company agents harp upon it continually, to prevent negroes from joining even the organizations willing to take them in. This was the case in the steel campaign. Moreover these same company agents cited this discriminatory practice most effectively to induce thousands of outside colored workers to come into the industry as strike-breakers. Such a condition cannot be allowed to persist. But to relieve it the unions will have to meet the issue honestly and broad-mindedly. They must open their ranks to negroes, make an earnest effort to organize them, and then give them a square deal when they do join. Nothing short of this will accomplish the desired result.⁽⁵⁾

This action by the unions will be a step in the right direction, but it alone will not solve the vexed problem. The best negro leaders must join heartily in destroying the pernicious anti-union policies so deeply rooted among their people. It is a lamentable fact, well known to all organizers who have worked in industries employing considerable numbers of negroes, that there is a large and influential black leadership, including ministers, politicians, editors, doctors, lawyers, social workers, etc., who as a matter of race tactics are violently opposed to their people going into the trade unions. They look upon strike-breaking as a legitimate and effective means of negro advancement. Time and again, they have seen their people, by use of it, readily work their way into trades and industries previously firmly sealed against them by the white workers’ and white employers’ prejudices. Nor can they see any wrong in thus taking advantage of the white man, who has so brutally oppressed them for centuries. On the contrary, they consider it a justified retaliation. They are in a race war. Inasmuch as the steel strike resulted in more negroes being in the industry than was the case before, they look upon the outcome as a victory. For these elements, and they are numerous and powerful among negroes, the color line clauses in the union constitutions are meat and drink; such leaders don’t want them abolished,—they make too strong an argument against the unions.

Consider the situation faced by the unions in the campaign to organize the Chicago packing houses in 1917-18. The negroes in this industry are a strong factor (numbering 14,000 of a total of some 65,000 employees), and the unions were determined to organize them. But no sooner had organizers begun the work than they met the firm opposition of the negro intelligencia above-noted. These warned their people to have nothing to do with the movement, as their interest lay in working with the packers to defeat the unions. They said that was how the negroes came into the packing industry, and that was how they would progress in it.

Naturally, they repeated the accusations about white men not taking negroes in their unions, a charge which was not true in the packing industry. The organizers replied by launching a vigorous campaign to get them into the unions. Then the propaganda was sent forth that the only reason the whites were willing to take the blacks into their locals was because the latter, being in a minority, could exert no control; that the whites would not dare to give them a local of their own, etc. This was met by the establishment of a negro local of miscellaneous workers in a convenient neighborhood. Then the Jim Crow cry was raised that the whites wanted the blacks to herd by themselves. This the organizers answered by insisting that a free transfer system be kept up between the white and black locals. These were affiliated with the basic organization of the industry, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America.

But even this did not satisfy; the anti-union propaganda went on undiminished and with tremendous effect. It is true that some far-sighted negro intellectuals defended the unions; but they were as men crying in the wilderness; the others prevailed. And although the unions kept a crew of negro organizers in the field, and won many concessions for the packing house workers, including the eight hour day, right of collective bargaining, large increases in wages, 40 hour weekly guarantee, retroactive pay, seniority rights, etc., they have never succeeded in organizing the negroes.

They know little of the race problem in industry who declare that it can be settled merely by the unions opening their doors to the negroes. It is much more complex than that, and will require the best thought that conscientious whites and blacks can give it. The negro has the more difficult part to solve, in resisting the insidious efforts of unscrupulous white employers and misguided intellectuals of his own race to make a professional strike-breaker of him. But I am confident that he will win out and will take his place where he belongs in the industrial fight, side by side with the white worker.

Footnotes

1. Senate Committee Steel Strike Hearings, page 532.

2. In steel industry usage (followed in this book unless otherwise noted) the term “foreigners” applies chiefly to the nationalities of the later immigrations, including the Slavic races, Roumanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Greeks, Italians and others from Eastern and Southern Europe. These are the so-called “hunkies.” The peoples of the earlier immigrations—the English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Germans and Scandinavians—who speak our language, hold good jobs, and are generally well established, are not exactly considered Americans, but they are rarely called foreigners.

3. The brazen frankness with which this policy was carried out is illustrated by the following advertisement, which appeared in the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times, July 15, 1909, during the big steel strike of that time:

Men Wanted—Tinners, catchers and helpers to work in open shops. Syrians, Poles and Roumanians preferred. Steady employment and good wages to men willing to work. Fare paid and no fees charged.

4. During the great organization drive in the Chicago packing houses in 1917-18, this method was used for several months in the large local union of car builders and repairmen, fully 90 per cent. of whom, born in Eastern Europe, were supposedly non-English-speaking. As a result they acquired such confidence in their ability to use the language that they dropped the customary practice of translating all their business into several languages and took to using English only.

5. The Miners, Building Laborers and several other unions are taking the lead in this direction and are getting good results. Negroes are joining their ranks in considerable numbers and are proving themselves to be excellent union men.

Next: XII. The Commissariat—The Strike Cost

The Great Steel Strike and Its Lessons Table of Contents
William Z. Foster | Communist Party, USA | Marxists Internet Archive