William Z. Foster

THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL CONFERENCE—THE SENATE COMMITTEE —THE RED BOOK—THE MARGOLIS CASE—THE INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT

Upon October 6 the National Industrial Conference opened its sessions in Washington, D. C. This body was called together by President Wilson to make an effort to solve the pressing labor difficulties confronting the country, and was the one, pending whose deliberations the steel workers had been asked to postpone their strike. It was a three-party arrangement, Capital, Labor and the Public being represented. Naturally it was only advisory in character; and under the rules adopted all action taken, not relating merely to methods of procedure, had to have the endorsement of all three sections, each of which voted as a unit in accordance with the majority sentiment of its members.

The Conference met in the midst of a tense situation. The steel industry was almost completely paralysed; the miners were just about to launch their national general strike; the railroaders were in a foment of discontent, and many other large and important sections of workers were demanding better conditions. Capital and Labor were arrayed against each other as never before. Both appeared determined to fight; Capital in a bitter, revengeful spirit to oust Labor from the favorable position won during the war, and Labor in a decided effort to hold what it had and to make more winnings to offset the rapidly mounting cost of living. The United States seemed upon the brink of an industrial war.

From the beginning the touchstone of the Conference, the measure by which all its activities were gauged, was the steel strike. It was clear that its attitude towards this great issue would settle its general policy. This was felt by all parties to the Conference, even though some hated the thought. The labor delegation, headed by Samuel Gompers, precipitated matters by introducing, by previous arrangement with the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers, the following resolution:

This resolution provoked a storm of opposition from the reactionary employers, who, headed by Mr. Gary (ironically seated with John D. Rockefeller, Jr., as a representative of the Public) insisted that the Conference ignore the steel strike situation altogether, its purpose being, according to them, not the settlement of existing disputes, but the formulation of principles and plans which would provide for the prevention of such disputes in the future. Finally, seeing that if they insisted upon their resolution it would wreck the Conference, the workers held it in abeyance temporarily and submitted the following:

Such a mild proposition as this would hardly meet with serious opposition in a similar conference in any other important country than ours. All over Europe it would be far too conservative to fit the situation. In England, for example, the British Industrial Conference recently adopted the following:

And just across our border, in Canada, this advanced conception was formulated but a few months before:

But Mr. Gary and his associates care nothing about the reputation of America as a progressive, liberty-loving country. They have their prerogatives, and they intend to exercise them, cost what it may. They organize as they see fit and pick out such representatives as they will; but by virtue of their economic strength they deny to their workers these same rights. So they voted down Labor's collective bargaining resolution, and at the same time the one providing for a settlement of the steel strike. The employers insisted upon absolute rule by themselves.This action discredited the Conference, and sentenced it to dissolution. By its refusal to meet the great steel strike issue the Conference showed that it had neither the will nor the power to settle industrial disputes. Labor, openly denied the fundamental right of organization, could no longer sit with it. The workers' representatives, therefore, took the only honorable course left to them; they withdrew, allowing the whole worthless structure to collapse. Said Mr. Gompers in his final speech:

Thus ingloriously ended the Conference upon which the steel workers had been asked to hang all their hopes. Even with powerful organizations intact and with their industry almost entirely at a standstill, the latter could get no consideration from it. What, then, would have been their fate if they had postponed the strike? With their forces shattered, half of their men being on strike and the rest at work thoroughly disgusted, they would have been helpless and unable to strike in any event. They would have been absolutely at the mercy of the employers. And any one who may imagine that the latter would have done anything short of giving the steel workers their coup de grace at the Conference is an optimist indeed. The steel strike was a clean fight and an honorable defeat for Labor. Its bad effects will soon wear off. But it would have been a ruinous calamity, with ineradicable harm, had the strike been postponed for the sake of the ill-fated Industrial Conference.

Pursuant to a resolution adopted by the Senate on September 23, in the white heat of the strike excitement, the Committee on Education and Labor was instructed to investigate the steel strike and to report back to the Senate as soon as possible. Accordingly this Committee held sittings in Washington and Pittsburgh, hearing about one hundred witnesses all told. Its active members were Senators Kenyon (Chairman), McKellar, Walsh (Mass.), Sterling and Phipps.

For the workers Samuel Gompers, John Fitzpatrick, M. F. Tighe and many organizers and strikers testified, setting forth in detail the grievances and demands of the men. For the steel companies came the usual crop of strike-breakers and company officials, pliable city authorities and business men from the steel towns. The star witness was Judge Gary, who presented practically the entire case for the whole steel industry. It is noteworthy that with the exception of one minor hothead, the so-called "independents" made no defense before the committee. They left it all to their master, the United States Steel Corporation.

Mr. Gary was a good witness. Not for him were the antiquated blusterings of a "divine-right" Baer or a "public-be-damned" Vanderbilt. He used the modern method,—a mass of silky hypocrisies and misrepresentations for the public, to cover up the mailed fist he has for his workers. He was suave, oily, humble, obliging, persuasive, patriotic. He pictured the steel industry as a sort of industrial heaven and the U. S. Steel Corporation as a beneficent institution, leading even the trade-union movement in reform work.

Inasmuch as Mr. Gary's peculiar notions of the "open shop," minority rule by the unions, etc., set forth afresh by him at the strike hearings, are discussed quite generally throughout this book, there is no need to review them again here. We will note his testimony no more than to give the facts of the death of Mrs. Fannie Sellins, of whose murder he was so anxious to clear the Steel Trust.

Mrs. Fannie Sellins was an organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, stationed in the notorious, anti-union Black Valley district along the Allegheny river. An able speaker, and possessed of boundless courage, energy, enthusiasm and idealism, she was a most effective worker. Due largely to her efforts many thousands of miners and miscellaneous workers in this hard district were organized. She was the very heart of the local labor movement, which ranked second to none in Pennsylvania for spirit and progress. When the steel campaign began, Mrs. Sellins threw herself whole-heartedly into it. She worked indefatigably. More than any other individual she was responsible for the unionization of the big United States Steel Corporation mills at Vandergrift, Leechburg and New Kensington, as well as those of the so-called independent Allegheny and West Penn Steel Companies at Brackenridge. The results secured by her will compare favorably with those of any other organizer in the whole campaign.

By her splendid work in behalf of the toilers Mrs. Sellins gained the undying hatred of the untamed employers in the benighted Black Valley district. Open threats were made to "get" her. The opportunity came on August 26, 1919, when she was deliberately murdered under the most brutal circumstances.

The miners of the Allegheny Coal and Coke Company were on strike at West Natrona. The mine is situated in the mill yard of the Allegheny Steel Company and furnishes fuel for that concern. All was going peacefully when a dozen drunken deputy sheriffs on strike duty, led by a mine official, suddenly rushed the pickets, shooting as they came. Joseph Strzelecki fell, mortally wounded. Mrs. Sellins, standing close by, rushed first to get some children out of danger. Then she came back to plead with the deputies, who were still clubbing the prostrate Strzelecki, not to kill him. What happened then is told in the New Majority (Chicago) of September 20:

Thus perished noble Fannie Sellins: shot in the back by so-called peace officers. And she 49 years old, a grandmother, and mother of a boy killed in France, fighting to make the world safe for democracy.

Many people witnessed this horrible murder. The guilty men were named openly in the newspapers and from a hundred platforms. Yet no one was ever punished for the crime. Witnesses were spirited away or intimidated, and the whole matter hushed up in true Steel Trust fashion. A couple of deputies were arrested; but they were speedily released on smaller bonds than those often set for strikers arrested for picketing. Eventually they were freed altogether.

The killing of Mrs. Sellins, right in the teeth of the strike as it was, lent much bitterness to the general situation. Rightly or wrongly, the steel workers, almost to a man, felt that this devoted woman was a martyr to their cause.

Upon November 8, the Senate Committee, having completed its hearings, made public its report. This document is a strange mixture of progressive and reactionary principles. In some respects, especially where it grants, however confusedly, the right of collective bargaining and the eight hour day, it is just and meets the situation; but in other respects it is so unfair to the workers' cause as to be grotesque. For one thing it shoulders upon the unions the entire responsibility for the failure to postpone the strike, choosing to disregard completely the clearly established fact that the steel companies were discharging men so fast that for the unions it was a case of strike or perish. In fact, the report ignores altogether the bitter grievance of men being discharged for union membership. Mr. Gary had said that this practice was not engaged in, and that apparently settled it so far as the Committee was concerned,—the testimony of dozens of victimized workers (with thousands more available) to the contrary notwithstanding. Other sins of the Steel Trust, the suppression of free speech and free assembly, etc., were passed over lightly; but the alleged virtues of its housing and welfare plans were very highly lauded.

Nowhere are the workers more ruthlessly robbed and exploited by their employers than in the steel industry. Speaking recently in Brooklyn on the subject of profiteering, Mr. Basil Manly, formerly Joint Chairman of the National War Labor Board, cited Page 367 of the Treasury report as showing one steel company "earning" $14,549,952 in 1917 on a capital of $5,000, or a profit of 290,999 per cent. As the department conveniently suppresses all details, it is impossible to learn the name of this company or how it made such fabulous profits. On the same page appeared another steel company with a profit rate of 20,180 per cent. Speaking of the United States Steel Corporation's returns, which of course were garbled so that no outsider could understand them, Mr. Manly said:

The other steel companies did as well or better, proportionately. W. Jett Lauck, acting on behalf of the railroad workers, submitted figures to the United States Railroad Labor Board (A. P. dispatches May 19, 1920) showing that during the years 1916-18 the Bethlehem Steel Corporation "earned" average annual profits of $29,000,000, or six times its pre-war average. In 1916 its profits amounted to 146 per cent. on its capital stock. Our Johnstown friend, the Cambria Steel Company, in 1916-17 cleaned up $50,000,000 on $45,000,000 capital stock; while the Lackawanna, Republic, Colorado Fuel and Iron, Jones and Laughlin, Crucible, etc., companies made similar killings.

As against useless, non-producing drones getting these millions, the great mass of workers actually operating the industry were receiving the beggarly wages of from 42 to 48 cents per hour. They had received no increase for a year before the strike, notwithstanding the skyrocketing cost of living. Yet the Senate Committee could discover no discontent at this condition nor see any injustice in it. Upon page 10 of its report appears the startling statement that "The question of wages is not involved in this controversy." Forty-two cents per hour would hardly buy cigars for these smug, well-fed gentlemen; still they would have us conclude that it is enough for a steel worker to raise a family upon.

The fact is, of course, that an increase in wages was a cardinal demand of the strikers, even though the Senate Committee did not get to learn of it.[13] And so great was the steel workers' need for more money that the strike had scarcely ended when the United States Steel Corporation, followed soon after by the "independents," granted its lesser skilled help 10 per cent. increase in wages, and promised "an equitable adjustment" to the widely advertised small minority of highly paid men.

Part of the strike-breaking strategy of the Steel Trust was to alienate public sympathy from the strike by denouncing it as an incipient revolution which had to be put down at all costs. Public opinion was already violently inflamed against everything savoring no matter how slightly of radicalism, and it was not difficult for the reactionary newspapers to make the steel strike unpopular, even as they had, under various pretexts, the movements of the miners and railroad men of the period. One weapon they used extensively against the steel strike was an almost forgotten pamphlet, "Syndicalism," written by Earl C. Ford and myself eight years ago.

Throughout the hearings the investigating senators went along with this Steel Trust propaganda, which was not so surprising considering the fact that of the five active committee men, one was a steel magnate, and three others typical Bourbons. By playing up the "little red book" they systematically fed the newspapers with the sensationalism they wanted and which the steel companies desired them to get. I was called before the Committee and gruffly ordered to express my opinion on the doctrines in the booklet. In reply, I stated that the steel movement had been carried on according to the strictest trade-union principles. It was overseen by the National Committee, consisting of twenty-four presidents of large international unions. As secretary of this committee I had necessarily worked under the close scrutiny of these men and dozens of their organizers—not to speak of the highest officials in the American Federation of Labor. Yet none of these trade unionists, keen though they be to detect and condemn unusual practices and heresy in the ranks, had found fault with the character of my work. Nor could the crew of detectives and stool pigeons of the steel companies and Department of Justice, who had dogged my footsteps for a year past, cite a single word said, a thing done, or a line written by me in the entire campaign which would not measure up to most rigid trade-union standards. I contended that my private opinions were immaterial as they did not and could not enter into the organizing work or the strike.

But the nation-wide head hunt of the radicals was on in full cry, and the Senators had a good blood scent. They would follow it to the end. They insisted that I express my opinion upon the wage system, the state, morality, patriotism, marriage, etc. Finally, in a last effort to protect the interests of the 2,000,000 men, women and children affected by the strike, I stated that if the vulture press, which was bound to misrepresent what I said, was removed from the room, I would be glad to oblige the Senators with a frank expression of my views upon any subject. But this simple fairness to the steel workers and their families they denied. The newspapers were clamoring for red meat, and the Senators seemed determined they should have it. Having made my protest and my prediction, I was compelled to yield; but the first newspapers on the streets proved the soundness of my fears. My answers were garbled and twisted against both the steel movement and me.

Then there was the Margolis case. I charge that to be a deliberate frame-up against the steel strike. To prove the Steel Trust's contention that the strike was a desperate revolutionary coup, engineered by men seeking to destroy our civilization generally, somewhat more was required than merely an eight year old booklet. The thing had to be brought down to date and a far-reaching plot constructed. Hence the Senate Committee dragged in Mr. Margolis and made him a scapegoat. Mr. Margolis is a well known Anarchist attorney of Pittsburgh. He has the reputation of having served ably as counsel for several trade-union organizations, and has a wide circle of acquaintances among labor men. The Senate Committee selected him as the man who had organized, with my hearty support and co-operation, the real force behind the strike, the I. W. W.'s, Anarchists and Bolshevists.

Now the fact is that Mr. Margolis had nothing whatever to do, officially or unofficially, with the policies or management of either the organizing campaign or the strike. He had no connection with the Strike committee; nor did he ever even speak at a union meeting of steel workers during the whole movement in question. If he wrote an article in some radical paper, or spoke to a meeting of Russian workmen in Youngstown, endorsing the strike, as is said, he did it purely as an individual sympathizer acting upon his own initiative. Mr. Margolis freely stated this on the stand, and every union official in Pittsburgh knew it to be the case. So did the investigating Senators; but it the better served their purpose to enlarge upon Mr. Margolis' activities, in the hope that his radical reputation would lend color to the plot theory which they were laboring so hard to establish, and which was so advantageous to the Steel Trust.

In their final report the Senators continued their plot "evidence" and insinuations, so persistently worked up all through their hearings. They ignored highly important testimony tending to put the movement in its right light as a strictly trade-union affair, and gave prominence to everything to the contrary. They elevated unheard-of I. W. W.'s into powerful strike leaders and surrounded the most ordinary comings and goings with revolutionary mystery. Where they lacked facts they cast suspicion, leaving a vicious daily press to draw its own conclusions.

Although they expressed great concern for the sufferings of the public in strikes, and advocated the establishment of an industrial tribunal to prevent them in the future, the worthy Senators, nevertheless, recommended no means to end the steel strike. So far as they were concerned, apparently they were willing to have the steel strike fought to a conclusion. At one of the Senate Committee hearings, John Fitzpatrick, Chairman of the National Committee, agreed to arbitration. But later Mr. Gary gave an emphatic "No" to this proposition. Mr. Gary's wishes usually had decisive weight with the Senators, so the matter was settled.On October 1-3, 1919, a national conference called by the Industrial Relations Department of the Interchurch World Movement met at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York and adopted a resolution providing for a full investigation of the steel strike, then a burning public question. Under the terms of this resolution the Industrial Relations Department set up an independent Commission of Inquiry, composed of representative churchmen from all over the country who should be responsible for carrying out the investigation. This Commission consisted of Bishop Francis J. McConnell (Methodist), Chairman, Dr. Daniel A. Poling (Evangelical), vice-Chairman, Dr. John McDowell (Presbyterian), Mrs. Fred Bennett (Board of Foreign Missions), Dr. Nicholas Van Der Pyl (Congregational), Dr. Alva W. Taylor (Disciples), and Mr. Geo. W. Coleman (Baptist).

In order to commit the investigation of technical data to the hands of trained men, the Industrial Relations Department obtained the services of the Bureau of Industrial Research, New York, which, besides its own researches, obtained the co-operation of various other scientific agencies and organized a staff of field workers whose principal members were: Mr. George Soule, Mr. David J. Saposs, Miss Marian D. Savage, Mr. Marion K. Wisehart and Mr. Robert Littell. A member of the Bureau of Industrial Research, Mr. Heber Blankenhorn, had charge of the field work and later acted as Secretary to the Commission of Inquiry, which held hearings in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and other steel centres.

The Interchurch World Movement, representing as it does the organized Protestant millions of America, is a conservative and respectable body, if there is such in this country. Yet when it stepped upon the toes of the Steel Trust by starting the investigation it found itself soon classed among the revolutionaries. Persistent rumors were sent broadcast, and even newspaper stories, to the effect that the Commission's investigators were "Bolsheviks" and that the Interchurch World Movement was permeated with "anarchists." This hampered the work greatly, especially among employers. Finally a threat of legal action was necessary against a large commercial organization which had circulated the rumors officially. It eventually retracted in full. As for the workers, they gave the fullest co-operation to the investigation.

Impressed by the scientific methods and apparent desire to get at the truth of the strike situation manifested in the Interchurch investigation—which stood in striking contrast to the slipshod, haphazard system, "red" mania, and violent partiality towards the steel companies shown by the Senate Committee,—the strike leaders decided to ask the Commission to undertake a settlement of the strike by mediation, which the Commission had the power to do under the resolution creating it. The workers' representatives felt that no stone should be left unturned to get a settlement, and that if the powerful Interchurch movement stirred in their behalf possibly Mr. Gary would be dislodged from his position.

Consequently, John Fitzpatrick, Chairman of the National Committee, put before Mr. Blankenhorn a plan for the settlement of the strike by mediation. Mr. Blankenhorn felt, however, that it might be better to recommend that the Commission move independently, rather than as merely representing the strikers, and submitted the following plan, which was adopted by the Commission:

On December 1, the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers met and formally accepted this proposition of mediation. What happened next is told in an official statement to the writer of this book:

At the time this book goes to press the findings and recommendations of the Commission have not yet been made public.

This made the sixth attempt of the National Committee to settle the steel controversy—not to mention the individual effort of the Amalgamated Association. They were: (1) The letter from Mr. Gompers to Mr. Gary requesting a conference; (2) the visit to his office of the National Committee conference committee, equipped with the power to set a strike date; (3) the appeal to President Wilson to arrange a conference; (4) Organized Labor's resolution in the National Industrial Conference to have that body select an arbitration board; (5) The offer of arbitration by John Fitzpatrick while testifying before the Senate Committee; and, (6) the Interchurch mediation incident.

But they were all futile. Mr. Gary's policy is the time-honored one of all tyrants, rule or ruin. The unions had no option but to fight, and this they did to the best of their ability.

FOOTNOTE: