In view of these exceptions it may be conservatively estimated that well over 250,000 steel workers joined the unions notwithstanding the opposition of the Steel Trust, which discharged thousands of its workers, completely suppressed free speech and free assembly in Pennsylvania and used every known tactic to prevent the organization of its employees.
WM. Z. FOSTER, Secretary-Treasurer National Committee for Organizing Iron & Steel Workers.
Certified by Enoch Martin Auditor, District No. 12 United Mine Workers of America.
[7] Throughout the latter part of the organizing campaign and the first two months of the strike, Mother Jones lent great assistance to the steel workers. This veteran organizer (she testified in court to being 89 years old) of the United Mine Workers labored dauntlessly, going to jail and meeting the hardships and dangers of the work in a manner that would do credit to one half her age.
[8] Relative to this meeting there occurs the following dialogue on page 508 of the report on the Senate Committee's Hearings on the Steel Strike:
Senator Sterling. "Was Mr. Foster here prior to the strike?"
Mr. Diehl (Gen. Manager Duquesne Works, Carnegie Steel Co.). "Yes; he was here trying to hold a meeting, but the meeting was not held."
The Chairman. "What happened to the meeting?"
Mr. Diehl. "Well, we simply prohibited it."
And naturally so. Mr. Diehl and other company officials shut off meetings in the halls and on the lots of their towns just as readily as they would have done had attempts been made to hold them in the mill yards.
[9] Now that the strike is over and spring is again at hand, the unions have resumed the battle for free speech and assembly in Duquesne and promise to fight it to a conclusion.
RELIEF DEMANDED--THE AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION MOVES--A GENERAL MOVEMENT--THE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE--GOMPERS' LETTER UNANSWERED--THE STRIKE VOTE--GARY DEFENDS STEEL AUTOCRACY --PRESIDENT WILSON ACTS IN VAIN--THE STRIKE CALL
Surging forward to the accomplishment of the "impossible," the organization of the steel industry, the twenty-four co-operating international unions found themselves in grips with the employers long before they were strong enough to sustain such a contest. It is almost always so with new unions. In their infancy, when their members are weak, undisciplined and inexperienced, and the employers are bitterly hostile and aggressive, is exactly the time when they must establish principles and adjust grievances that would test the strength of the most powerful unions. Inability to do so means dissolution, either through a lost strike or by disintegration. Following in the wake of the newly formed steel workers' unions came a mass of such difficulties requiring immediate settlement. The demand for relief from the evils of long hours, low wages and miserable working conditions was bad enough; but infinitely more serious was the need to take care of the army of men discharged for union membership. Thousands of these walked the streets in the various steel towns clamoring for protection. And the men on the job demanded it for them. Nor could these appeals be ignored. Whether they deemed the occasion propitious or not, the steel workers' unions, on pain of extinction, had to act in defence of their harassed membership.