Hellraisers Journal: Duluth Labor World: Mary Heaton Vorse Reports from Front Lines of Great Steel Strike, Part II

Quote Mother Jones, Strikes are not peace Clv UMWC p537, Sept 16, 1919 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 27, 1919
Report from Front Lines of Great Steel Strike by Mary Heaton Vorse

From the Duluth Labor World of October 25, 1919:

[Part II.]

STATE TROOPERS TOOLS OF STEEL
—–
Cossacks Break Into Homes,
Interfere With Church Worship
and Assault Women.

[By MARY HEATON VORSE.]

We must remember that in the steel towns people have been arrested wholesale because they have committed the crime of striking. There are charges such as obstructing traffic, unlawful assembly, etc., which make it impossible to run a striker in without his having committed any real offense.

Suppression and oppression have been the father and mother of this strike and terror its godfather. But, when the company used terror, they forgot the old saying that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

There hasn’t been a home searched or an illegal arrest made that hasn’t helped the strike. There hasn’t been a club that has come down on a defenseless mill worker that hasn’t sent men hurrying to get out their union cards.

Take the case of Clairton for instance—this was the town where the union had got no foothold—the watchful authorities had kept the “agitators” out. (“Agitator” is the company’s name for all members of the A. F. of L. who try to get their fellow workers to join a union.)

There were no halls in Clairton that could be rented. All permits were denied and street meetings were broken up. That is to say, the fundamental rights of Americans were sweepingly denied. There is no right of free speech and free assembly in the steel towns. When the people in Farrell want to go to a meeting they have to go over the Ohio state line into America—and the other evening 4,000 of them walked over to hear Foster speak.

There are plenty of steel towns not in America and Clairton is one of them.

After a time the organizer hired a vacant lot from one of the mill workers. But a man in Clairton can’t ask a few friends to a lawn party on his own property—the Cossacks rode down the strikers and broke up the meeting. The mill workers didn’t know that it was un-American to strike and they had put up an American flag—this the Cossacks tore down and the flag was trampled under the horses’ hoofs. This started trouble, for there were some ex-service men there as there are in all workingmen’s crowds. The affidavits sent to the senate abound in statements like:

The state troopers rushed on the lot and the people started to run away but when said state troopers rushed to the platform and tore down our flag, the men became incensed and some ex-soldiers, seeing our flag being insulted and defiled, rushed at said troopers in defense of our flag and started the excitement and almost caused a riot and loyal citizens were greatly incensed. There was no provocation for said interference and riding over women and children.

(Signed) Mihon Terzich.

Before this happened the organization made no headway in Clairton but the constabulary had made an irresistible argument-men rushed away from the riot to get their union cards.

The state constabulary are a splendid-looking body of men in their smart dark green uniforms and helmets but with their riot clubs three feet long they are terror incarnate to the workers—they are in the steel towns in many cases not because the town authorities asked them but at the request of the company. So brutal have they been that one can explain their acts only on the theory that they were acting under orders “to throw a scare into the workers” from the first, or else that they were deliberately trying to incite riot. How else can one account for the tearing down of the flag or the incident at Braddock?

There was a mission in Braddock in the Slovak church and the men were coming out from instruction at about nine—the Cossacks rode them down—not only that but they rode their horses up the narrow church steps. The men controlled themselves—they didn’t attack the Cossacks, and they did nothing in anger or reprisal when the Cossacks rode down a crowd of babies of the first grade who were going home from church.

No assembling in crowds is allowed in Braddock.

There is a narrow street in Braddock along which runs the Baltimore and Ohio railway. A tall fence separates the street from the tracks and children play here, for nothing on wheels is allowed here by the city ordinance. Since the strike one of the mill owners, drove his car down this street, scattering the children in front of him. Behind him for his protection rode two of the steel-gray troopers, but they weren’t needed any more than they have been any time. The men are out to win the strike by peaceable means in spite of thugs, gun men and state constabulary.

The worst of the terror is over now. The people have been “pacified.” They realize that they have no freedom—no right of free speech or assembly. There are communities where for a steel worker to be long to the A. F. of L. is to lay himself open to arrest and imprisonment.

The search for concealed weapons still affords a pretext for the constabulary to break into houses at night, smash open trunks and boxes with hatchets. Yesterday I went to the house of a Slovak woman who had called her husband when the Cossacks came crashing in, whereupon the trooper struck her across the face with his gloves.

These outrages, and more besides, were testified to before the senate committee and, as the witnesses piled in, in ceaseless procession before the senators, the outstanding fact about them was their defenselessness. How small they seemed to lift their feeble hands against the giant of steel—the giant which can command not only the mills but the courts, the police and the press!

There was one thing more out standing than their defenselessness and that was their steadfastness as they are fighting one of the greatest battles of all history and fighting with no other weapon than their unshaken courage.

———-

[Emphasis added, paragraph break added.]