Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 27, 1919
Mary Heaton Vorse Reports from the Front Lines of the Great Steal Strike:
People have died, people have been wounded, they have been beaten, ridden down by mounted police, and have suffered in great numbers, fine and imprisonment, because of Mr. Gary’s principles.
From the Kansas Trades Unionist of December 26, 1919:
CAMOUFLAGE IN INDUSTRIAL WARFARE
By Mary Heaton Vorse
Butte Daily Bulletin of October 10, 1919
Do you know what the steel strike is about?It is about the right of free men to join freely in organizations which will deliver them from conditions which prevent them being men. It is a fight as to whether one man can coerce the men in the industries of five great states.
There are wars being fought now in Europe over territories not so large and involving the lives of fewer human beings.
This strike is a strike for democracy. It is a fight for the opportunity for wider citizenship.
People against profit. Feudalism against Americanism-a blacker feudalism than the world has known for a long time, for in the most autocratic monarchies the people had the right of petition.
If they had something they wanted to say to their king, they could say it. He would read their petition, he would reply to it.
Judge Gary is more autocratic than any monarch. He denies his men the right of petition. He throws their petitions into the waste basket.
For principles sake.
For principles sake Mr. Gary has let this strike go on.
People have died, people have been wounded, they have been beaten, ridden down by mounted police, and have suffered in great numbers, fine and imprisonment, because of Mr. Gary’s principles.
The people in autocratic monarchies had another right which custom gave them. This was the right of demonstration. When something happened that they liked or didn’t like, they demonstrated. They marched in processions with banners, and Judge Gary does not allow demonstration.
The rights of the citizens of this free republic are denied them. Free speech and free assembly do not exist, they have been killed so that free organization shall be crushed.
More than this, the elementary rights allowed to the people of despotic countries-these do not exist in the steel districts.
Look around, look over the wide expanse of this country-and there you will see the most dramatic thing in the world-thousands on thousands of patient men-doing nothing.
Hundreds of thousands of patient, quiet men staying home. All these men striking for freedom-some of them blindly, some of them ignorantly striving for the right to live a public life.
These men from the north to the south, from the east to the west are actuated by a common purpose. They are fighting a common enemy, a very powerful enemy who will stop at nothing to break the will of the hundreds and thousands of patient toiling men-the conditions of whose lives he controls more surely than has any despotic monarch. How strong Judge Gary is he has just shown.
The industrial conference in Washington has just been ended by him. He was a representative of the public, but he and he alone closed the conference, but behind him and supporting him were all the big steel interests so highly co-ordinated, so highly organized, and vowed to crush organization among their employes-the men who control the metal miners and who have twice broken their strikes. All that is anti-democratic and anti-American backed Mr. Gary. All that was anti-American and anti-democratic won.
With the close of the industrial conference a new phase of the steel strike begins.
The steel strike has completed its fifth week. It was born in oppression and it has grown in adversity. Now it definitely enters a new phase.
War is on. Capital as represented by Garyism has now come out in the open and is prepared to wage on organized labor a war which shall include “force without stint or limit.”
The industrial conference in Washington hinged on the steel strike. It might be said of that conference that is talked of nothing else. No matter what other topic seemed to be uppermost it was really the steel strike which was under discussion.
The conference split on the right of collective bargaining, or rather it would be fairer to say that Mr. Gary was stronger than anyone else. If the principle of collective bargaining was admitted, then the principle of arbitration would be admitted.
Mr. Gary’s principles wouldn’t let him arbitrate. The president couldn’t make him. Public opinion couldn’t make him-nor finally could pressure put on him during the conference.
This is Fosters idea of what result the break-up of the conference will be:
[He said:]
The close up of the conference is wholesome. It has cleared the air. To have it staggering along was no good for anyone. It kept the idea of arbitration before the minds of the public. The leaders in Washington always hoped for it, but the organizers in the field have known from the first just where we stood-now our position in regard to the strike has been proven the true one.
The strike forced Gary to come out in the open and show his hand. Although he was supposed to be a representative of the public, he was stronger than anyone else in the conference. He and the employers were willing to break up the conference and to enter into a period of open warfare rather than yield to any idea of mediation. The president asked that some means of arbitration should be found. It is for the interests of the public and for the 300,000 men and their families involved in the strike. President and public mean nothing to Gary.
This shows the utter fallacy in the theory that the strike could have been delayed. The union men were being discharged wholesale-and we were at a point when a series of uncoordinated and sporadic strikes were inevitable. These two things would have destroyed the organization.
Capital as represented by Garyism has come to a place where it will listen to nobody. They are the bitter enders-they have always waged their relentless warfare on labor secretly, and now they have come out in the open.
The sixth week of the strike begins then with this open warfare, with all lingering hopes of arbitration gone-and the strike settles down to a long gruelling endurance test.
Meantime the press has been trying to smother the strike by suppressing the news. On every hand the idea has been driven into the public mind that the strike is dying.
You who read this have probably thought so, too. But what you have been reading has been enemy propaganda from our home-made Prussians.
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