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.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 7, 1919
Buffalo, New York – Steel Strikers Standing Firm as Gibraltar
From Buffalo Labor Journal of October 2, 1919:
STEEL STRIKERS HOLDING FIRMLY
—–
Propaganda in Sunday Papers Fails in Desired Effect
-Gunmen Modest in Their Retirement
-Big Mill and the Assessors
A flood of printer’s ink and a mountain of good white paper was utterly wasted in the campaign of propaganda which the barons of the Steel Trust and their affiliations poured forth in last Sunday’s papers of this good, old America of ours.
According to the writings of the lads employed by Kaiser Gary and his entourage, the gates of the big mills would be choked on Monday morning with the men, eager to bend their backs to the crack of the driver’s whip
Their fond anticipations failed to realize and there was no response to the weasel voice of the hired scribblers. The men are standing as firm as the rock of Old Gibraltar.
None went back-divel the wan.
In all this pyrotechnical display of the propagandists we fail to catch the sonorous voice of our old friend, False Alarm Donner. In the first week of the strike Donner could be heard with his discordant bray over the thunderous voices of both master and men. That lad made a high mark for himself as the Grand Claimant of All. He spouted interviews like a Texan oil gusher.
They have put the soft pedal on Donner and the atmosphere no longer vibrates with his amazing prognostications.
So much for friend Donner; now for the big mill with its company houses, its Moses Taylor hospital, its Smokes Creek and its favored assessments. All are interwoven closely with its desire for welfare work and its Oh! Be Joyful efforts at uplifting.
———-
———-