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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 20, 1919
Mary Heaton Vorse on Organizing Steel Workers in Youngstown
From the Pittsburg [Kansas] Workers Chronicle of December 19, 1919:
THEIR WEAPONS AND OURS.
—–(By Mary Heaton Vorse.)
Not long ago a friend of mine came to Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania] who wanted to know about the strike. He wanted me to tell him first of all what had impressed me most. My answer was the answer that anyone who had watched the strike must have given. What had impressed me the most was the courage of the men; what had impressed me the most was their endurance; what had impressed me most was their uncomplaining patience.
It had seemed almost a miracle to me that men of a dozen or more nationalities and half a dozen states, separated into isolated communities, should one fine day have struck altogether, 350,000 strong.
The longer I stayed and the more knew about the strike, the more in credible did the strike seem, for as I went from town to town staying a few days now in one community and now in another, I realized how little organization they had before the strike started.
Take Youngstown for instance. No one had ever organized Youngstown and everyone said that Youngstown never could be organized.
In Youngstown and East Youngstown and the nineteen small communities surrounding it where steel is made, there are about 70,000 steel workers. The first large meeting ever held of the National Committe occurred in January of this year. Between that time and September 22 there was never a larger force of organizers in this whole district than six. Six men organized Youngstown and the surrounding country. Six men and that was all.
