Steel Tempers

In Chicago last week, for the first time since a strike was called against three big independent steel companies -- Republic, Youngstown, Inland--the basic law which is supposed to forestall strikes was finally invoked. Van A. Bittner, regional director of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, formally accused Inland Steel Co. before the Labor Board of "unfair labor practices" under the Wagner Labor Relations Act. Thus, after 70,000 men had been out of work for three weeks, the one legal question at the bottom of the strike was belatedly raised:

Under the Wagner Labor Act employers have to bargain collectively, but do they have to sign written contracts? The three steel companies asserted their willingness to bargain collectively, but refused to sign anything because, they said, a contract would be followed by demands for the closed shop and the check-off of union dues. To the unions this was just a quibble. Pickets in Cleveland last week carried placards chiding the companies for refusing to buy ink. Settlement of this unsettled question may affect many a future labor crisis.

The law does not require any agreement at all to be made--the Supreme Court and the Committee which originally sent the bill to the Senate both have said so flatly --but if an employer refused to consider any agreement, he might nevertheless be considered not to have "bargained" in any real sense as required by the law. The big question at issue is whether an employer legally "bargains" who: 1) may be willing to consider wage increases, for example, and even put them into effect without making any promises of how long they will last, or 2) may be willing to make a contract but not in writing, a procedure which is legal in many transactions since oral contracts are generally binding. The Labor Board has declared that if an understanding is reached in collective bargaining it must be embodied "in a binding agreement for a definite term." Senator Wagner said last week that the Act (by implication) required written contracts to be made. The steel strike is, however, likely to be over long before that point of law is definitely settled.

Public Opinion-- Biggest development of last week was the first appearance of signs that the public was ready to demand law & order and defend the right to work. In the Mahoning Valley around Youngstown, Ohio sheriffs' deputies made their first serious attempt to disarm pickets who held possession of roads around the steel plants. Meeting one night in Youngstown while pickets under police guard were demonstrating in the street below, the Youngstown city council by vote of 6-to-1 granted Mayor Lionel Evans full authority to increase the police force and buy as much additional equipment as he deemed necessary to preserve order in the city.

At Canton, Ohio, anti-strike sentiment quickened when the chamber of commerce polled 6,465 steel workers by mail. Three clergymen employed to count the returns reported 3,633 votes for returning to work, 216 for continuing the strike, a majority, although 2,516 ballots were cast out as palpable forgeries, not being printed on the same paper or with the same perforations as those mailed out.

In Michigan public opinion was influenced by an incident outside the steel strike proper. A union committee appointed to settle a strike of the Consumers Power Co. obtained an agreement providing a 5-c- per hour pay rise, a 40-hour week, exclusive bargaining rights for the union, one week a year vacation and two weeks' sick leave, all with pay. When the terms were reported in the power houses early one morning the workers were indignant that they had not got 10-c- an hour raise. Without warning they pulled the switches, leaving Flint, Saginaw, Bay City with their 300,000 inhabitants as well as those of the surrounding countryside without light in their homes or power in their factories. This made even Governor Frank Murphy speak to the strikers severely, and the union negotiating committee hurrying back from Washington by plane told the workers to come to their senses before the whole public grew angry at them. After a powerless day service was finally restored.

Monroe. Biggest demonstration of public opinion took place at the town of Monroe, Mich., where Newton Steel Co., a small subsidiary of Republic, had been closed by the strike. Pickets held the one road leading to the mill and refused to allow non-strikers to pass. The city election commission polled the mill workers on the question of returning to work. The returns were 856 for, 20 against. Although S.W.O.C. advised its members not to vote, this was a clear majority of the plant's 1,322 workers. Mayor Daniel A. Knaggs announced that the plant would be opened by force if necessary. With the cooperation of the local American Legion whose members undertook to patrol the city, the entire police force helped open the plant. Several hundred nonstriking workmen in automobiles with horns blowing, as well as men, women and children from the town flocked along to see the ousting of the pickets.

Beardless youngsters, grizzled laborers, husky War veterans, all toting guns, plus police in uniform, made up Mayor Knaggs' motley army. On a mile-long causeway, pickets with clubs and with old pots for helmets, accompanied by their determined womenfolk armed with sticks and rocks defied the oncoming enemy. The police chief parleyed at length with the pickets, trying to induce them to withdraw. Meanwhile Governor Murphy, who had given no encouragement to Mayor Knaggs' determination to open the plant, was on the long distance telephone urging the police and pickets not to resort to violence. The police chief gave the pickets two minutes to get out and marched back to his troops. The two minutes was stretched to two hours before the police fired a volley of tear gas shells. This had no effect except that the pickets brandished clubs in defiance. In good order the police and deputies then marched up six abreast, delivered a well-aimed volley of vomiting gas grenades before which the pickets fled.

The crowd of spectators cheered lustily. The non-strikers in their cars rattled toward the mill. The pickets rallied to shower them with rocks, but another volley of grenades put them finally to rout, sent them fleeing down the road and across an orchard, many of them abandoning their cars. Members of the crowd joined in the chase and beat up several pickets whom they caught. Several others were rescued and released by the well-organized deputies. Taken into "protective custody" was Fred Mayberry, leader of the pickets who was seated in the car of the police chief so no one would do him harm. Cars abandoned by the pickets were smashed up and shoved into the river by volunteer vigilantes. Such was the first reopening of a strike-closed steel plant.

Sixty-five miles away in Pontiac, the United Automobile Workers local union, some 15,000 strong, inflamed by the news of what had happened to their C.I.O. cousins, declared a general holiday and announced a mass march on Monroe to close the Newton steel mill. Governor Murphy advised the auto men's chief, Homer Martin, to advise the Pontiac union against it. He did, and the march was called off.

Now Homer Martin felt he must save his union's face. He called for a mass meeting at Monroe of union men from Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. Mayor Knaggs, who already had a large part of his aroused constituents under arms, appealed vociferously to Governor Murphy for militia and State police to protect his city from the expected mob. The Governor finally arranged that the meeting should be held at a State park three miles from Monroe, promised to have 350 guardsmen on hand to keep the union men out of the anti-union town and also see that the union's "right of free speech" was not abrogated.

There 10,000 strike sympathizers assembled, heard Van Bittner of S.WT.O.C. cry: "They say in Monroe they want to protect their homes. We don't want to destroy their homes. . . . But by God they'll pay for what they did at the Republic Steel Corp. We are going to make those hoodlums in Monroe just as decent as any other American citizens."

After several hours of oratory the meeting broke up peacefully. Meanwhile in Monroe, guardsmen (including a local howitzer company under Captain Brice C. Custer, great-nephew of General George A. Custer, who spent much of his early life in Monroe) stood watch. Only excitement to break the Sabbath calm was when Governor Murphy stopped in the town to attend church and visit St. Mary's College.

Governors. The growth of anti-strike sentiment in Michigan was a blow to union hopes. Strike Leader Bittner let it be known that $1,300,000 had already been spent on the steel drive. The union had won a point when Mayor Burton of Cleveland revoked Republic's permit for use of the airport from which planes had provisioned its strike-bound plants in Ohio. It hoped to have non-strikers ousted from those plants by appeals for enforcement of sanitary regulations forbidding the use of mills as living quarters. In Chicago, however, Republic got around a similar maneuver, after bringing Pullman cars into its yards for temporary housing, by securing a permit to remodel a warehouse into dwelling quarters.

Union leaders still hoped to close the operating mills by strikes shutting off their ore supplies from Michigan, their coal supplies from Pennsylvania and by having automobile workers refuse to use the steel sheets from such mills as Newton Steel. The apparent trend of public opinion in the steel towns not only embittered union men but indicated that attempts would soon be made to open other plants besides the one at Monroe. This really alarmed the Governors of the States concerned. The battle at Monroe had shown what might happen if citizens and unionists were permitted to fight it out. The prospect stirred two Governors who had previously kept their hands carefully in their pockets, into cautious action. In Indiana, Governor Clifford Townsend called meetings of steel operators and union leaders to see whether he could not settle the strike at Inland and Youngstown plants close to the Illinois line. This gesture accomplished nothing and Indiana's Governor pondered calling the Governors of Illinois, Michigan and Ohio to join him in a concerted effort.

In Ohio, Governor Martin Luther Davey called his own meeting. Chairman Tom Girdler of Republic and President Frank Purnell of Youngstown declined to attend in person but sent deputies to meet with Philip Murray and John Owens of the Steel Workers. Governor Davey proposed a compromise: let the companies sign a labor contract, and let the union promise not to demand the closed shop or checkoff. The meeting was adjourned without result but another was arranged for this week.

Meantime bitterness continued mounting. In Washington John L. Lewis erupted:

"Tom Girdler [Chairman of Republic Steel] is a heavily armed monomaniac with murderous tendencies, who has gone berserk. Potter [William C. Potter,* chairman of Manhattan's Guaranty Trust Co.] and Grace [President Eugene Grace of Bethlehem Steel] have turned him loose upon the unarmed steel workers.

"Girdler should be disarmed and restrained by the Government before he turns the steel districts into a bloody shambles and looses all the pent-up forces of human passion."

Already Mr. Lewis had broadened the steel front by calling a strike in Bethlehem Steel's Cambria Mill at Johnstown, Pa., to cooperate with a strike which Railway Brotherhoods called on a little ten-mile railroad owned by Bethlehem and connecting its plant with the Pennsylvania Railroad. Boss Lewis proceeded to broaden the front still further by calling strikes in 17 coal mines owned by Republic, Youngstown and Bethlehem. The war which the Governors hoped to settle was getting bigger and uglier by the hour, yet up to them to settle it remained. For from the White House came no sign that Franklin Roosevelt would lift a Federal finger.

*Angrily telegraphed Mr. Potter to Mr. Lewis next morning, "That part of the statement which refers to me is absolutely false."

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