The Daily Worker Newspaper, June 13, 1925, Page 9

“ Pittsburg Steel vs. Human Freedom F we would understand the big struggles in human society a knowl- edge of the economic forces is the magic key that unlocks the door of understanding. It is this knowledge which explains the mystery of mil- lions of human beings starving, hun- dreds of thousands brutalized by si- lent repression of every human emo- tion in the concrete graves of “model” prisons, the lynching of the Negro, the terrorism of the K. K. K., the pros- titution of the “independent” press in the richest country in the world where the productive capacity of the labor units comprising the industrial army of 25 million robots is relative- ly greater than any other part of the world and far greater than at any oth- er time in history and in a land which boasts of “democracy” and professes to maintain a status of “equality” for all its enormous popu- lation seattered over the face of a great. continent. The Economics of Pittsburgh. of the blunders of the superficial and uneconomic observer of the Pittsburgh district has been the in- variable approach from the angle of steel. Those who have no training as economic-students are blinded by the sensations created by the spectacular and thrilling flash and glare of the open hearth furnaces on the black screen of Pittsburgh’s night sky. They come and look and leave with only one word upon their. lips—‘Steel.” To the economist and the toiling wage slave whose lives have been spent in the smoky, murky, sweaty in- dustrial hell called “Pittsburgh,” an entirely different word epitomizes the economic foundation upon which the stage of the romance of steel has been erected. That word is “coal.” To many this may seem a_ distinction without a difference. Such is not the case. In the difference between these words lies the difference between “or- ganized labor” and.thd “open shop,” a difference so great that the politi- cal reflex of this economic situation marks the administration of the poli- tical institutions of Western Penn- sylvania as a district separate and apart from. the rest of the United States. Here the dilletante and the pseudo political economist come to gasp and marvel at the “amazing and cruel abuse of our great democratic institutions” by ignorant tools of Judge Gary and the charming Mr. Mellon, A serious investigation of the mon- strous brutalities of the courts, police and state constabulary in Western Pennsylvania will disclose the fact that there is nothing strange about it all, This treatment of the workers is absolutely necessary to keep them in that degree of subjection necessary to a smoot and profitable and capi- T the present time the annual membership drive is going on in the three western prairie provinces of the Dominion of Canada for the wheat pools, The co-operative movement in Cana- da, as in the United States, is for ob- vious reasons (large-scale mass capi- talist production and distribution, rela- tively higher living standard of skill- ed workers, backwardness of labor movement, etc.), very backward. There is only one flourishing co-opera- tive, and that is among the miners in Sydney, Nova Scotia. But there are a number of farmers’ organizations which carry on commodity marketing go-operation, . URING the world war, two bodies were created to handle the mar- talistic method of production in an industry known as a “continuous pro- cess” one, such as steel is. The only alternative to this would be the demo- cratic organization of the steel in- dustry under the ownership control and administration of the workers or- ganized into a great industrial union, provided there was no hostile po- litical institution to interfere with the workers’ administration of the in- dustry. Hence it is pure sea-foam for us to “protest” against this greater degree of oppression in the Pittsburgh district as long as the economic cause for oppression remains. The capital- ist owners of “steel” must make a profit off of the sweat and bones of the steel workers if they are to re- main capitalists and not become work- ers. The workers’ object to this and attempt to rebel. The capitalists, as capitalists, must meet this with suffi- cient force to crush it. Due to nu- merous factors this requires the ex- ercise of greater force. than in most other parts of the United States and therefore makes the political agents of the Steel Corporation look rela- tively worse than the political pup- pets of the other industrial lords of America, King Coal as a Factor. HE “flying”. of Pittsburgh as the greatest steel center on this planet was the result of the natural deposits ofa peculiarly suitable vein of coal in this locality. Without this juxta- position of coal adjacent to Pitts- burgh’s industrial canal—the Monong- ahela river, Pittsburgh would never have become a steel city nor grown to any size whatever. Therefore the key to Pittsburgh’s labor problem must be sought in the coal mining industry of this district. The beginning of mining along the banks of the “Mon” was so long ago and so modest and at a time when only pioneers and primitive men par- ticipated that a spirit of crude, pio- neer-front democracy grew up among these coal miners which manifested itself repeatedly in organization along class lines. This had become a tra- dition around Pittsburg long before the organization of the U. S. Steel cor- poration. Large numbers of the stronger miners naturally drifted into the steel industry and became the natural leaders of the workers in the evolution of that industry. Their in- clination towards industrial independ- ence manifested itself in the organ- ization of the Amalgamated Associat- ed of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers. This union met its Waterloo in the almost successful rebellion of the homestead strike when for the first time in American history workers seized and defended by force of arms a great capitalist industrial property as their own property, by right of creation. From that date armed was marketed. The war-time wheat board (Wheat Export company) remained in exist- ence till July, 1919, in the spring of which year the allied imperialists an- nounced that they would not take the 1919 crops. A post-war wheat board was therefore formed in July, 1919, to market the crop, which it did by: (a) controlling the internal price of flour, and (b) subordinating the ma- chinery of the Winnipeg grain ex- change to its rulings. The crops of 1920, 1921 and 1922, however, were handled thru the rebacanae channels of trade. ESE latter are the farmers’ co- operative organizations — the “United Grain Growers” (in Manitoba and Alberta), the Saskatchewan Co- operative Elevator company which op- erates local and terminal elevators. These either buy outright from their members or sell on commission. The great price slump in 1920 drew from the farmers a demand that the wheat board should continue to func- tion. To this the government refused to accede, and as a result the farmers were compelled to turn to voluntary efforts, forming three pools im 1924, 3 guards continually patrol all the great steel mills of the Pittsburgh district and admission of visitors is next to impossible* as an acknowledgment of the irrepressible class struggle be- tween steel manufacturer and steel worker. From that date began.a sys- tematic and ceaseless campaign to establish the “open shop” thruout this district. Elaborate espionage systems were permanently organized, thou- sands of stool pigeons employed and corruption of labor leaders on a grand scale became the customary practice in the industrial life of Pitts- burgh. Today all this is considered just as legitimate as banking the pro- fits of the steel mills. The Black Cloud of Union Miners. UT there was always the menace of a black cloud of unionism threatening the plans of the steel “open shoppers,” and this was the union coal miner. Buried in the bow- els of the earth, at his work, or living his colorless life in a numbered com- pany house under the shadow of the elaborate company store, with seldom even a movie to distract his attention from the realism of the stark class struggle, the U. M. W. of A. became his church, the local meeting his prayer meeting and unionism his re- ligion with the operator as the devil and the union organizer as his patron saint. The “brains” of steel long ago re- cognized this menace and almost co- incident with the Homestead strike H. C. Frick moved upon Fayette coun- ty and destroyed the last vestige of unionism among the Connellsville coke miners who supplied the coke necessary in the production of steel. It was not so easy, however, to de- stroy the union in the immediate vicinity of Pittsburgh. The miners could not be herded together in one factory group and the evolution of coal mining was necessarily so slow that the small operator often found it a distinct advantage to have a con- tract with the union and thus keep up compeition with the larger oper- ators who rapidly metamorphised in- to subsidiaries of all the big steel companyies, including the “independ- ents” and the Youngstown group. Steel companies who did not at least indirectly, own coal mines to feed their furnaces were quite out of style. ‘Thus Frick and the leading steel magnates most logically became the bitter foes of the union miner. S time went on this grew more serious. The union miner out of intense conviction could always be counted upon to give liberally of his money and his efforts to defend any victims of persecution in the cause of unionism and again and again struggling “craft” unions and their leaders on the precipice of dissolu- The stages of the formation of these pools were as follows: In 1921, a committee of the Saskatchewan Co- operative Elevator company reported in favor of a voluntary pool, while the “Council of Agriculture” demanded a government board. In 1922 the gov- ernment refused such a board on the ground that it was “ultra vire” of fed- eral power in “normal times,” and referred the matter to the provincial authorities. The legislatures of Al- berta and Saskatchewan immediately passed enabling legislation, but in Manitoba the bill of the Bracken (farmer) government for a board was defeated. In 1923, a drive to secure farmers’ signatures to a voluntary pool was energetically launched representing 50 per cent of the acreage of Alberta. The pool was started in October of that year and was later on able to report marketing 34 million bushels at an average price of $1.03 per bush- netroots CC? qiesuniieneeennnssnitesnstnsetnstssinnnsnnni a stn nt ee Fred H. Merrick tion were saved by the timely help of the militant Pittsburgh coal miner. In more recent years the costly strike of 1922 demonstrated even to Andrew Mellon, the ‘spiritual heir of Frick, the Southwestern Pennsylvania coal miner was a power to be reckoned with. At that time the powerful Mel- lon group entrenched in the Pitts- burgh Coal company suffered the most humiliating defeat in their en- tire career being compelled, after seg- regating themselves from their weak- er colleagues, and defiantly boasting they would never “sign,” to march up and write their names on the dotted line. The Mellons blamed _ three groups for their defeat and swore not simply to get vulgar revenge but to remove these obstacles to the “open shop” in Pittsburgh. The first of this group were the. “independents” led by John S. Bell, a millionaire banker and coal oper- ator who with a group of smaller fry signed up with the union compelling the Pittsburgh Coal company to come in. Just a few weeks ago Bell paid for his class scabbery with his finan- cial life blood. Three banks he con- trolled were found “unsound” and he quickly disgorged with large and juicy coal properties he was attempt- ing unsuccessfully to swallow. The second group were “regular” district officials of District 5, U. M. W. of A. whom the Pittsburgh Coal company claim were “unfair an@ who have been trailed for months recently by U. S. treasury agents in an effort to catch them in income tax irregu- larities.” Pittsburgh Miners’ Relief Conference. HE fourth group were at the time considered a joke—‘just a bunch of nuts.” It however, developed that this group was the most dangerous of all. Starting with a capital of $15, a handful of Pittsburgh trade union- ists conceived of the idea, while the 1922 strike was still on, of raising enough help to keep _up the fight in only a few “key” mining camps’ and by this strategy hold the mass of the miners in line under the leadership of these few important mines. This was necessary as the officials of the union were not giving out relief and the resources of the “nuts” was too limited to help many miners. Natur- ally, they picked the camps where the miners were most militant. Going from house to house in the working elass districts of Pittsburgh, facing ridicule, suspicion and abuse, “The Pittsburgh Miners’ Relief Confer- ence,” raised $15,000, in food, clothes and money. This modest sum was the stabilizing force in strategic camps of the Pittsburgh Coal com- pany in the closing days of the 1922 strike. (Continued on page 6.) The ¢ Canadian Wheat Pools 3) tesrice Spector the whole of the 1917 and 1918 crops, ed by the farmers themselves, which Means by some 85,000 farmers, repre- senting ten million acres of wheat- land. pool is based on the contract system practiced by the Danish dairy farmers and the California fruit growers. The contract the farmer signs runs for five years, till 1927. A member breaking the contract is liable to 25 cents per bushel damages. Some advantages of the pool are that the farmer does not have to sell im- mediately after harvest under press- ure of creditors and that by orderly feeding of the market there is more capitalist monopoly and subject to vig tos ay a H Hi! Hie pFe3iee ? <<