The Spokane press. [volume] (Spokane, Wash.) 1902-1939, 1909-07-09
BY HUGH ALLEN.

BY HUGH ALLEN.
0pscial Correspondence to The Press
PITTSBURG, July 9.-Nine
years ago this coming fall ]. p.
Morgan faced Theodore Shaffer,
then president of the Amalgamaed
Association of Iron, Steel and Tin
Workers, in the Morgan offices in
New York. They were settling the
great steel strike of 1901. Morgan,
white with rage, turned to Shaffer
and said:
'I'll smash your unoin for this.
II will take me Just four years. At
the enw of that time you'll not
have a union man at work in the
mills of my combine"
That was in October cf 1901.
Thursday, July 1, Morgan made
good his word. But it had taken
him nearly nine years, instead of
four.
There isn't union man at work
toudy III Tie HILLS VI IHc otSCi u uoI,
which employs 100000 to 10000
skilled workers in making iron and
steel and tin, and turning out
bridges and skeletons of steel
buildings, and everything from a
big armor plate to the wire screens
you use in your windows in fly
time. On that morning of July 1
5000 sheet and tin mill workers
struck against the order of the
American Sheet and Tinplate Co.,
a branch of the trust. In this strike
the old Amalgamated association is
making its last stand against utter
determination in the trust mills.
This handful of 5000 Amalgam-
ated men is all that are left of the
$4,000 men that entered the first
strike against Morgan's iron hand
II they lose, there will be no more
union mills in the trust.
For the latter day policy of the
steel trust is not to bring strike
breakers into a mill and try to OPP
crate it in the face of the strikers
pickets, but to let it stand idle, and
push some nonunion plant beyond
its capacity until the strikers are
tired out and give up the struggle.
President E. M. Pargny of the
American Shet Steel Co. boasts
that his company has no union
mills but he is not trying to start
any of the IA that were tied up last
week when the Amalgamated men
walked out. These mills are stand
ing idle; while the plants from
which the union was driven years
ago are being pushed double turn
to bring the average output up as
high as possible.
1t is an easy way to break" a
strike. But before the day of trusts
the manufacturer with one or even
two or three mills, couldn't do it.
He hadn't mills enough.
For nearly nine years the Anal
gamated association has hung on
in this losing battle, giving conces-
sion after concession, rather than
fight power that even the United
States government has sometimes
seemed to fear But the end came
a month ago, when the trust re-
fused to sign another annual scale
with the Amalgamated. announced
its own scale, with a reduction of
about eight per cent in wages, and
posted a notice declaring that the
10 plants in which the union still
retained foothold would run, after
July 1, as open Shops" in which
union and nonunion men alike
could get employment.
The Amalgamated men had had
a taste of the open shop" in the
trust. open shop" mills always
bar known union men after six
months of year National Presi-
dent P. j. McArdle, as he said in
his office in the House building. in
this city, nearly sobbed as he said,
the day the 5000 devoted men came
out.
"They are loyal to a man, as I
knew they would be. And every
striker this year is hero. He
knows what he is fighting. We did
everything to avoid this, but the
trust has thrown down the gaunt-
let. We would be towards if we
didn't fight"
These 5000 men started their
fight well. Out of five sheet steel
plants and 10 tinplate plants where
the open shop order was posted,
IA have been idle since July l. In
one plant, the sheet mill at Cam
bridge, o., part of the men re-
ported for work and are operating
about a third of the mill.
The battle is not being fought in
Pittsburg. Every trust mill in this
city was nonunionized years ago.