The Cordova daily times., 1919-10-24
CONDITIONS IN STEEL DISTRICTS
 ARE CONDUCIVE TO B0LSHEVISM

CnlCdSO, anu lOunQ the SreoI WOrkerS so anxious for the benefits of organ. ization, as means of protecting them selves against the autocratic power of the greatest corporation in the world that the meeting places were packed and thousands of members were signed up every day. No active opposition from the steel companies was encoun- tered-probably because of the close proximity to Chicago, where the pack ing house employees had just been suc- cessfully organized and had pledged themselves to support their brothers in the steel mills.
 Pretexts for Prohibiting Meetings
 When the committee entered the Pittsburgh district, however, an en- tirely different situation was encoun- tered. Burgesses and mayors of steel towns refused to permit meetings to be held under the auspices of the American Federation of Labor, and when, in some of the larger towns, buildings were rented for organization meetings, financial pressure was brought to bear upon the proprietors to cancel the leases. Health authori- ties suddenly discovered that the halls were unsanitary, although other meet ings were permitted in the same halls during the same week without fumi- gation or other precautions, or the building inspectors, with surprising conscientiousness, decreed that halls were unsafe which were occupied on every day in the week except that for which the committee had announced it's meeting.
 "When meetings were held in the open air they were surrounded by a swarm of detectives and company guards, accompanied by timekeepers, who made lists of all the men who at tended the meetings.
 Foster and other active workers of the committee were kept under con- stant espionage day and night and had to be continually on guard to detect company spies who tried to get into the inner circles of the committee in order to learn their plans and counsel unwise actions that would discredit the organization campaign and, if pos sible, give some ground for a cry of pro-Germanism.
 "These oppressive tactics, while un- American and contrary to the solemn pact signed by the representatives of labor and capital during the war, and embodied in the proclamation of the President, might not have aroused the steel workers, accustomed for more than a quarter of a century to the ex cesses of autocratic industrial power, had it not been that some diabolical mind or set of minds in the steel com panies, with perversity almost be- yond belief, inaugurated terroristic policy of making examples of the old est and best known employees who showed any disposition to become in iere5led in the union.
 "In the Jones x Laughlin Steel Com pany, for instance. among a number of others, was an old roller named John Flanagan, who had been a hard working, faithful employe of the com pany for thirty four years. Everybody knew Flanagan and nearly everybody loved the genial old Irishman. Those that didn't know Flanagan knew Mrs. Flanagan, who had been good neigh bor to all those who lived in the same district of the south side slums.
 "Flannagan went to one union meet ing. He was spotted by timekeeper and the next morning was given his time. He was broken-hearted, because all the big steel companies have a dead-line of forty-ive years, beyond which no skilled workman will be en- ployed, and thirty-five years for un- skilled workmen. This rule was some what relaxed while the war was on and labor was scarce, but Flanagan had seen men standing unemployed at the steel company's gates and knew that if the rule was rigidly enforced his chance was gone to earn a living in the industry to which his life had beendevoted.