The Connecticut labor press., 1919-11-08
CAMOUFLAGE in INDUSTRIAL WARFARE
By MARY HEATON WORSE.


da from our homemade PruSSIanS.
One of the organizers of the steel
strike went to New Y Ork this week and
the hrst person he met was a man IN
the publishers business. lie is for
ward looking man, and friend of Or
gained labor. he SAID: w ell, hoW'S
the strike gong! Pretty bad isn't it !?
Only matter OF a short time before
everyone wall be back at work"
That night he was having DINNER with
some other labor men. 1hev all COM
mlserated with HIM over the demise of
the strike, until he wanted to know
over whose coffin they were hanging
crepe.
Next morning he went to see anothe
friend OF his, the editor of a paper.
The editor Sa1d Don't you think
roster and the other steel organizers
nave made a mistake III Identifying
themselves with the communists anu
Neds Z" The organizer sat down limp
~. COmmun1sts-keds!" he asked
They've been helping you all along,
hay emit they!" +sa1d the editor calmly
See what that man Margo1eS SAID In
ms testimony.
Thar was when the organizer realized
how well the steel company had done
ITS work. 1t has from the nrst tried to
give the impression that the strike is
nothing, a mere ripple on the surface
OF the industrial ocean. 1t has tried
TO beAttIe a strike which IN Its WIDE
sweep takes III Pueblo, and all the large
steel towns of ILLINOIS. Which carries
IN its sweep Pittsburgh and ali the
clustering towns whose tunnels belch
up smoke on the Monongahela and
Allegheny rivers. Which swept down
to the South and put out the furnaces
IN wheeling, west Virginia, and which
has blaCkened and laid tat oungstown,
and the other furnaces in ONO and al
DuHa4o, N. Y.
This steel strike has been a very
strange strike. 1here has probably been
40 81 eat strike Where the men were So
oIel4uerIy organized, winch so tar as
money is concerned is no more than a
shoe string. there was everything Oh
me other SIDE. An the night and wealth
and power OF great community match
ed against slender organization OF in
duStr4aI workers. A little thin line
scattered up and down the industry
through the steel towns. Just an once
opened without any fuss, without any
44OIse or advertisement and a stream OF
lnen Came Ill to take out their red-WhIte-
and-blue cards. hen one day little
steel district. 1t Just SAID:
Strike September r." That was all.
That was ali, but as 0OU men, more
or less, were out on strike, and that
same humber OF men stayed out on
aLrIke. FOR what few nave Seeped
BACK, others have gone out.
1he company had many weapons
which 1t cOudl use against the strikers.
here was no one weapon which was
used more to undermine the morale OF
The strike than the steady assault OF the
headlines of the papers. STRIKERS go
DaCk to work." Furnaces have all re-
sumed work." So goes the daily press.
1t has probably affected the spirits of
almost everyone who reads this, If they
lead the local papers which are ted by
the great newspapers, and rhese are all
busy IN keeping a casually agreed on
policy, sentlemen's agreement, which
IS to mute down the strike, not to play
1t up.
these people that the organizer talk
ed to were all either labor men or else
they were enthusiastic friends of labor.
Yet they had been ted on the defeat
lists dOctr1ne-''the strike was over, men
were gong back to work.
Here is some real news. The report
in the New York Times gives steel
production fallen off 20 per cent, but
as a certain part of this ~ per cent. is
produced by scab labor the steel IS no
good.
Without a conspiracy of silence the
papers would be tut of the results of
this falling off in the manufacture of
steel, but nothing is said about 1t. We
only learn through the unions that
works IN various parts of the country
are being shut down. From the struc-
tural iron workers comes the news that
they are beginning to feel the Cr1mp.
They were running full blast in con-
struCtlon work all over the country.
Now they are slowing down. Steel isn't
Deln0 made.
Steel isn't being made, but smoke is.
There is smudge that extends all over
the Allegheny valley. The great black
ch1nlneyS belch out black oily smoke
made from tar.
industrial warfare has its camouflage
as wei as real warfare. In YOungS-
town one of the union men saw at a
mill he thought had been struck the
deep glow OF pouring iron. He re-
passed the place later in the night and
ron was still being poured.
There was something unnatural IN the
| way this iron poured hour after hour.
They got a man inside the mill and this
| IS what they found-an immense glass
lube lighted with electric lights.
The noise of production, the glare
of melted iron and smoke are all be-
| ing manufactured, but steel isn't.
Here is curious thing III this strike
t is the sympathetic public that is dis
couraged-nct the organizers nor the
strikers. Whenever an organizer leaves
the strike zone he goes from an atmos-
phere of hope into one of depression.
Here is letter from an organizer
which gives at once the difficulties which
confront the strikers and their spirit:
In great shake here. The mills are
| trying to import some strlke-breakers
| but getting nowhere. We met IFS of
them at the Baltimore & Ohio station at
midnight last night. The chief of police
was there, too, assuring the strike
breakers police protection to go into
| the mills. However, we got them to
| come to our headquarters instead, for
| some af1davits as to the methods used
| to get them to come to Youngstown,
etc, and then shipped them all out of
town again to Chicago, Akron, Cleve-
land and Pittsburgh, where they came
! from A good many strike-breakers
| who have been in the mills are quitting.
The mills have lost between 500 and
900 in the last two days and o5 mill
guards struck Friday night. Three
mills which employed about $4,000 men
| before the strike now have together a
total of about 28O strike-breakers and
scabs, exclusive of bosses. The spirit