The Cordova daily times., 1919-10-24

The following art1Cle bearing on COIL ditions in the steel industry, from the pen of Basil M Manly, joint chairman of the National War Labor Board, was published in May of this year, and will be of particular interest at this time. It will account in part for the seeming anomaly of the arrival of United States troops being welcomed by the strikers in the Gary district, as re- lated in the Associated Press dis patches in the Daily Times few days ago:
 "If we have a revolution in the Unit ed States it will be produced, not by the Bolshcviks, but by the Boneheads.
 There are many different varieties of boneheads now at work in different parts of the United States doing their utmost to bring about revolution, but just at the present moment the most perniciously active boneheads are those who are dictating the labor poli- cies of the steel companies in West ern Pennsylvania.
 Ably assisting the steel companies in the preparations for a revolution are score or more of corporation-con- trolled mayors and burgesses of the so-called steel towns and host of private detectives and "strong-arm" men whose jobs are dependent on the existence of visible industrial unrest. In the steel towns free speech, free assemblage and other fundamental American rights are being crushed and trodden under foot as ruthlessly and far more efficiently than in the days of darkest czarism.
 "As a background, it is necessary to understand that more than quarter of a century ago the Carnegie Steel Company, at the end of hard-fought labor war, eliminating in the Home stead tragedy, succeeded in breaking the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, then the strongest if not the largest labor union in the United States.
 For twenty-six years, therefore, the steel companies have been in the sad dle. Superintendents, clerks and other officials of the steel companies were put into power, through tho far-reach- ing influence of the corporations, as hurgesses and mayors of the steei towns, and a system of espionage was quilt up so complete that no stranger could be in the towns for tWenty-four hours without his business being known or his purposes directly qucs- toned. Trade union organizers and othec so.talled agitators have been suppressed or deported, sometimes under cloak of farcical legal proceed ings engineered by the corporatlon- controlled officials of the steel towns, and sometimes without even color of legal sanction, by the armed guards and private detectives of the steel com panies.
 ''In 1902 an attempt was made to rebuild the American Association ol Iron and Steel Workers, but through the vacillating policy of the leaders and the ruthless power of the steel corporations the strike was crushed and the last vestige of organization Ill the mills of the United States Steel Corporation and the leading indepeh- dent steel companies was eliminated
 since then furtive attempts to or ganize the steel workers have been made, but entirely without success un iii A little more than year ago twenty-four international unions ot the American Federation of Labor joined in the creation of the national com mittee for organizing iron and steel work CTS.
 "In order that there might be no pos sible charge of disloyalty or pro-Ger- manism. Samuel Gompers himself be- came chairman of the committee, and William z. Foster, who had displayed remarkable zeal and efficiency in the organization of the packing house em- nloyes. was made secretary-treasurer. Foster has been in active charge ot the organization work in the field.
 "The committee started in South