Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1920-01-11

IOTcl 1Hcy HdV SccH iStohs
dreamed dream; they had awak-
cned. 1t was snatched away. Not
only that, but the steel companies,
not needing to speed up A. much as
during the war, began to discharge
many men, and the workmen heard
rumors that wages were soon to be
reduced so as to get the industry
back to prewar standards.
am trying here to show just
what happened, just what was the
psychology Of these masses OF men;
Well, they were back in the dull
mills, working IL hours = day
they had ceased to be men, and were
again mere machines. A striker
quoted me that bitter cry OF the
workers:
II work, work, work without end,
Why and for whom ! know not,
care not, ask not
am a machine" .=.
Consider. then, in all fairness
what happened next. Some time be-
fore the war ended the American
Federation of Labor had begun its
campaign to organize the steel
workers. 1t went slowly; it was
uphill business-until the war ended.
And then many disillusioned work.
ers seized upon itNas the one ray OF
hope. The employers had done moth
ing. There was no way of getting
at them. One man at Gary told me
that Judge Gary was "as distant as
God" Not a single man who has
any real ownership or any real con-
troll of things at Gary either lives
at Gary or is known to workmen at
Gary. Not one! They are not pleas
ant places to live in-the steel
towns. Most of the workmen l
asked did not even know who was
the head man" of the Illinois Steel
company; and Judge Gary-of whom
they have all heard--is 900 miles
away in New York. To these men
the steel corporation is a vast, i'm
personal. inhuman, unreachable ma
chine. ...
Fertile Soil for Wild Ideas.
So they listened eagerly to the
labor organizers, for these men told
them the same things they had
heard during the war; exactly what
President Wilson has told them
democracy, more freedom, more
life.
But the moment they began to
stir for MISUNDERSTANDING
at once found against them the old
set policies of the steel corporation
its opposition to unionism; its oppo-
sition to any change in the condi-
tons which. since they had had a
taste of freedom, seemed doubly ir-
ritating. In Pennsylvania when
they tried to hold meetings they
were suppressed by the constab-
ulary, their organizers were arrest
ed, their papers were seized. In
Gary homes were broken into and
searched. They felt the old hope
less conditions closing in around
them.
Some years ago I heard deaf and
dumb Helen Keller describe how size
tried to express herself and could
not speak, could not even make mo-
tons that conveyed any idea, could
do nothing for herself. She de-
scribed the wild fits of rage she
went into. She was suppressed, in
h!bited. Something of the same kind
goes on among masses of men who
are not allowed self-expression. A
certain number become reckless;
fall into RACES; are willing to do
anything to escape
This is fertile soil for wild ideas;
for quack remedies; for blind re-
volt. When conservative labor
unlonism is prevented the |. w. w.
leader is there with flaming doc
trine that promises much and
promises it quick; there are utopian
ideas from Russia. When open meet
lngs and frank discussion are sup
pressed, workmen begin to hold
secret meetings, make extreme de-
mands, plot violent remedies. The
ideas they hold are usually of the
vaguest and crudest. Chase them
around with few frank questions
AS / have done many times-and
you can ordinarily drive them into
a corner and show them the want
of logic, or reason, or even basis
of fact to support their beliefs. But
you rarely convince them, for what
they lack in light they make up in
heat. Flow can they get light il all
association and discussion is choked
off? And how can anything else be
expected when these groups of Wig
orous but ignorant young men are
left crowded together in miserable
places, worked to the limit of en-
durance, with no one paying any at
tention to >them-body or soui-so
long as they come to work every
day.
Can 'Deport Men; Not Ideas.
Here, then, we begin 70 get at the
bottom fact about Gary; indeed,
about our entire industrial life. 1t
is the unrest, the unhealthy condi-
tons, that cause the bolshevism
not the bolshevism that causes the
unrest. Once the process starts,
however, as disease germ makes
easy work of a debifitated human
body, the radical agitation increases
the trouble-accelerates it.
If every radical alien were de
ported from Gary tomorrow the
causes of unrest would still remain
I spent most of the year of 1918
studying similar conditions in Eu-
rope; in every country | visited the
same kind of unrest prevails-and NO
one attributes it either to aliens OF
outside agitators. One recalls, also
that exactly the same complaint was
made by the slave owners in the
south before the civil war, that thu
slaves were contented, and that all
| the trouble came from Outside
agitators' and "revolutionaries'
| InLr prou,, r,rr,.o, 1,o:1, "a,