The Little Steel Strike of 1937

This dissertation has been Mic 61-2851 microfilmed exactly as received SOFCHALK, Donald Gene. THE LITTLE STEEL STRIKE OF 1937. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1961 History, modem ; n University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE LITTLE STEEL STRIKE OF 1937 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Donald Gene Sofchalk, B. A., M. A. ***** The Ohio State University 1961 Approved by Adviser Department of History PREFACE On Sunday, May 30, 1937, a crowd of strikers and sympathizers marched toward the South Chicago plant of the Republic Steel Corpora tion. The strikers came abreast a line of two hundred Chicago police, a scuffle ensued, and the police opened fire with tear gas and revolvers. Within minutes, ten people were dead or critically injured and scores wounded. This sanguinary incident, which came to be known as the "Memorial Day Massacre," grew out of a strike called by the Steel Workers Or&soizing Committee of the CIO against the so-called Little Steel companies. Two months previously the U. S. Steel Corporation, traditional "citadel of the open shop," had come to terms with SWOC, but several independent steel firms had refused to recognize the new union. Nego tiations, never really under way, had broken down, and SWOC had issued a strike call affecting about eighty thousand workers in the plants of Republic, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company, and Inland Steel Company in six states. The Memorial Day clash, occurring only a few days after the * strike began, epitomized and undoubtedly intensified the atmosphere of mutual hostility which characterized the strike. On the issue which had caused it, both sides remained adamant, the companies con tending that they did not have to conclude a contract with any labor organization, SWOC maintaining that it would settle for nothing less than a signed contract. Meanwhile, tempers flared and tensions mounted. John L. Lewis fulminated in no uncertain terms against Republic Steel. ii Tom M. Girdler, Chairman of Republic and President of the American Iron and Steel Institute, asked by newsmen if he had ever met Mr. Lewis, replied laconically, "No. and I hope to God I never do." On some of the picket lines, sullen strikers armed with baseball bats faced even more heavily armed company police. In one area, company planes flying food into the plants became targets for union "snipers." When this industrial warfare finally ended, seventeen persons were dead and hundreds wounded as a direct result of it. During the generation when Americans were hectically engaged in creating a modern industrial economy, industrial warfare became almost endemic to the climate of labor-management relations which prevailed in many segments of the economy. To recall the violent and chaotic state of those relations, one need mention only a few of the more famous strikes, such as Homestead, Pullman, and Ludlow. Insofar as the Little Steel strike was permeated with intense bitterness and fought out through a series of bloody clashes between police and strikers, it was essentially no different from these earlier strikes. For example, many of the general circumstances of the steel walkout of 1937 were quite similar to those of the Homestead strike of 1892: both strikes involved employers who were so uncompromisingly opposed to unionism that they stood fully prepared to use drastic means in fighting it; both resulted in extreme violence and extensive loss of life; and both were terminated in favor of management after the intervention of mili tary force. Yet neither Little Steel nor SWOC won any immediate advantages from the costly encounter. Not only did SWOC fail to attain the specific iii objective for which it had struck, but the defeat in steel was a temporary setback for the whole CIO movement. On the side of the companies, they would be forced within four years to recognize the union as exclusive bargaining agent for all their employees. In retrospect, the main significance of the strike lies in this: it was the most ambitious and--along with that of the Ford Motor Company— the most successful attempt to resist the spread of the CIO campaign for indus trial unionism; coming as the climax of the unprecedented wave of strikes which engulfed the nation in the spring and summer of 1937, it remains as one of the outstanding examples of the numerous eruptions of indus trial strife which occurred during the New Deal period. But, though the Little Steel strike was conducted with all the traditional weapons of unrestricted industrial warfare, it nevertheless presaged the beginning of a new approach to labor problems and relations, an era in which such techniques would no longer be of any major importance. Since 1937 few if any strikes have involved a degree of violence comparable to that which accompanied the Litlle Steel conflict, and, in the main, labor disputes have been resolved across the bargaining table rather than on the picket lines. The primary purpose of this study is to present a thorough historical narrative of the strike, beginning with the SWOC organizing drive which immediately preceded the actual walkout in 1937, and ending with a discussion of the consequences of the strikers collapse on SWOC and the CIO in general. Another purpose is to examine the Little Steel executives* intense opposition toward trade unionism and to show the extent to which it was a factor in the defeat of SWOC in the strike. iv This contest between Little Steel and the CIO engendered considerable interest on the part of the public. Consequently, there will also be an attempt to analyze public attitudes and to indicate how the strike was affected by them. No account of this strike would be complete without consideration of the leading personalities on both sides. Philip Murray, as Chairman of SWOC, was the foremost union leader directly involved; though mild in manner and gentle in appearance, he was an exceptionally capable and energetic labor leader who had come to head up the steel union after years of experience in the United Mine Workers. Constantly in the background, however, was the towering presence of John L. Lewis, the pre-eminent figure on the American labor scene. On the side of management were Eugene Grace, president of Bethlehem Steel, and, more importantly, Tom M. Girdler, the fiercely independent chief of Republic Steel, his entire career steeped in a tradition of consistent anti unionism. Of the various individuals, Girdler and Lewis had the most at stake— the former his position as leader of the surviving open shop forces, and for the latter the whole future of the CIO with which his name had come to be synonomous. The narrative of events presented in this dissertation is based largely on factual materials obtained from government documents and newspaper accounts of the strike itself. But there also exists a mass of conflicting accusations, highly prejudiced opinions, and not a few sheer propagandistic distortions. With regard to many aspects of the strike, it has been possible to state the facts and circumstances and let them speak for themselves. In some other instances, however, V especially in interpreting events and in seeking to discover wherein lay the major responsibility for the recurrent outbreaks of violence, the writer has had no alternative except to exercise his own best Judgment. Vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Preface. ............................................ ii Chapter I. Introduction ................................... 1 II. The Antiunion Tradition in Little Steel.......... 13 III. Negotiations and Events Leading up to the Strike .. 61 IV. Little Steel's Campaign to Mold Public Opinion .... 106 V. The Attitude of the General Public Toward the Strike . 120 VI. The First Stage of the Strike................... 137 VII. The Back-to-Work Movement....................... 204 VIII. Public Opinion During the Strike ................. 264 IX. Government Intervention......................... 302 X. The End of the Strike.......................... 356 XI. Conclusion................................... 373 Bibliography ........................................... 402 vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The highly tense state of affairs in the Little Steel communities in the summer of 1937 was by no means novel. It was in part the legacy of recurrent conditions and consistent policies that can be traced from the almost legendary Homestead strike through the great strike of 1919 and into the early 1930*s. The periodic eruptions of industrial strife and violence were simply intensifications of the "state of latent war" which prevailed in the steel industry generally.^ The "war" was largely a result of the inveterate denial of industrial democracy by the steel magnates. During the 1880*s there existed in the iron and steel industry a relatively strong trade union movement represented by the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, a craft union that concen trated almost exclusively on the skilled workers. But the events at Homestead catapulted the union into a decline from which it never really recovered. At the same time, a precedent was set for a pattern of oppo sition to unionism and intermittent outbreaks of violence that was to plague the steel industry and its employees for the next half century. In the summer of 1892 the Amalgamated went on strike at the large Homestead works of the Carnegie Steel Company, situated just south of Pittsburgh. Although the men had been called out because of a cut in ^ h e Commission of Inquiry, The Interchurch World Movement, Report on the Steel Strike of 1919 (New York, 1920), 4. 2 «rages, it soon became apparent that at stake «ras the very existence of the Amalgamated in the Carnegie mills. As both sides prepared to outmaneuver the other, the situation took on the dimensions of an Armageddon bet«reen capital and labor.

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