Steel Front

To Charles Michael Schwab, 75, who became manager of Homestead Steel plant immediately after the bloody union-crushing of 1892 when ten men were killed, and who last week returned to the U. S. from taking the cure at Bad Nauheim, the current upheavals between Labor and Capital are merely "a phase."

To Edward Francis McGrady, 65, who is Franklin Roosevelt's chief practical executive in the Department of Labor and who returned last week from assuring the International Labor Conference at Geneva that the world's workingmen have a strong will to peace (TIME, June 21), the upheavals represent simply "growing pains."

Both these shipboard estimates may be correct, but to millions of citizens on the sidelines, the 1937 struggles between Labor & Capital continued to feel last week like a fierce civic and economic headache, and in the participants on both sides, last week's developments intensified a mood of bitter, uncompromising belligerence.

The Committee for Industrial Organization, backed by the Wagner Act, Boss John L. Lewis proposes to extend to all unorganized industrial workers willy-nilly, was content to leave the Motor Front quiescent for seven days. But on the Steel Front one sector reached the tense pitch of martial law.

South Chicago was quiet, but a vivid description of what a newsreel camera saw Mayor Kelly's police do to the picket army at Republic Steel's barrier month ago (see p. 11), provoked fresh cries of "murder" from the Labor camp.

Michigan was quiet. The Newton Steel Co. (subsidiary of Republic) plant re-opened by Mayor Knaggs of Monroe and his civilian army (TIME, June 21) remained unmolested by the angry union motor workers though they threatened to boycott its product.

Youngstown continued in a state of siege, and when a Saturday crowd of women strike sympathizers started heckling Sheriff Ralph Elser's police cordon at the Republic Steel plant, a riot started in which police tear gas was answered by birdshot and bullets from thousands of unionists. Two men were killed, 25 persons wounded, including Mary Heaton Vorse, liberal writer.

Johnstown, Pa. was the week's new and major trouble focus. Events here loomed large because they brought into the Steel struggle another big company, another type of local reaction to the national unrest, another glimpse of John L. Lewis' juggernaut intentions and power, and another Governor capable of positive action.

With Big Steel and virtually all the small companies in line, as a result of his personal agreement with Big Steel's Myron C. Taylor (TIME, March 15), John Lewis had planned to subdue next only three of the five big independent steel companies still outside the C.I.O. fold--Republic, Inland and Youngstown Sheet & Tube. He was going to leave Ernest Weir's National Steel and Bethlehem and its hardbitten President Eugene Grace until later. A call from the potent Railroad Brotherhoods, until now aloof from C.I.O., to back them in a little strike on a ten-mile line owned by Bethlehem and connecting its Cambria plant with the Pennsylvania's main line, changed John Lewis' mind last fortnight. He ordered the Cambria plant closed and called all his men out of Bethlehem's coal mines to enforce this order. Non-unionists, many of them Negroes, incurred cracked pates and bullet wounds trying to crash through the picket lines at the gates of the Cambria plant which continued to operate with about one-third of its 15,000 workers. When a luckless Bethlehem worker was kidnapped, stripped and turned loose naked in front of the City Hall, Johnstown's Mayor Daniel J. Shields excitedly telegraphed President Roosevelt, imploring him to have John L. Lewis withdraw "murderous elements" from his fair city. Threatening to arm 3,000 American Legionaires, the burly mayor requested aid from Pennsylvania's Governor George Earle, who dispatched a few hundred State troopers to police the Cambria picket lines. After that there was no more brawling. The troopers arrested turbulent strikers and belligerent workers impartially, even entering the plant to search for marksmen who were hurling nuts and bolts from the windows. With the arrival of Governor Earle's troopers the back-to-work movement gained appreciable momentum.

Then Mayor Shields heard that, even as John Lewis' Michigan motor workers had marched on Monroe, now 40,000 of John Lewis' Pennsylvania coal miners were going to march on Johnstown. To Franklin D. Roosevelt he sent another hysterical message: "Personally I am convinced that it [C.I.O.] is a Red Russian organization gaining prestige by the use of your name. Confidential information in my hands warns me of certain dynamite explosions now planned. . . . Warnings have been received by me that me and my family are to be destroyed. . . . Mr. President, I fought for you. . . . Now are you going to fail me by allowing this reign of terror to continue?"

When Governor Earle ordered his troopers to ease up on the picket lines, Mayor Shields threw up his hands, wiring hysterically: "Your order will have a demoralizing effect and civil war is all we can expect." To the great chagrin of this mayor of a city of 70,000, the Governor cracked back with the only logical answer to that observation: Johnstown was clapped under martial law.

With the United Mine Workers demonstration looming over the week end, Governor Earle had asked Bethlehem's President Grace to close down the Cambria Works in the interest of domestic tranquillity. Mr. Grace refused on the ground that "to close the plant would involve the admission on our part that the forces of law of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are powerless to protect our men in the exercise of their right to work. We cannot assume the grave responsibility of making such an admission." If the plant had to be closed, said Steelman Grace, it was up to the Governor to issue the order.

The Governor promptly ordered the Cambria works shut down "until further notice." Hopping mad, President Grace sent a sizzling protest to the Governor, warning that "the responsibility for the great losses which our employes, their families and this company and its stock-holders are bound to suffer . . . will be upon you and the Commonwealth." Smoke continued to belch from the stacks of the Cambria works.

With 500 troopers and highway patrolmen at his command Col. Augustine S. Janeway gave the plant's general manager until 12:30 a. m. Sunday to comply with the shut-down order. Nothing happened. Forthwith the colonel posted troopers at the gates with instructions to allow no one to enter, though anyone was free to leave. Pennsylvania R.R. was forbidden to deliver inbound shipments. After an eleven-hour siege Bethlehem officially surrendered, under "duress" and still vigorously protesting the illegality of the Governor's action. The company was allowed to keep 900 men for maintenance and minimum operations in a few key divisions.

Meantime John L. Lewis personally called off his 40,000 coal miners, Colonel Janeway disarmed Mayor Shields's vigilantes and Johnstown settled down to its first taste of martial law since the 1889 flood. C.I.O. picket lines, now unnecessary, were withdrawn. Despite Mayor Shields's cry of "usurpation," Colonel Janeway took over full police powers where they touched on the strike, sending the local police back to their beats or traffic posts. Otherwise the civil authority was not disturbed.

Arbitration Before Mediation. John Lewis' chief lieutenant for the steel war, Chairman Philip Murray of the Steel Workers' Organizing Committee, had gone to Washington early in the week to confer with Secretary of Labor Perkins on the idea of appointing a Federal mediation board. She, a Joan of Arc to many a worker, was eager to do so, but Franklin Roosevelt had wanted to give Ohio's Governor Davey a chance to bring peace locally, as Michigan's Murphy had done in the motor strikes. Meantime, while Governor Martin Davey tried and failed, Franklin Roosevelt personally and conversationally arbitrated the central issue of the steel war, unmistakably indicating the course that any mediation by his representatives would take. This was just one step short of the personal Presidential intervention which John Lewis wanted.

Sole issue between John Lewis and the independent steelmasters was whether or not they would sign an agreement. The steelmasters had no doubt an agreement could be reached, but sign they would not. At his mid-week press conference Mr. Roosevelt was asked whether refusal to sign a labor contract was a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the Wagner Act. Replied he: "If a fellow was willing to enter a verbal agreement with his workers, common sense dictates that he should be willing to sign his name to it." On the legalities of the question the President did not comment.

Having said that, President Roosevelt told Miss Perkins to go ahead and appoint a mediation board and he telephoned to the steelmasters asking them to cooperate.

Eminently satisfying to John Lewis were next developments. Federal Relief was already available for the 100,000 steelworkers affected by strikes, now Miss Perkins requested local authorities to maintain "the status quo" at all steel plants, most of which were shut or blockaded, and the three mediators whom she named were seen to be heavily weighted toward John Lewis' objectives:

Lloyd Kirkham Garrison, dean of Wisconsin University's Law School, was named the first chairman of the National Labor Relations Board in 1934. Bald, ruddy-cheeked great-grandson of the late famed Abolitionist, Lawyer Garrison is a New Deal liberal by way of the Harvard Law School.

Edward Francis McGrady, the Administration's crack Labor conciliator, was the active figure in mediating the West Coast maritime strike (TIME, Nov. 23).

Charles Phelps Taft II, son of the late Chief Justice, was no New Dealer of the Rooseveltian stripe, but a socially-conscientious progressive known to view old-fashioned strong-arm methods by management with as much alarm as he might feel about Labor's new truculence. Miss Perkins asked him to act as chairman. He accepted after scrupulously informing her that his wife owned 50 shares of Youngstown Sheet & Tube stock and 30 shares of Inland Steel. Miss Perkins said that would not disqualify him, and observers rated the Board at least 2 to 1 for Labor.

To Sign or Not To Sign, Steelmaster Girdler prepared for the Mediation Board's meetings by issuing a reminder that the point at issue was signing labor contracts. This, he swore again, he and his friends would never do, for well known reasons: 1) signed contracts would certainly be used as entering wedges for the closed shop and the check-off (company collection of union dues); and 2) the union is not a responsible party to a contract. In a letter to employes, Republic's Girdler asked:

''Would you, yourself, sign a contract witha man who clubs his neighbor over the head, kicks the postmen out of your yard, throws bricks through your parlor window and has already broken his contract with the man across the street?

"Must Republic and its men submit to the communistic dictates and terrorism of the C. I. O.? If America is to remain a free country the answer is NO."

Mr. Girdler further observed that in contrast to C. I. O.'s "reign of violence, Republic has unfailingly obeyed the laws and has made every effort to avoid violence of any kind." Another version of Republic's activities was presented last week to the Senate Post Office Committee by another participant in this week's Cleveland meetings. Testified S. W. O. C.'s Philip Murray:

"A persistent, brazen policy of intimidation, coercion and discrimination has been practiced by these four steel corporations. . . . In dozens of local communities these steel barons have created armed camps where any act of violence on the part of their agents, including wholesale murder of innocent and defenseless workers, can occur with impunity and without obligation to account to the law.

"Sheriff Elser of Mahoning County, covering Youngstown and Mayor Evans of the city have hired as special deputies all the thugs and policemen of the Republic Steel Corp. Scores of these thugs have been brought into Youngstown in the past few weeks . . . in express violation of the Federal Anti-Strike Breaking Act."

Only one good omen greeted the Federal Mediation Board as it assembled in Cleveland's Hotel Hollenden. The motif of the wallpaper in their headquarters on the tenth floor was two billing doves with another dove--promptly dubbed the "mediating dove"--hovering nearby. Assisted by James F. Dewey, another top-flight Labor Department conciliator and Ralph Lind, regional director of the National Labor Relations Board, the steel mediators spent hours on the long-distance telephone arranging for preliminary huddles. John L. Lewis hurried from Washington to lead Labor's delegation. The Board wanted to talk to Republic's Girdler alone but he refused to attend without his allies, Bethlehem's Grace, Youngstown Sheet & Tube's Frank Purnell and Wilfred Sykes, assistant to President Philip Dee Block of Inland Steel.

Feeling that the Board was biased against them, resentful of State and Federal intervention on the side of Labor, confident that they could have won a strike which was already in its fourth week, the steelmen nevertheless attended the Board's first session. They did not meet the Labor delegation, for Tom M. Girdler will not sit in the same room with John L. Lewis.

Steel Strategy? Philip Murray last week repeated Labor's charge that the four embattled, independents had joined in an "unholy alliance" to gain their end. Holy or unholy, by last week a steel-masters' alliance was obvious, with Tom Girdler as field commander and Eugene Grace as chief of staff. Driven into each other's arms by U. S. Steel's settlement, a desertion of their cause for which they have never forgiven Myron Taylor and probably never will, they were now engaged in trying to win to their side the strongest of all allies, Public Opinion. With State and Federal authorities aligned against them, their only chance of ultimate victory lay in keeping their feet planted until a "break" came their way. How this might come, or how far they would go to try to precipitate it, remained their close-lipped secret, if indeed they had any long-range strategy worked out. Perhaps they counted on forcing the Wagner Act up for amendment, hoping to fasten a responsibility clause on Labor at the same time that their own obligations were more strictly defined. Perhaps they were grimly determined to force a complete showdown with Labor, even a General Strike such as John Lewis' lieutenants were rumbling about and enough bloodshed to bring Public Opinion to its feet demanding permanent labor peace.

Ugly threats of that bloodshed loomed at week's start as Republic and Youngstown Sheet & Tube promised to reopen Tuesday morning and angry armies of picketers swarmed to the plants, determined that they should not reopen. "Stop this contemplated butchery!" cried Boss Lewis over the telephone to Madam Perkins, Governor Davey and the President. As midnight neared the President at last intervened directly, wired Tom Girdler and Frank Purnell urging them in the name of "public safety" and "a reasonable and peaceful settlement" not to reopen. Ohio's Governor had also acted. Into Mahoning (Youngstown) and Trumbull (Warren) Counties poured 4,800 National Guardsmen of Ohio with orders that: 1) closed steel plants should not open; 2) plants already operating could continue to operate free from interference except lawful picketing; 3 ) all persons not officers of the law were to be completely disarmed; 4) nonresidents should not invade the areas. To clinch the situation, Ohio's Governor shrewdly promised that the troops would stay on the job until the Federal Mediation Board had finished its work. Chairman Taft promptly called the steelmen back for another conference.

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