Commonwealth and Foreign

LABOUR WAR IN AMERICA

By S. K. RATCLIFFE

NOWHERE in the world do Capital and Labour provide a parallel to the present situation in America, for the plain reason that there is no country which can be compared with the United States. Its economic structure is still unique, and the enormous Americal labour force is, of necessity, unlike all others. Under the stimulus of business recovery, and in the heightened atmosphere of Rooseveltian govern- ment, the multitudes of workers throughout the country are stirring as never before. The year 1937 has been marked by continuous conflict. It is said that the strikes have reached, in twelve months, a total of 3,000. There is not an industrial State in the Union which has not been a battlefield, more or less stricken ; and -recent incidents when brought together make a spectacle of terrific import.

It was in the autumn of 1935 that Mr. John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers, flung his challenge at the conservative heads of the American Federation of Labour, issued his call for a new industrial unionism, and formed the Committee for Industrial Organisation. The unions within this body had then a total membership of 1,200,000. They have since recruited forces with the speed and sweep of a national crusade. Mr. Lewis's purpose is to organise, upon the inclusive principle, all workers in the mass-production industries upon which the old craft unions had made little or no impression—steel, automobiles, rubber, textiles, radio, oil. His method involved an assault upon one great industry after another, the theory being that victory in any one field would have an immediate and far-reaching effect. This theory was largely vindicated by results, but even after the events of last winter the organisers can hardly have foreseen the extent of the success achieved by the C.I.O. until the opening of the steel strike in May. John Lewis is the most powerful Labour leader so far known in America. The hour and the man were matched. But he has now had a serious setback.

There have been three clearly defined stages in the crisis as it has developed since Mr. Lewis and the C.I.O. swung into action. The first was marked by exciting developments in the automobile centres, particularly the sit-down strikes in the Michigan plants of Detroit and Flint last winter. The second opened with the agreement, signed on March znd, between the United States Steel Corporation and the Union, an - event of sensational importance. Taken together with the judgement of the Supreme Court upholding the Wagner Labour Relations Act, it seemed, by bringing peace to Big Steel (for forty years the most terrible of industrial battle- fields), to contain the promise of a turn for the better all round. " Big Steel " had never before shown itself ready for co- operation with unionism. The third stage is that of open war since June between the C.I.O. and " Little Steel ", by which term is meant the four principal companies that remain outside:the greatest combine. Chief of these are the Bethlehem and the Republic Steel Companies, and the strike appears to have involved at least 70,000 workers. It is now dragging on.

The campaign is directed on the employers' side mainly by Mr. Tom Girdler, president of the Republic Company, who could not object to being described as a diehard champion of the old order. He has been entirely outspoken in declaring that in no circumstances would his company negotiate with the C.I.O., while we should certainly be justified in saying that he looks upon Mr. Myron Taylor, head of the U.S. Steel Corporation, as the commander who sold the pass. It was Mr. Taylor who put his signature to the contract under which, for six months past, Big Steel has been maintaining production on a colossal scale, at peace with the Union. About 15o steel companies in all signed agreements, accepting the C.I.O. as the bargaining authority. The Taylor decision, that is, covered roughly three-fourths of the Steel industry and over 400,000 men. If we were to look for the governing motive of this new policy on the part of the U.S. Steel Cor- poration, we should find it undoubtedly (apart from the determination to avoid disaster amidst unexampled boom con- ditions) in a belated realisation that labour organisation is the inexorable corollary of mass production and concentrated ownership, coupled with a belief that the C.I.O. must in the future be driven to accept full incorporation of the unions. But the warlike " independent " companies will have none of this. Mr. Girdler and his associates are acting upon the assumption that Steel, - which has never hitherto known a successful strike, can beat John Lewis as it has beaten all his predecessors. As a peculiarity of the present conflict, they are making the most of the singular fact that the Wagner Act, which enjoins collective bargaining, makes no mention of signed agreements. And in consequence, the Bethlehem and Republic plants, scattered over five or six States, have since May been the focal points of a campaign, the terrors of which have certainly equalled the worst recorded in the grim half-century of steel wars.

The event which, after the " sit-downs " in the motor-car factories, provoked the strongest public feeling, occurred on May 30th outside the Republic's plant in South Chicago. The strikers' case is that a crowd of about i,000, demon- strating without arms or sign of violence, was fired upon by a large force of police, ten people being killed and hundreds injured when the fumes of tear-gas created scenes of hideous panic. A Paramount film of the scene was made but was not allowed to be exhibited in any public theatre. (A fragment of the film found its way into the news-reel shown in England.) This picture was called for by the Senate Committee which, under the chairmanship of Senator La Follette, is investi- gating the infractions of civil liberty and the widespread system of espionage in factories. The La Follette Committee

found that there was no sufficient provocation for the firing, and that the treatment of the injured by the police revealed a " callous indifference to life and suffering." The affair

of South Chicago was a single incident, while several steel towns in Ohio have during the past three months existed under conditions of siege. In Massillon, Ohio, for example, the police chief testified, after a horrible affair of shooting

into a Sunday-evening crowd, that he had been pushed into action by the officers of the " deputy sheriffs " (Anglici, armed irregular constables), under threats from their self- appointed leader to take matters into their own hands. Youngstown is the vital centre of the war in Ohio. The place is almost entirely dependent upon steel, as are several adjacent towns in a group which under " Little Steel " form

an important industrial unit.

" Sure, we have the guns," said Mr. Girdler, when the strike leaders asserted that every steel plant was an arsenal of machine-guns, rifles, and tear-gas. And while the com- panies are thus prepared, against strike mobs and militant pickets, " law and order " is maintained with the aid of armed deputy-sheriffs, steadily multiplied in numbers, levies of the American Legion, and, when the Governor deems it necessary,

detachments of the State militia or National Guard. Inci- dentally it may be noted that the State Governors in the war area have been put into a position of excessive difficulty. Theirs is the responsibility for keeping the peace and maintaining the

public services. It would seem to be almost impossible for them to act without causing offence to one side, or to both. Nor can President Roosevelt escape condemnation from both parties. They are organised in battle array, and the multip!e revival of Vigilantism is the gravest symptom of the conflict.

Youngstown has produced what is perhaps the most revealing document in this connexion. Representatives of citizens' protective societies met for the purpose of drawing up a pro- gramme of anti-union action, or as they put in, " to preserve the inalienable constitutional right to work without molestation." A manifesto, " We protest," was published throughout the country, in the form of a full-page advertisement. It contained the text of a resolution of the Citizens' National Committee

" We feel it is our patriotic duty to perfect a nation-wide organisa- tion whose function it shall be to restore and protect those con- stitutional rights that have been taken from American citizens by certain unworthy officials." ("Officials " here may be understood to mean legislators, and high executive and judicial authorities.) Here, that is, we have a call in the plainest terms to extra-legal action by bands of citizens.