Ohio History Journal

JAMES L. BAUGHMAN

 

Classes and Company Towns:

Legends of the 1937

Little Steel Strike

Much of the scholarship on organized labor in the 1930s remains

burdened by the polemics of the decade. Historians have often only

refined what writers for the union had composed for mass consumption

a few decades earlier. "A complex history, full of intricate relation-

ships," David Brody writes, has almost uniformly been presented as a

simple struggle between workers and managers.¹ In doing so, labor

scholars have neglected the complexities of community life and the

interplay of social forces within the middle-sized towns and cities

that commonly served as the setting for industrial strife in the Depres-

sion era. Labor historians have frequently dismissed as servants of the

old, managerial order those community groups, local elites and police

functionaries not firmly committed to the union cause.²

A reexamination of events in three Ohio cities during the 1937

"Little Steel" strike offers a different perspective on the relationship

of the general community to the bitter month-long labor management

conflict.³ Most historians of this dispute have argued that the Com-

mittee for Industrial Organization's (CIO) defeat in this important

strike flowed from the solid opposition to the union by local news-

 

James L. Baughman is a graduate student in History at Columbia University.

 

1. David Brody, "Labor and the Great Depression: The Interpretative Prospects,"

Labor History, XIII (Spring 1972), 239, 244; Robert H. Zeiger, "Workers and Scholars:

Recent Trends in American Labor Historiography," Labor History, XIII (Spring 1972),

245-66.

2. See, for example, Sidney Fine, Sit-Down, the General Motors Strike of 1936-1937

(Ann Arbor, 1969).

3. No comprehensive version of the strike has been published. The most complete

account is Donald G. Sofchalk, "The Little Steel Strike of 1937" (Ph.D. dissertation,

Ohio State University, 1961). Subsequent works have relied heavily upon the Sofchalk

dissertation or, like Sofchalk, referred almost exclusively to the hearings of the "La

Follette Committee," U.S., Senate, Committee on Education and Labor, Hearings

Persuant to S. R. 266, 75th Congress, 76th Congress, pts. 23-43 (hereafter cited as

Hearings), and The "Little Steel" Strike and Citizens' Committees, Senate Report No.

151, 77th Congress, 1st session, 1941. Other recent efforts include Michael Speer, "The

'Little Steel' Strike: Conflict for Control," Ohio History, LXXVIII (Autumn 1969),

273-87, and Irving Bernstein, The Turbulent Years, A  History of the American

Worker 1933-1941 (Boston, 1969), 478ff.

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176                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

papers, police, business leaders and city officials, all solidly backed, if

not manipulated, by the steel corporations that so thoroughly dominated

the economic life of these communities. In fact, this interpretation

overstates the local opposition to the new unions while it understates

the many divisions among the steel workers themselves. For several

weeks during the walkout both city officials and middle-class opinion

leaders displayed either goodwill or neutrality toward strikes organized

by the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC). When anti-

union activity did increase, it assumed simple, rather than conspira-

torial forms. Finally, by the conflict's end, demoralization and inter-

nal division, not solidarity, characterized the steel workers of the region.

After unprecedented advances in the rubber, steel and automobile

industries in the early months of 1937, the CI0 faced four "Little

Steel" companies: Republic, Inland, Bethlehem and Youngstown Sheet

and Tube. Unlike some 140 other steel concerns-including industry

leader U.S. Steel-Little Steel refused to sign a CIO contract. Rank and

file pressure for a strike against these companies mounted all through

the spring. Finally on May 26, 1937, SWOC President Philip Murray

relented and ordered a strike against three of the Little Steel companies:

Inland, Republic and Youngstown Sheet and Tube, the last two of

which operated their major production facilities in Ohio. Eight thousand

workers supported the strike call in Canton and Warren, and about

twenty thousand walked off the job in Youngstown. Two weeks later

SWOC struck Bethlehem Steel as well. By June 11 the number of

striking workers reached ninety thousand in an arc stretching from

Chicago to Buffalo. America confronted its first major steel strike

since 1919.4

The union never came close to victory. Despite the mediation

efforts of local leaders, state governors and President Franklin Roose-

velt, officials of Little Steel refused to meet personally with CIO repre-

sentatives and remained adamantly opposed to a written agreement.

 

4. Murray sanctioned the walkout only after wildcat strikes in Canton and Massillon

forced his hand. "Interview with Harry Wines," Oral History Project, Department of

Labor Studies, Pennsylvania State University (hereafter cited as PSOHC), 1968,

11; "Interview with John S. Johns," PSOHC, 1970, 4; "The Reminiscences of Lee

Pressman," Oral History Collection of Columbia University (hereafter cited as COHC),

1957, pt. 2, 193; Hearings, pt. 27, 11318. Production ceased and management staffed

the plants with non-union maintenance crews except at a small Canton facility and at

the Warren works, where Republic tried to maintain operations and keep its eight open

hearth furnaces burning. Estimates of the number of workers remaining inside the War-

ren works varied from one hundred to just over three thousand (out of a total of six

thousand). The only data available are from newspaper accounts, company and union

claims. See New York Herald-Tribune, May 27, 1937; Warren Tribune Chronicle,

May 27, June 1, 1937; New York Times, May 28, 29, June 1, 1937; Steel Labor,

June 2, 1937, 1; Life, June 14, 1937, 30; Senate, Steel Strike, 203; Hearings, pt. 31,

12695-96.

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The Little Steel Strike                                          177

Neither side would agree to National Labor Relations Board elec- tions to test union sentiment among the workers. Instead each faction hoped to outlast the other. This strategy proved disastrous for SWOC, since it lacked the resources to support a large body of strikers over a long period. Worker morale weakened. Seizing upon what he con- sidered to be a popular wave of anti-union opinion, Ohio Governor Martin L. Davey moved against the CIO in late June. He first sent the Ohio National Guard into the strike zones and then commanded it to break up union efforts to keep the factories inoperative. After four weeks once confident SWOC members and ever-available non-SWOC laborers began filing back into the mills. The managers of Little Steel had halted what had been an impressive advance for CIO organization in the nation's basic industries. "For the moment," wrote Charles and Mary Beard, "the tide stood still." A CIO executive recalled that "We had been checked in Little Steel, in what was our most important and vital role." Some critics of the new union

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178                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

declared that the initials CIO stood for "Collapsed in Ohio."⁵

A long and violent strike, Little Steel left a bitter aftertaste. Par-

tisan views of the turmoil-the stuff of legends-became accepted truths.

Over forty years after the event, the 1937 walkout still evokes vivid

memories of class warfare: "citizens' " vigilante committees, the com-

pany airlift of supplies to a mill works encircled by pickets, two

bloody riots at plant gates in Youngstown, the torture of non-union

"scab" employees, and the deaths of six strikers in Ohio and ten in

Chicago.⁶

Why did the CIO       lose? Quickly writers sympathetic to unionism,

such as Mary Heaton Vorse, J. Raymond Walsh and Edward Levinson,

offered one set of answers.⁷ As might be expected much of the blame

fell on the shoulders of Little Steel management. Republic Steel

Chairman Tom M. Girdler, the public spokesman for Little Steel and

intractable union foe, received the harshest criticism.⁸ But these

reporters looked elsewhere for the real anti-union villains.

Most contemporary journalists, government investigators and the

labor historians who followed them have stressed the role of local

"third parties" as critical determinants of the strike's outcome. Thus,

public officials in the strike-bound towns have been made ready targets,

as have the special anti-SWOC "citizens' committees" and "back-to-

work" movements. Both coalitions have been described as the imagina-

tive creations of management. The La Follette Committee, which held

extensive hearings on the strike in 1938, argued in an interim report

that the newly enacted Wagner Act had "started a great hunt by the

first party, the industrialist, for a third party to do to labor on indus-

try's behalf what the individual employer himself could no longer do

 

 

 

5. Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, America in Midpassage (2 vols, New York,

1939), II, 537; "The Reminiscences of John Brophy," COHC, 1955, 811-12; speech,

David J. McDonald, First Ohio CIO Convention, February 26-27, 1938, CIO Secre-

tary-Treasurer's Office Collection, Department of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State

University, Box 59.

6. On the Chicago Memorial Day Massacre, see Donald G. Sofchalk, "The Chicago

Memorial Day Massacre: An Episode of Mass Action," Labor History, VI (Winter

1965), 7-19; Staughton Lynd, "Personal Histories of the Early CIO," Radical America,

VI (May-June 1971), 59-61. In Ohio, two died in Massillon, two in Youngstown, one

in Canton and one in Cleveland.

7. Mary Heaton Vorse, Labor's New Millions (New York, 1938); J. Raymond

Walsh, C. I. 0., Industrial Unionism in Action (New York, 1938); Edward Levinson,

Labor on the March (New York, 1938).

8. On Girdler, see Tom M. Girdler, Bootstraps: The Autobiography of Tom M.

Girdler (New York, 1943); Philip L. Cook, "Tom Girdler and the Labor Policies of Re-

public Steel Corporation," Social Science, XLII (January 1967), 21-30; Louis Leotta,

Jr., "Republic Steel Corporation in the Steel Strike of 1937" (M. A. thesis, Columbia

University, 1960).

• 4
 

The Little Steel Strike                                               179

 

legally."⁹ Twenty-eight years later historian Jerold Auerbach accepted

much of the La Follette panel's analysis, writing that "Citizens' com-

mittees were particularly effective in the cities affected" by the strike,

since "a single industry dominated the economic life of the com-

munity."¹⁰ In concert with local newspapers and public officials subser-

vient to the corporations, these citizens' committees mobilized anti-

union sentiment and embraced back-to-work movements in an at-

mosphere of vigilantism and hysteria.

Observers sympathetic to the union predicated this interpretation on

a literary and sociological conception of small town society common to

well educated liberals in the 1930s. In the 1920s Sinclair Lewis had

offered Americans a portrait of Midwestern communities where the

middle classes set rigid bounds for social conduct, and in cooperation

with large, absentee-owned businesses, thoroughly dominated the polit-

ical and economic life of the community. In their widely read and re-

spected studies of Muncie, Indiana, Robert and Helen Lynd drew upon

social science to complement the literary insights of Lewis.11 The La

Follette Committee accepted this view as well. Indeed, its investigation

of six communities involved in the Little Steel Strike rendered them

interchangeable. Writing in 1941, a former committee investigator,

Louis G. Silverberg, offered the stereotypical description of the Little

Steel cities:

The life of the community is largely dependent upon a single or several

corporations. Employing interests display unusual cohesiveness, and the

middle-class group of professions and small businessmen are as dependent

upon the corporate overlord of the economic fief as the workers on the payroll.

To strike a blow at the business interest is to attack the entire economic

structure of the community.12

 

Corporate use of a new and sophisticated anti-union strategy offered

further proof of the community model to which Silverberg and others

 

 

9. U. S., Senate, Committee on Education and Labor, Interim Report, Report No. 46,

Pt. 4, 75th Congress, 3rd session, 1938, 2, 3, cited in Jerold S. Auerbach, Labor and

Liberty: The La Follette Committee and the New Deal (Indianapolis, 1966), 136-37.

10. Ibid., 133.

11. Sinclair Lewis, Main Street (New York, 1920); Idem., Babbitt (New York, 1922);

Mark Schorer, Sinclair Lewis, An American Life (New York, 1961), 352-56; Robert S.

Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown (New York, 1929); Idem., Middletown in

Transition (New York, 1937). The Lynds are taken to task in Maurice R. Stein, The

Eclipse of Community; An Interpretation of American Studies, 2nd ed. (Princeton,

1972), chapter 2.

12. Louis G. Silverberg, "Citizens' Committees: Their Role in Industrial Conflicts,"

Public Opinion Quarterly, V (March 1941), 18 and passim. See also Levinson, "Six

Months After the Strike," Survey Graphic, XXIV (November 1937), 566; Nation (July

3, 1937), 5; Senate, Steel Strike, 7.

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180                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

referred. In 1936 Remington Rand devised the "Mohawk Valley

Formula" to break an American Federation of Labor strike at its Illion,

New York, factory. Soon thereafter, the U.S. Chamber of Com-

merce and National Association of Manufacturers promoted this tactic,

which the NLRB described and condemned in a March 1937 decision.

The Mohawk Valley, or Rand Formula, relied heavily upon the manip-

ulation of public opinion through the use of newspapers and radio,

the organization of mass meetings, the recruitment of "loyal" em-

ployees and the establishment of citizens' committees, all designed to

demoralize workers and break the strike. Those who argued for the

efficacy of the Mohawk Valley Formula presupposed the captive town

model Silverberg and others described, one in which public opinion

could be molded at will by the dominant economic and social powers

of the community.13

Although the Mohawk Valley Formula worked well in Illion, its

general applicability is suspect. Recent social science work in commu-

nity power structure fails to offer the sort of consensus prevalent in

the 1930s about the "company town" and its ties to elite action.¹⁴ Where

such systems did apparently operate in 1936-1937, as at Flint, Michigan,

or Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, the CIO nevertheless scored stunning vic-

 

 

13. National Labor Relations Board, "Remington Rand Decision," Press Release,

March 15, 1937, and "In the Matter of Remington Rand, Inc ...," Case no. C-145,

decided March 13, 1937, Decisions and Orders, II, 664-66; New York Times, June 4,

6, 1937; Youngstown Vindicator, June 6, 1937; Steel Labor, June 2, 1937, 1; Nation,

July 3, 1937, 5; Alexander H. Frey, "What's Behind the Strikes?" Harper's Monthly,

CLXXXVI (January 1938), !68-78; Labor Research Association, Labor Fact Book (New

York, 1938), 114-16; C. L. Sulzberger, Sit Down with John L. Lewis (New York,

1938), 116; Levinson,. Labor, 208, 219; Walsh, C. I. 0., 227-28; Seldon Menefee,

"Propaganda and Symbol Manipulation," Industrial Conflict: A Psychological Interpre-

tation, eds. George W. Hartmann and Theodore Newcomb (New York, 1939), 485, 495-

96; Robert R. R. Brooks, As Steel Goes . . . Unionism in a Basic Industry (New Haven,

1940), 138; Wilbert E. Moore, Industrial Relations and the Social Order (New York,

1946), 418-20; John Steuben, Strike Strategy (New York, 1950), 230-77; Daniel Bell,

The End of Ideology; on the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (Glencoe,

1960), 196-97; Bernstein, Turbulent Years, 478-79; John D. Lages, "The CIO-SWOC

Attempt to Organize the Steel Industry, 1936-1942: A Restatement and Economic

Analysis" (Ph.D. dissertation, Iowa State University, 1967), 39-44, 47.

14. John Walton, "Substance and Artifact: The Current Status of Research on Com-

munity Power Structure," American Journal of Sociology, LXXII (January 1966),

430-38; Peter Rossi, "Power and Community Structure," Midwest Journal of Political

Science, IV (November 1960), 390-401; Richard L. Simpson, "Sociology of the Com-

munity: Current Status and Prospects," Rural Sociology, XXX (June 1965), 127-49.

The extent of the smaller community's role in labor relations and its relative insularity

from outside forces are outlined in Milton Derber, "A Small Community's Impact on

Labor Relations," Industrial Relations, IV (February 1965), 27-41; Neil W. Chamberlain,

Social Responsibility and Strikes (New York, 1953), 112, 130-36. See also Clark Kerr and

Abraham Siegel, "The Interindustry Propensity to Strike--An International Comparison,"

Industrial Conflict, eds. Arthur Kornhauser, et al. (New York, 1954), 189-212.

• 6
 

The Little Steel Strike                                              181

 

tories. In Ohio's Little Steel communities the strikers lost, but their

defeat came as a result of social factors far more complex than those

assumed in the application of the Mohawk Valley Formula. These

distinctions may mercilessly confuse the reader. They are more likely

to upset the polemicist.

A close examination of events in Canton, Warren and Youngstown

indicates that local business and governmental leaders proved far from

uniformly hostile to the strikers. During the 1937 dispute SWOC did

not obtain bountiful aid and sympathy from the local middle classes,

but the business and professional people in these three towns hardly

performed as anti-union Babbitts or pliable instruments in a company-

inspired implementation of the Mohawk Valley Formula.

During the first week of the strike local SWOC leaders in Warren

reported near-uniform success in raising relief funds and securing pro-

visions from area merchants. In Youngstown lending companies ex-

tended payment deadlines on new cars for four weeks from the strike's

commencement.¹⁵ Local merchants and finance companies eventually

terminated such lines of credit, but their decision arose out of economic

necessity rather than antipathy for SWOC. A long strike hurt business.

As the dispute wore on, it made little sense to subsidize the union

cause. Although retailers had extended payment deadlines, sales tax

receipts (which included food and clothing) for the three counties fell

sharply during the first two weeks of the strike. Comparing receipts for

the same period in 1936, the state government reported an 11.2

percent drop in sales tax revenues in Mahoning County (Youngstown),

a 17.4 percent decline in Stark County (Canton), and a 30.1 percent

decrease in Trumbull County (Warren).¹⁶ Officials in Warren ordered

downtown merchants to close earlier in the evening in the interests

of public safety. By mid-June the Christian Science Monitor reported

business "at a standstill" in Youngstown. Certainly local businessmen

possessed reasons for wishing the strike's end, an anxiousness based

chiefly on an aversion to hard times.¹⁷

Each town did witness the formation of anti-CIO law and order

 

15. Ralph Norman Mould, "Steel Strike Town," Christian Century (June 23, 1937),

806; "Work sheet," June 28, 1937, Captain Carl W. Postan, the Papers of the Adjutant

General, Ohio National Guard, correspondence pertaining to Steel Strike, Youngstown

and Canton, 1937, Ohio Historical Society (hereafter, Steel Strike File), Box 1, Folder

13.

16. Figures are for a two-week period ending June 12, in Tribune Chronicle, June

26, 1937. See also Dun and Bradstreet, Marketing and Research Service, Retail Sales

Trends 1935-1944. A Survey for National Retail Dry Goods Association, V (November

1946). Retail Sales and Unweighted Indexes of Sales, data for Warren and Youngstown,

1428-29, 1434-35.

17. Christian Science Monitor, June 14, 1937; Warren Tribune Chronicle, June 4, 1937;

Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 26, 1937.

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182                                             OHIO HISTORY

"citizens' committees." Although union partisans have argued that these groups played a key role in promoting the failure of the strike, they in fact proved politically impotent. Canton and Warren residents started law and order groups in early June, while Youngstown's com- mittee organized about a week later. The Canton organization enjoyed the greatest success. On the tenth day of the strike, T. K. Harris, the president of a local public relations firm, oversaw the founding of the Canton Citizen's Law and Order League. The printed admission ticket to a June 9 meeting described the session as a "Civic meeting of Business and Professional Men and Women." An occupational breakdown of the League's most active members included fifteen at- torneys, six employees of Harris' firm, five insurance agents, two min- isters, and an assortment of real estate agents, salesmen and manu- facturers.18     18. Senate, Steel Strike, 222-23; Hearings, pt. 25, 10589-90, pt. 32, 13169: Canton Repository, June 10, 1937.

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The Little Steel Strike                                              183

 

About four hundred persons attended the June 9 event, listened to

condemnations of SWOC and to accounts of strike violence for which

the union was held entirely responsible. Harris indignantly elaborated

on the vandalism at the homes of non-union employees. These inci-

dents, he argued, arose directly from the character of the CIO, "a law-

less organization" which had "put fear into the hearts of helpless

wives and children" of non-union workers. The Reverend Pearl H.

Welshimer, leader of an      evangelical Protestant church with "the

world's largest Sunday school," also spoke out against SWOC. Wel-

shimer declared that "only a small minority" belonged to the CIO

affiliate. After damning SWOC for its violent deeds, he demanded that

a special citizen police force be created to preserve order.¹⁹

The depth of support for the law and order group in Warren never

matched that for Harris' Canton society. Officially organized at the same

time as the Canton committee, the Warren "John Q. Public League"

conducted public meetings and subscription drives without comparable

endorsements. Hardly any residents rallied to its banner and money

raising campaigns drew few donors and miniscule funds. Only a few

attended league meetings in and around Warren. Although the associa-

tion's chairman told farmers in Howland Corners of "the first stages of

the Russian Revolution" down by the Mahoning River, Harry Wines,

leader of the Warren SWOC, expressed no fear of the League.²⁰

As in Warren the Youngstown committee attracted few members.

Not established until June 18, three weeks after the strike began,

the Youngstown league confined its activities to placing pro-manage-

ment newspaper advertisements that failed to create a mass following.

In a city of 150,000 residents, only thirty people contributed to the

Youngstown law and order league fund. The group had little impact on

the course of the strike.²¹

The organized anti-CIO groups revealed their lack of influence

when public officials in Warren and Canton virtually ignored them.

There as elsewhere the crucial issue of the strike involved the right of

SWOC pickets to patrol plant gates and keep non-union workers from

 

19. Hearings, pt. 32, 13168-69; Cleveland Press, June 12, 1937. At least two middle-

class leaders, one an attorney for the Pennsylvania Railroad, refused to join the

Canton League once its anti-unionism became evident, Hearings, pt. 32, 13067; Walsh,

C. I. 0., 85.

20. Originally called the "Warren Law and Order League," for an unknown reason, the

association changed its name to something milder in tone, Warren Tribune Chronicle,

June 5, 10, 12, 17, 19, 1937; Youngstown Vindicator, June 6, 1937; Senate, Steel

Strike, 209; Mould. "Steel Strike Town," 805; A. L. Wirin to William H. Thomas,

June [12?], 1937, The Papers of the American Civil Liberties Union, Princeton Univer-

sity, Box 1055 (hereafter cited as ACLU Papers).

21. Sofchalk, "Little Steel," 311; Hearings, pt. 29, 12154-61; Senate, Steel Strike.

185-86.

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184                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

reentering the mills. Sheriff Roy S. Hardman and Warren city offi-

cials disregarded the John Q. Public League's repeated calls for unim-

peded access to the plants. Hardman visited the strike scene regularly

but he refused to disarm or disperse pickets. Nor did he respond to

reports that pickets fired on Republic Steel Corporation's airplanes

which dropped food and other supplies to those still inside the mills

in early June. On the day SWOC pickets first blocked mail delivery

at the Warren works, May 28, an incident which enraged much mid-

dle-class opinion, Hardman was out of town, some fifty miles from

the besieged plant. A vision of social chaos, reinforced by journalists

and promoted by the local law and order league, counted for little

when Hardman lifted the ban on the sale of 3.2 "near" beer. County

residents could drink something alcoholic again after fifteen days of

emergency prohibition.22

Hardman accepted large contributions from the Little Steel com-

panies to pay for additional deputies, but he consulted with SWOC

leader Wines concerning police appointments and named sixteen

SWOC members to his staff. Wines later recalled that during the

strike he maintained "good relationships" with city and county law

enforcement agencies. In a June 13 report, the American Civil Liber-

ties Union praised Hardman for disregarding local anti-union forces.²³

Although they served a community with far better mobilized anti-

CI0 sentiment, Canton officials acted in a manner similar to that of

Hardman. After the Law and Order League's June 9 meeting, Mayor

Seccombe, a Republican, did agree to employ additional police on

an emergency basis despite a negative vote from the city council. How-

ever, the mayor assured Canton SWOC Director Frank Hardesty that

the augmented police force would be kept away from the strike area.

Seccombe also ignored criticism from Governor Martin L. Davey over

the refusal of city police to investigate an alleged June 19 kidnapping

of six back-to-work marchers.²⁴

In contrast, Youngstown area officials expanded their police forces

in a concerted effort to intimidate the steel workers. This conduct re-

 

22. Warren Tribune Chronicle, June 4, 10, 12, 1937; U.S., Senate, Committee on Post

Offices and Roads, Hearings Pursuant to S. R. 140, 75th Congress, 1st session, 1937,

III, 116. On the Post Office incident in Warren, see Post Office Hearings, III, passim;

Press conference no. 374, June 15, 1937, Complete Press Conferences of Franklin D.

Roosevelt (New York, 1972), 1X, 431-32; Cleveland Plain Dealer, editorial, June 5, 1937;

Canton Repository, June 10, 1937; Warren Tribune Chronicle, June 11, 1937; George

Soule, "Panic over Labor," New Republic (June 23, 1937), 175.

23. Hearings, pt. 31, 12922, 12933; Wines, PSOHC, 8; Warren Tribune Chronicle,

June 11, 1937; Youngstown Vindicator, June 14, 1937; William H. Thomas to A. L. Wirin,

n.d., ACLU Papers, Box 1055.

24. Canton Repository, June 14, 16, 23, 24, 25, 1937; Columbus Ohio State Journal,

June 30, 1937; Hearings, pt. 31, 12826.

• 10
 

The Little Steel Strike                                                  185

 

lated partly to the larger number of strikers, just over twenty thousand,

as well as to the particular prejudices of the local police. Following a

June 9 disturbance at a Republic plant gate, Mahoning County Sher-

iff Ralph Elser appointed 147 extra deputies, at least ten of whom were

non-union steel workers. Officials in Youngstown declined to follow

the Warren example and did not seek out SWOC members as tem-

porary police recruits. For this and other anti-union practices, the

ACLU criticized Sheriff Elser in its June 13 report on the strike.²⁵

Local newspapers reputedly helped management, though this per-

ception too warrants redefinition. To those who have seen the Little

Steel strike as a realization of the Mohawk Valley Formula, worker

morale dissipated, in part, because of anti-strike news stories and

sophisticated, pro-management advertising.²⁶ This interpretation, of

course, stemmed from an exaggerated view of the power of mass com-

munication over a poorly educated, easily manipulatable working

class, an assumption that has been upended by subsequent research

in opinion formation.²⁷ When and if newspapers finally turned against

the strikers, union members appear to have either cancelled their sub-

scriptions or concentrated on the neutral sports and funnies pages.

Most workers received their news about the strike from fellow work-

ers, SWOC leaflets, bulletins and strike meetings.28

The most important reason for believing that the local press had

little impact on the strike is that Canton, Warren and Youngstown

newspapers covered the walkout with remarkable even-handedness.

One newspaper served each community.²⁹ Although owned by Repub-

licans partial to the pre-Depression equilibrium, their biases did not

interfere greatly with their reportage of the strike itself. The Canton

 

25. Hearings, pt. 29, 11851, 11979, 12050-51, 12170, pt. 31, 12707, pt. 32, 13028,

13040: Youngstown Vindicator, June 13, 18, 1937; New York Herald Tribune, June

14, 1937.

26. Walsh, C. I. 0., 277; Levinson, Labor, 204; Mark Farrell, "Chilled Steel--the

C. I. 0. and Reaction," Canadian Forum, XVII (August 1937), 162. The traditional view

of the press as anti-labor can be found in C. Wright Mills, The New Men of Power:

America's Labor Leaders (New York, 1948), 32, 44; William H. Form and Delbert C.

Miller, Industry, Labor, and the Community (New York, 1960), 114-15.

27. Joseph T. Klapper, The Effects of Mass Communication (Glencoe, 1960), 49-52,

94; Harold Mendelsohn. "Behaviorism, Functionalism, and Mass Communications

Policy," Public Opinion Quarterly, XXVIII (Fall 1974), 379-89.

28. Letter, C. Edward Powell, circulation manager, Youngstown Vindicator, to James

L. Baughman, February 19, 1975; Advertising Research Foundation, The Continuing

Story of Newspaper Reading, Study no. 25: Canton Repository, Issue of August 20,

1940 (New York, 1940).

29. Edward Thornton Heald, The Stark County Story ... The Suburban Era

(Canton, 1955). IV. pt. 1. 719; Ohio, Works Progress Administration, Federal Writers'

Project. Warren and Trumbull County (Warren, 1938), 37; Osman Castle Hooper, His-

tory of Ohio Journalism (Columbus, 1933), 38; Hoyt L. Warner, The life of Mr. Jus-

tice Clark (Cleveland 1959), 198.

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186                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

Repository, whose publisher contributed three hundred dollars to the

Law and Order League, quoted on the front page with regularity and

at length the opinions of Canton SWOC officials. Both the Repository

and the Warren Tribune Chronicle generally placed anti-union re-

ports of violence against "scabs" or damage to company property well

off the front page. These organs of elite community opinion sought

to dampen, not exacerbate, the tensions aroused by the conflict.³⁰

The Youngstown Vindicator eventually earned the enmity of

SWOC, but for the first two weeks of the strike, the Vindicator sup-

ported the union's cause. On June 13, it again endorsed SWOC's

demand for a signed contract. Ray Thomas, head of the city's militant

back-to-work movement, described the paper as "strongly inclined

toward the CIO." Then the day after its June 13 call for a written

agreement, the Vindicator gave Thomas' meeting with Youngstown

Sheet and Tube President Purnell extravagant front-page coverage.

The Vindicator wavered during the third week of the strike and finally

withdrew its support of the union position in a June 21 editorial that

called for the guarantee of all workers' passage into the mills. The

shift deeply angered union members.³¹

Probably to avoid alienating anyone, most church leaders did noth-

ing about the strike. The union had contacted the ministries of var-

ious local congregations months before the strike commenced. These

initiatives failed, though the majority of Protestant clergy did not fol-

low the path of the Reverend Welshimer and assume leadership roles

in secular anti-union crusades. In Youngstown, the Catholic hierarchy

conveyed displeasure to SWOC after the Vindicator inaccurately re-

ported that SWOC President Murray belonged to a Protestant sect.

Once SWOC leaders authenticated Murray's Catholicism, they met

with priestly sympathy, if not substantial aid.³²

Why did many public officials perform their tasks cautiously and with

thousands of others, many local opinion leaders, ignore the exhorta-

tions of the anti-union groups? Probably both recognized the new

 

 

30. See issues of Repository and Tribune Chronicle, June 1-20, 1937; cf. David M.

Katzman, "Ann Arbor: Depression City," Michigan History, L (December 1966), 306-17,

reprinted in Hitting Home: The Great Depression in Town and Country, ed. Bernard

Sternsher (Chicago, 1970), especially 55, 58n-59n, and Sternsher's comments, 20.

31. Youngstown Vindicator, June 13, 14, 21, 1937; "Interview with Hugh Carcella,"

PSOHC, 1967, pt. 1, 18; "Interview with James Gallagher," PSOHC, 1967, 5; Hearings,

pt. 29, 11998; "Interview with Thomas White," Youngstown State University Oral

History Project (hereafter cited as YSOHC), 1974, 9; "Interview with Clingan Jackson,"

YSOHC, 1974, 8; William F. Maag, Jr., to Roosevelt, June 22, 1937, Official File 407B

("Steel Industry Strikes"), The Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt

Library; "Work Sheets," Joseph Parilla, June 26, 1937, Steel Strike File, Box 1, Folder 13.

32. Hearings, pt. 26, 11156; White, YSOHC, 14.

• 12
 

The Little Steel Strike                                        187

strength of the industrial union movement. Months before the strike, many thought the CIO an ephemerial phenomenon; some speculated that Alfred Landon might become the thirty-third president. Then Canton police had not protected pickets beaten by Republic guards during a 1935 strike, Warren officials had denied SWOC access to Court House Park, and Youngstown police, a young SWOC leader charged, had tossed a box of Steel Workers' pamphlets into the Ma- honing River.33 But after the successful sit-down strikes, the Supreme Court's unex- pected validation of the Wagner Act and after John L. Lewis and U.S. Steel President Myron Taylor signed steel's first major collective bar- gaining contract, local officials no longer blinded themselves to the     33. Senate, Steel Strike, 88-90, 202; Hearings, pt. 26, 11028-29. Reporting from western Pennsylvania, an aide to Harry Hopkins found that "even in communities where a Republican administration still holds over, I doubt if an unfriendly attitude would be taken by police authorities toward peaceful picketing." Previously, "the full weight of local authority was always thrown against any attempt on the part of workers to inter- fere with mill operations," Pierce Williams, "The Strength of the C. I. O. Unionization Movement in the Steel Industry and the Prospects of a Strike During 1937," February 15, 1937, The Papers of Harry Hopkins, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.

• 13
 

188                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

potential of organized labor. Even in Youngstown, the city closest to

the "company town" model, officials respected SWOC's new power.34

On the ninth day of the strike, Little Steel managers insisted that

city officials provide police protection for an effort to reopen all plants.

Youngstown Mayor Lionel Evans, like Seccombe, a Republican, po-

litely declined the request. Youngstown Sheet and Tube President

Frank Purnell complained bitterly that Little Steel had "no influence

with the city and county officials."³⁵

What of the workers themselves? Most accounts of the strike have

presupposed solidarity. Hence the "black-to-work" coalitions, formed

to mobilize the non-union laborer against SWOC, have suffered a

harsh and skeptical treatment.³⁶ As with other components of the Mo-

hawk Valley Formula tested here, the pattern of the back-to-work

groups was not uniform in each community. In retrospect, these "in-

dependent" worker groups appear to have been very well organized

in Canton and Youngstown, though not in Warren.

The great CIO drive to organize basic industry has so captured the

imagination of historians that its internal limitations have only now

come under careful scrutiny. The characteristics of militancy and pro-

union sentiment among American workers belonged, even in 1937,

to a committed minority. The greater number of steel laborers often

proved cautious and fearful. As late as February 1937, for example,

SWOC had only recruited about 30 percent of the U.S. Steel work

force. Chief union officials feared that in a collective bargaining elec-

tion SWOC might actually lose. SWOC recruiting campaigns encoun-

tered similar problems in Little Steel.³⁷

The well disguised fact of the walkout is that the workers ended

the strike on their own accord. They did so out of divided loyalty

to SWOC and as a direct consequence of the economic deprivation

resulting from the closure of the mills. Citizens' committee propaganda

and elite pressure had little to do with their decision. The rhetoric of

anti-unionism hardly mattered when most strikers finally decided to re-

turn to work.

 

 

34. Patricia Ann Terpack, "Youngstown and the 'Little Steel Strike of 1937': A Study

of Community Reaction to a Labor Dispute" (M.A. thesis, The Ohio State University,

1971); Paul Bates Gillen, The Distribution of Occupations as a City Yardstick (New

York, 1951), 25. Youngstown elite structure is surveyed in John N. Ingham, "Rags to

Riches Revisited: The Effect of City Size and Related Factors on the Recruitment of

Business Leaders," Journal of American History, LXIII (December 1976), 630-31, 636.

35. New York Times, June 4, 1937.

36. Farrell, "Chilled Steel"; Walsh, C. I. O., 277; James A. Wechsler, Labor Baron,

A Portrait of John L. Lewis (New York, 1944), 70.

37. Brooks, As Steel Goes, 133; Saul Alinsky, John L. Lewis (New York, 1949),

149; Business Week (June 5, 1937), 15.

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The Little Steel Strike                                              189

 

One element that led to demoralization among the strikers arose

out of the quite different perspectives leaders of SWOC and rank and file

steelworkers brought to the walkout. Long time trade unionists like

SWOC President Murray or CIO President Lewis judged a signed

contract and union recognition paramount because they ensured the

permanence and stability of the new union. Although most workers

supported the concept of union recognition, to them it constituted but

a means to the resolution of their many grievances over wages, hours

and working conditions that were closely tied to daily life in the mills.³⁸

Little Steel companies skillfully exacerbated this split by offering

to honor all of the wage and hour provisions of the U.S. Steel agree-

ment. But they steadfastly refused to put their accord into writing.

Louis Adamic, an observer sympathetic to the strike, argued that this

situation undermined union solidarity. The steelworker "is hot and

bothered about concrete grievances," he noted "and when nothing

was said about them by the top leaders, he soon lost interest in the

fight and, in most cases, became ready to return to work."³⁹ Adamic's

observations applied to some Youngstown native-born employees wh_o

recalled striking steel in 1919 but disapproved of SWOC's call eigh-

teen years later. "We were striking then for higher wages and shorter

hours," one man complained: "what is this strike for? A piece of

paper." Acknowledging the common view of the strike as a battle

for Lewis of the CIO, they asked if they should be fighting for "John

L. Lewis or us.^"40

Although some strikers expressed confusion over the purpose of the

walkout, all suffered the hardships. "To the workers," one writer

noted, "the strike was very exciting for a while, but not very nourish-

ing."⁴¹ During the first days of the strike SWOC officials reported

"ample food" in the union canteens, but they could not thereafter se-

cure the necessary relief. Because the national SWOC and CIO ex-

perienced serious problems in collecting dues from new members,

area locals had to rely upon monies from other local unions and the

United Mine Workers. This aid proved insufficient. By early July, with

many men still out of work, a Canton SWOC leader admitted that

 

38. See for example, letters to Steel Labor (February 6, 1937), 4; Ibid. (March 6,

1937), 4; Ibid. (April 18, 1937), 4; Ibid. (May 1, 1937), 4.

39. Louis Adamic, My America, 1928-1938 (New York, 1938), 421; cf. Benjamin Stol-

berg, "Big Steel, Little Steel, and the C. I. 0.," Nation (July 31, 1937), 121;

Frederick H. Harbison, "Labor Relations in the Iron and Steel Industry, 1936-1939"

(Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1940), 56-57.

40. Garet Garrett, "Labor and Napoleanism," Saturday Evening Post (September 4,

1937), 38; Walter Davenport, "Lewis Strikes Steel," Collier's (August 21, 1937), 55;

Pierce Williams, Survey Graphic, 518.

41. Davenport, "Lewis Strikes Steel," 55.

• 15
 

190                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

"we had many hungry families."⁴² Canton public welfare agencies

gave some aid to union families, but in Warren and Youngstown lo-

cal welfare officials lacked the resources required for the support of

thousands of newly unemployed steelworkers and their families.⁴³

In mid-July David J. McDonald, SWOC Secretary-Treasurer, jour-

neyed to Canton to inform members and their families that the parent

union had no more funds for their soup kitchens, "one of the most

difficult things I ever had to do," McDonald recalled. The union hall,

he wrote,

. . .was tilled with people, mostly women, and they had a beaten

hopeless look about their eyes. They were waiting for food to arrive. What

they got, instead, was a very short speech from headquarters, delivered in a

voice that quavered unmistakably. "How can I tell you," I said, "that we have

no more money, and we're going to have to close down the kitchens?" They

never changed expressions. They just looked at me.

McDonald concluded that "an epitaph" for the Little Steel Strike "would

have to be . . . 'We have no money and we'll have to close down the

kitchens.' It was as simple as that."⁴⁴ Clearly the back-to-work and

law and order committees did less damage to the strikers' cause than

the inadequacy of relief, from either unions or public agencies.

The strike's resolution came swiftly in the fifth week. On June 22

Governor Davey ordered the Ohio National Guard into the Youngs-

town and Warren areas: a day later he extended his command to

Stark County. Originally, Davey had sent in the militia to maintain

peace and preserve the status quo while mediation efforts continued.

However, late on the night of June 24 Davey concluded that any pros-

pect for a negotiated settlement had failed and, sensing a political

benefit in taking on the CIO, he ordered the guard to protect anyone

wishing to reenter the Little Steel facilities. The militia, which soon

numbered some 5,800 troops, broke up mass picket lines and main-

tained open access to the plants for strikebreakers. In Canton, where

strike militancy remained high, the guard arrested ninety-six strikers

on June 27 and on succeeding days escorted returning workers into

the mills and on the way home at the end of the work shift.45

 

 

42. Johns, PSOHC, 8; New York Times, June 18, 1937.

43. Johns, PSOHC, 8; Warren Tribune Chronicle, June 8, 1937.

44. David J. McDonald, Union Man (New York, 1969), 112-18.

45. Proclamations, Steel Strike File, Box 1, Folder 2; Senate, Steel Strike, 194-95;

Hearings, pt. 31, 12850; Cleveland Press, June 22, 1937; Columbus Ohio State Journal,

June 22, 1937; Canton Repository, June 23, 1937. An apologia for Davey's conduct is

John F. Shiner, "The 1937 Steel Labor Dispute and the Ohio National Guard." Ohio

History, LXXXIV (Autumn 1975), 182-95. Despite Shiner's assertion. Davey did not

operate in the "public interest," but tried to salvage his own political fortunes by

• 16
 

The Little Steel Strike                                                191

 

Davey's use of the guard to open the mills decisively broke the

strike in Ohio. Each of the Little Steel companies immediately an-

nounced the reopening of their plants. With the fortunes of the union

so clearly on the wane, local judges, sheriffs and police now turned

their own forces against the strike as well. Because of the inability

of SWOC to provide relief, the demoralizing confusion over the goals

of the strike, and the psychological blow represented by the intimi-

dating presence of the state militia, most workers soon returned to

their jobs. By the beginning of July virtually full production resumed

as the furnace smoke turned from black to red. Although the strike

would linger on in Cleveland and elsewhere, it had already been re-

solved for one third of Little Steel's total work force. The companies'

triumph in the three communities foredoomed SWOC's campaign

against them practically everywhere else.⁴6

It remains to be understood why so many interpretations of the dis-

pute have underscored worker consensus and third party intervention.

Certainly the La Follette Committee's favoritism toward the CIO,

apparent in its inquiry into the 1937 conflict, worked against any

other viewpoint. "The committee tried to restore the C.l.O.'s lost sta-

ture," Jerold Auerbach writes. The hearings on the strike "represented

a belated but determined effort to condemn the victors in a strug-

gle that the union had lost."⁴⁷ But there are other reasons for this pre-

vailing interpretation as well.

For many writers and liberal reformers, the 1930s manifested sharp

social and ideological differences relatively new to American think-

ing. These distinctions virtually necessitated "taking sides" "for" and

"against" things like the working man, rugged individualism or pri-

vate property. Most writers on the labor scene expected all Americans

to share in their new consciousness and adopt one or another clearly

delined  position.⁴8 Such cleavages, after all, made for good melo-

 

 

baiting the C. I. 0. See Ralph L. Donaldson, "Martin L. Davey." The Governors of

Ohio (Columbus, 1954), 182-83; and accounts of Davey's 1938 reelection campaign in

Charles B. Nuckolls, Jr., "The Governorship of Martin L. Davey" (M.A. thesis, The

Ohio State University, 1952), 88, 90-92, 94-95; Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 6, May 25,

1938.

46. Vorse, Labor's New Millions, 155. Youngstown workers capitulated early during

the 1919-1920 strike as well. See David Brody, Labor in Crisis: the Steel Strike of 1919

(Philadelphia, 1965), 174.

47. Auerbach, Labor and Liberty, 131.

48. Richard H. Pells, Radical Visions and American Dreams, Culture and Social

Thought in the Depression Years (New York, 1973), 167-68, 198-99, 302-03; Charles C.

Alexander. Nationalism in American Thought 1930-1945 (Chicago, 1969). 5, See also

Sidney Verba and Kay Lehman Schlozman, "Unemployment, Class Consciousness, and

Radical Politics: What Didn't Happen in the Thirties," Journal of Politics, XXXIV

(May 1977), 291-323.

• 17
 

192                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

drama: spirited Blue Eagle rallies, the best films of Frank Capra and

the most memorable songs by Woody Guthrie.

They have also much obscured the epoch's labor history. Contrary to

most accounts of the 1937 strike, many townspeople simply did not

take sides; others strove valiantly to preserve community harmony

against the greatest of odds. These positions have been neglected

and other, hostile initiatives by local figures exaggerated. Finally, a

class consciousness has been imposed on workmen who never sat

through "Waiting for Lefty".

• 18