THE COMMUNIST Page Five October 11, 1919 Steel and Life. few days ago was overheard a con some want to leave, to be replaced by total of steel stocks held by the workers, versation between two business men on black Americans or by newly arriving small accumulations of savings which board a train traveling through the steel foreigners.
mean nothing more than a span of two One was towns adjacent to Chicago.
Black, white, yellow, brown, the steel or three months against starvation, apparently the manager of some chemworkers are all foreigners. It is not nothing more than the beggarly allowical corporation, the other, one of the agreeable to be constantly looked down ance in present pay against the always directors.
upon as a foreigner. So these workers imminent layoff. The Liberty Bonds of This was the first day of the strike. search out those of the same nativity, Steel, and of Bethlehem, are never All were scanning the horizon to read and they live and work close together, mentioned by contrast.
the news from the smoke stacks. The speaking the mother tongue. Then there It took a terrific lot of vitality to earn comments were the usual ones that the is the longing for the land where this the wages saved in these one or two hunmen didn want to strike; that it was tongue is not foreign, where the steel dred dollars in stocks or bonds. Schwab all the doing of scheming leaders; that worker of this country may be laborer or frankly told the British Premier that it Fitzpatrick was out to replace Gompers; peasant, but not hunkie.
was taken for granted that war orders that the rank and file were far more con This is a passing phase. Industry is meant war profits. That was the business servative than the leaders, etc.
already well advanced along the lines of genius for which Bethlehem stockholdThe train went through Gary, Ham internationality. The class call, with its ers were paid manifold millions. The mond, South Chicago. The business men challenge to the future, drowns out the business world nodded approval. Such is turned their talk from the strike to a weak call to the past, to the relaxation the business of war and the war of building scheme which interested them of a homeland. There is only one way: business. Against life!
because of the housing problem in con workers can no longer be foreigners to nection with one or other of their plants. other workers; there must be class union The steel strike is the cry of life The train happened to be stalled along against class exploitation against steel despotism. But it is yet a the rows of miserable cottages in Ham One of the newspapers referred to the timid, hesitant cry of revolt. It is only mond and South Chicago. One thing various foreign groups, and then to the the cry for merciful servitude.
we have neglected, said the manager, balance as hybrids who, for the want is the problem of housing these foreign of anything more definite, were called immediate strike demands and yet go on The owners of steel could grant all the workers. Americans. increasing their profits. It is the unionThen, somehow momentarily losing The American proletariat is beginning ism of these workers that must be dethe perspective of business: Well, by to sense the fact from his day to day ex feated. Because there is something omiGod, if had to live in one of these perience that the proletariat the mass of nous for the future in the organization shacks, guess d go on a strike myself.
workers in the basic industries is withof these workers and their attainment of But the thought of going on a strike was out nationality. It is only a matter of consciousness of group and class power.
a too violent bit of heresy, so he added, place of work. The tables of figures show The revolution is the issue in the steel after a few seconds, Or would get my that over one third of the entire Ameriself a farm. Then the business discusstrike. It is a palpable lie that any concan population is foreign or born of forsion was resumed.
siderable number of the strikers have eign parentage.
Those who live in these shacks have the revolutionary consciousness; and it The foreign workers in steel suffer the is ludicrous that the of officiallong ago thought about living where stings of the despised foreign caste. there is space, fresh air, green fields.
dom of any stripe, entertains conceptions few acquire the snobbishness of insistent of this strike outside the regular formulas Americanism. Those who attain class of trade unionism. But a militant deBen Hecht reported some consciousness and align themselves defimand for human existence on the part tions with strikers in the Chicago Daily nitely in the revolutionary class conflict of the workers in steel is a first epoch in News. The following is an excerpt: become patient; they accept placidly the the proletarian revolution in America. work 14 hours a day, he said. snobberies of fellow workers or of the The revolution is the issue because it never see my kids, never see my missus. petty officialdom. They see the prolewill be learned, in defeat or victory alike, go to work at o clock. It dark at tariat of tomorrow and of today, in that out of the furnaces and hearth fires o cloc. The kids is sleeping at Russia!
of steel can no longer come the sheets o clock. come home when it 7 o clock and slabs and rods and rails of profitin the night. It dark at o clock. The In the magic age of steel, with its won extracting industry if the worker in steel kids is going to sleep again. say to the ders of expanded industry, it is steel is to have the life benefits of steel. The missus, m tired; let go to bed. So which exacts a toll of life sacrifice such law of profit is the law of life deprivaI go to bed. don see nobody. Now as was not dreamt of by all the angry tion. Steel cannot serve both profits and m striking, see the kids, and maybe gods of all the ages.
life.
go to a show.
One of the steel superintendents The revolution is to make steel serve Why don you take a day off some grimly remarked that the making of life.
times? asked.
steel was no tea party. But men have What you talk about? said the man. never shrunk away from hard tasks or work our years without taking a day great hazards. The reckless toll of needA unionism which breaks down the off. If take a day off the boss hire less deaths, of devitalized manhood, of caste system against the unskilled and somebody else, and lose my job. That serni skilled, a unionism which breaks starved childhood in the ugly steel towns what the Joss tell me, so work. this has not been the price of steel, down the caste division among workers but only of the gigantic steel fortunes, tivity, a unionism which cannot stop at against those of different color and naSteel sorkers are hunkies.
the imperial fortunes of the Carnegies. the old craft separation of workers that They can be thae impersonalized in droves beFricks; Bakers, Schwabs, Morgans and the others.
is the unionism in steel against which the cause, fire, they are heavy laborers, and powerful Steel Trust is hurling its great because, second, they are foreigners.
The strike is not against the making of power. Such unionism too clearly visualSeven out of ten are actually foreign steel, with all its hazards. The revoluizes the working class array which Capborn. The other three happened to be tion is not against the making of steel.
italism itself inevitably creates for its born American citizens.
It is against the making of steel profits.
own destruction.
It is reported that many are planning The daily papers carry one statement Capitalism is doomed by its inherent to try the old country again, that thou after another by steel officials about the law of profits. The cry is for more prosands are leaving now. No doubt the high wages of their workers, propaganda duction, more production. This is the figures are false, part of the propaganda statements which, when they have any escape from the vicious circle of increasto impress the foreign character of the truth at all, are based on a few excep ing prices which keeps the worker livstrikers. When it comes to paying for tional piece rate and bonus cases. These ing from advancing! Vain delusion. As the trip, the family men must be largely papers never mention the war profits of if the greater production meant anything counted out. But some are leaving, and steel. There is much flourish of the paltry (Continued on page conversa