Steel Aftermath

Having nearly exhausted his original $55,000 appropriation, Senator Robert Marion La Follette last week asked the Senate for another $50,000 to carry on the work of his Civil Liberties Committee. As a sample of the Committee's work the shrewd little Wisconsin Progressive also sent the Senate a report on the Memorial Day massacre in which ten men were fatally shot outside the gates of Republic Steel's South Chicago plant (TIME, June 7). After the open hearings in Washington and the showing of the famed Paramount newsreel of the riot, it was obvious whom the La Follette Committee would blame-- the Chicago police. Concluded the Committee :

1) The police had no authority to limit the number of pickets. The police argument that the marchers intended to storm Republic's plant was "groundless."

2) Even if the police were justified in halting the marchers, "proper police work clearly required careful preparation"--i.e. use of tear gas instead of guns and clubs.

3) "We find that the provocation for the police assault did not go beyond abusive language and the throwing of isolated missiles. . . . From all the evidence we think it plain that the force employed by the police was far in excess of that which the occasion required."

4) "Treatment of the injured was characterized by the most callous indifference to human life and suffering. Wounded prisoners of war might have expected and received greater solicitude."

Hopping mad was Chicago officialdom when the La Follette findings were released. Far from demonstrating remorse, officials were preparing to prosecute, for conspiracy to riot, some 65 strikers, sympathizers and bystanders who were arrested during the riot. Moreover a six-man coroner's jury had just white-washed the police with a report of "justifiable homicide."

'T am sorry the Civil Liberties Committee at that distance from the situation sees things as it does," cried Chicago's Mayor Edward J. Kelly. "The Cook County coroner's jury was an unbiased jury of citizens." The Cook County coroner's jury was made up of six unemployed American Legionnaires.

The La Follette report was by no means the last chapter in John L. Lewis' unsuccessful siege of "Little Steel." As far as Mr. Lewis was concerned the strike was still on, except against Inland Steel and the Youngstown Sheet & Tube plants in the Chicago area where Indiana's Governor Townsend had patched up truces. There was heavy rioting last week at Republic Steel plants in Cleveland and in Cumberland, Md. But some of Mr. Lewis' coal miners returned to a Sheet & Tube captive mine last week, and reopening of all captive mines was expected shortly-- except those of Republic. For Republic's Tom Girdler, Mr. Lewis has a special niche alongside his other great enemy, William Green.

Cited last fortnight for unfair labor practices, Republic was on trial last week in Washington before the National Labor Relations Board. Among the charges was that "the company at all six plants has interfered with the right of its employes peacefully to picket and still does intimidate its employes by shooting at them and by throwing bolts and other dangerous missiles at them."

Massillon, The Labor Board's hearings had not reached the bolt & missile episodes by last week but it had heard a lot about shooting in Massillon, Ohio (TIME, July 19). There early last month three men were fatally shot in a midnight massacre which will probably get as earnest attention from the La Follette committee as the Chicago affair. Massillon's Police Chief Stanley W. Switter testified that Republic's manager in the Canton-Massillon area, Carl Meyers, had asked him early in the strike "why the hell we didn't take action such as the Chicago police did and put 'em where they belong." Manager Meyers, it appeared, was in a temper, having been inadvertently shot by one of his own company guards.

Husky young Police Chief Switter was the Labor Board's star witness. For weeks, he related, Manager Meyers, the Law & Order League and a back-to-work committee had kept "pounding" him to deputize more policemen. Chief Switter weakened only to the point of accepting from Republic a consignment of guns, ammunition and tear gas. "I finally told them it was up to the mayor," testified Chief Switter. ''They made the old boy pretty hot. Then they jumped on me. I said all right I would appoint the whole damned outfit. I would give them everything they wanted. I could see there would be a battle and bloodshed as soon as they put guns into those rookies' hands."

Sure enough, as soon as Chief Switter, who had been working 16 to 20 hours per day, went to the country for an evening with his wife, the self-appointed leaders of the new deputies took charge of the police station. One witness testified that he overheard a Republic foreman remark early that day: "We're going to clean them up tonight."

A few hours later, when Mr. Switter returned, he found the hospitals filled with dead & dying, the jails jammed with prisoners. The C. I. O. headquarters had been completely wrecked. Witness after union witness testified they had been routed from bed and arrested without benefit of search warrant. The only concealed weapon found on any of the 165 unionists arrested was one three-and-a-half-inch knife. All were examined by an immigration official but not one was found deportable.

Lewis Sound-Off. During one of the Labor Board's sessions John L. Lewis stalked in with the directors of his United Mine Workers. They listened to the testimony in silence but a few days later Mr. Lewis issued a statement from the Steel Workers Organizing Committee endorsed by the United Mine Workers. Said S. W. 0. C.: "The Federal Government throughout this entire situation has not displayed the slightest interest in protecting the rights of the steel workers on strike. . . . Seventeen steel workers have been cruelly and wantonly murdered. Not a single person has as yet been brought to account. . . . Not a single steel worker engaged in the strike has as yet been convicted of any serious offense. Only a few fines have been imposed for minor incidents."

Nye Sound-Off. Startling though this blast at a friendly Administration was, it was not so startling as an attack on the Labor Board last week from Senator Gerald P. Nye, usually rated proLabor. Comparing it to a "kangaroo court," the North Dakota Senator cried: "The National Labor Relations Board seems to have gone out of its way to demonstrate to the public that it is a partisan body rather than a judicial institution. It has disqualified itself as a referee between management and workers."

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