Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

President Roosvelt privately said in 1934 that there
was a conspiracy by "the old conservative crowd" to provoke
general strikes as a pretext for wholesale repression.
The President's confidential secretary wrote at the time
that both he and U.S. Labor Secretary Francis Perkins
believed that: "...the shipowners deliberately planned to
force a general strike throughout the country and in this
way they hoped they could crush the labor movement. I
have no proof but I think the shipowners were selected to
replace the steel people who originally started out to do
this job." (19)
The reactionary wing of the bourgeoisie were no
doubt enraged at the New Deal's refusal to try and return
the outmoded past at bayonet point. Almost three years
later, in the pivotal labor battle of the 1930s, the New Deal
forced General Motors to reach a deal with their striking
Flint, Michigan employees. GM had attempted to end the
Flint Sit-Down with force, using both a battalion of hired
thugs and the local Flint police. Lengthy street battles with
the police over union food deliveries to the Sit-Downers
resulted in many strikers shot and beaten (14 were shot in
one day), but also in union control over the streets. In the
famous "Battle of Bull's Run" the auto workers, fighting
in clouds of tear gas, forced the cops to run for their lives.
The local repressive forces available to GM were unequal
to the task.
From the second week of the strike, GM had officially
asked the government to send in the troops. But
both the State and Federal governments were in the hands
of the New Deal. After five weeks of stalling, Michigan
Gov. Frank Murphy finally sent in 1,200 National Guardsmen
to calm the street battles but not to move against
either the union or the seized plants. Murphy used the
leverage of the troops to pressure both sides to reach a
compromise settlement. The Governor reassured the CIO:
"The military wiN never be used against you. " The National
Guard was ordered to use force, if necessary, to protect
the Sit-Down from the local sheriff and any right-wing
vigilantes.
The Administration had both the President's
Secretary and the Secretary of Commerce call GM officials,
urging settlement with the union. Roosevelt even
had the head of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. call his friend,
the Chairman of GM, to push for labor peace. The end of
GM's crush-the-union strategy came on Feb. 11, 1937,
after President Roosevelt had made it clear he would not
approve repression, and told GM to settle with the union.
GM realized that the fight was over. (20)
The important effect of the pro-CIO national
strategy can be seen if we compare the '30s to earlier
periods. Whenever popular struggles against business grew
too strong to be put down by local police, then the government
would send in the National Guard or U.S. Army.
Armed repression was the drastic but brutally decisive
weapon used by the bourgeoisie.
And the iron fist of the U.S. Government not only
inspired terror but also promoted patriotism to split the
settler ranks. The U.S. Army broke the great 1877 and
1894 national railway strikes. The coast-to-coast repressive
wave, led by the U.S. Dept. of Justice, against the I.W.W.
during 1917-1924 effectively destroyed that "Un-
American" movement - even without Army troops. Yet,
no such attempt was made during the even more turbulent
1930s. President Roosevelt himself turned to CIO leaders,
in the words of the N. Y. Times, "for advice on labor problems
rather than to any old-line A.F.L. leader." (21)
There was a heavy split in the capitalist class, with
many major corporations viewing the CIO as the Red
Menace in their backyards, and desperately using lockouts,
company unions and police violence to stop them.
Not all, however. Years before the CIO came into being,
Gerald Swope of General Electric had told A.F.L. President
William Green that the company would rather deal
with one industrial union rather than fifteen different craft
unions. And when the Communist Party-led United Electrical
Workers-CIO organized at GE, they found that the
company was glad to make a deal.
While some corporations, such as Republic Steel,
tolerated unionization only after bloody years of conflict,
others wised up very quickly. U.S. Steel tried to control its
employees by promoting company unions. But in plant
after plant the company unions were taken over by CIO activists.
(23) It was no secret that the New Deal was pushing
industrial unionization. In Aliquippa, Pa., Jones &
Laughlin Steel Co. had simply made union militants
"disappear" - one Steelworkers organizer was later
found after having been secretly committed to a state mental
hospital. New Deal Gov. Pinchot changed all that, even
assigning State Police bodyguards to protect CIO
organizers.
In Homestead, where no public labor meeting had
82 been held since 1919, 2,000 steelworkers and miners