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Steel Workers !<br />
Now is the time to join with steel worken everywhen<br />
to win higher wages, a square deal. and security. The<br />
law says you have a right to organize into a genuina<br />
union under your own control.<br />
The powerful backing of the Committee for Industrial<br />
Organization will help you build a strong union in<br />
accordance with the law. The C. I. 0. will assist<br />
your efforts to get a wage agreement with the steel<br />
companies.<br />
A union can end favoritism, protect you against the<br />
speed-up, and end unfair lay-offs.<br />
Stand up for your rights! Safeguard your children's<br />
future! America is a land of great wealth. Sw that<br />
you have your just sham.<br />
Get in touch with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee.<br />
3600 Grant Building. Pittaburgh. Pennsylvania;<br />
1900 Engineering Building, 205 West Wacker Drive.<br />
Chicago; 1418 Comer Building, Birmingham, Alabama.<br />
Publication Bo. 5. July. 1936<br />
Price, 5c each; 12 for 3Oc; 180 for $2.00<br />
Committee for<br />
Industrial Organization<br />
45 Rust Building<br />
1001 15th St. N. W. Washington, D. C.<br />
gathered in 1936 in a memorial to the pioneering 1892<br />
Homestead Strike against U.S. Steel. The memorial rally<br />
was protected by State Police, and Lt. Gov. Kennedy was<br />
one of the speakers. He told the workers that the State<br />
Police would help them if they went on strike against U.S.<br />
Steel. (24)<br />
With all that, it is understandable that U.S. Steel<br />
decided to reach a settlement with the CIO. Two weeks<br />
after the Flint Sit-Down defeated GM, U.S. Steel suddenly<br />
proposed a contract to the CIO. On March 2, 1937, the<br />
Steelworkers Union became the officially accepted<br />
bargaining agent at U.S. Steel plants. The Corporation not<br />
only bowed to the inevitable, but by installing the CIO it<br />
staved off even more militant possibilities. The CIO<br />
bureaucracy was unpopular in the mills. Only 7% of the<br />
U.S. Steel employees had signed union membership cards.<br />
In fact, Lee Pressman, the Communist Party lawyer for<br />
the Steelworkers Union, said afterwards that they just<br />
didn't have the support of the majority:<br />
'There is no question that we could not have filed a<br />
petition through the National Labor Relations Board or<br />
any other kind of machinery asking for an election. We<br />
could not have won an election ..." (25)<br />
At the U.S. Steel stockholders meeting the following<br />
year, Chairman Myron Taylor explained to his investors<br />
why the New Deal's pro-CIO approach worked:<br />
"The union has scrupulously followed the terms<br />
of its agreement and, in so far as I know, has made no unfair<br />
effort to bring other employees into its ranks, while<br />
I<br />
I<br />
I<br />
the corporation subsidiaries, during a very difficult period,<br />
have been entirely free of labor disturbance of any kind."<br />
(26)<br />
By holding back the, iron fist of repression, by encouraging<br />
the CIO, the New Deal reform government cut<br />
down "labor disturbance" among the Euro-Amerikan<br />
proletariat.<br />
It should be kept in mind that the New Deal was<br />
ready to use the most direct repression when it was felt<br />
necessary. All during the 1930s, for example, they directed<br />
an ever-increasing offensive against the Nationalist Party<br />
of Puerto Rico. Unlike the settler workers, the liberation<br />
struggle of Puerto Rico was not seeking the reform of the<br />
U.S. Empire but its ouster from their nation. The speed<br />
with which the nationalist fervor was spreading through<br />
the Puerto Rican masses alarmed U.S. Imperialism.<br />
So the most liberal, most reform-minded U.S.<br />
Government in history repressed the Nationalists in the<br />
most naked and brutal way. By 1936 the tide of pro-<br />
Independence sentiment was running high, and Don<br />
Albizu Campos, President of the Nationalist Party, was<br />
without doubt the most respected political figure among<br />
both the intellectuals and the masses. School children were<br />
starting to tear the U.S. flag down from the school<br />
flagpoles and substitute the Puerto Rican flag. In the city<br />
of Ponce the school principal defied a police order to take<br />
the Puerto Rican banner down. The New Deal response<br />
was to directly move to violently break up the Nationalist<br />
center.<br />
In July, 1936 eight Nationalist leaders were successfully<br />
tried for conspiracy by the U.S. Government.<br />
Since their first trial had ended in a dead-locked jury, the<br />
government decided to totally rig the next judge and jury<br />
(most of the jurors were Euro-Amerikans, for example).<br />
That done, the Nationalist leaders were sentenced to four<br />
to ten years in federal prison. Meanwhile, general repression<br />
came down. U.S. Governor Winship followed a policy<br />
of denying all rights of free speech or assembly to the pro-<br />
Independence forces. Machine guns were placed in the<br />
streets of San Juan.<br />
On Palm Sunday, 1937 - one month after President<br />
Roosevelt refused to use force against the Flint Sit-<br />
Down Strike - the Ponce Massacre took place. A Nationalist<br />
parade, with a proper city permit, was met with<br />
U.S. police gunfire. The parade of 92 youth from the<br />
Cadets and Daughters of the Republic (Nationalist youth<br />
groups) was watched by 150 U.S. police with rifles and<br />
machine guns. As soon as the unarmed teen-agers started<br />
marching the police began firing and kept firing. Nineteen<br />
Puerto Rican citizens were killed and over 100 wounded.<br />
Afterwards, President Roosevelt rejected all protests and<br />
said that Governor Winship had his approval. The goal of<br />
paralyzing the pro-Independence forces through terrorism<br />
was obvious. (27)<br />
Similar pressures, although different in form, were<br />
used by the New Deal against Mexicano workers in the<br />
West and Midwest. There, mass round-ups in the Mexicano<br />
communities and the forced deportation of 500,000<br />
Mexicanos (many of whom had U.S. residency or citizen-<br />
83 ship) were used to save relief funds for settlers and, most