publican funds, is a steel owner and is the Steel Trust's agent plenipotentiary in the Cabinet. Steel is all-powerful and makes and unmakes the laws. Speaking of the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act which gave the steel Trust a total bonus of over two billion dollars, Senator Underwood said: "I know this iron and steel schedule and I know that it is a fraud and a shame upon the people of this country."
Government is Responsible for Continuation of 12-Hour Day
Considering the why and wherefore of the persistence of the 12-Hour Day and the Seven-Day Week, the Interchurch World investigators found that: "The Government as much as the steel Corporation is to blame." The same authorities reported that one of the chief causes for the loss of the 1919 strike was the support accorded the Steel Magnates "by Governmental agencies and by public opinion." In this sense it is easy to understand that in the strike "the foundations of the United States Government were involved."
But perhaps the most imposing evidence of the relationship between the Steel Trust and the Government is to be found in the fact that the Chairman of the Senate Committee investigating the Steel Strike boasted to Mr. Gary that he himself was in favor of the Open shop. The caes is tersely put in the following taken from the Inter-
"In the twenty-eight pages of the Senate Committee's Report on the Steel Strike much space is devoted to the need for Americanization. Only a few lines were devoted to the 12-Hour Day."
And this Americanization has meant to the Steel workers only gruesome suffering and unrestrained terrorism!
Local Government Tyranny Rampant in Steel Area
As soon as the steel workers went into the struggle aginst the 12-Hour Day the Government—Municipal, State, and National—leaped to the defense of the employers. Describing this situation confronting the strikers the Interchurch investigators reported that:
"Local magistrates, police authorities, etc., around Pittsburgh were frequently steel mill officials. In other cases steel mill officials exercised police authority without the excuse of having been previously elected to public office. For example, besides Sheriff Haddock of Alleghany County whose brother was superintendent of an American Sheet and Tin Plate plant (Corporation subsidiary), Mayor Crawford of Duquesne was the brother of the President of the McKeesport Tin Plate Co.; President Moon of the Borough of Homestead was chief of the mechanical department of the Homestead Mills; Burgess Lincoln of Munhal was a department superintendent in the same mill. The Burgess of Clairton was a mill official, etc., etc. …
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