On May 30, 1937, Chicago police opened fire on strikers in front of the Republic Steel mill, killing 10 workers. Part of the “Little Steel” strike, where smaller steel corporations refused to follow US Steel into signing contracts with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (later United Steelworkers of America), the Memorial Day Massacre was one of the last great spasms of organized, lethal state violence against labor in American labor history.

The Steel Workers Organizing Committee was a central part of the Congress of Industrial Organization’s industrial union strategy. John L. Lewis, who led the United Mine Workers and the CIO, knew that he could only truly organize the coal mines if he organized the consumers of that coal, which by the 1930s was the steel industry. So that became the top goal of then brand new CIO, along with the auto industry. Successfully targeting US Steel, they convinced that company to sign a contract on May 2, 1937. This contract standardized pay, granted the 8-hour day, and instituted overtime pay. US Steel had led the industry to bust unions over and over and over again since its creation in 1901, so that was a huge victory.

However, the smaller steel companies hated unions even more than US Steel. They decided to resist unions at all costs. SWOC and the CIO therefore made them the next target of their organizing. On May 26, 1937, 25,000 people walked off the job in plants in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio. By the 28th, 80,000 were on strike, 46,000 of whom worked for Republic Steel, headed by anti-union diehard Tom Girdler. Girdler later recalled how bitter he and his fellow Little Steel leaders were after US Steel’s capitulation. He said, “we were convinced that a surrender to the CIO was a bad thing for our companies, our employees, indeed for the United States of America.” Girdler believed his right to kill workers on the job by forcing them to work long shifts in dangerous conditions was the most important thing in the United States.

Things got worse for Little Steel when workers at Jones and Laughlin, the fourth largest steel company in the nation, went on strike for 36 hours and forced a National Labor Relations Board poll of its employees. When over two-thirds of the workers voted for the union, it caved, as well as a couple of other companies. Six major steel companies resisted: Republic, Youngstown Sheet and Tube, Bethlehem, National, Inland, and American Rolling Mills. These were the holdouts, and Girdler guided their violent path to resist. Girdler hired the Chicago police as a private army, paying for their guns and ammunition. The companies spent $40,000 on weapons for the police. Between 1933 and 1937, the Little Steel companies purchased more poison gas (nausea-inducing rather than fatal) than the US military. In fact, Little Steel was among the largest purchasers of poison gas in the world in these years, and they were happy to use it on their workers.

The steel workers and their supporters decided hold a major event on Memorial Day. Hundreds of supporters gathered to picket in front of Republic’s main gate. A line of policemen met them. After a brief, confused conversation about letting the workers pass, the police opened fire on the strikers, both with live fire and gas bombs. Mollie West, a member of the Typographical Union, remembered the cops yelling at her, “Get off the field, or I’ll put a bullet in your back.” The cops began beating the strikers as well. In addition to the 10 workers who died (four on site, six in the hospital), another 30 suffered serious injuries, nine of whom were permanently disabled through gunshot wounds or police beatings.

No one was prosecuted for the massacre.

The cops and Republic Steel talked about the violent protestors, etc. But they hadn’t counted on a new technology — the motion picture camera. Reporters’ footage showed peaceful people being massacred by the police, being shot in the back. The film was shown before a Senate committee on civil liberties led by Robert LaFollette Jr., senator from Wisconsin. His committee concluded that the police were “loosed to shoot down citizens on the streets and highways.” And while Republic’s massacre of workers in Chicago was the big event, six additional strikers had been murdered outside of various Republic plants in Ohio. Girdler and the Chicago police remained defiant in the face of the public outrage. Captain James Mooney said the march was led by communists, as if that was justification alone for mass murder. Sergeant Lawrence Lyons, testifying before the LaFollette committee, when asked whether a policeman on the tape had drawn his gun, impudently replied, “I don’t know. He may be drawing his handkerchief.” Despite the filmed violence, SWOC lost the strike.

Little Steel defeated the SWOC. The bravery of strikers could only go so far without state intervention. This takes us back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who wanted to level the playing field, not unionize the nation. He was not actually that pro-union or pro-strike. He responded to the Memorial Day Massacre and the strike that had led to it by saying to the union and the companies “a curse on both your houses” to reporters. The unwillingness of Roosevelt to back the union devastated the strikers and infuriated John L. Lewis. At the barrel of a gun, whether from Republic Steel’s private army or the National Guard, the strikers had to give up. Whereas state support made the difference in the Flint sit-down strike a few months earlier, state indifference left Little Steel unorganized. Continued violence combined with financial pressures to force the workers back in without a contract.

Yet time was on the steelworkers’ side. Some of the companies signed contracts in 1938. In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt, not wanting any labor issues during the war, put major pressure on the Little Steel companies through the National War Labor Board to recognize SWOC as the legitimate bargaining agent for their workers, which finally forced Girdler and the other steel magnates to cave. But still, this is a big black mark on FDR’s record.

FURTHER READING:

Ahmed White, The Last Great Strike: Little Steel, the CIO, and the Struggle for Labor Rights in New Deal America

John Hinshaw, Steel and Steelworkers: Race and Class Struggle in Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh

Michael Dennis, Blood on Steel: Chicago Steelworkers and the Strike of 1937

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