﻿The Big Steel Tribe Tries To Slip One Over 
By T-BONE SLIM

It looks just as if United States Steel corporation is fighting unionism through “Independents” and its subsidiaries. This is supposed to be strategy or tactics. It is neither. It is a solemn declaration that the U. S. Steel corporation cannot stand on its own leet and that a darky resides in the wood pile.
Were it different and these wars were on the up and up, it is the first time in history of steel that they weren’t glove and hand.
I don’t know where Tom Girdler comes from. But independents live because they are tolerated and the swag is big enough to reach all around that charmed circle . . . Has the Hindoo been here again? Subsidiaries live by special permit. These the United States Steel can lick any time—any time. But it cannot lick labor this time—this time.
Republic Steel is the bully of the tribe and Tom Girdler is its prophet. For two years the Republic has been working to create differences between its workers and to divide them into three (or more) factions, as: “Stay Ins,” “Stay Outs,” and “Strikers.” Shifts have been shuffled, reshuffled and then hashed. Seniority and precedence was changed to favoritism (just as if Republic could favor anybody but itself).
Wages were reduced, re-raised, reduced and re-raised without reason, rhyme or ‘rithmetic, to create a condition of uncertainty and the struggle for “favor” was on.
The cost of living in Monroe is high and the pay at Newton Steel company is low. Rents in Monroe are 35 to 65 dollars a month for anything with more than three boards nailed to studding. A landlord’s paradise.
Newton and Steed company is three miles away. (Note: the picket line is not at the plant and “the dog bit the little girl who was afraid,” to begin with.)
Most of the employes have cars—I did not say, “own cars”—they have been paying for them ever since I was running around in knee britches and that’s half a century ago, and they’ll keep on paying for them unless they learn to strike, and strike as one—like the I. W. W.
The Monroe driver is an ever present danger on the highways and sometimes the driving is so rudimentary that a fatal accident looks like a clear case of deliberate murder. Engineers recognized this when they laid out the main highway arteries north and south, they ran them outside the town.
Anxiety over an unpaid for car it the source of this wild and woolly driving. So it can be seen why the good and willing slaves of the Newton Steel company over-turned and wrecked the pickets’ cars—they could not imagine anything more horrible than to destroy a man’s life savings, set him back a half century and force him to walk three miles to work.
A leading New York paper says there is a conspiracy between the independents. Poppycock! Orders come from above.
Lewis says—
It makes no difference what Lewis says. But what I would say is this: We need a constitutional amendment to curb the Republic Steel for its irresponsible, irrational conduct.
