Louis Duchez reports on the new-found power of workers at McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania and their novel ‘strike on the job’ to enforce demands after their hard-fought, victorious fight against U.S. Pressed Steel.

‘The Passive Resistance Strike’ by Louis Duchez from International Socialist Review. Vol. 10 No. 5. November, 1909.

THE working class of America has just entered a new period of activity. The reactionary spell which has gripped the workers of this country since the love feast and marriage of the American Federation of Labor and the Civic Federation has been broken. The officials of those two organizations who have been lulling to sleep and dividing the wage slaves of this country in behalf of their own fat positions and their masters’ pocketbooks during the last few years, will have harder rows to hoe from now on.

The “ignorant foreigners” at McKees Rocks, whom Frank Morrison thought not worth bothering with, have been the spark in the powder magazine. The wage slaves of America have been taught a lesson—one that will long be remembered and profited by.

The McKees Rocks strike, without doubt, is the most revolutionary event that has transpired in this country. These 6,000 workers at the Pressed Steel Car plant employed tactics against the steel trust and the slugging forces of the state of Pennsylvania behind which the object was to ignore and undermine entirely the political state, making the will of the organization the law of the community, so far as they and the Pressed Steel Car Company were concerned. Further, behind the actions of these McKees Rocks strikers we see the power and experience of a revolutionary union manifesting itself—the Industrial Workers of the World.

In connection with the “second strike” at McKees Rocks, which took place on September 15th, a week after the first strike, there are some things that the capitalist press deliberately misrepresented and which the workers of this country should know about.

When the men at McKees Rocks first went back to work they discovered that many men were actually receiving less pay than before the strike. The company deliberately chose this way of dividing the men. They wished to disrupt the newly organized union. The men also discovered that thugs and hoodlums had been hired as “straw” bosses for the same purpose.

At a meeting held September 14th, they decided to change this state of affairs. A vote was taken by the 2,500 present and it was agreed to return to work the next morning, as usual, and at ten o’clock every man was to drop his tools and stand at his place of employment until the committee returned after delivering its orders to the company’s officials.

The company at once promised to concede their demands and began firing the scabs and thugs at once.

This “Passive Resistance” strike, to use the European phrase, lasted something like fifteen minutes, when the men returned to their work victorious.

It was also interesting to note how the men enforced their demand for a half holiday Saturday and no work Sunday. They merely quit work at noon Saturday and failed to return until Monday morning.

It is also interesting to note an incident in connection with the taming of the Cossacks. On the night of the big riot near Donovon’s bridge three troopers and four strikers were killed. The threat that for every striker killed one trooper would go, bothered the Cossacks terribly. The strikers had one trooper coming to them yet, and it has since been learned, that the troopers felt sure that the threat would be carried out and that one of them would go. It was the fear of each that he was that man.

The stern methods of the McKees Rocks strikers were “lawless” and “anarchistic,” true enough, but what were they to do? Theirs were simply the methods of retaliation. At any rate, the entire military forces of the U.S. could not have brought order and prevented violence as effectively as those strikers did.

In no strike of such proportion in this country at one place has there been less bloodshed than at McKees Rocks. It is the general opinion of the working class citizens in and about Pittsburg that the men did the proper thing. A concrete lesson in “direct action” was taught—and many learned.

The McKees Rocks men are back at work, concessions have been won, an organization of 5,000 members has been built up and branch meetings are being held every night, but the fight with the Pressed Steel Car Company is not over yet, for that firm is but a branch of the steel trust.

And the men realize that. They know that it is war to the knife, and that they are engaged in a struggle in which more than themselves are concerned. The company has promised a raise of 15 per cent at the end of 60 days, but the men know they will have to fight for it, and they are preparing. They realize that their stronghold is their organization. This is the first time that a revolutionary union has got a foothold in the basic industries. A real labor union has stepped in upon the territory of the steel trust and all the means at the command of that giant concern will be used to crush the I.W.W. at McKees Rocks, for if it holds the ground gained there, what will be the outcome in the Pittsburg district in a few months? Already the McKees Rocks victory is stirring the entire district to organization, in what is, without doubt, the industrial center of America.

The United States government is behind the move to crush the I.W.W. for the I.W.W. is attacking the present system at its base. It believes in direct action rather than wrangling in legislative halls with men better acquainted with the game of politics than the working class is. In order to sidetrack the remarkable increasing interest in industrial unionism, Taft is touring the country and praising the American Federation of Labor, advising Post, Van Cleave and that narrow-sighted group to be more tolerant, and, on the other hand, urging working men to join that organization, at the same time pointing to the fact that he is an honorary member of the Steam Shovelers’ Union.

Organization in the Industrial Workers of the World is going on at a rapid rate. The places where the greatest progress is made is in the non-union plants. The victory at McKees Rocks has instilled more hope and solidarity into the workers of this country, and in Europe, for that matter, than years of talk and car loads of literature could have done. It is on the firing line against the muzzles of the enemy’s guns that the workers learn of the class struggle and the road to economic freedom.

The tin workers who are out against the open shop order of the American Sheet and Tin Plate Company are becoming imbued with the principles of industrial unionism and the I.W.W. as the only organization that represents those principles. The old shell, however, is holding them down and it looks at this writing as if the men will lose their strike. In fact, the thing for which they have come out is absurd, anyway. It is based upon the principle that the interests of capital and labor are identical. If this were not so they would realize that the only way to disregard an open shop order is to cast aside written time agreements and enforce their demands through the power of their organization. The open shop would have no fear for them if they were industrially organized, and until they are industrially organized they will be at the mercy of the steel trust, contracts or no contracts.

The odds are tremendously against the tin plate workers. Good union (?) men in the independent (?) mills have signed up and are back at work while those employed by the trust are out on strike. The next time the trust owned, mills will sign up and the independent (?) mills will go out. The “Gentlemen’s Agreement” is forgotten and the masters of both concerns dine and wine together and smile at their wage slaves with divided forces on the economic field. It is no wonder that Taft praises the A.F. of L. The tin workers will have to take on a revolutionary spirit if they expect to win.

Hope! Hope is everywhere. The wage slaves of the world will not wait indefinitely to vote Socialism in. It will come sooner than that. They will organize industrially and establish the working class republic in their own domain—in the industries.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v10n05-nov-1909-ISR-gog-LB-cov.pdf