The post-war strike wave that erupted in 1919 began with the Seattle General Strike and ended with the National Steel Strike. The country had never witnessed a strike like it, with over 350,000 workers in a basic industry walking out for union recognition. Steel’s seat was in Gary, Indiana–named for U.S. Steel founder E.H. Gary–and run as their private fiefdom until they lost control during the strike and called in the federal government. The U.S. army occupied the city, declaring martial law on October 6, 1919. Below is a statement from the just-formed Communist Party of America on the situation.

‘Resist the Terror!’ from The Communist (old C.P.A.). Vol. 1 No. 5. October 25, 1919.

GARY and the steel strike are a challenge to the workers…

Capitalism is desperate. It senses the awakening of the workers and their coming revolt. Capitalism in the United States finds it more and more difficult to maintain its power, to prevent the workers from acting as a class for the overthrow of Capitalism.

The American workers, as if just awakening from the sleep of ages, are becoming conscious of larger means and purposes in the struggle against Capitalism. Everywhere there is unrest and developing revolt. Strikes are assuming a menacing character; Congress is held in contempt; the power of the press over the workers is weakening; while, most menacing of all, workers in the trades unions are in actual revolution against their old officials and reactionary policy.

Capitalism must act. Congress passes law after law against the militant workers. Agitators are imprisoned by the scores. “Criminal Syndicalism” measures in state after state make almost any advocacy of militant proletarian action a crime. Congress is considering prohibiting strikes in certain industries. The iron claws of reaction are seizing the proletariat.

Legislative measures are not the only means of repression of the workers used by Capitalism. Capitalism maintains itself by force; and behind all these measures there is the armed force of the capitalist state, the agency for the oppression of the workers by capital. This armed force is now being mobilized against workers on strike, as it is mobilized in Europe against workers in Revolution.

The steel strike had not yet started when capital mobilized its armed forces against the workers. Meetings are prohibited strike agitators are murdered and imprisoned. The terror of Capitalism is in action against the militant proletariat.

At this moment the class struggle is flaring up in all its intensity in Gary, Indiana, where thousands of steel workers on strike are being repressed by the power of the Federal government, including its army.

In the city of Gary–named after Steel Trust Gary and symbolical of Steel Trust domination-the steel strikers were solid in their determination to carry on to the end. They had revolted against intolerable conditions, against the deprivation of life, against being compelled to live as beasts of burden. It was a terrible thing, this strike, making their livelihood still more precarious; but they struck, and they stood firm.

The city administration was against them. The press was against them. Church, press and government united against them.

It was not enough that the strikers should suffer the ordinary deprivations of a strike. It was not enough that they should suffer starvation. Theirs was an industrial mutiny, and they had to pay the price of mutiny in blood.

Martial law prevails in Gary. The local government no longer exists. The army is in control and Major-General Leonard Wood is dictator. The Terror of Capitalism is in action.

What was the immediate cause for calling in the army? The strikers were denied the right to hold public demonstrations and parades. The hirelings of Capitalism know the value during strikes of demonstrations, parades and meetings. They arouse the spirit of the strikers, developing enthusiasm and courage. Unless they meet together and demonstrate, the workers are isolated, and isolation breeds suspicion, fears and a weakening of morale. Morale is vital during a strike; meetings and demonstrations are necessary to maintain this morale. Realizing this psychological factor, the first act of the hirelings of Capitalism during a strike is to prevent meetings and demonstrations of the strikers.

The strikers of Gary were prevented for two weeks from holding a mass parade. Permission was denied them. Then the strikers determined to hold their mass demonstration in spite of the mayor’s order to the contrary. And they did. In spite of the mayor, in spite of the order: the mass power of the workers conquered.

This was dangerous–to the capitalists and Capitalism. Capitalism acted. The army was called in; grenades and rifles and machine guns were to answer the workers.

And now Gary is under martial law. Now Gary is in the control of a military dictator. To the devil with civil liberty!

The Terror prevails in Gary. Machine guns and rifles and armored trucks bristle, and everywhere, prepared for action, behind the array of military power, the skulking hirelings of Capitalism are active the spies, and the agents of the Automobiles Department of Justice rush through the city, arresting strikers and agitators. Hundreds have been arrested; dozens are being prepared for deportation.

This is the terror of Capitalism in action. This is the terror used against the workers whenever the workers assert their independence.

There is industrial mutiny in Gary, and industrial mutiny is the prelude to industrial revolution. The mutiny must be crushed in order to crush the oncoming industrial revolution of the proletariat.

Every blow at the workers of Gary is a blow at the workers of the whole country. If the Terror prevails in Gary, it will prevail in every community where the workers mutiny against their industrial masters.

The capitalist state has intervened in Gary. The power of the capitalist state is being used against our fellow workers in Gary. This power will be used against the workers everywhere. Capitalism and the state have issued a challenge to the workers.

The workers must answer this challenge!

The workers must rally to the cause of their comrades in Gary, to the cause of their comrades in every city where the steel strike prevails.

The defeat of the steel strike would make all the more difficult victory for other strikers.

The victory of Capitalism and the state in Gary means victory again in the days to come.

Armed force must not prevail! The workers must conquer!

They can conquer by means of solidarity, by means of using their mass power against Capitalism and the state. by rallying in mass strikes to the cause of their comrades in Gary.

Bring pressure to bear upon the state by means of mass strikes.

The class struggle is becoming acute. Terror is in action against the workers. The workers must resist the terror.

The process of the proletarian revolution consists in weakening the class power of the capitalists as against strengthening the class power of the workers. Victory for Capitalism and the state in Gary means strengthening the class power of the capitalists. Victory for the workers in Gary means strengthening the class power of the proletariat.

Workers, act! Out of your mass strikes to aid the Gary workers will come the impulse and the action for establishing a state of the workers, proletarian dictatorship, which will crush the capitalists as the capitalist state now crushes the workers.

Emulating the Bolsheviks who changed the name of their party in 1918 to the Communist Party, there were up to a dozen papers in the US named ‘The Communist’ in the splintered landscape of the US Left as it responded to World War One and the Russian Revolution. This ‘The Communist’ began in September 1919 combining Louis Fraina’s New York-based ‘Revolutionary Age’ with the Detroit-Chicago based ‘The Communist’ edited by future Proletarian Party leader Dennis Batt. The new ‘The Communist’ became the official organ of the first Communist Party of America with Louis Fraina placed as editor. The publication was forced underground in the post-War reaction and its editorial offices moved from Chicago to New York City. In May, 1920 CE Ruthenberg became editor before splitting briefly to edit his own ‘The Communist’. This ‘The Communist’ ended in the spring of 1921 at the time of the formation of a new unified CPA and a new ‘The Communist’, again with Ruthenberg as editor.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thecommunist/thecommunist3/v1n05-oct-25-1919.pdf