Divisions between ‘industrial’ and ‘political’ Socialists play out in a strike led by the I.W.W. at Pittsburgh’s Oliver Iron & Steel Company with real consequences.

‘Pittsburg Traitors’ by Celia Lepschutz from International Socialist Review. Vol. 13 No. 11. May, 1913.

THE worst traitor to the working class is. the man or woman, who, pretending to aid it in its struggles against Capitalism, helps in any way to divide the proletarians, to the benefit of the master class. In a time of strike it is the duty of every real Socialist to point out the class nature of existing social institutions and to aid the workers, not only in winning their fight against the exploiters of labor, but to teach them also the vital need of CLASS unionism on the economic and SOCIALISM on the political field. During the recent rebellion of the wage slaves of Senator Oliver, of Pennsylvania, a newspaper called the Pittsburg Socialist (?) was a large factor in defeating the workers and serving the master class.

Three thousand employes of the Oliver Iron & Steel Co. struck for higher wages and better working conditions. A large proportion of these were women and girls, and nearly all the strikers were “foreigners” unable to write the English language. The average girl and woman wage was from $3.00 to $4.00. Boys earn $1.00 a day and married men $1.50 so that wives and children are forced to enter the wage-earning field to supplement the father’s earnings.

Women worked 101⁄2 hours daily with arms elbow deep in oil, eating lunch where they sat toiling and returning home in oil-soaked clothing. During the winter the Oliver wage slaves rarely see the daylight and the White Plague finds easy victims among them.

As soon as the strikers went out, I.W.W. and Socialist organizers, who had been carrying on a splendid educational campaign, threw all their strength into the fight to help the workers organize into ONE industrial union that would give them a chance of beating the bosses.

The Pittsburg Justice edited by Fred Merrick, threw open its pages to the strikers and held benefit meetings for them, while the Pittsburg Socialist (?) lent its aid to the Capitalist enemy by seeking to discredit the I.W.W. organizers and members of the Socialist party who advocated CLASS unionism.

The Oliver paper, known as the Gazette-Times, printed regular lies about the I.W.W. and the Pittsburg Socialist (?) REPRINTED an article from the ENEMY’S sheet headed, “The I.W.W. is Repudiated,” in which it was claimed that the I.W.W. organizers had collected $200 for the strikers which these organizers had appropriated; and that the strikers had repudiated the I.W.W.

These lies were promptly nailed and disproved by the organizers. But the prompt help the Pittsburg Socialist (?) gave the Oliver Iron & Steel Company, through the reprinting of the Oliver Gazette-Times calumnies, almost certainly broke the strike.

The Pittsburg Socialist (?) ENDORSED the lies of the Capitalist paper by reprinting them. Hundreds of copies of this issue of this “Socialist” (?) sheet were distributed and sold to the strikers.

Doubt and suspicion was fostered in their minds. Since “Socialists,” the professed friends of the working class, warned them against the I.W.W., some of them refused to join. The strikers were at once divided.

Priests and clergymen, as well as capitalist exploiter and newspaper, were one with the Pittsburg Socialist (?) in denouncing the I.W.W. Surely they must be right. The strikers returned to the mills and the fight was lost.

Workingmen and women, this is the lowest point yet reached in the history of the Socialist movement in this country. Socialist Party members have actually joined the capitalists to beat the workers back to slavery. This is the level to which these opponents of class unionism have sunk–that they will join with the exploiters of labor before they will aid the workers to gain real unionism on the economic field.

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 de

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