An often overlooked component of 1934’s history-changing strike wave was the multiple hard fought, deadly strikes in Alabama. The area around Birmingham supplied all the components–lime, ore, and coal–for heavy industry, creating one of the county’s steel producing centers–and the seat of southern heavy industry. From mine, on to rail, to mill and manufacture, all was controlled by the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. If ever a situation demanded a general strike, it was in the spring of 1934. However, jim-crow and a divided union movement. The C.P. District Organizer on the struggle.
‘Some Highlights in Recent Strikes in the Birmingham Area’ by Nat Ross from Daily Worker. Vol. 11 No. 128. May 29, 1934.
Common Bond Between T.C.I. Coal, Ore Miners and Steel Men
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. A peculiar feature of the Birmingham area where 8,000 ore miners are striking is that the steel corporations, headed by the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (U.S. Steel), own all the ore mines and the main coal mines, in addition to the steel mills.
This feature establishes at the outset a common bond between the steel workers and the coal and ore miners, who together form the decisive working class force in this area.
The Strike Demands
The two outstanding demands in the strikes in the steel, coal, laundry, textile and other industries have been: (1) Recognition of the A. F. of L. union; (2) For higher wages.
The demand for higher wages was part of the whole struggle against the slave differential wage rates established for the South by the N.R.A.
During the first week of the coal strike in April, which closed every mine in Alabama, the demands of the miners for union recognition and against the differential, found a unanimous echo among the ore miners and steel men. As long as the steel mills could ran with the stored up coal of their captive mines, the coal miners could never win a real victory.
In this situation which stirred the masses to their depths, the Communist Party boldly called on the ore miners and steel workers to prepare to strike for their own immediate demands, and to support the brave fight of their brother coal miners.
This ringing appeal of the Party found a universal echo among the ore miners and steel workers. Strike talk was in the air. Even a general strike was feared. The ore miners and steel workers were raring to go.
How Officials Split Strike
So strong was the pressure of the ore miners for strike, especially since they recognized that they were storing up ore for the steel corporations just like the coal miners had done previously, that the officials of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, which, had completely organized the ore fields, set May 4th as the strike date unless their demands for union recognition and higher wages were met.
The officials made this declaration the last week in April. In the meantime Bill Mitch, District President of the United Mine Workers of Alabama, used this situation to come to an agreement with the steel and coal corporations. The coal miners were forced back to work without recognition of the union, and in some cases with actual wage decreases, with the T.C.I. miners going back last, as the ore miners came out on strike.
The most glaring example of this was seen when the Republic Steel workers, organized in the same union as the ore miners, went on strike the latter part of April.
This was the first breach in the steel industry since the 1919 strike in Birmingham.
It was the first answer of the Birmingham steel workers to the Party slogan for spreading the strike. On this same day Mitch called a hurried meeting of the coal miners of the Republic Steel, forcing them back to work. At the same time the Party called on the Republic coal miners to stick with their Republic Steel brothers, and urging the Republic ore miners to strike.
Response to Party Call
The next day the steel strikers of Republic picketed the Republic coal mine and shut it down, despite the sell-out agreement signed by Mitch a day before. It was then that Mitch made a vicious attack on the Party, told the coal miners that the U.M.W.A. did not believe in “sympathy” strikes, and ordered them back to work.
On May 4th, 8,000 ore miners struck, tying up the whole industry. The Party had even greater influence and stronger organization among the ore miners than among the coal miners. And too, the ore miners had watched the coal strike with breathless concern. They went over the heads of their big officials.
Elements of real revolutionary strike tactics were cropping out as the ore miners began to put Party slogans into practice. There was mass picketing at every mine. Women and unemployed workers Joined the picket line. Jim-Crow lines disappeared as the pickets fought together. In some cases rank and file committees were elected to lead the strike. The ore miners were really fighting to win. In the meantime the coal miners were becoming restless. especially in the captive mines, and so were the steel workers.
It was in this situation that the steel trust ordered their deputized thugs to shoot to kill. From then on the ore strike zones became in armed camp, with the national guardsmen on twenty-four hour duty.
Ranks Divided by A. F. of L, Officials
In this critical situation the big officials of the A. F. of L. crudely exposed themselves as misleaders of strikes, as enemies of unity, and friends of jim-crowism. Their ballyhoo for the N.R.A. was even louder than that which comes from official Washington sources. In fact, they acted as real strike breakers and scabs—yes, literally.
For example, in the Woodward Blast Furnace, which is organized in the same union as the Republic steel strikers and all the ore strikers, the officials of the local, with the consent and under the orders of International Vice President. Coles, who is in Birmingham to “lead” the strike, issued a statement to the press that the steel workers of Woodward were satisfied and would not join the strike. This was an attempt not only to smash the ore strike, but to prevent the steel strike from spreading, and thus winning the demands for the ore miners and steel workers. Just as the big A. F. of L. officials tried where possible to get the white workers to jim-crow the Negroes, so the Negro reformists were trying to instill distrust among the Negro strikers toward their white union brothers. However, neither the white nor the Negro fakers had a great deal of success.
At this time also a wave of terror was let loose against the Party, with the purpose of smashing the strikes. No one was more vicious than the big A. F. of L. officials, who took a considerable number of hours at their recent annual state convention to make slanderous and insane attacks on the Party.
The solidarity of white and Negro strikers was never before seen in Birmingham. The remarkable militancy of the Negro strikers has won the admiration of large sections of the white masses, many of whom only a year ago considered the Negro as fit only for scabbing. Over the heads of the bureaucrats the fight for Negro rights was placed on a higher plane, a real first step forward.
The need for united action of the steel workers and the coal and ore miners in the Birmingham area, became more clear. In fact, such strike action becomes the basic perspective in the gigantic struggles ahead in Alabama.
Activity of Party
The Party was very active in these strikes. It issued close to a quarter of a million leaflets during the ten weeks the strike wave was developing. The Party’s influence was wide spread among the strikers. A number of Party slogans were being adopted by the strikers. They began to see the Party as the real fighter for union recognition, against the differential, and for rank and file strike leadership. Here was a golden opportunity for our Party. It is a fact, that the Party, stepped forward and made progress in this situation.
But for every one striker we recruited, twenty others wanted to join but we didn’t get at them. Our main weaknesses were that we did not carry out a correct concentration policy. We didn’t pick out one key mine in order to build up a strong Party unit and develop a powerful opposition in the local which would show the way to the conscious revolutionary leadership of the strike movement. This is all the more serious since our Party units were functioning in the five biggest ore mines, and a number of Party members were local union officials and strike leaders.
Another serious mistake was our failure to prepare our Party units to function solidly in the strike situation, no matter how intense the terror became.
The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.
PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n128-may-29-1934-DW-LOC.pdf
