Page:Jay Lovestone - Blood and Steel (1923)).djvu/26

 stown, Ohio. The declaration is especially interesting in view of the fact that it is made by a skilled man.

"I had relatives in the Revolutionary War, I fought for freedom of the Philippines myself, and I had three boys fighting for democracy in France. One of them is lying in the Argonne forest now. If my boy could give his life fighting for free democracy in Europe, I guess I can stand it to fight this battle thru to the end. I am going to help my fellow workmen show Judge Gary that he can't act as if he was a king or kaizer and tell them how long they have got to work."

The workers are onto the infamous game of the Steel Trust's savage exploitation. They know that the capitalists are simply out to strip them to the skeleton. Turning to Lieutenant Walker's diary, we find the following on this point: "The melter broke in again. 'It's the dollar they are after—the sucking dollar. They say they are going to cut the long turn. I heard they were going to cut out the long turn when I went to work in the mill, as a kid. I'm workin' it, ain't I? Christ!"

The Twelve-Hour Day is maintained by a highly organized system of force and violence—the employing class Government, municipal, State, and Federal. Every steel town and almost every official, church and newspaper in these towns are the outright property of the Steel Buccaneers. Only thru Black Cossackism and merciless oppression are the workers held in the abject slavery of the inhuman 12-Hour Day. From their own bitter experiences thousands of steel workers have come to believe that Government is their bosses' rule of blood and iron. A mailed fist policy goes hand in hand with the long working day. Bayonets buttress the powerful dictatorship of steel and profits. A vicious spy system has its deadly tentacles creeping thru every walk of the steel worker's life.

The union of Steel and Government is today an open, ugly fact. The Democratic President Wilson had Gary act as the representative of the public at his first Industrial Peace Conference. The Republican Harding only echoes the sentiments and opinions of this Field Marshal of the American employing class.

Mellon, our Secretary of the Treasury, a heavy donor to the Re-