Page:Jay Lovestone - Blood and Steel (1923)).djvu/31



But, much as the strength of the Steel Trust and the help given it by the Government may be responsible for the degrading conditions, low pay and inhuman working hours in the industry, most of the blame for the intolerable situation must be placed on the heads of the labor bureaucracy. One need but examine the outstanding evils of the Steel Industry to be convinced that here more than in any other American industry is there a pressing demand for organization. Yet the record of inactivity in unionizing the steel workers is about as black as any achieved by our reactionary labor leaders.

Speaking of the Great Strike the Interchurch Commission said: "Causes of defeat, second in importance only to the fight waged by the Steel Corporation, lay in the organization and leadership, not so much of the strike itself, as of the American labor movement."

Gompers did not address a single meeting of steel workers during the strike. He did not attend a single meeting of the National Committee meeting in Pittsburgh. The case of Gompers attending meetings of the National Committee for organizing the steel workers was a case of the mountain really coming to Mahomet because Mahomet would not come to the mountain. The only meetings of the National Committee that Gompers attended were those held in Washington. The National Committee had to move its meetings to Gompers, to the city where he was, from Pittsburgh, in order to have him attend.

Just at this time, while things were coming to a showdown, the President of the American Federation of Labor saw fit to take a junket trip to Mexico. The organization drive of the National Comittee made it too hot for him in the United States at that time. Gompers spent a month on this trip to monkey around with the Conference of the still-born Pan-American Federation of Labor.

While the workers were straining every ounce of energy to organize for a fight against the 12-Hour Day, Sam Gompers took a flying trip to Europe and helped frame that damnable Versailles Treaty which has enslaved hundreds of thousands of workers and made millions the pawns of the imperialists. Six months were spent by the "Grand Old