Gompers has announced that an organization campaign will very soon be launched amongst the steel workers. How half-hearted and faint an attempt this is to be and how unwillingly Gompers is getting into the campaign is borne out by two facts. First of all, Gompers is again putting only a handful of organizers at the disposal of this campaign. Such tactics are suicidal. At best they are stupid. In this case they are criminal. Secondly, in laying the plans for this campaign, whatever of it will materialize, Gompers is excluding the best fighters of the old strike. Masking his treachery to the interests of the steel workers under the hypocritical guise of an attack on "radicals," Gompers is depriving the unionization drive of the best forces available.
These are exactly the tactics pursued by all the enemies of labor. These are the very words used by the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers in their attacks on Labor. A pint jar cannot hold a quart. With an insufficient number of organizers and the best organizers kept out of the campaign Gompers can do very little for the steel workers.
Our Conclusions
The only way the steel workers can hope to abolish the 12-Hour Day is through building a powerful union able to settle the score with the United States Steel Corporation and its allies. All workers, particularly the miners and railroaders, must aid in this effort to unionize the steel mills.
It is an irreparable disgrace to the whole American Labor Movement that the 12-Hour Day is still in force in the steel industry. Labor stands helpless, its leaders asleep at the switch and refusing to do anything, while forces outside the Labor Movement, like the Federal Council of Churches, are agitating for the 8-Hour Day.
The steel workers in particular and the other organized workers in general must bring to bear the greatest pressure possible on the officialdom of the American Federation of Labor to get into a unionization campaign heart and soul. Thus only can the 12-Hour Day be ended. No half-way measures will do in a fight with the Steel Trust. The workers must organize for a fight to the finish in order to free themselves from their present slave conditions.
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