STRIKE STRATEGY
a living strike, and they are not far wrong. This dramatization may be accomplished in many ways, such as mass picketing in the face of police terror, mass violations of injunctions, free speech fights, marches such as those of the Kansas and West Virginia miners, spectacular exposure of the workers' poverty and the employers' riches, militant resistance to violence, transfer of strikers' children from the strike district, nation-wide relief campaigns, national and local protest meetings, state investigations, parades, pageants, tag-days, etc., etc.
Good strike dramatization is closely related to militant fighting on the offensive. Classical examples of dramatic strikes were those of the steel workers in Homestead in 1892, of the Colorado coal miners and Lawrence Textile workers in 1912, and the present struggle in Passaic.
Dramatization is equally as effective in organizing campaigns as in strikes. Often it can be strikingly accomplished by the simple expedient of transacting with a fanfare of trumpets and mass participation union business and maneuvers which, were no dramatic effects desired, could be handled easily and shortly in committee, such as the formulation of demands, election of negotiation committees, taking of strike votes, etc.
For example, in the steel campaign of 1918–19 one of our best organizing strokes was the holding of a national conference of steel workers in Pittsburgh for the express purpose of considering and acting upon the critical situation in the industry. The actual legislative business of the conference we could have transacted, had we been so minded, in 10 minutes in committee. But we advertised the conference so widely that the workers of all the industry had their eyes focussed upon it. It dramatized their hopes and ispirations in the struggle. It had splendid organizing results.
Likewise, when we came to decide on the question of
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