Everett Labor Joins Nationwide Rebellion Against U.S. Steel
Local union leaders rally to the national call to challenge the 'autocratic domination' of the steel industry as conflict over the open shop reaches a breaking point.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
War was formally declared upon the United States Steel corporation by leaders of organized labor throughout the United States and Canada at a conference in Pittsburg, presided over by Samuel Gompers. The labor organizations stated that the steel trust is using its great wealth in an effort to destroy the only factor standing between the workers and unchecked industrial, political, and social carnage. On July 1, 1909, the corporation began enforcing a policy of hostility toward labor, refusing to recognize the right of workers to associate for their common protection, while simultaneously reducing wages. Local labor organizations in Everett have been instructed to form committees to co-operate in the organizing effort and to pressure government officials to investigate the corporation's actions, which included the suppression of free speech and assembly in mill towns.
“This corporation in its mad greed for still greater riches sweeps aside, makes and unmakes law, its enactors and executors.”
This 1910 call to action highlights the early 20th-century intensity of the labor struggle in Everett, a city defined by its mill-based economy. Today's tensions over gig-work, warehouse conditions, and corporate power echo these same arguments about the need for workers to have a collective voice against unchecked industrial interests.
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