OF REDS AND REVOLUTION: THREE NEW YORK NEWSPAPERS COVER
THE GREAT STEEL STRIKE OF1919
JohnP.Spencer
In the fall of 1919, some 350,000 recently organized steel workers fought a nationwide strike against the United States Steel Corporation, and failed to gain a single concession. Like the bitter Homestead strike of 1892, it was a standoff marked by violence. Yet, equally fierce was the battle over the image of the strike that was projected by the press, for the steel strike of 1919 occurred during the great "Red Scare." In a year of "national hysteria," many saw industrial conflict such as the steel strike through an ideological prism of anti-radicalism and anti-Bolshevism. It has been suggested that newspapers contributed to this tendency, and to the downfall of the steel strike in particular, by portraying it as a revolutionary conspiracy involving foreign-born "agitators" and even the Soviet Union itself.I If "red-baiting" was the general tendency of the mainstream press in 1919, however, the question arises: were there notable exceptions? Were there any newspapers which, like the Washington-Post during the McCarthy era, showed a degree of independence from the prevailing trend?2 To address this issue is to test the Jeffersonian notion of an independent and civic-minded American press at a historical moment when that function was most sorely needed. Moreover, the extent to which even highly regarded newspapers were prone to the excesses of the Red Scare may forcefully illuminate the degree and nature of such excess.News
1See Robert K. Murray, Red Scare; A Study in National Hysteria, 1919- 1920, (Minneapolis,1955),pp.135-152;andInterchurchWorldMovementa Public Opinion and the Steel Strike, (New York, 1921), pp. 90-155.
2David Halberstam, The Powers That Be, (New York, 1979), pp. 193-200.
TheHistory Journal:Post!facto
coverage in 1919 was important in reflecting public opinion as well as shapingit.
As the unofficial capital of journalism, notable in 1919 for its selection of eighteen daily newspapers, New York City provides a compelling field of study.3 Of particular interest is an examination of the city's three most widely read papers: The New York Times of Adolph Ochs, with its self-styled reputation for decency and impartiality; the New York World that Joseph Pulitzer and his successor Frank Cobb had shaped into perhaps the most highly regarded liberal newspaper of the era; and the New York American of William Randolph Hearst, who, like Pulitzer, had built his career by cultivating a working class readership, albeit with different motivations. Given the reputation and ethos of these papers, and particularly of the Times and the World, one might expect to find in them a less apocalyptic and sensational image of the steel strike than was evident in lesser papers. Indeed, in their coverage of the events leading up to the strike, the Times, the World, and the American differed substantially from, say, the New York Tribune, which epitomized the anti-radical tendencies of the era. Yet, over the course of the five-week period in which the steel strike dominated the front page of all three newspapers, the tone and emphasis in both the Times and the World shifted dramatically. Initially portrayed as a conflict between the owners and workers of the United States Steel Corporation, the strike metamorphosed, at several critical junctures, into the conflict between Bolshevism and Americanism that so pervaded the larger culture. Of the three, only Hearst's American remained moderate in its treatment of that theme. The degeneration of such highly regarded newspapers offers a telling illustration of the spread of anti-radical discourse in 1919, and suggests ignoble images of our vaunted democratic press: newspapers as instruments of political propaganda, or, conversely, as commercial enterprises that were shaped by and reactive to what was popular among readers.
3Oswald Garrison Villard, Some Newspapers and Newspaper-Men, (New York,1923),p.319.Thisfigureincludessixmorning dailies and twelve evening dailies, including four evening papers in Brooklyn.
In assessing the image of the strike projected by the World, the Times, and the American, this study is concerned with front page news coverage rather than editorial comment. By 1919, the front page, and especially its headlines, reached a wider readership than the editorial page, and engaged in a more subtle, even unconscious process of image-making and edi toriali zing. 4 Reporters and editors made significant decisions about what to emphasize in their writing and presentation, what kind of tone to adopt, and what kinds of sources to consult; in so doing, they defined what happened, why those events happened, and what they meant. This process was especially significant in the case of the steel strike of 1919 and the "Red Scare" in general, given the atmosphere of controversy and the dominance of newspapers in the field of mass communications. It should be noted, however, that this paper, in focusing on the extent of anti-radical discourse in the coverage itself, does not seek to argue conclusively about the causes and effects of suchcoverage.
Each of the three newspapers under consideration was resurrected and reshaped in the late nineteenth century by a notable publisher with a journalistic mission. After buying the 15,000 circulation New York World in 1883, Joseph Pulitzer announced his high purpose and independence in a credo that would appear on the editorial page until the paper's demise in 1931:
An institution that should always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.
4Michael Schudson, Discoyerin2 the News:A SocialHistoryof Newspapers, (New York, 1978), p. 98.Schudson comments on the diminishing role of the editorial page in the late-nineteenthcentury.
Pulitzer turnedtheWorldinto the first mass circulation newspaperhe had 250,000 readers by 1887-by appealing to the working class with a curious combination of idealistic crusading and lurid sensationalism.5 After1900,however, the World grew more sophisticated and appealed to middle-class liberals as well as workers.6 From 1904-1923 the paper wasedited bythe brilliantFrank Cobb, whom Pulitzer hadgroomed as his successor. Under Cobb,theWorld championed free speech and the rightsofminoritiesand labor, and was noted for its independence, intelligence, and fair mindedness.7 Writing in 1923 during his tenure as editor of The Nation, Oswald Garrison Villard applied his "ethical measuring stick" and asserted that despite occasional lapses, the World "remains the nearest approach to a great liberal daily which we have inAmerica."8
In reviving the New York Journal in 1895, William Randolph Hearst used Pulitzer's populism and New Journalistic sensationalism as his model-and then carried such techniques to even greater extremes. Calling for nationalization of coal mines, railroads, and telegraph lines and "destruction of criminal trusts," Hearst adopted a pro-labor stance even more radical than Pulitzer's.9 Contemporaries and historians alike have agreed that Hearst made such appeals to the masses for cynical and self-serving reasons, hoping to sell more papers and further his political ambitions. Io He is generally associated with the rise of "yellow journalism," defined by one historian as Pulitzer's sensational New Journalism without a soul.I 1 Yet, after about 1910, Hearst's "yellowness" began to fade just as Pulitzer's had, especially in the morning New York American, which
5The circulation figure is from Michael Emery and Edwin Emery, The. Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media, (New Jersey,1992), p.174.
6Sidney Kobre, Development of American Journalism, (Dubuque, Iowa, 1969), p. 571 and Emery Emery, p. 174.
7Kobre, p. 579 and Emery & Emery, pp.213-14.
8Villard, p.62.
9Emery & Emery, p. 216.
10Villard, pp. 16-41.
11Emery & Emery, p.191.
he edited himself and which in 1919 had a daily 3OO,OOO.12Moreover, the publisher unpredictability by opposing U.S. involvement in
circulation of about demonstrated his World War I and
denouncing the persecution of socialist and German-language newspapers.13 Though Hearst is known more for cynicism than high purpose, his American was the type of paper that may have resisted the "red-baiting" tendencies of 1919.
When Adolph Ochs bought the failing New York Times in 1896, he hoped to build a paper that would represent an alternative to the sensationalism of Pulitzer and Hearst. Like Pulitzer, Ochs made a high-minded mission statement, though of a different sort:
It will be my earnest aim that The New York Times give the news, all the news, in concise and attractive form, in language that 1s parliamentary in good society...to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of any party, sect or interest involved; to make the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades ofopinion.14
With Adolph Ochs as publisher, The New York Times was well known for the political conservatism of its editorial page and its business-class readership. Equally familiar, though, was the image of the Times as a "news-gathering machine," a paper in which editorial
commentary was secondary to the dispensing of large quantities of inf ormati on. 15 Above all, the paper would be "decent"; engaged in a
moral war with Pulitzer and Hearst, Ochs proudly proclaimed that his paper would not "soil the breakfast cloth" like the "yellow"
12Kobre, p. 583; the circulation figure is from Villard, p. 319.
13Emery & Emery, p.257.
14Quoted in Schudson, pp. 10-11.
15Kobre, p.587.
TheHistoryJournal:i\'. Post!Facto
journals.16 The Times gained readership as well as respect; a circulation of 9,000 when Ochs bought the paper had grown to some 340,000 by 1919.17 In 1911, reporter and newspaper critic Will Irvin wrote that the Times came "the nearest of any newspaper to presenting a truthful picture of life in New York and the world at large."18
Whether in the name of impartiality, justice, or crass populism, each of the three papers under consideration suggests a potential for unusual coverage in 1919. Moreover, New York was close enough to steel producing centers for the newspapers to send correspondents and cover the event extensively, yet removed enough to enhance objectivity.
The tense social climate in which the steel strike occurred was certainly not conducive to objectivity and independent newspaper work. World War I set the precedent for anti-radical fervor in 1919.The government jailed socialists and other dissenters under the Espionage and Sedition Acts. The Russian Revolution injected fear into an already fervent debate over patriotism; to many the revolution seemed the very antithesis of all that was American. Censorship of socialist and German-language newspapers was rampant. Decades of peak immigration from Southern Europe had caused social tension to escalate; in the industrial East of 1919,half
the population was either foreign-born or of foreign-born parentage .19
Tensions were aggravated in January 1919 when a general strike shut down the city of Seattle for five days and caused alarm throughout the nation. Seattle mayor Ole Hanson and others succeeded in stigmatizing the strike as a revolutionary threat, setting an example for other political leaders and employers who might use
16The Times motto is quoted from Emery & Emery, p. 235 and Ochs'
emphasis on the "decency" of the Tjmes is discussed in Schudson, pp. 108-109, 112.
17Schudson, p.114.
18Quoted in Schudson, p. 107.
19Emery & Emery, p.210.
anti-radical rhetoric in the fight against un ionism.20 On April 30, newspapers reported another astonishing story: the postal service had intercepted mail bombs intended for dozens of prominent Americans, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan. This, together with May Day riots in several major cities, raised further concern about radical activities. Industrial conflict was a constant backdrop to such events; throughout the year, hundreds of strikes occurred every month, including the dramatic Boston police strike in earlySeptember.21
The steel industry was ripe for conflict. In 1901, when the U.S. Steel Corporation was formed during a wave of mergers in the industry, sixty to seventy percent of the nation's steel making capacity came under the direction of a single holding company.2 2 Sixteen subsidiary companies maintained their own identities, but answered to the board of U.S. Steel. By 1919, the corporation consisted of 142 mills in twenty states and one Canadian province.2 3 In the course of this transformation, unions had virtually been eliminated from the industry.24 The situation of labor was bleak: by 1919, almost half the men worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and an unskilled worker's average annual income was less than the estimated minimum subsistence for a family of five.25
Efforts to change this situation began in August 1918, when twenty-four trade unions met in Chicago and established the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers, with Samuel Gompers as honorary chair, John Fitzpatrick as acting chair, and William Z. Foster as secretary-treasurer. Throughout the next year, despite bitter resistance from steel interests, this committee achieved surprising success in organizing workers in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, and other districts throughout the
20Murray, p.67.
21 Ibid., p. 111.
22GeraldG. Eggert, SteelmastersandLaborReform,1886-1923,
(Pittsburgh, 1981), p.I1.
23The New York Tribune, 19 September 1919, p.1.
24Eggert, p. 14.
25Murray, p.137.
The History Journal:Post!Facto
Northeast,26 On June 20, 1919, the union leaders asked Judge Elbert
H. Gary, Chairman of the Board of Directors of U.S. Steel, for a conference to discuss working conditions and wages. Receiving no reply, the Committee circulated a strike ballot among the local unions, all of which voted to strike. On August 26, with a strike threat to back them up, union leaders requested a conference with arbitration, this time receiving no for an answer. President Wilson attempted to head off the crisis by promising a national industrial conference and urging the steel unions to seek a settlement of grievances in that venue. Yet on September 10, under pressure fromlocal union leadership, the National Committee issued a strike call for September 22. The Times, the World, and the American each announced the move the following day-the first time the strike had made the frontpage.
In the week before September 22, the crisis was the lead story in all three newspapers. Coverage emphasized the official positions of management and labor. On September 18, banner headlines in both the Times and the World announced that Judge Gary was "Firm For Open Shop." On the top right of the page the two papers also printed and placed a box around the chairman's letter to the heads of subsidiary companies; in it, Gary explained that he declined to meet with union leaders because he did not feel they represented a majority of the employees of U.S. Steel, and because negotiation with labor unions "would indicate the closing of our shops against non union labor; and large numbers of our workers are not members of unions and do not care to be." Elaborating, Gary declared that his stand was one of "principle...vital to the greatest industrial progress and prosperity." The following day, the strikers dominated the news. All three papers featured their twelve demands in a special box; the right to bargain collectively, an eight hour workday and six day week, and wages "sufficient to guarantee American standards of living," were especially notable. Quoting extensively from a letter written to President Wilson by National Committee chairman John Fitzpatrick, the lead stories exposed readers to a year's worth of
26 Ibid., p. 135.
historical background from the perspective of the strikers, including references to "despotic and un-American industrial conditions," the workers' patriotic decision to wait until after the armistice to press their demands, and the "obstinate" refusal of Judge Gary to discuss such matters.
Though all three papers initially covered both perspectives on the strike, the tone of both the World and the Times was slanted in subtle ways against the workers. Headlines dealing with Judge Gary emphasized his stated belief in the open shop principle. In no instance did a newspaper announce that "Strikers Insist on Eight Hour Day," or "Union Firm For Right to be Recognized." Headlines about the strikers also hinted at their unreasonableness. In the World, workers "ignored" and "rejected" a "plea" from President Wilson. The Times indicated that the unions were "chafing," that they insisted "Gary Must Give In," and that they "Advocate No Compromise."27 Meanwhile, Gary was "firm" for principle, and the newspapers did not highlight his refusal to meet with members of the strike committee. The American was generally more favorable to strikers; the union did not appear rigid, but rather it had "Gone Too Far To Turn Back." Hearst's paper did not visibly emphasize Gary's position over that of theworkers.28
Moreseriousthansuchbias,however,wastheanti-radical undercurrent that appeared mainly on page two of theWorld inthedays preceding the walkout.On September 18, a headline declared that William Z. Foster, secretary-treasurer of the National Committee,was "Once An Anarchist." Essentially a reprinted editorial from thesteel industry publication The Iron Age, the storychronicled Foster'sformer involvement with the Industrial Workers of the World and quoted revolutionary rhetoric from the pamphlet "Syndicalism," which Foster wrote in 1911. The following day, a sub-head on pageone reported that "Foster, Real Leader of Movement,Becomes Storm Center of Charges Which Accuse Him of Radica lism." Extensive