In the midst of the Great Depression, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee pushed to create a labor union representing the interests of steel workers. As part of this effort, four thousand steel workers gathered in Homestead, Pennsylvania, site of the famous 1892 Homestead Strike against the Carnegie Steel Company, in the summer of 1936.
Explanation
In the midst of the Great Depression, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee pushed to create a labor union representing the interests of steel workers. As part of this effort, four thousand steel workers gathered in Homestead, Pennsylvania, site of the famous 1892 Homestead Strike against the Carnegie Steel Company, in the summer of 1936. There, they agreed to a manifesto expressing their rights and grievances in language that explicitly invoked the Declaration of Independence. In particular, the steel workers declared their “inalienable rights to organize into a great industrial union, banded together with all our fellow steelworkers.” The steel industry had a long history of resisting organized labor and its unionization efforts—at times, through extreme and violent tactics, including during the Homestead Strike itself. This manifesto—and the broader 1930s labor movement that it represented—was ultimately successful, with U.S. Steel recognizing a steel workers union in 1937.
Excerpt
On July Fourth, 1776, the American people declared their independence of political tyranny from which they had long suffered. They pledged themselves to protect the right of all to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
DESPOTISM OF THE LORDS OF STEEL
But today we find the political liberty for which our forefathers fought is made meaningless by economic inequality. In the steel and other like industries a new despotism has come into being.
Through their control over the hours we work, the wages we receive, and the conditions of our labor, and through their denial of our right to organize freely and bargain collectively, the Lords of Steel try to rule us as did the royalists against whom our forefathers rebelled.
. . .
COMPANIES HEED NO APPEAL—
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms.
We have used every channel of the so-called representation to put forward our requests and grievances. But all we have found is that the employers control these plans and refuse to grant requests which are not backed by independent organizations.
. . .
So we steel workers do today solemnly publish and declare our independence. We say to the world: “We are Americans.” We shall exercise our inalienable rights to organize into a great industrial union, banded together with all our fellow steel workers.
. . .
WE PLEDGE OUR LIVES—
Through this union, we shall win higher wages, shorter hours, and a better standard of living. We shall win leisure for ourselves, and opportunity for our children. Together with our union brothers in other industries, we shall abolish industrial despotism. We shall make real the dreams of the pioneers who pictured America as a land where all might live in comfort and happiness.
In support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our steadfast purpose as union men, our honor and our very lives.
