The great steel mills lay cool and dead and some 500,000 steelworkers hit the streets. Another 500,000 would be called out of steel-fabricating plants the minute Philip Murray thought the right strategic moment had come. In a slower, creeping fashion—if the shutdown lengthened—unemployment would spread to railroads, auto plants, thousands of steel-dependent factories. In the wink of an eye last week, the nation's economic backbone was paralyzed by the first industry-wide steel strike since the walkout of 1946.
Federal Mediator Cyrus Ching, reflecting over his failure to break the deadlock, sadly summed...