Seven men (included wounded who died) last week went to their graves as the result of the battle between pickets and police before Republic Steel Corp.'s South Chicago plant (TIME, June 7). In Chicago a "mass funeral" was staged for three of them by the Steel Workers Organizing Committee. Meanwhile the violence of the S. W. O. C. strike against three big independent steel com- panies—Republic, Youngstown and Inland —subsided. In Detroit, where fortnight ago United Automobile Workers organizers were beaten at the entrance to Ford's River Rouge plant, the fighting shifted to court. On both fronts the combatants took advantage of the lull to maneuver for position. On both sides the sense of injury grew deeper and darker.
Steel Front. Inside the Republic plant near which the bloodshed had taken place, newshawks found that some 1,000 non-strikers were not having a bad time, playing baseball and ping-pong in off hours. But Chicago's Mayor Edward J. Kelly acted to end their cloistered life. He wrote Republic Steel a polite letter declaring that the men were living in quarters (a wire mill) not designed for residence, an infraction of the city's health and housing ordinances. They would have to be evacuated within 48 hours. When the time expired, the company shunted 21 Pullman cars inside its gates, installed about 600 workers in them, said the rest would go home at night.
In Ohio's Mahoning Valley, site of several Republic and Youngstown plants, other maneuvers were afoot. Basic strategy of all three steel companies was to sit tight, wait for back-to-work movements to start among such of their workers as were not actively allied with the S. W. 0. C. strike. They counted on aroused public feeling to assure protection for men going back to work. The Youngstown plants were entirely shut down, in charge of company maintenance men. Republic plants were in partial operation. All were in a state of close siege by strikers. Around the Republic plant at Warren, Ohio, the roads for miles were taken over by strikers who stopped traffic of every description. They called it "Strike Law." Airplanes, making regular flights to deliver food to the plants at Warren and Niles, were sniped at and repeatedly hit by rifle bullets. The company offered $1,000 reward (unclaimed) for information leading to the arrest and conviction of snipers.
To prevent supplies entering the plants by rail, strikers put ties on the tracks, threatened the train crews until they retired "in fear of bodily injury." This brought the railroads into the picture: Pennsylvania, B & O and Erie. They appealed to the courts for an injunction to prevent strikers from blocking their tracks. S.W.O.C. counsel replied that the railroads were not acting on their own behalf but merely as a catspaw for the steel companies.