Inscription
retouching across recto in grey paint; crop marks around perimeter in grease pencil, white paint, and orange crayon; on verso, upper right printed in black ink on applied barcode label: HBX-463-BS; center printed in black ink on applied newspaper perpendicular: The police in an orderly row are coming across a field to- / ward a ragged crowd of about 1,500. Two people are carry- / ing American flags; another has a sign: "Republic vs. the / People." / This is the Republic Steel Company [circled in red ink] [by unknown hand in red ink: Strike 1937] plant in South Chica- / go, Memorial Day 1937. For two days strikers have been bat- / tling police to seize the plant and oust company maintenance / men inside. / There are 75,000 steel workers on strike across the nation / as John L. Lewis and his new Congress of Industrial Organi- / zations are trying to gain union recognition. / U.S. Steel has already settled, giving a 10 per cent wage / increase and establishing a 40-hour week. Now Lewis turns / to Little Steel--Republic, Inland, Youngstown. / Six Republic plants are virtually under siege by strikers. / The company drops food to its people by plane, and one / plane is fired on. / It is a time of sitdown strikes, beatings by company / goons, hardjawed hostility between management and its / workers. Union organizers at the Ford Motor Company are / bloodily beaten in their effort to win recognition and an $8 / day. Henry Ford says with finality he'll only pay $6--and / definitely no union. / In South Chicago, they are marching, tattered crusaders, / veterans of the hunger-ache of the Depression. Their leader, / a hard-muscled young man in shirtsleeves with a CIO button / in the ribbon of his felt hat, approaches a police officer. / The officer makes an impatient gesture, as if to say no. / The crowd is yelling and throwing rocks and pebbles from / slingshots. Suddenly, the 300 police draw their guns and fire / directly into the mob. The strikers stop, then run, climbing / over the fallen in their maddened dash to safety. / A heavy, bareheaded middle-age man finds himself at / the rear of the mob and tries to run a gauntlet of police. / They begin clubbing him with their nightsticks and he tries / to dodge past them. / Then he is trapped and holds his hands up. The clubbing / goes on. Slowly, clumsily, he goes down. The clubbing contin- / ues. The CIO charges later that one of the 10 people who died / was found with his brains literally beaten out. Six others / were shot in the back. / The strikers lose the battle. The strike is settled on Re- / public's terms. But they win the war: four years later the / government invokes the New Deal's Wagner Act to order / Republic and other firms of Little Steel to recognize the un- / ion, the United Steel Workers of America. / This photograph by Carl Linde is another in a series / of Photos to Remember by The Associated Press which / is appearing Mondays in Accent.; lower left printed in black ink perpendicular: Republic Steel Co. Strike 1938 / 385-256; lower left stamped in red ink perpendicular: APR 18 1977 E
Provenance
Tribune Company, Chicago; Mary and Dan Solomon, Monarch Beach, CA; gift to NGA, 2018.
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