Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 542

they were really engaged in a death struggle in the competitive field. U. S. Steel was borrowing, begging and stealing money everywhere - I shouldn't say stealing - to build some new steel plants, because they had missed their step, as I've already described, and were behind Bethlehem in not having modernized their plants.

My memory is that they struck Big Steel first and that it wasn't until Big Steel was settled that they pulled the strike on Little Steel. I think that was the technique. It was a cagey, smart technique on Murray's part. He was a very practical organizer. When he had a job to do, he figured it all out. He estimated human motives, estimated who would want to settle badly, why they would want to settle first, where his pressures cold best be applied, and so forth.

As a matter of fact, I don't recall the settlement of this steel strike. They went out in May 1937. It was not very long drawn out. It was actually settled by private conversations between Myron Taylor and John L. Lewis, following Lewis's old pattern in the coal industry of dealing only with the top people and doing that privately where nobody knew anything about it. Mr. Taylor took a suite at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help