ABSTRACT
Studies of the 1919 Steel Strike have generally assumed that the strike would have had a much better chance of succeeding if all the steelworkers had walked out. Modern steel manufacturing in the United States originated in the Pittsburgh district. Trade union organization among steelworkers had its deepest roots in the mills of the Monongahela Valley. The chapter analyzes the impact of the memory of defeat on the skilled workers who eschewed strike action in 1919. In the summer of 1920, in the aftermath of the great steel strike, David Saposs, a labor historian trained by John R. Commons at the University of Wisconsin, led a team of field investigators working for the Interchurch World Movement into the steel towns of Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania. Saposs and his coworkers, Bertha Saposs, Mary Senior, and John Fitch, interviewed 166 steelworkers. The bulk of the Saposs interviews were conducted in the Pittsburgh district.
