Introduction

Reminiscing about his days as a union organizer, David McDonald, the former president of the United Steel Workers of America, relates the following anecdote. According to McDonald, in order to get steel workers to join the union, the union organizers used a technique

which we called … visual education, which was a high-sounding label for a practice much more accurately described as dues picketing. It worked very simply. A group of dues-paying members selected by the district director (usually more for their size than their tact) would stand at the plant gate with pick handles or baseball bats and confront each worker as he arrived for his shift. ¹