The Memorial Day Massacre and American Labor

On the afternoon of May 30, 1937, the Chicago Police killed or mortally wounded ten men who were among a large group of unionists attempting to picket a mill operated by the Republic Steel Corporation. Scores of demonstrators were injured, some critically, in this shocking episode. The “Memorial Day Massacre” occurred during the Little Steel Strike, a sprawling and protracted conflict that arose out of the Committee for Industrial Organization’s (CIO) attempt to overcome the strident resistance of a coalition of power companies and to organize the basic steel industry. The strike evolved into a contest to decide how much the Second New Deal and its legislative centerpiece, the Wagner Act, would alter the landscape of American labor relations. This was evident in Chicago, where the unionists’ efforts to engage in mass picketing at Republic’s plant were an attempt to wrest from the Wagner Act’s ambiguous terms an effective right to strike, and where the violence of the police, who were doing Republic’s bidding, was intended to prevent this. Ultimately, the use of violence against the unionists not only defeated this bid to engage in mass picketing but served, along with similar clashes elsewhere during the strike, to justify government intervention that ended the walkout and secured the companies’ victory. Later, the strike and the massacre were invoked to justify political and legal changes that further limited the right to strike and that endorsed much of what the police, the steel companies, and their allies had done during the conflict. While the CIO did eventually organize steel, this success was primarily the result of the war and not the strike or the labor law. And although the National Labor Relations Board prosecuted the steel companies for violating the Wagner Act, this litigation took years and ended with Republic facing only modest penalties.