A pivotal moment in the history of the movement for working-class
democracy, the "Memorial Day Massacre" vividly captured the conflicting
ideals of workers' rights and the sanctity of private property.
On Memorial Day 1937, thousands of steelworkers, middle-class
supporters, and working-class activists gathered at Sam's Place on the
Southeast Side of Chicago to protest Republic Steel's virulent
opposition to union recognition and collective bargaining. By the end of
the day, ten marchers had been mortally wounded and more than one
hundred badly injured, victims of a terrifying police riot. Sam's Place,
the headquarters for the steelworkers, was transformed into a bloody and
frantic triage unit for treating heads split open by police batons,
flesh torn by bullets, and limbs mangled badly enough to require
amputation.
While no one doubts the importance of the Memorial Day Massacre, Michael
Dennis identifies it as a focal point in the larger effort to revitalize
American equality during the New Deal. In Blood on Steel, Dennis shows
how the incident--captured on film by Paramount newsreels--validated the
claims of labor activists and catalyzed public opinion in their favor.
In the aftermath of the massacre, Senate hearings laid bare patterns of
anti-union aggression among management, ranging from blacklists to
harassment and vigilante violence. Companies were determined to subvert
the right to form a union, which Congress had finally recognized in
1935. Only in the following year would Congress pass the Fair Labor
Standards Act, which established a minimum wage and a maximum work week,
outlawed child labor, and regulated hazardous work. Like the Wagner Act
that protected collective bargaining, this law aimed to protect workers
who had suffered the worst of what the Great Depression had inflicted.
Dennis's wide-angle perspective reveals the Memorial Day Massacre as not
simply another bloody incident in the long story of labor-management
tension in American history but as an illustration of the broad-based
movement for social democracy which developed in the New Deal era.
