Speech #640260999

For years. until the present demand for unskilled labor gave them a choice of jobs. the steel workers have been forced to accept whatever the Steel Corporation and its followers cared to give them or to starve. This condition of helplessness and economic slavery was forced on them by a policy that kept. with the aid of charity. two men for every job and that ruthlessly crushed any attempt of the employees to organize. The Youngstown strike was a sign to the owners and managers of the American steel industry that the end will come. that they can not forever adhere to their present policy of depressing wages below a decent standard by maintaining a vast horde of helpless Immigrants in a condition of economic subserviency. throwing them on charity during times of depression. paying less than a living wage during times of prosperity. and during all times brutalizing them either by imposing excessive hours of employment orby imposing the enforced leisure that breeds fear and pauperization. Even around Birmingham and Gadsden. Ala.. the honest American laborer is being forced into competition with that low class of Illiterate immigrants from southern Europe who are brought here to beat down the price of the workingmans sweat and toil and thus take the bread from the mouths of his wife and children. A few years.ago I asked a large mine operator in Alabama who were his poorest laborers. He replied: "The south Italians." I asked if they were poorer than the Negro.