CROSS COUNTRY
wholeness in this scene of chaos and destruction appeared downright
uncanny. Even more uncanny was the broad, careless smile which
emanated from it. It was the picture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Not more than twenty feet from the house a sizable crimson-red
spot on the pavement attracted passersby. The spot had been scrubbed
and scraped, but there it was still, a stark bit of testimony to the night
of terror. It was a spot made by the blood of Fulgencio Calzada, a
striking steel worker, a union man, a young Spaniard who met his
Franco in Massillon, Ohio. He was shot in back of the head, shot dead
as he was running to safety from an unprovoked attack.
Massillon was slow to respond to the back-to-work movement. Even
after Governor Davey's "tin soldiers" came upon the scene, and offered
safe conduct to work, the men still failed to respond. A more workable
strategy had to be found. The first step consisted in getting several car
loads of professional back-to-work-goers, escort them through the picket
line with the aid of the militia, burn a lot of coal and tar paper so that
plenty of smoke might be seen on the outside, and go through the
motions of pretending that steel was being made, in the expectation
that the strikers would lose courage. A few did, but only a few. The
Greeks, Hungarians, Poles, Slavs, and Italians were not fooled. They
knew the mills could not very well make steel without them. Many of
these men do not read English, some are altogether illiterate, con-
sequently they could not read the extravagant newspaper accounts of the
number of people who returned to work. They looked about them, saw
all their cronies out, then looked at the smoke and chuckled.
The situation was becoming critical. Foremen and straw bosses were
sent to workers' homes asking them to return to work. The union
countered this move by sending union committees likewise to make at-
home calls. There were more union men than bosses to do the at-homes
and the back-to-work movement did not move. Open-hearth workers,
and other highly skilled men, were especially urged to stay out, and
without them no steel could be made. On Saturday, July 10, Republic's
Central Alloy Plant in Massillon, employing some 4,500 men, closed
down voluntarily and everyone of the 600 men who had been in the
mill was given the names of two workers whom he had to see during
the week-end and urge to come to work. It was a difficult assignment.
It is hard enough on a steel worker to play the scab role for himself,
but to urge others to do scabbing, is next to impossible. The assign-
ments were either entirely ignored or were unconvincingly presented.
They produced no results. Some of those who had been in the plant
hesitated to go back lest they be reprimanded for not bringing others
with them. When the plant reopened Sunday night, very few workers
showedany inclination to go in.
A court injunction had been procured the week before which limited
picketsto from six to twelve at anyone gate. In compliance with this
injunction the strikers remained away from the gate, but about 200 of
them gathered around the headquarters, and from that post were able
45
