Word: martialled
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Strike of 1937, biggest and bloodiest since 1919, entered upon a fresh, perhaps final, phase. From mill gate and picket line the major action shifted rearward to civil courts, State capitals, Congressional committee rooms and the editorial and advertising columns of the nation's press. Temporarily stalemated by martial law in two steel States, both Labor and Capital grasped desperately for the support of Public Opinion. And Public Opinion, without the support of which no major strike is ever won, seemed to be swinging slowly, imponderably to the side of the embattled steelmasters...
Since the Ohio constitution makes no provision for martial law the militiamen were nominally at the command of the local sheriffs. Sheriff Elser of Mahoning County, mortally feared & hated by Youngstown strikers, promptly clapped nearly 200 unionists in jail for carrying concealed weapons and on "suspicion." What was worse, he left them there without arraigning them until a judge, outraged by such "willful failure" to grant the prisoners their constitutional right to a hearing, gave the sheriff a thoroughgoing public reprimand...
Meantime Pennsylvania's Governor Earle was discontinuing the martial law by which he had closed Bethlehem's great Cambria plant in Johnstown. When it became apparent that the strike would not be settled by mediation. Governor Earle decided his enforced shut-down was no longer warranted. Having decided to permit the Bethlehem plant to reopen, having determined to prevent bloodshed by keeping State troopers on the scene, the Governor had only one course open: protect non-strikers from violence. Since law & order is seldom compatible with an effective strike, this "Labor Governor" too found himself in Labor...
Just before Governor Earle withdrew martial law, a Johnstown "Citizens' Committee" & a "Steel Workers Committee" inserted in some 40 newspapers a full-page advertisement captioned WE PROTEST. Relating that the closing of the Bethlehem plant was costing the community $500,000 in weekly payrolls, the advertisement thundered: "It is no part of the functions of American Government to force-or to permit anyone else to force-the individual worker into surrendering his Constitutional rights. . . . If this can happen in Johnstown it can happen anywhere else...
...suppress violence. Since the mill continued to operate and the State police prevented the strikers from closing the mill by force, he was in the peculiar position for a Labor Governor, of "breaking the strike." Then the United Mine Workers called 40,000 miners to march on Johnstown. Declaring martial law, he sent in troops and shut the mill (TIME, June 28). So there was no violence of consequence in Johnstown. Where three others had fumbled, Governor Earle had made a putout. Last week he justified the Cambria shut-down by saying: "In this crisis the choice to be made...