The way a strike was once broken at our steel-rail mills is interesting.  Here again, I am sorry to say, one hundred and thirty-four men in one department had bound themselves under secret oath to demand increased wages at the end of the year, several months away.  The new year proved very unfavorable for business, and other iron and steel manufacturers throughout the country had effected reductions in wages.  Nevertheless, these men, having secretly sworn months previously that they would not work unless they got increased wages, thought themselves bound to insist upon their demands.  We could not advance wages when our competitors were reducing them, and the works were stopped in consequence.  Every department of the works was brought to a stand by these strikers.  The blast furnaces were abandoned a day or two before the time agreed upon, and we were greatly troubled in consequence.

I went to Pittsburgh and was surprised to find the furnaces had been banked, contrary to agreement.  I was to meet the men in the morning upon arrival at Pittsburgh, but a message was sent to me from the works stating that the men had “left the furnaces and would meet me to-morrow.”  Here was a nice reception!  My reply was: 

“No they won’t.  Tell them I shall not be here to-morrow.  Anybody can stop work; the trick is to start it again.  Some fine day these men will want the works started and will be looking around for somebody who can start them, and I will tell them then just what I do now:  that the works will never start except upon a sliding scale based upon the prices we get for our products.  That scale will last three years and it will not be submitted by the men.  They have submitted many scales to us.  It is our turn now, and we are going to submit a scale to them.

“Now,” I said to my partners, “I am going back to New York in the afternoon.  Nothing more is to be done.”

A short time after my message was received by the men they asked if they could come in and see me that afternoon before I left.

I answered:  “Certainly!”

They came in and I said to them: 

“Gentlemen, your chairman here, Mr. Bennett, assured you that I would make my appearance and settle with you in some way or other, as I always have settled.  That is true.  And he told you that I would not fight, which is also true.  He is a true prophet.  But he told you something else in which he was slightly mistaken.  He said I could not fight.  Gentlemen,” looking Mr. Bennett straight in the eye and closing and raising my fist, “he forgot that I was Scotch.  But I will tell you something; I will never fight you.  I know better than to fight labor.  I will not fight, but I can beat any committee that was ever made at sitting down, and I have sat down.  These works will never start until the men vote by a two-thirds majority to start them, and then, as I told you this morning, they will start on our sliding scale.  I have nothing more to say.”