When Ayn Rand Defended the Memorial Day Massacre

Of course she did. Plus union songs from Leonard Cohen, The Band, Bruce Springsteen and Woody Guthrie.

May 29, 2023

As today’s holiday neared, and now arrives, there has been a flurry of new attention for my 27-minute PBS film (which aired nationally yesterday but you can still watch for free any time you want via PBS.org and PBS apps) and book, Memorial Day Massacre: Workers Die, Film Buried. So just a few of the links below plus odd bonus content from the book, which finds the egregious Ayn Rand defending the Massacre and then basing a key character in Atlas Shrugged on one of the prime villains in the story. Reviews and more background on film here.

First, my appearance on Democracy Now! on Friday, via their YouTube site (also carried at a dozen other places), which includes a bunch of clips from the film:

My Los Angeles Times op-ed summarizes the story pretty well. Nice shout-out from main site for legacy of Howard Zinn, who is featured in the book. Alternet carried my Studs Terkel (featured in film and book) piece and In These Times with foreword from book by Carol Quirke on her uncle getting shot in the Massacre.

Down below pro-union songs from Leonard Cohen (from a soundcheck no less), The Band, Springsteen and Woody Guthrie. Here a song about the tragedy from lefty troubadour Joe Glazer:

When Ayn Rand Shrugged

On May 30, 1937, Chicago police shot forty protesting steel workers and their supporters (most of them in the back or in the side) near the massive Republic Steel plant, killing ten of them. In the aftermath, press coverage and public opinion seemed to support the police, who claimed they had acted to halt an invasion of the plant by a “mob” of rioters. A sensational U.S. Senate hearing one month later gave lie to these claims. The only footage of the incident, suppressed by Paramount News, was finally released, providing more proof of police malfeasance, along with evidence of the police receiving key support and supplies from Republic Steel.

Nevertheless, on July 12, 1943, almost precisely six years after the hearings and release of the film, author Ayn Rand, whose novel The Fountainhead had been published two months earlier (drawing only modest attention), typed a five-page letter to the chairman of Republic Steel, Tom M. Girdler. “Allow me to express my deepest admiration for the way in which you have lived your life,” Rand wrote from New York City, “for your gallant fight of 1937, for the courage you displayed then and are displaying again now when you attempt a truly heroic deed—a defense of the industrialist….” Then she offered to send him a copy of her novel.

Soon she would model a key character in her most famous novel, Atlas Shrugged, partly on Girdler.

Near the end of May, 1937, workers on strike for the past several days at Republic Steel had called for a Memorial Day picnic on the wide open field several blocks from the plant entrance to build support. At least 1500 workers and family members, including many women and children, turned out. After the picnic, organizers called on the crowd to march to the gates of the plant where they might establish a mass, legal, picket.

Halfway there, the marchers, several hundred in number, were halted by a large contingent of Chicago police and ordered to disperse. A heated discussion ensued. A few rocks were thrown in the direction of the police. Suddenly, some of the police drew their pistols and opened fire on the protesters at point blank range, and then as the marchers fled. They chased after the survivors, clubbing many of them.

Most of the survivors were arrested and lifted into paddy wagons without the benefit of any medical attention. Only a handful of police required treatment for minor injuries.

Despite the one-sided results of this confrontation, local and national newspapers, right up to The New York Times and Washington Post, almost uniformly portrayed the marchers as the perpetrators of this tragedy. Some falsely suggested that the unionists fired first.

Then the Progressive Party senator from Wisconsin, Robert LaFollette, Jr. convened a sensational three-day hearing into the tragedy. The graphic Paramount footage was screened in its entirety—and then in slow motion (you can watch it here). It emerged that Republic Steel had collaborated with police on this day, allowing them to set up headquarters inside their plant and supplying them with tear gas and axe handles to supplement their billy clubs.

When the LaFollette committee released its report (most of it printed, along with witness testimony, for the first time in my new book on the Massacre), it harshly criticized the police: “We conclude that the consequences of the Memorial Day encounter were clearly avoidable by the police. The action of the responsible authorities in setting the seal of their approval upon the conduct of the police not only fails to place responsibility where responsibility properly belongs but will invite the repetition of similar incidents in the future.”

Ayn Rand clearly did not agree. After the reading the galleys to Girdler’s forthcoming memoir (later titled Boot Straps), she explained in her July 12, 1943, letter to him: “The basic falsehood which the world has accepted is the doctrine that altruism is the ultimate ideal. That is, service to others as a justification and the placing of others above self as a virtue. Such an ideal is not merely impossible, it is immoral and vicious. And there is no hope for the world until enough of us come to realize this. Man’s first duty is not to others, but to himself…

“I have presented my whole thesis against altruism in The Fountainhead….Its hero is the kind of man you appear to be, if I can judge by your book, the kind of man who built America, the creator and uncompromising individualist.”

But Rand also admitted that “it shocked me to read you, a great industrialist, saying in self-justification that you are just as good as a social worker. You are not. You are much better. But you will never prove it until we have a new code of values.

“You had the courage to stand on your rights and your convictions in 1937, while others crawled, compromised, and submitted. You were one of the few who made a stand. You are doing it again now when you come out openly in defense of the industrialist. So I think you are one of few men who will have the courage to understand and propagate the kind of moral code we need if the industrialists, and the rest of us, are to be saved. A new and consistent code of individualism.”

She concluded the letter “with deep appreciation for your achievement and that which you represent.”

Girdler would reply on July 27 that he had just purchased The Fountainhead. A few months later, he met Rand in New York and told her that he had read and enjoyed novel, which pleased her immensely, and he suggested they meet for lunch.

This apparently did not take place, but she would, a short time later, create one of the key characters in Atlas Shrugged, troubled steel industrialist Hank Rearden, based partly on Girdler.

And now, four favorite “union” songs…

Leonard Cohen, “Solidarity Forever”