Grace Carlson Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 38, 20 September 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Pittsburgh-Youngstown area is widely known as the steel center of the world. Along the shores of the Mahoning, Allegheny and Monongahela rivers are located some of Steel’s biggest names – Youngstown Sheet and Tube, Jones and Laughlin, Carnegie-Illinois, U.S. Steel, Republic Steel. To recite these names is to recall long years of workers’ struggle against these huge corporations and some of the bloodiest – and noblest – pages in American labor history.
But many other and varied industries are also located in the Pittsburgh area. This area has the largest tin plate mill in the world; the largest electrical manufacturing works in the world; the largest plate glass manufacturing plant in the world; the largest food producing plant in the world, and so forth and so on.
Pittsburgh’s downtown area, between the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers before they join to form the Ohio River is known as the “golden triangle.” Billions of dollars of wealth is concentrated in the hands of the capitalist monopolists of the “golden triangle.” They own everything in sight – but they don’t own the future. We own the future – we who are building the foundations of a workers’ world.
We made a very important down payment on the future when we established Socialist Workers Party branches in Youngstown and Pittsburgh. These Trotskyists are facing up to their big capitalist opponents – who own the newspapers, the radio networks, and the local governments of these cities – and they are getting in some telling blows. At the present time, it may seem like a David-Goliath contest, but after all the tiny David won out over the giant Goliath because he was properly armed!
Armed with the Socialist Workers Party election program, the Youngstown and Pittsburgh Trotskyists are demanding – and getting – publicity in the press, free radio interviews and many other concessions usually granted only to capitalist party candidates. And all of this intensive and enthusiastic campaigning has brought results. There were many new faces at the public meetings in Youngstown, Hazelwood and Pittsburgh and many pieces of Trotskyist literature were taken back to steelworkers and electrical workers homes for future study.
And when these workers and the many more who will be reached through them really understand that the Carnegies and the Mellons and their kind play no useful role in our society, we will be at the dawn of the bright future of Socialism.
Grace Carlson Archive | Trotskyist Writers’ Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 11 October 2022