The Armies of Labor
by
Samuel P. Orth
Part 3 out of 3
the union had were invulnerable to process, the savings bank
accounts of the individual defendants were attached. The union
insisted that the defendants were not taxable for accrued
interest, and the United States Supreme Court, now appealed to
for a third time, sustained the plaintiff's contention. In this
manner $60,000 were obtained. Foreclosure proceedings were then
begun against one hundred and forty homes belonging to union men
in the towns of Danbury, Norwalk, and Bethel. The union boasted
that this sale would prove only an incubus to the purchasers, for
no one would dare occupy the houses sold under such
circumstances. In the meantime the American Federation, which had
financed the litigation, undertook to raise the needed sum by
voluntary collection and made Gompers's birthday the occasion for
a gift to the Danbury local. The Federation insisted that the
houses be sold on foreclosure and that the collected money be
used not as a prior settlement but as an indemnity to the
individuals thus deprived of their homes. Rancor gave way to
reason, however, and just before the day fixed for the
foreclosure sale the matter was settled. In all, $235,000 was
paid in damages by the union to the company. In the fourteen
years during which this contest was waged, about forty
defendants, one of the plaintiffs, and eight judges who had
passed on the controversy, died. The outcome served as a spur to
the Federation in hastening through Congress the Clayton bill of
1914, designed to place labor unions beyond the reach of the
anti-trust laws.
The union label has in more recent years achieved importance as a
weapon in union warfare. This is a mark or device denoting a
union-made article. It might be termed a sort of labor union
trademark. Union men are admonished to favor the goods so marked,
but it was not until national organizations were highly perfected
that the label could become of much practical value. It is a
device of American invention and was first used by the cigar
makers in 1874. In 1880 their national body adopted the now
familiar blue label and, with great skill and perseverance and at
a considerable outlay of money, has pushed its union-made ware,
in the face of sweat-shop competition, of the introduction of
cigar making machinery, and of fraudulent imitation. Gradually
other unions making products of common consumption adopted
labels. Conspicuous among these were the garment makers, the hat
makers, the shoe makers, and the brewery workers. As the value of
the label manifestly depends upon the trade it entices, the
unions are careful to emphasize the sanitary conditions and good
workmanship which a label represents.
The application of the label is being rapidly extended. Building
materials are now in many large cities under label domination. In
Chicago the bricklayers have for over fifteen years been able to
force the builders to use only union-label brick, and the
carpenters have forced the contractors to use only material from
union mills. There is practically no limit to this form of
mandatory boycott. The barbers, retail clerks, hotel employees,
and butcher workmen hang union cards in their places of
employment or wear badges as insignia of union loyalty. As these
labels do not come under the protection of the United States
trademark laws, the unions have not infrequently been forced to
bring suits against counterfeiters.
Finally, in their efforts to fortify themselves against undue
increase in the rate of production or "speeding up," against the
inrush of new machinery, and against the debilitating alternation
of rush work and no work, the unions have attempted to restrict
the output. The United States Industrial Commission reported in
1901 that "there has always been a strong tendency among labor
organizations to discourage exertion beyond a certain limit. The
tendency does not express itself in formal rules. On the
contrary, it appears chiefly in the silent, or at least informal
pressure of working class opinion." Some unions have rules,
others a distinct understanding, on the subject of a normal day's
work, and some discourage piecework. But it is difficult to
determine how far this policy has been carried in application.
Carroll D. Wright, in a special report as United States
Commissioner of Labor in 1904, said that "unions in some cases
fix a limit to the amount of work a workman may perform a day.
Usually it is a secret understanding, but sometimes, when the
union is strong, no concealment is made." His report mentioned
several trades, including the building trades, in which this
curtailment is prevalent.
The course of this industrial warfare between the unions and the
employers has been replete with sordid details of selfishness,
corruption, hatred, suspicion, and malice. In every community the
strike or the boycott has been an ominous visitant, leaving in
its trail a social bitterness which even time finds it difficult
to efface. In the great cities and the factory towns, the
constant repetition of labor struggles has created centers of
perennial discontent which are sources of never-ending reprisals.
In spite of individual injustice, however, one can discern in the
larger movements a current setting towards a collective justice
and a communal ideal which society in self-defense is imposing
upon the combatants.
CHAPTER IX. THE NEW TERRORISM: THE I.W.W.
It was not to be expected that the field of organized labor would
be left undisputed to the moderation of the trade union after its
triumph over the extreme methods of the Knights of Labor. The
public, however, did not anticipate the revolutionary ideal which
again sought to inflame industrial unionism. After the decadence
of the older type of the industrial union several conditions
manifested themselves which now, in retrospect, appear to have
encouraged the violent militants who call themselves the
Industrial Workers of the World.
First of all, there took place in Europe the rise of syndicalism
with its adoption of sympathetic strikes as one of its methods.
Syndicalism flourished especially in France, where from its
inception the alert French mind had shaped for it a philosophy of
violence, whose subtlest exponent was Georges Sorel. "The
Socialist Future of Trade Unions," which he published in 1897,
was an early exposition of his views, but his "Reflections upon
Violence" in 1908 is the best known of his contributions to this
newer doctrine. With true Gallic fervor, the French workingman
had sought to translate his philosophy into action, and in 1906
undertook, with the aid of a revolutionary organization known as
the "Confederation General du Travail," a series of strikes which
culminated in the railroad and post office strike of 1909. All
these uprisings--for they were in reality more than strikes--were
characterized by extreme language, by violent action, and by
impressive public demonstrations. In Italy, Spain, Norway, and
Belgium, the syndicalists were also active. Their partiality to
violent methods attracted general attention in Europe and
appealed to that small group of American labor leaders whose
experience in the Western Federation of Miners had taught them
the value of dynamite as a press agent.
In the meantime material was being gathered for a new outbreak in
the United States. The casual laborers had greatly increased in
numbers, especially in the West. These migratory workingmen--the
"hobo miners," the "hobo lumberjacks," the "blanket stiffs," of
colloquial speech--wander about the country in search of work.
They rarely have ties of family and seldom ties of locality.
About one-half of these wanderers are American born. They are to
be described with precision as "floaters." Their range of
operations includes the wheat regions west of the Mississippi,
the iron mines of Michigan and Minnesota, the mines and forests
of Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, and the
fields of California and Arizona. They prefer to winter in the
cities, but, as their only refuge is the bunk lodging house, they
increase the social problem in New York, Chicago, San Francisco,
and other centers of the unemployed. Many of these migrants never
were skilled workers; but a considerable portion of them have
been forced down into the ranks of the unskilled by the
inevitable tragedies of prolonged unemployment. Such men lend a
willing ear to the labor agitator. The exact number in this
wandering class is not known. The railroad companies have
estimated that at a given time there have been 500,000 hobos
trying to beat their way from place to place. Unquestionably a
large percentage of the 23,964 trespassers killed and of the
25,236 injured on railway rights of way from 1901 to 1904
belonged to this class.
It is not alone these drifters, however, who because of their
irresponsibility and their hostility toward society became easy
victims to the industrial organizer. The great mass of unskilled
workers in the factory towns proved quite as tempting to the
propagandist. Among laborers of this class, wages are the lowest
and living conditions the most uninviting. Moreover, this group
forms the industrial reservoir which receives the settlings of
the most recent European and Asiatic immigration. These people
have a standard of living and conceptions of political and
individual freedom which are at variance with American
traditions. Though their employment is steadier than that of the
migratory laborer, and though they often have ties of family and
other stabilizing responsibilities, their lives are subject to
periods of unemployment, and these fluctuations serve to feed
their innate restlessness. They are, in quite the literal sense
of the word, American proletarians. They are more volatile than
any European proletarian, for they have learned the lesson of
migration, and they retain the socialistic and anarchistic
philosophy of their European fellow-workers.
There were several attempts to organize casual labor after the
decline of the Knights of Labor. But it is difficult to arouse
any sustained interest in industrial organizations among
workingmen of this class. They lack the motive of members of a
trade union, and the migratory character of such workers deprives
their organization of stability. One industrial organization,
however, has been of the greatest encouragement to the I.W.W. The
Western Federation of Miners, which was organized at Butte,
Montana, on May 15, 1893, has enjoyed a more turbulent history
than any other American labor union. It was conceived in that
spirit of rough resistance which local unions of miners, for some
years before the amalgamation of the unions, had opposed to the
ruthless and firm determination of the mine owners. In 1897, the
president of the miners, after quoting the words of the
Constitution of the United States giving citizens the right to
bear arms, said: "This you should comply with immediately. Every
union should have a rifle club. I strongly advise you to provide
every member with the latest improved rifle which can be obtained
from the factory at a nominal price. I entreat you to take action
on this important question, so that in two years we can hear the
inspiring music of the martial tread of 25,000 armed men in the
ranks of labor."
This militant vision was fortunately never quite fulfilled. But
armed strikers there were, by the thousands, and the gruesome
details of their fight with mine owners in Colorado are set forth
in a special report of the United States Commissioner of Labor in
1905. The use of dynamite became early associated with this
warfare in Colorado. In 1903 a fatal explosion occurred in the
Vindicator mine, and Telluride, the county seat, was proclaimed
to be in a state of insurrection and rebellion. In 1904 a cage
lifting miners from the shaft in the Independence mine at Victor
was dropped and fifteen men were killed. There were many minor
outrages, isolated murders, "white cap" raids, infernal machines,
deportations, black lists, and so on. In Montana and Idaho
similar scenes were enacted and reached a climax in the murder of
Governor Steunenberg of Idaho. Yet the union officers indicted
for this murder were released by the trial jury.
Such was the preparatory school of the new unionism, which had
its inception in several informal conferences held in Chicago.
The first, attended by only six radical leaders, met in the
autumn of 1904. The second, held in January, 1905, issued a
manifesto attacking the trade unions, calling for a "new
departure" in the labor movement, and inviting those who desired
to join in organizing such a movement to "meet in convention in
Chicago the 27th day of June, 1905." About two hundred persons
responded to this appeal and organized the Industrial Workers of
the World, almost unnoticed by the press of the day and scorned
by the American Federation of Labor, whose official organ had
called those in attendance at the second conference "engaged in
the delectable work of trying to divert, pervert, and disrupt the
labor movement of the country."
An overwhelming influence in this convention was wielded by the
Western Federation of Miners and the Socialistic American Labor
Union, two radical labor bodies which looked upon the trade
unions as "union snobbery" and the "aristocracy of labor," and
upon the American Federation as "the consummate flower of craft
unionism" and "a combination of job trusts." They believed trade
unionism wrong in principle. They discarded the principle of
trade autonomy for the principle of laboring class solidarity,
for, as one of their spokesmen said, "The industrial union, in
contradistinction to the craft union, is that organization
through which all its members in one industry, or in all
industries if necessary, can act as a unit." While this
convention was united in denouncing the trade unions, it was not
so unanimous in other matters, for the leaders were all veterans
in those factional quarrels which characterize Socialists the
world over. Eugene V. Debs, for example, was the hero of the
Knights of Labor and had achieved wide notoriety during the
Pullman strike by being imprisoned for contempt of court. William
D. Haywood, popularly known as "Big Bill," received a rigorous
training in the Western Federation of Miners. Daniel DeLeon,
whose right name, the American Federationist alleged, was Daniel
Loeb, was a university graduate and a vehement revolutionary, the
leader of the Socialistic Labor party, and the editor of the
Daily People. A. M. Simons, the leader of the Socialist party and
the editor of the Coming Nation, was at swords' points with
DeLeon. William E. Trautmann was the fluent spokesman of the
anti-political faction. These men dominated the convention.
After some twelve days of discussion, they agreed upon a
constitution which established six departments,* provided for a
general executive board with centralized powers, and at the same
time left to the local and department organizations complete
industrial autonomy. The I.W.W. in "the first constitution, crude
and provisional as it was, made room for all the world's
workers."** This was, indeed, the great object of the
organization.
* 1. Agriculture, Land, Fisheries, and Water Products. 2. Mining.
3. Transportation and Communication. 4. Manufacturing and General
Production. 5. Construction. 6. Public Service.
** J. G. Brissenden, "The Launching of the Industrial Workers of
the World," page 41.
Whatever visions of world conquest the militants may at first
have fostered were soon shattered by internal strife. There were
unreconcilable elements in the body: those who regarded the
political aspect as paramount and industrial unions as allies of
socialism; those who regarded the forming of unions as paramount
and politics as secondary; and those who regarded all forms of
political activity as mere waste of energy. The first two groups
were tucked under the wings of the Socialist party and the
Socialist Labor party. The third group was frankly anarchistic
and revolutionary. In the fourth annual convention the Socialist
factions withdrew, established headquarters at Detroit, organized
what is called the Detroit branch, and left the Chicago field to
the revolutionists. So socialism "pure and simple," and what
amounts to anarchism "pure and simple," fell out, after they had
both agreed to disdain trade unionism "pure and simple."
This shift proved the great opportunity for Haywood and his
disciples. Feeling himself now free of all political
encumbrances, he gathered around him a small group of
enthusiastic leaders, some of whom had a gift of diabolical
intrigue, and with indomitable perseverance and zeal he set
himself to seeking out the neglected, unskilled, and casual
laborer. Within a few years he so dominated the movement that, in
the public mind, the I.W.W. is associated with the Chicago branch
and the Detroit faction is well-nigh forgotten.
As a preliminary to a survey of some of the battles that made the
I.W.W. a symbol of terror in many communities it will be well to
glance for a moment at the underlying doctrines of the
organization. In a preamble now notorious it declared that "the
working class and the employing class have nothing in common.
There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among
millions of working people, and the few who make up the employing
class have all the good things of life. Between these two classes
a struggle must go on until the workers of the world as a class
take possession of the earth and the machinery of production and
abolish the wage system."
This thesis is a declaration of war as well as a declaration of
principles. The I.W.W. aims at nothing less than the complete
overthrow of modern capitalism and the political structure which
accompanies it. Emma Goldman, who prides herself on having
received her knowledge of syndicalism "from actual contact" and
not from books, says that "syndicalism repudiates and condemns
the present industrial arrangement as unjust and criminal."
Edward Hamond calls the labor contract "the sacred cow" of
industrial idolatry and says that the aim of the I.W.W. is "the
abolition of the wage system." And W. E. Trautmann affirms that
"the industrial unionist holds that there can be no agreement
with the employers of labor which the workers have to consider
sacred and inviolable." In place of what they consider an unjust
and universal capitalistic order they would establish a new
society in which "the unions of the workers will own and manage
all industries, regulate consumption, and administer the general
social interests."
How is this contemplated revolution to be achieved? By the
working classes themselves and not through political activity,
for "one of the first principles of the I.W.W. is that political
power rests on economic power . . . . It must gain control of the
shops, ships, railways, mines, mills." And how is it to gain this
all-embracing control? By persuading every worker to join the
union, the "one great organization" which, according to Haywood,
is to be "big enough to take in the black man, the white man; big
enough to take in all nationalities-an organization that will be
strong enough to obliterate state boundaries; to obliterate
national boundaries . . . . We, the I.W.W., stand on our two
feet, the class struggle and industrial unionism, and coolly say
we want the whole earth." When the great union has become
universal, it will simply take possession of its own, will "lock
the employers out for good as owners and parasites, and give them
a chance to become useful toilers." The resistance that will
assuredly be made to this process of absorption is to be met by
direct action, the general strike, and sabotage--a trinity of
phrases imported from Europe, each one of special significance.
"The general strike means a stoppage of work," says Emma Goldman
with naive brevity. It was thought of long before the I.W.W.
existed, but it has become the most valuable weapon in their
arsenal. Their pamphlets contain many allusions to the great
strikes in Belgium, Russia, Italy, France, Scandinavia, and other
European countries, that were so widespread as to merit being
called general. If all the workers can be induced to stop work,
even for a very brief interval, such action would be regarded as
the greatest possible manifestation of the "collective power of
the producers."
Direct action, a term translated directly from the French, is
more difficult to define. This method sets itself in opposition
to the methods of the capitalist in retaining control of
industry, which is spoken of as indirect action. Laws, machinery,
credits, courts, and constabulary are indirect methods whereby
the capitalist keeps possession of his property. The
industrialist matches this with a direct method. For example, he
engages in a passive strike, obeying rules so literally as to
destroy both their utility and his work; or in an opportune
strike, ceasing work suddenly when he knows his employer has
orders that must be immediately filled; or in a temporary strike,
quitting work one day and coming back the next. His weapon is
organized opportunism, wielding an unexpected blow, and keeping
the employer in a frenzy of fearful anticipation.
Finally, sabotage is a word that expresses the whole philosophy
and practice of revolutionary labor. John Spargo, in his
"Syndicalism, Industrial Unionism and Socialism," traces the
origin of the word to the dockers' union in London. Attempt after
attempt had proved futile to win by strikes "the demands of these
unskilled workers. The men were quite at the end of their
resources, when finally they hit upon the plan of "lying down on
the job" or "soldiering." As a catchword they adopted the Scotch
phrase ca'canny, to go slow or be careful not to do too much. As
an example they pointed to the Chinese coolies who met a refusal
of increased wages by cutting off a few inches from their shovels
on the principle of "small pay, small work." He then goes on to
say that "the idea was very easily extended. From the slowing up
of the human worker to the slowing up of the iron worker, the
machine, was an easy transition. Judiciously planned "accidents"
might easily create confusion for which no one could be blamed. A
few "mistakes" in handling cargoes might easily cost the
employers far more than a small increase in wages would. Some
French syndicalists, visiting London, were greatly impressed with
this new cunning. But as they had no ready translation for the
Scottish ca'canny, they ingeniously abstracted the same idea from
the old French saying "Travailler a coups de sabots"--to work as
if one had on wooden shoes--and sabotage thus became a new and
expressive phrase in the labor war.
Armed with these weapons, Haywood and his henchmen moved forward.
Not long after the first convention in 1905, they made their
presence known at Goldfield, Nevada. Then they struck
simultaneously at Youngstown, Ohio, and Portland, Oregon. The
first battle, however, to attract general notice was at McKees
Rocks, Pennsylvania, in 1909. In this warfare between the
recently organized unskilled workers and the efficient state
constabulary, the I.W.W. sent notice "that for every striker
killed or injured by the cossacks, the life of a cossack will be
exacted in return." And they collected their gruesome toll.
In 1912 occurred the historic strike in the mill town of
Lawrence, Massachusetts. This affair was so adroitly managed by
the organizers of the Workers that within a few weeks every
newspaper of importance in America was publishing long
descriptions of the new anarchism. Magazine writers,
self-appointed reformers, delegations representing various
organizations, three committees of the state legislature, the
Governor's personal emissary, the United States Attorney, the
United States Commissioner of Labor, and a congressional
committee devoted their time to numerous investigations, thereby
giving immense satisfaction to those obscure agitators who were
lifted suddenly into the glare of universal notoriety, to the
disgust of the town thus dragged into unenviable publicity, and
to the discomfiture of the employers.
The legislature of Massachusetts had reduced the hours of work of
women and children from fifty-six to fifty-four hours a week.
Without making adequate announcement, the employers withheld two
hours' pay from the weekly stipend. A large portion of the
workers were foreigners, representing eighteen different
nationalities, most of them with a wholly inadequate knowledge of
English, and all of an inflammable temperament. When they found
their pay short, a group marched through the mills, inciting
others to join them, and the strike was on. The American
Federation of Labor had paid little attention to these workers.
There were some trade unions in the mills, but most of the
workers were unorganized except for the fact that the I.W.W. had,
about eight months before, gathered several hundred into an
industrial union. Yet it does not appear that this union started
the strike. It was a case of spontaneous combustion. No sooner
had it begun, however, than Joseph J. Ettor, an I.W.W. organizer,
hastened to take charge, and succeeded so well that within a few
weeks he claimed 7000 members in his union. Ettor proved a
crafty, resourceful general, quick in action, magnetic in
personality, a linguist who could command his polyglot mob. He
was also a successful press agent who exploited fully the
unpalatable drinking water provided by the companies, the
inadequate sewerage, the unpaved streets, and the practical
destitution of many of the workers. The strikers made an attempt
to send children to other towns so that they might be better
cared for. After several groups had thus been taken away, the
city of Lawrence interfered, claiming that many children had been
sent without their parents' consent. On the 24th of February,
when a group of forty children and their mothers gathered at the
railway station to take a train for Philadelphia, the police
after due warning refused to let them depart. It was then that
the Federal Government was called upon to take action. The strike
committee telegraphed Congress: "Twenty-five thousand striking
textile workers and citizens of Lawrence protest against the
hideous brutality with which the police handled the women and
children of Lawrence this morning. Carrying out the illegal and
original orders of the city marshal to prevent free citizens from
sending their children out of the city, striking men were knocked
down, women and mothers who were trying to protect their children
from the onslaught of the police were attacked and clubbed." So
widespread was the opinion that unnecessary brutality had taken
place that petitions for an investigation poured in upon Congress
from many States and numerous organizations.
The whole country was watching the situation. The hearings held
by a congressional committee emphasized the stupidity of the
employers in arbitrarily curtailing the wage, the inadequacy of
the town government in handling the situation, and the cupidity
of the I.W.W. leaders in taking advantage of the fears, the
ignorance, the inflammability of the workers, and in creating a
"terrorism which impregnated the whole city for days." Lawrence
became a symbol. It stood for the American factory town; for
municipal indifference and social neglect, for heterogeneity in
population, for the tinder pile awaiting the incendiary match.
At Little Falls, New York, a strike occurred in the textile mills
in October, 1912, as a result of a reduction of wages due to a
fifty-four hour law. No organization was responsible for the
strike, but no sooner had the operatives walked out than here
also the I.W.W. appeared. The leaders ordered every striker to do
something which would involve arrest in order to choke the local
jail and the courts. The state authorities investigating the
situation reported that "all of those on strike were foreigners
and few, if any, could speak or understand the English language,
complete control of the strike being in the hands of the I.W.W."
In February, 1913, about 15,000 employees in the rubber works at
Akron, Ohio, struck. The introduction of machinery into the
manufacture of automobile tires caused a reduction in the
piecework rate in certain shops. One of the companies posted a
notice on the 10th of February that this reduction would take
effect immediately. No time was given for conference, and it was
this sudden arbitrary act which precipitated all the discontent
lurking for a long time in the background; and the employees
walked out. The legislative investigating committee reported
"there was practically no organization existing among the rubber
employees when the strike began. A small local of the Industrial
Workers of the World comprised of between fifteen and fifty
members had been formed . . . . Simultaneously with the beginning
of the strike, organizers of the I.W.W. appeared on the ground
inviting and urging the striking employees to unite with their
organization." Many of these testified before the public
authorities that they had not joined because they believed in the
preachings of the organization but because "they hoped through
collective action to increase their wages and improve their
conditions of employment." The tactics of the strike leaders soon
alienated the public, which had at first been inclined towards
the strikers, and acts of violence led to the organization of a
vigilance committee of one thousand citizens which warned the
leaders to leave town.
In February, 1913, some 25,000 workers in the silk mills of
Paterson, New Jersey, struck, and here again the I.W.W. repeated
its maneuvers. Sympathetic meetings took place in New York and
other cities. Daily "experience meetings" were held in Paterson
and all sorts of devices were invented to maintain the fervor of
the strikers. The leaders threatened to make Paterson a "howling
wilderness," an "industrial graveyard," and "to wipe it off the
map." This threat naturally arrayed the citizens against the
strikers, over one thousand of whom were lodged in jail before
the outbreak was over. Among the five ringleaders arrested and
held for the grand jury were Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Patrick
Quinlan, whose trials attracted wide attention. Elizabeth Flynn,
an appealing young widow scarcely over twenty-one, testified that
she had begun her work as an organizer at the age of sixteen,
that she had not incited strikers to violence but had only
advised them to picket and to keep their hands in their pockets,
"so that detectives could not put stones in them as they had done
in other strikes." The jury disagreed and she was discharged.
Quinlan, an unusually attractive young man, also a professional
I.W.W. agitator, was found guilty of inciting to violence and was
sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. After serving nine
months he was freed because of a monster petition signed by some
20,000 sympathetic persons all over the United States. Clergymen,
philanthropists, and prominent public men, were among the
signers, as well as the jurors who convicted and the sheriff who
locked up the defendant.
These cases served to fix further public attention upon the
nature of the new movement and the sort of revivalists its
evangel of violence was producing. Employers steadfastly refused
to deal with the I.W.W., although they repeatedly asserted they
were willing to negotiate with their employees themselves. After
three months of strike and turmoil the mayor of Paterson had
said: "The fight which Paterson is making is the fight of the
nation. Their agitation has no other object in view but to
establish a reign of terror throughout the United States." A
large number of thoughtful people all over the land were
beginning to share this view.
In New York City a new sort of agitation was devised in the
winter of 1913-14 under the captaincy of a young man who quite
suddenly found himself widely advertised. Frank Tannenbaum
organized an "army of the unemployed," commandeered Rutgers
Square as a rendezvous, Fifth Avenue as a parade ground, and
churches and parish houses as forts and commissaries. Several of
the churches were voluntarily opened to them, but other churches
they attempted to enter by storm. In March, 1914, Tannenbaum led
several score into the church of St. Alphonsus while mass was
being celebrated. Many arrests followed this bold attempt to
emulate the French Revolutionists. Though sympathizers raised
$7500 bail for the ringleader, Tannenbaum loyally refused to
accept it as long as any of his "army" remained in jail. Squads
of his men entered restaurants, ate their fill, refused to pay,
and then found their way to the workhouse. So for several months
a handful of unemployed, some of them professional unemployed,
held the headlines of the metropolitan papers, rallied to their
defense sentimental social sympathizers, and succeeded in calling
the attention of the public to a serious industrial condition.
At Granite City, Illinois, another instance of unrest occurred
when several thousand laborers in the steel mills, mostly
Roumanians and Bulgarians, demanded an increase in wages. When
the whistle blew on the appointed morning, they gathered at the
gates, refused to enter, and continued to shout "Two dollars a
day!" Though the manager feared violence and posted guards, no
violence was offered. Suddenly at the end of two hours the men
quietly resumed their work, and the management believed the
trouble was over. But for several successive mornings this
maneuver was repeated. Strike breakers were then sent for. For a
week, however, the work went forward as usual. The order for
strike breakers was countermanded. Then came a continued
repetition of the early morning strikes until the company gave
way.
Nor were the subtler methods of sabotage forgotten in these
demonstrations. From many places came reports of emery dust in
the gearings of expensive machines. Men boasted of powdered soap
emptied into water tanks that fed boilers, of kerosene applied to
belting, of railroad switches that had been tampered with. With
these and many similar examples before them, the public became
convinced that the mere arresting of a few leaders was futile. A
mass meeting at Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1913, declared, as its
principle of action, "We have got to meet force with force," and
then threatened to run the entire local I.W.W. group out of town.
In many towns vigilance committees acted as eyes, ears, and hands
for the community. When the community refused to remain neutral,
the contest assumed a different aspect and easily became a feud
between a small group of militants and the general public. In the
West this contest assumed its most aggressive form. At Spokane,
in 1910, the jail was soon filled, and sixty prisoners went on a
hunger strike which cost several lives. In the lumber mills of
Aberdeen, South Dakota, explosions and riots occurred. In
Hoquiam, Washington, a twelve-foot stockade surmounted by barbed
wire entanglements failed to protect the mills from the assaults
of strikers. At Gray's Harbor, Washington, a citizens' committee
cut the electric light wires to darken the meeting place of the
I.W.W. and then used axe handles and wagon spokes to drive the
members out of town. At Everett, Washington, a strike in the
shingle mills led to the expulsion of the I.W.W. The leaders then
called for volunteers to invade Everett, and several hundred
members sailed from Seattle. They were met at the dock, however,
by a large committee of citizens and were informed by the sheriff
that they would not be allowed to land. After some parley, the
invaders opened fire, and in the course of the shooting that
followed the sheriff was seriously wounded, five persons were
killed, and many were injured. The boat and its small invading
army then returned to Seattle without making a landing at
Everett.
The I.W.W. found an excuse for their riotous action in the
refusal of communities to permit them to speak in the streets and
public places. This, they claimed, was an invasion of their
constitutional right of free speech. The experience of San Diego
serves as an example of their "free speech" campaigns. In 1910,
I.W.W. agitators began to hold public meetings in the streets, in
the course of which their language increased in ferocity until
the indignation of the community was aroused. An ordinance was
then passed by the city council prohibiting street speaking
within the congested portions of the city, but allowing street
meetings in other parts of the city if a permit from the police
department were first obtained. There was, however, no law
requiring the issue of such a permit, and none was granted to the
agitators. This restriction of their liberties greatly incensed
the agitators, who at once raised the cry of "free speech" and
began to hold meetings in defiance of the ordinance. The jail was
soon glutted with these apostles of riotous speaking. In order to
delay the dispatch of the court's overcrowded calendar, every one
demanded a jury trial. The mayor of the town then received a
telegram from the general secretary of the organization which
disclosed their tactics: "This fight will be continued until free
speech is established in San Diego if it takes twenty thousand
members and twenty years to do so." The national membership of
the I.W.W. had been drafted as an invading army, to be a constant
irritation to the city until it surrendered. The police asserted
that "there are bodies of men leaving all parts of the country
for San Diego" for the purpose of defying the city authorities
and overwhelming its municipal machinery. A committee of
vigilantes armed with "revolvers, knives, night-sticks, black
jacks, and black snakes," supported by the local press and
commercial bodies, undertook to run the unwelcome guests out of
town. That this was not done gently is clearly disclosed by
subsequent official evidence. Culprits were loaded into auto
trucks at night, taken to the county line, made to kiss the flag,
sing the national anthem, run the gauntlet between rows of
vigilantes provided with cudgels and, after thus proving their
patriotism under duress, were told never to return.
"There is an unwritten law," one of the local papers at this time
remarked, "that permits a citizen to avenge his outraged honor.
There is an unwritten law that permits a community to defend
itself by any means in its power, lawful or unlawful, against any
evil which the operation of the written law is inadequate to
oppose or must oppose by slow, tedious, and unnecessarily
expensive proceeding." So this municipal homeopathy of curing
lawlessness with lawlessness received public sanction.
With the declaration of war against Germany in April, 1917,
hostility to the I.W.W. on the part of the American public was
intensified. The members of the organization opposed war. Their
leaflet "War and the Workers," bore this legend:
GENERAL SHERMAN SAID
"WAR IS HELL"
DON'T GO TO HELL
IN ORDER TO GIVE A BUNCH OF
PIRATICAL
PLUTOCRATIC
PARASITES
A BIGGER SLICE OF HEAVEN.
Soon rumors abounded that German money was being used to aid the
I.W.W. in their plots. In Oklahoma, Texas, Illinois, Kansas, and
other States, members of the organization were arrested for
failure to comply with the draft law. The governors of Oregon,
Washington, Montana, Idaho, and Nevada met to plan laws for
suppressing the I.W.W. Similar legislation was urged upon
Congress. Senator Thomas, in a report to the Senate, accused the
I.W.W. of cooperating with German agents in the copper mines and
harvest fields of the West by inciting the laborers to strikes
and to the destruction of food and material. Popular opinion in
the West inclined to the view of Senator Poindexter of Washington
when he said that "most of the I.W.W. leaders are outlaws or
ought to be made outlaws because of their official utterances,
inflammatory literature and acts of violence." Indeed, scores of
communities in 1917 took matters into their own hands. Over a
thousand I.W.W. strikers in the copper mines of Bisbee, Arizona,
were loaded into freight cars and shipped over the state line. In
Billings, Montana, one leader was horsewhipped, and two others
were hanged until they were unconscious. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a
group of seventeen members were taken from policemen, thoroughly
flogged, tarred, feathered, and driven out of town by vigilantes.
The Federal Government, after an extended inquiry through the
secret service, raided the Detroit headquarters of the I.W.W.,
where a plot to tie up lake traffic was brewing. The Chicago
offices were raided some time later; over one hundred and sixty
leaders of the organization from all parts of the country were
indicted as a result of the examination of the wagon-load of
papers and documents seized. As a result, 166 indictments were
returned. Of these 99 defendants were found guilty by the trial
jury, 16 were dismissed during the trial, and 51 were dismissed
before the trial. In Cleveland, Buffalo, and other lake ports
similar disclosures were made, and everywhere the organization
fell under popular and official suspicion.
In many other portions of the country members of the I.W.W. were
tried for conspiracy under the Federal espionage act. In January,
1919, a trial jury in Sacramento found 46 defendants guilty. The
offense in the majority of these cases consisted in opposing
military service rather than in overt acts against the
Government. But in May and June, 1919, the country was startled
by a series of bomb outrages aimed at the United States
Attorney-General, certain Federal district judges, and other
leading public personages, which were evidently the result of
centralized planning and were executed by members of the I.W.W.,
aided very considerably by foreign Bolshevists.
In spite of its spectacular warfare and its monopoly of newspaper
headlines, the I.W.W. has never been numerically strong. The
first convention claimed a membership of 60,000. All told, the
organization has issued over 200,000 cards since its inception,
but this total never constituted its membership at any given
time, for no more fluctuating group ever existed. When the I.W.W.
fosters a strike of considerable proportions, the membership
rapidly swells, only to shrink again when the strike is over.
This temporary membership consists mostly of foreign workmen who
are recent immigrants. What may be termed the permanent
membership is difficult to estimate. In 1913 there were about
14,000 members. In 1917 the membership was estimated at 75,000.
Though this is probably a maximum rather than an average,
nevertheless the members are mostly young men whose revolutionary
ardor counterbalances their want in numbers. It is, moreover, an
organization that has a wide penumbra. It readily attracts the
discontented, the unemployed, the man without a horizon. In an
instant it can lay a fire and put an entire police force on the
qui vive.
The organization has always been in financial straits. The source
of its power is to be sought elsewhere. Financially bankrupt and
numerically unstable, the I.W.W. relies upon the brazen cupidity
of its stratagems and the habitual timorousness of society for
its power. It is this self-seeking disregard of constituted
authority that has given a handful of bold and crafty leaders
such prominence in the recent literature of fear. And the members
of this industrial Ku Klux Klan, these American Bolsheviki,
assume to be the "conscious minority" which is to lead the ranks
of labor into the Canaan of industrial bliss.
CHAPTER X. LABOR AND POLITICS
In a democracy it is possible for organized labor to extend its
influence far beyond the confines of a mere trade policy. It can
move the political mechanism directly in proportion to its
capacity to enlist public opinion. It is not surprising,
therefore, to find that labor is eager to take part in politics
or that labor parties were early organized. They were, however,
doomed to failure, for no workingman's party can succeed, except
in isolated localities, without the cooperation of other social
and political forces. Standing alone as a political entity, labor
has met only rebuff and defeat at the hands of the American
voter.
The earlier attempts at direct political action were local. In
Philadelphia a workingman's party was organized in 1828 as a
result of the disappointment of the Mechanics' Union at its
failure to achieve its ambitions by strikes. At a public meeting
it was resolved to support only such candidates for the
legislature and city council as would pledge themselves to the
interests of "the working classes." The city was organized, and a
delegate convention was called which nominated a ticket of thirty
candidates for city and county offices. But nineteen of these
nominees were also on the Jackson ticket, and ten on the Adams
ticket; and both of these parties used the legend "Working Man's
Ticket," professing to favor a shorter working day. The isolated
labor candidates received only from 229 to 539 votes, while the
Jackson party vote ranged from 3800 to 7000 and the Adams party
vote from 2500 to 3800. So that labor's first excursion into
politics revealed the eagerness of the older parties to win the
labor vote, and the futility of relying on a separate
organization, except for propaganda purposes.
Preparatory to their next campaign, the workingmen organized
political clubs in all the wards of Philadelphia. In 1829 they
nominated thirty-two candidates for local offices, of whom nine
received the endorsement of the Federalists and three that of the
Democrats. The workingmen fared better in this election, polling
nearly 2000 votes in the county and electing sixteen candidates.
So encouraged were they by this success that they attempted to
nominate a state ticket, but the dominant parties were too
strong. In 1831 the workingmen's candidates, who were not
endorsed by the older parties, received less than 400 votes in
Philadelphia. After this year the party vanished.
New York also early had an illuminating experience in labor
politics. In 1829 the workingmen of the city launched a political
venture under the immediate leadership of an agitator by the name
of Thomas Skidmore. Skidmore set forth his social panacea in a
book whose elongated title betrays his secret: "The Rights of Man
to Property! Being a Proposition to Make it Equal among the
Adults of the Present Generation; and to Provide for its Equal
Transmission to Every Individual of Each Succeeding Generation,
on Arriving at the Age of Maturity." The party manifesto began
with the startling declaration that "all human society, our own
as well as every other, is constructed radically wrong." The new
party proposed to right this defect by an equal distribution of
the land and by an elaborate system of public education.
Associated with Skidmore were Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright
of the "Free Enquirer," a paper advocating all sorts of extreme
social and economic doctrines. It was not strange, therefore,
that the new party was at once connected, in the public mind,
with all the erratic vagaries of these Apostles of Change. It was
called the "Fanny Wright ticket" and the "Infidel Ticket." Every
one forgot that it aimed to be the workingman's ticket. The
movement, however, was supported by "The Working Man's Advocate,"
a new journal that soon reached a wide influence.
There now appeared an eccentric Quaker, Russell Comstock by name,
to center public attention still more upon the new party. As a
candidate for the legislature, he professed an alarmingly
advanced position, for he believed that the State ought to
establish free schools where handicrafts and morals, but not
religion, should be taught; that husband and wife should be
equals before the law; that a mechanics' lien and bankruptcy law
should be passed; and that by wise graduations all laws for the
collection of debts should be repealed. At a meeting held at the
City Hall, for the further elucidation of his "pure
Republicanism," he was greeted by a great throng but was arrested
for disturbing the peace. He received less than one hundred and
fifty votes, but his words went far to excite, on the one hand,
the interest of the laboring classes in reform, and, on the other
hand, the determination of the conservative classes to defeat "a
ticket got up openly and avowedly," as one newspaper said, "in
opposition to all banks, in opposition to social order, in
opposition to rights of property."
Elections at this time lasted three days. On the first day there
was genuine alarm at the large vote cast for "the Infidels."
Thoughtful citizens were importuned to go to the polls, and on
the second and third days they responded in sufficient numbers to
compass the defeat of the entire ticket, excepting only one
candidate for the legislature.
The Workingman's party contained too many zealots to hold
together. After the election of 1829 a meeting was called to
revise the party platform. The more conservative element
prevailed and omitted the agrarian portions of the platform.
Skidmore, who was present, attempted to protest, but his voice
was drowned by the clamor of the audience. He then started a
party of his own, which he called the Original Workingman's party
but which became known as the Agrarian party. The majority
endeavored to rectify their position in the community by an
address to the people. "We take this opportunity," they said, "to
aver, whatever may be said to the contrary by ignorant or
designing individuals or biased presses, that we have no desire
or intention of disturbing the rights of property in individuals
or the public." In the meantime Robert Dale Owen and Fanny Wright
organized a party of their own, endorsing an extreme form of
state paternalism over children. This State Guardianship Plan, as
it was called, aimed to "regenerate America in a generation" and
to "make but one class out of the many that now envy and despise
each other."
There were, then, three workingmen's parties in New York, none of
which, however, succeeded in gaining an influential position in
state politics. After 1830 all these parties disappeared, but not
without leaving a legacy of valuable experience. "The Working
Man's Advocate" discovered political wisdom when it confessed
that "whether these measures are carried by the formation of a
new party, by the reform of an old one, or by the abolishment of
party altogether, is of comparative unimportance."
In New England, the workingmen's political endeavors were joined
with those of the farmers under the agency of the New England
Association of Farmers, Mechanics, and Workingmen. This
organization was initiated in 1830 by the workingmen of
Woodstock, Vermont, and their journal, the "Working Man's
Gazette," became a medium of agitation which affected all the New
England manufacturing towns as well as many farming communities.
"Woodstock meetings," as they were called, were held everywhere
and aroused both workingmen and farmers to form a new political
party. "The Springfield Republican" summarized the demands of the
new party thus:
"The avowed objects generally seem to be to abolish imprisonment
for debt, the abolishment of litigation, and in lieu thereof the
settlement of disputes by reference to neighbors; to establish
some more equal and universal system of public education; to
diminish the salaries and extravagance of public officers; to
support no men for offices of public trust, but farmers,
mechanics, and what the party call "working men"; and to elevate
the character of this class by mental instruction and mental
improvement . . . . Much is said against the wealth and
aristocracy of the land, their influence, and the undue influence
of lawyers and other professional men . . . . The most of these
objects appear very well on paper and we believe they are already
sustained by the good sense of the people . . . . What is most
ridiculous about this party is, that in many places where the
greatest noise is made about it, the most indolent and most
worthless persons, men of no trade or useful occupation have
taken the lead. We cannot of course answer for the character for
industry of many places where this party is agitated: but we
believe the great body of our own community, embracing every
class and profession, may justly be called workingmen: nor do we
believe enough can be found who are not such, to make even a
decent party of drones."
In the early thirties many towns and cities in Massachusetts,
Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, and Rhode Island elected
workingmen's candidates to local offices, usually with the help
of small tradespeople. In 1833 and 1834 the workingmen of
Massachusetts put a state ticket in the field which polled about
2000 votes, and in Boston a workingman's party was organized, but
it did not gather much momentum and soon disappeared.
These local and desultory attempts at forming a separate labor
party failed as partisan movements. The labor leader proved an
inefficient amateur when matched against the shrewd and
experienced party manipulator; nor was there a sufficient class
homogeneity to keep the labor vote together; and, even if it had
so been united, there were not enough labor votes to make a
majority. So the labor candidate had to rely on the good will of
other classes in order to win his election. And this support was
not forthcoming. Americans have, thus far, always looked with
suspicion upon a party that represented primarily the interests
of only one class. This tendency shows a healthy instinct founded
upon the fundamental conception of society as a great unity whose
life and progress depend upon the freedom of all its diverse
parts.
It is not necessary to assume, as some observers have done, that
these petty political excursions wrecked the labor movement of
that day. It was perfectly natural that the laborer, when he
awoke to the possibilities of organization and found himself
possessed of unlimited political rights, should seek a speedy
salvation in the ballot box. He took, by impulse, the partisan
shortcut and soon found himself lost in the slough of party
intrigue. On the other hand, it should not be concluded that
these intermittent attempts to form labor parties were without
political significance. The politician is usually blind to every
need except the need of his party; and the one permanent need of
his party is votes. A demand backed by reason will usually find
him inert; a demand backed by votes galvanizes him into nervous
attention. When, therefore, it was apparent that there was a
labor vote, even though a small one, the demands of this vote
were not to be ignored, especially in States where the parties
were well balanced and the scale was tipped by a few hundred
votes. Within a few decades after the political movement began,
many States had passed lien laws, had taken active measures to
establish efficient free schools, had abolished imprisonment for
debt, had legislative inquiry into factory conditions, and had
recognized the ten-hour day. These had been the leading demands
of organized labor, and they had been brought home to the public
conscience, in part at least, by the influence of the
workingmen's votes.
It was not until after the Civil War that labor achieved
sufficient national homogeneity to attempt seriously the
formation of a national party. In the light of later events it is
interesting to sketch briefly the development of the political
power of the workingman. The National Labor Union at its congress
of 1866 resolved "that, so far as political action is concerned,
each locality should be governed by its own policy, whether to
run an independent ticket of workingmen, or to use political
parties already existing, but at all events to cast no vote
except for men pledged to the interests of labor." The issue then
seemed clear enough. But six years later the Labor Reform party
struck out on an independent course and held its first and only
national convention. Seventeen States were represented.* The
Labor party, however, had yet to learn how hardly won are
independence and unity in any political organization. Rumors of
pernicious intermeddling by the Democratic and Republican
politicians were afloat, and it was charged that the Pennsylvania
delegates had come on passes issued by the president of the
Pennsylvania Railroad. Judge David Davis of Illinois, then a
member of the United States Supreme Court, was nominated for
President and Governor Joel Parker of New Jersey for
Vice-President. Both declined, however, and Charles O'Conor of
New York, the candidate of "the Straight-Out Democrats," was
named for President, but no nomination was made for
Vice-President. Considering the subsequent phenomenal growth of
the labor vote, it is worth noting in passing that O'Conor
received only 29,489 votes and that these embraced both the labor
and the so-called "straight" Democratic strength.
* It is interesting to note that in this first National Labor
Party Convention a motion favoring government ownership and the
referendum was voted down.
For some years the political labor movement lost its independent
character and was absorbed by the Greenback party which offered
a meeting-ground for discontented farmers and restless
workingmen. In 1876 the party nominated for President the
venerable Peter Cooper, who received about eighty thousand
votes--most of them probably cast by farmers. During this time
the leaders of the labor movement were serving a political
apprenticeship and were learning the value of cooperation. On
February 22, 1878, a conference held at Toledo, Ohio, including
eight hundred delegates from twenty-eight States, perfected an
alliance between the Labor Reform and Greenback parties and
invited all "patriotic citizens to unite in an effort to secure
financial reform and industrial emancipation." Financial reform
meant the adoption of the well-known greenback free silver
policy. Industrial emancipation involved the enactment of an
eight-hour law; the inspection of workshops, factories, and
mines; the regulation of interstate commerce; a graduated
federal income tax; the prohibition of the importation of alien
contract labor; the forfeiture of the unused portion of the
princely land grants to railroads; and the direct participation
of the people in government. These fundamental issues were
included in the demands of subsequent labor and populist
parties, and some of them were bequeathed to the Progressive
party of a later date. The convention was thus a forerunner of
genuine reform, for its demands were based upon industrial needs.
For the moment it made a wide popular appeal. In the state
elections of 1878 about a million votes were polled by the party
candidates. The bulk of these were farmers' votes cast in the
Middle and Far West, though in the East, Massachusetts,
Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, and New Jersey cast a considerable
vote for the party.
With high expectations the new party entered the campaign of
1880. It had over a dozen members in Congress, active
organizations in nearly every State, and ten thousand local
clubs. General James B. Weaver, the presidential nominee of the
party, was the first candidate to make extensive campaign
journeys into distant sections of the country. His energetic
canvass netted him only 308,578 votes, most of which came from
the West. The party was distinctly a farmers' party. In 1884, it
nominated the lurid Ben Butler who had been, according to report,
"ejected from the Democratic party and booted out of the
Republican." His demagogic appeals, however, brought him not much
more than half as many votes as the party received at the
preceding election, and helped to end the political career of the
Greenbackers.
With the power of the farmers on the wane, the balance began to
shift. There now followed a number of attempts to organize labor
in the Union Labor party, the United Labor party, the Progressive
Labor party, the American Reform party, and the Tax Reformers.
There were still numerous farmers' organizations such as the
Farmers' Alliance, the Anti-Monopolists, the Homesteaders, and
others, but they were no longer the dominant force. Under the
stimulus of the labor unions, delegates representing the Knights
of Labor, the Grangers, the Anti-Monopolists, and other farmers'
organizations, met in Cincinnati on February 22, 1887, and
organized the National Union Labor party.* The following May the
party held its only nominating convention. Alson J. Streeter of
Illinois was named for President and Samuel Evans of Texas for
Vice-President. The platform of the party was based upon the
prevalent economic and political discontent. Farmers were
overmortgaged, laborers were underpaid, and the poor were growing
poorer, while the rich were daily growing richer. "The paramount
issues," the new party declared, "are the abolition of usury,
monopoly, and trusts, and we denounce the Republican and
Democratic parties for creating and perpetuating these monstrous
evils."
* McKee, "National Conventions and Platforms," p. 251.
In the meantime Henry George, whose "Progress and Poverty" had
made a profound impression upon public thought, had become in
1886 a candidate for mayor of New York City, and polled the
phenomenal total of 68,110 votes, while Theodore Roosevelt, the
Republican candidate, received 60,485, and Abram S. Hewitt, the
successful Democratic candidate, polled 90,552. The evidence of
popular support which attended Henry George's brief political
career was the prelude to a national effort which culminated in
the formation of the United Labor party. Its platform was similar
to that of the Union party, except that the single tax now made
its appearance. This method contemplated the "taxation of land
according to its value and not according to its area, to devote
to common use and benefit those values which arise, not from the
exertion of the individual, but from the growth of society," and
the abolition of all taxes on industry and its products. But it
was apparent from the similarity of their platforms and the
geographical distribution of their candidates that the two labor
parties were competing for the same vote. At a conference held in
Chicago to effect a union, however, the Union Labor party
insisted on the complete effacement of the other ticket and the
single taxers refused to submit. In the election which followed,
the Union Labor party received about 147,000 votes, largely from
the South and West and evidently the old Greenback vote, while
the United party polled almost no votes outside of Illinois and
New York. Neither party survived the result of this election.
In December, 1889, committees representing the Knights of Labor
and the Farmers' Alliance met in St. Louis to come to some
agreement on political policies. Owing to the single tax
predilection of the Knights, the two organizations were unable to
enter into a close union, but they nevertheless did agree that
"the legislative committees of both organizations [would] act in
concert before Congress for the purpose of securing the enactment
of laws in harmony with their demands." This cooperation was a
forerunner of the People's party or, as it was commonly called,
the Populist party, the largest third party that had taken the
field since the Civil War. Throughout the West and the South
political conditions now were feverish. Old party majorities were
overturned, and a new type of Congressman invaded Washington.
When the first national convention of the People's party met in
Omaha on July 2, 1892, the outlook was bright. General Weaver was
nominated for President and James G. Field of Virginia for
Vice-President. The platform rehabilitated Greenbackism in cogent
phrases, demanded government control of railroads and telegraph
and telephone systems, the reclamation of land held by
corporations, an income tax, the free coinage of silver and gold
"at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one," and postal
savings banks. In a series of resolutions which were not a part
of the platform but were nevertheless "expressive of the
sentiment of this convention," the party declared itself in
sympathy "with the efforts of organized workingmen to shorten the
hours of labor"; it condemned "the fallacy of protecting American
labor under the present system, which opens our ports to the
pauper and criminal classes of the world and crowds out our
wage-earners"; and it opposed the Pinkerton system of
capitalistic espionage as "a menace to our liberties." The party
formally declared itself to be a "union of the labor forces of
the United States," for "the interests of rural and city labor
are the same; their enemies identical."
These national movements prior to 1896 are not, however, an
adequate index of the political strength of labor in partisan
endeavor. Organized labor was more of a power in local and state
elections, perhaps because in these cases its pressure was more
direct, perhaps because it was unable to cope with the great
national organization of the older parties. During these years of
effort to gain a footing in the Federal Government, there are
numerous examples of the success of the labor party in state
elections. As early as 1872 the labor reformers nominated state
tickets in Pennsylvania and Connecticut. In 1875 they nominated
Wendell Phillips for Governor of Massachusetts. In 1878, in
coalition with the Greenbackers, they elected many state officers
throughout the West. Ten years later, when the Union Labor party
was at its height, labor candidates were successful in several
municipalities. In 1888 labor tickets were nominated in many
Western States, including Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota,
Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Of these
Kansas cast the largest labor vote, with nearly 36,000, and
Missouri came next with 15,400. In the East, however, the showing
of the party in state elections was far less impressive.
In California the political labor movement achieved a singular
prominence. In 1877 the labor situation in San Francisco became
acute because of the prevalence of unemployment. Grumblings of
dissatisfaction soon gave way to parades and informal meetings at
which imported Chinese labor and the rich "nobs," the supposed
dual cause of all the trouble, were denounced in lurid language.
The agitation, however, was formless until the necessary leader
appeared in Dennis Kearney, a native of Cork County, Ireland. For
fourteen years he had been a sailor, had risen rapidly to first
officer of a clipper ship, and then had settled in San Francisco
as a drayman. He was temperate and industrious in his personal
life, and possessed a clear eye, a penetrating voice, the
vocabulary of one versed in the crude socialistic pamphlets of
his day, and, in spite of certain domineering habits bred in the
sailor, the winning graces of his nationality.
Kearney appeared at meetings on the vacant lots known as the
"sand lots," in front of the City Hall of San Francisco, and
advised the discontented ones to "wrest the government from the
hands of the rich and place it in those of the people." On
September 12, 1877, he rallied a group of unemployed around him
and organized the Workingman's Trade and Labor Union of San
Francisco. On the 5th of October, at a great public meeting, the
Workingman's party of California was formed and Kearney was
elected president. The platform adopted by the party proposed to
place the government in the hands of the people, to get rid of
the Chinese, to destroy the money power, to "provide decently for
the poor and unfortunate, the weak and the helpless," and "to
elect none but competent workingmen and their friends to any
office whatever . . . . When we have 10,000 members we shall have
the sympathy and support of 20,000 other workingmen. This party,"
concluded the pronouncement, "will exhaust all peaceable means of
attaining its ends, but it will not be denied justice, when it
has the power to enforce it. It will encourage no riot or
outrage, but it will not volunteer to repress or put down or
arrest or prosecute the hungry and impatient, who manifest their
hatred of the Chinamen by a crusade against 'John,' or those who
employ him. Let those who raise the storm by their selfishness,
suppress it themselves. If they dare raise the devil, let them
meet him face to face. We will not help them." In advocating
these views, Kearney held meeting after meeting each rhetorically
more violent than the last, until on the 3d of November he was
arrested. This martyrdom in the cause of labor increased his
power, and when he was released he was drawn by his followers in
triumph through the streets on one of his own drays. His language
became more and more extreme. He bludgeoned the "thieving
politicians" and the "bloodsucking capitalists," and he advocated
"judicious hanging" and "discretionary shooting." The City
Council passed an ordinance intended to gag him; the legislature
enacted an extremely harsh riot act; a body of volunteers
patrolled the streets of the city; a committee of safety was
organized. On January 5, 1878, Kearney and a number of associates
were indicted, arrested, and released on bail. When the trial
jury acquitted Kearney, what may be called the terrorism of the
movement attained its height, but it fortunately spent itself in
violent adjectives.
The Workingman's party, however, elected a workingman mayor of
San Francisco, joined forces with the Grangers, and elected a
majority of the members of the state constitutional convention
which met in Sacramento on September 28, 1878. This was a notable
triumph for a third party. The framing of a new constitution gave
this coalition of farmers and workingmen an unusual opportunity
to assail the evils which they declared infested the State. The
instrument which they drafted bound the state legislature with
numerous restrictions and made lobbying a felony; it reorganized
the courts, placed innumerable limitations upon corporations,
forbade the loaning of the credit or property of the State to
corporations, and placed a state commission in charge of the
railroads, which had been perniciously active in state politics.
Alas for these visions of reform! A few years after the adoption
of this new constitution by California, Hubert H. Bancroft wrote:
"Those objects which it particularly aimed at, it failed to
achieve. The effect upon corporations disappointed its authors
and supporters. Many of them were strong enough still to defy
state power and evade state laws, in protecting their interests,
and this they did without scruple. The relation of capital and
labor is even more strained than before the constitution was
adopted. Capital soon recovered from a temporary
intimidation...Labor still
uneasy was still subject to the inexorable law of
supply and demand. Legislatures were still to be approached by
agents...Chinese were still employed in digging and
grading. The state board of railroad Commissioners was a useless
expense, ...being as wax in the hands of the companies it was
set to watch."*
* "Works" (vol. XXIV): "History of California," vol. VII, p. 404.
After the collapse of the Populist party, there is to be
discerned in labor politics a new departure, due primarily to the
attitude of the American Federation of Labor in partisan matters,
and secondarily to the rise of political socialism. A socialistic
party deriving its support almost wholly from foreign-born
workmen had appeared in a few of the large cities in 1877, but it
was not until 1892 that a national party was organized, and not
until after the collapse of Populism that it assumed some
political importance.
In August, 1892, a Socialist-Labor convention which was held in
New York City nominated candidates for President and
Vice-President and adopted a platform that contained, besides the
familiar economic demands of socialism, the rather unusual
suggestion that the Presidency, Vice-Presidency, and Senate of
the United States be abolished and that an executive board be
established "whose members are to be elected, and may at any time
be recalled, by the House of Representatives, as the only
legislative body, the States and municipalities to adopt
corresponding amendments to their constitutions and statutes."
Under the title of the Socialist-Labor party, this ticket polled
21,532 votes in 1892, and in 1896, 36,373 votes.
In 1897 the inevitable split occurred in the Socialist ranks.
Eugene V. Debs, the radical labor leader, who, as president of
the American Railway Union, had directed the Pullman strike and
had become a martyr to the radical cause through his imprisonment
for violating the orders of a Federal Court, organized the
Social Democratic party. In 1900 Debs was nominated for
President, and Job Harriman, representing the older wing, for
Vice-President. The ticket polled 94,864 votes. The
Socialist-Labor party nominated a ticket of their own which
received only 33,432 votes. Eventually this party shrank to a
mere remnant, while the Social Democratic party became generally
known as the Socialist party. Debs became their candidate in
three successive elections. In 1904 and 1908 his vote hovered
around 400,000. In 1910 congressional and local elections spurred
the Socialists to hope for a million votes in 1912 but they fell
somewhat short of this mark. Debs received 901,873 votes, the
largest number which a Socialist candidate has ever yet received.
Benson, the presidential candidate in 1916, received 590,579
votes.*
* The Socialist vote is stated differently by McKee, "National
Conventions and Platforms." The above figures, to 1912, are taken
from Stanwood's "History of the Presidency," and for 1912 and
1916 from the "World Almanac."
In the meantime, the influence of the Socialist labor vote in
particular localities vastly increased. In 1910 Milwaukee elected
a Socialist mayor by a plurality of seven thousand, sent Victor
Berger to Washington as the first Socialist Congressman, and
elected labor-union members as five of the twelve Socialist
councilmen, thus revealing the sympathy of the working class for
the cause. On January 1, 1912, over three hundred towns and
cities had one or more Socialist officers. The estimated
Socialist vote of these localities was 1,500,000. The 1039
Socialist officers included 56 mayors, 205 aldermen and
councilmen, and 148 school officers. This was not a sectional
vote but represented New England and the far West, the oldest
commonwealths and the newest, the North and the South, and cities
filled with foreign workingmen as well as staid towns controlled
by retired farmers and shopkeepers.
When the United States entered the Great War, the Socialist party
became a reservoir for all the unsavory disloyalties loosened by
the shock of the great conflict. Pacifists and pro-Germans found
a common refuge under its red banner. In the New York mayoralty
elections in 1917 these Socialists cast nearly one-fourth of the
votes, and in the Wisconsin senatorial election in 1918 Victor
Bergen, their standard-bearer, swept Milwaukee, carried seven
counties, and polled over one hundred thousand votes. On the
other hand, a large number of American Socialists, under the
leadership of William English Walling and John Spargo, vigorously
espoused the national cause and subordinated their economic and
political theories to their loyalty.
The Socialists have repeatedly attempted to make official inroads
upon organized labor. They have the sympathy of the I.W.W., the
remnant of the Knights of Labor, and the more radical trades
unions, but from the American Federation of Labor-they have met
only rebuff. A number of state federations, especially in the
Middle West, not a few city centrals, and some sixteen national
unions, have officially approved of the Socialist programme, but
the Federation has consistently refused such an endorsement.
The political tactics assumed by the Federation discountenance a
distinct labor party movement, as long as the old parties are
willing to subserve the ends of the unions. This self-restraint
does not mean that the Federation is not "in politics." On the
contrary, it is constantly vigilant and aggressive and it engages
every year in political maneuvers without, however, having a
partisan organization of its own. At its annual conventions it
has time and again urged local and state branches to scrutinize
the records of legislative candidates and to see that only
friends of union labor receive the union laborer's ballot. In
1897 it "firmly and unequivocally" favored "the independent use
of the ballot by trade unionists and workmen united regardless of
party, that we may elect men from our own ranks to write new laws
and administer them along lines laid down in the legislative
demands of the American Federation of Labor and at the same time
secure an impartial judiciary that will not govern us by
arbitrary injunctions of the courts, nor act as the pliant tool
of corporate wealth." And in 1906 it determined, first, to defeat
all candidates who are either hostile or indifferent to labor's
demands; second, if neither party names such candidates, then to
make independent labor nominations; third, in every instance to
support "the men who have shown themselves to be friendly to
labor."
With great astuteness, perseverance, and alertness, the
Federation has pursued this method to its uttermost
possibilities. In Washington it has met with singular success,
reaching a high-water mark in the first Wilson Administration,
with the passage of the Clayton bill and the eight-hour railroad
bill. After this action, a great New York daily lamented that
"Congress is a subordinate branch of the American Federation of
Labor...The unsleeping watchmen of organized labor know how
intrepid most Congressmen are when threatened with the 'labor
vote.' The American laborites don't have to send men to Congress
as their British brethren do to the House of Commons. From the
galleries they watch the proceedings. They are mighty in
committee rooms. They reason with the recalcitrant. They fight
opponents in their Congress districts. There are no abler or more
potent politicians than the labor leaders out of Congress. Why
should rulers like Mr. Gompers and Mr. Furuseth* go to Congress?
They are a Super-Congress."
* Andrew Furuseth, the president of the Seamen's Union and
reputed author of the Seaman's Act of 1915.
Many Congressmen have felt the retaliatory power of the
Federation. Even such powerful leaders as Congressman Littlefield
of Maine and Speaker Cannon were compelled to exert their utmost
to overcome union opposition. The Federation has been active in
seating union men in Congress. In 1908 there were six union
members in the House; in 1910 there were ten; in 1912 there were
seventeen. The Secretary of Labor himself holds a union card. Nor
has the Federation shrunk from active participation in the
presidential lists. It bitterly opposed President Roosevelt when
he espoused the open shop in the Government Printing Office; and
in 1908 it openly espoused the Democratic ticket.
In thus maintaining a sort of grand partisan neutrality, the
Federation not only holds in numerous instances the balance of
power but it makes party fealty its slave and avoids the costly
luxury of maintaining a separate national organization of its
own. The all-seeing lobby which it maintains at Washington is a
prototype of what one may discern in most state capitals when the
legislature is in session. The legislative programmes adopted by
the various state labor bodies are metamorphosed into demands,
and well organized committees are present to cooperate with the
labor members who sit in the legislature. The unions, through
their steering committee, select with caution the members who are
to introduce the labor bills and watch paternally over every
stage in the progress of a measure.
Most of this legislative output has been strictly protective of
union interests. Labor, like all other interests that aim to use
the power of government, has not been wholly altruistic, in its
motives, especially since in recent years it has found itself
matched against such powerful organizations of employers as the
Manufacturers' Association, the National Erectors' Association,
and the Metal Trades Association. In fact, in nearly every
important industry the employers have organized for defensive and
offensive purposes. These organizations match committee with
committee, lobby with lobby, add espionage to open warfare, and
issue effective literature in behalf of their open shop
propaganda.
The voluminous labor codes of such great manufacturing
communities as Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and
Illinois, reflect a new and enlarged conception of the modern
State. Labor has generally favored measures that extend the
inquisitional and regulative functions of the State, excepting
where this extension seemed to interfere with the autonomy of
labor itself. Workshops, mines, factories, and other places of
employment are now minutely inspected, and innumerable sanitary
and safety provisions are enforced. A workman's compensation law
removes from the employee's mind his anxiety for the fate of his
family if he should be disabled. The labor contract, long
extolled as the aegis of economic liberty, is no longer free from
state vigilance. The time and method of paying wages are ordered
by the State, and in certain industries the hours of labor are
fixed by law. Women and children are the special proteges of this
new State, and great care is taken that they shall be engaged
only in employment suitable to their strength and under an
environment that will not ruin their health.
The growing social control of the individual is significant, for
it is not only the immediate conditions of labor that have come
under public surveillance. Where and how the workman lives is no
longer a matter of indifference to the public, nor what sort of
schooling his children get, what games they play, and what motion
pictures they see. The city, in cooperation with the State, now
provides nurses, dentists, oculists, and surgeons, as well as
teachers for the children. This local paternalism increases
yearly in its solicitude and receives the eager sanction of the
labor members of city councils. The State has also set up
elaborate machinery for observing all phases of the labor
situation and for gathering statistics and other information that
should be helpful in framing labor laws, and has also established
state employment agencies and boards of conciliation and
arbitration.
This machinery of mediation is significant not because of what it
has already accomplished but as evidence of the realization on
the part of the State that labor disputes are not merely the
concern of the two parties to the labor contract. Society has
finally come to realize that, in the complex of the modern State,
it also is vitally concerned, and, in despair at thousands of
strikes every year, with their wastage and their aftermath of
bitterness, it has attempted to interpose its good offices as
mediator.
The modern labor laws cannot be credited, however, to labor
activity alone. The new social atmosphere has provided a
congenial milieu for this vast extension of state functions. The
philanthropist, the statistician, and the sociologist have become
potent allies of the labor legislator; and such non-labor
organizations, as the American Association for Labor Legislation,
have added their momentum to the movement. New ideals of social
cooperation have been established, and new conceptions of the
responsibilities of private ownership have been evolved.
While labor organizations have succeeded rather readily in
bending the legislative power to their wishes, the military arm
of the executive and the judiciary which ultimately enforce the
command of the State have been beyond their reach. To bend these
branches of the government to its will, organized labor has
fought a persistent and aggressive warfare. Decisions of the
courts which do not sustain union contentions are received with
great disfavor. The open shop decisions of the United States
Supreme Court are characterized as unfair and partisan and are
vigorously opposed in all the labor journals. It is not, however,
until the sanction of public opinion eventually backs the
attitude of the unions that the laws and their interpretation can
conform entirely to the desires of labor.
The chief grievance of organized labor against the courts is
their use of the injunction to prevent boycotts and strikes.
"Government by injunction" is the complaint of the unions and it
is based upon the common, even reckless, use of a writ which was
in origin and intent a high and rarely used prerogative of the
Court of Chancery. What was in early times a powerful weapon in
the hands of the Crown against riotous assemblies and threatened
lawlessness was invoked in 1868 by an English court as a remedy
against industrial disturbances.* Since the Civil War the
American courts in rapidly increasing numbers have used this
weapon, and the Damascus blade of equity has been transformed
into a bludgeon in the hands even of magistrates of inferior
courts.
* Springfield Spinning Company vs. Riley, L.R.6 Eq. 551.
The prime objection which labor urges against this use of the
injunction is that it deprives the defendant of a jury trial when
his liberty is at stake. The unions have always insisted that the
law should be so modified that this right would accompany all
injunctions growing out of labor disputes. Such a denatured
injunction, however, would defeat the purpose of the writ; but
the union leader maintains, on the other hand, that he is placed
unfairly at a disadvantage, when an employer can command for his
own aid in an industrial dispute the swift and sure arm of a law
originally intended for a very different purpose. The
imprisonment of Debs during the Pullman strike for disobeying a
Federal injunction brought the issue vividly before the public;
and the sentencing of Gompers, Mitchell, and Morrison to prison
terms for violating the Buck's Stove injunction produced new
waves of popular protest. Occasional dissenting opinions by
judges and the gradual conviction of lawyers and of society that
some other tribunal than a court of equity or even a court of law
would be more suitable for the settling of labor disputes is
indicative of the change ultimately to be wrought in practice.
The unions are also violently opposed to the use of military
power by the State during strikes. Not only can the militia be
called out to enforce the mandates of the State but whenever
Federal interference is justified the United States troops may be
sent to the scene of turmoil. After the period of great labor
troubles culminating in the Pullman strike, many States
reorganized their militia into national guards. The armories
built for the accommodation of the guard were called by the
unions "plutocracy's bastiles," and the mounted State
constabulary organized in 1906 by Pennsylvania were at once
dubbed "American Cossacks." Several States following the example
of Pennsylvania have encountered the bitterest hostility on the
part of the labor unions. Already opposition to the militia has
proceeded so far that some unions have forbidden their members to
perform militia service when called to do strike duty, and the
military readjustments involved in the Great War have profoundly
affected the relation of the State to organized labor. Following
the signing of the armistice, a movement for the organization of
an American Labor party patterned after the British Labour party
gained rapid momentum, especially in New York and Chicago. A
platform of fourteen points was formulated at a general
conference of the leaders, and provisional organizations were
perfected in a number of cities. What power this latest attempt
to enlist labor in partisan politics will assume is
problematical. It is obviously inspired by European experiences
and promulgated by socialistic propaganda. It has not succeeded
in invading the American Federation of Labor, which did not
formally endorse the movement at its Annual Convention in 1919.
Gompers, in an intimate and moving speech, told a group of labor
leaders gathered in New York on December 9, 1918, that "the
organization of a political party would simply mean the dividing
of the activities and allegiance of the men and women of labor
between two bodies, such as would often come in conflict." Under
present conditions, it would appear that no Labor party could
succeed in the United States without the cooperation of the
American Federation of Labor.
The relation between the American Federation of Labor and the
socialistic and political labor movements, as well as the
monopolistic eagerness of the socialists to absorb these
activities, is clearly indicated in Gompers's narrative of his
experiences as an American labor representative at the London
Conference of 1918. The following paragraphs are significant:
"When the Inter-Allied Labor Conference opened in London, on
September 17th, early in the morning, there were sent over to my
room at the hotel cards which were intended to be the credential
cards for our delegation to sign and hand in as our credentials.
The card read something like this: 'The undersigned is a duly
accredited delegate to the Inter-Allied Socialist Conference to
be held at London,' etc., and giving the dates.
"I refused to sign my name, or permit my name to be put upon any
card of that character. My associates were as indignant as I was
and refused to sign any such credential. We went to the hall
where the conference was to be held. There was a young lady at
the door. When we made an effort to enter she asked for our
cards. We said we had no cards to present. 'Well,' the answer
came, 'you cannot be admitted.' We replied, 'That may be true--we
cannot be admitted--but we will not sign any such card. We have
our credentials written out, signed, and sealed and will present
them to any committee of the conference for scrutiny and
recommendation, but we are not going to sign such a card.'
"Mr. Charles Bowerman, Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee
of the British Trade Union Congress, at that moment emerged from
the door. He asked why we had not entered. I told him the
situation, and he persuaded the young lady to permit us to pass
in. We entered the hall and presented our credentials. Mr. James
Sexton, officer and representative of the Docker's Union of
Liverpool, arose and called the attention of the Conference to
this situation, and declared that the American Federation of
Labor delegates refused to sign any such document. He said it was
not an Inter-Allied Socialist Conference, but an Inter-Allied
Socialist and Labor Conference.
"Mr. Arthur Henderson, of the Labor Party, made an explanation
something to this effect, if my memory serves me: 'It is really
regrettable that such an error should have been made. It was due
to the fact that the old card of credentials which has been used
in former conferences was sent to the printer, no one paying any
attention to it, thinking it was all right.'
"I want to call your attention to the significance of that
explanation, that is, that the trade union movement of Great
Britain was represented at these former conferences, but at this
conference the importance of Labor was regarded as so
insignificant that everybody took it for granted that it was
perfectly all right to have the credential card read
'Inter-Allied Socialist Conference' and with the omission of this
more important term, 'Labor.'"*
* "American Federationist," January, 1919, pp. 40-41.
As one looks back upon the history of the workingman, one finds
something impressive, even majestic, in the rise of the fourth
estate from a humble place to one of power in this democratic
nation. In this rise of fortune the laborer's union has
unquestionably been a moving force, perhaps even the leading
cause. At least this homogeneous mass of workingmen, guided by
self-developed leadership, has aroused society to safeguard more
carefully the individual needs of all its parts. Labor has
awakened the state to a sense of responsibility for its great
sins of neglect and has made it conscious of its social duties.
Labor, like other elements of society, has often been selfish,
narrow, vindictive; but it has also shown itself earnest and
constructive. The conservative trades union, at the hour of this
writing, stands as a bulwark between that amorphous, inefficient,
irresponsible Socialism which has made Russia a lurid warning and
Prussia a word of scorn, and that rational social ideal which is
founded upon the conviction that society is ultimately an organic
spiritual unity, the blending of a thousand diverse interests
whose justly combined labors and harmonized talents create
civilization and develop culture.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
While there is a vast amount of writing on the labor problem,
there are very few works on the history of labor organizations in
the United States. The main reliance for the earlier period, in
the foregoing pages, has been the "Documentary History of
American Industrial Society", edited by John R. Commons, 10 vols.
(1910). The "History of Labour in the United States," 2 vols.
(1918), which he published with associates, is the most
convenient and complete compilation that has yet appeared and
contains a large mass of historical material on the labor
question.
The following works are devoted to discussions of various phases
of the history of American labor and industry:
T. S. Adams and Helen L. Sumner, "Labor Problems" (1905).
Contains several refreshing chapters on labor organizations.
F. T. Carlton, "The History and Problem of Organized Labor"
(1911). A succinct discussion of union problems.
R. T. Ely, "The Labor Movement in America" (1886). Though one of
the earliest American works on the subject, it remains
indispensable.
G. G. Groat, "An Introduction to the Study of Organized Labor in
America" (1916). A useful and up-to-date compendium. R. F. Hosie,
"Trade Unionism in the United States" (1917). A suggestive study
of the philosophy of unionism.
J. R. Commons (Ed.), "Trade Unionism and Labor Problems" (1905).
J. H. Hollander and G. E. Barnett (Eds.), "Studies in American
Trade Unionism" (1905). These two volumes are collections of
contemporary studies of many phases of organized labor by
numerous scholars. They are not historical.
The "Report of the Industrial Commission," vol. XVII (1901)
provides the most complete analysis of trade union policies and
also contains valuable historical summaries of many unions.
G. E. McNeill (Ed.), "The Labor Movement: the Problem of Today"
(1899.). This collection contains historical sketches of the
organizations of the greater labor groups and of the development
of the more important issues espoused by them. For many years it
was the most comprehensive historical work on American unionism,
and it remains a necessary source of information to the student
of trades union history.
J. G. Brissenden, "The Launching of the Industrial Workers of the
World" (1913). An account of the origin of the I.W.W.
J. G. Brooks, "American Syndicalism: the I.W.W." (1913).
John Mitchell, "Organized Labor" (1903). A suggestive exposition
of the principles of Unionism by a distinguished labor leader. It
contains only a limited amount of historical matter.
T. V. Powderly, "Thirty Years of Labor" (1889.) A history of the
Knights of Labor from a personal viewpoint.
E. L. Bogart, "The Economic History of the United States" (rev.
ed., 1918). A concise and clear account of our economic
development.
R. T. Ely, "Evolution of Industrial Society" (1903).
Carroll D. Wright, "The Industrial Evolution of the United
States" (1895).
G. S. Callender, "Selections from the Economic History of the
United States" (1909). A collection of readings. The brief
introductory essays to each chapter give a succinct account of
American industrial development to 1860.
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