A history of trade unionism in the United States

. .

presented to the
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
SAN DIEGO

by

JUDGE J.M. CARTER

*'-*'' J?7

, > - /i •»- /

Social Science

EDITED BY RICHARD T. ELY

A HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM
IN THE UNITED STATES

SOCIAL SCIENCE TEXT-BOOKS

EDITED BY RICHARD T. ELY

OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS

By RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D. Revised and
enlarged by the AUTHOR and THOMAS S. ADAMS,
PH.D., MAX O. LORENZ, PH.D., ALLYN A. YOUNG,

PH.D.
OUTLINES OF SOCIOLOGY

By FHAXK W. BLACKMAB, PH.D., and JOHN LEWIS
GILLIN, PH.D.

HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT (Revised Edi-
tion)

By LEWIS H. HANEY, PH.D.

BUSINESS ORGANIZATION AND COMBINATION
By LEWIS H. HANEY, PH.D.

PROBLEMS OF CHILD WELFARE
By GEORGE B. MANGOLD, Pn.D.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

By EZRA T. TOWNE, PH.D.

THE NEW AMERICAN GOVERNMENT
By JAMES 1. YOUNG, PH.D.

COMPARATIVE FREE GOVERNMENT

By JESSE MACY, LL.D., and JOHN W. GANNAWAY,
M.A.

AMERICAN MUNICIPAL PROGRESS
By CHARLES ZUEBLIN

APPLIED EUGENICS

By PAUL POPENOE and ROSWELL S. JOHNSON, M.S.

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS

By HENRY C. TAYLOR, M.S. AGR., PH.D.

THE LABOR MARKET

By DON D. LESCOHIEH, PH.D.

EFFICIENT MARKETING FOR AGRICULTURE
By THEODORE MACKLIN, PH.D.

A HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM IN THE
UNITED STATES
By SELIG PERLMAN, Pn.D.

A HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM
IN THE UNITED STATES

BY

SELIG PERLMAN, PH.D.

Assistant Professor of Economics in the University of

Wisconsin; Co-author of the History of

Labour in the United States

got*

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1923

All Right* Reserved

FEINTED IK THE UNITED STATES Ol1 AMERICA

COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BT THE MAGMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1922.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

THE present History of Trade Unionism in the United
States is in part a summary of work in labor history by
Professor John R. Commons and collaborators at the
University of Wisconsin from 1904 to 1918, and in part
an attempt by the author to carry the work further. Part
I of the present book is based on the History of Labour in
the United States by Commons and Associates (Introduc-
tion : John R. Commons ; Colonial and Federal Beginnings,
to 1827: David J. Saposs; Citizenship, 1827-1833: Helen
L. Summer ; Trade Unionism, 1833-1839 : Edward B. Mit-
telman; Humanitarianism, 1840-1860: Henry E. Hoag-
land; Nationalization, 1860-1877: John B. Andrews; and
Upheaval and Reorganization, 1876-1896 : by the present
author), published by the Macmillan Company in 1918
in two volumes.

Part II, "The Larger Career of Unionism," brings the
story from 1897 down to date; and Part III, "Conclusions
and Inferences," is an attempt to* bring together several
of the general ideas suggested by the History. Chapter
12, entitled "An Economic Interpretation," follows the
line of analysis laid down by Professor Commons in his
study of the American shoemakers, 1648-1895.1

The author wishes to express his strong gratitude to
Professors Richard T. Ely and John R. Commons for

1See his Labor and Adnwniftration, CSiapter XIV (Macmillan,
1913).

v

vi AUTHOR'S PREFACE

their kind aid at every stage of this work. He also wishes
to acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. Edwin E. Witte,
Director of the Wisconsin State Legislative Reference
Library, upon whose extensive and still unpublished re-
searches he based his summary of the history of the
injunction; and to Professor Frederick L. Paxson, who
subjected the manuscript to criticism from the point of
view of General American History.

S. P.

CONTENTS

PACT

PREFACE v

PART I. THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL

CHAPTER

1 LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR

(1) Early Beginnings, to 1827 3

(2) Equal Citizenship, 1827-1832 .... 9

(3) The Period of the "Wild-Cat" Prosperity,

1833-1837 18

(4) The Long Depression, 1837-1862 ... 29

2 THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 .... 42

3 THE BEGINNING OF THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR AND OP

THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR ... 68

4 REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 .... 81

5 THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM AND THE FINAL

FAILURE OF PRODUCERS' COOPERATION . . . 106

6 STABILIZATION, 1888-1897 130

7 TRADE UNIONISM AND THE COURTS 146

PART II. THE LARGER CAREER OF UNIONISM

8 PARTIAL RECOGNITION AND NEW DIFFICULTIES,

1898-1914 163

(1) The Miners 167

(2) The Railway Men 180

(3) The Machinery and Metal Trades . . . 186

vii

viii CONTENTS

CRAPTCK

(4) The Employers' Reaction 190

(5) Legislation, Courts, and Politics . . . 198

9 RADICAL UNIONISM AND A "COUNTER-REFORMATION" 208

10 THE WAR-TIME BALANCE SHEET 226

11 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 245

PART III. CONCLUSIONS AND INFERENCES

12 AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 265

13 THE IDEALISTIC FACTOR 279

14 WHY THERE is NOT AN AMERICAN LABOR PARTY . 285

15 THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT AND

TRADE UNIONISM 295

BIBLIOGRAPHY 307

INDEX :. .. w w >. . 309

PART I
THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL

HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM
IN THE U. S.

CHAPTER 1

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR

(1) Early Beginnings, to 1827

The customary chronology records the first American
labor strike in 1741. In that year the New York bakers
went out on strike. A closer analysis discloses, however,
that this outbreak was a protest of master bakers against
a municipal regulation of the price of bread, not a wage
earners' strike against employers. The earliest genuine
labor strike in America occurred, as far as known, in
1786, when the Philadelphia printers "turned out" for a
minimum wage of six dollars a week. The second strike
on record was in 1791 by Philadelphia house carpenters
for the ten-hour day. The Baltimore sailors were suc-
cessful in advancing their wages through strikes in the
years 1795, 1805, and 1807, but their endeavors were
recurrent, not permanent. Even more ephemeral were
several riotous sailors' strikes as well as a ship builders'
strike in 1817 at Medford, Massachusetts. Doubtless
many other such outbreaks occurred during the period
to 1820, but left no record of their existence.

A strike undoubtedly is a symptom of discontent.

3

4 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

However, one can hardly speak of a beginning of trade
unionism until such discontent has become expressed in
an organization that keeps alive after a strike, or between
strikes. Such permanent organizations existed prior to
the twenties only in two trades, namely, shoemaking and
printing.

The first continuous organization of wage earners was
that of the Philadelphia shoemakers, organized in 1792.
This society, however, existed for less than a year and did
not even leave us its name. The shoemakers of Phila-
delphia again organized in 1794 under the name of the
Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers and main-
tained their existence as such at least until 1806. In
1799 the society conducted the first organized strike,
which lasted nine or ten weeks. Prior to 1799, the
only recorded strikes of any workmen were "unorganized"
and, indeed, such were the majority of the strikes that
occurred prior to the decade of the thirties in the nine-
teenth century.

The printers organized their first society in 1794 in
New York under the name of The Typographical So-
ciety and it continued in existence for ten years and six
months. The printers of Philadelphia, who had struck in
1786, neglected to keep up an organization after winning
their demands. Between the years 1800 and 1805, the
shoemakers and the printers had continuous organizations
in Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore. In 1809
the shoemakers of Pittsburgh and the Boston printers
were added to the list, and somewhat later the Albany
and Washington printers. In 1810 the printers organized
in New Orleans.

The separation of the jorneymen from the masters, first
shown in the formation of these organizations, was empha-

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 5

sized in the attitude toward employer members. The
question arose over the continuation in membership of
those who became employers. The shoemakers excluded
such members from the organization. The printers, on
the other hand, were more liberal. But in 1817 the New
York society put them out on the ground that "the
interests of the journeymen are separate and in some
respects opposite to those of the employers."

The strike was the chief weapon of these early societies.
Generally a committee was chosen by the society to pre-
sent a price list or scale of wages to the masters indi-
vidually. The first complete wage scale presented in this
country was drawn up by the organized printers of New
York in 1800. The strikes were mainly over wages and
were generally conducted in an orderly and compara-
tively peaceful manner. In only one instance, that of the
Philadelphia shoemakers of 1806, is there evidence of
violence and intimidation. In that case "scabs" were
beaten and employers intimidated by demonstrations in
front of the shop or by breaking shop windows. During
a strike the duties of "picketing" were discharged by
tramping committees. The Philadelphia shoemakers,
however, as early as 1799, employed for this purpose a
paid officer. This strike was for higher wages for
workers on boots. Although those who worked on shoes
made no demands of their own, they were obliged to strike,
much against their will. We thus meet with the first
sympathetic strike on record. In 1809 the New York
shoemakers, starting with a strike against one firm, or-
dered a general strike when they discovered that that
firm was getting its work done in other shops. The pay-
ment of strike benefits dates from the first authenticated
strike, namely in 1786. The method of payment varied

6 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

from society to society, but the constitution of the New
York shoemakers, as early as 1805, provided for a per-
manent strike fund.

The aggressive trade unionism of these early trade
societies forced the masters to combine against them.
Associations of masters in their capacity as merchants
had usually preceded the journeymen's societies. Their
function was to counteract destructive competition from
"advertisers'* and sellers in the "public market" at low
prices. As soon, however, as the wage question became
serious, the masters' associations proceeded to take ori
the function of dealing with labor — mostly aiming to
break up the trade societies. Generally they sought to
create an available force of non-union labor by means
of advertising, but often they turned to the courts and
brought action against the journeymen's societies on the
ground of conspiracy.

The bitterness of the masters* associations against the
the journeymen's societies perhaps was caused not so
much by their resistance to reductions in wages as by
their imposition of working rules, such as the limitation
of the number of apprentices, the minimum wage, and
what we would now call the "closed shop." The con-
spiracy trials largely turned upon the "closed shop" and
in these the shoemakers figured exclusively.1

Altogether six criminal conspiracy cases are recorded
against the shoemakers from 1806 to 1815. One oc-
curred in Philadelphia in 1806; one in New York in
1809; two in Baltimore in 1809; and two in Pittsburgh,
the first in 1814 and the other in 1815. Each case was
tried before a jury which was judge both of law and fact.
Four of the cases were decided against the journeymen.
»See below, 147-148.

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 7

In one of the Baltimore cases judgment was rendered in
favor of the journeymen. The Pittsburgh case of 1815
was compromised, the shoemakers paying the costs and
returning to work at the old wages. The outcome in the
other cases is not definitely known. It was brought out
in the testimony that the masters financed, in part at least,
the New York and Pittsburgh prosecutions.

Effective as the convictions in court for conspiracy
may have been in checking the early trade societies, of
much greater consequence was the industrial depression
which set in after the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars.
The lifting of the Embargo enabled the foreign traders
and manufacturers to dump their products upon the
American market. The incipient American industries
were in no position to withstand this destructive compe-
tion. Conditions were made worse by past over invest-
ment and by the collapse of currency inflation.

Trade unionism for the time being had to come to an
end. The effect on the journeymen's societies was para-
lyzing. Only those survived which turned to mutual in-
surance. Several of the printers' societies had already
instituted benefit features, and these now helped them
considerably to maintain their organization. The shoe-
makers' societies on the other hand had remained to the
end purely trade-regulating organizations and went to
the wall.

Depression reached its ebb in 1820. Thereafter con-
ditions improved, giving rise to aggressive organizations
of wage earners in several industries. We find strikes
and permanent organizations among hatters, tailors,
weavers, nailers, and cabinet makers. And for the first
time we meet with organizations of factory workers — •
female workers.

8 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

Beginning with 1824 and running through 1825, the
year which saw the culmination of a period of high prices,
a number of strikes occurred in the important industrial
centers. The majority were called to enforce higher
wages. In Philadelphia, 2900 weavers out of about 4500
in the city were on strike. But the strike that attracted
the most public attention was that of the Boston house
carpenters for the ten-hour day in 1825.

The Boston journeymen carpenters chose the most
strategic time for their strike. They called it in the
spring of the year when there was a great demand for
carpenters owing to a recent fire. Close to six hundred
journeymen were involved in this struggle. The journey-
men's demand for the ten-hour day drew a characteristic
reply from the "gentlemen engaged in building," the cus-
tomers of the master builders. They condemned the jour-
neymen on the moral ground that an agitation for a
shorter day would open "a wide door for idleness and
vice"; hinted broadly at the foreign origin of the agita-
tion ; declared that all combinations intending to regulate
the value of labor by abridging the working day were in
a high degree unjust and injurious to the other classes
in the community; announced their resolution to support
the masters at the sacrifice of suspending building alto-
gether; and bound themselves not to employ any journey-
man or master who might enforce the ten-hour day. The
strike failed.

The renewed trade-union activities brought forth a
fresh crop of trials for conspiracy.1 One case involved
Philadelphia master shoemakers who combined to reduce
wages, two were against journeymen tailors in Philadel-
phia and Buffalo and the fourth was a hatters' case in
4See below, 148-149.

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 9

New York. The masters were acquitted and the hatters
were found guilty of combining to deprive a non-union
man of his livelihood. In the Philadelphia tailors' case,
the journeymen were convicted on the charge of intimi-
dation. Of the Buffalo tailors' case it is only known that
it ended in the conviction of the journeymen.

(2) Equal Citizenship, 1827-1832

So far we have dealt only with trade societies but not
yet with a labor movement. A labor movement presup-
poses a feeling of solidarity which goes beyond the bound-
aries of a single trade and extends to other wage earners.
The American labor movement ..began in 1827. when the
several trades in Philadelphia organized the Mechanics'
Union of Trade Associations, which was, so far as now
known, the first city central organization of trades in the
world. This Union, originally intended as an economic
organization, changed to a political one the following
year and initiated what was probably the most interesting
and most typically American labor movement — a struggle
for "equality of citizenship." It was brought to a head
by the severe industrial depression of the time. But the
decisive impulse came from the nation-wide democratic
upheaval led by Andrew Jackson, for which the poorer
classes in the cities displayed no less enthusiasm than the
agricultural West. To the wage earner this outburst of
democratic fervor offered an opportunity to try out his
recently acquired franchise. Of the then industrial States,
Massachusetts granted suffrage to the workingmen in
1820 and New York in 1822. In Pennsylvania the con-
stitution of 1790 had extended the right of suffrage to
those who paid any kind of a state or county tax, how-
ever small.

10 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

The wage earners* Jacksonianism struck a note all its
own. If the farmer and country merchant, who had
passed through the abstract stage of political aspiration
with the Jeffersonian democratic movement, were now,
with Jackson, reaching out for the material advantages
which political power might yield, the wage earners, being
as yet novices in politics, naturally were more strongly
impressed with that aspect of the democratic upheaval
which emphasized the rights of man in general and social
equality in particular. If the middle class Jacksonian
was probably thinking first of reducing the debt on his
farm or perchance of getting a political office, and only
as an after-thought proceeding to look for a justification
in the Declaration of Independence, as yet the wage earner
was starting with the abstract notion of equal citizenship
as contained in the Declaration, and only then proceeding
to search for the remedies which would square reality
with the idea. Hence it was that the aspiration toward
equal citizenship became the keynote of labor's earliest
political movement. The issue was drawn primarily be-
tween the rich and the poor, not between the functional
classes, employers and employes. While the workmen
took good care to exclude from their ranks "persons
not living by some useful occupation, such as bankers,
brokers, rich men, etc.," they did not draw the line
on employers as such, master workmen and independent
"producers."

The workingmen's bill of complaints, as set forth in the
Philadelphia Mechanic's Free Press and other labor pa-
pers, clearly marks off the movement as a rebellion by
the class of newly enfranchised wage earners against con-
ditions which made them feel degraded in their own eyes
as full fledged citizens of the commonwealth.

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 11

The complaints were of different sorts but revolved
around the charge of the usurpation of government by an
"aristocracy." Incontrovertible proof of this charge
was found in special legislation chartering banks and
other corporations. The banks were indicted upon two
counts. First, the unstable bank paper money defrauded
the wage earner of a considerable portion of the pur-
chasing power of his wages. Second, banks restricted
competition and shut off avenues for the "man on the
make." The latter accusation may be understood only
if we keep in mind that this was a period when bank
credits began to play an essential part in the conduct of
industry; that with the extension of the market into the
States and territories South and West, with the resulting
delay in collections, business could be carried on only by
those who enjoyed credit facilities at the banks. Now,
as credit generally follows access to the market, it was
inevitable that the beneficiary of the banking system
should not be the master or journeyman but the merchant
for whom both worked.1 To the uninitiated, however,
this arrangement could only appear in the light of a huge
conspiracy entered into by the chartered monopolies, the
banks, and the unchartered monopolist, the merchant, to
shut out the possible competition by the master and
journeyman. The grievance appeared all the more seri-
ous since all banks were chartered by special enactments
of the legislature, which thus appeared as an accomplice
in the conspiracy.

In addition to giving active help to the rich, the work-
ingmen argued, the government was too callous to the
suffering of the poor and pointed to the practice of im-
prisonment for debt. The Boston Prison Discipline So-
1 See below, 270-272.

12 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

ciety, a philanthropic organization, estimated in 1829
that about 75,000 persons were annually imprisoned for
debt in the United States. Many of these were im-
prisoned for very small debts. In one Massachusetts
prison, for example, out of 37 cases, 20 were for less than
$20. The Philadelphia printer and philanthropist,
Mathew Carey, father of the economist Henry C. Carey,
cited a contemporary Boston case of a blind man with a
family dependent on him imprisoned for a debt of six
dollars. A labor paper reported an astounding case of
a widow in Providence, Rhode Island, whose husband had
lost his life in a fire while attempting to save the property
of the man who later caused her imprisonment for a debt
of 68 cents. The physical conditions in debtors' jails
were appalling, according to unimpeachable contemporary
reports. Little did such treatment of the poor accord
with their newly acquired dignity as citizens.

Another grievance, particularly exasperating because
the government was responsible, grew in Pennsylvania out
of the administration of the compulsory militia system.
Service was obligatory upon all male citizens and non-
attendance was punished by fine or imprisonment. The
rich delinquent did not mind, but the poor delinquent
when unable to pay was given a jail sentence.

Other complaints by workingmen went back to the
failure of government to protect the poorer citizen's
right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'*
The lack of a mechanic's lien law, which would protect
his wages in the case of his employer's bankruptcy, was
keenly felt by the workingmen. A labor paper estimated
in 1829 that, owing to the lack of a lien law on buildings,
not less than three or four hundred thousand dollars in
wages were annually lost.

But the most distinctive demands of the workingmen
went much further. This was an age of egalitarianism.
The Western frontiersmen demanded equality with the
wealthy Eastern merchant and banker, and found in
Andrew Jackson an ideal spokesman. For a brief mo-
ment it seemed that by equality the workingmen meant
an equal division of all property. That was the pro-
gram which received temporary endorsement at the first
workingmen's meeting in New York in April 1829.
"Equal division" was advocated by a self-taught me-
chanic by the name of Thomas Skidmore, who elaborated
his ideas in a book bearing the self-revealing title of
"The Rights of Man to Property: being a Proposition to
make it Equal among the Adults of the Present Genera-
tion: and to Provide for its Equal Transmission to
Every Individual of Each Succeeding Generation, on
Arriving at the Age of Maturity" published in 1829.
This Skidmorian program was better known as "agrarian-
ism," probably from the title of a book by Thomas Paine,
Agrarian Justice, as Opposed to Agrarian Law and to
Agrarian Monopoly, published in 1797 in London, which
advocated equal division by means of an inheritance tax.
Its adoption by the New York .workingmen was little
more than a stratagem, for their intention was to fore-
stall any attempts by employers to lengthen the working
day to eleven hours by raising the question of "the
nature of the tenure by which all men hold title to their
property." Apparently the stratagem worked, for the em-
ployers immediately dropped the eleven-hour issue. But,
although the workingmen quickly thereafter repudiated
agrarianism, they succeeded only too well in affixing to
their movement the mark of the beast in the eyes of their
opponents and the general public.

Except during the brief but damaging "agrarian" epi-
sode, the demand for free public education or "Republi-
can" education occupied the foreground. We, who live
in an age when free education at the expense of the com-
munity is considered practically an inalienable right of
every child, find it extremely difficult to understand the
vehemence of the opposition which the demand aroused on
the part of the press and the "conservative" classes, when
first brought up by the workingmen. The explanation
lies partly in the political situation, partly in the moral
character of the "intellectual" spokesmen for the work-
ingmen, and partly in the inborn conservatism of the tax-
paying classes upon whom the financial burden would fall.
That the educational situation was deplorable much
proof is unnecessary. Pennsylvania had some public
schools, but parents had to declare themselves too poor
to send their children to a private school before they
were allowed the privilege of sending them there. In fact
so much odium attached to these schools that they were
practically useless and the State became distinguished for
the number of children not attending school. As late
as 1837 a labor paper estimated that 250,000 out of
400,000 children in Pennsylvania of school age were not
in any school. The Public School Society of New York
estimated in a report for 1829 that in New York City
alone there were 24,200 children between the ages of five
and fifteen years not attending any school whatever.

To meet these conditions the workingmen outlined a
comprehensive educational program. It was not merely
a literary education that the workingmen desired. The
idea of industrial education, or training for a vocation,
which is even now young in this country, was undoubtedly
first introduced by the leaders of this early labor move-

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 15

ment. They demanded a system of public education which
would "combine a knowledge of the practical arts with
that of the useful sciences." The idea of industrial edu-
cation appears to have originated in a group of which
two "intellectuals," Robert Dale Owen and Frances
Wright, were the leading spirits.

Robert Dale Owen was the eldest son of Robert Owen,
the famous English manufacturer-philanthropist, who
originated the system of socialism known as "Owenism."
Born in Scotland, he was educated at Hofwyl, Switzer-
land, in a school conducted by Emmanuel von Fellenberg,
the associate of the famous Pestalozzi, as a self-govern-
ing children's republic on the manner of the present
"Julior Republics." Owen himself said that he owed his
abiding faith in human virtue and social progress to his
years at Hofwyl. In 1825 Robert Dale left England
to join his father in a communistic experiment at New
Harmony, Indiana, and together they lived through the
vicissitudes which attended that experiment. There he
met Frances Wright, America's first suffragist, with
whom he formed an intimate friendship lasting through
many years. The failure at New Harmony convinced
him that his father had overlooked the importance of
the anti-social habits which the members had formed
before they joined; and he concluded that those could
be prevented only by applying a rational system of edu-
cation to the young. These conclusions, together with
the recollections of his experience at Hofwyl, led him
to advocate a new system of education, which came to be
called "state guardianship."

State guardianship was a demand for the establish-
ment by the state of boarding schools where children
should receive, not only equal instruction, general as well

16 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

as industrial, but equal food and equal clothing at the
public expense. Under this system, it was asserted, public
schools would become "not schools of charity, but schools
of the nation, to the support of which all would con-
tribute; and instead of being almost a disgrace, it would
become an honor to have been educated there." It was
urged as an especial advantage that, as children would
be clothed and cared for at all times, the fact that poor
parents could not afford to dress their children "as de-
cently as their neighbors" would not prevent their at-
tendance.

State guardianship became the battle cry of an. im-
portant faction in the Workingmen's party in New York.
Elsewhere a less radical program was advocated. In
Philadelphia the workingmen demanded only that high
schools be on the Hofwyl model, whereas in the smaller
cities and towns in both Pennsylvania and New York the
demand was for "literary" day schools. Yet the under-
lying principle was the same everywhere. A labor can-
didate for Congress in the First Congressional District
of Philadelphia in 1830 expressed it succinctly during his
campaign. He made his plea on the ground that "he
is the friend and indefatigable defender of a system of
general education, which will place the citizens of this
extensive Republic on an equality; a system that will fit
the children of the poor, as well as the rich, to become our
future legislators ; a system that will bring the children
of the poor and the rich to mix together as a band of
Republican brethren."

In New England the workingmen's movement for equal
citizenship was simultaneously a reaction against the
factory system. To the cry for a Republican system of
education was added an anti-child labor crusade. One

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 17

who did more than any other to call attention to the evils
of the factory system of that day was a lawyer by the
name of Seth Luther, who, according to his own account,
had "for years lived among cotton mills, worked in them,
travelled among them." His "Address to the Working
Men of New England on the State of Education, and on
the Condition of the Producing Classes in Europe and
America, with Particular Reference to the Effect of
Manufacturing (as now conducted) on the Health and
Happiness of the Poor, and on the Safety of our Re-
public" was delivered widely and undoubtedly had consid-
erable influence over the labor movement of the period.
The average working day in the best factories at that
time was nearly thirteen hours. For the children who
were sent into the factories at an early age these hours
precluded, of course, any possibility of obtaining even
the most rudimentary education.

The New England movement was an effort to unite
producers of all kinds, including not only farmers but
factory workers with mechanics and city workingmen.
In many parts of the State of New York the workingmen's
parties included the three classes — "farmers, mechanics,
and working men," — but New England added a fourth
class, the factory operatives. It was early found, how-
ever, that the movement could expect little or no help
from the factory operatives, who were for the most part
women and children.

The years 1828, 1829, and 1830 were years of political
labor movements and labor parties. Philadelphia origi-
nated the first workingmen's party, then came New York
and Boston, and finally state-wide movements and po-
litical organizations in each of the three States. In
New York the workingmen scored their most striking

18 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

single success, when in 1829 they cast 6000 votes out of a
total of 21,000. In Philadelphia the labor ticket polled
2400 in 1828 and the labor party gained the balance of
power in the city. But the inexperience of the labor poli-
ticians coupled with machinations on the part of "de-
signing men" of both older parties soon lost the labor
parties their advantage. In New York Tammany made
the demand for a mechanics' lien law its own and later
saw that it became enacted into law. In New York, also,
the situation became complicated by factional strife be-
tween the Skidmorian "agrarians," the Owenite state
guardianship faction, and a third faction which eschewed
either "panacea." Then, too, the opposition parties and
press seized upon agrarianism and Owen's alleged atheism
to brand the whole labor movement. The labor party was
decidedly unfortunate in its choice of intellectuals and
"ideologists."

It would be, however, a mistake to conclude that the
Philadelphia, New York, or New England political move-
ments were totally without results. Though unsuc-
cessful in electing their candidates to office, they did suc-
ceed in placing their demands to advantage before the
public. Humanitarians, like Horace Mann, took up inde-
pendently the fight for free public education and carried
it to success. In Pennsylvania, public schools, free from
the taint of charity, date since 1836. In New York City
the public school system was established in 1832. The
same is true of the demand for a mechanics' lien law, of
the abolition of imprisonment for debt, and of others.

(3) The Period of the "Wild-cat" Prosperity, 1833-1837

With the break-up of the workingmen's parties, la-
bor's newly acquired sense of solidarity was temporarily

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 19

lost, leaving only the restricted solidarity of the isolated
trade society. Within that limit, however, important
progress began to be made. In 1833, there were in New
York twenty-nine organized trades; in Philadelphia,
twenty-one; and in Baltimore, seventeen. Among those
organized in Philadelphia were hand-loom weavers, plas-
terers, bricklayers, black and white smiths, cigar makers,
plumbers, and women workers including tailoresses, seam-
stresses, binders, folders, milliners, corset makers, and
mantua workers. Several trades, such as the printers
and tailors in New York and the Philadelphia carpen-
ters, which formerly were organized upon the benevolent
basis, were now reorganized as trade societies. The
benevolent New York Typographical Society was reduced
to secondary importance by the appearance in 1831 of
the New York Typographical Association.

But the factor that compelled labor to organize on a
much larger scale was the remarkable rise in prices from
1835 to 1837. This rise in prices was coincident with
the "wild-cat" prosperity, which followed a rapid multi-
plication of state banks with the right of issue of paper
currency — largely irredeemable "wild-cat" currency.
Cost of living having doubled, the subject of wages became
a burning issue. At the same time the general business
prosperity rendered demands for higher wages easily
attainable. The outcome was a luxuriant growth of trade
unionism.

In 1836 there were in Philadelphia fifty-eight trade
unions ; in Newark, New Jersey, sixteen ; in New York,
fifty-two; in Pittsburgh, thirteen; in Cincinnati, four-
teen; and in Louisville, seven. In Buffalo the journey-
men builders' association included all the building trades.
The tailors of Louisville, Cincinnati, and St. Louis made

20 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

a concentrated effort against their employers in these
three cities.

The wave of organization reached at last the women
workers. In 1830 the well-known Philadelphia philan-
thropist, Mathew Carey, asserted that there were in the
cities of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore
about 20,000 women who could not by constant employ-
ment for sixteen hours out of twenty-four earn more than
$1.25 a week. These were mostly seamstresses and tailor-
esses, umbrella makers, shoe binders, cigar makers, and
book binders. In New York there was in 1835 a Female
Union Association, in Baltimore a United Seamstresses'
Society, and in Philadelphia probably the first federa-
tion of women workers in this country. In Lynn, Massa-
chusetts, a "Female Society of Lynn and Vicinity for the
Protection and Promotion of Female Industry" operated
during 1833 and 1834 among the shoe binders and had
at one time 1000 members, who, like the seamstresses,
were home workers and earned scanty wages.

Where nearly every trade was in motion, it did not take
long to discover a common direction and a common pur-
pose. This was expressed in city "trades' unions," or
federations of all organized trades in a city, and in its
ascendency over the individual trade societies.

The first trades' union was organized August 14, 1833,
in New York. Baltimore followed in September, Phila-
delphia in November, and Boston in March 1834. New
York after 1820 was the metropolis of the country and
also the largest industrial and commercial center. There
the house carpenters had struck for higher wages in the
latter part of May 1833, and fifteen other trades met
and pledged their support. Out of this grew the New
York Trades' Union. It had an official organ in a weekly,

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 21

the National Trades9 Union, published from 1834 to
1836, and a daily, The Union, issued in 1836. Ely Moore,
a printer, was made president. Moore was elected a few
months later as the first representative of labor in
Congress.

In addition, trades' unions were organized in Washing-
ton; in New Brunswick and Newark, New Jersey; in Al-
bany, Troy, and Schenectady, New York; and in the
"Far West" — Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville.

Except in Boston, the trades' unions felt anxious to
draw the line between themselves and the political labor
organizations of the preceding years. In Philadelphia,
where as we have seen, the formation of an analogous
organization, the Mechanics' Union of Trade Associa-
tions of 1828, had served as a preliminary for a political
movement, the General Trades' Union took especial pre-
caution and provided in the constitution that "no party,
political or religious questions shall at any time be agi-
tated in or acted upon in the Union." Its official organ,
the National Laborer, declared that "the Trades' Union
never will be political because its members have learned
from experience that the introduction of politics into their
societies has thwarted every effort to ameliorate their
conditions."

The repudiation of active politics did not carry with
it a condemnation of legislative action or "lobbying."
On the contrary, these years witnessed the first sus-
tained legislative campaign that was ever conducted by a
labor organization, namely the campaign by the New
York Trades' Union for the suppression of the competi-
tion from prison-made goods. Under the pressure of the
New York Union the State Legislature created in 1834
a special commission on prison labor with its president,

22 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

Ely Moore, as one of the three commissioners. On this
question of prison labor the trade unionists clashed with
the humanitarian prison reformers, who regarded produc-
tive labor by prisoners as a necessary means of their re-
form to an honest mode of living; and the humanitarian
won. After several months* work the commission sub-
mitted what was to the Union an entirely unsatisfactory
report. It approved the prison-labor system as a whole
and recommended only minor changes. Ely Moore signed
the report, but a public meeting of workingmen con-
demned it.

The rediscovered solidarity between the several trades
now embodied in the city trades' unions found its first ex-
pression on a large scale in a ten-hour movement.

The first concerted demand for the ten-hour day was
made by the workingmen of Baltimore in August 1833,
and extended over seventeen trades. But the mechanics'
aspiration for a ten-hour day — perhaps the strongest
spiritual inheritance from the preceding movement for
equal citizenship,1 had to await a change in the general
condition of industry to render trade union effort ef-
fective before it could turn into a well sustained move-
ment. That change finally came with the prosperous
year of 1835.

The movement was precipitated in Boston. There, as
we saw, the carpenters had been defeated in an effort to
establish a ten-hour day in 1825,2 but made another at-
tempt in the spring of 1835. This time, however, they
did not stand alone but were joined by the masons and
stone-cutters. As before, the principal attack was di-

1 The workingmen felt that they required leisure to be able to
exercise their rights of citizens.
'The ship carpenters had been similarly defeated in 1832.

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 23

rected against the "capitalists," that is, the owners of the
buildings and the real estate speculators. The employer
or small contractor was viewed sympathetically. "We
would not be too severe on our employers," said the
strikers' circular, which was sent out broadcast over the
country, "they are slaves to the capitalists, as we are
to them."

The strike was protracted. The details of it are not
known, but we know that it won sympathy throughout
the country. A committee visited in July the different
cities on the Atlantic coast to solicit aid for the strikers.
In Philadelphia, when the committee arrived in company
with delegates from New York, Newark, and Paterson,
the Trades' Union held a special meeting and resolved
to stand by the "Boston House Wrights" who, "in imi-
tation of the noble and decided stand taken by their Revo-
lutionary Fathers, have determined to throw off the
shackles of more mercenary tyrants than theirs." Many
societies voted varying sums of money in aid of the
strikers.

The Boston strike was lost, but the sympathy which it
evoked among mechanics in various cities was quickly
turned to account. Wherever the Boston circular reached,
it acted like a spark upon powder. In Philadelphia the
ten-hour movement took on the aspect of a crusade. Not
only the building trades, as in Boston, but most of the
mechanical branches were involved. Street parades and
mass meetings were held. The public press, both friendly
and hostile, discussed it at length. Work was suspended
and after but a brief "standout" the whole ended in a
complete victory for the workingmen. Unskilled laborers,
too, struck for the ten-hour day and, in the attempt to
prevent others from taking their jobs, riotous scenes

24 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

occurred which attracted considerable attention. The
movement proved so irresistible that the Common Council
announced a ten-hour day for public servants. Lawyers,
physicians, merchants, and politicians took up the cause
of the workingmen. On June 8 the master carpenters
granted the ten-hour day and by June 22 the victory was
complete.

The victory in Philadelphia was so overwhelming and
was given so much publicity that its influence extended
to many smaller towns. In fact, the ten-hour system,
which remained in vogue in this country in the skilled
trades until the nineties, dates largely from this move-
ment in the middle of the thirties.

The great advance in the cost of living during 1835
and 1836 compelled an extensive movement for higher
wages. Prices had in some instances more than doubled.
Most of these strikes were hastily undertaken. Prices,
of course, were rising rapidly but the societies were new
and lacked balance. A strike in one trade was an ex-
ample to others to strike. In a few instances, however,
there was considerable planning and reserve.

The strike epidemic affected even the girls who worked
in the textile factories. The first strike of factory girls
on record had occurred in Dover, New Hampshire, in
1828. A factory strike in Paterson, New Jersey, which
occurred in the same year, occasioned the first recorded
calling out of militia to quell labor disturbances. There
the strikers were, however, for the most part men. But
the factory strike which attracted the greatest public
attention was the Lowell strike in February, 1834, against
a 15 per cent, reduction in wages. The strike was short
and unsuccessful, notwithstanding that 800 striking girls
at first exhibited a determination to carry their struggle

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 25

to the end. It appears that public opinion in New Eng-
land was disagreeably impressed by this early manifesta-
tion of feminism. Another notable factory strike was one
in Paterson in July 1835. Unlike similar strikes, it had
been preceded by an organization. The chief demand was
the eleven-hour day. The strike involved twenty mills
and 2000 persons. Two weeks later the employers reduced
hours from thirteen and a half to twelve hours for five
days and to nine hours on Saturday. This broke the
strike. The character of the agitation among the factory
workers stamps it as ephemeral. Even more ephemeral was
the agitation among immigrant laborers, mostly Irish,
on canals and roads, which usually took the form of riots.

As in the preceding period, the aggressiveness of the
trade societies eventually gave rise to combative masters'
associations. These, goaded by restrictive union prac-
tices, notably the closed shop, appealed to the courts for
relief. By 1836 employers' associations appeared in
nearly every trade in which labor was aggressive; in New
York there were at least eight and in Philadelphia seven.
In Philadelphia, at the initiative of the master carpen-
ters and cordwainers, there came to exist an informal
federation of the masters' associations in the several
trades.

From 1829 to 1842 there were eight recorded prose-
cutions of labor organizations for conspiracy. The work-
ingmen were convicted in two cases; in two other cases
the courts sustained demurrers to the indictments; in
three cases the defendants were acquitted after jury
trials ; and the outcome of one case is unknown. Finally,
in 1842, long after the offending societies had gone out of
existence under the stress of unemployment and depres-
sions, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

26 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

handed down a decision, which for forty years laid to
rest the doctrine of conspiracy as applied to labor
unions.1

The unity of action of the several trades displayed in
the city trades' unions engendered before long a still
wider solidarity in the form of a National Trades' Union.
It came together in August 1834, in New York City upon
the invitation of the General Trades' Union of New York.
The delegates were from the trades' unions of New York,
Philadelphia, Boston, Brooklyn, Poughkeepsie, and
Newark. Ely Moore, then labor candidate for Congress,
was elected president. An attempt by the only "intel-
lectual" present, a Doctor Charles Douglass, representing
the Boston Trades' Union, to strike a political note was
immediately squelched. A second convention was held
in 1835 and a third one in 1837.

The National Trades' Union played a conspicuous part
in securing the ten-hour day for government employes.
The victory of the ten-hour principle in private employ-
ment in 1835 generally led to its adoption by states and
municipalities. However, the Federal government was
slow to follow the example, since Federal officials were
immune from the direct political pressure which the work-
ingmen were able to use with advantage upon locally
elected office holders.

In October 1835, the mechanics employed in the New
York and Brooklyn Navy Yards petitioned the Secretary
of the Navy for a reduction of the hours of labor to ten.
The latter referred the petition to the Board of Navy
Commissioners, who returned the petition with the opinion
that it would be detrimental to the government to accede
to their request. This forced the matter into the atten-
1 For a detailed discussion of these trials see below, 149-152.

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 27

tion of the National Trades' Union. At its second con-
vention in 1835 it decided to petition Congress for a ten-
hour day for employes on government works. The peti-
tion was introduced by the labor Congressman from New
York, Ely Moore. Congress curtly replied, however, that
it was not a matter for legislation but "that the persons
employed should redress their own grievances." With
Congress in such a mood, the hopes of the workingmen
turned to the President.

A first step was made in the summer of 1836, when the
workers in the Navy Yard at Philadelphia struck for a
ten-hour day and appealed to President Jackson for re-
lief. They would have nothing further to do with Con-
gress. They had supported President Jackson in his
fight against the United States Bank and now sought a
return favor. At a town meeting of "citizens, mechanics,
and working men," a committee was appointed to lay the
issue before him. He proved indeed more responsive than
Congress and ordered the ten-hour system established.

But the order applied only to the localities where the
strike occurred. The agitation had been chiefly local.
Besides Philadelphia and New York the mechanics se-
cured the ten-hour day in Baltimore and Annapolis, but
in the District of Columbia and elsewhere they were still
working twelve or fourteen hours. In other words, the
ten-hour day was secured only where trade societies
existed.

But the organized labor movement did not rest with
a partial success. The campaign of pressure on the
President went on. Finally, although somewhat belatedly,
President Van Buren issued on March 31, 1840, the fa-
mous executive order establishing the ten-hour day on
government work without a reduction in wages.

28 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

The victory came after the National Trades' Union
had gone out of existence and should be, more correctly,
correlated with a labor political movement. Early in
1837 came a financial panic. The industrial depression
wiped out in a short time every form of labor organization
from the trade societies to the National Trades' Union.
Labor stood defenseless against the economic storm. In
this emergency it turned to politics as a measure of de-
spair.

The political dissatisfaction assumed the form of hos-
tility towards banks and corporations in general. The
workingmen held the banks responsible for the existing
anarchy in currency, from which they suffered both as
consumers and producers. Moreover, they felt that there
was something uncanny and threatening about corpora-
tions with their continuous existence and limited liability.
Even while their attention had been engrossed by trade
unionism, the workingmen were awake to the issue of
monopoly. Together with their employers they had
therefore supported Jackson in his assault upon the
largest "monster" of them all — the Bank of the United
States. The local organizations of the Democratic party,
however, did not always remain true to faith. In such
circumstances the workingmen, again acting in conjunc-
tion with their masters, frequently extended their support
to the "insurgent" anti-monopoly candidates in the Demo-
cratic party conventions. Such a revolt took place in
Philadelphia in 1835; and in New York, although Tam-
many had elected Ely Moore, the President of the Gen-
eral Trades' Union of New York, to Congress in 1834,
a similar revolt occurred. The upshot was a triumphant
return of the rebels into the fold of Tammany in 1837.
During the next twenty years, Tammany came nearer

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 29

to being a workingmen's organization than at any other
time in its career.

(4) The Long Depression, 1837-1862

The twenty-five years which elapsed from 1837 to 1862
form a period of business depression and industrial dis-
organization only briefly interrupted during 1850-1853
by the gold discoveries in California. The aggressive
unions of the thirties practically disappeared. With in-
dustry disorganized, trade unionism, or the effort to pro-
tect the standard of living by means of strikes, was out of
question. As the prospect for immediate amelioration be-
came dimmed by circumstances, an opportunity arrived
for theories and philosophies of radical social reform.
Once the sun with its life-giving heat has set, one begins
to see the cold and distant stars.

The uniqueness of the period of the forties in the labor
movement proceeds not only from the large volume of star-
gazing, but also from the accompanying fact that, for
the first and only time in American history, the labor
movement was dominated by men and women from the
educated class, the "intellectuals," who thus served in
the capacity of expert astrologers.

And there was no lack of stars in the heaven of social
reform to occupy both intellectual and wage earner. First,
there was the efficiency scheme of the followers of Charles
Fourier, the French socialist, or, as they preferred to
call themselves, the Associationists. Theirs was a pro-
posal aiming directly to meet the issue of the prevailing
industrial disorganization and wasteful competition. Al-
bert Brisbane, Horace Greeley, and the Brook Farm
enthusiasts and "Associationists" of the forties, made fa-
mous by their intimate association with Ralph Waldo

30 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

Emerson, had much in common with the present-day effi-
ciency engineers. This "old" efficiency of theirs, like
the new one, was chiefly concerned with increasing the pro-
duction of wealth through the application of the "nat-
ural" laws of human nature. With the enormous in-
crease in production to be brought about by "Fourier-
ism" and "Association," the question of justice in distri-
bution was relegated to a secondary place. Where they
differed from the new efficiency was in method, for they be-
lieved efficiency would be attained if only the human in-
stincts or "passions" were given free play, while the
efficiency engineers of today trust less to unguided in-
stinct and more to "scientific management" of human
"passions."

Midway between trade unionism and the simon-pure,
idealistic reform philosophies stood producers* and con-
sumers* cooperation. It had the merit of being a prac-
tical program most suitable to a time of depression, while
on its spiritual side it did not fail to satisfy the loftiest
intellectual. It was the resultant of the two most potent
forces which acted upon the movement of the forties,
the pressure of an inadequate income of the wage earner
and the influence of the intellectuals. During no other
period has there been, relatively speaking, so much effort
along that line.

Although, as we shall see, the eighties were properly the
era of producers' cooperation on a large scale, the self-
governing workshop had always been familiar to the
American labor movement. The earliest attempt, as far
as we have knowledge, occurred in Philadelphia in 1791,
when the house carpenters out on strike offered by way
of retaliation against their employers to undertake con-
tracts at 25 per cent, less than the price charged by the

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 31

masters. Fourteen years later, in 1806, the journeymen
cordwainers of the same city, following their conviction
in court on the charge of conspiracy brought in by their
masters, opened up a cooperative shoe warehouse and
store. As a rule the workingmen took up productive co-
operation when they had failed in strikes.

In 1836 many of the trade societies began to lose
their strikes and turned to cooperation. The cordwainers
working on ladies' shoes entered upon a strike for higher
wages in March 1836, and opened three months later a
"manufactory" or a warehouse of their own. The hand-
loom weavers in two of the suburbs of Philadelphia started
cooperative associations at the same time. At the end of
1836 the hand-loom weavers of Philadelphia proper had
two cooperative shops and were planning to open a third.
In New Brunswick, New Jersey, the journeymen cord-
wainers opened a shop after an unsuccessful strike early
in 1836; likewise the tailors of Cincinnati, St. Louis, and
Louisville. In New York the carpenters had done so al-
ready in 1833, and the painters of New York and Brook-
lyn opened their shops in 1837.

Before long the spirit became so contagious that the
Trades' Union of Philadelphia, the city federation of
trade societies, was obliged to take notice. Early in 1837
a conference of about 200 delegates requested each trade
society to submit estimates for a shop to employ ten mem-
bers. However, further steps were prevented by the finan-
cial panic and business depression.

The forties witnessed several similar attempts. When
the iron molders of Cincinnati failed to win a strike in
the autumn of 1847, a few of their number collected what
funds they could and organized a sort of joint-stock com-
pany which they called "The Journeymen Molders' Union

32 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

Foundry." Two local philanthropists erected their
buildings. In Pittsburgh a group of puddlers tried to
raise money by selling stock to anyone who wished to take
an interest in their cooperative venture.

The cooperative ventures multiplied in 1850 and 1851,
following a widespread failure of strikes and were entered
upon with particular readiness by the German immigrants.
Among the Germans was an attitude towards producers'
cooperation, based more nearly on general principles
than the practical exigencies of a strike. Fresh from the
scenes of revolutions in Europe, they were more given to
dreams about reconstructing society and more trustful
in the honesty and integrity of their leaders. The co-
operative movement among the Germans was identified
with the name of Wilhelm Weitling, the well-known Ger-
man communist, who settled in America about 1850. This
movement centered in and around New York. The co-
operative principle met with success among the English-
speaking people only outside the larger cities. In Buf-
falo, after an unsuccessful strike, the tailors formed an
association with a membership of 108 and in October
1850, were able to give employment to 80 of that num-
ber.

Again, following an unsuccessful Pittsburgh strike of
iron founders in 1849, about a dozen of the strikers went
to Wheeling, Virginia, each investing $3000, and opened
a cooperative foundry shop. Two other foundries were
opened on a similar basis in Stetsonville, Ohio, and Sharon,
Pennsylvania. These associations of iron founders, how-
ever, might better be called association of small capitalists
or master-workmen.

During the forties, consumers' or distributive coopera-
tion was also given a trial. The early history of con-

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 33

sinners' cooperation is but fragmentary and, so far as
we know, the first cooperative attempt which had for its
exclusive aim "competence to purchaser" was made in
Philadelphia early in 1829. A store was established
on North Fifth Street, which sold goods at wholesale
prices to members, who paid twenty cents a month for
its privileges.

In 1831 distributive cooperation was much discussed
in Boston by a "New England Association of Farmers,
Mechanics, and Other Working Men." A half dozen co-
operative attempts are mentioned in the Cooperator,
published in Utica in 1832, but only in the case of the
journeymen cordwainers of Lynn do we discover an under-
taking which can with certainty be considered as an effort
to achieve distributive cooperation. Several germs of
cooperative effort are found between 1833 and 1845, but
all that is known about them is that their promoters
sought to effect a saving by the purchase of goods in
large quantities which were then broken up and distributed
at a slight advance above original cost in order to meet
expenses. The managers were unpaid, the members' in-
terest in the business was not maintained, and the stores
soon failed, or passed into the possession of private
owners.

It was the depression of 1846—1849 which supplied the
movement for distributive cooperation with the needed
stimulus, especially in New England. Although the mat-
ter was discussed in New York, New Jersey, Pennsyl-
vania, Maryland, and even as far west as Ohio and Illinois,
yet in none of the industrial centers of these States, ex-
cept perhaps in New York, was it put into successful
operation.

In New England, however, the conditions were ex-

34 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

ceptionally favorable. A strike movement for higher
wages during a partial industrial revival of 1843— 1844
had failed completely. This failure, added to the fact
that 'women and girls were employed under very unsatis-
factory conditions, strengthened the interest of humani-
tarians'in the laboring people and especially in coopera-
tion as a possible means of alleviating their distress.

Under the stimulus of these agitations, the New Eng-
land Protective Union was formed in 1845. Until 1849,
however, it bore the name of the Working Men's Protec-
tive Union. As often happens, prosperity brought dis-
union and, in 1853, a schism occurred in the organiza-
tion due to personal differences. The seceders formed a
separate organization known as the American Protective
Union.

The Working Men's Protective Union embodied a
larger conception of the cooperative idea than had been
expressed before. The important thought was that an
economy of a few dollars a year in the purchase of com-
modities was a poor way out of labor difficulties, but was
valuable only as a preparation for something better.

Though the resources of these laborers were small, they
began the work with great hopes. This business, starting
so unpretentiously, assumed larger and increasing pro-
portions until in October, 1852, the Union embraced 403
divisions of which 167 reported a capital of $241,712 and
165 of these announced annual sales amounting to $1,-
696,825. Though the schism of 1853, mentioned above,
weakened the body, the agent of the American Protec-
tive Union claimed for the divisions comprising it sales
aggregating in value over nine and one-fourth millions
dollars in the seven years ending in 1859.

It is not possible to tell what might have been the out-

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 35

come of this cooperative movement had the peaceful de-
velopment of the country remained uninterrupted. As it
happened, the disturbed era of the Civil War witnessed
the near annihilation of all workingmen's cooperation.
It is not difficult to see the causes which led to the destruc-
tion of the still tender plant. Men left their homes for
the battle field, foreigners poured into New England
towns and replaced the Americans in the shops, while
share-holders frequently became frightened at the state
of trade and gladly saw the entire cooperative enterprise
pass into the hands of the storekeeper.

This first American cooperative movement on a large
scale resembled the British movement in many respects,
namely open membership, equal voting by members ir-
respective of number of shares, cash sales and federation
of societies for wholesale purchases, but differed in that
goods were sold to members nearly at cost rather than
at the market price. Dr. James Ford in his Cooperation
in New England, Urban and Rural,1 describes two sur-
vivals from this period, the Central Union Association
of New Bedford, Massachusetts, founded in 1848, and
the Acushnet Cooperative Association, also of New Bed-
ford, which began business in 1849.

But the most characteristic labor movement of the
forties was a resurgence of the old Agrarianism of the
twenties.

Skidmore's "equal division" of all property appealed
to the workingmen of New York because it seemed to be
based on equality of opportunity. One of Skidmore's
temporary associates, a Welshman by the name of
George Henry Evans, drew from him an inspiration for
a new kind of agrarianism to which few could object.
1 Published In 1916 by the Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 16-18.

36 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

This new doctrine was a true Agrarianism, since it fol-
lowed in the steps of the original "Agrarians," the broth-
ers Gracchi in ancient Rome. Like the Gracchi, Evans
centered his plan around the "ager publicum" — the vast
American public domain. Evans began his agitation
about 1844.

Man's right to life, according to Evans, logically im-
plied his right to use the materials of nature necessary
for being. For practical reasons he would not interfere
with natural resources which have already passed under
private ownership. Evans proposed instead that Con-
gress give each would-be settler land for a homestead free
of charge.

As late as 1852 debaters in Congress pointed out that
in the preceding sixty years only 100,000,000 acres of
the public lands had been sold and that 1,400,000,000
acres still remained at the disposal of the government.
Estimates of the required time to dispose of this residuum
at the same rate of sale varied from 400 or 500 to 900
years. With the exaggerated views prevalent, it is no
wonder that Evans believed that the right of the indi-
vidual to as much land as his right to live calls for would
remain a living right for as long a period in the future
as a practical statesman may be required to take into
account.

The consequences of free homesteads were not hard to
picture. The landless wage earners could be furnished
transportation and an outfit, for the money spent for
poor relief would be more profitably expended in sending
the poor to the land. Private societies and trade unions,
when laborers were too numerous, could aid in transport-
ing the surplus to the waiting homesteads and towns
that would grow up. With the immobility of labor thus

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 37

offering no serious obstacle to the execution of the plan,
the wage earners of the East would have the option of
continuing to work for wages or of taking up their share
of the vacant lands. Moreover, mechanics could set up
as independent producers in the new settlements. Enough
at least would go West to force employers to offer
better wages and shorter hours. Those unable to meet
the expenses of moving would profit by higher wages at
home. An equal opportunity to go on land would benefit
both pioneer and stay-at-home.

But Evans would go still further in assuring equality
of opportunity. He would make the individual's right to
the resources of nature safe against the creditors through
a law exempting homesteads from attachment for debts
and even against himself by making the homestead in-
alienable. Moreover to assure that right to the American
people in perpetuo he would prohibit future disposal of
the public land in large blocks to moneyed purchasers as
practiced by the government heretofore. Thus the pro-
gram of the new agrarianism : free homesteads, homestead
exemption, and land limitation.

Evans had a plan of political action, which was as
unique as his economic program. His previous political
experiences with the New York Workingmen's party had
taught him that a minority party could not hope to win
by its own votes and that the politicans cared more for
offices than for measures. They would endorse any mea-
sure which was supported by voters who held the balance
of power. His plan of action was, therefore, to ask all
candidates to pledge their support to his measures. In
exchange for such a pledge, the candidates would re-
ceive the votes of the workingmen. In case neither candi-
date would sign the pledge, it might be necessary to nomi-

38 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

nate an independent as a warning to future candidates ;
but not as an indication of a new party organization.

Evans' ideas quickly won the adherence of the few labor
papers then existing. Horace Greeley's New York
Tribune endorsed the homestead movement as early as
1845. The next five years witnessed a remarkable spread
of the ideas of the free homestead movement in the press
of the country. It was estimated in 1845 that 2000
papers were published in the United States and that in
1850, 600 of these supported land reform.

Petitions and memorials having proved of little avail,
the land reformers tried Evans' pet plan of bargaining
votes for the support of their principles. Tammany was
quick to start the bidding. In May, 1851, a mass-meeting
was held at Tammany Hall "of all those in favor of land
and other industrial reform, to be made elements in the
Presidential contest of 1852." A platform was adopted
which proclaimed man's right to the soil and urged that
freedom of the public lands be endorsed by the Demo-
cratic party. Senator Isaac A. Walker of Wisconsin
was nominated as the candidate of the party for
President.

For a while the professional politician triumphed over
the too trusting workingman reformer. But the cause
found strong allies in the other classes of the American
community. From the poor whites of the upland region
of the South came a similar demand formulated by the
Tennessee tailor, Andrew Johnson, later President of the
United States, who introduced his first homestead bill in
1845. From the Western pioneers and settlers came the
demand for increased population and development of re-
sources, leading both to homesteads for settlers and land
grants for railways. The opposition came from manu-

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 39

facturers and landowners of the East and from the
Southern slave owners. The West and East finally com-
bined and the policy of the West prevailed, but not before
the South had seceded from the Union.

Not the entire reform was accepted. The Western
spirit dominated. The homestead law, as finally adopted
in 1862, granted one hundred and sixty acres as a free
gift to every settler. But the same Congress launched
upon a policy of extensive land grants to railways. The
homestead legislation doubtless prevented great estates
similar to those which sprang of a different policy of the
Australian colonies, but did not carry out the broad prin-
ciples of inalienability and land limitation of the original
Agrarians.

Their principle of homestead exemption, however, is
now almost universally adopted. Thus the homestead agi-
tation begun by Evans and a group of wage earners and
farmers in 1844 was carried to victory, though to an in-
complete victory. It contained a fruitful lesson to labor
in politics. The vested interests in the East were seen
ultimately to capitulate before a popular movement which
at no time aspired toward political power and office, but,
concentrating on one issue, endeavored instead to per-
meate with its ideas the public opinion of the country at
large.

Of all the "isms" so prevalent during the forties,
"Agrarianism" alone came close to modern socialism, as
it alone advocated class struggle and carried it into the
political field, although, owing to the peculiarity of the
American party structure, it urged a policy of "reward
your friends, and punish your enemies" rather than an
out and out labor party. It is noteworthy that of all
social reform movements of the forties Agrarianism alone

40 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

was not initiated by the intellectuals. On the other hand,
another movement for legislative reform, namely the short-
er-hour movement for women and children working in the
mills and factories, was entirely managed by humani-
tarians. Its philosophy was the furthest removed from
the class struggle idea.

For only a short year or two did prosperity show it-
self from behind the clouds to cause a mushroom growth
of trade unions, once in 1850-1851 and again in 1853-
1854, following the gold discoveries in California. Dur-
ing these few years unionism disentangled itself from hu-
manitarianism and cooperationism and came out in its
wholly modern form of restrictive craft unionism, only
to be again suppressed by the business depressions that
preceded and followed the panic of 1857. Considered
as a whole, however, the period of the forties and fifties
was the zenith in American history of theories of social
reform, of "panaceas," of humanitarianism.

The trade union wave of the fifties was so short lived
and the trade unionists were so preoccupied with the
pressing need of advancing their wages to keep pace with
the soaring prices caused by the influx of California gold,
that we miss the tendency which was so strong in the thir-
ties to reach out for a wider basis of labor organization
in city trades* unions, and ultimately in a National
Trades' Union. On the other hand, the fifties foreshad-
owed a new form of expansion of labor organization —
the joining together in a nation-wide organization of all
local unions of one trade. The printers * organized na-

1 The printers had organized nationally for the first time in 1836,
but the organization lasted less than two years; likewise the cord-
wainers or shoemakers. But we must keep in mind that what consti-
tuted national organization in the thirties would pass only for
regional or sectional organization in later years.

LABOR MOVEMENTS BEFORE CIVIL WAR 41

tionally in 1850, the locomotive engineers and the hat-
finishers in 1854; and the iron molders, and the machin-
ists and blacksmiths in 1859 ; in addition there were at
least a half dozen less successful attempts in other trades.

CHAPTER 2
THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879

The few national trade unions which were formed at
the close of the fifties did not constitute by themselves
a labor movement. It needed the industrial prosperity
caused by the price inflation of the Civil War time to
bring forth again a mass movement of labor.

We shall say little of labor's attitude towards the
question of war and peace before the War had started.
Like many other citizens of the North and the Border
States the handful of organized workers favored a com-
promise. They held a labor convention in Philadelphia,
in which a great labor leader of the sixties, William H.
Sylvis, President of the International Holders' Union,
took a prominent part and pronounced in favor of the
compromise solution advanced by Congressman Critten-
den of Kentucky. But no sooner had Fort Sumter been
fired upon by the secessionists than labor rallied to the
support of the Federal Union. Entire local unions en-
listed at the call of President Lincoln, and Sylvis him-
self assisted in recruiting a company composed of molders.

The first effect of the War was a paralysis of business
and an increase of unemployment. The existing labor
organizations nearly all went to the wall. The period
of industrial stagnation, however, lasted only until the
middle of 1862.

The legal tender acts of 1862 and 1863 authorized the
issue of paper currency of "greenbacks" to the amount

42

THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 43

of $1,050,000,000, and immediately prices began to soar.
For the next sixteen years, namely until 1879, when the
government resumed the redemption of greenbacks in
gold, prices of commodities and labor expressed in terms
of paper money showed varying degrees of inflation;
hence the term "greenback" period. During the War the
advance in prices was due in part to the extraordinary
demand by the government for the supply of the army
and, of course, to speculation.

In July 1863, retail prices were 43 per cent, above
those of 1860 and wages only 12 per cent, above; in
July 1864, retail prices rose to 70 per cent, and wages
to 30 per cent, above 1860; and in July 1865, prices rose
to 76 per cent, and wages only to 50 per cent, above
the level of 1860. The unequal pace of the price move-
ment drove labor to organize along trade-union lines.

The order observed in the thirties was again followed
out. First came a flock of local trade unions ; these soon
combined in city centrals — or as they came to be called,
trades* assemblies — paralleling the trades' union of the
thirties ; and lastly, came an attempt to federate the sev-
eral trades' assemblies into an International Industrial
Assembly of North America. Local trade unions were or-
ganized literally in every trade beginning in the second
half of 1862. The first trades' assembly was formed in
Rochester, New York, in March 1863; and before long
there was one in every town of importance. The Inter-
national Industrial Assembly was attempted in 1864,
but failed to live up to the expectations: The time had
passed for a national federation of city centrals. As in
the thirties the spread of unionism over the breadth of the
land called out as a counterpart a widespread movement
of employers' associations. The latter differed, however,

44 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

from their predecessors in the thirties in that they made
little use of the courts in their fight against the unions.

The growth of the national trade unions was a true
index of the condition of business. Four were organized
in 1864 as compared to two organized in 1863, none in
1862, and one in 1861. During 1865, which marked the
height of the intense business activity, six more national
unions were organized. In 1866 industry entered upon
a period of depression, which reached its lowest depth in
1867 and continued until 1869. Accordingly, not a
single national union was organized in 1866 and only one
in 1867. In 1868 two new national labor unions were
organized. In 1869 two more unions were formed — a
total of seven for the four depressed years, compared with
ten in the preceding two prosperous years. In the sum-
mer of 1870 business became good and remained good for
approximately three years. Nine new national unions
appeared in these three years. These same years are
marked also by a growth of the unions previously organ-
ized. For instance, the machinists and blacksmiths, with
only 1500 members in 1870, had 18,000 in 1873. Other
unions showed similar gains.

An estimate of the total trade union membership at
any one time (in view of the total lack of reliable statis-
tics) would be extremely hazardous. The New York
Herald estimated it in August 1869, to be about 170,000.
A labor leader claimed at the same time that the total was
as high as 600,000. Probably 300,000 would be a con-
servative estimate for the time immediately preceding the
panic of 1873.

Although the strength of labor was really the strength
of the national trade unions, especially during the de-
pression of the later sixties, far greater attention was at-

THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 45

tracted outside as well as inside the labor movement by
the National Labor Union, a loosely built federation of
national trade unions, city trades* assemblies, local trade
unions, and reform organizations of various descriptions,
from philosophical anarchists to socialists and woman
suffragists. The National Labor Union did not excel in
practical activity, but it formed an accurate mirror of
the aspirations and ideals of the American mechanics of
the time of the Civil War and after. During its six years'
existence it ran the gamut of all important issues which
agitated the labor movement of the time.

The National Labor Union came together in its first
convention in 1866. The most pressing problem of the
day was unemployment due to the return of the demob-
ilized soldiers and the shutting down of war industries.
The convention centered on the demand to reduce the
working day to eight hours. But eight hours had by that
time come to signify more than a means to increase em-
ployment. The eight-hour movement drew its inspira-
tion from an economic theory advanced by a self-taught
Boston machinist, Ira Steward. And so naturally did
this theory flow from the usual premises in the thinking
of the American workman that once formulated by Stew-
ard it may be said to have become an official theory of the
labor movement.

Steward's doctrine is well expressed by a couplet which
was very popular with the eight-hour speakers of that
period : "Whether you work by the piece or work by the
day, decreasing the hours increases the pay." Steward
believed that the amount of wages is determined by no
other factor than the worker's standard of living. He
held that wages cannot fall below the standard of living
not because, as the classical economists said, it would

46 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

cause late marriages and a reduction in the supply of
labor, but solely because the wage earner will refuse to
work for less than enough to maintain his standard of
living. Steward possessed such abundant faith in this
purely psychological check on the employer that he made
it the cornerstone of his theory of social progress. Raise
the worker's standard of living, he said, and the employer
will be immediately forced to raise wages; no more can
wages fall below the level of the worker's standard of liv-
ing than New England can be ruled against her will. The
lever for raising the standard of living was the eight-
hour day. Increase the worker's leisure and you will in-
crease his wants ; increase his wants and you will imme-
diately raise his wages. Although he occasionally tried
to soften his doctrine by the argument that a shorter
work-day not only does not decrease but may actually
increase output, his was a distinctly revolutionary doc-
trine; he aimed at the total abolition of profits through
their absorption into wages. But the instrument was
nothing more radical than a progressive universal short-
ening the hours.

So much for the general policy. To bring it to pass
two alternatives were possible: trade unionism or legis-
lation. Steward chose the latter as the more hopeful and
speedy one. Steward knew that appeals to the humanity
of the employers had largely failed ; efforts to secure the
reform by cooperation had failed ; the early trade unions
had failed; and there seemed to be no recourse left now
but to accomplish the reduction of hours by legislative
enactment.

In 1866 Steward organized the Grand Eight-Hour
League of Massachusetts as a special propagandist or-
ganization of the eight-hour philosophy. The League

THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 47

was a secret organization with pass words and obliga-
tions, intended as the central organization of a chain of
subordinate leagues in the State, afterwards to be created.
Of a total of about eighty local leagues in existence from
1865 to 1877, about twenty were in Massachusetts, eight
elsewhere in New England, at least twenty-five in Michi-
gan, four or five in Pennsylvania, about seven in Illinois,
as many in Wisconsin, and smaller numbers in Missouri,
Iowa, Indiana, and California. Michigan, Illinois, Iowa,
and Pennsylvania had each a Grand Eight-Hour League.
Practically all of these organizations disappeared soon
after the panic of 1873.

The National Labor Union centered on the passage of
an eight-hour law for employes of the Federal govern-
ment. It was believed, perhaps not without some justice,
that the effect of such law would eventually lead to the
introduction of the same standard in private employment
— not indeed through the operation of the law of supply
and demand, for it was realized that this would be practi-
cally negligible, but rather through its contagious effect
on the minds of employes and even employers. It will be
recalled that, at the time of the ten-hour agitation of
the thirties, the Federal government had lagged about
five years behind private employers in granting the de-
manded concession. That in the sixties the workingmen
chose government employment as the entering wedge
shows a measure of political self-confidence which the
preceding generation of workingmen lacked.

The first bill in Congress was introduced by Senator
Gratz Brown of Missouri in March 1866. In the summer
a delegation from the National Labor Union was received
by President Andrew Johnson. The President pointed to
his past record favorable to the workingmen but refrained

48 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

from any definite promises. Finally, an eight-hour bill
for government employes was passed by the House in
March 1867, and by the Senate in June 1868. On June
29, 1868, President Johnson signed it and it went into
effect immediately.

The result of the eight-hour law was not all that the
friends of the bill hoped. The various officials in charge
of government work put their own interpretations upon
it and there resulted.much diversity in its observance, and
consequently great dissatisfaction. There seemed to be
no clear understanding as to the intent of Congress in
enacting the law. Some held that the reduction in work-
ing hours must of necessity bring with it a corresponding
reduction in wages. The officials' view of the situation
was given by Secretary Gideon Wells. He pointed out
that Congress, by reducing the hours of labor in govern-
ment work, had forced upon the department of the Navy
the employment of a larger number of men in order to
accomplish the necessary work ; and that at the same time
Congress had reduced the appropriation for that depart-
ment. This had rendered unavoidable a twenty per cent,
reduction in wages paid employes in the Navy Yard. Such
a state of uncertainty continued four years longer. At
last on May 13, 1872, President Grant prohibited by
proclamation any wage reductions in the execution of the
law. On May 18, 1872, Congress passed a law for the
restitution of back pay.

The expectations of the workingmen that the Federal
law would blaze the way for the eight-hour system in
private employment failed to materialize. The depression
during the seventies took up all the impetus in that direc-
tion which the law may have generated. Even as far as
government work is concerned forty years had to elapse

THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 49

before its application could be rounded out by extending
it to contract work done for the government by private
employers.

We have dealt at length with this subject because it
marked an important landmark. It demonstrated to the
wage earners that, provided they concentrated on a mod-
est object and kept up a steady pressure, their prospects
for success were not entirely hopeless, hard as the road
may seem to travel. The other and far more ambitious
object of the workingman of the sixties, that of enacting
general eight-hour laws in the several States, at first
appeared to be within easy reach — so yielding political
parties and State legislatures seemed to be to the demands
of the organized workmen. Yet before long these suc-
cesses proved to be entirely illusory.

The year 1867 was the banner year for such State
legislation. Eight -hour laws were passed in Illinois, Wis-
consin, Connecticut, Missouri, and New York. California
passed such a law in 1868. In Pennsylvania, Michigan,
Maryland, and Minnesota bills were introduced but were
defeated. Two common features characterized these
laws, whether enacted or merely proposed to the legisla-
tures. There were none which did not permit of longer
hours than those named in the law, provided they were so
specified in the contract. A contract requiring ten or
more hours a day was perfectly legal. The eight -hour
day was the legal day only "when the contract was silent
on the subject or where there is no express contract to the
contrary," as stated in the Wisconsin law. But the
greatest weakness was a lack of a provision for enforce-
ment. New York's experience is typical and character-
istic. When the workingmen appealed to Governor Fen-
ton to enforce the law, he replied that the act had

50 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

received his official signature and he felt that it "would
be an unwarrantable assumption" on his part to take
any step requiring its enforcement. "Every law," he
said, "was obligatory by its own nature, and could
derive no additional force from any further act of
his."

In Massachusetts, however, the workingmen succeeded
after hard and protracted labor in obtaining an enforce-
able ten-hour law for women — the first effective law of
its kind passed in any American State. This law, which
was passed in 1874, provides that "no minor under the
age of eighteen years, and no woman over that age" shall
be employed more than ten hours in one day or sixty
hours in any one week in any manufacturing establish-
ment in the State. The penalty for each violation was
fixed at fifty dollars.

The repeated disappointments with politics and legis-
lation led in the early seventies to a revival of faith in
trade unionism. Even in the early sixties we find not a
few unions, national and local, limiting their hours by
agreement with employers. The national unions, how-
ever, for the most part left the matter to the local unions
for settlement as their strength or local conditions might
dictate. In some cases the local unions were advised to
accept a reduction of wages in order to secure the system,
showing faith in Steward's theory that such reduction
could not be permanent.

The movement to establish the eight-hour day through
trade unionism reached its climax in the summer of 1872,
when business prosperity was at its height. This year
witnessed in New York City a general eight-hour strike.
However, it succeeded in only a few trades, and even
there the gain was only temporary, since it was lost

THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 51

during the years of depression which followed the finan-
cial panic of 1873.

To come back to the National Labor Union. At the
second convention in 1867 the .enthusiasm was trans-
ferred from eight -hour laws to the bizarre social reform
philosophy known as "greenbackism."

"Greenbackism" was, .in substance, a plan to give the
man without capital an equal opportunity in business
with his rich competitor. It meant taking away from
bankers and middlemen their control over credit and
thereby furnishing credit and capital through the aid of
the government to the producers of physical products.
On its face greenbackism was a program of currency re-
form and derived its name from the so-called "greenback,"
the paper money issued during the Civil War. But it was
more than currency reform — it was industrial democ-
racy.

"Greenbackism" was the American counterpart of the
contemporary radicalism of Europe. Its program had
much in common with that of Lassalle in Germany who
would have the state lend its credit to cooperative asso-
ciations of workingmen in the confident expectation that
with such backing they would drive private capitalism out
of existence by the competitive route. But greenbackism
differed from the scheme of Lassalle in that it would
utilize the government's enormous Civil War debt, instead
of its taxing power, as a means of furnishing capital to
labor. This was to be done by reducing the rate of
interest on the government bonds to three per cent, and
by making them convertible into legal tender currency
and convertible back into bonds, at the will of the holder
of either. In other words, the greenback currency, in-
stead of being, as it was at the time, an irredeemable

62 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

promise to pay in specie, would be redeemable in govern-
ment bonds. On the other hand, if a government bond-
holder could secure slightly more than three per cent, by
lending to a private borrower, he would return his bonds
to the government, take out the corresponding amount
in greenbacks and lend it to the producer on his private
note or mortgage. This would involve, of course, the
possible inflation of legal tender currency to the amount
of outstanding bonds. But inflation was immaterial, since
all prices would be affected alike and meanwhile the
farmers, the workingmen, and their cooperative estab-
lishments would be able to secure capital at slightly more
than three per cent, instead of the nine or twelve per cent,
which they were compelled to pay at the bank. Thereby
they would be placed on a competitive level with the mid-
dleman, and the wage earner would be assisted to escape
the wage system into self-employment.

Such was the curious doctrine which captured the lead-
ers of the organized wage earners in 1867. The way had
indeed been prepared for it in 1866, when the wage
earners espoused producers* cooperation as the only so-
lution. But, in the following year, 1867, they concluded
that no system of combination or cooperation could se-
cure to labor its natural rights as long as the credit
system enabled non-producers to accumulate wealth
faster than labor was able to add to the national wealth.
Cooperation would follow "as a natural consequence," if
producers could secure through legislation credit at a low
rate of interest. The government was to extend to the
producer "free capital" in addition to free land which
he received with the Homestead Act.

The producers* cooperation, which offered the occasion
for the espousal of greenbackism, was itself preceded by

THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 53

a movement for consumers* cooperation. Following the
upward sweep of prices, workmen had begun toward the
end of 1862 to make definite preparations for distributive
cooperation. They endeavored to cut off the profits of
the middleman by establishing cooperative grocery
stores, meat markets, and coal yards. The first substan-
tial effort of this kind to attract wide attention was the
formation in December 1862, of the Union Cooperative
Association of Philadelphia, which opened a store. The
prime mover and the financial secretary of this organiza-
tion was Thomas Phillips, a shoemaker who came from
England in 1852, fired with the principles of the Rochdale
pioneers, that is, cash sales, dividends on purchases rather
than on stock, and "one man, one vote." By 1866 the
movement had extended until practically every important
industrial town between Boston and San Francisco had
some form of distributive cooperation. This was the high
tide of the movement. Unfortunately, the condition of
the country was unfavorable to these enterprises and they
were destined to early collapse. The year 1865 witnessed
disastrous business failures. The country was in an un-
certain condition and at the end of the sixties the entire
movement had died out.

From 1866 to 1869 experiments in productive coopera-
tion were made by practically all leading trades including
the bakers, coach makers, collar makers, coal miners,
shipwrights, machinists and blacksmiths, foundry work-
ers, nailers, ship carpenters, and calkers, glass blowers,
hatters, boiler makers, plumbers, iron rollers, tailors,
printers, needle women, and molders. A large proportion
of these attempts grew out of unsuccessful strikes. The
most important undertakings were among the workers
in iron, undoubtedly due in large measure to the inde-

54 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

fatigable efforts of William H. Sylvis, the founder of the
Iron Molders* International Union.

At the close of 1869 members of the Iron Molders*
International Union owned and operated many coopera-
tive foundries chiefly in New York and Pennsylvania.
The first of the foundries established at Troy in the early
summer of 1866 was followed quickly by one in Albany
and then during the next eighteen months by ten more —
one each in Rochester, Chicago, Quincy, Louisville, Som-
erset, Pittsburgh, and two each in Troy and Cleveland.
The original foundry at Troy was an immediate financial
success and was hailed with joy by those who believed
that under the name of cooperationists the baffled trade
unionists might yet conquer. The New York Sun con-
gratulated the iron molders of Troy and declared that
Sylvis had checkmated the association of stove manu-
facturers and, by the establishment of this cooperative
foundry, had made the greatest contribution of the year
to the labor cause.

But the results of the Troy experiment, typical of the
others, show how far from a successful solution of the
labor problem is productive cooperation. Although this
"Troy Cooperative Iron Founders' Association" was
planned with great deliberation and launched at a time
when the regular stove manufacturers were embarrassed
by strikes, and although it was regularly incorporated
with a provision that each member was entitled to but
one vote whether he held one share at $100, or the maxi-
mum privilege of fifty in the total of two thousand
shares, it failed as did the others in furnishing perma-
nent relief to the workers as a class. At the end of the
third year of this enterprise, the American Workman
published a sympathetic account of its progress uncon-

THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 55

sciously disclosing its fatal weakness, namely, the in-
evitable tendency of cooperators to adopt the capitalistic
view. The writer of this account quotes from these co-
operators to show that "the fewer the stockholders in
the company the greater its success."

A similar instance is furnished by the Cooperative
Foundry Company of Rochester. This venture has also
been a financial success, though a partial failure as a
cooperative enterprise. When it was established in 1867
all employes were stockholders and profits were divided
as follows : Twelve per cent, on capital and the balance
in proportion to the earnings of the men. But the capi-
talist was stronger than the cooperative brother. Divi-
dends on capital were advanced in a few years to seven-
teen and one-half per cent., then to twenty-five, and
finally the distribution of any part of the profits
in proportion to wages was discontinued. Money was
made every year and dividends paid, which in 1884
amounted to forty per cent, on the capital. At that time
about one-fifth of the employes were stockholders. Also
in this case cooperation did not prevent the usual conflict
between employer and employe, as is shown in a strike
of three and a half months' duration. It is interesting
to notice that one of the strikers, a member of the
Molders* Union, owned stock to the amount of $7000.

The machinists, too, throughout this period took an
active interest in cooperation. Their convention which
met in October, 1865, appointed a committee to report
on a plan of action to establish a cooperative shop under
the auspices of the International Union. The plan failed
of adoption, but of machinists* shops on the joint-stock
plan there were a good many. Two other trades noted
for their enthusiasm for cooperation at this time were

56 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

the shoemakers and the coopers. The former, organized
in the Order of St. Crispin, then the largest trade union
in the country, advocated cooperation even when their
success in strikes was at its height. "The present demand
of the Crispin is steady employment and fair wages, but
his future is self-employment" was one of their mottoes.
During the seventies they repeatedly attempted to carry
this motto into effect. The seventies also saw the be-
ginning of the most successful single venture in productive
cooperation ever undertaken in this country, namely, the
eight cooperative cooperage shops in Minneapolis, which
were established at varying intervals from 1874 to 1886.
The coopers took care to enforce true cooperation by
providing for equal holding of stock and for a division
of ordinary profits and losses in proportion to wages.
The cooper shops prospered, but already ten years later
four out of the eight existing in 1886 had passed into
private hands.

In 1866 when the eight -hour demand was as yet upper-
most, the National Labor Union resolved for an inde-
pendent labor party. The espousal of greenbackism in
1867 only reenforced that resolution. The leaders real-
ized only too well that neither the Republican nor Demo-
cratic party would voluntarily make an issue of a scheme
purporting to assist the wage earner to become an inde-
pendent producer. Accordingly, the history of the Na-
tional Labor Union became largely the history of labor's
first attempt to play a lone political hand on a national
scale.

Each annual session of the National Labor Union
faithfully reaffirmed the decision to "cut loose" from the
old parties. But such a vast undertaking demanded time.
It was not until 1872 that the National Labor Union met

THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 57

as a political convention to nominate a national ticket.
From the first the stars were inauspicuous. Charges were
made that political aspirants sought to control the con-
vention in order to influence nominations by the Republi-'
can and Democratic parties. A "greenback" platform
was adopted as a matter of course and the new party
was christened the National Labor and Reform Party.
On the first formal ballot for nomination for President,
Judge David Davis of Illinois, a personal friend of Abra-
ham Lincoln, received 88 votes, Wendell Phillips, the
abolitionist, 52, and the remainder scattered. On the.
third ballot Davis was nominated. Governor J. Parker
of New Jersey was nominated for Vice-President. At
first Judge Davis accepted the nomination, but resigned
after the Democrats had nominated Horace Greeley.
The loss of the candidate spelled the death of the party.
The National Labor Union itself had been only an empty
shell since 1870, when the national trade unions, dis-
affected with the turn towards politics, withdrew. Now,
its pet project a failure, it, too, broke up.

In 1873, on the eve of the financial panic, the national
trade unions attempted to reconstruct a national labor
federation on a purely trade-union basis in the form of a
National Industrial Congress. But the economic disas-
ter of the panic nipped it in the bud just as it cut off the
life of the overwhelming majority of the existing labor
organizations. Another attempt to get together on a
national basis was made in the National Labor Congress
at Pittsburgh in 1876. But those who responded were
not interested in trade unionism and, mirroring the pre-
vailing labor sentiment during the long years of de-
pressions, had only politics on their mind, greenback or
socialist. As neither greenbacker nor socialist would

58 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

meet the other half-way, the attempt naturally came to
naught.

Greenbackism was popular with the working people
during the depressed seventies because it now meant to
them primarily currency inflation and a rise of prices
and, consequently, industrial prosperity — not the phan-
tastic scheme of the National Labor Union. Yet in the
Presidential election of 1876 the Greenback party candi-
date, Peter Cooper, the well known manufacturer and
philanthropist, drew only a poor 100,000, which came
practically from the rural districts only. It was not until
the great strikes of 1877 had brought in their train a
political labor upheaval that the greenback movement
assumed a formidable form.

The strikes of 1877, which on account of the wide area
affected, the degree of violence displayed, and the amount
of life and property lost, impressed contemporaries as
being nothing short of social revolution, were precipitated
by a general ten per cent, reduction in wages on the three
trunk lines running West, the Pennsylvania, the Balti-
more & Ohio, and the New York Central, in June and
July 1877. This reduction came on top of an earlier
ten per cent, reduction after the panic. The railway
men were practically unorganized so that the steadying
influence of previous organization was totally lacking in
the critical situation of unrest which the newly announced
wage reduction created. One must take also into account
that in the four terrible years which elapsed since the
panic, America had developed a new type of a man — the
tramp — who naturally gravitated towards places where
trouble was expected.

The first outbreak occurred at Martinsburg, West
Virginia, on July 17, the day after the ten per cent, re-

THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 59

duction had gone into effect. The strike spread like
wildfire over the adjacent sections of the Baltimore &
Ohio road, the strikers assuming absolute control at
many points. The militia was either unwilling or power-
less to cope with the violence. In Baltimore, where in the
interest of public safety all the freight trains had stopped
running, two companies of militia were beleaguered by a
mob to prevent their being dispatched to Cumberland,
where the strikers were in control. Order was restored
only when Federal troops arrived.

But these occurrences fade into insignificance when
compared with the destructive effects of the strike on the
Pennsylvania in and around Pittsburgh. The situation
there was aggravated by a hatred of the Pennsylvania
railway corporation shared by nearly all residents on
the ground of an alleged rate discrimination against the
city. The Pittsburgh militia fraternized with the strik-
ers, and when 600 troops which arrived from Philadelphia
attempted to restore order and killed about twenty riot-
ers, they were besieged in a roundhouse by a furious mob.
In the battle the railway yards were set on fire. Damages
amounting to about $5,000,000 were caused. The be-
sieged militia men finally gained egress and retreated
fighting rear-guard actions. At last order was restored
by patrols of citizens. The strike spread also to the Erie
railway and caused disturbances in several places, but not
nearly of the same serious nature as on the Baltimore
& Ohio and the Pennsylvania. The other places to which
the strike spread were Toledo, Louisville, Chicago, St.
Louis, and San Francisco.

The strikes failed in every case but their moral effect
was enormous. The general public still retained a fresh
memory of the Commune of Paris of 1871 and feared for

60 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

the foundations of the established order. The wage
earners, on the other hand, felt that the strikers had not
been fairly dealt with. It was on this intense labor dis-
content that the greenback agitation fed and grew.

Whereas in 1876 the greenback labor vote was negli-
gible, notwithstanding the exhortations by many of the
former trade union leaders who turned greenback agi-
tators, now, following the great strikes, greenbackism
became primarily a labor movement. Local Greenback-
Labor parties were being organized everywhere and a
national Greenback-Labor party was not far behind in
forming. The continued industrial depression was a
decisive factor, the winter of 1877—1878 marking perhaps
the point of its greatest intensity. Naturally the green-
back movement was growing apace. One of the notable
successes in the spring of 1878 was the election of Terence
V. Powderly, later Grand Master Workman of the
Knights of Labor, as mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The Congressional election in the autumn of 1878
marked the zenith of the movement. The aggregate
greenback vote cast in the election exceeded a million, and
fourteen Representatives were sent to Congress. In New
England the movement was strong enough to poll almost
a third of the total vote in Maine, over 8 per cent, of the
total vote in both Connecticut and New Hampshire, and
from 4 to 6 per cent, in the other States. In Maine the
greenbackers elected 32 members of the upper house
and 151 members of the lower house and one Congress-
man, Thompson Murch of Rochland, who was secretary
of the National Granite Cutters' Union. However, the
bulk of the vote in that State was obviously agricultural.
In Massachusetts, the situation was dominated by Gen-
eral Benjamin F. Butler, lifelong Republican politician,

THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 61

who had succeeded in getting the Democratic nomination
for governor and was endorsed by the Greenback conven-
tion. He received a large vote but was defeated for
office.

But just as the Greenback-Labor movement was as-
suming promising proportions a change for the better
in the industrial situation cut under the very roots of its
existence. In addition, one month after the election of
1878, its principal issue disappeared. January 1, 1879,
was the date fixed by the act for resumption of redemp-
tion of greenbacks in gold and on December 17, 1878,
the premium on gold disappeared. From that day on,
the greenback became a dead issue.

Another factor of great importance was the large in-
crease in the volume of the currency. In 1881 the currency,
which had averaged about $725,000,000 for the years
1876-1878, reached over $1,111,000,000. Under these
conditions, all that remained available to the platform-
makers and propagandists of the party was their oppo-
sition to the so-called "monopolistic" national banks with
their control over currency and to the refunding of the
bonded debt of the government.

The disappearance of the financial issue snapped the
threads which had held together the farmer and the wage-
worker. So long as depression continued, the issue was
financial and the two had, as they thought, a common
enemy — the banker. The financial issue once settled, or at
least suspended, the object of the attack by labor became
the employer, and that of the attack by the farmer — the
railway corporation and the warehouse man. Prosperity
had mitigated the grievances of both classes, but while
the farmer still had a great deal to expect from politics
in the form of state regulation of railway rates, the wage

62 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

earners' struggle now turned entirely economic and not
political.

In California, as in the Eastern industrial States, the
railway strikes of 1877 precipitated a political movement.
California had retained gold as currency throughout the
entire period of paper money, and the labor movement
at no time had accepted the greenback platform. The
political issue after 1877 was racial, not financial, and
the weapon was not merely the ballot, but also "direct
action" — violence. The anti-Chinese agitation in Cali-
fornia, culminating as it did in the Exclusion Law passed
by Congress in 1882, was doubtless the most important
single factor in the history of American labor, for with-
out it the entire country might have been overrun by
Mongolian labor and the labor movement might have
become a conflict of races instead of one of classes.1

The seventies witnessed another of those recurring at-
tempts of consumers' cooperation already noticed in the
forties and sixties. This time the movement was or-
ganized by the "Sovereigns of Industry," a secret order,
founded at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1874 by one
William H. Earle. The spirit of the Order was entirely
peaceful and unobtrusive as expressed in the first para-
graph of the Declaration of Purposes which reads as
follows :

"The Order of the Sovereigns of Industry is an associa-
tion of the industrial or laboring classes, without regard
to race, sex, color, nationality, or occupation; not
founded for the purpose of waging any war of aggression
upon any other class, or for fostering any antagonism

1 The National Labor Union came out against Chinese immigration
in 1869, when the issue was brought home to the Eastern wage earners
following the importation by a shoe manufacturer in North Adams,
Massachusetts, of Chinese strike breakers.

THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 63

of labor against capital, or of arraying the poor against
the rich; but for mutual assistance in self-improvement
and self-protection."

The scheme of organization called for a local council
including members from the town or district, a state
council, comprising representatives from the local coun-
cils and a National Council in which the States were
represented. The president of the National Council was
the founder of the Order, William H. Earle.

Success accompanied the efforts of the promoters of
the Sovereigns of Industry for a few years. The total
membership in 1875-1876 was 40,000, of whom seventy-
five per cent, were in New England and forty-three per
cent, in Massachusetts. Though the Order extended into
other States and even reached the territories, its chief
strength always remained in New England and the Middle
States. During the last period of its existence a national
organ was published at Washington, but the Order does
not appear to have gained a foothold in any of the more
Southern sections of the country.

In 1875, 101 local councils reported as having some
method of supplying members with goods, 46 of whom
operated stores. The largest store belonged to the
council at Springfield, Massachusetts, which in 1875 built
the "Sovereign Block" at a cost of $35,500. In his ad-
dress at the fourth annual session in Washington, Presi-
dent Earle stated that the store in Springfield led all
the others with sales amounting to $119,000 for the pre-
ceding year. About one-half of the councils failed to
report, but at the Congress of 1876 President Earle
estimated the annual trade at $3,000,000.

Much enthusiasm accompanied the progress of the
movement. The hall in "Sovereign Block" at Springfield

64 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

was dedicated amid such jubilation as marks an event
thought to be the forerunner of a new era. There is
indeed a certain pathos in the high hopes expressed in
the Address of Dedication by President Earle, for,
though the Order continued to thrive until 1878, shortly
after a decline began, and dissolution was its fate in 1880.
The failure of the Sovereigns marked the latest attempt
on a large scale l to innoculate the American workingmen
with the sort of cooperative spirit which proved so suc-
cessful in England.2

1 There were many cooperative stores in the eighties and a con-
certed effort to duplicate the venture of the Sovereigns was attempted
as late as 1919 under the pressure of the soaring cost of living.

2 Where Consumers' Cooperation has worked under most favorable
conditions as in England, its achievements have been all that its
most ardent champions could have desired. Such is the picture pre-
sented by Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb in the following glowing terms:

"The organization of industry by Associations of Consumers oifers,
as far as it goes, a genuine alternative to capitalist ownership, because
it supersedes the capitalist power, whether individual or joint-stock,
alike in the control of the instruments of production by which the
community lives, and in the absorption of the profits, which other-
wise support a capitalist class. The ownership and control are vested
in, and the profits are distributed among, the whole community of
consumers, irrespective of their industrial wealth. Through the
device of dividend on purchases the Cooperative Movement maintains
an open democracy, through the control of this democracy of con-
sumers it has directly or indirectly kept down prices, and protected
the wage-earning class from exploitation by the Credit System and
from the extortions of monopolist traders and speculators. By
this same device on purchases, and the automatic accumulation of
part of the profit in the capital of each society and in that of the
Wholesales, it has demonstratedly added to the personal wealth of
the manual working class, and has, alike in Great Britain, and in
other countries, afforded both a valuable financial reserve to the
wage-earners against all emergencies and an instrument for their
elevation from the penury to which competition is always depressing
them. By making possible the upgrowth of great business enterprises
in working class hands, the Cooperative Movement has, without divorc-
ing them from their fellows, given to thousands of the manual workers
both administrative experience and a well-grounded confidence; and
has thus enabled them to take a fuller part in political and social
life than would otherwise have been probable." — New Statesman,
May 30, 1916. "Special Supplement on the Cooperative Movement."

Indeed the success of the consumer's cooperative movement in
European countries has been marvellous, even measured by bare

THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 65

This failure of distributive cooperation to gain the
strong and lasting foothold in this country that it has
abroad has been accounted for in various ways by differ-
ent writers. Great emphasis has been laid upon the lack
of capital, the lack of suitable legislation on the subject
of cooperation, the mutual isolation of the educated and
wage-earning classes, the lack of business ability among
wage earners, and the altogether too frequent venality
and corruption among cooperators.

Probably the lack of adequate leadership has played as
important a part as any. It is peculiar to America that
the wage earner of exceptional ability can easily find a
way for escaping into the class of independent producers
or even employers of labor. The American trade union
movement has suffered much less from this difficulty.
The trade unions are fighting organizations ; they demand
the sort of leader who is of a combative spirit, who pos-
sesses the organizing ability and the "personal mag-
netism" to keep his men in line ; and for this kind of ability
the business world offers no particular demand. On the
other hand, the qualifications which go to make a suc-
cessful manager of a cooperative store, namely, steadi-
ness, conservatism of judgment, attention to detail and
business punctuality always will be in great demand in
the business world. Hence, when no barrier is interposed
in the form of preempted opportunities or class bias, the
exceptional workingman who possesses these qualifications
will likely desert his class and set up in business for him-

figures. In all Europe in 1914, there were about 9,000,000 cooperators
of whom one-third lived in Great Britain and not less than two and
a half millions in Germany. In England and Scotland alone, the 1400
stores and two Wholesale Cooperative Societies controlled in 1914
about 420 million dollars of retail distributive trade and employed
nearly 50,000 operatives in processes of production in their own work-
shops and factories.

66 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

self. In England, fortunately for the cooperative move-
ment, such an escape is very difficult.

The failure of consumers' cooperation in America was
helped also by two other peculiarly American conditions.
European economists, when speaking of the working class,
assume generally that it is fixed in residence and contrast
it with capital, which they say is fluid as between city
and city and even between country and country. Ameri-
can labor, however, native as well as immigrant, is prob-
ably more mobile than capital; for, tradition and habit
which keep the great majority of European wage earners
in the place where their fathers and forefathers had lived
before them are generally absent in this country, except
perhaps in parts of New England and the South. It is
therefore natural that the cooperative spirit, which after
all is but an enlarged and more generalized form of the old
spirit of neighborliness and mutual trust, should have
failed to develop to its full strength in America.

Another condition fatal to the development of the co-
operative spirit is the racial heterogeneity of the Ameri-
can wage-earning class, which separates it into mutually
isolated groups even as the social classes of England
and Scotland are separated by class spirit. As a result,
we find a want of mutual trust which depends so much on
"consciousness of kind." This is further aggravated by
competition and a continuous displacement in industry
of nationalities of a high standard of living by those of a
lower one. This conflict of nationalities, which lies also
at the root of the closed shop policy of many of the
American trade unions, is probably the most effective
carrier that there is to a widespread growth of the
cooperative spirit among American wage earners. This
is further hindered by other national characteristics

THE "GREENBACK" PERIOD, 1862-1879 67

which more or less pervade all classes of society, namely,
the traditional individualism — the heritage of puritanism
and the pioneer days, and the emphasis upon earning
capacity with a corresponding aversion to thrift.

CHAPTER 3

THE BEGINNING OF THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR

AND OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION

OF LABOR

With the practical disintegration of the organized
labor movement in the seventies, two nuclei held together
and showed promise of future growth. One was the
"Noble Order of the Knights of Labor" and the other a
small trade union movement grouped around the Inter-
national Cigar Makers' Union.

The "Noble Order of the Knights of Labor," while it
first became important in the labor movement after 1873,
was founded in 1869 by Uriah Smith Stephens, a tailor
who had been educated for the ministry, as a secret or-
ganization. Secrecy was adopted as a protection against
persecutions by employers.

The principles of the Order were set forth by Stephens
in the secret ritual. "Open and public association having
failed after a struggle of centuries to protect or advance
the interest of labor, we have lawfully constituted this
Assembly," and "in using this power of organized effort
and cooperation, we but imitate the example of capital
heretofore set in numberless instances;" for, "in all the
multifarious branches of trade, capital has its combina-
tions, and, whether intended or not, it crushes the manly
hopes of labor and tramples poor humanity into the
dust." However, "we mean no conflict with legitimate

68

BEGINNING OF KNIGHTS AND FEDERATION 69

enterprise, no antagonism to necessary capital." The
remedy consists first in work of education : "We mean to
create a healthy public opinion on the subject of labor
(the only creator of values or capital) and the justice of
its receiving a full, just share of the values or capital it
has created." The next remedy was legislation: "We
shall, with all our strength, support laws made to har-
monize the interests of labor and capital, for labor alone
gives life and value to capital, and also those laws which
tend to lighten the exhaustiveness of toil." Next in order
were mutual benefits. "We shall use every lawful and
honorable means to procure and retain employ for
one another, coupled with a just and fair remunera-
tion, and, should accident or misfortune befall one of
our number, render such aid as lies within our power to
give, without inquiring his country or his creed."

For nine years the Order remained a secret organiza-
tion and showed but a slow growth. In 1878 it was forced
to abolish secrecy. The public mind was rendered uneasy
by the revolutionary uprising of workingmen of Paris
who set up the famous "Commune of Paris" of 1871, by
the destructive great railway strikes in this country in
1877 and, lastly, by a wave of criminal disorders in the
anthracite coal mining region in Eastern Pennsylvania,1
and became only too prone to attribute revolutionary
and criminal intents to any labor organization that
cloaked itself in secrecy. Simultaneously with coming
out into the open, the Knights adopted a new program,
called the Preamble of the Knights of Labor, in place of

1 After the defeat of a strong anthracite miners' union in 1869,
which was an open organization, the fight against the employers was
carried on by a secret organization known as the Molly Maguires,
which used the method of terrorism and assassination. It was later
exposed and many were sentenced and executed.

70 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

the vague Secret Ritual which hitherto served as the
authoritative expression of aims.

This Preamble recites how "wealth," with its develop-
ment, has become so aggressive that "unless checked" it
"will inevitably lead to the pauperisation and hopeless
degradation of the toiling masses." Hence, if the toilers
are "to enjoy the blessings of life," they must organize
"every department of productive industry" in order to
"check" the power of wealth and to put a stop to "unjust
accumulation." The battle cry in this fight must be
"moral worth not wealth, the true standard of individual
and national greatness." As the "action" of the toilers
ought to be guided by "knowledge," it is necessary to
know "the true condition of the producing masses";
therefore, the Order demands "from the various govern-
ments the establishment of bureaus of labor statistics."
Next in order comes the "establishment of cooperative
institutions productive and distributive." Union of all
trades, "education," and producers* cooperation remained
forever after the cardinal points in the Knights of Labor
philosophy and were steadily referred to as "First Prin-
ciples," namely principles bequeathed to the Order by
Uriah Stephens and the other "Founders." *

1 The Preamble further provides that the Order will stand for the
reservation of all lands for actual settlers; the "abrogation of all
laws that do not bear equally upon capital and labor, the removal
of unjust technicalities, delays, and discriminations in the adminis-
tration of justice, and the adopting of measures providing for the
health and safety of those engaged in mining, manufacturing, or
building pursuits"; the enactment of a weekly pay law, a mechanics'
lien law, and a law prohibiting child labor under fourteen years of
age; the abolition of the contract system on national, state, and
municipal work, and of the system of leasing out convicts; equal
pay for equal work for both sexes; reduction of hours of labor to
eight per day; "the substitution of arbitration for strikes, whenever
and wherever employers and employees are willing to meet on
equitable grounds"; the establishment of "a purely national circulat-
ing medium based upon the faith and resources of the nation, issued

BEGINNING OF KNIGHTS AND FEDERATION 71

These idealistic "First Principles" found an ardent
champion in Terence V. Powderly, a machinist by trade
and twice mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, on a labor
ticket, who succeeded Stephens in 1878 to the headship
of the Order. Powderly bore unmistakably the stamp of
this sort of idealism throughout all the time when he was
the foremost labor leader in the country. Unlike Samuel
Gompers, who came to supplant him about 1890, he was
foreign to that spirit of combative unionism which accepts
the wage system but concentrates on a struggle to wrest
concessions from the employers. Even when circum-
stances which were largely beyond his control made
Powderly a strike leader on a huge scale, his heart lay
elsewhere — in circumventing the wage system by opening
to the worker an escape into self-employment through
cooperation.

Producers* cooperation, then, was the ambitious pro-
gram by which the Order of the Knights of Labor ex-
pected to lead the American wage-earning class out of the
bondage of the wage system into the Canaan of self-
employment. Thus the Order was the true successor of
the cooperative movement in the forties and sixties. Its
motto was "Cooperation of the Order, by the Order, and
for the Order." Not scattered local initiative, but the
Order as a whole was to carry on the work. The plan
resembled the Rochdale system of England in that it pro-
posed to start with an organization of consumers — the
large and ever-growing membership of the Order. But it
departed radically from the English prototype in that
instead of setting out to save money for the consumer,

directly to the people, without the intervention of any system of
banking corporations, which money shall he a legal tender in pay-
ment of all debts, public or private".

72 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

it primarily aimed to create a market for the productive
establishments which were to follow. Consumers' co-
operation was to be but a stepping stone to producers'
self -employment. Eventually when the Order had grown
to include nearly all useful members of society — so the
plan contemplated — it would control practically the
whole market and cooperative production would become
the rule rather than the exception. So far, therefore, as
"First Principles" went, the Order was not an instrument
of the "class struggle," but an association of idealistic
cooperators. It was this pure idealism which drew to the
Order of the Knights of Labor the sympathetic interest
of writers on social subjects and university teachers, then
unfortunately too few in number, like Dr. Richard T.
Ely * and President John Bascom of Wisconsin.

The other survival in the seventies of the labor move-
ment of the sixties, which has already been mentioned,
namely the trade union movement grouped around the
Cigar Makers* Union, was neither so purely American in
its origin as the Knights of Labor nor so persistently
idealistic. On the contrary, its first membership was
foreign and its program, as we shall see, became before
long primarily opportunist and "pragmatic." The train-
ing school for this opportunistic trade unionism was the
socialist movement during the sixties and seventies, par-
ticularly the American branch of the International Work-
ingmen's Association, the "First Internationale" which
was founded by Karl Marx in London in 1864. The con-
ception of economic labor organization which was ad-

1 Dr. Ely in his pioneer work, The Labor Movement in America,
published in 1886, showed a most genuine sympathy for the idealistic
strivings and gropings of labor for a better social order. He even
advised some of his pupils at the Johns Hopkins University to join
the Knights of Labor in order to gain a better understanding of the
labor movement.

BEGINNING OF KNIGHTS AND FEDERATION 73

vanced by the Internationale in a socialistic formulation
underwent in the course of years a process of change:
On the one hand, through constant conflict with the rival
conception of political labor organization urged by
American followers of the German socialist, Ferdinand
Lassalle, and on the other hand, through contact with
American reality. Out of that double contact emerged
the trade unionism of the American Federation of Labor.
The Internationale is generally reputed to have been
organized by Karl Marx for the propaganda of interna-
tional socialism. As a matter of fact, its starting point
was the practical effort of British trade union leaders to
organize the workingmen of the Continent and to pre-
vent the importation of Continental strike-breakers.
That Karl Marx wrote its Inaugural Address was merely
incidental. It chanced that what he wrote was acceptable
to the British unionists rather than the draft of an ad-
dress representing the views of Giuseppe Mazzini, the
leader of the "New Italy" and the "New Europe," which
was submitted to them at the same time and advocated
elaborate plans of cooperation. Marx emphasized the
class solidarity of labor against Mazzini's harmony of
capital and labor. He did this by reciting what British
labor had done through the Rochdale system of coopera-
tion without the help of capitalists and what the British
Parliament had done in enacting the ten-hour law of 1847
against the protest of capitalists. Now that British trade
unionists in 1864 were demanding the right of suffrage
and laws to protect their unions, it followed that Marx
merely stated their demands when he affirmed the inde-
pendent economic and political organization of labor in
all lands. His Inaugural Address was a trade union
document, not a Communist Manifesto. Indeed not until

74 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

Bakunin and his following of anarchists had nearly cap-
tured the organization in the years 1869 to 1872 did the
program of socialism become the leading issue.

The philosophy of the Internationale at the period of
its ascendency was based on the economic organization
of the working class in trade unions. These must precede
the political seizure of the government by labor. Then,
when the workingmen's party should achieve control, it
would be able to build up successively the socialist state
on the foundation of a sufficient number of existing trade
unions.

This conception differed widely from the teaching of
Ferdinand Lassalle. Lassallean socialism was born in
1863 with Lassalle's Open Letter to a workingmen's com-
mittee in Leipzig. It sprang from his antagonism to
Schultze-Delizsch's 1 system of voluntary cooperation. In
Lassalle's eagerness to condemn the idea of the harmony
of capital and labor, which lay at the basis of Schultze's
scheme for cooperation, he struck at the same time a blow
against all forms of non-political organization of wage
earners. Perhaps the fact that he was ignorant of the
British trade unions accounts for his insufficient apprecia-
tion of trade unionism. But no matter what the cause
may have been, to Lassalle there was but one means of
solving the labor problem — political action. When po-
litical control was finally achieved, the labor party, with
the aid of state credit, would build up a network of co-
operative societies into which eventually all industry
would pass.

In short, the distinction between the ideas of the Inter-
nationale and of Lassalle consisted in the fact that the

1 Schultze-Delizsch was a German thinker and practical reformer
of the liberal school.

BEGINNING OF KNIGHTS AND FEDERATION 75

former advocated trade unionism prior to and underlying
political organization, while the latter considered a politi-
cal victory as the basis of socialism. These antagonistic
starting points are apparent at the very beginning of
American socialism as well as in the trade unionism and
socialism of succeeding years.

Two distinct phases can be seen in the history of the
Internationale in America. During the first* phase, which
began in 1866 and lasted until 1870, the Internationale
had no important organization of its own on American
soil, but tried to establish itself through affiliation with
the National Labor Union. The inducement held out to
the latter was of a practical nature, the international
regulation of immigration. During the second phase the
Internationale had its "sections" in nearly every large
city of the country, centering in New York and Chicago,
and the practical trade union part of its work receded
before its activity on behalf of the propaganda of so-
cialism.

These "sections," with a maximum membership which
probably never exceeded a thousand, nearly all foreigners,
became a preparatory school in trade union leadership for
many of the later organizers and leaders of the American
Federation of Labor: for example, Adolph Strasser, the
German cigar maker, whose organization became the new
model in trade unionism, and P. J. McGuire, the
American-born carpenter, who founded the Brotherhood
of Carpenters and Joiners and who was for many years
the secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of
Labor.

Fate had decreed that these sections of a handful of
immigrants should play for a time high-sounding parts
in the world labor movement. When, at the World Con-

76 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

gress of the International Workingmen's Association at
the Hague in 1872, the anarchist faction led by Bakunin
had shown such strength that Marx and his socialist fac-
tion deemed it wise to move the General Council out of
mischief's way, they removed it to New York and entrusted
its powers into the hands of the faithful German Marx-
ians on this side of the Atlantic. This spelled the end of
the Internationale as a world organization, but enor-
mously increased the stakes of the factional fights within
the handful of American Internationalists. The organi-
zation of the workers into trade unions, the Internation-
ale's first principle, was forgotten in the heat of intemper-
ate struggles for empty honors and powerless offices. On
top of that, with the panic of 1873 and the ensuing pro-
longed depression, the political drift asserted itself in
socialism as it had in the labor movement in general and
the movement, erstwhile devoted primarily to organiza-
tion of trade unions, entered, urged on by the Lassalleans,
into a series of political campaigns somewhat successful
at first but soon succumbing to the inevitable fate of all
amateurish attempts. Upon men of Strasser's practical
mental grasp these petty tempests in the melting pot
could only produce an impression of sheer futility, and
he turned to trade unionism as the only activity worth
his while. Strasser had been elected president of the
Cigar Makers' International Union in 1877, in the midst
of a great strike in New York against the tenement-house
system.

The president of the local New York union of cigar
makers was at the time Samuel Gompers, a young man
of twenty-seven, who was born in England and came to
America in 1862. In his endeavor to build up a model
for the "new" unionism and in his almost uninterrupted

BEGINNING OF KNIGHTS AND FEDERATION 77

headship of that movement for forty years is indicated
Gompers' truly representative character. Born of Dutch-
Jewish parents in England in 1850, he typifies the cos-
mopolitan origins of American unionism. His early
contact in the union of his trade with men like Strasser,
upon whom the ideas of Marx and the International
Workingmen's Association had left an indelible stamp,
and his thorough study of Marx gave him that grounding
both in idealism and class consciousness which has pro-
duced many strong leaders of American unions and saved
them from defection to other interests. Aggressive and
uncompromising in a perpetual fight for the strongest
possible position and power of trade unions, but always
strong for collective agreements with the opposing em-
ployers, he displays the business tactics of organized
labor. At the head of an organization which denies itself
power over its constituent unions, he has brought and
held together the most widely divergent and often an-
tagonistic unions, while permitting each to develop and
even to change its character to fit the changing industrial
conditions.

The dismal failure of the strike against the tenement
house system in cigar making brought home to both
Strasser and Gompers the weakness of the plan of or-
ganization of their union as well as that of American
trade unions in general. They consequently resolved to
rebuild their union upon the pattern of the British
unions, although they firmly intended that it should re-
main a militant organization. The change involved, first,
complete authority over the local unions in the hands of
the international officers ; second, an increase in the mem-
bership dues for the purpose of building up a large fund ;
and, third, the adoption of a far-reaching benefit system

78 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

in order to assure stability to the organization. This was
accomplished at the convention held in August, 1879.
This convention simultaneously adopted the British idea
of the "equalization of funds," which gave the interna-
tional officers the power to order a well-to-do local union
to transfer a portion of its funds to another local union
in financial straits. With the various modifications of the
feature of "equalization of funds," the system of govern-
ment in the Cigar Makers* International Union was later
used as a model by the other national and international
trade unions.

As Strasser and men of his ilk grew more and more
absorbed in the practical problems of the everyday strug-
gle of the wage-earners for better conditions of employ-
ment, the socialistic portion of their original philosophy
kept receding further and further into the background
until they arrived at pure trade unionism. But their
trade unionism differed vastly from the "native" Ameri-
can trade unionism of their time, which still hankered for
the haven of producers' cooperation. The philosophy
which these new leaders developed might be termed a
philosophy of pure wage-consciousness. It signified a
labor movement reduced to an opportunistic basis, ac-
cepting the existence of capitalism and having for its
object the enlarging of the bargaining power of the wage
earner in the sale of his labor. Its opportunism was
instrumental — its idealism was home and family and in-
dividual betterment. It also implied an attitude of aloof-
ness from all those movements which aspire to replace the
wage system by cooperation, whether voluntary or sub-
sidized by government, whether greenbackism, socialism,
or anarchism.

Perhaps the most concise definition of this philosophy

BEGINNING OF KNIGHTS AND FEDERATION 79

is to be found in Strasser's testimony before the Senate
Committee on Education and Labor in 1883:

"Q. You are seeking to improve home matters first?

"A. Yes, sir, I look first to the trade I represent; I
look first to cigars, to the interests of men who employ
me to represent their interest.

"Chairman: I was only asking you in regard to your
ultimate ends.

"Witness: We have no ultimate ends. We are going
on from day to day. We are fighting only for immediate
objects — objects that can be realized in a few years.

"By Mr. Call : Q. You want something better to eat
and to wear, and better houses to live in?

"A. Yes, we want to dress better and to live better,
and become better citizens generally.

"The Chairman: I see that you are a little sensitive
lest it should be thought that you are a mere theoriser, I
do not look upon you in that light at all.

"The Witness: Well, we say in our constitution that
we are opposed to theorists, and I have to represent the
organization here. We are all practical men."

Another offshoot of the same Marxian Internationale
were the "Chicago Anarchists." * The Internationale, as
we saw, emphasized trade unionism as the first step in the
direction of socialism, in opposition to the political social-
ism of Lassalle, which ignored the trade union and would
start with a political party outright. Shorn of its
socialistic futurity this philosophy became non-political
"business" unionism; but, when combined with a strong
revolutionary spirit, it became a non-political revolu-
tionary unionism, or syndicalism.

The organization of those industrial revolutionaries
was called the International Working People's Associa-

1 The Anarchists who were tried and executed after the Haymarket
Square bomb in Chicago in May, 1886. See below, 91-93.

80 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

tion, also known as the "Black" or anarchist Interna-
tional, which was formed at Pittsburgh in 1883. Like
the old Internationale it busied itself with forming trade
unions, but insisted that they conform to a revolutionary
model. Such a "model" trade union was the Federation
of Metal Workers of America, which was organized in
1885. It said in its Declaration of Principles that the
entire abolition of the present system of society can alone
emancipate the workers, but under no consideration
should they resort to politics ; "our organization should
be a school to educate its members for the new condition
of society, when the workers will regulate their own
affairs without any interference by the few. Since the
emancipation of the productive classes must come by
their own efforts, it is unwise to meddle in present politics.
. . . All direct struggles of the laboring masses have our
fullest sympathy." Alongside the revolutionary trade
unions were workers' armed organizations ready to usher
in the new order by force. "By force," recited the Pitts-
burgh Manifesto of the Black International, "our an-
cestors liberated themselves from political oppression, by
force their children will have to liberate themselves from
ecenomic bondage. It is, therefore, your right, it is your
duty, says Jefferson, — to arms !"

The following ten years were to decide whether the
leadership of the American labor movement was to be
with the "practical men of the trade unions" or with
the cooperative idealists of the Knights of Labor.

CHAPTER 4
REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887

With the return of business prosperity in 1879, the
labor movement revived. The first symptom of the up-
ward trend was a rapid multiplication of city federations
of organized trades, variously known as trade councils,
amalgamated trade and labor unions, trades assemblies,
and the like. Practically all of these came into existence
after 1879, since hardly any of the "trades' assemblies"
of the sixties had survived the depression.

As was said above, the national trade unions existed
during the sixties and seventies in only about thirty
trades. Eighteen of these had either retained a nucleus
during the seventies or were first formed during that
decade. The following is a list of the national unions in
existence in 1880 with the year of formation: Typo-
graphical (1850), Hat Finishers (1854), Iron Holders
(1859), Locomotive Engineers (1863), Cigar Makers
(1864), Bricklayers and Masons (1865), Silk and Fur
Hat Finishers (1866), Railway Conductors (1868),
Coopers (1870), German- American Typographia (1873),
Locomotive Firemen (1873), Horseshoers (1874), Furni-
ture Workers (1873), Iron and Steel Workers (1876),
Granite Cutters (1877), Lake Seamen (1878), Cotton
Mill Spinners (1878), New England Boot and Shoe
Lasters (1879).

In 1880 the Western greenbottle blowers' national
union was established; in 1881 the national unions of

81

82 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

boiler makers and carpenters ; in 1882, plasterers and
metal workers ; in 1883, tailors, lithographers, wood
carvers, railroad brakemen, and silk workers.

An illustration of the rapid growth in trade union
membership during this, period is given in the following
figures : the bricklayers' union had 303 in 1880 ; 1558
in 1881 ; 6848 in 1882 ; 9193 in 1883. The typographi-
cal union had 5968 members in 1879; 6520 in 1880; 7931
in 1881 ; 10,439 in 1882 ; 12,273 in 1883. The total trade
union membership in the country, counting the three rail-
way organizations and those organized only locally,
amounted to between 200,000 and 225,000 in 1883 and
probably was not below 300,000 in the beginning of 1885.

A distinguishing characteristic of the trade unions of
this time was the predominance in them of the foreign
element. The Illinois Bureau of Labor describes the
ethnical composition of the trade unions of that State
during 1886, and states that 21 per cent, were American,
33 per cent. German, 19 per cent. Irish, 10 per cent.
British other than Irish, 12 per cent. Scandinavian, and
the Poles, Bohemians, and Italians formed about 5 per
cent. The strong predominance of the foreign element
in American trade unions should not appear unusual,
since, owing to the breakdown of the apprenticeship sys-
tem, the United States had been drawing its supply of
skilled labor from abroad.

The Order of the Knights of Labor, despite its "First
Principles" based on the cooperative ideal, was soon
forced to make concessions to a large element of its mem-
bership which was pressing for strikes. With the advent
of prosperity, the Order expanded, although the Knights
of Labor played but a subordinate part in the labor
movement of the early eighties. The membership was

REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 83

20,151 in 1879 ; 28,136 in 1880 ; 19,422 in 1881 ; 42,517
in 1882; 51,914 in 1883; showing a steady and rapid
growth, with the exception of the year 1881. But these
figures are decidedly deceptive as a means of measuring
the strength of the Order, for the membership fluctuated
widely; so that in the year 1883, when it reached 50,000
no less than one-half of this number passed in and out
of the organization during the year. The enormous
fluctuation, while reducing the economic strength of the
Order, brought large masses of people under its influence
and prepared the ground for the upheaval in the middle
of the eighties. It also brought the Order to the attention
of the public press. The labor press gave the Order
great publicity, but the Knights did not rely on gratui-
tous newspaper publicity. They set to work a host of
lecturers, who held public meetings throughout the coun-
try adding recruits and advertising the Order.

The most important Knights of Labor strike of this
period was the telegraphers' strike in 1883. The teleg-
raphers had a national organization in 1870, which soon
collapsed. In 1882 they again organized on a national
basis and affiliated with the Order as District Assembly
45. l The strike was declared on June 19, 1883, against
all commercial telegraph companies in the country, among
which the Western Union, with about 4000 operators,
was by far the largest. The demands were one day's rest
in seven, an eight-hour day shift and a seven-hour night
shift, and a general increase of 15 per cent, in wages.
The public and a large portion of the press gave their
sympathy to the strikers, not so much on account of the
oppressed condition of the telegraphers as of the general

'See the next chapter for the scheme of organization followed by
the Order.

84 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

hatred that prevailed against Jay Gould, who then con-
trolled the Western Union Company. This strike was
the first in the eighties to call the attention of the general
American public to the existence of a labor question, and
received considerable attention at the hands of the Senate
Committee on Education and Labor. By the end of July,
over a month after the beginning of the strike, the men
who escaped the blacklist went back to work on the old
terms.

From 1879 till 1882 the labor movement was typical
of a period of rising prices. It was practically restricted
to skilled workmen, who organized to wrest from employ-
ers still better conditions than those which prosperity
would have given under individual bargaining. The
movement was essentially opportunistic and displayed no
particular class feeling and no revolutionary tendencies.
The solidarity of labor was not denied by the trade
unions, but they did not try to reduce the idea to practice :
each trade coped more or less successfully with its own
employers. Even the Knights of Labor, the organization
par excellence of the solidarity of labor, was at this time,
in so far as practical efforts went, merely a faint echo of
the trade unions.

But the situation radically changed during the de-
pression of 1884-1885. The unskilled and the semi-
skilled, affected as they were by wage reductions and un-
employment even in a larger measure than the skilled,
were drawn into the movement. Labor organizations
assumed the nature of a real class movement. The idea
of the solidarity of labor ceased to be merely verbal and
took on life ! General strikes, sympathetic strikes, nation-
wide boycotts and nation-wide political movements be-
came the order of the day. The effects of an unusually

REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 85

large immigration joined hands with the depression. The
eighties were the banner decade of the entire century for
immigration. The aggregate number of immigrants ar-
riving was 5,246,613 — two and a half millions larger
than during the seventies and one million and a half
larger than during the nineties. The eighties witnessed
the highest tide of immigration from Great Britain and
the North of Europe and the beginning of the tide of
South and East European immigration.

However, the depression of 1883-1885 had one re-
deeming feature by which it was distinguished from other
depressions. With falling prices, diminishing margins
of profit, and decreasing wages, the amount of employ-
ment was not materially diminished. Times continued
hard during 1885, a slight improvement showing itself
only during the last months of the year. The years 1886
and 1887 were a period of gradual recovery, and normal
conditions may be said to have returned about the middle
of 1887. Except in New England, the old wages, which
had been reduced during the bad years, were won again
by the spring of 1887.

The year 1884 was one of decisive failure in strikes.
They were practically all directed against reductions in
wages and for the right of organization. The most con-
spicuous strikes were those of the Fall River spinners, the
Troy stove mounters, the Cincinnati cigar makers and the
Hocking Valley coal miners.

The failure of strikes brought into use the other
weapon of labor — the boycott. But not until the latter
part of 1884, when the failure of the strike as a weapon
became apparent, did the boycott assume the nature of
an epidemic. The boycott movement was a truly national
one, affecting the South and the Far West as well as the

86 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

East and Middle West. The number of boycotts during
1885 was nearly seven times as large as during 1884.
Nearly all of the boycotts either originated with, or were
taken up by, the Knights of Labor.

The strike again came into prominence in the latter
half of 1885. This coincided with the beginning of an
upward trend in general business conditions. The strikes
of 1885, even more than those of the preceding year,
were spontaneous outbreaks of unorganized masses.

The frequent railway strikes were a characteristic
feature of the labor movement in 1885. Most notable was
the Gould railway strike in March, 1885. On February
26, a cut of 10 per cent, was ordered in the wages of the
shopmen of the Wabash road. A similar reduction had
been made in October, 1884, on the Missouri, Kansas &
Texas. Strikes occurred on the two roads, one on Feb-
ruary 27 and the other March 9, and the strikers were
joined by the men on the third Gould road, the Missouri
Pacific, at all points where the two lines touched, making
altogether over 4500 men on strike. The train service
personnel, that is, the locomotive engineers, firemen,
brakemen, and conductors, supported the strikers and
to this fact more than to any other was due their speedy
victory. The wages were restored and the strikers re-
employed. But six months later this was followed by a
second strike. The road, now in the hands of a receiver,
reduced the force of shopmen at Moberly, Missouri, to
the lowest possible limit, which virtually meant a lockout
of the members of the Knights of Labor in direct viola-
tion of the conditions of settlement of the preceding
strike. The General Executive Board of the Knights,
after a futile attempt to have a conference with the re-
ceiver, declared a boycott on Wabash rolling stock.

REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 87

This order, had it been carried out, would have affected
over 20,000 miles of railway and would have equalled the
dimensions of the great railway strike of 1877. But Jay
Gould would not risk a general strike on his lines at this
time. According to an appointment made between him
and the executive board of the Knights of Labor, a con-
ference was held between that board and the managers of
the Missouri Pacific and the Wabash railroads, at which
he threw his influence in favor of making concessions to
the men. He assured the Knights that in all troubles he
wanted the men to come directly to him, that he believed
in labor organizations and in the arbitration of all diffi-
culties and that he "would always endeavor to do what
was right." The Knights demanded the discharge of all
new men hired in the Wabash shops since the beginning
of the lockout, the reinstatement of all discharged men,
the leaders being given priority, and an assurance that
no discrimination against the members of the Order would
be made in the future. A settlement was finally made at
another conference, and the receiver of the Wabash road
agreed, under pressure by Jay Gould, to issue an order
conceding the demands of the Knights of Labor.

The significance of the second Wabash strike in the
history of railway strikes was that the railway brother-
hoods (engineers, firemen, brakemen, and conductors),
in contrast with their conduct during the first Wabash
strike, now refused to lend any aid to the striking shop-
men, although many of the members were also Knights of
Labor.

But far more important was the effect of the strike
upon the general labor movement. Here a labor organ-
ization for the first time dealt on an equal footing with
probably the most powerful capitalist in the country. It

88 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

forced Jay Gould to recognize it as a power equal to
himself, a fact which he conceded when he declared his
readiness to arbitrate all labor difficulties that might
arise. The oppressed laboring masses finally discovered a
powerful champion. All the pent-up feeling of bitterness
and resentment which had accumulated during the two
years of depression, in consequence of the repeated cuts
in wages and the intensified domination by employers,
now found vent in a rush to organize under the banner
of the powerful Knights of Labor. To the natural tend-
ency on the part of the oppressed to exaggerate the
power of a mysterious emancipator whom they suddenly
found coming to their aid, there was added the influence
of sensational reports in the public press. The news-
papers especially took delight in exaggerating the powers
and strength of the Order.

In 1885 the New York Sun detailed one of its
reporters to "get up a story of the strength and
purposes of the Knights of Labor." This story was
copied by newspapers and magazines throughout the
country and aided considerably in bringing the Knights
of Labor into prominence. The following extract illus-
trates the exaggerated notion of the power of the Knights
of Labor.

"Five men in this country control the chief interests
of five hundred thousand workingmen, and can at any
moment take the means of livelihood from two and a half
millions of souls. These men compose the executive board
of the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor of America.
The ability of the president and cabinet to turn out all
the men in the civil service, and to shift from one post
to another the duties of the men in the army and navy,
is a petty authority compared with that of these five

REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 89

Knights. The authority of the late Cardinal was, and
that of the bishops of the Methodist Church is, narrow
and prescribed, so far as material affairs are concerned,
in comparison with that of these five rulers.

"They can stay the nimble touch of almost every
telegraph operator; can shut up most of the mills and
factories, and can disable the railroads. They can issue
an edict against any manufactured goods so as to make
their subjects cease buying them, and the tradesmen stop
selling them.

"They can array labor against capital, putting labor
on the offensive or the defensive, for quiet and stubborn
self-protection, or for angry, organized assault, as they
will."

Before long the Order was able to benefit by this pub-
licity in quarters where the tale of its great power could
only attract unqualified attention, namely, in Congress.
The Knights of Labor led in the agitation for prohibiting
the immigration of alien contract laborers. The problem
of contract immigrant labor rapidly came to the front
in 1884, when such labor began frequently to be used to
defeat strikes.

Twenty persons appeared to testify before the com-
mittee in favor of the bill, of whom all but two or three
belonged to the Knights of Labor. The anti-contract
labor law which was passed by Congress on February 2,
1885, therefore, was due almost entirely to the efforts of
the Knights of Labor. The trade unions gave little active
support, for to the skilled workingmen the importation
of contract Italian and Hungarian laborers was a matter
of small importance. On the other hand, to the Knights
of Labor with their vast contingent of unskilled it was
a strong menace. Although the law could not be enforced

90 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

and had to be amended in. 1887 in order to render it effec-
tive, its passage nevertheless attests the political influence
already exercised by the Order in 1885.

The outcome of the Gould strike of 1885 and the
dramatic exaggeration of the prowess of the Order by
press and even by pulpit were largely responsible for the
psychological setting that called forth and surrounded
the great upheaval of 1886. This upheaval meant more
than the mere quickening of the pace of the movement
begun in preceding years and decades. It signalled the
appearance on the scene of a new class which had not
hitherto found a place in the labor movement, namely the
unskilled. All the peculiar characteristics of the dra-
matic events in 1886 and 1887, the highly feverish pace
at which organizations grew, the nation-wide wave of
strikes, particularly sympathetic strikes, the wide use of
the boycott, the obliteration, apparently complete, of all
lines that divided the laboring class, whether geographic
or trade, the violence and turbulence which accompanied
the movement — all of these were the signs of a great
movement by the class of the unskilled, which had finally
risen in rebellion. This movement, rising as an elemental
protest against oppression and degradation, could be but
feebly restrained by any considerations of expediency
and prudence; nor, of course, could it be restrained by
any lessons from experience. But, if the origin and
powerful sweep of this movement were largely spontane-
ous and elemental, the issues which it took up were sup-
plied by the existing organizations, namely the trade
unions and the Knights of Labor. These served also as
the dykes between which the rapid streams were gathered
and, if at times it seemed that they must burst under the
pressure, still they gave form and direction to the move-

REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 91

ment and partly succeeded in introducing order where
chaos had reigned. The issue which first brought unity
in this great mass movement was a nation-wide strike for
the eight-hour day declared for May 1, 1886.

The initiative in this strike was taken not by the Order
but by the trade unionists and on the eve of the strike
the general officers of the Knights adopted an attitude
of hostility. But if the slogan failed to arouse the en-
thusiasm of the national leaders of the Knights, it never-
theless found ready response in the ranks of labor. The
great class of the unskilled and unorganized, which had
come to look upon the Knights of Labor as the all-
powerful liberator of the laboring masses from oppres-
sion, now eagerly seized upon this demand as the issue
upon which the first battle with capital should be fought.

The agitation assumed large proportions in March.
The main argument for the shorter day was work for the
unemployed. With the exception of the cigar makers, it
was left wholly in the hands of local organizations. The
Knights of Labor as an organization figured far less
prominently than the trade unions, and among the latter
the building trades and the German-speaking furniture
workers and cigar makers stood in the front of the move-
ment. Early in the strike the workingmen's cause was
gravely injured by a bomb explosion on Haymarket
Square in Chicago, attributed to anarchists, which killed
and wounded a score of policemen.

The bomb explosion on Haymarket Square connected
two movements which had heretofore marched separately,
despite a certain mutual affinity. For what many of the
Knights of Labor were practising during the upheaval in
a less drastic manner and without stopping to look for a
theoretical justification, the contemporary Chicago "an-

92 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

archists," * the largest branch of the "Black Interna-
tional," had elevated into a well rounded-out system of
thought. Both syndicalism and the Knights of Labor
upheaval were related chapters in the revolutionary
movement of the eighties. Whether in its conscious or
unconscious form, this syndicalism was characterized by
an extreme combativeness, by the ease with which minor
disputes grew into widespread strikes involving many
trades and large territories, by a reluctance, if not an
out and out refusal, to enter into agreements with em-
ployers however temporary, and lastly by a ready resort
to violence. In 1886 the membership of the Black Inter-
national probably was about 5000 or 6000 and of this
number about 1000 were English speaking.

The circumstances of the bomb explosion were the fol-
lowing. A strikers' meeting was held near the McCormick
Reaper Works in Chicago, late on the third of May.
About this time strike-breakers employed in these works
began to leave for home and were attacked by strikers.
The police arrived in large numbers and upon being re-
ceived with stones, fired and killed four and wounded
many. The same evening the International issued a call
in which appeared the word "Revenge" with the appeal:
"Workingmen, arm yourselves and appear in full force."
A protest mass meeting met the next day on Haymarket
Square and was addressed by Internationalists. The
police were present in numbers and, as they formed in
line and advanced on the crowd, some unknown hand
hurled a bomb into their midst killing and wounding
many.

It is unnecessary to describe here the period of police
terror in Chicago, the hysterical attitude of the press,
'See above, 79-80.

REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 93

or the state of panic that came over the inhabitants of
the city. Nor is it necessary to deal in detail with the
trial and sentence of the accused. Suffice it to say that
the Haymarket bomb showed to the labor movement what
it might expect from the public and the government if it
combined violence with a revolutionary purpose.

Although the bomb outrage was attributed to the
anarchists and not generally to the strikers for the eight-
hour day, it did materially reduce the sympathy of the
public as well as intimidate many strikers. Nevertheless,
Bradstreet's estimated that no fewer than 340,000 men
took part in the movement ; 190,000 actually struck, only
42,000 of this number with success, and 150,000 secured
shorter hours without a strike. Thus the total number
of those who secured with or without strikes the eight-
hour day was something less than 200,000. But even
those who for the present succeeded, whether with or
without striking, soon lost the concession, and Brad-
street's estimated in January, 1887, that, so far as the
payment of former wages for a shorter day's work is
concerned, the grand total of those retaining the conces-
sion did not exceed, if it equalled, 15,000.

American labor movements have never experienced
such a rush to organize as the one in the latter part of
1885 and during 1886. During 1886 the combined mem-
bership of labor organizations was exceptionally large
and for the first time came near the million mark. The
Knights of Labor had a membership of 700,000 and the
trade unions at least 250,000, the former composed
largely of unskilled and the latter of skilled. The
Knights of Labor gained in a remarkably short time — in
a few months — over 600,000 new members and grew from
1610 local assemblies with 104,066 members in good

94 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

standing in July 1885, to 5892 assemblies with 702,924
members in July 1886. The greatest portion of this
growth occurred after January 1, 1886. In the state of
New York there were in July 1886, about 110,000 mem-
bers (60,809 in District Assembly 49 of New York City
alone); in Pennsylvania, 95,000 (51,557 in District As-
sembly 1, Philadelphia, alone) ; in Massachusetts, 90,000
(81,191 in District Assembly 30 of Boston) ; and in Illi-
nois, 32,000.

In the state of Illinois, for which detailed information
for that year is available, there were 204 local assemblies
with 34,974 members, of which 65 per cent, were found
in Cook County (Chicago) alone. One hundred and
forty-nine assemblies were mixed, that is comprised mem-
bers of different trades including unskilled and only 55
were trade assemblies. Reckoned according to country
of birth the membership was 45 per cent. American, 16
per cent. German, 13 per cent. Irish, 10 per cent. British,
5 per cent. Scandinavian, and the remaining 2 per cent,
scattered. The trade unions also gained many members
but in a considerably lesser proportion.

The high water mark was reached in the autumn of
1886. But in the early months of 1887 a reaction be-
came visible. By July 1, the membership of the Order had
diminished to 510,351. While a share of this retrogres-
sion may have been due to the natural reaction of large
masses of people who had been suddenly set in motion
without experience, a more immediate cause came from
the employers. Profiting by past lessons, they organized
strong associations. The main object of these employers'
associations was the defeat of the Knights. They were
organized sectionally and nationally. In small localities,
where the power of the Knights was especially great, all

REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 95

employers regardless of industry joined in a single asso-
ciation. But in large manufacturing centers, where the
rich corporation prevailed, they included the employers
of only one industry. To attain their end these associa-
tions made liberal use of the lockout, the blacklist, and
armed guards and detectives. Often they treated agree-
ments entered into with the Order as contracts signed
under duress. The situation in the latter part of 1886
and in 1887 had been clearly foreshadowed in the treat-
ment accorded the Knights of Labor on the Gould rail-
ways in the Southwest in the early part of 1886.

As already mentioned, at the settlement of the strike
on the Gould system in March 1885, the employes were
assured that the road would institute no discriminations
against the Knights of Labor. However, it is apparent
that a series of petty discriminations was indulged in
by minor officials, which kept the men in a state of unrest.
It culminated in the discharge of a foreman, a member
of the Knights, from the car shop at Marshall, Texas,
on the Texas & Pacific Road, which had shortly before
passed into the hands of a receiver. A strike broke out
over the entire road on March 1, 1886. It is necessary,
however, to note that the Knights of Labor themselves
were meditating aggressive action two months before
the strike. District Assembly 101, the organization em-
bracing the employes on the Southwest system, held a
convention on January 10, and authorized the officers to
call a strike at any time they might find opportune to
enforce the two following demands : first, the formal
"recognition" of the Order; and second, a daily wage of
$1 .50 for the unskilled. The latter demand is peculiarly
characteristic of the Knights of Labor and of the feeling
of labor solidarity that prevailed in the movement. But

96 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

evidently the organization preferred to make the issue
turn on discrimination against members. Another pe-
culiarity which marked off this strike as the beginning
of a new era was the facility with which it led to a sym-
pathetic strike on the Missouri Pacific and all leased and
operated lines. This strike broke out simultaneously over
the entire system on March 6. It affected more than
5000 miles of railway situated in Missouri, Kansas,
Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Nebraska. The strikers
did not content themselves with mere picketing, but actu-
ally took possession of the railroad property and by a
systematic "killing" of engines, that is removing some in-
dispensable part, effectively stopped all the freight traffic.
The number of men actively on strike was in the neighbor-
hood of 9000, including practically all of the shopmen,
yardmen, and section gangs. The engineers, firemen,
brakemen, and conductors .took no active part and had
to be forced to leave their posts under threats from the
strikers.

The leader, one Martin Irons, accurately represented
the feelings of the strikers. Personally honest and prob-
ably well-meaning, his attitude was overbearing and tyran-
nical. With him as with those who followed him, a strike
was not a more or less drastic means of forcing a better
labor contract, but necessarily assumed the aspect of a
crusade against capital. Hence all compromise and any
policy of give and take were excluded.

Negotiations were conducted by Jay Gould and Pow-
derly to submit the dispute to arbitration, but they failed
and, 'after two months of sporadic violence, the strike
spent itself and came to an end. It left, however, a pro-
found impression upon the public mind, second only to the
impression made by the great railway strike of 1877 ; and

REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 97

a Congressional committee was appointed to investigate
the whole matter.

The disputes during the second half of 1886 ended, for
the most part, disastrously to labor. The number of
men involved in six months, was estimated at 97,300. Of
these, about 75,300 were in nine great lockouts, of whom
54,000 suffered defeat at the hands of associated em-
ployers. The most important lockouts were against
15,000 laundry workers at Troy, New York, in June;
against 20,000 Chicago packing house workers; and
against 20,000 knitters at Cohoes, New York, both in
October.

The lockout of the Chicago butcher workmen attracted
the most attention. These men had obtained the eight-
hour day without a strike during May. A short time
thereafter, upon the initiative of Armour & Company,
the employers formed a packers' association and, in the
beginning of October, notified the men of a return to the
ten-hour day on October 11. They justified this action
on the ground that they could not compete with Cincin-
nati and Kansas City, which operated on the ten-hour
system. On October 8, the men, who were organized in
District Assemblies 27 and 54, suspended work, and the
memorable lockout began. The packers* association re-
jected all offers of compromise and on October 18 the
men were ordered to work on the ten-hour basis. But
the dispute in October, which was marked by a complete
lack of ill-feeling on the part of the men and was one of
the most peaceable labor disputes of the year, was in
reality a mere prelude to a second disturbance which broke
out in the plant of Swift & Company on November 2
and became general throughout the stockyards on No-
vember 6. The men demanded a return to the eight-hour

98 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

day, but the packers* association, which was now joined
by Swift & Company, who formerly had kept aloof, not
only refused to give up the ten-hour day, but declared
that they would employ no Knights of Labor in the future.
The Knights retaliated by declaring a boycott on the
meat of Armour & Company. The behavior of the men
was now no longer peaceable as before, and the employers
took extra precautions by prevailing upon the governor
to send two regiments of militia in addition to the several
hundred Pinkerton detectives employed by the associa-
tion. To all appearances, the men were slowly gaining
over the employers, for on November 10 the packers*
association rescinded its decision not to employ Knights,
when suddenly on November 15, like a thunderbolt out
of a clear sky, a telegram arrived from Grand Master
Workman Powderly ordering the men back to work.
Powderly had refused to consider the reports from the
members of the General Executive Board who were on the
ground, but, as was charged by them, was guided instead
by the advice of a priest who had appealed to him to call
off the strike and thus put an end to the suffering of the
men and their families.

New York witnessed an even more characteristic
Knights of Labor strike and on a larger scale. This
strike began as two insignificant separate strikes, one by
coal-handlers at the Jersey ports supplying New York
with coal and the other by longshoremen on the New York
water front; both starting on January 1, 1887. Eighty-
five coal-handlers employed by the Philadelphia & Reading
Railroad Company, members of the Knights of Labor,
struck against a reduction of 21/2 cents an hour in the
wages of the "top-men" and were joined by the trimmers
who had grievances of their own. Soon the strike spread

REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 99

to the other roads and the number of striking coal-han-
dlers reached 3000. The longshoremen's strike was begun
by 200 men, employed by the Old Dominion Steamship
Company, against a reduction in wages and the hiring
of cheap men by the week. The strikers were not organ-
ized, but the Ocean Association, a part of the Knights of
Labor, took up their cause and was assisted by the long-
shoremen's union. Both strikes soon widened out through
a series of sympathetic strikes of related trades and
finally became united into one. The Ocean Association
declared a boycott on the freight of the Old Dominion
Company and this was strictly obeyed by all of the long-
shoremen's unions. The International Boatmen's Union
refused to allow their boats to be used for "scab coal"
or to permit their members to steer the companies' boats.
The longshoremen joined the boatmen in refusing to
handle coal, and the shovelers followed. Then the grain
handlers on both floating and stationary elevators re-
fused to load ships with grain on which there was scab
coal, and the bag-sewers stood with them. The long-
shoremen now resolved to go out and refused to work on
ships which received scab coal, and finally they decided
to stop work altogether on all kinds of craft in the harbor
until the trouble should be settled. The strike spirit
spread to a large number of freight handlers working for
railroads along the river front, so that in the last week of
January the number of strikers in New York, Brooklyn,
and New Jersey, reached approximately 28,000; 13,000
longshoremen, 1000 boatmen, 6000 grain handlers, 7500
coal-handlers, and 400 bag-sewers.

On February 11, August Corbin, president and receiver
of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company, fearing
a strike by the miners working in the coal mines operated

by that road, settled the strike by restoring to the eighty-
five coal-handlers, the original strikers, their former rate
of wages. The Knights of Labor felt impelled to accept
such a trivial settlement for two reasons. The coal-
handlers' strike, which drove up the price of coal to the
consumer, was very unpopular, and the strike itself had
begun to weaken when the brewers and stationary engi-
neers, who for some obscure reason had been ordered to
strike in sympathy, refused to come out. The situation
was left unchanged, as far as the coal-handlers employed
by the other companies, the longshoremen, and the many
thousands of men who went out on sympathetic strike
were concerned. The men began to return to work by
the thousands and the entire strike collapsed.

The determined attack and stubborn resistance of the
employers' associations after the strikes of May 1886,
coupled with the obvious incompetence displayed by the
leaders, caused the turn of the tide in the labor movement
in the first half of 1887. This, however, manifested itself
during 1887 exclusively in the large cities, where the
movement had borne in the purest form the character of
an uprising by the class of the unskilled and where the
hardest battles were fought with the employers. District
Assembly 49, New York, fell from its membership of
60,809 in June 1886, to 32,826 in July 1887. During
the same interval, District Assembly 1, Philadelphia, de-
creased from 51,557 to 11,294), and District Assembly 30,
Boston, from 81,197 to 31,644. In Chicago there were
about 40,000 Knights immediately before the packers*
strike in October 1886, and only about 17,000 on July 1,
1887. The falling off of the largest district assemblies in
10 large cities practically equalled the total loss of the
Order, which amounied approximately to 191,000. At

REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 101

the same time the membership of the smallest district
assemblies, which were for the most part located in small
cities, remained stationary and, outside of the national
and district trade assemblies which were formed by sepa-
ration from mixed district assemblies, thirty-seven new
district assemblies were formed, also mostly in rural locali-
ties. In addition, state assemblies were added in Alabama,
Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska,
North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, with
an average membership of about 2000 each.

It thus becomes clear that by the middle of 1887, the
Great Upheaval of the unskilled and semi-skilled portions
of the working class had already subsided beneath the
strength of the combined employers and the unwieldiness
of their own organization. After 1887 the Knights of
Labor lost its hold upon the large cities with their wage-
conscious and largely foreign population, and became an
organization predominantly of country people, of me-
chanics, small merchants, and farmers, — a class of people
which was more or less purely American and decidedly
middle class in its philosophy.

The industrial upheaval in the middle of the eighties
had, like the great strike of 1877, a political reverbera-
tion. Although the latter was heard throughout the entire
country, it centered in the city of New York, where the
situation was complicated by court interference in the
labor struggle.

A local assembly of the Knights of Labor had declared
a boycott against one George Theiss, a proprietor of a
music and beer garden. The latter at first submitted and
paid a fine of $1000 to the labor organization, but later
brought action in court against the officers charging them
with intimidation and extortion.

102 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

The judge, George C. Barrett, in his charge to the
jury, conceded that striking, picketing, and boycotting
as such were not prohibited by law, if not accompanied by
force, threats, or intimidation. But in the case under
consideration the action of the pickets in advising passers-
by not to patronize the establishment and in distributing
boycott circulars constituted intimidation. Also, since
the $1000 fine was obtained by fear induced by a threat
to continue the unlawful injury to Theiss inflicted by the
"boycott," the case was one of extortion covered by the
penal code. It made no difference whether the money was
appropriated by the defendants for personal use or
whether it was turned over to their organization. The
jury, which reflected the current public opinion against
boycotts, found all of the five defendants guilty of extor-
tion, and Judge Barrett sentenced them to prison for
terms ranging from one year and six months to three
years and eight months.

The Theiss case, coming as it did at a time of general
restlessness of labor and closely after the defeat of the
eight-hour movement, greatly hastened the growth of the
sentiment for an independent labor party. The New York
Central Labor Union, the most famous and most influen-
tial organization of its kind in the country at the time,
with a membership estimated at between 40,000 and
50,000, placed itself at the head of the movement in which
both socialists and non-socialists joined. Henry George,
the originator of the single tax movement, was nominated
by the labor party for Mayor of New York and was al-
lowed to draw up his own platform, which he made of
course a simon-pure single tax platform. The labor de-
mands were compressed into one plank. They were as
follows: The reform of court procedure so that "the

REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 103

practice of drawing grand jurors from one class should
cease, and the requirements of a property qualification
for trial jurors should be abolished" ; the stopping of the
"officious intermeddling of the police with peaceful as-
semblages"; the enforcement of the laws for safety and
the sanitary inspection of buildings ; the abolition of con-
tract labor on public work; and equal pay for equal
work without distinction of sex on such work.

The George campaign was more in the nature of a reli-
gious revival than of a political election campaign. It
was also a culminating point in the great labor upheaval.
The enthusiasm of the laboring people reached its highest
pitch. They felt that, baffled and defeated as they were
in their economic struggle, they were now nearing victory
in the struggle for the control of government. Mass
meetings were numerous and large. Most of them were
held in the open air, usually on the street corners. From
the system by which one speaker followed another, speak-
ing at several meeting places in a night, the labor cam-
paign got its nickname of the "tailboard campaign."
The common people, women and men, gathered in hun-
dreds and often thousands around trucks from which the
shifting speakers addressed the crowd. The speakers
were volunteers, including representatives of the liberal
professions, lawyers, physicians, teachers, ministers, and
labor leaders. At such mass meetings George did most
of his campaigning, making several speeches a night, once
as many as eleven. The single tax and the prevailing
political corruption were favorite topics. Against George
and his adherents were pitted the powerful press of the
city of New York, all the political power of the old par-
ties, and all the influence of the business class. George's
opponents were Abram S. Hewitt, an anti-Tammany

104 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

Democrat whom Tammany had picked for its candidate
in this emergency, and Theodore Roosevelt, then as yet
known only as a courageous young politician.

The vote cast was 90,000 for Hewitt, 68,000 for
George, and 60,000 for Roosevelt. There is possible
ground for the belief that George was counted out of
thousands of votes. The nature of the George vote can
be sufficiently gathered from an analysis of the pledges to
vote for him. An apparently trustworthy investigation
was made by a representative of the New York Sun. He
drew the conclusion that the vast majority were not
simply wage earners, but also naturalized immigrants,
mainly Irish, Germans, and Bohemians, the native element
being in the minority. While the Irish were divided be-
tween George and Hewitt, the majority of the German
element had gone over to Henry George. The outcome
was hailed as a victory by George and his supporters and
this view was also taken by the general press.

In spite of this propitious beginning the political labor
movement soon suffered the fate of all reform political
movements. The strength of the new party was frittered
away in doctrinaire factional strife between the single
taxers and the socialists. The trade union element be-
came discouraged and lost interest. So that at the next
State election, in which George ran for Secretary of State,
presumably because that office came nearest to meeting
the requirement for a single taxer seeking a practical
scope of action, the vote in the city fell to 37,000 and
in the whole State amounted only to 72,000. This ended
the political labor movement in New York.

Outside of New York the political labor movement was
not associated either with the single tax or any other
"ism." As in New York it was a spontaneous expression

REVIVAL AND UPHEAVAL, 1879-1887 105

of dissatisfaction brought on by failure in strikes. The
movement scored a victory in Milwaukee, where it elected
a mayor, and in Chicago where it polled 25,000 out of a
total of 92,000. But, as in New York, it fell to pieces
without leaving a permanent trace.

CHAPTER 5

THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM AND THE

FINAL FAILURE OF PRODUCERS'

COOPERATION

We now come to the most significant aspect of the
Great Upheaval: the life and death struggle between
two opposed principles of labor organization and between
two opposed labor programs. The Upheaval offered the
practical test which the labor movement required for an
intelligent decision between the rival claims of Knights
and trade unionists. The test as well as the conflict
turned principally on "structure," that is on the differ-
ence between "craft autonomists" and those who would
have labor organized "under one head,'* or what we would
now call the "one big union" advocates.

As the issue of "structure" proved in the crucial eighties,
and has remained ever since, the outstanding factional
issue in the labor movement, it might be well at this point
to pass in brief review the structural developments in
labor organization from the beginning and try to corre-
late them with other important developments.

The early 1 societies of shoemakers and printers were
purely local in scope and the relations between "locals"
extended only to feeble attempts to deal with the compe-
tition of traveling journeymen. Occasionally, they cor-
responded on trade matters, notifying each other of their
purposes and the nature of their demands, or expressing

'See Chapter 1.

106

THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM 107

fraternal greetings ; chiefly for the purpose of counter-
acting advertisements by employers for journeymen or
keeping out dishonest members and so-called "scabs."
This mostly relates to printers. The shoemakers, despite
their bitter contests with their employers, did even less.
The Philadelphia Mechanics' Trades Association in 1827,
which we noted as the first attempted federation of trades
in the United States if not in the world, was organized
as a move of sympathy for the carpenters striking for
the ten-hour day. During the period of the "wild-cat"
prosperity the local federation of trades, under the name
of "Trades' Union," 1 comes to occupy the center of the
stage in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and appeared
even as far "West" as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Louis-
ville. The constitution of the New York "Trades' Union"
provided, among other things, that each society should
pay a monthly per capita tax of 6*4 cents to be used as
a strike fund. Later, when strikes multiplied, the Union
limited the right to claim strike aid and appointed a
standing "committee on mediation. In 1835 it discussed
a plan for an employment exchange or a "call room."
The constitution of the Philadelphia Union required that
a strike be endorsed by a two-thirds majority before
granting aid.

The National Trades' Union, the federation of city
trades' unions, 1834-1836, was a further development of
the same idea. Its first and second conventions went little
beyond the theoretical. The latter, however, passed a
significant resolution urging the trade societies to ob-
serve a uniform wage policy throughout the country and,

1 In the thirties the term "union" was reserved for the city federa-
tions of trades. What is now designated as a trade union was called
trade society. In the sixties the "Union" became the "trades' as-
semijiy."

108 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

should the employers combine to resist it, the unions should
make "one general strike."

The last convention in 1836 went far beyond preceding
conventions in its plans for solidifying the workingmen
of the country. First and foremost, a "national fund"
was provided for, to be made up of a levy of two cents per
month on each of the members of the trades* unions and
local societies represented. The policies of the National
Trades' Union instead of merely advisory were hence-
forth to be binding. But before the new policies could be
tried, as we know, the entire trade union movement was
wiped out by the panic.

The city "trades' union" of the thirties accorded with
a situation where the effects of the extension of the market
were noticeable in the labor market, and little as yet in
the commodity market; when the competitive menace to
labor was the low paid out-of-town mechanic coming to
the city, not the out-of-town product made under lower
labor costs selling in the same market as the products of
unionized labor. Under these conditions the local trade
society, reenforced by the city federation of trades,
sufficed. The "trades' union," moreover, served also
as a source of reserve strength.

Twenty years later the whole situation was changed.
The fifties were a decade of extensive construction of
railways. Before 1850 there was more traffic by water
than by rail. After 1860 the relative importance of land
and water transportation was reversed. Furthermore,
i the most important railway building during the ten years
preceding 1860 was the construction of East and West
trunk lines; and the sixties were marked by the estab-
lishment of through lines for freight and the consolidation
of connecting lines. The through freight lines greatly

THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM 109

hastened freight traffic and by the consolidations through
transportation became doubly efficient.

Arteries of traffic had thus extended from the Eastern
coast to the Mississippi Valley. Local markets had
widened to embrace half a continent. Competitive men-
aces had become more serious and threatened from a dis-
tance. Local unionism no longer sufficed. Consequently,
as we saw, in the labor movement of the sixties the national
trade union was supreme.

There were four distinct sets of causes which operated
during the sixties to bring about nationalization; two
grew out of the changes in transportation, already alluded
to, and two were largely independent of such changes.

The first and most far-reaching cause, as illustrated by
the stove molders, was the competition of the products of
different localities side by side in the same market. Stoves
manufactured in Albany, New York, were now displayed
in St. Louis by the side of stoves made in Detroit. No
longer could the molder in Albany be indifferent to the
fate of his fellow craftsman in Louisville. With the
molders the nationalization of the organization was des-
tined to proceed to its utmost length. In order that union
conditions should be maintained even in the best organized
centers, it became necessary to equalize competitive con-
ditions in the various localities. That led to a well-knit
national organization to control working conditions, trade
rules, and strikes. In other trades, where the competitive
area of the product was still restricted to the locality,
the paramount nationalizing influence was a more inten-
sive competition for employment between migratory out-
of-town journeymen and the locally organized mechanics.
This describes the situation in the printing trade, where
the bulk of work was newspaper and not book and job

110 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

printing. Accordingly, the printers did not need to
entrust their national officers with anything more than
the control of the traveling journeymen and the result
was that the local unions remained practically inde-
pendent.

The third cause of concerted national action in a trade
union was the organization of employers. Where the
power of a local union began to be threatened by an em-
ployers' association, the next logical step was to combine
in a national union.

The fourth cause was the application of machinery and
the introduction of division of labor, which split up the
established trades and laid industry open to invasion by
"green hands." The shoemaking industry, which during
the sixties had reached the factory stage, illustrates this
in a most striking manner. Few other industries ex-
perienced anything like a similar change during this
period.

Of course, none of the causes of nationalization here
enumerated operated in entire isolation. In some trades
one cause, in other trades other causes, had the predomi-
nating influence. Consequently, in some trades the na-
tional union resembled an agglomeration of loosely allied
states, each one reserving the right to engage in inde-
pendent action and expecting from its allies no more than
a benevolent neutrality. In other trades, on the con-
trary, the national union was supreme in declaring in-
dustrial war and in making peace, and even claimed abso-
lute right to formulate the civil laws of the trade for
times of industrial peace.

The national trade union was, therefore, a response to
obvious and pressing necessity. However slow or imper-
fect may have been the adjustment of internal organiza-

THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM 111

tions to the conditions of the trade, still the groove was
defined and consequently the amount of possible flounder-
ing largely limited. Not so with the next step, namely
the national federation of trades. In the sixties we saw
the national trade unions join with other local and
miscellaneous labor organizations in the National Labor
Union upon a political platform of eight -hours and green-
backism. In 1873 the same national unions asserted their
rejection of "panaceas" and politics by attempting to
create in the National Labor Congress a federation of
trades of a strictly economic character. The panic and
depression nipped that in the bud. When trade unionism
revived in 1879 the national trade unions returned to
the idea of a national federation of labor, but this time
they followed the model of the British Trades Union
Congress, the organization which cares for the legisla-
tive interests of British labor. This was the "Federation
of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United
States and Canada," which was set up in 1881.

It is easy to understand why the unions of the early
eighties did not feel the need of a federation on economic
lines. The trade unions of today look to the American
Federation of Labor for the discharge of important
economic functions, therefore it is primarily an economic
organization. These functions are the assistance of na-
tional trade unions in organizing their trades, the adjust-
ment of disputes between unions claiming the same "juris-
diction," and concerted action in matters of especial
importance such as shorter hours, the "open-shop," or
boycotts. None of these functions would have been of
material importance to the trade unions of the early
eighties. Existing in well-defined trades, which were not
affected by technical changes, they had no "jurisdic-

112 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

tional" disputes ; operating at a period of prosperity
with full employment and rising wages, they did not
realize a necessity for concerted action; the era of the
boycotts had not yet begun. As for having a common
agency to do the work of organizing, the trade unions of
the early eighties had no keen desire to organize any but
the skilled workmen; and, since the competition of work-
men in small towns had not yet made itself felt, each
national trade union strove to organize primarily the
workmen of its trade in the larger cities, a function for
which its own means were adequate.

The new organization of 1881 was a loose federation
of trade and labor unions with a legislative committee at
the head, with Samuel Gompers of the cigar makers as
a member. The platform was purely legislative and de-
manded legal incorporation for trade unions,1 compulsory
education for children, the prohibition of child labor
under fourteen, uniform apprentice laws, the enforcement
of the national eight-hour law, prison labor reform, abo-
lition of the "truck" and "order" system, mechanics'
lien, abolition of conspiracy laws as applied to labor
organizations, a national bureau of labor statistics, a
protective tariff for American labor, an anti-contract
immigrant law, and recommended "all trade and labor
organizations to secure proper representation in all law-
making bodies by means of the ballot, and to use all
honorable measures by which this result can be accom-
plished." Although closely related to the present
American Federation of Labor in point of time and per-
sonnel of leadership, the Federation of Organized Trades
and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada was
in reality the precursor of the present state federations
*See below, 152-154.

THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM 113

of labor, which as specialized parts of the national feder-
ation now look after labor legislation.

Two or three years later it became evident that the
Federation as a legislative organization proved a failure.1
Manifestly the trade unions felt no great interest in na-
tional legislation. The indifference can be measured by
the fact that the annual income of the Federation never
exceeded $700 and that, excepting in 1881, none of its
conventions represented more than one-fourth of the
trade union membership of the country. Under such con-
ditions the legislative influence of the Federation natu-
rally was infinitesimal. The legislative committee carried
out the instructions of the 1883 convention and communi-
cated to the national committees of the Republican and
Democratic parties the request that they should define
their position upon the enforcement of the eight-hour law
and other measures. The letters were not even answered.
A subcommittee of the legislative committee appeared
before the two political conventions, but received no
greater attention.

It was not until the majority of the national trade
unions came under the menace of becoming forcibly ab-
sorbed by the Order of the Knights of Labor that a basis
appeared for a vigorous federation.

The Knights of Labor were built on an opposite prin-
ciple from the national trade unions. Whereas the latter
started with independent crafts and then with hesitating
hands tried, as we saw, to erect some sort of a common
superstructure that should express a higher solidarity
of labor, the former was built from the beginning upon
a denial of craft lines and upon an absolute unity of all

aSee below, 285-290, for a discussion why American labor looks
away from legislation.

114 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

classes of labor under one guiding head. The subdi-
vision was territorial instead of occupational and the
government centralized.

The constitution of the Knights of Labor was drawn in
1878 when the Order laid aside the veil of secrecy to which
it had clung since its foundation in 1869. The lowest
unit of organization was the local assembly of ten or more,
at least three-fourths of whom had to be wage earners
at any trade. Above the local assembly was the "district
assembly" and above it the "General Assembly." The
district assembly had absolute power over its local as-
semblies and the General Assembly was given "full and
final jurisdiction" as "the highest tribunal" of the Order.1
Between sessions of the General Assembly the power was
vested in a General Executive Board, presided over by a
Grand Master Workman.

The Order of the Knights of Labor in practice carried
out the idea which is now advocated so fervently by
revolutionary unionists, namely the "One Big Union,"
since it avowedly aimed to bring into one organization
"all productive labor.'* This idea in organization was
aided by the weakness of the trade unions during the long
depression of the seventies, which led many to hope for
better things from a general pooling of labor strength.
But its main appeal rested on a view that machine tech-
nique tends to do away with all distinctions of trades by
reducing all workers to the level of unskilled machine
tenders. To its protagonists therefore the "one big
union" stood for an adjustment to the new technique.

1 The Constitution read as follows : "It alone possesses the power
and authority to make, amend, or repeal the fundamental and general
laws and regulations of the Order; to finally decide all controversies
arising in the Order; to issue all charters. ... It can also tax the
members of the Order for its maintenance."

THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM 115

First to face the problem of adjustment to the machine
technique of the factory system were the shoemakers.
They organized in 1867 the Order of the Knights of St.
Crispin, mainly for the purpose of suppressing the com-
petitive menace of "green hands," that is unskilled work-
ers put to work on shoe machines. At its height in 1872,
the Crispins numbered about 50,000, perhaps the largest
union in the whole world at that time. The coopers began
to be menaced by machinery about the middle of the
sixties, and about the same time the machinists and black-
smiths, too, saw their trade broken up by the introduction
of the principle of standardized parts and quantity pro-
duction in the making of machinery. From these trades
came the national leaders of the Knights of Labor and
the strongest advocates of the new principle in labor
organization and of the interests of the unskilled workers
in general. The conflict between the trade unions and
the Knights of Labor turned on the question of the
unskilled workers.

The conflict was held in abeyance during the early
eighties. The trade unions were by far the strongest
organizations in the field and scented no particular danger
when here or there the Knights formed an assembly either
contiguous to the sphere of a trade union or even at
times encroaching upon it.

With the Great Upheaval, which began in 1884, and
the inrushing of hundreds of thousands of semi-skilled
and unskilled workers into the Order, a new situation was
created. The leaders of the Knights realized that mere
numbers were not sufficient to defeat the employers and
that control over the skilled, and consequently the more
strategic occupations, was required before the unskilled
and semi-skilled could expect tc march to victory. Hence,

116 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

parallel to the tremendous growth of the Knights in 1886,
there was a constantly growing effort to absorb the exist-
ing trade unions for the purpose of making them sub-
servient to the interests of the less skilled elements. It
was mainly that which produced the bitter conflict be-
tween the Knights and. the trade unions during 1886 and
1887. Neither the jealousy aroused by the success of
the unions nor the opposite aims of labor solidarity and
trade separatism gives an adequate explanation of this
conflict. The one, of course, aggravated the situation
by introducing a feeling of personal bitterness, and the
other furnished an appealing argument to each side. But
the strugle was one between groups within the working
class, in which the small but more skilled group fought
for independence of the larger but weaker group of the
unskilled and semi-skilled. The skilled men stood for the
right to use their advantage of skill and efficient organi-
zation in order to wrest the maximum amount of con-
cessions for themselves. The Knights of Labor endeav-
ored to annex the skilled men in order that the advantage
from their exceptional fighting strength might lift up the
unskilled and semi-skilled. From the point of view of a
struggle between principles, this was indeed a clash be-
tween the principle of solidarity of labor and that of trade
separatism, but, in reality, each of the principles reflected
only the special interest of a certain portion of the work-
ing class. Just as the trade unions, when they fought for
trade autonomy, really refused to consider the unskilled
men, so the Knights of Labor overlooked the fact that
their scheme would retard the progress of the skilled
trades.

The Knights were in nearly every case the aggressors,
and it is significant that among the local organizations of

THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM 117

the Knights inimical to trade unions, District Assembly
49, of New York, should prove the most relentless. It
was this assembly which conducted the longshoremen's
and coal miners' strike in New York in 1887 and which,
as we saw,1 did not hesitate to tie up the industries of
the entire city for the sake. of securing the demands of
several hundred unskilled workingmen. Though District
Assembly 49, New York, came into conflict with not a
few of the trade unions in that city, its battle royal was
fought with the cigar makers' unions. There were at the
time two factions among the cigar makers, one upholding
the International Cigar Makers' Union with Adolph
Strasser and Samuel Gompers as leaders, the other calling
itself the Progressive Union, which was more socialistic
in nature and composed of more recent immigrants and
less skilled workers. District Assembly 49 of the Knights
of Labor took a hand in the struggle to support the
Progressive Union and by skillful management brought
the situation to the point where the latter had to allow
itself to be absorbed into the Knights of Labor.

The events in the cigar making trade in New York
brought to a climax the sporadic struggles that had been
going on between the Order and the trade unions. The
trade unions demanded that the Knights of Labor respect
their "jurisdiction" and proposed a "treaty of peace"
with such drastic terms that had they been accepted the
trade unions would have been left in the sole possession
of the field. The Order was at first more conciliatory. It
would not of course cease to take part in industrial dis-
putes and industrial matters, but it proposed a modus
vivendi on a basis of an interchange of "working cards"
and common action against employers. At the same time
'See above, 98-100.

118 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

it addressed separately to each national trade union a
gentle admonition to think of the unskilled workers as well
as of themselves. The address said: "In the use of the
wonderful inventions, your organization plays a most im-
portant part. Naturally it embraces within its ranks a
very large proportion of laborers of a high grade of
skill and intelligence. With this skill of hand, guided
by intelligent thought, comes the right to demand that
excess of compensation paid to skilled above the unskilled
labor. But the unskilled labor must receive attention,
or in the hour of difficulty the employer will not hesitate
to use it to depress the compensation you now receive.
That skilled or unskilled labor may no longer be found
unorganized, we ask of you to annex your grand and
powerful corps to the main army that we may fight the
battle under one flag."

But the trade unions, who had formerly declared that
their purpose was "to protect the skilled trades of
America from being reduced to beggary," evinced no de-
sire to be pressed into the service of lifting up the un-
skilled and voted down with practical unanimity the pro-
posal. Thereupon the Order declared open war by com-
manding all its members who were also members of the
cigar makers' union to withdraw from the latter on the
penalty of expulsion.

Later events proved that the assumption of the aggres-
sive was the beginning of the undoing of the Order. It
was, moreover, an event of first significance in the labor
movement since it forced the trade unions to draw closer
together and led to the founding in the same year, 1886,
of the American Federation of Labor.

Another highly important effect of this conflict was
the ascendency in the trade union movement of Samuel

THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM 119

Gompers as the foremost leader. Gompers had first
achieved prominence in 1881 at the time of the organiza-
tion of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor
Unions. But not until the situation created by the con-
flict with the Knights of Labor did he get his first real
opportunity, both »to demonstrate his inborn capacity
for leadership and to train and develop that capacity by
overcoming what was perhaps the most serious problem
that ever confronted American organized labor.

The new Federation avoided its predecesisor's mistake
of emphasizing labor legislation above all. Its prime
purpose was economic. The legislative interests of labor
were for the most part given into the care of subordinate
state federations of labor. Consequently, the several
state federations, not the American Federation of Labor,
correspond in America to the British Trades Union Con-
gress. But in the conventions of the American Federa-
tion of Labor the state federations are represented only
nominally. The Federation is primarily a federation of
national and international (including Canada and
Mexico) trade unions.

Each national and 'international union in the new Fed-
eration was acknowledged a sovereignty unto itself, with
full powers of discipline over its members and with the
power of free action toward the employers without any
interference from the Federation ; in other words, its full
autonomy was confirmed. Like the British Empire, the
Federation of Labor was cemented together by ties which
were to a much greater extent spiritual than they were
material. Nevertheless, the Federation's authority was
far from being a shadowy one. If it could not order about
the officers of the constituent unions, it could so mobilize
the general labor sentiment in the country on behalf of

120 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

any of its constituent bodies that its good will would be
sought even by the most powerful ones. The Federation
guaranteed to each union a certain jurisdiction, gen-
erally coextensive with a craft, and protected it against
encroachments by adjoining unions and more especially
by rival unions. The guarantee worked absolutely in the
case of the latter, for the Federation knew no mercy
when a rival union attempted to undermine the strength
of an organized union of a craft. The trade unions have
learned from experience with the Knights of Labor that
their deadliest enemy was, after all, not the employers'
association but the enemy from within who introduced
confusion in the ranks. They have accordingly devel-
oped such a passion for "regularity," such an intense con-
viction that there must be but one union in a given trade
that, on occasions, scheming labor officials have known
how to checkmate a justifiable insurgent movement by a
skillful play upon this curious hypertrophy of the feeling
of solidarity. Not only will a rival union never be ad-
mitted into the Federation, but no subordinate body,
state or city, may dare to extend any aid or comfort to a
rival union.

The Federation exacted but little from the national and
international unions in exchange for the guarantee of
their jurisdiction: A small annual per capita tax; a
willing though a not obligatory support in the special
legislative and industrial campaigns it may undertake;
an adherence to its decisions on general labor policy; an
undertaking to submit to its decision in the case of dis-
putes with other unions, which however need not in every
case be fulfilled; and lastly, an unqualified acceptance of
the principle of "regularity" relative to labor organiza-
tion. Obviously, judging from constitutional powers

THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM 121

alone, the Federation was but a weak sort of a govern-
ment. Yet the weakness was not the forced weakness of
a government which was willing to start with limited
powers hoping to increase its authority as it learned to
stand more firmly on its own feet; it was a self-imposed
weakness suggested by the lessons of labor history.

By contrast the Order of the Knights of Labor, as
seen already, was governed by an all-powerful General
Assembly and General Executive Board. At a first
glance a highly centralized form of government would
appear a promise of assured strength and a guarantee of
coherence amongst the several parts of the organization.
Perhaps, if America's wage earners were cemented to-
gether by as strong a class consciousness as the laboring
classes of Europe, such might have been the case.

But America's labor movement lacked the unintended
aid which the sister movements in Europe derived from
a caste system of society and political oppression. Where
the class lines were not tightly drawn, the centrifugal
forces in the labor movement were bound to assert them-
selves. The leaders of the American Federation of Labor,
in their struggle against the Knights of Labor, played
precisely upon this centrifugal tendency and gained a
victory by making an appeal to the natural desire for
autonomy and self-determination of any distinctive group.
But originally perhaps intended as a mere "strategic"
move, this policy succeeded in creating a labor movement
which was, on fundamentals, far more coherent than the
Knights of Labor even in the heyday of their glory. The
officers and leaders of the Federation, knowing that they
could not command, set themselves to developing a uni-
fied labor will and purpose by means of moral suasion
and propaganda. Where a bare order would breed re-

122 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

sentment and backbiting, an appeal, which is reinforced
by a carefully nurtured universal labor sentiment, will
eventually bring about common consent and a willing
acquiescence in the policy supported by the majority.
So each craft was made a self-determining unit and
"craft autonomy" became a sacred shibboleth in the la-
bor movement without interfering with unity on essen-
tials.

The principle of craft autonomy triumphed chiefly be-
cause it recognized the existence of a considerable amount
of group selfishness. The Knights of Labor held, as was
seen, that the strategic or bargaining strength of the
skilled craftsman should be used as a lever to raise the
status of the semi-skilled and unskilled worker. It con-
sequently grouped them promiscuously in "mixed as-
semblies" and opposed as long as it could the demand for
"national trade assemblies." The craftsman, on the other
hand, wished to use his superior bargaining strength for
his own purposes and evinced little desire to dissipate it
in the service of his humbler fellow worker. To give
effect to that, he felt obliged to struggle against becom-
ing entangled with undesirable allies in the semi-skilled
and unskilled workers for whom the Order spoke. Need-
less to say, the individual self-interest of the craft leaders
worked hand in hand with the self-interest of the craft as
a whole, for had they been annexed by the Order they
would have become subject to orders from the Gen-
eral Master Workman or the General Assembly of the
Order.

In addition to platonic stirrings for "self-determina-
tion" and to narrow group interest, there was a motive
for craft autonomy which could pass muster both as
strictly social and realistic. The fact was that the

THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM 123

autonomous craft union could win strikes where the cen-
tralized promiscuous Order merely floundered and suf-
fered defeat after defeat. The craft union had the ad-
vantage, on the one hand, of a leadership which was thor-
oughly familiar with the bit of ground upon which it
operated, and, on the other hand, of handling a group of
people of equal financial endurance and of identical in-
terest. It has already been seen how dreadfully mis-
managed were the great Knights of Labor strikes of 1886
and 1887. The ease with which the leaders were able to
call out trade after trade on a strike of sympathy proved
more a liability than an asset. Often the choice of trades
to strike bore no particular relation to their strategic
value in the given situation; altogether one gathers the
impression that these great strikes were conducted by
blundering amateurs who possessed more authority than
was good for them or for the cause. It is therefore not
to be wondered at if the compact craft unions led by
specialists scored successes where the heterogeneous mobs
of the Knights of Labor had been doomed from the first.
Clearly then the survival of the craft union was a sur-
vival of the fittest ; and the Federation's attachment to
the principle of craft autonomy was, to say the least, a
product of an evolutionary past, whatever one may hold
with reference to its fitness in our own time.

Whatever reasons moved the trade unions of the skilled
to battle with the Order for their separate and autono-
mous existence were bound sooner or later to induce those
craftsmen who were in the Order to seek a similar
autonomy. From the very beginning the more skilled and
better organized trades in the Knights sought to sepa-
rate from the mixed "district assemblies" and to create
within the framework of the Order "national trade as-

124 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

semblies." * However, the national officers, who looked
upon such a move as a betrayal of the great principle of
the solidarity of all labor, were able to stem the tide
excepting in the case of the window glass blowers, who
were granted their autonomy in 1880.

The obvious superiority of the trade union form of
organization over the mixed organization, as revealed by
events in 1886 and 1887, strengthened the separatist tend-
ency. Just as the struggle between the Knights of
Labor and the trade unions on the outside had been fun-
damentally a struggle between the unskilled and the
skilled portions of the wage-earning class, so the aspira-
tion toward the national trade assembly within the Order
represented the effort of the more or less skilled men for
emancipation from the dominance of the unskilled. But
the Order successfully fought off such attempts until
after the defeat of the mixed district assemblies, or in
other words of the unskilled class, in the struggle with
the employers. With the withdrawal of a very large por-
tion of this class, as shown in 1887,2 the demand for the
national trade assembly revived and there soon began
a veritable rush to organize by trades. The stampede was
strongest in the city of New York where the incompe-
tence of the mixed District Assembly 49 had become pat-
ent. At the General Assembly in 1887 at Minneapolis
all obstacles were removed from forming national trade
assemblies, but this came too late to stem the exodus of
the skilled element from the order into the American
Federation of Labor.

The victory of craft autonomy over the "one big
union" was decisive and complete.

1The "local assemblies" generally followed in practice trade lines,
but the district assemblies were "mixed."
•See above, 100-101.

THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM 125

The strike activities of the Knights were confessedly
a deviation from "First Principles." Yet the First Prin-
ciples with their emphasis on producers' cooperation
were far from forgotten even when the enthusiasm for
strikes was at its highest. Whatever the actual feelings
of the membership as a whole, the leaders neglected no
opportunity to promote cooperation. T. V. Powderly,
the head of the Order since 1878, in his reports to the
annual General Assembly or convention, consistently
urged that practical steps be taken toward cooperation.
In 1881, while the general opinion in the Order was still
undecided, the leaders did not scruple to smuggle into
the constitution a clause which made cooperation com-
pulsory.

Notwithstanding Powderly's exhortations, the Order
was at first slow in taking it up. In 1882 a general co-
operative board was elected to work out a plan of action,
but it never reported, and a new board was chosen in its
place at the Assembly of 1883. In that year, the first
practical step was taken in the purchase by the Order of
a coal mine at Cannelburg, Indiana, with the idea of sell-
ing the coal at reduced prices to the members. Soon
thereafter a thorough change of sentiment with regard
to the whole matter of cooperation took place, contem-
poraneously with the industrial depression and unsuccess-
ful strikes. The rank and file, who had hitherto been
indifferent, now seized upon the idea with avidity. The
enthusiasm ran so high in Lynn, Massachusetts, that it
was found necessary to raise the shares of the Knights
of Labor Cooperative Shoe Company to $100 in
order to prevent a large influx of "unsuitable members."
In 1885 Powderly complained that "many of our
members grow impatient and unreasonable because

126 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

every avenue of the Order does not lead to coopera-
tion."

The impatience for immediate cooperation, which
seized the rank and file in practically every section of the
country, caused an important modification in the official
doctrine of the Order. Originally it had contemplated
centralized control under which it would have taken years
before a considerable portion of the membership could
realize any benefit. This was now dropped and a decen-
tralized plan was adopted. Local organizations and,
more frequently, groups of members with the financial aid
of their local organizations now began to establish shops.
Most of the enterprises were managed by the stockholders,
although, in some cases, the local organization of the
Knights of Labor managed the plant.

Most of the cooperative enterprises were conducted on
a small scale. Incomplete statistics warrant the conclu-
sion that the average amount invested per establishment
was about $10,000. From the data gathered it seems
that cooperation reached its highest point in 1886, al-
though it had not completely spent itself by the end of
1887. The total number of ventures probably reached
two hundred. The largest numbers were in mining, coop-
erage, and shoes. These industries paid the poorest
wages and treated their employes most harshly. A small
amount of capital was required to organize such estab-
lishments.

With the abandonment of centralized cooperation in
1884, the role of the central cooperative board changed
correspondingly. The leading member of the board was
now John Samuel, one of those to whom cooperation
meant nothing short of a religion. The duty of the
board was to educate the members of the Order in the

THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM 127

principles of cooperation; to aid by information and
otherwise prospective and actual cooperators ; in brief,
to coordinate the cooperative movement within the Order.
It issued forms of a constitution and by-laws which, with
a few modifications, could be adopted by any locality. It
also published articles on the dangers and pitfalls in
cooperative ventures, such as granting credit, poor man-
agement, etc., as well as numerous articles on specific
kinds of cooperation. The Knights of Labor label was
granted for the use of cooperative goods and a persistent
agitation was steadily conducted to induce purchasers to
give a preference to cooperative products.

As a scheme of industrial regeneration, cooperation
never materialized. The few successful shops sooner or
later fell into the hands of an "inner group," who "froze
out" the others and set up capitalistic partnerships. The
great majority went on the rocks even before getting
started. The causes of failure were many : Hasty action,
inexperience, lax shop discipline, internal dissensions,
high rates of interest upon the mortgage of the plant, and
finally discriminations instigated by competitors. Rail-
ways were heavy offenders, by delaying side tracks and,
on some pretext or other, refusing to furnish cars or re-
fusing to haul them.

The Union Mining Company of Cannelburg, Indiana,
owned and operated by the Order as its sole experiment
of the centralized kind of cooperation, met this fate.
After expending $20,000 in equipping the mine, purchas-
ing land, laying tracks, cutting and sawing timber on
the land and mining $1000 worth of coal, they were
compelled to lie idle for nine months before the railway
company saw fit to connect their switch with the main
track. When they were ready to ship their product, it

128 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

was learned that their coal could be utilized for the manu-
facture of gas only, and that contracts for supply of such
coal were let in July, that is nine months from the time
of connecting the switch with the main track. In addi-
tion, the company was informed that it must supply itself
with a switch engine to do the switching of the cars from
its mine to the main track, at an additional cost of $4000.
When this was accomplished they had to enter the mar-
ket in competition with a bitter opponent who had been
fighting them since the opening of the mine. Having ex-
hausted their funds and not seeing their way clear to
securing additional funds for the purchase of a loco-
motive and to tide over the nine months ere any contracts
for coal could be entered into, they sold out to their
competitor.

But a cause more fundamental perhaps than all other
causes of the failure of cooperation in the United States
is to be found in the difficulties of successful entrepre-
neurship. In the labor movement in the United States
there has been a failure, generally speaking, to appreci-
ate the significance of management and the importance
which must be imputed to it. Glib talk often commands
an undeserved confidence and misleads the wage earner.
Thus by 1888, three or four years after it had begun, the
cooperative movement had passed the full cycle of life
and succumbed. The failure, as said, was hastened by
external causes and discrimination. But the experiments
had been foredoomed anyway, — through the incompati-
bility of producers' cooperation with trade unionism.
The cooperators, in their eagerness to get a market, fre-
quently undersold the private employer expecting to re-
coup their present losses in future profits. In conse-
quence, the privately employed wage earners had to bear

THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM 129

reductions in their wages. A labor movement which en-
deavors to practice producers* cooperation and trade
unionism at the same time is actually driving in opposite
directions.

CHAPTER 6
STABILIZATION, 1888-1897

The Great Upheaval of 1886 had, as we saw, suddenly
swelled the membership of trade unions ; consequently,
during several years following, notwithstanding the pros-
perity in industry, further growth was bound to pro-
ceed at a slower rate.

The statistics of strikes during the later eighties, like
the figures of membership, show that after the strenuous
years from 1885 to 1887 the labor movement had entered
a more or less quiet stage. Most prominent among the
strikes was the one of 60,000 iron and steel workers in
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the West, which was carried to
a successful conclusion against a strong combination of
employers. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and
Steel Workers stood at the zenith of its power about this
time and was able in 1889, by the mere threat of a strike,
to dictate terms to the Carnegie Steel Company. The
most noted and last great strike of a railway brother-
hood was the one of the locomotive engineers on the
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company. The
strike was begun jointly on February 27, 1888, by the
brotherhoods of locomotive engineers and locomotive fire-
men. The main demands were made by the engineers,
who asked for the abandonment of the system of classi-
fication and for a new wage scale. Two months previ-
ously, the Knights of Labor had declared a miners' strike
against the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company,

130

STABILIZATION, 1888-1897 131

employing 80,000 anthracite miners, and the strike had
been accompanied by a sympathetic strike of engineers and
firemen belonging to the Order. The members of the
brotherhoods had filled their places and, in retaliation,
the former Reading engineers and firemen now took the
places of the Burlington strikers, so that on March 15
the company claimed to have a full contingent of em-
ployes. The brotherhoods ordered a boycott upon the
Burlington cars, which was partly enforced, but they
were finally compelled to submit. The strike was not
officially called off until January 3, 1889. Notwithstand-
ing the defeat of the strikers, the damage to the railway
was enormous, and neither the railways of the country nor
the brotherhoods since that date have permitted a serious
strike of their members to occur.

The lull in the trade union movement was broken by a
new concerted eight-hour movement managed by the Fed-
eration, which culminated in 1890.

Although on the whole the eight-hour movement in
1886 was a failure, it was by no means a disheartening
failure. It was evident that the eight-hour day was a
popular demand, and that an organization desirous of
expansion might well hitch its wagon to this star. Ac-
cordingly, the convention of the American Federation of
Labor in 1888 declared that a general demand should be
made for the eight-hour day on May 1, 1890. The chief
advocates of the resolution were the delegates of the car-
penters, who announced a readiness to lead the way for a
general eight-hour day in 1890.

The Federation at once inaugurated an aggressive
campaign. For the first time in its history it employed
special salaried organizers. Pamphlets were issued and
widely distributed. On every important holiday mass

132 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

meetings were held in the larger cities. On Labor Day
1889, no less than 420 such mass meetings were held
throughout the country. Again the Knights of Labor
came out against the plan.

The next year the plan of campaign was modified.
The idea of a general strike for the eight-hour day in
May 1890, was abandoned in favor of a strike trade by
trade. In March 1890, the carpenters were chosen to
make the demand on May 1 of the same year, to be
followed by the miners at a later date.

The choice of the carpenters was indeed fortunate.
Beginning with 1886, that union had a rapid growth and
was now the largest union affiliated with the Federation.
For several years it had been accumulating funds for the
eight-hour day, and, when the movement was inaugurated
in May 1890, it achieved a large measure of success.
The union officers claimed to have won the eight-hour day
in 137 cities and a nine-hour day in most other places.

However, the selection of the miners to follow on May
1, 1891, was a grave mistake. Less than one-tenth of the
coal miners of the country were then organized. For
years the miners' union had been losing ground, with the
constant decline of coal prices. Some months before May
1, 1891, the United Mine Workers had become involved
in a disastrous strike in the Connelsville coke region, and
the plan for an eight-hour strike was abandoned. In
this manner the eight-hour movement inaugurated by the
convention of the Federation in 1888 came to an end.
Apart from the strike of the carpenters in 1890, it had not
led to any general movement to gain the eight-hour work
day. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of workingmen
had won reduced hours of labor, especially in the building
trades. By 1891 the eight-hour day had been secured

STABILIZATION, 1888-1897 133

for all building trades in Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, In-
dianapolis, and San Francisco. In New York and Brook-
lyn the carpenters, stone-cutters, painters, and plasterers
worked eight hours, while the bricklayers, masons, and
plumbers worked nine. In St. Paul the bricklayers alone
worked nine hours, the remaining trades eight.

In 1892 the labor movement faced for the first time a
really modern manufacturing corporation with its prac-
tically boundless resources of war, namely the Carnegie
Steel Company, in the strike which has become famous
under the name of the Homestead Strike. The Amalga-
mated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, with a
membership of 24,068 in 1891, was probably the strong-
est trade union in 'the entire history of the American
labor movement. Prior to 1889 the relations between
the union and the Carnegie firm had been invariably
friendly. In January 1889, H. C. Frick, who, as owner
of the largest coke manufacturing plant, had acquired
a reputation of a bitter opponent of organized labor,
became chairman of Carnegie Brothers and Company.
In the same year, owing to his assumption of manage-
ment, as the union men believed, the first dispute oc-
curred between them and the company. Although the
agreement was finally renewed for three years on terms
dictated by the Association, the controversy left a dis-
turbing impression upon the minds of the men, since dur-
ing the course of the negotiations Frick had demanded
the dissolution of the union.

Negotiations for the new scale presented to the com-
pany began in February 1892. A few weeks later the
company presented a scale to the men providing for a
reduction and besides demanded that the date of the
termination of the scale be changed from July 1 to

134 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

January 1. A number of conferences were held without
result; and on May 30 the company submitted an ulti-
matum to the effect that, if the scale were not signed by
June 29, they would treat with the men as individuals.
At a final conference which was held on June 23, the
company raised its offer from $22 per ton to $23 as the
minimum base of the scale, and the union lowered its
demand from $25, the rate formerly paid, to $24. But
no agreement could be reached on this point nor on
others and the strike began June 29 upon the definite
issue of the preservation of the union.

Even before the negotiations were broken up, Frick
had arranged with the Pinkerton detective agency for
300 men to serve as guards. These men arrived at a sta-
tion on the Ohio River below Pittsburgh near midnight
of July 5. Here they embarked on barges and were towed
up the river to Pittsburgh and taken up the Monanga-
hela River to Homestead, which they approached about
four o'clock on the morning of July 6. The workmen had
been warned of their coming and, when the boat reached
the landing back of the steel works, nearly the whole town
was there to meet them and to prevent their landing.
Passion ran high. The men armed themselves with guns
,and gave the Pinkertons a pitched battle. When the day
was over, at least half a dozen men on both sides had
been killed and a number were seriously wounded. The
Pinkertons were defeated and driven away and, although
there was no more disorder of any sort, the State militia
appeared in Homestead on July 12 and remained for
several months.

The strike which began in Homestead soon spread to
other mills. The Carnegie mills at 29th and 33d Streets,
Pittsburgh, went on strike. The strike at Homestead

STABILIZATION, 1888-1897 135

was finally declared off on November 20, and most of the
men went back to their old positions as non-union men.
The treasury of the union was depleted, winter was
coming, and it was finally decided to consider the battle
lost.

The defeat meant not only the loss by the union of the
Homestead plant but the elimination of unionism in most
of the mills in the Pittsburgh region. Where the great
Carnegie Company led, the others had to follow. The
power of the union was henceforth broken and the labor
movement learned the lesson that even its strongest or-
ganization was unable to withstand an onslaught by the
modern corporation. The Homestead strike stirred the
labor movement as few other single events. It had its
political reverberation, since it drove home to the workers
that an industry protected by high tariff will not neces-
sarily be a haven to organized labor, notwithstanding that
the union had actively assisted the iron and steel manu-
facturers in securing the high protection granted by the
McKinley tariff bill of 1890. Many of the votes which
would otherwise have gone to the Republican candidate
for President went in 1892 to Grover Cleveland, who ran
on an anti-protective tariff issue. It is not unlikely that
the latter's victory was materially advanced by the disil-
lusionment brought on by the Homestead defeat.

In the summer of 1893 occurred the financial panic.
The panic and the ensuing crisis furnished a conclusive
test of the strength and stability of the American labor
movement. Gompers in his presidential report at the
convention of 1899, following the long depression, said:
"It is noteworthy, that while in every previous industrial
crisis the trade unions were literally mowed down and
swept out of existence, the unions now in existence have

136 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

manifested, not only the power of resistance, but of
stability and permanency," and he assigned as the most
prominent cause the system of high dues and benefits
which had come into vogue in a large number of trade
unions. He said: "Beyond doubt the superficial motive
of continued membership in unions organized upon this
basis was the monetary benefits the members were en-
titled to ; but be that as it may, the results are the same,
that is, membership is maintained, the organization re-
mains intact during dull periods of industry, and is pre-
pared to take advantage of the first sign of an industrial
revival." Gompers may have overstated the power of
resistance of the unions, but their holding power upon the
membership cannot be disputed. The aggregate member-
ship of all unions affiliated with the Federation remained
near the mark of 275,000 throughout the period of de-
pression from 1893 to 1897. At last the labor move-
ment had become stabilized.

The year 1894 was exceptional for labor disturbances.
The number of employes involved reached nearly 750,000,
surpassing even the mark set in 1886. However, in con-
tradistinction to 1886, the movement was defensive. It
also resulted in greater failure. The strike of the coal
miners and the Pullman strike were the most important
ones. The United Mine Workers began their strike in
Ohio on April 21. The membership did not exceed
20,000, but about 125,000 struck. At first the demand
was made that wages should be restored to the level at
which they were in May 1893. But within a month
the union in most regions was struggling to prevent a fur-
ther reduction in wages. By the end of July the strike
was lost.

The Pullman strike marks an era in the American

STABILIZATION, 1888-1897 137

labor movement because it was the only attempt ever
made in America of a revolutionary strike on the Conti-
nental European model. The strikers tried to throw
against the associated railways and indeed against the
entire existing social order the full force of a revolution-
ary labor solidarity embracing the entire American wage-
earning class brought to the point of exasperation by
unemployment, wage reductions, and misery. That in
spite of the remarkable favorable conjuncture the dra-
matic appeal failed to shake the general labor movement
out of its chosen groove is proof positive of the comple-
tion of the stabilization process which had been going
on since the early eighties.

The Pullman strike began May 11, 1894, and grew
out of a demand of certain employes in the shops of the
Pullman Palace Car Company, situated at Pullman,
Illinois, for a restoration of the wages paid during the
previous year. In March 1894, the Pullman employes
had voted to join the American Railway Union. The
American Railway Union was an organization based on
industrial lines, organized in June 1893, by Eugene V.
Debs. Debs, as secretary-treasurer of the Brotherhood
of Locomotive Firemen, had watched the failure of
many a strike by only one trade and resigned this office
to organize all railway workers in one organization. The
American Railway Union was the result. Between June
9 and June 26 the latter held a convention in Chicago.
The Pullman matter was publicly discussed before and
after its committee reported their interviews with the
Pullman Company. On June 21, the delegates under in-
structions from their local unions, feeling confident after
a victory over the Great Northern in April, unanimously
voted that the members should stop handling Pullman

138 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

cars on June 26 unless the Pullman Company would con-
sent to arbitration.

On June 26 the railway strike began. It was a purely
sympathetic strike as no demands were made. The union
found itself pitted against the General Managers' Asso-
ciation, representing twenty-four roads centering or ter-
minating in Chicago, which were bound by contracts with
the Pullman Company. The association had been or-
ganized in 1886, its main business being to determine a
common policy as to traffic and freight rates, but inci-
dentally it dealt also with wages. The strike soon spread
over an enormous territory. Many of the members of
the brotherhoods joined in, although their organizations
were opposed to the strike. The lawless element in Chi-
cago took advantage of the opportunity to rob, burn, and
plunder, so that the scenes of the great railway strike
of 18.77 were now repeated. The damages in losses of
property and business to the country have been estimated
at $80,000,000. On July 7, E. V. Debs, president, and
other principal officers of the American Railway Union
were indicted, arrested, and held under $10,000 bail. On
July 13 they were charged with contempt of the United
States Court in disobeying an injunction which enjoined
them, among other things, from compelling or inducing
by threats railway employes to strike. The strike had
already been weakening for some days. On July 12, at
the request of the American Railway Union, about twen-
ty-five of the executive officers of national and interna-
tional labor unions affiliated with the American Federa-
tion of Labor met in conference in Chicago to discuss
the situation. Debs appeared and urged a general strike
by all labor organizations. But the conference decided
that "it would be unwise and disastrous to the interests

STABILIZATION, 1888-1897 139

of labor to extend the strike any further than it had
already gone," and advised the strikers to return to
work. On July 13, the American Railway Union,
through the Mayor of Chicago, offered the General Man-
agers' Association to declare the strike off, provided the
men should be restored to their former positions without
prejudice, except in cases where they had been convicted
of crime. But the Association refused to deal with the
union. The strike was already virtually beaten by the
combined moral effect of the indictment of the leaders
and of the arrival in Chicago of United States troops,
which President Cleveland sent in spite of the protest
of Governor Altgeld of Illinois.

The labor organizations were taught two important
lessons. First, that nothing can be gained through revo-
lutionary striking, for the government was sufficiently
strong to cope with it; and second, that the employers
had obtained a formidable ally in the courts.1

Defeats in strikes, depression in trade, a rapidly fall-
ing labor market and court prosecutions were powerful
allies of those socialistic and radical leaders inside the
Federation who aspired to convert it from a mere eco-
nomic organization into an economic-political one and
make it embark upon the sea of independent politics.

The convention of 1893 is memorable in that it sub-
mitted to the consideration of affiliated unions a "politi-
cal programme." The preamble to the "programme"
recited that the English trade unions had recently
launched upon independent politics "as auxiliary to their
economic action." The eleven planks of the program de-
manded: compulsory education; the right of popular
initiative in legislation; a legal eight-hour work-day;

1See below, 159-160.

140 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

governmental inspection of mines and workshops; aboli-
tion of the sweating system ; employers' liability laws ; abo-
lition of the contract system upon public work ; municipal
ownership of electric light, gas, street railway, and water
systems ; the nationalization of telegraphs, telephones,
railroads, and mines; "the collective ownership by the
people of all means of production and distribution"; and
the referendum upon all legislation.

Immediately after the convention of 1893 affiliated
unions began to give their endorsement to the political
program. Not until comparatively late did any oppo-
sition make itself manifest. Then it took the form of a
demand by such conservative leaders as Gompers, Mc-
Guire, and Strasser, that plank 10, with its pledge in
favor of "the collective ownership by the people of all
means of production and distribution," be stricken out.
Notwithstanding this, the majority of national trade
unions endorsed the program.

During 1894 the trade unions were active participants
in politics. In November, 1894, the Federationist gave
a list of more than 300 union members candidates for
some elective office. Only a half dozen of these, however,
were elected. It was mainly to these local failures that
Gompers pointed in his presidential address at the con-
vention of 1894 as an argument against the adoption
of the political program by the Federation. His atti-
tude clearly foreshadowed the destiny of the program at
the convention. The first attack was made upon the pre-
amble, on the ground that the statement therein that the
English trade unions had declared for independent po-
litical action was false. By a vote of 1345 to 861 the
convention struck out the preamble. Upon motion of
the typographical union, a substitute was adopted call-

STABILIZATION, 1888-1897 141

ing for the "abolition of the monopoly system of land
holding and the substitution therefor of a title of occu-
pancy and use only." Some of the delegates seem to have
interpreted this substitute as a declaration for the single
tax; but the majority of those who voted in its favor
probably acted upon the principle "anything to beat
socialism." Later the entire program was voted down.
That sealed the fate of the move for an independent labor
party.

The American Federation of Labor was almost drawn
into the whirlpool of partisan politics during the Presi-
dential campaign of 1896. Three successive conventions
had declared in favor of the free coinage of silver; and
now the Democratic party had come out for free coinage.
In this situation very many prominent trade union lead-
ers declared publicly for Bryan. President Gompers,
however, issued a warning to all affiliated unions to keep
out of partisan politics. Notwithstanding this Secre-
tary McGraith, at the next convention of the Federation,
charged President Gompers with acting in collusion with
the Democratic headquarters throughout the campaign
in aid of Bryan's candidacy. After a lengthy secret ses-
sion the convention approved the conduct of Gompers.
Free silver continued to be endorsed annually down to
the convention of 1898, when the return of industrial
prosperity and rising prices put an end to it as a demand
advocated by labor.

The depressed nineties demonstrated conclusively that
a new era had arrived. No longer was the labor move-
ment a mere plaything of the alternating waves of pros-
perity and depression. Formerly, as we saw, it had
centered on economic or trade-union action during pros-
perity only to change abruptly to "panaceas" and poli-

142 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

tics with the descent of depression. Now the movement,
notwithstanding possible changes in membership, and
persistent political leanings in some portions of it, as a
whole for the first time became stable in purpose and ac-
tion. Trade unionism has won over politics.

This victory was synchronous with the first successful
working out of a national trade agreement and the in-
stitutionalization of trade unionism in a leading indus-
try, namely stove molding. While one of the earliest
stable trade agreements in a conspicuous trade covering
a local field was a bricklayers' agreement in Chicago in
1887, the era of trade agreements really dates from the
national system established in the stove foundry indus-
try in 1891. It is true also that the iron and steel
workers had worked under a national trade agreement
since 1866. However, that trade was too exceptionally
strong to be typical.

The stove industry had early reached a high degree
of development and organization. There had existed
since 1872 the National Association of Stove Manufac-
turers, an organization dealing with prices and embracing
in its membership the largest stove manufacturers of
the country. The stove foundrymen, therefore, unlike
the manufacturers in practically all other industries at
that time, controlled in a large measure their own market.
Furthermore, the product had been completely stand-
ardized and reduced to a piecework basis, and machinery
had not taken the place of the molders' skill. It con-
sequently was no mere accident that the stove industry
was the first to develop a system of permanent industrial
peace. But, on the other hand, this was not automati-
cally established as soon as the favorable external condi-
tions were provided. In reality, only after years of

STABILIZATION, 1888-1897 143

struggle, of strikes and lockouts, and after the two sides
had fought each other "to a standstill," was the system
finally installed.

The eighties abounded in stove molders* strikes, and
in 1886 the national union began to render effective aid.
The Stove Founders* National Defense Association was
formed in 1886 as an employers' association of stove
manufacturers. The Defense Association aimed at a na-
tional labor policy; it was organized for "resistance
against any unjust demands of their workmen, and such
other purposes as may from time to time prove or appear
to be necessary for the benefit of the members thereof as
employers of labor." Thus, after 1886, the alignment
was made national on both sides. The great battle was
fought the next year.

March 8, 1887, the employes of the Bridge and Beach
Manufacturing Company in St. Louis struck for an ad-
vance in wages and the struggle at once became one be-
tween the International Union and the National Defense
Association. The St. Louis company sent its patterns
to foundries in other districts, but the union successfully
prevented their use. This occasioned a series of strikes
in the West and of lockouts in the East, affecting alto-
gether about 5000 molders. It continued thus until
June, when the St. Louis patterns were recalled, the De-
fense Association having provided the company with a
sufficient number of strike-breakers. Each side was in a
position to claim the victory for itself ; so evenly matched
were the opposing forces.

During the next four years disputes in Association
plants were rare. In August 1890, a strike took place
in Pittsburgh and, for the first time in the history of the
industry, it was settled by a written trade agreement with

144 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

the local union. This supported the idea of a national
trade agreement between the two organizations. Since
the dispute of 1887, negotiations with this object were
from time to time conducted, the Defense Association in-
variably taking the initiative. Finally, the national con-
vention of the union in 1890 appointed a committee to
meet a like committee of the Defense Association. The
conference took place March 25, 1891, and worked out
a complete plan of organization for the stove molding
industry. Every year two committees of three members
each, chosen respectively by the union and the association,
were to meet in conference and to draw up general laws
for the year. In case of a dispute arising in a locality,
if the parties immediately concerned were unable to ar-
rive at common terms, the chief executives of both or-
ganizations, the president of the union and the president
of the association, were to step in and try to effect an
adjustment. If, however, they, too, failed, a conference
committee composed of an equal number of members from
each side was to be called in and its findings were to be
final. Meanwhile the parties were enjoined from engag-
ing in hostilities while the matter at dispute was being
dealt with by the duly appointed authorities. Each
organization obligated itself to exercise "police author-
ity" over its constituents, enforcing obedience to the
agreement. The endorsement of the plan by both or-
ganizations was practically unanimous, and has con-
tinued in operation without interruption for thirty years
until the present day.

Since the end of the nineties the trade agreement has
become one of the most generally accepted principles and
aspirations of the American labor movement. However,
it is not to be understood that by accepting the principle

STABILIZATION, 1888-1897 145

of the trade agreement the labor movement has committed
itself to unlimited arbitration of industrial disputes.
The basic idea of the trade agreement is thajfc of collective
bargaining rather than arbitration. The two terms are
not always distinguished, but the essential difference is
that in the trade agreement proper no outside party in-
tervenes to settle the dispute and make an award. TJie
agreement is made by direct negptiatipn between the^two
organized groups and the sanction which each holds over
the head of the other is the strike or lockout. If no agree-
ment can be reached, the labor organization as well as the
employers' association, insists on its right to refuse arbi-
tration, whether it be "voluntary" or so-called "com-
pulsory."

The clarification of the conception of the trade agree-
ment was perhaps the main achievement of the nineties.
Without the trade agreement the labor movement could
hardly come to eschew "panaceas" and to reconstitute
itself upon the basis of opportunism. The coming in of
the trade agreement, whether national, sectional, or local,
was also the chief factor in stabilizing the movement
against industrial depressions.

CHAPTER 7
TRADE UNIONISM AND THE COURTS

While it was in the nineties that trade unionists first
tasted the sweets of institutionalization in industry
through "recognition" by employers, it was also during
the later eighties and during the nineties that they ex-
perienced a revival of suspicion and hostility on the part
of the courts and a renewal of legal restraints upon their
activities, which were all the more discouraging since for
a generation or more they had practically enjoyed non-
interference from that quarter. It was at this period
that the main legal weapons against trade unionism were
forged and brought to a fine point in practical applica-
tion. The'history of the courts' attitude to trade union-
ism may therefore best be treated from the standpoint of
the nineties.

•The subject of court interference was not altogether
new in the eighties. We took occasion to point out the
effect of court interference in labor disputes in the first
and second decades of the nineteenth century and again
in the thirties. Mention was made also of the court's
decision in the Theiss boycott case in New York in 1886,
which proved a prime moving factor in launching the
famous Henry George campaign for Mayor. And we
gave due note to the role of court injunctions in the Debs
strike of 1894 and in other strikes. Our present interest
is, however, more in the court doctrines than in their
effects : more concerned with the development of the legal

146

TRADE UNIONISM AND THE COURTS 147

thought underlying the policies of the courts than with
the reactions of the labor movement to the policies them-
selves.

The earliest case on record, namely the Philadelphia
shoemakers* strike case in 1806,1 charged two offences;
one was a combination to raise wages, the other a com-
bination to injure others; both offences were declared by
the judge to be forbidden by the common law. To the
public at large the prosecution seemed to rest solely upon
the charge that the journeymen combined to raise wages.
The defense took advantage of this and tried to make
use of it for its own purposes. The condemnation of the
journeymen on this ground gave rise to a vehement pro-
test on the part of the journeymen themselves and their
friends. It was pointed out that the journeymen were
convicted for acts which are considered lawful when done
by masters or merchants. Therefore when the next con-
spiracy case in New York in 1809 was decided, the court's
charge to the jury was very different. Nothing was said
about the illegality of the combinations to raise wages;
on the contrary, the jury was instructed that this was not
the question at issue. The issue was stated to be whether
the defendants had combined to secure an increase in their
wages by unlawful means. To the question what means
were unlawful, in this case the answer was given in gen-
eral terms, namely that "coercive and arbitrary" means
are unlawful. The fines imposed upon the defendants were
only nominal.

A third notable case of the group, namely the Pitts-
burgh case in 1815, grew out of a strike for higher wages,
as did the preceding cases. The charges were the same
as in those and the judge took the identical view that was
1 See above, 6.

148 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

taken by the court in the New York case. However, he
explained more fully the meaning of "coercive and ar-
bitrary" action. "Where diverse persons," he said, "con-
federate together by direct means to impoverish or
prejudice a third person, or to do acts prejudicial to
the community," they are engaged in an unlawful con-
spiracy. Concretely, it is unlawful to "conspire to com-
pel an employer to hire a certain description of persons,"
or to "conspire to prevent a man from freely exercising
his trade in a particular place," or to "conspire to com-
pel men to become members of a particular society, or to
contribute toward it," or when persons "conspire to com-
pel men to work at certain prices." Thus it was the
effort of the shoemakers* society to secure a closed shop
which fell chiefly under the condemnation of the court.

The counsel for the defense argued in this case that
whatever is lawful for one individual is lawful also for
a combination of individuals. The court, however, re-
jected the arguments on the ground that there was a basic
difference between an individual doing a thing and a com-
bination of individuals doing the same thing. The doc-
trine of conspiracy was thus given a clear and unequivo-
cal definition.

Another noteworthy feature of the Pittsburgh case
was the emphasis given to the idea that the defendants'
conduct was harmful to the public. The judge con-
demned the defendants because they tended "to create a
monopoly or to restrain the entire freedom of the trade."
What a municipality is not allowed to do, he argued, a
private association of individuals must not be allowed
to do.

Of the group of cases which grew out of the revival
of trade union activity in the twenties, the first, a case

TRADE UNIONISM AND THE COURTS 149

against Philadelphia master shoemakers, was decided in
1821, and the judge held that it was lawful for the mas-
ters, who had recently been forced by employes to a wage
increase, to combine in order to restore wages to their
"natural level." But he also held that had the employers
combined to depress wages of journeymen below the level
fixed by free competition, it would have been criminal.

Another Pennsylvania case resulted from a strike by
Philadelphia tailors in 1827 to secure the reinstatement
of six discharged members. As in previous cases the
court rejected the plea that a combination to raise wages
was illegal, and directed the attention of the jury to the
question of intimidation and coercion, especially as it
affected third parties. The defendants were found guilty.

In a third, a New York hatters' case of 1823, the
charge of combining to raise wages was entirely absent
from the indictment. The issue turned squarely on the
question of conspiring to injure others by coercion and
intimidation. The hatters were adjudged guilty of com-
bining to deprive a non-union workman of his livelihood.

The revival of trade unionism in the middle of the
thirties brought in, as we saw, another crop of court
cases.

In 1829 New York State had made "conspiracy to com-
mit any act injurious to public morals or to trade or
commerce" a statutory offence, thus reenforcing the
existing common law. In 1835 the shoemakers of Geneva
struck to enforce the closed shop against a workman
who persisted in working below the union rate. The in-
dictment went no further than charging this offence.
The journeymen were convicted in a lower court and
appealed to the Supreme Court of the State. Chief Jus-
tice Savage, in his decision condemning the journeymen,

150 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

broadened the charge to include a conspiracy to raise
wages and condemned both as "injurious to trade or
commerce'* and thus expressly covered by statute.

The far-reaching effects of this decision came clearly
to light in a tailor's case the next year. The journey-
men were charged with practising intimidation and
violence, while picketing their employers'* shops during a
prolonged strike against a reduction in wages. Judge
Edwards, the trial judge, in his charge to the jury,
stigmatized the tailors' society as an illegal combination,
largely basing himself upon Judge Savage's decision.
The jury handed in a verdict of guilty, but recommended
mercy. The judge fined the president of the society $150,
one journeyman $100, and the others $50 each. The fines
were immediately paid with the aid of a collection taken
up in court.

The decisions produced a violent reaction among the
workingmen. They held a mass-meeting in City Hall
Park, with an estimated attendance of 27,000, burned
Judge Savage and Judge Edwards in effigy, and resolved
to call a state convention to form a workingmen's party.

So loud, indeed, was the cry that justice had been
thwarted that juries were doubtless influenced by it. Two
cases came up soon after the tailors' case, the Hudson,
New York, shoemakers' in»June and the Philadelphia plas-
terers' in July 1836. In both the juries found a verdict
of not guilty. Of all journeymen indicted during this
period the. Hudson shoemakers had been the most auda-
cious ones in enforcing the closed shop. They not only
refused to work for employers who hired non-society men,
but fined them as well ; yet they were acquitted.

Finally six years later, in 1842, long after the offend-
ing trade societies had gone out of existence under the

TRADE UNIONISM AND THE COURTS 151

stress of unemployment and depression, came the famous
decision in the Massachusetts case of Commonwealth v.
Hunt.

This was a shoemakers* case and arose out of a strike.
The decision in the lower court was adverse to the de-
fendants. However, it was reversed by the Supreme
Judicial Court of Massachusetts. The decision, written
by Chief Justice Shaw, is notable in that it holds trade
unions to be legal organizations. In the earlier cases it
was never in so many words held that trade unions were
unlawful, but in all of them there were suggestions to this
effect. Now it was recognized that trade unions are
per se lawful organizations and, though men may band
themselves together to effect a criminal object under the
disguise of a trade union, such a purpose is not to be
assumed without positive evidence. On the contrary, the
court said that "when an association is formed for pur-
poses actually innocent, and afterwards its powers are
abused by those who have the control and management
of it to purposes of oppression and injustice, it will be
criminal in those who misuse it, or give consent thereto,
but not in other members of the association." This doc-
trine that workingmen may lawfully organize trade
unions has since Commonwealth v. Hunt been adopted
in nearly every case.

The other doctrine which Justice Shaw advanced in this
case has been less generally accepted. It was that the
members of a union may procure the discharge of non-
members through strikes for this purpose against their
employers. This is the essence of the question of the
closed shop; and Commonwealth v. Hunt goes the full
length of regarding strikes for the closed shop as legal.
Justice Shaw said that there is nothing unlawful about

152 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

such strikes, if they are conducted in a peaceable manner.
This was much in advance of the position which is taken
by many courts upon this question even at the present
day.

After Commonwealth v. Hunt came a forty years' lull
in the courts' application of the doctrine of conspiracy
to trade unions. In fact so secure did trade unionists
feel from court attacks that in the seventies and early
eighties their leaders advocated the legal incorporation
of trade unions. The desire expressed for incorporation
is of extreme interest compared with the opposite attitude
of the present day. The motive behind it then was more
than the usual one of securing protection for trade union
funds against embezzlement by officers. A full enumera-
tion of other motives can be obtained from the testimony
of the labor leaders before the Senate Committee on Edu-
cation and Labor in 1883. McGuire, the national secre-
tary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners,
argued before the committee for a national incorporation
law mainly for the reason that such a law passed by
Congress would remove trade unions from the operation
of the conspiracy laws that still existed though in a
dormant state on the statute books of a number of Slates,
notably New York and Pennsylvania. He pleaded that
"if it (Congress) had not the power, it shall assume the
power; and, if necessary, amend the constitution to do
it." Adolph Strasser of the cigar makers raised the
point of protection for union funds and gave as a second
reason that it "will give our organization more stability,
and in that manner we shall be able to avoid strikes by
perhaps settling with our employers, when otherwise we
should be unable to do so, because when our employers
know that we are to be legally recognized that will exer-

TRADE UNIONISM AND THE COURTS 153

cise such moral force upon them that they cannot avoid
recognizing us themselves." W. H. Foster, the secretary
of the Legislative Committee of the Federation of Or-
ganized Trades and Labor Unions, stated that in Ohio
the law provided for incorporation at a slight cost, but
he wanted a national law to "legalize arbitration," by
which he meant that "when a question of dispute arose
between the employers and the employed, instead of hav-
ing it as now, when the one often refuses to even acknowl-
edge or discuss the question with the other, if they were
required to submit the question to arbitration, or to meet
on the same level before an impartial tribunal, there is
no doubt but what the result would be more in our favor
than it is now, when very often public opinion cannot hear
our cause." He, however, did not desire to have com-
pulsory arbitration, but merely compulsory dealing with
the union, or compulsory investigation by an impartial
body, both parties to remain free to accept the award,
provided, however, "that once they do agree the agree-
ment shall remain in force for a fixed period." Like
Foster, John Jarrett, the President of the Amalgamated
Association of Iron and Steel Workers, argued for an
incorporation law before the committee solely for its
effect upon conciliation and arbitration. He, too, was
opposed to compulsory arbitration, but he showed that
he had thought out the point less clearly than Foster.

The young and struggling trade unions of the early
eighties saw only the good side of incorporation without
its pitfalls; their subsequent experience with courts con-
verted them from exponents into ardent opponents of in-
corporation and of what Foster termed "legalized ar-
bitration."

During the eighties there was much legislation ap-

154 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

plicable to labor disputes. The first laws against boy-
cotting and blacklisting and the first laws which pro-
hibited discrimination against members who belonged to
a union were passed during this decade. At this time
also were passed the first laws to promote voluntary ar-
bitration and most of the laws which allowed unions to
incorporate. Only in New York and Maryland were the
conspiracy laws repealed. Four States enacted such
laws and many States passed laws against intimidation.
Statutes, however, played at that time, as they do now,
but a secondary role. The only statute which proved of
much importance was the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
When Congress passed this act in 1890, few people
thought it had application to labor unions. In 1893-
1894, as we shall see, however, this act was successfully
invoked in several labor controversies, notably in the
Debs case.

The bitterness of the industrial struggle during the
eighties made it inevitable that the labor movement should
acquire an extensive police and court record. It was
during that decade that charges like "inciting to riot,"
"obstructing the streets," "intimidation," and "trespass"
were first extensively used in connection with labor dis-
putes. Convictions were frequent and penalties often
severe. What attitude the courts at that time took
toward labor violence was shown most strikingly, even if
in too extreme a form to be entirely typical, in the case of
the Chicago anarchists.1

But the significance of the eighties in the development
of relations of the courts to organized labor came not
from these cases which were, after all, nothing but ordi-
nary police cases magnified to an unusual degree by the
1See above, 91-93.

TRADE UNIONISM AND THE COURTS 155

intensity of the industrial struggle and by the excited
state of public opinion, but in the new lease of life to the
doctrine of conspiracy as affecting labor disputes. Dur-
ing the eighties and nineties there seemed to have been
more conspiracy cases than during all the rest of the cen-
tury. It was especially in 1886 and 1887 that organized
labor found court interference a factor. At this time, as
we saw, there was also passed voluminous state legislation
strengthening the application of the common law doctrine
of conspiracy to labor disputes. The conviction of
the New York boy cotters in 1886 and many similar
convictions, though less widely known, of partici-
pants in strikes and boycotts were obtained upon
this ground.

Where the eighties witnessed a revolution was in a
totally new use made of the doctrine of conspiracy by the
courts when they began to issue injunctions in labor cases.
Injunctions were an old remedy, but not until the eighties
did they figure in the struggles between labor and capital.
In England an injunction was issued in a labor dispute
as early as 1868 ; x but this case was not noticed in the
United States and had nothing whatever to do with the
use of injunctions in this country. When and where the
first labor injunction was issued in the United States is
not known. An injunction was applied for in a New
York case as early as 1880 but was denied.2 An injunc-
tion was granted in Iowa in 1884, but not until the
Southwest railway strike in 1886 were injunctions used
extensively. By 1890 the public had yet heard little of
injunctions in connection with labor disputes, but such
use was already fortified by numerous precedents.

1 Springhead Spinning Co. v. Riley, L. R. 6 E. 551 (1868).
'Johnson Harvester Co. v. Meinhardt, 60 How. Pr. 171.

156 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

The first injunctions that attained wide publicity were
those issued by Federal courts during the strike of engi-
neers against the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Rail-
road * in 1888 and during the railway strikes of the early
nineties. Justification for these injunctions was found
in the provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act and the
Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Often the State courts used
these Federal cases as precedents, in disregard of the fact
that there the issuance of injunctions was based upon
special statutes. In other cases the more logical course
was followed of justifying the issuance of injunctions
upon grounds of equity. But most of the acts which the
courts enjoined strikers from doing were already pro-
hibited by the criminal laws. Hence organized labor
objected that these injunctions violated the old principle
that equity will not interfere to prevent crime. No such
difficulties arose when the issuance of injunctions was
justified as a measure for the protection of property. In
the Debs case,2 when the Supreme Court of the United
States passed upon the issuance of injunctions in labor
disputes, it had recourse to this theory.

But the theory of protection to property also pre-
sented some difficulties. The problem was to establish
the principle of irreparable injury to the complainant's
property. This was a simple matter when the strikers
were guilty of trespass, arson, or sabotage. Then they
damaged the complainant's physical property and, since
they were usually men against whom judgments are
worthless, any injury they might do was irreparable.
But these were exceptional cases. Usually injunctions

1 Chicago, Burlington, etc., R. R. Co. v. Union Pacific R. R. Co.,
U. S. Dist. Ct., D. Neb. (1888).
JIn re Debs, 158 U. S. 564 (1895).

TRADE UNIONISM AND THE COURTS 157

were sought to prevent not violence, but strikes, picket-
ing, or boycotting. What is threatened by strikes and
picketing is not the employer's physical property, but the
relations he has established as an employer of labor,
summed up in his expectancy of retaining the services of
old employes and of obtaining new ones. Boycotting,
obviously, has no connection with acts of violence against
physical property, but is designed merely to undermine
the profitable relations which the employer had developed
with his customers. These expectancies are advantages
enjoyed by established businesses over new competitors
and are usually transferable and have market value. For
these reasons they are now recognized as property in the
law of good-will and unfair competition for customers,
having been first formulated about the middle of the
nineteenth century.

The first case which recognized these expectancies of
a labor market was Walker v. Cronin,1 decided by the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1871. It held
that the plaintiff was entitled to recover damages from
the defendants, certain union officials, because they had in-
duced his employes, who were free to quit at will, to leave
his employ and had also been instrumental in preventing
him from getting new employes. But as yet these ex-
pectancies were not considered property in the full sense
of the word. A transitional case is that of Brace Bros.
v. Evans in 1888.2 In that case an injunction against
a boycott was justified on the ground that the value of
the complainant's physical property was being destroyed
when the market was cut off. Here the expectancies
based upon relations which customers and employes were

'107 Mass. 555 (1871).
•5 Pa. Co. Ct. 163 (1888).

158 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

thought of as giving value to the physical property, but
they were not yet recognized as a distinct asset which in
itself justifies the issuance of injunctions.

This next step was taken in the Barr 1 case in New
Jersey in 1893. Since then there have been frequent
statements in labor injunction cases to the effect that
both the expectancies based upon the merchant-function
and the expectancies based upon the employer-function
are property.

But the recognition of "probable expectancies" as
property was not in itself sufficient to complete the chain
of reasoning that justifies injunctions in labor disputes.
It is well established that no recovery can be had for
losses due to the exercise by others of that which they
have a lawful right to do. Hence the employers were
obliged to charge that the strikes and boycotts were
undertaken in pursuance of an unlawful conspiracy.
Thus the old conspiracy doctrine was combined with
the new theory, and "malicious" interference with "prob-
able expectancies" was held unlawful. Earlier conspiracy
had been thought of as a criminal offence, now it was
primarily a civil wrong. The emphasis had been upon
the danger to the public, now it was the destruction of
the employer's business. Occasionally the court went so
far as to say that all interference with the business of
employers is unlawful. The better view developed was
that interference is prima facie unlawful but may be jus-
tified. But even this view placed the burden of proof
upon the workingmen. It actually meant that the court
opened for itself the way for holding the conduct of the
workingmen to be lawful only when it sympathized with
their demands.

v. Trades' Council, 53 N. J. E. 101 (1894).

TRADE UNIONISM AND THE COURTS 159

During the eighties, despite the far-reaching develop-
ment of legal theories on labor disputes, the issuance of
injunctions was merely sporadic, but a veritable crop
came up during 1893-1894. Only the best-known injunc-
tions can be here noted. The injunctions issued in the
course of the Southwest railway strike in 1886 and the
Burlington strike in 1888 have already received mention.
An injunction was also issued by a Federal court during
a miners' strike at Creur d'Alene, Idaho, in 1892.1 A
famous injunction was the one of Judges Taft and Rickes
in 1893, which directed the engineers, who were employed
by connecting railways, to handle the cars of the Ann
Arbor and Michigan railway, whose engineers were on
strike.2 This order elicited much criticism because it
came close to requiring men to work against their will.
This was followed by the injunction of Judge Jenkins in
the Northern Pacific case, which directly prohibited the
quitting of work.3 From this injunction the defendants
took an appeal, with the result that in Arthur v. Oakes 4
it was once for all established that the quitting of work
may not be enjoined.

During the Pullman strike numerous injunctions, most
sweeping in character, were issued by the Federal courts
upon the initiative of the Department of Justice. Under
the injunction which was issued in Chicago arose the
famous contempt case against Eugene V. Debs,5 which
was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States.
The decision of the court in this case is notable, because
it covered the main points of doubt above mentioned and

»Cceur d'Alene Mining Co. ». Miners' Union, 51 Fed. 260 (1892).

1 Toledo, etc. Co. v. Penn. Co., 54 Fed. 730 (1893).

•Farmers' Loan and Trust Co. v. N. P. R. Co., 60 Fed. 803 (1895).

•64 Fed. 310 (1894).

•In re Debs, 158 U. S. 564 (1894).

160 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

placed the use of injunctions in labor disputes upon a
firm legal basis.

Another famous decision of the Supreme Court growing
out of the railway strikes of the early nineties was in the
Lennon case 1 in 1897. Therein the court held that all
persons who have actual notice of the issuance of an
injunction are bound to obey its terms, whether they
were mentioned by name or not; in other words, the
courts had evolved the "blanket injunction."

At the end of the nineties, the labor movement, en-
riched on the one side by the lessons of the past and by
the possession of a concrete goal in the trade agreement,
but pressed on the other side by a new form of legal
attack and by the growing consolidation of industry,
started upon a career of new power but faced at the same
time new difficulties.
* In re Lennon, 166 U. S. 548 (1897).

PART II
THE LARGER CAREER OF UNIONISM

CHAPTER 8

PARTIAL RECOGNITION AND NEW
DIFFICULTIES, 1898-1914

When, in 1898, industrial prosperity returned, there
came with it a rapid expansion of labor organization.
At no time in its history, prior to the World War, not
excepting the Great Upheaval in the eighties, did labor
organizations make such important gains as during the
following five years. True, in none of these years did
the labor movement add over half a million members as
in the memorable year of 1886 ; nevertheless, from the
standpoint of permanence, the upheaval during the
eighties can scarcely be classed with the one which began
in the late nineties.

During 1898 the membership of the American Federa-
tion of Labor remained practically stationary, but dur-
ing 1899 it increased by about 70,000 (to about 350,-
000); in 1900, it increased by 200,000; in 1901, by
240,000; in 1902, by 237,000; in 1903, by 441,000; in
1904, by 210,000, bringing the total to 1,676,000. In
1905 a backward tide set in; and the membership de-
creased by nearly 200,000 during that year. It remained
practically stationary until 1910, when the upward
movement was resumed, finally bringing the membership
to near the two million mark, to 1,996,000, in 1913. If we
include organizations unaffiliated with the Federation,

163

164 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

among them the bricklayers 1 and the four railway
brotherhoods, with about 700,000 members, the union
membership for 1913 will be brought near a total of
2,700,000.

A better index of progress is the proportion of organ-
ized workers to organizable workers. Two such estimates
have been made. Professor George E. Barnett figures
the organizable workers in 1900 at 21,837,000; in 1910
at 30,267,000. On this basis wage earners were 3.5 per
cent, organized in 1900 and 7 per cent, in 1910.2 Leo
Wolman submits more detailed figures for 1910. Ex-
cluding employers, the salaried group, agricultural and
clerical workers, persons engaged in personal or domestic
service, and those below twenty years of age (unorgan-
izable workers), the organizable total was 11,490,944.
With an estimated trade union strength of 2,116,317 for
1910 the percentage of the organized was 18. 4. 3 Exclud-
ing only employers and salaried persons, his percentage
was 7.7, which compares closely with Professor Barnett's.

Of greater significance are Wolman's figures for or-
ganization by industries. These computations show that
in 1910 the breweries had 88.8 per cent, organized, print-
ing and book binding 34.3 per cent., mining 30.5 per
cent., transportation 17.3 per cent., clothing 16.9 per
cent., building trades 16.2 per cent., iron and steel 9.9
per cent., metal 4.7 per cent., and textile 3.7 per cent.4
By separate occupations, railway conductors, brakemen,
and locomotive engineers were from 50-100 per cent.

* The bricklayers became affiliated in 1917.

'"The Growth of Labor Organizations in the United States, 1897-
1914," in Quarterly Journal of Economics, Aug., 1916, p. 780.

*"The Extent of Trade Unionism," in Annals of American Academy
of Political Science, Vol. 69, p. 118.

4 Ibid.

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 165

organized; printers, locomotive firemen, molders and
plasterers, from 30-50 per cent.; bakers, carpenters,
plumbers, from 15-30 per cent, organized.1

Accompanying the numerical growth of labor organ-
izations was an extension of organization into heretofore
untouched trades as well as a branching out into new
geographical regions, the South and the West. On the
whole, however, though the Federation was not unmind-
ful of the unskilled, still, during the fifteen years after
1898 it brought into its fold principally the upper strata
of semi-skilled labor. Down to the "boom" period
brought on by the World War, the Federation did not
comprise to any great extent either the totally unskilled,
or the partially skilled foreign-speaking workmen, with
the exception of the miners and the clothing workers.
In other words, those below the level of the skilled trades,
which did gain admittance, were principally the same
elements which had asserted their claim to organization
during the stormy period of the Knights of Labor.2 The
new accretions to the American wage-earning class since
the eighties, the East and South Europeans, on the one
hand, and the ever-growing contingent of "floaters" of
native and North and West European stock, on the other
hand, were still largely outside the organization.

The years of prosperity brought an intensified activity
of the trade unions on a scale hitherto unknown. Wages
were raised and hours reduced all along the line. The
new strength of the trade unions received a brilliant test

1 "The Extent of Trade Unionism," in Annals of American Academy
of Political Science, Vol. 69, p. 118.

"The "federal labor unions" (mixed unions) and the directly
affiliated local trade unions (in trades in which a national union does
not yet exist) are forms of organization which the Federation de-
signed for bringing in the more miscellaneous classes of labor. The
membership in these has seldom reached over 100,000.

166 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

during the hard times following the financial panic of
October 1907, when they successfully fought wage re-
ductions. As good a test is found in the conquest of the
shorter day. By 1900 the eight-hour day was the rule in
the building trades, in granite cutting and in bituminous
coal mining. The most spectacular and costly eight-hour
fight was waged by the printers. In the later eighties
and early nineties, the Typographical Union had en-
deavored to establish a nine-hour day in the printing
offices. This was given a setback by the introduction of
the linotype machine during the period of depression,
1893-1897. In spite of this obstacle, however, the
Typographical Union held its ground. Adopting the
policy that only journeymen printers must operate the
linotype machines, the union was able to meet the situa-
tion. And, furthermore, in 1898, through agreement
with the United Typothetas of America, the national
association of employers in book and job printing, the
union was able to gain the nine-hour day in substantially
all book and job offices. In 1903 the union demanded
the eight-hour day in all printing offices to become effec-
tive January 1, 1906. To gain an advantage over the
union, the United Typothetse, late in the summer of 1905,
locked out all its union men. This at once precipitated
a strike for the eight -hour day. The American Federa-
tion of Labor levied a special assessment on all its mem-
bers in aid of the strikers. By 1907 the Typographical
Union won its demand all along the line, although at a
tremendous cost of money running into several million
dollars, and in 1909 the United Typothetae formally
conceded the eight-hour day.

Another proof of trade union progress is found in the
spread of trade agreements. The idea of a joint partner-

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 167

ship of organized labor and organized capital in the
management of industry, which, ever since the fifties, had
been struggling for acceptance, finally showed definite
signs of coming to be materialized.

(1) The Miners

In no other industry has a union's struggle for "rec-
ognition" offered a richer and more instructive picture
of the birth of the new order with its difficulties as well
as its promises than in coal mining. Faced in the an-
thracite field l by a small and well knitted group of em-
ployers, generally considered a "trust," and by a no
less difficult situation in bituminous mining due to cut-
throat competition among the mine operators, the United
Mine Workers have succeeded in a space of fifteen years
in unionizing the one as well as the other; while at the
same time successfully and progressively solving the
gigantic internal problem of welding a polyglot mass of
workers into a well disciplined and obedient army.

The miners' union attained its first successes in the
so-called central bituminous competitive field, including
Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana,
Michigan, and Illinois. In this field a beginning had been
made in 1886 when the coal operators and the union en-
tered into a collective agreement. However, its scope
was practically confined to Ohio and even that limited
agreement went under in 1890. 2 With the breakdown of

1 A small but immensely rich area in Eastern Pennsylvania where
the only anthracite coal deposits in the United States are found.

"At a conference at Columbus, Ohio, in January, 1886, coal oper-
ators from Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois met
the organized miners and drew up an agreement covering the wages
which were to prevail throughout the central competitive field from
May 1, 1886, to April 30, 1887. The scale established would seem
to have been dictated by the wish to give the markets of the central
competitive field to the Ohio operators. Ohio was favored in the
scale established by this first Interstate conference probably because

168 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

this agreement, the membership dwindled so that by the
time of a general strike in 1894, the total paid-up mem-
bership was barely 13,000. This strike was undertaken
to restore the wage-scale of 1893, but during the ensuing
years of depression wages were cut still further.1

The turn came as suddenly as it was spectacular. In
1897, with a membership which had dropped to 10,000
and of which 7000 were in Ohio and with an empty treas-
ury, the United Mine Workers called a general strike
trusting to a rising market and to an awakenend spirit
of solidarity in the majority of the unorganized after
four years of unemployment and distress. In fact the
leaders had not miscalculated. One hundred thousand
or more coal miners obeyed the order to go on a strike.
In Illinois the union had but a handful of members when
the strike started, but the miners struck to a man. The
tie-up was practically complete except in West Virginia.
That State had early become recognized as the weakest
spot in the miners' union's armor. Notwithstanding the
American Federation of Labor threw almost its entire
force of organizers into that limited area, which was then
only beginning to assume its present day importance in
the coal mining industry, barely one-third of the miners

more than half of the operators present came from that State, and
because the chief strength of the miners' union also lay in that State.
To prevent friction over the interpretation of the Interstate agree-
ment, a board of arbitration and conciliation was established. This
board consisted of five miners and five operators chosen at large,
and one miner and operator more from each of the States of this
field. Such a board of arbitration and conciliation was provided for
in all of the Interstate agreements of the period of the eighties.
This system of Interstate agreement, in spite of the cut-throat
competition raging between operators, was maintained for Pennsyl-
vania and Ohio practically until 1890, Illinois having been lost in
1887, and Indiana in 1888. It formed the real predecessor of the
system established in 1898 and in vogue thereafter.
1See above, 136.

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 169

were induced to strike. A contributing factor was a more
energetic interference from the courts than in other
States. All marching upon the highways and all assem-
blages of the strikers in large gatherings were forbidden
by injunctions. On one occasion more than a score of
men were sentenced to jail for contempt of court by
Federal Judge Goff. The handicap in West Virginia
was offset by sympathy and aid from other quarters.
Many unions throughout the country and even the gen-
eral public sent the striking miners financial aid. In
Illinois Governor John R. Tanner refused the requests
for militia made by several sheriffs.

The general strike of 1897 ended in the central com-
petitive field after a twelve-weeks' struggle. The settle-
ment was an unqualified victory for the union. It con-
ceded the miners a 20 per cent, increase in wages, the
establishment of the eight-hour day, the abolition of
company stores, semi-monthly payments, and a restora-
tion of the system of fixing Interstate wage rates in
annual joint conferences with the operators, which meant
official recognition of the United Mine Workers. The
operators in West Virginia, however, refused to come in.

The first of these Interstate conferences was held in
January, 1898, at which the miners were conceded a
further increase in wages. In addition, the agreement,
which was to run for two years, established for Illinois
the run-of-mine 1 system of payment, while the size of the
screens of other states was regulated; and it also con-
ceded the miners the check-off system 2 in every district,

1 The run-of-mine system means payment by weight of the coal as
brought out of the mine including minute pieces and impurities.

3 The check-off system refers to collection of union dues. It means
that the employer agrees to deduct from the wage of each miner the
amount of his union dues, thus constituting himself the union's
financial agent.

170 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

save that of Western Pennsylvania.1 Such a compre-
hensive victory would not have been possible had it not
been for the upward trend which coal prices had taken.

But great as was the union's newly discovered power,
it was spread most unevenly over the central competitive
field. Its firmest grip was in Illinois. The well-filled
treasury of the Elinois district has many times been called
upon for large contributions or loans, to enable the union
to establish itself in some other field. The weakest hold
of the United Mine Workers has been in West Virginia.
At the end of the general strike of 1897, the West Vir-
ginia membership was only about 4000. Moreover, a
further spread of the organization met with unusual ob-
stacles. A large percentage of the miners of West Vir-
ginia are Negroes or white mountaineers. These have
proven more difficult to organize than recent Southern
and Eastern European immigrants, who formed the ma-
jority in the other districts. And yet West Virginia as
a growing mining state soon assumed a high strategic
importance. A lower wage scale, the better quality of its
coal, and a comparative freedom from strikes have made
West Virginia a formidable competitor of the other dis-
tricts in the central competitive field. Consequently
West Virginia operators have been able to operate their
mines more days during the year than elsewhere; and
despite the lower rates per ton, the West Virginia miners
have earned but little less annually than union miners in
other States. But above all the United Mine Workers
have been handicapped in West Virginia as nowhere else
by court interference in strikes and in campaigns of or-
ganization. In 1907 a temporary injunction was
granted at the behest of the Hitchman Coal and Coke

1 In that district the check-off was granted in 1902.

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 171

Company, a West Virginia concern, restraining union or-
ganizers from attempting to organize employes who
signed agreements not to join the United Mine Workers
while in the employ of the company. The injunction was
made permanent in 1913. The decree of the District
Court was reversed by the Circuit Court of Appeals in
1914, but was sustained by the United States Supreme
Court in March 1917.1 Recently the United States Steel
Corporation became a dominant factor in West Virginia
through its ownership of mines and lent additional
strength to the already strong anti-union determination
of the employers.

Very early the United Mine Workers established a
reputation for strict adherence to agreements made. This
faithfulness to a pledged word, which justified itself even
from the standpoint of selfish motive, in as much as it
gained for the union public sympathy, was urged upon
all occasions by John Mitchell, the national President of
the Union. The first test came in 1899, when coal prices
soared up rapidly after the joint conference had ad-
journed. Although they might have won higher wages
had they struck, the miners observed their contracts. A
more severe test came in 1902 during the great anthracite
strike.2 A special union convention was then held to con-
sider whether the bituminous miners should be called out
in sympathy with the hard pressed striking miners in the
anthracite field. By a large majority, however, the con-
vention voted not to strike in violation of the agreements
made with the operators. The union again gave proof of
statesmanly self-control when, in 1904, taking into ac-
count the depressed condition of industry, it accepted

1Hitchman Coal and Coke Company t>. Mitchell, 245 U. S. 232.
'See below, 175-177.

172 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

without a strike a reduction in wages in the central com-
petitive field. However, as against the miners' conduct in
these situations must be reckoned the many local strikes
or "stoppages" in violation of agreements. The difficulty
was that the machinery for the adjustment of local
grievances was too cumbersome.

In 1906 the trade agreement system encountered a new
difficulty in the friction which developed between the
operators of the several competitive districts. On the
surface, the source of the friction was the attempt made
by the Ohio and Illinois operators to organize a national
coal operators* association to take the place of the sev-
eral autonomous district organizations. The Pittsburgh
operators, however, objected. They preferred the exist-
ing system of agreements under which each district or-
ganization possessed a veto power, since then they could
keep the advantage over their competitors in Ohio and
Indiana with which they had started under the original
agreement of 1898. The miners in this emergency threw
their power against the national operators' association.
A suspension throughout most districts of the central
competitive field followed. In the end, the miners won an
increase in wages, but the Interstate agreement system
was suspended, giving place to separate agreements for
each district.

In 1908 the situation of 1906 was repeated. This time
the Illinois operators refused to attend the Interstate
conference on the ground that the Interstate agreement
severely handicapped Illinois. As said before, ever since
1897 payment in Illinois has been upon the run-of-mine
basis ; whereas in all other States of the central competi-
tive field the miners were paid for screened coal only.
With the operators of each State having one vote in the

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 173

joint conference, it can be understood why the handicap
against Illinois continued. Theoretically, of course, the
Illinois operators might have voted against the acceptance
of any agreement which gave an advantage to other
States ; however, against this weighed the fact that the
union was strongest in Illinois. The Illinois operators,
hence, preferred to deal separately with the United Mine
Workers. Accordingly, an Interstate agreement was
drawn up, applying only to Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsyl-
vania.

In 1910, the Illinois operators again refused to enter
the Interstate conference, but this time the United Mine
Workers insisted upon a return to the Interstate agree-
ment system of 1898. On April 1, 1910, operations were
suspended throughout the central competitive field. By
July agreements had been secured in every State save
Illinois, the latter State holding out until September.
This long struggle in Illinois was the first real test of
strength between the operators and the miners since 1897.
The miners' victory made it inevitable that the Illinois
operators should eventually reenter the Interstate con-
ference.

In 1912, after repeated conferences, the net result was
the restoration of the Interstate agreement as it existed
before 1906. The special burden of which the Illinois
operators had been complaining was not removed; yet
they were compelled by the union to remain a party to
the Interstate agreement. The union justified its special
treatment of the operators in Illinois on the ground that
the run-of-mine rates were 40 per cent, below the screened
coal rates, thus compensating them amply for the "slack"
for which they had to pay under this system. The Fed-
eral report on "Restriction of Output" of 1904 substan-

174 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

tiated the union's contention. Ultimately, the United
Mine Workers unquestionably hoped to establish the run-
of-mine system throughout the central competitive field.

The union, incidentally to its policy of protecting the
miners, has considerably affected the market or business
structure of the industry. An outstanding policy of the
union has been to equalize competitive costs over the
entire area of a market by means of a system of grading
tonnage rates paid to the miner, whereby competitive
advantages of location, thickness of vein, and the like
were absorbed in higher labor costs. This doubtless
tended to eliminate cut-throat competition and thus
stabilize the industry. On the other hand, it may have
hindered the process of elimination of unprofitable mines,
and therefore may be in some measure responsible for the
present-day overdevelopment in the bituminous mining
industry, which results in periodic unemployment and in
idle mines.

In the anthracite coal field in Eastern Pennsylvania the
difficulties met by the United Mine'Workers were at first
far greater than in the bituminous branch of the industry.
First, the working population was nearly all foreign-
speaking, and the union thus lacked the fulcrum which it
found in Illinois with its large proportion of English-
speaking miners accustomed to organization and to
carrying on a common purpose. Secondly, the employers,
instead of being numerous and united only for joint deal-
ing with labor, as in bituminous mining, were few in
number besides being cemented together by a common
selling policy on top of a common labor policy. In con-
sequence, the union encountered a stone wall of opposi-
tion, which its loose ranks found for many years well-nigh
impossible to overcome.

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 175

During the general strike of 1897 the United Mine
Workers made a beginning in organizing the anthracite
miners. In September 1900, they called a general strike.
Although at that time the union had only 8000 members
in this region, the strike order was obeyed by over 100,-
000 miners ; and within a few weeks the strike became
truly general. Probably the union could not have won
if it had to rely solely on economic strength. However,
the impending Presidential election led to an interference
by Senator Mark Hanna, President McKinley's campaign
manager. Through him President John Mitchell of the
United Mine Workers was informed that the operators
would abolish the objectionable sliding scale system of
wage payments, increase rates 10 per cent, and agree to
meet committees of their employes for the adjustment of
grievances. This, however, did not carry a formal recog-
nition of the union; it was not a trade agreement but
merely an unwritten understanding. A part of the same
understanding was that the terms which had been agreed
upon should remain in force until April, 1901. At its
expiration the identical terms were renewed for another
year, while the negotiations bore the same informal char-
acter.

During 1902 the essential instability of the arrange-
ment led to sharp friction. The miners claimed that
many operators violated the unwritten agreement. The
operators, on their part, charged that the union was
using every means for practically enforcing the closed
shop, which was not granted in the understanding. In
the early months of 1902 the miners presented demands
for a reduction of the hours of labor from 10 to 9, for a
twenty per cent, increase in wages, for payment according
to the weight of coal mined, and for the recognition of

176 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

the union. The operators refused to negotiate, and on
May 9 the famous anthracite strike of 1902 began.

It is unnecessary to detail the events of the anthracite
strike. No other strike is better known and remembered.
More than 150,000 miners stood out for approximately
five months. The strike was financed by a levy of one
dollar per week upon all employed miners in the country,
which yielded over $2,000,000. In addition several hun-
dred thousand dollars came in from other trade unions
and from the public generally. In October, when the
country was facing a most serious coal famine, President
Roosevelt took a hand. He called in the presidents of
the anthracite railroads and the leading union officials
for a conference in the White House and urged arbitra-
tion. At first he met with rebuff from the operators, but
shortly afterward, with the aid of friendly pressure from
New York financiers, the operators consented to accept
the award of a commission to be appointed by himself.
This was the well-known Anthracite Coal Strike Commis-
sion. Its appointment terminated the strike. Not until
more than a half year later, however, was the award of
the Commission made. It conceded the miners a 10 per
cent, increase in wages, the eight and nine-hour day, and
the privilege of having a union check-weighman at the
scale where the coal sent up in cars by the miners is
weighed. Recognition was not accorded the union, except
that it was required to bear one-half of the expense con-
nected with the maintenance of a joint arbitration board
created by the Commission. When this award was an-
nounced there was much dissatisfaction with it among
the miners. President Mitchell, however, put forth every
effort to have the union accept the award. Upon a refer-
endum vote the miners accepted his view.

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 177

The anthracite coal strike of 1902 was doubtless the
most important single event in the history of American
trade unionism until that time and has since scarcely
been surpassed. To be sure, events like the great railway
strike of 1877 and the Chicago Anarchist bomb and trial
in 1886-1887 had equally forced the labor question into
public attention. What distinguished the anthracite coal
strike, however, was that for the first time a labor organ-
ization tied up for months a strategic industry and
caused wide suffering and discomfort to the public with-
out being condemned as a revolutionary menace to the
existing social order calling for suppression by the gov-
ernment; it was, on the contrary, adjudged a force within
the preserves of orderly society and entitled to public
sympathy. The public identified the anthracite employ-
ers with the trust movement, which was then new and
seemingly bent upon uprooting the traditional free
American social order; by contrast, the striking miners
appeared almost as champions of Old America. A strong
contributory factor was the clumsy tactics of the em-
ployers who played into the hands of the leaders of the
miners. The latter, especially John Mitchell, conducted
their case with great skill.

Yet the award of the Commission fell considerably
short of what the union and its sympathizers outside the
ranks of labor hoped for. For by refusing to grant
formal recognition, the Commission failed to constitute
unionism into a publicly recognized agency in the man-
agement of industry and declared by implication that the
role of unionism ended with a presentation of grievances
and complaints.

For ten years after the strike of 1902 the union failed
to develop the strength in the anthracite field which many

believed would follow. Certain proof of the weakness of
the union is furnished by the fact that the wage-scale
in that field remained stationary until 1912 despite a
rising cost of living. The wages of the anthracite miners
in 1912 were slightly higher than in 1902, because coal
prices had increased and the Anthracite Coal Strike Com-
mission had reestablished a sliding scale system of ton-
nage rates.

A great weakness, while the union still struggled for
existence, was the lack of the "check-off." Membership
would swell immediately before the expiration of the
agreement but diminish with restoration of quiet. With
no immediate outlook for a strike the Slav and Italian
miners refused to pay union dues. The original award
was to be in force until April 1, 1906. In June, 1905,
the union membership was less than 39,000. But by
April 1, 1906, one-half of the miners were in the union.
A month's suspension of operations followed. Early in
May the union and the operators reached an agreement
to leave the award of the Anthracite Coal Strike Com-
mission in force for another three years.

The following three years brought a duplication of
the developments of 1903-1906. Again membership fell
off only to return in the spring of 1909. Again the union
demanded formal recognition, and again it was refused.
Again the original award was extended for three more
years.

In the winter of 1912, when the time for renewing the
agreement again drew near, the entire membership in the
three anthracite districts was slightly above 29,000.
Nevertheless, the union demanded a twenty per cent,
raise, a complete recognition of the union, the check-off,
and yearly agreements, in addition to a more expeditious

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 179

system of settling local grievances to replace the slow
and cumbersome joint arbitration boards provided by
the award of the Commission. A strike of 180,000 an-
thracite miners followed on April 1, 1912, during which
the operators made no attempt to run their mines. The
strike ended within a month on the basis of the abolition
of the sliding scale, a wage increase of approximately
10 per cent., and a revision of the arbitration machinery
in local disputes. This was coupled with a somewhat
larger degree of recognition, but by no means a complete
recognition. Nor was the check-off system granted.
Strangest of all, the agreement called for a four-year
contract, as against a one-year contract originally de-
manded by the union. In spite of the opposition of local
leaders, the miners accepted the agreement. President
White's chief plea for acceptance was the need to rebuild
the union before anything ambitious could be attempted.
After 1912 the union entered upon the work of organ-
ization in earnest. In the following two years the mem-
bership was more than quadrupled. With the stopping
of immigration due to the European War, the power of
the union was greatly increased. Consequently, in 1916,
when the agreement was renewed, the miners were ac-
corded not only a substantial wage increase and the eight-
hour day but also full rcognition. The United Mine
Workers have thus at last succeeded in wresting a share
of industrial control from one of the strongest capital-
istic powers of the country; while demonstrating beyond
doubt that, with intelligent preparation and with sympa-
thetic treatment, the polyglot immigrant masses from
Southern and Eastern Europe, long thought to be im-
pervious to the idea of labor organization, can be changed
into reliable material for unionism.

180 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

The growth of the union in general is shown by the
following figures. In 1898 it was 33,000; in 1900,
116,000; in 1903, 247,000; in 1908, 252,000; and in
1913, 378,000.!

(2) The Railway Men

The railway men are divided into three gioups. One
group comprises the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engi-
neers, the Order of Railroad Conductors, the Brotherhood
of Firemen and Enginemen, and the Brotherhood of Rail-
road Trainmen. These are the oldest and strongest
railway men's organizations and do not belong to the
American Federation of Labor. A second group are the
shopmen, comprising the International Association of
Machinists; the International Brotherhood of Black-
smiths, Drop Forgers, and Helpers ; the Brotherhood of
Railway Carmen of America; the Amalgamated Sheet
Metal Workers' International Alliance; the Brotherhood
of Boilermakers and Iron Ship Builders and Helpers of
America; the International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers ; and the International Brotherhood of Sta-
tionary Firemen and Oilers. A third and more miscel-
laneous group are the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, the
Order of Railway Telegraphers, the Switchmen's Union
of North America, the International Brotherhood of
Maintenance of Way Employes and Railroad Shop
Laborers, and the Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen.
The organizations comprised in the latter two groups

1The actual membership of the union is considerably above these
figures, since they are based upon the dues-paying membership, and
miners out on strike are exempted from the payment of all dues.
The number of miners who always act with the union is much larger
still. Even in non-union fields the United Mine Workers have always
been successful in getting thousands of miners to obey their order
to strike.

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 181

belong to the American Federation of Labor. For the
period from 1898 to the outbreak of the War, the or-
ganizations, popularly known as the "brotherhoods,"
namely, those of the engineers, conductors, firemen, and
trainmen, are of outstanding importance.

The brotherhoods were unique among American labor
organizations in that for many years they practically re-
produced in most of their features the sort of unionism
typified by the great "Amalgamated" unions of the fifties
and sixties in England.1 Like these unions the brother-
hoods stressed mutual insurance and benefits and dis-
couraged when they did not actually prohibit striking.
It should, however, be added that the emphasis on in-
surance was due not to "philosophy," but to the practical
consideration that, owing to the extra hazardous nature
of their occupations, the men could get no insurance pro-
tection from ordinary commercial insurance companies.

By the end of the eighties the brotherhoods began to
press energetically for improvements in employment con-
ditions and found the railways not disinclined to grant
their demands in a measure. This was due in great meas-
ure to the strategic position of these trades, which have
it in their power completely to tie up the industry when
on strike, causing enormous losses to the carriers.2 Ac-
cordingly, they were granted wages which fairly placed
them among the lower professional groups in society as
well as other privileges, notably "seniority" in promotion,
that is promotion based on length of service and not on
a free selection by the officials. Seniority was all the
more important since the train personnel service is so

1 See Webb, History of Trade Unionism, p. 205 ff.
*This was demonstrated in the bitterly fought strike on the Chi-
cago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad in 1888. (See above, 130-131.)

182 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

organized that each employe will pass several times in
the regular course of his career from a lower to a higher
rung on the industrial ladder.1 For instance, a typical
passenger train engineer starts as fireman on a freight
train, advances to a fireman on a passenger train, then
to engineer on a freight train, and finally to engineer on
a passenger train. A similar sequence is arranged in ad-
vancing from brakeman to conductor. Along with
seniority the brotherhoods received the right of appeal
in cases of discharge, which has done much to eliminate
discrimination. Since they were enjoying such excep-
tional advantages relative to income, to the security of
the job, and to the stability of their organization, it is
not surprising, in view of the limited class solidarity
among American laboring men in general, that these
groups of workers should have chosen to stand alone in
their wage bargaining and that their refusal to enter
"entangling alliances" with other less favored groups
should have gone even to the length of staying out of the
American Federation of Labor.

This condition of relative harmony between employer
and employe, notwithstanding the energetic bargaining,
continued for about fiften years until it was disturbed by
factors beyond the control of either railway companies or
brotherhoods. The steady rise in the cost of living forced
the brotherhoods to intensify their demands for increased
wages. At the same time an ever tightening regulation
of railway rates by the Federal government since 1906
practically prevented a shift of increased costs to the
shipper. "Class struggles" on the railways began in
earnest.

1 Seniority also decides the assignment to "runs," which differ
greatly in desirability, and it gives preference over junior employes in
keeping the job when it is necessary to lay men off.

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 183

The new situation was brought home to the brother-
hoods in the course of several wage arbitration cases in
which they figured.1 The outcome taught them that the
public will give them only limited support in their efforts
to maintain their real income at the old high level com-
pared with other classes of workers.

A most important case arose from a "concerted move-
ment" in 1912 2 of the engineers and firemen on the 52
Eastern roads for higher wages. Two separate arbitra-
tion boards were appointed. The engineers' board con-
sisted of seven members, one each for the interests in-
volved and five representing the public. The award was
unsatisfactory to the engineers, first, because of the
meager raise in wages and, second, because it contained a
strong plea to Congress and the country to have all
wages of all railway employes fixed by a government
commission, which implied a restriction of the right to
strike. The award in the firemen's case, which was de-
cided practically simultaneously with the engineers',
failed to satisfy either side.

The conductors and trainmen on the Eastern roads
were next to move "in concert" for increased wages. The
roads refused and the brotherhoods decided by a good
majority to quit work. This threatened strike occasioned
the passage of the so-called Newlands bill as an amend-
ment to the Erdman Act, with increased powers to the
government in mediation and with more specified condi-

1The first arbitration act was passed by Congress in 1888. In
1898 it was superseded by the well known Erdman Act, which pre-
scribed rules for mediation and voluntary arbitration.

1 Concerted movements began in 1907 as joint demands upon all
railways in a single section of the country, like the East or the West,
by a single group of employes; after 1912 two or more brotherhoods
initiated common concerted movements, first in one section only,
and at last covering all the railways of the country.

184 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

tions relative to the work of the arbitration boards chosen
for each occasion. Whereupon both sides agreed to sub-
mit to arbitration.

The award allowed an increase in wages of seven per
cent., or less than one-half of that demanded, but dis-
allowed a plea made by the men for uniformity of the
wage scales East and West, and denied the demanded
time and a half for overtime. The men accepted but
the decision added to their growing opposition to the
principle of arbitration.

Another arbitration case, in 1914, involving the engi-
neers and firemen on the Western roads led the brother-
hoods to come out openly against arbitration. The
award was signed only by the representatives on the board
of the employers and the public. A characteristic after-
math of this case was an attack made by the unions upon
one of the "neutrals" on the board. His impartiality
was questioned because of his relations with several con-
cerns which owned large amounts of railroad securities.
Therefore, when in 1916 the four brotherhoods together
demanded the eight-hour day, they categorically refused
to consider arbitration.1 The evolution to a fighting
unionism had become complete.

While the brotherhoods of the train service personnel
were thus shifting their tactics, they kept drawing nearer
to the position held by the other unions in the railway
service. These had rarely had the good fortune to bask
in the sunshine of their employers' approval and "recog-
nition." Some railways, of the more liberal sort, made
agreements with the machinists and with the other shop
unions. On the whole, however, the hold of these or-
ganizations upon their industry was of a precarious sort,
^ee below, 230-233.

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 185

To meet their strong opponents on a basis nearer to
equality, they started about 1904 a movement for "system
federations," * that is, federations of all organized trades
through the length of a given railway system as, for
instance, the Pennsylvania Railroad or the Illinois Cen-
tral Railroad. In turn the creation of system federations
sharpened the employers' antagonism. Some railway
systems, like the Illinois Central, might be willing to enter
into agreements with the separate crafts, but refused to
deal with a federation of crafts. In 1912, stimulated by
a dispute on the Illinois Central Railroad and on the
Harriman lines in general, involving the issue of system
federations, a Federation of System Federations was
formed by forty systems upon an aggressive program.
In 1908 a weak and rather tentative Railway Employes'
Department had been launched by the American Federa-
tion of Labor. The Federation of Federations was thus
a rival organization and "illegal" or, at best, "extra-
legal" from the standpoint of the American Federation
of Labor. The situation, however, was too acute to
permit the consideration of "legality" to enter. An ad-
justment was made and the Federation of System Federa-
tions was "legitimatized" through fusion with the "De-
partment," to which it gave its constitution, officers, and
fighting purpose, and from which it took only its name.
This is the now well-known Railway Employes* Depart-
ment of the American Federation of Labor ( embracing all
important national unions of the railway workers except-
ing the four brotherhoods), and which, as we shall see,
came into its own when the government took over the

1 Long before this, about the middle of the nineties, the first system
federations were initiated by the brotherhoods and were confined to
them only; they took up adjustment of grievances and related
matters.

railways from their private owners eight months after
America's entry into the World War.

(3) The Machinery and Metal Trades

Unlike the miners and the railway brotherhoods, the
unions in the machinery and metal trades met with small
success in their efforts for "recognition" and trade agree-
ments. The outstanding unions in the industry are the
International Association of Machinists and the Inter-
national Molders' Union, with a half dozen smaller and
very small unions.1 The molders' International united
in the same union the stove molders, who as was seen
had been "recognized" in 1891, and the molders of parts
of machinery and other foundry products. The latter
found the National Founders* Association as their an-
tagonist or potential "co-partner" in the industry.

The upward swing in business since 1898, combined
with the growth of trade unionism and with the successful
negotiation of the Interstate agreement in the soft coal
mining industry, created an atmosphere favorable to
trade agreements. For a time "recognition" and its im-
plications seemed to all concerned, the employer, the
unions, and the public, a sort of cure-all for industrial
disputes. Accordingly, in March 1899, the National
Founders' Association (organized in the previous year
and comprising foundrymen engaged principally in ma-
chinery manufacturing and jobbing) and the Interna-
tional Molders' Union of North America met and drew

1The International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths, the Brotherhood
of Boilermakers and Iron Shipbuilders, the Pattern Makers' League,
the International Union of Stove Mounters, the International Union
of Metal Polishers, Platers, Brass and Silver Workers, the Interna-
tional Federation of Draftsmen's Unions, and the International
Brotherhood of Foundry Employes.

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 187

up the following tersely worded agreement which became
known as the New York Agreement :

"That in event of a dispute arising between members of
the respective organizations, a reasonable effort shall be
made by the parties directly at interest to effect a satis-
factory adjustment of the difficulty; failing to do which,
either party shall have the right to ask its reference to a
Committee of Arbitration which shall consist of the Presi-
dent of the National Founders' Association and the
President of the Iron Molders' Union or their representa-
tives, and two other representatives from each organiza-
tion appointed .by the respective Presidents.

"The finding of this Committee of Arbitration by
majority vote shall be considered final in so far as the
future action of the respective organizations is concerned.

"Pending settlement by the Committee, there shall be
no cessation of work at the instance of either party to the
dispute. The Committee of Arbitration shall meet within
two weeks after reference of dispute to them."

The agreement was a triumph for the principle of pure
conciliation as distinct from arbitration by a third party.
Both sides preferred to run the risk of a possible deadlock
in the conciliation machinery to throwing decisions into
the hands of an umpire, who would be an uncertain
quantity both as regards special bias and understanding
of the industry.

The initial meeting of the arbitration committee was
held in Cleveland, in May 1899, to consider the demand
by the unions at Worcester, Massachusetts, and Provi-
dence, Rhode Island, for a minimum wage which the em-
ployers had refused. In each city one member of the
National Founders' Association was involved and the
men in these firms went to work pending the arbitration
decision, while the others stayed out on strike.

188 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

The meeting ended inauspiciously. The founders and
molders seemed not to be able to settle their difficulties.
Each side stood fast on its own principles and the arbi-
tration committees regularly became deadlocked. The
question of a minimum wage was the most important issue.
From 1899 to 1902 several joint conventions were held
to discuss the wage question. In 1899 a settlement was
made, which, however, proved of short duration. In No-
vember 1902, the two organizations met, differed, and
arranged for a sub-committee to meet in March 1903.
The sub-committee met but could reach no agreement.

The two organizations clashed also on the question of
apprentices. The founders contended that, because there
were not enough molders to fill the present demand, the
union restrictions as to the employment of apprentices
should be removed. The union argued that a removal of
the restriction would cause unlimited competition among
molders and eventually the founders could employ them
at their own price. They likewise failed to agree on the
matter of classifying molders.

Owing to the stalling of the conciliation machinery
many strikes occurred in violation at least of the spirit
of the agreement. July 1, 1901, the molders struck in
Cleveland for an increase in wages ; arbitration commit-
tees were appointed but failed to make a settlement. In
Chicago and San Francisco strikes occurred for the same
reason.

It was at last becoming evident that the New York
agreement was not working well. In the autumn of 1903
business prosperity reached its high watermark and then
came a sharp depression which lessened the demand for
molders. Early in 1904 the National Founders' Associa-
tion took advantage of this situation to reduce wages and

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 189

finally practically abrogated the New York agreement.
In April, 1904, the founders and molders tried to reach
a decision as to how the agreement could be made effective,
but gave it up after four days and nights of constant
consideration. The founders claimed that the molders
violated the agreement in 54 out of the 96 cases that came
up during the five years of its life; and further justified
their action on the ground that the union persistently
refused to submit to arbitration by an impartial outsider
the issues upon which the agreement was finally wrecked.

An agreement similar to the New York one was con-
cluded in 1900 between the National Metal Trades' As-
sociation and the International Association of Machin-
ists. The National Metal Trades' Association had been
organized in 1899 by members of the National Founders'
Association, whose foundries formed only a part of their
manufacturing plants. The spur to action was given
by a strike called by the machinists in Chicago and other
cities for the nine-hour day. After eight weeks of intense
struggle the Association made a settlement granting a
promise of the shorter day. Although hailed as one of
the big agreements in labor history, it lasted only one
year, and broke up on the issue of making the nine-hour
day general in the Association shops. The machinists
continued to make numerous agreements with individual
firms, especially the smaller ones, but the general agree-
ment was never renewed. Thereafter the National Metal
Trades' Association became an uncompromising enemy
of organized labor.

In the following ten years both molders and machinists
went on fighting for control and engaged in strikes with
more or less success. But the industry as a whole never
again came so near to embracing the idea of a joint co-

190 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

partnership between organized capital and labor as in
1900.

(4) The Employers' Reaction

With the disruption of the agreement systems in the
machinery producing and foundry industries, the idea of
collective bargaining and union recognition suffered a
setback ; and the employers' uneasiness, which had already
steadily been feeding on the unions* mounting pressure
for control, now increased materially. As long, however,
as business remained prosperous and a rising demand for
labor favored the unions, most of the agreements were
permitted to continue. Therefore, it was not until the
industrial depression of 1907-1908 had freed the em-
ployers' hands that agreements were disrupted wholesale.
In 1905 the Structural Erectors' Association discon-
tinued its agreements with the Structural Iron Workers*
Union, causing a dispute which continued over many
years. In the course of this dispute the union replied
to the victorious assaults of the employers by tactics of
violence and murder, which culminated in the fatal ex-
plosion in the Los Angeles Times Building in 1911. In

1906 the employing lithographers discontinued their
national agreement with the lithographers' union. In

1907 the United Typothetae broke with the pressmen,
and the stove founders with the stove mounters and stove
polishers. In 1908 the agreements between the Lake Car-
riers and Lumber Carriers (both operating on the Great
Lakes) and the seafaring and water front unions were
terminated.

In the operation of these unsuccessful agreements the
most serious stumbling blocks were the union "working
rules," that is to say, the restrictive rules which unions

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 191

strove to impose on employers in the exercise of their
managerial powers in the shop, and for which the latter
adopted the sinister collective designation of "restriction
of output."

Successful trade unionism has always pressed "work-
ing rules" on the employer. As early as the first decade
of the nineteenth century, the trade societies then exist-
ing tried to impose on the masters the closed shop and
restrictions on apprenticeship along with higher wages
and shorter hours. As a union advances from an
ephemeral association to a stable organization more and
more the emphasis is shifted from wages to working rules.
Unionists have discovered that on the whole wages are the
unstable factor, going up or down, depending on fluctuat-
ing business conditions and cost of living ; but that once
they have established their power by making the employer
accept their working rules, high wages will ultimately
follow.

These working rules are seldom improvisations of the
moment, but, crude and one-sided as they often are, they
are the product of a long labor experience and have taken
many years to be shaped and hammered out. Since their
purpose is protective, they can best be classified with
reference to the particular thing in the workingman's
life which they are designed to protect: the standard of
living of the trade group, health, the security of the
worker's job, equal treatment in the shop and an equal
chance with other workmen in promotion, the bargaining
power of the trade group, as a whole, and the safety of
the union from the employer's attempts to undermine it.
We shall mention only a few of these rules by way of
illustration. Thus all rules relating to methods of wage
payment, like the prohibition of piece work and of bonus

192 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

systems (including those associated with scientific man-
agement systems), are primarily devices to protect the
wage earner's rate of pay against being "nibbled away"
by the employer; and in part also to protect his health
against undue exertion. Other rules like the normal
(usually the eight-hour) day with a higher rate for over-
time; the rule demanding a guarantee of continuous em-
ployment for a stated time or a guarantee of minimum
earnings, regardless of the quantity of work available in
the shop; again the demand for the sharing of work in
slack times among all employes ; and further, when lay-
offs become necessary, the demand of recognition by the
employer of a right to continuous employment based on
"seniority" in the shop ; — all these have for their common
aim chiefly the protection of the job. Another sort of
rules, like the obstruction to the splitting up of trades
and the restrictions on apprenticeship, have in view the
protection of the bargaining power of the craft group —
through artificially maintaining an undiminished demand
for skilled labor, as well as through a reduction of the
number of competitors, present and future, for jobs.
The protection of the union against the employer's de-
signs, actual or potential, is sought by an insistence on
the closed union shop, by the recognition of the right of
appeal to grievance boards in cases of discharge to pre-
vent anti-union discrimination, and through establishing
a seniority right in promotion which binds the worker's
allegiance to his union rather than to the employer.

With these rigid rules, partly already enforced on the
employer by strikes or threats to strike and partly as
yet unrealized but energetically pushed, trade unionism
enters the stage of the trade agreement. The problem
of industrial government then becomes one of steady

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 193

adjustment of the conflicting claims of employer and union
for the province of shop control staked out by these
working rules. When the two sides are approximately
equal in bargaining strength (and lasting agreements are
possible only when this condition obtains), a promising
line of compromise, as recent experience has shown, has
been to extend to the unions and their members in some
form that will least obstruct shop efficiency the very same
kind of guarantees which they strive to obtain through
rules of their own making. For instance, an employer
might induce a union to give up or agree to mitigate its
working rules designed to protect the job by offering a
quid pro quo in a guarantee of employment for a stated
number of weeks during the year; and likewise, a union
might hope to counteract the employer's natural hanker-
ing for being "boss in his own business," free of any union
working rules, only provided it guaranteed him a sufficient
output per unit of labor time and wage investment.

However, compromises of this sort are pure experi-
ments even at present — fifteen to twenty years after the
dissolution of those agreements ; and they certainly re-
quire more faith in government by agreement and more
patience than one could expect in the participants in
these earlier agreements. It is not surprising, therefore,
that the short period of agreements after 1898 should
in many industries have formed but a prelude to an "open-
shop" movement.1

1 Professor Barnett attributes the failure of these agreements
chiefly to faulty agreement machinery. The working rules, he points
out, are rules made by the national union and therefore can be
changed by the national union only. At the same time the agree-
ments were national only in so far as they provided for national
conciliation machinery; the fixing of wages was left to local bodies.
Consequently, the national employers' associations lacked the power
to offer the unions an indispensable quid pro quo in higher wages

194 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

After their breach with the union, the National Found-
ers' Association and the National Metal Trades* Asso-
ciation have gone about the business of union wrecking in
a systematic way. They have maintained a so-called
"labor bureau," furnishing men to their members when-
ever additional help was needed, and keeping a complete
card system record of every man in the employ of mem-
bers. By this system occasion was removed for employers
communicating with the business agents of the various
unions when new men were wanted. The associations have
had in their regular pay a large number of non-union
men, or "strike-breakers," who were sent to the shop of
any member whose employes were on strike.

In addition to these and other national organizations,
the trade unions were attacked by a large and important
class of local employers* associations. The most influ-
ential association of this class was the Employers' Asso-
ciation of Dayton, Ohio. This association had a standing
strike committee which, in trying to break a strike, was
authorized to offer rewards to the men who continued at
work, and even to compensate the employer for loss of
production to the limit of one dollar per day for each
man on strike. Also a system was adopted of issuing
cards to all employes, which the latter, in case of changing
employment, were obliged to present to the new employer
and upon which the old employer inscribed his recommen-
dation. The extreme anti-unionism of the Dayton Asso-
ciation is best attested by its policy of taking into mem-
bership employers who were threatened with strikes, not-
withstanding the heavy financial obligations involved.

for a compromise on working rules. ("National and District Sys-
tems of Collective Bargaining in the United States," in Quarterly
Journal of Economics, May, 1912, pp. 425 ff.)

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 195

Another class of local associations were the "Citizens'
Alliances," which did not restrict membership to em-
ployers but admitted all citizens, the only qualification
being that the applicant be not a member of any labor
organization. These organizations were frequently
started by employers and secured cooperation of citizens
generally. In some places there were two associations,
an employers' and a Citizens' Alliance. A good example
of this was the Citizens' Alliances of Denver, Colorado,
organized in 1903. These "Citizens' Alliances," being by
virtue of mixed membership more than a mere employers'
organization, claimed in time of strikes to voice the sen-
timent of the community in general.

So much for the employers' counter attacks on trade
unions on the strictly industrial front. But there were
also a legal front and a political front. In 1902 was
organized the American Anti-Boycott Association, a se-
cret body composed mainly of manufacturers. The pur-
pose of the organization was to oppose by legal proceed-
ings the boycotts of trade unions, and to secure statutory
enactments against the boycott. The energies of the
association have been devoted mainly to taking certain
typical cases to the courts in order thereby to create
legal precedents. The famous Danbury Hatters' Case, in
which the Sherman Anti-Trust law was invoked against
the hatters' union, was fought in the courts by this
Association.

The employers' fight on the political front was in charge
of the National Association of Manufacturers. This
association was originally organized in 1895 for the pur-
suit of purely trade interests, but about 1903, under the
influence of the Dayton, Ohio, group of employers, turned
to combating trade unions. It closely cooperated with

196 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

other employers* associations in the industrial and legal
field, but its chief efforts lay in the political or legisla-
tive field, where it has succeeded through clever lobbying
and manipulations in nullifying labor's political influ-
ence, especially in Congress. The National Association
of Manufacturers saw to it that Congress and State Legis-
latures might not weaken the effect of court orders, injunc-
tions and decisions on boycotts, closed shop, and related
matters.

The "open-shop movement" in its several aspects, in-
dustrial, legal, and political, continued strong from 1903
to 1909. Nevertheless, despite most persistent effort and
despite the opportunity offered by the business depres-
sion which followed the financial panic of 1907, the re-
sults were not remarkable. True, it was a factor in
checking the rapid rate of expansion of unionism, but it
scarcely compelled a retrogression from ground already
conquered. It is enough to point out that the unions
managed to prevent wage reductions in the organized
trades notwithstanding the unemployment and distress
of 1907-1908. On the whole trade unionism held its
own against employers in strictly competitive industry.
Different, however, was the outcome in industries in which
the number of employers had been reduced by monopolis-
tic or semi-monopolistic mergers.

The steel industry is the outstanding instance.1 The
disastrous Homestead strike of 1892 2 had eliminated
unionism from the steel plants of Pittsburgh. However,
the Carnegie Steel Company was only a highly efficient
and powerful corporation, not yet a "trust." The panic

1 The following account is taken from Chapter X of the Steel
Workers by John A. Fitch, published by the Russell Sage Foundation.
»See above, 133-135.

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 197

of 1893 dealt another blow to the Amalgamated Associ-
ation of Iron & Steel Workers. The steel mills of Alle-
ghany County, outside Pittsburgh, were all put upon a
non-union basis before 1900. In Pittsburgh, the iron mills,
too, became non-union between 1890 and 1900. There
remained to the organization only the iron mills west of
Pittsburgh, the large steel mills of Illinois, and a large
proportion of the sheet, tin, and iron hoop mills of the
country. In 1900 there began to be whisperings of a
gigantic consolidation in the steel industry. The Amal-
gamated officials were alarmed. In any such combination
the Carnegie Steel Company, an old enemy of unionism,
would easily be first and would, they feared, insist on
driving the union out of every mill in the combination.
Then it occurred to President Shaffer and his associates
that it might be a propitious time to press for recogni-
tion while the new corporation was forming. Anxious for
public confidence and to float their securities, the com-
panies could not afford a labor controversy.

Accordingly, wlien the new scales were to be signed in
July 1901, the Amalgamated Association demanded of
the American Tin Plate Company that it sign a scale
not only for those mills that had been regarded as union
but for all of its mills. This was agreed, provided the
American Sheet Steel Company would agree to the same.
The latter company refused, and a strike was started
against the American Tin Plate Company, the American
Sheet Steel Company, and the American Steel Hoop Com-
pany. In conferences held on July 11, 12, and 13 these
companies offered to sign for all tin mills but one, for all
the sheet mills that had been signed for in the preceding
year and for four other mills that had been non-union,
and for all the hoop mills that had been signed for in the

198 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

preceding year. This highly advantageous offer was
foolishly rejected by the representatives of the union;
they demanded all the mills or none. The strike then went
on in earnest. In August, President Shaffer called on
all the men working in mills of the United States Steel
Corporation to come out on strike.

By the middle of August it was evident that the Asso-
ciation had made a mistake. Instead of finding their task
easier because the United States Steel Corporation had
just been formed, they found that corporation ready to
bring all its tremendous power to bear against the organ-
ization. President Shaffer offered to arbitrate the whole
matter, but the proposal was rejected; and at the end of
August the strike was declared at an end.

The steel industry was apparently closed to unionism.1

(5) Legislation, Courts, and Politics

While trade unionism was thus on the whole holding
its ground against the employers and even winning vic-
tories and recognition, its influence on National and State
legislation failed for many years to reflect its growing
economic strength. The scant success with legislation
resulted, on the one hand, from the very expansion of the
Federation into new fields, which absorbed nearly all its
means and energy ; but was due in a still greater measure
to a solidification of capitalist control in the Republican
party and in Congress, against which President Roosevelt
directed his spectacular campaign. A good illustration is

*The opposition of the Steel Corporation to unionism was an
important factor in the disruption of the agreement systems in the
Structural iron-erecting industry in 1905 and in the carrying industry
on the Great Lakes in 1906; in each of these industries the Cor-
poration holds a place of considerable control.

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 199

furnished by the attempt to get a workable eight-hour
law on government work.

In the main the leaders of the Federation placed slight
reliance upon efforts to shorten the working day through
legislation. The movement for shorter hours by law for
women, which first attained importance in the nineties,
was not the work of organized labor but of humanitarians
and social workers. To be sure, the Federation has sup-
ported such laws for women and children workers, but
so far as adult male labor was concerned, it has always
preferred to leave the field clear for the trade unions.
The exception to the rule was the working day on public
work.

The Federal eight-hour day law began to receive atten-
tion from the Federation towards the end of the eighties.
By that time the status of the law of 1868 which decreed
the eight -hour day on Federal government work 1 had
been greatly altered. In a decision rendered in 1887 the
Supreme Court held that the eight-hour day law of 1868
was merely directory to the officials of the Federal gov-
ernment, but did not invalidate contracts made by them
not containing an eight-hour clause. To counteract this
decision a special law was passed in 1888, with the sup-
port of the Federation, establishing the eight-hour day
in the United States Printing Office and for letter carriers.
In 1892 a new general eight-hour law was passed, which
provided that eight-hours should be the length of the
working day on all public works of the United States,
whether directed by the government or under contract or
sub-contract. Within the next few years interpretations
rendered by attorney generals of the United States prac-
tically rendered the law useless.

1 See above, 47-49.

200 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

In 1895 the Federation began to press in earnest for
a satisfactory eight-hour law. In 1896 its eight-hour
bill passed the House of Representatives unanimously.
In the Senate it was introduced by Senator Kyle, the
chairman of the committee on Education and Labor.
After its introduction, however, hearings upon the bill
were delayed so long that action was prevented during the
long session. In the short session of 1898-1899 the bill
met the cruel fate of having its introducer, Senator Kyle,
submit a minority report against it. Under the cir-
cumstances no vote upon the bill could be had in the
Senate. In the next Congress, 1899-1901, the eight-hour
bill once more passed the House of Representatives only
to be lost in the Senate by failure to come to a vote. In
1902, the bill again unanimously passed the House, but
was not even reported upon by the Senate committee. In
the hearings upon the eight-hour bill in that year the
opposition of the National Manufacturers' Association
was first manifested. In 1904 the House Labor Commit-
tee sidetracked a similar bill by recommending that the
Department of Commerce and Labor should investigate
its merits. Secretary Metcalf, however, declared that the
questions submitted to his Department with reference to
the eight-hour bill were "well-nigh unintelligible.'* In
1906 the House Labor Committee, at a very late stage in
the session, reported "favorably" upon the eight hour bill.
At the same time it eliminated all chances of passage of
the bill through the failure of a majority of the members
of the committee to sign the "favorable" report made.
This session of Congress, also, allowed a "rider" to be
added to the Panama Canal bill, exempting the canal con-
struction from the provisions of the eight-hour law. In
the next two Congresses no report could be obtained from

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 201

the labor committees of either House upon the general
eight-hour day bill, despite the fact that President Roose-
velt and later President Taft recommended such legisla-
tion. In the sessions of the Congress of 1911-1913 the
American Federation of Labor hit upon a new plan. This
was the attachment of "riders" to departmental appro-
priation bills requiring that all work contracted for by
these departments must be done under the eight-hour
system. The most important "rider" of this character
was that attached to the naval appropriation bill. Under
its provisions the Attorney-General held that in all work
done in shipyards upon vessels built for the Federal gov-
ernment the eight -hour rule must be applied. Finally,
in June 1912, a Democratic House and a Republican
Senate passed the eight-hour bill supported by the Amer-
ican Federation of Labor with some amendments, which
the Federation did not find seriously objectionable; and
President Taft signed it.

Still better proof of the slight influence of the Feder-
ation upon government is furnished by the vicissitudes of
its anti-injunction bills in Congress. The Federation
had been awakened to the seriousness of the matter of the
injunction by the Debs case. A bill of its sponsoring pro-
viding for jury trials in "indirect" contempt cases passed
the Senate in 1896 only to be killed in the House. In
1900 only eight votes were recorded in the House against
a bill exempting labor unions from the Sherman Anti-
Trust Act; it failed, however, of passage in the Senate.
In 1902 an anti-injunction bill championed by the Amer-
ican Federation of Labor passed the House of Represen-
tatives. That was the last time, however, for many years
to come when such a bill was even reported out of com-
mittee. Thereafter, for a decade, the controlling powers

202 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

in Congress had their faces set against removal by law
of the judicial interference in labor's use of its economic
strength against employers.

In the meantime, however, new court decisions made
the situation more and more critical. A climax was
reached in 1908-1909. In February 1908, came the
Supreme Court decision in the Danbury Hatters* case,
which held that members of a labor union could be held
financially responsible to the full amount of their indi-
vidual property under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act for
losses to business occasioned by an interstate boycott.1
By way of contrast, the Supreme Court within the same
week held unconstitutional the portion of the Erdman
Act which prohibited discrimination by railways against
workmen on account of their membership in a union.2
One year later, in the Buck's Stove and Range Company
boycott case, Gompers, Mitchell, and Morrison, the three
most prominent officials of the American Federation of
Labor, were sentenced by a lower court in the District of
Columbia to long terms in prison for violating an injunc-
tion which prohibited all mention of the fact that the
plaintiff firm had ever been boycotted.3 Even though
neither these nor subsequent court decisions had the para-
lyzing effect upon American trade unionism which its
enemies hoped for and its friends feared, the situation
called for a change in tactics. It thus came about that
the Federation, which, as was seen, by the very principles
of its program wished to let government alone, — as it

1Loewe v. Lawlor, 208 U. S. 274 (1908).

1 Adair v. U. S., 208 U. S. 161 (1908).

*36 Wash, Law Rep. 436 (1909). Gompers was finally sentenced to
imprisonment for thirty days and the other two defendants were fined
$500 each. These penalties were later lifted by the Supreme Court
on a technicality, 233 U. S. 604 (1914).

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 203

indeed expected little good of government, — was obliged
to enter into competition with the employers for con-
trolling government ; this was because one branch of the
government, namely the judicial one, would not let it
alone.

A growing impatience with Congress was manifested in
resolutions adopted by successive conventions. In 1902
the convention authorized the Executive Council to take
"such further steps as will secure the nomination — and
the election — of only such men as are fully and satisfac-
torily pledged to the support of the bills" championed by
the Federation. Accordingly, the Executive Council
prepared a series of questions to be submitted to all can-
didates for Congress in 1904 by the local unions of each
district.

The Federation was more active in the Congressional
election of 1906. Early in the year the Executive Coun-
cil urged affiliated unions to use their influence to prevent
the nomination in party primaries or conventions of can-
didates for Congress who refused to endorse labor's de-
mands, and where both parties nominated refractory
candidates to run independent labor candidates. The
labor campaign was placed in the hands of a Labor Rep-
resentation Committee, which made use of press publicity
and other standard means. Trade union speakers were
sent into the districts of the most conspicuous enemies of
labor's demands to urge their defeat. The battle royal
was waged against Congressman Littlefield of Maine. A
dozen union officials, headed by President Gompers, in-
vaded his district to tell the electorate of his insults to
organized labor. However, he was reflected, although
with a reduced plurality over the preceding election. The
only positive success was the election of McDermott of

204 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

the commercial telegraphers* union in Chicago. Presi-
dent Gompers, however, insisted that the cutting down
of the majorities of the conspicuous enemies of labor's
demands gave "more than a hint" of what organized labor
"can and may do when thoroughly prepared to exercise
its political strength." Nevertheless the next Congress
was even more hostile than the preceding one. The con-
vention of the Federation following the election approved
the new tactics, but was careful at the same time to de-
clare that the Federation was neither allied with any
political party nor had any intention of forming an inde-
pendent labor party.

In the Presidential election of 1908, however, the Feder-
ation virtually entered into an alliance with the Demo-
crats. At a "Protest Conference" in March, 1908, at-
tended by the executive officers of most of the affiliated
national unions as well as by the representatives of sev-
eral farmers' organizations, the threat was uttered that
organized labor would make a determined effort in the
coming campaign to defeat its enemies, whether "candi-
dates for President, for Congress, or other offices." The
next step was the presentation of the demands of the
Federation to the platform committees of the conventions
of both parties. The wording of the proposed anti-injunc-
tion plank suggests that it had been framed after con-
sultation with the Democratic leaders, since it omitted
to demand the sweeping away of the doctrine of malicious
conspiracy or the prohibition of the issuance of in-
junctions to protect business rights, which had regularly
been asked by the American Federation of Labor since
1904. In its place was substituted an indefinite state-
ment against the issuance of injunctions in labor disputes
where none would be allowed if no labor dispute existed

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 205

and a declaration in favor of jury trial on the charge of
contempt of court.

The Republicans paid scant attention to the planks
of the Federation. Their platform merely reiterated the
recognized law upon the allowance of equity relief; and
as if to leave no further doubt in the minds of the labor
leaders, proceeded to nominate for President, William H.
Taft, who as a Federal judge in the early nineties was
responsible for some of the most sweeping injunctions
ever issued in labor disputes. A year earlier Gompers had
characterized Taft as "the injunction standard-bearer"
and as an impossible candidate. The Democratic plat-
form, on the other hand, verbatim repeated the Federation
plank on the injunction question and nominated Bryan.

After the party conventions had adjourned the Amer-
ican Federationist entered on a vigorous attack upon the
Republican platform and candidate. President Gompers
recognized that this was equivalent to an endorsement of
Bryan, but pleaded that "in performing a solemn duty
at this time in support of a political party, labor does
not become partisan to a political party, but partisan to
a principle.'* Substantially, all prominent non-Socialist
trade-union officials followed Gompers' lead. That the
trade unionists did not vote solidly for Bryan, however,
is apparent from the distribution of the vote. On the
other hand, it is true that the Socialist vote in 1908 in
almost all trade-union centers was not materially above
that of 1904, which would seem to warrant the conclusion
that Gompers may have "delivered to Bryan" not a few
labor votes which would otherwise have gone to Debs.

In the Congressional election of 1910 the Federation
repeated the policy of "reward your friends, and punish
your enemies." However, it avoided more successfully

206 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

the appearance of partisanship. Many progressive Re-
publicans received as strong support as did Democratic
candidates. Nevertheless the Democratic majority in
the new House meant that the Federation was at last
"on the inside'* of one branch of the government. In ad-
dition, fifteen men holding cards of membership in unions,
were elected to Congress, which was the largest number
on record. Furthermore William B. Wilson, Ex-Secre-
tary of the United Mine Workers, was appointed chair-
man of the important House Committee on Labor.

The Congress of 1911-1913 with its Democratic House
of Representatives passed a large portion of the legisla-
tion which the Federation had been urging for fifteen
years. It passed an eight-hour law on government con-
tract work, as already noted, and a seaman's bill, which
went far to grant to the sailors the freedom of contract
enjoyed by other wage earners. It created a Department
of Labor with a seat in the Cabinet. It also attached
a "rider" to the appropriation bill for the Department
of Justice enjoining the use of any of the funds for pur-
poses of prosecuting labor organizations under the Sher-
man Anti-Trust Law and other Federal laws. In the
presidential campaign of 1912 Gompers pointed to the
legislation favorable to labor initiated by the Democratic
House of Representatives and let the workers draw their
own conclusions. The corner stone of the Federation's
legislative program, the legal exemption of trade unions
from the operation of anti-trust legislation and from
court interference in disputes by means of injunctions,
was yet to be laid. By inference, therefore, the election
of a Democratic administration was the logical means
to that end.

At last, with the election of Woodrow Wilson as Presi-

PARTIAL RECOGNITION 207

dent and of a Democratic Congress in 1912, the political
friends of the Federation controlled all branches of gov-
ernment. William B. Wilson was given the place of
Secretary of Labor. Hereafter, for at least seven years,
the Federation was an "insider" in the national govern-
ment. The road now seemed clear to the attainment
by trade unions of freedom from court interference in
struggles against employers — a judicial laissez-faire.
The political program initiated in 1906 seemed to be
bearing fruit.

The drift into politics, since 1906, has differed essen-
tially from that of earlier periods. It has been a move-
ment coming from "on top," not from the masses of the
laborers themselves. Hard times and defeats in strikes
have not very prominently figured. Instead of a move-
ment led by local unions and by city centrals as had been
the case practically in all preceding political attempts,
the Executive Council of the American Federation of
Labor now became the directing force. The rank and
file seem to have been much less stirred than the leaders ;
for the member who held no union office felt less intensely
the menace from injunctions than the officials who might
face a prison sentence for contempt of court. Probably
for this reason the "delivery" of the labor vote by the Fed-
eration has ever been so largely problematical. That the
Federation leaders were able to .force the desired conces-
sions from one of the political parties by holding out a
quid pro quo of such an uncertain value is at once a
tribute to their political sagacity as well as a mark of
the instability of the general political alignment in the
country.

CHAPTER 9

RADICAL UNIONISM AND A "COUNTER-
REFORMATION"

For ten years after 1904, when it reached its high
point, the American Federation of Labor was obliged to
stay on the defensive — on the defensive against the "open-
shop" employers and against the courts. Even the
periodic excursions into politics were in substance de-
fensive moves. This turn of events naturally tended to
detract from the prestige of the type of unionism for
which Gompers was spokesman; and by contrast raised
the stock of the radical opposition.

The opposition developed both in and outside the Feder-
tion. Inside it was the socialist "industrialist" who ad-
vocated a political labor party on a socialist platform,
such as the Federation had rejected when it defeated the
"program" of 1893,1 together with a plan of organiza-
tion by industry instead of by craft. Outside the Feder-
ation the opposition marched under the flag of the Indus-
trial Workers of the World, which was launched by so-
cialists but soon after birth fell into the hands of
syndicalists.

However, fully to understand the issue between con-
servatives and radicals in the Federation after 1905, one
needs to go back much earlier for the "background."

The socialist movement, after it had unwittingly as-
sisted in the birth of the opportunistic trade unionism of

'See above, 139-141.

208

RADICAL UNIONISM 209

Strasser and Gompers,1 did not disappear, but remained
throughout the eighties a handful of "intellectuals'* and
"intellectualized" wage earners, mainly Germans. These
never abandoned the hope of better things for socialism
in the labor movement. With this end in view, they
adopted an attitude of enthusiastic cooperation with the
Knights of Labor and the Federation in their wage
struggle, which they accompanied, to be sure, by a per-
sistent though friendly "nudging" in the direction of so-
cialism. During the greater part of the eighties the
socialists were closer to the trade unionists than to the
Knights, because of the larger proportion of foreign
born, principally Germans, among them. The unions in
the cigar making, cabinet making, brewing, and other
German trades counted many socialists, and socialists
were also in the lead in the city federations of unions in
New York, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and
other cities. In the campaign of Henry George for
Mayor of New York in 1886, the socialists cooperated
with him and the labor organizations. When, however,
the campaign being over, they fell out with George on
the issue of the single tax, they received more sympathy
from the trade unionists than George ; though one should
add that the internal strife caused the majority of the
trade unionists to lose interest in either faction and in
the whole political movement. The socialist organization
went by the name of the Socialist Labor party, which it
had kept since 1877. Its enrolled membership was under
10,000, and its activities were non-political (since it re-
frained from nominating its own tickets) but entirely agi-
tational and propagandist. The socialist press was chiefly
in German and was led by a daily in New York. So it
*See above, 76-79.

210 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

continued until there appeared on the scene an imperious
figure, one of those men who, had he lived in a country
with conditions more favorable to socialism than the
United States, would doubtless have become one of the
world's outstanding revolutionary leaders. This man
was Daniel DeLeon.

DeLeon was of South American ancestry, who early
immigrated to New York. For a time he was teacher of
languages at Columbia College; later he devoted himself
thoroughly to socialist propaganda. He established his
first connection with the labor movement in the George
campaign in 1886 and by 1890 we find him in control of
the socialist organization. DeLeon was impatient with
the policy of slow permeation carried on by the socialists.
A convinced if not fanatical Marxian, his philosophy
taught him that the American labor movement, like all
national labor movements, had, in the nature of things,
to be socialist. He formed the plan of a supreme and
last effort to carry socialism into the hosts of the Knights
and the Federation, failing which, other and more drastic
means would be used.

By 1895 he learned that he was beaten in both organi-
zations ; not, however, without temporarily upsetting the
groups in control. For, the only time when Samuel
Gompers was defeated for President of the Federation
was in 1894, when the socialists, angered by his part in
the rejection of the socialist program at the convention,1
joined with his enemies and voted another man into office.
Gompers was reflected the next year and the Federation
seemed definitely shut to socialism. DeLeon was now
ready to go to the limit with the Federation. If the estab-
lished unions refused to assume the part of the grave-
1 See above, 139-141.

RADICAL UNIONISM 211

diggers of capitalism, designed for them, as he believed,
by the very logic of history, so much the worse for the
established trade unions.

Out of this grew the Socialist Trade and Labor Alli-
ance as a life and death rival to the Federation. From
the standpoint of socialism no more unfortunate step
could have been taken. It immediately stamped the so-
cialists as wilful destroyers of the unity of labor. To
the trade unionists, yet fresh from the ordeal of the
struggle against the Knights of Labor, the action of the
socialists was an unforgivable crime. All the bitterness
which has characterized the fight between socialist and
anti-socialist in the Federation verily goes back to this
gross miscalculation by DeLeon of the psychology of the
trade union movement. DeLeon, on his part, attributed
the action of the Federation to a hopelessly corrupt
leadership and, since he failed to unseat it by working
from within, he now felt justified in striking at the entire
structure.

The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance was a failure
from the outset. Only a small portion of even the social-
ist-minded trade unionists were willing to join in the ven-
ture. Many trade union leaders who had been allied with
the socialists now openly sided with Gompers. In brief,
the socialist "revolution" in the American labor world suf-
fered the fate of all unsuccessful revolutions : it alienated
the moderate sympathizers and forced the victorious ma-
jority into taking up a more uncompromising position
than heretofore.

Finally, the hopelessness of DeLeon's tactics became
obvious. One faction in the Socialist Labor party, which
had been in opposition ever since he assumed command,
came out in revolt in 1898. A fusion took place between

212 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

it and another socialist group, the so-called Debs-Berger
Social Democracy,1 which took the name of the Social
Democratic Party. Later, at a "Unity Congress" in
1901, it became the Socialist Party of America. What
distinguished this party from the Socialist Labor party
(which, although it had lost its primacy in the socialist
movement, has continued side by side with the Socialist
party of America), was well expressed in a resolution
adopted at the same "Unity" convention: "We recog-
nize that trade unions are by historical necessity organ-
ized on neutral grounds as far as political affiliation is
concerned." With this program, the socialists have been
fairly successful in extending their influence in the Amer-
ican Federation of Labor so that at times they have con-
trolled about one-third of the votes in the conventions.
Nevertheless the conservatives have never forgiven the
socialists their "original sin." In the country at large
socialism made steady progress until 1912, when nearly
one million votes were cast for Eugene V. Debs, or
about 1/16 of the total. After 1912, particularly since
1916, the socialist party became involved in the War and
the difficulties created by the War and retrogressed.

For a number of years DeLeon's failure kept possible
imitators in check. However, in 1905, came another
attempt in the shape of the Industrial Workers of the
World. As with its predecessor, impatient socialists

1 Eugene V. Debs, after serving his sentence in prison for disobey-
ing a court injunction during the Pullman strike of 1894, became
a convert to socialism. It is said that his conversion was due to
Victor Berger of Milwaukee. Berger had succeeded in building up
a strong socialist party in that city and in the State of Wisconsin
upon the basis of a thorough understanding with the trade unions
and was materially helped by the predominance of the German-
speaking element in the population. In 1910 the Milwaukee socialists
elected a municipal ticket, the first large city to vote the socialists
into office.

RADICAL UNIONISM 213

helped to set it afoot, but unlike the Alliance, it was at
the same time an outgrowth of a particular situation in
the actual labor movement, namely, of the bitter fight
which was being waged by the Western Federation of
Miners since the middle nineties.

Beginning with a violent clash between miners and mine
owners in the silver region of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in
the early nineties, the mining States of the West became
the scene of many labor struggles which were more like
civil wars than like ordinary labor strikes.

A most important contributing cause was a struggle,
bolder than has been encountered elsewhere in the United
States, for control of government in the interest of
economic class. This was partly due to the absence of
a neutral middle class, farmers or others, who might
have been able to keep matters within bounds.

The Western Federation of Miners was an organization
of workers in and around the metaliferous mines. It also
included workers in smelters. It held its first convention
in 1893 in Butte, Montana. In 1894* the men employed
in the Cripple Creek, Colorado, gold fields demanded a
minimum wage of three dollars for an eight-hour day.
After four months the strike resulted in a victory for the
union. Other strikes occurred in 1896 and 1897 at
Leadville, in 1899 in the Cceur d'Alene mining district,
and in 1901 at Rossland and Fernie, British Columbia,
and also in the San Juan district in California.

The most important strike of the Western Federation
of Miners, however, began in 1903 at Colorado City,
where the mill and smeltermen's union quit work in order
to compel better working conditions. As the sympathetic
strike was a recognized part of the policy of the Western
Federation of Miners, all the miners in the Cripple Creek

214 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

region were called out. The eight-hour day in the smel-
ters was the chief issue. In 1899 the Colorado legisla-
ture had passed an eight-hour law which was declared
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the State. To
overcome this difficulty, an amendment to the State con-
stitution was passed in 1902 by a large majority, but
the legislature, after having thus received a direct com-
mand to establish the eight-hour law, adjourned without
taking action. Much of the subsequent disorder and
bloodshed in the Cripple Creek region during 1903-1904
is traceable to this failure on the part of the legislature
to enact the eight-hour law. The struggle in Colorado
helped to convince the Western miners that agreements
with their employers were futile, that constitutional
amendments and politics were futile, and from this they
drew the conclusion that the revolutionary way was the
only way. William D. Haywood, who became the central
figure in the revolutionary movement of the Industrial
Workers of the World since its launching in 1905, was a
former national officer of the Western Federation of
Miners and a graduate of the Colorado school of in-
dustrial experience.1

Even before 1905 the Western Federation of Miners,
which was out of touch with the American Federation of
Labor for reasons of geography and of difference in
policy and program, attempted to set up a national labor
federation which would reflect its spirit. An American
Labor Union was created in 1902, which by 1905 had
a membership of about 16,000 besides the 27,000 of the

1 In 1907 Haywood was tried and acquitted with two other officers
of the Western Federation of Miners at Bois6, Idaho, on a murder
charge which grew out of the same labor struggle. This was one of
the several sensational trials in American labor history, on a par with
the Molly Maguires' case in the seventies, the Chicago Anarchists' in
1887, and the McNamaras' case in 1912.

RADICAL UNIONISM 215

miners* federation. It was thus the precursor of the
Industrial Workers of the World in 1905. In the latter
the revolutionary miners from the West joined hands
with radical socialists from the East and Middle West
of both socialist parties, the Socialist party of America
and DeLeon's Socialist Labor party.

We shall forbear tracing here the complicated internal
history of the I. W. W., that is the friction which im-
mediately arose between the DeLeonites and the other
socialists and later on the struggle between the socialists
and the syndicalist-minded labor rebels from the West.
Suffice it to say that the Western Federation of Miners,
which was its very heart and body, convinced of the
futility of it all, seceded in 1907. In 1911 it joined the
American Federation of Labor and after several hard-
fought strikes, notably in Michigan in 1913, it practically
became assimilated to the other unions in the American
Federation of Labor.

The remnant of the I. W. W. split in 1908 into two
rival Industrial Workers of the World, with headquarters
in Detroit and Chicago, respectively, on the issue of
revolutionary political versus non-political or "direct"
action. As a rival to the Federation of Labor the I. W.
W. never materialized, but on the one hand, as an in-
strument of resistance by the migratory laborers of the
West and, on the other hand, as a prod to the Federation
to do its duty to the unorganized and unskilled foreign-
speaking workers of the East, the I. W. W. will for long
have a part to play.

In fact, about 1912, it seemed as though the I. W. W.
were about to repeat the performance of the Knights
of Labor in the Great Upheaval of 1885-1887. Its
clamorous appearance in the industrial East, showing

216 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

in the strikes by the non-English-speaking workers in the
textile mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, Paterson, New
Jersey, and Little Falls, New York, on the one hand,
and on the other, the less tangible but no less desperate
strikes of casual laborers which occurred from time to
time in the West, bore for the observer a marked re-
semblance to the Great Upheaval. Furthermore, the
trained eyes of the leaders of the Federation espied in
the Industrial Workers of the World a new rival which
would best be met on its own ground by organizing within
the Federation the very same elements to which the I. W.
W. especially addressed itself. Accordingly, at the con-
vention of 1912, held in Rochester, the problem of organ-
izing the unskilled occupied a place near the head of the
list. But after the unsuccessful Paterson textile strikes
in 1912 and 1913, the star of the Industrial Workers of
the World set as rapidly as it had risen and the organiza-
tion rapidly retrogressed. At no time did it roll up a
membership of more than 60,000 as compared with the
maximum membership of 750,000 of the Knights of Labor.
The charge made by the I. W. W. against the Feder-
ation of Labor (and it is in relation to the latter that
the I. W. W. has any importance at all) is mainly two-
fold : on aim and on method. "Instead of the conservative
motto, 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work,' "
reads the Preamble, "We must inscribe on our banner
the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the wage sys-
tem.* It is the historic mission of the working class to
do away with capitalism. The army of production must
be organized, not only for the every-day struggle with
capitalists, but to carry on production when capitalism
shall have been overthrown." Then on method: "We
find that the centering of management in industries into

RADICAL UNIONISM 217

fewer and fewer hands makes the trade union unable to
cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class.
The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows
one set of the workers to be pitted against another set of
workers in the same industry, thereby helping to defeat
one another in wage wars. . . . These conditions must
be changed and the interest of the working class upheld
only by an organization founded in such a way that all
its members in any one industry, or in all industries, if
necessary, cease work whenever a strike or a lockout is in
any department thereof, thus making an injury to one
an injury to all." Lastly, "By organizing industrially
we are forming the structure of the new society within
the shell of the old."

This meant "industrialism" versus the craft autonomy
of the Federation. "Industrialism" was a product of the
intense labor struggles of the nineties, of the Pullman rail-
way strike in 1894, of the general strike of the bituminous
miners of 1898, and of a decade long struggle and boy-
cott in the beer-brewing industry. Industrialism meant
a united front against the employers in an industry re-
gardless of craft; it meant doing away with the paralyz-
ing disputes over jurisdiction amongst the several craft
unions ; it meant also stretching out the hand of fellow-
ship to the unskilled worker who knowing no craft fitted
into no craft union. But over and above these changes
in structure there hovered a new spirit, a spirit of class
struggle and of revolutionary solidarity in contrast with
the spirit of "business unionism" of the typical craft
union. Industrialism signified a challenge to the old
leadership, to the leadership of Gompers and his asso-
ciates, by a younger generation of leaders who were more
in tune with the social ideas of the radical intellectuals and

218 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

the labor movements of Europe than with the traditional
policies of the Federation.

But there is industrialism and industrialism, each an-
swering the demands of a particular stratum of the wage-
earning class. The class lowest in the scale, the unskilled
and "floaters," for which the I. W. W. speaks, conceives
industrialism as "one big union," where not only trade
but even industrial distinctions are virtually ignored with
reference to action against employers, if not also with
reference to the principle of organization. The native
floater in the West and the unskilled foreigner in the
East are equally responsive to the appeal to storm capit-
alism in a successive series of revolts under the banner of
the "one big union." Uniting in its ranks the workers
with the least experience in organization and with none
in political action, the "one big union" pins its faith upon
assault rather than "armed peace," upon the strike with-
out the trade agreement, and has no faith whatsoever in
political or legislative action.

Another form of industrialism is that of the middle
stratum of the wage-earning group, embracing trades
which are moderately skilled and have had considerable
experience in organization, such as brewing, clothing, and
mining. They realize that, in order to attain an equal
footing with the employers, they must present a front
coextensive with the employers' association, which means
that all trades in an industry must act under one direc-
tion. Hence they strive to assimilate the engineers and
machinists, whose labor is essential to the continuance of
the operation of the plant. They thus reproduce on a
minor scale the attempt of the Knights of Labor during
the eighties to engulf the more skilled trade unions.

At the same time the relatively unprivileged position of

RADICAL UNIONISM 219

these trades makes them keenly alive to the danger from
below, from the unskilled whom the employer may break
into their jobs in case of strikes. They therefore favor
taking the unskilled into the organization. Their in-
dustrialism is consequently caused perhaps more by their
own trade consideration than *by an altruistic desire to
uplift the unskilled, although they realize that the or-
ganization of the unskilled is required by the broader in-
terests of the wage-earning class. However, their long
experience in matters of organization teaches them that
the "one big union" would be a poor medium. Their ac-
cumulated experience likewise has a moderating influence
on their economic activity, and they are consequently
among the strongest supporters inside the American Fed-
eration of Labor of the trade agreement. Nevertheless,
opportunistic though they are in the industrial field,
their position is not sufficiently raised above the unskilled
to make them satisfied with the wage system. Hence, they
are mostly controlled by socialists and are strongly in
favor of political action through the Socialist party.
This form of industrialism may consequently be called
"socialist industrialism." In the annual conventions of
the Federation, industrialists are practically synonymous
with socialists.

The best examples of the "middle stratum" industrial-
ism are the unions in the garment industries. Enthusi-
astic admirers have proclaimed them the harbingers of
a "new unionism" in America. One would indeed be
narrow to withhold praise from organizations and leaders
who in spite of a most chaotic situation in their industry
have succeeded so brilliantly where many looked only for
failure. Looking at the matter, however, from the wider
standpoint of labor history, the contribution of this so-

220 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

called "new unionism" resides chiefly, first, in that it has
rationalized and developed industrial government by col-
lective bargaining and trade agreements as no other union-
ism, and second, in that it has applied a spirit of broad-
minded all-inclusiveness to all workers in -the industry.
To put it in another way, its merit is in that it has made
supreme use of the highest practical acquisition of the
American Federation of Labor — namely, the trade agree-
ment— while reinterpreting and applying the latter in
a spirit of a broader labor solidarity than the "old
unionism" of the Federation. As such the clothing
workers point the way to the rest of the labor move-
ment.

The first successful application of the "new unionism"
in the clothing trades was in 1910 by the workers on
cloaks and suits in the International Ladies' Garment
Workers Union of America, a constituent union of the
American Federation of Labor. They established machin-
ery of conciliation from the shop to the industry, which
in spite of many tempests and serious crises, will probably
live on indefinitely. Perhaps the greatest achievement to
their credit is that they have jointly with the employers,
through a Joint Board of Sanitary Control, wrought a
revolution in the hygienic conditions in the shops.

The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America have
won great power in the men's clothing industry, through
aggressive but constructive leadership. The nucleus of
the union seceded from the United Garment Workers, an
A. F. of L. organization, in 1914. The socialistic ele-
ment within the organization was and still is numerically
dominating. But in the practical process of collective
bargaining, this union's revolutionary principles have
served more as a bond to hold the membership together

RADICAL UNIONISM 221

than as a severe guide in its relations with the employers.1
As a result, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers attained
trade agreements in all the large men's clothing centers.
The American Federation of Labor, however, in spite of
this union's success, has persistently refused to admit it
to affiliation, on account of its original secessionist origin
from a chartered international union.

The unions of the clothing workers have demonstrated
how immigrants (the majority in the industry are Rus-
sian and Polish Jews and Italians) may be successfully
organized on the basis of a broad minded industrialism.
On the issue of industrialism in the American Federation
of Labor the last word has not yet been said. It appears,
though, that the matter is being solved slowly but surely
by a silent "counter-reformation" by the old leaders. For
industrialism, or the adjustment of union structure to
meet the employer with ranks closed on the front of an
entire industry, is not altogether new even in the most
conservative portion of the Federation, although it has
never been called by that name.

Long before industrialism entered the national arena
as the economic' creed of socialists, the unions of the
skilled had begun to evolve an industrialism of their own.
This species may properly be termed craft industrialism,
as it sought merely to unite on an efficient basis the
fighting strength of the unions of the skilled trades by
devising a method for speedy solution of jurisdictional
disputes between overlapping unions and by reducing the
sympathetic strike to a science. The movement first
manifested itself in the early eighties in the form of local
building trades' councils, which especially devoted them-

1The same applies to the International Ladies' Garment Workers'
Union.

222 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

selves to sympathetic strikes. This local industrialism
grew, after a fashion, to national dimensions in the form
of the International Building Trades' Council organized
in St. Louis in 1897. The latter proved, however, inef-
fective, since, having for its basic unit the local building
trades' council, it inevitably came into conflict with the
national unions in the building trades. For the same
reason it was barred from recognition of the American
Federation of Labor. The date of the real birth of craft
industrialism on a national scale, was therefore deferred
to 1903, when a Structural Building Trades' Alliance was
founded. The formation of the Alliance marks an event
of supreme importance, not only because it united for the
first time for common action all the important national
unions in the building industry, but especially because it
promulgated a new principle which, if generally adopted,
was apparently destined to revolutionize the structure
of American labor organizations. The Alliance purported
to be a federation of the "basic" trades in the industry,
and in reality it did represent an entente of the big and
aggressive unions. The latter were moved to federate
not only for the purpose of forcing the struggle against
the employers, but also of expanding at the expense of the
"non-basic" or weak unions, besides seeking to annihilate
the last vestiges of the International Building Trades*
Council. The Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners,
probably the most aggressive union in the American Fed-
eration of Labor, was the leader in this movement. From
the standpoint of the Federation, the Structural Alliance
was at best an extra-legal organization, as it did not
receive the latter's formal sanction, but the Federation
could scarcely afford to ignore it as it had ignored the
International Building Trades' Council. Thus in 1908

RADICAL UNIONISM 223

the Alliance was "legitimatized" and made a "Depart-
ment" of the American Federation of Labor, under the
name of the Building Trades' Department, with the settle-
ment of jurisdictional disputes as its main function. It
was accompanied by departments of metal trades, of rail-
way employes, of miners, and by a "label" department.

It is not, however, open to much doubt that the Depart-
ment was not a very successful custodian of the trade
autonomy principle. Jurisdictional disputes are caused
either by technical changes, which play havoc with of-
ficial "jurisdiction," or else by a plain desire on the part
of the stronger union to encroach upon the province of
the weaker one. When the former was the case and the
struggle happened to be between unions of equal strength
and influence, it generally terminated in a compromise.
When, however, the combatants were two unions of un-
equal strength, the doctrine of the supremacy of the
"basic" unions was generally made to prevail in the end.
Such was the outcome of the struggle between the carpen-
ters and joiners on the one side and the wood workers on
the other and also between the plumbers and steam fitters.
In each case it ended in the forced amalgamation of the
weaker union with the stronger one, upon the principle
that there must be only one union in each "basic" trade.
In the case of the steam fitters, which was settled at the
convention at Rochester in 1912, the Federation gave
what might be interpreted as an official sanction of the
new doctrine of one union in a "basic" trade.

Notwithstanding these official lapses from the principle
of craft autonomy, the socialist industrialists 1 are still
compelled to abide by the letter and the spirit of craft
autonomy. The effect of such a policy on the coming

1 Except the miners, brewers, and garment workers.

224 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

American industrialism may be as follows : The future
development of the "department" may enable the strong
"basic" unions to undertake concerted action against
employers, while each retains its own autonomy. Such
indeed is the notable "concerted movement" of the rail-
way brotherhoods, which since 1907 has begun to set a
type for craft industrialism. It is also probable that
the majority of the craft unions will sufficiently depart
from a rigid craft standard for membership to include
helpers and unskilled workers working alongside the
craftsmen.

The clearest outcome of this silent "counter-reforma-
tion" in reply to the socialist industrialists is the Rail-
way Employes' Department as it developed during and
after the war-time period.1 It is composed of all the rail-
way men's organizations except the brotherhoods of engi-
neers, firemen, conductors, trainmen, telegraphers, and
several minor organizations, which on the whole cooper-
ate with the Department. It also has a place for the
unskilled laborers organized in the United Brotherhood
of Maintenance of Way Employes and Railroad Shop
Laborers. The Railway Employes' Department there-
fore demonstrates that under craft unionism the unskilled
need not be left out in the cold. It also meets the charge
that craft unionism renders it easy for the employers
to defeat the unions one by one, since this Department has
consolidated the constituent crafts into one bargaining
and striking union 2 practically as well as could be done
by an industrial union. Finally, the Railway Employes'
Department has an advantage over an industrial union
in that many of its constituent unions, like the machinists',

1 See above, 185-186.

'This refers particularly to the six shopmen's unions.

RADICAL UNIONISM 225

blacksmiths*, boilermakers', sheet metal workers', and
electrical workers', have large memberships outside the
railway industry, which might by their dues and assess-
ments come to the aid of the railway workers on strike.
To be sure, the solidarity of the unions in the Department
might be weakened through jurisdictional disputes, which
is something to be considered. However, when unions
have gone so far as to confederate for joint collective
bargaining, that danger will probably never be allowed
to become too serious.

CHAPTER 10

THE WAR-TIME BALANCE SHEET

The outbreak of the War in Europe in August 1914
found American labor passing through a period of de-
pression. The preceding winter had seen much unem-
ployment and considerable distress and in the summer
industrial conditions became scarcely improved. In the
large cities demonstrations by the unemployed were daily
occurrences. A long and bloody labor struggle in the
coal fields of Colorado, which was slowly drawing to an
unsuccessful end in spite of sacrifices of the heaviest kind,
seemed only to set into bold relief the generally inaus-
picious outlook. Yet the labor movement could doubtless
find solace in the political situation. Owing to the sup-
port it had given the Democratic party in the Presiden-
tial campaign of 1912, the Federation could claim return
favors. The demand which it was now urging upon its
friends in office was the long standing one for the exemp-
tion of labor unions from the operation of the anti-trust
legislation and for the reduction to a minimum of interfer-
ence by Federal Courts in labor disputes through injunc-
tion proceedings.

During 1914 the anti-trust bill introduced in the House
by Clayton of Alabama was going through the regular
stages preliminary to enactment and, although it finally
failed to embody all the sweeping changes demanded by
the Federation's lobbyists, it was pronounced at the time
satisfactory to labor. The Clayton Act starts with the

226

THE WAR-TIME BALANCE SHEET 227

declaration that "The labor of a human being is not a
commodity or article of commerce" and specifies that
labor organizations shall not be construed as illegal com-
binations or conspiracies in restraint of trade under
Federal anti-trust laws. It further proceeds to prescribe
the procedure in connection with the issuance of injunc-
tions in labor disputes as, for instance, limiting the time
of effectiveness of temporary injunctions, making notice
obligatory to persons about to be permanently enjoined,
and somewhat limiting the power of the courts in con-
tempt proceedings. The most vital section of the Act re-
lating to labor disputes is Section 20, which says "that no
such restraining order or injunction shall prohibit any
person or persons, whether singly or in concert, from ter-
minating any relation of employment, or from ceasing to
perform any work or labor or from recommending, ad-
vising, or persuading others by peaceful means so to do ;
or from attending at any place where any such person
or persons may lawfully be, for the purpose of peacefully
persuading any person to work or to abstain from work-
ing, or from recommending, advising, or persuading others
by peaceful and lawful means so to do ; or from paying
or giving to, or withholding from, any person employed
in such dispute, any strike benefits or other moneys or
things of value ; or from peacefully assembling in a lawful
manner, or for lawful purposes, or from doing any act
or things which might lawfully be done in the absence of
such dispute by any party thereto ; nor shall any of the
acts specified in this paragraph be considered or held
to be violations of any law of the United States."

The government was also rendering aid to organized
labor in another, though probably little intended, form,
namely through the public hearings conducted by the

228 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

United States Commission on Industrial Relations. This
Commission had been authorized by Congress in 1912 to
investigate labor unrest after a bomb explosion in the
Los Angeles Times Building, which was set off at the
order of some of the national officers of the structural
iron workers* union, incidental to a strike. The hearings
which were conducted by the able and versatile chairman,
Frank P. Walsh, with a particular eye for publicity, cen-
tering as they did around the Colorado outrages, served
to popularize the trade union cause from one end of the
country to the other. The report of the Commission or
rather the minority report, which was signed by the
chairman and the three labor members, and was known as
the "staff" report, named trade unionism as the para-
mount remedy — not compulsory arbitration which was
advocated by the employer members, nor labor legislation
and a permanent governmental industrial commission
proposed by the economist on the commission. The im-
mediate practical effects of the commission were nil, but
its agitational value proved of great importance to labor.
For the first time in the history of the United States the
employing class seemed to be arrayed as a defendant be-
fore the bar of public opinion. Also, it was for the first
time that a commission representing the government not
only unhesitatingly pronounced the trade union move-
ment harmless to the country's best interests but went to
the length of raising it to the dignity of a fundamental
and indispensable institution.

The Commission on Industrial Relations on the whole
reflected the favorable attitude of the Administration
which came to power in 1912. The American Federation
of Labor was given full sway over the Department of
Labor and a decisive influence in all other government

THE WAR-TIME BALANCE SHEET 229

departments on matters relating to labor. Without a
political party of its own, by virtue only of its "bargain-
ing power" over the old parties, the American Federation
of Labor seemed to have attained a position not far be-
hind that of British labor after more than a decade of
independent political action. Furthermore, fortunately
for itself, labor in America had come into a political patri-
mony at a time when the country was standing on the
threshold of a new era, during which government was des-
tined to become the arbiter of industry.

The War in Europe did not immediately improve in-
dustrial conditions in America. The first to feel its effects
were the industries directly engaged in the making of
munitions. The International Association of Machinists,
the organization of the now all-important munition work-
ers, actually had its membership somewhat decreased dur-
ing 1915, but in the following year made a 50 per cent,
increase. The greater part of the new membership came
from the "munitions towns," such as Bridgeport, Con-
necticut, where, in response to the insatiable demand from
the Allied nations, new enormous plants were erected dur-
ing 1915 and shipment of munitions in mass began early
the next year. Bridgeport and surrounding towns be-
came a center of a successful eight-hour movement, in
which the women workers newly brought into the industry
took the initiative. The Federation as a whole lost three
per cent, of its membership in 1915 and gained seven per
cent, during 1916.

On its War policy the Federation took its cue com-
pletely from the national government. During the greater
part of the period of American neutrality its attitude was
that of a shocked lover of peace who is desirous to main-
tain the strictest neutrality if the belligerents will persist

230 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

in refusing to lend an ear to reason. To prevent a repeti-
tion of a similar catastrophe, the Federation did the ob-
vious thing, pronouncing for open and democratized di-
plomacy; and proposed to the several national trade
union federations that an international labor congress
meet at the close of the war to determine the conditions
of peace. However, both the British and Germans de-
clined. The convention in 1915 condemned the German-
inspired propaganda for an embargo on shipments to all
belligerents and the fomenting of strikes in munitions-
making plants by German agents. The Federation re-
fused to interpret neutrality to mean that the American
wage earner was to be thrown back into the dumps of
depression and unemployment, from which he was just
delivered by the extensive war orders from the Allied
governments.

By the second half of 1916 the war prosperity was in
full swing. Cost of living was rising rapidly and move-
ments for higher wages became general. The practical
stoppage of immigration enabled common labor to get a
larger share than usual of the prosperity. Many em-
ployers granted increases voluntarily. Simultaneously,
a movement for the eight-hour day was spreading from
strictly munitions-making trades into others and was
meeting with remarkable success. But 1916 witnessed
what was doubtless the most spectacular move for the
eight-hour day in American history — the joint eight-hour
demand by the four railway brotherhoods, the engineers,
firemen, conductors, and trainmen. The effectiveness
acquired by trade unionism needs no better proof than the
remarkable success with which these four organizations,
with the full support of the whole labor movement at their
back and aided by a not unfriendly attitude on the part

THE WAR-TIME BALANCE SHEET 231

of the national Administration, brought to bay the great-
est single industry of the country and overcame the oppo-
sition of the entire business class.

The four brotherhoods made a joint demand for an
eight-hour day early in 1916.1 The railway officials
claimed that the demand for the reduction of the work-day
from ten to eight hours with ten hours' pay and a time and
a half rate for overtime was not made in good faith.
Since, they said, the employes ought to have known that
the railways could not be run on an eight-hour day, the
demand was but a covert attempt to gain a substantial
increase in their wages, which were already in advance
of any of the other skilled workers. On the other hand,
the brotherhoods stoutly maintained during their direct
negotiations with the railway companies and in the public
press that their demand was a bona fide demand and that
they believed that the railway business did admit of a
reorganization substantially on an eight-hour basis. The
railway officials offered to submit to arbitration the de-
mand of the men together with counter demands of their
own. The brotherhoods, however, fearing prejudice and
recalling to mindi past disappointments, declined the
proposal and threatened to tie up the whole transporta-
tion system of the country by a strike on Labor Day.

When the efforts at mediation by the United States
Board of Mediation and Conciliation came to naught,
President Wilson invited to Washington the executives
of the several railway systems and a convention of the
several hundred division chairmen of the brotherhoods
and attempted personal mediation. He urged the rail-
way executives to accept the eight-hour day and pro-

*For the developments which led up to this joint move see above,
182-184.

232 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

posed that a commission appointed by himself should in-
vestigate the demand for time and a half for overtime.
This the employes accepted, but the executives objected
to giving the eight-hour day before an investigation was
made. Meantime the brotherhoods had issued their strike
order effective on Labor Day and the crisis became im-
minent. To obviate the calamity of a general strike, at
a time when the country was threatened with troubles on
the Mexican frontier and with the unsettled submarine
controversy with Germany ready to flare up any mo-
ment, the President went before Congress and asked for a
speedy enactment of an eight-hour law for train oper-
atives without a reduction in wages but with no punitive
overtime. He coupled it with a request for an authoriza-
tion of a special commission to report on the operation of
such law for a period of six months, after which the
subject might be reopened. Lastly, he urged an amend-
ment to the Newlands Act making it illegal to call a strike
or a lockout pending an investigation of a controversy
by a government commission. Spurred on by the danger
of the impending strike, Congress quickly acceded to the
first two requests by the President and passed the so-
called Adamson law.1 The strike was averted, but in the
immediately following Presidential campaign labor's
"hold-up" of the national government became one of the
trump issues of the Republican candidate.

This episode of the summer of 1916 had two sequels,
one in the courts and the other one in a negotiated agree-
ment between the railways and the brotherhoods. The
former brought many suits in courts against the govern-

1 Congress ignored the last-named recommendation which would
have introduced in the United States the Canadian system of "Com-
pulsory Investigation."

THE WAR-TIME BALANCE SHEET 233

ment and obtained from a lower court a decision that the
Adamson law was unconstitutional. The case was then
taken to the United States Supreme Court, but the deci-
sion was not ready until the spring of 1917. Meantime
the danger of a strike had been renewed. However, on
the same day when the Supreme Court gave out its deci-
sion, the railways and brotherhoods had signed, at the
urging of the National Council of Defense, an agree-
ment accepting the conditions of the Adamson law re-
gardless of the outcome in court. When the decision be-
came known it was found to be in favor of the Adamson
law. The declaration of war against Germany came a
few days later and opened a new era in the American labor
situation.

Previous to that, on March 12, 1917, when war seemed
inevitable, the national officers of all important unions
in the Federation met in Washington and issued a state-
ment on "American Labor's Position in Peace or in War."
They pledged the labor movement and the influence of the
labor organizations unreservedly in support of the gov-
ernment in case of war. Whereas, they said, in all previ-
ous wars "under the guise of national necessity, labor was
stripped of its means of defense against enemies at home
and was robbed of the advantages, the protections, and
guarantees of justice that had been achieved after ages
of struggle"; and "labor had no representatives in the
councils authorized to deal with the conduct of the war" ;
and therefore "the rights, interests and welfare of work-
ers were autocratically sacrificed for the slogan of na-
tional safety"; in this war "the government must recog-
nize the organized labor movement as the agency through
which it must cooperate with wage earners." Such recog-
nition will imply first "representation on all agencies de-

234 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

termining and administering policies of national defense"
and "on all boards authorized to control publicity during
war time." Second, that "service in government fac-
tories and private establishments, in transportation agen-
cies, all should conform to trade union standards"; and
that "whatever changes in the organization of industry are
necessary upon a war basis, they should be made in ac-
cord with plans agreed upon by representatives of the
government and those engaged and employed in the indus-
try." Third, that the government's demand of sacrifice
of their "labor power, their bodies or their lives" be ac-
companied by "increased guarantees and safe-guards,"
the imposing of a similar burden on property and the
limitation of profits. Fourth, that "organization for in-
dustrial and commercial service" be "upon a different
basis from military service" and "that military service
should be carefully distinguished from service in indus-
trial disputes," since "the same voluntary institutions
that organized industrial, commercial and transportation
workers in times of peace will best take care of the same
problems in time of war." For, "wrapped up with the
safety of this Republic are ideals of democracy, a heritage
which the masses of the people received from our fore-
fathers, who fought that liberty might live in this country
— a heritage that is to be maintained and handed down to
each generation with undiminished power and usefulness."
We quote at such length because this document gives
the quintessence of the wise labor statesmanship which
this crisis brought so clearly to light. Turning away from
the pacifism of the Socialist party, Samuel Gompers and
his associates believed that victory over world militarism
as well as over the forces of reaction at home depended
on labor's unequivocal support of the government. And

THE WAR-TIME BALANCE SHEET 235

in reality, by placing the labor movement in the service
of the war-making power of the nation they assured for
it, for the time being at least, a degree of national pres-
tige and a freedom to expand which could not have been
conquered by many years of the most persistent agitation
and strikes.

The War, thus, far from being a trial for organized
labor, proved instead a great opportunity. For the War
released organized labor from a blind alley, as it were.
The American Federation of Labor, as we saw, had made
but slow progress in organization after 1905. At that
time it had succeeded in organizing the skilled and some
of the semi-skilled workers. Further progress was im-
peded by the anti-union employers especially in indus-
tries commonly understood to be dominated by "trusts."
In none of the "trustified" industries, save anthracite
coal, was labor organization able to make any headway.
And yet the American Federation of Labor, situated as
it is, is obliged to stake everything upon the power to
organize.1 The war gave it that all-important power.
Soon after the Federal government became the arbiter of
industry — by virtue of being the greatest consumer, and
by virtue of a public opinion clearly outspoken on the
subject — we see the Taft-Walsh War Labor Board 2
embody "the right to organize" into a code of rules for
the guidance of the relations of labor and capital during
War-time, along with the basic eight-hour day and the
right to a living wage. In return for these gifts American
labor gave up nothing so vital as British labor had done
in the identical situation. The right to strike was left
unmolested and remained a permanent threat hanging

'See below, 283-287.
'See below, 238-240.

236 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

over slow moving officialdom and recalcitrant employers.
And the only restraint accepted by labor was a promise
of self-restraint. The Federation was not to strike until
all other means for settlement had been tried, nor was it
to press for the closed shop where such had not existed
prior to the War declaration. But at the same time no
employer was to interpose a check to its expansion into
industries and districts heretofore unorganized. Nor
could an employer discipline an employe for joining a
union or inducing others to join.

In 1916, when the President established the National
Council of Defense, he appointed Samuel Gompers one
of the seven members composing the Advisory Commission
in charge of all policies dealing with labor and chairman
of a committee on labor of his own appointment. Among
the first acts of the Council of Defense was an emphatic
declaration for the preservation of the standards of legal
protection of labor against the ill-advised efforts for
their suspension during War-time. The Federation was
given representation on the Emergency Construction
Board, the Fuel Administration Board, on the Woman's
Board, on the Food Administration Board, and finally on
the War Industries Board. The last named board was
during the war the recognized arbiter of the country's
industries, all labor matters being handled by its labor
representative. The Department of Labor, which in the
War emergency could rightly be considered the Federa-
tion's arm in the Administration, was placed in supreme
charge of general labor administration. Also, in connec-
tion with the administration of the military conscription
law, organized labor was given representation on each
District Exemption Board. But perhaps the strongest
expression of the official recognition of the labor move-

THE WAR-TIME BALANCE SHEET 237

ment was offered by President Wilson when he took time
from the pressing business in Washington to journey to
Buffalo in November 1917, to deliver an address before
the convention of the American Federation of Labor.

In addition to representation on boards and commis-
sions dealing with general policies, the government en-
tered with the Federation into a number of agreements
relative to the conditions of direct and indirect employ-
ment by the government. In each agreement the preva-
lent trade union standards were fully accepted and pro-
vision was made for a three-cornered board of adjustment
to consist of a representative of the particular govern-
ment department, the public and labor. Such agreements
were concluded by the War and Navy departments and
by the United States Emergency Fleet Corporation. The
Shipping Board sponsored a similar agreement between
the shipping companies and the seafaring unions ; and the
War Department between the leather goods manufac-
turers and leather workers' union. When the government
took over the railways on January 1, 1918, it created
three boards of adjustment on the identical principle of
a full recognition of labor organizations. The spirit with
which the government faced the labor problem was shown
also in connection with the enforcement of the eight-
hour law. The 'law of 1912 provided for an eight-hour
day on contract government work but allowed exceptions
in emergencies. In 1917 Congress gave the President
the right to waive the application of the law, but provided
that in such event compensation be computed on a "basic"
eight-hour day. The War and Navy departments en-
forced these provisions not only to the letter but generally
gave to them a most liberal interpretation.

The taking over of the railways by the government

238 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

revolutionized the railway labor situation. Under private
management, as was seen, the four brotherhoods alone, the
engineers, firemen, conductors, and trainmen enjoyed uni-
versal recognition, the basic eight-hour day (since 1916),
and high wages. The other organizations of the railway
workers, the shopmen, the yardmen, the maintenance of
way men, the clerks, and the telegraphers were, at best,
tolerated rather than recognized. Under the government
administration the eight-hour day was extended to all
grades of workers, and wages were brought up to a mini-
mum of 68 cents per hour, with a considerable though not
corresponding increase in the wages of the higher grades
of labor. All discrimination against union men was done
away with, so that within a year labor organization on
the railways was nearing the hundred per cent. mark.

The policies of the national railway administration of
the open door to trade unionism and of recognition of
union standards were successfully pressed upon other em-
ployments by the National War Labor Board. On March
29, 1918, a National War Labor Conference Board, com-
posed of five representatives of the Federation of Labor,
five representatives of employers* associations and two
joint chairmen, William H. Taft for the employers and
Frank P. Walsh for the employes, reported to the Secre-
tary of Labor on "Principles and Policies to govern Re-
lations between Workers and Employers in War In-
dustries for the Duration of the War." These "prin-
ciples and policies," which were to be enforced by a per-
manent War Labor Board organized upon the identical
principle as the reporting board, included a voluntary
relinquishment of the right to strike and lockout by
employes and employers, respectively, upon the follow-
ing conditions : First, there was a recognition of the equal

THE WAR-TIME BALANCE SHEET 239

right of employes and employers to organize into associ-
ations and trade unions and to bargain collectively. This
carried an undertaking by the employers not to discharge
workers for. membership in trade unions or for legitimate
trade union activities, and was balanced by an undertak-
ing of the workers, "in the exercise of their right to organ-
ize," not to "use coercive measures of any kind to induce
persons to join their organizations, nor to induce employ-
ers to bargain or deal therewith." Second, both sides
agreed upon the observance of the status quo ante bellum
as to union or open shop in a given establishment and as
to union standards of wages, hours, and other conditions
of employment. This carried the express stipulation that
the right to organize was not to be curtailed under any
condition and that the War Labor Board could grant
improvement in labor conditions as the situation war-
ranted. Third, the understanding was that if women
should be brought into industry, they must be allowed
equal pay for equal work. Fourth, it was agreed that
"the basic eight-hour day was to be recognized as apply-
ing in all cases in which the existing law required it,
while in all other cases the question of hours of labor was
to be settled with due regard to government necessities
and the welfare, health, and proper comfort of the work-
ers." Fifth, restriction of output by trade unions was to
be done away with. Sixth, in fixing wages and other
conditions regard was to be shown to trade union stand-
ards. And lastly came the recognition of "the right of all
workers, including common laborers, to a living wage"
and the stipulation that in fixing wages, there will be
established "minimum rates of pay which will insure the
subsistence of the worker and his family in health and
reasonable comfort."

240 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

The establishment of the War Labor Board did not
mean that the country had gone over to the principle
of compulsory arbitration, for the Board could not
force any party to a dispute to submit to its arbitra-
tion or by an umpire of its appointment. However,
so outspoken was public opinion on the necessity of avoid-
ing interruptions in the War industries and so far-reach-
ing were the powers of the government over the employer
as the administrator of material and labor priorities and
over the employes as the administrator of the conscrip-
tion law that the indirect powers of the Board sufficed
to make its decision prevail in nearly every instance.

The packing industry was a conspicuous case of the
"new course" in industrial relations. This industry had
successfully kept unionism out since an ill-considered
strike in 1904, which ended disastrously for the strikers.
Late in 1917, 60,000 employes in the packing houses went
on strike for union recognition, the basic eight-hour day,
and other demands. Intervention by the government led
to a settlement, which, although denying the union formal
recognition, granted the basic eight-hour day, a living
wage, and the right to organize, together with all that it
implied, and the appointment of a permanent arbitrator
to adjudicate disputes. Thus an industry which had pro-
hibited labor organization for fourteen years was made to
open its door to trade unionism.1 Another telling gain
for the basic eight-hour day was made by the timber
workers in the Northwest, again at the insistence of the
government.

What the aid of the government in securing the right
to organize meant to the strength of trade unionism may

irThe unions again lost their hold upon the packing industry in
the autumn of 1921.

THE WAR-TIME BALANCE SHEET 241

be derived from the following figures. In the two years
from 1917 to 1919 the organization of the meat cutters
and butcher workmen increased its membership from less
than 10,000 to over 66,000; the boilermakers and iron
shipbuilders from 31,000 to 85,000; the blacksmiths from
12,000 to 28,000 ; the railway clerks from less than 7000
to over 71,000; the machinists from 112,000 to 255,000;
the maintenance of way employes from less than 10,000
to 54,000; the railway carmen from 39,000 to 100,000;
the railway telegraphers from 27,000 to 45,000; and
the electrical workers from 42,000 to 131,000. The
trades here enumerated — mostly related to shipbuilding
and railways — accounted for the greater part of the total
gain in the membership of the Federation from two and a
half million members in 1917 to over three and a third
in 1919.

An important aspect of the cooperation of the govern-
ment with the Federation was the latter's eager self-iden-
tification with the government's foreign policy, which went
to the length of choosing to play a lone hand in the
Allied labor world. Labor in America had an implicit
faith in the national government, which was shared by
neither English nor French labor. Whereas the workers
in the other Allied Nations believed that their govern-
ments needed to be prodded or forced into accepting
the right road to a democratic peace by an international
labor congress, which would take the entire matter of
war and peace out of the diplomatic chancellories into
an open conference of the representatives of the workers,
the American workers were only too eager to follow the
leadership of the head of the American nation. To this
doubtless was added the usual fervor of a new convert
to any cause (in this instance the cause of the War

242 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

against Germany) and a strong distrust of German so-
cialism, which American labor leaders have developed dur-
ing their drawn-out struggle against the German-trained
socialists inside the Federation who have persistently
tried to "capture" the organization.

When on January 8, 1918, President Wilson enunciated
his famous Fourteen Points, the Federation of course gave
them an enthusiastic endorsement. In the autumn of
1918 Gompers went to Europe and participated in an
Inter-Allied labor conference. He refused, however, to
participate in the first International Labor and Socialist
Congress called since the War, which met at Berne, Switz-
erland, in March 1919, since he would not sit with the
Germans while their country was not formally at peace
with the United States. The convention of the Feder-
ation in June 1919 gave complete endorsement to the
League of Nations Pact worked out at Versailles, — on
general grounds and on the ground of its specific provi-
sions for an international regulation of labor conditions
designed to equalize labor standards and costs. Contrast-
ing with this was the position of British labor, which
regarded the Pact with a critical eye, frankly confessing
disillusionment, but was willing to accept it for the sake
of its future possibilities, when the Pact might be re-
modelled by more liberal and more democratic hands.

The contrast in outlook between the mild evolutionism
of the American Federation of Labor and the social radi-
calism of British labor stood out nowhere so strongly
as in their respective programs for Reconstruction after
the War. The chief claim of the British Labor party for
recognition at the hands of the voter at the General
Election in December 1918, was its well-thought-out
reconstruction program put forth under the telling title

THE WAR-TIME BALANCE SHEET 243

of "Labour and the New Social Order." This program
was above all a legislative program. It called for a thor-
oughgoing governmental control of industry by means
of a control of private finance, natural resources, trans-
portation, and international trade. To the workingmen
such control would mean the right to steady employment,
the right to a living wage, and the appropriation of eco-
nomic surpluses by the state for the common good — be
they in the form of rent, excessive profits, or overlarge
personal incomes. Beyond this minimum program loomed
the cooperative commonwealth with the private capitalist
totally eliminated.

Such was the program of British labor. What of the
Reconstruction program of American labor? First of all,
American labor thought of Reconstruction as a program
to be carried out by the trade union, not by the govern-
ment. Moreover, it did not see in Reconstruction the
great break with the past which that meant to British
labor. The American Federation of Labor applied to Re-
construction the same philosophy which lies at the basis
of its ordinary, everyday activity. It concerned itself
not with any far-reaching plan for social reorganization,
but with a rising standard of living and an enlarged free-
dom for the union. The American equivalent of a gov-
ernment-guaranteed right to employment and a living
wage was the "right to organize." Assure to labor that
right, free the trade unions of court interference in strikes
and boycotts, prevent excessive meddling by the govern-
ment in industrial relations — and the stimulated activities
of the "legitimate" organizations of labor, which will re-
sult therefrom, will achieve a far better Reconstruction
than a thousand paper programs however beautiful. So
reasoned the leaders of the American Federation of Labor.

244 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

During the period of War, they of course gladly accepted
directly from the government the basic eight-hour day
and the high wages, which under other circumstances
they could have got only by prolonged and bitter strik-
ing. But even more acceptable than these directly be-
stowed boons was the indirect one of the right to organize
free from anti-union discriminations by employers. Hav-
ing been arrested in its expansion, as we saw, by anti-
union employers and especially "trusts," the American
Federation of Labor took advantage of the War situ-
ation to overflow new territory. Once entrenched and the
organization well in hand, it thought it could look to the
future with confidence.

CHAPTER 11
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

The Armistice with Germany came suddenly and unex-
pectedly. To the organized workers the news was as wel-
come as to other citizens. But, had they looked at the
matter from a special trade union standpoint, they would
probably have found a longer duration of the War not
entirely amiss. For coal had been unionized already be-
fore the War, the railways first during the War, but the
third basic industry, steel, was not touched either before
or during the War. However, it was precisely in the
steel industry that opposition to unionism has found its
chief seat, not only to unionism in that industry alone but
to unionism in related or subsidiary industries as well.

The first three months after the Armistice the general
expectation was for a set-back in business conditions due
to the withdrawal of the enormous government War-time
demand. Employers and trade unions stood equally unde-
cided. When, however, instead of the expected slump,
there came a prosperity unknown even during the War,
the trade unions resumed their offensive, now unrestrained
by any other but the strictly economic consideration. As
a matter of fact, the trade unions were not at all free
agents, since their demands, frequent and considerable
though they were, barely sufficed to keep wages abreast
of the soaring cost of living. Through 1919 and the

245

246 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

first half of 1920 profits and wages were going up by
leaps and bounds; and the forty-four hour week, — no
longer the mere eight-hour day, — became a general slo-
gan and a partial reality. Success was especially notable
in clothing, building, printing, and the metal trades. One
cannot say the same, however, of the three basic industries,
steel, coal, and railways. In steel the twelve-hour day and
the seven-day week continued as before for approximately
one-half of the workers and the unions were preparing for
a battle with the "Steel Trust." While on the railways
and in coal mining the unions now began to encounter
opposition from an unexpected quarter, namely, the gov-
ernment.

When in the summer of 1919 the railway shopmen de-
manded an increase in their wages, which had not been
raised since the summer of 1918, President Wilson prac-
tically refused the demand, urging the need of a general
deflation but binding himself to use all the powers of the
government immediately to reduce the cost of living. A
significant incident in this situation was a spontaneous
strike of shopmen on many roads unauthorized by inter-
national union officials, which disarranged the movement
of trains for a short time but ended with the men return-
ing to work under the combined pressure of their leaders*
threats and the President's plea.

In September 1919, the United States Railroad Ad-
ministration and the shopmen's unions entered into na-
tional agreements, which embodied the practices under
the Administration as well as those in vogue on the more
liberal roads before 1918, including recognition and a
large number of "working rules." These "national
agreements" became an important issue one year later,
when their abolition began to be pressed by the railway

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 247

executives before the Railroad Labor Board, which was
established under the Transportation Act of 1920.

In the summer of 1919 employers in certain industries,
like clothing, grew aware of a need of a more "psycho-
logical" handling of their labor force than heretofore in
order to reduce a costly high labor turnover and no less
costly stoppages of work. This created a veritable Eldo-
rado for "employment managers'* and "labor managers,"
real and spurious. Universities and colleges, heretofore
wholly uninterested in the problem of labor or viewing
training in that problem as but a part of a general cul-
tural education, now vied with one another in establishing
"labor management" and "labor personnel" courses. One
phase of the "labor personnel" work was a rather wide
experimentation with "industrial democracy" plans.
These plans varied in form and content, from simple pro-
vision for shop committees for collective dealing, many
of which had already been installed during the War under
the orders of the War Labor Board, to most elaborate
schemes, some modelled upon the Constitution of the
United States. The feature which they all had in com-
mon was that they attempted to achieve some sort of col-
lective bargaining outside the channels of the established
trade unions. The trade unionists termed the new fash-
ioned expressions of industrial democracy "company
unions." This term one may accept as technically cor-
rect without necessarily accepting the sinister connota-
tion imputed to it by labor.

The trade unions, too, were benefiting as organizations.
The Amalgamated Clothing Workers' Union firmly estab-
lished itself by formal agreement on the men's clothing
"markets" of Chicago, Rochester, Baltimore, and New

248 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

York. The membership of the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers* Union rose to 175,000. Employers in general
were complaining of increased labor unrest, a falling off
of efficiency in the shop, and looked askance at the rapid
march of unionization. The trade unions, on their part,
were aware of their opportunity and eager for a final
recognition as an institution in industry. As yet uncer-
tainty prevailed as to whether enough had survived of
the War-time spirit of give and take to make a struggle
avoidable, or whether the issue must be solved by a bitter
conflict of classes.

A partial showdown came in the autumn of 1919.
Three great events, which came closely together, helped
to clear the situation: The steel strike, the President's
Industrial Conference, and the strike of the soft coal min-
ers. The great steel strike, prepared and directed by a
Committee representing twenty-four national and inter-
national unions with William Z. Foster as Secretary and
moving spirit, tried in September 1919 to wrest from
the owners of the steel mills what the railway shopmen
had achieved in 1918 by invitation of the government,
namely, "recognition" and the eight-hour day. Three
hundred thousand men went out on strike at the call of
the committee. The industry came to a practical stand-
still. But in this case the twenty-four allied unions
were not dealing with a government amenable to political
pressure, nor with a loosely joined association of employ-
ers competing among themselves. Furthermore, the time
had passed when the government had either the will or
the power to interfere and order both sides to arbitrate
their dispute. On the contrary, the unions were now
dealing unaided with the strongest capitalist aggregation
in the world.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 249

At the request of President Wilson, Gompers had urged
the strike committee to postpone the strike until after the
meeting of the national industrial conference called by
the President in October, but the committee claimed that
it could not have kept the men back after a summer of
agitation and feverish organization had they even tried.
The President's conference, modelled upon a similar con-
ference which met earlier in Great Britain, was composed
of three groups of representatives equal in number, one
for capital, one for labor, and one for the general public.
Decisions, to be held effective, had to be adopted by a
majority in each group. The labor representation, domi-
nated of course by Gompers, was eager to make the dis-
cussion turn on the steel strike. It proposed a resolution
to this effect which had the support of the public group,
but fearing a certain rejection by the employer group the
matter was postponed. The issue upon which the align-
ment was effected was industrial control and collective
bargaining. All three groups, the employer and public
groups and of course the labor group, advocated collec-
tive bargaining, — but with a difference. The labor group
insisted that collective bargaining is doomed to be a farce
unless the employes are allowed to choose as their spokes-
men representatives of the national trade union. In the
absence of a powerful protector in the national union,
they argued, the workers in a shop can never feel them-
selves on a bargaining equality with their employer, nor
can they be represented by a spokesman of the necessary
ability if their choice be restricted to those working in
the same plant. The employers, now no longer dominated
by the War-time spirit which caused them in 1917 to
tolerate an expansion of unionism, insisted that no em-
ployer must be obliged to meet for the purpose of collec-

tive bargaining with other than his own employes.1 After
two weeks of uncertainty, when it had become clear that a
resolution supported by both labor and public groups,
which restated the labor position in a milder form, would
be certain to be voted down by the employer group, the
labor group withdrew from the conference, and the con-
ference broke up. The period of the cooperation of
classes had definitely closed.

Meantime the steel strike continued. Federal troops
patrolled the steel districts and there was no violence.
Nevertheless, a large part of the country's press pic-
tured the strike by the steel workers for union recognition
and a normal workday as an American counterpart of the
Bolshevist revolution in Russia. Public opinion, unbal-
anced and excited as it was over the whirlpool of world
events, was in no position to resist. The strike failed.

Nothing made so clear to the trade unionists the
changed situation since the War ended as the strike of
the bituminous coal miners which began November 1. The
miners had entered, in October 1917, into a wage agree-
ment with the operators for the duration of the War.
The purchasing power of their wages having become
greatly reduced by the ever rising cost of living, discon-
tent was general in the union. A further complication
arose from the uncertain position of the United States
with reference to War and Peace, which had a bearing on
the situation. The miners claimed that the Armistice
had ended the War. The War having ended, the disad-

1 The most plausible argument in favor of the position taken by
the employing group is that no employer should be forced to decide
matters as intimately connected with the welfare of his business
as the ones relating to his labor costs and shop discipline with
national union leaders, since the latter, at beat, are interested in the
welfare of the trade as a whole but rarely in the particular success
of his own particular establishment.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 251

vantageous agreement expired with it. So argued the
miners and demanded a sixty per cent, increase in ton-
nage rates, a corresponding one for yardmen and others
paid by the day or hour, and a thirty-hour week to
spread employment through the year. The operators
maintained that the agreement was still in force, but in-
timated a readiness to make concessions if they were
permitted to shift the cost to the consumer. At this
point, the Fuel Administration, a War-time government
body, already partly in the process of dissolution, inter-
vened and attempted to dictate a settlement at a fourteen
per cent, increase, which was entirely unacceptable to the
union. The strike continued and the prospect of a dire
coal famine grew nearer. To break the deadlock, on mo-
tion of Attorney-General Palmer, Judge Anderson of
Indianapolis, under the War-time Lever Act, issued an
injunction forbidding the union officials to continue con-
ducting the strike. The strike continued, the strikers
refusing to return to work, and a Bituminous Coal Com-
mission appointed by the President finally settled it by an
award of an increase of twenty-seven per cent. But that
the same Administration which had given the unions so
many advantages during the War should now have invoked
against them a War-time law, which had already been
considered practically abrogated, was a clear indication
of the change in the times. In a strike by anthracite
coal miners in the following year an award was made by
a Presidential board of three, representing the employers,
the union, and the public. The strikers, however, refused
to abide by it and inaugurated a "vacation-strike," the
individual strikers staying away on a so-called vacation,
nominally against the will of the union officers. They
finally returned to work.

252 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

Both the steel and coal strikes furnished occasions for
considerable anti-union propaganda in the press. Public
sentiment long favorable to labor became definitely hos-
tile.1 In Kansas the legislature passed a compulsory arbi-
tration law and created an Industrial Relations Court to
adjudicate trade disputes. Simultaneously an "anti-Red"
campaign inaugurated by Attorney-General Palmer con-
tributed its share to the public excitement and helped to
prejudice the cause of labor more by implication than by
making direct charges. It was in an atmosphere thus sur-
charged with suspicion and fear that a group of employ-
ers, led by the National Association of Manufacturers
and several local employers* organizations, launched an
open-shop movement with the slogan of an "American
plan" for shops and industries. Many employers, nor-
mally opposed to unionism, who in War-time had per-
mitted unionism to acquire scope, were now trying to re-
conquer their lost positions. The example of the steel
industry and the fiasco of the President's Industrial Con-
ference crystallized this reviving anti-union sentiment
into action.

Meanwhile the railway labor situation remained un-
settled and fraught with danger. The problem was bound
up with the general problem as to what to do with the
railways. Many plans were presented to Congress, from
an immediate return to private owners to permanent
government ownership and management. The railway
labor organizations, that is, the four brotherhoods of the
train service personnel and the twelve unions united in

*The turn in public sentiment really dated from the threat of a
strike for the eight-hour day by the four railway brotherhoods in
1916, which forced the passage of the Adamson law by Congress.
The law was a victory for the brotherhoods, but also extremely useful
to the enemies of organized labor in arousing public hostility to
unionism.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 253

the Railway Employes* Department of the American
Federation of Labor, came before Congress with the so-
called Plumb Plan, worked out by Glenn E. Plumb, the
legal representative of the brotherhoods. This plan
proposed that the government take over the railways for
good, paying a compensation to the owners, and then
entrust their operation to a board composed of govern-
ment officials, union representatives, and representatives
of the technical staffs.1 So much for ultimate plans. On
the more immediate wage problem proper, the government
had clearly fallen down on its promise made to the shop-
men in August 1919, when their demands for higher wages
were refused and a promise was made that the cost of
living would be reduced. Early in 1920 President Wilson
notified Congress that he would return the roads to
the owners on March 1, 1920. A few days before that
date the Esch-Cummins bill was passed under the name
of the Transportation Act of 1920. Strong efforts were
made to incorporate in the bill a prohibition against
strikes and lockouts. In that form it had indeed passed
the Senate. In the House bill, however, the compulsory
arbitration feature was absent and the final law contained
a provision for a Railroad Labor Board, of railway, union,
and public representatives, to be appointed by the Presi-
dent, with the power of conducting investigations and
issuing awards, but with the right to strike or lockout
unimpaired either before, during, or after the investiga-
tion. It was the first appointed board of this description
which was to pass on the clamorous demands by the
railway employes for higher wages.2

1 See below, 259-261, for a more detailed description of the Plan.
*The Transportation Act included a provision that prior to Sep-
tember 1, 1920, the railways could not reduce wages.

254 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

No sooner had the roads been returned under the new
law, and before the board was even appointed, than a
strike broke out among the switchmen and yardmen,
whose patience had apparently been exhausted. The
strike was an "outlaw" strike, undertaken against the
wishes of national leaders and organized and led by
"rebel" leaders risen up for the occasion. For a time it
threatened not only to paralyze the country's railway
system but to wreck the railway men's organizations as
well. It was finally brought to an end through the ef-
forts of the national leaders, and a telling effect on the
situation was produced by an announcement by the newly
constituted Railroad Labor Board that no "outlaw" or-
ganization would have standing before it. The Board is-
sued an award on July 20, retroactive to May 1, increasing
the total annual wage bill of the railways by $600,000,000.
The award failed to satisfy the union, but they acquiesced.

When the increase in wages was granted to the railway
employes, industry in general and the railways in par-
ticular were already entering a period of slump. With
the depression the open-shop movement took on a greater
vigor. With unemployment rapidly increasing employers
saw their chance to regain freedom from union control.
A few months later the tide also turned in the movement
of wages. Inside of a year the steel industry reduced
wages thirty per cent., in three like installments ; and the
twelve-hour day and the seven-day week, which had fig-
ured among the chief causes of the strike of 1919 and
for which the United States Steel Corporation was
severely condemned by a report of a Committee of the
Interchurch World Movement,1 has largely continued as

1 A Protestant interdenominational organization of influence, which
investigated the strike and issued a report.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 255

before. In the New York "market" of the men's clothing
industry, where the union faces the most complex and
least stable condition mainly owing to the heterogeneous
character of the employing group, the latter grasped the
opportunity to break with the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers* Union. By the end of the spring of 1921 the
clothing workers won their struggle, showing that a
union built along new lines was at least as efficient a
fighting machine as any of the older unions. It was this
union also and several local branches of the related union
in the ladies* garment industry, which realized the need of
assuring to the employer at least a minimum of labor
efficiency if the newly established level of wages was not
to be materially lowered. Hence the acceptance of the
principle of "standards of production" fixed with the
aid of scientific managers employed jointly by the em-
ployers and the union.

The spring and summer of 1921 were a time of wide-
spread "readjustment" strikes, or strikes against cuts in
wages, especially in the building trades. The building
industry went through in 1921 and 1922 one of its peri-
odic upheavals against the tyranny of the "walking
delegates" and against the state of moral corruption
for which some of the latter shared responsibility to-
gether with an unscrupulous element among the employers.
In San Francisco, where the grip of the unions upon the
industry was strongest, the employers turned on them
and installed the "open-shop" after the building trades'
council had refused to accept an award by an arbitration
committee set up by mutual agreement. The union
claimed, however, in self- justification that the Committee,
by awarding a reduction in the wages of fifteen crafts
while the issue as originally submitted turned on a demand

256 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

by these crafts for a raise in wages, had gone outside its
legitimate scope. In New York City an investigation
by a special legislative committee uncovered a state of
reeking corruption among the leadership in the building
trades* council and among an element in the employing
group in connection with a successful attempt to establish
a virtual local monopoly in building. Some of the lead-
ing corruptionists on both sides were given court sen-
tences and the building trades' council accepted modi-
fications in the "working rules" formulated by the counsel
for the investigating committee. In Chicago a situation
developed in many respects similar to the one in San Fran-
cisco. In a wage dispute, which was submitted by both
sides to Federal Judge K. M. Landis for arbitration,
the award authorized not only a wage reduction but a
revision of the "working rules" as well. Most of the
unionists refused to abide by the award and the situation
developed into literal warfare. In Chicago the employers'
side was aggressively upheld by a "citizens' committee"
formed to enforce the Landis award. The committee
claimed to have imported over 10,000 out-of-town build-
ing mechanics to take the places of the strikers.

In the autumn of 1921 the employers in the packing
industry discontinued the arrangement whereby indus-
trial relations were administered by an "administrator," *
Judge Alschuler of Chicago, whose rulings had ma-
terially restricted the employers' control in the shop.
Some of the employers put into effect company union
plans. This led to a strike, but in the end the unions
lost their foothold in the industry, which the War had
enabled them to acquire. By that time, however, the
*The union had not been formally "recognized" at any time.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 257

open-shop movement seemed already passing its peak,
without having caused an irreparable breach in the posi-
tion of organized labor. Evidently, the long years of
preparation before the War and the great opportunity
during the War itself, if they have failed to give trade
unionism the position of a recognized national institution,
have at least made it immune from destruction by
employers, however general or skillfully managed the
attack. In 1920 the total organized union membership,
including the 871,000 in unions unaffiliated with the Amer-
ican Federation of Labor, was slightly short of 5,000,000,
or over four million in the Federation itself. In 1921
the membership of the Federation declined slightly to
3,906,000, and the total organized membership probably
in proportion. In 1922 the membership of the Federa-
tion declined to about 3,200,000, showing a loss of about
850,000 since the high mark of 1920.

The legal position of trade unions has continued as un-
certain and unsatisfactory to the unions, as if no Clay-
ton Act had been passed. The closed shop has been
condemned as coercion of non-unionists. Yet in the Cop-
page case * the United States Supreme Court found that
it is not coercion when an employer threatens discharge
unless union membership is renounced. Similarly, it is
unlawful for union agents to attempt organization, even
by peaceful persuasion, when employes have signed con-
tracts not to join the union as a condition of employ-
ment.2 A decision which arouses strong doubt whether
the Clayton Act made any change in the status of trade
unions was given by the Supreme Court in the recent

'Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U. S. (1915).

'Hitchman Coal and Coke Co. v. Mitchell et al, 245 U. S. 289
(1917).

258 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

Duplex Printing case.1 In this decision the union rested
its defense squarely on the immunities granted by the
Clayton Act. Despite this, the injunction was confirmed
and the boycott again declared illegal, the court holding
that the words "employer and employes" in the Act re-
strict its benefits only to "parties standing in proximate
relation to a controversy," that is to the employes who
are immediately involved in the dispute and not to the
national union which undertakes to bring their employer
to terms by causing their other members to boycott his
goods.

The prevailing judicial interpretation of unlawful
union methods is briefly as follows : Strikes are illegal
when they involve defamation, fraud, actual physical vio-
lence, threats of physical violence, or inducement of
breach of contract. Boycotts are illegal when they bring
third parties into the dispute by threats of strikes, or loss
of business, publication of "unfair lists," 2 or by inter-
ference with Interstate commerce. Picketing is illegal
when accompanied by violence, threats, intimidation, and
coercion. In December 1921 the Supreme Court de-
clared mere numbers in groups constituted intimidation
and, while admitting that circumstances may alter
cases, limited peaceful picketing to one picket at each
point of ingress or egress of the plant.3 In another case
the Court held unconstitutional an Arizona statute, which
reproduced verbatim the labor clauses of the Clayton
Act ; * this on the ground that concerted action by the
union would be illegal if the means used were illegal and

1 Duplex Printing Press Co. ». Deering, 41 Sup. Ct. 172 (1921).

'Montana allows the "unfair list" and California allows all
boycotts.

1 American Steel Foundries of Granite City, Illinois, v. Tri-City
Central Trades' Council, 42 Sup. Ct. 72 (1921).

*Truax et al. t>. Corrigan, 42 Sup. Ct. 124 (1921).

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 259

therefore the law which operated to make them legal de-
prived the plaintiff of his property without due process
of law. In June 1922, in the Coronado case, the Court
held that unions, although unincorporated, are in every
respect like corporations and are liable for damages in
their corporate capacity, including triple damages under
the Sherman Anti-Trust law, and which may be collected
from their funds.

We have already pointed out that since the War ended
the American labor movement has in the popular mind be-
come linked with radicalism. The steel strike and the coal
miners* strike in 1919, the revolt against the national
leaders and "outlaw" strikes in the printing industry and
on the railways in 1920, the advocacy by the organiza-
tions of the railway men of the Plumb Plan for nationali-
zation of railways and its repeated endorsement by the
conventions of the American Federation of Labor, the
resolutions in favor of the nationalization of coal mines
passed at the conventions of the United Mine Workers,
the "vacation" strike by the anthracite coal miners in
defiance of a government wage award, the sympathy ex-
pressed for Soviet Russia in a number of unions, notably
of the clothing industry, have led many to see, despite the
assertions of the leaders of the American Federation of
Labor to the contrary, an apparent drift in the labor
movement towards radicalism, or even the probability of
a radical majority in the Federation in the not distant
future.

The most startling shift has been, of course, in the rail-
way men's organizations, which have changed from a
pronounced conservatism to an advocacy of a socialistic
plan of railway nationalization under the Plumb Plan.
The Plumb Plan raises the issue of socialism in its Amer-

260 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

ican form. In bare outline the Plan proposes government
acquisition of the railroads at a value which excludes
rights and privileges not specifically granted to the roads
in their charters from the States. The government
would then lease the roads to a private operating cor-
poration governed by a tri-partite board of directors
equally representing the consuming public, the mana-
gerial employes, and the classified employes. An auto-
matic economy-sharing scheme was designed to assure
efficient service at low rates calculated to yield a fixed
return on a value shorn of capitalized privileges.

The purpose of the Plumb Plan is to equalize the op-
portunities of labor and capital in using economic power
to obtain just rewards for services rendered to the public.
In this respect it resembles many of the land reform and
other "panaceas" which are scattered through labor his-
tory. Wherein it differs is in making the trade unions the
vital and organized representatives of producers' in-
terests entitled to participate in the direct management of
industry. An ideal of copartnership and self-employ-
ment was thus set up, going beyond the boundaries of
self-help to which organized labor had limited itself in
the eighties.

But it is easy to overestimate the drift in the direction
of radicalism. The Plumb Plan has not yet been made
the sine qua non of the American labor program. Al-
though the American Federation of Labor endorsed the
principle of government ownership of the railways at its
conventions of 1920 and 1921, President Gompers, who
spoke against the Plan, was reflected and again reflected.
And in obeying instructions to cooperate with brother-
hood leaders, he found that they also thought it inoppor-
tune to press Plumb Plan legislation actively. So far

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 261

as the railway men themselves are concerned, after the
Railroad Labor Board set up under the Esch-Cummins act
had begun to pass decisions actually affecting wages and
working rules, the pressure for the Plumb Plan sub-
sided. Instead, the activities of the organizations, though
scarcely lessened in intensity, have become centered upon
the issues of conditions of employment.

The drift towards independent labor politics, which
many anticipate, also remains quite inconclusive. A
Farmer-Labor party, launched in 1920 by influential la-
bor leaders of Chicago (to be sure, against the wishes of
the national leaders), polled not more than 350,000
votes. And in the same election, despite a wide dissatis-
faction in labor circles with the change in the govern-
ment's attitude after the passage of the War emergency
and with a most sweeping use of the injunction in the
coal strike, the vote for the socialist candidate for
President fell below a million, that is behind the vote
of 1912, notwithstanding a doubling of the electorate
with women's suffrage. Finally, the same convention of
the American Federation of Labor, which showed so much
sympathy for the ideas of the Plumb Plan League, ap-
proved a rupture with the International Trade Union
Federation, with headquarters in Amsterdam, Holland,
mainly on account of the revolutionary character of the
addresses issued by the latter.

PART III
CONCLUSIONS AND INFERENCES

CHAPTER 12

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

To interpret the labor movement means to offer a
theory of the struggle between labor and capital in our
present society. According to Karl Marx, the founder
of modern socialism, the efficient cause in all the class
struggles of history has been technical progress. Prog-
ress in the mode of making a living or the growth of
"productive forces," says Marx, causes the coming up
of new classes and stimulates in each and all classes a
desire to use their power for a maximum class advantage.
Referring to the struggle between the class of wage
earners and the class of employers, Marx brings out
that modern machine technique has concentrated the
social means of production under the ownership of the
capitalist, who thus became absolute master. The laborer
indeed remains a free man to dispose of his labor as he
wishes, but, having lost possession of the means of pro-
duction, which he had as a master-workman during the
preceding handicraft stage of industry, his freedom is
only an illusion and his bargaining power is no greater
than if he were a slave.

But capitalism, Marx goes on to say, while it debases
the worker, at the same time produces the conditions of
his ultimate elevation. Capitalism with its starvation
wages and misery makes the workers conscious of their
common interests as an exploited class, concentrates them
in a limited number of industrial districts, and forces

265

266 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

them to organize for a struggle against the exploiters.
The struggle is for the complete displacement of the
capitalists both in government and industry by the revo-
lutionary labor class. Moreover, capitalism itself ren-
ders effective although unintended aid to its enemies by
developing the following three tendencies : First, we have
the tendency towards the concentration of capital and
wealth in the hands of a few of the largest capitalists,
which reduces the number of the natural supporters of
capitalism. Second, we observe a tendency towards a
steady depression of wages and a growing misery of the
wage-earning class, which keeps revolutionary ardor
alive. And lastly, the inevitable and frequent economic
crises under capitalism disorganize it and hasten it on
towards destruction. The last and gravest capitalistic
industrial crisis will coincide with the social revolution
which will bring capitalism to an end. The wage-earning
class must under no condition permit itself to be diverted
from its revolutionary program into futile attempts to
"patch-up" capitalism. The labor struggle must be for
the abolition of capitalism.

American wage earners have steadily disappointed sev-
eral generations of Marxians by their refusal to accept
the Marxian theory of social development and the Marx-
ian revolutionary goal. In fact, in their thinking, most
American wage earners do not start with any general
theory of industrial society, but approach the subject as
bargainers, desiring to strike the best wage bargain pos-
sible. They also have a conception of what the bargain
ought to yield them by way of real income, measured in
terms of their customary standard of living, in terms of
security for the future, and in terms of freedom in the
shop or "self-determination." What impresses them is

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 267

not so much the fact that the employer owns the employ-
ment opportunities but that he possesses a high degree
of bargaining advantage over them. Viewing the situ-
ation as bargainers, they are forced to give their best
attention to the menaces they encounter as bargainers,
namely, to the competitive menaces ; for on these the
employer's own advantage as a bargainer rests. Their
impulse is therefore not to suppress the employer, but
to suppress those competitive menaces, be they convict
labor, foreign labor, "green" or untrained workers work-
ing on machines, and so forth. To do so they feel they
must organize into a union and engage in a "class
struggle" against the employer.

It is the employer's purpose to bring in ever lower and
lower levels in competition among laborers and depress
wages; it is the purpose of the union to eliminate those
lower levels and to make them stay eliminated. That
brings the union men face to face with the whole matter
of industrial control. They have no assurance that the
employer will not get the best of them in bargaining un-
less they themselves possess enough control over the shop
and the trade to check him. Hence they will strive for
the "recognition" of the union by the employer or the
associated employers as an acknowledged part of the
government of the shop and the trade. It is essential
to note that in struggling for recognition, labor is strug-
gling not for something absolute, as would be a struggle
for a complete dispossession of the employer, but for the
sort of an end that admits of relative differences and
gradations. Industrial control may be divided in vary-
ing proportions,1 reflecting at any one time the relative

1 The struggle for control, as carried on by trade unions, centers
on such matters as methods of wage determination, the employer's
right of discharge, hiring and lay-off, division of work, methods of

268 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

ratio of bargaining power of the contesting sides. It is
labor's aim to continue increasing its bargaining power
and with it its share of industrial control, just as it is
the employer's aim to maintain a status quo or
better. Although this presupposes a continuous strug-
gle, it is not a revolutionary but an "opportunist"
struggle.

Once we accept the view that a broadly conceived aim
to control competitive menaces is the key to the conduct
of organized labor in America, light is thrown on the
causes of the American industrial class struggles. In
place of looking for these causes, with the Marxians, in
the domain of technique and production, we shall look
for them on the market, where all developments which
affect labor as a bargainer and competitor, of which
technical change is one, are sooner or later bound to
register themselves. It will then become possible to ac-
count for the long stretch of industrial class struggle
in America prior to the factory system, while industry
continued on the basis of the handicraft method of pro-
duction. Also we shall be able to render to ourselves a
clearer account of the changes, with time, in the inten-
sity of the struggle, which, were we to follow the Marxian
theory, would appear hopelessly irregular.

We shall take for an illustration the shoe industry.1
The ease with which shoes can be transported long dis-
tances, due to the relatively high money value contained
in small bulk, rendered the shoe industry more sensitive
to changes in marketing than other industries. Indeed

enforcing shop discipline, introduction of machinery and division of
labor, transfers of employes, promotions, the union or non-union
shop, and similar subjects.

1The first trade societies were organized by shoemakers. (See
above, 4-7.)

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 269

we may say that the shoe industry epitomized the general
economic evolution of the country.1

We observe no industrial class struggle during Colonial
times when the market remained purely local and the work
was custom-order work. The journeyman found his
standard of life protected along with the master's own
through the latter's ability to strike a favorable bargain
with the consumer. This was done by laying stress upon
the quality of the work. It was mainly for this reason
that during the custom-order stage of industry the jour-
neymen seldom if ever raised a protest because the regu-
lation of the craft, be it through a guild or through an
informal organization, lay wholly in the hands of the
masters. Moreover, the typical journeyman expected in
a few years to set up with an apprentice or two in
business for himself — so there was a reasonable harmony
of interests.

A change came when improvements in transportation,
the highway and later the canal, had widened the area of
competition among masters. As a first step, the master
began to produce commodities in advance of the demand,
laying up a stock of goods for the retail trade. The
result was that his bargaining capacity over the con-
sumer was lessened and so prices eventually had to be re-
duced, and with them also wages. The next step was
even more serious. Having succeeded in his retail busi-
ness, the master began to covet a still larger market, —
the wholesale market. However, the competition in this
wider market was much keener than it had been in the
custom-order or even in the retail market. It was inevit-
able that both prices and wages should suffer in the proc-

1 See Chapter on "American Shoemakers," in Labor and Admvnif-
tration, by John R. Commons (Macmillan, 1913).

270 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

ess. The master, of course, could recoup himself by
lowering the quality of the product, but when he did that
he lost a telling argument in bargaining with the con-
sumer or the retail merchant. Another result of this new
way of conducting the business was that an increased
amount of capital was now required for continuous
operation, both in raw material and in credits extended to
distant buyers.

The next phase in the evolution of the market rendered
the separation of the journeymen into a class by them-
selves even sharper as well as more permanent. The mar-
ket had grown to such dimensions that only a specialist
in marketing and credit could succeed in business, namely,
the "merchant-capitalist." The latter now interposed
himself permanently between "producer" and consumer
and by his control of the market assumed a commanding
position. The merchant-capitalist ran his business upon
the principle of a large turn-over and a small profit per
unit of product, which, of course, made his income highly
speculative. He was accordingly interested primarily in
low production and labor costs. To depress the wage
levels he tapped new and cheaper sources of labor supply,
in prison labor, low wage country-town labor, woman
and child labor; and set them up as competitive menaces
to the workers in the trade. The merchant-capitalist
system forced still another disadvantage upon the wage
earner by splitting up crafts into separate operations
and tapping lower levels of skill. In the merchant-cap-
italist period we find the "team work" and "task" sys-
tem. The "team" was composed of several workers : a
highly skilled journeyman was in charge, but the other
members possessed varying degrees of skill down to the
practically unskilled "finisher." The team was generally

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 271

paid a lump wage, which was divided by an understanding
among the members. With all that the merchant-
capitalist took no appreciable part in the produc-
tive process. His equipment consisted of a warehouse
where the raw material was cut up and given out
to be worked up by small contractors, to be worked
up in small shops with a few journeymen and ap-
prentices, or else by the journeyman at his home, — all
being paid by the piece. This was the notorious "sweat-
shop system."

The contractor or sweatshop boss was a mere labor
broker deriving his income from the margin between the
piece rate he received from the merchant-capitalist and
the rate he paid in wages. As any workman could easily
become a contractor with the aid of small savings out of
wages, or with the aid of money advanced by the mer-
chant-capitalist, the competition between contractors was
of necessity of the cut-throat kind. The industrial class
struggle was now a three-cornered one, the contractor
aligning himself here with the journeymen, whom he was
forced to exploit, there with the merchant-capitalist, but
more often with the latter. Also, owing to the precari-
ousness of the position of both contractor and journey-
man, the class struggle now reached a new pitch of in-
tensity hitherto unheard of. It is important to note, how-
ever, that as yet the tools of production had not under-
gone any appreciable change, remaining hand tools as
before, and also that the journeyman still owned them.
So that the beginning of class struggles had nothing to
do with machine technique and a capitalist ownership
of the tools of production. The capitalist, however, had
placed himself across the outlets to the market and domi-
nated by using all the available competitive menaces to

272 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

both contractor and wage earner. Hence the bitter class
struggle.

The thirties witnessed the beginning of the merchant-
capitalist system in the cities of the East. But the
situation grew most serious during the forties and fifties.
That was a period of the greatest disorganization of in-
dustry. The big underlying cause was the rapid exten-
sion of markets outrunning the technical development
of industry. The large market, opened first by canals
and then by railroads, stimulated the keenest sort of
competition among the merchant-capitalists. But the
industrial equipment at their disposal had made no
considerable progress. Except in the textile industry,
machinery had not yet been invented or sufficiently per-
fected to make its application profitable. Consequently
industrial society was in the position of an antiquated
public utility in a community which persistently forces
ever lower and lower rates. It could continue to render
service only by cutting down the returns to the factors
of production, — by lowering profits, and especially by
pressing down wages.

In the sixties the market became a national one as the
effect of the consolidation into trunk lines of the numer-
ous and disconnected railway lines built during the for-
ties and fifties. Coincident with the nationalized market
for goods, production began to change from a handicraft
to a machine basis. The former sweatshop boss having
accumulated some capital, or with the aid of credit, now
became a small "manufacturer,'* owning a small plant
and employing from ten to fifty workmen. Machinery
increased the productivity of labor and gave a consider-
able margin of profits, which enabled him to begin
laying a foundation for his future independence of the

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 273

middleman. As yet he was, however, far from inde-
pendent.

The wider areas over which manufactured products
were now to be distributed, called more than ever before
for the services of the specialist in marketing, namely,
the wholes ale- jobber. As the market extended, he sent
out his traveling men, established business connections,
and advertised the articles which bore his trade mark.
His control of the market opened up credit with the banks,
while the manufacturer, who with the exception of his
patents possessed only physical capital and no market
opportunities, found it difficult to obtain credit. More-
over, the rapid introduction of machinery tied up all of
the manufacturers' available capital and forced him to
turn his products into money as rapidly as possible, with
the inevitable result that the merchant was given an
enormous bargaining advantage over him. Had the ex-
tension of the market and the introduction of machinery
proceeded at a less rapid pace, the manufacturer prob-
ably would have been able to obtain greater control over
the market opportunities, and the larger credit which this
would have given him, combined with the accumulation
of his own capital, might have been sufficient to meet his
needs. However, as the situation really developed, the
merchant obtained a superior bargaining power and, by
playing off the competing manufacturers one against
another, produced a cut-throat competition, low prices,
low profits, and consequently a steady and insistent pres-
sure upon wages. This represents the situation in the
seventies and eighties.

For labor the combination of cut-throat competition
among employers with the new machine technique brought
serious consequences. In this era of machinery the forces

274 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

of technical evolution decisively joined hands with the
older forces of marketing evolution to depress the con-
ditions of the wage bargain. It is needless to dilate upon
the effects of machine technique on labor conditions —
they have become a commonplace of political economy.
The shoemakers were first among the organized trades to
feel the effects. In the later sixties they organized what
was then the largest trade union in the world, the Order
of the Knights of St. Crispin,1 to ward off the menace of
"green hands" set to work on machines. With the ma-
chinists and the metal trades in general, the invasion of
unskilled and little skilled competitors began a decade
later. But the main and general invasion came in the
eighties, the proper era from which to date machine pro-
duction in America. It was during the eighties that we
witness an attempted fusion into one organization, the
Order of the Knights of Labor, of the machine-menaced
mechanics and the hordes of the unskilled.2

With the nineties a change comes at last. The manu-
facturer finally wins his independence. Either he reaches
out directly to the ultimate consumer by means of chains
of stores or other devices, or else, he makes use of his
control over patents and trade marks and thus succeeds
in reducing the wholesale- jobber to a position which more
nearly resembles that of an agent working on a commis-
sion basis than that of the quondam industrial ruler. The
immediate outcome is, of course, a considerable increase
in the manufacturer's margin of profit. The industrial
class struggle begins to abate in intensity. The em-
ployer, now comparatively free of anxiety that he may
be forced to operate at a loss, is able to diminish pres-

1 See Don D. Lescohier, The Order of the Knights of St. Crispin.
'See above, 114-116.

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 275

sure on wages. But more than this : the greater certainty
about the future, now that he is a free agent, enables him
to enter into time agreements with a trade union. At
first he is generally disinclined to forego any share of his
newly acquired freedom by tying himself up with a union.
But if the union is strong and can offer battle, then he
accepts the situation and "recognizes" it. Thus the class
struggle instead of becoming sharper and sharper with
the advance of capitalism and leading, as Marx pre-
dicted, to a social revolution, in reality, grows less and
less revolutionary and leads to a compromise or succes-
sion of compromises, — namely, collective trade agree-
ments.

But the manufacturer's emancipation from the middle-
man need not always lead to trade agreements. In the
shoe industry this process did not do away with competi-
tion. In other industries such an emancipation was iden-
tical with the coming in of the "trust," or a combina-
tion of competing manufacturers into a monopoly. As
soon as the "trust" becomes practically the sole employer
of labor in an industry, the relations between labor and
capital are thrown almost invariably back into the state
of affairs which characterized the merchant-capitalist
system at its worst, but with one important difference.
Whereas under the merchant-capitalist system the em-
ployer was obliged to press down on wages and fight
unionism to death owing to cut-throat competition, the
"trust," its strength supreme in both commodity and
labor market, can do so and usually does so of free
choice.

The character of the labor struggle has been influenced
by cyclical changes in industry as much as by the perma-
nent changes in the organization of industry and market.

In fact, whereas reaction to the latter has generally been
slow and noticeable only over long periods of time, with
a turn in the business cycle, the labor movement reacted
surely and instantaneously.

We observed over the greater part of the history of
American labor an alternation of two planes of thought
and action, an upper and a lower. On the upper plane,
labor thought was concerned with ultimate goals, self-
employment or cooperation, and problems arising there-
from, while action took the form of politics. On the
lower plane, labor abandoned the ultimate for the proxi-
mate, centering on betterments within the limits of the
wage system and on trade-union activity. Labor history
in the past century was largely a story of labor's shifting
from one plane to another, and then again to the first.
It was also seen that what determined the plane of
thought and action at any one time was the state of
business measured by movements of wholesale and retail
prices and employment and unemployment. When prices
rose and margins of employers' profits were on the in-
crease, the demand for labor increased and accordingly
also labor's strength as a bargainer; at the same time,
labor was compelled to organize to meet a rising cost of
living. At such times trade unionism monopolized the
arena, won strikes, increased membership, and forced
"cure-alls" and politics into the background. NWhen,
however, prices fell and margins of profit contracted,
labor's bargaining strength waned, strikes were lost,
trade unions faced the danger of extinction, and "cure-
alls" and politics received their day in court. Labor
would turn to government and politics only as a last
resort, when it had lost confidence in its ability to hold
its own in industry. This phenomenon, noticeable also in

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 277

other countries, came out with particular clearness in
America.

For, as a rule, down to the World War, prices both
wholesale and retail, fluctuated in America more vio-
lently than in England or the Continent. And twice,
once in the thirties and again in the sixties, an irre-
deemable paper currency moved up the water mark of
prices to tremendous heights followed by reactions of
corresponding depth. From the war of 1812, the actual
beginning of an industrial America, to the end of the
century, the country went through several such complete
industrial and business cycles. We therefore conveni-
ently divide labor and trade union history into periods
on the basis of the industrial cycle. It was only in the
nineties, as we saw, that the response of the labor move-
ment to price fluctuations ceased to mean a complete or
nearly complete abandonment of trade unionism during
depressions. A continuous and stable trade union move-
ment consequently dates only from the nineties.

The cooperative movement which was, as we saw, far
less continuous than trade unionism, has also shown the
effects of the business cycle. The career of distributive
cooperation in America has always been intimately re-
lated to the movements of retail prices and wages. If,
in the advance of wages and prices during the ascending
portion of the industrial cycle, the cost of living hap-
pened to outdistance wages by a wide margin, the wage
earners sought a remedy in distributive cooperation.
They acted likewise during the descending portion of the
industrial cycle, when retail prices happened to fall much
less slowly than wages.

Producers* cooperation in the United States has gen-
erally been a "hard times" remedy. When industrial

278 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

prosperity has passed its high crest and strikes have
begun to fail, producers* cooperation has often been
used as a retaliatory measure to bring the employer to
terms by menacing to underbid him in the market. Also,
when in the further downward course of industry the
point has been reached where cuts in wages and unem-
ployment have become quite common, producers* coopera-
tion has sometimes come in as an attempt to enable the
wage earner to obtain both employment and high earn-
ings bolstered through cooperative profits.

CHAPTER 13

THE IDEALISTIC FACTOR

The puzzling fact about the American labor movement
is, after all, its limited objective. As we saw before, the
social order which the typical American trade unionist
considers ideal is one in which organized labor and or-
ganized capital possess equal bargaining power. The
American trade unionist wants, first, an equal voice with
the employer in fixing wages and, second, a big enough
control over the productive processes to protect job,
health, and organization. Yet he does not appear to wish
to saddle himself and fellow wage earners with the
trouble of running industry without the employer.

But materialistic though this philosophy appears, it is
nevertheless the product of a long development to which
the spiritual contributed no less than the material. In
fact the American labor movement arrived at an oppor-
tunist trade unionism only after an endeavor spread over
more than seventy years to realize a more idealistic pro-
gram.

American labor started with the "ideology" of the
Declaration of Independence in 1776. Intended as a
justification of a political revolution, the Declaration was
worded by the authors as an expression of faith in a
social revolution. To controvert the claims of George
III, Thomas Jefferson quoted Rousseau. To him Rous-
seau was in all probability little more than an abstract
"beau ideal," but Rousseau's abstractions were no mere

279

280 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

abstractions to the pioneer American farmer. To the lat-
ter the doctrine that all men are born free and equal
seemed to have grown directly out of experience. So
it appeared, two or three generations later, to the young
workmen when they for the first time achieved political
consciousness. And, if reality ceased to square with the
principles of the Declaration, it became, they felt, the
bounden duty of every true American to amend reality.

Out of a combination of the principles of individual
rights, individual self-determination, equality of oppor-
tunity, and political equality enumerated and suggested
in the Declaration, arose the first and most persistent
American labor philosophy. This philosophy differed in
no wise from the philosophy of the old American de-
mocracy except in emphasis and particular application,
yet these differences are highly significant. Labor read
into the Declaration of Independence a condemnation of
the wage system as a permanent economic regime ; sooner
or later in place of the wage system had to come self-
employment. Americanism to them was a social and eco-
nomic as well as a political creed. Economic self-deter-
mination was as essential to the individual as political
equality. Just as no true American will take orders from
a king, so he will not consent forever to remain under
the orders of a "boss." It was the uplifting force of this
social ideal as much as the propelling force of the chang-
ing economic environment that molded the American
labor program.

We find it at work at first in the decade of the thirties
at the very beginning of the labor movement. It then
took the form of a demand for a free public school system.
These workingmen in Philadelphia and New York dis-
covered that in the place of the social democracy of the

THE IDEALISTIC FACTOR 281

Declaration, America had developed into an "aristoc-
racy." They thought that the root of.it all lay in "in-
equitable" legislation which fostered "monopoly," hence
the remedy lay in democratic legislation. But they fur-
ther realized that a political and social democracy must
be based on an educated and intelligent working class.
No measure, therefore, could be more than a palliative j <
until they got a "Republican" system of education. The * * ~
workingmen's parties of 1828-1831 failed as parties, but '
humanitarians like Horace Mann took up the struggle for
free public education and carried it to success.

If in the thirties the labor program was to restore a
sojeial and political democracy by means of the public
school, in the forties the program centered on economic
democracy, on equality of economic opportunity. This
took the form of a demand of a grant of public land free
of charge to everyone willing to brave the rigors of pio-
neer life. The government should thus open an escape to
the worker from the wage system into self-employment by
way of free land. After years of agitation, the same
cry was taken up by the Western States eager for more
settlers to build up their communities and this combined
agitation proved irresistible and culminated in the Home- ,
stead law of 1862. ,"i

The Homestead law opened up the road to self-employ-
ment by way of free land and agriculture. But in the
sixties the United States was already becoming an in-
dustrial country. In abandoning the city for the farm,
the wage earner would lose the value of his greatest pos-
session— his skill. Moreover, as a homesteader, his prob-
lem was far from solved by mere access to free land.
Whether he went on the land or stayed in industry, he
needed access to reasonably free credit. The device in-

282 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

vented by workingmen to this end was the bizarre "green-
back'* idea which held their minds as if in a vise for
nearly twenty years. "Greenbackism'* left no such per-
manent trace on American social and economic structure
as "Republican education" or "free land."

The lure of "greenbackism" was that it offered an
opportunity for self-employment. But already in the
sixties, it became clear that the workingman could not
expect to attain self-employment as an individual, but
if at all, it had to be sought on the basis of producers*
cooperation. In the eighties, it became doubly clear that
industry had gone beyond the one-man-shop stage; self-
employment had to stand or fall with the cooperative
or self-governing workshop. The protagonist of this
most interesting and most idealistic striving of American
labor was the "Noble Order of the Knights of Labor,"
which reached its height in the middle of the eighties.

The period of the greatest enthusiasm for cooperation
was between 1884 and 1887 ; and by 1888 the cooperative
movement had passed the full cycle of life and succumbed.
The failure of cooperation proved a turning point in
the evolution of the American labor program. Whatever
the special causes of failure, the idealistic unionism, for
which the ideas of the Declaration of Independence served
as a fountain head, suffered in the eyes of labor, a degree
of discredit so overwhelming that to regain its old posi-
tion was no longer possible. The times were ripe for the
opportunistic unionism of Gompers and the trade
unionists.

These latter, having started in the seventies as Marxian
socialists, had been made over into opportunistic unionists
by their practical contact with American conditions.
Their philosophy was narrower than that of the Knights

THE IDEALISTIC FACTOR 283

and their concept of labor solidarity narrower still. How-
ever, these trade unionists demonstrated that they could
win strikes. It was to this practical trade unionism, then,
that the American labor movement turned, about 1890,
when the idealism of the Knights of Labor had failed.
From gropjng_iar_a cooperative economic order j>r self-
empjoyment, labor turned with the American Federation
of Labor to developing bargaining power for use against
empjloyers. This trade unionism stood for a strengthened
group consciousness. While it continued to avow sym-
pathy with the "anti-monopoly" aspirations of the "pro-
ducers," who fought for the opportunity of self-employ-
ment, it also declared that the interests of democracy
will be best served if the wage earners organized by
themselves. Cfi^_P^_j-

This opportunist unionism, now at last triumphant
over the idealistic unionism induced by America's spiritual
tradition, soon was obliged to fight against a revolu-
tionary unionism which, like itself, was an offshoot of the
socialism of the seventies. At first, the American Feder-
ation of Labor was far from hostile to socialism as a
philosophy. ' Its attitude was rather one of mild con-
tempt for what it considered to be wholly impracticable
under American conditions, however necessary or effica-
cious under other conditions. When, about 1890, the so-
cialists declared their policy of "boring from within,"
that is, of capturing the Federation for socialism by
means of propaganda in Federation ranks, this attitude
remained practically unchanged. Only when, dissatis-
fied with the results of boring from within, the socialists,
now led by a more determined leadership, attempted in
1895 to set up a rival to the Federation in the Socialist
Trade and Labor Alliance, was there a sharp line drawn

284 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

between socialist and anti-socialist in the Federation.
The issue once having become a fighting issue, the
leaders of the Federation experienced the need of a
positive and well rounded-out social philosophy capable
of meeting socialism all along the front instead of the
former self-imposed super-pragmatism.

By this time, the Federation had become sufficiently
removed in point of time from its foreign origin to turn
to the social ideal derived from pioneer America as the
philosophy which it hoped would successfully combat an
aggressive and arrogant socialism. Thus it came about
that the front against socialism was built out from the
immediate and practical into the ultimate and spiritual;
and that inferences drawn from a reading of Jefferson's
Declaration, with its emphasis on individual liberty,
were pressed into service against the seductive collectivist
forecasts of Marx.

CHAPTER 14

WHY THERE IS NOT AN AMERICAN LABOR

PARTY

The question of a political labor party hinges, in the
last analysis, on the benefits which labor expects from
government. If, under the constitution, government pos-
sesses considerable power to regulate industrial relations
and improve labor conditions, political power is worth
striving for. If, on the contrary, the power of the jgov-
ernment is restricted by a rigid organic law, the matter
is reversed. The latter is the situation in the United
States. The American constitutions, both Federal and
State, contain bills of rights which embody in fullness the
eighteenth-century philosophy of economic individualism
and governmental laissez-faire. ^The courts, Federal

?. !Th(
>/overri(

and State, are given the right tojoverride any law jnacted
by Congress or Jthe State legislatures which may be shown
to conflict with constitutional rights.

In the exercise of this right, American judges have
always inclined to be very conservative in allowing the
legislature to invade the province of economic freedom.
At present after many years of agitation by humanitari-
ans and trade unionists, the cause of legislative protec-
tion of child and woman laborers seems to be won in
principle. But this progress has been made because it
has been shown conclusively that the protection of these
most helpless groups of the wage-earning class clearly
falls within the scope of public purpose and is therefore

285

286 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

a lawful exercise of the state's police power within the
meaning of the constitution. However, adult male labor
offers a far different case. Moreover, should the unex-
pected happen and the courts become converted to a
broader view, the legislative standards would be small com-
pared with the standards already enforced by most of
the trade unions. Consequently, so far as adult male
workers are concerned (and they are of course the great
bulk of organized labor), labor in America would scarcely
be justified in diverting even a part of its energy from
trade unionism to a relatively unprofitable seeking of
redress through legislatures and courts.1

But this is no more than half the story. Granting
even 'that political power may be worth having, its at-
tainment is beset with difficulties and dangers more than
sufficient to make responsible leaders pause. The causes
reside once more in the form of government, also in the
general nature of American politics, and in political his-
tory and tradition. To begin with, labor would have
to fight not on one front, but on forty-nine different
fronts.2

Congress and the States have power to legislate on
lajjor matters ; also, jn^ each, power is divided between
anjexecutive and the two houses of the legislature. De-
cidedly, government in America was built not for strength

1 This assumes that the legislative program of labor would deal
primarily with the regulation of labor conditions in private employ-
ment analogous to the legislative program of the British trade
unions until recent years. Should labor in America follow the newer
program of labor in Britain and demand the taking over of indus-
tries by government with compensation, it is not certain that the
courts would prove as serious a barrier as in the other case. However,
the situation would remain unchanged so far as the difficulties dis-
cussed in the remainder of this chapter are concerned.

* For the control of the national government and of the forty-eight
State governments.

WHY NO AMERICAN LABOR PARTY 287

but for weakness. The splitting up of sovereignty does
not especially interfere ^with the purposes of a conserva-
tive party, but c£p_ ai jDarty of social and industrial re-
form it offers a disheartening obstacle. A labor party,
to be effective, would be obliged to capture all the dif-
fused bits of sovereignty at the same time. A partial
gain is of little avail, since it is likely to be lost at the
next election even simultaneously with a new gain. But
we have assumed here that the labor party had reached
the point where its trials are the trials of a party in
power or nearing power. In reality, American labor
parties are spared this sort of trouble by trials of an
anterior order residing in the nature of American politics.

The American political party system antedates the
formation of modern economic classes, especially the class
alignment of labor and capital. Each of the old parties
represents, at least in theory, the entire American com-
munity regardless of class. Party differences are con-
sidered differences of opinion or of judgment on matters
of public policy, not differences of class interest. The
wage earner in America, who never had to fight for his
suffrage but received it as a free gift from the Jefferso-
nian and Jacksonian democratic movements and who did
not therefore develop the political class consciousness
which was stamped into the workers in Europe by the
feeling of revolt against an upper ruling class, is prone
to adopt the same view of politics. Class parties in
America have always been effectively countered by the old
established parties with the charge that they tend to
incite class against class.

But the old parties had on numerous occasions, as we
saw, an even more effective weapon. No_ sooner did^ a
labor party gain a foothold, than the old party politician,

288 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

the "friend of labor/' did appear and start a rival
attraction by a more or less verbal adherence to one
or more planks of the rising party. Had he been,
as in Europe, a branded spokesman of a particular eco-
nomic class or interest, it would not have been difficult
to ward him off . But here in America, he said that he too
was a workingman and was heart and soul for the work-
ingman. Moreover, the workingman was just as much
attached to an old party label as any average American.
In a way he considered it an assertion of his social equal-
ity with any other group of Americans that he could
afford to take the same "disinterested" and tradition-
bound view of political struggles as the rest. This is
why labor parties generally encountered such disheart-
ening receptions at the hands of workingmen; also why
it was difficult to "deliver the labor vote" to any party.
This, on the whole, describes the condition of affairs to-
day as it does the situations in the past.
. In the j?nd, should the workingman be pried loose from
his traditional party affiliation by a labor event of tran-
scendent importance for the time being, should he be
stirred to political revolt by an oppressive court decision,
or the use of troops to break a strike; then, at the next
election, when the excitement has had time to subside,
he will usually return to his political normality. More-
over, should labor discontent attain depth, it may be
safely assumed that either one or the other of the old
parties or a faction therein will seek to divert its driving
force into its own particular party channel. Should the
labor party still persist, the old party politicians, whose
bailiwick it will have particularly \invaded, will take care
to enqourage., by means not always ethical but nearly
always effective\strife in its ran^s. Should that fail,

WHY NO AMERICAN LABOR PARTY 289

the old parties will in the end "fuse" against the upstart
rival. If they are able to stay "fused" during enough
elections and also win them, the fidelity of the adherent
of the third party is certain to be put to a hard and un-
successful test. To the outsider these conclusions may
appear novel, but labor in America learned these lessons
through a long experience, which began when the first
workingmen's parties were attempted in 1828-1832. The
limited potentialities of labor legislation together with
the apparent hopelessness of labor party politics com-
pelled the American labor movement to develop a sort of
non-partisan political action with limited objectives thor-
oughly characteristic of American conditions. Labor
needs protection from interference by the courts in the
exgrcise of its economic weapons^, the strike and the
boycott, upon which it is obviously obliged to place espe-
cial reliance. In other words, though labor may refuse
to be drawn into the vortex of politics for the sake of
positive attainments, or, that is to say, labor legislation,
it is compelled to do so for the sake of a negative gain
— a judicial laissez-faire. That labor does by pursuing
a policy of "jrewardyour friends" and ^punish^your
enemies" in the sphere of politics. The method itself is
an ol(f one in the labor movement ; we saw it practiced
by George Henry Evans and the land reformers of the
forties as well as by Steward and the advocates of the
eight-hour day by law in the sixties. The American Fed-
eration of Labor merely puts it to use in connection with
a new objective, namely, freedom from court interference.
Although the labor vote is largely "undeliverable," still
where the parties are more or less evenly matched in
strength, that portion of the labor vote which is politi-
cally conscious of its economic interests may swing the

290 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

election to whichever side it turns. Under certain con-
ditions 1 labor has been known even to attain through such
indirection in excess of what it might have won had it come
to share in power as a labor party.

The controversy around labor in politics brings up in
the la«t analysis the whole problem of leadership in
labor orgflT"**'^™"^^ to be specific, the role of the in-
tellectual in the movement. In America his role has been
remarkably restricted. For a half century or more the
educated classes had no connection with the labor move-
ment, for in the forties and fifties, when the Brook Farm
enthusiasts and their associates took up with fervor the
social question, they were really alone in the field, since
the protracted trade depression had laid all labor or-
ganization low. It was in the eighties, with the turmoil
of the Knights of Labor and the Anarchist bomb in
Chicago, that the "intellectuals" first awakened to the
existence of a labor problem. To this awakening no
single person contributed more than the economist Pro-
fessor Richard T. Ely, then of Johns Hopkins University.
His pioneer work on the Labor Movement in America
published in 1886, and the works of his many capable
students gave the labor movement a permanent place in
the public mind, besides presenting the cause of labor
with scientific precision and with a judicious balance.
Among the other pioneers were preachers like Washing-
ton Gladden and Lyman Abbott, who conceived their duty
as that of mediators between the business class and the
wage earning class, exhorting the former to deal with
their employes according to the Golden Rule and the
latter to moderation in their demands. Together with
the economists they helped to break down the prejudice

1 Such as a state of war; see above, 235-236.

WHY NO AMERICAN LABOR PARTY 291

against labor unionism in so far as the latter was non-
revolutionary. And though their influence was large, they
understood that their maximum usefulness would be
realized by remaining sympathetic outsiders and not by
seeking to control the course of the labor movement.

In recent years a new type of intellectual has come to
the front. A product of a more generalized mental envi-
ronment than his predecessor, he is more daring in his
retrospects and his prospects. He is just as ready to
advance an "economic interpretation of the constitution"
as to advocate a collectivistic panacea for the existing
industrial and social ills. Nor did this new intellectual
come at an inopportune time for getting a hearing. Con-
fidence in social conservatism has been undermined by
an exposure in the_ press nT1r> thrftllgh Ipgigla+iv*1 in-
vestigations of the disreputable doings of some of the
staunchest conservatives. At such a juncture "pro-
gressivism" and a "new liberalism" were bound to
come into their own in the general opinion of the
country.

But the labor movement resisted. American labor, both
during the periods of neglect and of moderate champion-
ing by the older generation of intellectuals, has devel-
oped a leadership wholly its own. This leadership, of
which Samuel Gompers is the most notable example, has
given years and years to building up a united fighting
morale in the army of labor. And because the morale
of an army, as these leaders thought, is strong only when
it is united upon one common attainable purpose, the
intellectual with his new and unfamiliar issues has been
given the cold shoulder by precisely the trade unionists in
whom he had anticipated to find most eager disciples.
The intellectual might go from success to success in con-

292 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

quering the minds of the middle classes ; the labor move-
ment largely remains closed to him.

To make matters worse the intellectual has brought
with him a psychology which is particularly out of fit
with the American labor situation. We noted that the
American labor movement became shunted from the po-
litical arena into the economic one by virtue of fundamen-
tal conditions of American political institutions and po-
litical life. However, it is precisely in political activity
where the intellectual is most at home. The clear-cut logic
and symmetry of political platforms based on general
theories, the broad vistas which it may be made to encom-
pass, and lastly the opportunity for eloquent self-ex-
pression offered by parliamentary debates, all taken to-
gether exert a powerful attraction for the intellectualized
mind. Contrast with this the prosaic humdrum work of
a trade union leader, the incessant wrangling over "small"
details and "petty" grievances, and the case becomes ex-
ceedingly clear. The mind of the typical intellectual is
too generalized to be lured by any such alternative. He
is out of patience with mere amelioration, even though
it may mean much in terms of human happiness to the
worker and his family.

When in 19, 06. in consequence of the heaping up of
legal disabilities upon the trade unions, American labor
leaders turned to politics to seek a restraining hand upon
the courts,1 the intellectuals foresaw a political labor
party in the not distant future. They predicted that one
step would inevitably lead to another, that from a policy
of bartering with the old parties for anti-injunction
planks in their platforms, labor would turn to a political
party of its own. The intellectual critic continues to

1 See above, 203-204.

WHY NO AMERICAN LABOR PARTY 293

view the political action of the American Federation of
Labor as the first steps of an invalid learning to walk;
and hopes that before long he will learn to walk with
a firmer step, without feeling tempted to lean upon
the only too willing shoulders of old-party politi-
cians. On the contrary, the Federation leaders, as
we know, regard their political work as a necessary
evil, due to an unfortunate turn of affairs, which
forces them from time to time to step out of their own
trade union province in order that their natural enemy,
the employing class, might get no aid and comfort from
an outside ally.

Of late a rapprochement between the intellectual and
trade unionist has begun to take place. However, it is
not founded on the relationship of leader and led, but
only on a business relationship, or that of giver and re-
ceiver of paid technical advice. The role of the trained
economist in handling statistics and preparing "cases"
for trade unionists before boards of arbitration is
coming to be more and more appreciated. The rail-
way men's organizations were first to put the intellec-
tual to this use, the miners and others followed. From
this it is still a far cry to the role of such intellectuals
as Sidney and Beatrice Webb, G. D. H. Cole and the
Fabian Research group in England, who have really
permeated the British labor movement with their views
on labor policy. However, there is also a place for the
American intellectual as an ally of trade unionism, not
only as its paid servant. The American labor move-
ment has committed a grave and costly error because it
has not made use of the services of writers^ journalists,
lecturers, and speakers to popularize its cause with the
general public. Some of its recent defeats, notably the

294 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

steel strike of 1919, were partly due to the neglect
to provide a sufficient organization of labor pub-
licity to counteract the anti-union publicity by the
employers.

CHAPTER 15

THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT
AND TRADE UNIONISM

The rise of a political and economic dictatorship by
the wage-earning class in revolutionary Russia in 1917
has focussed public opinion on the labor question as no
other event ever did. But one will scarcely say that it
has tended to clarity of thought. On the one hand, the
conservative feels confirmed in his old suspicions that
there is something inherently revolutionary in any labor
movement. The extreme radical, on the other hand, is
as uncritically hopeful for a Bolshevist upheaval in
America as the conservative or reactionary is uncritically
fearful. Both forget that an effective social revolution
is not the product of mere chance and "mob psychology,"
nor even of propaganda however assiduous, but always of
a new preponderance of power as between contending
economic classes.

To students of the social sciences, it is self-evident
that the prolonged rule of the proletariat in Russia in
defiance of nearly the whole world must be regarded as
a product of Russian life, past and present. In fact,
the continued Bolshevist rule seems to be an index of
the relative fighting strength of the several classes in
Russian society — the industrial proletariat, the landed
and industrial propertied class, and the peasantry.

It is an irony of fate that the same revolution which
purports to enact into life the Marxian social program

295

296 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

should belie the truth of Marx's materialistic interpreta-
tion of history and demonstrate that history is shaped
by both economic and non-economic forces. Marx, as is
well known, taught that history is a struggle between
classes, in which the landed aristocracy, the capitalist
class, and the wage earning class are raised successively
to rulership as, with the progress of society's technical
equipment, first one and then another class can operate
it with the maximum efficiency. Marx assumed that when
the time has arrived for a given economic class to take
the helm, that class will be found in full possession of
all the psychological attributes of a ruling class, namely,
an indomitable will to power, no less than the more vulgar
desire for the emoluments that come with power. Ap-
parently, Marx took for granted that economic evolu-
tion is inevitably accompanied by a corresponding de-
velopment of an effective will to power in the class des-
tined to rule. Yet, whatever may be the case in the coun-
tries of the West, in Russia the ruling classes, the gentry
and the capitalists, clearly failed in the psychological
test at the critical time. This failure is amply attested
by the manner in which they submitted practically with-
out a fight after the Bolshevist coup d'etat.

To get at the secret of this apparent feebleness and
want of spunk in Russia's ruling class one must study a
peculiarity of her history, namely, the complete domi-
nance of Russia's development by organized government.
Where the historian of the Western countries must take
account of several independent forces, each standing for
a social class, the Russian historian may well afford
to station himself on the high peak of government and,
from this point of vantage, survey the hills and vales of
the society which it so thoroughly dominated.

DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT 297

Apolitism runs like a red thread through the pages of
Russian history. Even the upper layer of the old noble
class, the "Boyars," were but a shadow of the Western
contemporary medieval landed aristocracy. When the
several principalities became united with the Czardom
of Muscovy many centuries ago, the Boyar was in fact
no more than a steward of the Czar's estate and a leader
of a posse defending his property; the most he dared to
do was surreptitiously to obstruct the carrying out of
the Czar's intentions; he dared not try to impose the
will of his class upon the crown. The other classes were
even more apolitical. So little did the several classes
aspire to domination that they missed many golden op-
portunities to seize and hold a share of the political
power. In the seventeenth century, when the government
was exceptionally weak after what is known as the
"period of troubles," it convoked periodical "assemblies
of the land" to help administer the country. But, as a
matter of fact, these assemblies considered themselves ill
used because they were asked to take part in government
and not once did they aspire to an independent position in
the Russian body politic. Another and perhaps even
more striking instance we find a century and a half later.
Catherine the Great voluntarily turned over the local ad-
ministration to the nobles and to that end decreed that
the nobility organize themselves into provincial associa-
tions. But so little did the nobility care for political
power and active class prerogative that, in spite of the
broadest possible charters, the associations of nobles were
never more than social organizations in the conventional
sense of the word.

Even less did the commercial class aspire to indepen-
dence. In the West of Europe mercantilism answered in

298 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

an equal measure the needs of an expanding state and of
a vigorous middle class, the latter being no less ardent in
the pursuit of gain than the former in the pursuit of con-
quest. In Russia, on the other hand, when Peter the
Great wanted manufacturing, he had to introduce it by
government action. Hence, Russian mercantilism was
predominantly a state mercantilism. Even where Peter
succeeded in enlisting private initiative by subsidies, in-
stead of building up a class of independent manufac-
turers, he merely created industrial parasites and bureau-
crats without initiative of their own, who forever kept
looking to the government.

Coming to more recent times, we find that the modern
Russian factory system likewise owes its origin to gov-
ernmental initiative, namely, to the government's railway-
building policy. The government built the railways for
strategic and fiscal reasons but incidentally created a
unified internal market which made mass-production of
articles of common consumption profitable for the first
time. But, even after Russian capitalism was thus
enabled to stand on its own feet, it did not unlearn the
habit of leaning on the government for advancement
rather than relying on its own efforts. On its part the
autocratic government was loath to let industry alone.
The government generously dispensed to the capitalists
tariff protection and bounties in the form of profitable
orders, but insisted on keeping industry under its thumb.
And though they might chafe, still the capitalists never
neglected to make the best of the situation. For instance,
when the sugar producers found themselves running into
a hole from cut-throat competition, they appealed to the
Minister of Finances, who immediately created a govern-
ment-enforced "trust" and assured them huge dividends.

DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT 299

Since business success was assured by keeping on the
proper footing with a generous government rather than
by relying on one's own vigor, it stands to reason that,
generally speaking, the capitalists and especially the
larger capitalists, could develop only into a class of in-
dustrial courtiers. And when at last the autocracy fell,
the courtiers were not to be turned overnight into stub-
born champions of the rights of their class amid the
turmoil of a revolution. To be sure, Russia had entered
the capitalistic stage as her Marxians had predicted, but
nevertheless her capitalists were found to be lacking the
indomitable will to power which makes a ruling class.

The weakness of the capitalists in the fight on behalf
of private property may be explained in part by their
want of allies in the other classes in the community. The
Russian peasant, reared in the atmosphere of communal
land ownership, was far from being a fanatical defender
of private property. No Thiers could have rallied a Rus-
sian peasant army for the suppression of a communistic
industrial wage-earning class by an appeal to their prop-
erty instinct. To make matters worse for the capitalists,
the peasant's strongest craving was for more land, all
the land, without compensation! This the capitalists,
being capitalists, were unable to grant. Yet it was the
only sort of currency which the peasant would accept in
payment for his political support. In November, 1917,
when the Bolsheviki seized the government, one of their
first acts was to satisfy the peasant's land hunger by
turning over to his use all the land. The "proletariat"
had then a free hand so far as the most numerous class
in Russia was concerned.

Just as the capitalist class reached the threshold of
the revolution psychologically below par, so the wage-

300 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

earning class in developing the will to rule outran all
expectations and beat the Marxian time-schedule. Among
the important contributing factors was the unity of the
industrial laboring class, a unity broken by no rifts be-
tween highly paid skilled groups and an inferior unskilled
class, or between a well-organized labor aristocracy and
an unorganized helot class. The economic and social
oppression under the old regime had seen to it that no
group of laborers should possess a stake in the existing
order or desire to separate from the rest. Moreover, for
several decades, and especially since the memorable days
of the revolution of 1905, the laboring class has been
filled by socialistic agitators and propagandists with
ideas of the great historical role of the proletariat. The
writer remembers how in 1905 even newspapers of the
moderately liberal stamp used to speak of the "heroic
proletariat marching in the van of Russia's progress."
No wonder then that, when the revolution came, the in-
dustrial wage earners had developed such self-confidence
as a class that they were tempted to disregard the dictum
of their intellectual mentors that this was merely to be a
bourgeois revolution — with the social revolution still re-
mote. Instead they listened to the slogan "All power
to the Soviets."

The idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat"
reached maturity in the course of the abortive revolution
of 1905-1906. After a victory for the people in October,
1905, the bourgeoisie grew frightened over the aggressive-
ness of the wage-earning class and sought safety in an
understanding with the autocracy. An order by the
Soviet of Petrograd workmen in November, 1905, de-
creeing the eight-hour day in all factories sufficed to make
the capitalists forego their historical role of champions

DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT 301

of popular liberty against autocracy. If the bourgeoisie
itself will not fight for a democracy, reasoned the revolu-
tionary socialists, why have such a democracy at all?
Have we not seen the democratic form of government lend
itself to ill-concealed plutocracy in Europe and America?
Why run at all the risk of corruption of the post-
revolutionary government at the hands of the capitalists?
Why first admit the capitalists into the inner circle and
then spend time and effort in preventing them from com-
ing to the top? Therefore, they declined parliamentarism
with thanks and would accept nothing less than a govern-
ment by the representative organ of the workers — the
Soviets.

If we are right in laying the emphasis on the relative
fighting will and fighting strength of the classes strug-
gling for power rather than on the doctrines which they
preach and the methods, fair or foul, which they practice,
then the American end of the problem, too, appears in a
new light. No longer is it in the main a matter of taking
sides for or against the desirability of a Bolshevist rule
or a dictatorship by the proletariat, but a matter of as-
certaining the relative strength and probable behavior of
the classes in a given society. It is as futile to "see red"
in America because of Bolshevism in Russia as to yearn
for Bolshevism's advent in the United States. Either
view misses the all-important point that so far as social
structure is concerned America is the antipodes of Rus-
sia, where the capitalists have shown little fighting spirit,
where the tillers of the soil are only first awakening to a
conscious desire for private property and are willing to
forego their natural share in government for a gift of
land, and where the industrial proletariat is the only
class ready and unafraid to fight. Bolshevism is unthink-

302 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

able in America, because, even if by some imaginable
accident the government were overthrown and a labor
dictatorship declared, it could never "stay put." No
one who knows the American business class will even dream
that it would under any circumstances surrender to a
revolution perpetrated by a minority, or that it would
wait for foreign intervention before starting hostilities.
A Bolshevist coup d'etat in America would mean a civil
war to the bitter end, and a war in which the numerous
class of farmers would join the capitalists in the defense
of the institution of private property.1

But it is not only because the preponderance of social
power in the United States is so decisively with private
property that America is proof against a social upheaval
like the Russian one. Another and perhaps as important
a guarantee of her social stability is found in her four
million organized trade unionists. For, however unjustly
they may feel to have been treated by the employers or
the government; however slow they may find the realiza-
tion of their ideals of collective bargaining in industry;
their stakes in the existing order, both spiritual and ma-
terial, are too big to reconcile them to revolution. The

1 Though writers and public speakers of either extreme have often
overlooked the fundamental consideration of where the preponder-
ance of social power lies in their prognostications of revolutions, this
has not escaped the leaders of the American labor movement. The
vehemence with which the leaders of the American Federation of
Labor have denounced Sovietism and Bolshevism, and which has of
late been brought to a high pitch by a fear lest a shift to radicalism
should break up the organization, is doubtless sincere. But one
cannot help feeling that in part at least it aimed to reassure the
great American middle class on the score of labor's intentions. The
great majority of organized labor realize that, though at times they
may risk engaging in unpopular strikes, it will never do to permit
their enemies to tar them with the pitch of subversionism in the eyes
of the great American majority — a majority which remains wedded
to the regime of private property and individual enterprise despite
the many recognized shortcomings of the institution.

DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT 303

truth is that the revolutionary labor movement in America
looms up much bigger than it actually is. Though in
many strikes since the famous textile strike in Lawrence,
Massachusetts, in 1911, the leadership was revolutionary,
it does not follow that the rank and file was animated by
the same purpose. Given an inarticulate mass of
grievously exploited workers speaking many foreign
tongues and despised alike by the politician, the police-
man, and the native American labor organizer; given a
group of energetic revolutionary agitators who make the
cause of these workers their own and become their spokes-
men and leaders ; and a situation will clearly arise where
thousands of workmen will be apparently marshalled
under the flag of revolution while in reality it is the desire
for a higher wage and not for a realization of the
syndicalist program that reconciles them to starving their
wives and children and to shedding their blood on picket
duty. If they follow a Haywood or an Ettor, it is pre-
cisely because they have been ignored by a Golden or a
Gompers.

Withal, then, trade unionism, despite an occasional
revolutionary facet and despite a revolutionary clamor
especially on its fringes, is a conservative social force.
Trade unionism seems to have the same moderating effect
upon society as a wide diffusion of private property. In
fact the gains of trade unionism are to the worker on a
par with private property to its owner. The owner re-
gards his property as a protective dyke between himself
and a ruthless biological struggle for existence ; his prop-
erty means liberty and opportunity to escape dictation
by another man, an employer or "boss," or at least a
chance to bide his time until a satisfactory alternative
has presented itself for his choice. The French peasants

304 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

in 1871 who flocked to the army of the government of
Versailles to suppress the Commune of Paris (the first
attempt in history of a proletarian dictatorship), did so
because they felt that were the workingmen to triumph
and abolish private property, they, the peasants, would
lose a support in their daily struggle for life for the
preservation of which it was worth endangering life itself.
And having acquired relative protection in their private
property, small though it might be, they were unwilling
to permit something which were it to succeed would lose
them their all.

Now with some exceptions every human being is a "pro-
tectionist," provided he does possess anything at all which
protects him and which is therefore worth being pro-
tected by him in turn. The trade unionist, too, is just
such a protectionist. When his trade union has had the
time and opportunity to win for him decent wages and
living conditions, a reasonable security of the job, and
at least a partial voice in shop management, he will, on
the relatively high and progressive level of material wel-
fare which capitalism has called into being, be chary to
raze the existing economic system to the ground on the
chance of building up a better one in its place. A re-
shuffling of the cards, which a revolution means, might
conceivably yield him a better card, but then again it
might make the entire stack worthless by destroying the
stakes for which the game is played. But the revolution
might not even succeed in the first round; then the en-
suing reaction would probably destroy the trade union
and with it would go the chance of a recovery of the
original ground, modest though that may have been. In
practice, therefore, the trade union movements in nearly

DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT 305

all nations l have served as brakes upon the respective
national socialist movements ; and, from the standpoint of
society interested in its own preservation against catas-
trophic change, have played and are playing a role of
society's policemen and watch-dogs over the more revolu-
tionary groups in the wage-earning class. These are
largely the unorganized and ill-favored groups rendered
reckless because, having little to lose from a revolution,
whatever the outcome might be, they fear none.

In America, too, there is a revolutionary class which,
unlike the striking textile workers in 1911-1913, owes its
origin neither to chance nor to neglect by trade union
leaders. This is the movement of native American or
Americanized workers in the outlying districts of the
West or South — the typical I. W. W., the migratory
workers, the industrial rebels, and the actors in many
labor riots and lumber-field strikes. This type of worker
has truly broken with America's spiritual past. He has
become a revolutionist either because his personal char-
acter and habits unfit him for success under the exacting
capitalistic system; or because, starting out with the
ambitions and rosy expectations of the early pioneer, he
found his hopes thwarted by a capitalistic preemptor of
the bounty of nature, who dooms to a wage-earner's posi-
tion all who came too late. In either case he is animated
by a genuine passion for revolution, a passion which
admits no compromise. Yet his numbers are too few to
threaten the existing order.

In conclusion, American trade unionism, no matter

whether the American Federation of Labor keeps its old

leaders or replaces them by "progressives" or socialists,

seems in a fair way to continue its conservative function

1 Notably in Germany since the end of the World War.

306 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

— so long as no overpowering open-shop movement or
"trustification" will break up the trade unions or render
them sterile. The hope of American Bolshevism will,
therefore, continue to rest with the will of employers to
rule as autocrats.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The first seven chapters of the present work are based on
the History of Labour in the United States by John R. Com-
mons and Associates,1 published in 1918 in two volumes by
the Macmillan Company, New York. The major portion of
the latter was in turn based on A Documentary History of
the American Industrial Society, edited by Professor Com-
mons and published in 1910 in ten volumes by Clark and
Company, Cleveland. In preparing chapters 8 to 11, dealing
with the period since 1897, which is not covered in the His-
tory of Labour, the author used largely the same sort of
material as that in the preparation of the above named works ;
namely, original sources such as proceedings of trade union
conventions, labor and employer papers, government reports,
etc. There are, however, many excellent special histories
relating to the recent period in the labor movement, especially
histories of unionism in individual trades or industries, to
which the author wishes to refer the reader for more ample
accounts of the several phases of the subject, which he himself
was of necessity obliged to treat but briefly. The following is
a selected list of such works together with some others relating
to earlier periods:

BARNETT, GEORGE E., The Printers — A Study in American
Trade Unionism, American Economic Association, 1909.

BING, ALEXANDER M., War-Time Strikes and their Adjust-
ment, Button and Co., 1921.

BONNETT, CLARENCE E., Employers' Associations in the
United States, Macmillan, 1922.

BRISSENDEN, PAUL F., The I. W. W. — A Study in American
Syndicalism, Columbia University, 1920.

BROOKS, JOHN G., American Syndicalism: The 7. W. W.,
Macmillan, 1913.

BUDISH AND SOULE, The New Unionism in the Clothing In-
dustry, Harcourt, 1920.

*See Author's Preface.

307

308 TRADE UNIONISM IN THE UNITED STATES

CARLTON, FRANK T., Economic Influences upon Educational
Progress in the United States, 1820-1850, University of
Wisconsin, 1908.

DEIBLER, FREDERICK S., The Amalgamated Wood Workers'
International Union of America, University of Wiscon-
sin, 1912.

FITCH, JOHN L., The Steel Workers, Russell Sage Founda-
tion, 1911.

HOAGLAND, HENRY E., Wage Bargaining on the Fessels of
the Great Lakes, University of Illinois, 1915.

Collective Bargaining in the Lithographic Industry,

Columbia University, 1917.

INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT, Commission of Inquiry,
Report on the Steel Strike of 1919, Harcourt, 1920.

LAIDLER, HARRY, Socialism in Thought and Action, Macmil-
lan, 1920.

ROBBINS, EDWIN C., Railway Conductors — A Study in Or-
ganized Labor, Columbia University, 1914.

SCHLUTER, HERMAN, The Brewing Industry and the Brewery
Workmen's Movement in America, International Union
of Brewery Workmen, 1910.

SUFFERN, ARTHUR E., Conciliation and Arbitration in the
Coal Mining Industry in America, Mifflin, 1915.

SYDENSTRICKER, EDGAR, Collective Bargaining in the Anthra-
cite Coal Industry, Bulletin No. 191 of the United States
Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1916.

WOLMAN, LEO, The Boycott in American Trade Unions, Johns
Hopkins University, 1916.

Labor Encyclopedias:

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR, History, Encyclopedia,

Reference Book, American Federation of Labor, 1919.
BROWNE, WALDO R., What's What in the Labor Movement,

Huebsch, 1921.

INDEX

'A!

Adair Case, 202.

Adamson Law, 232.

Agrarianism, "equal division,"
13; homestead movement, 35.

Amalgamated Clothing Workers'
Union of America, 220, 247,
255.

American Anti-Boycott League,
195.

American Federation of Labor,
departments, 223 ; eight-hour
movement, 1890, 131; interna-
tional labor movement, 242;
politics, 139, 203; origin of
program, 77; Reconstruction,
242; shorter hours by law, 199;
socialism, 140; structure, 119,
122; Trade Union Inter-
national, 261; unskilled, 116,
216; use of government, 202;
World War, 233; see Federa-
tion of Organized Trades and
Labor Unions of the United
States and Canada.

American Labor Union, 214.

"American Plan," 252.

American Railway Union, 137.

Anarchists, Chicago, 79.

Anthracite Coal Strike Commis-
sion, 176.

Arbitration, see Collective Bar-
gaining; see Railway Men.

B

Banks, complaints against, 11, 28.
Bargaining Theory of Labor

Movement, 266.
Barnett, George E., 164.
Bascom, John, 72.
Benevolent Societies, 7.

Berger, Victor, 212.

Black International, 79.

Blacklist, laws of, 154.

Bolshevism, in Russia, 295; In
America, 301.

Boycott, in the eighties, 85; law
of, 155, 258; the Theiss, 101.

Brisbane, Albert, 29.

British Trade Union Congress,
111.

British Unions, 139.

Brook Farm, 29.

Bryan, William J., 141, 205.

Buck's Stove and Range Com-
pany Case, 202.

Building Strikes, 255.

Business Cycles, effects on co8p-
erative movement, 277; effects
on labor movement, 276.

Carey, Mathew, 20.

Carnegie Steel Company, 133,

196.
Carpenters, first strike, 3; strike

in 1825, 8; national eight-hour

strike, 132.
Central Competitive Field, see

Miners.

Check-off, 169 note, 178, 179.
Chinese, agitation against, 62.
Cigar Makers' International

Union, 68, 76, 78, 117.
Citizens' Alliances, 195.
City Central Labor Bodies, first

on record, 9; in the thirties,

20; in the sixties, 43.
Clayton Act, 226, 257.
Cleveland, Grover, 135, 139.
Closed Shop, early, 6; in court,

151.

309

310

INDEX

Collective Bargaining, 176; in
stove molding, 142.

Commonwealth v. Hunt, 151.

Communist Manifesto, 73.

Compulsory Military Service, 12.

Concerted Movements, 183.

Conspiracy, early cases, 6, 8, 25,
147, 155; see Injunctions, Sher-
man Anti-Trust Law, and
Clayton Act.

Cooper, Peter, 58.

Cooperation, consumers' in Eu-
rope, 64 note; effect of busi-
ness cycles upon, 277; con-
sumers', early, 32; consumers',
Sovereigns of Industry, 62, 63,
64; consumers', causes of fail-
ure, 65; producers', early, 30;
producers', in the sixties, 52;
and the Knights of Labor, 71 ;
producers', in the eighties, 125;
producers', Minneapolis Coop-
ers, 56; producers', causes of
failure of, 127, 128.

Coppage Case, 257.

Coronado Case, 259.

Cost of Living, rise of, in the
thirties, 19; during Civil War,
43.

Courts, see Conspiracy, Incorpor-
ation, Injunctions, Sherman
Anti-Trust Law, and Clayton
Act.

Craft Autonomy, 122.

Danbury Hatters' Case, 195, 202.

Declaration of Independence, ef-
fect on labor movement, 279.

Debs, Eugene V., 137, 156, 159,
212.

DeLeon, Daniel, 210.

Duplex Printing Case, 258.

E

Earle, William H., 62.

Education, early conditions, 14;
industrial, 14; "State Guard-
ianship," 15.

Eight-Hour Leagues, 46.

Ely, Richard T., 72, 290.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 29.

Employers' Associations, early, 6,
8; in the thirties, 25; in the
sixties, 43; in the eighties, 94;
in stove industry, 142; open-
shop movement, 194, 252.

Erdman Act, 183.

Esch Cummings Law, 253.

Evans, George Henry, 35.

Factory System, early reaction
against, 16; early strikes, 24.

Factory Workers, first organiza-
tion of, 7.

Farmer-Labor Party, 261.

Federation of Organized Trades
and Labor Unions of the
United States and Canada, 111.

Fourierism, 29.

Frick, Henry C., 133.

G

George, Henry, campaign for

mayor, 102.
Gompers, Samuel, 71, 112, 117,

119, 135, 140, 202, 203, 204,

205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 291;

characterization of, 76.
Gould, Jay, 84, 86, 96.
Grant, U. S., 48.
Greeley, Horace, 29, 38, 57.
Greenbackism, parties, 58, 60;

philosophy, 51, 282.
Greenbacks, 42.

H

Haywood, William D., 214, 303.
Hewitt, Abram S., 103.
Hitchman Case, 170, 257.
Homestead Movement, 281; phi-
losophy of, 36.
Homestead Exemption, 39.
Homestead Strike, 133.

Immigration, 85, 179, 221.
Imprisonment for Debt, 11.
Incorporation, 112, 152.
Industrial Government, see Col-
lective Bargaining.

INDEX

311

Industrial Unionism, 137, 217.

Industrial Workers of the World,
208, 212, 214, 303, 305.

Injunctions, 138, 169, 170;
"blanket," 160; legal theory of,
156; bills, 201; planks, 204; see
Clayton Act.

Intellectuals, in the forties, 29;
role of, 290.

Interchurch World Movement,
254.

International Building Trades'
Council, 222.

International Industrial Assem-
bly, 43.

International Ladies' Garment
Workers' Union, 220.

International Workingmen's As-
sociation, 72, 73.

Interstate Commerce Act, 156.

Iron and Steel Workers, Amalga-
mated Association of, 130, 133,
142, 153, 197.

Jackson, Andrew, 27.
Jacksonian Democracy, influence

on labor, 9, 10.
Jefferson, Thomas, 279.
Johnson, Andrew, 38, 48.
Jurisdictional disputes, 223.

Kansas Industrial Relations
Court, 252.

Knights of Labor, and alien con-
tract labor law, 89; cooperative
program, 71; "First prin-
ciples," 70, 125; "one big
union," 106, 114; preamble,
70; producers' cooperation,
125; ritual, 68; secrecy, 69;
skilled in, 123; structure, 113,
121; and unskilled, 84, 115,
118, 122; water-front strike of
1887, 98.

Knights of St. Crispin, 56, 115,
274.

Labor Management, 247.

Labor Politics, in the twenties,

17, 21; in the thirties, 28; pol-
icy of pressure, 37, 289; Na-
tional Labor and Reform
party, 57; in the eighties, 102,
105; in the nineties, 139; see
American Federation of Labor.

Labor Press, 8, 21.

Lake Carriers' Association, 190.

Lassalle, Ferdinand, program of,
51, 73, 74.

League of Nations Pact, 242.

Lobbying, early, 21.

Lumber Carriers* Association,
190.

Luther, Seth, 17.

M

McGuire, P. J., 75, 140, 152.

Machinery, effect of, 115.

Machinists and Blacksmiths, na-
tional union of, 41.

Manhood Suffrage, 9.

Market Theory of Industrial
Evolution, 268.

Marx, Karl, 72, 265, 296.

Mazzini, Giuseppe, 73.

Mechanics' Lien, 12.

Merchant-Capitalist, 11, 270, 271.

Miners, anthracite, early union,
69; strike in 1888, 130; agree-
ment system in eighties, lf>7
note; eight-hour movement,
132; strike in 1894, 136, 168;
strike in 1897, 168; anthracite
strike of 1900, 175; of 1902,
176; bituminous strike of 1919,
251; anthracite strike of 1920,
251 ; Interstate agreement sys-
tem, 169; West Virginia situ-
ation, 168, 170.

Mitchell, John, 171, 176, 202.

Molders, and cooperation, 54; na-
tional union, 41.

Molly Maguires, 69 note.

Moore, Ely, first labor congress-
man, 22, 24.

N

National Association of Manu-
facturers, 195, 200, 252.

National Council of Defense, 233,
236.

312

INDEX

National Founders' Association,
186, 194.

National Industrial Congress,
57.

National Labor Congress, 57, 111.

National Labor Federations, see
National Labor Union, Na-
tional Labor Congress, Knights
of Labor, and American Fed-
eration of Labor.

National Labor Union, 45, 51,
56, 111.

National Metal Trades' Associa-
tion, 189, 194.

National Trades' Union, 36, 107.

Nationalization, causes of in
union structure, 109.

New England Protective Union,
34.

Newlands Act, 183.

"New York Agreement," 187,
189.

"New Unionism," 220.

Open-Shop Movement, 193, 253,

256.

"One Big Union," 106, 218.
"Outlaw" Strike, 254.
Owen, Robert Dale, 15.

Packing industry, 97, 240, 256.

Paine, Thomas, 13.

Phillips, Thomas, 53.

Phillips, Wendell, 57.

Pinkertons, 134.

Plumb Plan, 253, 259.

Powderly, Terence V., 60, 71,
125.

Preponderance of Social Power
Theory of Social Revolutions,
295, 302.

President's Industrial Confer-
ence, 249.

Printers, early societies of, 4;
national trade union, 40; eight
hours, 166.

Prison Labor, 21.

Pullman Strike, 136.

R

Railway Employes' Department,
185, 224.

Railroad Labor Board, 253, 254,
261.

Railway Men, Adamson Law,
232; arbitration cases, 183;
eight-hour movement in 1916,

. 231 ; first organizations, 41 ;
"National Agreements," 246 ;
Plumb Plan, 253, 259; senior-
ity, 181, 182; see Railway Em-
ployers' Department.

Railway Strikes, of 1877, 58;
of 1884-1885, 86; of the South-
west, 95 ; of 1888, 130 ; on Great
Northern, 137; Pullman, 136;
injunctions in, 159.

"Republican Education," 281.

Restriction of Output, 191.

"Reward Your Friends," 289.

Rochdale System, 71, 73.

Roosevelt, Theodore, 104, 176,
198.

"Run-of-mine" System, 169 note,
173.

S

Samuel, John, 116.

Schulze-Delitzsch, 74.

Self-employment, 280.

Seniority, 181, 182, 192.

Sherman Anti-Trust Law, 154,
156.

Shoemakers, early societies of, 4;
see Knights of St. Crispin.

Shorter Hours, first strike for, 3;
ten-hour movement, 22; eight-
hour movement, 50, 91, 131,
231 ; eight-hours philosophy, 45 ;
first effective law, 50; State
eight-hour laws, 49; on govern-
ment work, 24, 26, 47; on gov-
ernment contract work, 199.

Single tax, 102.

Skidmore, Thomas, 13, 35.

Socialism, 57, 140, 208, 212.

Socialist Labor Party, 209, 211.

Socialist Trade and Labor Al-
liance, 211, 283.

"Standards of Production," 255.

Steel Strike, 248, 250.

INDEX

313

Steward, Ira, 45.

Strasser, Adolph, 75, 76, 117, 140,
152.

Steel Corporation, United States,
171, 196, 254.

Stephens, Uriah Smith, 68, 71.

Strikes, first on record, 3; sym-
pathetic, first on record, 5; see
Carpenters, Miners, and Rail-
way Men.

Structural Building Trades' Al-
liance, 222.

Structural Erectors' Association,
190.

Sylvis, William H., 42, 54.

Syndicalism, 79.

System Federation, 185.

Sweatshop System, 271.

Taft, William H., 159, 201, 205,

238.

Tammany, 28, 38, 104.
Trade Agreements, 275; see

Collective Bargaining.
Truax case, 258.
Typothetae, United, of America,

166, 190.

U

United States Commission on In-
dustrial Relations, 228.

Unskilled, 90, 95, 101, 115, 122,
165, 216, 219, 224.

Van Buren, Martin, 27.
W

Walsh, Frank P., 228, 238.

War, Civil, 42.

War Labor Board, 235, 238, 247.

Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, 293.

Weitling, Wilhelm, 32.

Welles, Gideon, 48.

Western Federation of Miners,

213.

Wilson, William B., 206.
Wilson, Woodrow, 206, 237, 242,

249, 253.

Wolman, Leo, 164.
Working Men's Protective Union,

34:

Women Workers, 20.
"Working Rules," 191.
Wright, Frances, 15.

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