The Armies of Labor Part 7

In December, 1889, committees representing the Knights of Labor and the Farmers' Alliance met in St. Louis to come to some agreement on political policies. Owing to the single tax predilection of the Knights, the two organizations were unable to enter into a close union, but they nevertheless did agree that "the legislative committees of both organizations [would] act in concert before Congress for the purpose of securing the enactment of laws in harmony with their demands." This cooperation was a forerunner of the People's party or, as it was commonly called, the Populist party, the largest third party that had taken the field since the Civil War. Throughout the West and the South political conditions now were feverish. Old party majorities were overturned, and a new type of Congressman invaded Washington. When the first national convention of the People's party met in Omaha on July 2, 1892, the outlook was bright. General Weaver was nominated for President and James G. Field of Virginia for Vice-President. The platform rehabilitated Greenbackism in cogent phrases, demanded government control of railroads and telegraph and telephone systems, the reclamation of land held by corporations, an income tax, the free coinage of silver and gold "at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one," and postal savings banks. In a series of resolutions which were not a part of the platform but were nevertheless "expressive of the sentiment of this convention," the party declared itself in sympathy "with the efforts of organized workingmen to shorten the hours of labor"; it condemned "the fallacy of protecting American labor under the present system, which opens our ports to the pauper and criminal cla.s.ses of the world and crowds out our wage-earners"; and it opposed the Pinkerton system of capitalistic espionage as "a menace to our liberties." The party formally declared itself to be a "union of the labor forces of the United States," for "the interests of rural and city labor are the same; their enemies identical."

These national movements prior to 1896 are not, however, an adequate index of the political strength of labor in partisan endeavor. Organized labor was more of a power in local and state elections, perhaps because in these cases its pressure was more direct, perhaps because it was unable to cope with the great national organization of the older parties. During these years of effort to gain a footing in the Federal Government, there are numerous examples of the success of the labor party in state elections. As early as 1872 the labor reformers nominated state tickets in Pennsylvania and Connecticut. In 1875 they nominated Wendell Phillips for Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts. In 1878, in coalition with the Greenbackers, they elected many state officers throughout the West. Ten years later, when the Union Labor party was at its height, labor candidates were successful in several munic.i.p.alities. In 1888 labor tickets were nominated in many Western States, including Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Of these Kansas cast the largest labor vote, with nearly 36,000, and Missouri came next with 15,400. In the East, however, the showing of the party in state elections was far less impressive.

In California the political labor movement achieved a singular prominence. In 1877 the labor situation in San Francis...o...b..came acute because of the prevalence of unemployment. Grumblings of dissatisfaction soon gave way to parades and informal meetings at which imported Chinese labor and the rich "n.o.bs," the supposed dual cause of all the trouble, were denounced in lurid language. The agitation, however, was formless until the necessary leader appeared in Dennis Kearney, a native of Cork County, Ireland. For fourteen years he had been a sailor, had risen rapidly to first officer of a clipper ship, and then had settled in San Francisco as a drayman. He was temperate and industrious in his personal life, and possessed a clear eye, a penetrating voice, the vocabulary of one versed in the crude socialistic pamphlets of his day, and, in spite of certain domineering habits bred in the sailor, the winning graces of his nationality.

Kearney appeared at meetings on the vacant lots known as the "sand lots," in front of the City Hall of San Francisco, and advised the discontented ones to "wrest the government from the hands of the rich and place it in those of the people." On September 12, 1877, he rallied a group of unemployed around him and organized the Workingman's Trade and Labor Union of San Francisco. On the 5th of October, at a great public meeting, the Workingman's party of California was formed and Kearney was elected president. The platform adopted by the party proposed to place the government in the hands of the people, to get rid of the Chinese, to destroy the money power, to "provide decently for the poor and unfortunate, the weak and the helpless," and "to elect none but competent workingmen and their friends to any office whatever.... When we have 10,000 members we shall have the sympathy and support of 20,000 other workingmen. This party," concluded the p.r.o.nouncement, "will exhaust all peaceable means of attaining its ends, but it will not be denied justice, when it has the power to enforce it. It will encourage no riot or outrage, but it will not volunteer to repress or put down or arrest or prosecute the hungry and impatient, who manifest their hatred of the Chinamen by a crusade against 'John,' or those who employ him. Let those who raise the storm by their selfishness, suppress it themselves. If they dare raise the devil, let them meet him face to face. We will not help them." In advocating these views, Kearney held meeting after meeting each rhetorically more violent than the last, until on the 3d of November he was arrested. This martyrdom in the cause of labor increased his power, and when he was released he was drawn by his followers in triumph through the streets on one of his own drays. His language became more and more extreme. He bludgeoned the "thieving politicians" and the "bloodsucking capitalists," and he advocated "judicious hanging" and "discretionary shooting." The City Council pa.s.sed an ordinance intended to gag him; the legislature enacted an extremely harsh riot act; a body of volunteers patrolled the streets of the city; a committee of safety was organized. On January 5, 1878, Kearney and a number of a.s.sociates were indicted, arrested, and released on bail. When the trial jury acquitted Kearney, what may be called the terrorism of the movement attained its height, but it fortunately spent itself in violent adjectives.

The Workingman's party, however, elected a workingman mayor of San Francisco, joined forces with the Grangers, and elected a majority of the members of the state const.i.tutional convention which met in Sacramento on September 28, 1878. This was a notable triumph for a third party. The framing of a new const.i.tution gave this coalition of farmers and workingmen an unusual opportunity to a.s.sail the evils which they declared infested the State. The instrument which they drafted bound the state legislature with numerous restrictions and made lobbying a felony; it reorganized the courts, placed innumerable limitations upon corporations, forbade the loaning of the credit or property of the State to corporations, and placed a state commission in charge of the railroads, which had been perniciously active in state politics. Alas for these visions of reform! A few years after the adoption of this new const.i.tution by California, Hubert H. Bancroft wrote:

"Those objects which it particularly aimed at, it failed to achieve. The effect upon corporations disappointed its authors and supporters. Many of them were strong enough still to defy state power and evade state laws, in protecting their interests, and this they did without scruple. The relation of capital and labor is even more strained than before the const.i.tution was adopted. Capital soon recovered from a temporary intimidation... Labor still uneasy was still subject to the inexorable law of supply and demand. Legislatures were still to be approached by agents... Chinese were still employed in digging and grading. The state board of railroad Commissioners was a useless expense,... being as wax in the hands of the companies it was set to watch." *

* "Works" (vol. XXIV): "History of California," vol. VII, p.

404.

After the collapse of the Populist party, there is to be discerned in labor politics a new departure, due primarily to the att.i.tude of the American Federation of Labor in partisan matters, and secondarily to the rise of political socialism. A socialistic party deriving its support almost wholly from foreign-born workmen had appeared in a few of the large cities in 1877, but it was not until 1892 that a national party was organized, and not until after the collapse of Populism that it a.s.sumed some political importance.

In August, 1892, a Socialist-Labor convention which was held in New York City nominated candidates for President and Vice-President and adopted a platform that contained, besides the familiar economic demands of socialism, the rather unusual suggestion that the Presidency, Vice-Presidency, and Senate of the United States be abolished and that an executive board be established "whose members are to be elected, and may at any time be recalled, by the House of Representatives, as the only legislative body, the States and munic.i.p.alities to adopt corresponding amendments to their const.i.tutions and statutes." Under the t.i.tle of the Socialist-Labor party, this ticket polled 21,532 votes in 1892, and in 1896, 36,373 votes.

In 1897 the inevitable split occurred in the Socialist ranks. Eugene V. Debs, the radical labor leader, who, as president of the American Railway Union, had directed the Pullman strike and had become a martyr to the radical cause through his imprisonment for violating the orders of a Federal Court, organized the Social Democratic party. In 1900 Debs was nominated for President, and Job Harriman, representing the older wing, for Vice-President. The ticket polled 94,864 votes. The Socialist-Labor party nominated a ticket of their own which received only 33,432 votes. Eventually this party shrank to a mere remnant, while the Social Democratic party became generally known as the Socialist party. Debs became their candidate in three successive elections. In 1904 and 1908 his vote hovered around 400,000. In 1910 congressional and local elections spurred the Socialists to hope for a million votes in 1912 but they fell somewhat short of this mark. Debs received 901,873 votes, the largest number which a Socialist candidate has ever yet received. Benson, the presidential candidate in 1916, received 590,579 votes. *

* The Socialist vote is stated differently by McKee, "National Conventions and Platforms." The above figures, to 1912, are taken from Stanwood's "History of the Presidency," and for 1912 and 1916 from the "World Almanac."

In the meantime, the influence of the Socialist labor vote in particular localities vastly increased. In 1910 Milwaukee elected a Socialist mayor by a plurality of seven thousand, sent Victor Berger to Washington as the first Socialist Congressman, and elected labor-union members as five of the twelve Socialist councilmen, thus revealing the sympathy of the working cla.s.s for the cause. On January 1, 1912, over three hundred towns and cities had one or more Socialist officers. The estimated Socialist vote of these localities was 1,500,000. The 1039 Socialist officers included 56 mayors, 205 aldermen and councilmen, and 148 school officers. This was not a sectional vote but represented New England and the far West, the oldest commonwealths and the newest, the North and the South, and cities filled with foreign workingmen as well as staid towns controlled by retired farmers and shopkeepers.

When the United States entered the Great War, the Socialist party became a reservoir for all the unsavory disloyalties loosened by the shock of the great conflict. Pacifists and pro-Germans found a common refuge under its red banner. In the New York mayoralty elections in 1917 these Socialists cast nearly one-fourth of the votes, and in the Wisconsin senatorial election in 1918 Victor Bergen, their standard-bearer, swept Milwaukee, carried seven counties, and polled over one hundred thousand votes. On the other hand, a large number of American Socialists, under the leadership of William English Walling and John Spargo, vigorously espoused the national cause and subordinated their economic and political theories to their loyalty.

The Socialists have repeatedly attempted to make official inroads upon organized labor. They have the sympathy of the I.W.W., the remnant of the Knights of Labor, and the more radical trades unions, but from the American Federation of Labor-they have met only rebuff. A number of state federations, especially in the Middle West, not a few city centrals, and some sixteen national unions, have officially approved of the Socialist programme, but the Federation has consistently refused such an endors.e.m.e.nt.

The political tactics a.s.sumed by the Federation discountenance a distinct labor party movement, as long as the old parties are willing to subserve the ends of the unions. This self-restraint does not mean that the Federation is not "in politics." On the contrary, it is constantly vigilant and aggressive and it engages every year in political maneuvers without, however, having a partisan organization of its own. At its annual conventions it has time and again urged local and state branches to scrutinize the records of legislative candidates and to see that only friends of union labor receive the union laborer's ballot. In 1897 it "firmly and unequivocally" favored "the independent use of the ballot by trade unionists and workmen united regardless of party, that we may elect men from our own ranks to write new laws and administer them along lines laid down in the legislative demands of the American Federation of Labor and at the same time secure an impartial judiciary that will not govern us by arbitrary injunctions of the courts, nor act as the pliant tool of corporate wealth." And in 1906 it determined, first, to defeat all candidates who are either hostile or indifferent to labor's demands; second, if neither party names such candidates, then to make independent labor nominations; third, in every instance to support "the men who have shown themselves to be friendly to labor."

With great astuteness, perseverance, and alertness, the Federation has pursued this method to its uttermost possibilities. In Washington it has met with singular success, reaching a high-water mark in the first Wilson Administration, with the pa.s.sage of the Clayton bill and the eight-hour railroad bill. After this action, a great New York daily lamented that "Congress is a subordinate branch of the American Federation of Labor... The unsleeping watchmen of organized labor know how intrepid most Congressmen are when threatened with the 'labor vote.' The American laborites don't have to send men to Congress as their British brethren do to the House of Commons. From the galleries they watch the proceedings. They are mighty in committee rooms. They reason with the recalcitrant. They fight opponents in their Congress districts. There are no abler or more potent politicians than the labor leaders out of Congress. Why should rulers like Mr. Gompers and Mr. Furuseth * go to Congress? They are a Super-Congress."

* Andrew Furuseth, the president of the Seamen's Union and reputed author of the Seaman's Act of 1915.

Many Congressmen have felt the retaliatory power of the Federation. Even such powerful leaders as Congressman Littlefield of Maine and Speaker Cannon were compelled to exert their utmost to overcome union opposition. The Federation has been active in seating union men in Congress. In 1908 there were six union members in the House; in 1910 there were ten; in 1912 there were seventeen. The Secretary of Labor himself holds a union card. Nor has the Federation shrunk from active partic.i.p.ation in the presidential lists. It bitterly opposed President Roosevelt when he espoused the open shop in the Government Printing Office; and in 1908 it openly espoused the Democratic ticket.

In thus maintaining a sort of grand partisan neutrality, the Federation not only holds in numerous instances the balance of power but it makes party fealty its slave and avoids the costly luxury of maintaining a separate national organization of its own. The all-seeing lobby which it maintains at Washington is a prototype of what one may discern in most state capitals when the legislature is in session. The legislative programmes adopted by the various state labor bodies are metamorphosed into demands, and well organized committees are present to cooperate with the labor members who sit in the legislature. The unions, through their steering committee, select with caution the members who are to introduce the labor bills and watch paternally over every stage in the progress of a measure.

Most of this legislative output has been strictly protective of union interests. Labor, like all other interests that aim to use the power of government, has not been wholly altruistic, in its motives, especially since in recent years it has found itself matched against such powerful organizations of employers as the Manufacturers' a.s.sociation, the National Erectors' a.s.sociation, and the Metal Trades a.s.sociation. In fact, in nearly every important industry the employers have organized for defensive and offensive purposes. These organizations match committee with committee, lobby with lobby, add espionage to open warfare, and issue effective literature in behalf of their open shop propaganda.

The voluminous labor codes of such great manufacturing communities as Ma.s.sachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, reflect a new and enlarged conception of the modern State. Labor has generally favored measures that extend the inquisitional and regulative functions of the State, excepting where this extension seemed to interfere with the autonomy of labor itself. Workshops, mines, factories, and other places of employment are now minutely inspected, and innumerable sanitary and safety provisions are enforced. A workman's compensation law removes from the employee's mind his anxiety for the fate of his family if he should be disabled. The labor contract, long extolled as the aegis of economic liberty, is no longer free from state vigilance. The time and method of paying wages are ordered by the State, and in certain industries the hours of labor are fixed by law. Women and children are the special proteges of this new State, and great care is taken that they shall be engaged only in employment suitable to their strength and under an environment that will not ruin their health.

The growing social control of the individual is significant, for it is not only the immediate conditions of labor that have come under public surveillance. Where and how the workman lives is no longer a matter of indifference to the public, nor what sort of schooling his children get, what games they play, and what motion pictures they see. The city, in cooperation with the State, now provides nurses, dentists, oculists, and surgeons, as well as teachers for the children. This local paternalism increases yearly in its solicitude and receives the eager sanction of the labor members of city councils. The State has also set up elaborate machinery for observing all phases of the labor situation and for gathering statistics and other information that should be helpful in framing labor laws, and has also established state employment agencies and boards of conciliation and arbitration.

This machinery of mediation is significant not because of what it has already accomplished but as evidence of the realization on the part of the State that labor disputes are not merely the concern of the two parties to the labor contract. Society has finally come to realize that, in the complex of the modern State, it also is vitally concerned, and, in despair at thousands of strikes every year, with their wastage and their aftermath of bitterness, it has attempted to interpose its good offices as mediator.

The modern labor laws cannot be credited, however, to labor activity alone. The new social atmosphere has provided a congenial milieu for this vast extension of state functions. The philanthropist, the statistician, and the sociologist have become potent allies of the labor legislator; and such non-labor organizations, as the American a.s.sociation for Labor Legislation, have added their momentum to the movement. New ideals of social cooperation have been established, and new conceptions of the responsibilities of private ownership have been evolved.

While labor organizations have succeeded rather readily in bending the legislative power to their wishes, the military arm of the executive and the judiciary which ultimately enforce the command of the State have been beyond their reach. To bend these branches of the government to its will, organized labor has fought a persistent and aggressive warfare. Decisions of the courts which do not sustain union contentions are received with great disfavor. The open shop decisions of the United States Supreme Court are characterized as unfair and partisan and are vigorously opposed in all the labor journals. It is not, however, until the sanction of public opinion eventually backs the att.i.tude of the unions that the laws and their interpretation can conform entirely to the desires of labor.

The chief grievance of organized labor against the courts is their use of the injunction to prevent boycotts and strikes. "Government by injunction" is the complaint of the unions and it is based upon the common, even reckless, use of a writ which was in origin and intent a high and rarely used prerogative of the Court of Chancery. What was in early times a powerful weapon in the hands of the Crown against riotous a.s.semblies and threatened lawlessness was invoked in 1868 by an English court as a remedy against industrial disturbances. * Since the Civil War the American courts in rapidly increasing numbers have used this weapon, and the Damascus blade of equity has been transformed into a bludgeon in the hands even of magistrates of inferior courts.

* Springfield Spinning Company vs. Riley, L.R.6 Eq. 551.

The prime objection which labor urges against this use of the injunction is that it deprives the defendant of a jury trial when his liberty is at stake. The unions have always insisted that the law should be so modified that this right would accompany all injunctions growing out of labor disputes. Such a denatured injunction, however, would defeat the purpose of the writ; but the union leader maintains, on the other hand, that he is placed unfairly at a disadvantage, when an employer can command for his own aid in an industrial dispute the swift and sure arm of a law originally intended for a very different purpose. The imprisonment of Debs during the Pullman strike for disobeying a Federal injunction brought the issue vividly before the public; and the sentencing of Gompers, Mitch.e.l.l, and Morrison to prison terms for violating the Buck's Stove injunction produced new waves of popular protest. Occasional dissenting opinions by judges and the gradual conviction of lawyers and of society that some other tribunal than a court of equity or even a court of law would be more suitable for the settling of labor disputes is indicative of the change ultimately to be wrought in practice.

The unions are also violently opposed to the use of military power by the State during strikes. Not only can the militia be called out to enforce the mandates of the State but whenever Federal interference is justified the United States troops may be sent to the scene of turmoil. After the period of great labor troubles culminating in the Pullman strike, many States reorganized their militia into national guards. The armories built for the accommodation of the guard were called by the unions "plutocracy's bastiles," and the mounted State constabulary organized in 1906 by Pennsylvania were at once dubbed "American Cossacks." Several States following the example of Pennsylvania have encountered the bitterest hostility on the part of the labor unions. Already opposition to the militia has proceeded so far that some unions have forbidden their members to perform militia service when called to do strike duty, and the military readjustments involved in the Great War have profoundly affected the relation of the State to organized labor. Following the signing of the armistice, a movement for the organization of an American Labor party patterned after the British Labour party gained rapid momentum, especially in New York and Chicago. A platform of fourteen points was formulated at a general conference of the leaders, and provisional organizations were perfected in a number of cities. What power this latest attempt to enlist labor in partisan politics will a.s.sume is problematical. It is obviously inspired by European experiences and promulgated by socialistic propaganda. It has not succeeded in invading the American Federation of Labor, which did not formally endorse the movement at its Annual Convention in 1919. Gompers, in an intimate and moving speech, told a group of labor leaders gathered in New York on December 9, 1918, that "the organization of a political party would simply mean the dividing of the activities and allegiance of the men and women of labor between two bodies, such as would often come in conflict." Under present conditions, it would appear that no Labor party could succeed in the United States without the cooperation of the American Federation of Labor.

The relation between the American Federation of Labor and the socialistic and political labor movements, as well as the monopolistic eagerness of the socialists to absorb these activities, is clearly indicated in Gompers's narrative of his experiences as an American labor representative at the London Conference of 1918. The following paragraphs are significant:

"When the Inter-Allied Labor Conference opened in London, on September 17th, early in the morning, there were sent over to my room at the hotel cards which were intended to be the credential cards for our delegation to sign and hand in as our credentials. The card read something like this: 'The undersigned is a duly accredited delegate to the Inter-Allied Socialist Conference to be held at London,' etc., and giving the dates.

"I refused to sign my name, or permit my name to be put upon any card of that character. My a.s.sociates were as indignant as I was and refused to sign any such credential. We went to the hall where the conference was to be held. There was a young lady at the door. When we made an effort to enter she asked for our cards. We said we had no cards to present. 'Well,' the answer came, 'you cannot be admitted.' We replied, 'That may be true-we cannot be admitted-but we will not sign any such card. We have our credentials written out, signed, and sealed and will present them to any committee of the conference for scrutiny and recommendation, but we are not going to sign such a card.'

"Mr. Charles Bowerman, Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee of the British Trade Union Congress, at that moment emerged from the door. He asked why we had not entered. I told him the situation, and he persuaded the young lady to permit us to pa.s.s in. We entered the hall and presented our credentials. Mr. James s.e.xton, officer and representative of the Docker's Union of Liverpool, arose and called the attention of the Conference to this situation, and declared that the American Federation of Labor delegates refused to sign any such doc.u.ment. He said it was not an Inter-Allied Socialist Conference, but an Inter-Allied Socialist and Labor Conference.

"Mr. Arthur Henderson, of the Labor Party, made an explanation something to this effect, if my memory serves me: 'It is really regrettable that such an error should have been made. It was due to the fact that the old card of credentials which has been used in former conferences was sent to the printer, no one paying any attention to it, thinking it was all right.'

"I want to call your attention to the significance of that explanation, that is, that the trade union movement of Great Britain was represented at these former conferences, but at this conference the importance of Labor was regarded as so insignificant that everybody took it for granted that it was perfectly all right to have the credential card read 'Inter-Allied Socialist Conference' and with the omission of this more important term, 'Labor.'" *

* "American Federationist," January, 1919, pp. 40-41.

As one looks back upon the history of the workingman, one finds something impressive, even majestic, in the rise of the fourth estate from a humble place to one of power in this democratic nation. In this rise of fortune the laborer's union has unquestionably been a moving force, perhaps even the leading cause. At least this h.o.m.ogeneous ma.s.s of workingmen, guided by self-developed leadership, has aroused society to safeguard more carefully the individual needs of all its parts. Labor has awakened the state to a sense of responsibility for its great sins of neglect and has made it conscious of its social duties. Labor, like other elements of society, has often been selfish, narrow, vindictive; but it has also shown itself earnest and constructive. The conservative trades union, at the hour of this writing, stands as a bulwark between that amorphous, inefficient, irresponsible Socialism which has made Russia a lurid warning and Prussia a word of scorn, and that rational social ideal which is founded upon the conviction that society is ultimately an organic spiritual unity, the blending of a thousand diverse interests whose justly combined labors and harmonized talents create civilization and develop culture.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

While there is a vast amount of writing on the labor problem, there are very few works on the history of labor organizations in the United States. The main reliance for the earlier period, in the foregoing pages, has been the "Doc.u.mentary History of American Industrial Society", edited by John R. Commons, 10 vols. (1910). The "History of Labour in the United States," 2 vols. (1918), which he published with a.s.sociates, is the most convenient and complete compilation that has yet appeared and contains a large ma.s.s of historical material on the labor question.

The following works are devoted to discussions of various phases of the history of American labor and industry:

T. S. Adams and Helen L. Sumner, "Labor Problems" (1905). Contains several refreshing chapters on labor organizations.

F. T. Carlton, "The History and Problem of Organized Labor" (1911). A succinct discussion of union problems.

R. T. Ely, "The Labor Movement in America" (1886). Though one of the earliest American works on the subject, it remains indispensable.

G. G. Groat, "An Introduction to the Study of Organized Labor in America" (1916). A useful and up-to-date compendium. R. F. Hosie, "Trade Unionism in the United States" (1917). A suggestive study of the philosophy of unionism.

J. R. Commons (Ed.), "Trade Unionism and Labor Problems" (1905).

J. H. Hollander and G. E. Barnett (Eds.), "Studies in American Trade Unionism" (1905). These two volumes are collections of contemporary studies of many phases of organized labor by numerous scholars. They are not historical.

The "Report of the Industrial Commission," vol. XVII (1901) provides the most complete a.n.a.lysis of trade union policies and also contains valuable historical summaries of many unions.

G. E. McNeill (Ed.), "The Labor Movement: the Problem of Today" (1899.). This collection contains historical sketches of the organizations of the greater labor groups and of the development of the more important issues espoused by them. For many years it was the most comprehensive historical work on American unionism, and it remains a necessary source of information to the student of trades union history.

J. G. Brissenden, "The Launching of the Industrial Workers of the World" (1913). An account of the origin of the I.W.W.

J. G. Brooks, "American Syndicalism: the I.W.W." (1913).