[64] See below, 230-233.

[65] 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.

[66] The 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 International Federation of Draftsmen's Unions, and the International Brotherhood of Foundry Employes.

[67] 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 agreements 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 for a compromise on working rules. ("National and District Systems of Collective Bargaining in the United States," in Quarterly Journal of Economics, May, 1912, pp. 425 ff.)

[68] The following account is taken from Chapter X of the Steel Workers by John A. Fitch, published by the Russell Sage Foundation.

[69] See above, 133-135.

[70] 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 1908; in each of these industries the Corporation holds a place of considerable control.

[71] See above, 47-49.

[72] Loewe v. Lawlor, 208 U.S. 274 (1908).

[73] Adair v. U.S., 208 U.S. 161 (1908).

[74] 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).



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 defensive 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 Federation. Inside it was the socialist "industrialist" who advocated a political labor party on a socialist platform, such as the Federation had rejected when it defeated the "program" of 1893,[75] together with a plan of organization by industry instead of by craft. Outside the Federation the opposition marched under the flag of the Industrial Workers of the World, which was launched by socialists but soon after birth fell into the hands of syndicalists.

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

The socialist movement, after it had unwittingly assisted in the birth of the opportunistic trade unionism of Strasser and Gompers,[76] 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 persistent though friendly "nudging" in the direction of socialism. 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 refrained from nominating its own tickets) but entirely agitational and propagandist. The socialist press was chiefly in German and was led by a daily in New York. So it 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 organizations; 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,[77] joined with his enemies and voted another man into office. Gompers was reelected 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 established unions refused to assume the part of the gravediggers 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 Alliance 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 socialists 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 socialist-minded trade unionists were willing to join in the venture. 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 suffered the fate of all unsuccessful revolutions: it alienated the moderate sympathizers and forced the victorious majority 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 it and another socialist group, the so-called Debs-Berger Social Democracy,[78] 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 recognize that trade unions are by historical necessity organized 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 American Federation of Labor so that at times they have controlled 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 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 Coeur 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 region were called out. The eight-hour day in the smelters was the chief issue. In 1899 the Colorado legislature 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 constitution was passed in 1902 by a large majority, but the legislature, after having thus received a direct command 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 industrial experience.[79]

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 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 immediately 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 instrument 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 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 resemblance 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 convention of 1912, held in Rochester, the problem of organizing 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 organization 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 Federation 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 system.' 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 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 railway strike in 1894, of the general strike of the bituminous miners of 1898, and of a decade long struggle and boycott in the beer-brewing industry. Industrialism meant a united front against the employers in an industry regardless of craft; it meant doing away with the paralyzing disputes over jurisdiction amongst the several craft unions; it meant also stretching out the hand of fellowship 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 associates, by a younger generation of leaders who were more in tune with the social ideas of the radical intellectuals and the labor movements of Europe than with the traditional policies of the Federation.

But there is industrialism and industrialism, each answering 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 capitalism 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 without 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 direction. 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 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 industrialism is consequently caused perhaps more by their own trade consideration than by an altruistic desire to uplift the unskilled, although they realize that the organization of the unskilled is required by the broader interests 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 accumulated experience likewise has a moderating influence on their economic activity, and they are consequently among the strongest supporters inside the American Federation 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" industrialism are the unions in the garment industries. Enthusiastic 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-called "new unionism" resides chiefly, first, in that it has rationalized and developed industrial government by collective bargaining and trade agreements as no other unionism, and second, in that it has applied a spirit of broadminded 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 agreement—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 movement.

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 machinery 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 element 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 than as a severe guide in its relations with the employers.[80] 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 Russian 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 themselves 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, ineffective, 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 Federation 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 the Alliance was "legitimatized" and made a "Department" of the American Federation of Labor, under the name of the Building Trades' Department, with the settlement of jurisdictional disputes as its main function. It was accompanied by departments of metal trades, of railway employes, of miners, and by a "label" department.

It is not, however, open to much doubt that the Department was not a very successful custodian of the trade autonomy principle. Jurisdictional disputes are caused either by technical changes, which play havoc with official "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 unequal 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 carpenters 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[81] are still compelled to abide by the letter and the spirit of craft autonomy. The effect of such a policy on the coming 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 railway 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-reformation" in reply to the socialist industrialists is the Railway Employes' Department as it developed during and after the war-time period.[82] It is composed of all the railway men's organizations except the brotherhoods of engineers, firemen, conductors, trainmen, telegraphers, and several minor organizations, which on the whole cooperate 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 therefore 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[83] 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', blacksmiths', boiler-makers', sheet metal workers', and electrical workers', have large memberships outside the railway industry, which might by their dues and assessments 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[75] See above, 139-141.

[76] See above, 76-79.

[77] See above, 139-141.

[78] Eugene V. Debs, after serving his sentence in prison for disobeying 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.

[79] In 1907 Haywood was tried and acquitted with two other officers of the Western Federation of Miners at Boise, 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.

[80] The same applies to the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.

[81] Except the miners, brewers, and garment workers.

[82] See above, 185-186.

[83] This refers particularly to the six shopmen's unions.



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 depression. The preceding winter had seen much unemployment 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 inauspicious outlook. Yet the labor movement could doubtless find solace in the political situation. Owing to the support it had given the Democratic party in the Presidential 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 exemption of labor unions from the operation of the anti-trust legislation and for the reduction to a minimum of interference by Federal Courts in labor disputes through injunction 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 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 combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade under Federal anti-trust laws. It further proceeds to prescribe the procedure in connection with the issuance of injunctions 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 contempt proceedings. The most vital section of the Act relating 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 terminating any relation of employment, or from ceasing to perform any work or labor or from recommending, advising, 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 working, 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 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, centering 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 paramount 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 immediate 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 before 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 movement 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 departments on matters relating to labor. Without a political party of its own, by virtue only of its "bargaining power" over the old parties, the American Federation of Labor seemed to have attained a position not far behind 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 patrimony at a time when the country was standing on the threshold of a new era, during which government was destined to become the arbiter of industry.

The War in Europe did not immediately improve industrial 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 workers, actually had its membership somewhat decreased during 1915, but in the following year made a 50 percent increase. The greater part of the new membership came from the "munitions towns," such as Bridgeport, Connecticut, where, in response to the insatiable demand from the Allied nations, new enormous plants were erected during 1915 and shipment of munitions in mass began early the next year. Bridgeport and surrounding towns became 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 percent of its membership in 1915 and gained seven percent during 1916.

On its War policy the Federation took its cue completely 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 maintain the strictest neutrality if the belligerents will persist in refusing to lend an ear to reason. To prevent a repetition of a similar catastrophe, the Federation did the obvious thing, pronouncing for open and democratized diplomacy; 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 declined. 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 refused 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 movements for higher wages became general. The practical stoppage of immigration enabled common labor to get a larger share than usual of the prosperity. Many employers 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 of the national Administration, brought to bay the greatest single industry of the country and overcame the opposition of the entire business class.

The four brotherhoods made a joint demand for an eight-hour day early in 1916.[84] 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 demand of the men together with counter demands of their own. The brotherhoods, however, fearing prejudice and recalling to mind past disappointments, declined the proposal and threatened to tie up the whole transportation 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 railway executives to accept the eight-hour day and proposed that a commission appointed by himself should investigate the demand for time and a half 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 imminent. 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 moment, the President went before Congress and asked for a speedy enactment of an eight-hour law for train operatives without a reduction in wages but with no punitive overtime. He coupled it with a request for an authorisation of a special commission to report on the operation of such a law for a period of six months, after which the subject might be reopened. Lastly, he urged an amendment 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.[85] 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 agreement between the railways and the brotherhoods. The former brought many suits in courts against the government 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 decision 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 decision, the railways and brotherhoods had signed, at the urging of the National Council of Defense, an agreement accepting the conditions of the Adamson law regardless of the outcome in court. When the decision became 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 statement 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 government in case of war. Whereas, they said, in all previous 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 workers were autocratically sacrificed for the slogan of national safety"; in this war "the government must recognize the organized labor movement as the agency through which it must cooperate with wage earners." Such recognition will imply first "representation on all agencies determining and administering policies of national defense" and "on all boards authorized to control publicity during war time." Second, that "service in government factories and private establishments, in transportation agencies, 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 accord with plans agreed upon by representatives of the government and those engaged and employed in the industry." Third, that the government's demand of sacrifice of their "labor power, their bodies or their lives" be accompanied by "increased guarantees and safe-guards," the imposing of a similar burden on property and the limitation of profits. Fourth, that "organization for industrial and commercial service" be "upon a different basis from military service" and "that military service should be carefully distinguished from service in industrial 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 forefathers, 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 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 prestige 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 impeded by the anti-union employers especially in industries 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.[86] 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[87] 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 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 Federation's arm in the Administration, was placed in supreme charge of general labor administration. Also, in connection 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 movement 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 commissions dealing with general policies, the government entered with the Federation into a number of agreements relative to the conditions of direct and indirect employment by the government. In each agreement the prevalent trade union standards were fully accepted and provision was made for a three-cornered board of adjustment to consist of a representative of the particular government 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 manufacturers 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 enforced 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 revolutionized the railway labor situation. Under private management, as was seen, the four brotherhoods alone, the engineers, firemen, conductors, and trainmen enjoyed universal 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 minimum 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 percent 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 employments by the National War Labor Board. On March 29, 1918, a National War Labor Conference Board, composed 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 Secretary of Labor on "Principles and Policies to govern Relations between Workers and Employers in War Industries for the Duration of the War." These "principles and policies," which were to be enforced by a permanent 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 following conditions: First, there was a recognition of the equal right of employes and employers to organize into associations 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 undertaking of the workers, "in the exercise of their right to organize," not to "use coercive measures of any kind to induce persons to join their organizations, nor to induce employers 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 warranted. 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 applying 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 workers." 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 standards. 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."

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 arbitration or by an umpire of its appointment. However, so outspoken was public opinion on the necessity of avoiding interruptions in the War industries and so far-reaching 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 conscription 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 prohibited labor organization for fourteen years was made to open its door to trade unionism.[88] 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 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 government with the Federation was the latter's eager self-identification 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 governments 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 against Germany) and a strong distrust of German socialism, which American labor leaders have developed during 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, Switzerland, 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 Federation 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 provisions for an international regulation of labor conditions designed to equalize labor standards and costs. Contrasting 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 remodelled by more liberal and more democratic hands.

The contrast in outlook between the mild evolutionism of the American Federation of Labor and the social radicalism 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 of "Labour and the New Social Order." This program was above all a legislative program. It called for a thoroughgoing governmental control of industry by means of a control of private finance, natural resources, transportation, 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 economic 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 government. 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 Reconstruction 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 freedom for the union. The American equivalent of a government-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 government in industrial relations—and the stimulated activities of the "legitimate" organizations of labor, which will result therefrom, will achieve a far better Reconstruction than a thousand paper programs however beautiful. So reasoned the leaders of the American Federation of Labor. 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 striking. But even more acceptable than these directly bestowed boons was the indirect one of the right to organize free from anti-union discriminations by employers. Having 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 situation to overflow new territory. Once entrenched and the organization well in hand, it thought it could look to the future with confidence.

FOOTNOTES:

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

[85] Congress ignored the last-named recommendation which would have introduced in the United States the Canadian system of "Compulsory Investigation."

[86] See below, 283-287.

[87] See below, 238-240.

[88] The unions again lost their hold upon the packing industry in the autumn of 1921.



CHAPTER 11

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

The Armistice with Germany came suddenly and unexpectedly. To the organized workers the news was as welcome 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 before 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 undecided. 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 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 slogan 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 government.

When in the summer of 1919 the railway shopmen demanded an increase in their wages, which had not been raised since the summer of 1918, President Wilson practically 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 international union officials, which disarranged the movement of trains for a short time but ended with the men returning to work under the combined pressure of their leaders' threats and the President's plea.

In September 1919, the United States Railroad Administration and the shopmen's unions entered into national 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 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 "psychological" 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 Eldorado 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 cultural 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 provision 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 common was that they attempted to achieve some sort of collective bargaining outside the channels of the established trade unions. The trade unionists termed the new fashioned expressions of industrial democracy "company unions." This term one may accept as technically correct without necessarily accepting the sinister connotation imputed to it by labor.

The trade unions, too, were benefiting as organizations. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers' Union firmly established itself by formal agreement on the men's clothing "markets" of Chicago, Rochester, Baltimore, and New 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 uncertainty 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 miners. The great steel strike, prepared and directed by a Committee representing twenty-four national and international 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 standstill. 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 employers 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.

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 conference 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, dominated of course by Gompers, was eager to make the discussion 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 alignment was effected was industrial control and collective bargaining. All three groups, the employer and public groups and of course the labor group, advocated collective 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 spokesmen 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 themselves 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 employer must be obliged to meet for the purpose of collective bargaining with other than his own employes.[89] 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 conference 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 pictured 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, unbalanced 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 agreement 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, discontent 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 disadvantageous agreement expired with it. So argued the miners and demanded a sixty percent increase in tonnage 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 intimated 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, intervened and attempted to dictate a settlement at a fourteen percent 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 motion of Attorney-General Palmer, Judge Anderson of Indianapolis, under the War-time Lever Act, issued an injunction forbidding the union officials to continue conducting the strike. The strike continued, the strikers refusing to return to work, and a Bituminous Coal Commission appointed by the President finally settled it by an award of an increase of twenty-seven percent. 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.

Both the steel and coal strikes furnished occasions for considerable anti-union propaganda in the press. Public sentiment long favorable to labor became definitely hostile.[90] In Kansas the legislature passed a compulsory arbitration law and created an Industrial Relations Court to adjudicate trade disputes. Simultaneously an "anti-Red" campaign inaugurated by Attorney-General Palmer contributed 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 surcharged with suspicion and fear that a group of employers, 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, normally opposed to unionism, who in War-time had permitted unionism to acquire scope, were now trying to reconquer their lost positions. The example of the steel industry and the fiasco of the President's Industrial Conference crystallized this reviving anti-union sentiment into action.

Meanwhile the railway labor situation remained unsettled 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 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 government officials, union representatives, and representatives of the technical staffs.[91] So much for ultimate plans. On the more immediate wage problem proper, the government had clearly fallen down on its promise made to the shopmen 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 President, with the power of conducting investigations and issuing awards, but with the right to strike or lockout unimpaired either before, during, or after the investigation. It was the first appointed board of this description which was to pass on the clamorous demands by the railway employes for higher wages.[92]

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 efforts 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" organization would have standing before it. The Board issued 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 particular 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 percent, in three like installments; and the twelve-hour day and the seven-day week, which had figured 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,[93] has largely continued as 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 employers and the union.

The spring and summer of 1921 were a time of widespread "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 periodic upheavals against the tyranny of the "walking delegates" and against the state of moral corruption for which some of the latter shared responsibility together 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 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 leading corruptionists on both sides were given court sentences and the building trades' council accepted modifications 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 Francisco. 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 building mechanics to take the places of the strikers.

In the autumn of 1921 the employers in the packing industry discontinued the arrangement whereby industrial relations were administered by an "administrator,"[94] Judge Alschuler of Chicago, whose rulings had materially 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 open-shop movement seemed already passing its peak, without having caused an irreparable breach in the position 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 American 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 Federation 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 uncertain and unsatisfactory to the unions, as if no Clayton Act had been passed. The closed shop has been condemned as coercion of non-unionists. Yet in the Coppage case[95] 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 contracts not to join the union as a condition of employment.[96] 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 Duplex Printing case.[97] 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 restrict 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 violence, 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,"[98] or by interference with Interstate commerce. Picketing is illegal when accompanied by violence, threats, intimidation, and coercion. In December 1921 the Supreme Court declared 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.[99] In another case the Court held unconstitutional an Arizona statute, which reproduced verbatim the labor clauses of the Clayton Act;[100] this on the ground that concerted action by the union would be illegal if the means used were illegal and therefore the law which operated to make them legal deprived 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 become 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 organizations of the railway men of the Plumb Plan for nationalization 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 expressed 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 railway 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 American 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 corporation governed by a tri-partite board of directors equally representing the consuming public, the managerial employes, and the classified employes. An automatic 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 opportunities 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 history. Wherein it differs is in making the trade unions the vital and organized representatives of producers' interests entitled to participate in the direct management of industry. An ideal of copartnership and self-employment 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. Although 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 reelected and again reelected. And in obeying instructions to cooperate with brotherhood leaders, he found that they also thought it inopportune to press Plumb Plan legislation actively. So far 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 subsided. 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 labor 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 dissatisfaction in labor circles with the change in the government'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, approved 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[89] 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 best, are interested in the welfare of the trade as a whole but rarely in the particular success of his own particular establishment.

[90] 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.

[91] See below, 259-261, for a more detailed description of the Plan.

[92] The Transportation Act included a provision that prior to September 1, 1920, the railways could not reduce wages.

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

[94] The union had not been formally "recognized" at any time.

[95] Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. (1915).

[96] Hitchman Coal and Coke Co. v. Mitchell et al, 245 U.S. 229 (1917).

[97] Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deering, 41 Sup. Ct. 172 (1921).

[98] Montana allows the "unfair list" and California allows all boycotts.

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

[100] Truax et al. v. Corrigan, 42 Sup. Ct. 124 (1921).



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. Progress 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 production, 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 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 revolutionary labor class. Moreover, capitalism itself renders 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 several generations of Marxians by their refusal to accept the Marxian theory of social development and the Marxian 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 possible. 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 not so much the fact that the employer owns the employment opportunities but that he possesses a high degree of bargaining advantage over them. Viewing the situation 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 working 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.