The Armies of Labor..........................................................................................................................................1

Samuel P. Orth .........................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I. THE BACKGROUND ......................................................................................................1

CHAPTER II. FORMATIVE YEARS....................................................................................................6

CHAPTER III. TRANSITION YEARS................................................................................................11

CHAPTER IV. AMALGAMATION .....................................................................................................18

CHAPTER V. FEDERATION..............................................................................................................24

CHAPTER VI. THE TRADE UNION..................................................................................................30

CHAPTER VII. THE RAILWAY BROTHERHOODS ........................................................................36

CHAPTER VIII. ISSUES AND WARFARE ........................................................................................46

CHAPTER IX. THE NEW TERRORISM: THE I.W.W. ......................................................................51

CHAPTER X. LABOR AND POLITICS ..............................................................................................59

Three momentous things symbolize the era that begins its cycle with the memorable year of 1776: the

Declaration of Independence, the steam engine, and Adam Smith's book, "The Wealth of Nations." The

Declaration gave birth to a new nation, whose millions of acres of free land were to shift the economic

equilibrium of the world; the engine multiplied man's productivity a thousandfold and uprooted in a

generation the customs of centuries; the book gave to statesmen a new view of economic affairs and

The American people, as they faced the approaching age with the experiences of the race behind them,

fashioned many of their institutions and laws on British models. This is true to such an extent that the subject

of this book, the rise of labor in America, cannot be understood without a preliminary survey of the British

industrial system nor even without some reference to the feudal system, of which English society for many

centuries bore the marks and to which many relics of tenure and of class and governmental responsibility may

be traced. Feudalism was a society in which the status of an individual was fixed: he was underman or

overman in a rigid social scale according as he considered his relation to his superiors or to his inferiors.

Whatever movement there was took place horizontally, in the same class or on the same social level. The

movement was not vertical, as it so frequently is today, and men did not ordinarily rise above the social level

of their birth, never by design, and only perhaps by rare accident or genius. It was a little world of lords and

serfs; of knights who graced court and castle, jousted at tournaments, or fought upon the field of battle; and of

serfs who toiled in the fields, served in the castle, or, as the retainers of the knight, formed the crude soldiery

of medieval days. For their labor and allegiance they were clothed and housed and fed. Yet though there were

feast days gay with the color of pageantry and procession, the worker was always in a servile state, an

underman dependent upon his master, and sometimes looking upon his condition as little better than slavery.

With the breakup of this rigid system came in England the emancipation of the serf, the rise of the artisan

class, and the beginnings of peasant agriculture. That personal gravitation which always draws together men

of similar ambitions and tasks now began to work significant changes in the economic order. The peasantry,

more or less scattered in the country, found it difficult to unite their powers for redressing their grievances,

although there were some peasant revolts of no mean proportions. But the artisans of the towns were soon

grouped into powerful organizations, called guilds, so carefully managed and so well disciplined that they

dominated every craft and controlled every detail in every trade. The relation of master to journeyman and

apprentice, the wages, hours, quantity, and quality of the output, were all minutely regulated. Merchant

guilds, similarly constituted, also prospered. The magnificent guild halls that remain in our day are

monuments of the power and splendor of these organizations that made the towns of the later Middle Ages

flourishing centers of trade, of handicrafts, and of art. As towns developed, they dealt the final blow to an

agricultural system based on feudalism; they became cities of refuge for the runaway serfs, and their charters,

insuring political and economic freedom, gave them superior advantages for trading.

The guild system of manufacture was gradually replaced by the domestic system. The workman's cottage,

standing in its garden, housed the loom and the spinning wheel, and the entire family was engaged in labor at

home. But the workman, thus apparently independent, was not the owner of either the raw material or the

finished product. A middleman or agent brought him the wool, carried away the cloth, and paid him his hire.

Daniel Defoe, who made a tour of Britain in 17946, left a picture of rural England in this period, often

called the golden age of labor. The land, he says, "was divided into small inclosures from two acres to six or

seven each, seldom more; every three or four pieces of land had an house belonging to them, ...hardly an

house standing out of a speaking distance from another .... We could see at every house a tenter, and on

almost every tenter a piece of cloth or kersie or shalloon .... At every considerable house was a manufactory

.... Every clothier keeps one horse, at least, to carry his manufactures to the market and every one generally

keeps a cow or two or more for his family. By this means the small pieces of inclosed land about each house

are occupied, for they scarce sow corn enough to feed their poultry .... The houses are full of lusty fellows,

some at the dye vat, some at the looms, others dressing the clothes; the women or children carding or

But more significant than these changes was the rise of the socalled mercantile system, in which the state

took under its care industrial details that were formerly regulated by the town or guild. This system,

beginning in the sixteenth century and lasting through the eighteenth, had for its prime object the upbuilding

of national trade. The state, in order to insure the homogeneous development of trade and industry, dictated

the prices of commodities. It prescribed the laws of apprenticeship and the rules of master and servant. It

provided inspectors for passing on the quality of goods offered for sale. It weighed the loaves, measured the

cloth, and tested the silverware. It prescribed wages, rural and urban, and bade the local justice act as a sort of

guardian over the laborers in his district. To relieve poverty poor laws were passed; to prevent the decline of

productivity corn laws were passed fixing arbitrary prices for grain. For a time monopolies creating artificial

prosperity were granted to individuals and to corporations for the manufacture, sale, or exploitation of certain

This highly artificial and paternalistic state was not content with regulating all these internal matters but

spread its protection over foreign commerce. Navigation acts attempted to monopolize the trade of the

colonies and especially the trade in the products needed by the mother country. England encouraged shipping

and during this period achieved that dominance of the sea which has been the mainstay of her vast empire.

She fostered plantations and colonies not for their own sake but that they might be tributaries to the wealth of

the nation. An absurd importance was attached to the possession of gold and silver, and the ingenuity of

statesmen was exhausted in designing lures to entice these metals to London. Banking and insurance began to

assume prime importance. By 1750 England had sent ships into every sea and had planted colonies around

But while the mechanism of trade and of government made surprising progress during the mercantile period,

the mechanism of production remained in the slow handicraft stage. This was now to change. In 1738 Kay

invented the flying shuttle, multiplying the capacity of the loom. In 1767 Hargreaves completed the

spinningjenny, and in 1771 Arkwright perfected his roller spinning machine. A few years later Crompton

combined the roller and the jenny, and after the application of steam to spinning in 1785 the power loom

replaced the hand loom. The manufacture of woolen cloth being the principal industry of England, it was

natural that machinery should first be invented for the spinning and weaving of wool. New processes in the

manufacture of iron and steel and the development of steam transportation soon followed.

Within the course of a few decades the whole economic order was changed. Whereas many centuries had

been required for the slow development of the medieval system of feudalism, the guild system, and the

handicrafts, now, like a series of earthquake shocks, came changes so sudden and profound that even today

society has not yet learned to adjust itself to the myriads of needs and possibilities which the union of man's

mind with nature's forces has produced. The industrial revolution took the workman from the land and

crowded him into the towns. It took the loom from his cottage and placed it in the factory. It took the tool

from his hand and harnessed it to a shaft. It robbed him of his personal skill and joined his arm of flesh to an

arm of iron. It reduced him from a craftsman to a specialist, from a maker of shoes to a mere stitcher of soles.

It took from him, at a single blow, his interest in the workmanship of his task, his ownership of the tools, his

garden, his wholesome environment, and even his family. All were swallowed by the black maw of the ugly

new mill town. The hardships of the old days were soon forgotten in the horrors of the new. For the transition

was rapid enough to make the contrast striking. Indeed it was so rapid that the new class of employers, the

capitalists, found little time to think of anything but increasing their profits, and the new class of employees,

now merely wageearners, found that their long hours of monotonous toil gave them little leisure and no

The transition from the age of handicrafts to the era of machines presents a picture of greed that tempts one to

bitter invective. Its details are dispassionately catalogued by the Royal Commissions that finally towards the

middle of the nineteenth century inquired into industrial conditions. From these reports Karl Marx drew

inspiration for his social philosophy, and in them his friend Engles found the facts that he retold so vividly,

for the purpose of arousing his fellow workmen. And Carlyle and Ruskin, reading this official record of

selfishness, and knowing its truth, drew their powerful indictments against a society which would permit its

eightyearold daughters, its mothers, and its grandmothers, to be locked up for fourteen hours a day in dirty,

illsmelling factories, to release them at night only to find more misery in the hovels they pitifully called

The introduction of machinery into manufacturing wrought vast changes also in the organization of business.

The unit of industry greatly increased in size. The economies of organized wholesale production were soon

made apparent; and the tendency to increase the size of the factory and to amalgamate the various branches of

industry under corporate control has continued to the present. The complexity of business operations also

increased with the development of transportation and the expansion of the empire of trade. A world market

took the place of the old town market, and the world market necessitated credit on a new and infinitely larger

No less important than the revolution in industry was the revolution in economic theory which accompanied

it. Unlimited competition replaced the state paternalism of the mercantilists. Adam Smith in 1776 espoused

the cause of economic liberty, believing that if business and industry were unhampered by artificial

restrictions they would work out their own salvation. His pronouncement was scarcely uttered before it

became the shibboleth of statesmen and business men. The revolt of the American colonies hastened the

general acceptance of this doctrine, and England soon found herself committed to the practice of every man

looking after his own interests. Freedom of contract, freedom of trade, and freedom of thought were vigorous

and inspiring but often misleading phrases. The processes of specialization and centralization that were at

work portended the growing power of those who possessed the means to build factories and ships and

railways but not necessarily the freedom of the many. The doctrine of laissez faire assumed that power would

bring with it a sense of responsibility. For centuries, the oldcountry gentry and governing class of England

had shown an appreciation of their duties, as a class, to those dependent upon them. But now another class

with no benevolent traditions of responsibility came into powerthe capitalist, a parvenu whose ambition

was profit, not equity, and whose dealings with other men were not tempered by the amenities of the

gentleman but were sharpened by the necessities of gain. It was upon such a class, new in the economic world

and endowed with astounding power, that Adam Smith's new formularies of freedom were let loose.

During all these changes in the economic order, the interest of the laborer centered in one question: What

return would he receive for his toil? With the increasing complexity of society, many other problems

presented themselves to the worker, but for the most part they were subsidiary to the main question of wages.

As long as man's place was fixed by law or custom, a customary wage left small margin for controversy. But

when fixed status gave way to voluntary contract, when payment was made in money, when workmen were

free to journey from town to town, labor became both free and fluid, bargaining took the place of custom, and

the wage controversy began to assume definite proportions. As early as 1348 the great plague became a

landmark in the field of wage disputes. So scarce had laborers become through the ravages of the Black

Death, that wages rose rapidly, to the alarm of the employers, who prevailed upon King Edward III to issue

the historic proclamation of 1349, directing that no laborer should demand and no employer should pay

greater wages than those customary before the plague. This early attempt to outmaneuver an economic law by

a legal device was only the prelude to a long series of labor laws which may be said to have culminated in the

great Statute of Laborers of 1562, regulating the relations of wageearner and employer and empowering

justices of the peace to fix the wages in their districts. Wages steadily decreased during the two hundred years

in which this statute remained in force, and poor laws were passed to bring the succor which artificial wages

made necessary. Thus two rules of arbitrary government were meant to neutralize each other. It is the usual

verdict of historians that the estate of labor in England declined from a flourishing condition in the fourteenth

and fifteenth centuries to one of great distress by the time of the Industrial Revolution. This unhappy decline

was probably due to several causes, among which the most important were the arbitrary and artificial

attempts of the Government to keep down wages, the heavy taxation caused by wars of expansion, and the

>From the decline of the guild system, which had placed labor and its products so completely in the hands of

the master craftsman, the workman had assumed no controlling part in the labor bargain. Such guilds and

such journeyman's fraternities as may have survived were practically helpless against parliamentary rigor and

state benevolence. In the domestic stage of production, cohesion among workers was not so necessary. But

when the factory system was substituted for the handicraft system and workers with common interests were

thrown together in the towns, they had every impulsion towards organization. They not only felt the need of

sociability after long hours spent in spiritless toil but they were impelled by a new consciousnessthe

realization that an inevitable and profound change had come over their condition. They had ceased to be

journeymen controlling in some measure their activities; they were now merely wageearners. As the

realization of this adverse change came over them, they began to resent the unsanitary and burdensome

conditions under which they were compelled to live and to work. So actual grievances were added to fear of

what might happen, and in their common cause experience soon taught them unity of action. Parliament was

petitioned, agitations were organized, sickbenefits were inaugurated, and when these methods failed,

machinery was destroyed, factories were burned, and the strike became a common weapon of selfdefense.

Though a few labor organizations can be traced as far back as 1700, their growth during the eighteenth

century was slow and irregular. There was no unity in their methods, and they were known by many names,

such as associations, unions, union societies, trade clubs, and trade societies. These societies had no legal

status and their meetings were usually held in secret. And the Webbs in their "History of Trade Unionism"

allude to the traditions of "the midnight meeting of patriots in the corner of the field, the buried box of

records, the secret oath, the long terms of imprisonment of the leading officials." Some of these tales were

unquestionably apocryphal, others were exaggerated by feverish repetition. But they indicate the aversion

There were two legal doctrines long invoked by the English courts against combined actiondoctrines that

became a heritage of the United States and have had a profound effect upon the labor movements in America.

The first of these was the doctrine of conspiracy, a doctrine so ancient that its sources are obscure. It was the

natural product of a government and of a time that looked askance at all combined action, fearing sedition,

intrigue, and revolution. As far back as 1305 there was enacted a statute defining conspiracy and outlining the

offense. It did not aim at any definite social class but embraced all persons who combined for a "malicious

enterprise." Such an enterprise was the breaking of a law. So when Parliament passed acts regulating wages,

conditions of employment, or prices of commodities, those who combined secretly or openly to circumvent

the act, to raise wages or lower them, or to raise prices and curtail markets, at once fell under the ban of

conspiracy. The law operated alike on conspiring employers and conniving employees.

The new class of employers during the early years of the machine age eagerly embraced the doctrine of

conspiracy. They readily brought under the legal definition the secret connivings of the wageearners.

Political conditions now also worked against the laboring class. The unrest in the colonies that culminated in

the independence of America and the fury of the French Revolution combined to make kings and

aristocracies wary of all organizations and associations of plain folk. And when we add to this the favor

which the new employing class, the industrial masters, were able to extort from the governing class, because

of their power over foreign trade and domestic finance, we can understand the compulsory laws at length

The second legal doctrine which Americans have inherited from England and which has played a leading role

in labor controversies is the doctrine that declares unlawful all combinations in restraint of trade. Like its twin

doctrine of conspiracy, it is of remote historical origin. One of the earliest uses, perhaps the first use, of the

term by Parliament was in the statute of 1436 forbidding guilds and trading companies from adopting

bylaws "in restraint of trade," and forbidding practices in price manipulations "for their own profit and to

the common hurt of the people." This doctrine thus early invoked, and repeatedly reasserted against

combinations of traders and masters, was incorporated in the general statute of 1800 which declared all

combinations of journeymen illegal. But in spite of legal doctrines, of innumerable laws and court decisions,

strikes and combinations multiplied, and devices were found for evading statutory wages.

In 1824 an act of Parliament removed the general prohibition of combinations and accorded to workingmen

the right to bargain collectively. Three men were responsible for this noteworthy reform, each one a new type

in British politics. The first was Francis Place, a tailor who had taken active part in various strikes. He was

secretary of the London Corresponding Society, a powerful labor union, which in 1795 had twenty branches

in London. Most of the officers of this organization were at one time or another arrested, and some were kept

in prison three years without a trial. Place, schooled in such experience, became a radical politician of great

influence, a friend of Bentham, Owen, and the elder Mill. The second type of new reformer was represented

by Joseph Hume, a physician who had accumulated wealth in the India Service, who had returned home to

enter public life, and who was converted from Toryism to Radicalism by a careful study of financial,

political, and industrial problems. A great number of reform laws can be traced directly to his incredible

activity during his thirty years in Parliament. The third leader was John R. McCulloch, an orthodox

economist, a disciple of Adam Smith, for some years editor of The Scotsman, which was then a violently

radical journal cooperating with the newly established Edinburgh Review in advocating sociological and

Thus Great Britain, the mother country from which Americans have inherited so many institutions, laws, and

traditions, passed in turn through the periods of extreme paternalism, glorified competition, and governmental

antagonism to labor combinations, into what may be called the age of conciliation. And today the Labour

Party in the House of Commons has shown itself strong enough to impose its programme upon the Liberals

and, through this radical coalition, has achieved a power for the working man greater than even Francis Place

America did not become a cisatlantic Britain, as some of the colonial adventurers had hoped. A wider destiny

awaited her. Here were economic conditions which upset all notions of the fixity of class distinctions. Here

was a continent of free land, luring the disaffected or disappointed artisan and enabling him to achieve

economic independence. Hither streamed ceaselessly hordes of immigrants from Europe, constantly shifting

the social equilibrium. Here the demand for labor was constant, except during the rare intervals of financial

stagnation, and here the door of opportunity swung wide to the energetic and able artisan. The records of

American industry are replete with names of prominent leaders who began at the apprentice's bench.

The old class distinctions brought from the home country, however, had survived for many years in the

primeval forests of Virginia and Maryland and even among the hills of New England. Indeed, until the

Revolution and for some time thereafter, a man's clothes were the badge of his calling. The gentleman wore

powdered queue and ruffled shirt; the workman, coarse buckskin breeches, ponderous shoes with brass

buckles, and usually a leather apron, well greased to keep it pliable. Just before the Revolution the lot of the

common laborer was not an enviable one. His house was rude and barren of comforts; his fare was coarse and

without variety. His wage was two shillings a day, and prison usually an indescribably filthy hole awaited

him the moment he ran into debt. The artisan fared somewhat better. He had spent, as a rule, seven years

learning his trade, and his skill and energy demanded and generally received a reasonable return. The account

books that have come down to us from colonial days show that his handiwork earned him a fair living. This,

however, was before machinery had made inroads upon the product of cabinetmaker, tailor, shoemaker,

locksmith, and silversmith, and when the main street of every village was picturesque with the signs of the

Such labor organizations as existed before the Revolution were limited to the skilled trades. In 1648 the

coopers and the shoemakers of Boston were granted permission to organize guilds, which embraced both

master and journeyman, and there were a few similar organizations in New York, Philadelphia, and

Baltimore. But these were not unions like those of today. "There are," says Richard T. Ely, "no traces of

anything like a modern trades' union in the colonial period of American history, and it is evident on reflection

that there was little need, if any, of organization on the part of labor, at that time."*

A new epoch for labor came in with the Revolution. Within a decade wages rose fifty per cent, and John Jay

in 1784 writes of the "wages of mechanics and laborers" as "very extravagant." Though the industries were

small and depended on a local market within a circumscribed area of communication, they grew rapidly. The

period following the Revolution is marked by considerable industrial restiveness and by the formation of

many labor organizations, which were, however, benevolent or friendly societies rather than unions and were

often incorporated by an act of the legislature. In New York, between 1800 and 1810, twentyfour such

societies were incorporated. Only in the larger cities were they composed of artisans of one trade, such as the

New York Masons Society (1807) or the New York Society of Journeymen Shipwrights (1807). Elsewhere

they included artisans of many trades, such as the Albany Mechanical Society (1801). In Philadelphia the

cordwainers, printers, and hatters had societies. In Baltimore the tailors were the first to organize, and they

conducted in 1795 one of the first strikes in America. Ten years later they struck again, and succeeded in

raising their pay from seven shillings sixpence the job to eight shillings ninepence and "extras." At the same

time the pay of unskilled labor was rising rapidly, for workers were scarce owing to the call of the merchant

marine in those years of the rising splendor of the American sailing ship, and the lure of western lands. The

There occurred in 1805 an important strike of the Philadelphia cordwainers. Theirs was one of the oldest

labor organizations in the country, and it had conducted several successful strikes. This particular occasion,

however, is significant, because the strikers were tried for conspiracy in the mayor's court, with the result that

they were found guilty and fined eight dollars each, with costs. As the court permitted both sides to tell their

story in detail, a full report of the proceedings survives to give us, as it were, a photograph of the labor

conditions of that time. The trial kindled a great deal of local animosity. A newspaper called the Aurora

contained inflammatory accounts of the proceedings, and a pamphlet giving the records of the court was

widely circulated. This pamphlet bore the significant legend, "It is better that the law be known and certain,

than that it be right," and was dedicated to the Governor and General Assembly "with the hope of attracting

Another early instance of a strike occurred in New York City in 1809, when the cordwainers struck for higher

wages and were hauled before the mayor's court on the charge of conspiracy. The trial was postponed by

Mayor DeWitt Clinton until after the pending municipal elections to avoid the risk of offending either side.

When at length the strikers were brought to trial, the courthouse was crowded with spectators, showing how

keen was the public interest in the case. The jury's verdict of "guilty," and the imposition of a fine of one

dollar each and costs upon the defendants served but as a stimulus to the friends of the strikers to gather in a

great mass meeting and protest against the verdict and the law that made it possible.

In 1821 the New York Typographical Society, which had been organized four years earlier by Peter Force, a

labor leader of unusual energy, set a precedent for the vigorous and fearless career of its modern successor by

calling a strike in the printing office of Thurlow Weed, the powerful politician, himself a member of the

society, because he employed a "rat," as a nonunion worker was called. It should be noted, however, that the

organizations of this early period were of a loose structure and scarcely comparable to the labor unions of

Sidney Smith, the brilliant contributor to the "Edinburgh Review," propounded in 1820 certain questions

which sum up the general conditions of American industry and art after nearly a half century of

independence: "In the four quarters of the globe," he asked, "who reads an American book? or goes to an

American play? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American

physicians or surgeons? What new substances have their chemists discovered? or what old ones have they

analyzed? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans? What have they

done in mathematics? Who drinks out of American glasses? or eats from American plates? or wears

These questions, which were quite pertinent, though conceived in an impertinent spirit, were being answered

in America even while the witty Englishman was framing them. The water power of New England was being

harnessed to cotton mills, woolen mills, and tanneries. Massachusetts in 1820 reported one hundred and

sixtyone factories. New York had begun that marvelous growth which made the city, in the course of a few

decades, the financial capital of a hemisphere. So rapidly were people flocking to New York, that houses had

tenants long before they had windows and doors, and streets were lined with buildings before they had

sewers, sidewalks, or pavements. New Jersey had well under way those manufactories of glassware,

porcelains, carpets, and textiles which have since brought her great prosperity. Philadelphia was the country's

greatest weaving center, boasting four thousand craftsmen engaged in that industry. Even on the frontier,

Pittsburgh and Cincinnati were emerging from "settlements" into manufacturing towns of importance.

McMaster concludes his graphic summary of these years as follows: "In 1820 it was estimated that 200,000

persons and a capital of $75,000,000 were employed in manufacturing. In 1825 the capital used had been

The Industrial Revolution had set in. These new millions who hastened to answer the call of industry in the

new land were largely composed of the poor of other lands. Thousands of them were paupers when they

landed in America, their passage having been paid by those at home who wanted to get rid of them. Vast

numbers settled down in the cities, in spite of the lure of the land. It was at this period that universal manhood

suffrage was written into the constitutions of the older States, and a new electorate assumed the reins of

power. Now the first labor representatives were sent to the legislatures and to Congress, and the older parties

began eagerly bidding for the votes of the humble. The decision of great questions fell to this new electorate.

With the rise of industry came the demand for a protective tariff and for better transportation. State

governments vied with each other, in thoughtless haste, in lending their credit to new turnpike and canal

construction. And above all political issues loomed the Bank, the monopoly that became the laborer's

bugaboo and Andrew Jackson's opportunity to rally to his side the newly enfranchised mechanics.

So the old days of semicolonial composure were succeeded by the thrilling experiences that a new industrial

prosperity thrusts upon a really democratic electorate. Little wonder that the labor union movement took the

political bypath, seeking salvation in the promise of the politician and in the panacea of fatuous laws. Now

there were to be discerned the beginnings of class solidarity among the working people. But the individual's

chances to improve his situation were still very great and opportunity was still a golden word.

The harsh facts of the hour, however, soon began to call for united action. The cities were expanding with

such eager haste that proper housing conditions were overlooked. Workingmen were obliged to live in

wretched structures. Moreover, human beings were still levied on for debt and imprisoned for default of

payment. Children of less than sixteen years of age were working twelve or more hours a day, and if they

received any education at all, it was usually in schools charitably called "ragged schools" or "poor schools,"

or "pauper schools." There was no adequate redress for the mechanic if his wages were in default, for lien

laws had not yet found their way into the statute books. Militia service was oppressive, permitting only the

rich to buy exemption. It was still considered an unlawful conspiracy to act in unison for an increase in pay or

a lessening of working hours. By 1840 the pay of unskilled labor had dropped to about seventyfive cents a

day in the overcrowded cities, and in the winter, in either city or country, many unskilled workers were glad

to work for merely their board. The lot of women workers was especially pitiful. A seamstress by hard toil,

working fifteen hours a day might stitch enough shirts to earn from seventytwo cents to a dollar and twelve

cents a week. Skilled labor, while faring better in wages, shared with the unskilled in the universal working

day which lasted from sun to sun. Such in brief were the conditions that brought home to the laboring masses

that homogeneous consciousness which alone makes a group powerful in a democracy.

The movement can most clearly be discerned in the cities. Philadelphia claims precedence as the home of the

first Trades' Union. The master cordwainers had organized a society in 1792, and their journeymen had

followed suit two years later. The experiences and vicissitudes of these shoemakers furnished a useful lesson

to other tradesmen, many of whom were organized into unions. But they were isolated organizations, each

one fighting its own battles. In 1897 the Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations was formed. Of its

England is considered the home of tradeunionism, but the distinction belongs to Philadelphia.... The first

trades' union in England was that of Manchester, organized in 1829, although there seems to have been an

attempt to organize one in 1824. But the first one in America was the "Mechanics' Union of Trade

Associations," organized in Philadelphia in 1827, two years earlier. The name came from Manchester, but the

thing from Philadelphia. Neither union lasted long. The Manchester union lived two years, and the

Philadelphia union one year. But the Manchester union died and the Philadelphia union metamorphosed into

politics. Here again Philadelphia was the pioneer, for it called into being the first labor party. Not only this,

but through the Mechanics' Union Philadelphia started probably the first wageearners' paper ever

publishedthe 'Mechanics Free Press'antedating, in January, 1828, the first similar journal in England by

* "Labor Organization and Labor Politics," 182737; in the "Quarterly Journal of Economics," February,

The union had its inception in the first general building strike called in America. In the summer of 1827 the

carpenters struck for a tenhour day. They were soon joined by the bricklayers, painters, and glaziers, and

members of other trades. But the strike failed of its immediate object. A second effort to combine the various

trades into one organization was made in 1833, when the Trades' Union of the City and County of

Philadelphia, was formed. Three years later this union embraced some fifty societies with over ten thousand

members. In June, 1835, this organization undertook what was probably the first successful general strike in

America. It began among the cordwainers, spread to the workers in the building trades, and was presently

joined in by cigarmakers, carters, saddlers and harness makers, smiths, plumbers, bakers, printers, and even

by the unskilled workers on the docks. The strikers' demand for a tenhour day received a great deal of

support from the influential men in the community. After a mass meeting of citizens had adopted resolutions

endorsing the demands of the union, the city council agreed to a tenhour day for all municipal employees.

In 1833 the carpenters of New York City struck for an increase in wages. They were receiving a dollar

thirtyseven and a half cents a day; they asked for a dollar and a half. They obtained the support of other

workers, notably the tailors, printers, brushmakers, tobacconists, and masons, and succeeded in winning their

strike in one month. The printers, who have always been alert and active in New York City, elated by the

success of this coordinate effort, sent out a circular calling for a general convention of all the trades societies

of the city. After a preliminary meeting in July, a mass meeting was held in December, at which there were

present about four thousand persons representing twentyone societies. The outcome of the meeting was the

It happened in the following year that Ely Moore of the Typographical Association and the first president of

the new union, a powerful orator and a sagacious organizer, was elected to Congress on the Jackson ticket.

He was backed by Tammany Hall, always on the alert for winners, and was supported by the mechanics,

artisans, and workingmen. He was the first man to take his seat in Washington as the avowed representative

The movement for a tenhour day was now in full swing, and the years 18347 were full of strikes. The most

spectacular of these struggles was the strike of the tailors of New York in 1836, in the course of which twenty

strikers were arrested for conspiracy. After a spirited trial attended by throngs of spectators, the men were

found guilty by a jury which took only thirty minutes for deliberation. The strikers were fined $50 each,

except the president of the society, who was fined $150. After the trial there was held a mass meeting which

was attended, according to the "Evening Post," by twentyseven thousand persons. Resolutions were passed

declaring that "to all acts of tyranny and injustice, resistance is just and therefore necessary," and "that the

construction given to the law in the case of the journeymen tailors is not only ridiculous and weak in practice

but unjust in principle and subversive of the rights and liberties of American citizens." The town was

"Twenty of your brethren have been found guilty for presuming to resist a reduction in their wages!.... Judge

Edwards has charged...the Rich are the only judges of the wants of the poor. On Monday, June 6, 1836, the

Freemen are to receive their sentence, to gratify the hellish appetites of aristocracy!.... Go! Go! Go! Every

Freeman, every Workingman, and hear the melancholy sound of the earth on the Coffin of Equality. Let the

Court Room, the Cityhallyea, the whole Park, be filled with mourners! But remember, offer no violence

to Judge Edwards! Bend meekly and receive the chains wherewith you are to be bound! Keep the peace!

The "Evening Post" concludes a long account of the affair by calling attention to the fact that the Trades'

Union was not composed of "only foreigners." "It is a low calculation when we estimate that twothirds of

the workingmen of the city, numbering several thousand persons, belong to it," and that "it is controlled and

The Boston Trades' Union was organized in 1834 and started out with a great labor parade on the Fourth of

July, followed by a dinner served to a thousand persons in Faneuil Hall. This union was formed primarily to

fight for the tenhour day, and the leading crusaders were the house carpenters, the ship carpenters, and the

masons. Similar unions presently sprang up in other cities, including Baltimore, Albany, Troy, Washington,

Newark, Schenectady, New Brunswick, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. By 1835 all the larger centers

of industry were familiar with the idea, and most of them with the practice, of the trades organizations of a

The local unions were not unmindful of the need for wider action, either through a national union of all the

organizations of a single trade, or through a union of all the different trades' unions. Both courses of action

were attempted. In 1834 the National Trades' Union came into being and from that date held annual national

conventions of all the trades until the panic of 1837 obliterated the movement. When the first convention was

called, it was estimated that there were some 26,250 members of trades' unions then in the United States. Of

these 11,500 were in New York and its vicinity, 6000 in Philadelphia, 4000 in Boston, and 3500 in

Baltimore. Meanwhile a movement was under way to federate the unions of a single trade. In 1835 the

cordwainers attending the National Trades Union' formed a preliminary organization and called a national

cordwainers' convention. This met in New York in March, 1836, and included fortyfive delegates from New

York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut. In the fall of 1836 the combmakers, the carpenters, the

handloom weavers, and the printers likewise organized separate national unions or alliances, and several

other trades made tentative efforts by correspondence to organize themselves in the same manner.

Before the dire year of 1837, there are, then, to be found the beginnings of most of the elements of modern

labor organizations benevolent societies and militant orders; political activities and trades activities;

amalgamations of local societies of the same trades and of all trades; attempts at national organization on the

part of both the local trades' unions and of the local trade unions; a labor press to keep alive the interest of the

workman; mass meetings, circulars, conventions, and appeals to arouse the interest of the public in the issues

of the hour. The persistent demand of the workingmen was for a tenhour day. Harriet Martineau, who

traveled extensively through the United States, remarked that all the strikes she heard of were on the question

of hours, not wages. But there were nevertheless abundant strikes either to raise wages or to maintain them.

There were, also, other fundamental questions in controversy which could not be settled by strikes, such as

imprisonment for debt, lien and exemption and homestead laws, convict labor and slave labor, and universal

education. Most of these issues have since that time been decided in favor of labor, and a new series of

demands takes their place today. Yet as one reads the records of the early conspiracy cases or thumbs through

the files of old periodicals, he learns that there is indeed nothing new under the sun and that, while perhaps

the particular issues have changed, the general methods and the spirit of the contest remain the same.

The laborer believed then, as he does now, that his organization must be allembracing. In those days also

there were "scabs," often called "rats" or "dung." Places under ban were systematically picketed, and

warnings like the following were sent out: "We would caution all strangers and others who profess the art of

horseshoeing, that if they go to work for any employer under the above prices, they must abide by the

consequences." Usually the consequences were a fine imposed by the union, but sometimes they were more

severe. Coercion by the union did not cease with the strike. Journeymen who were not members were pursued

with assiduity and energy as soon as they entered a town and found work. The boycott was a method early

used against prison labor. New York stonecutters agreed that they would not "either collectively or

individually purchase any goods manufactured" by convicts and that they would not "countenance" any

merchants who dealt in them; and employers who incurred the displeasure of organized labor were

The use of the militia during strikes presented the same difficulties then as now. During the general strike in

Philadelphia in 1835 there was considerable rowdyism, and Michel Chevalier, a keen observer of American

life, wrote that "the militia looks on; the sheriff stands with folded hands." Nor was there any difference in

the attitude of the laboring man towards unfavorable court decisions. In the tailors' strike in New York in

1836, for instance, twentyseven thousand sympathizers assembled with bands and banners to protest against

the jury's verdict, and after sentence had been imposed upon the defendants, the lusty throng burned the judge

Sabotage is a new word, but the practice itself is old. In 1835 the striking cabinetmakers in New York

smashed thousands of dollars' worth of chairs, tables, and sofas that had been imported from France, and the

newspapers observed the significant fact that the destroyers boasted in a foreign language that only

Americanmade furniture should be sold in America. Houses were burned in Philadelphia because the

contractors erecting them refused to grant the wages that were demanded. Vengeance was sometimes sought

against new machinery that displaced hand labor. In June, 1835, a New York paper remarked that "it is well

known that many of the most obstinate turnouts among workingmen and many of the most violent and

lawless proceedings have been excited for the purpose of destroying newly invented machinery." Such acts of

wantonness, however, were few, even in those first tumultuous days of the thirties. Striking became in those

days a sort of mania, and not a town that had a mill or shop was exempt. Men struck for "grog or death," for

"Liberty, Equality, and the Rights of Man," and even for the right to smoke their pipes at work.

Strike benefits, too, were known in this early period. Strikers in New York received assistance from

Philadelphia, and Boston strikers were similarly aided by both New York and Philadelphia. When the high

cost of living threatened to deprive the wageearner of half his income, bread riots occurred in the cities, and

With the panic of 1837 the mills were closed, thousands of unemployed workers were thrown upon private

charity, and, in the long years of depression which followed, trade unionism suffered a temporary eclipse. It

was a period of social unrest in which all sorts of philanthropic reforms were suggested and tried out.

Measured by later events, it was a period of transition, of social awakening, of aspiration tempered by the

In the previous decade Robert Owen, the distinguished English social reformer and philanthropist, had visited

America, and had begun in 1826 his famous colony at New Harmony, Indiana. His experiments at New

Lanark, in England, had already made him known to working people the world over. Whatever may be said

of his quaint attempts to reduce society to a common denominator, it is certain that his arrival in America, at

a time when people's minds were open to all sorts of economic suggestions, had a stimulating effect upon

labor reforms and led, in the course of time, to the founding of some forty communistic colonies, most of

them in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. "We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social

reform," wrote Emerson to Thomas Carlyle; "not a reading man but has the draft of a new community in his

waistcoat pocket." One of these experiments, at Red Bank, New Jersey, lasted for thirteen years, and another,

in Wisconsin, for six years. But most of them after a year or two gave up the struggle.

Of these failures, the best known is Brook Farm, an intellectual community founded in 1841 by George

Ripley at West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Six years later the project was abandoned and is now remembered as

an example of the futility of trying to leaven a world of realism by means of an atom of transcendental

idealism. In a sense, however, Brook Farm typifies this period of transition. It was a time of vagaries and

longings. People seemed to be conscious of the fact that a new social solidarity was dawning. It is not

strange, therefore, thatwhile the railroads were feeling their way from town to town and across the prairies,

while waterpower and steampower were multiplying man's productivity, indicating that the old days were

gone forever many curious dreams of a new order of things should be dreamed, nor that among them some

should be ridiculous, some fantastic, and some unworthy, nor that, as the futility of a universal social reform

forced itself upon the dreamers, they merged the greater in the lesser, the general in the particular, and sought

Those movements which had their inspiration in a genuine humanitarianism achieved great good. Now for

the first time the blind, the deaf, the dumb, and the insane were made the object of social solicitude and

communal care. The criminal, too, and the jail in which he was confined remained no longer utterly

neglected. Men of the debtor class were freed from that medieval barbarism which gave the creditor the right

to levy on the person of his debtor. Even the public schools were dragged out of their lethargy. When Horace

Mann was appointed secretary of the newly created Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837, a new day

While these and other substantial improvements were under way, the charlatan and the faddist were not

without their opportunities or their votaries. Spirit rappings beguiled or awed the villagers; thousands of

religious zealots in 1844 abandoned their vocations and, drawing on white robes, awaited expectantly the

second coming of Christ; every cult from free love to celibate austerity found zealous followers; the "new

woman" declared her independence in short hair and bloomers; people sought social salvation in new health

codes, in vegetarian boardinghouses, and in physical culture clubs; and some pursued the way to perfection

In this seething milieu, this medley of practical humanitarianism and social fantasies, the labor movement

was revived. In the forties, Thomas Mooney, an observant Irish traveler who had spent several years in the

"The average value of a common uneducated labourer is eighty cents a day. Of educated or mechanical

labour, one hundred twentyfive and two hundred cents a day; of female labour forty cents a day. Against

meat, flour, vegetables, and groceries at onethird less than they rate in Great Britain and Ireland; against

clothing, house rent and fuel at about equal; against public taxes at about threefourths less; and a certainty

of employment, and a facility of acquiring homes and lands, and education for children, a hundred to one

greater. The further you penetrate into the country, Patrick, the higher in general will you find the value of

labour, and the cheaper the price of all kinds of living.... The food of the American farmer, mechanic or

labourer is the best I believe enjoyed by any similar classes in the whole world. At every meal there is meat

or fish or both; indeed I think the women, children, and sedentary classes eat too much meat for their own

This highly optimistic picture, written by a sanguine observer from the land of greatest agrarian oppression,

must be shaded by contrasting details. The truck system of payment, prevalent in mining regions and many

factory towns, reduced the actual wage by almost onehalf. In the cities, unskilled immigrants had so

overcrowded the common labor market that competition had reduced them to a pitiable state. Hours of labor

were generally long in the factories. As a rule only the skilled artisan had achieved the tenhour day, and

then only in isolated instances. Woman's labor was the poorest paid, and her condition was the most

neglected. A visitor to Lowell in 1846 thus describes the conditions in an average factory of that town:

"In Lowell live between seven and eight thousand young women, who are generally daughters of farmers of

the different States of New England. Some of them are members of families that were rich the generation

before.... The operatives work thirteen hours a day in the summer time, and from daylight to dark in the

winter. At halfpast four in the morning the factory bell rings and at five the girls must be in the mills. A

clerk, placed as a watch, observes those who are a few minutes behind the time, and effectual means are

taken to stimulate punctuality.... At seven the girls are allowed thirty minutes for breakfast, and at noon thirty

minutes more for dinner, except during the first quarter of the year, when the time is extended to fortyfive

minutes. But within this time they must hurry to their boardinghouses and return to the factory.... At seven

It was under these conditions that the cooperative movement had its brief day of experiment. As early as 1828

the workmen of Philadelphia and Cincinnati had begun cooperative stores. The Philadelphia group were

"fully persuaded," according to their constitution, "that nothing short of an entire change in the present

regulation of trade and commerce will ever be permanently beneficial to the productive part of the

community." But their little shop survived competition for only a few months. The Cincinnati "Cooperative

Magazine" was a sort of combination of store and shop, where various trades were taught, but it also soon

In 1845 the New England Workingmen's Association organized a protective union for the purpose of

obtaining for its members "steady and profitable employment" and of saving the retailer's profit for the

purchaser. This movement had a high moral flavor. "The dollar was to us of minor importance; humanitary

and not mercenary were our motives," reported their committee on organization of industry. "We must

proceed from combined stores to combined shops, from combined shops to combined homes, to joint

ownership in God's earth, the foundation that our edifice must stand upon." In this ambitious spirit "they

commenced business with a box of soap and half a chest of tea." In 1852 they had 167 branches, a capital of

In the meantime similar cooperative movements began elsewhere. The tailors of Boston struck for higher

wages in 1850 and, after fourteen weeks of futile struggle, decided that their salvation lay in cooperation

rather than in trade unionism, which at best afforded only temporary relief. About seventy of them raised

$700 as a cooperative nest egg and netted a profit of $510.60 the first year. In the same year the Philadelphia

printers, disappointed at their failure to force a higher wage, organized a cooperative printing press.

The movement spread to New York, where a strike of the tailors was in progress. The strikers were addressed

at a great mass meeting by Albert Brisbane, an ardent disciple of Fourier, the French social economist, and

were told that they must do away with servitude to capital. "What we want to know," said Brisbane, "is how

to change, peacefully, the system of today. The first great principle is combination." Another meeting was

addressed by a German, a follower of Karl Marx, who uttered in his native tongue these words that sound like

a modern I.W.W. prophet: "Many of us have fought for liberty in the fatherland. We came here because we

were opposed, and what have we gained? Nothing but misery, hunger, and treading down. But we are in a

free country and it is our fault if we do not get our rights.... Let those who strike eat; the rest starve. Butchers

and bakers must withhold supplies. Yes, they must all strike, and then the aristocrat will starve. We must

have a revolution. We cannot submit any longer." The cry of "Revolution! Revolution!" was taken up by the

In the midst of this agitation a New York branch of the New England Protective Union was organized as an

attempt at peaceful revolution by cooperation. The New York Protective Union went a step farther than the

New England Union. Its members established their own shops and so became their own employers. And in

many other cities striking workmen and eager reformers joined hands in modest endeavors to change the face

of things. The revolutionary movements of Europe at this period were having a seismic effect upon American

labor. But all these attempts of the workingmen to tourney a rough world with a needle were foredoomed to

failure. Lacking the essential business experience and the ability to cooperate, they were soon undone, and

In the meantime another economic movement gained momentum under the leadership of George Henry

Evans, who was a land reformer and may be called a precursor of Henry George. Evans inaugurated a

campaign for free farms to entice to the land the unprosperous toilers of the city. In spite of the vast areas of

the public domain still unoccupied, the cities were growing denser and larger and filthier by reason of the

multitudes from Ireland and other countries who preferred to cast themselves into the eager maw of factory

towns rather than go out as agrarian pioneers. To such Evans and other agrarian reformers made their appeal.

"Are you an American citizen? Then you are a joint owner of the public lands. Why not take enough of your

"Are you a party follower? Then you have long enough employed your vote to benefit scheming office

"Are you tired of slaveryof drudging for othersof poverty and its attendant miseries? Then, vote

"Would you free your country and the sons of toil everywhere from the heartless, irresponsible mastery of the

aristocracy of avarice? .... Then join with your neighbors to form a true American party...whose chief

measures will be first to limit the quantity of land that any one may henceforth monopolize or inherit; and

second to make the public lands free to actual settlers only, each having the right to sell his improvements to

"Vote yourself a farm" became a popular shibboleth and a part of the standard programme of organized labor.

The donation of public lands to heads of families, on condition of occupancy and cultivation for a term of

years, was proposed in bills repeatedly introduced in Congress. But the cry of opposition went up from the

older States that they would be bled for the sake of the newer, that giving land to the landless was

encouraging idleness and wantonness and spreading demoralization, and that Congress had no more power to

give away land than it had to give away money. These arguments had their effect at the Capitol, and it was

not until the new Republican party came into power pledged to "a complete and satisfactory homestead

A characteristic manifestation of the humanitarian impulse of the forties was the support given to labor in its

renewed demand for a tenhour day. It has already been indicated how this movement started in the thirties,

how its object was achieved by a few highly organized trades, and how it was interrupted in its progress by

the panic of 1837. The agitation, however, to make the tenhour day customary throughout the country was

not long in coming back to life. In March, 1840, an executive order of President Van Buren declaring ten

hours to be the working day for laborers and mechanics in government employ forced the issue upon private

employers. The earliest concerted action, it would seem, arose in New England, where the New England

Workingmen's Association, later called the Labor Reform League, carried on the crusade. In 1845 a

committee appointed by the Massachusetts Legislature to investigate labor conditions affords the first

instance on record of an American legislature concerning itself with the affairs of the labor world to the

extent of ordering an official investigation. The committee examined a number of factory operatives, both

men and women, visited a few of the mills, gathered some statistics, and made certain neutral and specious

suggestions. They believed the remedy for such evils as they discovered lay not in legislation but "in the

progressive improvement in art and science, in a higher appreciation of man's destiny, in a less love for

money, and a more ardent love for social happiness and intellectual superiority."

The first tenhour law was passed in 1847 by the New Hampshire Legislature. It provided that "ten hours of

actual labor shall be taken to be a day's work, unless otherwise agreed to by the parties," and that no minor

under fifteen years of age should be employed more than ten hours a day without the consent of parent or

guardian. This was the unassuming beginning of a movement to have the hours of toil fixed by society rather

than by contract. This law of New Hampshire, which was destined to have a widespread influence, was hailed

by the workmen everywhere with delight; mass meetings and processions proclaimed it as a great victory;

and only the conservatives prophesied the worthlessness of such legislation. Horace Greeley sympathetically

dissected the bill. He had little faith, it is true, in legislative interference with private contracts. "But," he

asks, "who can seriously doubt that it is the duty of the Commonwealth to see that the tender frames of its

youth are not shattered by excessively protracted toil? .... Will any one pretend that ten hours per day,

especially at confining and monotonous avocations which tax at once the brain and the sinews are not quite

enough for any child to labor statedly and steadily?" The consent of guardian or parent he thought a fraud

against the child that could be averted only by the positive command of the State specifically limiting the

In the following year Pennsylvania enacted a law declaring ten hours a legal day in certain industries and

forbidding children under twelve from working in cotton, woolen, silk, or flax mills. Children over fourteen,

however, could, by special arrangement with parents or guardians, be compelled to work more than ten hours

a day. "This act is very much of a humbug," commented Greeley, "but it will serve a good end. Those whom

it was intended to put asleep will come back again before long, and, like Oliver Twist, 'want some more.'"

The tenhour movement had thus achieved social recognition. It had the staunch support of such men as

Wendell Phillips, Edward Everett, Horace Greeley, and other distinguished publicists and philanthropists.

Public opinion was becoming so strong that both the Whigs and Democrats in their party platforms declared

themselves in favor of the tenhour day. When, in the summer of 1847, the British Parliament passed a

tenhour law, American unions sent congratulatory messages to the British workmen. Gradually the various

States followed the example of New Hampshire and PennsylvaniaNew Jersey in 1851, Ohio in 1852, and

But it was one thing to write a statute and another to enforce it. American laws were, after all, based upon the

ancient AngloSaxon principle of private contract. A man could agree to work for as many hours as he chose,

and each employer could drive his own bargain. The cotton mill owners of Allegheny City, for example,

declared that they would be compelled to run their mills twelve hours a day. They would not, of course,

employ children under twelve, although they felt deeply concerned for the widows who would thereby lose

the wages of their children. But they must run on a twelvehour schedule to meet competition from other

States. So they attempted to make special contracts with each employee. The workmen objected to this and

struck. Finally they compromised on a tenhour day and a sixteen per cent reduction in wages. Such an

arrangement became a common occurrence in the industrial world of the middle of the century.

In the meantime the factory system was rapidly recruiting women workers, especially in the New England

textile mills. Indeed, as early as 1825 "tailoresses" of New York and other cities had formed protective

societies. In 1829 the mill girls of Dover, New Hampshire, caused a sensation by striking. Several hundred of

them paraded the streets and, according to accounts, "fired off a lot of gunpowder." In 1836 the women

workers in the Lowell factories struck for higher wages and later organized a Factory Girls' Association

which included more than 2,500 members. It was aimed against the strict regimen of the boarding houses,

which were owned and managed by the mills. "As our fathers resisted unto blood the lordly avarice of the

British Ministry," cried the strikers, "so we, their daughters, never will wear the yoke which has been

In this vibrant atmosphere was born the powerful woman's labor union, the Female Labor Reform

Association, later called the Lowell Female Industrial Reform and Mutual Aid Society. Lowell became the

center of a farreaching propaganda characterized by energy and a definite conception of what was wanted.

The women joined in strikes, carried banners, sent delegates to the labor conventions, and were zealous in

propaganda. It was the women workers of Massachusetts who first forced the legislature to investigate labor

conditions and who aroused public sentiment to a pitch that finally compelled the enactment of laws for the

bettering of their conditions. When the mill owners in Massachusetts demanded in 1846 that their weavers

tend four looms instead of three, the women promptly resolved that "we will not tend a fourth loom unless we

receive the same pay per piece as on three .... This we most solemnly pledge ourselves to obtain."

In New York, in 1845, the Female Industry Association was organized at a large meeting held in the court

house. It included "tailoresses, plain and coarse sewing, shirt makers, bookfolders and stickers, capmakers,

strawworkers, dressmakers, crimpers, fringe and lacemakers," and other trades open to women "who were

like oppressed." The New York Herald reported "about 700 females generally of the most interesting age and

appearance" in attendance. The president of the meeting unfolded a pitiable condition of affairs. She

mentioned several employers by name who paid only from ten to eighteen cents a day, and she stated that,

after acquiring skill in some of the trades and by working twelve to fourteen hours a day, a woman might earn

twentyfive cents a day! "How is it possible," she exclaimed, "that at such an income we can support

So we come to the fifties, when the rapid rise in the cost of living due to the influx of gold from the newly

discovered California mines created new economic conditions. By 1853, the cost of living had risen so high

that the length of the working day was quite forgotten because of the utter inadequacy of the wage to meet the

new altitude of prices. Hotels issued statements that they were compelled to raise their rates for board from a

dollar and a half to two dollars a day. Newspapers raised their advertising rates. Drinks went up from six

cents to ten and twelve and a half cents. In Baltimore, the men in the Baltimore and Ohio Railway shops

struck. They were followed by all the conductors, brakemen, and locomotive engineers. Machinists employed

in other shops soon joined them, and the city's industries were virtually paralyzed. In New York nearly every

industry was stopped by strikes. In Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh, in cities large and small, the striking

By this time thoughtful laborers had learned the futility of programmes that attempted to reform society.

They had watched the birth and death of many experiments. They had participated in shortlived cooperative

stores and shops; they had listened to Owen's alluring words and had seen his World Convention meet and

adjourn; had witnessed national reform associations, leagues, and industrial congresses issue their

highpitched resolutions; and had united on legislative candidates. And yet the old world wagged on in the

old way. Wages and hours and working conditions could be changed, they had learned, only by coercion.

This coercion could be applied, in general reforms, only by society, by stress of public opinion. But in

concrete cases, in their own personal environment, the coercion had to be first applied by themselves. They

had learned the lesson of letting the world in general go its way while they attended to their own business.

In the early fifties, then, a new species of union appears. It discards lofty phraseology and the attempt at

worldreform and it becomes simply a trade union. It restricts its housecleaning to its own shop, limits its

demands to its trade, asks for a minimum wage and minimum hours, and lays out with considerable detail the

conditions under which its members will work. The weapons in its arsenal are not newthe strike and the

boycott. Now that he has learned to distinguish essentials, the new trade unionist can bargain with his

employer, and as a result trade agreements stipulating hours, wages, and conditions, take the place of the

desultory and ineffective settlements which had hitherto issued from labor disputes. But it was not without

foreboding that this development was witnessed by the adherents of the status quo. According to a magazine

"After prescribing the rate of remuneration many of the Trades' Unions go to enact laws for the government

of the respective departments, to all of which the employer must assent .... The result even thus far is that

there is found no limit to this species of encroachment. If workmen may dictate the hours and mode of

service, and the number and description of hands to be employed, they may also regulate other items of the

business with which their labor is connected. Thus we find that within a few days, in the city of New York,

the longshoremen have taken by force from their several stations the horses and laborsaving gear used for

delivering cargoes, it being part of their regulations not to allow of such competition."

The gravitation towards common action was felt over a wide area during this period. Some trades met in

national convention to lay down rules for their craft. One of the earliest national meetings was that of the

carpetweavers (1846) in New York City, when thirtyfour delegates, representing over a thousand

operatives, adopted rules and took steps to prevent a reduction in wages. The National Convention of

Journeymen Printers met in 1850, and out of this emerged two years later an organization called the National

Typographical Union, which ten years later still, on the admission of some Canadian unions, became the

International Typographical Union of North America; and as such it flourishes today. In 1855 the

Journeymen Stone Cutters' Association of North America was organized and in the following year the

National Trade Association of Hat Finishers, the forerunner of the United Hatters of North America. In 1859

The conception of a national trade unity was now well formed; compactly organized national and local trade

unions with very definite industrial aims were soon to take the place of ephemeral, loosejointed associations

with vast and vague ambitions. Early in this period a new impetus was given to organized labor by the

historic decision of Chief Justice Shaw of Massachusetts in a case* brought against seven bootmakers

charged with conspiracy. Their offense consisted in attempting to induce all the workmen of a given shop to

join the union and compel the master to employ only union men. The trial court found them guilty; but the

Chief Justice decided that he did not "perceive that it is criminal for men to agree together to exercise their

own acknowledged rights in such a manner as best to subserve their own interests." In order to show criminal

conspiracy, therefore, on the part of a labor union, it was necessary to prove that either the intent or the

method was criminal, for it was not a criminal offense to combine for the purpose of raising wages or

bettering conditions or seeking to have all laborers join the union. The liberalizing influence of this decision

The period closed amidst general disturbances and forebodings, political and economic. In 1857 occurred a

panic which thrust the problem of unemployment, on a vast scale, before the American consciousness.

Instead of demanding higher wages, multitudes now cried for work. The marching masses, in New York,

carried banners asking for bread, while soldiers from Governor's Island and marines from the Navy Yard

guarded the Custom House and the SubTreasury. From Philadelphia to New Orleans, from Boston to

Chicago, came the same story of banks failing, railroads in bankruptcy, factories closing, idle and hungry

throngs moving restlessly through the streets. In New York 40,000, in Lawrence 3500, in Philadelphia

20,000, were estimated to be out of work. Labor learned anew that its prosperity was inalienably identified

with the wellbeing of industry and commerce; and society learned that hunger and idleness are the golden

opportunity of the demagogue and agitator. The word "socialism" now appears more and more frequently in

the daily press and always a synonym of destruction or of something to be feared. No sooner had business

revived than the great shadow of internal strife was cast over the land, and for the duration of the Civil War

After Appomattox, every one seemed bent on finding a short cut to opulence. To foreign observers, the

United States was then simply a scrambling mass of selfish units, for there seemed to be among the American

people no disinterested group to balance accounts between the competing elementsno leisure class, living

on secured incomes, mellowed by generations of travel, education, and reflection; no bureaucracy arbitrarily

guiding the details of governmental routine; no aristocracy, born umpires of the doings of their underlings.

All the manifold currents of life seemed swallowed up in the commercial maelstrom. By the standards of

what happened in this season of exuberance and intense materialism, the American people were hastily

judged by critics who failed to see that the period was but the prelude to a maturer national life.

It was a period of a remarkable industrial expansion. Then "plant" became a new word in the phraseology of

the market place, denoting the enlarged factory or mill and suggesting the hardy perennial, each succeeding

year putting forth new shoots from its side. The products of this seedtime are seen in the colossal industrial

growths of today. Then it was that short railway lines began to be welded into "systems," that the railway

builders began to strike out into the prairies and mountains of the West, and that partnerships began to be

merged into corporations and corporations into trusts, ever reaching out for the greater markets. Meanwhile

the inventive genius of America was responding to the call of the time. In 1877 Bell telephoned from Boston

to Salem; two years later, Brush lighted by electricity the streets of San Francisco. In 1882 Edison was

making incandescent electric lights for New York and operating his first electric car in Menlo Park, New

All these developments created a new demand for capital. Where formerly a manufacturer had made products

to order or for a small number of known customers, now he made on speculation, for a great number of

unknown customers, taking his risks in distant markets. Where formerly the banker had lent money on local

security, now he gave credit to vast enterprises far away. New inventions or industrial processes brought on

new speculations. This new demand for capital made necessary a new system of credits, which was erected at

first, as the recurring panics disclosed, on sand, but gradually, through costly experience, on a more stable

The economic and industrial development of the time demanded not only new money and credit but new

men. A new type of executive was wanted, and he soon appeared to satisfy the need. Neither a capitalist nor a

merchant, he combined in some degree the functions of both, added to them the greater function of industrial

manager, and received from great business concerns a high premium for his talent and foresight. This Captain

of Industry, as he has been called, is the foremost figure of the period, the hero of the industrial drama.

But much of what is admirable in that generation of nation builders is obscured by the industrial anarchy

which prevailed. Everybody was for himselfand the devil was busy harvesting the hindmost. There were

"ratewars," "cutrate sales," secret intrigues, and rebates; and there were subterranean passages some,

indeed, scarcely under the surfaceto council chambers, executive mansions, and Congress. There were

extreme fluctuations of industry; prosperity was either at a very high level or depression at a very low one.

Prosperity would bring on an expansion of credits, a rise in prices, higher cost of living, strikes and boycotts

for higher wages; then depression would follow with the shutdown and that most distressing of social

diseases, unemployment. During the panic of 187374 many thousands of men marched the streets crying

Between the panics, strikes became a part of the economic routine of the country. They were expected, just as

pay days and legal holidays are expected. Now for the first time came strikes that can only be characterized

as stupendous. They were not mere slight economic disturbances; they were veritable industrial earthquakes.

In 1873 the coal miners of Pennsylvania, resenting the truck system and the miserable housing which the

mine owners forced upon them, struck by the tens of thousands. In Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Maryland,

Ohio, and New York strikes occurred in all sorts of industries. There were the usual parades and banners,

some appealing, some insulting, and all the while the militia guarded property. In July, 1877, the men of the

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad refused to submit to a fourth reduction in wages in seven years and struck. From

Baltimore the resentment spread to Pennsylvania and culminated with riots in Pittsburgh. All the anthracite

coal miners struck, followed by most of the bituminous miners of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The militia

were impotent to subdue the mobs; Federal troops had to be sent by President Hayes into many of the States;

and a proclamation by the President commanded all citizens to keep the peace. Thus was Federal authority

introduced to bolster up the administrative weakness of the States, and the first step was taken on the road to

The turmoil had hardly subsided when, in 1880, new strikes broke out. In the long catalogue of the strikers of

that year are found the ribbon weavers of Philadelphia, Paterson, and New York, the stablemen of New York,

New Jersey, and San Francisco, the cotton yard workers of New Orleans, the cotton weavers of New England

and New York, the stockyard employees of Chicago and Omaha, the potters of Green Point, Long Island, the

puddlers of Johnstown and Columbia, Pennsylvania, the machinists of Buffalo, the tailors of New York, and

the shoemakers of Indiana. The year 1881 was scarcely less restive. But 1886 is marked in labor annals as

"the year of the great uprising," when twice as many strikes as in any previous year were reported by the

United States Commissioner of Labor, and when these strikes reached a tragic climax in the Chicago

It was during this feverish epoch that organized labor first entered the arena of national politics. When the

policy as to the national currency became an issue, the lure of cheap money drew labor into an alliance in

1880 with the Greenbackers, whose mad cry added to the general unrest. In this, as in other fatuous pursuits,

labor was only responding to the forces and the spirit of the hour. These have been called the years of

amalgamation, but they were also the years of tumult, for, while amalgamation was achieved, discipline was

not. Authority imposed from within was not sufficient to overcome the decentralizing forces, and just as big

business had yet to learn by selfimposed discipline how to overcome the extremely individualistic

tendencies which resulted in trade anarchy, so labor had yet to learn through discipline the lessons of

selfrestraint. Moreover, in the sudden expansion and great enterprises of these days, labor even more than

capital lost in stability. One great steadying influence, the old personal relation between master and servant,

which prevailed during the days of handicraft and even of the small factory, had disappeared almost

completely. Now labor was put up on the marketa heartless term descriptive of a condition from which

human beings might be expected to react violentlyand they did, for human nature refused to be an inert,

The labor market must expand with the trader's market. In 1860 there were about one and a third million

wageearners in the United States; in 1870 well over two million; in 1880 nearly two and threequarters

million; and in 1890 over four and a quarter million. The city sucked them in from the country; but by far the

larger augmentation came from Europe; and the immigrant, normally optimistic, often untaught, sometimes

sullen and filled with a destructive resentment, and always accustomed to low standards of living, added to

There were two paramount issueswages and the hours of labor to which all other issues were and

always have been secondary. Wages tend constantly to become inadequate when the standard of living is

steadily rising, and they consequently require periodical readjustment. Hours of labor, of course, are not

subject in the same degree to external conditions. But the tendency has always been toward a shorter day. In a

previous chapter, the inception of the tenhour movement was outlined. Presently there began the eighthour

movement. As early as 1842 the carpenters and caulkers of the Charleston Navy Yard achieved an eighthour

day; but 1863 may more properly be taken as the beginning of the movement. In this year societies were

organized in Boston and its vicinity for the precise purpose of winning the eighthour day, and soon

afterwards a national EightHour League was established with local leagues extending from New England to

This movement received an intelligible philosophy, and so a new vitality, from Ira Steward, a member of the

Boston Machinists' and Blacksmiths' Union. Writing as a workingman for workingmen, Steward found in the

standard of living the true reason for a shorter workday. With beautiful simplicity he pointed out to the

laboring man that the shorter period of labor would not mean smaller pay, and to the employer that it would

not mean a diminished output. On the contrary, it would be mutually beneficial, for the unwearied workman

could produce as much in the shorter day as the wearied workman in the longer. "As long," Steward wrote,

"as tired human hands do most of the world's hard work, the sentimental pretense of honoring and respecting

the hornyhanded toiler is as false and absurd as the idea that a solid foundation for a house can be made out

In 1865 Steward's pamphlet, "A Reduction of Hours and Increase of Wages," was widely circulated by the

Boston Labor Reform Association. It emphasized the value of leisure and its beneficial reflex effect upon

both production and consumption. Gradually these well reasoned and conservatively expressed doctrines

found champions such as Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, and Horace Greeley to give them wider

publicity and to impress them upon the public consciousness. In 1867 Illinois, Missouri, and New York

passed eighthour laws and Wisconsin declared eight hours a day's work for women and children. In 1868

Congress established an eighthour day for public work. These were promising signs, though the battle was

still far from being won. The eighthour day has at last received "the sanction of society"to use the words

of President Wilson in his message to Congress in 1916, when he called for action to avert a great railway

strike. But to win that sanction required over half a century of popular agitation, discussion, and economic

Such, in brief, were the general business conditions of the country and the issues which engaged the energies

of labor reformers during the period following the Civil War. Meanwhile great changes were made in labor

organizations. Many of the old unions were reorganized, and numerous local amalgamations took place. Most

of the organizations now took the form of secret societies whose initiations were marked with naive

formalism and whose routines were directed by a group of officers with royal titles and fortified by signs,

passwords, and ritual. Some of these orders decorated the faithful with highsounding degrees. The societies

adopted fantastic names such as "The Supreme Mechanical Order of the Sun," "The Knights of St. Crispin,"

Meanwhile, too, there was a growing desire to unify the workers of the country by some sort of national

organization. The outcome was a notable Labor Congress held at Baltimore in August, 1866, which included

all kinds of labor organizations and was attended by seventyseven delegates from thirteen States. In the light

of subsequent events its resolutions now seem conservative and constructive. This Congress believed that "all

reforms in the labor movement can only be effected by an intelligent, systematic effort of the industrial

classes . . . through the trades organizations." Of strikes it declared that "they have been injudicious and

illadvised, the result of impulse rather than principle,...and we would therefore discountenance them except

as a dernier ressort, and when all means for an amicable and honorable adjustment has been abandoned." It

issued a cautious and carefully phrased Address to the Workmen throughout the Country, urging them to

organize and assuring them that "the first thing to be accomplished before we can hope for any great results is

The National Labor Union which resulted from this convention held seven Annual Congresses, and its

proceedings show a statesmanlike conservatism and avoid extreme radicalism. This organization, which at its

high tide represented a membership of 640,000, in its brief existence was influential in three important

matters: first, it pointed the way to national amalgamation and was thus a forerunner of more lasting efforts in

this direction; secondly, it had a powerful influence in the eighthour movement; and, thirdly, it was largely

instrumental in establishing labor bureaus and in gathering statistics for the scientific study of labor

questions. But the National Labor Union unfortunately went into politics; and politics proved its undoing.

Upon affiliating with the Labor Reform party it dwindled rapidly, and after 1871 it disappeared entirely.

One of the typical organizations of the time was the Order of the Knights of St. Crispin, so named after the

patron saint of the shoemakers, and accessible only to members of that craft. It was first conceived in 1864 by

Newell Daniels, a shoemaker in Milford, Massachusetts, but no organization was effected until 1867, when

the founder had moved to Milwaukee. The ritual and constitution he had prepared was accepted then by a

group of seven shoemakers, and in four years this insignificant mustard seed had grown into a great tree. The

story is told by Frank K. Foster,* who says, speaking of the order in 1868: "It made and unmade politicians;

it established a monthly journal; it started cooperative stores; it fought, often successfully, against threatened

reductions of wages...; it became the undoubted foremost trade organization of the world." But within five

years the order was rent by factionalism and in 1878 was acknowledged to be dead. It perished from various

causespartly because it failed to assimilate or imbue with its doctrines the thousands of workmen who

subscribed to its rules and ritual, partly because of the jealousy and treachery which is the fruitage of sudden

prosperity, partly because of failure to fulfill the fervent hopes of thousands who joined it as a prelude to the

industrial millennium; but especially it failed to endure because it was founded on an economic principle

which could not be imposed upon society. The rule which embraced this principle reads as follows: "No

member of this Order shall teach, or aid in teaching, any fact or facts of boot or shoemaking, unless the lodge

shall give permission by a threefourths vote...provided that this article shall not be so construed as to

prevent a father from teaching his own son. Provided also, that this article shall not be so construed as to

hinder any member of this organization from learning any or all parts of the trade." The medieval craft guild

could not so easily be revived in these days of rapid changes, when a new stitching machine replaced in a day

a hundred workmen. And so the Knights of St. Crispin fell a victim to their own greed.

* "The Labor Movement, the Problem of Today," edited by George E. McNeill, Chapter VIII.

The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, another of those societies of workingmen, was organized in

November, 1869, by Uriah S. Stephens, a Philadelphia garment cutter, with the assistance of six fellow

craftsmen. It has been said of Stephens that he was "a man of great force of character, a skilled mechanic,

with the love of books which enabled him to pursue his studies during his apprenticeship, and feeling withal a

strong affection for secret organizations, having been for many years connected with the Masonic Order." He

was to have been educated for the ministry but, owing to financial reverses in his family, was obliged instead

to learn a trade. Later he taught school for a few years, traveled extensively in the West Indies, South

America, and California, and became an accomplished public speaker and a diligent observer of social

Stephens and his six associates had witnessed the dissolution of the local garment cutters' union. They

resolved that the new society should not be limited by the lines of their own trade but should embrace "all

branches of honorable toil." Subsequently a rule was adopted stipulating that at least threefourths of the

membership of lodges must be wageearners eighteen years of age. Moreover, "no one who either sells or

makes a living, or any part of it, by the sale of intoxicating drinks either as manufacturer, dealer, or agent, or

through any member of his family, can be admitted to membership in this order; and no lawyer, banker,

professional gambler, or stock broker can be admitted." They chose their motto from Solon, the wisest of

lawgivers: "That is the most perfect government in which an injury to one is the concern of all"; and they

took their preamble from Burke, the most philosophical of statesmen: "When bad men combine, the good

must associate, else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

The order was a secret society and for years kept its name from the public. It was generally known as the

"Five Stars," because of the five asterisks that represented its name in all public notices. While mysterious

initials and secret ceremonies gratified the members, they aroused a corresponding antagonism, even fear,

among the public, especially as the order grew to giant size. What were the potencies of a secret organization

that had only to post a few mysterious words and symbols to gather hundreds of workingmen in their halls?

And what plottings went on behind those locked and guarded doors? To allay public hostility secrecy was

gradually removed and in 1881 was entirely abolished not, however, without serious opposition from the

The atmosphere of high idealism in which the order had been conceived continued to be fostered by

Stephens, its founder and its first Grand Master Workman. He extolled justice, discountenanced violence, and

pleaded for "the mutual development and moral elevation of mankind." His exhortations were free from that

narrow class antagonism which frequently characterizes the utterances of labor. One of his associates, too,

invoked the spirit of chivalry, of true knighthood, when he said that the old trade union had failed because "it

had failed to recognize the rights of man and looked only to the rights of tradesmen," that the labor movement

needed "something that will develop more of charity, less of selfishness, more of generosity, less of

stinginess and nearness, than the average society has yet disclosed to its members." Nor were these ideas and

principles betrayed by Stephens's successor, Terence V. Powderly, who became Grand Master in 1879 and

served during the years when the order attained its greatest power. Powderly, also, was a conservative

idealist. His career may be regarded as a good example of the rise of many an American labor leader. He had

been a poor boy. At thirteen he began work as a switchtender; at seventeen he was apprenticed as machinist;

at nineteen he was active in a machinists' and blacksmiths' union. After working at his trade in various places,

he at length settled in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and became one of the organizers of the Greenback Labor

party. He was twice elected mayor of Scranton, and might have been elected for a third term had he not

declined to serve, preferring to devote all his time to the society of which he was Grand Master. The

obligations laid upon every member of the Knights of Labor were impressive: Labor is noble and holy. To

defend it from degradation; to divest it of the evils to body, mind and estate which ignorance and greed have

imposed; to rescue the toiler from the grasp of the selfishis a work worthy of the noblest and best of our

race. In all the multifarious branches of trade capital has its combinations; and, whether intended or not, it

crushes the manly hopes of labor and tramples poor humanity in the dust. We mean no conflict with

legitimate enterprise, no antagonism to necessary capital; but men in their haste and greed, blinded by

selfinterests, overlook the interests of others and sometimes violate the rights of those they deem helpless.

We mean to uphold the dignity of labor, to affirm the nobility of all who earn their bread by the sweat of their

brows. We mean to create a healthy public opinion on the subject of labor (the only creator of values or

capital) and the justice of its receiving a full, just share of the values or capital it has created. We shall, with

all our strength, support laws made to harmonize the interests of labor and capital, for labor alone gives life

and value to capital, and also those laws which tend to lighten the exhaustiveness of toil. To pause in his toil,

to devote himself to his own interests, to gather a knowledge of the world's commerce, to unite, combine and

cooperate in the great army of peace and industry, to nourish and cherish, build and develop the temple he

lives in is the highest and noblest duty of man to himself, to his fellow men and to his Creator.

The phenomenal growth and collapse of the Knights of Labor is one of the outstanding events in American

economic history. The membership in 1869 consisted of eleven tailors. This small beginning grew into the

famous Assembly No. 1. Soon the ship carpenters wanted to join, and Assembly No. 2 was organized. The

shawlweavers formed another assembly, the carpetweavers another, and so on, until over twenty

assemblies, covering almost every trade, had been organized in Philadelphia alone. By 1875 there were

eighty assemblies in the city and its vicinity. As the number of lodges multiplied, it became necessary to

establish a common agency or authority, and a Committee on the Good of the Order was constituted to

represent all the local units, but this committee was soon superseded by a delegate body known as the District

Assembly. As the movement spread from city to city and from State to State, a General Assembly was

created in 1878 to hold annual conventions and to be the supreme authority of the order. In 1883 the

membership of the order was 591,000; within three years, it had mounted to over 700,000; and at the climax

of its career the society boasted over 1,000,000 workmen in the United States and Canada who had vowed

fealty to its knighthood. It is not to be imagined that every member of this vast horde so suddenly brought

together understood the obligations of the workman's chivalry. The selfish and the lawless rushed in with the

prudent and sincere. But a resolution of the executive board to stop the initiation of new members came too

late. The undesirable and radical element in many communities gained control of local assemblies, and the

conservatism and intelligence of the national leaders became merely a shield for the rowdy and the ignorant

The crisis came in 1886. In the early months of this turbulent year there were nearly five hundred labor

disputes, most of them involving an advance in wages. An epidemic of strikes then spread over the country,

many of them actually conducted by the Knights of Labor and all of them associated in the public mind with

that order. One of the most important of these occurred on the Southwestern Railroad. In the preceding year,

the Knights had increased their lodges in St. Louis from five to thirty, and these were under the domination of

a coarse and ruthless district leader. When in February, 1886, a mechanic, working in the shops of the Texas

and Pacific Railroad at Marshall, Texas, was discharged for cause and the road refused to reinstate him, a

strike ensued which spread over the entire six thousand miles of the Gould system; and St. Louis became the

center of the tumult. After nearly two months of violence, the outbreak ended in the complete collapse of the

strikers. This result was doubly damaging to the Knights of Labor, for they had officially taken charge of the

strike and were censured on the one hand for their conduct of the struggle and on the other for the defeat

In the same year, against the earnest advice of the national leaders of the Knights of Labor, the employees of

the Third Avenue Railway in New York began a strike which lasted many months and which was

characterized by such violence that policemen were detailed to guard every car leaving the barns. In Chicago

the freight handlers struck, and some 60,000 workmen stopped work in sympathy. On the 3d of May, at the

McCormick Harvester Works, several strikers were wounded in a tussle with the police. On the following day

a mass meeting held in Haymarket Square, Chicago, was harangued by a number of anarchists. When the

police attempted to disperse the mob, guns were fired at the officers of the law and a bomb was hurled into

their throng, killing seven and wounding sixty. For this crime seven anarchists were indicted, found guilty,

and sentenced to be hanged. The Knights of Labor passed resolutions asking clemency for these murderers

and thereby grossly offended public opinion, and that at a time when public opinion was frightened by these

outrages, angered by the disclosures of brazen plotting, and upset by the sudden consciousness that the

Powderly and the more conservative national officers who were opposed to these radical machinations were

strong enough in the Grand Lodge in the following year to suppress a vote of sympathy for the condemned

anarchists. The radicals thereupon seceded from the organization. This outcome, however, did not restore the

order to the confidence of the public, and its strength now rapidly declined. A loss of 300,000 members for

the year 1888 was reported. Early in the nineties, financial troubles compelled the sale of the Philadelphia

headquarters of the Knights of Labor and the removal to more modest quarters in Washington. A remnant of

members still retain an organization, but it is barely a shadow of the vast army of Knights who at one time so

hopefully carried on a crusade in every center of industry. It was not merely the excesses of the lawless but

the multiplicity of strikes which alienated public sympathy. Powderly's repeated warnings that strikes, in and

of themselves, were destructive of the stable position of labor were shown to be prophetic.

These excesses, however, were forcing upon the public the idea that it too had not only an interest but a right

and a duty in labor disputes. Methods of arbitration and conciliation were now discussed in every legislature.

In 1883 the House of Representatives established a standing committee on labor. In 1884 a national Bureau

of Labor was created to gather statistical information. In 1886 President Cleveland sent to Congress a

message which has become historic as the first presidential message devoted to labor. In this he proposed the

creation of a board of labor commissioners who should act as official arbiters in labor disputes, but Congress

was unwilling at that time to take so advanced a step. In 1888, however, it enacted a law providing for the

settlement of railway labor disputes by arbitration, upon agreement of both parties.

Arbitration signifies a judicial attitude of mind, a judgment based on facts. These facts are derived from

specific conditions and do not grow out of broad generalizations. Arbitral tribunals are created to decide

points in dispute, not philosophies of human action. The businesslike organization of the new trade union

could as readily adapt itself to arbitration as it had already adapted itself, in isolated instances, to collective

Experience and events had now paved the way for that vast centralization of industry which characterizes the

business world of the present era. The terms sugar, coffee, steel, tobacco, oil, acquire on the stock exchange a

new and precise meaning. Seventyfive per cent of steel, eightythree per cent of petroleum, ninety per cent

of sugar production are brought under the control of industrial combinations. Nearly onefourth of the

wageearners of America are employed by great corporations. But while financiers are talking only in terms

of millions, while superorganization is reaching its eager fingers into every industry, and while the units of

business are becoming national in scope, the workingman himself is being taught at last to rely more and

more upon group action in his endeavor to obtain better wages and working conditions. He is taught also to

widen the area of his organization and to intensify its efforts. So, while the public reads in the daily and

periodical press about the oil trust and the coffee trust, it is also being admonished against a labor trust and

against two personages, both symbols of colossal economic unrestthe promoter, or the stalking horse of

financial enterprise, and the walking delegate, or the labor union representative and only too frequently the

In response to the call of the hour there appeared the American Federation of Labor, frequently called in these

later days the labor trust. The Federation was first suggested at Terre Haute, Indiana, on August 2, 1881, at a

convention called by the Knights of Industry and the Amalgamated Labor Union, two secret societies

patterned after the model common at that period. The Amalgamated Union was composed largely of

disaffected Knights of Labor, and the avowed purpose of the Convention was to organize a new secret society

to supplant the Knights. But the trades union element predominated and held up the British Trades Union and

its powerful annual congress as a model. At this meeting the needs of intensive local organization, of trades

autonomy, and of comprehensive team work were foreseen, and from the discussion there grew a plan for a

second convention. With this meeting, which was held at Pittsburgh in November, 1881, the actual work of

the new association began under the name, "The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the

When this Federation learned that a convention representing independent trade unions was called to meet in

Columbus, Ohio, in December, 1886, it promptly altered its arrangements for its own annual session so that

it, too, met at the same time and place. Thereupon the Federation effected a union with this independent

body, which represented twentyfive organizations. The new organization was called the American

Federation of Labor. Until 1889, this was considered as the first annual meeting of the new organization, but

in that year the Federation resolved that its "continuity...be recognized and dated from the year 1881."

For some years the membership increased slowly; but in 1889 over 70,000 new members were reported, in

1900 over 200,000, and from that time the Federation has given evidence of such growth and prosperity that

it easily is the most powerful labor organization America has known, and it takes its place by the side of the

British Trades Union Congress as "the sovereign organization in the trade union world." In 1917 its

membership reached 91,371,434, with 110 affiliated national unions, representing virtually every element of

American industry excepting the railway brotherhoods and a dissenting group of electrical workers.

The foundation of this vast organization was the interest of particular trades rather than the interests of labor

in general. Its membership is made up "of such Trade and Labor Unions as shall conform to its rules and

regulations." The preamble of the Constitution states: "We therefore declare ourselves in favor of the

formation of a thorough federation, embracing every trade and labor organization in America under the Trade

Union System of organization." The Knights of Labor had endeavored to subordinate the parts to the whole;

the American Federation is willing to bend the whole to the needs of the unit. It zealously sends out its

organizers to form local unions and has made provision that "any seven wage workers of good character

following any trade or calling" can establish a local union with federal affiliations.

This vast and potent organization is based upon the principle of trade homogeneitynamely, that each trade

is primarily interested in its own particular affairs but that all trades are interested in those general matters

which affect all laboring men as a class. To combine effectually these dual interests, the Federation espouses

the principle of home rule in purely local matters and of federal supervision in all general matters. It

combines, with a great singleness of purpose, so diverse a variety of details that it touches the minutiae of

every trade and places at the disposal of the humblest craftsman or laborer the tremendous powers of its

national influence. While highly centralized in organization, it is nevertheless democratic in operation,

depending generally upon the referendum for its sanctions. It is flexible in its parts and can mobilize both its

heavy artillery and its cavalry with equal readiness. It has from the first been managed with skill, energy, and

The supreme authority of the American Federation is its Annual Convention composed of delegates chosen

from national and international unions, from state, central, and local trade unions, and from fraternal

organizations. Experience has evolved a few simple rules by which the convention is safeguarded against

political and factional debate and against the interruptions of "soreheads." Besides attending to the necessary

routine, the Convention elects the eleven national officers who form the executive council which guides the

administrative details of the organization. The funds of the Federation are derived from a per capita tax on the

membership. The official organ is the American Federationist. It is interesting to note in passing that over

two hundred and forty labor periodicals together with a continual stream of circulars and pamphlets issue

The Federation is divided into five departments, representing the most important groups of labor: the

Building Trades, the Metal Trades, Mining, Railroad Employees, and the Union Label Trades.* Each of these

departments has its own autonomous sphere of action, its own set of officers, its own financial arrangements,

its own administrative details. Each holds an annual convention, in the same place and week, as the

Federation. Each is made up of affiliated unions only and confines itself solely to the interest of its own

trades. This suborganization serves as an admirable clearing house and shockabsorber and succeeds in

* There is in the Federation, however, a group of unions not affiliated with any of these departments.

There are also fortythree state branches of the Federation, each with its own separate organization. There are

annual state conventions whose membership, however, is not always restricted to unions affiliated with the

There remain the local unions, into personal touch with which each member comes. There were in 1916 as

many as 647 "city centrals," the term used to designate the affiliation of the unions of a city. The city centrals

are smaller replicas of the state federations and are made up of delegates elected by the individual unions.

They meet at stated intervals and freely discuss questions relating to the welfare of organized labor in general

as well as to local labor conditions in every trade. Indeed, vigilance seems to be the watchword of the

Central. Organization, wages, trade agreements, and the attitude of public officials and city councils which

even remotely might affect labor rarely escape their scrutiny. This oldest of all the groups of labor

organizations remains the most vital part of the Federation. The success of the American Federation of Labor

is due in large measure to the crafty generalship of its President, Samuel Gompers, one of the most astute

labor leaders developed by American economic conditions. He helped organize the Federation, carefully

nursed it through its tender years, and boldly and unhesitatingly used its great power in the days of its

maturity. In fact, in a very real sense the Federation is Gompers, and Gompers is the Federation. Born in

London of DutchJewish lineage, on January 27, 1850, the son of a cigarmaker, Samuel Gompers was early

apprenticed to that craft. At the age of thirteen he went to New York City, where in the following year he

joined the first cigarmakers' union organized in that city. He enlisted all his boyish ardor in the cause of the

trade union and, after he arrived at maturity, was elected successively secretary and president of his union.

The local unions were, at that time, gingerly feeling their way towards state and national organization, and in

these early attempts young Gompers was active. In 1887, he was one of the delegates to a national meeting

which constituted the nucleus of what is now the Cigarmakers' International Union.

The local cigarmakers' union in which Gompers received his necessary preliminary training was one of the

most enlightened and compactly organized groups of American labor. It was one of the first American

Unions to adopt in an efficient manner the British system of benefits in the case of sickness, death, or

unemployment. It is one of the few American unions that persistently encourages skill in its craft and

intelligence in its membership. It has been a pioneer in collective bargaining and in arbitration. It has been

conservatively and yet enthusiastically led and has generally succeeded in enlisting the respect and

cooperation of employers. This union has been the kindergarten and preparatory school of Samuel Gompers,

who, during all the years of his wide activities as the head of the Federation of Labor, has retained his

membership in his old local and has acted as first vicepresident of the Cigarmakers' International. These

early experiences, precedents, and enthusiasms Gompers carried with him into the Federation of Labor. He

was one of the original group of trade union representatives who organized the Federation in 1881. In the

following year he was its President. Since 1885 he has, with the exception of a single year, been annually

chosen as President. During the first years the Federation was very weak, and it was even doubtful if the

organization could survive the bitter hostility of the powerful Knights of Labor. It could pay its President no

salary and could barely meet his expense account.* Gompers played a large part in the complete

reorganization of the Federation in 1886. He subsequently received a yearly salary of $1000 so that he could

devote all of his time to the cause. From this year forward the growth of the Federation was steady and

healthy. In the last decade it has been phenomenal. The earlier policy of caution has, however, not been

discardedfor caution is the word that most aptly describes the methods of Gompers. From the first, he

tested every step carefully, like a wary mountaineer, before he urged his organization to follow. From the

beginning Gompers has followed three general lines of policy. First, he has built the imposing structure of his

Federation upon the autonomy of the constituent unions. This is the secret of the united enthusiasm of the

Federation. It is the AngloSaxon instinct for home rule applied to trade union politics. In the tentative years

of its early struggles, the Federation could hope for survival only upon the suffrance of the trade union, and

today, when the Federation has become powerful, its potencies rest upon the same foundation.

Secondly, Gompers has always advocated frugality in money matters. His Federation is powerful but not rich.

Its demands upon the resources of the trade unions have always been moderate, and the salaries paid have

been modest.* When the Federation erected a new building for its headquarters in Washington a few years

ago, it symbolized in its architecture and equipment this modest yet adequate and substantial financial policy.

American labor unions have not yet achieved the opulence, ambitions, and splendors of the guilds of the

* Before 1899 the annual income of the Federation was less than $25,000; in 1901 it reached the $100,000

In the third place, Gompers has always insisted upon the democratic methods of debate and referendum in

reaching important decisions. However arbitrary and intolerant his impulses may have been, and however

dogmatic and narrow his conclusions in regard to the relation of labor to society and towards the employer

(and his Dutch inheritance gives him great obstinacy), he has astutely refrained from too obviously bossing

With this sagacity of leadership Gompers has combined a fearlessness that sometimes verges on brazenness.

He has never hesitated to enter a contest when it seemed prudent to him to do so. He crossed swords with

Theodore Roosevelt on more than one occasion and with President Eliot of Harvard in a historic newspaper

controversy over trade union exclusiveness. He has not been daunted by conventions, commissions, courts,

congresses, or public opinion. During the long term of his Federation presidency, which is unparalleled in

labor history and alone is conclusive evidence of his executive skill, scarcely a year has passed without some

dramatic incident to cast the searchlight of publicity upon hima court decision, a congressional inquiry, a

grand jury inquisition, a great strike, a nationwide boycott, a debate with noted public men, a political

maneuver, or a foreign pilgrimage. Whenever a constituent union in the Federation has been the object of

attack, he has jumped into the fray and has rarely emerged humiliated from the encounter. This is the more

surprising when one recalls that he possesses the limitations of the zealot and the dogmatism of the partisan.

One of the most important functions of Gompers has been that of national lobbyist for the Federation. He was

one of the earliest champions of the eighthour day and the Saturday halfholiday. He has energetically

espoused Federal child labor legislation, the restriction of immigration, alien contract labor laws, and

employers' liability laws. He advocated the creation of a Federal Department of Labor which has recently

developed into a cabinet secretariat. His legal bete noire, however, was the Sherman AntiTrust Law as

applied to labor unions. For many years he fought vehemently for an amending act exempting the laboring

class from the rigors of that famous statute. President Roosevelt with characteristic candor told a delegation

of Federation officials who called on him to enlist his sympathy in their attempt, that he would enforce the

law impartially against lawbreakers, rich and poor alike. Roosevelt recommended to Congress the passage of

an amendment exempting "combinations existing for and engaged in the promotion of innocent and proper

purposes." An exempting bill was passed by Congress but was vetoed by President Taft on the ground that it

was class legislation. Finally, during President Wilson's administration, the Federation accomplished its

purpose, first indirectly by a rider on an appropriation bill, then directly by the Clayton Act, which

specifically declared labor combinations, instituted for the "purpose of mutual help and...not conducted for

profit," not to be in restraint of trade. Both measures were signed by the President. Encouraged by their

success, the Federation leaders have moved with a renewed energy against the other legal citadel of their

Gompers has thus been the political watchman of the labor interests. Nothing pertaining, even remotely, to

labor conditions escapes the vigilance of his Washington office. During President Wilson's administration,

Gompers's influence achieved a power second to none in the political field, owing partly to the political

power of the labor vote which he ingeniously marshalled, partly to the natural inclination of the dominant

political party, and partly to the strategic position of labor in the war industries.

The Great War put an unprecedented strain upon the American Federation of Labor. In every center of

industry laborers of foreign birth early showed their racial sympathies, and under the stimuli of the intriguing

German and Austrian ambassadors sinister plots for crippling munitions plants and the shipping industries

were hatched everywhere. Moreover, workingmen became restive under the burden of increasing prices, and

At the beginning of the War, the officers of the Federation maintained a calm and neutral attitude which

increased in vigilance as the strain upon American patience and credulity increased. As soon as the United

States declared war, the whole energies of the officials of the Federation were cast into the national cause. In

1917, under the leadership of Gompers, and as a practical antidote to the I.W.W. and the foreign labor and

pacifist organization known as The People's Council, there was organized The American Alliance for Labor

and Democracy in order "to Americanize the labor movement." Its campaign at once became nation wide.

Enthusiastic meetings were held in the great manufacturing centers, stimulated to enthusiasm by the incisive

eloquence of Gompers. At the annual convention of the Federation held in Buffalo in November, 1917, full

endorsement was given to the Alliance by a vote of 21,602 to 401. In its formal statement the Alliance

declared: "It is our purpose to try, by educational methods, to bring about a more American spirit in the labor

movement, so that what is now the clear expression of the vast majority may become the conviction of all.

Where we find ignorance, we shall educate. Where we find something worse, we shall have to deal as the

situation demands. But we are going to leave no stone unturned to put a stop to antiAmerican activities

This was the first great step taken by Gompers and the Federation. The second was equally important. With

characteristic energy the organization put forward a programme for the readjustment of labor to war

conditions. "This is labor's war" declared the manifesto issued by the Federation. "It must be won by labor,

and every stage in the fighting and the final victory must be made to count for humanity." These aims were

embodied in constructive suggestions adopted by the Council of National Defense appointed by President

Wilson. This programme was in a large measure the work of Gompers, who was a member of the Council.

The following outline shows the comprehensive nature of the view which the laborer took of the relation

This included: (a) A system of labor exchanges. (b) The training of workers. (c) Agencies for determining

2. Machinery for adjusting disputes between capital and labor, without stoppage of work.

3. Machinery for safeguarding conditions of labor, including industrial hygiene, safety appliances, etc.

6. Machinery for developing sound public sentiment and an exchange of information between the various

departments of labor administration, the numerous industrial plants, and the public, so as to facilitate the

Having thus first laid the foundations of a national labor policy and having, in the second place, developed an

effective means of Americanizing, as far as possible, the various labor groups, the Federation took another

step. As a third essential element in uniting labor to help to win the war, it turned its attention to the

interallied solidarity of workingmen. In the late summer and autumn of 1917, Gompers headed an American

labor mission to Europe and visited England, Belgium, France, and Italy. His frequent public utterances in

numerous cities received particular attention in the leading European newspapers and were eagerly read in the

allied countries. The pacifist group of the British Labour Party did not relish his outspokenness on the

necessity of completely defeating the Teutons before peace overtures could be made. On the other hand,

some of the ultraconservative papers misconstrued his sentiments on the terms which should be exacted from

the enemy when victory was assured. This misunderstanding led to an acrid international newspaper

controversy, to which Gompers finally replied: "I uttered no sentence or word which by the wildest

imagination could be interpreted as advocating the formula 'no annexations, and no indemnities.' On the

contrary, I have declared, both in the United States and in conferences and public meetings while abroad, that

the German forces must be driven back from the invaded territory before even peace terms could be

discussed, that AlsaceLorraine should be returned to France, that the 'Irredente' should be returned to Italy,

and that the imperialistic militarist machine which has so outraged the conscience of the world must be made

to feel the indignation and righteous wrath of all liberty and peace loving peoples." This mission had a deep

effect in uniting the labor populations of the allied countries and especially in cheering the overwrought

workers of Britain and France, and it succeeded in laying the foundation for a more lasting international labor

This considerable achievement was recognized when the Peace Conference at Paris formed a Commission on

International Labor Legislation. Gompers was selected as one of the American representatives and was

chosen chairman. While the Commission was busy with its tasks, an international labor conference was held

at Berne. Gompers and his colleagues, however, refused to attend this conference. They gave as their reasons

for this aloofness the facts that delegates from the Central powers, with whom the United States was still at

war, were in attendance; that the meeting was held "for the purpose of arranging socialist procedure of an

international character"; and that the convention was irregularly called, for it had been announced as an

interallied conference but had been surreptitiously converted into an international pacifist gathering,

Probably the most farreaching achievement of Gompers is the by no means inconsiderable contribution he

has made to that portion of the treaty of peace with Germany relating to the international organization of

labor. This is an entirely new departure in the history of labor, for it attempts to provide international

machinery for stabilizing conditions of labor in the various signatory countries. On the ground that "the

wellbeing, physical and moral, of the industrial wageearners is of supreme international importance," the

treaty lays down guiding principles to be followed by the various countries, subject to such changes as

variations in climate, customs, and economic conditions dictate. These principles are as follows: labor shall

not be regarded merely as a commodity or an article of commerce; employers and employees shall have the

right of forming associations; a wage adequate to maintain a reasonable standard of living shall be paid; an

eighthour day shall be adopted; a weekly day of rest shall be allowed; child labor shall be abolished and

provision shall be made for the education of youth; men and women shall receive equal pay for equal work;

equitable treatment shall be accorded to all workers, including aliens resident in foreign lands; and an

adequate system of inspection shall be provided in which women should take part.

While these international adjustments were taking place, the American Federation began to anticipate the

problems of the inevitable national labor readjustment after the war. Through a committee appointed for that

purpose, it prepared an ample programme of reconstruction in which the basic features are the greater

participation of labor in shaping its environment, both in the factory and in the community, the development

of cooperative enterprise, public ownership or regulation of public utilities, strict supervision of corporations,

restriction of immigration, and the development of public education. The programme ends by declaring that

"the trade union movement is unalterably and emphatically opposed...to a large standing army."

During the entire period of the war, both at home and abroad, Gompers fought the pacifist and the socialist

elements in the labor movement. At the same time he was ever vigilant in pushing forward the claims of trade

unionism and was always beforehand in constructive suggestions. His life has spanned the period of great

industrial expansion in America. He has had the satisfaction of seeing his Federation grow under his

leadership at first into a national and then into an international force. Gompers is an orthodox trade unionist

of the British School. Bolshevism is to him a synonym for social ruin. He believes that capital and labor

should cooperate but that capital should cease to be the predominant factor in the equation. In order to secure

this balance he believes labor must unite and fight, and to this end he has devoted himself to the federation of

American trade unions and to their battle. He has steadfastly refused political preferment and has declined

many alluring offers to enter private business. In action he is an opportunista shrewd, calculating captain,

whose knowledge of human frailties stands him in good stead, and whose personal acquaintance with

hundreds of leaders of labor, of finance, and of politics, all over the country, has given him an unusual

opportunity to use his influence for the advancement of the cause of labor in the turbulent field of economic

The American Federation of Labor has been forced by the increasing complexity of modern industrial life to

recede somewhat from its early trade union isolation. This broadening point of view is shown first in the

recognition of the man of no trade, the unskilled worker. For years the skilled trades monopolized the

Federation and would not condescend to interest themselves in their humble brethren. The whole mechanism

of the Federation in the earlier period revolved around the organization of the skilled laborers. In England the

great dockers' strike of 1889 and in America the lurid flare of the I.W.W. activities forced the labor aristocrat

to abandon his pharisaic attitude and to take an interest in the welfare of the unskilled. The future will test the

stability of the Federation, for it is among the unskilled that radical and revolutionary movements find their

A further change in the internal policy of the Federation is indicated by the present tendency towards

amalgamating the various allied trades into one union. For instance, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters

and the Amalgamated Wood Workers' Association, composed largely of furniture makers and machine wood

workers, combined a few years ago and then proceeded to absorb the Wooden Box Makers, and the Wood

Workers in the shipbuilding industry. The general secretary of the new amalgamation said that the

organization looked "forward with pleasurable anticipations to the day when it can truly be said that all men

of the woodworking craft on this continent hold allegiance to the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and

Joiners of America." A similar unification has taken place in the lumbering industry. When the shingle

weavers formed an international union some fifteen years ago, they limited the membership "to the men

employed in skilled departments of the shingle trade." In 1912 the American Federation of Labor sanctioned

a plan for including in one organization all the workers in the lumber industry, both skilled and unskilled.

This is a far cry from the minute trade autocracy taught by the orthodox unionist thirty years ago.

Today the Federation of Labor is one of the most imposing organizations in the social system of America. It

reaches the workers in every trade. Every contributor to the physical necessities of our materialistic

civilization has felt the farreaching influence of confederated power. A sense of its strength pervades the

Federation. Like a healthy, selfconscious giant, it stalks apace among our national organizations. Through

its cautious yet pronounced policy, through its seeking after definite results and excluding all economic

vagaries, it bids fair to overcome the disputes that disturb it from within and the onslaughts of Socialism and

The trade union* forms the foundation upon which the whole edifice of the American Federation of Labor is

built. Like the Federation, each particular trade union has a tripartite structure: there is first the national body

called the Union, the International, the General Union, or the Grand Lodge; there is secondly the district

division or council, which is merely a convenient general union in miniature; and finally there is the local

individual union, usually called "the local." Some unions, such as the United Mine Workers, have a fourth

* The term "trade union" is used here in its popular sense, embracing labor, trade, and industrial unions,

The sovereign authority of a trade union is its general convention, a delegate body meeting at stated times.

Some unions meet annually, some biennially, some triennially, and a few determine by referendum when the

convention is to meet. Sometimes a long interval elapses: the granite cutters, for instance, held no convention

between 1880 and 1912, and the cigarmakers, after a convention in 1896, did not meet for sixteen years.

The initiative and referendum are, in some of the more compact unions, taking the place of the general

convention, while the small executive council insures promptness of administrative action.

The convention elects the general officers. Of these the president is the most conspicuous, for he is the field

marshal of the forces and fills a large place in the public eye when a great strike is called. It was in this

capacity that John Mitchell rose to sudden eminence during the historic anthracite strike in 1902, and George

W. Perkins of the cigarmakers' union achieved his remarkable hold upon the laboring people. As the duties

of the president of a union have increased, it has become the custom to elect numerous vicepresidents to

relieve him. Each of these has certain specific functions to perform, but all remain the president's aides. One,

for instance, may be the financier, another the strike agent, another the organizer, another the agitator. With

such a group of virtual specialists around a chieftain, a union has the immense advantage of centralized

command and of highly organized leadership. The tendency, especially among the more conservative unions,

is to reelect these officers year after year. The president of the Carpenters' Union held his office for twenty

years, and John Mitchell served the miners as president ten years. Under the immediate supervision of the

president, an executive board composed of all the officers guides the destinies of the union. When this board

is not occupied with the relations of the men to their employers, it gives its judicial consideration to the more

delicate and more difficult questions of interunion comity and of local differences.

The local union is the oldest labor organization, and a few existing locals can trace their origin as far back as

the decade preceding the Civil War. Many more antedate the organization of the Federation. Not a few of

these almost historic local unions have refused to surrender their complete independence by affiliating with

those of recent origin, but they have remained merely isolated independent locals with very little general

influence. The vast majority of local unions are members of the national trades union and of the Federation.

The local union is the place where the laborer comes into direct personal contact with this powerful entity

that has become such a factor in his daily life. Here he can satisfy that longing for the recognition of his point

of view denied him in the great factory and here he can meet men of similar condition, on terms of equality,

to discuss freely and without fear the topics that interest him most. There is an immense psychic potency in

this intimate association of fellow workers, especially in some of the older unions which have accumulated a

It is in the local union that the real life of the labor organization must be nourished, and the statesmanship of

the national leaders is directed to maintaining the greatest degree of local autonomy consistent with the

interests of national homogeneity. The individual laborer thus finds himself a member of a group of his

fellows with whom he is personally acquainted, who elect their own officers, to a large measure fix their own

dues, transact their own routine business, discipline their own members, and whenever possible make their

own terms of employment with their employers. The local unions are obliged to pay their tithe into the

greater treasury, to make stated reports, to appoint a certain roster of committees, and in certain small matters

to conform to the requirements of the national union. On the whole, however, they are independent little

democracies confederated, with others of their kind, by means of district and national organizations.

The unions representing the different trades vary in structure and spirit. There is an immense difference

between the temper of the tumultuous structural iron workers and the contemplative cigarmakers, who often

hire one of their number to read to them while engaged in their work, the favorite authors being in many

instances Ruskin and Carlyle. Some unions are more successful than others in collective bargaining. Martin

Fox, the able leader of the iron moulders, signed one of the first trade agreements in America and fixed the

tradition for his union; and the shoemakers, as well as most of the older unions are fairly well accustomed to

collective bargaining. In matters of discipline, too, the unions vary. Printers and certain of the more skilled

trades find it easier to enforce their regulations than do the longshoremen and unions composed of casual

foreign laborers. In size also the unions of the different trades vary. In 1910 three had a membership of over

100,000 each. Of these the United Mine Workers reached a total of 370,800, probably the largest trades union

in the world. The majority of the unions have a membership between 1000 and 10,000, the average for the

entire number being 5000; but the membership fluctuates from year to year, according to the conditions of

labor, and is usually larger in seasons of contest. Fluctuation in membership is most evident in the newer

unions and in the unskilled trades. The various unions differ also in resources. In some, especially those

composed largely of foreigners, the treasury is chronically empty; yet at the other extreme the mine workers

distributed $1,890,000 in strike benefits in 1902 and had $750,000 left when the board of arbitration sent the

The efforts of the unions to adjust themselves to the quickly changing conditions of modern industries are not

always successful. Old trade lines are instantly shifting, creating the most perplexing problem of interunion

amity. Over two score jurisdictional controversies appear for settlement at each annual convention of the

American Federation. The Association of Longshoremen and the Seamen's Union, for example, both claim

jurisdiction over employees in marine warehouses. The cigarmakers and the stogiemakers have also long

been at swords' points. Who shall have control over the coopers who work in breweriesthe Brewery

Workers or the Coopers' Union? Who shall adjust the machinery in elevatorsthe Machinists or Elevator

Constructors? Is the operator of a linotype machine a typesetter? So plasterers and carpenters, blacksmiths

and structural iron workers, printing pressmen and plate engravers, hod carriers and cement workers, are at

loggerheads; the electrification of a railway creates a jurisdictional problem between the electrical railway

employees and the locomotive engineers; and the marble workers and the plasterers quarrel as to the setting

of imitation marble. These quarrels regarding the claims of rival unions reveal the weakness of the Federation

as an arbitral body. There is no centralized authority to impose a standard or principle which could lead to the

settlement of such disputes. Trade jealousy has overcome the suggestions of the peacemakers that either the

nature of the tools used, or the nature of the operation, or the character of the establishment be taken as the

When the Federation itself fails as a peacemaker, it cannot be expected that locals will escape these

controversies. There are many examples, often ludicrous, of petty jealousies and trade rivalries. The man who

tried to build a brick house, employing union bricklayers to lay the brick and union painters to paint the brick

walls, found to his loss that such painting was considered a bricklayer's job by the bricklayers' union, who

charged a higher wage than the painters would have done. It would have relieved him to have the two unions

amalgamate. And this in general has become a real way out of the difficulty. For instance, a dispute between

the Steam and Hot Water Fitters and the Plumbers was settled by an amalgamation called the United

Association of Journeymen Plumbers, Gas Fitters, Steam Fitters, and Steam Fitters' Helpers, which is now

affiliated with the Federation. But the International Association of Steam, Hot Water, and Power Pipe Fitters

and Helpers is not affiliated, and interunion war results. The older unions, however, have a stabilizing

influence upon the newer, and a genuine conservatism such as characterizes the British unions is becoming

more apparent as age solidifies custom and lends respect to bylaws and constitutions. But even time cannot

obviate the seismic effects of new inventions, and shifts in jurisdictional matters are always imminent. The

dominant policy of the trade union is to keep its feet on the earth, no matter where its head may be; to take

one step at a time, and not to trouble about the future of society. This purpose, which has from the first been

the prompter of union activity, was clearly enunciated in the testimony of Adolph Strasser, a converted

socialist, one of the leading trade unionists, and president of the Cigarmakers' Union, before a Senate

Witness: Yes sir, I look first to the trade I represent: I look first to cigars, to the interests of men, who employ

Witness: We have no ultimate ends. We are going on from day to day. We are fighting only for immediate

Chairman: You want something better to eat and to wear, and better houses to live in?

Witness: Yes, we want to dress better and to live better, and become better citizens generally.

Chairman: I see that you are a little sensitive lest it should be thought that you are a mere theorizer. I do not

Witness: Well, we say in our constitution that we are opposed to theorists, and I have to represent the

This remains substantially the trade union platform today. Trade unionists all aim to be "practical men."

The trade union has been the training school for the labor leader, that comparatively new and increasingly

important personage who is a product of modern industrial society. Possessed of natural aptitudes, he usually

passes by a process of logical evolution, through the important committees and offices of his local into the

wider sphere of the national union, where as president or secretary, he assumes the leadership of his group.

Circumstances and conditions impose a heavy burden upon him, and his tasks call for a variety of gifts.

Because some particular leader lacked tact or a sense of justice or some similar quality, many a labor

maneuver has failed, and many a labor organization has suffered in the public esteem. No other class relies so

much upon wise leadership as does the laboring class. The average wageearner is without experience in

confronting a new situation or trained and superior minds. From his tasks he has learned only the routine of

his craft. When he is faced with the necessity of prompt action, he is therefore obliged to depend upon his

In America these leaders have risen from the rank and file of labor. Their education is limited. The great

majority have only a primary schooling. Many have supplemented this meager stock of learning by rather

wide but desultory reading and by keen observation. A few have read law, and some have attended night

schools. But all have graduated from the University of Life. Many of them have passed through the bitterest

poverty, and all have been raised among toilers and from infancy have learned to sympathize with the toiler's

point of view.* They are therefore by training and origin distinctly leaders of a class, with the outlook upon

* A wellknown labor leader once said to the writer: "No matter how much you go around among laboring

people, you will never really understand us unless you were brought up among us. There is a real gulf

between your way of looking on life and ours. You can be only an investigator or an intellectual sympathizer

with my people. But you cannot really understand our viewpoint." Whatever of misconception there may be

in this attitude, it nevertheless marks the actual temper of the average wageearner, in spite of the fact that in

In a very real sense the American labor leader is the counterpart of the American business man intensively

trained, averse to vagaries, knowing thoroughly one thing and only one thing, and caring very little for

This comparative restriction of outlook marks a sharp distinction between American and British labor leaders.

In Britain such leadership is a distinct career for which a young man prepares himself. He is usually fairly

well educated, for not infrequently he started out to study for the law or the ministry and was sidetracked by

hard necessity. A few have come into the field from journalism. As a result, the British labor leader has a

certain veneer of learning and puts on a more impressive front than the American. For example, Britain has

produced Ramsey MacDonald, who writes books and makes speeches with a rare grace; John Burns, who

quotes Shakespeare or recites history with wonderful fluency; Keir Hardie, a miner from the ranks, who was

possessed of a charming poetic fancy; Philip Snowden, who displays the spiritual qualities of a seer; and John

Henderson, who combines philosophical power with skill in dialectics. On the other hand, the rank and file of

American labor is more intelligent and alert than that of British labor, and the American labor leader

possesses a greater capacity for intensive growth and is perhaps a better specialist at rough and tumble

* The writer recalls spending a day in one of the Midland manufacturing towns with the secretary of a local

cooperative society, a man who was steeped in Bergson's philosophy and talked on local botany and geology

as fluently as on local labor conditions. It would be difficult to duplicate this experience in America.

In a very real sense every trade union is typified by some aggressive personality. The Granite Cutters'

National Union was brought into active being in 1877 largely through the instrumentality of James Duncan, a

rugged fighter who, having federated the locals, set out to establish an eighthour day through collective

bargaining and to settle disputes by arbitration. He succeeded in forming a welldisciplined force out of the

members of his craft, and even the employers did not escape the touch of his rod.

The Glassblowers' Union was saved from disruption by Dennis Hayes, who, as president of the national

union, reorganized the entire force in the years 189699, unionized a dozen of the largest glass producing

plants in the United States and succeeded in raising the wages fifteen per cent. He introduced methods of

arbitration and collective agreements and established a successful system of insurance.

James O'Connell, the president of the International Association of Machinists, led his organization safely

through the panic of 1893, reorganized it upon a broader basis, and introduced sick benefits. In 1901 after a

long and wearisome dickering with the National Metal Trades Association, a shorter day was agreed upon,

but, as the employers would not agree to a tenhour wage for a ninehour day, O'Connell led his men out on

Thomas Kidd, secretary of the WoodWorkers' International Union, was largely responsible for the

agreement made with the manufacturers in 1897 for the establishment of a minimum wage of fifteen cents an

hour for a tenhour day, a considerable advance over the average wage paid up to that time. Kidd was the

object of severe attacks in various localities, and in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where labor riots took place for the

enforcement of the Union demands, he was arrested for conspiracy but acquitted by the trial jury.

When the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers lost their strike at Homestead, Pennsylvania,

in 1892, the union was thought to be dead. It was quietly regalvanized into activity, however, by Theodore

Schaffer, who has displayed adroitness in managing its affairs in the face of tremendous opposition from the

The International Typographical Union, composed of an unusually intelligent body of men, owes its singular

success in collective contracting largely to James M. Lynch, its national president. The great newspapers did

not give in to the demands of the union without a series of struggles in which Lynch manipulated his forces

with skill and tact. Today this is one of the most powerful unions in the country.

Entirely different was the material out of which D.J. Keefe formed his Union of Longshoremen, Marine and

Transport Workers. His was a mass of unskilled workers, composed of many nationalities accustomed to

rough conditions, and not easily led. Keefe, as president of their International Union, has had more difficulty

in restraining his men and in teaching them the obligations of a contract than any other leader. At least on one

occasion he employed nonunion men to carry out the agreement which his recalcitrant following had made

The evolution of an American labor leader is shown at its best in the career of John Mitchell, easily the most

influential trade unionist of this generation. He was born on February 4, 1870, on an Illinois farm, but at two

years of age he lost his mother and at four his father. With other lads of his neighborhood he shared the

meager privileges of the school terms that did not interfere with farm work. At thirteen he was in the coal

mines in Braidwood, Illinois, and at sixteen he was the outer doorkeeper in the local lodge of the Knights of

Labor. Eager to see the world, he now began a period of wandering, working his way from State to State. So

he traversed the Far West and the Southwest, alert in observing social conditions and coming in contact with

many types of men. These wanderings stood him in lieu of an academic course, and when he returned to the

coal fields of Illinois he was ready to settle down. From his Irish parentage he inherited a genial personality

and a gift of speech. These traits, combined with his continual reading on economic and sociological subjects,

soon lifted him into local leadership. He became president of the village school board and of the local lodge

of the Knights of Labor. He joined the United Mine Workers of America upon its organization in 1890. He

rose rapidly in its ranks, was a delegate to the district and subdistrict conventions, secretarytreasurer of the

Illinois district, chairman of the Illinois legislative committee, member of the executive board, and national

organizer. In January, 1898, he was elected national vicepresident, and in the following autumn, upon the

resignation of the president, he became acting president. The national convention in 1899 chose him as

president, a position which he held for ten years. He has served as one of the vicepresidents of the American

Federation of Labor since 1898, was for some years chairman of the Trade Agreement Department of the

National Civic Federation and has held the position of Chairman of the New York State Industrial

When he rose to the leadership of the United Mine Workers, this union had only 48,000 members, confined

almost exclusively to the bituminous regions of the West.* Within the decade of his presidency he brought

virtually all the miners of the United States under his leadership. Wherever his union went, there followed

sooner or later the eighthour day, raises in wages of from thirteen to twentyfive per cent, periodical joint

conventions with the operators for settling wage scales and other points in dispute, and a spirit of prosperity

In unionizing the anthracite miners, Mitchell had his historic fight with the group of powerful corporations

that owned the mines and the railways which fed them. This great strike, one of the most significant in our

history, attracted universal attention because of the issues involved, because a coal shortage threatened many

Eastern cities, and because of the direct intervention of President Roosevelt. The central figure of this

gigantic struggle was the miners' young leader, barely thirty years old, with the features of a scholar and the

demeanor of an ascetic, marshaling his forces with the strategic skill of a veteran general.

At the beginning of the strike Mitchell, as president of the Union, announced that the miners were eager to

submit all their grievances to an impartial arbitral tribunal and to abide by its decisions. The ruthless and

prompt refusal of the mine owners to consider this proposal reacted powerfully in the strikers' favor among

the public. As the long weeks of the struggle wore on, increasing daily in bitterness, multiplying the

apprehension of the strikers and the restiveness of the coal consumers, Mitchell bore the increasing strain

After the parties had been deadlocked for many weeks, President Roosevelt called the mine owners and the

union leaders to a conference in the White House. Of Mitchell's bearing, the President afterwards remarked:

"There was only one man in the room who behaved like a gentleman, and that man was not I."

The Board of Arbitration eventually laid the blame on both sides but gave the miners the bulk of their

demands. The public regarded the victory as a Mitchell victory, and the unions adored the leader who had

won their first strike in a quarter of a century, and who had won universal confidence by his ability and

* Mitchell was crossexamined for three days when he was testifying before the Anthracite Coal Strike

Commission. Every weapon which craft, prejudice, and skill could marshal against him failed to rule his

John Mitchell's powerful hold upon public opinion today is not alone due to his superior intelligence, his self

possession, his business skill, nor his Irish gift of human accommodation, but to the greater facts that he was

always aware of the grave responsibilities of leadership, that he realized the stern obligation of a business

contract, and that he always followed the trade union policy of asking only for that which was attainable.

"I am opposed to strikes as I am opposed to war. As yet, however, the world with all its progress has not

made war impossible; neither, I fear, considering the nature of men and their institutions, will the strike

"This strike has taught both capital and labor that they owe certain obligations to society and that their

obligations must be discharged in good faith. If both are fair and conciliatory, if both recognize the moral

restraint of the state of society by which they are surrounded, there need be few strikes. They can, and it is

"Since labor organizations are here, and here to stay, the managers of employing corporations must choose

what they are to do with them. They may have the union as a present, active, and unrecognized force,

possessing influence for good or evil, but without direct responsibility; or they may deal with it, give it

responsibility as well as power, define and regulate that power, and make the union an auxiliary in the

promotion of stability and discipline and the amicable adjustment of all local disputes."

The solidarity and statesmanship of the trade unions reached perfection in the railway "Brotherhoods." Of

these the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers* is the oldest and most powerful. It grew out of the union of

several early associations; one of these was the National Protective Association formed after the great

Baltimore and Ohio strike in 1854; another was the Brotherhood of the Footboard, organized in Detroit after

the bitter strike on the Michigan Central in 1862. Though born thus of industrial strife, this railroad union has

nevertheless developed a poise and a conservatism which have been its greatest assets in the numerous

controversies engaging its energies. No other union has had a more continuous and hardheaded leadership,

and no other has won more universal respect both from the public and from the employer.

* Up to this time the Brotherhoods have not affiliated with the Knights of Labor nor with the American

Federation of Labor. After the passage of the eighthour law by Congress in 1916, definite steps were taken

towards affiliating the Railway Brotherhoods with the Federation, and at its annual convention in 1919 the

This high position is largely due, no doubt, to the fact that the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers is

composed of a very select and intelligent class of men. Every engineer must first serve an apprenticeship as a

fireman, which usually lasts from four to twelve years. Very few are advanced to the rank of engineer in less

than four years. The firemen themselves are selected men who must pass several physical examinations and

then submit to the test of as arduous an apprenticeship as modern industrialism affords. In the course of an

eight to twelvehour run firemen must shovel from fifteen to twentyfive tons of coal into the blazing fire

box of a locomotive. In winter they are constantly subjected to hot blasts from the furnace and freezing drafts

from the wind. Records show that out of every hundred who begin as firemen only seventeen become

engineers and of these only six ever become passenger engineers. The mere strain on the eyes caused by

looking into the coal blaze eliminates 17 per cent. Those who eventually become engineers are therefore a

The constant dangers accompanying their daily work require railroad engineers to be no less dependable from

the moral point of view. The history of railroading is as replete with heroism as is the story of any war. A

coward cannot long survive at the throttle. The process of natural selection which the daily labor of an

engineer involves the Brotherhood has supplemented by most rigid moral tests. The character of every

applicant for membership is thoroughly scrutinized and must be vouched for by three members. He must

demonstrate his skill and prove his character by a year's probation before his application is finally voted

upon. Once within the fold, the rules governing his conduct are inexorable. If he shuns his financial

obligations or is guilty of a moral lapse, he is summarily expelled. In 1909, thirtysix members were expelled

When the order was only five years old and still struggling for its life, it nevertheless expelled 172 members

for drunkenness. In proven cases of this sort the railway authorities are notified, the offending engineer is

dismissed from the service, and the shame of these culprits is published to the world in the Locomotive

Engineers' Journal, which reaches every member of the order. There is probably no other club or professional

organization so exacting in its demands that its members be selfrespecting, faithful, lawabiding, and

Today ninety per cent of all the locomotive engineers in the United States and Canada belong to this union.

But the Brotherhood early learned the lesson of exclusion. In 1864 after very annoying experiences with

firemen and other railway employees on the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad, it amended its

constitution and excluded firemen and machinists from the order. This exclusive policy, however, is based

upon the stern requirements of professional excellence and is not displayed towards engineers who are not

members of the Brotherhood. Towards them there is displayed the greatest toleration and none of the narrow

spirit of the "closed shop." The nonunion engineer is not only tolerated but is even on occasion made the

beneficiary of the activities of the union. He shares, for example, in the rise of wages and readjustment of

runs. There are even cases on record where the railroad unions have taken up a specific grievance between a

>From the inception of the Brotherhood, the policy of the order towards the employing railroad company has

been one of business and not of sentiment. The Brotherhood has held that the relation between the employer

and employee concerning wages, hours, conditions of labor, and settlement of difficulties should be on the

basis of a written contract; that the engineer as an individual was at a manifest disadvantage in making such a

contract with a railway company; that he therefore had a right to join with his fellow engineers in pressing his

demands and therefore had the right to a collective contract. Though for over a decade the railways fought

stubbornly against this policy, in the end every important railroad of this country and Canada gave way. It is

doubtful, indeed, if any of them would today be willing to go back to the old method of individual

bargaining, for the brotherhood has insisted upon the inviolability of a contract once entered into. It has

consistently held that "a bargain is a bargain, even if it is a poor gain." Members who violate an agreement

are expelled, and any local lodge which is guilty of such an offense has its charter revoked.*

* In 1905 in New York City 893 members were expelled and their charter was revoked for violation of their

contract of employment by taking part in a sympathetic strike of the subway and elevated roads.

Once the practice of collective contract was fixed, it naturally followed that some mechanism for adjusting

differences would be devised. The Brotherhood and the various roads now maintain a general board of

adjustment for each railway system. The Brotherhood is strict in insisting that the action of this board is

binding on all its members. This method of bargaining and of settling disputes has been so successful that

since 1888 the Brotherhood has not engaged in an important strike. There have been minor disturbances, it is

true, and several nationwide threats, but no serious strikes inaugurated by the engineers. This great

achievement of the Brotherhood could not have been possible without keen ability in the leaders and splendid

The individual is carefully looked after by the Brotherhood. The Locomotive Engineers' Mutual Life and

Accident Insurance Association is an integral part of the Brotherhood, though it maintains a separate legal

existence in order to comply with the statutory requirements of many States.* Every member must carry an

insurance policy in this Association for not less than $1500, though he cannot take more than $4500. The

policy is carried by the order if the engineer becomes sick or is otherwise disabled, but if he fails to pay

assessments when he is in full health, he gives grounds for expulsion. There is a pension roll of three hundred

disabled engineers, each of whom receives $25 a month; and the four railroad brotherhoods together maintain

* The following figures show the status of the Insurance Association in 1918. The total amount of life

insurance in force was $161,805,500.00. The total amount of claims paid from 1868 to 1918 was

$41,085,183.04. The claims paid in 1918 amounted to $3,014,540.22. The total amount of indemnity

insurance in force in 1918 was $12,486,397.50. The total claims paid up to 1918 were $1,624,537.61; and

The technical side of engine driving is emphasized by the "Locomotive Engineers' Journal" which goes to

every member, and in discussions in the stated meetings of the Brotherhood. Intellectual and social interests

are maintained also by lecture courses, study clubs, and women's auxiliaries. Attendance upon the lodge

meetings has been made compulsory with the intention of insuring the order from falling prey to a designing

minoritya condition which has proved the cause of the downfall of more than one labor union.

The Brotherhood of Engineers is virtually a large and prosperous business concern: Its management has been

enterprising and provident; its treasury is full; its insurance policies aggregate many millions; it owns a

modern skyscraper in Cleveland which cost $1,250,000 and which yields a substantial revenue besides

The engineers have, indeed, succeeded in forming a real Brotherhooda "feudal" brotherhood an opposing

lawyer once called themreestablishing the medieval guildpaternalism so that each member is responsible

for every other and all are responsible for each. They therefore merge themselves through selfdiscipline into

The supreme authority of the Brotherhood is the Convention, which is composed of delegates from the local

subdivisions. In the interim between conventions, the authorized leader of the organization is the Grand Chief

Engineer, whose decrees are final unless reversed by the Convention. This authority places a heavy

responsibility upon him, but the Brotherhood has been singularly fortunate in its choice of chiefs. Since 1873

there have been only two. The first of these was P. M. Arthur, a sturdy Scot, born in 1831 and brought to

America in boyhood. He learned the blacksmith and machinist trades but soon took to railroading, in which

he rose rapidly from the humblest place to the position of engineer on the New York Central lines. He

became one of the charter members of the Brotherhood in 1863 and was active in its affairs from the first. In

1873 the union became involved in a bitter dispute with the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Arthur, whose

prompt and energetic action had already designated him as the natural leader of the Brotherhood, was elected

to the chieftainship. For thirty years he maintained his prestige and became a national figure in the labor

world. He died suddenly at Winnipeg in 1903 while speaking at the dinner which closed the general

When P.M. Arthur joined the engineers' union, the condition of locomotive engineers was unsatisfactory.

Wages were unstable; working conditions were hard and, in the freight service, intolerable. For the first

decade of the existence of the Brotherhood, strike after strike took place in the effort to establish the right of

organizing and the principle of the collective contract. Arthur became head of the order at the beginning of

the period of great financial depression which followed the first Civil War boom and which for six years

threatened wages in all trades. But Arthur succeeded, by shrewd and careful bargaining, in keeping the pay of

engineers from slipping down and in some instances he even advanced them. Gradually strikes became more

and more infrequent; and the railways learned to rely upon his integrity, and the engineers to respect his skill

as a negotiator. He proved to the first that he was not a labor agitator and to the others that he was not a

Year by year, Arthur accumulated prestige and power for his union by practical methods and by being

content with a step at a time. This success, however, cost him the enmity of virtually all the other trades

unionists. To them the men of his order were aristocrats, and he was lord over the aristocrats. He is said to

have "had rare skill in formulating reasonable demands, and by consistently putting moderate demands

strongly instead of immoderate demands weakly he kept the good will of railroad managers, while steadily

obtaining better terms for his men." In this practice, he could not succeed without the solid good will of the

members of the Brotherhood; and this good will was possible only in an order which insisted upon that high

standard of personal skill and integrity essential to a firstclass engineer. Arthur possessed a genial, fatherly

personality. His Scotch shrewdness was seen in his own real estate investments, which formed the foundation

of an independent fortune. He lived in an imposing stone mansion in Cleveland; he was a director in a leading

When Chief Arthur died, the Assistant Grand Chief Engineer, A.B. Youngson, who would otherwise have

assumed the leadership for the unexpired term, was mortally ill and recommended the advisory board to

telegraph Warren S. Stone an offer of the chieftainship. Thus events brought to the fore a man of marked

executive talent who had hitherto been unknown but who was to play a tremendous role in later labor politics.

Stone was little known east of the Mississippi. He had spent most of his life on the Rock Island system, had

visited the East only once, and had attended but one meeting of the General Convention. In the West,

however, he had a wide reputation for sound sense, and, as chairman of the general committee of adjustment

of the Rock Island system, he had made a deep impression on his union and his employers. Born in

Ainsworth, Iowa, in 1860, Stone had received a high school education and had begun his railroading career as

fireman on the Rock Island when he was nineteen years old. At twentyfour he became an engineer. In this

capacity he spent the following nineteen years on the Rock Island road and then accepted the chieftainship of

Stone followed the general policy of his predecessor, and brought to his tasks the energy of youth and the

optimism of the West. When he assumed the leadership, the cost of living was rising rapidly and he addressed

himself to the adjustment of wages. He divided the country into three sections in which conditions were

similar. He began in the Western section, as he was most familiar with that field, and asked all the general

managers of that section to meet the Brotherhood for a wage conference. The roads did not accept his

invitation until it was reenforced by the threat of a Western strike. The conference was a memorable one. For

nearly three weeks the grand officers of the Brotherhood wrangled and wrought with the managers of the

Western roads, who yielded ground slowly, a few pennies' increase at a time, until a satisfactory wage scale

was reached. Similarly the Southern section was conquered by the inexorable hard sense and perseverance of

The dispute with the fiftytwo leading roads in the socalled Eastern District, east of the Mississippi and

north of the Norfolk and Western Railroad, came to a head in 1912. The engineers demanded that their wages

should be "standardized" on a basis that one hundred miles or less, or ten hours or less, constitute a day's

work; that is, the inequalities among the different roads should be leveled and similar service on the various

roads be similarly rewarded. They also asked that their wages be made equal to the wages on the Western

roads and presented several minor demands. All the roads concerned flatly refused to grant the demand for a

standardized and increased wage, on the ground that it would involve an increased expenditure of $7,000,000

a year. This amount could be made up only by increased rates, which the Interstate Commerce Commission

must sanction, or by decreased dividends, which would bring a real hardship to thousands of stockholders.

The unions were fully prepared for a strike which would paralyze the essential traffic supplying

approximately 38,000,000 people. Through the agency of Judge Knapp of the United States Commerce Court

and Dr. Neill of the United States Department of Labor, and under the authority of the Erdman Act, there was

appointed a board of arbitration composed of men whose distinction commanded national attention. P.H.

Morrissey, a former chief of the Conductors' and Trainmen's Union, was named by the engineers. President

Daniel Willard of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, known for his fair treatment of his employees, was

chosen by the roads. The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, the Commissioner of Labor, and

the presiding judge of the United States Commerce Court designated the following members of the tribunal:

Oscar S. Straus, former Secretary of Commerce and Labor, chairman; Albert Shaw, editor of the Review of

Reviews; Otto M. Eidlitz, former president of the Building Trades Association; Charles R. Van Hise,

president of the University of Wisconsin; and Frederick N. Judson, of the St. Louis bar.

After five months of hearing testimony and deliberation, this distinguished board brought in a report that

marked, it was hoped, a new epoch in railway labor disputes, for it recognized the rights of the public, the

It granted the principle of standardization and minimum wage asked for by the engineers, but it allowed an

increase in pay which was less by onehalf than that demanded. In order to prevent similar discord in the

future, the board recommended the establishment of Federal and state wage commissions with functions

pertaining to wage disputes analogous to those of the public service commissions in regard to rates and

capitalization. The report stated that, "while the railway employees feel that they cannot surrender their right

to strike, if there were a wage commission which would secure them just wages the necessity would no

longer exist for the exercise of their power. It is believed that, in the last analysis, the only solutionunless

we are to rely solely upon the restraining power of public opinionis to qualify the principle of free contract

* The board recognized the great obstacles in the way of such a solution but went on to say: "The suggestion,

however, grows out of a profound conviction that the food and clothing of our people, the industries and the

general welfare of our nation, cannot be permitted to depend upon the policies and dictates of any particular

group of men, whether employers or employees." And this conviction has grown apace with the years until it

stands today as the most potent check to aggression by either trade unions or capital.

While yielding to the wage findings of the board, P.H. Morrissey vigorously dissented from the principle of

the supremacy of public interest in these matters. He made clear his position in an able minority report: "I

wish to emphasize my dissent from that recommendation of the board which in its effect virtually means

compulsory arbitration for the railroads and their employees. Regardless of any probable constitutional

prohibition which might operate against its being adopted, it is wholly impracticable. The progress towards

the settlement of disputes between the railways and their employees without recourse to industrial warfare

has been marked. There is nothing under present conditions to prevent its continuance. We will never be

perfect, but even so, it will be immeasurably better than it will be under conditions such as the board

The significance of these words was brought out four years later when the united railway brotherhoods made

their famous coup in Congress. For the time being, however, the public with its usual selfassurance thought

the railway employee question was solved, though the findings were for one year only.*

* The award dated back to May 1, 1912, and was valid only one year from that date.

Daniel Willard speaking for the railroads, said: "My acceptance of the award as a whole does not signify my

approval of all the findings in detail. It is intended, however, to indicate clearly that, although the award is not

such as the railroads had hoped for, nor is it such as they felt would be justified by a full consideration of all

the facts, yet having decided to submit this case to arbitration and having been given ample opportunity to

present the facts and arguments in support of their position, they now accept without question the conclusion

A comparison of these statements shows how the balance of power had shifted, since the days when railway

policies reigned supreme, from the corporation to the union. The change was amply demonstrated by the next

grand entrance of the railway brotherhoods upon the public stage. After his victory in the Western territory,

Chief Stone remarked: "Most labor troubles are the result of one of two things, misrepresentation or

misunderstanding. Unfortunately, negotiations are sometimes entrusted to men who were never intended by

nature for this mission, since they cannot discuss a question without losing their temper .... It may be laid

down as a fundamental principle without which no labor organization can hope to exist, that it must carry out

its contracts. No employer can be expected to live up to a contract that is not regarded binding by the union."

The other railway brotherhoods to a considerable degree follow the model set by the engineers. The Order of

Railway Conductors developed rapidly from the Conductors' Union which was organized by the conductors

of the Illinois Central Railroad at Amboy, Illinois, in the spring of 1868. In the following July this union was

extended to include all the lines in the State. In November of the same year a call to conductors on all the

roads in the United States and the British Provinces was issued to meet at Columbus, Ohio, in December, to

organize a general brotherhood. Ten years later the union adopted its present name. It has an ample insurance

fund* based upon the principle that policies are not matured but members arriving at the age of seventy years

are relieved from further payments. About thirty members are thus annually retired. At Cedar Rapids, Iowa,

the national headquarters, the order publishes The Railway Conductor, a journal which aims not only at the

* In 1919 the total amount of outstanding insurance was somewhat over $90,000,000.

The conductors are a conservative and carefully selected group of men. Each must pass through a long term

of apprenticeship and must possess ability and personality. The order has been carefully and skillfully led and

in recent years has had but few differences with the railways which have not been amicably settled. Edgar E.

Clark was chosen president in 1890 and served until 1906, when he became a member of the Interstate

Commerce Commission. He was born in 1856, received a public school education, and studied for some time

in an academy at Lima, New York. At the age of seventeen, he began railroading and served as conductor on

the Northern Pacific and other Western lines. He held numerous subordinate positions in the Brotherhood and

in 1889 became its vicepresident. He was appointed by President Roosevelt as a member of the Anthracite

Coal Strike Commission in 1902 and is generally recognized as one of the most judicial heads in the labor

world. He was succeeded as president of the order by Austin B. Garretson, who was born in Winterset, Iowa,

in 1856. He began his railroad career at nineteen years of age, became a conductor on the Burlington system,

and had a varied experience on several Western lines, including the Mexican National and Mexican Central

railways. His rise in the order was rapid and in 1889 he became vicepresident. One of his intimate friends

wrote that "in his capacity as VicePresident and President of the Order he has written more schedules and

successfully negotiated more wage settlements, including the eighthour day settlement in 1916, under the

method of collective bargaining than any other labor leader on the American continent."

Garretson has long served as a member of the executive committee of the National Civic Federation and in

1919 was appointed by President Wilson a member of the Federal Commission on Industrial Relations. A

man of great energy and force of character, he has recently assumed a leading place in labor union activities.

In addition to the locomotive engineers and the conductors, the firemen also have their union. Eleven firemen

of the Erie Railroad organized a brotherhood at Port Jervis, New York, in December, 1873, but it was a

fraternal order rather than a trade union. In 1877, the year of the great railway strike, it was joined by the

International Firemen's Union, an organization without any fraternal or insurance features. In spite of this

amalgamation, however, the growth of the Brotherhood was very slow. Indeed, so unsatisfactory was the

condition of affairs that in 1879 the order took an unusual step. "So bitter was the continued opposition of

railroad officials at this time," relates the chronicler of the Brotherhood (in some sections of the country it

resulted in the disbandment of the lodges and the depletion of membership) "that it was decided, in order to

remove the cause of such opposition, to eliminate the protective feature of the organization. With a view to

this end a resolution was adopted ignoring strikes." This is one of the few recorded retreats of militant trade

unionism. The treasury of the Brotherhood was so depleted that it was obliged to call upon local lodges for

donations. By 1885, however, the order had sufficiently recovered to assume again the functions of a labor

union in addition to its fraternal and beneficiary obligations. The days of its greatest hardships were over,

although the historic strike on the Burlington lines that lasted virtually throughout the year 1888 and the

Pullman strike in 1894 wrought a severe strain upon its staying powers. In 1906 the enginemen were

incorporated into the order, and thenceforth the membership grew rapidly. In 1913 a joint agreement was

effected with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers whereby the two organizations could work together

"on a labor union basis." Today men operating electric engines or motor or gas cars on lines using electricity

are eligible for membership, if they are otherwise qualified. This arrangement does not interfere with unions

The leadership of this order of firemen has been less continuous, though scarcely less conspicuous, than that

of the other brotherhoods. Before 1886 the Grand Secretary and Treasurer was invested with greater authority

than the grand master, and in this position Eugene V. Debs, who served from 1881 to 1899, and Frank W.

Arnold, who served from 1893 to 1903, were potent in shaping the policies of the Union. There have been

seven grand masters and one president (the name now used to designate the chief officer) since 1874. Of

these leaders Frank P. Sargent served from 1886 until 1892, when he was appointed Commissioner General

of Immigration by President Roosevelt. Since 1909, William S. Carter has been president of the Brotherhood.

Born in Texas in 1859, he began railroading at nineteen years of age and served in turn as fireman,

baggageman, and engineer. Before his election to the editorship of the Firemen's Magazine, he held various

minor offices in local lodges. Since 1894 he has served the order successively as editor, grand secretary and

treasurer, and president. To his position he has brought an intimate knowledge of the affairs of the Union as

well as a varied experience in practical railroading. Upon the entrance of America into the Great War,

President Wilson appointed him Director of the Division of Labor of the United States Railway

"This Brotherhood may be compared to a state in a republic of railway unions, maintaining almost complete

autonomy in its own affairs yet uniting with other railway brotherhoods in matters of mutual concern and in

common defense. It is true that these railway brotherhoods carry the principle of home rule to great lengths

and have acknowledged no common head, and by this have invited the criticism from those who believe...that

only in one 'big' union can railway employees hope for improved working condition.... That in union there is

strength, no one will deny, but in any confederation of forces there must be an exchange of individual rights

for this collective power. There is a point in the combining of working people in labor unions where the loss

of individual rights is not compensated by the increased power of the masses of workers."

In the cautious working out of this principle, the firemen have prospered after the manner of their colleagues

in the other brotherhoods. Their membership embraces the large majority of their craft. From the date of the

establishment of their beneficiary fund to 1918 a total of $21,860,103.00 has been paid in death and disability

claims and in 1918 the amount so paid was $1,538,207.00. The Firemen's Magazine, established in 1876 and

now published from headquarters in Cleveland, is indicative of the ambitions of the membership, for its

avowed aim is to "make a specialty of educational matter for locomotive enginemen and other railroad

employees." An attempt was even made in 1908 to conduct a correspondence school, under the supervision of

the editor and manager of the magazine, but after three years this project was discontinued because it could

The youngest of the railway labor organizations is the Brotherhood of Trainmen, organized in September,

1883, at Oneonta, New York. Its early years were lean and filled with bickerings and doubts, and it was not

until S. E. Wilkinson was elected grand master in 1885 that it assumed an important role in labor

organizations. Wilkinson was one of those big, rough and ready men, with a natural aptitude for leadership,

who occasionally emerge from the mass. He preferred railroading to schooling and spent more time in the

train sheds of his native town of Monroeville, Ohio, than he did at school. At twelve years of age he ran away

to join the Union Army, in which he served as an orderly until the end of the war. He then followed his

natural bent, became a switchman and later a brakeman, was a charter member of the Brotherhood, and, when

its outlook was least encouraging, became its Grand Master. At once under his leadership the organization

The conditions under which trainmen worked were far from satisfactory. At that time, in the Eastern field, the

pay of a brakeman was between $1.50 and $2 a day in the freight service, $45 a month in the passenger

service, and $50 a month for yard service. In the Southern territory, the wages were very much lower and in

the Western about $5 per month higher. The runs in the different sections of the country were not equalized;

there was no limit to the number of hours called a day's work; overtime and preparatory time were not

counted in; and there were many complaints of arbitrary treatment of trainmen by their superiors. Wilkinson

set to work to remedy the wage situation first. Almost at once he brought about the adoption of the principle

of collective bargaining for trainmen and yardmen. By 1895, when he relinquished his office, the majority of

the railways in the United States and Canada had working agreements with their train and yard service men.

Wages had been raised, twelve hours or less and one hundred miles or less became recognized as a daily

The panic of 1893 hit the railway service very hard. There followed many strikes engineered by the American

Railway Union, a radical organization which carried its ideas of violence so far that it wrecked not only itself

but brought the newer and conservative Brotherhoods to the verge of ruin. It was during this period of strain

that, in 1895, P. H. Morrissey was chosen Grand Master of the Trainmen. With a varied training in

railroading, in insurance, and in labor organization work, Morrissey was in many ways the antithesis of his

predecessors who had, in a powerful and brusque way, prepared the ground for his analytical and judicial

leadership. He was unusually well informed on all matters pertaining to railroad operations, earnings, and

conditions of employment, and on general economic conditions. This knowledge, together with his

forcefulness, tact, parliamentary ability, and rare good judgment, soon made him the spokesman of all the

railway Brotherhoods in their joint conferences and their leader before the public. He was not afraid to take

the unpopular side of a cause, cared nothing for mere temporary advantages, and had the gift of inspiring

When Morrissey assumed the leadership of the Trainmen, their order had lost 10,000 members in two years

and was about $200,000 in debt. The panic had produced unemployment and distrust, and the violent

reprisals of the American Railway Union had reaped a harvest of bitterness and disloyalty. During his fifteen

years of service until he retired in 1909, Morrissey saw his order rejuvenated and virtually reconstructed, the

work of the men standardized in the greater part of the country, slight increases of pay given to the freight

and passenger men, and very substantial increases granted to the yard men. But his greatest service to his

He was succeeded by William G. Lee, who had served in many subordinate offices in local lodges before he

had been chosen First ViceGrand Master in 1895. For fifteen years he was a faithful understudy to

Morrissey whose policy he has continued in a characteristically fearless and thoroughgoing manner. When he

assumed the presidency of the order, he obtained a tenhour day in the Eastern territory for all train and yard

men, together with a slight increase in pay for all classes fixed on the tenhour basis. The tenhour day was

now adopted in Western territory where it had not already been put into effect. The Southern territory,

however, held out until 1912, when a general advance on all Southern railroads, with one exception, brought

the freight and passenger men to a somewhat higher level of wages than existed in other parts of the country.

In the following year the East and the West raised their wages so that finally a fairly level rate prevailed

throughout the United States. In the movement for the eighthour day which culminated in the passage of the

Adamson Law by Congress, Lee and his order took a prominent part. In 1919 the Trainmen had

$253,000,000 insurance in force, and up to that year had paid out $42,500,000 in claims. Of this latter amount

$3,604,000 was paid out in 1918, onehalf of which was attributed to the influenza epidemic.

Much of the success and power of the railroad Brotherhoods is due to the character of their members as well

as to able leadership. The editor of a leading newspaper has recently written: "The impelling power behind

every one of these organizations is the membership. I say this without detracting from the executive or

administrative abilities of the men who have been at the head of these organizations, for their influence has

been most potent in carrying out the will of their several organizations. But whatever is done is first decided

upon by the men and it is then put up to their chief executive officers for their direction."

With a membership of 375,000 uniformly clean and competent, so well captained and so well fortified

financially by insurance, benefit, and other funds, it is little wonder that the Brotherhoods have reached a

permanent place in the railroad industry. Their progressive power can be discerned in Federal legislation

pertaining to arbitration and labor conditions in interstate carriers. In 1888 an act was passed providing that,

in cases of railway labor disputes, the President might appoint two investigators who, with the United States

Commission of Labor, should form a board to investigate the controversy and recommend "the best means

for adjusting it." But as they were empowered to produce only findings and not to render decisions, the law

remained a dead letter, without having a single case brought up under it. It was superseded in 1898 by the

Erdman Act, which provided that certain Federal officials should act as mediators and that, in case they

failed, a Board of Arbitrators was to be appointed whose word should be binding for a certain period of time

and from whose decisions appeal could be taken to the Federal courts. Of the hundreds of disputes which

occurred during the first eight years of the existence of this statute, only one was brought under the

mechanism of the law. Federal arbitration was not popular. In 1905, however, a rather sudden change came

over the situation. Over sixty cases were brought under the Erdman Act in about eight years. In 1913 the

Newlands Law was passed providing for a permanent Board of Mediation and Conciliation, by which over

The increase of brotherhood influence which such legislation represents was accompanied by a consolidation

in power. At first the Brotherhoods operated by railway systems or as individual orders. Later on they united

into districts, all the Brotherhoods of a given district cooperating in their demands. Finally the cooperation of

all the Brotherhoods in the United States on all the railway systems was effected. This larger organization

came clearly to light in 1912, when the Brotherhoods submitted their disputes to the board of arbitration. This

step was hailed by the public as going a long way towards the settlement of labor disputes by arbitral boards.

The latest victory of the Brotherhoods, however, has shaken public confidence and has ushered in a new era

of brotherhood influence and Federal interference in railroad matters. In 1916, the four Brotherhoods

threatened to strike. The mode of reckoning paywhether upon an eighthour or a longer daywas the

subject of contention. The Department of Labor, through the Federal Conciliation Board, tried in vain to

bring the opponents together. Even President Wilson's efforts to bring about an agreement proved futile. The

roads agreed to arbitrate all the points, allowing the President to name the arbitrators; but the Brotherhoods,

probably realizing their temporary strategic advantage, refused pointblank to arbitrate. When the President

tried to persuade the roads to yield the eighthour day, they replied that it was a proper subject for arbitration.

Instead of standing firmly on the principle of arbitration, the President chose to go before Congress, on the

afternoon of the 29th of August, and ask, first, for a reorganization of the Interstate Commerce Commission;

second, for legal recognition of the eighthour day for interstate carriers; third, for power to appoint a

commission to observe the operation of the eighthour day for a stated time; fourth, for reopening the

question of an increase in freight rates to meet the enlarged cost of operation; fifth, for a law declaring

railway strikes and lockouts unlawful until a public investigation could be made; sixth, for authorization to

The strike was planned to fall on the expectant populace, scurrying home from their vacations, on the 4th of

September. On the 1st of September an eighthour bill, providing also for the appointment of a board of

observation, was rushed through the House; on the following day it was hastened through the staid Senate;

and on the third it received the President's signature.* The other recommendations of the President were

made to await the pleasure of Congress and the unions. To the suggestion that railway strikes be made

unlawful until their causes are disclosed the Brotherhoods were absolutely opposed.

* This was on Sunday. In order to obviate any objection as to the legality of the signature the President

signed the bill again on the following Tuesday, the intervening Monday being Labor Day.

Many readjustments were involved in launching the eighthour law, and in March, 1917, the Brotherhoods

again threatened to strike. The President sent a committee, including the Secretary of the Interior and the

Secretary of Labor, to urge the parties to come to an agreement. On the 19th of March, the Supreme Court

upheld the validity of the law, and the trouble subsided. But in the following November, after the declaration

of war, clouds reappeared on the horizon, and again the unions refused the Government's suggestion of

arbitration. Under war pressure, however, the Brotherhoods finally consented to hold their grievance in

The haste with which the eighthour law was enacted, and the omission of the vital balance suggested by the

President appeared to many citizens to be a holdup of Congress, and the nearness of the presidential election

suggested that a political motive was not absent. The fact that in the ensuing presidential election, Ohio, the

home of the Brotherhoods, swung from the Republican to the Democratic column, did not dispel this

suspicion from the public mind. Throughout this maneuver it was apparent that the unions were very

confident, but whether because of a prearranged pact, or because of a full treasury, or because of a feeling

that the public was with them, or because of the opposite belief that the public feared them, must be left to

individual conjecture. None the less, the public realized that the principle of arbitration had given way to the

Soon after the United States had entered the Great War, the Government, under authority of an act of

Congress, took over the management of all the interstate railroads, and the nation was launched upon a vast

experiment destined to test the capacities of all the parties concerned. The dispute over wages that had been

temporarily quieted by the Adamson Law broke out afresh until settled by the famous Order No. 27, issued

by William G. McAdoo, the Director General of Railroads, and providing a substantial readjustment of wages

and hours. In the spring of 1919 another large wage increase was granted to the men by Director General

Hines, who succeeded McAdoo. Meanwhile the Brotherhoods, through their counsel, laid before the

congressional committee a plan for the government ownership and joint operation of the roads, known as the

Plumb plan, and the American people are now face to face with an issue which will bring to a head the

paramount question of the relation of employees on government works to the Government and to the general

There has been an enormous expansion in the demands of the unions since the early days of the Philadelphia

cordwainers; yet these demands involve the same fundamental issues regarding hours, wages, and the closed

shop. Most unions, when all persiflage is set aside, are primarily organized for businessthe business of

looking after their own interests. Their treasury is a war chest rather than an insurance fund. As a benevolent

organization, the American union is far behind the British union with its highly developed Friendly Societies.

The establishment of a standard rate of wages is perhaps, as the United States Industrial Commission reported

in 1901, "the primary object of trade union policy." The most promising method of adjusting the wage

contract is by the collective trade agreement. The mechanism of the union has made possible collective

bargaining, and in numerous trades wages and other conditions are now adjusted by this method. One of the

earliest of these agreements was effected by the Iron Molders' Union in 1891 and has been annually renewed.

The coal operatives, too, for a number of years have signed a wage agreement with their miners, and the

many local difficulties and differences have been ingeniously and successfully met. The great railroads have,

likewise, for many years made periodical contracts with the railway Brotherhoods. The glovemakers,

cigarmakers, and, in many localities, workers in the building trades and on streetrailway systems have the

advantage of similar collective agreements. In 1900 the American Newspaper Publishers Association and the

International Typographical Union, after many years of stubborn fighting merged their numerous differences

in a trade contract to be in effect for one year. This experiment proved so successful that the agreement has

since then been renewed for five year periods. In 1915 a bitter strike of the garment makers in New York City

was ended by a "protocol." The principle of collective agreement has become so prevalent that the

Massachusetts Bureau of Labor believes that it "is being accepted with increasing favor by both employers

and employees," and John Mitchell, speaking from wide experience and an intimate knowledge of conditions,

says that "the hope of future peace in the industrial world lies in the trade agreement." These agreements are

growing in complexity, and today they embrace not only questions of wages and hours but also methods for

adjusting all the differences which may arise between the parties to the bargain.

The very success of collective bargaining hinges upon the solidarity and integrity of the union which makes

the bargain. A union capable of enforcing an agreement is a necessary antecedent condition to such a

contract. With this fact in mind, one can believe that John Mitchell was not unduly sanguine in stating that

"the tendency is toward the growth of compulsory membership ...and the time will doubtless come when this

compulsion will be as general and will be considered as little of a grievance as the compulsory attendance of

children at school." There are certain industries so well centralized, however, that their coercive power is

greater than that of the labor union, and these have maintained a consistent hostility to the closed shop. The

question of the closed shop is, indeed, the most stubborn issue confronting the union. The principle involves

the employment of only union men in a shop; it means a monopoly of jobs by members of the union. The

issue is as old as the unions themselves and as perplexing as human nature. As early as 1806 it was contended

for by the Philadelphia cordwainers and by 1860 it had become an established union policy. While wages and

hours are now, in the greater industrial fields, the subject of a collective contract, this question of union

monopoly is still open, though there has been some progress towards an adjustment. Wherever the trade

agreement provides for a closed shop, the union, through its proper committees and officers, assumes at least

part of the responsibility of the discipline. The agreement also includes methods for arbitrating differences.

For the purpose of forcing its policies upon its employers and society the unions have resorted to the strike

and picketing, the boycott, and the union label. When violence occurs, it usually is the concomitant of a

strike; but violence unaccompanied by a strike is sometimes used as a union weapon.

The strike is the oldest and most spectacular weapon in the hands of labor. For many years it was thought a

necessary concomitant of machine industry. The strike, however, antedates machinery and was a practical

method of protest long before there were unions. Men in a shop simply agreed not to work further and walked

out. The earliest strike in the United States, as disclosed by the United States Department of Labor occurred

in 1741 among the journeymen bakers in New York City. In 1792 the cordwainers of Philadelphia struck. By

1834 strikes were so prevalent that the New York Daily Advertiser declared them to be "all the fashion."

These demonstrations were all small affairs compared with the strikes that disorganized industry after the

Civil War or those that swept the country in successive waves in the late seventies, the eighties, and the

nineties. The United States Bureau of Labor has tabulated the strike statistics for the twentyfive year period

from 1881 to 1905. This list discloses the fact that 38,303 strikes and lockouts occurred, involving 199,954

establishments and 7,444,279 employees. About 2,000,000 other employees were thrown out of work as an

indirect result. In 1894, the year of the great Pullman strike, 610,425 men were out of work at one time; and

659,792 in 1902. How much time and money these ten million wageearners lost, and their employers lost,

and society lost, can never be computed, nor how much nervous energy was wasted, good will thrown to the

The increase of union influence is apparent, for recognition of the union has become more frequently a cause

for strikes.* Moreover, while the unions were responsible for about 47 per cent of the strikes in 1881, they

had originated, directly or indirectly, 75 per cent in 1905. More significant, indeed, is the fact that striking is

a growing habit. In 1903, for instance, there were 3494 strikes, an average of about ten a day.

* The cause of the strikes tabulated by the Bureau of Labor is shown in the following table of percentages:

1881 1891 1901 1905 For increase of wages: 61 27 29 32 Against reduction of wages: 10 11 4 5 For

Preparedness is the watchword of the Unions in this warfare. They have generals and captains, a war chest

and relief committees, as well as publicity agents and sympathy scouts whose duty it is to enlist the interest of

the public. Usually the leaders of the unions are conservative and deprecate violence. But a strike by its very

nature offers an opportunity to the lawless. The destruction of property and the coercion of workmen have

been so prevalent in the past that, in the public mind, violence has become universally associated with strikes.

Judge Jenkins, of the United States Circuit Court, declared, in a leading case, that "a strike without violence

would equal the representation of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet omitted." Justice Brewer of the United

States Supreme Court said that "the common rule as to strikes" is not only for the workers to quit but to

"forcibly prevent others from taking their place." Historic examples involving violence of this sort are the

great railway strikes of 1877, when Pittsburgh, Reading, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Buffalo were mobridden;

the strike of the steelworkers at Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892; the Pullman strike of 1894, when

President Cleveland sent Federal troops to Chicago; the great anthracite strike of 1902, which the Federal

Commission characterized as "stained with a record of riot and bloodshed"; the civil war in the Colorado and

Idaho mining regions, where the Western Federation of Miners battled with the militia and Federal troops; the

dynamite outrages, perpetrated by the structural iron workers, stretching across the entire country, and

reaching a dastardly climax in the dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times building on October 1, 1910, in

which some twenty men were killed. The recoil from this outrage was the severest blow which organized

labor has received in America. John J. McNamara, Secretary of the Structural Iron Workers' Association, and

his brother James were indicted for murder. After the trial was staged and the eyes of the nation were upon it,

the public was shocked and the hopes of labor unionists were shattered by the confessions of the principals.

In March, 1912, a Federal Grand Jury at Indianapolis returned fiftyfour indictments against officers and

members of the same union for participation in dynamite outrages that had occurred during the six years in

many parts of the country, with a toll of over one hundred lives and the destruction of property valued at

many millions of dollars. Among those indicted was the president of the International Association of Bridge

and Structural Iron Workers. Most of the defendants were sentenced to various terms in the penitentiary.

The records of this industrial warfare are replete with lesser battles where thuggery joined hands with

desperation in the struggle for wages. Evidence is not wanting that local leaders have frequently incited their

men to commit acts of violence in order to impress the public with their earnestness. It is not an inviting

picture, this matching of the sullen violence of the mob against the sullen vigilance of the corporation. Yet

such methods have not always been used, for the union has done much to systematize this guerrilla warfare. It

has matched the ingenuity and the resolution of the employer, backed by his detectives and professional

strikebreakers; it has perfected its organization so that the blow of a whistle or the mere uplifting of a hand

can silence a great mill. Some of the notable strikes have been managed with rare skill and diplomacy. Some

careful observers, indeed, are inclined to the opinion that the amount of violence that takes place in the

average strike has been grossly exaggerated. They maintain that, considering the great number of strikes, the

earnestness with which they are fought, the opportunity they offer to the lawless, and the vast range of

territory they cover, the amount of damage to property and person is unusually small and that the public,

through sensational newspaper reports of one or two acts of violence, is led to an exaggerated opinion of its

It must be admitted, however, that the wisdom and conservatism of the national labor leaders is neutralized

by their lack of authority in their particular organization. A large price is paid for the autonomy that permits

the local unions to declare strikes without the sanction of the general officers. There are only a few unions,

perhaps half a dozen, in which a local can be expelled for striking contrary to the wish of the national

officers. In the United Mine Workers' Union, for example, the local must secure the consent of the district

officers and national president, or, if these disagree, of the executive board, before it can declare a strike. The

tendency to strike on the spur of the moment is much more marked among the newer unions than among the

older ones, which have perfected their strike machinery through much experience and have learned the cost

A less conspicuous but none the less effective weapon in the hands of labor is the boycott,* which is carried

by some of the unions to a terrible perfection. It reached its greatest power in the decade between 1881 and

1891. Though it was aimed at a great variety of industries, it seemed to be peculiarly effective in the theater,

hotel, restaurant, and publishing business, and in the clothing and cigar trades. For sheer arbitrary

coerciveness, nothing in the armory of the union is so effective as the boycott. A flourishing business finds its

trade gone overnight. Leading customers withdraw their patronage at the union's threat. The alert picket is the

harbinger of ruin, and the union black list is as fraught with threat as the black hand.

* In 1880, Lord Erne, an absentee Irish landlord, sent Captain Boycott to Connemara to subdue his irate

tenants. The people of the region refused to have any intercourse whatever with the agent or his family. And

The New York Bureau of Statistics of Labor has shown that during the period of eight years between 1885

and 1892 there were 1352 boycotts in New York State alone. A sort of terrorism spread among the

tradespeople of the cities. But the unions went too far. Instances of gross unfairness aroused public sympathy

against the boycotters. In New York City, for instance, a Mrs. Grey operated a small bakery with nonunion

help. Upon her refusal to unionize her shop at the command of the walking delegate, her customers were sent

the usual boycott notice, and pickets were posted. Her delivery wagons were followed, and her customers

were threatened. Grocers selling her bread were systematically boycotted. All this persecution merely aroused

public sympathy for Mrs. Grey, and she found her bread becoming immensely popular. The boycotters then

demanded $2500 for paying their boycott expenses. When news of this attempt at extortion was made public,

it heightened the tide of sympathy, the courts took up the matter, and the boycott failed. The New York

Boycotter, a journal devoted to this form of coercion, declared: "In boycotting we believe it to be legitimate

to strike a man financially, socially, or politically. We believe in hitting him where it will hurt the most; we

believe in remorselessly crowding him to the wall; but when he is down, instead of striking him, we would

lift him up and stand him once more on his feet." When the boycott thus enlisted the aid of blackmail, it was

doomed in the public esteem. Boycott indictments multiplied, and in one year in New York City alone, over

one hundred leaders of such attempts at coercion were sentenced to imprisonment.

The boycott, however, was not laid aside as a necessary weapon of organized labor because it had been

abused by corrupt or overzealous unionists, nor because it had been declared illegal by the courts. All the

resources of the more conservative unions and of the American Federation of Labor have been enlisted to

make it effective in extreme instances where the strike has failed. This application of the method can best be

illustrated by the two most important cases of boycott in our history, the Buck's Stove and Range case and the

Danbury Hatters' case. Both were fought through the Federal courts, with the defendants backed by the

American Federation and opposed by the AntiBoycott Association, a federation of employers.

The Buck's Stove and Range Company of St. Louis incurred the displeasure of the Metal Polishers' Union by

insisting upon a tenhour day. On August 27, 1906, at five o'clock in the afternoon, on a prearranged signal,

the employees walked out. They returned to work the next morning and all were permitted to take their

accustomed places except those who had given the signal. They were discharged. At five o'clock that

afternoon the men put aside their work, and the following morning reappeared. Again the men who had given

the signal were discharged, and the rest went to work. The union then sent notice to the foreman that the

discharged men must be reinstated or that all would quit. A strike ensued which soon led to a boycott of

national proportions. It spread from the local to the St. Louis Central Trades and Labor Union and to the

Metal Polishers' Union. In 1907 the executive council of the American Federation of Labor officially placed

the Buck's Stove and Range Company on the unfair list and gave this action wide and conspicuous circulation

in The Federationist. This boycott received further impetus from the action of the Mine Workers, who in their

Annual Convention resolved that the Buck's Stove and Range Company be put on the unfair list and that "any

member of the United Mine Workers of America purchasing a stove of above make be fined $5.00 and failing

Espionage became so efficient and letters from old customers withdrawing patronage became so numerous

and came from so wide a range of territory that the company found itself rapidly nearing ruin. An injunction

was secured, enjoining the American Federation from blacklisting the company. The labor journals

circumvented this mandate by publishing in display type the statement that "It is unlawful for the American

Federation of Labor to boycott Buck's Stoves and Ranges," and then in small type adroitly recited the news of

the court's decision in such a way that the reader would see at a glance that the company was under union

ban. These evasions of the court's order were interpreted as contempt, and in punishment the officers of the

Federation were sentenced to imprisonment: Frank Morrison for six months, John Mitchell for nine months,

Samuel Gompers for twelve months. But a technicality intervened between the leaders and the cells awaiting

them. The public throughout the country had followed the course of this case with mingled feelings of

sympathy and disfavor, and though the boycott had never met with popular approval, on the whole the public

The Danbury Hatters' boycott was brought on in 1903 by the attempt of the Hatters' Union to make a closed

shop of a manufacturing concern in Danbury, Connecticut. The unions moved upon Danbury, flushed with

two recent victoriesone in Philadelphia, where an important hat factory had agreed to the closed shop after

spending some $40,000 in fighting, and another at Orange, New Jersey, where a manufacturer had spent

$25,000. But as the Danbury concern was determined to fight the union, in 1902 a nationwide boycott was

declared. The company then brought suit against members of the union in the United States District Court.

Injunction proceedings reached the Supreme Court of the United States on a demurrer, and in February, 1908,

the court declared that the Sherman AntiTrust Law forbade interstate boycotts. The case then returned to the

original court for trial. Testimony was taken in many States, and after a trial lasting twelve weeks the jury

assessed the damages to the plaintiff at $74,000. On account of error, the case was remanded for retrial in

1911. At the second trial the jury gave the plaintiff a verdict for $80,000, the full amount asked. According to

the law, this amount was trebled, leaving the judgment, with costs added, at $252,000. The Supreme Court

having sustained the verdict, the puzzling question of how to collect it arose. As such funds as the union had

were invulnerable to process, the savings bank accounts of the individual defendants were attached. The

union insisted that the defendants were not taxable for accrued interest, and the United States Supreme Court,

now appealed to for a third time, sustained the plaintiff's contention. In this manner $60,000 were obtained.

Foreclosure proceedings were then begun against one hundred and forty homes belonging to union men in the

towns of Danbury, Norwalk, and Bethel. The union boasted that this sale would prove only an incubus to the

purchasers, for no one would dare occupy the houses sold under such circumstances. In the meantime the

American Federation, which had financed the litigation, undertook to raise the needed sum by voluntary

collection and made Gompers's birthday the occasion for a gift to the Danbury local. The Federation insisted

that the houses be sold on foreclosure and that the collected money be used not as a prior settlement but as an

indemnity to the individuals thus deprived of their homes. Rancor gave way to reason, however, and just

before the day fixed for the foreclosure sale the matter was settled. In all, $235,000 was paid in damages by

the union to the company. In the fourteen years during which this contest was waged, about forty defendants,

one of the plaintiffs, and eight judges who had passed on the controversy, died. The outcome served as a spur

to the Federation in hastening through Congress the Clayton bill of 1914, designed to place labor unions

The union label has in more recent years achieved importance as a weapon in union warfare. This is a mark

or device denoting a unionmade article. It might be termed a sort of labor union trademark. Union men are

admonished to favor the goods so marked, but it was not until national organizations were highly perfected

that the label could become of much practical value. It is a device of American invention and was first used

by the cigar makers in 1874. In 1880 their national body adopted the now familiar blue label and, with great

skill and perseverance and at a considerable outlay of money, has pushed its unionmade ware, in the face of

sweatshop competition, of the introduction of cigar making machinery, and of fraudulent imitation.

Gradually other unions making products of common consumption adopted labels. Conspicuous among these

were the garment makers, the hat makers, the shoe makers, and the brewery workers. As the value of the label

manifestly depends upon the trade it entices, the unions are careful to emphasize the sanitary conditions and

The application of the label is being rapidly extended. Building materials are now in many large cities under

label domination. In Chicago the bricklayers have for over fifteen years been able to force the builders to use

only unionlabel brick, and the carpenters have forced the contractors to use only material from union mills.

There is practically no limit to this form of mandatory boycott. The barbers, retail clerks, hotel employees,

and butcher workmen hang union cards in their places of employment or wear badges as insignia of union

loyalty. As these labels do not come under the protection of the United States trademark laws, the unions

Finally, in their efforts to fortify themselves against undue increase in the rate of production or "speeding up,"

against the inrush of new machinery, and against the debilitating alternation of rush work and no work, the

unions have attempted to restrict the output. The United States Industrial Commission reported in 1901 that

"there has always been a strong tendency among labor organizations to discourage exertion beyond a certain

limit. The tendency does not express itself in formal rules. On the contrary, it appears chiefly in the silent, or

at least informal pressure of working class opinion." Some unions have rules, others a distinct understanding,

on the subject of a normal day's work, and some discourage piecework. But it is difficult to determine how

far this policy has been carried in application. Carroll D. Wright, in a special report as United States

Commissioner of Labor in 1904, said that "unions in some cases fix a limit to the amount of work a workman

may perform a day. Usually it is a secret understanding, but sometimes, when the union is strong, no

concealment is made." His report mentioned several trades, including the building trades, in which this

The course of this industrial warfare between the unions and the employers has been replete with sordid

details of selfishness, corruption, hatred, suspicion, and malice. In every community the strike or the boycott

has been an ominous visitant, leaving in its trail a social bitterness which even time finds it difficult to efface.

In the great cities and the factory towns, the constant repetition of labor struggles has created centers of

perennial discontent which are sources of neverending reprisals. In spite of individual injustice, however,

one can discern in the larger movements a current setting towards a collective justice and a communal ideal

It was not to be expected that the field of organized labor would be left undisputed to the moderation of the

trade union after its triumph over the extreme methods of the Knights of Labor. The public, however, did not

anticipate the revolutionary ideal which again sought to inflame industrial unionism. After the decadence of

the older type of the industrial union several conditions manifested themselves which now, in retrospect,

appear to have encouraged the violent militants who call themselves the Industrial Workers of the World.

First of all, there took place in Europe the rise of syndicalism with its adoption of sympathetic strikes as one

of its methods. Syndicalism flourished especially in France, where from its inception the alert French mind

had shaped for it a philosophy of violence, whose subtlest exponent was Georges Sorel. "The Socialist Future

of Trade Unions," which he published in 1897, was an early exposition of his views, but his "Reflections

upon Violence" in 1908 is the best known of his contributions to this newer doctrine. With true Gallic fervor,

the French workingman had sought to translate his philosophy into action, and in 1906 undertook, with the

aid of a revolutionary organization known as the "Confederation General du Travail," a series of strikes

which culminated in the railroad and post office strike of 1909. All these uprisingsfor they were in reality

more than strikeswere characterized by extreme language, by violent action, and by impressive public

demonstrations. In Italy, Spain, Norway, and Belgium, the syndicalists were also active. Their partiality to

violent methods attracted general attention in Europe and appealed to that small group of American labor

leaders whose experience in the Western Federation of Miners had taught them the value of dynamite as a

In the meantime material was being gathered for a new outbreak in the United States. The casual laborers had

greatly increased in numbers, especially in the West. These migratory workingmenthe "hobo miners," the

"hobo lumberjacks," the "blanket stiffs," of colloquial speechwander about the country in search of work.

They rarely have ties of family and seldom ties of locality. About onehalf of these wanderers are American

born. They are to be described with precision as "floaters." Their range of operations includes the wheat

regions west of the Mississippi, the iron mines of Michigan and Minnesota, the mines and forests of Idaho,

Montana, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, and the fields of California and Arizona. They prefer to winter

in the cities, but, as their only refuge is the bunk lodging house, they increase the social problem in New

York, Chicago, San Francisco, and other centers of the unemployed. Many of these migrants never were

skilled workers; but a considerable portion of them have been forced down into the ranks of the unskilled by

the inevitable tragedies of prolonged unemployment. Such men lend a willing ear to the labor agitator. The

exact number in this wandering class is not known. The railroad companies have estimated that at a given

time there have been 500,000 hobos trying to beat their way from place to place. Unquestionably a large

percentage of the 23,964 trespassers killed and of the 25,236 injured on railway rights of way from 1901 to

It is not alone these drifters, however, who because of their irresponsibility and their hostility toward society

became easy victims to the industrial organizer. The great mass of unskilled workers in the factory towns

proved quite as tempting to the propagandist. Among laborers of this class, wages are the lowest and living

conditions the most uninviting. Moreover, this group forms the industrial reservoir which receives the

settlings of the most recent European and Asiatic immigration. These people have a standard of living and

conceptions of political and individual freedom which are at variance with American traditions. Though their

employment is steadier than that of the migratory laborer, and though they often have ties of family and other

stabilizing responsibilities, their lives are subject to periods of unemployment, and these fluctuations serve to

feed their innate restlessness. They are, in quite the literal sense of the word, American proletarians. They are

more volatile than any European proletarian, for they have learned the lesson of migration, and they retain the

There were several attempts to organize casual labor after the decline of the Knights of Labor. But it is

difficult to arouse any sustained interest in industrial organizations among workingmen of this class. They

lack the motive of members of a trade union, and the migratory character of such workers deprives their

organization of stability. One industrial organization, however, has been of the greatest encouragement to the

I.W.W. The Western Federation of Miners, which was organized at Butte, Montana, on May 15, 1893, has

enjoyed a more turbulent history than any other American labor union. It was conceived in that spirit of rough

resistance which local unions of miners, for some years before the amalgamation of the unions, had opposed

to the ruthless and firm determination of the mine owners. In 1897, the president of the miners, after quoting

the words of the Constitution of the United States giving citizens the right to bear arms, said: "This you

should comply with immediately. Every union should have a rifle club. I strongly advise you to provide every

member with the latest improved rifle which can be obtained from the factory at a nominal price. I entreat

you to take action on this important question, so that in two years we can hear the inspiring music of the

This militant vision was fortunately never quite fulfilled. But armed strikers there were, by the thousands, and

the gruesome details of their fight with mine owners in Colorado are set forth in a special report of the United

States Commissioner of Labor in 1905. The use of dynamite became early associated with this warfare in

Colorado. In 1903 a fatal explosion occurred in the Vindicator mine, and Telluride, the county seat, was

proclaimed to be in a state of insurrection and rebellion. In 1904 a cage lifting miners from the shaft in the

Independence mine at Victor was dropped and fifteen men were killed. There were many minor outrages,

isolated murders, "white cap" raids, infernal machines, deportations, black lists, and so on. In Montana and

Idaho similar scenes were enacted and reached a climax in the murder of Governor Steunenberg of Idaho. Yet

Such was the preparatory school of the new unionism, which had its inception in several informal

conferences held in Chicago. The first, attended by only six radical leaders, met in the autumn of 1904. The

second, held in January, 1905, issued a manifesto attacking the trade unions, calling for a "new departure" in

the labor movement, and inviting those who desired to join in organizing such a movement to "meet in

convention in Chicago the 27th day of June, 1905." About two hundred persons responded to this appeal and

organized the Industrial Workers of the World, almost unnoticed by the press of the day and scorned by the

American Federation of Labor, whose official organ had called those in attendance at the second conference

"engaged in the delectable work of trying to divert, pervert, and disrupt the labor movement of the country."

An overwhelming influence in this convention was wielded by the Western Federation of Miners and the

Socialistic American Labor Union, two radical labor bodies which looked upon the trade unions as "union

snobbery" and the "aristocracy of labor," and upon the American Federation as "the consummate flower of

craft unionism" and "a combination of job trusts." They believed trade unionism wrong in principle. They

discarded the principle of trade autonomy for the principle of laboring class solidarity, for, as one of their

spokesmen said, "The industrial union, in contradistinction to the craft union, is that organization through

which all its members in one industry, or in all industries if necessary, can act as a unit." While this

convention was united in denouncing the trade unions, it was not so unanimous in other matters, for the

leaders were all veterans in those factional quarrels which characterize Socialists the world over. Eugene V.

Debs, for example, was the hero of the Knights of Labor and had achieved wide notoriety during the Pullman

strike by being imprisoned for contempt of court. William D. Haywood, popularly known as "Big Bill,"

received a rigorous training in the Western Federation of Miners. Daniel DeLeon, whose right name, the

American Federationist alleged, was Daniel Loeb, was a university graduate and a vehement revolutionary,

the leader of the Socialistic Labor party, and the editor of the Daily People. A. M. Simons, the leader of the

Socialist party and the editor of the Coming Nation, was at swords' points with DeLeon. William E.

Trautmann was the fluent spokesman of the antipolitical faction. These men dominated the convention.

After some twelve days of discussion, they agreed upon a constitution which established six departments,*

provided for a general executive board with centralized powers, and at the same time left to the local and

department organizations complete industrial autonomy. The I.W.W. in "the first constitution, crude and

provisional as it was, made room for all the world's workers."** This was, indeed, the great object of the

* 1. Agriculture, Land, Fisheries, and Water Products. 2. Mining. 3. Transportation and Communication. 4.

** J. G. Brissenden, "The Launching of the Industrial Workers of the World," page 41.

Whatever visions of world conquest the militants may at first have fostered were soon shattered by internal

strife. There were unreconcilable elements in the body: those who regarded the political aspect as paramount

and industrial unions as allies of socialism; those who regarded the forming of unions as paramount and

politics as secondary; and those who regarded all forms of political activity as mere waste of energy. The first

two groups were tucked under the wings of the Socialist party and the Socialist Labor party. The third group

was frankly anarchistic and revolutionary. In the fourth annual convention the Socialist factions withdrew,

established headquarters at Detroit, organized what is called the Detroit branch, and left the Chicago field to

the revolutionists. So socialism "pure and simple," and what amounts to anarchism "pure and simple," fell

This shift proved the great opportunity for Haywood and his disciples. Feeling himself now free of all

political encumbrances, he gathered around him a small group of enthusiastic leaders, some of whom had a

gift of diabolical intrigue, and with indomitable perseverance and zeal he set himself to seeking out the

neglected, unskilled, and casual laborer. Within a few years he so dominated the movement that, in the public

mind, the I.W.W. is associated with the Chicago branch and the Detroit faction is wellnigh forgotten.

As a preliminary to a survey of some of the battles that made the I.W.W. a symbol of terror in many

communities it will be well to glance for a moment at the underlying doctrines of the organization. In a

preamble now notorious it declared that "the working class and the employing class have nothing in common.

There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people, and the few

who make up the employing class have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must

go on until the workers of the world as a class take possession of the earth and the machinery of production

This thesis is a declaration of war as well as a declaration of principles. The I.W.W. aims at nothing less than

the complete overthrow of modern capitalism and the political structure which accompanies it. Emma

Goldman, who prides herself on having received her knowledge of syndicalism "from actual contact" and not

from books, says that "syndicalism repudiates and condemns the present industrial arrangement as unjust and

criminal." Edward Hamond calls the labor contract "the sacred cow" of industrial idolatry and says that the

aim of the I.W.W. is "the abolition of the wage system." And W. E. Trautmann affirms that "the industrial

unionist holds that there can be no agreement with the employers of labor which the workers have to consider

sacred and inviolable." In place of what they consider an unjust and universal capitalistic order they would

establish a new society in which "the unions of the workers will own and manage all industries, regulate

How is this contemplated revolution to be achieved? By the working classes themselves and not through

political activity, for "one of the first principles of the I.W.W. is that political power rests on economic power

. . . . It must gain control of the shops, ships, railways, mines, mills." And how is it to gain this allembracing

control? By persuading every worker to join the union, the "one great organization" which, according to

Haywood, is to be "big enough to take in the black man, the white man; big enough to take in all

nationalitiesan organization that will be strong enough to obliterate state boundaries; to obliterate national

boundaries . . . . We, the I.W.W., stand on our two feet, the class struggle and industrial unionism, and coolly

say we want the whole earth." When the great union has become universal, it will simply take possession of

its own, will "lock the employers out for good as owners and parasites, and give them a chance to become

useful toilers." The resistance that will assuredly be made to this process of absorption is to be met by direct

action, the general strike, and sabotagea trinity of phrases imported from Europe, each one of special

"The general strike means a stoppage of work," says Emma Goldman with naive brevity. It was thought of

long before the I.W.W. existed, but it has become the most valuable weapon in their arsenal. Their pamphlets

contain many allusions to the great strikes in Belgium, Russia, Italy, France, Scandinavia, and other European

countries, that were so widespread as to merit being called general. If all the workers can be induced to stop

work, even for a very brief interval, such action would be regarded as the greatest possible manifestation of

Direct action, a term translated directly from the French, is more difficult to define. This method sets itself in

opposition to the methods of the capitalist in retaining control of industry, which is spoken of as indirect

action. Laws, machinery, credits, courts, and constabulary are indirect methods whereby the capitalist keeps

possession of his property. The industrialist matches this with a direct method. For example, he engages in a

passive strike, obeying rules so literally as to destroy both their utility and his work; or in an opportune strike,

ceasing work suddenly when he knows his employer has orders that must be immediately filled; or in a

temporary strike, quitting work one day and coming back the next. His weapon is organized opportunism,

wielding an unexpected blow, and keeping the employer in a frenzy of fearful anticipation.

Finally, sabotage is a word that expresses the whole philosophy and practice of revolutionary labor. John

Spargo, in his "Syndicalism, Industrial Unionism and Socialism," traces the origin of the word to the dockers'

union in London. Attempt after attempt had proved futile to win by strikes "the demands of these unskilled

workers. The men were quite at the end of their resources, when finally they hit upon the plan of "lying down

on the job" or "soldiering." As a catchword they adopted the Scotch phrase ca'canny, to go slow or be careful

not to do too much. As an example they pointed to the Chinese coolies who met a refusal of increased wages

by cutting off a few inches from their shovels on the principle of "small pay, small work." He then goes on to

say that "the idea was very easily extended. From the slowing up of the human worker to the slowing up of

the iron worker, the machine, was an easy transition. Judiciously planned "accidents" might easily create

confusion for which no one could be blamed. A few "mistakes" in handling cargoes might easily cost the

employers far more than a small increase in wages would. Some French syndicalists, visiting London, were

greatly impressed with this new cunning. But as they had no ready translation for the Scottish ca'canny, they

ingeniously abstracted the same idea from the old French saying "Travailler a coups de sabots"to work as

if one had on wooden shoesand sabotage thus became a new and expressive phrase in the labor war.

Armed with these weapons, Haywood and his henchmen moved forward. Not long after the first convention

in 1905, they made their presence known at Goldfield, Nevada. Then they struck simultaneously at

Youngstown, Ohio, and Portland, Oregon. The first battle, however, to attract general notice was at McKees

Rocks, Pennsylvania, in 1909. In this warfare between the recently organized unskilled workers and the

efficient state constabulary, the I.W.W. sent notice "that for every striker killed or injured by the cossacks, the

life of a cossack will be exacted in return." And they collected their gruesome toll.

In 1912 occurred the historic strike in the mill town of Lawrence, Massachusetts. This affair was so adroitly

managed by the organizers of the Workers that within a few weeks every newspaper of importance in

America was publishing long descriptions of the new anarchism. Magazine writers, selfappointed reformers,

delegations representing various organizations, three committees of the state legislature, the Governor's

personal emissary, the United States Attorney, the United States Commissioner of Labor, and a congressional

committee devoted their time to numerous investigations, thereby giving immense satisfaction to those

obscure agitators who were lifted suddenly into the glare of universal notoriety, to the disgust of the town

thus dragged into unenviable publicity, and to the discomfiture of the employers.

The legislature of Massachusetts had reduced the hours of work of women and children from fiftysix to

fiftyfour hours a week. Without making adequate announcement, the employers withheld two hours' pay

from the weekly stipend. A large portion of the workers were foreigners, representing eighteen different

nationalities, most of them with a wholly inadequate knowledge of English, and all of an inflammable

temperament. When they found their pay short, a group marched through the mills, inciting others to join

them, and the strike was on. The American Federation of Labor had paid little attention to these workers.

There were some trade unions in the mills, but most of the workers were unorganized except for the fact that

the I.W.W. had, about eight months before, gathered several hundred into an industrial union. Yet it does not

appear that this union started the strike. It was a case of spontaneous combustion. No sooner had it begun,

however, than Joseph J. Ettor, an I.W.W. organizer, hastened to take charge, and succeeded so well that

within a few weeks he claimed 7000 members in his union. Ettor proved a crafty, resourceful general, quick

in action, magnetic in personality, a linguist who could command his polyglot mob. He was also a successful

press agent who exploited fully the unpalatable drinking water provided by the companies, the inadequate

sewerage, the unpaved streets, and the practical destitution of many of the workers. The strikers made an

attempt to send children to other towns so that they might be better cared for. After several groups had thus

been taken away, the city of Lawrence interfered, claiming that many children had been sent without their

parents' consent. On the 24th of February, when a group of forty children and their mothers gathered at the

railway station to take a train for Philadelphia, the police after due warning refused to let them depart. It was

then that the Federal Government was called upon to take action. The strike committee telegraphed Congress:

"Twentyfive thousand striking textile workers and citizens of Lawrence protest against the hideous brutality

with which the police handled the women and children of Lawrence this morning. Carrying out the illegal

and original orders of the city marshal to prevent free citizens from sending their children out of the city,

striking men were knocked down, women and mothers who were trying to protect their children from the

onslaught of the police were attacked and clubbed." So widespread was the opinion that unnecessary brutality

had taken place that petitions for an investigation poured in upon Congress from many States and numerous

The whole country was watching the situation. The hearings held by a congressional committee emphasized

the stupidity of the employers in arbitrarily curtailing the wage, the inadequacy of the town government in

handling the situation, and the cupidity of the I.W.W. leaders in taking advantage of the fears, the ignorance,

the inflammability of the workers, and in creating a "terrorism which impregnated the whole city for days."

Lawrence became a symbol. It stood for the American factory town; for municipal indifference and social

neglect, for heterogeneity in population, for the tinder pile awaiting the incendiary match.

At Little Falls, New York, a strike occurred in the textile mills in October, 1912, as a result of a reduction of

wages due to a fiftyfour hour law. No organization was responsible for the strike, but no sooner had the

operatives walked out than here also the I.W.W. appeared. The leaders ordered every striker to do something

which would involve arrest in order to choke the local jail and the courts. The state authorities investigating

the situation reported that "all of those on strike were foreigners and few, if any, could speak or understand

the English language, complete control of the strike being in the hands of the I.W.W."

In February, 1913, about 15,000 employees in the rubber works at Akron, Ohio, struck. The introduction of

machinery into the manufacture of automobile tires caused a reduction in the piecework rate in certain shops.

One of the companies posted a notice on the 10th of February that this reduction would take effect

immediately. No time was given for conference, and it was this sudden arbitrary act which precipitated all the

discontent lurking for a long time in the background; and the employees walked out. The legislative

investigating committee reported "there was practically no organization existing among the rubber employees

when the strike began. A small local of the Industrial Workers of the World comprised of between fifteen and

fifty members had been formed . . . . Simultaneously with the beginning of the strike, organizers of the

I.W.W. appeared on the ground inviting and urging the striking employees to unite with their organization."

Many of these testified before the public authorities that they had not joined because they believed in the

preachings of the organization but because "they hoped through collective action to increase their wages and

improve their conditions of employment." The tactics of the strike leaders soon alienated the public, which

had at first been inclined towards the strikers, and acts of violence led to the organization of a vigilance

In February, 1913, some 25,000 workers in the silk mills of Paterson, New Jersey, struck, and here again the

I.W.W. repeated its maneuvers. Sympathetic meetings took place in New York and other cities. Daily

"experience meetings" were held in Paterson and all sorts of devices were invented to maintain the fervor of

the strikers. The leaders threatened to make Paterson a "howling wilderness," an "industrial graveyard," and

"to wipe it off the map." This threat naturally arrayed the citizens against the strikers, over one thousand of

whom were lodged in jail before the outbreak was over. Among the five ringleaders arrested and held for the

grand jury were Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Patrick Quinlan, whose trials attracted wide attention. Elizabeth

Flynn, an appealing young widow scarcely over twentyone, testified that she had begun her work as an

organizer at the age of sixteen, that she had not incited strikers to violence but had only advised them to

picket and to keep their hands in their pockets, "so that detectives could not put stones in them as they had

done in other strikes." The jury disagreed and she was discharged. Quinlan, an unusually attractive young

man, also a professional I.W.W. agitator, was found guilty of inciting to violence and was sentenced to a long

term of imprisonment. After serving nine months he was freed because of a monster petition signed by some

20,000 sympathetic persons all over the United States. Clergymen, philanthropists, and prominent public

men, were among the signers, as well as the jurors who convicted and the sheriff who locked up the

These cases served to fix further public attention upon the nature of the new movement and the sort of

revivalists its evangel of violence was producing. Employers steadfastly refused to deal with the I.W.W.,

although they repeatedly asserted they were willing to negotiate with their employees themselves. After three

months of strike and turmoil the mayor of Paterson had said: "The fight which Paterson is making is the fight

of the nation. Their agitation has no other object in view but to establish a reign of terror throughout the

United States." A large number of thoughtful people all over the land were beginning to share this view.

In New York City a new sort of agitation was devised in the winter of 191314 under the captaincy of a

young man who quite suddenly found himself widely advertised. Frank Tannenbaum organized an "army of

the unemployed," commandeered Rutgers Square as a rendezvous, Fifth Avenue as a parade ground, and

churches and parish houses as forts and commissaries. Several of the churches were voluntarily opened to

them, but other churches they attempted to enter by storm. In March, 1914, Tannenbaum led several score

into the church of St. Alphonsus while mass was being celebrated. Many arrests followed this bold attempt to

emulate the French Revolutionists. Though sympathizers raised $7500 bail for the ringleader, Tannenbaum

loyally refused to accept it as long as any of his "army" remained in jail. Squads of his men entered

restaurants, ate their fill, refused to pay, and then found their way to the workhouse. So for several months a

handful of unemployed, some of them professional unemployed, held the headlines of the metropolitan

papers, rallied to their defense sentimental social sympathizers, and succeeded in calling the attention of the

At Granite City, Illinois, another instance of unrest occurred when several thousand laborers in the steel mills,

mostly Roumanians and Bulgarians, demanded an increase in wages. When the whistle blew on the appointed

morning, they gathered at the gates, refused to enter, and continued to shout "Two dollars a day!" Though the

manager feared violence and posted guards, no violence was offered. Suddenly at the end of two hours the

men quietly resumed their work, and the management believed the trouble was over. But for several

successive mornings this maneuver was repeated. Strike breakers were then sent for. For a week, however,

the work went forward as usual. The order for strike breakers was countermanded. Then came a continued

Nor were the subtler methods of sabotage forgotten in these demonstrations. From many places came reports

of emery dust in the gearings of expensive machines. Men boasted of powdered soap emptied into water

tanks that fed boilers, of kerosene applied to belting, of railroad switches that had been tampered with. With

these and many similar examples before them, the public became convinced that the mere arresting of a few

leaders was futile. A mass meeting at Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1913, declared, as its principle of action,

"We have got to meet force with force," and then threatened to run the entire local I.W.W. group out of town.

In many towns vigilance committees acted as eyes, ears, and hands for the community. When the community

refused to remain neutral, the contest assumed a different aspect and easily became a feud between a small

group of militants and the general public. In the West this contest assumed its most aggressive form. At

Spokane, in 1910, the jail was soon filled, and sixty prisoners went on a hunger strike which cost several

lives. In the lumber mills of Aberdeen, South Dakota, explosions and riots occurred. In Hoquiam,

Washington, a twelvefoot stockade surmounted by barbed wire entanglements failed to protect the mills

from the assaults of strikers. At Gray's Harbor, Washington, a citizens' committee cut the electric light wires

to darken the meeting place of the I.W.W. and then used axe handles and wagon spokes to drive the members

out of town. At Everett, Washington, a strike in the shingle mills led to the expulsion of the I.W.W. The

leaders then called for volunteers to invade Everett, and several hundred members sailed from Seattle. They

were met at the dock, however, by a large committee of citizens and were informed by the sheriff that they

would not be allowed to land. After some parley, the invaders opened fire, and in the course of the shooting

that followed the sheriff was seriously wounded, five persons were killed, and many were injured. The boat

and its small invading army then returned to Seattle without making a landing at Everett.

The I.W.W. found an excuse for their riotous action in the refusal of communities to permit them to speak in

the streets and public places. This, they claimed, was an invasion of their constitutional right of free speech.

The experience of San Diego serves as an example of their "free speech" campaigns. In 1910, I.W.W.

agitators began to hold public meetings in the streets, in the course of which their language increased in

ferocity until the indignation of the community was aroused. An ordinance was then passed by the city

council prohibiting street speaking within the congested portions of the city, but allowing street meetings in

other parts of the city if a permit from the police department were first obtained. There was, however, no law

requiring the issue of such a permit, and none was granted to the agitators. This restriction of their liberties

greatly incensed the agitators, who at once raised the cry of "free speech" and began to hold meetings in

defiance of the ordinance. The jail was soon glutted with these apostles of riotous speaking. In order to delay

the dispatch of the court's overcrowded calendar, every one demanded a jury trial. The mayor of the town

then received a telegram from the general secretary of the organization which disclosed their tactics: "This

fight will be continued until free speech is established in San Diego if it takes twenty thousand members and

twenty years to do so." The national membership of the I.W.W. had been drafted as an invading army, to be a

constant irritation to the city until it surrendered. The police asserted that "there are bodies of men leaving all

parts of the country for San Diego" for the purpose of defying the city authorities and overwhelming its

municipal machinery. A committee of vigilantes armed with "revolvers, knives, nightsticks, black jacks, and

black snakes," supported by the local press and commercial bodies, undertook to run the unwelcome guests

out of town. That this was not done gently is clearly disclosed by subsequent official evidence. Culprits were

loaded into auto trucks at night, taken to the county line, made to kiss the flag, sing the national anthem, run

the gauntlet between rows of vigilantes provided with cudgels and, after thus proving their patriotism under

"There is an unwritten law," one of the local papers at this time remarked, "that permits a citizen to avenge

his outraged honor. There is an unwritten law that permits a community to defend itself by any means in its

power, lawful or unlawful, against any evil which the operation of the written law is inadequate to oppose or

must oppose by slow, tedious, and unnecessarily expensive proceeding." So this municipal homeopathy of

With the declaration of war against Germany in April, 1917, hostility to the I.W.W. on the part of the

American public was intensified. The members of the organization opposed war. Their leaflet "War and the

Soon rumors abounded that German money was being used to aid the I.W.W. in their plots. In Oklahoma,

Texas, Illinois, Kansas, and other States, members of the organization were arrested for failure to comply

with the draft law. The governors of Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, and Nevada met to plan laws for

suppressing the I.W.W. Similar legislation was urged upon Congress. Senator Thomas, in a report to the

Senate, accused the I.W.W. of cooperating with German agents in the copper mines and harvest fields of the

West by inciting the laborers to strikes and to the destruction of food and material. Popular opinion in the

West inclined to the view of Senator Poindexter of Washington when he said that "most of the I.W.W.

leaders are outlaws or ought to be made outlaws because of their official utterances, inflammatory literature

and acts of violence." Indeed, scores of communities in 1917 took matters into their own hands. Over a

thousand I.W.W. strikers in the copper mines of Bisbee, Arizona, were loaded into freight cars and shipped

over the state line. In Billings, Montana, one leader was horsewhipped, and two others were hanged until they

were unconscious. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a group of seventeen members were taken from policemen,

The Federal Government, after an extended inquiry through the secret service, raided the Detroit headquarters

of the I.W.W., where a plot to tie up lake traffic was brewing. The Chicago offices were raided some time

later; over one hundred and sixty leaders of the organization from all parts of the country were indicted as a

result of the examination of the wagonload of papers and documents seized. As a result, 166 indictments

were returned. Of these 99 defendants were found guilty by the trial jury, 16 were dismissed during the trial,

and 51 were dismissed before the trial. In Cleveland, Buffalo, and other lake ports similar disclosures were

made, and everywhere the organization fell under popular and official suspicion.

In many other portions of the country members of the I.W.W. were tried for conspiracy under the Federal

espionage act. In January, 1919, a trial jury in Sacramento found 46 defendants guilty. The offense in the

majority of these cases consisted in opposing military service rather than in overt acts against the

Government. But in May and June, 1919, the country was startled by a series of bomb outrages aimed at the

United States AttorneyGeneral, certain Federal district judges, and other leading public personages, which

were evidently the result of centralized planning and were executed by members of the I.W.W., aided very

In spite of its spectacular warfare and its monopoly of newspaper headlines, the I.W.W. has never been

numerically strong. The first convention claimed a membership of 60,000. All told, the organization has

issued over 200,000 cards since its inception, but this total never constituted its membership at any given

time, for no more fluctuating group ever existed. When the I.W.W. fosters a strike of considerable

proportions, the membership rapidly swells, only to shrink again when the strike is over. This temporary

membership consists mostly of foreign workmen who are recent immigrants. What may be termed the

permanent membership is difficult to estimate. In 1913 there were about 14,000 members. In 1917 the

membership was estimated at 75,000. Though this is probably a maximum rather than an average,

nevertheless the members are mostly young men whose revolutionary ardor counterbalances their want in

numbers. It is, moreover, an organization that has a wide penumbra. It readily attracts the discontented, the

unemployed, the man without a horizon. In an instant it can lay a fire and put an entire police force on the qui

The organization has always been in financial straits. The source of its power is to be sought elsewhere.

Financially bankrupt and numerically unstable, the I.W.W. relies upon the brazen cupidity of its stratagems

and the habitual timorousness of society for its power. It is this selfseeking disregard of constituted

authority that has given a handful of bold and crafty leaders such prominence in the recent literature of fear.

And the members of this industrial Ku Klux Klan, these American Bolsheviki, assume to be the "conscious

minority" which is to lead the ranks of labor into the Canaan of industrial bliss.

In a democracy it is possible for organized labor to extend its influence far beyond the confines of a mere

trade policy. It can move the political mechanism directly in proportion to its capacity to enlist public

opinion. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that labor is eager to take part in politics or that labor parties

were early organized. They were, however, doomed to failure, for no workingman's party can succeed, except

in isolated localities, without the cooperation of other social and political forces. Standing alone as a political

entity, labor has met only rebuff and defeat at the hands of the American voter.

The earlier attempts at direct political action were local. In Philadelphia a workingman's party was organized

in 1828 as a result of the disappointment of the Mechanics' Union at its failure to achieve its ambitions by

strikes. At a public meeting it was resolved to support only such candidates for the legislature and city

council as would pledge themselves to the interests of "the working classes." The city was organized, and a

delegate convention was called which nominated a ticket of thirty candidates for city and county offices. But

nineteen of these nominees were also on the Jackson ticket, and ten on the Adams ticket; and both of these

parties used the legend "Working Man's Ticket," professing to favor a shorter working day. The isolated labor

candidates received only from 229 to 539 votes, while the Jackson party vote ranged from 3800 to 7000 and

the Adams party vote from 2500 to 3800. So that labor's first excursion into politics revealed the eagerness of

the older parties to win the labor vote, and the futility of relying on a separate organization, except for

Preparatory to their next campaign, the workingmen organized political clubs in all the wards of Philadelphia.

In 1829 they nominated thirtytwo candidates for local offices, of whom nine received the endorsement of

the Federalists and three that of the Democrats. The workingmen fared better in this election, polling nearly

2000 votes in the county and electing sixteen candidates. So encouraged were they by this success that they

attempted to nominate a state ticket, but the dominant parties were too strong. In 1831 the workingmen's

candidates, who were not endorsed by the older parties, received less than 400 votes in Philadelphia. After

New York also early had an illuminating experience in labor politics. In 1829 the workingmen of the city

launched a political venture under the immediate leadership of an agitator by the name of Thomas Skidmore.

Skidmore set forth his social panacea in a book whose elongated title betrays his secret: "The Rights of Man

to Property! Being a Proposition to Make it Equal among the Adults of the Present Generation; and to

Provide for its Equal Transmission to Every Individual of Each Succeeding Generation, on Arriving at the

Age of Maturity." The party manifesto began with the startling declaration that "all human society, our own

as well as every other, is constructed radically wrong." The new party proposed to right this defect by an

equal distribution of the land and by an elaborate system of public education. Associated with Skidmore were

Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright of the "Free Enquirer," a paper advocating all sorts of extreme social

and economic doctrines. It was not strange, therefore, that the new party was at once connected, in the public

mind, with all the erratic vagaries of these Apostles of Change. It was called the "Fanny Wright ticket" and

the "Infidel Ticket." Every one forgot that it aimed to be the workingman's ticket. The movement, however,

was supported by "The Working Man's Advocate," a new journal that soon reached a wide influence.

There now appeared an eccentric Quaker, Russell Comstock by name, to center public attention still more

upon the new party. As a candidate for the legislature, he professed an alarmingly advanced position, for he

believed that the State ought to establish free schools where handicrafts and morals, but not religion, should

be taught; that husband and wife should be equals before the law; that a mechanics' lien and bankruptcy law

should be passed; and that by wise graduations all laws for the collection of debts should be repealed. At a

meeting held at the City Hall, for the further elucidation of his "pure Republicanism," he was greeted by a

great throng but was arrested for disturbing the peace. He received less than one hundred and fifty votes, but

his words went far to excite, on the one hand, the interest of the laboring classes in reform, and, on the other

hand, the determination of the conservative classes to defeat "a ticket got up openly and avowedly," as one

newspaper said, "in opposition to all banks, in opposition to social order, in opposition to rights of property."

Elections at this time lasted three days. On the first day there was genuine alarm at the large vote cast for "the

Infidels." Thoughtful citizens were importuned to go to the polls, and on the second and third days they

responded in sufficient numbers to compass the defeat of the entire ticket, excepting only one candidate for

The Workingman's party contained too many zealots to hold together. After the election of 1829 a meeting

was called to revise the party platform. The more conservative element prevailed and omitted the agrarian

portions of the platform. Skidmore, who was present, attempted to protest, but his voice was drowned by the

clamor of the audience. He then started a party of his own, which he called the Original Workingman's party

but which became known as the Agrarian party. The majority endeavored to rectify their position in the

community by an address to the people. "We take this opportunity," they said, "to aver, whatever may be said

to the contrary by ignorant or designing individuals or biased presses, that we have no desire or intention of

disturbing the rights of property in individuals or the public." In the meantime Robert Dale Owen and Fanny

Wright organized a party of their own, endorsing an extreme form of state paternalism over children. This

State Guardianship Plan, as it was called, aimed to "regenerate America in a generation" and to "make but

There were, then, three workingmen's parties in New York, none of which, however, succeeded in gaining an

influential position in state politics. After 1830 all these parties disappeared, but not without leaving a legacy

of valuable experience. "The Working Man's Advocate" discovered political wisdom when it confessed that

"whether these measures are carried by the formation of a new party, by the reform of an old one, or by the

In New England, the workingmen's political endeavors were joined with those of the farmers under the

agency of the New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics, and Workingmen. This organization was

initiated in 1830 by the workingmen of Woodstock, Vermont, and their journal, the "Working Man's

Gazette," became a medium of agitation which affected all the New England manufacturing towns as well as

many farming communities. "Woodstock meetings," as they were called, were held everywhere and aroused

both workingmen and farmers to form a new political party. "The Springfield Republican" summarized the

"The avowed objects generally seem to be to abolish imprisonment for debt, the abolishment of litigation, and

in lieu thereof the settlement of disputes by reference to neighbors; to establish some more equal and

universal system of public education; to diminish the salaries and extravagance of public officers; to support

no men for offices of public trust, but farmers, mechanics, and what the party call "working men"; and to

elevate the character of this class by mental instruction and mental improvement . . . . Much is said against

the wealth and aristocracy of the land, their influence, and the undue influence of lawyers and other

professional men . . . . The most of these objects appear very well on paper and we believe they are already

sustained by the good sense of the people . . . . What is most ridiculous about this party is, that in many places

where the greatest noise is made about it, the most indolent and most worthless persons, men of no trade or

useful occupation have taken the lead. We cannot of course answer for the character for industry of many

places where this party is agitated: but we believe the great body of our own community, embracing every

class and profession, may justly be called workingmen: nor do we believe enough can be found who are not

In the early thirties many towns and cities in Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, and Rhode Island

elected workingmen's candidates to local offices, usually with the help of small tradespeople. In 1833 and

1834 the workingmen of Massachusetts put a state ticket in the field which polled about 2000 votes, and in

Boston a workingman's party was organized, but it did not gather much momentum and soon disappeared.

These local and desultory attempts at forming a separate labor party failed as partisan movements. The labor

leader proved an inefficient amateur when matched against the shrewd and experienced party manipulator;

nor was there a sufficient class homogeneity to keep the labor vote together; and, even if it had so been

united, there were not enough labor votes to make a majority. So the labor candidate had to rely on the good

will of other classes in order to win his election. And this support was not forthcoming. Americans have, thus

far, always looked with suspicion upon a party that represented primarily the interests of only one class. This

tendency shows a healthy instinct founded upon the fundamental conception of society as a great unity whose

It is not necessary to assume, as some observers have done, that these petty political excursions wrecked the

labor movement of that day. It was perfectly natural that the laborer, when he awoke to the possibilities of

organization and found himself possessed of unlimited political rights, should seek a speedy salvation in the

ballot box. He took, by impulse, the partisan shortcut and soon found himself lost in the slough of party

intrigue. On the other hand, it should not be concluded that these intermittent attempts to form labor parties

were without political significance. The politician is usually blind to every need except the need of his party;

and the one permanent need of his party is votes. A demand backed by reason will usually find him inert; a

demand backed by votes galvanizes him into nervous attention. When, therefore, it was apparent that there

was a labor vote, even though a small one, the demands of this vote were not to be ignored, especially in

States where the parties were well balanced and the scale was tipped by a few hundred votes. Within a few

decades after the political movement began, many States had passed lien laws, had taken active measures to

establish efficient free schools, had abolished imprisonment for debt, had legislative inquiry into factory

conditions, and had recognized the tenhour day. These had been the leading demands of organized labor,

and they had been brought home to the public conscience, in part at least, by the influence of the

It was not until after the Civil War that labor achieved sufficient national homogeneity to attempt seriously

the formation of a national party. In the light of later events it is interesting to sketch briefly the development

of the political power of the workingman. The National Labor Union at its congress of 1866 resolved "that, so

far as political action is concerned, each locality should be governed by its own policy, whether to run an

independent ticket of workingmen, or to use political parties already existing, but at all events to cast no vote

except for men pledged to the interests of labor." The issue then seemed clear enough. But six years later the

Labor Reform party struck out on an independent course and held its first and only national convention.

Seventeen States were represented.* The Labor party, however, had yet to learn how hardly won are

independence and unity in any political organization. Rumors of pernicious intermeddling by the Democratic

and Republican politicians were afloat, and it was charged that the Pennsylvania delegates had come on

passes issued by the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Judge David Davis of Illinois, then a member of

the United States Supreme Court, was nominated for President and Governor Joel Parker of New Jersey for

VicePresident. Both declined, however, and Charles O'Conor of New York, the candidate of "the

StraightOut Democrats," was named for President, but no nomination was made for VicePresident.

Considering the subsequent phenomenal growth of the labor vote, it is worth noting in passing that O'Conor

received only 29,489 votes and that these embraced both the labor and the socalled "straight" Democratic

* It is interesting to note that in this first National Labor Party Convention a motion favoring government

For some years the political labor movement lost its independent character and was absorbed by the

Greenback party which offered a meetingground for discontented farmers and restless workingmen. In 1876

the party nominated for President the venerable Peter Cooper, who received about eighty thousand

votesmost of them probably cast by farmers. During this time the leaders of the labor movement were

serving a political apprenticeship and were learning the value of cooperation. On February 22, 1878, a

conference held at Toledo, Ohio, including eight hundred delegates from twentyeight States, perfected an

alliance between the Labor Reform and Greenback parties and invited all "patriotic citizens to unite in an

effort to secure financial reform and industrial emancipation." Financial reform meant the adoption of the

wellknown greenback free silver policy. Industrial emancipation involved the enactment of an eighthour

law; the inspection of workshops, factories, and mines; the regulation of interstate commerce; a graduated

federal income tax; the prohibition of the importation of alien contract labor; the forfeiture of the unused

portion of the princely land grants to railroads; and the direct participation of the people in government.

These fundamental issues were included in the demands of subsequent labor and populist parties, and some of

them were bequeathed to the Progressive party of a later date. The convention was thus a forerunner of

genuine reform, for its demands were based upon industrial needs. For the moment it made a wide popular

appeal. In the state elections of 1878 about a million votes were polled by the party candidates. The bulk of

these were farmers' votes cast in the Middle and Far West, though in the East, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania,

With high expectations the new party entered the campaign of 1880. It had over a dozen members in

Congress, active organizations in nearly every State, and ten thousand local clubs. General James B. Weaver,

the presidential nominee of the party, was the first candidate to make extensive campaign journeys into

distant sections of the country. His energetic canvass netted him only 308,578 votes, most of which came

from the West. The party was distinctly a farmers' party. In 1884, it nominated the lurid Ben Butler who had

been, according to report, "ejected from the Democratic party and booted out of the Republican." His

demagogic appeals, however, brought him not much more than half as many votes as the party received at the

With the power of the farmers on the wane, the balance began to shift. There now followed a number of

attempts to organize labor in the Union Labor party, the United Labor party, the Progressive Labor party, the

American Reform party, and the Tax Reformers. There were still numerous farmers' organizations such as the

Farmers' Alliance, the AntiMonopolists, the Homesteaders, and others, but they were no longer the

dominant force. Under the stimulus of the labor unions, delegates representing the Knights of Labor, the

Grangers, the AntiMonopolists, and other farmers' organizations, met in Cincinnati on February 22, 1887,

and organized the National Union Labor party.* The following May the party held its only nominating

convention. Alson J. Streeter of Illinois was named for President and Samuel Evans of Texas for

VicePresident. The platform of the party was based upon the prevalent economic and political discontent.

Farmers were overmortgaged, laborers were underpaid, and the poor were growing poorer, while the rich

were daily growing richer. "The paramount issues," the new party declared, "are the abolition of usury,

monopoly, and trusts, and we denounce the Republican and Democratic parties for creating and perpetuating

In the meantime Henry George, whose "Progress and Poverty" had made a profound impression upon public

thought, had become in 1886 a candidate for mayor of New York City, and polled the phenomenal total of

68,110 votes, while Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican candidate, received 60,485, and Abram S. Hewitt,

the successful Democratic candidate, polled 90,552. The evidence of popular support which attended Henry

George's brief political career was the prelude to a national effort which culminated in the formation of the

United Labor party. Its platform was similar to that of the Union party, except that the single tax now made

its appearance. This method contemplated the "taxation of land according to its value and not according to its

area, to devote to common use and benefit those values which arise, not from the exertion of the individual,

but from the growth of society," and the abolition of all taxes on industry and its products. But it was

apparent from the similarity of their platforms and the geographical distribution of their candidates that the

two labor parties were competing for the same vote. At a conference held in Chicago to effect a union,

however, the Union Labor party insisted on the complete effacement of the other ticket and the single taxers

refused to submit. In the election which followed, the Union Labor party received about 147,000 votes,

largely from the South and West and evidently the old Greenback vote, while the United party polled almost

no votes outside of Illinois and New York. Neither party survived the result of this election.

In December, 1889, committees representing the Knights of Labor and the Farmers' Alliance met in St. Louis

to come to some agreement on political policies. Owing to the single tax predilection of the Knights, the two

organizations were unable to enter into a close union, but they nevertheless did agree that "the legislative

committees of both organizations [would] act in concert before Congress for the purpose of securing the

enactment of laws in harmony with their demands." This cooperation was a forerunner of the People's party

or, as it was commonly called, the Populist party, the largest third party that had taken the field since the

Civil War. Throughout the West and the South political conditions now were feverish. Old party majorities

were overturned, and a new type of Congressman invaded Washington. When the first national convention of

the People's party met in Omaha on July 2, 1892, the outlook was bright. General Weaver was nominated for

President and James G. Field of Virginia for VicePresident. The platform rehabilitated Greenbackism in

cogent phrases, demanded government control of railroads and telegraph and telephone systems, the

reclamation of land held by corporations, an income tax, the free coinage of silver and gold "at the present

legal ratio of sixteen to one," and postal savings banks. In a series of resolutions which were not a part of the

platform but were nevertheless "expressive of the sentiment of this convention," the party declared itself in

sympathy "with the efforts of organized workingmen to shorten the hours of labor"; it condemned "the fallacy

of protecting American labor under the present system, which opens our ports to the pauper and criminal

classes of the world and crowds out our wageearners"; and it opposed the Pinkerton system of capitalistic

espionage as "a menace to our liberties." The party formally declared itself to be a "union of the labor forces

of the United States," for "the interests of rural and city labor are the same; their enemies identical."

These national movements prior to 1896 are not, however, an adequate index of the political strength of labor

in partisan endeavor. Organized labor was more of a power in local and state elections, perhaps because in

these cases its pressure was more direct, perhaps because it was unable to cope with the great national

organization of the older parties. During these years of effort to gain a footing in the Federal Government,

there are numerous examples of the success of the labor party in state elections. As early as 1872 the labor

reformers nominated state tickets in Pennsylvania and Connecticut. In 1875 they nominated Wendell Phillips

for Governor of Massachusetts. In 1878, in coalition with the Greenbackers, they elected many state officers

throughout the West. Ten years later, when the Union Labor party was at its height, labor candidates were

successful in several municipalities. In 1888 labor tickets were nominated in many Western States, including

Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Of these Kansas

cast the largest labor vote, with nearly 36,000, and Missouri came next with 15,400. In the East, however, the

In California the political labor movement achieved a singular prominence. In 1877 the labor situation in San

Francisco became acute because of the prevalence of unemployment. Grumblings of dissatisfaction soon

gave way to parades and informal meetings at which imported Chinese labor and the rich "nobs," the

supposed dual cause of all the trouble, were denounced in lurid language. The agitation, however, was

formless until the necessary leader appeared in Dennis Kearney, a native of Cork County, Ireland. For

fourteen years he had been a sailor, had risen rapidly to first officer of a clipper ship, and then had settled in

San Francisco as a drayman. He was temperate and industrious in his personal life, and possessed a clear eye,

a penetrating voice, the vocabulary of one versed in the crude socialistic pamphlets of his day, and, in spite of

certain domineering habits bred in the sailor, the winning graces of his nationality.

Kearney appeared at meetings on the vacant lots known as the "sand lots," in front of the City Hall of San

Francisco, and advised the discontented ones to "wrest the government from the hands of the rich and place it

in those of the people." On September 12, 1877, he rallied a group of unemployed around him and organized

the Workingman's Trade and Labor Union of San Francisco. On the 5th of October, at a great public meeting,

the Workingman's party of California was formed and Kearney was elected president. The platform adopted

by the party proposed to place the government in the hands of the people, to get rid of the Chinese, to destroy

the money power, to "provide decently for the poor and unfortunate, the weak and the helpless," and "to elect

none but competent workingmen and their friends to any office whatever . . . . When we have 10,000

members we shall have the sympathy and support of 20,000 other workingmen. This party," concluded the

pronouncement, "will exhaust all peaceable means of attaining its ends, but it will not be denied justice, when

it has the power to enforce it. It will encourage no riot or outrage, but it will not volunteer to repress or put

down or arrest or prosecute the hungry and impatient, who manifest their hatred of the Chinamen by a

crusade against 'John,' or those who employ him. Let those who raise the storm by their selfishness, suppress

it themselves. If they dare raise the devil, let them meet him face to face. We will not help them." In

advocating these views, Kearney held meeting after meeting each rhetorically more violent than the last, until

on the 3d of November he was arrested. This martyrdom in the cause of labor increased his power, and when

he was released he was drawn by his followers in triumph through the streets on one of his own drays. His

language became more and more extreme. He bludgeoned the "thieving politicians" and the "bloodsucking

capitalists," and he advocated "judicious hanging" and "discretionary shooting." The City Council passed an

ordinance intended to gag him; the legislature enacted an extremely harsh riot act; a body of volunteers

patrolled the streets of the city; a committee of safety was organized. On January 5, 1878, Kearney and a

number of associates were indicted, arrested, and released on bail. When the trial jury acquitted Kearney,

what may be called the terrorism of the movement attained its height, but it fortunately spent itself in violent

The Workingman's party, however, elected a workingman mayor of San Francisco, joined forces with the

Grangers, and elected a majority of the members of the state constitutional convention which met in

Sacramento on September 28, 1878. This was a notable triumph for a third party. The framing of a new

constitution gave this coalition of farmers and workingmen an unusual opportunity to assail the evils which

they declared infested the State. The instrument which they drafted bound the state legislature with numerous

restrictions and made lobbying a felony; it reorganized the courts, placed innumerable limitations upon

corporations, forbade the loaning of the credit or property of the State to corporations, and placed a state

commission in charge of the railroads, which had been perniciously active in state politics. Alas for these

visions of reform! A few years after the adoption of this new constitution by California, Hubert H. Bancroft

"Those objects which it particularly aimed at, it failed to achieve. The effect upon corporations disappointed

its authors and supporters. Many of them were strong enough still to defy state power and evade state laws, in

protecting their interests, and this they did without scruple. The relation of capital and labor is even more

strained than before the constitution was adopted. Capital soon recovered from a temporary

intimidation...Labor still uneasy was still subject to the inexorable law of supply and demand. Legislatures

were still to be approached by agents...Chinese were still employed in digging and grading. The state board of

railroad Commissioners was a useless expense, ...being as wax in the hands of the companies it was set to

After the collapse of the Populist party, there is to be discerned in labor politics a new departure, due

primarily to the attitude of the American Federation of Labor in partisan matters, and secondarily to the rise

of political socialism. A socialistic party deriving its support almost wholly from foreignborn workmen had

appeared in a few of the large cities in 1877, but it was not until 1892 that a national party was organized, and

not until after the collapse of Populism that it assumed some political importance.

In August, 1892, a SocialistLabor convention which was held in New York City nominated candidates for

President and VicePresident and adopted a platform that contained, besides the familiar economic demands

of socialism, the rather unusual suggestion that the Presidency, VicePresidency, and Senate of the United

States be abolished and that an executive board be established "whose members are to be elected, and may at

any time be recalled, by the House of Representatives, as the only legislative body, the States and

municipalities to adopt corresponding amendments to their constitutions and statutes." Under the title of the

SocialistLabor party, this ticket polled 21,532 votes in 1892, and in 1896, 36,373 votes.

In 1897 the inevitable split occurred in the Socialist ranks. Eugene V. Debs, the radical labor leader, who, as

president of the American Railway Union, had directed the Pullman strike and had become a martyr to the

radical cause through his imprisonment for violating the orders of a Federal Court, organized the Social

Democratic party. In 1900 Debs was nominated for President, and Job Harriman, representing the older wing,

for VicePresident. The ticket polled 94,864 votes. The SocialistLabor party nominated a ticket of their own

which received only 33,432 votes. Eventually this party shrank to a mere remnant, while the Social

Democratic party became generally known as the Socialist party. Debs became their candidate in three

successive elections. In 1904 and 1908 his vote hovered around 400,000. In 1910 congressional and local

elections spurred the Socialists to hope for a million votes in 1912 but they fell somewhat short of this mark.

Debs received 901,873 votes, the largest number which a Socialist candidate has ever yet received. Benson,

* The Socialist vote is stated differently by McKee, "National Conventions and Platforms." The above

figures, to 1912, are taken from Stanwood's "History of the Presidency," and for 1912 and 1916 from the

In the meantime, the influence of the Socialist labor vote in particular localities vastly increased. In 1910

Milwaukee elected a Socialist mayor by a plurality of seven thousand, sent Victor Berger to Washington as

the first Socialist Congressman, and elected laborunion members as five of the twelve Socialist councilmen,

thus revealing the sympathy of the working class for the cause. On January 1, 1912, over three hundred towns

and cities had one or more Socialist officers. The estimated Socialist vote of these localities was 1,500,000.

The 1039 Socialist officers included 56 mayors, 205 aldermen and councilmen, and 148 school officers. This

was not a sectional vote but represented New England and the far West, the oldest commonwealths and the

newest, the North and the South, and cities filled with foreign workingmen as well as staid towns controlled

When the United States entered the Great War, the Socialist party became a reservoir for all the unsavory

disloyalties loosened by the shock of the great conflict. Pacifists and proGermans found a common refuge

under its red banner. In the New York mayoralty elections in 1917 these Socialists cast nearly onefourth of

the votes, and in the Wisconsin senatorial election in 1918 Victor Bergen, their standardbearer, swept

Milwaukee, carried seven counties, and polled over one hundred thousand votes. On the other hand, a large

number of American Socialists, under the leadership of William English Walling and John Spargo,

vigorously espoused the national cause and subordinated their economic and political theories to their loyalty.

The Socialists have repeatedly attempted to make official inroads upon organized labor. They have the

sympathy of the I.W.W., the remnant of the Knights of Labor, and the more radical trades unions, but from

the American Federation of Laborthey have met only rebuff. A number of state federations, especially in the

Middle West, not a few city centrals, and some sixteen national unions, have officially approved of the

Socialist programme, but the Federation has consistently refused such an endorsement.

The political tactics assumed by the Federation discountenance a distinct labor party movement, as long as

the old parties are willing to subserve the ends of the unions. This selfrestraint does not mean that the

Federation is not "in politics." On the contrary, it is constantly vigilant and aggressive and it engages every

year in political maneuvers without, however, having a partisan organization of its own. At its annual

conventions it has time and again urged local and state branches to scrutinize the records of legislative

candidates and to see that only friends of union labor receive the union laborer's ballot. In 1897 it "firmly and

unequivocally" favored "the independent use of the ballot by trade unionists and workmen united regardless

of party, that we may elect men from our own ranks to write new laws and administer them along lines laid

down in the legislative demands of the American Federation of Labor and at the same time secure an

impartial judiciary that will not govern us by arbitrary injunctions of the courts, nor act as the pliant tool of

corporate wealth." And in 1906 it determined, first, to defeat all candidates who are either hostile or

indifferent to labor's demands; second, if neither party names such candidates, then to make independent

labor nominations; third, in every instance to support "the men who have shown themselves to be friendly to

With great astuteness, perseverance, and alertness, the Federation has pursued this method to its uttermost

possibilities. In Washington it has met with singular success, reaching a highwater mark in the first Wilson

Administration, with the passage of the Clayton bill and the eighthour railroad bill. After this action, a great

New York daily lamented that "Congress is a subordinate branch of the American Federation of Labor...The

unsleeping watchmen of organized labor know how intrepid most Congressmen are when threatened with the

'labor vote.' The American laborites don't have to send men to Congress as their British brethren do to the

House of Commons. From the galleries they watch the proceedings. They are mighty in committee rooms.

They reason with the recalcitrant. They fight opponents in their Congress districts. There are no abler or more

potent politicians than the labor leaders out of Congress. Why should rulers like Mr. Gompers and Mr.

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

Many Congressmen have felt the retaliatory power of the Federation. Even such powerful leaders as

Congressman Littlefield of Maine and Speaker Cannon were compelled to exert their utmost to overcome

union opposition. The Federation has been active in seating union men in Congress. In 1908 there were six

union members in the House; in 1910 there were ten; in 1912 there were seventeen. The Secretary of Labor

himself holds a union card. Nor has the Federation shrunk from active participation in the presidential lists. It

bitterly opposed President Roosevelt when he espoused the open shop in the Government Printing Office;

In thus maintaining a sort of grand partisan neutrality, the Federation not only holds in numerous instances

the balance of power but it makes party fealty its slave and avoids the costly luxury of maintaining a separate

national organization of its own. The allseeing lobby which it maintains at Washington is a prototype of

what one may discern in most state capitals when the legislature is in session. The legislative programmes

adopted by the various state labor bodies are metamorphosed into demands, and well organized committees

are present to cooperate with the labor members who sit in the legislature. The unions, through their steering

committee, select with caution the members who are to introduce the labor bills and watch paternally over

Most of this legislative output has been strictly protective of union interests. Labor, like all other interests that

aim to use the power of government, has not been wholly altruistic, in its motives, especially since in recent

years it has found itself matched against such powerful organizations of employers as the Manufacturers'

Association, the National Erectors' Association, and the Metal Trades Association. In fact, in nearly every

important industry the employers have organized for defensive and offensive purposes. These organizations

match committee with committee, lobby with lobby, add espionage to open warfare, and issue effective

The voluminous labor codes of such great manufacturing communities as Massachusetts, New York,

Pennsylvania, and Illinois, reflect a new and enlarged conception of the modern State. Labor has generally

favored measures that extend the inquisitional and regulative functions of the State, excepting where this

extension seemed to interfere with the autonomy of labor itself. Workshops, mines, factories, and other places

of employment are now minutely inspected, and innumerable sanitary and safety provisions are enforced. A

workman's compensation law removes from the employee's mind his anxiety for the fate of his family if he

should be disabled. The labor contract, long extolled as the aegis of economic liberty, is no longer free from

state vigilance. The time and method of paying wages are ordered by the State, and in certain industries the

hours of labor are fixed by law. Women and children are the special proteges of this new State, and great care

is taken that they shall be engaged only in employment suitable to their strength and under an environment

The growing social control of the individual is significant, for it is not only the immediate conditions of labor

that have come under public surveillance. Where and how the workman lives is no longer a matter of

indifference to the public, nor what sort of schooling his children get, what games they play, and what motion

pictures they see. The city, in cooperation with the State, now provides nurses, dentists, oculists, and

surgeons, as well as teachers for the children. This local paternalism increases yearly in its solicitude and

receives the eager sanction of the labor members of city councils. The State has also set up elaborate

machinery for observing all phases of the labor situation and for gathering statistics and other information

that should be helpful in framing labor laws, and has also established state employment agencies and boards

This machinery of mediation is significant not because of what it has already accomplished but as evidence of

the realization on the part of the State that labor disputes are not merely the concern of the two parties to the

labor contract. Society has finally come to realize that, in the complex of the modern State, it also is vitally

concerned, and, in despair at thousands of strikes every year, with their wastage and their aftermath of

The modern labor laws cannot be credited, however, to labor activity alone. The new social atmosphere has

provided a congenial milieu for this vast extension of state functions. The philanthropist, the statistician, and

the sociologist have become potent allies of the labor legislator; and such nonlabor organizations, as the

American Association for Labor Legislation, have added their momentum to the movement. New ideals of

social cooperation have been established, and new conceptions of the responsibilities of private ownership

While labor organizations have succeeded rather readily in bending the legislative power to their wishes, the

military arm of the executive and the judiciary which ultimately enforce the command of the State have been

beyond their reach. To bend these branches of the government to its will, organized labor has fought a

persistent and aggressive warfare. Decisions of the courts which do not sustain union contentions are received

with great disfavor. The open shop decisions of the United States Supreme Court are characterized as unfair

and partisan and are vigorously opposed in all the labor journals. It is not, however, until the sanction of

public opinion eventually backs the attitude of the unions that the laws and their interpretation can conform

The chief grievance of organized labor against the courts is their use of the injunction to prevent boycotts and

strikes. "Government by injunction" is the complaint of the unions and it is based upon the common, even

reckless, use of a writ which was in origin and intent a high and rarely used prerogative of the Court of

Chancery. What was in early times a powerful weapon in the hands of the Crown against riotous assemblies

and threatened lawlessness was invoked in 1868 by an English court as a remedy against industrial

disturbances.* Since the Civil War the American courts in rapidly increasing numbers have used this weapon,

and the Damascus blade of equity has been transformed into a bludgeon in the hands even of magistrates of

The prime objection which labor urges against this use of the injunction is that it deprives the defendant of a

jury trial when his liberty is at stake. The unions have always insisted that the law should be so modified that

this right would accompany all injunctions growing out of labor disputes. Such a denatured injunction,

however, would defeat the purpose of the writ; but the union leader maintains, on the other hand, that he is

placed unfairly at a disadvantage, when an employer can command for his own aid in an industrial dispute the

swift and sure arm of a law originally intended for a very different purpose. The imprisonment of Debs

during the Pullman strike for disobeying a Federal injunction brought the issue vividly before the public; and

the sentencing of Gompers, Mitchell, and Morrison to prison terms for violating the Buck's Stove injunction

produced new waves of popular protest. Occasional dissenting opinions by judges and the gradual conviction

of lawyers and of society that some other tribunal than a court of equity or even a court of law would be more

suitable for the settling of labor disputes is indicative of the change ultimately to be wrought in practice.

The unions are also violently opposed to the use of military power by the State during strikes. Not only can

the militia be called out to enforce the mandates of the State but whenever Federal interference is justified the

United States troops may be sent to the scene of turmoil. After the period of great labor troubles culminating

in the Pullman strike, many States reorganized their militia into national guards. The armories built for the

accommodation of the guard were called by the unions "plutocracy's bastiles," and the mounted State

constabulary organized in 1906 by Pennsylvania were at once dubbed "American Cossacks." Several States

following the example of Pennsylvania have encountered the bitterest hostility on the part of the labor unions.

Already opposition to the militia has proceeded so far that some unions have forbidden their members to

perform militia service when called to do strike duty, and the military readjustments involved in the Great

War have profoundly affected the relation of the State to organized labor. Following the signing of the

armistice, a movement for the organization of an American Labor party patterned after the British Labour

party gained rapid momentum, especially in New York and Chicago. A platform of fourteen points was

formulated at a general conference of the leaders, and provisional organizations were perfected in a number

of cities. What power this latest attempt to enlist labor in partisan politics will assume is problematical. It is

obviously inspired by European experiences and promulgated by socialistic propaganda. It has not succeeded

in invading the American Federation of Labor, which did not formally endorse the movement at its Annual

Convention in 1919. Gompers, in an intimate and moving speech, told a group of labor leaders gathered in

New York on December 9, 1918, that "the organization of a political party would simply mean the dividing

of the activities and allegiance of the men and women of labor between two bodies, such as would often

come in conflict." Under present conditions, it would appear that no Labor party could succeed in the United

The relation between the American Federation of Labor and the socialistic and political labor movements, as

well as the monopolistic eagerness of the socialists to absorb these activities, is clearly indicated in

Gompers's narrative of his experiences as an American labor representative at the London Conference of

"When the InterAllied Labor Conference opened in London, on September 17th, early in the morning, there

were sent over to my room at the hotel cards which were intended to be the credential cards for our

delegation to sign and hand in as our credentials. The card read something like this: 'The undersigned is a

duly accredited delegate to the InterAllied Socialist Conference to be held at London,' etc., and giving the

"I refused to sign my name, or permit my name to be put upon any card of that character. My associates were

as indignant as I was and refused to sign any such credential. We went to the hall where the conference was

to be held. There was a young lady at the door. When we made an effort to enter she asked for our cards. We

said we had no cards to present. 'Well,' the answer came, 'you cannot be admitted.' We replied, 'That may be

truewe cannot be admittedbut we will not sign any such card. We have our credentials written out,

signed, and sealed and will present them to any committee of the conference for scrutiny and

"Mr. Charles Bowerman, Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee of the British Trade Union Congress, at

that moment emerged from the door. He asked why we had not entered. I told him the situation, and he

persuaded the young lady to permit us to pass in. We entered the hall and presented our credentials. Mr.

James Sexton, officer and representative of the Docker's Union of Liverpool, arose and called the attention of

the Conference to this situation, and declared that the American Federation of Labor delegates refused to sign

any such document. He said it was not an InterAllied Socialist Conference, but an InterAllied Socialist and

"Mr. Arthur Henderson, of the Labor Party, made an explanation something to this effect, if my memory

serves me: 'It is really regrettable that such an error should have been made. It was due to the fact that the old

card of credentials which has been used in former conferences was sent to the printer, no one paying any

"I want to call your attention to the significance of that explanation, that is, that the trade union movement of

Great Britain was represented at these former conferences, but at this conference the importance of Labor was

regarded as so insignificant that everybody took it for granted that it was perfectly all right to have the

credential card read 'InterAllied Socialist Conference' and with the omission of this more important term,

As one looks back upon the history of the workingman, one finds something impressive, even majestic, in the

rise of the fourth estate from a humble place to one of power in this democratic nation. In this rise of fortune

the laborer's union has unquestionably been a moving force, perhaps even the leading cause. At least this

homogeneous mass of workingmen, guided by selfdeveloped leadership, has aroused society to safeguard

more carefully the individual needs of all its parts. Labor has awakened the state to a sense of responsibility

for its great sins of neglect and has made it conscious of its social duties. Labor, like other elements of

society, has often been selfish, narrow, vindictive; but it has also shown itself earnest and constructive. The

conservative trades union, at the hour of this writing, stands as a bulwark between that amorphous,

inefficient, irresponsible Socialism which has made Russia a lurid warning and Prussia a word of scorn, and

that rational social ideal which is founded upon the conviction that society is ultimately an organic spiritual

unity, the blending of a thousand diverse interests whose justly combined labors and harmonized talents

While there is a vast amount of writing on the labor problem, there are very few works on the history of labor

organizations in the United States. The main reliance for the earlier period, in the foregoing pages, has been

the "Documentary History of American Industrial Society", edited by John R. Commons, 10 vols. (1910).

The "History of Labour in the United States," 2 vols. (1918), which he published with associates, is the most

convenient and complete compilation that has yet appeared and contains a large mass of historical material on

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

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

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

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

G. G. Groat, "An Introduction to the Study of Organized Labor in America" (1916). A useful and uptodate

compendium. R. F. Hosie, "Trade Unionism in the United States" (1917). A suggestive study of the

J. H. Hollander and G. E. Barnett (Eds.), "Studies in American Trade Unionism" (1905). These two volumes

are collections of contemporary studies of many phases of organized labor by numerous scholars. They are

The "Report of the Industrial Commission," vol. XVII (1901) provides the most complete analysis of trade

G. E. McNeill (Ed.), "The Labor Movement: the Problem of Today" (1899.). This collection contains

historical sketches of the organizations of the greater labor groups and of the development of the more

important issues espoused by them. For many years it was the most comprehensive historical work on

American unionism, and it remains a necessary source of information to the student of trades union history.

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

John Mitchell, "Organized Labor" (1903). A suggestive exposition of the principles of Unionism by a

distinguished labor leader. It contains only a limited amount of historical matter.

T. V. Powderly, "Thirty Years of Labor" (1889.) A history of the Knights of Labor from a personal

E. L. Bogart, "The Economic History of the United States" (rev. ed., 1918). A concise and clear account of

G. S. Callender, "Selections from the Economic History of the United States" (1909). A collection of

readings. The brief introductory essays to each chapter give a succinct account of American industrial