Page:EB1922 - Volume 32.djvu/781

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TRADE UNIONS
755


the A.C.W.A. had raised $930,244.54 toward the strike fund. The arbitration plan was renewed July 1921.

In the spring of 1919 during a strike in Lawrence, Mass., the

Amalgamated Textile Workers of America were organized. A

resolution of the executive board in April 1920 to affiliate with the

' Amalgamated Clothing Workers was favourably received by the latter in their convention in May. The constitutions of the two

organizations are similar. The membership of the A.T.W. in Jan.

1921 was 40,000; that of the A.C.W.A. 200,000. In 1920 the Amal- gamated Clothing Workers and the Ladies' Garment Workers

1 were drawing together and affiliation was discussed. Shop Unions. In recent years some employers have offered substitutes for trade agreements with organized labour. The

' Colorado Fuel & Iron Co. recognized committees of its employees as a part of the welfare plan of 1915. In 1918 the Standard Oil Co.

introduced a system of conferences with representatives elected by

the employees. Committees on health, safety, sanitation and housing were formed, and individuals might present grievances through their representatives. By the summer of 1919, 160 com- panies in the United States had shop committees in their plants. In some plants elaborate industrial governments have been developed ; the best known are those in the Filene store in Boston and the Leitch plan named after its originator, John Leitch of Philadelphia,

and modelled on the checks and balances of the U.S. Government.

Some employers associate the workers with themselves by profit-

, sharing and bonus plans. Others offer a " forum " in which workers

] may meet with the managers to discuss the problems of the business.

One firm expressed the hope that the purchase of stock by employees

1 would save it from the dictatorship of absentee financial control. In 1918 the attention of managers was called to the high cost of

! the labour turnover. Employment departments were instituted. In the course of placing and training the worker and securing his

' honest effort in production, and in organizing the working force for the safety movement, the science of personal management has

| been evolving. Persuasion takes the place of coercion or bargaining. The old " scientific management " introduced in 1911 by Frederick W. Taylor, an engineer connected with the Midvale and later with the Bethlehem Steel Co., looked upon the individual worker as a producing machine; effort to increase earning power was the only human reaction expected from him. The new scientific man- agement obtains production through group action, by a general consensus of opinion in the shop. The labour problem is no longer left solely to the production engineer, who has been trained to deal with the forces of nature, but is given to a new official, a psycholo- gist, the labour manager. The labour department is not responsible for getting out the product, but for building up a permanent and dependable labour force.

Criminal Unionists. On Oct. I 1910 the office of the Los Angeles Times was blown up and 21 people were killed. On the same night bombs were found in the homes of the publisher of the Times and of the secretary of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association. On Dec. 25 the Llewellyn Iron-Works, also at Los Angeles, were dynamited. In May 1911 William J. Burns, a detective, secured the arrest, in Indianapolis, of John McNamara, secretary of the International Association of Bridge and Structural .Iron Work- ers, his brother James, and Ortie McManigal. The men were taken to Los Angeles, where they were found to be responsible for these and other dynamite outrages in various parts of the country. McManigal confessed to dynamite plots involving also the Mc- Namaras and others, and the brothers pleaded guilty to blowing up the Times building and the iron-works. The criminals were formally repudiated by the American Federation of Labor. An investigation by a Federal grand jury of the dynamite plots led to the indictment of 54 men, many of them officers of the Bridge and Structural Iron Workers. They were tried and 38 were found guilty. Burns was arrested for kidnapping, but acquitted. In June 1916 14 business agents of the Painters' and Electrical Workers' unions of Chicago were found guilty of extortion. The evidence showed that contrac- tors and merchants had been compelled to pay sums ranging from 50 to $200 under the threat of damage to their property. In Nov. 1920 an investigation into the high cost of building in New York City brought to light a conspiracy among dealers in material, puilding contractors, bankers and labour bosses to keep up the bids

or construction work. The labour leader implicated and convicted

A-as President Brindell of the Building Trades Council.

The Industrial Workers of the World, commonly spoken of as the I.W.W., were organized in June 1905 at a convention in Chicago of 203 persons, representing over 40 groups in the working classes. \mong the sponsors were the leaders of the Western Federation of Miners, the remnants of the American Labor Union (made up of workers from different industries, but chiefly raihvaymen), and the socialist 1 rade and Labor Alliance, known to be the economic arm )f the Socialist Labor party. The originators of the new association 'elt that a labour union based on craft autonomy, such as the American Federation of Labor, could not succeed in the struggle of

he workers against capital. For success, " one big union," the m-

lustrial workers massed in a single army, was felt to be necessary. Moreover, it was thought advisable to get the working class organ- zed beforehand and accustomed to working together in " the same jroups and departments and industries that the workers would

assume in the working-class administration of the Cooperative Com- monwealth." The aim of the new organization, as intended by the founders, was first to provide a new central body in which the existing trade unions, consolidated into industrial unions, could be associated ; and second, to organize and add to this nucleus the great mass of the unorganized, unskilled and migratory labourers. The philosophy of the movement, as expressed in the constitution adopted, was that " the working class and the employing class have nothing in com- mon ; 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 "; the wages system must be abolished, and the capitalistic form of society must become extinct. This was to be accomplished by direct action; the final solution of the class struggle would be by the " social general strike," when the toilers would " take and hold " that which they produce by their labour. " There is but one bargain that the I.W.W. will make with the employing class complete surrender of all con- trol of industry to the organized workers." Some of the leaders insisted that political action should be discouraged as useless. This led to the split, in 1908, between the western, or direct-action faction, known as the Chicago branch, and the parliamentarian or doctrinaire group, represented by the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, led by Daniel De Leon of New York, which became known as the " De- troit Branch," until in 1915 it took the name of Workers' Interna- tional Industrial Union. Its official publications are The Weekly People, Industrial Union News, and The Socialist. The Chicago di- rect-action branch, exclusively claiming the name Industrial Workers of the World, was led by W. D. Haywood. After being sentenced to prison (see below) Haywood fled to Russia in April 1921, leaving the office in Chicago in charge of Roy Brown. Their organs are One Big Union Monthly, New Solidarity, both published in Chicago, and The Industrial Worker, Seattle. Before 1917 they published seven papers in foreign languages. After the war the organization issued 19 publications in 13 languages. The I.W.W. have amended their original constitution to omit the clause calling for political action. At its origin the I.W.W. spoke hopefully of sweeping the working class into its ranks; at the end of its first year it had a paid-up membership of 14,000; in 1907, before the split, of less than half that number; in 1912 the Chicago branch reported 18,387; in 1913 14,851; in Jan. 1917 60,000; on Oct. I 1919 100,000. The general office had issued 500,000 membership cards to that date. One de- partment, the Agricultural Workers Union, reported 18,000 mem- bers enrolled between April 1915 and Nov. 1916. The turnover between 1905 and 1915 was very high, both as regards members and local unions. In 1915 7-5 % of the enrolment had remained in active membership. By 1918 only one-fifth of the number of locals which had been chartered were in existence. The greatest loss was in 1907 when the Western Federation of Miners left the I.W.W. In 1911 it affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, and in 1916 became the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers' International Union.

The I.W.W. claimed leadership in the McKees Rocks, Pa., strike in 1909, and in the " free speech fights " at Spokane, Wash., and Fresno, Cal., in 1909, San Diego, Cal., in 1910, and Everett, Wash., in 1916. In 1907 the leaders Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone were accused of the murder of the ex-governor of Idaho; they were arrested in Colorado without warrant, carried to Idaho, imprisoned and finally tried. They were acquitted. In 1912 the I.W.W. leaders helped carry on strikes at Lawrence, Mass., and at Paterson, N.J. (see STRIKES AND LOCK-OUTS). They were active among the lumber- men in Louisiana. In 1914 they organized the migratory labourers in the harvest-fields, lumber workers, miners and construction workers. In the spring of 1917 the lumbermen of the extreme north-west struck; soldiers rounded up the pickets and threw them into a stockade. By July 50,000 lumbermen were on strike, demand- ing an eight-hour day and better housing. The I.W.W. were con- sidered responsible for trouble among the miners in Arizona in the summer of 1917 (see STRIKES AND LOCK-OUTS). On Sept. 5 1917 I.W.W. offices throughout the country were raided by the Depart- ment of Justice, and their property seized. A few days later most of the officials were arrested. The grand jury in Chicago indicted 166 members for conspiracy to interfere with the nation s war pro- gramme. Over 1 ,000 members were arrested ; aliens among them were held for deportation. At the trial in Chicago in Aug. 1918 97 of the accused were industrial workers, four were journalists and organizers. Ninety-eight were pronounced guilty, and 93 were sentenced to imprisonment of from 10 days to 20 years. Haywood received 20 years' imprisonment and a fine of $10,000. He appealed, and was released on bail. The sentence was confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in April 1921, but, as stated, Haywood had escaped to Russia. At about the same time 46 reputed members of the I.W.W. were arrested in California under the Espionage Act. Others were added to their number. The indictment was added to six times. The defendants believed that the trial was a mere formality, and sat silent throughout the proceedings without offering a defence. They were found guilty and severe sentences were passed. Five of the defendants died in jail. In 1917 the lumber workers substituted " sabotage " for strikes. They would work for eight hours and then quit in a body. If anyone was discharged the whole crew quit. In Nov. 1917 the Construction Workers, an international union of the I.W.W., attempted to hold a convention in Omaha; all attending