1910’S:

THE DECADE OF

DYNAMITE

Review

• Progressive Era

• Period of uncertainty, social activism and political and social reform

• Main objective was to eliminate corruption in government – taking

down political machines and their bosses

• Regulation of monopolies (Trust busting) via anti-trust laws

• Sherman Anti- trust Act

• It was also however significant in its great strikes – never before

had labor and capital engage in such a private warfare than during

this decade. (until the 1910s)

• Homestead

• Pullman

• Formation of the I.W.W. – Industrial Unionism <-> Trade Unionism

• 1904-1910 – American Federation of Labor existence was being challenged. Membership declined or remained stagnant during this period: • Employer organized a successful counter offensive (Open Shop Campaign)

against the AFL

• Industrial and Radical Unionism – Radical labor organizations like the Western Federation of Miners and the IWW captured a growing militant section of labor force – successfully organizing skilled and unskilled workers.

• AFL’s Reaction • Despite vocal opposition toward industrial unionism - beginning in 1907 the

AFL began forming Trade Departments to better consolidate actions by various trade unions within a specific industry. (Examples: Building Trades Department, Railway Employees Department, Mining Department, etc.)

• While attempting to couch this new model within the framework of trade unionism it was clearly derived from the new theories of industrial unionism.

• Between 1910-1917, the AFL gained some 800,000 new members. Over 70% of the growth came from railway, building, coal mining and clothing.

• Some of the most bitter labor fights in the 1910s took place in these industries.

Los Angeles Times Bombing • October 1st, 1910 (1:07 am) – Corner of First Street and Broadway

• Killed twenty and injured over 100

• Called the “crime of the century”

• Addition unexploded bombs found at the home of Harrison Gray Otis (owner of LA Times and F.J. Zeehandelaar, secretary of the Merchants and Manufacturers Association (MMA) December 25th, 1910 - Llewellyn factory bombed – partially destroying the building.

• Otis had been waging a war

Against organized labor. He

Wanted Los Angeles to be an

Oasis of industrial freedom

• Using the MMA to push an

Open Shop” campaign in the city.

• Labor and capital saw LA as the

battleground for the state - mainly

for the building trade.

Los Angeles Times Bombing • Members of the International Association of Bridge

and Structural Iron Workers – McNamara Brothers

(John J. and James B. McNamara) were arrested

• Brother became cause célèbre for the labor movement

• Job Harriman – attorney and socialist candidate

• 4 days before 1911 Mayoral election

Plea: John McNamara – Life; James McNamara – 15

• Between 1906 and 1911, the Iron Workers blew up

110 iron works

• Additional 55 leaders of the Iron Workers were arrested

– 38 were convicted.

• Matthew Schmidt and David Caplan were also arrested

and accused of being involved in the L.A. bombings.

Schmidt received a life sentence; Caplan received 10 years

Garment and Needle Trades

• Garment industry remained very similar to how it was organized in

the previous century

• Payment was often determined according to piece rates, which tended

to be low.

• Hours were long and conditions were deplorable.

• Three unions existed in the needle trade industry but were confined

primarily in New York and were torn by ideological conflicts:

• Journeymen Tailors (Socialist)

• United Garment Workers (Anti-Socialist)

• International Ladies Garment Workers (anarchist and communist)

Garment and Needle Trades

• September 1909 - “Uprising of the 20,000” - female shirtwaist makers in New York strike against sweatshop conditions • Strike started with an action against the Triangle Shirt Waist Company after the

termination of union leaders during an organizing campaign.

• Company guards assaulted picketers – most of whom were young immigrant female workers of Jewish and Italian descent.

• New of the brutality caused 20,000 workers in the industry to walk off the job.

• Strike ended by arbitration in mid-February 1910 – strikers winning wage increases and a closed shop in almost all shirtwaist establishments.

• Summer of 1910 - ILGWU lead a 4-month strike of 60,000 cloak and suit makers in New York City • “Protocol of Peace”

• Higher wages, reduced hours, preferential union shop, grievance and arbitration machinery established.

• These two strike transformed the ILGWU form a feeble organization into one of the nation’s larger and more militant unions.

• March 25, 1911- Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire – 10-story Asch Building in Lower Manhattan – 146 of the 500 employees killed. • Deaths were exacerbated due to blocked or locked fire escapes to prevent

stealing and broken elevators.

• One fire escape the victims had access to collapse due to the weight and heat of the fire – causing twenty victims to fall to their death.

• Other victims pried the elevator shafts open and jumped to their deaths attempting to escape the flames.

• Over 62 people jumped to their deaths from windows.

“I learned a new sound that day, a sound more horrible than description can picture -- the thud of a speeding living body on a stone sidewalk "

-William Gunn Shepard (reporter)

• Owners were brought to trial but were acquitted, but lost a subsequent civil suit and was made to compensate the families of the victims in the amount of $75 per victim. Insurance company paid the owners $60,000 more than the reported losses - $400 per victim.

• Brought attention to sweatshop conditions in factories

• Series of regulatory laws to protect workers safety.

• March 25, 1911- Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire – 10-story Asch Building in Lower Manhattan – 146 of the 500 employees killed.

• Deaths were exacerbated due to blocked or locked fire escapes to prevent stealing and broken elevators.

• One fire escape the victims had access to collapse due to the weight and heat of the fire – causing twenty victims to fall to their death.

• Other victims pried the elevator shafts open and jumped to their deaths attempting to escape the flames.

• Over 62 people jumped to their deaths from windows.

“I learned a new sound that day, a sound more horrible than description can picture -- the thud of a speeding living body on a stone sidewalk " -William Gunn Shepard

(reporter)

• Owners were brought to trial but were acquitted, but lost a subsequent civil suit and was made to compensate the families of the victims in the amount of $75 per victim. Insurance company paid the owners $60,000 more than the reported losses - $400 per victim.

• Brought attention to sweatshop conditions in factories

• Series of regulatory laws to protect workers safety.

• 1912 - Bread and Roses - Lawrence, Mass., ended with 23,000 men and women and children on strike and with as many as 20,000 on the picket line

• Coal Mines

• Growth of the AFL membership in the coalfields after 1910 developed primarily out of conflicts in West Virginia and Colorado.

• 1912 – Paint Creek and Cabin Creek Mine War – April 18, 1912 through July 1913.

• In the end an estimated 12,500 workers were involved in the strike

• Violence began when the companies hired the Baldwin-Felts Detective agency to break the strike – brought in 300 troops to evict the workers from their rented homes and brought in scab labor.

• Beatings, sniper attacks and sabotage were daily occurrences.

• Martial law was declared – strikers were forbidden to congregate and their weapons seized. Strikers were arrested and tried in military courts.

• In February – company guards machine gunned a tent village of striking workers setting off another gun battle.

• Over 150 strike leaders were arrested; Over 50 killed through violence – many more through starvation and malnutrition

Coal Mines

• Growth of the AFL membership in the coalfields after 1910 developed primarily out of conflicts in West Virginia and Colorado.

• 1912 – Paint Creek and Cabin Creek Mine War – April 18, 1912 through July 1913.

• In the end an estimated 12,500 workers were involved in the strike

• Violence began when the companies hired the Baldwin-Felts Detective agency to break the strike – brought in 300 troops to evict the workers from their rented homes and brought in scab labor.

• Beatings, sniper attacks and sabotage were daily occurrences.

• Martial law was declared – strikers were forbidden to congregate and their weapons seized. Strikers were arrested and tried in military courts.

• In February – company guards used a machine gun to open fire on a tent village of striking workers setting off another gun battle.

• Over 150 strike leaders were arrested; Over 50 killed through violence – many more through starvation and malnutrition

Ludlow Massacre (Ludlow, Colorado) - 1914

• Late 1913 – UMW sent in organizers to organize the John D.

Rockefeller Jr.-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company and other

mine fields in the area.

• Previous attempt in 1903-04 led to martial law and deportation of

organizers.

• Strike begins on September 17, 1913

• 1913-14 – Rockefeller hired the Baldwin-Felt Detective Agency

• Open warfare continued for months. Reached its bloody climax on

April 20, 1914 – 14-hour gun battle. Miners’ tent colony is pelted

with machine gun fire and torched by state militia. Two women and

11 children were killed in the fire.

“The Ludlow camp is a mass of charred debris, and buried beneath

it is a story of horror imparalleled [sic] in the history of industrial

warfare. In the holes which had been dug for their protection

against the rifles' fire the women and children died like trapped rats

when the flames swept over them. One pit, uncovered [the day after

the massacre] disclosed the bodies of 10 children and two women.”

New York Times”

• Strike ended on December 10, 1914 when the union ran

out of finances

• Over 75 people were killed

• 400 people were arrested; 332 of whom were indicted for

murder; only one man (John R. Lawson – strike leader)

was convicted of murder.

• Twenty-two national guardsmen were court martialed but

were eventually acquitted.

• Lexington Avenue Bombing – July 4, 1914. (Charles Berg,

Carl Hanson and Arthur Caron); Berkman?

Build Up Toward War

• July 28, 1914 – November 11, 1918 – World War I

• By mid-1916 – U.S. posed to enter the War. Business and civic

leaders throughout the country organized marches to heighten

patriotic fervor - Preparedness Day – July 22, 1916.

• Radicals, Wobblies and many mainstream labor leaders

opposed the war. Swore to demonstrate against the marches.

• San Francisco - 2:06 pm (half-hour into parade) – a bomb

exploded in a suitcase – Market and Steuart Street – Ten

bystanders killed and forty wounded.

• Police immediately suspect radicals – specifically Alexander Berkman

and closes associates.

• Two known radical labor leaders – Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings – were eventually arrested despite not fitting the description of those who planted the bomb.

• Suspected because of their ties to the radical community and specifically Alexander Berkmann

• Both were convicted and sentenced to

be hanged. Both men later had their

sentences commuted to life.

• By 1939 – evidence of perjury

and false testimony at the trial

became so overwhelming that

Governor Olson pardoned

both men.

• United States entered World War I in April 1917

• One-month prior – March 1, 1917 – the AFL pledged full support of the

war efforts.

• In order to ensure that labor disputes could be addressed with

strikes or lockouts impeding in the war effort – the National War

Labor Board was formed – consisting of representatives from

labor and management. In exchanged for its cooperation, the

Wilson administration was will to recognize:

• Labor’s right to organize and bargain collectively through “chosen

representatives” and was not to be abridged or denied by the

employers;

• All existing agreements in respect to union or open shops were to be

upheld on their pre-war basis;

• Eight-hour day was applied as far as possible;

• Women entering industry were given equal pay for equal work;

• All workers had a right to a living wage

• Samuel Gompers (AFL) – as the principle spokesperson for labor continued to support the war effort in every possible way.

• He viciously attacked pacifists or those who opposed the war.

• Eugene Debs continued to attack what he declared to be a wholly capitalistic war – urging resistance to the draft – he was arrested and charged with ten counts of sedition and sentenced to ten years in prison. (Released on Christmas Day, 1921)

• 1918 – Trial of 100 – Chicago - Leadership of Industrial Workers of the World sentenced to federal prison on charges of disloyalty to the United States.

• 20 years for 15 men; 10 years for 35; 5 years for 33; 1 year for 12 and nominal sentences for the rest.

• Similar trials would take place in Wichita, KS and Sacramento, CA the following year (1919).

Postwar Labor Upheaval - 1919

• After the war – Wartime restraints were lifted. Labor was ready to push for further gains and ignite an industrial strife on a scale greater than country had ever experience.

• Before the year (1919) was out over 4 million workers – one out of every five workers – participated in more than 3.500 strikes.

• Seattle engage in a four-day general strike

• Police went out on strike in Boston

• National coal and steelworkers engaged in a national strike.

• Employers and the federal government wasted no time redbaiting and blaming the strike on the IWW, communists and Bolsheviks and set the stage for a red scare, palmer raids and mass deportation of radicals and labor activists.