by Norman Lowe
The row over Prohibition was one aspect of a traditional American conflict between the countryside and the city. Many country people believed that city life was sinful and unhealthy, while life in the country was pure, noble and moral. President Roosevelt’s administration ended Prohibition in 1933, since it was obviously a failure and the government was losing large amounts of revenue that it would have collected from taxes on liquor.
9 Women not treated equally
Many women felt that they were still treated as second-class citizens. Some progress had been made towards equal rights for women: they had been given the vote in 1920, the birth control movement was spreading and more women were able to take jobs. On the other hand, these were usually jobs men did not want; women were paid lower wages than men for the same job, and education for women was still heavily slanted towards preparing them to be wives and mothers rather than professional career women.
22.4 SOCIALISTS, TRADE UNIONS AND THE IMPACT OF WAR AND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS
(a) Labour unions during the nineteenth century
During the great industrial expansion of the half-century after the Civil War, the new class of industrial workers began to organize labour unions to protect their interests. Often the lead was taken by immigrant workers who had come from Europe with experience of socialist ideas and trade unions. It was a time of trauma for many workers in the new industries. On the one hand there were the traditional American ideals of equality, the dignity of the worker and respect for those who worked hard and achieved wealth – ‘rugged individualism’. On the other hand there was a growing feeling, especially during the depression of the mid-1870s, that workers had lost their status and their dignity. Hugh Brogan neatly sums up the reasons for their disillusionment:
Diseases (smallpox, diphtheria, typhoid) repeatedly swept the slums and factory districts; the appalling neglect of safety precautions in all the major industries; the total absence of any state-assisted schemes against injury, old age or premature death; the determination of employers to get their labour as cheap as possible, which meant, in practice, the common use of under-paid women and under-age children; and general indifference to the problems of unemployment, for it was still the universal belief that in America there was always work, and the chance of bettering himself, for any willing man.
As early as 1872 the National Labor Union (the first national federation of unions) led a successful strike of 100 000 workers in New York, demanding an eight-hour working day. In 1877 the Socialist Labor Party was formed, its main activity being to organize unions among immigrant workers. In the early 1880s an organization called the Knights of Labor became prominent. It prided itself on being non-violent, non-socialist and against strikes, and by 1886 it could boast more than 700 000 members. Soon after that, however, it went into a steep decline. A more militant, though still moderate, organization was the American Federation of Labor (AFL), with Samuel Gompers as its president. Gompers was not a socialist and did not believe in class warfare; he was in favour of working with employers to get concessions, but equally he would support strikes to win a fair deal and improve the workers’ standard of living.
When it was discovered that on the whole, employers were not prepared to make concessions, Eugene Debs founded a more militant association – the American Railway Union (ARU) – in 1893, but that too soon ran into difficulties and ceased to be important. Most radical of all were the Industrial Workers of the World (known as the Wobblies), a socialist organization. Started in 1905, they led a series of actions against a variety of unpopular employers, but were usually defeated (see Section (c)). None of these organizations achieved very much that was tangible, either before or after the First World War, though arguably they did draw the public’s attention to some of the appalling conditions in the world of industrial employment. There were several reasons for their failure.
The employers and the authorities were completely ruthless in suppressing strikes, blaming immigrants for what they called ‘un-American activities’ and labelling them as socialists. Respectable opinion regarded unionism as something unconstitutional which ran counter to the cult of individual liberty. The general middle-class public and the press were almost always on the side of the employers, and the authorities had no hesitation in calling in state or federal troops to ‘restore order’ (see the next section).
The American workforce itself was divided, the skilled workers against the unskilled, which meant that there was no concept of worker solidarity; the unskilled worker simply wanted to become a member of the skilled elite.
There was a division between white and black workers; most unions refused to allow blacks to join, and told them to form their own unions. For example, blacks were not allowed to become members of the new ARU in 1894, although Debs wanted to bring everybody in. In retaliation the black unions often refused to cooperate with the whites, and allowed themselves to be used as strike-breakers.
Each new wave of immigrants weakened the union movement; they were willing to accept lower wages than established workers and so could be used as strike-breakers.
In the early years of the twentieth century, some union leaders, especially those of the AFL, were discredited: they were becoming wealthy, paying themselves large salaries, and seemed to be on suspiciously close terms with employers, while ordinary union members gained very little benefit and working conditions hardly improved. The union lost support because it concentrated on looking after skilled workers; it did very little for unskilled, black and women workers, who began to look elsewhere for protection.
Until after the First World War it was the American farmers, not the industrial workers, who made up a majority of the population. Later it was the middle class, white-collar workers, who narrowly became the largest group in American society.
(b) The unions under attack
The employers, fully backed by the authorities, soon began to react vigorously against strikes, and the penalties for strike leaders were severe. In 1876 a miners’ strike in Pennsylvania was crushed and ten of the leaders (members of a mainly Irish secret society known as the Molly Maguires) were hanged for allegedly committing acts of violence, including murder. The following year there was a series of railway strikes in Pennsylvania; striking workers clashed with police, and the National Guard was brought in. The fighting was vicious: two companies of US infantry had to be called in before the workers were finally defeated. Altogether that year, about 100 000 railway workers had gone on strike, over a hundred were killed, and around a thousand sent to jail. The employers made a few minor concessions, but the message was clear: strikes would not be tolerated.
Ten years later nothing had changed. In 1886, organized labour throughout the USA campaigned for an eight-hour working day. There were many strikes and a few employers granted a nine-hour day to dissuade their workers from striking. However, on 3 May, police killed four workers in Chicago. The following day, at a large protest meeting in Haymarket Square, a bomb exploded in the middle of a contingent of police, killing seven of them. Who was responsible for the bomb was never discovered, but the police arrested eight socialist leaders in Chicago. Seven of them were not even at the meeting; but they were found guilty and four were hanged. The campaign failed.
Another strike, which became legendary, took place in 1892 at the Carnegie steelworks in Homestead, near Pittsburgh. When the workforce refused to accept wage reductions, the management laid them all off and tried to bring in strike-breakers, protected by hired detectives. Almost the entire town supported the workers; fighting broke out as crowds attacked the detectives, and several people were killed. Eventually troops were brought in and both the strike and the union were broken. The strike leaders were arrested and charged with murder and treason against the state, but the difference this time was that sympathetic juries acquitted them all.
In 1894 it was the turn of Eugene Debs and his American Railway Union. Outraged by the treatment of the Homestead workers, he organized a strike of work
ers at the Pullman Palace Car Company’s Chicago plant, who had just had their wages reduced by 30 per cent. ARU members were ordered not to handle Pullman cars, which meant in effect that all passenger trains in the Chicago area were brought to a standstill. Strikers also blocked tracks and derailed wagons. Once again, federal troops were brought in, and 34 people were killed; the strike was crushed and nothing much more was heard from the ARU. In a way Debs was fortunate: he was only given six months in prison, and during that time, he later claimed, he was converted to socialism.
(c) Socialism and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
A new and more militant phase of labour unionism began in the early years of the twentieth century, with the formation of the IWW in Chicago in 1905. Eugene Debs, who was by this time the leader of the Socialist Party, was at the inaugural meeting, and so was ‘Big Bill’ Haywood, a miners’ leader, who became the main driving force behind the IWW. It included socialists, anarchists and radical trade unionists; their aim was to form ‘One Big Union’ to include all workers across the country, irrespective of race, sex or level of employment. Although they were not in favour of starting violence, they were quite prepared to resist if they were attacked. They believed in strikes as an important weapon in the class war; but strikes were not the main activity: ‘they are tests of strength in the course of which the workers train themselves for concerted action, to prepare for the final “catastrophe” – the general strike which will complete the expropriation of the employers’.
This was fighting talk, and although the IWW never had more than 10 000 members at any one time, employers and property owners saw them as a threat to be taken seriously. They enlisted the help of all possible groups to destroy the IWW. Local authorities were persuaded to pass laws banning meetings and speaking in public; gangs of vigilantes were hired to attack IWW members; leaders were arrested. In Spokane, Washington, in 1909, 600 people were arrested and jailed for attempting to make public speeches in the street; eventually, when all the jails were full, the authorities relented and granted the right to speak.
Undeterred, the IWW continued to campaign, and over the next few years members travelled around the country to organize strikes wherever they were needed – in California, Washington State, Massachusetts, Louisiana and Colorado, among other places. One of their few outright successes came with a strike of woollen weavers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912. The workers, mainly immigrants, walked out of the factories after learning that their wages were to be reduced. The IWW moved in and organized pickets, parades and mass meetings. Members of the Socialist Party also became involved, helping to raise funds and make sure the children were fed. The situation became violent when police attacked a parade; eventually state militia and even federal cavalry were called in, and several strikers were killed. But they held out for over two months until the mill owners gave way and made acceptable concessions.
However, successes like this were limited, and working conditions generally did not improve. In 1911 a fire in a New York shirtwaist factory killed 146 workers, because employers had ignored the fire regulations. At the end of 1914 it was reported that 35 000 workers had been killed that year in industrial accidents. Many of those sympathetic to the plight of the workers began to look towards the Socialist Party and political solutions. A number of writers helped to increase public awareness of the problems. For example, Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle (1906) dealt with the disgusting conditions in the meat-packing plants of Chicago, and at the same time succeeded in putting across the basic ideals of socialism.
By 1910 the party had some 100 000 members and Debs ran for president in 1908, though he polled only just over 400 000 votes. The importance of the socialist movementwas that it publicized the need for reform and influenced both major parties, which acknowledged, however reluctantly, that some changes were needed, if only to steal the socialists’ thunder and beat off their challenge. Debs ran for president again in 1912, but by that time the political scene had changed dramatically. The ruling Republican Party had split: its more reform-minded members set up the Progressive Republican League (1910) with a programme that included the eight-hour day, prohibition of child labour, votes for women and a national system of social insurance. It even expressed support for labour unions, provided they were moderate in their behaviour. The Progressives decided to run former president Theodore Roosevelt against the official Republican candidate William Howard Taft. The Democrat Party also had its progressive wing, and their candidate for president was Woodrow Wilson, a well-known reformer who called his programme the ‘New Freedom’.
Faced with these choices, the American Federation of Labor stayed with the Democrats as the most likely party to actually carry out its promises, while the IWW supported Debs. With the Republican vote divided between Roosevelt (4.1 million) and Taft (3.5 million), Wilson was easily elected president (6.3 million votes). Debs (900 672) more than doubled his previous vote, indicating that support for socialism was still increasing despite the efforts of the progressives in both major parties. During Wilson’s presidency (1913–21) a number of important reforms were introduced, including a law forbidding child labour in factories and sweatshops. More often than not, however, it was the state governments which led the way; for example, by 1914, nine states had introduced votes for women; it was only in 1920 that women’s suffrage became part of the federal constitution. Hugh Brogan sums up Wilson’s reforming achievement succinctly: ‘By comparison with the past, his achievements were impressive; measured against what needed to be done, they were almost trivial.’
(d) The First World War and the Russian revolutions
When the First World War began in August 1914, Wilson pledged, to the relief of the vast majority of the American people, that the USA would remain neutral. Having won the 1916 election largely on the strength of the slogan ‘He Kept Us Out of the War’, Wilson soon found that Germany’s campaign of ‘unrestricted’ submarine warfare gave him no alternative but to declare war (see Section 2.5(c)). The Russian revolution of February/March 1917 (see Section 16.2), which overthrew Tsar Nicholas II, came at exactly the right time for the president – he talked of ‘the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening in the last few weeks in Russia’. The point was that many Americans had been unwilling for their country to enter the war because it meant being allied to the most undemocratic state in Europe. Now that tsarism was finished, an alliance with the apparently democratic Provisional Government was much more acceptable. Not that the American people were enthusiastic about the war; according to Howard Zinn:
There is no persuasive evidence that the public wanted war. The government had to work hard to create its consensus. That there was no spontaneous urge to fight is suggested by the strong measures taken: a draft of young men, an elaborate propaganda campaign throughout the country, and harsh punishment for those who refused to get in line.
Wilson called for an army of a million men, but in the first six weeks, a mere 73 000 volunteered; Congress voted overwhelmingly for compulsory military service.
The war gave the Socialist Party a new lease of life – for a short time. It organized anti-war meetings throughout the Midwest and condemned American participation as ‘a crime against the people of the United States’. Later in the year, ten socialists were elected to the New York State legislature; in Chicago the socialist vote in the municipal elections rose from 3.6 per cent in 1915 to 34.7 per cent in 1917. Congress decided to take no chances – in June 1917 it passed the Espionage Act, which made it an offence to attempt to cause people to refuse to serve in the armed forces; the socialists came under renewed attack: anyone who spoke out against conscription was likely to be arrested and accused of being pro-German. About 900 people were sent to jail under the Espionage Act, including members of the IWW, which also opposed the war.
Events in Russia influenced the fortunes of the socialists. When Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power in October/November 1917, they soon ordered all Russ
ian troops to cease fire, and began peace talks with the Germans. This caused consternation among Russia’s allies, and the Americans condemned the Bolsheviks as ‘agents of Prussian imperialism’. There was plenty of public support when the authorities launched a campaign against the Socialist Party and the IWW, who were both labelled as pro-German Bolsheviks. In April 1918, 101 ‘Wobblies’, including their leader, ‘Big Bill’ Haywood, were put on trial together. They were all found guilty of conspiring to obstruct recruitment and encourage desertion. Haywood and 14 others were sentenced to 20 years in jail; 33 others were given ten years and the rest received shorter sentences. The IWW was destroyed. In June 1918, Eugene Debs was arrested and accused of trying to obstruct recruitment and of being pro-German; he was sentenced to ten years in prison, though he was released after serving less than three years. The war ended in November 1918, but in that short period of US involvement, since April 1917, some 50 000 American soldiers had died.
(e) The Red Scare: the Sacco and Vanzetti case
Although the war was over, the political and social troubles were not. In the words of Howard Zinn, ‘with all the wartime jailings, the intimidation, the drive for national unity, the Establishment still feared socialism. There seemed to be again the need for the twin tactics of control in the face of revolutionary challenge: reform and repression.’ The ‘revolutionary challenge’ took the form of a number of bomb outrages during the summer of 1919. An explosion badly damaged the house of the attorney-general, A. Mitchell Palmer, in Washington, and another bomb went off at the great House of Morgan banking establishment on Wall Street, in New York, killing 39 people and injuring hundreds. Exactly who was responsible has never been discovered, but the explosions were blamed on anarchists, Bolsheviks and immigrants. ‘This movement,’ one of Wilson’s advisers told him, ‘if it is not checked, is bound to express itself in an attack on everything we hold dear.’