by Kornbluh, Joyce L. , Rosemont, Franklin, Thompson, Fred, Gross, Daniel
The result is that no concerted action is possible in the conflicts following. Many a time the achievements of one strike, won only because the workers stood and fought together, are lost in the next skirmish. One portion of workers, members of one craft union, remain at work, while others, members of another trade union, are fighting either for improved working conditions, or in resistance against wrongs or injustice done them by the employing class.
Take, for example, the first street car workers’ strike in San Francisco, in the first year of Mayor Schmidt’s administration. Not only were all motor-men, conductors and ticket agents organized in one union, but the barnmen, the linemen and repairers, and many of the repair shop workers enlisted in the union, also the engineers, the firemen, the electricians, the ash wheelers, oilers, etc., in the power stations. They all fought together. The strike ended with a signal victory for the workers; this was accomplished because the workers had quit their work spontaneously. But hardly had they settled down to arrange matters for the future, and to make the organization still stronger, when they found themselves confronted with the clamor of “craft autonomy rules.’
They were told that the electricians in the power houses, linemen and line repairers had to be members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The workers heard to their amazement that the engineers had to be members of the International Union of Steam Engineers.
The firemen, ashwheelers and oilers were commanded to withdraw at once from the Street Car Employes’ Union, and join the union of their craft. The workers in the repair shops were not permitted under trade autonomy rules to form a union embracing all engaged therein. They had to join the union of their craft, either as machinists, molders, polishers or woodworkers, and would not be permitted to be members of any other organization. They are restrained by the rules of craft autonomy from being members of a union embracing all in the industry, even if they had chosen to remain members by their own free choice. They were not allowed to think that their place would be in such an organization through which the best results with the least of sacrifices for the workers could be obtained.
In the second strike of street car workers in 1907 the absolute failure, the complete disaster, was solely due to the fact that the workers, separated in several craft groups, could not strike together and win together. Similar cases, by the hundreds, could be enumerated to show what grave injuries craft autonomy inflicts upon the workers. And if the investigator will follow the investigation of facts and underlying causes, he will be surprised to see how the employers take advantage of this dividing-up policy. He will see how the capitalist gleefully helped to pit one portion of the workers against others in the same or other industries, so that the latter, while kept busy fighting among themselves, had no time nor strength to direct their fights against the employers and exploiters.
The most striking example was given recently in the two strikes of street car workers in Philadelphia. In July 1909, they went on strike. Only a portion of them were then organized. But the workers all made the fight a common cause of all. Not only did workers on the subway lines begin to quit, but also the power house workers in several stations walked out, shutting off the power, thus forcing the company to make a settlement.
The Philadelphia street car lines are controlled by the same corporation that operates and owns the lines in San Francisco, in Pittsburgh, in Cincinnati, in Louisville, in Detroit, and other cities, the Elkins-Widener-Dolan Syndicate. The same trick was played in Philadelphia as in San Francisco after the first victorious contest. The separation process began. The power-house men, members of the National Union of Steam Engineers and the Brotherhood of Stationary Firemen, 1,800 of them, according to Tim Healy, one of the head labor fakirs of these organizations, and the electricians were tied down by contracts.
The street car company forced the second strike in February, 1910, and of course the craft union engineers, the union firemen, and the union electricians remained at work, protecting their craft union interests.
When, in the course of rapidly developed events, it was found necessary to call a general strike in all industries, what was the real result? The A. F. of L. unions who had declared the strike were the ones to ignore the strike orders. They had to protect their “contracts,” by order from the national labor lieutenants. The Brewery Workers, the Printers, the Molders, later the Cigarmakers, and scores of other “union men” scabbed it on their own order, while the big bulk of unorganized again responded nobly.
Now that the real facts are known it is ascertained that out of approximately 320,000 wage workers in that city, 45,000 responded to the strike call, of whom there were 32,000 so-called “unorganized” workers, or partly organized in independent unions or in the Industrial Workers of the World. The balance, 13,000, were either building trades workers, who were not working anyway at the time of the strike order, or were members of radical, progressive unions.
But the body of approximately 45,000 workers, organized in the A. F. of L. unions, who had issued the strike call, remained at work, protecting their contracts. The real union-made scabs—the 1,800 union engineers, firemen, electricians, in the power houses— failed to respond; they union-labeled scabs by order of the labor lieutenants! And all other street car workers in other cities, where the same syndicate operates the street car service, remained at work, although a farcical general strike was pulled off, so as to discredit forever the general strike idea.
In the Baldwin Locomotive Works thousands of so-called “unorganized” workers had gone out in response to the general strike call. They were ready to form an organization embracing all in that industry. First they were urged not to insist on having one union. Their reply was: “Either all into one, or none at all!”
Finally, in a meeting attended by most of the “great” leaders of the strike, they were promised a charter as “Baldwin Locomotive Workers’ Association”; but at the moment that the promise was made, William Mahon, “president of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Car Employes,” A. F. of L., turned around and remarked: “They can be assorted to their respective craft unions after this strike is over.” (Authentic reports, corroborated by editorials in the Philadelphia Tageblatt, the official organ of the German Trades Union Council of Philadelphia.)
What more is needed to convince the workers of the reason: “Why Strikes Are Lost”?
The Sacredness of Contracts
“Perhaps the workers, although compelled in most of the cases to adhere to the outlined plan of organizing in craft unions, would have made common cause with other crafts in any one industry in their conflicts with the capitalists, if they had realized that the defeat of one ultimately meant the defeat of all”—such may be said in rebuttal.
But with the separation from other groups of workers a craft or sectarian spirit was developed among members of each of the trade organizations. A spirit manifested itself, and does so now, in their relations to other groups of workers as well as to the employers of labor. “Gains at any price” even at the expense of others, has become the governing rule. The rule of “non-interference” made sacred by the decrees of those who blatantly pose as leaders of labor, permitted one craft union to ride roughshod over the others. “Let us go ahead; the devil take the hindmost,” has drowned the old idea of the “injury to one is the concern of all.” Woe to anyone who would try to throw himself against this current. He will be drowned and buried under mud thrown upon him by all the vultures and vampires.
A great victory is proclaimed in print and public when one or the other of such craft organizations succeeds in getting a contract signed with an individual employer, or, what is considered still better, if it is consummated with an association of employers in a given industry. But actuated by that sectarian spirit these contracts are considered to be inviolable. Not so much by the employers, who will break them any time when it will be to their advantage; but by the workers who are organized in craft unions. Imbued with their sectarian ideas
, by the terms of such a contract they are in duty bound to protect the interests of the employers if the latter should have controversies with other craft unions. Thus the workers consent to being made traitors to their class.
Small wonder, therefore, that in that period between 1901 and 1905, the time that these lessons and conclusions are drawn from, the employers were able to check first, then to retard, and finally to paralyze the workers in any efforts to secure by their organized efforts permanently improved conditions in their places of employment. The employers, supported by such lieutenants of labor as Gompers, Mitchell, Duncan and others (as they were rightly called by Marcus Aurelius Hanna when he organized the Hanna-chist Civic Federation), would harp continually on the sanctity of contracts with some of the craft unions, while at the same time slaughtering piece-meal other craft unions with whom they were in conflict.
Of the thousand and odd strikes that took place in that period and since, none bears better testimony of the impotency of the craft unions; not one has presented better proof of the shameless betrayal of working class interests than the gigantic strike of workers in the meat packing and slaughter houses in Chicago, Omaha and other places in the country.
A Horrible Example
The meat wagon drivers of Chicago were organized in 1902. They made demands for better pay and shorter hours. Unchecked by any outside influence, they walked out on strike. They had the support of all other workers in the packing houses. They won. But before they resumed work the big packing firms insisted that they enter into a contract. They did. In that contract the teamsters agreed not to engage in any sympathetic strike with other employes in the plants or stockyards. Not only this, but the drivers also decided to split their union into three. They then had the “Bone and Shaving Teamsters,” the “Packing House Teamsters,” and the “Meat Delivery Drivers.”
Encouraged by the victory of the teamsters, the other workers in the packing houses then started to organize. But they were carefully advised not to organize into one body, or at the best into one National Trades Union. They had to be divided up, so that the employers could exterminate them all whenever opportunity presented itself.
Now observe how the dividing-up process worked. The teamsters were members of the “International Union of Teamsters.” The engineers were connected with the “International Union of Steam Engineers.” The firemen, oilers, ash-wheelers were organized in the “Brotherhood of Stationary Firemen.” Carpenters employed in the stockyards permanently had to join the “Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners.” The pipe and steam fitters were members of another “National Union.” The sausage makers, the packers, the canning department workers, the beef butchers, the cattle butchers, the hog butchers, the bone shavers, etc., each craft group had a separate union. Each union had different rules, all of them not permitting any infringements on them by others. Many of the unions had contracts with the employers. These contracts expired at different dates. Most of the contracts contained the clause of “no support to others when engaged in a controversy with the stockyard companies.”
The directory of unions of Chicago shows in 1903 a total of 56 different unions in the packing houses, divided up still more in 14 different national trades unions of the American Federation of Labor.
What a horrible example of an army divided against itself in the face of a strong combination of employers. This was best displayed in the last desperate and pitiful struggle of the stock yard laborers against the announced wage reduction from 17 to 16 cents an hour in 1904.
These oppressed workers, mostly Poles and Lithuanians, who have so often helped others when called upon, could have reasonably expected the support at least of those who were working with them in the same industry.
Nor would their expectations have failed of realization, if the other workers had been given a free hand.
No wage worker, if he has any manhood in him, likes to be a strikebreaker of his own free will. That there are thousands of strikebreakers in America is due to the discriminative rules of the American Federation of Labor unions. Due also to the high initiation fees, as high as $500.* But the history of strikes proves that where no restrictive measures are enforced, the workers in one plant instinctively make common cause; they stand together in every conflict with their employers.
Not so when the lash of a sacred contract is held over their head. The breaking of a contract, in most of the cases, means suspension from the union. It means that the union agrees to fill the places of men or women who suspend work in violation of contracts. This is so stipulated in most of the agreements with the employers. In more than one case labor leaders have helped the employers to fill the places of the rebellious workers.
Now in that strike of butcher workmen in the stock yards they looked to the engineers, the firemen and others to quit their jobs. They expected the teamsters to walk out in their support as the latter themselves had gained their demands only by the support of all. And really all the members of these craft unions were prepared and ready to lay down their tools. The strike would have been won within 24 hours if all had stood together. The employers realized that. They sent for their labor lieutenants. Over 25 labor leaders conjointly helped to force the workers back to their stations. Drivers already walking out were told to return or their places would be filled by other union men. The engineers were commanded to abide by their contract with the companies. Union printers, members of the Typographical Union, employed in the printing plants of the stock yards, were escorted every day through the picket lines of the poor strikers with permit badges pinned to their coats, issued by their union, so that the strikers’ pickets would not molest these “licensed” strikebreakers. These aristocrats of labor even looked down with contempt on the men and women whom an ill fate compelled to be slaves of the magnates of “Packingtown.” All appeals to the manhood of these union strikebreakers were in vain. Stronger than their sense of duty and of solidarity in the struggle of members of their own class, was the “iron gag and chain of craft union non-interference.” The contracts were the weapons in the hands of the capitalists, by which the craft unionists were forced to wear the stigma of strikebreakers. They were made union scabs at the moment when concerted action would have pulled down the flag of boastful, defiant triumph from the palaces of the bosses, and would have raised up the banner of working class victory on the miserable pest houses in which men and women and children are compelled to drudge for a pitiful, miserable existence. Yes! these were the weapons used by the meat barons of America to ultimately extinguish all unions of workers in their employ.
The capitalists could not defeat the workers, not they! The craft unionists, forced by the lieutenants of the employing class—because most of the craft union leaders are indirectly their servants—defeated themselves. They shattered not only their own hopes, but the hopes, the confidence, the aspirations of thousands and tens of thousands, who had thought, after all, that unionism meant: “Solidarity, Unity, Brotherly Support in Hours of Strike and Struggle.”
This is why and how the workers lost! Not only in Packingtown, but in almost every industrial place of production in that period referred to. That was the way the employers did, and still do, rally their forces in their successful efforts to defeat labor. By slashing piecemeal the Giant, tied hand and foot by a paper contract, they throttled him, threw his members out of joint, so that his enormous strength could not be used against his oppressors. Oh, but they would not kill him, oh, no! He who is so useful to them to create everything, so that they who do nothing may abound in luxury and debauchery; he must only be kept in his cage, within his dungeon where he drudges in the sweat of his brow, bent over in blunt indifference, carrying stupidly his burden, the weight of a world that depends on him for its existence. Believing that he is eternally condemned to be a slave he perishes and falls by the wayside when his usefulness for the master class ceases. In “Organized Labor,” John Mitchell, one of the “great leaders,” begins his first sentence with the words: “The wor
kers never hope to be more than wage earners.”
Craft unionism, fostered by the American Federation of Labor, has made him the pathetic wage slave, always contented to be no more than a wage slave, with no higher ideals and sublime hopes for a better life on earth.
Can you hear the curses and condemnation, intermingled with the outcries of despair when the burdens become too heavy? Not so much hatred is expressed against those and their class who Shylock like, only ask for and take their good pound of flesh, as against the vampires who suck the life blood of the workers, destroy their hopes and energies, stultify their manhood! The labor traitors who live and dwell in debaucheries akin to the masters’, whose pliant dirty tools they are, more than any other force are responsible that the workers have so often lost their battles for a higher station in life.
Labor Vultures
They, whether their names be Gompers, Mitchell, Duncan, Tobin, Golden, Grant Hamilton, or what else, are the vultures, because they exist only by dividing the workers and separating one from another. They have been and are doing the bidding of the master class. Upon them falls the awful curse of a world of millions. They have made America the land of the lost strikes—the land where from the mountains and the hills, and in the plains and vales resound the echoes of the curse of an outraged working class. They are the dark forces that the world should know as the traitors, the real malefactors, the real instigators of the appalling defeats and betrayals of the proletarians. The land in which the depravity of these vultures has driven thousands back into despair and distrust, and aroused their suspicion—thousands who only lost because they placed implicit confidence in those who were agents of their oppressors—thousands who never were shown what they had come together for—thousands who had confided, only to be betrayed, to be thrown back into the desert from where there is no escape from the penalty for blind confidence: all those hundreds of thousands have lost faith in the ability of their own class to release themselves from the grasp of the oppressors. But what does it concern the labor leaders? It is on these conditions that they are allowed to exist in their debaucheries, to continue their destructive work in the interests of the capitalists.