by Kornbluh, Joyce L. , Rosemont, Franklin, Thompson, Fred, Gross, Daniel
And then came jealousy. There were only a thousand that came to New York. I wonder if you ever realized that you left 24,000 disappointed people behind? The women cried and said “Why did she go? Why couldn’t I go?” The men told about how many times they had been in jail, and asked why couldn’t they go as well as somebody else. Between jealousy, unnecessary but very human, and their desire to do something, much discord was created in the ranks.
But whatever credit is due for such a gigantic undertaking comes to the New York silk workers, not the dilettante element who figured so prominently, but who would have abandoned it at the last moment had not the silk workers advanced $600 to pull it through.
And then comes the grand finale—no money. Nothing. This thing that had been heralded as the salvation of the strike, this thing that was going to bring thousands of dollars to the strike,—$150 came to Paterson, and all kinds of explanations. I don’t mean to say that I blame the people who ran the pageant. I know they were amateurs and they gave their time and their energy and their money. They did the best they could and I appreciate their effort. But that doesn’t minimize the result that came in Paterson. It did not in any way placate the workers of Paterson, to tell them that people in New York had made sacrifices, in view of the long time that they had been making sacrifices. And so with the pageant as a climax, with the papers clamoring that tens of thousands of dollars had been made, and with the committee explaining what was very simple, that nothing could have been made with one performance on such a gigantic scale, there came trouble, dissatisfaction, in the Paterson strike.
Bread was the need of the hour, and bread was not forthcoming even from the most beautiful and realistic example of art that has been put on the stage in the last half century.
Paterson strikers marching up Fifth Ave. to Madison Square Garden, June 5, 1913.
United Press International, Inc., photo.
What was the employers’ status during all this time? We saw signs of weakness every day. There was a minister’s committee appointed to settle the strike. There was a businessmen’s committee appointed to settle the strike. The governor’s intervention, the President’s intervention was sought by the manufacturers. Every element was brought to bear to settle the strike. Even the American Federation of Labor; nobody believes that they came in there uninvited and no one can believe that the armory was given to them for a meeting place unless for a purpose. What was this purpose but to settle the strike? The newspapers were clamoring that the strike could and must be settled. And we looked upon all this,—the newspapers that were owned by the mill owners, the ministers and the business men who were stimulated by the mill owners,—we looked upon all this as a sign that the manufacturers were weakening. Even the socialists admitted it. In the New York Call of July 9 we read this: “The workers of Paterson should stay With them another round or two after a confession of this kind. What the press had to say about the strike looks very much like a confession of defeat.” This was on the 9th of July. Every sign of weakness on the part of the manufacturers was evident.
But there came one of the most peculiar phenomena that I have ever seen in a strike; that the bosses weakened simultaneously with the workers. Both elements weakened together. The workers did not have a chance to see the weaknesses of the employers as clearly, possibly, as we who had witnessed it before, did, which gave us our abiding faith in the workers’ chances of success, but the employers had every chance to see the workers weaken. The employers have a full view of your army. You have no view of their army and can only guess at their condition. So a tentative proposition came from the employers of a shop-by-shop settlement. This was the trying-out of the bait, the bait that should have been refused by the strikers without qualification. Absolute surrender, all or nothing, was the necessary slogan. By this we did not mean that 100 per cent of the manufacturers must settle, or that 99 per cent of the workers must stay out till 1 per cent won everything. The I.W.W. advice to the strikers was—an overwhelming majority of the strikers must receive the concession before a strike is won. This was clearly understood in Paterson, though misrepresented there and elsewhere. Instead, the committee swallowed the bait and said, “We will take a vote on the shop-by-shop proposition, a vote of the committee.” The minute they did that, they admitted their own weakness. And the employers immediately reacted to a position of strength. There was no referendum vote proposed by this committee, they were willing to take their own vote to see what they themselves thought of it, and to settle the strike on their own decision alone.
Then it was that the I.W.W. speakers and Executive Committee had to inject themselves in contradistinction to the strike committee. And the odd part of it was that the conservatives on the committee utilized our own position against us. We had always said, “The silk workers must gain their own strike.” And so they said, ‘We are the silk workers. You are simply outside agitators. You can’t talk to this strike committee even.” I remember one day the door was virtually slammed in my face, until the Italian and Jewish workers made such an uproar, threatening to throw the others out of a three-story building window, that the floor was granted. It was only when we threatened to go to the masses and to get this referendum vote in spite of them that they took the referendum vote. But all this came out in the local press and it all showed that the committee was conservative and the I.W.W. was radical, more correctly the I.W.W. and the masses were radical. And so this vote was taken by the strikers. It resulted in a defeat of the entire proposition. 5,000 dyers in one meeting voted it down unanimously. They said, “We never said we would settle shop by shop. We are going to stick it out together until we win together or until we lose together.” But the very fact that they had been willing to discuss it made the manufacturers assume an aggressive position. And then they said, “We never said we would settle shop-by-shop. We never offered you any such proposition. We won’t take you back now unless you come under the old conditions.”
One of the peculiar things about this whole situation was the attitude of the socialists on that committee. I want to make myself clearly understood. I don’t hold the socialist party officially responsible, only insofar as they have not repudiated these particular individuals. The socialist element in the committee represented the ribbon weavers, the most conservative, the ones who were in favor of the shop-by-shop settlement. They were led by a man named Magnet, conservative, Irish, Catholic, Socialist. His desire was to wipe the strike off the slate in order to leave the stage free for a political campaign. He had aspirations to be the mayoralty candidate, which did not however come to fruition. This man and the element that were behind him, the socialist element, were willing to sacrifice, to betray a strike in order to make an argument, the argument given out in the “Weekly Issue” a few days before election: “Industrial action has failed. Now try political action.” It was very much like the man who made a prophecy that he was going to die on a certain date, and then he committed suicide. He died, all right. Industrial action failed, all right. But they forgot to say that they contributed more than any other element in the strike committee to the failure of the strike. They were the conservatives, they were the ones who wanted to get rid of the strike as quickly as possible. And through these ribbon weavers the break came.
On the 18th of July the ribbon weavers notified the strike committee, “We have drawn out of your committee. We are going to settle our strike to suit ourselves. We are going to settle it shop by shop. That’s the way they have settled it in New York at Smith and Kauffmann.” But a visit had been made by interested parties to the Smith and Kauffmann boys prior to their settlement, at which they were informed that the Paterson strike was practically lost: “These outside agitators don’t know anything about it, because they are fooled in this matter. You had better go back to work.” When they went back to work on the nine-hour day and the shop-by-shop settlement, then it was used by the same people who had told them that, as an argument to settle in the same way in Paterson. And the ribbon w
eavers stayed out till the very last. Oh yes. They have all the glory throughout the United States of being the last ones to return to work, but the fact is that they were the first ones that broke the strike, because they broke the solidarity, they precipitated a position that was virtually a stampede. The strike committee decided, “Well, with the ribbon weavers drawing out, what are we going to do? We might as well accept;” and the shop-by-shop proposition was put through by the strike committee without a referendum vote, stampeded by the action of the English-speaking, conservative ribbon weavers.
So that was the tragedy of the Paterson strike, the tragedy of a stampede, the tragedy of an army, a solid phalanx being cut up into 300 pieces, each shop-piece trying to settle as best for themselves. It was absolutely in violation of the I.W.W. principles and the I.W.W. advice to the strikers. No strike should ever be settled without a referendum vote, and no shop settlement should ever have been suggested in the city of Paterson, because that was the very thing that had broken the strike the year before. So this stampede came, and the weaker ones went back to work and the stronger ones were left outside, to be made the target of the enemy, blacklisted for weeks and weeks after the strike was over, many of them on the blacklist yet. It produced discord among the officers in the strike. I remember one day at Haledon, the chairman said to Tresca and myself, “If you are going to talk about the eight-hour day and about a general strike, then you had better not talk at all.” And we had to go out and ask the people, “Are we expected here today and can we say what we think, or have we got to say what the strike committee has decided?” We were unanimously welcomed. But it was too late. Just as soon as the people saw that there was a break between the agitators and the strike committee, that the ribbon weavers wanted this and others wanted that, the stampede had started and no human being could have held it back.
It was the stampede of hungry people, people who could no longer think clearly. The bosses made beautiful promises to the ribbon weavers and to everybody else, but practically every promise made before the settlement of the Paterson strike was violated, and the better conditions have only been won through the organized strikes since the big strike. Not one promise that was made by the employers previous to breakup on account of the shop-by-shop settlement was ever lived up to. Other places were stranded. New York, Hoboken, College Point were left stranded by this action. And on the 28th of July everybody was back at work, back to work in spite of the fact that the general conviction had been that we were on the eve of victory. I believe that if the strikers had been able to hold out a little longer by any means, by money if possible, which was refused to us, we could have won the Paterson strike. We could have won it because the bosses had lost their spring orders, they had lost their summer orders, they had lost their fall orders and they were in danger of losing their winter orders, one year’s work; and the mills in Pennsylvania, while they could give the bosses endurance for a period, could not fill all the orders and could not keep up their business for the year round.
I say we were refused money. I wish to tell you that is the absolute truth. The New York Call was approached by fellow-worker Haywood, when we were desperate for money, when the kitchens were closed and the people were going out on the picket line on bread and water, and asked to publish a full page advertisement begging for money, pleading for money. They refused to accept the advertisement. They said, “We can’t take your money.” ‘Well, can you give us the space?” “Oh, no, we can’t afford to give you the space. We couldn’t take money from strikers, but we couldn’t give space either.” And so in the end there was no appeal, either paid for or not, but a little bit of a piece that did not amount to a candle of light, lost in the space of the newspaper. However, on the 26th of July, while the ribbon weavers and some of the broad silk weavers were still out, the Call had published a criticism by Mr. Jacob Panken of the Paterson strike. Lots of space for criticism, but no space to ask bread for hungry men and women. And this was true not only of the Call, but of the other socialist papers. So, between these two forces, we were helpless. And then we had to meet our critics. First came the socialist critic who said, “But the I.W.W. didn’t do enough for the socialist party. Look at all the money we gave you. And you don’t say anything about it.” Dr. Korshet had a long article in the New York Call. Anyone may read it who likes to refresh his memory. Just this: ‘We gave you money and you didn’t thank us.” Well, I would like to know why we should thank them. Aren’t the socialists supposed to be workingmen, members of the working class, just the same as we are? And if they do something for their own class we have got to thank them the next ten years for it. They are like the charity organization that gives the poor working woman a little charity and then expects her to write recommendations to the end of the end of the earth. We felt that there was no need to thank the socialist party for what they had done, because they had only done their duty and they had done very little in comparison with what they have done in A. F. of L. strikes, in the McNamara cases.
They make the criticism that we didn’t give them any credit. How about the 5,000 votes that the I.W.W. membership gave the party in Paterson for a candidate who was a member of the A. F. of L. and who did not get a single vote from his own union? All his votes came from the I.W.W. If they wanted to invest money, the money that they invested for each vote in Paterson was well spent, on a purely business basis.
A sample of the foreign language pamphlets issued at various times by the I.W.W.
And then Mr. Panken’s criticism was that we should have settled the strike shop by shop. A humorous criticism, a cynical, sarcastic criticism, when you consider that’s exactly what was done, and that’s exactly why we lost the Paterson strike. But a few days before the strike was over, before this collapse came, we received a little piece of paper through the delegates to the New York-Paterson Relief Committee, and on this little piece of paper it said, “The following gentlemen are willing to bring about a settlement of the Paterson strike if the strike committee will send them a letter requesting them to do it.” And on this piece of paper were the names of Jacob Panken, Meyer London, Abe Cahan, Charles Edward Russell, and two others. In other words, a few days before the Paterson strike collapsed there were a committee of six socialists in New York who had such faith that the strike was going to be won, including the man who criticized us for not settling shop by shop, that they were willing to settle it for us on this condition that they incidentally take all the glory of the settlement if we asked them to do it. We didn’t ask them. We said, “If there is anybody that thinks he can settle the Paterson strike and he calls himself a socialist or a friend of labor he will do it without being asked to do it in an official manner.” They did not do it. They criticized.
Our position to the strikers was “If the I.W.W. conception had been followed out you would have won all together, or you would have lost all together, but you would still have had your army a continuing whole.” Every general knows it is far better for an army to retreat en masse than it is to scatter and be shot to pieces. And so it is better to lose all together than to have some win at the expense of the rest, because losing all together you have the chance within a few months of recovering and going back to the battle again, your army still centralized, and winning in the second attempt.
What lessons has the Paterson strike given to the I.W.W. and to the strikers? One of the lessons it has given to me is that when the I.W.W. assumes the responsibility of a strike the I.W.W. should control the strike absolutely through a union strike committee; that there should be no outside interference, no outside non-union domination accepted or permitted, no Magnet permitted to pose as “representing the non-union element.” That direct action and solidarity are the only keys to a worker’s success or the workers’ success. That the spirit throughout this long weary propaganda has remained unbroken, and I will give you just three brief examples.
The 5,000 votes for the socialist party was because the workers had this in mind: “Maybe we will
strike again, and the next time we strike we want all this political machinery on our side.” They would not have done that if their spirit had been crushed and they had no hope for another strike. The free speech fight for Emma Goldman that was recently successfully waged in Paterson was made because the strikers have an unbroken spirit still. Many of them did not know Emma Goldman. I say this with no disrespect to her. Many of them are foreigners and did not know anything about her speeches and lectures. But they knew somebody wanted to speak there and their constitutional enemies, the police, were trying to prevent it, and so they turned out en masse and free speech was maintained in Paterson. And just around Christmas time there was an agitation for a strike, and then instead of stimulation we had to give them a sort of sedative, to keep them quiet. Why, they were so anxious to go out on strike that they had great mass meetings: “now is the time, eight-hour day, nine-hour day, anything at all; but—we want to strike again!” Every time I go to Paterson some people get around and say, “Say, Miss Flynn, when is there going to be another strike?” They have that certain feeling that the strike has been postponed, but they are going to take it up again and fight it out again. That spirit is the result of the I.W.W. agitation in Paterson.
And so, I feel that we have been vindicated in spite of our defeat. We have won further toleration for the workers. We have given them a class feeling, a trust in themselves and a distrust for everybody else. They are not giving any more faith to the ministers, even though we didn’t carry any “No God, no master” banners floating through the streets of Paterson. You know, you may put a thing on a banner and it makes no impression at all; but you let a minister show himself up, let all the ministers show themselves against the workers and that makes more impression than all the “No God, no master” banners from Maine to California. That is the difference between education and sensationalism.