Rebel Voices
Page 58
Can you condemn them? I cannot. I don’t believe in condemnation; I do believe in correcting what is wrong. So I found that I could not accomplish much by abolishing liquor—and in fact, could not abolish this damnable traffic—without a fundamental change in society itself, as the liquor traffic is simply part and parcel of our present social order. It is maintained for the sake of profit and it is necessary for the sake of profit, at least until such time as something equally suitable is ready to take its place.
What the I.W.W. Offered
The I.W.W. seemed to me then and seems to me now the only group offering me any sensible program under which I could operate with a view to gaining these good things in life, and such changes in society as I desired. The I.W.W. declared that our real ruler is our boss. He decides our wages and thereby our standard of living, our pleasure or our misery, our education as well as the education of our children, our health and our comfort in life; in fact, he almost decides if we shall be allowed to live. The I.W.W. also told me that by uniting with my fellow-workers in the industry and all industries combined into One Big Union of all the workers, we could successfully combat our masters’ One Big Union and gain the good things in life. We did not need to live in misery, we did not need to be ignorant for lack of time and access to study. And furthermore, we would become trained and organized for our final task, the control and management of industries. And as this program met my demands I naturally joined the I.W.W.
Some particular influences caused me to devote my whole life to the organization, and I am sure that perhaps thousands of others have been similarly influenced and simply forced to align themselves with the movement.
I knew a young fellow-worker in Seattle, by name Gust Johnson. He was only a little more than 20 years of age, a very quiet and very studious fellow. He surely had the courage of his convictions and he practiced what he preached to the limit of his ability. He was refined in manners, exceedingly clean, neat and orderly. He had been in the United States for about two years, when the Everett free-speech fight took place. He went on board the Verona to go with the bunch to Everett on the fifth of November, 1916, to assist in enforcing the constitutional right of free speech and free assemblage. In the shooting that followed Gust Johnson was the first one who fell with a bullet through his heart. Gust Johnson, who would hesitate even to kill a fly, Gust Johnson, to whom violence and disorder were an abhorrence.
For the Defense of Friends
I did what every one of you would have done for a true friend on whom such a cruel outrage had been committed. I threw myself into the harness and faithfully worked for the defense of the seventy-two victims, unjustly arrested, until the day of their release, and until the memory of Gust Johnson and the other four victims of the Everett tragedy stood shining bright before their relatives and their class.
During this defense work I got acquainted with another countryman of mine who toured the country in behalf of the I.W.W. His name is Ragnar Johanson. Ragnar has all the advantages in life which I lack. He is well educated, well built, handsome, a gifted orator and accomplished writer. Now, there is no intelligent human being who thinks that any question can be solved by violence. So Ragnar’s theme has always been: “Violence signifies weakness; reason, strength.” In hundreds of lectures I have heard this man urge his fellow-workers to educate themselves, to study and organize, but never have I heard him utter one word about using brutal force or violence to accomplish their ends. On the contrary he has always argued against all such teachings as being harmful and detrimental to the workers as a class or as individuals. Where is Ragnar Johnson now? He is serving ten years in the Leavenworth, Kan., federal prison, together with about seventy other fellow-workers who are my personal acquaintances or friends.
And lastly, although I am a foreigner, it is only because I am in America that I am an I.W.W. For, contrary to the belief of many, the I.W.W. is an outgrowth of advanced economic developments in America, and the Italian, the Russian or the Swede that you may find in the organization here would not have been “wobblies” had they remained in their native countries.
The economic law which says “that commodities shall be produced by that method which allows for the least expenditure of human labor” is the real ruler of society. This law cannot be abrogated by any combinations, trusts, monopolies, parties or organizations of any kind. To explain thoroughly this law would force me to a lengthy discussion of economics which space forbids. At present time production on large scale affords the greatest conformity to this law, hence the success of the trusts and the great industrial combinations. United States, with its immensely large natural resources and its shortage of labor power in years gone by has offered the best opportunity for the development of machine production on a large scale, while at the same time the aforesaid shortage of labor power has served as a spur to progress in this direction. The result is that no country in the world is so far advanced, industrially, as the U. S., particularly in leading industries, such as agriculture, mining, lumbering and manufacturing of machinery and means of locomotion.
The saving of labor power appears through a thorough-going specialization of the work, through elimination of competition by means of amalgamations into large trusts whereby unnecessary labor in management in advertising, in salesmanship, and in distribution are avoided, and at the same time over-production with its loss of values in perishable goods, etc., is limited to a minimum. The trust is the bosses’ One Big Union whereby they not only control the price on labor power, but also safeguard themselves against waste of labor power.
The I.W.W. is the result of the trust, the bosses’ One Big Union. As the trust becomes universal, succeeds in organizing the industries internationally, so will the I.W.W. expand. As the trust is the logical outcome of technical progress in our mode of production, is a means by which commodities can be produced with a smaller expenditure of human labor than under a competitive system, so is the I.W.W. outcome of the same forces whose object is to counteract the power of the trust and ultimately take full control of the trusts and the means of production for the benefit of mankind as a whole. Neither of them can be talked, written or legislated away. Let’s make an effort to understand them and the underlying causes for their existence, and much suffering and much hatred will be avoided.
Yours for industrial freedom.
Chapter 10
Down in the Mines
I rustled the High Ore
I rustled the Bell
I rustled the Badger
I rustled like hell,
I rustled the Tramway,
I rustled the View
And I finally found work
At the Ella-ma-loo (Elm Orlu).
“Rustler’s Song” by Ralph Workman, Western Folklore (January 1950), p. 25.
The early struggles of the Western miners imprinted a militant heritage on the Industrial Workers of the World. Strikes in the gold, silver, copper, and lead camps of the West made revolutionary unionists of the miners as vigilante committees, state militia, and armed mine guards wrecked their homes and halls, locked them in bull pens, and dominated mining towns. Arrests, beatings, individual killings, machine gunning of union meetings imbued the Western miner with a fierce independence characteristic of the reckless and lawless frontier life.
In 1897 the Western Federation of Miners withdrew from the American Federation of Labor, claiming that the A.F.L. had betrayed the miners’ cause. Disillusioned about legal protection from local courts, state legislatures, and the federal government, mine union leaders like Bill Haywood and Vincent St. John became convinced that political action was useless and that direct economic action was the only way to effect a change. As a result, the Western Federation of Miners attempted to broaden its support, first, through spearheading the organization of the Western Labor Union, then the American Labor Union, and finally, the I.W.W.—radical industrial unions that, hopefully, would be able to counter the mine owners’ force with the force of united labor groups.
A strike in Goldfield, Nevada, a goldmining town of some 15,000-20,000 persons, was the first practical test of W.F.M.-I.W.W. cooperation. It failed. The Goldfield strike came in the midst of the 1907 depression, immediately after the Idaho trials of W.F.M. President Charles Moyer, I.W.W. leader Bill Haywood, and a blacklisted miner, George Pettibone. It came at a time when the I.W.W. organization was split over the issue of direct vs political action.
The Goldfield strike was marked by violence, the activities of a hostile citizens’ committee, and martial law. It was complicated by a jurisdictional dispute between the W.F.M. and an A.F.L. carpenters’ union, as well as by a sympathetic strike of miscellaneous town workers organized into an I.W.W. local.
Goldfield became an armed camp. A restaurant owner was killed. The town’s businessmen locked out I.W.W. members. President Theodore Roosevelt sent in federal troops at the mine owners’ request and, on the day the troops arrived, the mine companies cut wages and announced an open shop policy. A commission which investigated the Goldfield situation reported:
The action of the mine operators warrants the belief that they had determined upon a reduction of wages and the refusal of employment to members of the Western Federation of Miners, but that they feared to take this action unless they had the protection of Federal troops and they accordingly laid a plan to secure such troops and then put their program into effect.1
The loss of the strike in Goldfield gave further impetus to the Western Federation of Miners to withdraw from the I.W.W. Growing increasingly more conservative, the officers of the W.F.M. charged that the “propaganda of the spouting hoodlums” had been one of the reasons for the failure of the strike. On the other hand, Vincent St. John and other I.W.W. organizers claimed that the I.W.W. was abused because the union did win important concessions from the mine companies in Goldfield: higher wages, an eight-hour day, and job control. St. John later looked back on the Goldfield strike as a golden age of I.W.W. effectiveness. He recalled:
No committees were ever sent to any employers. The unions adopted wage scales and regulated hours. The secretary posted the same on a bulletin board outside of the union hall, and it was the LAW. The employers were forced to come and see the union committees.2
Butte, Montana, was another setting for the growing hostility between the W.F.M. and the I.W.W. Butte miners had been organized since 1878 in the largest and strongest metal miners’ organization in the West. For a long time they claimed that Butte was “the strongest union town on earth,” where no employment was possible for a man who did not hold a union card. Oral tradition has it that even the two Butte chimney sweeps had their own union and that a local of miscellaneous workers once debated whether to boycott the Butte cemetery in order to help the grave-digger win better working conditions.3
Butte miners helped organize the Western Federation of Miners in 1893 and received the Federation’s first charter. For the next fifteen years they benefited from a divided enemy, as the “copper bosses,” in their wars with one another, encouraged the unions and wooed union leaders.
Dissension started in Butte Miners Union Local No. 1 about 1908, following the withdrawal of the W.F.M. from the I.W.W. Radicals among the Butte miners railed against the position taken by W.F.M. national officers, and factionalism broke out in the open in 1911 when the W.F.M., after fourteen years as an independent union, rejoined the A.F.L.
In 1912 several hundred Finnish Socialist miners were fired by the Butte mining companies. Company officials fumed against proposals, introduced by the Socialists elected to the town’s city council, to tax mine tonnage for the city’s benefit. In an attempt to rid Butte of radicals—for a time the mayor of the town was a Socialist—the Anaconda Copper Company initiated a “rustling card” system.
A miner applied at the company’s central employment department, gave his personal and job history, and a list of references. He waited for several weeks while his references were checked out. If he was cleared, he was given a “rustling card” which gave him access to “rustle the Hill,” that is, to apply directly for work at any of the Anaconda mines and mines of other companies which required the rustling card as a minimum job qualification. When a miner was hired, his card was sent back to the central employment department. If he quit work, he had to reapply at the rustling card office and go through the same procedure. The card could be withheld if the company regarded him “undesirable” for any reason. Only the small Elm Orlu mine, known among miners as the “Ella-ma-loo,” did not require a rustling card. The company’s president held that it was “un-American.”4
The reason for the rustling card was given by an Anaconda Company official in a speech before the Chamber of Commerce in Missoula, Montana, on August 29, 1917. He said:
It became apparent to the officials of the Anaconda Company that in view of the increasing number of such characters [I.W.W.’s and radicals] in Butte, many of whom were working in the mines, that in order to do any part of its duty to the community and to itself it must first establish some system of knowing its employees. This was the main reason for the adoption of the rustling card system.5
The discharge of the Finnish Socialist miners and the adoption of the rustling card system became immediate issues. A committee of Butte Miners Union Local No. 1 recommended no opposition to the rustling card. But the radicals in the union vehemently attacked the rustling card system and were backed up by a referendum vote taken in the local. The issue was carried to the 1912 convention of the W.F.M. Tom Campbell, the leader of the Butte radicals, ran for the office of national union president against the incumbent, Charles Moyer. Campbell lost, 8318 to 3744. The W.F.M. convention rejected his charges that the conservative W.F.M. officials had taken no action in the firing of the Finns and refused to fight the rustling card system.
In turn, the W.F.M. convention expelled Campbell from the Federation for “conduct unbecoming a member of the Western Federation of Miners … by disseminating the lie that the Western Federation of Miners was floundering on the rocks of destruction and was impotent to protect its membership.”6
Dissension in the next few years split the Butte local. Three miners’ unions vied for membership: the older Butte Miners Union (W.F.M.), a radical independent group led by miner “Muckie” Mac-Donald, and a small I.W.W. local. Factionalism culminated in rioting, gunfire, and death when the hall of the Butte Miners Union was dynamited by twenty-six blasts during a visit of W.F.M. President Charles Moyer to the town.
The Butte mayor, a Socialist, charged Moyer’s followers with firing the first shot from the union hall. The editor of the W.F.M. national magazine reported that he had reliable information that the dynamiting had been done by agents from a private detective company in the mine owners’ employ. Professor Paul Brissenden wrote in 1920:
It is not likely that the responsibility for this disaster will ever be definitely fixed. The mine operators place the blame on the shoulders of the agitators and malcontents in the union. The members of the radical unions in the Butte district generally explained it as an act of the mine operators perpetrated in order to discredit the union and if possible disrupt it and so bring about an open shop camp.7
The dynamiting of the Miners’ Hall ended over two decades of Butte’s role as a closed-shop, union town. The mining companies declared martial law. Troops crushed the new organization of radicals, known among miners as “Muckie MacDon-ald’s Union,” and ended job control by the W.F.M. and A.F.L. craft unions as well. MacDonald and Joe Bradley, the officers of the radical group, were sentenced to three to five years for their alleged part in the bombing. The Anaconda Copper Company, by far the largest producer in the town, declared Butte “open shop.”
Two years later in 1916, the seventy-mile-long Mesabi Iron Range in northern Minnesota was the setting for a major I.W.W. metal mine strike. Some 7000 to 8000 immigrant miners—Finns, Swedes, and Slavs—who had been brought to the Range in 1907 to scab on striking W.F.M. members, now demanded better wages, shorter hou
rs, and an end to a system of graft practiced by company foremen who elicited “kick-backs” for placing miners on more productive veins of ore.
An unorganized walkout started at the Aurora Mine on June 3 against the Oliver Company, a subsidiary of United States Steel Corporation. The I.W.W. national office responded to a call for help from the miners and sent I.W.W. organizers Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carlo Tresca, Sam Scarlett, Joe Ettor, and others to the Range. By the middle of June, the entire Range was out on strike.
When the first clash of the strike resulted in the death of a miner, the governor of Minnesota sent an investigator to the Range. He was told by the secretary of the I.W.W. miner’s local: “We don’t want to fight the flag, we don’t want to fight anybody, what we want is more pork chops.”8
A second clash between strikers and deputies resulted in the death of two deputies and led to the arrest of a group of miners as well as the I.W.W. strike leaders. No trial was held. Instead, local legal authorities attempted to make a deal with Judge O. N. Hilton who had been called in by the I.W.W. as defense attorney. Five of the I.W.W. organizers would be released if the other Wobbly prisoners pleaded guilty of manslaughter. Authorities persuaded three Montenegrin miners who spoke little English to plead guilty and sentenced them to prison for terms of one to seven years. Bill Haywood, who had become I.W.W. secretary-treasurer in 1914, charged that the I.W.W. organizers should never have consented to such an arrangement and terminated their connection with the I.W.W. at that time for “breaking solidarity.”
Throughout September the strikes spread to the Cayuna and Vermilion ranges, until a 10 percent wage increase was won and an eight-hour day promised for the following May 1. At the same time, several thousand miles away in Pennsylvania, the I.W.W. agitated for shorter hours and higher pay for anthracite coal miners who had organized about a dozen I.W.W. locals in the region. The strike, which had made some headway in the Lackawanna area, was broken, however, by the activities of the Pennsylvania State Constabulary. Mounted troopers raided a union meeting of 250 miners at Old Forge in June and arrested and jailed all those present. Four months later the prisoners were released because no evidence against them could be found.