There is Power in a Union

by Philip Dray

  59 James Green, Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006), p. 208.

  60 New York Times, May 5, 1886.

  61 Harper’s Weekly, May 15, 1886.

  62 Melville E. Stone, Fifty Years a Journalist (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1921), pp. 172–73.

  63 New York Times, May 8, 1886.

  64 Henry David, The History of the Haymarket Affair (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1936), p. 183.

  65 Alarm, Dec. 17, 1887.

  66 New York Times, Nov. 11, 1887.

  67 Schnaubelt, who left Chicago and eventually sailed to England, wrote two letters from London insisting that he was not the bomb thrower. He died in 1901. A 1908 novel by Frank Harris, The Bomb, opens with a scene in which Schnaubelt confesses on his deathbed; the book was widely denounced by Schnaubelt’s friends and former Chicago colleagues.

  68 New York Times, May 6, 1886.

  69 Ibid., May 5, 1886.

  70 James Green, Death in the Haymarket, p. 213.

  71 Alarm, Jan. 14, 1888.

  72 Melville E. Stone, Fifty Years a Journalist, p. 173.

  73 Boyer and Morais, Labor’s Untold Story, p. 97.

  74 Quoted in James Green, Death in the Haymarket, p. 214.

  75 Alarm, Feb. 7, 1885, and May 30, 1885.

  76 Boyer and Morais, Labor’s Untold Story, p. 98.

  77 Ray Ginger, Altgeld’s America, p. 54.

  78 Boyer and Morais, Labor’s Untold Story, pp. 99–100.

  79 Cited in David, History of Haymarket, p. 186.

  80 Avrich, Haymarket Tragedy, pp. 162–63.

  81 Chicago Tribune, Aug. 20, 1886.

  82 New York Times, Aug. 21, 1886.

  83 See “Meet the Haymarket Defendants,” http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/haymarket/

  haymarketdefendants.html.

  84 Chicago Express, Aug. 28, 1886.

  85 The Famous Speeches of the Eight Chicago Anarchists on October 7th, 8th, and 9th (Chicago: Socialist Publishing Co., 1886), p. 10; also in James Green, Death in the Haymarket, p. 233.

  86 James Green, Death in the Haymarket, pp. 234–37.

  87 Boyer and Morais, Labor’s Untold Story, pp. 101–2.

  88 Ray Ginger, Altgeld’s America, p. 58. Melville Stone claims to have been instrumental in convincing Schwab and Fielden to recant, and in delivering word of their intentions to Governor Oglesby. He also relates that, in a meeting with Parsons to discuss the matter, Parsons, who refused to recant, assaulted Stone and had to be restrained by a bailiff. See Melville E. Stone, Fifty Years a Journalist, pp. 175–77.

  89 Adamic, Dynamite! p. 80.

  90 Ibid.

  91 Letter from Adolph Fischer to Johann Most, Nov. 5, 1887, in Alarm, Nov. 19, 1887.

  92 Alarm, Nov. 19, 1887.

  93 Ibid., Dec. 3, 1887.

  94 Ibid., Nov. 19, 1887.

  95 Ibid.

  96 Dulles, Labor in America, p. 125.

  97 Alarm, Dec. 3, 1887.

  98 Rodeiger and Rosemont, Haymarket Scrapbook, p. 136.

  99 Adamic, Dynamite! p. 84.

  100 Dulles, Labor in America, p. 153.

  101 Rodeiger and Rosemont, Haymarket Scrapbook, p. 12.

  102 Harold C. Livesay, Samuel Gompers and Organized Labor in America (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1993; originally published 1978), p. 79.

  103 Dulles, Labor in America, p. 159.

  104 Livesay, Samuel Gompers and Organized Labor in America, p. 7.

  105 Ibid., p. 39.

  106 Dulles, Labor in America, p. 154.

  107 Livesay, Samuel Gompers and Organized Labor in America, p. 70.

  108 U.S. Strike Commission Report—Chicago Strike of June–July 1894 (1895), p. 195.

  109 Livesay, Samuel Gompers and Organized Labor in America, p. 45.

  110 Ibid., p. 46.

  111 Samuel Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1925), p. 250.

  112 New York Standard, Oct. 8, 1887.

  113 Opponents of the reforms were equally devious. When the bill came up for review in the state legislature, they simply stole the original copy, thus delaying any possible action. The bill was eventually passed with the help of a young state assemblyman named Theodore Roosevelt, but enforcement proved difficult and the law was eventually thrown out by the New York Court of Appeals, which was unwilling to accept the argument that public health concerns could trump private property rights.

  114 Alarm, Sept. 5, 1885.

  115 Livesay, Samuel Gompers and Organized Labor in America, p. 5.

  CHAPTER FOUR: PULLMAN’S TOWN

  1 Harold C. Livesay, Samuel Gompers and Organized Labor in America (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1993; originally published 1978), p. 119.

  2 New York Herald, July 10, 1892; Paul Krause, The Battle for Homestead, 1880–1892 (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), p. 42.

  3 New York Times, June 13, 1892.

  4 Krause, Battle for Homestead, pp. 16–18.

  5 Myron R. Stowell, “Fort Frick,” or the Siege of Homestead (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Pittsburgh Printing Co., 1893), p. 52.

  6 Krause, Battle for Homestead, pp. 21–25.

  7 Ibid., p. 32.

  8 Ibid., pp. 79–80.

  9 Fosta Rhea Dulles, Labor in America: A History (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1966), p. 171.

  10 Krause, Battle for Homestead, pp. 39–40.

  11 Leon Wolff, Lockout: The Story of the Homestead Strike of 1892 (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 164.

  12 Jeremy Brecher, Strike! (Boston: South End Press, 1984; originally published 1972), pp. 62–63.

  13 Alexander Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Frontier Press, 1970), pp. 6–7.

  14 Emma Goldman, Living My Life (New York: Penguin Books, 2006; originally published 1931), p. 60.

  15 Ibid., pp. 64–66.

  16 Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, pp. 9–10.

  17 Ibid., p. 37.

  18 New York Times, July 24, 1892.

  19 Ibid., July 25, 1892.

  20 Ibid.

  21 Goldman, Living My Life, pp. 73–74.

  22 Ibid., p. 75.

  23 St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial is quoted in Charles R. Morris, The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy (New York: Henry Holt, 2005), p. 206.

  24 The case was Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 357 (1896).

  25 Rayford Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson (New York: Da Capo Press, 1997; originally published 1954), p. 140.

  26 It was reportedly feared by some employers that blacks were too neglectful to be around complicated machinery, or that its humming sound would have a lulling effect on their concentration, perhaps even putting them to sleep.

  27 Gompers quoted in Herbert Hill, “The Real Practices of Organized Labor—The Age of Gompers and After,” in Employment, Race, and Poverty, ed. Arthur M. Ross and Herbert Hill (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1967), p. 367.

  28 Proceedings of the AFL, 1881–1888, p. 14.

  29 Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine, July 1896, quoted in Hill, “The Real Practices of Organized Labor,” p. 369.

  30 Hill, “The Real Practices of Organized Labor,” p. 370.

  31 Ibid.

  32 John M. Callahan to Samuel Gompers, Nov. 7, 1892, quoted in Philip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619–1973 (New York: Praeger, 1974), p. 68.

  33 Brecher, Strike! pp. 64–66.

  34 Hill, “The Real Practices of Organized Labor,” pp. 371–72.

  35 Ibid., p. 379. When Du Bois, as part of a study he was writing about black workers, wrote to the heads of several labor unions seeking information about their racial policies, Gompers scolded the scholar for being “pessimistic” and “unwilling to give credit where credit is due,” befor
e advising Du Bois, “Let me say further, that I have more important work to attend to than correct ‘copy’ for your paper.” Hill, “The Real Practices of Organized Labor,” pp. 379–80.

  36 Philip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, p. 65.

  37 Ibid., p. 72.

  38 Logan, Betrayal of the Negro, p. 150.

  39 Booker T. Washington, “The Negro and the Labor Unions,” Atlantic Monthly, June 1913.

  40 New York Times, June 29, 1894.

  41 Some historians contend that the story that the “Pioneer” was in Lincoln’s funeral train was invented later as a sales promotion, and that there was no way existing railway platforms between Chicago and Springfield could have been widened in time to accommodate the car. But Pullman himself and others insisted that with the cooperation of James H. Bowen, president of the Third National Bank of Chicago (and a friend and supporter of Pullman’s efforts), as well as the Chicago, Alton and St. Louis Railroad, last-minute adjustments were made to prune the station platforms and that the “Pioneer” did indeed make the journey south from Chicago with the train carrying Lincoln’s body. For discussion see L. E. Leyendecker, Palace Car Prince: A Biography of George Mortimer Pullman (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1992), pp. 77–78.

  42 Stanley Buder, Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning 1880–1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 5–6.

  43 Ibid., p. 37.

  44 Ibid., p. 148.

  45 Ibid., p. 149.

  46 Samuel Gompers, “The Lesson of the Recent Strikes,” in The Pullman Boycott of 1894: The Problem of Federal Intervention, ed. Colston E. Warne (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1955).

  47 “Statement from the Pullman Strikers to the Convention of the American Railway Union, June 15, 1894,” in The Pullman Boycott of 1894: The Problem of Federal Intervention, ed. Colston E. Warne (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1955).

  48 Leyendecker, Palace Car Prince, p. 235.

  49 “Statement from the Pullman Strikers to the Convention of the American Railway Union, June 15, 1894.”

  50 Ray Ginger, Altgeld’s America: The Lincoln Ideal Versus Changing Realities (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1958), p. 149.

  51 Ibid., p. 151.

  52 The sole precursor for the idea of expansive, direct government aid was the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (known as the Freedmen’s Bureau) that Congress had created in March 1865 to deal with the aftermath of the Civil War by offering basic services to both blacks and whites striving to re-create a functioning society in the postwar South. The bureau’s officers enforced emancipation and often monitored the first work contracts between freedmen and their former masters. But the agency was unpopular, particularly in the region it was meant to serve, where it was frequently savaged in broadsides and editorials, and was soon abandoned by Congress, as was eventually most of the federal effort to reconstruct the South.

  53 Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, Labor’s Untold Story (New York: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, 1972; originally published 1955), pp. 120–21.

  54 Quoted in Carlos Schwantes, Coxey’s Army: An American Odyssey (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), pp. 18–19.

  55 One of the witnesses to Coxey’s march on Washington was the author Lyman Frank Baum, who would later use it as the basis for his popular book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). In Baum’s children’s story, the innocent Dorothy sets out on a pilgrimage with the Scarecrow (a farmer), the Tin Man (a worker), and the Cowardly Lion (a politician) to seek the aid and guidance of the Wizard (President Cleveland).

  56 Tacoma News, April 16, 1894, in Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, p. 261.

  57 Robert V. Bruce, 1877: Year of Violence (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1959), pp. 68–69.

  58 Ray Ginger, Altgeld’s America, p. 41.

  59 Schwantes, Coxey’s Army, p. 271.

  60 See ibid., pp. 275–79.

  61 Ray Ginger, Altgeld’s America, p. 152; Dulles, Labor in America, p. 175.

  62 Boyer and Morais, Labor’s Untold Story, p. 122.

  63 Debs in Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine, Sept. 1892

  64 Ray Ginger, The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1949), p. 106.

  65 Ibid., pp. 97–98.

  66 Ibid., p. 155.

  67 “Statement from the Pullman Strikers to the Convention of the American Railway Union, June 15, 1894,” in The Pullman Boycott 1894: The Problem of Federal Intervention, ed. Colston E. Warne (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1955).

  68 Ray Ginger, Bending Cross, p. 113.

  69 Ibid., p. 117.

  70 David Montgomery, “The Pullman Boycott and the Making of Modern America,” in The Pullman Strike and the Crisis of the 1890s, ed. Richard Schneirov (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).

  71 Boyer and Morais, Labor’s Untold Story, p. 125.

  72 New York Times, June 28, 1894.

  73 Montgomery, “The Pullman Boycott and the Making of Modern America.”

  74 New York Times, June 28 and 29, 1894.

  75 Eugene Debs, “The Federal Government and the Chicago Strike,” in The Pullman Boycott 1894: The Problem of Federal Intervention, ed. Colston E. Warne (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1955).

  76 New York Times, July 5, 1894.

  77 Dulles, Labor in America, p. 177.

  78 New York Times, July 4, 1894.

  79 Ray Ginger, Bending Cross, p. 145.

  80 New York Times, July 9, 1894.

  81 Ibid.

  82 The blaring headlines of anarchy set loose were likely inspired in part by news of the assassination, only a few days earlier, of French president Sadi Carnot. See Ray Ginger, Bending Cross, p. 123.

  83 New York Times, July 5, 1894.

  84 Taft quoted in Melvyn Dubofsky, “The Federal Judiciary, Free Labor, and Equal Rights,” in The Pullman Strike and the Crisis of the 1890s, ed. Richard Schneirov (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).

  85 Gerald Eggert, Railroad Labor Disputes: The Beginnings of Federal Strike Policy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), p. 172.

  86 Ray Ginger, Bending Cross, p. 137.

  87 New York Times, June 29, 1894.

  88 Ray Ginger, Altgeld’s America, p. 161.

  89 Ray Ginger, Bending Cross, p. 130.

  90 Ray Ginger, Altgeld’s America, p. 160.

  91 John P. Altgeld, “Comment on the Supreme Court Decision,” in The Pullman Boycott 1894: The Problem of Federal Intervention, ed. Colston E. Warne (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1955).

  92 Boyer and Morais, Labor’s Untold Story, p. 113.

  93 See New York Times, June 27, 1893; Chicago Tribune, June 27, 1893; also Ray Ginger, Altgeld’s America, p. 87.

  94 Henry David, The History of the Haymarket Affair (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1936), pp. 479–503.

  95 Chicago Tribune, June 27, 1893.

  96 Ray Ginger, Altgeld’s America, pp. 85–86.

  97 New York Times, June 27, 1893.

  98 Ibid., June 28, 1893.

  99 Philadelphia Times, undated excerpt quoted in New York Times, July 8, 1894.

  100 Ray Ginger, Bending Cross, p. 94.

  101 Baltimore Sun, undated excerpt quoted in New York Times, July 8, 1894.

  102 New York Times, July 3, 1894.

  103 Willard King, “The Debs Case,” in The Pullman Boycott 1894: The Problem of Federal Intervention, ed. Colston E. Warne (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1955).

  104 Grover Cleveland, “The Government in the Chicago Strike of 1894,” in The Pullman Boycott 1894: The Problem of Federal Intervention, ed. Colston E. Warne (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1955).

  105 Ray Ginger, Bending Cross, p. 140.

  106 Louis Adamic, Dynamite!: A Century of Class Violence in America (New York: Viking Books, 1934), p. 119.

  107 New York Times, July 5, 1894.

  108 Debs, “The Federal Government and the Chicago Strike”; see also Ray Ginger, Bending Cross, p. 139.
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  109 Ray Ginger, Altgeld’s America, p. 161.

  110 U.S. Strike Commission Report: The Chicago Strike of June–July 1894 (1895), p. 192. See also Ray Ginger, Bending Cross, p. 149.

  111 William D. Haywood, Bill Haywood’s Book: The Autobiography of William D. Haywood (New York: International Publishers, 1929), p. 77.

  112 Letter from Eugene Debs to his parents, July 16, 1894, The Papers of Eugene V. Debs, Tamiment Labor Archives, New York University.

  113 Chicago Inter-Ocean, Nov. 21, 1892, cited in Edward Berman, Labor and the Sherman Act (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1930), p. 6.

  114 United States v. Workingmen’s Amalgamated Council of New Orleans, Eastern District Court of Louisiana, 54 Fed. 994, 996 (1893), cited in Edward Berman, p. 7.

  115 United States v. Patterson, 55 Fed 605, 641 (1893), cited in Edward Berman, pp. 61–63.

  116 United States v. Debs, 64 Fed. 724, 744–745 (1894). This interpretation was echoed in the first USSC decision on the Sherman Act in 1908, Loewe v. Lawlor, 208 U.S. 274, 301; see Edward Berman, pp. 7–8.

  117 See United States v. E. C. Knight Co., 156 U.S. 1 (1895).

  118 Senator Robert Wagner quoted in Congressional Record, U.S. Senate, 74th Cong., 1st sess., May 15, 1936, p. 7565.

  119 See Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, 221 U.S. (1911).

  120 Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, 221 U.S. (1911). Two years later, in 1913, Standard Oil declared a 60 percent stock dividend and in 1922 a 400 percent stock dividend. See Patrick Renshaw, The Wobblies: The Story of Syndicalism in the United States (New York: Doubleday, 1967), p. 23. The court in 1911 also fulfilled Harlan’s fears in its ruling in United States v. American Tobacco Co., wherein it refused to demand the dissolution of a tobacco trust by rejecting the terms of the Sherman Act as written. American Tobacco had bought out 250 smaller firms and was prosecuted along with 65 of them for violating Sherman. Again Harlan made sharp dissenting comments, accusing his colleagues of second-guessing Congress and ignoring the statute’s clear import. See United States v. American Tobacco Co., 221 U.S. 189–93 (1911).

  121 Adamic, Dynamite! p. 123.

  122 Ray Ginger, Bending Cross, p. 150.