Nineteen nineteen was a time in America when the pent-up hopes of a nation at war collided with the chaos of war’s aftermath. It was a time when bombs exploded on porch steps and grown men threw sharp-edged rocks at little boys whose skin was a different color. And it was a time when working people, having experienced the highly organized, collective character of waging war, came to believe that through organized labor they could claim the power to achieve the happiness they felt they deserved after surviving such a war. It was a year when race riots erupted in twenty-six cities; labor strikes occurred at an average of ten a day; and always there was the looming terror of the new enemy, Bolshevism. It was indeed a year of struggle. An apocalyptic time, some would say. Others would say it was only a dark moment preceding a new day. For struggle can also be a sign of progress and the foundation on which all change must be built. Struggle is the cost of transforming dreams into reality. It is the way we progress.
By September, a nation still recovering from war and from a summer of racial violence plunged into a season consumed with labor struggle. So far there had been nearly two thousand labor strikes since January, some lasting only a few days and others as long as three months. From carpenters and machinists to streetcar conductors and suit makers, America’s workers were asking for better conditions, higher wages, and the right to bargain collectively. In April even the telephone operators—referred to as “the telephone girls”—a seemingly tame group, had walked off their jobs in Boston and in almost every village and town across New England. On the second day of the strike, twelve thousand other telephone employees, considered company “insiders,” joined the “girls” and on the third day, the federal government, which still held wartime controls over the phone companies, capitulated to the demands. Next up, for the autumn season: the Boston police, 350,000 steelworkers, and the coal miners.
No other year thus far had compared with 1919 in terms of the number of workers on strike. In New York alone since March, 75,000 garment workers had walked out, 15,000 streetcar men, 14,000 painters, 40,000 tobacco workers, and 20,000 harbor workers. And with the help of the timing of certain events, the high-profile lust of the Red hunters, and the sensational headlines, the critics of organized labor were able to generate strong suspicions among those predisposed to believe it that Bolshevism was behind it all. Although it was true that the membership of labor unions included Reds, the demands of the labor movement—effectively, inclusion in American democracy—did not emanate from the Red influence but rather from the conditions of the coal mines, the stockyards, the steel mills. Still, just as the Red hunters had dismissed the oppression of African-Americans as the most significant cause of racial disturbances—choosing to focus instead on Bolshevik “outside agitation”—many industrialists and those who identified with them also preferred to ignore the oppressive conditions of labor and to brand the struggle for workers’ rights as a Bolshevik cause. By the winter of 1919, striking laborers would be labeled as radicals. America had been indulging in this self-deception for several years, but in 1919 it was rising to new heights of hysteria.
The Seattle general strike in February may have been the beginning of such fears that year. Adding piles of kindling to popping fires, the city of Winnipeg in Canada shut down in May when thirty thousand workers walked out on their jobs, giving credence in some circles to the notion that the Bolsheviks were practicing for something much bigger. Seattle and Winnipeg were simply rehearsals. Then came the prediction of a July 4 “reign of terror,” which had included the threat of a nationwide strike to protest the imprisonment of radical labor agitator Thomas Mooney—a highly publicized forecast that bolstered the Independence Day hysteria, but never happened. Add to that the fact that throughout the summer the question of whether to maintain government control of the railroads or privatize the rails pitted organized labor, which favored nationalization, against corporate America, and allowed labor’s critics once again to thrust the labor movement into the same box with the Bolsheviks. To nationalize transportation was perceived by some in America as consistent with the philosophies of Lenin and Trotsky, and thus a dangerous move.
More kindling arrived at the end of August in Chicago when radicals, including John Reed, former New York legislator Benjamin Gitlow, and Chicago millionaire William Lloyd participated in the formation of the Communist Labor Party. Its membership of ten thousand, primarily English-speaking, pledged themselves to a manifesto that proposed “the organization of the workers as a class, the overthrow of capitalist rule and the conquest of political power by the workers.” The next day, September 1, the Communist Party of America, whose sixty thousand members were mostly foreigners, was also formed. While the total membership of both parties represented only one-tenth of 1 percent of the nation’s adult population, the parties launched dozens of new publications promulgating the communist philosophy in many languages—thus intensifying the threat of a workers’ revolt and fattening Hoover’s index of suspicious editors, writers, and subscribers.
As both communist parties supported the Russian Soviet “experiment” in workers’ control, it became easier to link the actions and goals of the American radicals with those of the new Soviet state. And thus it became easier for the American public to believe that Bolshevik propaganda was the main factor behind the unrest in the nation, whether it was a race riot or a labor strike. By September, many Americans, if asked about the politics of organized labor, would say that to walk off the job, to picket, to protest was not only un-American but also part of a Bolshevik plot. And after the highly publicized walkouts in September, such a conspiracy would seem very real.
By 1919 there were effectively two parts to the labor movement. There was the more traditional American Federation of Labor, headed by Samuel Gompers, which was based on the premise that workers and a reasonable management could partner under the capitalist system. This part of the movement had supported the war and was composed largely of small craft unions populated by skilled white workers. The other, more radical wing, believed that no partnership between labor and capital was possible, that the drive for maximum profits would always occur to the detriment of working people. This faction did not support the war and focused its attention on building a labor movement large enough to challenge the capitalists for power, bringing in unskilled workers as well as women, blacks, and foreigners—groups often ignored by Gompers. This faction included socialists, communists, Wobblies, and anarcho-syndicalists, and it had won a stunning success in organizing Chicago’s packinghouses during the war. By the fall of 1919 literally hundreds of thousands of workers were demanding that both parts of the labor movement—the traditional and the radical—assist them to establish union representation, get raises to offset the high cost of living, win fairer and safer working conditions, and claim a bit of the democracy the war had promised.
Gompers cautiously entered the labor struggles of 1919. He had actively supported Wilson in his 1912 campaign, had worked closely with industry leaders during the war to guarantee wartime production levels, and had sought political alliances to support his cause. An advocate of the theory of “industrial democracy,” which aimed at reforming and taming capitalism—thus rendering radical alternatives unnecessary—Gompers backed President Wilson’s plan for an autumn conference to devise various reforms that would humanize the prevailing industrial system. For many of America’s most oppressed workers, however, especially in the steel mills and the coalfields, such a conference would be too little too late.
In his Labor Day address, on August 31, the president announced an October 6 conference to “discuss fundamental means of bettering the whole relationship of capital and labor, and putting the whole question of wages upon another footing.” As he spoke, there were sixty-five strikes nationwide involving 300,000 people in twenty states. The real impetus behind his proposed conference, however, was the growing conflict between organized labor and management in the steel industry. During the week leading up to Wilson’s announcement, a group of labor leaders had just received a response to their latest appeal for negotiations with the chairman of the United States Steel Corporation, Elbert H. Gary, the namesake of Gary, Indiana. Gary’s resolute rejection and the leaders’ disappointment would dramatically affect the lives of 350,000 workers nationwide.
The AFL had begun holding meetings to organize steel workers in September of 1918, under the supervision of the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers headed by Gompers, John Fitzpatrick, who was the president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, and William Z. Foster, who had organized the meatpackers during the war and who would one day be the head of the new Communist Party of America. Self-taught, erudite, and passionate, Foster was an intellectual as well as an industrial worker in the tradition of Eugene Debs. By the end of the summer of 1919, Foster, Fitzpatrick, and Gompers had succeeded in signing up more than 100,000 workers in Cleveland, Chicago, Johnstown, Youngstown, Wheeling, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh, despite the resistance of the steel corporations and despite the violence—for example, gunmen hired by the steel trust murdered a young female organizer, Fannie Sellins, in West Natrona, Pennsylvania, on August 26. In the towns that steel companies virtually owned, organizing workers was a perilous pursuit. But enlisting them to the cause was not so difficult. Conditions alone were the motivation.
In 1919, the government calculated that the minimum income required for subsistence of a family of five in America was $1,575 a year and for what it termed “the comfort level,” which was considered the American standard of living at the time, the minimum annual income was $2,024. In the steel industry, unskilled workers—nearly 50 percent of the workforce—made an average of $1,466 annually. Some earned a mere $1,000 a year. The typical workweek for the steel industry was about sixty-nine hours. Some men worked twelve-hour days; some eighteen; and some twenty-four hours. Many worked every day of the week. Living conditions were shocking. Census takers in a steel suburb of Pittsburgh called Bradford found two hundred families living in sixty-one houses. In one house there were thirty-five boarders. There three people occupied each bed, sleeping in eight-hour shifts. It was not unusual for a family of eight to share a two-room flat. A large percentage of the industry’s unskilled labor force, which was mostly immigrant labor, lived without running water, without indoor plumbing of any sort. Several families used a single water pump and an open unsanitary drain in a shared courtyard or alley.
Perhaps one of the most startling details about U.S. Steel was that its financial surplus was huge. In 1918, for example, after paying out dividends of $96,382,027 and setting aside $274,277,835 for federal taxes to be paid in 1919, it had a surplus of $466,888,421, which was enough to have paid the company’s entire wage and salary budget for that year twice and still leave a $14 million surplus. In 1919, it would be much the same. In July that year, the AFL’s National Committee sent a letter to Judge Gary requesting a meeting to discuss the needs of the steelworkers. Gary, who had served two terms as a county judge in Illinois, was from that time forward referred to as Judge Gary, and from the day of the company’s inception in 1901 until his death, he would rule. His stand against labor unions was firm and he was unbendable on the issue of long hours, which were a trademark of the steel industry at that time.
Among the demands expressed in the AFL’s letter were: the right to collective bargaining—meaning union representation; an eight-hour work-day; extra pay for overtime; one day out of seven without required work; the end of the twenty-four-hour shift; wage increases; and reinstatement of workers fired for union activities. The iron-willed Gary did not respond.
By August 20, to show their determination, union members had all signed a strike authorization, though no date was established to begin the strike. On the 26th, five union men—John Fitzpatrick, D. J. Davis, William Hannon, Edward J. Evans, and William Foster—tried to meet with Judge Gary in his office, urging him to take the demands seriously and to work with them on a resolution. An arbitration conference must be called, they insisted. Gary refused to meet but said he would read a letter from them. From the offices of U.S. Steel’s Finance Committee at 71 Broadway in New York, Judge Gary immediately sent a response.
We do not think you are authorized to represent the sentiment of a majority of the employees of the United States Steel Corporation and its subsidiaries…. As heretofore publicly stated and repeated, our Corporation and subsidiaries, although they do not combat labor unions as such, decline to discuss business with them…. In all decisions and acts of the Corporation and subsidiaries pertaining to employees and employment their interests are of highest importance. In wage rates, living and working conditions, conservation of life and health, care and comfort in times of sickness or old age, and providing facilities for the general welfare and happiness of employees and their families, the Corporation and subsidiaries have endeavored to occupy a leading and advanced position among employers.
Instantly upon receiving Gary’s letter, the committee, all of whom were then staying at the National Hotel in Washington, D.C., sent another:
You question the authority of our committee to represent the majority of your employees. The only way by which we can prove our authority is to put the strike vote into effect and we sincerely hope that you will not force a strike to prove this point…. We read with great care your statement as to the interest the Corporation takes in the lives and welfare of the employees and their families, and if that were true even in a minor degree, we would not be pressing consideration, through a conference, of the terrible conditions that exist. The conditions of employment, the home life, the misery in the hovels of the steel workers is beyond description. You may not be aware that the standard of life of the average steel worker is below the pauper line, which means that charitable institutions furnish to the pauper a better home, more food, clothing, light and heat than many steel workers can bring into their lives upon the compensation received for putting forth their very best efforts in the steel industry. Surely this is a matter which might well be discussed in conference…. Surely reasonable men can find a common ground upon which we can all stand and prosper.
Wilson’s speech and Labor Day came and went and so did every possibility of negotiation in the nation’s largest industry. The local steel union shops were strongly pressuring the National Committee—Gompers, Fitzpatrick, and Foster, among others—to vote on a date for the strike to begin. On September 10, they did. Their “Call to Strike” read: “IRON AND STEEL WORKERS! A historic decision confronts us. If we will but stand together now like men our demands will soon be granted and a golden era of prosperity will open for us in the steel industry. But if we falter and fail to act this great effort will be lost, and we will sink back into a miserable hopeless serfdom. The welfare of our wives and children is at stake. Now is the time to insist upon our rights as human beings. STOP WORK SEPTEMBER 22.”
The steelworkers’ “Call to Strike” came on the first full day of another conflict that was drawing considerable attention. The day before the “Call,” most of the Boston police force had walked off the job. That the nation’s protectors were workers who sought to be part of the American Federation of Labor and were so often called upon to help suppress labor struggles must have seemed an odd concept to most Americans—and a frightening one. President Wilson called the strike “a crime against civilization.” A policeman’s loyalty must be to the state, not to his fellow workers. The obligation of a policeman was like that of a soldier, the president said. The press agreed. And that the first full day of the strike happened to be on the same day as the last stupendous parade to welcome home returning soldiers—this one in New York celebrating General Pershing’s return—did not help the policemen’s public image. The next day the front pages of many of the nation’s newspapers carried the stories side by side: one about a parade celebrating the heroism of public service and the other about the public servants who had abandoned their posts.
The main issue behind the strike was that the Boston Social Club, which was the local policemen’s organization, wanted to affiliate with the AFL, and it wanted the mayor and the police commissioner to reinstate nineteen officers who had been suspended from duty for organizing club members to join the AFL. City officials refused both demands. The policemen stopped work at 5:45 P.M. on the 9th. That night 1,117 out of the 1,544 Boston police were not on the street. Gangs of hoodlums smashed shop windows, looted displays, stoned trolley cars, and threw mud at the replacement policemen and the citizen volunteers patrolling the streets.
By the 10th, the city was in a panic. A volunteer police force supervised by the policemen who didn’t strike tried to secure the town. Even the president of Harvard offered a thousand students to serve on the makeshift force. Citizens were ordered off the streets at night. City officials debated the next step. The mayor, a Democrat, wanted to settle the differences with the striking police, while the police commissioner, a Republican, did not. On the night of the 10th rioting broke out, during which three people were killed. The mayor sought help from the State Guard and after five thousand soldiers began patrolling the streets of Boston some peace was restored by Thursday. Still, with the mayor and police commissioner at odds, Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge decided to intervene and personally oversee the situation. At the same time, Samuel Gompers urged the police to stop the strike. When they agreed, he asked the mayor to reinstate them and to begin mediation.
Things might have been different for the Boston police if the press had presented the story a different way and if Washington had reacted more calmly. Not only were the police viewed as traitors to their duty as public servants but their short, three-day strike was depicted nationwide as a Bolshevik plot, continuing the Seattle strike and the May Day demonstrations. Quotes from local businessmen calling the strikers Bolshevists and deserters showed up everywhere. “Lenin and Trotsky are on their way,” wrote the Wall Street Journal on its editorial page. And in Washington Red-hunting congressmen and bureaucrats painted a grim picture of a Soviet takeover in the making. There never was mediation. How could the city make a settlement with a group of people who might be in collusion with Bolsheviks?
In the end, the entire police force was fired and new police were recruited while the State Guard continued to patrol the streets for the next three months. One impact of the strike was to further associate organized labor with radicalism. Another was to heighten the national profile of Calvin Coolidge. It was Governor Coolidge who sent the devastating message to Gompers, under the bright beam of a national spotlight, that there would be no arbitration: “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.” Suddenly Coolidge, the man who took a stand against Bolshevism, was the hero of the moment. And while Calvin Coolidge became a household name, the striking 1,117 policemen also had a new image. They were now perceived as radical, suspicious, likely dangerous men linked to a plot to overthrow the government, and thus they were blacklisted.
The depiction of the police strike as Bolshevik-inspired set the stage for the steelworkers, though the stage would be far bigger and the drama would last far longer. Shortly after the September 10 “Call to Strike,” Gompers urged President Wilson to ask Judge Gary to agree to mediation. Wilson asked, but Gary would not concede. The president then asked Gompers to put off the September 22 strike. Gompers passed the request to the heads of the organizing committee. By then, the pressure to strike from the local unions, the momentum of the workers to proceed on schedule, was like a fast-moving train. The leaders of the Youngstown workers, for example, during the week after the strike date was set, sent a telegram to the National Committee, in the tone of a warning. The AFL must stick to the September 22 date or “the men will strike regardless of any postponement and we will lose control of the situation.” It was one of many such telegrams. There was no going back. The workers were unstoppable now. Fitzpatrick and Foster knew that. Believing that they would never again be able to create the momentum they now had among the workers and knowing how demoralized the workers would be if there were any delays, they declined Wilson’s request. In a letter to Gompers, Fitzpatrick said that “It would be a thousand times better for the entire labor movement that we lose the strike and suffer complete defeat, than to attempt postponement now, except under a definite arrangement which would absolutely and positively guarantee the steelworkers substantial concessions. If these things cannot be guaranteed, then, in our opinion, our only hope is to strike.”
On September 22, 275,000 steelworkers across America walked off the job. By the 26th, this bold upsurge of the rank and file had swelled to more than 365,000, the biggest walkout ever. Hundreds of thousands of workingmen were struggling for some control over their lives, bravely taking a stand for a better life—the life they had imagined they could have in America. It began with the industry’s largest corporation refusing to discuss the workers’ demands and, by the end, would spread to every steel company, large and small, in the country. It included unskilled workers at a time when the national union organization, the AFL, represented skilled workers only. It crossed class lines and color lines. And it included immigrants from nearly fifty countries. It was daring and it was frightening. It was long, violent, and hugely significant for the future of labor. It was a struggle that more than a decade and a half later would lay the foundation for the first national union organization of unskilled laborers, the Committee, later, Congress, of Industrial Organizations, or the CIO.
But, as with the race riots, little of the public commentary focused on the truth. Once again Bolshevism became an easier enemy to target and to destroy than the dire conditions of life as a steelworker. Bolshevism was simpler to perceive as a problem than the convoluted politics and ethics of labor and capital. What the workers wanted was a better life. Communists had a presence in the labor community but, as Major Loving had stressed in his final report about race relations, Bolshevism was clearly not the enemy. It would have power only if the vile conditions did not improve.
Further, as in the black community, the war heightened passions and sharpened the moral issues. Many of these striking workers had risked their lives to make the world safe for democracy. Wasn’t protesting in the cause of justice part of what democracy was about? While on the front lines in France, could they ever have imagined that their future bosses in America would refuse to talk to them about receiving a wage sufficient to feed their children? Never would it have occurred to them that the very same machine guns, perched on tripods, they had used in Europe would now be pointed at them as they stood outside their plants asking for what they felt they deserved. To steelworkers, the steel strike was not about Bolshevism, despite the screaming headlines. The steel strike was about fairness and about betrayal.
As the season progressed, Hollywood came out with its latest anti-Bolshevik film, which this time was also anti-Semitic. But in an intriguing twist, the movie was supportive of workers. The Right to Happiness was the story of an American millionaire living in Petrograd with his baby twin daughters when a pogrom occurs. In the chaos, one daughter disappears. The father returns to the United States with the other daughter. The lost daughter is taken in by a Jewish family, and raised as a “Red revolutionary.” Years later, unaware of her true family history, she comes to America to organize workers at what turns out to be her father’s factory. As the Red daughter, she inspires the workers to go on strike. During the walkout she is shot while protecting her twin sister from the ensuing violence. In the end, as the rebel daughter is dying in her father’s arms, the father realizes that “workers are people too.” In the last scene of the movie, the father cuts the workers’ hours and raises their wages. The salvation of labor is thus portrayed as the work of a compassionate industrialist, awakened to the cause only after the unfortunate violent death of a loved one.