THE VICTORY OF CRAFT UNIONISM AND THE FINAL FAILURE OF PRODUCERS'
COOPERATION
We now come to the most significant aspect of the Great Upheaval: the
life and death struggle between two opposed principles of labor
organization and between two opposed labor programs. The Upheaval
offered the practical test which the labor movement required for an
intelligent decision between the rival claims of Knights and trade
unionists. The test as well as the conflict turned principally on
"structure," that is on the difference between "craft autonomists" and
those who would have labor organized "under one head," or what we would
now call the "one big union" advocates.
As the issue of "structure" proved in the crucial eighties, and has
remained ever since, the outstanding factional issue in the labor
movement, it might be well at this point to pass in brief review the
structural developments in labor organization from the beginning and try
to correlate them with other important developments.
The early[20] societies of shoemakers and printers were purely local in
scope and the relations between "locals" extended only to feeble
attempts to deal with the competition of traveling journeymen.
Occasionally, they corresponded on trade matters, notifying each other
of their purposes and the nature of their demands, or expressing
fraternal greetings; chiefly for the purpose of counteracting
advertisements by employers for journeymen or keeping out dishonest
members and so-called "scabs." This mostly relates to printers. The
shoemakers, despite their bitter contests with their employers, did even
less. The Philadelphia Mechanics' Trades Association in 1827, which we
noted as the first attempted federation of trades in the United States
if not in the world, was organized as a move of sympathy for the
carpenters striking for the ten-hour day. During the period of the
"wild-cat" prosperity the local federation of trades, under the name of
"Trades' Union,"[21] comes to occupy the center of the stage in New
York, Philadelphia, Boston, and appeared even as far "West" as
Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville. The constitution of the New York
"Trades' Union" provided, among other things, that each society should
pay a monthly per capita tax of 6-1/4 cents to be used as a strike fund.
Later, when strikes multiplied, the Union limited the right to claim
strike aid and appointed a standing committee on mediation. In 1835 it
discussed a plan for an employment exchange or a "call room." The
constitution of the Philadelphia Union required that a strike be
endorsed by a two-thirds majority before granting aid.
The National Trades' Union, the federation of city trades' unions,
1834-1836, was a further development of the same idea. Its first and
second conventions went little beyond the theoretical. The latter,
however, passed a significant resolution urging the trade societies to
observe a uniform wage policy throughout the country and, should the
employers combine to resist it, the unions should make "one general
strike."
The last convention in 1836 went far beyond preceding conventions in its
plans for solidifying the workingmen of the country. First and foremost,
a "national fund" was provided for, to be made up of a levy of two cents
per month on each of the members of the trades' unions and local
societies represented. The policies of the National Trades' Union
instead of merely advisory were henceforth to be binding. But before the
new policies could be tried, as we know, the entire trade union movement
was wiped out by the panic.
The city "trades' union" of the thirties accorded with a situation where
the effects of the extension of the market were noticeable in the labor
market, and little as yet in the commodity market; when the competitive
menace to labor was the low paid out-of-town mechanic coming to the
city, not the out-of-town product made under lower labor costs selling
in the same market as the products of unionized labor. Under these
conditions the local trade society, reenforced by the city federation of
trades, sufficed. The "trades' union," moreover, served also as a source
of reserve strength.
Twenty years later the whole situation was changed. The fifties were a
decade of extensive construction of railways. Before 1850 there was more
traffic by water than by rail. After 1860 the relative importance of
land and water transportation was reversed. Furthermore, the most
important railway building during the ten years preceding 1860 was the
construction of East and West trunk lines; and the sixties were marked
by the establishment of through lines for freight and the consolidation
of connecting lines. The through freight lines greatly hastened freight
traffic and by the consolidations through transportation became doubly
efficient.
Arteries of traffic had thus extended from the Eastern coast to the
Mississippi Valley. Local markets had widened to embrace half a
continent. Competitive menaces had become more serious and threatened
from a distance. Local unionism no longer sufficed. Consequently, as we
saw, in the labor movement of the sixties the national trade union was
supreme.
There were four distinct sets of causes which operated during the
sixties to bring about nationalization; two grew out of the changes in
transportation, already alluded to, and two were largely independent of
such changes.
The first and most far-reaching cause, as illustrated by the stove
molders, was the competition of the products of different localities
side by side in the same market. Stoves manufactured in Albany, New
York, were now displayed in St. Louis by the side of stoves made in
Detroit. No longer could the molder in Albany be indifferent to the fate
of his fellow craftsman in Louisville. With the molders the
nationalization of the organization was destined to proceed to its
utmost length. In order that union conditions should be maintained even
in the best organized centers, it became necessary to equalize
competitive conditions in the various localities. That led to a
well-knit national organization to control working conditions, trade
rules, and strikes. In other trades, where the competitive area of the
product was still restricted to the locality, the paramount
nationalizing influence was a more intensive competition for employment
between migratory out-of-town journeymen and the locally organized
mechanics. This describes the situation in the printing trade, where the
bulk of work was newspaper and not book and job printing. Accordingly,
the printers did not need to entrust their national officers with
anything more than the control of the traveling journeymen and the
result was that the local unions remained practically independent.
The third cause of concerted national action in a trade union was the
organization of employers. Where the power of a local union began to be
threatened by an employers' association, the next logical step was to
combine in a national union.
The fourth cause was the application of machinery and the introduction
of division of labor, which split up the established trades and laid
industry open to invasion by "green hands." The shoemaking industry,
which during the sixties had reached the factory stage, illustrates this
in a most striking manner. Few other industries experienced anything
like a similar change during this period.
Of course, none of the causes of nationalization here enumerated
operated in entire isolation. In some trades one cause, in other trades
other causes, had the predominating influence. Consequently, in some
trades the national union resembled an agglomeration of loosely allied
states, each one reserving the right to engage in independent action and
expecting from its allies no more than a benevolent neutrality. In other
trades, on the contrary, the national union was supreme in declaring
industrial war and in making peace, and even claimed absolute right to
formulate the civil laws of the trade for times of industrial peace.
The national trade union was, therefore, a response to obvious and
pressing necessity. However slow or imperfect may have been the
adjustment of internal organizations to the conditions of the trade,
still the groove was defined and consequently the amount of possible
floundering largely limited. Not so with the next step, namely the
national federation of trades. In the sixties we saw the national trade
unions join with other local and miscellaneous labor organizations in
the National Labor Union upon a political platform of eight-hours and
greenbackism. In 1873 the same national unions asserted their rejection
of "panaceas" and politics by attempting to create in the National Labor
Congress a federation of trades of a strictly economic character. The
panic and depression nipped that in the bud. When trade unionism revived
in 1879 the national trade unions returned to the idea of a national
federation of labor, but this time they followed the model of the
British Trades Union Congress, the organization which cares for the
legislative interests of British labor. This was the "Federation of
Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada,"
which was set up in 1881.
It is easy to understand why the unions of the early eighties did not
feel the need of a federation on economic lines. The trade unions of
today look to the American Federation of Labor for the discharge of
important economic functions, therefore it is primarily an economic
organization. These functions are the assistance of national trade
unions in organizing their trades, the adjustment of disputes between
unions claiming the same "jurisdiction," and concerted action in matters
of especial importance such as shorter hours, the "open-shop," or
boycotts. None of these functions would have been of material importance
to the trade unions of the early eighties. Existing in well-defined
trades, which were not affected by technical changes, they had no
"jurisdictional" disputes; operating at a period of prosperity with
full employment and rising wages, they did not realize a necessity for
concerted action; the era of the boycotts had not yet begun. As for
having a common agency to do the work of organizing, the trade unions of
the early eighties had no keen desire to organize any but the skilled
workmen; and, since the competition of workmen in small towns had not
yet made itself felt, each national trade union strove to organize
primarily the workmen of its trade in the larger cities, a function for
which its own means were adequate.
The new organization of 1881 was a loose federation of trade and labor
unions with a legislative committee at the head, with Samuel Gompers of
the cigar makers as a member. The platform was purely legislative and
demanded legal incorporation for trade unions,[22] compulsory education
for children, the prohibition of child labor under fourteen, uniform
apprentice laws, the enforcement of the national eight-hour law, prison
labor reform, abolition of the "truck" and "order" system, mechanics'
lien, abolition of conspiracy laws as applied to labor organizations, a
national bureau of labor statistics, a protective tariff for American
labor, an anti-contract immigrant law, and recommended "all trade and
labor organizations to secure proper representation in all law-making
bodies by means of the ballot, and to use all honorable measures by
which this result can be accomplished." Although closely related to the
present American Federation of Labor in point of time and personnel of
leadership, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the
United States and Canada was in reality the precursor of the present
state federations of labor, which as specialized parts of the national
federation now look after labor legislation.
Two or three years later it became evident that the Federation as a
legislative organization proved a failure.[23] Manifestly the trade
unions felt no great interest in national legislation. The indifference
can be measured by the fact that the annual income of the Federation
never exceeded $700 and that, excepting in 1881, none of its conventions
represented more than one-fourth of the trade union membership of the
country. Under such conditions the legislative influence of the
Federation naturally was infinitesimal. The legislative committee
carried out the instructions of the 1883 convention and communicated to
the national committees of the Republican and Democratic parties the
request that they should define their position upon the enforcement of
the eight-hour law and other measures. The letters were not even
answered. A subcommittee of the legislative committee appeared before
the two political conventions, but received no greater attention.
It was not until the majority of the national trade unions came under
the menace of becoming forcibly absorbed by the Order of the Knights of
Labor that a basis appeared for a vigorous federation.
The Knights of Labor were built on an opposite principle from the
national trade unions. Whereas the latter started with independent
crafts and then with hesitating hands tried, as we saw, to erect some
sort of a common superstructure that should express a higher solidarity
of labor, the former was built from the beginning upon a denial of craft
lines and upon an absolute unity of all classes of labor under one
guiding head. The subdivision was territorial instead of occupational
and the government centralized.
The constitution of the Knights of Labor was drawn in 1878 when the
Order laid aside the veil of secrecy to which it had clung since its
foundation in 1869. The lowest unit of organization was the local
assembly of ten or more, at least three-fourths of whom had to be wage
earners at any trade. Above the local assembly was the "district
assembly" and above it the "General Assembly." The district assembly had
absolute power over its local assemblies and the General Assembly was
given "full and final jurisdiction" as "the highest tribunal" of the
Order.[24] Between sessions of the General Assembly the power was vested
in a General Executive Board, presided over by a Grand Master Workman.
The Order of the Knights of Labor in practice carried out the idea which
is now advocated so fervently by revolutionary unionists, namely the
"One Big Union," since it avowedly aimed to bring into one organization
"all productive labor." This idea in organization was aided by the
weakness of the trade unions during the long depression of the
seventies, which led many to hope for better things from a general
pooling of labor strength. But its main appeal rested on a view that
machine technique tends to do away with all distinctions of trades by
reducing all workers to the level of unskilled machine tenders. To its
protagonists therefore the "one big union" stood for an adjustment to
the new technique.
First to face the problem of adjustment to the machine technique of the
factory system were the shoemakers. They organized in 1867 the Order of
the Knights of St. Crispin, mainly for the purpose of suppressing the
competitive menace of "green hands," that is unskilled workers put to
work on shoe machines. At its height in 1872, the Crispins numbered
about 50,000, perhaps the largest union in the whole world at that time.
The coopers began to be menaced by machinery about the middle of the
sixties, and about the same time the machinists and blacksmiths, too,
saw their trade broken up by the introduction of the principle of
standardized parts and quantity production in the making of machinery.
From these trades came the national leaders of the Knights of Labor and
the strongest advocates of the new principle in labor organization and
of the interests of the unskilled workers in general. The conflict
between the trade unions and the Knights of Labor turned on the question
of the unskilled workers.
The conflict was held in abeyance during the early eighties. The trade
unions were by far the strongest organizations in the field and scented
no particular danger when here or there the Knights formed an assembly
either contiguous to the sphere of a trade union or even at times
encroaching upon it.
With the Great Upheaval, which began in 1884, and the inrushing of
hundreds of thousands of semi-skilled and unskilled workers into the
Order, a new situation was created. The leaders of the Knights realized
that mere numbers were not sufficient to defeat the employers and that
control over the skilled, and consequently the more strategic
occupations, was required before the unskilled and semi-skilled could
expect to march to victory. Hence, parallel to the tremendous growth of
the Knights in 1886, there was a constantly growing effort to absorb the
existing trade unions for the purpose of making them subservient to the
interests of the less skilled elements. It was mainly that which
produced the bitter conflict between the Knights and the trade unions
during 1886 and 1887. Neither the jealousy aroused by the success of the
unions nor the opposite aims of labor solidarity and trade separatism
gives an adequate explanation of this conflict. The one, of course,
aggravated the situation by introducing a feeling of personal
bitterness, and the other furnished an appealing argument to each side.
But the struggle was one between groups within the working class, in
which the small but more skilled group fought for independence of the
larger but weaker group of the unskilled and semi-skilled. The skilled
men stood for the right to use their advantage of skill and efficient
organization in order to wrest the maximum amount of concessions for
themselves. The Knights of Labor endeavored to annex the skilled men in
order that the advantage from their exceptional fighting strength might
lift up the unskilled and semi-skilled. From the point of view of a
struggle between principles, this was indeed a clash between the
principle of solidarity of labor and that of trade separatism, but, in
reality, each of the principles reflected only the special interest of a
certain portion of the working class. Just as the trade unions, when
they fought for trade autonomy, really refused to consider the unskilled
men, so the Knights of Labor overlooked the fact that their scheme would
retard the progress of the skilled trades.
The Knights were in nearly every case the aggressors, and it is
significant that among the local organizations of the Knights inimical
to trade unions, District Assembly 49, of New York, should prove the
most relentless. It was this assembly which conducted the longshoremen's
and coal miners' strike in New York in 1887 and which, as we saw,[25]
did not hesitate to tie up the industries of the entire city for the
sake of securing the demands of several hundred unskilled workingmen.
Though District Assembly 49, New York, came into conflict with not a few
of the trade unions in that city, its battle royal was fought with the
cigar makers' unions. There were at the time two factions among the
cigar makers, one upholding the International Cigar Makers' Union with
Adolph Strasser and Samuel Gompers as leaders, the other calling itself
the Progressive Union, which was more socialistic in nature and composed
of more recent immigrants and less skilled workers. District Assembly 49
of the Knights of Labor took a hand in the struggle to support the
Progressive Union and by skillful management brought the situation to
the point where the latter had to allow itself to be absorbed into the
Knights of Labor.
The events in the cigar making trade in New York brought to a climax the
sporadic struggles that had been going on between the Order and the
trade unions. The trade unions demanded that the Knights of Labor
respect their "jurisdiction" and proposed a "treaty of peace" with such
drastic terms that had they been accepted the trade unions would have
been left in the sole possession of the field. The Order was at first
more conciliatory. It would not of course cease to take part in
industrial disputes and industrial matters, but it proposed a _modus
vivendi_ on a basis of an interchange of "working cards" and common
action against employers. At the same time it addressed separately to
each national trade union a gentle admonition to think of the unskilled
workers as well as of themselves. The address said: "In the use of the
wonderful inventions, your organization plays a most important part.
Naturally it embraces within its ranks a very large proportion of
laborers of a high grade of skill and intelligence. With this skill of
hand, guided by intelligent thought, comes the right to demand that
excess of compensation paid to skilled above the unskilled labor. But
the unskilled labor must receive attention, or in the hour of difficulty
the employer will not hesitate to use it to depress the compensation you
now receive. That skilled or unskilled labor may no longer be found
unorganized, we ask of you to annex your grand and powerful corps to the
main army that we may fight the battle under one flag."
But the trade unions, who had formerly declared that their purpose was
"to protect the skilled trades of America from being reduced to
beggary," evinced no desire to be pressed into the service of lifting up
the unskilled and voted down with practical unanimity the proposal.
Thereupon the Order declared open war by commanding all its members who
were also members of the cigar makers' union to withdraw from the latter
on the penalty of expulsion.
Later events proved that the assumption of the aggressive was the
beginning of the undoing of the Order. It was, moreover, an event of
first significance in the labor movement since it forced the trade
unions to draw closer together and led to the founding in the same year,
1886, of the American Federation of Labor.
Another highly important effect of this conflict was the ascendency in
the trade union movement of Samuel Gompers as the foremost leader.
Gompers had first achieved prominence in 1881 at the time of the
organization of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions. But
not until the situation created by the conflict with the Knights of
Labor did he get his first real opportunity, both to demonstrate his
inborn capacity for leadership and to train and develop that capacity by
overcoming what was perhaps the most serious problem that ever
confronted American organized labor.
The new Federation avoided its predecessor's mistake of emphasizing
labor legislation above all. Its prime purpose was economic. The
legislative interests of labor were for the most part given into the
care of subordinate state federations of labor. Consequently, the
several state federations, not the American Federation of Labor,
correspond in America to the British Trades Union Congress. But in the
conventions of the American Federation of Labor the state federations
are represented only nominally. The Federation is primarily a federation
of national and international (including Canada and Mexico) trade
unions.
Each national and international union in the new Federation was
acknowledged a sovereignty unto itself, with full powers of discipline
over its members and with the power of free action toward the employers
without any interference from the Federation; in other words, its full
autonomy was confirmed. Like the British Empire, the Federation of Labor
was cemented together by ties which were to a much greater extent
spiritual than they were material. Nevertheless, the Federation's
authority was far from being a shadowy one. If it could not order about
the officers of the constituent unions, it could so mobilize the general
labor sentiment in the country on behalf of any of its constituent
bodies that its good will would be sought even by the most powerful
ones. The Federation guaranteed to each union a certain jurisdiction,
generally coextensive with a craft, and protected it against
encroachments by adjoining unions and more especially by rival unions.
The guarantee worked absolutely in the case of the latter, for the
Federation knew no mercy when a rival union attempted to undermine the
strength of an organized union of a craft. The trade unions have learned
from experience with the Knights of Labor that their deadliest enemy
was, after all, not the employers' association but the enemy from within
who introduced confusion in the ranks. They have accordingly developed
such a passion for "regularity," such an intense conviction that there
must be but one union in a given trade that, on occasions, scheming
labor officials have known how to checkmate a justifiable insurgent
movement by a skillful play upon this curious hypertrophy of the feeling
of solidarity. Not only will a rival union never be admitted into the
Federation, but no subordinate body, state or city, may dare to extend
any aid or comfort to a rival union.
The Federation exacted but little from the national and international
unions in exchange for the guarantee of their jurisdiction: A small
annual per capita tax; a willing though a not obligatory support in the
special legislative and industrial campaigns it may undertake; an
adherence to its decisions on general labor policy; an undertaking to
submit to its decision in the case of disputes with other unions, which
however need not in every case be fulfilled; and lastly, an unqualified
acceptance of the principle of "regularity" relative to labor
organization. Obviously, judging from constitutional powers alone, the
Federation was but a weak sort of a government. Yet the weakness was not
the forced weakness of a government which was willing to start with
limited powers hoping to increase its authority as it learned to stand
more firmly on its own feet; it was a self-imposed weakness suggested by
the lessons of labor history.
By contrast the Order of the Knights of Labor, as seen already, was
governed by an all-powerful General Assembly and General Executive
Board. At a first glance a highly centralized form of government would
appear a promise of assured strength and a guarantee of coherence
amongst the several parts of the organization. Perhaps, if America's
wage earners were cemented together by as strong a class consciousness
as the laboring classes of Europe, such might have been the case.
But America's labor movement lacked the unintended aid which the sister
movements in Europe derived from a caste system of society and political
oppression. Where the class lines were not tightly drawn, the
centrifugal forces in the labor movement were bound to assert
themselves. The leaders of the American Federation of Labor, in their
struggle against the Knights of Labor, played precisely upon this
centrifugal tendency and gained a victory by making an appeal to the
natural desire for autonomy and self-determination of any distinctive
group. But originally perhaps intended as a mere "strategic" move, this
policy succeeded in creating a labor movement which was, on
fundamentals, far more coherent than the Knights of Labor even in the
heyday of their glory. The officers and leaders of the Federation,
knowing that they could not command, set themselves to developing a
unified labor will and purpose by means of moral suasion and propaganda.
Where a bare order would breed resentment and backbiting, an appeal,
which is reinforced by a carefully nurtured universal labor sentiment,
will eventually bring about common consent and a willing acquiescence in
the policy supported by the majority. So each craft was made a
self-determining unit and "craft autonomy" became a sacred shibboleth in
the labor movement without interfering with unity on essentials.
The principle of craft autonomy triumphed chiefly because it recognized
the existence of a considerable amount of group selfishness. The Knights
of Labor held, as was seen, that the strategic or bargaining strength of
the skilled craftsman should be used as a lever to raise the status of
the semi-skilled and unskilled worker. It consequently grouped them
promiscuously in "mixed assemblies" and opposed as long as it could the
demand for "national trade assemblies." The craftsman, on the other
hand, wished to use his superior bargaining strength for his own
purposes and evinced little desire to dissipate it in the service of his
humbler fellow worker. To give effect to that, he felt obliged to
struggle against becoming entangled with undesirable allies in the
semi-skilled and unskilled workers for whom the Order spoke. Needless to
say, the individual self-interest of the craft leaders worked hand in
hand with the self-interest of the craft as a whole, for had they been
annexed by the Order they would have become subject to orders from the
General Master Workman or the General Assembly of the Order.
In addition to platonic stirrings for "self-determination" and to narrow
group interest, there was a motive for craft autonomy which could pass
muster both as strictly social and realistic. The fact was that the
autonomous craft union could win strikes where the centralized
promiscuous Order merely floundered and suffered defeat after defeat.
The craft union had the advantage, on the one hand, of a leadership
which was thoroughly familiar with the bit of ground upon which it
operated, and, on the other hand, of handling a group of people of equal
financial endurance and of identical interest. It has already been seen
how dreadfully mismanaged were the great Knights of Labor strikes of
1886 and 1887. The ease with which the leaders were able to call out
trade after trade on a strike of sympathy proved more a liability than
an asset. Often the choice of trades to strike bore no particular
relation to their strategic value in the given situation; altogether one
gathers the impression that these great strikes were conducted by
blundering amateurs who possessed more authority than was good for them
or for the cause. It is therefore not to be wondered at if the compact
craft unions led by specialists scored successes where the heterogeneous
mobs of the Knights of Labor had been doomed from the first. Clearly
then the survival of the craft union was a survival of the fittest; and
the Federation's attachment to the principle of craft autonomy was, to
say the least, a product of an evolutionary past, whatever one may hold
with reference to its fitness in our own time.
Whatever reasons moved the trade unions of the skilled to battle with
the Order for their separate and autonomous existence were bound sooner
or later to induce those craftsmen who were in the Order to seek a
similar autonomy. From the very beginning the more skilled and better
organized trades in the Knights sought to separate from the mixed
"district assemblies" and to create within the framework of the Order
"national trade assemblies."[26] However, the national officers, who
looked upon such a move as a betrayal of the great principle of the
solidarity of all labor, were able to stem the tide excepting in the
case of the window glass blowers, who were granted their autonomy in
1880.
The obvious superiority of the trade union form of organization over the
mixed organization, as revealed by events in 1886 and 1887, strengthened
the separatist tendency. Just as the struggle between the Knights of
Labor and the trade unions on the outside had been fundamentally a
struggle between the unskilled and the skilled portions of the
wage-earning class, so the aspiration toward the national trade assembly
within the Order represented the effort of the more or less skilled men
for emancipation from the dominance of the unskilled. But the Order
successfully fought off such attempts until after the defeat of the
mixed district assemblies, or in other words of the unskilled class, in
the struggle with the employers. With the withdrawal of a very large
portion of this class, as shown in 1887,[27] the demand for the national
trade assembly revived and there soon began a veritable rush to organize
by trades. The stampede was strongest in the city of New York where the
incompetence of the mixed District Assembly 49 had become patent. At the
General Assembly in 1887 at Minneapolis all obstacles were removed from
forming national trade assemblies, but this came too late to stem the
exodus of the skilled element from the order into the American
Federation of Labor.
The victory of craft autonomy over the "one big union" was decisive and
complete.
The strike activities of the Knights were confessedly a deviation from
"First Principles." Yet the First Principles with their emphasis on
producers' cooperation were far from forgotten even when the enthusiasm
for strikes was at its highest. Whatever the actual feelings of the
membership as a whole, the leaders neglected no opportunity to promote
cooperation. T.V. Powderly, the head of the Order since 1878, in his
reports to the annual General Assembly or convention, consistently urged
that practical steps be taken toward cooperation. In 1881, while the
general opinion in the Order was still undecided, the leaders did not
scruple to smuggle into the constitution a clause which made cooperation
compulsory.
Notwithstanding Powderly's exhortations, the Order was at first slow in
taking it up. In 1882 a general cooperative board was elected to work
out a plan of action, but it never reported, and a new board was chosen
in its place at the Assembly of 1883. In that year, the first practical
step was taken in the purchase by the Order of a coal mine at
Cannelburg, Indiana, with the idea of selling the coal at reduced prices
to the members. Soon thereafter a thorough change of sentiment with
regard to the whole matter of cooperation took place, contemporaneously
with the industrial depression and unsuccessful strikes. The rank and
file, who had hitherto been indifferent, now seized upon the idea with
avidity. The enthusiasm ran so high in Lynn, Massachusetts, that it was
found necessary to raise the shares of the Knights of Labor Cooperative
Shoe Company to $100 in order to prevent a large influx of "unsuitable
members." In 1885 Powderly complained that "many of our members grow
impatient and unreasonable because every avenue of the Order does not
lead to cooperation."
The impatience for immediate cooperation, which seized the rank and file
in practically every section of the country, caused an important
modification in the official doctrine of the Order. Originally it had
contemplated centralized control under which it would have taken years
before a considerable portion of the membership could realize any
benefit. This was now dropped and a decentralized plan was adopted.
Local organizations and, more frequently, groups of members with the
financial aid of their local organizations now began to establish shops.
Most of the enterprises were managed by the stockholders, although, in
some cases, the local organization of the Knights of Labor managed the
plant.
Most of the cooperative enterprises were conducted on a small scale.
Incomplete statistics warrant the conclusion that the average amount
invested per establishment was about $10,000. From the data gathered it
seems that cooperation reached its highest point in 1886, although it
had not completely spent itself by the end of 1887. The total number of
ventures probably reached two hundred. The largest numbers were in
mining, cooperage, and shoes. These industries paid the poorest wages
and treated their employes most harshly. A small amount of capital was
required to organize such establishments.
With the abandonment of centralized cooperation in 1884, the role of the
central cooperative board changed correspondingly. The leading member of
the board was now John Samuel, one of those to whom cooperation meant
nothing short of a religion. The duty of the board was to educate the
members of the Order in the principles of cooperation; to aid by
information and otherwise prospective and actual cooperators; in brief,
to coordinate the cooperative movement within the Order. It issued forms
of a constitution and by-laws which, with a few modifications, could be
adopted by any locality. It also published articles on the dangers and
pitfalls in cooperative ventures, such as granting credit, poor
management, etc., as well as numerous articles on specific kinds of
cooperation. The Knights of Labor label was granted for the use of
cooperative goods and a persistent agitation was steadily conducted to
induce purchasers to give a preference to cooperative products.
As a scheme of industrial regeneration, cooperation never materialized.
The few successful shops sooner or later fell into the hands of an
"inner group," who "froze out" the others and set up capitalistic
partnerships. The great majority went on the rocks even before getting
started. The causes of failure were many: Hasty action, inexperience,
lax shop discipline, internal dissensions, high rates of interest upon
the mortgage of the plant, and finally discriminations instigated by
competitors. Railways were heavy offenders, by delaying side tracks and,
on some pretext or other, refusing to furnish cars or refusing to haul
them.
The Union Mining Company of Cannelburg, Indiana, owned and operated by
the Order as its sole experiment of the centralized kind of cooperation,
met this fate. After expending $20,000 in equipping the mine, purchasing
land, laying tracks, cutting and sawing timber on the land and mining
$1000 worth of coal, they were compelled to lie idle for nine months
before the railway company saw fit to connect their switch with the main
track. When they were ready to ship their product, it was learned that
their coal could be utilized for the manufacture of gas only, and that
contracts for supply of such coal were let in July, that is nine months
from the time of connecting the switch with the main track. In addition,
the company was informed that it must supply itself with a switch engine
to do the switching of the cars from its mine to the main track, at an
additional cost of $4000. When this was accomplished they had to enter
the market in competition with a bitter opponent who had been fighting
them since the opening of the mine. Having exhausted their funds and not
seeing their way clear to securing additional funds for the purchase of
a locomotive and to tide over the nine months ere any contracts for coal
could be entered into, they sold out to their competitor.
But a cause more fundamental perhaps than all other causes of the
failure of cooperation in the United States is to be found in the
difficulties of successful entrepreneurship. In the labor movement in
the United States there has been a failure, generally speaking, to
appreciate the significance of management and the importance which must
be imputed to it. Glib talk often commands an undeserved confidence and
misleads the wage earner. Thus by 1888, three or four years after it had
begun, the cooperative movement had passed the full cycle of life and
succumbed. The failure, as said, was hastened by external causes and
discrimination. But the experiments had been foredoomed anyway,--through
the incompatibility of producers' cooperation with trade unionism. The
cooperators, in their eagerness to get a market, frequently undersold
the private employer expecting to recoup their present losses in future
profits. In consequence, the privately employed wage earners had to bear
reductions in their wages. A labor movement which endeavors to practice
producers' cooperation and trade unionism at the same time is actually
driving in opposite directions.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] See Chapter 1.
[21] In the thirties the term "union" was reserved for the city
federations of trades. What is now designated as a trade union was
called trade society. In the sixties the "Union" became the "trades'
assembly."
[22] See below, 152-154.
[23] See below, 285-290, for a discussion why American labor looks away
from legislation.
[24] The Constitution read as follows: "It alone possesses the power and
authority to make, amend, or repeal the fundamental and general laws and
regulations of the Order; to finally decide all controversies arising in
the Order; to issue all charters.... It can also tax the members of the
Order for its maintenance."
[25] See above, 98-100.
[26] The "local assemblies" generally followed in practice trade lines,
but the district assemblies were "mixed."
[27] See above, 100-101.