STABILIZATION, 1888-1897
The Great Upheaval of 1886 had, as we saw, suddenly swelled the
membership of trade unions; consequently, during several years
following, notwithstanding the prosperity in industry, further growth
was bound to proceed at a slower rate.
The statistics of strikes during the later eighties, like the figures of
membership, show that after the strenuous years from 1885 to 1887 the
labor movement had entered a more or less quiet stage. Most prominent
among the strikes was the one of 60,000 iron and steel workers in
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the West, which was carried to a successful
conclusion against a strong combination of employers. The Amalgamated
Association of Iron and Steel Workers stood at the zenith of its power
about this time and was able in 1889, by the mere threat of a strike, to
dictate terms to the Carnegie Steel Company. The most noted and last
great strike of a railway brotherhood was the one of the locomotive
engineers on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company. The
strike was begun jointly on February 27, 1888, by the brotherhoods of
locomotive engineers and locomotive firemen. The main demands were made
by the engineers, who asked for the abandonment of the system of
classification and for a new wage scale. Two months previously, the
Knights of Labor had declared a miners' strike against the Philadelphia
& Reading Railroad Company, employing 80,000 anthracite miners, and the
strike had been accompanied by a sympathetic strike of engineers and
firemen belonging to the Order. The members of the brotherhoods had
filled their places and, in retaliation, the former Reading engineers
and firemen now took the places of the Burlington strikers, so that on
March 15 the company claimed to have a full contingent of employes. The
brotherhoods ordered a boycott upon the Burlington cars, which was
partly enforced, but they were finally compelled to submit. The strike
was not officially called off until January 3, 1889. Notwithstanding the
defeat of the strikers, the damage to the railway was enormous, and
neither the railways of the country nor the brotherhoods since that date
have permitted a serious strike of their members to occur.
The lull in the trade union movement was broken by a new concerted
eight-hour movement managed by the Federation, which culminated in 1890.
Although on the whole the eight-hour movement in 1886 was a failure, it
was by no means a disheartening failure. It was evident that the
eight-hour day was a popular demand, and that an organization desirous
of expansion might well hitch its wagon to this star. Accordingly, the
convention of the American Federation of Labor in 1888 declared that a
general demand should be made for the eight-hour day on May 1, 1890. The
chief advocates of the resolution were the delegates of the carpenters,
who announced a readiness to lead the way for a general eight-hour day
in 1890.
The Federation at once inaugurated an aggressive campaign. For the first
time in its history it employed special salaried organizers. Pamphlets
were issued and widely distributed. On every important holiday mass
meetings were held in the larger cities. On Labor Day 1889, no less
than 420 such mass meetings were held throughout the country. Again the
Knights of Labor came out against the plan.
The next year the plan of campaign was modified. The idea of a general
strike for the eight-hour day in May 1890, was abandoned in favor of a
strike trade by trade. In March 1890, the carpenters were chosen to make
the demand on May 1 of the same year, to be followed by the miners at a
later date.
The choice of the carpenters was indeed fortunate. Beginning with 1886,
that union had a rapid growth and was now the largest union affiliated
with the Federation. For several years it had been accumulating funds
for the eight-hour day, and, when the movement was inaugurated in May
1890, it achieved a large measure of success. The union officers claimed
to have won the eight-hour day in 137 cities and a nine-hour day in most
other places.
However, the selection of the miners to follow on May 1, 1891, was a
grave mistake. Less than one-tenth of the coal miners of the country
were then organized. For years the miners' union had been losing ground,
with the constant decline of coal prices. Some months before May 1,
1891, the United Mine Workers had become involved in a disastrous strike
in the Connelsville coke region, and the plan for an eight-hour strike
was abandoned. In this manner the eight-hour movement inaugurated by the
convention of the Federation in 1888 came to an end. Apart from the
strike of the carpenters in 1890, it had not led to any general movement
to gain the eight-hour work day. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of
workingmen had won reduced hours of labor, especially in the building
trades. By 1891 the eight-hour day had been secured for all building
trades in Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, Indianapolis, and San Francisco.
In New York and Brooklyn the carpenters, stone-cutters, painters, and
plasterers worked eight hours, while the bricklayers, masons, and
plumbers worked nine. In St. Paul the bricklayers alone worked nine
hours, the remaining trades eight.
In 1892 the labor movement faced for the first time a really modern
manufacturing corporation with its practically boundless resources of
war, namely the Carnegie Steel Company, in the strike which has become
famous under the name of the Homestead Strike. The Amalgamated
Association of Iron and Steel Workers, with a membership of 24,068 in
1891, was probably the strongest trade union in the entire history of
the American labor movement. Prior to 1889 the relations between the
union and the Carnegie firm had been invariably friendly. In January
1889, H.C. Frick, who, as owner of the largest coke manufacturing plant,
had acquired a reputation of a bitter opponent of organized labor,
became chairman of Carnegie Brothers and Company. In the same year,
owing to his assumption of management, as the union men believed, the
first dispute occurred between them and the company. Although the
agreement was finally renewed for three years on terms dictated by the
Association, the controversy left a disturbing impression upon the minds
of the men, since during the course of the negotiations Frick had
demanded the dissolution of the union.
Negotiations for the new scale presented to the company began in
February 1892. A few weeks later the company presented a scale to the
men providing for a reduction and besides demanded that the date of the
termination of the scale be changed from July 1 to January 1. A number
of conferences were held without result; and on May 30 the company
submitted an ultimatum to the effect that, if the scale were not signed
by June 29, they would treat with the men as individuals. At a final
conference which was held on June 23, the company raised its offer from
$22 per ton to $23 as the minimum base of the scale, and the union
lowered its demand from $25, the rate formerly paid, to $24. But no
agreement could be reached on this point nor on others and the strike
began June 29 upon the definite issue of the preservation of the union.
Even before the negotiations were broken up, Frick had arranged with the
Pinkerton detective agency for 300 men to serve as guards. These men
arrived at a station on the Ohio River below Pittsburgh near midnight of
July 5. Here they embarked on barges and were towed up the river to
Pittsburgh and taken up the Monangahela River to Homestead, which they
approached about four o'clock on the morning of July 6. The workmen had
been warned of their coming and, when the boat reached the landing back
of the steel works, nearly the whole town was there to meet them and to
prevent their landing. Passion ran high. The men armed themselves with
guns and gave the Pinkertons a pitched battle. When the day was over, at
least half a dozen men on both sides had been killed and a number were
seriously wounded. The Pinkertons were defeated and driven away and,
although there was no more disorder of any sort, the State militia
appeared in Homestead on July 12 and remained for several months.
The strike which began in Homestead soon spread to other mills. The
Carnegie mills at 29th and 33d Streets, Pittsburgh, went on strike. The
strike at Homestead was finally declared off on November 20, and most
of the men went back to their old positions as non-union men. The
treasury of the union was depleted, winter was coming, and it was
finally decided to consider the battle lost.
The defeat meant not only the loss by the union of the Homestead plant
but the elimination of unionism in most of the mills in the Pittsburgh
region. Where the great Carnegie Company led, the others had to follow.
The power of the union was henceforth broken and the labor movement
learned the lesson that even its strongest organization was unable to
withstand an onslaught by the modern corporation. The Homestead strike
stirred the labor movement as few other single events. It had its
political reverberation, since it drove home to the workers that an
industry protected by high tariff will not necessarily be a haven to
organized labor, notwithstanding that the union had actively assisted
the iron and steel manufacturers in securing the high protection granted
by the McKinley tariff bill of 1890. Many of the votes which would
otherwise have gone to the Republican candidate for President went in
1892 to Grover Cleveland, who ran on an anti-protective tariff issue. It
is not unlikely that the latter's victory was materially advanced by the
disillusionment brought on by the Homestead defeat.
In the summer of 1893 occurred the financial panic. The panic and the
ensuing crisis furnished a conclusive test of the strength and stability
of the American labor movement. Gompers in his presidential report at
the convention of 1899, following the long depression, said: "It is
noteworthy, that while in every previous industrial crisis the trade
unions were literally mowed down and swept out of existence, the unions
now in existence have manifested, not only the power of resistance, but
of stability and permanency," and he assigned as the most prominent
cause the system of high dues and benefits which had come into vogue in
a large number of trade unions. He said: "Beyond doubt the superficial
motive of continued membership in unions organized upon this basis was
the monetary benefits the members were entitled to; but be that as it
may, the results are the same, that is, _membership is maintained, the
organization remains intact during dull periods of industry, and is
prepared to take advantage of the first sign of an industrial revival_."
Gompers may have overstated the power of resistance of the unions, but
their holding power upon the membership cannot be disputed. The
aggregate membership of all unions affiliated with the Federation
remained near the mark of 275,000 throughout the period of depression
from 1893 to 1897. At last the labor movement had become stabilized.
The year 1894 was exceptional for labor disturbances. The number of
employes involved reached nearly 750,000, surpassing even the mark set
in 1886. However, in contradistinction to 1886, the movement was
defensive. It also resulted in greater failure. The strike of the coal
miners and the Pullman strike were the most important ones. The United
Mine Workers began their strike in Ohio on April 21. The membership did
not exceed 20,000, but about 125,000 struck. At first the demand was
made that wages should be restored to the level at which they were in
May 1893. But within a month the union in most regions was struggling to
prevent a further reduction in wages. By the end of July the strike was
lost.
The Pullman strike marks an era in the American labor movement because
it was the only attempt ever made in America of a revolutionary strike
on the Continental European model. The strikers tried to throw against
the associated railways and indeed against the entire existing social
order the full force of a revolutionary labor solidarity embracing the
entire American wage-earning class brought to the point of exasperation
by unemployment, wage reductions, and misery. That in spite of the
remarkable favorable conjuncture the dramatic appeal failed to shake the
general labor movement out of its chosen groove is proof positive of the
completion of the stabilization process which had been going on since
the early eighties.
The Pullman strike began May 11, 1894, and grew out of a demand of
certain employes in the shops of the Pullman Palace Car Company,
situated at Pullman, Illinois, for a restoration of the wages paid
during the previous year. In March 1894, the Pullman employes had voted
to join the American Railway Union. The American Railway Union was an
organization based on industrial lines, organized in June 1893, by
Eugene V. Debs. Debs, as secretary-treasurer of the Brotherhood of
Locomotive Firemen, had watched the failure of many a strike by only one
trade and resigned this office to organize all railway workers in one
organization. The American Railway Union was the result. Between June 9
and June 26 the latter held a convention in Chicago. The Pullman matter
was publicly discussed before and after its committee reported their
interviews with the Pullman Company. On June 21, the delegates under
instructions from their local unions, feeling confident after a victory
over the Great Northern in April, unanimously voted that the members
should stop handling Pullman cars on June 26 unless the Pullman Company
would consent to arbitration.
On June 26 the railway strike began. It was a purely sympathetic strike
as no demands were made. The union found itself pitted against the
General Managers' Association, representing twenty-four roads centering
or terminating in Chicago, which were bound by contracts with the
Pullman Company. The association had been organized in 1886, its main
business being to determine a common policy as to traffic and freight
rates, but incidentally it dealt also with wages. The strike soon spread
over an enormous territory. Many of the members of the brotherhoods
joined in, although their organizations were opposed to the strike. The
lawless element in Chicago took advantage of the opportunity to rob,
burn, and plunder, so that the scenes of the great railway strike of
1877 were now repeated. The damages in losses of property and business
to the country have been estimated at $80,000,000. On July 7, E.V. Debs,
president, and other principal officers of the American Railway Union
were indicted, arrested, and held under $10,000 bail. On July 13 they
were charged with contempt of the United States Court in disobeying an
injunction which enjoined them, among other things, from compelling or
inducing by threats railway employes to strike. The strike had already
been weakening for some days. On July 12, at the request of the American
Railway Union, about twenty-five of the executive officers of national
and international labor unions affiliated with the American Federation
of Labor met in conference in Chicago to discuss the situation. Debs
appeared and urged a general strike by all labor organizations. But the
conference decided that "it would be unwise and disastrous to the
interests of labor to extend the strike any further than it had already
gone," and advised the strikers to return to work. On July 13, the
American Railway Union, through the Mayor of Chicago, offered the
General Managers' Association to declare the strike off, provided the
men should be restored to their former positions without prejudice,
except in cases where they had been convicted of crime. But the
Association refused to deal with the union. The strike was already
virtually beaten by the combined moral effect of the indictment of the
leaders and of the arrival in Chicago of United States troops, which
President Cleveland sent in spite of the protest of Governor Altgeld of
Illinois.
The labor organizations were taught two important lessons. First, that
nothing can be gained through revolutionary striking, for the government
was sufficiently strong to cope with it; and second, that the employers
had obtained a formidable ally in the courts.[28]
Defeats in strikes, depression in trade, a rapidly falling labor market
and court prosecutions were powerful allies of those socialistic and
radical leaders inside the Federation who aspired to convert it from a
mere economic organization into an economic-political one and make it
embark upon the sea of independent politics.
The convention of 1893 is memorable in that it submitted to the
consideration of affiliated unions a "political programme." The preamble
to the "programme" recited that the English trade unions had recently
launched upon independent politics "as auxiliary to their economic
action." The eleven planks of the program demanded: compulsory
education; the right of popular initiative in legislation; a legal
eight-hour work-day; governmental inspection of mines and workshops;
abolition of the sweating system; employers' liability laws; abolition
of the contract system upon public work; municipal ownership of electric
light, gas, street railway, and water systems; the nationalization of
telegraphs, telephones, railroads, and mines; "the collective ownership
by the people of all means of production and distribution"; and the
referendum upon all legislation.
Immediately after the convention of 1893 affiliated unions began to give
their endorsement to the political program. Not until comparatively late
did any opposition make itself manifest. Then it took the form of a
demand by such conservative leaders as Gompers, McGuire, and Strasser,
that plank 10, with its pledge in favor of "the collective ownership by
the people of all means of production and distribution," be stricken
out. Notwithstanding this, the majority of national trade unions
endorsed the program.
During 1894 the trade unions were active participants in politics. In
November, 1894, the _Federationist_ gave a list of more than 300 union
members candidates for some elective office. Only a half dozen of these,
however, were elected. It was mainly to these local failures that
Gompers pointed in his presidential address at the convention of 1894 as
an argument against the adoption of the political program by the
Federation. His attitude clearly foreshadowed the destiny of the program
at the convention. The first attack was made upon the preamble, on the
ground that the statement therein that the English trade unions had
declared for independent political action was false. By a vote of 1345
to 861 the convention struck out the preamble. Upon motion of the
typographical union, a substitute was adopted calling for the
"abolition of the monopoly system of land holding and the substitution
therefor of a title of occupancy and use only." Some of the delegates
seem to have interpreted this substitute as a declaration for the single
tax; but the majority of those who voted in its favor probably acted
upon the principle "anything to beat socialism." Later the entire
program was voted down. That sealed the fate of the move for an
independent labor party.
The American Federation of Labor was almost drawn into the whirlpool of
partisan politics during the Presidential campaign of 1896. Three
successive conventions had declared in favor of the free coinage of
silver; and now the Democratic party had come out for free coinage. In
this situation very many prominent trade union leaders declared publicly
for Bryan. President Gompers, however, issued a warning to all
affiliated unions to keep out of partisan politics. Notwithstanding this
Secretary McGraith, at the next convention of the Federation, charged
President Gompers with acting in collusion with the Democratic
headquarters throughout the campaign in aid of Bryan's candidacy. After
a lengthy secret session the convention approved the conduct of Gompers.
Free silver continued to be endorsed annually down to the convention of
1898, when the return of industrial prosperity and rising prices put an
end to it as a demand advocated by labor.
The depressed nineties demonstrated conclusively that a new era had
arrived. No longer was the labor movement a mere plaything of the
alternating waves of prosperity and depression. Formerly, as we saw, it
had centered on economic or trade-union action during prosperity only to
change abruptly to "panaceas" and politics with the descent of
depression. Now the movement, notwithstanding possible changes in
membership, and persistent political leanings in some portions of it, as
a whole for the first time became stable in purpose and action. Trade
unionism has won over politics.
This victory was synchronous with the first successful working out of a
national trade agreement and the institutionalization of trade unionism
in a leading industry, namely stove molding. While one of the earliest
stable trade agreements in a conspicuous trade covering a local field
was a bricklayers' agreement in Chicago in 1887, the era of trade
agreements really dates from the national system established in the
stove foundry industry in 1891. It is true also that the iron and steel
workers had worked under a national trade agreement since 1866. However,
that trade was too exceptionally strong to be typical.
The stove industry had early reached a high degree of development and
organization. There had existed since 1872 the National Association of
Stove Manufacturers, an organization dealing with prices and embracing
in its membership the largest stove manufacturers of the country. The
stove foundrymen, therefore, unlike the manufacturers in practically all
other industries at that time, controlled in a large measure their own
market. Furthermore, the product had been completely standardized and
reduced to a piecework basis, and machinery had not taken the place of
the molders' skill. It consequently was no mere accident that the stove
industry was the first to develop a system of permanent industrial
peace. But, on the other hand, this was not automatically established as
soon as the favorable external conditions were provided. In reality,
only after years of struggle, of strikes and lockouts, and after the
two sides had fought each other "to a standstill," was the system
finally installed.
The eighties abounded in stove molders' strikes, and in 1886 the
national union began to render effective aid. The Stove Founders'
National Defense Association was formed in 1886 as an employers'
association of stove manufacturers. The Defense Association aimed at a
national labor policy; it was organized for "resistance against any
unjust demands of their workmen, and such other purposes as may from
time to time prove or appear to be necessary for the benefit of the
members thereof as employers of labor." Thus, after 1886, the alignment
was made national on both sides. The great battle was fought the next
year.
March 8, 1887, the employes of the Bridge and Beach Manufacturing
Company in St. Louis struck for an advance in wages and the struggle at
once became one between the International Union and the National Defense
Association. The St. Louis company sent its patterns to foundries in
other districts, but the union successfully prevented their use. This
occasioned a series of strikes in the West and of lockouts in the East,
affecting altogether about 5000 molders. It continued thus until June,
when the St. Louis patterns were recalled, the Defense Association
having provided the company with a sufficient number of strike-breakers.
Each side was in a position to claim the victory for itself; so evenly
matched were the opposing forces.
During the next four years disputes in Association plants were rare. In
August 1890, a strike took place in Pittsburgh and, for the first time
in the history of the industry, it was settled by a written trade
agreement with the local union. This supported the idea of a national
trade agreement between the two organizations. Since the dispute of
1887, negotiations with this object were from time to time conducted,
the Defense Association invariably taking the initiative. Finally, the
national convention of the union in 1890 appointed a committee to meet a
like committee of the Defense Association. The conference took place
March 25, 1891, and worked out a complete plan of organization for the
stove molding industry. Every year two committees of three members each,
chosen respectively by the union and the association, were to meet in
conference and to draw up general laws for the year. In case of a
dispute arising in a locality, if the parties immediately concerned were
unable to arrive at common terms, the chief executives of both
organizations, the president of the union and the president of the
association, were to step in and try to effect an adjustment. If,
however, they, too, failed, a conference committee composed of an equal
number of members from each side was to be called in and its findings
were to be final. Meanwhile the parties were enjoined from engaging in
hostilities while the matter at dispute was being dealt with by the duly
appointed authorities. Each organization obligated itself to exercise
"police authority" over its constituents, enforcing obedience to the
agreement. The endorsement of the plan by both organizations was
practically unanimous, and has continued in operation without
interruption for thirty years until the present day.
Since the end of the nineties the trade agreement has become one of the
most generally accepted principles and aspirations of the American labor
movement. However, it is not to be understood that by accepting the
principle of the trade agreement the labor movement has committed
itself to unlimited arbitration of industrial disputes. The basic idea
of the trade agreement is that of collective bargaining rather than
arbitration. The two terms are not always distinguished, but the
essential difference is that in the trade agreement proper no outside
party intervenes to settle the dispute and make an award. The agreement
is made by direct negotiation between the two organized groups and the
sanction which each holds over the head of the other is the strike or
lockout. If no agreement can be reached, the labor organization as well
as the employers' association, insists on its right to refuse
arbitration, whether it be "voluntary" or so-called "compulsory."
The clarification of the conception of the trade agreement was perhaps
the main achievement of the nineties. Without the trade agreement the
labor movement could hardly come to eschew "panaceas" and to
reconstitute itself upon the basis of opportunism. The coming in of the
trade agreement, whether national, sectional, or local, was also the
chief factor in stabilizing the movement against industrial depressions.
FOOTNOTE:
[28] See below, 159-160.