THE STRUGGLE FOR ORGANIZATION
In their volume on The Church and Industrial Reconstruction, the
Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook, an interdenominational
group appointed by the joint action of the Federal Council of Churches
and the General Wartime Commission of the Churches, declare that
"Democracy is the attempt to realize this fundamental right of every
personality to self-expression through cooperation with others in a
common task. In the political sphere it has already found large
recognition.... It applies, or should apply, in the sphere of organized
religion, which is the Church. It applies in the sphere of industry.
Indeed, it may be of relatively small significance for men to have the
right of political self-expression, unless they have similar opportunity
for self-expression in their daily work. For the conditions which affect
them in industry touch them more closely than the concerns of the
state."
It is for this reason that the study of the growth of democratic
organization and government in industry inevitably stresses the growth
of organization and orderly processes among the workers, the commoners
of industry. The political revolution of the eighteenth century
emancipated the owners of property from the autocratic control of the
monarchical state. But, as Sidney and Beatrice Webb have pointed out,
"the framers of the United States Constitution, like the various
parties in the French Revolution of 1789, saw no resemblance or analogy
between the personal power which they drove from the castle, the altar,
and the throne, and that which they left unchecked in the farm, the
factory, and the mine. Even at the present day, after a century of
revolution, the great mass of middle-and upper-class 'Liberals' all over
the world see no more inconsistency between democracy and unrestrained
capitalist enterprise, than Washington and Jefferson did between
democracy and slave-owning. The 'dim, inarticulate' multitude of
manual-working wage-earners have, from the outset, felt their way to a
different view. To them, the uncontrolled power wielded by the owners of
the means of production, able to withhold from the manual worker all
chance of subsistence unless he accepted their terms, meant a far more
genuine loss of liberty, and a far keener sense of personal subjection,
than the official jurisdiction of the magistrate, or the far-off,
impalpable rule of the king. The captains of industry, like the kings of
yore, are honestly unable to understand why their personal power should
be interfered with.... The agitation for freedom of combination and
factory legislation has been, in reality, a demand for a 'constitution'
in the industrial realm."
What the Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook and the Webbs
state in slightly different language explains why the history of
constitutional government in industry is fundamentally the history of
the rise of the workers through their unions and collective bargaining
toward a democratic equality of status with their employers.
As soon as the mining communities became sufficiently stable to allow
the consciousness of kind to operate, the miners began to organize into
small local groups for mutual aid, to care for one another in sickness,
to bury one another at death, and to improve their wages and working
conditions. But it was not until after the industrial revolution got
under full headway during and immediately after the Civil War that they
became actively conscious of a community of interest over wide areas.
For the structure of modern democratic government in industry as in
nations and among nations, depends upon railroads, the postal and
telegraph service, and other means of communication. A strong impetus
and a definite direction was given to the existing tendency toward
organization by the steady infiltration of miners from Great Britain
where constitutional government in the coal industry had already made
considerable progress and where the miners were firmly organized. The
miners held their first national convention in St. Louis, Missouri, in
January, 1861. The call had been issued by Daniel Weaver, an English
trade-unionist, who after the failure of the Chartist movement had
settled in the coal fields of Illinois.
"The necessity of an association of miners and of those branches of
industry immediately connected with mining operations, having for its
object the physical, mental, and social elevation of the miner, has long
been felt by the thinking portion of the miners generally," said Weaver
in his call. "Union is the great fundamental principle by which every
object of importance is to be accomplished. Man is a social being and if
left to himself in an isolated condition is one of the weakest of
creatures, but when associated with his kind he works wonders.... There
is an electric sympathy kindled, the attractive forces inherent in human
nature are called into action and a stream of generous emotion binds
together and animates the whole.... Our unity is essential to the
attainment of our rights and the amelioration of our present
condition.... Our safety, our remedy, our protection, our dearest
interests, and the social well-being of our families, present and
future, depend upon our unity, our duty, and our regard for each other."
The convention formed the American Miners' Association, elected Weaver
secretary and Thomas Lloyd, another English immigrant, president. A
considerable number of miners in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
and Maryland joined the union, which exerted a mild influence upon the
legislatures of the several states. But the Association was a national
organization in name only. The miners had not yet learned to work
together under the direction of their own leaders. The organization was
not strong enough to withstand the break in the labor market and the
anti-union drive that attended the flood of returning soldiers at the
end of the Civil War. Moreover, the American public regarded the trade
union as an alien institution, the evil creation of "foreigners" and
alien "agitators." It was held to be contrary to the genius of American
life that workers should combine to interfere with the sanctity of
property and the prerogatives that inhered in that sanctity just as it
had been so held in England a century before. Even by the great majority
of wage workers as by the public at large the accepted theory, carried
over from the feudal tradition of Europe, was that the rights and
interests of both would be best protected and cared for "by the
Christian men to whom God has given control of the property interests of
the country."
Under stress of the panic of 1873, and after a series of unsuccessful
strikes to maintain wages, the American Miners' Association went to
pieces. But local unions, generally known as "Miners' and Laborers'
Benevolent Associations," kept up a struggling existence. The strongest
of these was the Workingmen's Benevolent Association, a consolidation of
all the local unions in the anthracite field. It was largely the
creation of John Siney, an Englishbred Irishman, among the keenest minds
the labor movement has produced. One of the first acts of this
Benevolent Association was to declare a suspension of work in order to
relieve the mines of the glut of coal which had resulted from the slack
industrial period following the Civil War. This maneuver met with
condemnation of the press and from the operators, who did not,
nevertheless, regard it with entire disfavor, since it had a
considerable effect in maintaining prices as well as wages. As soon as
the suspension had accomplished its purpose the miners returned to work,
and immediately thereafter John Siney succeeded in persuading the
anthracite owners to enter a conference with representatives of the
union. The first joint meeting of operators and miners was held in
Scranton in 1869, and as a result of this conference the first joint
agreement ever made between American miners and operators for the
establishment of a wage scale was signed on July 29, 1870, by five
members of the Anthracite Board of Trade and five representatives of the
Workingmen's Benevolent Association.
This unique achievement made Siney a national figure. Local leaders in
all parts of the country appealed to him to call another national
convention. On his initiative, the Miners' National Association was
constituted by the convention held in Youngstown, Ohio, in October,
1873. The convention elected Siney president. National headquarters
were opened in Cleveland.
Wearied with endless strikes the convention had made arbitration,
conciliation, and cooperation the basic principles of their
constitution. Fortified with these principles, Siney and an associate
visited the offices of all the coal companies in Cleveland. All except
one of the operators turned them down. They would have nothing to do
with a union. The exception was Marcus A. Hanna. When Siney assured
Hanna that no strike would be called without previous resort to
arbitration and that the officers of the union would order the men to
keep at work even if an award went against them, Hanna accepted their
proposition and undertook to bring the other operators into line. In
spite of the widespread depression in the coal trade the National
Association grew rapidly. Twenty-one thousand members were represented
at the second convention held in Cleveland in October, 1874. But
notwithstanding Hanna's great influence, many of the operators remained
hostile to the union. Toward the close of 1874, the operators of the
Tuscarawas Valley in Ohio announced a wage cut from ninety to seventy
cents a ton. The miners determined to strike. Siney induced them to
resort to arbitration. The umpire admitted a reduction to seventy-one
cents. The miners were bitter against the decision which had gone almost
completely against them. Only the great influence of Siney restrained
them from striking at once.
Then one of the operators, the Crawford Coal Company, took advantage of
the discontent. This company had refused to join Hanna and his
associates in dealing with the union. During the arbitration
proceedings, the Crawford Company locked out their men for demanding a
check-weighman, and appealed to the operators' association for support.
The associated operators refused. The Crawford Company then offered
their locked-out men an advance of nine cents a ton above the rate fixed
for the union miners by the arbitration award. The acquisitive instinct
was stronger than the consciousness of kind among the non-union miners.
They accepted and went back to work.
This turn of the wheel broke Siney's control over the organization. His
followers threatened to desert unless he repudiated the arbitration
award. He refused. But his executive board, in a desperate effort to
save the union, overruled him and yielded. Strikes and lockouts followed
in quick succession. Hanna was as helpless as Siney. Strike breakers
were imported, under cover men and troops were brought in. Arbitration,
constitutional government, and the union went on the rocks.
Similar misfortune attended Siney's pioneer efforts to establish the
union and constitutional government in his home district at Clearfield,
Pennsylvania. No sooner had the miners joined the National Association
than they expected Siney and his fellow executives to achieve quick
redress of their grievances and to force an advance in wages. They grew
impatient with the slow processes of negotiation. They struck against
the advice of Siney. Immediately the operators in the Clearfield
district followed the precedent of Tuscarawas. They brought in strike
breakers and troops. A brief civil war followed. Some heads were broken.
The strike was lost. In spite of his heroic efforts to keep the peace
and to establish orderly processes of government, Siney was arrested for
conspiracy and thrown into jail. The morale of the Miners' National
Association was broken, and like its predecessors it went by the board.
Like the tides of the sea, the consciousness of kind ebbed and flowed
among the miners. They drew together into local, state, and national
organizations, held for brief periods, and then scattered again under
the impact of the operators supported by prevailing public opinion. They
had not become fully group conscious; neither had the public come to
recognize their unions as essential arms of constitutional government
within the industry.
In the bounteous days of national expansion, in the exuberant '70's and
'80's, a vague belief was abroad that America would never develop a
permanent working class. Every man was "as good as" another, and the
hustling, self-made business man was the American ideal. In accord with
this theory was one of the significant actions of the Miners' National
Association, an attempt to buy coal lands to be operated by the miners,
not as a workers' cooperative association, but as a corporation of
business men. During the '70's and the '80's also the Knights of Labor
built up a great following among the wage-workers, largely on the
philosophy that if they kept free of "class-conscious" trade unions and
went in for a mass movement of all workers, they could by some strange
alchemy of the American spirit rise to the status of independent
business men. The Knights of Labor played much the same role among the
wage-workers that the various "populist" movements played among the
farmers before the development of such group-conscious tendencies as
those which in our day have developed the farmers' cooperative societies
and the agricultural bloc.
The labor movement as we know it today in America began when in 1886
Samuel Gompers became first president of the American Federation of
Labor, an office which with the interruption of a single year he has
held ever since. Mr. Gompers led the wage-workers to a frank acceptance
of the prevailing business and acquisitive ideals as the basis, not of
individual escape from the working class, but of their consolidation
into trade unions for the businesslike control and sale of their craft
skill through collective bargaining. It is significant that the
immediate precursor of the American Federation of Labor--the Organized
Trades Unions of the United States of America and Canada, over whose
councils Mr. Gompers exercised great influence--demanded the legal
incorporation of trade unions and a protective tariff for American
labor, as well as the prohibition of child labor under fourteen, the
eight-hour day, the abolition of conspiracy laws, and the other reforms
which constitute the present program of organized labor. By the frank
recognition of the basic force of the acquisitive instinct in human
nature, the realistic leaders of the new labor movement were able to
release and consolidate the consciousness of kind for effective
operation within the wage-working group.
The influence of this new philosophy made itself felt throughout all the
skilled trades and notably among the miners. After the break-up of the
Miners' National Association, the miners maintained state organizations
in Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and in several other states. They
steadily took the initiative in seeking conferences and negotiations
with the operators of their districts. In spite of the failure of
arbitration under the pioneering leadership of Siney, they supported the
agitation which resulted in the Trade Tribunal Act of Pennsylvania
(1883), and the similar arbitration act of Ohio (1885).
But the process of overdevelopment which has always characterized the
American coal industry created sharp fluctuations of prosperity and
market depression and afforded an unstable basis for the establishment
of the machinery of orderly government. Both miners and operators showed
a tendency to run wild. Conferences were held, arbitration agreements
occasionally entered into, but now one side, now the other, repudiated
the awards as the fluctuating market sent prices erratically up and
down. The needs of the community have always called for the integration
of the industry, but the happy-go-lucky American spirit persistently
shied away from public regulation as long as the acquisitive instinct
could be satisfied at however great a cost in profligate use and waste.
But this very overdevelopment, with its destructive effect upon wages
and regularity of employment, continually brought the miners back to a
consciousness of the need for national organization.
In 1885, John McBride, president of the Ohio Miners' State Union, and
later, for a single term, president of the American Federation of Labor,
issued a call to the miners of the United States to meet in convention
on the ninth of September in Indianapolis. Seven states sent delegates.
The National Federation of Miners and Mine Laborers was formed and its
Executive Board issued a call _to the mine operators of the United
States and territories_ inviting them to a joint meeting for the purpose
of adjusting market and mining prices in such a way as to avoid strikes
and lockouts, and to give to each party an increased profit from the
sale of coal. Only one operator, Mr. W. P. Rend of Chicago, paid any
attention to this call. He inspired the miners to persevere. They sent
out a second invitation. A dozen or so operators met with the executive
board in Chicago and agreed upon a joint call for a national joint
convention to be held in Pittsburgh in December.
"The undersigned committee," the invitation said, "consisting of three
mine owners, and three delegates representing the miners' organization,
were appointed to make a general public presentation of the objects and
purposes of this convention, and to extend an invitation to all those
engaged in coal mining in America, to lend their active cooperation
toward the establishment of harmony and friendship between capital and
labor in this large and important industry.... Apart and in conflict
capital and labor become agents of evil, while united they create
blessings of plenty and prosperity.... Capital represents the
accumulation, or savings, of past labor, while labor is the most sacred
part of capital.... It is evident that the general standard of reward
for labor has sunk too low.... It is equally true that the widespread
depression of business, the overproduction of coal, and the consequent
severe competition have caused the capital invested in mines to yield
little or no profitable returns. The constant reductions of wages that
have lately taken place have afforded no relief to capital, and, indeed,
have tended to increase its embarrassments.... This is the first
movement of a national character in America, taken with the intention of
the establishment of labor conciliation...."
In response to this call a small joint meeting was held in Pittsburgh in
December. It adjourned for a second conference in Columbus, Ohio, in
February, 1886. Here the operators were represented by seventy-seven
delegates, principally from Ohio, but also from Pennsylvania, Indiana,
Illinois, Maryland, and West Virginia. They adopted a national wage
scale, established a national board of arbitration, and provided for the
creation of similar state boards to maintain industrial peace and to
develop the structure and processes of constitutional government.
The agreement held and worked in spite of the opposition of groups of
operators, notably in the West Virginia field and the steel district of
Pittsburgh, and the individualistic lethargy of many of the miners. The
new philosophy of business trade unionism gripped the miners, made the
trade union policy triumphant over the vaguely utopian policy of the
Knights of Labor, and resulted in the consolidation of the miners'
organizations into the United Mine Workers of America in 1890. But the
process of overdevelopment continued in the industry. The workings of
the joint machinery creaked and faltered under the impact of strikes and
lockouts due in the main to market fluctuations, and for a decade the
United Mine Workers, in spite of periods of prosperity and rapid growth,
was perpetually threatened with the fate of its predecessors.
This fate was averted by the economic developments which had converted
the compact anthracite field into a virtual monopoly under the combined
control of the anthracite railroads and the great banking houses of the
East that owned the railroads. While the bituminous industry sprawled
and overdeveloped, the anthracite combination gradually restricted the
production of anthracite to the calculable demand of the market. This
made for stability in the anthracite field, which is reflected in the
fact that while even today the average working year in the bituminous
fields is approximately two hundred and fifteen days,--an average
working day when spread over the year, of less than four hours,--the
working year in the anthracite field gradually rose until today it holds
steady at something more than two hundred and sixty days a year.
This stability enabled the anthracite miners to accumulate an economic
surplus above their immediate needs and set the consciousness of kind in
vigorous operation among them. By 1900 they had developed the nucleus of
a strong organization. Their wages, however, had lagged behind the wages
of the miners in the better-organized bituminous fields. On their
demand, the national officers of the United Mine Workers called a
convention of anthracite representatives in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, "to
devise means by which a joint convention of operators and miners can be
held" to consider the upward readjustment of the anthracite wage scale
and "methods to abolish the pernicious system now in vogue in the
anthracite region by which a part of the earnings of the mine workers is
taken from them by the infamous system of dockage, and by the practice
of compelling mine workers to load more than 2240 pounds for a ton." The
operators disregarded the convention's invitation to a joint conference.
The men struck. The operators made concessions but refused to deal with
the union. The men accepted the concessions and returned to work. During
the next two years they fortified their treasury and prepared to strike
again. John Mitchell had become president of the United Mine Workers. In
February, 1902, he addressed a circular letter to the presidents of the
anthracite railroads inviting them to a joint conference. The railroad
presidents refused to have anything to do with the union. The anthracite
miners then made a public proposal that the issues should be submitted
to the arbitration of the Industrial Branch of the National Civic
Federation, of which Senator Hanna was chairman, or of Archbishop
Ireland, Bishop Potter, and one other person to be selected by these
two. But all such tentatives were also rejected by the operators. It was
about this time that Mr. George F. Baer, president of the Philadelphia
and Reading Coal Company and of the Reading Railway System, made his
interesting declaration that "the rights and interests of the laboring
man will be protected and cared for, not by the labor agitators, but by
the Christian men to whom God has given the control of the property
interests of the country."
Efforts at conference and arbitration having failed, the anthracite
miners called a strike. Only a minority of the men had previously joined
the union, but ninety men in a hundred obeyed the strike call. The
bituminous miners were eager to declare a sympathetic strike, but they
had collective agreements in the more important fields and their
president, John Mitchell, and their secretary, William B. Wilson,
afterwards Secretary of Labor in President Wilson's cabinet, insisted
upon honoring these contracts. Trade union discipline had grown stronger
since the days of Siney and Mitchell's counsel prevailed. The anthracite
strike dragged on throughout the summer. Winter was approaching.
President Roosevelt decided to intervene. There was no precedent for
such intervention in the coal industry, which though basic to the
industrial life of the nation, was held sacred to the traditional rights
of private ownership and business initiative. In his address to the
miners and operators, President Roosevelt expressed his sense of the
unprecedented character of his action.
"As long," he said, "as there seemed to be a reasonable hope that these
matters could be adjusted between the parties it did not seem proper for
me to interfere in any way. I disclaim any right or duty to interfere in
any way, upon legal grounds or upon any official relation that I bear to
the situation. But the urgency and the terrible nature of the
catastrophe impending, where a large portion of our people, in the shape
of a winter fuel famine, are concerned, impel me after anxious thought
to believe that my duty requires me to use whatever influence I
personally can bring to bear to end a situation which has become
literally impossible."
In spite of his disavowal of legal authority or official responsibility,
President Roosevelt's action was publicly regarded as the official
action of the nation's chief executive. It gave the public its first
intimation of the status of coal as that of a public utility. It stamped
upon the coal industry the character of an essential public service
which has attached to it ever since. Backed by public opinion, which
would have sustained him if he had declared the existence of a public
emergency and had taken over the anthracite industry as the government
did the entire coal industry during the war, he was able to force the
submission of the dispute to a commission of arbitration by whose
decision both sides pledged themselves to abide. The strike was settled.
A machinery of government was established and put into operation. As the
result of President Roosevelt's action, collective bargaining was for
the first time given public sanction not only in the anthracite field
but throughout the coal industry. For seventeen years, and indeed, with
the exception of a brief interval in 1919, for twenty years, peace and
constitutional government prevailed not only in the anthracite field,
but, with the exception of a few districts, notably certain counties in
West Virginia and the coking fields subsidiary to the steel industry in
Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Alabama, throughout the bituminous fields
also.
The structure of this government and its basic laws are written into
collective contracts, which, together with the policies formulated by
the two parties through their national organizations, must be our guides
in the quest for an answer to the question as to how, short of the
autocratic control of the Fuel Administration, the coal industry is to
be developed into an integrated, dependably governed, public service.