The three great workers' organizations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were the Knights of Labor (KOL), the Socialist Party (SP), and the American Federation of Labor (AFL). [30]
The decline of the KOL after 1886 was thus a more critical turning point for both the labor movement and the shape of American democracy than the ebbing of electoral socialism after 1912. The forces that contributed to the Knights' demise would continue to plague the labor movement and would propel the surviving AFL into a narrow, defensive, and apolitical craft unionism that, in turn, contributed to its political ineffectiveness. [30-31]
Social movements in American politics have historically faced the following set of strategic choices:
1. A "purist" organization strategy emphasizing only collective action, with a localistic focus. Common economic (e.g., cooperatives, strikes) and social activities would draw members to the movement. The more members there were, the more success in the core activities. The organization would then, presumably, become so large and cohesive that politicians would come to it and court its members' votes by endorsing whatever political demands they put forward. Those demands would center on the removal of obstacles to movement organization and activities. The organization would endorse no political party and would largely ignore the partisan proclivities of the membership. Presumably, members would exercise their rights as individual citizens and, as informed voters, would back candidates favorable to the cause. This was the preferred strategy of the AFL before 1906 and of the KOL and the Farmers' Alliance (FA) in their early years.
2. Work for the election of whichever major-party candidates pledge the greatest support for the goals of the movement while maintaining the principle of flexible nonpartisanship. Inevitably, one party will prove more sympathetic than the other (though not necessarily the same party in each state, making national endorsements problematic). Such electoral alliances represent tactical cooperation, not a permanent alliance. The maintenance of a Washington, D.C., lobbying organization usually accompanies this nonpartisan "friends and enemies" strategy. The Farmers' Alliance and the KOL in the 1880s, the AFL in 1906, 1908, and 1916, and many late-twentieth-century social [31] movements of consumerists, feminists, environmentalists, and pacifists have used this strategy.
3. Combine with one of the major parties through a formal merger, "fusion," or massive infiltration. Many southern and midwestern agrarians endorsed this course. The national Populist-Democratic fusion of 1896 is illustrative. ~focus of paper
4. Mount an independent third-party effort, as did local Knights and farmers in the 1880s, Populists in 1892-94, and Socialists after 1900.
Each choice brings its own risks and calculation of benefits and costs, and different strategies may appeal to a movement at different stages of its existence. In the early stages, social movements of the disadvantaged are typically skeptical of any close affinity with the major parties, which, after all, have not been very attentive to their needs. Since a movement's leadership will naturally be more educated, with wider experience and connections than the bulk of the membership, it is plausible that some movement leaders will be attracted to overtures from the major parties (Terrence Powderly of the Knights of Labor is a good example here) and that the entry of the movement into politics will attract political activists with prior experience in major or minor parties, predisposing them to fusion. Such activists will often also have policy interests that diverge from those of the membership (or other leaders). Tensions, then, will inevitably emerge among leaders, and between leaders and followers, when a movement "goes political." Further, as the leaders' energies become focused on the political process, they will inevitably have less time (and inclination) for direct communication with members or organization-nurturing activities.[see footnote 3, p.423: Michael Schwartz, Radical Protest and Social Structure, 269-83.] The movement's dynamics, then, will change, and its force may well be dissipated by the move into politics. If the movement's adherents constitute a minority in the relevant electoral units--as is usually the case--coalitions must be effected with other social groups whose position in the political economy promises some hope of mutual support on common issues (or relatively low-cost logrolling). If the potential allies find some aspects of the movement's program objectionable, there will be pressure to sideline or jettison those positions. Inevitably, some movement members will object to the new demands adopted on behalf of allies. Movement esprit will be dissipated. [32]
The farmers' movement of the late nineteenth century tried all four strategies, moving from number one to two to four and ending up in three as the diminished movement came to rest in a Democratic Party that both captured and was transformed by the agrarian movement it had swallowed. [32-33] ~key point
The Knights of Labor
The vehicle that drew the organizers of the Knights' first General Assembly into local and national politics was the Greenback-Labor Party. Several labor leaders who would later be active Knights had participated in earlier greenback conventions, and the labor and middle-class reformers of the National Labor Union held greenbackism as a central tenet. In fact, working-class intellectuals like printer Andrew C. Cameron and William Sylvis of the Iron Molders Union (coeditors of a Chicago labor paper) were among the earliest and most influential converts to the monetary philosophy. Originally devised in the 1850s by a failed New York dry-goods merchant, Edward Kellogg, and elaborated fifteen years later by a Pennsylvania iron manufacturer named Alexander Campbell, greenbackism was welcomed by labor leaders such as Cameron and Sylvis, Richard Trevellick of Detroit, and Robert Schilling of Cleveland (both of whom became KOL organizers). These labor activists were discouraged by the failure of strikes and cooperative ventures in the post-Civil War deflation era. [34-35]
That so many currency and labor reformers hailed from these regions thus reflected not only local economic conditions but also a resurgent resentment thus reflected not only local economic conditions but also a resurgent resentment of the political dominance of northeastern, capital-rich cities and of the banker, bondholder, and mercantile interests concentrated there. The overlapping of personnel and a liberal borrowing of platform language and principles from earlier labor and farmer organizations (particularly the Patrons of Husbandry, or the Grange, and mid-western antimonopoly movements) explain the continuing thread of greenback philosophy in labor/reform movements of the 1870s--including the Knights--and the naturalness of broad farmer-labor political alliances for these labor leaders. Representatives of farmers' societies had participated in the second convention of the National Labor Union in 1867, and Robert Schilling urged in the 1874 Industrial Congress that a national labor organization be modeled on the Grange and seek "intimate cooperation with the Farmers' movement." [see footnote 10, p. 424: Ware, Labor Movement in the United States, 9-10, 16.] [35]
Demonstrating the appeal of greenbackism to both urban workers and farmers, the National Party's congressional candidates garnered over one million votes in state and congressional elections. In fifty-six congressional districts, Greenbackers (either alone or in fusion with a major party) won 30 percent or more of the total vote. Thirty-three of these ran in the Midwest and South and twenty-three in the Northeast (Maine, Vermont, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts). Of the fifteen elected, five had run in the Midwest, three in the South, three in Pennsylvania, two in Maine, and one each in Vermont and New Jersey. [see footnote 12, p. 424: Compiled from Congressional Quarterly, Guide to U.S. Elections, 638-41; and U.S. Congress, Congressional Directory, 46th Cong., 1st sess. Congressional Quarterly misses fusion and National (Greenback) candidates elected in Illinois and Indiana. Haynes, Third Party Movements, 131, counts fourteen elected but misses a New Jersey Greenback-Democrat. His regional table on p. 125 is misleading as a description of the congressional vote. It relies on figures in the 1878 issue of Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year, 808, which seems to miss many votes for fusion (e.g., Greenback-Democrat) candidates. Kenneth C. Martis counts thirteen Greenbackers (Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the U.S. Congress, 1789-1989, table 46H); my list includes, in addition to those, fusionists Kelley (PA4) and Smith (NJ2).] [36]
As a measure of the support base for the Greenback reform movement in national politics, these fifteen districts merit a closer examination. Eight of them were overwhelmingly rural, with less than 20 percent of the population (ranging from 3 to 18 percent) living in towns or cities of over 4,000. However, one of these (Main's fourth district) did have a modest industrial base in its collection of small towns, and another, in central Pennsylvania, contained several important coal-mining counties along with a fair wheat production. These two, then, may not be aptly classed as "agrarian." Another district (the Texas fifth), with an urban population of 24 percent, nevertheless had high cotton production, low value added in manufacturing, and a strong agrarian cast, despite enclosing the state capital at Austin. This district contained, in fact, the sparsely populated central Texas county that gave birth to the Farmers' Alliance. In all, seven of the fifteen Greenback districts appear, from their rural and economic profiles, to represent an agricultural milieu. Only four of the fifteen--those in Philadelphia, Indianapolis, coastal Maine, and southern urban districts with relatively high value added located in Pennsylvania and Maine brings the number of plausibly "labor" districts in the Greenback group to seven. The remaining district, in northwestern Missouri, had substantial farm output, very modest industrial production, and an urban population of 26 percent. [see footnote 13, p. 424: District urban profiles are calculated from the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of the Census, Compendium of the Tenth Census, Pt. 1. Value added in manufacturing and agricultural production are found in Stanley B. Parsons, William W. Beach, and Michael J. Dubin, United States Congressional Districts and Data, 1843-1883]
The picture, then, is genuinely mixed. Among the Greenback congressmen were at least two with working-class occupations or identified with labor causes (Thompson Murch of Maine and Hedrick Wright of Pennsylvania), the former president of the Illinois Grange (Albert Forsythe), and an Iowa Greenbacker known both as an agrarian reform leader and a friend of labor (James Weaver). On a very small scale, the Greenback movement had managed to achieve a farmer-labor reform coalition in national politics. The problem, of course, was scale. [36]
The year 1878 proved to be the electoral high point for the Greenback movement, and the fate of the party revealed two aspects of labor's political tendencies that would prove enduring: as individuals, national labor leaders, some of whom entertained political ambitions in their own right, might support major or third parties locally, but they were unwilling to commit their organizations and thus to attempt national labor electoral mobilizations; and the rank and file, aware of their leaders' ambivalence and pressured by employers, long-standing party loyalties, and their own assessments of labor advantage, could not be counted on to sustain a national reform campaign. [37]
Several KOL leaders were on hand at the 1880 Greenback convention (one was named chair of the Chicago nominating convention in June), but the enthusiasm of Powderly and others had notably waned. Despite the adoption of a vigorous reform program that included more labor demands than any earlier platforms, the KOL made little effort for the Greenback presidential candidate, and his labor vote was minimal. [see footnote 14, p.424: James, "American Labor and Political Action," 167-83. Weaver's vote came mostly from the Midwest and the South, with large declines (compared with 1878) in the Northeast and the more urban states of the Midwest.] Commentators have suggested that the lifting of the depression in the fall of 1880 and the nomination of Iowan James Weaver rather than Gen. Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts contributed to labor's disenchantment with greenbackism. [see footnote 15, p. 424: James, "American Labor and Political Action," 172-75. For a recent analysis of Greenbackism, particularly useful for state/regional contrasts, see Gretchen Ritter, Goldbugs and Greenbacks.] Butler, now a wealthy lawyer and Greenbacker, had cultivated a labor following in Massachusetts. But Weaver was a loyal friend of labor and, as the 1884 campaign would demonstrate, enjoyed far more national popularity than Butler (if the south had to swallow a Union general for president, better a man of agrarian sympathies like Weaver than the "Beast of New Orleans"). Certainly the 1880 Greenback platform promised much more to labor than did the Democratic and Republican versions. At any rate, the falloff of labor support left the agrarian Greenbackers high and dry. [37]
~Knights in Politics in the 1880s~
The looming tariff issue worked against both the Democratic Party (which must have regretted having pressed it) and independent labor politics even as it benefited the party of protection. In the national elections of 1888, the Republicans trumpeted the benefits of the tariff for labor and put Jarrett and other labor leaders on the stump for the GOP. [44]
The Union Labor Party (ULP) was formed in 1887 by members of the Farmers' Alliance, Agricultural Wheel, Greenbackers, Grangers, and a small and unofficial delegation of Knights. The majority of delegates were farmers. The convention's platform endorsed virtually the same combination of currency, land, transportation, election, labor, government ownership, and income-tax proposals as the earlier Greenback and Antimonopoly Parties. [44]
As prospects for an independent labor block faded, the congressional agrarians were left as the diffuse custodians of labor's political agenda. [45]
~The Labor Lobby~
Considering the divisiveness of the tariff issue and competing major-party loyalties for the KOL, Powderly preferred to concentrate the Order's political force on legislative lobbying. [45]
At the peak of KOL membership in 1886, the General Assembly voted to create a three-man Legislative Committee to reside in Washington when Congress was in session. Powderly appointed Ralph Beaumont, a labor journalist and shoemaker from Elmira, New York, along with James Campbell, a Pittsburgh glass blower, and John J. McCartney, a Baltimore carpenter. Beaumont was the major figure on the committee and shared Powderly's policy leanings. The list of bills the KOL committee decided to target must have delighted the Knights' agrarian supporters. Of the eight proposals endorsed, six involved land concerns: government reclamation of railroad and other land grants, repeal of timber and desert land acts that favored large syndicates, settlement of a portion of the Sioux Indian reservation and of Indian Territory, and a prohibition on landownership by aliens. The other two bills would have declared federal election days to be holidays and would have prescribed that $100 million of the current Treasury surplus be disbursed and U.S. Treasury notes be substituted for retired national bank notes (measures designed to expand the circulating medium and shift the control of money issue from private banks to the federal government). [see footnote 46, p. 425-26: Knights of Labor, Proceedings of the General Assembly (Richmond), 1886, 139-41, in Terrence V. Powderly Papers, 1864-1937, and John W. Hayes Papers, 1880-1921: The Knights of Labor, Reel 67-series A, part 4D, Proceedings, General Assembly, 1878-1902; James, "American Labor and Political Action," 279-84, 358-61. The KOL executive board also endorsed the ultimately unsuccessful bill sponsored by Sen. Henry Blair of New Hampshire, and strongly supported by the South, to appropriate $77 million in aid to elementary education. See chapter 9, note 5.] These were controversial proposals, even within the Democratic Party. [45-46]
In the politically momentous year of 1886, the attitude of the southern faction of the agrarian block toward federal power was still in flux and its implication for labor unclear. John Reagan of Texas was intent on establishing the right of Congress, under the interstate commerce clause, to regulate railroad freight charges and practices. When the Knights, beginning to lose a mammoth railroad strike in 1886, petitioned Congress to investigate labor conditions and create a federal mechanism to foster arbitration of labor disputes, Reagan argued that labor conflicts, unlike freight charges, were local matters that could, and should, be handled by the states--a position that opponents of his regulation bill found surprising and hypocritical. [see footnote 47, p.426: Congressional Record (CR), 49-I, 3393-95. Reagan had persuaded the KOL lobbyists to include his regulation bill in their legislative agenda. James, "American Labor and Political Action," 281, 288.] Reps. James Morgan of Mississippi and John Rogers of Arkansas joined Reagan in opposing the arbitration bill on constitutional grounds, and twenty-two southern Democrats voted against the federal arbitration bill on final House passage. [see footnote 48, p. 426: CR, 49-I, 3061-62, 3066, 3393. Rogers stated that he was proud to stand with the only two trade unionists in the House, Martin Foran of Ohio and John Farquhar of New York, both of whom opposed this and other attempts at government involvement in labor relations.] [46]
This opposition represented an antebellum constitutional position now rapidly being eroded. Most members of Congress were unwilling to let constitutional scruples stand in the way of a positive government effort to deal with the growing problems of an industrial age, particularly when those problems involved railroads, the lifelines of commerce. Nor were they willing to ignore the petitions for action that were flowing in from an organization of seven hundred thousand workers distributed around the country. Even Senator Harrison, not a prominent friend of labor, presented the KOL arbitration petition to his chamber, and other representatives voiced the opinion that the wishes of such a massive organization could not be ignored. During floor [46] debate on the investigation, Rep. Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania announced, "I hold in my hand a letter from Mr. Powderly," to which the cry went up, "Read it!" He proceeded to read into the Record Powderly's request for an investigation of labor conditions, to which the House promptly agreed. [see footnote 49, p. 426: CR, 3349, 3394-95.] [47]
~"The Three Great Questions of the Future": Land, Transportation, Finance~
Federally owned land should be reserved for actual settlers, not sold to corporation speculators or alien landlords. Land that was granted to railroads and that was not actually used for railroad purposes should be reclaimed and distributed to settlers.Lawrence Goodwyn has described Powderly in this period as having fallen "almost wholly under the ideological sway" of Charles Macune, leader of the Farmers' Alliance, whom he had gotten to know during the two men's Washington lobbying efforts. [see footnote 57, p. 426: Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment, 107.] However, Powderly had his own reasons for supporting these policies.
Edward T. James suggests that the focus on land and other agrarian issues might have been perceived as a way of enlisting farmer members in the KOL, especially as the conflict with the trade unionists escalated and urban membership began to decline.... Although farmers had the most direct grievances here, the urban worker too was victimized, both as a worker and as a citizen. [48]
...a million rail workers had reason to expect that federal control or ownership would net them better treatment than they received at the hands of Jay Gould, Tom Scott, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. [49]
~The Decline of the Knights of Labor~
...in Ware's opinion, the KOL was "dead" by 1893. [see footnote 68, p. 427: Ware, Labor Movement in the United States, 369-70.] The formation of new local assemblies tells a somewhat different story. The number of LAs formed was up 25 percent between 1886 and 1887, even as aggregate membership dropped. As Garlock shows, three thousand new LAs were organized between 1888 and 1896. [see footnote 69, p. 427: Garlock, "Structural Analysis of the Knights of Labor," 9-15.] What is clear is that membership size and structure changed drastically after the 1886 peak, and KOL politics evolved in the unmistakable direction of agrarianism. [50]
~~~~
Within a year of its summer 1886 peak, the KOL had lost 176,000 members in nine northeastern cities--118,000 in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York alone. [see footnote 74] Table 3.2 suggests a hierarchy of regional losses: most severe in large industrial cities; slower in small cities (and the Midwest); slowest in the periphery. [51]
Its ideology and politics were, indeed, more "agrarian" after 1886, but a broadly reformist republicanism and concern with land and money issues had characterized the KOL well before its presumed ruralization and would understandably have received renewed emphasis in the late 1880s and early 1890s, when farm organizations took the lead in organizing a national reform movement. [51]
Out of this meeting emerged a KOL endorsement of the program of the Southern Farmers' Alliance (now renamed the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union in deference to its labor alliance ambitions)--a program centered on bimetallism, greenbacks, land for settlers, an end to commodity speculation, and nationalization of communications and transportation [see footnote 79]. [53]
Yet despite open endorsement of Weaver by the KOL leaders, Powderly did very little to mobilize labor votes for the Populist ticket. [53]
It is doubtful that a strong effort by Powderly--who now presided over an organization of around eighty thousand members--would have made any difference in the 1892 results. [54]
The KOL's devotion to populism was now unqualified. In 1896 the Journal of United Labor trumpeted its endorsement of William Jennings Bryan and a "Call to Action" by Ignatius Donnally. A huge headline in the last issue before the 1896 election asked: "How Can Any Workingman Vote for McKinley?"[see footnote 89] In contrast to Powderly's reticience in 1892, Sovereign stumped the country for Bryan. But the contrast was sharper than that. Powderly [54] stumped for William McKinley in 1896, [see footnote 90] and the majority of industrial workers, ignoring the call of the much-diminished KOL, apparently followed his lead. [55] !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Socialists: Urban and Rural
Populism was much milder here than to the south and west, as farmers were generally less hard-pressed; but in the devastating depression of 1893-96, downstate farmers looked to urban workers for political allies. With their large and well-organized voting base, Chicago workers were not shy about pressing their demands on farmers. [56]
But Morgan was determined to secure from the Populists endorsement of a socialist political agenda as the price of SLP support. [see footnote 95] The program, modeled on that of British trade unionists and influenced by the 1892 Populist Party platform, advocated independent political action and listed eleven demands to be pressed on the local and national state: (1) compulsory education; (2) direct legislation (the initiative); (3) a legal eight-hour workday; (4) sanitary inspection of workshop, mine, and home; (5) liability of employers for injury to health, body, or life; (6) abolition of the contract system in all public works; (7) abolition of the sweating system; (8) municipal ownership of streetcars and of gas and electric plants; (9) nationalization of the telegraph, telephones, railroads, and mines; (10) the collective ownership by the people of all means of production and distribution; and (11) the principle of referendum in all legislation. The Populist conference endorsed ten of the socialist planks but adamantly refused to accept the critical plank, #10. Morgan went home in disgust. [see footnote 96] [56]~the left was already fragmented pre-1896
Henry Demarest Lloyd, a well-to-do Chicago journalist, labor advocate, and Fabian socialist, devised a compromise. In lieu of plank #10's unambiguous commitment to collectivization, his substitute pledged the constituent organizations to "vote for those candidates of the People's Party...who will pledge themselves to the principle of the collective ownership by the people of all such means of production and distribution as the people elect to operate for the commonwealth" (emphasis added). This the farmers and the more conservative unionists interpreted as requiring an explicit electoral authorization (as in a referendum), and they assumed it would lead only to selective nationalization or municipal ownership of utilities. The socialists, however, could interpret the plank as a commitment to socialism. It was accepted, and the political alliance was forged. [see footnote 97] [57]
The industrial working class was, it seemed, immune to populism and, in all but a few local politics, to socialism, even in the midst of a severe depression. [see footnote 100] [57]
~The Greening of American Socialism~
The SP, like the KOL and the Populist Party, was receptive to women and African Americans, who were largely ignored by the craft unions. In Oklahoma the SP fought against suffrage restriction, and everywhere the party campaigned to enfranchise women. Socialists were not, however, immune to racism. In the South and Southwest, race was one of the two issues (the other being landownership) that sorely tested Socialists. Although blacks were admitted to mixed locals in Texas and Oklahoma, most southern parties were afraid to actively recruit black for fear of losing white supporters, and the northern SP organizers who held prominent positions in the southern parties often had stronger race prejudices than their southern counterparts. For their time and place, one may say that the southern Socialists were remarkably, even heroically, progressive. [see footnote 110] At the national level, Debs was a strong voice for biracial organization and racial brotherhood; Berger, on the other hand, was a strident racist. Racial and ethnic bias also infected the party's stance on immigration. Socialists in the Pacific Coast region were strongly opposed to Asian immigration, and most national SP leaders accepted racial arguments against admitting "unassimilated coolie" labor. In 1910, after a heated debate, the party convention endorsed a resolution by Morris Hillquit that avoided overt racial exclusion but backed legislation "to prevent the immigration of strike-breakers and contract laborers and the mass [60] immigration from foreign countries brought about by the employing classes for the purpose of weakening of American labor." [see footnote 111]
Though sympathetic to the KOL and populism, the westerners were more inclined to anarchosyndicalism than to political action, and they saw the electoral process more as a check on the use of local and state police against strikers than as a means toward socialism or immediate legislative reforms. [61]
After the decline of populism and then the Farmers' Union, many agrarian radicals in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Missouri found a new home in the Socialist Party. [see footnote 61]
Recruitment and communication in such areas were sustained to some extent through industrial unions such as the biracial Brotherhood of Timber Workers (which joined the IWW), the United Mine Workers (UMW) union; and the Renters' Union (of white tenant farmers). But the most important links were camp meetings and a dynamic regional Socialist press. The summer encampment--an activity common to rural religious revivals and to populism--was first appropriated by a Texas Socialist who was a veteran of such Populist affairs. The first Socialist camp meeting in rural northeastern Texas drew 4,000 people and lasted a week. By 1908 such meetings, featuring prominent regional and national Socialist speakers, along with study groups, barbecues, and Socialist skits and songs (put to old Populist tunes), were drawing up to 10,000 people and had become a major organizing device. [see footnote 114] [62]
Yet the more orthodox Socialists of the northern industrial states looked askance at the naivete and religious fervor of their rural comrades; [see footnote 117] more fundamentally, they were disturbed about the whole notion of socialist farmers. [62]
...argued that farmers did not own the great national "tools" of production and transportation and that most had very low incomes; further, it was "absolutely ridiculous...to hope that you can ever accomplish anything without the [votes of the] farmers." [see footnote 118] But for the majority of delegates, every farmer belonged to "the possessing class," and the interest of rural farmers and urban wageworkers were inherently antithetical. The Socialist Party, they thought, should not spend its energies in an attempt to save a class doomed to extinction. All mention of farmers was avoided in the first platform. [see footnote 119] [63]
The latter were more radical on action--being, for example, much more skeptical of gradualist, one-step-at-a-time socialism and craft unionism and more favorable to the IWW--but were less orthodox on dogma. And one of the most rigid tenets of Marxist dogma was its treatment of farmers. Periphery state parties that combined radical activism with a recognition of land-holding rights and other practical populist-tinged state benefits for farmers and workers pushed at the upper limits of success for American socialism. But for workers and farmers attracted to political solutions, the SP offered a very constricted choice. The "constructivist" or "right-wing" Socialists, who believed profoundly in the possibilities of electoral politics but made little effort to bolster industrial unionism or to recruit excluded minorities, were wary of endorsing farmer demands and generally opposed cooperation with other reform movements or labor parties. The ideological left wing shared this refusal, if it found politics credible at all, and endorsed a drastic and rapid transition to socialism that few workers, and fewer farmers, were ready to accept. [see footnote 136] [68]
In the midwestern and northeastern enclaves where the party retained some strength, that strength rested on a close cooperation with unions, most of them AFL affiliates. As the AFL increasingly occupied the constricted field of American organized labor, the much smaller SP could hardly afford to alienate the labor federation. Yet for the SP to depend exclusively on the AFL meant forgoing significant inroads into the vast numbers of unorganized workers, particularly the unskilled and semi-skilled workers whom the AFL made little effort to reach; it meant, in addition, yoking itself to an organization whose leadership was hostile to socialism and held only a weak and opportunistic commitment to electoral politics. [71]
The American Federation of Labor
The AFL managed to distance organized labor from the reformist zeal of intellectuals and farmers and to withhold labor support from "debilitating" national political crusades. In the process, it accepted a marginal role for labor in national politics. [72]
Furthermore, the skilled craft unions were dominated by second-generation Irish Americans who often looked with disdain on the newer southern and eastern European immigrants, Asians, and African Americans who represented the majority of the industrial working class by 1910. The Irish were Catholic as well, and the profound hostility of the Catholic Church to socialism undoubtedly influenced the political tendencies of the Irish-Catholic-dominated AFL. [see footnote 154] [74]
A strong, independent labor politics, on the British model, might have enabled the trade-union federation to extract important benefits from one or the other pole. Instead, with a weak organization and unable (because [77] of its feeble penetration into the masses of unskilled workers) to deliver many votes, labor reaped scant benefit from the unions' support for capital's tariff, trust, and railroad policies. And after 1906, when the AFL began to tilt toward the agrarian Democratic pole in national politics, those same organizational and political weaknesses made it a rather uncreative and undemanding appendage to the agrarian coalition. It was prepared neither to form an independent left party or to make this one its own. [78]
~Growth and Distribution of Trade-Union Organization~
Leadership ideologies and a large, diverse immigration slowed the organization of the unskilled here, as did the stubborn craft focus of the AFL. Had the American iron and steel unions been as broadly encompassing as their British and German counterparts, it might have been easier to sustain a strike and to mount political action, had the union leadership been so inclined. [see footnote 177] [81]
A wide and sustained political mobilization on the part of American unionists might have overcome some of the powerful economic advantages of the trust, secured a more favorable judiciary, and/or overturned unfavorable court decisions through legislation. Political and economic power were more interrelated than the AFL recognized. [81]
~The AFL in Politics, 1886-1912~
~ coal = silver?
In theory, the greatest potential for a Populist alliance lay with the coal miners. Theirs was a broad-based industrial union supportive of independent political action. High vulnerability to cyclical unemployment (no other industry was more devastated by the 1893-94 depression than coal) heightened political sensibility, as did the need for legislation to deal with unsafe mines and extortionary company stores. Further, coal mines were located in rural areas, where miners and farmers were "kith and kin," and many had direct experience of each other's work. It was not surprising, then, that many coal miners were attracted to populism and that the Populists made programmatic [82] outreach to the miners. [see footnote 181] [83]
The Populist cause in Ohio was aided by the fact that a Republican governor, William McKinley, had sent the militia to deal with strike-related violence in Ohio, whereas a Democratic official (Governor John Peter Altgeld had done so in Illinois; thus miners in the latter state had dual economic and political grievances that impelled them toward the Republicans. In fact, the economic reaction against the Democrats in 1892-94 dwarfed the movement toward populism and would greatly burden the reconstituted "popocrats" in [83] 1896. [see footnote 186] By that year, the UMW had returned to its nonpartisan stance, and the momentum of labor populism had dissipated. [see footnote 187]
~see more on Gompers & AFL vs. Bryan
In these states there was no relationship between level of labor militancy (as measured by the number of people involved in all strikes, from 1893 to mid-1894, stated as a percentage of county population) and 1894 populism or the Bryan vote in 1896.... Only three of the top-ten strike counties in Ohio went for Bryan in 1896; in Illinois, only one. All four had cast majorities for the "Old Democracy" in 1892. [see footnote 188] [84]
~The AFL and Populism~
At AFL headquarters, Gompers's opposition to populism (as to socialism) was unambiguous. The AFL leader refused to have anything to do with the Farmers' Alliance and in 1892 disparaged the Populist Party as an organization "mainly of employing farmers without any regard to the interests of [agricultural wage labor] of the country districts or the mechanics and laborers of the industrial centers." A union with the farmers was impossible because it was fundamentally "unnatural." [see footnote 189] The agrarians, he warned, "simply do not understand that we are woefully ignorant upon the underlying principles, tactics and operations of the trade unions." [see footnote 190] He steadfastly maintained that the AFL should remain independent of all parties and attend only to trade-union organization and occasional lobbying. [see footnote 191] [84]
~left vs. party politics
However, at the 1893 AFL convention, the political actionists succeeded in having the Morgan (independent action) program submitted to the member unions for their consideration and put the federation on record for the free coinage of silver. In the following year, as midwestern unionists were lured into Populist-Socialist alliances, official AFL delegates worked to stanch the movement into politics. At labor conferences called by the KOL, they voted to reject proposals for a third-party movement backed by the KOL and the Farmers' Alliance. As the winter of 1894 approached, Gompers had reason to dread the annual AFL convention. Powderly had been deposed by the KOL for his political timidity the year before, and most AFL unions had voted in favor of some or all of the Morgan political program. There was widespread criticism of Gompers and the "pure and simple" leadership, both for their stubborn political reticence and for their refusal to support the [84] American Railway Union in the Pullman strike. Furthermore, the convention was to be held in Colorado, strong Populist territory. [see footnote 192]
As it turned out, Gompers's forebodings were justified. The political faction succeeded in replacing Gompers with the UMW's McBride, who had backed the Populists in November, and moved the AFL headquarters to Indianapolis. The convention also reaffirmed its support for the free coinage of silver. [see footnote 193] The political coup proved to be a temporary aberration, however. By late 1895 a modest recovery had set in, and what enthusiasm had existed for populism or other independent politics was fading among trade unionists.... According to Philip Foner, the "vast majority of A.F. of L. affiliates" nevertheless declared and worked for Bryan. [see footnote 197] Gwendolyn Mink also assumes a solid trade-union vote for Bryan while arguing that the nonunionized working class, particularly new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, flocked to the Republican banner, attracted by McKinley's promise of a return to prosperity and his downplaying of ethnic and religious issues. [see footnote 198]
It is, however, impossible to make such distinctions on the basis of available empirical evidence. It is plausible that union leaders, at least, would find Bryan's support for trade-union organizational rights attractive and that unskilled, nonunion, new immigrants might have been less interested in such rights, more easily intimidated by employers, and even more attracted to the Republicans' "full dinner pail" appeals. Since there were so few trade unionists in this period (less than 4 percent of the nonagricultural workforce), they could all have voted for Bryan without making much of an impact. But given the silence of the national AFL leadership, the widespread urban Democratic defections, and the fact that very few new immigrants voted, it seems safer to [85] assume a generalized disaffection of industrial workers from the "populized" Democratic Party, regardless of skill level or union membership. There was evidence of class-differentiated voting in the cities, and the bulk of big-city Democratic votes were most likely cast by workers. However, many of those votes represented ethnic traditions or maneuvers to gain control of local party organizations--as in the case of the Irish--rather than endorsement of the 1896 platform. [see footnote 199] It is clear from the returns that the urban core working class found the rhetoric and program of the reconstituted Democracy significantly less attractive than the conservative Democratic Party of 1892. With the voting patterns of the Pennsylvania and midwestern coal counties in mind, we can say that even where unionism flourished and reached broadly, encompassing men of diverse ethnic origins and skill levels, the politics of protection and monetary conservatism won out over the uncertain promise of farmer-labor "producer" democracy.
The Republicans offered the workers nothing in return for their votes except a signal, implicit in the election results, for capital to resume investment. At the same time, the GOP raised the price of consumer goods with a new high tariff in 1897, condoned a remarkable wave of mergers that ballooned corporations in major industries into anti-labor monoliths, and backed employers and the courts in their legal assault on trade-union organization. That northern urban workers continued, into the early twentieth century, to support the GOP in national politics and eschew the party that opposed trusts and high tariffs and offered the workers everything that leading labor spokesmen said they wanted simply underlines the extent to which workers in politics were locked into a political economy and organizational logic they felt powerless to change. [86]
~The AFL Lobby after 1896~
Both agrarian Democrats and Republicans were sympathetic to immigration restriction, as revealed by the robust congressional majorities in support of restrictive legislation from the 1880s through the Wilson era. Although the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and individual mining, shipping, and industrial firms opposed any large-scale restriction, middle- and upper-class disdain for the new immigrants and fear of "anarchists" and other radicals among them countered the economic utilitarianism of the large employers. Further, it often pleased high-tariff Republicans to emphasize the consistency of their protectionist ideology by opposing the importation of both labor and goods; this "dual protectionism" supported the party's claim to be a friend of labor. (see footnote 215) Thus, while House Speaker Cannon sided with the NAM in opposition to a literacy requirement for immigrants (the preferred method for restricting the influx of the poor and unskilled), Representative Gardner and Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge were strong champions of the bill. (see footnote 216)
The great institutional hurdles for this labor objective were the White House and the courts. The latter exploited ambiguities in the contract labor laws of 1885-87 to render them ineffective. Presidents, hesitant to give offense to other countries and eager to maintain discretion in their diplomatic functions, resisted the insulting and restrictive language of the anti-immigration bills. Hence Roosevelt opposed a Japanese exclusion law, and both William Howard Taft (once) and Woodrow Wilson (twice) vetoed literacy requirements passed by large congressional majorities. (see footnote 217)
The immigration issue also influenced labor's position on U.S. imperialism in the 1896-1905 period. Although the AFL did not actively contribute to the anti-imperialist movement, it did pass resolutions against expansionism in 1898 and in favor of Philippine independence in 1899. Labor papers that voiced opposition to Hawaiian annexation in 1896-97 and to retention of control over Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines after the Spanish-American [90] War were concerned about the domestic uses of an expanded U.S. Army and the prospect that the incorporation of these islands would bring an influx of cheap goods and cheap labor. [91]
~The Injunction and Labor's Political Turn~
~interesting
Chastened by the 1906-8 experience, the AFL seemed to revert to the political quiescence of the pre-1906 period. Very little effort was made to rally workers in the 1910 elections, short of providing legislative voting records to unionists who requested them. (see footnote 259) Ironically, the retirement of organized labor from its brief foray into national politics coincided with the Democratic Party's first victory in House elections in almost two decades. The 1910 elections, followed by the Democratic sweep two years later, would bring the Progressive Era to high tide--and would yield many legislative benefits to a labor movement that could not plausibly claim any significant role in the outcome. [100]
No comments:
Post a Comment