From the collection of the
7 n 2 m
o Prelinger v Uibrary
San Francisco, California 2006
THE AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
THE
AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
The Employers* Offensive Against the Trade Unions
BY ROBERT W. DUNN
With an Introduction by SCOTT NEARING
NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 192J, by INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS, INC.
Printed in the U. S. A.
This book is composed and printed by union labor
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION BY SCOTT NEARING ...... 7
PREFACE 15
I. BUILDING THE BOSS CLASS MACHINE
CHAPTER
I. THE AMERICAN PLAN 17
II. THE DRIVE FOR THE OPEN SHOP 21
1920-1921. Later Drives.
III. EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 37
Types and Names. Local Associations. National Associations.
II. ATTACKS ON THE UNIONS
IV. SOME METHODS AND PRACTICES OF EMPLOYERS'
ASSOCIATIONS 81
Patronize the Open Shop. The Blacklist. Political and Legislative Activity.
V. OTHER METHODS OF ATTACK 102
Labor Spies. Strike-Breaking. The State as Strike- Breaker. Individual Contracts.
III. BREAD AND CIRCUS
VI. THE COMPANY UNION 127
Types of Company Unions. Management's Objec- tives. Organized Labor and Company Unions.
VII. EMPLOYEE STOCK OWNERSHIP 147
Company Reasons. Objections to Stock Ownership. 5
6 CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
VIII. INSURANCE AND PENSIONS 169
Group Insurance. Labor Insurance Companies. In- dustrial Pensions.
IX. PERSONNEL, WELFARE AND SERVICE ACTIVITIES . 191 Cost of Welfare and Personnel Work. Why Wel- fare? Some Company Motives.
X. TYPES OF "WELFARE" 208
Mutual Benefit Associations. Types and Charac- teristics of Associations. Other Clubs and As- sociations. Relief Departments. Social and Recreational Activities. Sports and Athletics. Rewards and Prizes. Suggestion Systems.
XI. TYPES OF "WELFARE" (Continued) .... 232 Employee Education in Economics. Selling Thrift. Health Work Healthy for Bosses. Employee Magazines.
XII. LABOR'S CRITICISMS AND REMEDIES . . . . 262 Extent of Union Relief. Superiority of State Over Company Welfare.
INDEX . . . / » , - / •«...... 271
INTRODUCTION By SCOTT NEARING
The Americanization of Labor describes one theme in a general pattern that has been running through American pub- lic life for more than a generation. Since 1898 the ruling class of the United States has emerged with dramatic sud- denness from a position of uncertainty at home and of relative obscurity in world affairs to the dizzying heights of power and prestige.
Business class power in the United States is not the result of accident. Since the organization of the Standard Oil Co. in 1870, of the United States Steel Corporation in 1901, and the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913 the business interests have added steadily to their wealth and to their control over the political and social machinery of the country. Probably there is no country in the world to-day where the business interests occupy a position of such unchallenged power as that which they now hold in the United States.
Economic and historic forces have united to push the United States business interests into the foreground. Business lead- ers have planned and manipulated. Deliberately they have forged the links in the chain of their economic power. To-day they have, almost within their grasp, a monopoly of the best exploiting opportunities in the world. A brief description of some of the more important factors in this quick rise to power forms an excellent background from which to consider a de- tailed study of the offensive recently inaugurated by the Ameri- can employers against the organized workers.
The Civil War, which ended in 1865, closed the period of
7
8 INTRODUCTION
agricultural domination of United States public affairs. Up to 1860 Southern slave-holders were a major influence in the Federal Government as well as the ruling factor in the South and Southwest. The North was under the control of bankers and business men. With the defeat of the slave-holders in 1865 a change began which has placed the South as well as the North in the hands of the business class. To-day the Chamber of Commerce is as strong in Birmingham and Dallas as it is in Buffalo and Detroit. Furthermore, the develop- ment of the far West, which took place chiefly after the Civil War, was under business class auspices. To be sure, there were mortgaged farms in Kansas, the Dakotas, Idaho, and Wisconsin that laid the economic foundation for sporadic protest in the greenback and free silver campaigns. At no time during the last fifty years, however, have American farmers been able to make a real bid for economic preferment and political power.
Organized labor in the United States has generally refused to take an active part in political struggles, contenting itself with action on the industrial field. In European countries organized business finds itself politically confronted by or- ganized labor. Organized business in the United States de- feated organized agriculture in 1865 and has succeeded in keeping labor politically unorganized ever since. Economically and politically, the business class occupies a position of supremacy in American public life.
The unopposed rule of the business interests constitutes the basis from which the present employers' offensive against la- bor is being directed. In their conflicts with potential op- ponents at home and in their foreign rivalries American busi- ness interests can count upon a virtually united country.
Wealth power is of course the keystone in the arch which the American business interests have been building. United States wealth stood at thirty billion dollars in 1870; at eighty-eight billion in 1900; at one hundred eighty-six billion
INTRODUCTION 9
in 1912; at three hundred twenty-one billion in 1922; and at four hundred billion in 1927. There was a corresponding in- crease in the total income of the United States; which was thirty-one billion dollars in 1910; seventy- two billion in 1920; and ninety billion in 1926.
If, as experts estimate, the available economic surplus in the United States is from twenty to twenty-five per cent of the annual income, the volume of surplus must have increased from about six billion dollars in 1910 to about twenty billion in 1926.
Compared with foreign countries the wealth position of the United States has recently undergone a profound change. In 1870 the wealth of Great Britain was forty billion dollars; of Germany, thirty-eight billion; of France thirty- three billion; and of the United States thirty billion. All four of these leading industrial states were relatively equal in wealth, with the United States at the foot of the list. By 1912 the order had been completely reversed. The United States headed the list with one hundred eighty-six billion dollars; Britain came second with eighty billion; Germany followed with seventy-eight billion; and France was a poor fourth. Thus, at the outbreak of the World War the wealth of the United States was more than equal to the combined wealth of Britain and Germany. In 1922, when the economic consequences of the War had made themselves widely felt, the wealth of the United States was four times that of Britain and was more than equal to the wealth of Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Belgium and Japan combined. This differential in favor of the United States is more emphatic in 1927 than it was in 1922, so that the American ruling class literally wields the wealth power of the world.
The Spanish- American War (1898) marked an important division line in American ruling class activity. Up to that time American surplus wealth had been used to build rail- roads, factories and stores inside the United States. In ad-
10 INTRODUCTION
dition, the rapid economic development of the United States had led European investors to place about three and one-half billion dollars in American industry and agriculture.
With the ending of the nineteenth century a point was reached where the economic surplus of the United States was sufficiently great to provide for domestic needs and to leave a surplus for export. The total foreign investments of United States business in 1900 were less than five hundred million dollars, of which the bulk was in Mexico, Cuba, and Canada. Since that date, however, capital export from the United States has steadily increased until, at the present time, the United States is probably exporting more capital than all the other capital exporting nations of the world combined. All of the important countries in Europe and Asia, portions of Africa, and the whole of Latin America, are debtors to the United States.
World supremacy for the American ruling class followed from the World War. Economically, the United States, in 1914, was in a dominant position. Politically, the American ruling class had never asserted itself in world affairs. Dur- ing three war years the United States remained neutral: that is, its business men were free to sell to both sides, and to reap a profit which has never been equaled by any business group in a similar length of time. Between 1915 and 1922 United States exports exceeded imports by eighteen billion dollars. Roughly, therefore, the world went into the debt of the United States to the extent of about eighteen billion dollars in six or seven years.
The quick rise to a position of international supremacy was paralleled by the change in the domestic position of the Amer- ican business class. When the peace was signed in Europe the American business interests opened their war on United States labor. The World War experience had not only brought them undreamed wealth and a consciousness of their new
INTRODUCTION 11
power, but it had given them the machinery with which to consolidate their position.
Consider the assets of the American business class:
1. The ownership under private property law of the entire economic mechanism, including railroads, factories, mines, stores, banks, and land.
2. The control through banking and credit of the wealth surplus of the country.
3. A vast and rapidly increasing vested income from stocks, bonds, mortgages, notes.
4. The controlling position of international creditor.
5. Rapid colonial expansion, particularly in the Caribbean.
6. A well organized and generously financed army and navy.
7. The control of propaganda machinery, including schools, the press, the church, the movie, the radio, the advertising profession.
There is only one uncertain factor in the situation: labor; the threat of working class organization; the danger of a proletarian bid for power.
Since the War American workers have been maneuvered into a critical economic position. Their unions have lost a third in membership; they have suffered severe defeats, par- ticularly in the labor battles between 1919 and 1922; they have assumed many economic obligations, such as installment purchases, which strain every source of income; and they have no guarantee of job tenure.
The labor situation was uncertain in 1919. Russian work- ers had established the Soviet State ; Central Europe was in the throes of revolution; Italy was on the verge of revolt; British workers were reaching out for power. In the United States rebel strikes were occurring in widely scattered industries and demonstrations of solidarity with revolting European labor were being held from coast to coast. What should the em- ploying interests do? The Americanization of Labor tells what they did.
12 INTRODUCTION
A word should be said, however, regarding the limitations under which the American ruling class is working. They hold the economic and social machinery in their fists. They have hamstrung labor. But there are at least four things that the members of the United States ruling class cannot do:
1. They cannot give the workers steady work. Like the masters in every capitalist country, they are the victims of periodic industrial depression, and like the workers in every capitalist country, the workers in the United States are now facing slack work and unemployment, with rents and prices high.
2. They cannot prevent the increasing concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a wealth owning class. This means that the rich grow richer, and that the contrast between the rich idle owner and the poor worker tends to increase. Class division and class struggle are inevitable ac- companiments of the present order.
3. They cannot prevent revolt and rebellion in their spheres of influence, dependencies, and colonies, where exploited work- ers and restricted native business interests struggle for the defense of local economic activity against imperial aggression.
4. They cannot avert war. Already active preparations are being made for the next great struggle between rival em- pires to determine which shall have the right to exploit and plunder the earth.
The United States business class is using stock ownership, piece-work with bonuses, personnel work, welfare activities, the company union, the blacklist, the spy system, as the weapons with which to smash the labor movement. In most of the basic industries — steel, electric manufacturing, meat packing, oil refining — they have succeeded in establishing the open shop: organized employers exploiting unorganized workers.
What answer are the American workers making to this
INTRODUCTION 13
attack? Thus far, with the exception of some scattering activity on the part of the left wing elements in the needle trades, the miners, the painters, and two or three other unions, there has been no organized answer beyond the Amer- ican Federation of Labor policy of working harmoniously with the employing class under the guidance of organizations like the National Civic Federation.
Such a policy offers no way out for the American workers. By pursuing these tactics they merely place themselves at the mercy of the bosses, and the evidence printed in this volume should convince any worker as to what that means.
There is but one line of attack open to the American work- ers at the present moment. They must meet the offensive of the bosses squarely and fight back, at the bosses as well as against the economic system that the bosses repre- sent. Labor organization invites a united front of the workers against their exploiters. The American workers must organ- ize such a united front on the economic as well as political fields before they can hope to win in the face of the present employers' offensive.
What the United States ruling class must do, if it is to maintain its position and advance its interests, is to keep the masses loyal, — ready to work, to starve, to fight, and, if neces- sary, to die that the United States business interests may collect their six per cent on "legitimate" investments. That is one of the tasks on which the American rulers are now busy. It is their efforts in this direction that Robert Dunn has selected for this excellent study.
PREFACE
This book describes some of the "newer" as well as some of the "older" defenses — and offensives — of capitalism. It does not claim to cover all the devices used by the employers against the workers throughout the course of American indus- trial history. It deals primarily with the tactics of the cor- porations since the World War. During this period the American trade union movement has received heavy direct blows from the organized employers. It has also been at- tacked from other angles and in more subtle ways. These recent efforts of the employers to gild and lighten somewhat the chains of industrial exploitation are described in this book.
The significance of these less ruthless anti-union devices has been brought to our attention in recent months through the visits of various labor-capital delegations from foreign countries. They have usually been banqueted by the anti- union corporations, cheerfully guided by the labor managers through selected open shop plants, and presented with com- pany booklets extolling the humanitarian works of manage- ment. They have been told of the social harmonies and joys inherent in company unions, employee stock distribution, group insurance, and other boons and benefits provided by "enlightened" personnel departments.
It is a fact that many of these personnel devices are being copied abroad, at least in those industries where trade unions are not so well entrenched. European unionists, with years of struggle and achievement behind them, who are now witness- ing the "rationalization" of the industrial processes, are likely to see accompanying this an increasing Americanization of the "employer-employee relationship." At least this is the trend during the present period of temporary stabilization of capi-
15
16. PREFACE
talism in Europe. Because of this tendency to copy American tactics as a means towards neutralizing the class struggle, they acquire a double importance and deserve thorough study by British and continental unionists.
Although this volume pays special attention to these subtler tactics for destroying the American unions, it should not be concluded that the cruder tactics of the corporations and the employers7 associations are giving way permanently to the softer approach. As an interim method, the latter may serve to keep labor unorganized in the basic industries such as steel, meat-packing, automobiles, electrical equipment, rubber, and oil. But the American employing class which maintains its powerful and resourceful rulership over this country will again carry on smashing open-shop drives such as those described in Part I. The imperialists of the United States in their strug- gles for world power and profits, will resort, when the occa- sion requires, to the most brutal methods of oppression. How- ever, at the moment, the welfare wave is high. The em- ploying corporations are cultivating "good will" and "mutual cooperation" among their subject workers. While these prac- tices are in the ascendant, they are worth describing and their effects upon the unions evaluated. /
The trade unions in this country face in these practices a challenge to their very existence. A vigorous policy and pro- gram for meeting them must be worked out. It is hoped that this study may help stir practical trade unionists to devise more militant and realistic measures for meeting both the warfare and welfare offensives of the employers.
The author wishes to express his appreciation to a long list of friends in the trade union movement who have given him helpful advice and suggestions.
ROBERT W. DUNN.
July, 1927.
THE AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
L BUILDING THE BOSS CLASS MACHINE
CHAPTER I THE AMERICAN PLAN
"AMERICAN PLAN" is the term the employers use to desig- nate the open or non-union shop. It sounds thoroughly patriotic and is calculated to put the advocates of the union shop on the defensive. The implication intended is — if the employers stand for something called "American Plan," the employees who resist this condition must stand for something anti-American, or at least un-American. So the employers must have reasoned when they hit upon this phrase. From their point of view it was a very happy one. Just where the term originated or what patriotic genius invented it, we do not know, although it has been reported that the secretary of a certain local employers' association coined it. However, we do know that it was born in the period of one-hundred per-centism which broke out following the World War and the Russian Revolution. To be anything less than a 100% American, according to the standard of the business man and the business government, was to risk one's job if not one's physical safety. The word "American" had reached its hey- day. Even the Europeans still worshiped at the throne. To be "different" was to be Bolshevik. It was the correct psycho-
17
18 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
logical moment for the enemies of trade unionism to label their crusade "American."
To indicate the extent to which this cult of patriotic con- formity was carried by anti-union manufacturers, we may note the utilization of the Red, White and Blue in connection with American Plan propaganda. An issue of the influential Iron Trades Review of the period carried an article on the open shop in the metal industry. Accompanying the article was an emblem bearing the words, "Product of an Open Shop," and the explanatory note: "In this label used by several manufacturers the national colors are used to good effect." The emblem appeared on a sticker placed on all goods turned out by certain non-union firms.
Another popular insignia, still used by such energetic anti- union bodies as the Open Shop Division of the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, shows a circle with "The Open Shop" at the top, "A Square Deal for All" decorating the center, and at the bottom, in solid letters, the word "AMERI- CANISM." In addition we have the "American Plan Em- blem" originated by the Associated Employers of Indianapolis. In 1923, at least, it was claimed by this association that this emblem was being used extensively by open shop firms throughout the United States. It contains a screaming Ameri- can eagle perched on a shield bearing the words, "Ameri- can Plan Product — Independent Shop." Above the eagle is a scroll bearing thirteen stars. Behind the eagle and the scroll is the rising (or is it the setting?) sun.
The use of the term "American Plan" was obviously nothing but a clever appeal to current public prejudice in order to turn it against the unions. This chauvinization of the em- ployer's propaganda is, of course, not a novel device. It has been practised in other countries, though perhaps not in such a blatant and unpolished manner. For example, John H. Shirk, Chairman of the Open Shop Division of the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, writing recently to H. H.
THE AMERICAN PLAN 19
Anderson, secretary of the Employers' Association of Kansas City, declaims, "The stars and stripes form a net-work around my heart and at every pulsation I fancy one of the stars in the field of blue takes on a brighter hue." Similar senti- ments may be common among the die-hard anti-laborites abroad, but so far as we know, the Tory anti-union shop proponents in England have not as yet labeled their "new idea" the "British Empire Plan of Employment."
Of course the employers in the United States have their own definitions of the American Plan. At first hearing they have a very benevolent ring, most of them expressing willing- ness to let workers join a union, as individuals — but not as a shop. The Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference meets this "no discrimination" sophistry very nicely:
"Of what avail (it asks) is it for workers to be permitted by the employers to become members of unions if the employers will not deal with the unions? The workers might as well join golf clubs as labor unions if the present 'open shop* campaign is successful. The 'open shop' drive masks under such names as The American Plan' and hides behind the pretense of American freedom. Yet its real purpose is to destroy all effective labor unions, and thus subject the working people to the complete domination of the employers."
That the big American employers and employers' associa- tions conceive of the open shop as a shop closed to union men was demonstrated time and again during the days of the more intense open shop drives and in practically every situation since, where a union has attempted real organizing work. Both the words and deeds of the corporation open shop advo- cates also indicate what they mean by the phrase.
Testifying before a state housing investigation committee in New York, December 16, 1920, the president of the Beth- lehem Steel Corporation, Eugene C. Grace, said that he kept an "open shop" but that he would not deal with a labor union
20 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
even though the union embraced 95 per cent of his workers. He admitted also that, in conjunction with other steel manu- facturers, he had refused to sell his products to builders who would not adopt the same open shop — non-union — policy. Before the same committee, a few days later, C. E. Cheyney, Secretary of the National Erectors7 Association, admitted that his organization, in cooperation with the National Fabricators' Association, had adopted an open shop policy and that this meant giving employment to non-union members only. He stated that, "an open shop is a shop in which the foremen are expected to see to it that there are no union men."
That the open shop means nothing more than the no-union- man shop will become even clearer as we survey in the next chapter the offensive against labor organizations carried on by the organized employers during 1919-1922, and in subsequent attacks on particular trade unions.
CHAPTER II THE DRIVE FOR THE OPEN SHOP
1920-1921
THE close of the World War found American labor greatly strengthened in organized power and prestige, but the basic industries such as steel were still almost completely unor- ganized. Coal and railroad unions had made great strides as had almost all of the long-established unions, particularly in the building trades. Labor had cooperated closely with the government and with the employers during the war. Under the leadership of Samuel Gompers, the American Federation of Labor had turned its energies into chauvinistic patriotic channels. It had been completely hypnotized by the indus- trial democracy, war for democracy, and other slogans of President Wilson, and by the recognition given to the union leaders during the war days. With the end of the war and the years following came "labor's reward" for this loyalty during the conflict — federal troops and federal injunctions in the coal and the railroad strikes being the conspicuous ex- amples, while local and state police, as we shall see, played their part in such conflicts as the great steel strike of 1919.
At the same time the employers inaugurated what were known as open shop drives. They were eager to recover their lost positions and win back autocratic control over their properties and businesses. Anti-union sentiment flared up. A reaction against labor set in. With the industrial depression of 1920, and increasing unemployment, a vigorous anti-union movement got under way. Employers took advantage of labor's weakened condition to launch a strong attack on
21
22 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
wages, on union standards, and on the whole institution of union recognition and collective bargaining. The slogan of the campaign was sounded by William H. Barr, President of the National Founders' Association: "War-time wages must be liquidated." Another word used was "reconstruction," which meant, above all else, to this type of capitalist, the annihilation of the trade union movement.
This open shop drive of 1920-1921 was undoubtedly the most militant and widespread offensive ever undertaken by the American employing class — a class which has probably shown greater vigor and fighting spirit than in any other country.1 All the "anti-Hun" sentiment of the war days and the anti-Bolshevik fervor following the Russian Revolution were somehow distilled into an anti-trade union feeling that gave the open shop drive a particularly revengeful and ruth- less aspect. We have no room here to quote the extreme outcries against union labor during those days. Practically every open shop association journal joined in the chorus of vituperation. The Employer, organ of the Oklahoma Em- ployers' Association, carried on its front cover, December, 1919, an attack as provocative as it was alliterative. One year after the Armistice it shouted: "The country has passed from Victory to Violence, from Conquest to Chaos; Sacrifice to Strike; and the Rule of Reason is Supplanted by Riot and Revolution ..." and then, with a snarl, the following query, which sounds strange enough in the present-day Right-Left struggles in the unions: "Would Hindenburg and Ludendorff do less evil to the country than Lewis and Foster?"
A few more headlines from the same quite typical em- ployers' organ will suggest the temper of the developing drive against the unions: "Coal Strike is Nothing Less than an Open and Defiant Revolution," over an article by the president of the Oklahoma Coal Operators' Association; "Picketing is
1 S. Perlman : History of Trade Unionism in the United States, pp. 226-245.
THE DRIVE FOR THE OPEN SHOP 23
Un-American"; "Bolshevism Finds Its Way into Muskogee Street Car Strike"; "The Revolutionary Plumb plan for Control of Railroads"; "The Labor Strike is an Enemy to Our Modern Civilization"; "Keep Howatt in Jail" (referring to the leader of the Kansas miners who defied compulsory arbitration under the now defunct Kansas Industrial Court). Such were the slogans of the open shop elements throughout the country, the more substantial and dignified employers' organs being only slightly less blatant in their tone. Assisting in this chorus were the several score "professional patriotic" organiza- tions many of which have since been discredited even in conservative circles.2
Although the general anti-union feeling was not confined to any industry, employers in the metal trades were especially aggressive, and perhaps the most complete accounts of the various drives, their scope and effectiveness, appeared in the steel employers' organ, The Iron Trades Review. In its issue of November n, 1920, this journal endorsed the American Plan League which was then in the process of organization under the leadership of the Associated Employers of Indian- apolis. The purpose of this proposed league was announced to "unify the efforts of the existing open shop associations."
Although this organization never took permanent shape — others with the same purpose were organized later and are still in existence — it did serve as the channel through which the open shop advocates announced their strength and purpose to the world. It was stated by the secretary of the Associated Employers of Indianapolis, after a thorough survey, that the "open shop had been established or extended in past years in about 240 industrial cities," and that some 540 organizations, devoted in some way to promoting the open shop, were in existence in 247 cities of 44 states. Of these some 470 were called "purely open shop associations." None of the associations included in the 540 were chambers of com-
2 Norman Hapgood: Professional Patriots, 1927.
24 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
merce, boards of trade, merchants' associations, and other open shop bodies of long standing. In fact this same authority announced that 1665 local chambers of commerce had voted for the open shop in a ballot taken by the United States Chamber of Commerce.
At the same time it was assumed by the organizers of the drive that every employers' association in the country, na- tional, state-wide, and local, "may be considered in favor of the open shop." Among the leaders were the National Metal Trades Association, the National Industrial Council, the National Founders' Association, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Erectors' Association, the Em- ploying Painters of America, the Associated General Con- tractors of America, the United Typothetae of America, the Employing Photo-Engravers' Association, the National Asso- ciation of Pattern Manufacturers, the Railroad Executives' Advisory Committee, to mention only a few of the associations of national dimensions. Besides these, many local associations made desperate attempts to smash unions in a particular field. The great lockout against the 60,000 New York members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America was a typical unsuccessful effort undertaken by a local industrial association.
Without describing the attacks made on unionism in any one industry or locality, we may survey the drive as a whole as summarized in the above-mentioned report on the open shop situation made to the Iron Trades Review by the secre- tary of the Associated Employers of Indianapolis. He tells of fifty open shop associations in New York state and mentions particular plants that had taken a "firm stand" against the unions, such as the Pierce Arrow plant in Buffalo and the International Railway Company in the same city which had refused to deal with the union and succeeded in breaking a long strike and introducing a company union. (This company is controlled by Mitten Management, the same organization that has introduced the Men and Management scheme and the
THE DRIVE FOR THE OPEN SHOP 25
company union on the lines of the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company.)
After mentioning various open shop associations in Phila- delphia, Pittsburgh, and throughout the state of Pennsylvania, the same open shop secretary refers significantly to the Penn- sylvania State Constabulary, which the manufacturers of Pennsylvania describe as "the best in the country." Just what the state constabulary has to do with the establishment of the anti-union shop is evident to any one who has read the report of the Commission of Inquiry of the Interchurch World Movement on the Steel Strike. This open reliance on the state police to help them break strikes reflects a frankly militant attitude on the part of the Pennsylvania employers. In the same report on the open shop situation from. state to state, Mr. Allen refers many times to the same matter. He tells of the efforts of the New Jersey manufacturers, in-- eluding the Passaic mill owners, "to get another constabulary law on the books of the state." In Ohio he reports regretfully that "trade unions have succeeded in preventing the establish- ment of a state constabulary," while in West Virginia, he re- ports that "state police . . . have done effective work in pre- venting a small group of agitators from intimidating the majority of non-union miners." Writing of the situation in Iowa he refers gloomily to the fact that "the state has no con- stabulary," but in Idaho, "the state constabulary is very active, especially against the Industrial Workers of the World." Running through this whole report is the threat of force im- plied in the frequent remarks about the presence, absence, or activity of state troops like those used to club workers in such states as Pennsylvania, Colorado, and West Virginia. We shall refer to this matter again in a later section.
In New Jersey, at the time, specially active anti-union em- ployers were to be found in Passaic and Paterson, while the Business Men's Association in Jersey City had voted unani- mously in favor of the non-union shop. In the predominantly
26 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
textile state of Massachusetts, "the banner open shop state," re- ports told of the Associated Industries of Massachusetts with 1,550 members going on record for the American Plan, while "the employers' association of Fitchburg recently fought a molders' strike and won the open shop." In Connecticut, some twenty associations were on record for the open shop, with Hartford almost 100 per cent.
The same report lists among important open shop organiza- tions in Ohio, the American Plan Association of Cleveland, which we shall describe later, and the Dayton Employers' Association, one of the oldest and most militant local associa- tions in the country. "No strike against any of its members has ever been successfully settled by compromise." In Akron the open shop policy of the rubber companies is held to ac- count for a 200 per cent increase in the population of the city in a ten-year period, while in Toledo it was reported that "most of the city's employers joined with the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association in promulgating the Plan (Ameri- can) during the Willys-Overland 'strike in 1919." In all, there were some twenty Ohio organizations promoting the open shop drive.
In Illinois several score of industrial associations were listed as lining up behind the Illinois Manufacturers' Association in defense of the non-union shop. Chambers of Commerce throughout the state had gone on record, and one of them in Kewannee had aided the county sheriff in a strike by supply- ing 400 deputies for two weeks. This is considered practical open shop service. Michigan, also the paradise of non- unionism, where the automobile manufacturers maintain strictly non-union shops, was given honorable mention, some two dozen state and local associations having lined up against the unions. The Grand Rapids furniture dealers and metal trades men also refused to deal with unions, and in Muskegon, the open shop advocates reveal their true feeling toward union- ism when they report with satisfaction that "5,000 machinists
THE DRIVE FOR THE OPEN SHOP 27
are eligible to membership in the union but the membership in good standing numbers just sixteen."
Open shop successes in Indianapolis are attributed in the report to the "Anti-picketing and anti-banner carrying ordi- nance" which for several years has rendered the state "free of serious industrial strife." In Wisconsin, it is reported as a part of the open shop conquest, that the lumber mills of Oneida County have broken a strike of the timber workers' union. The West Virginia coal operators' battle with the Miners' Union was then succeeding, with the help of armed thugs, deputy sheriffs, and the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency. This report tells how the Elkins Coal and Coke Company, con- trolled by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, one of the fore- most experimenters with company unions, had announced that it would work hereafter open shop instead of under an agree- ment with the union. In West Virginia, the American Con- stitutional Association, subsidized by the mine owners, and flying a flamboyant "Save West Virginia" patriotic pennant from its masthead, was among the general associations fighting to destroy the United Mine Workers. State police, as we have noted above, rendered them valuable assistance.
Other states mentioned in this comprehensive survey of the nationwide open shop drive, were the following:
Louisiana, where in such cities as Shreveport, great adver- tisements in the papers lauding the American Plan, were signed by thousands of business men. In New Orleans, a coastwise longshoremen's strike had just been defeated and the non- union shop established.
Kentucky, where in Louisville, under the leadership of the local Employers' Association, $20,000 had been contributed to an "education campaign" to sell the open shop to the public, but where the business men complain "the state has no con- stabulary."
Georgia, where a great advertising campaign for the non- union shop was in progress, supported by the Southern Metal
28 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
Trades Association, the Employers' Association of Atlanta, and the Georgia Manufacturers' Association.
Washington, where Seattle, after its General Strike of 1919, was advertised as an "open shop strikeless city," with the Associated Industries of Seattle in command of the drive. Tacoma, boasting of seventy-five per cent open shop in 1920, as contrasted with 100 per cent union shop in 1919.
Texas, a state whose business interests could boast that they made greater progress in anti-union campaigns than any other in the country. The Southwest Open Shop Association had been organized in Dallas with 2,500 Dallas business men sign- ing the open shop declarations used in newspaper advertising. The anti-unionist strength in the state was reflected in the report that "the effectiveness of organization work in Texas recently was demonstrated when a strike of longshoremen at Galveston was broken by the arrival in that city of 200 open shop workers from other cities."
California, also reported to be one of the strongest open shop states in the West, with six organizations in Los Angeles — "the open shop stronghold of our state" — back of the movement, including the powerful Merchants' and Manufacturers' Asso- ciation, with the professional patriots included in the Better America Federation lending aid and comfort.
Oklahoma, which was reported to be "freeing itself of radicals," this being apparently one of the first steps taken in all communities wishing to attack trade unionism. It was reported also that the president of the Clearing House Associa- tion of Tulsa had issued a statement to the effect that building contractors desiring financial assistance from the local banks, "'must hereafter bear the non-union label." This form of pressure, incidentally, has been a very common practice among bankers wishing to do their bit to drive the unions out of any community.
Reports, encouraging to the opponents of labor unions were also made from Arkansas, where 2,200 business firms had
THE DRIVE FOR THE OPEN SHOP 29
signed the pledge; New Mexico, where in Albuquerque the Business Men's Cooperative Association, "had won several strikes through collective action"; Arizona, where the move- ment was enlisting the support of Rotary, Kiwanis, realty boards, builders' exchanges, and chambers of commerce; Colo- rado, where "newspaper advertising has been freely used"; Missouri, where eighty-five per cent of the industrial establish- ments of St. Louis were reported to be open shop ; Utah, where many strikes had been broken through the importation of strike-breakers by the Associated Industries of the state; Nebraska, where the Nebraska Manufacturers' Association "has the labor situation well in hand"; Montana, where Butte was reported to be "rapidly becoming open shop," and where the I.W.W. had been driven out of the mines, leaving them entirely unionless; Minnesota, where the Citizens' Alliance of Minneapolis assisted by the Manufacturers' Club, was pro- moting a publicity campaign against the unions; Florida, where the Miami building trades remained technically open shop, and where the Tampa manufacturers of cigars had just won a long fight against the Cigar Makers' Union.
Practically every state in the union was mentioned in this comprehensive survey of anti-unionism. A subsequent report from the same source, which appeared in the Iron Trades Review of September, 1920, showed that associations, other than chambers of commerce, "devoted to industrial promo- tion work with the open shop as the principal plank in their platform," numbered 65 in New York, 54 in Illinois, 50 in Ohio, 45 in Pennsylvania, 29 in Michigan, 25 in California, 20 in Texas, and 15 in Iowa. These were the states where the greatest number of associations were counted at the time, though the struggles in states reporting few associations were just as militantly conducted by the manufacturing interests.
It is interesting to note at this point the fondness of the most outright open shop advocates for the company union, which we will discuss more fully in a later chapter. The fol-
30 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
lowing extracts from the report of open shop activities in various states touch on the importance of the company union as a substitute for the unions the employers were trying to smash, with such manifest success, in their drive for the Ameri- can Plan. The Seattle Chamber of Commerce in its anti- union drive reported that something more than a merely nega- tive antagonistic policy was needed to beat the labor unions. What was needed was a "wage technique and a shop committee system of employee representation." In Massachusetts, a long list of firms was mentioned which had refused to deal with trade unions, but only with their workers organized in "shop com- mittees" divorced from the trade union movement. In Colo- rado, the reports of the open shop campaigns told of the or- ganization of an "American union" composed of so-called "independent workmen" to oppose the impliedly un-American unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. From New Jersey it was likewise reported that in the Union County silk mills, employers were applying the "guiding principles governing the selection and functions of employees' representa- tives." The writer who was in touch with the Amalgamated Textile Workers of America at the time, can add to this report that the purpose of this plan of "employee representation" was to bring about the death of the textile union in that vicinity.
Practically all the organizations to be mentioned later in this volume were drawn into the grand offensive of 1920-21. The National Association of Manufacturers, the various local open shop associations, the United States Chamber of Com- merce, the Manufacturers' Association of Illinois, local em- ployers' associations — all contributed to the man hunt against the trade unions. Savel Zimand in his highly entertaining booklet, The Open Shop Drive, Who Is Behind It and Where Is It Going? has touched on many of the high-light propa- ganda efforts of the campaign. One of these was a confi- dential letter issued to employers by an organization — or at least a letterhead — calling itself the National Open Shop Asso-
THE DRIVE FOR THE OPEN SHOP 31
ciation, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, and San Antonio. (It is probable that the local elements comprising this mushroom or- ganization are now included in the American Plan-Open Shop Conference.) It read as follows:
"Gentlemen : We have been in correspondence with your Manu- facturers' Association relative to us organizing a local Open Shop Association in your city for the purpose of putting into effect there the principles of the Open Shop, a copy of which we are enclosing you.
So as to proceed with this work effectively we desire to secure twenty-five charter members, and we are writing you in strict confidence, hoping that you can see your way clear to signify your willingness to join us in this movement providing we find it advisable to go ahead with our plans.
This work must be clothed with the utmost secrecy, as we have found that publicity usually defeats our purposes. For this reason you can feel assured that we will treat the matter in strict confidence.
Please let us hear from you regarding the matter, and we will gladly furnish any additional information you may desire. NATIONAL OPEN SHOP ASSOCIATION, (signed) James L. Glass, Sec'y."
Many such temporary organizations were thrown together in the excitement of the moment chiefly through the enterprise of some go-getting executive who saw his opportunity to cash in on the anti-union sentiment of the day. The American Employers' Open Shop Association with headquarters in Chi- cago, was one of these. Its directors offered a bright line of welfare work as well as labor spies to prospective members. One of its appeals reads as follows:
"AMERICAN EMPLOYERS' OPEN SHOP ASSOCIATION
Suite 356, 29 South La Salle Street
Chicago, 111.
November 23, 1920
Co., Omaha, Nebraska.
Attention General Manager.
Dear Sir: We are writing you at this time to attempt to get you or your company into the Open Shop Association.
32 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
As the time is ripe for all manufacturing concerns to run their shop as they see fit, and not be dictated to by some unscrupulous delegate of some union.
You may see the point that we are driving at very clearly. The Open Shop Association will do a great deal for its members.
(1) Should you be threatened with a labor controversy or strike, you can immediately get in touch with us and we will handle that situation for you.
(2) Should you want an under-caver man on the inside among your employees, we will also furnish you such a man, and you will receive a daily report on what is going on.
(3) In the event of trouble, we will replace any men that may strike against you.
(4) We establish welfare clubs in your plant from which you derive a lot of benefit; and all manufacturers are alive to this issue.
Our membership is growing larger every day and we would be glad to have you also fill out the accompanying application foi membership in this institution.
The Initiation fee is fifty dollars and the yearly dues twenty- five dollars.
Trusting that you will acknowledge receipt of this letter, we remain,
Yours truly,
AMERICAN EMPLOYERS' OPEN SHOP ASSN." 3
Among other such associations some of which apparently, have since gone out of business, or merged with the American Plan-Open Shop Conference, were the Southwestern Open Shop Association covering the states of New Mexico, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, and including some fifteen local open shop associations. Other enterprising southern asso- ciations flourishing during the drive were the Open Shop Asso- ciation of San Antonio, said to be the first organization of its kind using the name "open shop" in its title, the Open Shop Association of Dallas, Texas, and the Open Shop (Square Deal) Association of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in addition to innumer-
3 Zimand : op. tit., pp. 37-38.
THE DRIVE FOR THE OPEN SHOP 33
able open shop sections or committees of local chambers of commerce.
The drive of 1920 and 1921 was on a more comprehensive scale than any since. It consisted chiefly of a movement to liquidate the gains made by labor unions during the war and a desire on the part of most of the participants to wipe trade unions completely off the face of the map.
The first purpose was pretty nearly accomplished. Labor's war gains, particularly the gains of the machinists, the mainte- nance of way men, and the shopmen on the railroads, were seriously reduced. After this was accomplished, the more grandiose organization schemes of the employers, prepared in the heat and hysteria of that year, were scrapped, leaving many local open shop associations on the field and many na- tional organizations devoted to more special purposes and not exclusively to union smashing.
Later Drives
Although the employers' offensive of 1920-21 was by far the most concerted and inclusive, all the economic and psycho- logical conditions having favored it, there have been important drives since, of a more scattered and sporadic character. These drives have been more local, less spectacular, and more subtly sustained. Some of them will be referred to in our survey of employers' associations in the next chapter. But we may men- tion here the fact that in 1927 we are witnessing not only the gradual wearing away in the bituminous fields of the formerly powerful United Mine Workers of America through a coldly calculated open shop drive of the organized mine operators; we are witnessing also, new attacks on the building trades unions as evidenced by the plumbers' lockout in New York City in the spring of 1927. In the textile industry, always open shop and nearly 100 per cent non-union, the employers are taking advantage of the situation to weaken such protective legisla-
34 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
tion as has been passed in former years through the influence of the labor movement. And all this is happening in a period of marked prosperity when the unions should be gaining morally and numerically, instead of losing ground and finding them- selves continually on the defensive.
The employers in trades where there are any unions to de- feat, are preparing to weaken or destroy them. As American production is put on the lower price level, and the capitalists need to compete with the recovering and increasingly "ration- alized" European industries, new drives are bound to be made to reduce wages, lengthen hours, and to speed up work. Where unions stand in their way, as in 1921-22, they will be forced to fight or accept a sentence of death.
Before closing this section on anti-union drives, it may be well to note certain differences between the post-war drives de- scribed at length in this chapter, and the more isolated anti- union campaigns that have since been waged. In the former we saw mighty figures in the industrial world, such as Elbert H. Gary of the United States Steel Corporation, and Eugene C. Grace of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, take the witness stand — there was a considerable amount of investigating in progress then, both of a public and an unofficial character — and announce openly their bold ambitions to crush organized labor, root and branch. The widespread and desperate strug- gles of the workers forced the issues to the foreground, and gave them "big publicity." To-day the issues are still real, but the power of the Garys and Graces has been so well con- solidated and the workers' movement correspondingly so weak- ened and deflated, that public attention is not drawn to the still stubborn refusal of the industrial lords to deal with organized labor. Without powerful unions, the issues cannot be vitalized and advertised. There are no such unions in electrical manu- facturing, in steel, in meat packing, in oil, in textiles, and in other great industries where the American Plan is still com- pletely triumphant.
THE DRIVE FOR THE OPEN SHOP 35
It may also be noted that the growth in the "public rela- tions" departments of the corporations and the rise of the high- priced corporation publicity expert has saved the employers from many embarrassing situations, and has clothed their es- sentially autocratic powers with the cloak of propriety, good- will, and a superficial altruism. The Ivy Lees and other journalistic soothsayers have done wonders to soften the sting of the corporations. The public has been "educated" to see them in a better light. No matter how ruthless the anti-union stand taken by some baked bean tsar, or tooth paste prince, his press agent — now using the title "public relations counsel" — will be found handing out prepared statements assuring the public that Mr. Goldbond, President of the Board of Directors of the Goldbond Corporation, means to do everything through fair dealing for the well-being of his employees. They are "happy and well cared for," they are all members of the Big Goldbond Family, and most of them — with the exception of some "agitators in the pay of Moscow" — are thoroughly "loyal" to the firm. The Goldbond Corporation, it is stated repeatedly for public consumption, rules its "Family" with a kindly — but iron — hand.
Such publicity services were not so well installed in 1920-21. Each year since then has seen improvement and polish in the profession of glorifying the good intentions of the corporations. Open shop driving, in its crudest form, such as we have been discussing, is not considered the best way to convert the public to "right views" concerning the employer-employee relation- ship. It still continues, but is greatly modified by the applica- tion of the higher publicity counseling.
The employers were certainly more openly and generally militant in 1920-21 than they are to-day. A stronger labor movement forced them at that time to show their teeth. Many of them were then frankly of the opinion that Bolshevism was just around the corner and that trade unionism was merely its forerunner. One had to take a "firm stand" in dealing with the
36 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
"growing menace." There was a great deal of talk among the industrialists about nipping this and that bit of incipient com- munism in the bud. To be sure, much of the hysteria of the day was fostered by ex-Intelligence Division sleuths and De- partment of Justice operatives, as well as by enterprising dealers in industrial espionage. Their search for clients and their consequent provocative acts naturally added to the cur- rent alarm concerning the approach of revolution. Their inde- fatigability inspired such outbreaks as the following, a sample of the insanity then in vogue. It appeared in the Minnesota Banker (December 16, 1920). "Where the radical element is too strongly entrenched, there is, of course, but one final thing to do, and that is, to beat them by force. They must be locked up and licked until the conservatives (in the unions) see the light and realize that the rights of capital must be considered." By "radical" was meant any progressive who wanted to carry on the struggle for better conditions.
Undoubtedly, the most strident open shop voices are raised at present by the associations comprising the American Plan- Open Shop Conference and its western and southern affiliations. The American Plan Ass'n. at Cleveland is prosperous and ag- gressive in its leadership of local movements, particularly against the building trades unions. The Open Shop Depart- ment of the National Association of Manufacturers retains the leadership among the firms and associations making up its membership. Such open shop leadership as is to be found to- day is inspired by one or the other of these various associations to be examined in the next chapter.
CHAPTER III EMPLOYERS7 ORGANIZATIONS
"The opponents of unionism cannot stop it unless they them- selves combine more effectively than organized labor (which would not be difficult) and then use this joint power not only to stem the power of union expansion but to break up the existing unions and to discredit the theory and practice of unionism. This is what the fighting advocates of autocratic capitalism are now trying to do." 1
THE employing class believes in organization. The employ- ers not only believe in it. They practice it. To advance the American Plan of employment, and to frustrate the efforts of unions to attain collective bargaining, the employers must themselves be thoroughly organized. While the great corpora- tions such as the United States Steel Corporation, the Penn- sylvania Railroad, or the International Harvester Company, may, upon occasion, put up a single-handed battle against the workers, it is necessary for most employers and employing cor- porations, to join some sort of "bosses' union" in order to com- bat the organizing efforts of the workers.
Students of the labor problem have made various classifica- tions of the many employers' associations in America. Some have divided them into "bargaining associations" which make collective agreements with organized workers on a wide scale; "fellowship associations," which bind them together for pur- poses having nothing to do with labor relations; and finally, "militant associations" or those which, to use the words of one
1 New Republic, December 29, 1920, p. 124.
37
38 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
writer, "are created to oppose collective bargaining and to dis- credit and defeat unionism." 2
Most of the active employers' associations seem to be of the third type. Indeed, many of those that were organized originally to act as negotiatory and bargaining associations have, with the years, developed into the most bitter combative anti-union as- sociations. Others, which might be classified as bargaining associations, may engage in periodical struggles with unions upon the termination of agreements. The most commonly cited examples of the belligerent and non-bargaining type of national association are the National Metal Trades' Association, the National Founders Association, and the National Association of Manufacturers. The great majority of the associations dis- cussed in the following pages are of the militant, anti-union type. This type may often be heard to announce that it has no objections to labor organizations as such, or to individual employee membership in unions. But it always attacks unions when they show any signs of life.
This stressing of the belligerent aspects of employers' asso- ciations will be condemned in certain quarters. Even the care- fully detailed and objective study of Employers' Associations in the United States by Clarence E. Bonnett, has been attacked on this ground by sensitive employers' journals. The employers attempt to profess in public that the primary purpose of their associations is anything but to wage war on unions. However, the more carefully one surveys their deeds, the more one sees that the common denominator of most of them is a hatred and fear of organized labor and a desire to discredit and destroy it. Bonnett puts it more mildly when he writes, "The promotion of the employers' interests in labor matters is the function that characterizes every employers' association." In any case, the present discussion will deal almost exclusively with those or- ganizations which have participated in the open shop cam-
2 Gordon Watkins : An Introduction to the Study of Labor Prob- lems, p. 394.
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 39
paigns and anti-labor crusades of recent years. John R. Com- mons and Helen Sumner in their book on Labor Problems de- scribe these militant associations as follows: "In soberer mo- ments they disavow any intention of destroying trade unionism, although it is certainly fair to say that with them industrial peace is a secondary consideration" (p. 281).
There are a great many varieties of such associations. Some are of long standing and have become a permanent part of the American scene. Some are local bodies, and some cover only the employers in one trade or industry. Some are national trade associations, and some general employers' associations covering the whole country. Some use outspoken titles to ex- press their object and purpose. Others adopt such protective coloration as "Citizens' Committee" or "Citizens' Alliance."
There is nothing particularly new about these employers' associations. They have enjoyed a rapid growth in this coun- try during the last forty years and their strength and financial power have developed with the rise of industrial America. To- day, they together comprise the most formidable obstacle to
labor unionism in the world. For back of them stands the
\
power of the American bankers and bankers' associations, as well as the great corporations, which are the undisputed rulers of present-day American society.
How many employers' associations are there in this country? The United States Department of Commerce, in a compilation called Commercial and Industrial Organizations in the United States (1926), lists more than 9,000 organizations of all kinds, approximately 1,200 interstate, national and international, 1,130 state and 6,450 local organizations, and these are "only those organizations which replied to the Department's request for information." However, this broad category of commercial and industrial organizations includes many which are not strictly employers' associations, many, such as trade associa- tions, which have scarcely any relation to labor, and many
40 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
which might be classed as negotiatory rather than as belligerent associations.3
Professor Bonnett makes a more conservative estimate. He says, "in number, the associations now in existence, or which have been organized, in the United States, total over 2,000, all of which have dealt with the labor problem in some phase or form." This number includes both the negotiatory associations and the belligerent types, the latter undoubtedly being in the great majority. Some 300 associations of every description are included in the Index to Associations and Fostered Cor- porations on pages 561-67 of Bonnett's book. These are simply the few to which he refers in his exhaustive discussion of thirteen representative associations.
Types and Names of Employers' Associations
LOCAL ASSOCIATIONS
Local employers' associations use a confusing variety of names to describe themselves. Some are known simply as Employers' Association. Others use the title Employers' Coun- cil, Manufacturers' and Employers' Association, Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, Merchants', Manufacturers' and Employers' Association, or Manufacturers' Associations.
Other general associations of employers covering one city are called Industrial Associations. Various uses of the terms "open shop" and "American Plan" appear in the names of still other local associations, such as Open Shop Association. There are also the open shop divisions of local Chambers of Commerce, American Plan Associations and American Plan-Open Shop Associations. The local business bodies of certain cities go under the name of Associated Industries. The names vary from city to city. Some cities have organizations bearing two
3 U. S. Dept. of Commerce : Domestic Commerce Series, No. 5, June, 1926.
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 41
or more of these names; for example, Utica, N. Y., boasts of both an Industrial Association and an Employers' Association.
All local Chambers of Commerce and Business Men's Asso- ciations may be included in a somewhat broader category of employers' associations. The Rotary Club, the Kiwanis Club and similar organizations represent the "fellowship" of "big butter and egg men" and "Babbitts" — business men who can always be counted on to participate in an anti-red, anti-liberal, or anti-union campaign. The Rotary Club branches have sometimes played an important role in local "union-busting" drives, as have the local Bankers' Associations and other local business men's associations.
Chambers of Commerce have figured quite prominently in anti-labor drives^ but in some places, they have been more conciliatory in their relations with labor. This is probably due to the admixture of small merchants and minor business men in the local Chambers. The local Chambers of Commerce, with but few exceptions, are thoroughly open shop in their attitude, even though in some cities they have persuaded certain social- climbing leaders of central labor bodies to join them and par- ticipate in their "good fellowship" even after they have entered upon an anti-union crusade. When a Chamber of Commerce creates a special open shop division or an industrial relations committee it is usually on the way to becoming more belligerent in its dealings with unions. It is then usually impossible to distinguish between it and the more militant general local asso- ciations of employers above mentioned. Says the National Catholic Welfare Conference in one of the news releases issued by its Social Action Department:
"Notwithstanding its sprinkling of professional men, the aver- age local Chamber of Commerce represents the viewpoint of the employing class exclusively whenever it makes a pronouncement concerning the relations between capital and labor. The same is true of the American Bankers' Association, and to a lesser de- gree of that small body of rural aristocrats known as the National Grange.
42 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
Such bodies reflect only the viewpoint of the employing class and those small groups who have social and business affiliations with that class."
There remains another type of local general employers' asso- ciation which takes in professional elements as well, in fact, any person sufficiently saturated with animus toward trade unions. This is the Citizens' Committee. We shall note later the special .function of these committees. They have been formed in recent days in Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco, Detroit, and Passaic. They usually develop out of the anti- labor drives of some belligerent employers' association, and are created to draw a wider element of the business classes into the war on trade unions. They should not be confused with the Citizens' Alliance, which is the name used by three permanent open shop employers' associations in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth. The local Citizens' Committees are generally picked for special emergencies such as strikes, when the open shop employers' association needs the help of a "broader pub- lic" to carry out its program against labor. They are usually permitted to expire once they have performed the function for which the employers created them. There have also been, in a few places such as Sherman, Texas, special open shop enforce- ment bodies using the name Citizens' Welfare Associations.
So much for general local associations of employers, taking in employers from every industry. These naturally overlap with the local trade or industrial associations which include only em- ployers engaged in one occupation or line of business. The latter may be formed to negotiate with unions or they may be belligerent associations which have broken with the unions and are simply united, partly for trade purposes, and partly to de- fend themselves against possible union encroachments. Under this head come, of course, the Builders' Exchanges, the Associated Building Employers, the Associated Builders, and similarly named building employers' groups, in practically
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 43
every American city. All have strong building trades unions to deal with at one stage or another. Some have beaten the unions, and now control the labor situation in their communi- ties. Others cooperate with the unions and make agreements with them with occasional belligerent periods when the agree- ments expire.
In other trades similar industrial associations wage the fight on unionism. It is unnecessary to name all the trades and in- dustries represented. Every important industrial city has one or more such associations for each industry. There are thou- sands of them. The trade directories contain their names. And many of them are represented at the semi-annual gatherings of the American Plan-Open Shop Conference, where they dis- cuss better and shrewder methods of establishing and maintain- ing the open shop.
One of the outstanding examples of the local militant manu- facturers' body confined to one industry, was the Industrial Council of Passaic Wool Manufacturers. Prior to the Passaic strike of 1926, its tyrannical power over the mill workers was undisputed. It operated a spy system and a blacklist and a central employment office which employed every worker per- mitted to toil in the mills. This Council went out of business in March, 1927. It had received such a black eye during the strike that it lost much of its usefulness for the mill owners. Somewhat similar local industrial bodies exist in hundreds of American industrial communities. Sometimes they are inde- pendent and unaffiliated. In the metal industry they may be affiliated with the National Metal Trades' Association. In other industries they may have only a very loose affiliation with the National Association of Manufacturers or the American Plan-Open Shop Conference. They are usually dominated by powerful local corporations.
It is common practice for local associations in the same in- dustry to unite in the face of the enemy. There may have developed in one local industry a number of associations, de-
44 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
pending upon the character of the product made, the size of the shops or mills, geographical location, nationality of employers, and a number of other factors. When a strike threatens, how- ever, they are likely to merge or at least create a strategy board for the purpose of presenting a united front to the workers. For example, in the New York paper box makers' strike of 1926-27, the United Paper Box Manufacturers' Association, the Independent Paper Box Manufacturers' Association, and the Greater New York Paper Box Manufacturers' Association con- solidated for the fight under the leadership of the National Association of Paper Box Manufacturers, a national industrial association.
STATE ASSOCIATIONS
The same rough division of employers' associations of a state-wide and national character, may be made. The general employers' association, and the special trade or industrial asso- ciation have been developed both as state and national bodies. Many of the local associations above mentioned are simply the local affiliates of some large associations like the National Metal Trades' Association.
Taking first the associations with what might be termed state jurisdiction, we find in many states the general more class-conscious groups called Associated Industries. New York has a particularly powerful and militant one, and there are good examples of this type in a dozen other states. In Indiana, the same crowd is known as the Associated Employers, while in several other states it is the Employers' Association. An- other very common name is Manufacturers' Association. In Washington State a similar group uses the name Federated In- dustries, while in Oregon it is an Industrial Association, and in North Dakota, the Manufacturers' and Employers' Association. There are also the state Chambers of Commerce which, like
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 45
other state associations, devote much of their attention to legis- lative activities, which really means opposition to all social and progressive bills introduced by labor. Sometimes these state Chambers of Commerce use special lobbying organizations like the Ohio Industrial Council or the Oklahoma Industrial Coun- cil to serve their purposes in the legislative field. These are usually ''united front" organizations of all the state and local employers' associations to represent the business interests dur- ing the sessions of the state legislature.
Many of the state manufacturers' associations have county or city branches or divisions using the same names. These local groups are usually under the direction and discipline of the state organization.
The trade and industrial associations likewise have their statewide and regional federations, such as the State Foundry- men's Association of Ohio, the Illinois Coal Operators' Asso- ciation, and the Builders' Exchange of California, A midway type, covering more than a city and less than a state, is such an organization as the Operators' Association of the William- son Field, West Virginia, one of the many coal employers' associations in the country. Others that may be called inter- state— covering more than a state and less than the nation — are such bodies as the Southeastern Master Printers Federation.
NATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
On a national scale the employers' associations naturally are fewer in number, but powerful, larger, and no less militant. The outstanding general associations of the class-conscious sort are the National Association of Manufacturers, the United States Chamber of Commerce, and the American Plan-Open Shop Conference. Organizations covering one trade or indus- try are also large and important. Examples are the National Metal Trades' Association, the National Founders' Association,
46 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
the Employing Printers of America, the National Erectors' As- sociation, the Employing Photo-Engravers of America, the American Newspaper Publishers Association, and the United Typothetae of America. Most of these national associations have open shop departments or open shop divisions specializing in the distribution of publications expounding the virtues of the non-union shop.
Nationwide associations which fall without the above classi- fications are the League for Industrial Rights, the National In- dustrial Conference Board, and the National Civic Federation. Each has an unique function in the employers' offensive against labor unions.
TRADE AND INDUSTRIAL ASSOCIATIONS
It would require a separate volume to describe fully the trade and industrial associations in any one American industry. Take, for example, the textile industries. Here are just a few of the employers' associations in this field: American Cotton Manufacturers' Association, National Association of Woolen and Worsted Spinners, National Association of Finishers of Cotton Fabrics, National Association of Cotton Manufacturers, Association of Knit Goods Manufacturers of America, National Association of Wool Manufacturers, National Association of Manufacturers of Wilton and Brussels Carpets, Southern Tex- tile Association, National Association of Hosiery and Under- wear Manufacturers, Southern Hard Yarn Spinners' Associa- tion, Southern Soft Yarn Spinners' Association, North Carolina Cotton Manufacturers' Association (similar associations in South Carolina and other states), Georgia Industrial Associa- tion.
Each of these statewide, nationwide, or interstate textile associations may have more or less to do with labor relations in the mills of its members. Certainly, almost all of them give
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 47
advice or render assistance to members in matters relating to labor legislation.
The more local industrial associations of textile manufac- turers, such as those in Philadelphia, New Bedford, and Fall River devote themselves almost solely to labor questions. "They deal with other matters besides labor disputes but the ability to present a solid front to the laborers is their primary purpose."4 Others not listed above, such as the Arkwright Club of Boston, a group of influential New England mill men, are interested particularly in the fight against legislation which labor unions support. The power behind the agitation early in 1927 for the return of the fifty-four hour week and ten-hour day in Massachusetts was this distinguished textile club made up chiefly of mill agents and treasurers. The purpose of the club, according to its constitution, is: "to cultivate social inter- course among managers of corporations or private establish- ments manufacturing textile fabrics . . . and to promote good understanding and united action upon affairs of general interest to these industries."
Such clauses — and still more innocently worded ones — are typical of most manufacturers' clubs and associations. But what they do in the field of labor relationships is what interests us here, and what we shall deal with in the following pages.
Some Special Local Associations
We have noted that local associations carry on under various banners. American Plan Association, Employers' Association, Industrial Association are some of the common titles. It may be useful to examine in some detail a few of the typical ones. It will help us to understand the forces behind the associations, the methods commonly used, the pretensions made, and the
4 The Cotton Manufacturing Industry in the United States, Melvin T. Copeland, p. 157.
48 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
general character of these bodies. Take first one that calls it- self an industrial association.
INDUSTRIAL ASSOCIATION OF SAN FRANCISCO
Perhaps the most important local association on the Pacific coast is the Industrial Association of San Francisco with about 14,000 members. It was organized in the fall of 1921 out of a broken strike of the building trades unions of that city. The industrial relations committee of the local Chamber of Com- merce which had borne the brunt of the strike-breaking work during the conflict, issued a general "call to arms" echoed by the powerful business interests of the city. The Industrial As- sociation was the result of this call. Its purpose was to enforce the non-union shop chiefly in the building trades.
The managing director of the association has declared re- peatedly that the organization is "not an employers' organiza- tion," and that "it is not in the union busting business ... it represents the public and the public only and stands for fair play and sound industrial relations." As we examine the work of this and similar employers* associations, we shall discover what is meant by "sound industrial relations." We shall also see who supports this association — the "general public" or the class-conscious employers.
The association works in close cooperation with the Builders' Exchange, the building employers' council of the city. As a result, serious inroads have been made on union strength in the building industry of San Francisco, which is to-day, ac- cording to the Wall Street Journal, one of the leading "open shop cities" having secured what is called "complete emancipa- tion from the trade unions."
There can be no mistaking the effect this association has had upon trade union strength in San Francisco. As early as the fall of 1923 the association boasted in The American Plan, its monthly organ, that
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 49
"to-day 85 per cent of all men who earn their bread by manual toil work under open shop conditions. What more complete trans- formation ! Three years ago over 90 per cent worked under absolutely closed shop union conditions. To-day over 85 per cent work under open shop conditions."
So far as we know the percentage has not decreased since that date.
It is interesting to observe that the business men who insti- tuted this non-union regime in San Francisco look upon them- selves as heroic pioneers and "dreamers" — "men of vision," to use their own characterization. Says The American Plan:
"The men who gathered for the struggle to strike the shackles from this community were dreamers. But their dreams have come true. The men who made the fight had visions, and their hopes have been realized. It is an old saying that the worthwhile men of the world are the men with dreams and visions — the men whose eyes are turned toward the East; the men whose mental horizons are limitless; the%men whose heads are with the stars while their feet remain on solid ground."
There can be no doubt that these men kept their feet firmly on the ground. The Industrial Association conducted several campaigns for a fund to carry on its anti-union work. Twice within five years it raised a million dollars and in 1926 it levied assessments on the merchants and manufacturers of San Francisco to pay for its bitter fights against the carpenters, molders, and other unions. According to the secretary-treasurer of the California State Federation of Labor, certain well-known corporations each subscribed $10,000 or more during the first "slush fund assessment" as he calls it. In view of the indus- trial professions of some of these corporations, and their devo- tion to the company union and various welfare devices which they have installed to pacify their workers, it is of interest to give the list in part: 5
5 California State Federation of Labor, Reports of Officers, 26th Annual Convention, 1925, pp. 17-18.
50 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
Alexander & Baldwin, Ltd $10,000
American Factors Co 10,000
Anglo-London and Paris National Bank 15,000
Bank of California 15,000
Bethlehem Ship Building Corporation 20,000
California and Hawaiian Sugar Co 25,000
California Packing Co 10,000
Crocker National Bank 15,000
The Emporium 10,500
Firemen's Fund Insurance Co 10,000
Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co 10,000
Matson Navigation Co 10,000
Market Street Railroad Co 10,000
Mercantile Trust Co 10,000
Pacific Gas & Electric Co .' i^jpoo
Sante Fe Railroad Co 15,000
Southern Pacific Railroad Co 30,000
Pacific Oil Co 10,000
J. D. and A. B. Spreckels Co 25,000
Standard Oil Co 30,000
Union Oil Co 1 5,000
Welch & Co 10,000
Wells Fargo National Bank 15,000
Associated Oil Co 15,000
Most of these funds were raised by promises to the em- ployers to "insure them against industrial controversy" and to make San Francisco "the freest city in the Anglo-Saxon world," which to them means a city as nearly non-union as possible.
The various methods used to bring about this open shop condition out of a San Francisco which up to 1920 had been very effectively organized have been severely criticized by the representatives of the trade unions. Organized Labor, official journal of the local building trades council, charged the Indus- trial Association with using brutal and illegal methods to crush labor hi the city, particularly in the course of its open shop drive against the carpenters' union in 1926. During a strike for collective bargaining the association employed the notori- ous detective and strike-breaker, "Black Jack" Jerome, to
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 51
direct the war against union carpenters. Jerome mobilized a small army of thugs, gunmen, and ex-convicts, just as he had in the Denver tramway strike in 1920, where an investigation commission from the National Catholic Welfare Conference and local religious bodies had found him commanding his thugs: "When you shoot, be sure and shoot straight." 6 It was Jerome who committed the first violence in the San Francisco strike, just as in the Denver strike. His first victim was a disabled war veteran. Jerome assaulted him and was ar- rested. He pleaded guilty and was fined. He confessed that he was in the employ of the Industrial Association. This was also admitted by the managing director of the association.
One of Jerome's men, Harry Smith, testifying in an injunc- tion trial at the time, said that a daily list to be "beaten up" was furnished to Jerome. He told how he and another guard named Dooley had blackjacked one Daniels, a union man, in his home. When arrested, they had the cards of the attorney for the Industrial Association in their pockets. They told the police he was their attorney. Smith also testified that the In- dustrial Association had a regular scale of prices for sluggings, ranging from $10 to $50, depending on the extent of the "mas- sage" accomplished on the victim. For a full "polish," or kill- ing, anywhere from $250 to $1,000 was demanded by the Jerome agency.
Another guard, on the stand, told of his participation as one of Jerome's "flying squadron" which specialized in attacks on union men. He submitted to the court the names of various union members and union business agents he had been engaged to assault. Other guards gave similar testimony. One of them, named Redstrom, confessed that he had received his firearms from an employee of the Industrial Association. The latter admitted in court that he had furnished the weapons.
Although its chief work has been carried on in the building industry because of the strength of unionism there, the Indus-
6 Sidney Howard : The Labor Spy, p. 195.
52 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
trial Association does not forget its duties in minor fields. It boasts that "by money, employment of men, and other inci- dents to labor controversies," it succeeded in putting the cigar, tailoring, garment working, warehousing, and taxi industries in San Francisco on the American Plan. It also aided in breaking a strike of oil workers in 1922, and "participated actively in the great metal and shipping industries of this port."
The association has also functioned as a strike-breaking agency in the foundry industry. The International Holders' Union of North America has accused the Industrial Association of using hold-up methods to break its San Francisco Local Union No. 164. According to John P. Frey, editor of the International Holders' Journal (October, 1926, p. 606), the Industrial Association "publicly declared its determination to make every foundry in San Francisco and vicinity a non-union shop." Frey continues:
"Foundrymen operating under friendly agreements with Local No. 164 were told that unless they established non-union shops it would be impossible for them to retain their customers. The Industrial Association established a boycott against union shops. Its hired, representatives visited buyers of castings and en- deavored to have them place their patterns in the non-union asso- ciation shops. Bankers refused loans to foundrymen employing our members."
The local molders' union, according to Frey, was also harassed by spies placed in its ranks to make reports, talk violence and "incite members to commit some lawless act." Several of these Industrial Association provocateurs were ex- pelled from the union in the course of the struggle to substitute "American Plan molders" for union molders.
Such were the methods used by the high-minded American Plan advocates in their campaign to destroy the foundations of labor unionism in San Francisco. But there were still other forms of pressure employed, other weapons seized upon, in this battle to "free" the city. One was the "Citizens' Committee of One Hundred," which the Industrial Association organized
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 53
to maintain "law and order" and to stir up public sentiment against the unions. "The real object of this committee," spokesmen of labor contended, "is to discredit union labor, to intimidate public officials, to replenish the treasury of the Industrial Association and to bolster up the so-called 'American Plan' which is only another name for the non-union shop."
The "permit system," instituted by the Industrial Associa- tion, was an effort to make it impossible for any contractor or employer hiring union men or dealing with the union through collective bargaining, to purchase materials and supplies. The association continued to use the system even after the Federal District Courts had found it guilty of conspiracy, coercion, profiteering, collusion, blacklisting, threats, intimidation, and boycotting. The Supreme Court, to which the case was car- ried by the Industrial Association, reversed the injunction against the permit system on the technical ground that the materials used were not involved in interstate commerce. A Wall Street Journal account of the workings of the permit sys- tem tells us that "contractors operating on the closed shop basis could obtain neither credit nor materials." As a result of the carpenters' strike the association agreed to abandon, at least temporarily, the whole permit system.
The fulsome admirers of the Industrial Association, such as Warren Ryder 7 admit that the American Plan means "that on every job at least some of the workers should be non-union," even though they may all want to belong to the union. They contend that "the American Plan is so strongly entrenched in San Francisco that no sane person can predict that it will be overthrown in the next twenty-five years."
AMERICAN PLAN ASSOCIATION OF CLEVELAND
Outside of San Francisco the most flourishing, militant, and articulate local employers' organization for the advancement
7 Current History, January, 1927, p. 539.
54 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
of the non-union shop is the American Plan Association of Cleveland. Its general manager is William Frew Long. Its offices are palatial, its funds apparently quite adequate, and its social and corporate connections extensive and influential.
Organized in 1920 during the days of the intensive open shop drive, the A. P. A. of Cleveland is a sort of merger of local federations of employers and trade associations for the purpose of fighting the local unions in every industry where they happen to appear threatening. The association looks upon the unionized shop as "subversive of every human right" and upon the non-union shop as "the only just and righteous em- ployment condition." The "industrial liberties" of employers must be defended. The A. P. A. is both a defensive and an offensive organization. But up to date it has not been as successful as its prototype in San Francisco. For in Cleveland the building industry is still (1927) quite thoroughly union shop in spite of the campaigns conducted against the unions during the last six years by Long, his backers in the big metal plants, and the recently organized Cleveland Citizens' Com- mittee. Long looks upon the unionized Cleveland building trades as extremely baneful to the city's growth. When on top of this the city voted for the "radical" La Follette in the 1924 presidential election, he and his association cried out that other communities would look upon Cleveland as "the in- dustrial Sodom and Gomorrah of American cities."
Although up to date unable to make more than a dent in the solidarity of the building trades unions, the A. P. A. has been successful in other industries. Long, writing on his achieve- ments, in the New York Commercial, in 1925 observed: "The five years that have passed have been years of strenuous ac- tivity resulting in the complete destruction of closed shop con- ditions in all of the industries of the city outside of the building industry."
A picture of the diversity of non-union industry covered by the association may be gained from its organization chart which
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 55
lists some forty-eight membership groups including manufac- turers of all the important Cleveland products such as auto bodies, motor cars, bolts and nuts, boilers, brass plumbing sup- plies, chains, cranes and hoisting machinery, electrical appli- ances, fiber goods, forging and foundry products, hardware, lumber, machine tools, paints and varnish, paper boxes and bags, rubber goods, store fixtures, stoves, and tools.
The association reports that it is an organization of several hundred employers from all of these industries. The combined payrolls of the affiliated corporations amount to more than $200,000,000 a year and the investment of these firms in Cleve- land industry is claimed to represent more than half a billion dollars. The membership of the association is reported to have increased thirty-two per cent in 1923-1924.
Before taking up the specific activities of the association, let us note the various committees, departments, and groups in- cluded in its organization chart. The committees are the fol- lowing: advisory, public relations, associate membership, pub- licity, legislative, civic affairs, and building industry (a special committee is needed here to carry on the disproportionate amount of anti-union activity directed at the building trades unions which, as noted above, have not yet been broken in Cleveland). The departments listed are employment, confi- dential information (we shall see below what this means), em- ployee welfare, legal advice, legislative and political activities, library, miscellaneous advice and information, publications, bulletins and addresses, statistics, and finally, but not least important, strike management. In addition, there are certain executives' groups covering welfare and medical service, em- ployment and factory executives, inspection and time study.
With this elaborate machinery in mind, we may note some of the reported activities and "services" of the association during 1923-1924.
It sought to crystallize public sentiment for the open shop through wide publicity, including full-page advertisements in
56 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
the local press, many of which bore appropriate quotations from former Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty. It also received much free space in the news columns of the press, and it issued its own publications, bulletins, and addresses. It helped local preachers prepare sermons expounding the princi- ples of the open shop and deploring the alleged illegal acts of labor union officials.
It spent a good deal of time, as must every organization, whether of capital or labor, drumming up membership. It made special efforts to convince employers that membership in the A. P. A. is "an insurance against labor trouble" and that "all the strikes which this association has handled since its organization have been won by the employer in but a fraction of the time and with but a modicum of the expense which would have been required had no such organization existed." Long frequently refers to the successful record of the associa- tion's strike-breaking work. In one place he writes: "We have won many strikes, considering the short time our association has been in existence, and we have prevented many more."
He further states: "Again and again international unions have given local unions a 'strike sanction,' but when it was found that the plant against which the strike sanction was obtained was a member of this Association, the sanction was never used."
So much for strikes prevented. Long does not tell us how many strikes were instigated by the association in connection with its policy of bucking up what it calls lily-livered em- ployers to break off relations with the union.
In connection with strikes in the plants of member corpora- tions the association report deals with a variety of services. It raised money for legal expenses incurred by member firms during strikes. In one case the members of its "Foundry Group" "decided that the Superior Foundry Company should have something more than their cadmiration' and raised a fund
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 57
of some $4,000 to defray the legal expenses incurred by the Superior Company in connection with their strike." Guards and watchmen were provided to firms attempting to crush unions. An employment department was operated to furnish non-union workers. According to Long it provided "a class of labor all the way from steeplejack to sewer builders." In this connection the association organized a Labor Scout Service. Its expressed desire was to become the labor supply center of Cleveland. Automobiles, transportation surveys, publicity, prompt police attention, and other strike services are likewise provided by the association.
Closely related with these services is the espionage depart- ment which is devoted chiefly to discovering what plans the unions are making. "Confidential information" is obtained through "under-cover" men placed in unions and in plants for the purpose of reporting on union doings or prospective union moves. "We know from information in our possession" is a common phrase used by the association in its reports. It makes no pretense of securing this information through other than its own operatives. Apparently it hires no outside detec- tive agency but has its own organized spy system, or at least recommends to its members which private spy bureaus are reliable.
So adequate is the "protection" and strike-breaking service that in many instances such commendatory letters as the follow- ing have been received from member firms:
"It is with much pleasure that we have the opportunity of thanking you for your efforts in our behalf during the late strike at our plant.
Throughout all our troubles you stood by us with all the tremendous resources of the American Plan Association and we are very pleased to say that we lost very little time or money and have actually increased our production over fifty per cent with the same number of men, through the unsuccessful effort of the union to unionize our shop — thanks to the American Plan Association."
58 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
The association has resorted to the usual practice of boy- cotting union shops and encourages its members and the public to do its buying only from non-union firms.
In addition to counsel and legal advice on the maintenance of the non-union shop, the association staff provides free con- sultation and information on various employer tactics, such as employee representation (company unions), house organs (employee magazines), profit sharing plans and stock owner- ship by employees.
A considerable amount of political work was done by the association in the period under review. Opposition to labor- endorsed ordinances and the bringing of pressure to bear on city councilmen and officers were a part of the program. Such a resolution as that introduced in the city council providing that labor in the service of the city should receive the prevailing trade union rate of wages, received the vigorous opposition of the body. All legislation introduced by labor unions was labeled "socialistic." As we have noted, the association was pained at the Cleveland vote for La Follette in 1924, and shortly after this "disaster" reported gloomily, "It is confi- dently expected that our manufacturers will, as a matter of course, immediately consider the question of moving their plants elsewhere."
Like the National Association of Manufacturers and other employers' associations, the A. P. A. declares it "does not plan to fight labor unions or members of labor unions." Indeed, it goes so far as to claim that the plan it advocates is "labor's best friend," and that the association upholds "the principles of Washington, of Patrick Henry, of Thomas Jefferson."
*But under no circumstances would the association counte- nance entering into any sort of collective bargaining arrange- ment with a labor union. It would not admit them in any way to the function in industry for which trade unions are organized. The only kind of union it regards with favor is the company union.
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 59
ASSOCIATED EMPLOYERS OF INDIANAPOLIS
This local association has probably produced more printed matter describing its activities than any other employers' body in the country. Its story has been adequately told in Profes- sor Bennett's book to which the reader is referred for an en- lightening picture of a local employers' body at work. Bonnett says that it is perhaps the most active local employers' associa- tion in the United States: "Its opposition to the closed union shop in Indianapolis has been so successful that, with the excep- tions of certain branches of the building and printing trades, most of the industries of Indianapolis are conducted on the 'American Plan' or open shop basis."
This association is important also because of its attempt to promote a national federation of open shop organizations in 1920. This attempt failed in spite of the thorough survey and intense efforts of the A. E. I. referred to in Chapter II.
In answering a query made by the writer in 1926 as to the strength of unionism in Indianapolis, A. J. Allen, the secre- tary of the association, says:
"Unionism in Indianapolis is distinguished by its weakness rather than by its strength, because out of a total city population of about 360,000, our information is that only about 6,000 or 7,000 labor unionists are actually represented in the local Central Labor Union, and these are mostly in the building and printing trades."
The A. E. I. had made similar claims before by way of blow- ing its own horn and claiming credit for extensive union-liqui- dation activities. In 1923 after some particularly provocative statements under this head, Allen's veracity was questioned by Samuel Gompers in a leading editorial in the American Federationist (July, 1923, p. 541). The title of the article was, "If Indianapolis is 'Open Shop' Let Us Have More of It." The A. E. I. had claimed that Indianapolis was the most successful, open shop city in the country, and that eight unions with inter-
60 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
national headquarters in that city went elsewhere to do their organizing. "Both of these claims," declared the Federationist, "are absolutely untrue," after which Mr. Gompers proceeded to back up this assertion with reports from the various unions in that city and state — building trades bodies, miners, ma- chinists, iron workers, barbers, steam and operating engineers, printers, photo-engravers, and typographical workers. "Only one or two international unions report minor setbacks," wrote Mr. Gompers, and "this destructive, reactionary propaganda organization — the A. E. I. — has completely failed in its pur- pose."
It should be noted that certain unions, such as the team- sters' union, are not referred to in the Gompers retort. This local union had been broken up and forced to disband in 1923, according to Allen. Other unions were undoubtedly wiped out of existence through the union-destroying tactics of the A. E. I. To-day, none of the general manufacturing industries of the city is organized. This, however, is true of every city in the United States. The building and printing trades maintain power long after workers in the manufacturing industry have been defeated in their attempts to unionize.
Methods used by the A. E. I. in its anti-union campaigns are described in a "labor problems" paper prepared by a student of DePauw University and circulated in 1923 by Allen: "Several embryo strikes have been headed off by the prompt and fearless action of the Association. Its intelligence system (italics ours) and acquaintance with friendly workmen has enabled it to anticipate strikes and to defeat them early."
The following observation, suggesting Ku Klux Klan in- spiration, appears in the same "labor problems" essay, of the young student: "It — the A. E. I. — has helped to make Indian- apolis a pleasant city in which to live, one free from strikes, a city of homes free of radicalism, a population very free of alien blood, and a community which is growing rapidly and solidly."
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 61
Some experiences of the street car workers in Indianapolis in 1926 illustrate the methods of the association in the field of strike-breaking and union wrecking.
The workers on the lines of the Indianapolis Street Railway Company were receiving wages ranging from thirty-seven to forty-two cents an hour. They decided to organize, even though some of them were already tied to the company by indi- vidual or "yellow dog" contracts. The events that followed are described in a letter written to the author by R. L. Reeves, editor of the Motorman and Conductor, official organ of the Amalgamated Association of Street & Electric Railway Em- ployees of America:
"Some thirty or forty of them wrote in to our International President, Mr. W. D. Mahon, for the assistance of an organizer. He dispatched Vice-President Robert B. Armstrong of St. Louis and John M. Parker of Niagara FaMs, Ont, to Indianapolis to as- sist them. Immediately upon their presence becoming known, at the instance of the company and non-union employers' association (italics ours), the police department began to arrest them for vagrancy. They were arrested fifty-four times before the organ- ization had reached a membership which would warrant the appli- cation for an increase in wage, which was done. The company ignored the application and dismissed sixty-four of the employees for joining the union. . . . The men recognized that the company would dismiss them all unless there was something done to estab- lish collective agreement relations, and they suspended work July 5. The company immediately went into the Federal Court and obtained an injunction restraining Armstrong and Parker from in any way interfering with the master and servant agreement or encouraging a strike."
Armstrong and Parker, and local officers of the union, were immediately arrested on contempt charges and spent seven more days in prison before they were released on bail and the case appealed.
It is clear that the A. E. I. was the directing force in the campaign to prevent the organization of the workers into one of the most conservative and law-abiding unions in the A. F. of L.
62 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
It also appears that the "intelligence system" of the A. E. I. had been hitting on all cylinders — up to a certain point. Here an "under-cover" operative was brought to light. He testified later in court that, "the company was paying him extra for his services in reporting everything that happened. And that the company had been informed of the entire proceedings so that it could know everything practically before it took place."8 This spy, it was also discovered, had been so clever he had gotten himself elected president of the street car workers' local No. 976. However, he had sneaked out of town at the time of the contempt proceedings against the union officials.
Reports in the official organ of the A. E. I. recount the routine assistance given by the association to other open shop firms. Under the heading, "Open Shop Activities/' we read in the issue of March, 1924:
"Report made by Secretary Allen, concerning the status of the electrotypers' strike against three member founders; approval was given to the steps that had been taken to assist them, in- cluding the request made of members that 'by supporting- these employers to the extent of being patient where delays occur dur- ing the strike, buyers of electrotypes can help reduce the cost and encourage the management of the struck plants in their efforts to run their business free of union domination/ The Skillman Electric Co. (open shop electrical contractors) and the B. C. Torelle Co. (open shop plumbers) were commended for their mail campaigns in behalf of 'reciprocal patronage relations' among open shop employers and the public generally."
Again, in June, 1924, we read: "When placing orders for electrotypes, instruct your printer that you want open shop products." This appears in italics* following an editorial which praises the struck employers as well as the efficient way in which the chief of police had taken prompt steps to prevent picketing under an anti-picketing ordinance.
In recent years the association has shown a growing interest 8 Motorman and Conductor, September, 1926, p. 6.
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 63
in what might be loosely termed "workers' education." The employers, of course, call it "employee education" in "sound economics." In the address and joint report of the secretary and president of the association in 1924 this matter was earnestly discussed, and it was suggested that every employer and employers' organization "should institute as a permament business policy, some plan of educational program among em- ployees in the economics of management, business and industrial relations." They stressed the importance of having the fore- man impart to the workers under him "the viewpoint of others and the economic facts upon which industry is conducted." The report urges the employers to take this matter seriously and drives home the argument with a quotation from Law and Labor, official organ of the League for Industrial Rights: "Our economic system must be justified to the many who have little, and not to the few who have much."
That the present economic order was endeared to the street car workers of Indianapolis through the less "educational" tactics above described appears somewhat doubtful. (Their wages are still thirty-seven to forty-two cents an hour.) But the premiership of Indianapolis as an American Plan City can- not be questioned even by the A. F. of L. officials who still contend that the activities of the A. E. I. have had no appre- ciable effect upon their union membership.
CITIZENS' COMMITTEES
Local employers' associations in thin disguise as we have already noted are frequently known as citizens' committees. They have usually been fostered as auxiliary bodies by other employers' associations and have been specially useful in the raising of funds. They may include all sorts of business and professional people not technically employers. And, as Pro- fessor Bonnett has pointed out, "fostered associations . . .
64 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
have occasionally proven to be powerful weapons in promoting the employers' interests in the labor field" (op. cit. p. 15). We have seen how a citizens' committee was used by the Indus- trial Association of San Francisco to further its anti-union and anti-collective bargaining projects. Other typical citizens' committees deserve brief descriptions.
The Citizens' Committee of Detroit achieved national promi- nence in October, 1926, when it assisted the Detroit Board of Commerce in an attempt to interfere with trade union officials who were scheduled to speak in Detroit churches while attend- ing the annual convention of the A. F. of L. in that city. Ac- cording to the Industrial Barometer, official organ of the Em- ployers' Association of Detroit, this committee is an amalga- mation of the interests of such organizations as the Employers' Association, the Detroit Board of Commerce, the General Builders' Association of Detroit, and other clubs. The local organizations — forty-five in number — included in this com- mittee appeared as signers of a letter sent to the A. F. of L. convention, October 14, 1926. As they are typical of the make-up of citizens' committees in other cities, they are given in full in order to suggest to the reader the sort of local trade, industrial, and social bodies usually found in local anti-union campaigns:
Associated Building Employers of Business Property Owners' Asso-
Detroit ciation
Builders' & Traders' Exchange Central Detroit Commercial Club
Carpenter Contractors' Associa- Detroit Automobile Club
tion Detroit Automobile Dealers'
The Conopus Club of Detroit Association
Detroit Citizens' League Detroit Association of Sanitary
Detroit Board of Commerce & Heating Contractors
Detroit Cleaners & Dyers Detroit Coal Exchange
Detroit Engineering Society Detroit Hotel Association
Detroit Insurance Exchange Detroit Sheet Metal & Roofing
Detroit Real Estate Board Contractors' Association
Detroit Lumber Dealers' Associ- General Builders' Association of
ation Detroit
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 65
Detroit Iron League Grand River Redford Federation
Detroit Transportation Associa- Employers' Association of De-
tion troit
Exchange Club of Detroit Jefferson Avenue Improvement
Kiwanis Club of Detroit Association
Lions' Club of Detroit Laundry Workers' Association
Mercator Club Mason Contractors' Association
Michigan Society of Architects of Detroit
Milwaukee Junction Manufac- Master Painters' & Decorators'
turers' Association Association
Printers' Association Motion Picture Theater Owners
Retail Merchants' Association of Michigan
Postal Employees Progressive Business Men's Club
Vortex Club Optimists' Club
Asbestos Employers' Association Rotary Club
All East Side Association Tailors' Organization
This committee devotes its attention chiefly to boasting Detroit's freedom from strikes. Its membership, says the Industrial Barometer, is open "to every citizen who opposes the domination of the closed shop." In The Detroiter, weekly journal of the Detroit Board of Commerce, the Citizens' Com- mittee is described as "organized to maintain Detroit's leader- ship and freedom from labor troubles." The Detroiter of August 23, 1926, describes with burning phrases how the unions, if permitted a foothold in the great open-shop automo- bile metropolis would immediately seek to "close" factories by sabotage and destruction. Only the Citizens' Committee, this journal tells us, can save the city from the hordes of A. F. of L. organizers who on that date were said to be hurrying toward Detroit to begin work. In order to head off the activities of the unions, the Citizens' Committee has placed half -page advertise- ments in local newspapers calling attention to its patriotism and to the terrible damage that would be done to Detroit business through a strengthening of unionism. The level of intelligence of the committee's executive vice-president, L. J. Flint, may be judged from the last paragraph of his impertinent letter to the "Officers and Directors and Delegates" of the A. F. of L., dis- tributed at the convention hall on October 14, 1926: "You
66 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
have adopted a resolution contemplating the organization of Detroit's automotive workmen. Do you propose to organize them for the laborer's sake, or for the sake of your Federa- tion?"
Across the lake from Detroit another Citizens' Committee was getting under way in 1926. In Cleveland, a strike of painters, paperhangers, and glaziers was in progress in July of that year. It was considered a good time to aim a vital blow at the building trades unions. Early in the year a strike of building laborers had been broken through the efforts of a committee of some twenty-five citizens appointed by the American Plan Association. Encouraged by this success, the A. P. A. assembled a larger committee to break the painters' strike and to raise a fund of isome five million dollars to over- power all the building trades in the city and abolish what they termed the "labor monopoly." This committee of anti-monopo- lists, as permanently organized, included over 50 business men and bankers, the list including n contractors, 10 manufacturers, 8 bankers, 5 real estate promoters, 4 build- ing supply and lumber magnates, 4 merchants, 3 lawyers, 2 coal officials, and 5 in miscellaneous employing jobs, representing, according to Max Hayes, editor of the Cleveland Citizen, about one per cent of the population of the city. Through the building supply houses the committee brought pressure to bear on the independent contractors who desired to settle with the union, and after an intensive cam- paign, in which nearly a million dollars was expended, the strike was broken. The executive committee of the Cleveland Citizens' Committee in a subsequent report said: "The painters, paperhangers and glaziers returned to work under the same working conditions and wages that existed before the strike and without signing any union agreement."
Like the building laborers they were compelled to return without their demands and without their contracts. This was
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 67
the first fruit of the committee's work. It now intends to take the unions one by one and force them on the open shop basis. A split in the building trades unions has greatly assisted them in their job.
Like other such committees it publicly denies all desire to destroy unionism. It declares that it would advocate agree- ments with unions "which conducted themselves properly." It contends that some unions have been "unreasonable, arro- gant, and uneconomic in their demands" and that it is search- ing for "constructive, honest and able union leaders" to deal with. It may be noted, in passing, that the building trades of Cleveland are politically conservative and are in full accord with the traditional policies and practices of the A. F. of L. Yet this is the union which the Citizens' Committee, as well as the Cleveland American Plan Association, calls destructive and "radical."
The "Citizens Committee to Enforce the Landis Award" in the Building Trades of Chicago is another "impartial" body led by open shop employers and bankers. It was created to com- pel the building trades of Chicago to accept the decision of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis who in 1921 had been forced upon some of the unions as arbiter in a wage dispute. The Judge was selected to arbitrate wages. He proceeded to arbi- trate not only wages, but to revise everything else including the fundamental agreements between the unions and the em- ployers. He attempted to make the unions accept almost com- pletely open shop principles in their relations with the em- ployers' associations. The unions naturally balked. Judge Landis also gave them a very unsatisfactory deal in his wage award. Some of the unions refused to accept the reduced wages and restrictive conditions. The Judge was unable to enforce his award. When he found that he was helpless, the Chicago Association of Commerce, the Illinois Manufacturers Association, the two real estate boards of Chicago, and other
68 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
employer-controlled bodies appointed a large Citizens' Com- mittee "composed of more than 150 responsible Chicago citi- zens." This committee appointed an executive committee which included some of the most bitter anti-union employers in the city. They incorporated the committee and demanded that bankers refuse credit to building trades employers erecting buildings except upon contracts stipulating that Landis award conditions prevail. The committee announced a campaign to raise $3,000,000 to cover its expenses. Its object was to destroy the unions by importing non-union mechanics from other cities to take the place of union men who refused to accept the award. It also imported gunmen to protect non-union mechanics, "Landis mechanics." It opened an employment bureau to sign up workers and to blacklist union men and prevent them from securing jobs. It issued a monthly pamphlet, The Landis Award Journeymen, which it sent to all non-union workers to bolster up their morale. It arranged costume dances, stag parties, and other social affairs for the workers, with the same object in view. The carpenters' union and other labor bodies charged that the committee had not only imported thousands of non-union carpenters but that it had "terrorized union con- tractors and used its influence to keep them from getting credit at the banks." 9
The Landis Award expired in 1926, and new agreements were signed between the Building Trades' Council of the city, and the Building Construction Employers' Association which re- moved practically all the objectionable features of the Landis decree. The Citizens' Committee was thus defeated in its efforts to break the power of the unions, thanks partly to the building boom that had existed in Chicago during the entire period. However, the committee, having furnished non-union workers for some of the big building jobs in Chicago, is still
9 Federated Press, Chicago Weekly Letter, Sheet I, February 20, 1926.
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 69
confident that it can carry on the Landis principles indefinitely. The Chicago correspondent of the New York Evening Post, on September i, 1926, wrote: "The Citizens' Committee to En- force the Landis Award will make no surrender. It is very well organized and is likely to consider the time as fortuitous to break the strength of the unions in Chicago."
And in December, 1926, and January, 1927, the committee was advertising widely in Chicago papers inviting prospective builders to employ, "Landis Award architects and Landis Award contractors," as well as Landis Award mechanics and craftsmen. One of the advertisements declares that "Landis Award contractors have the pick of building trades craftsmen to choose from. These workmen flock to our employment bureau. We have placed 130,000 of them during the last five years. . . . They know that should they strike they injure you and eventually themselves." These strike-proof workers were described in another advertisement as men "who have broken away from their former leaders." In spite of organized labor's opposition, the committee has apparently no intention of re- tiring from the field. It says early in 1927, "the committee is confident that the public would suffer irreparable damage if it disbanded."
In the same category with the local citizens' committees just described, may be placed certain organizations whose names suggest disinterested patriotic motives, but whose actions point in quite the opposite direction. They may be local, state, or national. Examples are the American Constitutional Associa- tion of Charleston, West Virginia, which, according to the candid Iron Trades Review (November n, 1920, p. 1345)? "has been organized to promote the open shop principle." Although it has been classified as a "professional patriotic" body because of its use of patriotic sentiments and symbolism, the A. C. A. is really an employers' association organized in the interest of non-union coal operators.
70 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
The Better America Federation with headquarters in Los Angeles, is another employers' association of this sort, appeal- ing chiefly to business men for support. It was formerly the Commercial Federation of California, and changed its name in order to achieve a wider appeal. It has used many other names in the course of its campaigns for various sorts of anti- labor and anti-progressive legislation. Its support comes chiefly from big power and public utility interests.10
CITIZENS' ALLIANCES
The Citizens' Alliance, as an employers' association title, also deserves special mention. In some cities it has been much like the citizens' committees. In others it has been more perma- nent like the industrial associations or American Plan associa- tions. Many of the earlier "united fronts" of employers and business interests against labor, used this title. They often started as employers' associations later securing the cooperation of the citizens generally.
The Citizens' Alliance of Denver was one of the first to be organized. It began operations soon after 1900 and in its day had great influence in Colorado. It was one of the most sinis- ter organizations of its kind ever established by the employers. It figured in the charges of violence, provocation, and other murderous operations brought against the Colorado Mine Operators' Association by the Western Federation of Miners. It complemented the employers' association and was created to endorse the actions of the coal operators and to dominate public opinion more completely than any outright employers' association could expect to do.
The application for membership in this alliance read: "I, , do hereby make application for member-
10 For a description of the American Constitutional Association, and others like it, see Norman Hapgood : Professional Patriots.
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 71
ship in the Citizens' Alliance of Denver, Colorado, and affirm that I am not a member of any labor organization and fully agree to discountenance all strikes and schemes of persecution resorted to by organized labor."
With a membership of approximately 30,000 in the state, the alliance became the dominant power in local government in 1903 when the militia was slaughtering the coal miners then on strike. It circulated among the business men of Cripple Creek and Victor, Colorado, an agreement that they would not employ any person connected with the Western Federation of Miners.
It is clear that this alliance was nothing more than a tool of the formidable Colorado Mine Operators' Association, which in the early years of this century was busy with guns, bombs, train-wreckers, dynamiters, and provocateurs in attempting to destroy the mine workers' union.
The citizens' alliances, which receive most publicity to-day, are much less dramatic and primitive in their methods. They are the average type of open shop association organized to off- set unionism in the building trades, and keep the non-union shop on top in local industry. Typical associations carrying the name operate in three Minnesota cities — Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth. Minneapolis employers formed their alli- ance in 1903. In 1919 it opened a free employment bureau which now costs about $10,000 a year to maintain. The St. Paul alliance developed out of efforts to break a local strike of teamsters in 1920. It has, of course, cooperated closely with the local Builders' Exchange and local business bodies in weak- ening unionism in the building and other industries. The Duluth alliance has been still more recently organized. All are flourishing bodies. According to the bulletin of the Mil- waukee Employers' Council, an admiring rival, "they have the broad interest and support of all their business and citizen groups in addition to their industrial employers."
72 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
National Associations "
THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS
In his book on employers7 associations, Professor Bonnett has devoted nearly a hundred pages to an exhaustive treatment of the National Association of Manufacturers of the United States of America which, he tells us, "has been more active over a wider field than any other similar organization." Its propa- ganda output has greatly exceeded that of any other employers' association. It is not our purpose to summarize the extensive description given by Bonnett, except to quote its traditional attitude toward labor unions. However, it may be well to add a few notes based on the more recent activities of this leading American employers' association, which in 1926 claimed a membership of some 3,200, including employers and employers' associations in almost every state in the union. The total industrial investment of this membership is estimated at four billion dollars.
Some 270 delegates, over 70 of them representing other employers' associations of more limited jurisdiction, attended the 1926 convention of the N. A. of M. The registration list included local employers' associations, business men's associa- tions, and chambers of commerce, nationwide industrial associa- tions covering one line of business, such as the United Typo- thetae of America, state manufacturers' associations, and also separate corporations, such as the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co., Otis Elevator Co., Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., and the Packard Motor Car Co.
Although no less militant against labor unions than in its more notorious days when it was investigated by the United
11 For descriptions of other national associations not discussed in this volume, including the National Civic Federation — the employer- labor leader combination, the chief purpose of which is to check every progressive tendency in trade unionism — see Bonnett: op. cit., and Norman Hapgood: op. cit.
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 73
States Senate and found to have been guilty of maintaining a lobby to influence legislation, to have bribed labor leaders, and to have employed spies, the association, in keeping with other such bodies, is now advocating more welfare devices to hold labor in its place. At its 1924 convention, its committee on industrial relations reported favorably on various schemes for increasing cooperation between capital and labor — employee representation, profit sharing, group insurance, housing as- sistance, house organs, pension plans and "personal contacts." At its convention in 1925 the association passed a resolution which caused even the New York Times to comment, "it reads just a little bit too noble." Part of this resolution said:
"The highest function in American industry is not to make profit but to bring betterment of conditions to the workers as well as to the owner ... to protect the health and safety of the worker, to give him incentive for advancement along lines suited to his ability and to take the initiative in employee relations upon a basis of mutual interest through fair dealing and frankness regarding the facts and conditions of their common enterprise."
In contrast with the sweet words about welfare and the high purposes which have been frequently voiced by the associa- tion, we find in its literature, and in the speeches of its officers many references revealing its inflexible opposition to unionism. It has referred to the unions as criminal, although, of course, it leaves room for what it calls, "good unionism, if such exists anywhere." However, it believes that "the real and ideal union is the one between the employer and the employee." Professor Bonnett says: "Its arraignment of unions 'as now conducted' is continuous, and it has indicted 'present-day unionism' on every conceivable point, from the charge that unions are an 'aid to dirt' to that of murder and treason." It has, for example, contended that "labor pacts," meaning presumably agreements between unions to help each other, are "lawless, anarchistic and dangerous," and because of this, the association feels itself called upon "to arouse the great
74 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
middle class to a realization of what trade unionism really means."12 In one of its calls to arms in its publication, American Industries, it declares: "We must cooperate — we must get together and stick together to uphold our honor and honesty, we manufacturers and merchants, or rampant labor men, socialists and demagogues, will be our undoing."
What it means by rampant labor men is evident from another statement: "Our Government cannot stand, nor its free institu- tions endure if the Gompers-Debs ideals of liberty and freedom of speech and press are allowed to dominate."
While denying the existence of classes, and deploring "class hatred" and the class struggle, it apparently relies, as Pro- fessor Bonnett observes, "mainly on class interests in its appeals to employers." And at another place he says: "It is clear from the above that the National Association of Manu- facturers is opposed to practically everything that the American Federation of Labor and similar unions advocate, from closed- shop agreements to labor legislation," and in its legislative and political work, it has supported "practically all public officials who have won the enmity of the American Federation of Labor."
The association has helped other associations, as well as member firms, to break strikes, although this side of its work receives the least publicity. Most of its propaganda material touching on labor consists of attacks on the trade unions and trade union officials.
A recent pamphlet on Labor Conditions in England, by Noel Sargent, Manager of the Industrial Relations Department of the association, calls the closed shop an "economic crime," and speaks of the company union as "true collective bargaining." Sargent doubtless recommended this form of "industrial govern- ment" to certain British employers who have recently attempted to introduce the company union in their factories.
The Employment Relations Committee of the association
12 Bonnett : op. cit., p. 348.
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 75
reported to the convention in 1926 that "we, as manufacturers, are interested in profits. . . . Every activity of this Associa- tion, therefore, and every recommendation of this and other committees must, in the last analysis, be judged by this one standard — Does it contribute to the immediate or ultimate profit of the Association members?" Following this statement, the committee dwelt upon the subject of "industrial leader- ship" and declared, "Some of the working people of this country follow their natural leaders, the owners and managers of Industry (italics ours). Others find their leadership where they can." 13 The association considers it extremely unfortu- nate that workers should select their labor leaders anywhere outside the corporation, or that they should look to unions for advice and guidance. The natural leader of the steel worker, it contends, is Mr. Gary. The natural leader of any worker is the man who bosses him, and who determines, without the worker's assistance, how much shall be placed in the latter's pay envelope.
AMERICAN PLAN-OPEN SHOP CONFERENCE
One organization of employers which has been little discussed is the American Plan-Open Shop Conference. It is in fact not an organization in the strict sense of the word, although it has an office in Salt Lake City together with the Utah Associated Industries, and has one officer, a chairman, who handles the business. It pictures itself on its letterhead as "an intensive training in organization and management to industrial executives."
As its name implies, it is really a sort of informal semi- annual gathering of the representatives of more than a hundred local, state, and even national employers' groups. It issues from the chairman's office monthly mimeographed reports on
13 N. A. of M., Thirty-first Annual Convention (Proceedings), 1926, pp. 134-135-
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the open shop situation throughout the country. It prints alluring invitations to the conferences, and issues a printed di- gest of each. It is important, primarily, not for what it does itself, but rather through what its member organizations do under the inspiration of the statements made and resolutions drawn at the conferences.
These conferences have been held regularly since 1922 when a group of Western association executives met in Salt Lake City at the request of the manager of the Associated Industries of Utah. They met to hold a sort of postmortem over the unions they had killed and to lay plans for further killings. The leaders in the first conference were from associations west of the Mississippi.
Subsequent conferences were held in San Francisco, Port- land, Ore., Oklahoma City, Colorado Springs, San Antonio, Kansas City, San Diego, Detroit, and Dallas, in all of which thriving open shop associations exist. A brief survey of the pronouncements made at some of these conferences will help us to understand the character of this group of associations.
At the Kansas City Conference in April, 1925, the report on "the status of the open shop in outstanding industries" indi- cated that in most of the communities represented, the open shop was spreading rapidly and already covered from sixty to one hundred per cent of the workers employed. The purpose of the conferences is to hasten this process. "The answer is: no agreement, no contract — make a clean sweep." In other words, the conference urged its members to break down all collective bargaining arrangements that might possibly remain in their communities.
This conference suggested also the means by which the non-union shop could be advanced in the newspaper in- dustry— "as soon as advertisers make up their minds that they will place their advertising in newspapers that stand for in- dustrial freedom." We have already noted what the term "industrial freedom" means to an anti-union employer.
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 77
After presenting some miscellaneous information on the conduct of trade schools to train non-union workers, the re- port gives advice on the establishment of employment bureaus and tells us that "the most successful employment agencies maintain an exact card index giving all necessary information on each applicant." A blacklist is the natural product of this index.
The conference report urged also that industrial executives should "watch the national plans" of the A. F. of L. and "observe the tendency in your local labor circle."
The next conference held in San Diego, November, 1925, and attended by seventy-five delegates, discussed an even more diversified list of subjects. Formal discussions covered methods of extending open shop influence, employment service, the foreman, conditions in the metal trades, the printing in- dustry, the wage question, principles underlying effective management, women in industry, disquieting influences in public schools, vocational training, labor day parades, and edu- cation of workmen. The proceedings of this conference are embodied in a pamphlet bearing the title, For Sound Industrial Relations. The contents read like the promotion booklets of the Sherman Corporation, Engineers (industrial spy special- ists). There is frequent mention of "constructive influence," a favorite commodity of the espionage entrepreneurs. This in- fluence is to be cultivated not only over workers and foremen but over editorial writers and preachers. "Industrial associa- tions must accept the responsibility of seeing to it that the teachers have the right attitude of mind toward industrial questions." Not only this, but "the antecedents of teachers and supervisors should be known." The clear purpose is to line up public school teachers against unionism.
Under the title of "Education of the Workman," the confer- ence report suggested that the employer and industrial execu- tive should attempt to immunize his workers against the virus of trade unionism. "Take away his interest in deadly propa-
78 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
ganda that emanates from, destructive sources," is one of the commands.
Six months later, in May, 1926, well over a hundred local, state, and national industrial associations were represented at the Detroit conference, held under the patronage of the Asso- ciated Building Employers of Detroit. 4In its handbook contain- ing the proceedings of this conference, the officers trace its growth and declare that "the Conference has now proved its claim: to be the fountain head and inspiration and guidance on the problems of human relations in industry." The anti-union pronouncements at this conference were even more distinct than those of previous gatherings. "Employers shall deal directly with their employees either as individuals or as groups," but not through any unions affiliated to the A. F. of L. This rule remained the keystone in the American Plan arch. They sup- plemented this with the warning that "employers should not permit the initiative in handling the wage question to be taken out of their hands." The ban is definitely declared on all "out- side agitators," meaning representatives of the trade unions. And the union shop "must be looked upon as a form of in- dustrial pestilence which must be immediately cleaned up."
The Dallas conference, in November, 1926, under the aus- pices of the Dallas Open Shop Association, was even larger and more enthusiastic. Invitations to it informed the prospect that he would meet at the conference "the men who are on the firing line," and who "are making real progress in handling the biggest problem now before the American public — the labor problem." Again, "fighting the battles of the Open Shop, the American Shop, is a task big enough to command the attention of us all." Persons who might attend were told that they would return home, "laden with new enlightenment, renewed determination, ready and eager to do noble battle."
In invitations to this conference, the prospect's fears were played upon effectively. "The deadliest assaults of the enemy" — organized labor agitators — were referred to, and it
EMPLOYERS' ORGANIZATIONS 79
was asserted that "day and night without surcease, these enemies of American institutions are striking at the very foun- dations of our industrial peace, social unity and economic de- velopment." Some of the items on the Dallas program were the following:
1. "What Happened at Detroit," the story of the attack on William Green and the A. F. of L., by the various Detroit em- ployers' associations during the convention of the A. F. of L. in October, 1926.
2. "The Office-Holder and the Open Shop,"— how to make the men in public office "avowed allies to the cause."
3. "Industry's Responsibility in Legislation," — an analysis of A. F. of L. and progressive attempts to "communize and socialize America by legislative process."
4. "An Open Press and the Open Shop."
5. "Subversive Influences in our Schools."
6. "Selling the Open Shop to the Workman," — the technique used to "immunize workmen against that dreaded industrial disease — the closed shop."
7. "Restoring Industrial Freedom to a Closed Shop Com- munity,"—how to "storm the outposts, destroy the defenses," and thoroughly crush the unions.
Other discussions dealt with mobilizing the open shop forces of America, how to construct an open shop publicity program, reports on the growth of the non-union shop in various indus- tries, and lessons from the musicians' strike. The chairman of the conference declared that the battle for the non-union shop must be waged on the legislative as well as economic field, and tactics for defeating social legislation were discussed. This convention was attended by a larger number of executives from eastern open shop bodies, the National Association of Manufacturers and other national bodies being represented.
As noted above, the A. P. O. S. C. does little except to call the conferences, print proceedings, and act as a clearing house for its scattered association members. One of its regular ser-
80 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
vices is a Condensed Labor Report, several mimeographed sheets prepared monthly to inform members concerning the progress of the non-union shop. The form of these reports reminds one of the A. F. of L. organizer's reports which appear monthly in the American Federationist. They are paragraph digests of reports received from the secretaries of local associa- tions. A few typical extracts will show their content:
"November, 1926 — Joplin, Mo. Shortage of bricklayers. No strike for the last six years. About half of the general contrac- tors cooperating. The community itself is sold to the Open Shop.
Kansas City. Disturbances within the ranks of labor unionism which may result in a free-for-all among the leaders of the two factions."
The American Plan advocates always love to see internecine war in the unions. But the good news is not all for the em- ployer. From Ponca City, Okla., comes this message:
"Announcement comes that the Open Shop organization is dis- banded. Unofficial word comes at the same time that unions have come back and are restored to former power."
The editor adds his own note after this piece of bad news: "Query: Can any community afford to throw away its weapons of defense?"
II. ATTACKS ON THE UNIONS
CHAPTER IV
SOME METHODS AND PRACTICES OF EMPLOYERS' ASSOCIATIONS
OUR descriptions of certain local and national organizations of employers, of the more belligerent type, has given us some insight into the activities of this class of association. It might be possible to summarize these activities in a paragraph as does Professor Bonnett when he writes:
"The belligerent associations may fight the union in actual battles with machine guns ; it may oppose the union in legislative and political matters; it may combat all union strikes; it may carry on a continual propaganda against the union in every par- ticular or only against certain practices of the union; it may effectively blacklist all union members by means of a card index system; it may attempt to destroy all the sentimental appeal in the betterment activities of the union by doing welfare work; or it may combine a few or all of these activities in its general campaign against the union."
Or one could give an orderly list of association methods as does Robert F. Hoxie, in his indispensable book on Trade Unionism in the United States (page 190). Professor Hoxie lists twenty different types of activity carried on by the more militant employers' bodies. His list is pretty nearly complete. It is of interest, however, to note which methods have been re- sorted to most frequently in recent years. An examination of the literature of associations, chiefly of local ones, gives us con- crete instances of the various methods listed by Hoxie. Some associations issue tons of printed matter describing their activi-
81
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ties in great detail. Others are more modest (or secretive) and tell us very little concerning their methods. The extracts and examples which follow are chiefly from the recently issued lit- erature of a wide variety of local organizations and a few of broader scope. These methods of conduct and combat, of course, vary in character and degree depending upon the economic strength of the trade unions, if any, the state of the employment market, the leadership of the employers' group, and a number of other factors. Some associations have aban- doned the more provocative anti-union methods of 1920-21. Many of them by employing militant methods succeeded in liquidating unionism in their local field. They can now afford to be more generous and conciliatory — toward helpless non- union labor. However, there are still plenty of associations which might be described as militant and combative, in their daily practices as well as in their public pronouncements.
It ought to be clear to any person familiar with the indus- trial struggle that some of the activities of the associations are carried on, so to speak, underground. For example, an asso- ciation is not likely to announce in the newspapers that it is about to: plant a labor spy in a factory or a union, bribe a labor leader, frame up a business agent, establish a blacklist, exert pressure on a banker, import a gang of strike-breakers or sluggers, confer with a deputy sheriff or a police captain, ex- change "inside information" with a professional patriotic so- ciety, draw up an indictment against an agitator, financially aid a struck employer, encourage a dual union, "approach" a councilman or a legislator.
There are dozens of such association practices which, to say the least, are not widely advertised. Only a few of these are discussed in the following pages. The evidence concerning them is not easy to obtain unless one possesses an espionage service equal to that of the employers.
The more open activities of the employers3 associations are varied and numerous. A few of them which pertain particu-
SOME METHODS AND PRACTICES 83
larly to what might be described as labor and trade union rela- tions, are illustrated in the following pages. Most of them are given in the language of the association. Hence the abundant use of quotation.
If the average local militant employers' association were asked why it exists, the answer would be: "to solidify the busi- ness interests as a matter of community welfare, to assist fellow employers involved in trouble — chiefly labor trouble — to sup- port orderly government and law and order, to further the American Plan of employment, to secure industrial peace and tranquillity, to maintain sound relations and perpetuate pros- perity." These and similar statements would roll out from the enterprising executives, managers and publicists who head these organizations. But what specifically do they do in pur- suit of these hazy and general ends? That is a question which the following paragraphs may help us to answer.
An important function of the employers' association is to issue reports to its members warning them against the organiz- ing activities of the trade unions. For example, the Employers' Association of Denver issued a circular to its members in 1926, warning against the campaign begun by the Machinists', Sheet Metal Workers', Carpenters', Upholsterers', and Teamsters' and Chauffeurs' unions to organize the workers in the automobile and garage industry. It ends its appeal to manufacturers to be "prepared for whatever may come" by declaring, "organized labor must not get control of the industry, for it will mean an- other transportation strike as of 1922 with automobile trans- portation thrown in." The specter of the railroad shop crafts strike of 1922 still haunts the employers.
The Employers' Association of Kansas City is no less alarmed as it surveys the union campaigns in that city. In one of his recent circulars to "fellow citizens" the secretary of this association declares:
"Should we continue to be inactive and not alert to coming events, as surely as the sun shines, we will drift, be driven, yes,
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and rushed toward the intolerable English situation. . . . Can you not see that union labor, misguided by grafting leaders, has put that great country, the British Isles, out of business?"
After Soviet Russia, the blackest bogey useful to association executives in scaring contributions out of frightened American employers, is the labor solidarity exhibited in the British Gen- eral Strike of 1926.
Not only warnings of union campaigns, but recommendations and instructions as to how to meet them are contained in let- ters sent to members of these associations. On March 6, 1926, the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, a subsidiary of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, informed its members of a campaign to organize service stations. After describing the projected move of the unions, the letter says:
"It was voted at the meeting that the Chamber should recom- mend to its manufacturing members that they advise their dis- tributors and dealers that any attempt to change the open shop conditions in the service stations of their dealers can only result in injury to the public, the employee, the trade and the manu- facturing end of the industry."
Whereupon, the Director of Service of the Chrysler Motor Company mailed this letter as a part of the "Chrysler Confi- dential Bulletin" to all its dealers, distributors, and service sta- tions, together with a note saying that "the attached Bulletin reveals a very dangerous situation ... we solicit your keen- est efforts to maintain service stations as open shops." Pre- sumably, all the other motor car corporations connected with the N. A. C. C. warned their service station managers in like manner.
The National Association of Manufacturers is continually warning its constituents of the unionizing plans of the A. F. of L. It often carries stories in its publications headed, "New Drive for the Closed Shop," in which it analyzes the projected drives of the unions. In American Industries (September, 1925), it predicted a new drive of the unions to which it at-
SOME METHODS AND PRACTICES 85
tributed the following purposes: (i) To counteract and offset the growth of public opinion favorable to the open shop. (2) To secure "absolute union control" over certain large "key" cities. (3) To extend "strategic strength" of certain national unions. (4) to "demoralize the present harmony and satis- factory conditions enjoyed by employees." (5) To secure a foothold to organize the steel industry. (6) To regain ground lost in the struggle for the forty-four hour week, particularly in the typographical trades.
After this terrifying expose, the N. A. of M. organ informs us that for more than thirty years it has been the foremost proponent of the open shop: "We therefore present the above details as to the latest 'national drive' of the Closed Shop labor unions with the belief that such publicity will righteously fore- warn and forearm the Open Shop industries and associations throughout the country."
The N. A. of M. righteously warns not only its own members, but all employers' associations to be ready for the great labor drives, which the A. F. of L. is imagined to be plotting.
Funds to finance drives on unions are often raised by local associations either directly or through citizens' committees, law and order leagues, voters' leagues, and other bodies bearing names that give a more neutral and popular flavor to the cam- paign. The Milwaukee Employers' Council claims that it raised $20,000 for such a purpose in 1925 and planned to raise three or four times this amount the following year for its war on the socialists in that city. We have seen how a citizens7 committee in San Francisco, under the sponsorship of the local Industrial Association, raised nearly five million dollars in a series of drives, and how Cleveland's American Plan Associa- tion organized a citizens' committee to raise an equal amount for an attack on the building trades unions in that city. The St. Paul Citizens' Alliance has also been very successful in rais- ing funds. When it came into existence for the purpose of breaking a delivery and transportation strike in 1920, it raised
86 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
funds not only sufficient to accomplish its immediate purpose, but to carry the organization for several years.
An original way to raise money for anti-union campaigns was tried out in Seattle during the days of the open shop drives of 1919-21. The Associated Industries of Seattle instituted a policy among its members of writing no more agreements with unions. Funds were raised to support the employers in any strikes they might provoke by this policy. The employers went so far as to pledge themselves in case they signed an agreement with organized labor to forfeit one hundred dollars to every As- sociated Industries employer in their local trade or industry.
Militant appeals to employers to break off relations with unions are frequently made by local employ ers> associations, especially in communities where the building trades unions are still entrenched. The Employers' Association of Kansas City has issued particularly frantic appeals. An example is taken from a letter to employers dated February 5, 1926:
"Contractors, dislodge your shackles. Tear them from your hands of bondage. Say to the employee who is competent to fill the job, that I am to-day an independent American citizen; I will not longer deprive you of work because you fail to worship at the shrine of organized labor. Our Fathers suffered, bled and died to make this a free country. Why should I endorse the principles of union labor and refuse you employment? Here is your job, take it.
Give every man an equal chance. Contractors, architects and owners, call a conference and talk it over. 'Take the bull by the horns* and declare your independence.
Respectfully submitted,
(signed) H. H. ANDERSON,
Secretary."
Such an excited call to "freedom" may, of course, be the re- sult of weakness and frustration in the face of real union strength. Where employers have been successful in smashing unions, they have usually gone about it in a less heated and oratorical manner. When the money has been raised, they
SOME METHODS AND PRACTICES 87
have simply put it quietly to work in ways most effective for inducing the employer to drop his agreement with the unions.
Patronize the Open Shop
Urging employers to buy only non-union goods and to boy- cott union-made products are very common tactics in the war on the union shop conducted by local associations. The Mil- waukee Employers' Council in 1926 issued a "manifesto" to its members urging them, in the interests of a campaign against the electrical workers' union, to patronize only open shop elec- trical contractors. "We know what we are talking about," it declared, "and we are giving our manufacturers fair warning that unless they see fit to do something about it without delay, there will soon be no open shop electrical contractors in build- ing construction to patronize."
The use of the business man's boycott to maintain the "American Idea" is illustrated also in the work of the St. Paul Citizens' Alliance. John P. Frey, editor of the Holders Jour- nal, in his book on The Labor Injunction, tells how this alliance instituted a boycott against a certain firm of plumbing con- tractors because it had refused to place an "open shop" show card in its window. The plumbing concern applied for an in- junction to prevent the boycott by the alliance, but the court sustained the alliance in its right to enforce the boycott. This type of boycott is very common among local associations.
The Employers' Association of Detroit as we have noted is no less aggressive in its open shop appeals. It ran the follow- ing full-page advertisement in the Detroit Saturday Night of July 31, 1926 (Twelfth Annual Open Shop Number), telling the business man how he could aid in the battle with unionism:
"The Open Shop has made Detroit a great industrial center. Detroit needs the Open Shop if she is to continue to advance. What can Mr. Average Citizen do to promote the welfare of Detroit and incidentally of his fellows, his family, and himself?
88 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
The answer is a simple one :
Property owners specify the Open Shop and employ only local contractors who are fighting for progress.
Purchasers of goods buy only from Open Shop producers.
If you need printing see an Open Shop printer.
Manufacturers buy patterns and castings from open pattern shops and foundries.
Think Open Shop !
Talk Open Shop!
Yes, and vote for those who support the Open Shop."
The "don't patronize" appeals are phrased much like the union label "ads" appearing in the journals of A. F. of L. unions, only with the exactly opposite purpose, as the "unfair list" to the union is a "fair list" in the eyes of the employers' association.
Sometimes the association member is asked to act as a volun- teer evangelist for the open shop, just as the union member is exhorted by his local central body to show his union faith by patronizing and encouraging union shops. In May, 1925, the Associated Employers of Indianapolis addressed its members through its publication, the Digest:
"Out-of-town organizers of the International Alliance of Hotel and Restaurant Employees' Union have been in the city for a few weeks, endeavoring to unionize the cooks and waiters employed in the hotels, cafeterias and soft drink places. It is reported that a union charter was recently granted to sixty-five of these newly organized workers. In patronizing downtown eating places, members should encourage the managements to refrain from recognizing the union which has been instigated entirely by non-resident agitators to foment discord and strife among these employers and employees."
Not only in food places, but in their patronage of coal mines, the Indianapolis association urged its members to support non- union business. In its Digest of December, 1923, it gave the names of nine non-union coal operators' associations in West Virginia and Kentucky, and asked its members to "communi- cate directly with these organizations and give the names of
SOME METHODS AND PRACTICES 89
your local coal dealers with whom the operators can negotiate for a wider use and distribution of coal not mined under union conditions."
In addition to advertisements, circular letters are used. The Association of Employing American Plan Printers of the Print Trades Association of Cincinnati, wrote to a list of buyers of printing on June i, 1925, promising that "no portion of your money" spent in an open shop plant "is diverted to the union agitator," and that "plants holding membership in the Print Trades Association do not deal with labor unions . . . your best interests are served by placing your printing orders with an Open Shop."
The Blacklist
Employers' associations often keep a blacklist of union men. It usually dovetails with a spy system, an employment bureau, or a clearance card system. An excellent example of its em- ployment by a general local association in an effort to break a local of the Teamsters', Chauffeurs', and Truck Drivers' Union is presented in the following letter from the Employers' Asso- ciation of Denver. It shows that this association had employed a stool pigeon to spy on the union, and that through his ser- vices a blacklist had been established. The letter which was first reproduced in the Colorado Labor Advocate, November 5, 1925, follows in part:
"To Members :
In order to successfully combat the growth of unionism in Denver — especially in the teaming end of industry — it is neces- sary that the Employers' Association has the full support and co- operation of its members. This is imperative. We are doing everything in our power to secure information for our members, but it must be understood that this sort of work calls for dis- cretion and the delicate handling of the situation. One hasty move might arouse suspicion and thus spoil everything. How- ever, our investigator has been instructed to work as fast as ad- visable in order that we may be in a position to make some definite move.
90 AMERICANIZATION OF LABOR
... If a man is discharged from your employ, kindly advise us by phone. Before hiring new men, call us up and we will be glad to help you. By following this procedure, a great deal of time, money and trouble will be saved. We urge our members to help us in this way for unless you do, we are greatly hampered in our effort to clear up the situation.
We give below a list of the names we have been able to pro- cure up to date, of those who have joined the local in question."
(Here followed the names of twenty-one union members.)
The blacklisting of union men, particularly those who have had something to do with strikes, is so common as to be a part of the accepted procedure of the anti-union corporation. In the next chapter we shall refer to many corporations that use some sort of under-cover method to keep their plants clear of union agitators. Here we are interested only in such instances as show the relation of the employers' association to the black- list tactics. We have seen how the American Plan Association of Cleveland, and other such bodies have built up a blacklist as a part of their employment bureau system.
Other local associations with most effective blacklists are the local units of the National Metal Trades Association, such as the Philadelphia Metal Trades Association. It keeps a com- plete card catalog of every worker in the city, with the union men and the "agitators" appropriately noted. Any member of the association sending the name of a job applicant to head- quarters, can secure an immediate check on the worker's record in union and political activities. It also follows the usual prac- tice of the National Metal Trades' Association of keeping a list of the "reliable" non-union men who can be counted on to assist in strike-breaking. They are given certificates or dis- missal cards.
Blacklists are frequently instituted in connection with open shop drives by groups of employers covering all the industries of several adjacent cities. For example, during the campaign against the unions in 1921 the chief employers of Moline and
SOME METHODS AND PRACTICES 91
Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa, organized a cen- tral employment agency with a blacklist. If a worker was dropped from his job in any factory, he was automatically shut out from all the factories in the other cities.1
During the same year many local employers' associations, such as the Philadelphia Textile Manufacturers' Association, carried on a thorough "housecleaning" of union workers. This organization represented companies employing about 225,000 workers in the textile mills of that city. It weeded out all those workers that could be described as "trouble makers" or "radi- cals." A file was established and a number of "industrial ser- vice bureaus" — labor espionage corporations — were employed to identify the agitators. Active shop organizers in many of the local textile unions were discharged during the drive and could secure jobs in no other textile mills in the city.
Perhaps the best illustration of the way a blacklist bureau is operated through the employment office of a local industrial association, can be found in an affidavit made by John Sher- man, of Garfield, N. J., on April 23, 1926, at the request of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, of New York, in connection with efforts to settle the Passaic textile strike. Sherman swore that he had worked for the Industrial Council of Passaic Wool Manufac- turers, in the capacity of clerk, interpreter, and investigator from 1909 to 1926. He affirmed in part:
"My duties consisted of obtaining from applicants for jobs full particulars concerning former occupation, why they left their former jobs, how much they have been earning, description of the person and habits of the person. This application with the said information was then submitted to Mr. S. I. Szotkowski, who was the manager of the Employment Bureau of the Industrial Wool Council. The information which the Bureau required con- cerning applicant's previous record was obtained by sending to his former employers a blank known as Form No. 2 with the request that they fill it out and return it. On the basis of the application and the information derived by means of Form No. 2,
t1 Printers' Ink, June 2, 1921, p. 4.
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we would determine whether the applicant was likely to be a trouble maker. If so, our instructions were to refuse to give him an employment card. In 1925 and 1926, the method was adopted of giving the applicant a card, but indicating by a secret number system^ what objections there were to him, or her. The employ- ment clerks at the various mills hired or refused to hire, depend- ing upon the code number which appeared on this card, known as Form 3.
I know that each of the members of the Wool Council had detectives and spies in the mills who were charged with the duty of watching the employees and talking to them, and of reporting to the management any actions or language which might indicate the possibility of his causing trouble. These detectives and spies were especially instructed to report any person who complained about his wages or working conditions, whether he ever men- tioned forming a union, whether he worked steadily at his ma- chine, whether he had any ill-feeling towards the company, whether he was a crank on the labor question, whether the ma- chines were kept running to the fullest capacity, whether favor- itism was shown to any employees by the foreman, etc. When- ever any person was discharged or left his job of his own accord, I would receive a report from the mill where he had been em- ployed setting forth by means of a code number the reason or reasons why he or she had been dismissed or had left.
If any person came to the office of the Wool Council with a quit-card which did not indicate any reason for his discharge, we were required to call up the mills he had left and inquire why he had been discharged. After a man had once been dismissed by one of the members of the Wool Council, and he again sought employment, we would give him a card, but would indicate thereon in code what offense or offenses he had been charged with committing in the other mill or mills. If any of the mem- bers of the Council were badly in need of help and a person applied for a job whose card indicated that his or her record was not clear, the mill would apply to the Council's office for a full report of that person's activities during his or her employment in the various woolen mills, which report we would furnish. If any person was guilty of any serious infractions of the rules or policies of the member mills, it was virtually impossible for him to obtain employment with any other of the member woolen mills. No applicant for a job was ever accepted at any of these woolen mills without a card from the Wool Council.
SOME METHODS AND PRACTICES 93
Many applicants who found it impossible to obtain a job came to the office of the Wool Council and inquired for the reasons for their being blacklisted. My instructions from my superiors were never to admit to any person that he had been blacklisted. I was instructed to make up my own excuses in each case why the man or woman had been unable to obtain a job."
Other examples of an effective blacklist have been brought to light in recent years in the lumber industry of the Northwest, in the copper mines of Montana, and among certain shipping concerns on the west coast. All the workers hired by the cop- per companies of Butte are required to carry a "rustling card" from a central employment office. No cards are given to known union men or to any sort of worker suspected of "agitation." The Shipowners' Association of the Pacific Coast requires each seaman to carry a Certificate and Discharge Book in which his conduct is noted. Workers known to be active in the union are unable to secure these industrial passports. The system also ties in with the recruiting service of the United States Shipping Board.2
The secretary of the Open Shop Employing Printers' Asso- ciation of Chicago, in a confidential letter to non-union em- ployers early in 1925, urged that "every one should be ex- tremely careful at this time about hiring new men. Make sure of their records. While doing this don't forget to keep track of your present employees — the unions are very active. Keep strangers out of your plant unless they are cleared with permission from this office. Take all practical precautions. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." The same secretary, in an article in an employers' journal, reported that this employment clearance bureau has 50,000 workers' names
2 Late in 1926 the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision declaring that the shipowners' registration and blacklist practice was illegal. The decision developed out of a suit filed in 1922 by Cornelius Anderson, a member of the Seamen's Union of America, against the Shipowners' Association of the Pacific Coast and the Pacific-American Steamship Association. (47 Supreme Court, 125.)
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on file, "and the employer is sure that the workman sent out by the employment bureau is a good reliable worker." 3
Political and Legislative Activity
Many local associations devote much time to attacks on any expression of labor sentiment in political life. In some cities, as in Cleveland, it may be a violent attack on progressives of the 1924 La Follette stamp; in others, it may be a resistance to the communist political strength; in others, a fight on a vigor- ous socialist element. In Milwaukee, where the socialists have been in the city administration for some years, certain wage ordinances and laws restricting the use of industrial spies proved to be a considerable "hardship" for the local Employers' Council and stimulated them to political action.
When the business men of a community grow sluggish and indifferent, it is the function of the local association to arouse them and spur them to action politically. Thus the Employers' Association of Kansas City appeals to its constituents in De- cember, 1926:
"We should unite our efforts and have repealed certain statutes that have been enacted solely in the interest of union labor and greatly to the detriment of Industry and Commerce. We should pass a law that will give every citizen 'the right to work* in any legitimate occupation. This state should have an 'anti-picketing law/ . . .
We will soon be required to meet conditions of a new year. A new Legislature will be convened. We all know that labor will continue to make new demands, seek increased advantages and dominations, through legislative enactments.
What do our business men anticipate in new legislation in the interest of industry and fair dealings? Are they satisfied with present conditions?
Organized labor will have many committees stationed at Jeffer- son City looking after labor's interest during legislative sessions.
What are we going to do ?"
3 Manufacturers' News, December 26, 1925.
SOME METHODS AND PRACTICES 95
The Associated Employers of Indianapolis can boast of very definite achievements on the policital field. In the annual address and report of its officers in 1924, they inform the mem- bership that
"in legislative matters during sessions of Congress and the state General Assembly, the organization has been active in keeping its members informed on pernicious proposals affecting the inter- est of employers and employees. ... At times also the Associa- tion has had occasion to inquire into city ordinances, and has helped its members defeat some such proposals, while assisting them also to secure the enactment of needed ordinances such as the 'anti-picketing' and 'anti-banner carrying' ordinances. . . . As a result of our Association's 'objectives,' Indianapolis has ac- quired national recognition as a city of industrial peace."
The association was active also in the passage of a so-called "anti-Bolshevik" law in Indiana. Bennett, in his chapter on this association,4 describes some of its legislative activities:
"The A. E. I. opposes legislation designed to create a 'new order of things'; it desires 'constructive legislation and the en- forcement of laws to check the radicalism of the A. F. of L. and the Bolshevists,' on the grounds that . . . 'There has been too much rampant, privileged and unbridled license and abuse of the "right of free speech and free assembly" on the part of radicalists who seek to achieve aggrandizement through the physical over- throw and destruction of our Republican form of government/ "
This association opposed the Plumb Plan of railroad control as an attempt to "sovietize" American institutions. It has also advocated a state constabulary bill and has cooperated with national employers' associations in urging a federal "Anti- Strike Bill on Railroads."
Most of the local and state employers' associations direct their legislative drives against workmen's compensation, acts — the Federated Industries of Washington has been particularly vigilant in this matter — and other legislation supported by labor, such as the child labor amendment, old age relief and
4 Supra tit., p. 499.
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the federal maternity act. To achieve their ends they employ professional lobbyists, publicity agents, and other modern prop- aganda methods. Ex-Senator William M. Butler, President Coolidge's sponsor and spokesman, and chairman of the Re- publican National Committee, laid the foundation of his textile fortune by acting as lobbyist for an anti-union cotton manu- facturers' association. Other national figures have begun their careers as political heelers for employers' organizations.
The Utah Associated Industries in a self-congratulatory mood observes that nearly seventy lines of business are repre- sented in its organization and that at a recent meeting, repre- sentatives of twenty-five of the state's biggest lines of business "came together under the leadership of the Utah Associated Industries to anticipate the immediate needs in legislation. . . . With the functioning of this outstanding intelligence is it likely that legislation will be passed detrimental to the state? It is hardly conceivable." The kind of legislation here referred to includes the minimum wage, old age pensions, and other pro- gressive measures endorsed by organized labor.
Probably no state organization in the United States has opposed all labor legislation with more vehemence and with greater resources than the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Asso- ciation. The historical records of the Pennsylvania State Fed- eration of Labor are little more than the story of bitter and unending conflict with this powerful employers' group, whose president and chief lobbyist is Joseph R. Grundy, a wealthy textile manufacturer. No underhanded method of the skilled legislative manipulator has been left untried by this associa- tion in its fight to prevent the passage of laws favored by labor. Not only has the association spent millions on legisla- tion and legislators, it has taken a leading part in primary and general elections. In 1926, for example, it was tied up with scandals in the notorious and costly struggle between the Mellon and the Vare political machines. In this fight, according to Labor, Washington organ of the railroad brother-
SOME METHODS AND PRACTICES 97
hoods, the association had a "war chest" of $7,000,000, which was available for use by Grundy and his gang. This was not all spent in this campaign, but an investigation by the United States Senate revealed that nearly $500,000 had been advanced to assist the Mellon machine. Grundy, himself, admitted it, and as Labor observed, "no one believes that represents any- where near the total of his expenditures." Part of this money, it may be remembered, was used to distribute a letter en- dorsing the Grundy candidate, to which the name of William Green, president of the A. F. of L., had been forged.
In appealing to his class to support the Republican candi- dates in a certain Pennsylvania political campaign, Grundy tells the business man to contribute, "because you have en- joyed much" — through the tariff and other business measures benefiting the manufacturers.
Another manufacturers' lobby, and one of the most sinister ever set up in a state legislature, is that of the Associated Industries of New York. In 1920 it was exposed by the New York State League of Women Voters, after a thorough in- vestigation. The league found that the "dominant obstruc- tionist" to constructive social and industrial measures at Albany was "an organization of some 1,600 members, the so-called up-state Associated Manufacturers and Merchants, which has headquarters at Buffalo and which is just now changing its name to the Associated Industries of New York State. We are reliably informed that as early as last August, this Association had raised a fund of between $100,000 and $200,000 for propaganda purposes and that this fund has been used for the support of the so-called New York League for Americanism, an organization which, though extremely active in 'accelerating' public opinion, has, in fact, no patriotic nor constructive objects beyond the particular and selfish ends of its sponsors," 5
5 Report and Protest to the Governor, the Legislature and the People of the State of New York, by the New York State League of Women Voters, 1920, p. 4.
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This League for Americanism, financed by an inner circle of prominent members of the Associated Industries, was found to be nothing but a propaganda organization playing on the patriotic sentiments of the people to arouse opposition to health insurance and other social legislation supported by unions. As one manufacturer of Amsterdam, N. Y., put it, in commenting confidentially on the purpose of the league: "You know, the Americanism part of it is a joke. It was organized primarily to kill off health insurance and other such fool legislation. ... I ought to know, I helped to organize it." (Ibid. p. 17.)
It is of interest to note that the same Associated Industries of New York is still raising huge sums to fight labor legisla- tion. In 1927 it paid the National Industrial Conference Board $20,000 to prepare a brief to be presented to the state Industrial Survey Commission. The brief was a lengthy assault on practically all the social and labor legislation passed in New York state in recent years.
Some state employers' associations, in their desire to kill all social legislation, go so far as to condemn every organization that supports it. The Ohio Manufacturers' Association even warns its members against giving any financial support to the Ohio State University, the Young Women's Christian Associa- tion, and the National Consumers' League without the provi- sion that such monies shall not be used to further legislation. The program of legislation feared by the Ohio employers is described in their own words:
"the short (and shorter) workday with the eight-hour day as the maximum in all employment, minimum wag-e (with com- mission administration and enforcement), old age pensions, un- employment compensation or insurance, one day's rest in seven, no night work for women, etc., etc., and the establishment of the employer's responsibility for living and housing conditions."
Other state bodies, such as the California Manufacturers' Association, in their war on minimum wage legislation, have
SOME METHODS AND PRACTICES 99
employed dummies to bring suits under the law. A young woman employed by a labor detective agency was secured by the California association in 1924 to bring such a suit, claiming that she was willing to work for $6 a week, while the law called for $9 minimum, and alleging that her consti- tutional rights had been violated. Such tactics have fre- quently been employed by employers' associations in their fight against legislation introduced by the unions.
Another powerful lobbying organization covering a particular industry, and typical of a number of others always on guard to protect the interests of the capitalists as against organized labor in a special line of business, is the recently organized National Electrical Manufacturers' Association whose presi- dent and leading figure is Gerard Swope of the General Electric Co. This new "union" of electrical manufacturers was formed out of a merger of the Electric Power Club, the Electrical Manufacturers Council, and the Associated Manufacturers of Electrical Supplies. Its influence on legislation affecting the electrical industry is greater than that of any other body in the country.
The most consistent and continuous war on labor legislation is made on a national scale by the National Association of Manufacturers, working through a sub-organization, the Na- tional Industrial Council, "a federation of national, state and local industrial associations organized under the leadership of the National Association of Manufacturers to foster construc- tive industrial legislation and to oppose enactment of class laws." The council is composed of 308 national, state, and local industrial associations, and has a membership of more than 75,000 manufacturers who have in their employ more than 10,000,000 workers. According to a statement on the work of the council published by one of its affiliated organiza- tions, the Manufacturers7 and Merchants' Association of Ore- gon, "no other organization in the country wields so wide an influence or is so able to render service to its members." The
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long record of the National Association of Manufacturers and its subsidiary is given in great detail by Bonnett (supra cit., p. 3 72 ) . It reveals them as the most tireless opponents of eight- hour laws, workmen's compensation acts, child labor laws, and any legislation that in any way menaces the rights of prop- erty.6
The influence of the employers' associations on party poli- tics and party programs and platforms is too long a story to come within the compass of this volume. Illustrations of the more obvious political activities, such as support of certain business candidates and opposition to labor candidates, can be cited from the experience of every association. One of the chief aims of the associations has been to prove to candidates for public office that the "labor vote" amounts to nothing, and to encourage the candidate to pay no attention to the threats of union committees engaged in the periodical game of "re- warding friends and punishing enemies." Bonnett illustrates this practice in discussing the National Founders' Association (p. 91). He also gives a good illustration of the other political activities of this and similar associations, in the following para- graph:
"In a political way, the Association has, moreover, pointed out that the political power of the unions in elections is pure fiction and it has condemned the Farmers' Non-Partisan League for its Socialistic and Bolshevistic character, as well as certain con- gressmen for their cowardice."
The same association has also commended innumerable governors, mayors, and judges for their "strong stand" in suppressing strikes, preventing picketing, issuing injunctions, etc. Like other industrial associations, it has also brought its influence to bear on political platforms and secured the inser- tion of anti-labor planks and provisions favorable to the em- ployers' interests.
6 Robert Hunter : Labor in Politics, p. 55.
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How far these associations have gone, as associations, in financing political campaigns and candidates, it is difficult to say. Though corporate contributions to party treasuries are prohibited by federal law and various state laws, there is, of course, nothing to prevent an individual connected with a corporation or an employers' association from contributing generously to the party which backs the employers' legislative program. Or, like Harry Sinclair, head of the Sinclair Oil Corporation, or Samuel Insull, the public utilities magnate, he may prefer to play safe and to contribute something to both party campaign funds. Although the financing of political campaigns is not an expressed function of local, state or national employers' associations, we have noted, as in the case of Grundy of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Asso- ciation, that an officer of an association may play a leading role in the collection of party campaign funds from individual members of the association.
In conclusion, we may note that the chief direct expendi- tures made by employers' associations for political purposes are made at the point of production — at the legislative as- sembly, when the laws are being passed. The National Asso- ciation of Manufacturers, for example, keeps its expensive lobby in Washington for the sole purpose of bringing pressure to bear on congressmen and senators to pass legislation favor- able to the business interests. State associations naturally confine their anti-labor political activities largely to the state legislatures, and the local associations are always busy electing — or influencing after they are elected — councilmen, aldermen, and other local officials. What the results of all these political activities are — at least in terms of strike-breaking — we shall discuss in the next chapter.
CHAPTER V OTHER METHODS OF ATTACK
Labor Spies
AN indispensable adjunct to many of the above-mentioned anti-union activities is some form of labor espionage. This seems to combine very easily not only with the direct union- smashing tactics of the corporations and the employers' asso- ciations, but also with the more indirect tactics to be discussed later in this volume. The labor spy is used to prevent and discourage unionism. He is used to break strikes. He is frequently a propagandist for the company union.
Special "services" supplying "under-cover men" to cor- porations and employers' associations are still thriving in the land. Although they reached their pinnacle of prosperity dur- ing the days of the post-war open shop campaigns, they have by no means disappeared in later years. Like the employing class generally, they have adapted themselves to the changing economic situation and the "newer tactics" of labor-baiting. From out-and-out detective agencies many of them have developed into "industrial service and harmonization bureaus." For example, the "Sherman Detective Agency," issuing naked reports on how to break strikes, became the "Sheririan Service, Inc.," specializing in the "man element" in industry. Still later it changed its name to the "Sherman Corporation, En- gineers," production experts and company union installment! technicians. Other spy corporations have in recent years passed through a similar metamorphosis.
The Sherman Corporation is an outstanding example of the more prosperous espionage services. Although its adver-
102
OTHER METHODS OF ATTACK 103
tising copy assures us, "We are entirely alone in our field," and, "We have no competition," there are certainly a number of agencies, such as the Corporations (International) Auxiliary Co., that press it hard. Sherman claims clients in thirty-three states with more than fifty industries involved, in addition to certain railroad companies, one of which is known to have used fifty Sherman under-cover operatives on one job, their chief work having been the establishment of a company union.
The Sherman salesmen boast that the company has done some $25,000,000 worth of business in the last few years. Some of the Sherman clients that have helped to make up this total have been the Kirschbaum Clothing Co., Klotz Silk Co., Bell Telephone Co., Standard Roller Bearing Co., Phila- delphia Silk Manufacturing Co., Saquoit Silk Mills — all of Philadelphia — and the American Sugar Refining Co., American Woolen Co., S. S. White Dental Co., Sperry Gyroscope Co., Illinois Steel Co. and the Steel and Tube Co. of America, besides a number of Paterson silk mills and certain companies represented in the New Bedford Cotton Manufacturers' Asso- ciation. In their campaigns to defeat trade unionism they have all added to the profits of the Sherman company.
Sherman claims to be the "Largest Engineering Organization of its kind in the world" with a "million-dollar engineering staff." In one of its recent booklets, 439 Industrial Problems^ Analyzed, this corporation describes its functions as: "i. Man Engineering, 2. Production Engineering, 3. The Sherman Method." The Sherman method is the under-cover operative method, the "invisible and unobtrusive service" as one of the Sherman business-getters describes it. Labor spies are placed in the factory and in the trade union and the "attitudes" of the workers are "molded constructively" until a perfect force of non-union, boss-worshiping strike-breakers is produced.
Sherman has made millions out of this invisible service and his "satisfied clients" cover the country. He himself writes for journals such as Printers' Ink, Manufacturers' News, In-
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dm trial Management, Manufacturers' Record and Textile World, while his spat-wearing salesmen speak on "industrial counsel" before the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Case Business School. The labor spy practitioner thus worms his way into the personnel profession.
The Corporations Auxiliary Co. runs a close second to Sherman. Like its rival, it uses a number of names to dis- guise its employment department. It places operatives in clients' factories and issues confidential daily, weekly and monthly reports from its various offices throughout the country. Like Sherman, it can boast of speedy union liquidation where its remedies have been applied. In a confidential report to clients issued by its Buffalo office in 1926, it tells of an un- named client in Pennsylvania who "advises of great help derived through our service. He operates a foundry on an open shop basis, but most of the molders are card men. A new production system was resisted by all employees. Several of our representatives (the spies, R. W. D.) were placed among the men and through their leadership and propaganda work the men came to like the system. . . . The Union (we are then told) is being gradually forgotten."
Another instance of the skill of this spy concern in disposing of trade unions is related in a report from the same office which tells us that "a 100 per cent organized plant of 425 employees operating with an agreement with a large Inter- national Union employed our service, using only two operatives. Eight months later it was an open shop. . . . Most forgot to say this was done without a strike or a lockout."
The appeal of the spy company to the prospective client is graphically stated: "If you could don overalls and go to some particular department of your plant to-morrow morning you would do it and learn all the whys and wherefores of some situation. You cannot do that. We can do it for you by assigning one of our skilled and capable representatives. Let us help you overcome that problem."
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The Corporations Auxiliary Co. claims that it has been in the business for thirty years and that it never has less than 1,000 men on its operative lists. The service costs the client $150 and up per month, depending on the number of spies employed.
Many employers' associations, as we have observed, run their own under-cover services — as an aid to their blacklists — and do not employ the outside "engineering corporations." Such industrial associations as the National Clay Products Industries Association, for example, have their own spies or "staff representatives," who keep a sharp lookout for union activities in the plants of the companies affiliated to the asso- ciation. The National Metal Trades' Association also operates a secret service which "has enabled it to know most of the union plans before they could be put into operation." By the use of this service "it keeps agitation out of the shops of its members." x
Corporations using labor spies are frequently those that have attempted to cultivate a reputation for liberality in their "labor relations." Many of them have introduced the person- nel devices to be discussed later in this volume. Certain companies, for example, that have talked blithely of "industrial democracy" and "representation in industry" have at the same time stationed under-cover men among their employees for the purpose of forestalling trade unionism and keeping the company union "sold" to the workers. The spy agencies have even gone so far in some instances as to aid in the installation of company union plans. Among the many company union concerns known to have employed labor spies are the following railroads: Pennsylvania, New York, New Haven and Hartford, Long Island, Santa Fe, Boston and Maine, Atlantic Coast Line, Great Northern, Pittsburgh and Lake Erie, Delaware and Lackawanna, and the Union Pacific. Other company- unionized corporations infested with labor spies are the Inter-
1 Bonnett: op. cit., p. no.
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borough Rapid Transit Co., the Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Co., the International Paper Co., Armour & Co., Sheffield Farms Co., Amoskeag Manufacturing Co., Western Union, Wheeling Steel Corporation, Bethlehem Steel Corpora- tion, DuPont deNemours & Co., Phelps Dodge Corporation, Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co., Pacific Mills, Washburn-Crosby Co., Forstmann & Huffmann Co., Pullman Co., Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and the various Standard Oil companies. Some of them have their own intra-plant spy systems. Others employ outside agencies for the purpose.
In Sidney Howard's The Labor Spy — the standard work on the subject — we have a thorough and entertaining study of the under-cover man in action, how he is trained and instructed, how he reports and just what he does to earn his extra com- pensation from the agency. Since this work was published, a number of strikes, such as the Passaic strike of 1926, have witnessed the employment of strike-breaking spies on a scale equal to that of any of the strikes of earlier periods. In a strike like the one at Passaic, where the leadership was in the hands of radicals, we saw the mill owners paying out thousands of dollars to so-called "radical experts" who cashed in on their familiarity with the figures and phrases of "left wing" movements. The Passaic bosses had a number of these rene- gades on their payroll for the purpose of discrediting the early leadership of the strike; but the effort was comparatively fruitless.
In more conservatively conducted strikes, where the under- cover professional strike-breakers cannot play the anti-"red" game, attempts are usually made to provoke violence. Strike- breakers and "American Plan workmen" are imported, union leaders are sometimes bribed or bought off, and thugs and gangsters are used to attack the workers. These tactics are of course used in strikes no matter what the leadership. But in conservatively directed A. F. of L. strikes the "radical experts" are missing. Hence cruder methods are employed.
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Two of the most ruthless strike-breaking services using these methods are the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, operating chiefly against the mine workers in West Virginia, and the crew of "professionals" under the direction of "Black Jack" Jerome, who recently rallied his agents to break the carpenters' strike in San Francisco. William J. Burns has also had a hand in many labor struggles and employs a fair number of "industrials." Some of his most conspicuous under-cover operations have been against the International Holders' Union, the International Association of Machinists, and the western copper miners. His industrial service, he claims, discovers "which employees are disloyal and undesirable fomenters of unjustified dissatisfaction." It secures information "which makes it possible for an executive to weed out the dissatisfied." A typical Burns operation is described in the American Labor Year Book, 1926:
"Labor espionage developments during 1925 included tricking a picket during a strike of automobile mechanics in Joliet, 111., into accompanying a Burns operative to a struck garage where the Burns man lit a bomb and told the striker to run. Immedi- ately the picket was set upon by four Burns operatives who shot him in the leg. A local policeman discovered the planted bomb and the first operative hiding in the shadows. The picket was released the next day, but the frame-up later appeared so trans- parent that warrants for the arrest of all five Burns men were issued. They had already left the city."
Incidents like this are not uncommon in American strikes and organizing campaigns. Labor espionage is the mother of violence, and altogether one of the most profitable professions patronized by the employers in their wars on the trade unions.2
2 For further reading on labor spies, see S. Howard, The Labor Spy; J. E. Spielman, The Stoolpigeon; International Molders' Union of North America, Transcript of Proceedings of Special Committee Appointed to Try James C. Cronin; Interchurch World Movement. Public Opinion and the Steel Strike of 1919.
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Strike-Breaking
There is probably not a single militant employers' asso- ciation that has not at one time or another assisted in or directed the breaking of a strike, or the demoralization of a union-building campaign. Of course, many national em- ployers' associations, such as 'the National Metal Trades' Asso- ciation, the National Founders' Association, and the National Erectors' Association, have elaborate systems to combat strikes.
The local employers' association in its rules or by-laws usually promises general assistance to members involved in strikes. A booklet issued to members of the 'Employers' Asso- ciation of Detroit describes this function:
"In the event of a strike, if examination warrants, the affected member or group is given all possible assistance. The situation is thoroughly investigated and those involved are advised as to the proper course of action. The moral support of other em- ployers is secured, aid is given in rebuilding the working force, in providing plant protection, and in instituting legal proceedings should such steps be necessary."
"Rebuilding the working force" means the furnishing of strike-breakers, usually through the association's "free em- ployment bureau." These employment bureaus are used by almost all local associations. As we have noted, the blacklist, when one is maintained, is usually the property of the em- ployment office. No employers' association has ever operated successfully in strike-breaking work without some form of employment bureau through which non-union men could be directed to non-union jobs, or to jobs where employers were engaged in struggles with striking workers.
Describing the "free employment bureau" of the Associated Employers of Indianapolis, Bonnett says: "By the use of the bureau the employer rarely receives other than peaceable and qualified workmen," meaning, without doubt, workers who
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are regarded as immune to the teachings of labor unionism. Concerning the National Metal Trades' Association, he writes: "It operates local employment bureaus in twenty- three differ- ent cities for the benefit of its members in keeping agitators and other undesirables out of the shops of its members."
A similar bureau is maintained by the Employing Printers' Association of America, which furnishes non-union workers to its own members, as well as to the members of the Inland Daily Press Association, an organization of 246 newspapers with a combined circulation of four million copies. According to the secretary of the latter organization, speaking in May, 1926, "This means that if you have a strike on your hands they'll fill your shop with printers." He further explained to his members at this meeting that "we're sitting pretty on the labor question as we have connections (presumably for the same purpose — the furnishing of strike-breakers) with the Open Shop League of Philadelphia," as well as with other employment bureaus in the printing industry of Indianapolis and other cities.
This Employing Printers' Association of America has de- fined itself as a "mutual labor insurance association" and boasts that it renders "prompt, substantial assistance and sustained support" in case of "labor-union interference." It boasts of the "overwhelming defeat" it brought upon the printing trades union in 1921 when, it claims, it converted 1,500 union shops into non-union shops so that "the com- mercial branch of the printing industry is to-day preponder- antly independent," meaning; non-union. It says it is "or- ganized in a way that enables us to handle labor difficulties quickly and successfully."
Association employment bureaus usually attempt to make the public understand that they are giving "free Americans free employment in free America under fair conditions." If this is the case, it is fair to ask the associations why they so bitterly oppose the establishment of free public employment
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bureaus. This would relieve them of the expense of operating their own bureaus. But it would not permit them to operate a blacklist, to choose non-union men, to intimidate trade unionists and above all to break strikes. Their blanket argument against the establishment of state employment bureaus is that the latter are "socialistic' ' in tendency. It may be noted, in this connection, that most of the private employ- ment bureaus of the associations, such as the one established by the Employers' Association of Detroit, were created orig- inally to furnish strike-breakers in a specific strike. Having proved their value in such an emergency, the bureaus are usually retained for regular service to open shop employers.
Strike insurance is another form of service offered by some employers' associations. It was used by the Dayton Em- ployers' Association in its more militant days and many other organizations of employers have experimented with it. Special companies for this purpose have been organized at one time or another by persons identified with employers' associations. Sometimes the "strike benefit" for the employer will be paid out of a sort of "defense fund" which has been built up especially for the purpose of fighting strikes. The National Metal Trades' Association and other national industrial asso- ciations have established this practice very successfully.
The special service companies furnishing strike insurance to corporations have had their ups and downs. In 1921 the business received a setback when the Employers' Mutual Insurance and Service Company went on the financial rocks. But other companies, such as the American Employers, Incorporated, have done a similar business among corporations and employers' associations.
A somewhat novel strike-breaking method was employed by the Illinois Manufacturers' Association during a miners' strike in 1925. The secretary, John M. Glenn, announced that members of the manufacturers' association had begun a boy-
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cott of clothing, food, fuel, and other necessities for the miners. Glenn made public a letter he had received from a member-firm which read, "I have held up every order that comes from a mining community and I will continue to hold up such orders so long as the strike is on." This method of literally starving out workers by a sort of boycott has also been used by the operators' associations in the West Virginia coal fields.
During a union campaign to organize the stage hands, musicians, operators, and bill posters of a certain theater in Kansas City, the Employers' Association of that city suggested an original plan to help the owner of the theater win the strike: "Would it not be proper," the association asked, in one of its circular letters to members, "for employers to assist and encourage their employees to attend this theater by fur- nishing them a few tickets each week?" The Employers' Association thus acted as agent for the theater owner in selling blocks of tickets to "employers and the public." The em- ployers presumably distributed the tickets among their "American Plan workmen," who were only too willing to accept free admission to a cinema even though it meant assist- ing in a piece of strike-breaking.
Other local employers' associations have offered special rewards to workers who remained at work during a strike in the plant of a member-firm. This is usually done through the association's "strike committee." It is simply one of the many kinds of favors which local employers' associations have showered on the "American Plan workman" — the man who never goes on strike and who can always be counted on to help break a strike no matter what the grievance or the provocation involved.
The State as Strike-Breaker
Our story of employer attacks on the unions would not be complete without some mention of the manifold governmental
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agencies that have been used so frequently to break strikes and to destroy unions in the United States. The practice is so common it has almost ceased to excite comment. It is usu- ally understood that when workers walk out on a strike — and often when they are merely attempting, without a strike, to organize a union to protect their interests — that the capitalist- controlled "public servants" will be employed against them. The politicians who have achieved office through loyalty to the corporations and the employers' associations always "do their stuff'7 when called upon, on such occasions, by their owners and masters in industry. The striking worker finds arrayed against him a full front of functionaries in public office.
The town or city administration is usually under the domi- nation of the company or companies against whom the workers are striking. It is a simple matter for them to set the whole force of local "law and order" against the workers. A servile mayor, at the command of the employers, proceeds to prevent meetings, arrest speakers, smash picket lines, and jail organizers. If the ordinances are insufficient, new ones are hastily passed by the local council. But with or without ordinances, the police are called upon to break the strike. It would require a separate volume to relate in any detail even the more recent activities of police against American strikers and union workers. Take, as an example, the strike of the New York paper box makers in 1926. Even before the strike had been called, the official organ of the National Paper Box Manu- facturers was announcing that the bosses had "the full co- operation of the Police Department." Subsequent events fully justified this prediction. The uniformed agents of the law laid it heavy on the heads of the strikers. One of them, while peacefully picketing, had his front teeth knocked out by a blow from a cop. A girl was struck by a chair in the hands of an officer. Even children sympathetic to the pickets were chased from the streets by police brandishing pistols. Pickets
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swore to affidavits stating that they were dragged into shops and beaten up by bluecoats.
At about the same time the New York police, assisted by the city's Industrial Squad, were obeying the instructions of garment manufacturers in beating up the members of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union then on strike. They were also using similar methods against the subway motormen of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company who walked out in July, 1926. Strikers leaving their meeting hall were set upon by these official thugs and brutally slugged without the slightest provocation.
Still more inhuman were the operations of the police during the strike of Passaic woolen workers during the same year. The entire corrupt political machinery of most of the boroughs involved was at the disposal of the mill owners. Clubbings, illegal arrests, the use of tear gas and fire hose, sadistic third- degree methods, forced "confessions" and the usual cruelties were inflicted upon peaceful, underpaid textile workers and their families. Civil liberties were in abeyance.
These atrocities by local police are only repetitions of those from earlier chapters in American textile labor history, notably at Lawrence, Mass., in 1912 and 1919; at Paterson, N. J., in 1913, 1919, and 1924, and other textile centers where the workers have attempted to raise their standard of living by strikes and organization. Workers in other industries and scores of other cities and towns have fared no better at the hands of the local police.
The state police have been even more pitiless than the local police in their attacks on strikers and labor organizers. In our summary of the open shop drives of 1920-21 we have noted the emphasis laid on the necessity for the establishment of state constabularies as auxiliaries to the employers' offensive against the unions. Some twenty states now have these mounted troops. The legislation creating them has been backed by chambers of commerce, bankers' associations, and
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organized business generally. It has been consistently fought by labor.
According to investigations made for the American Civil Liberties Union, these police are used invariably to break strikes, to incite to riot and violence, to evict strikers from their homes, and to resort to strongarm methods characteristic of "company gunmen." It is further established, by observers of these troopers, that they are "almost always used against the workers and in the interests of the employers; they come in response to the employer's call, frequently occupy company property, and often have their transportation paid by the companies."
A few instances where state police have resorted to evictions, thug terrorism, false arrests and other outrages against work- ingmen and their families, are recorded — at Corinth, N. Y., in 1921, during a strike at the plant of the International Paper Co.; at Buffalo, during the street railway strike in 1922; in the West Virginia coal fields in 1921-22; in Colorado, during coal strikes; in dozens of Pennsylvania towns, during the steel strike of 1919, and in the coal strike of 1922. A number of excellent books describing the activities of these semi-military agents against labor have been written.3
The county sheriffs often carry out the orders of the cor- porations in quite as venal a manner as the local or state police. Any summary of corporation and employers' asso- ciation tactics in breaking strikes and unions must mention these sheriffs and their deputies.
The writer happened to witness one particularly mad sheriff in action during the Passaic strike of 1926. The sheriff of Bergen County, N. J., a political tool of the Forstmann & Huffmann Co., hired several dozen deputies, armed them with rifles, and undertook to break up picket lines. As one of these
3 John P. Guyer : Pennsylvania's Cossacks; James H. Maurer : The American Cossack. See also Public Opinion and the Steel Strike of 1919, pp. 117-179.-
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lines was moving peacefully past one of the Forstmann mills, the sheriff read the ancient "riot act," after which he screamed to his men: "Go to it, boys! Sweep 'em up!" His deputies, in complete violation of the law, proceeded immediately to knock down women, arrest strikers and strike sympathizers and otherwise carry out their conception of sheriff-made "martial law." The victims, at first denied bail, were later released under excessive bond by a servile local magistrate. But the legal action against them was finally dropped when the sheriff found he had no grounds whatsoever on which to base his charges. Following this picket line slaughter, other workers and interested citizens were arrested for merely at- tempting to address peaceful meetings held on private property in the vicinity. The sheriff banned all meetings and gather- ings having to do with the strike, although no violence had been committed by the workers.
In the coal mining districts of Pennsylvania and West Virginia sheriffs and armies of deputies have likewise violated the laws and the Constitution in carrying out the instructions of the corporations, not only during strikes, but during peace- ful periods when union organizers were going about their business of enlisting workers in the union. Investigators for Governor Pinchot of Pennsylvania discovered and published the fact that in one county alone — Fayette — the sheriff had appointed 6,180 deputies during the bituminous coal strike in 1922. The men were sent by the company to be deputized by the sheriff. The company paid the salary bills. Other sheriffs in Pennsylvania have issued proclamations during coal strikes preventing gatherings of more than three persons, thus effectually doing away with all freedom of assemblage.
West Virginia and Alabama sheriffs have been quite as cringing in their concern for the interests of the coal cor- porations. The Logan County Coal Operators' Association simply deposited a monthly check in the bank to the credit of the sheriff of that county. With it he paid the wages of
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the deputies who helped the private gunmen and police run union organizers out of the county. Up to the summer of 1923 the association was paying at least $7,000 a month for the services of these deputies who hounded the miners and their friends and assaulted, jailed, and in some cases murdered active union men. A part of this bloody story of deputy sheriffs is contained in the record of the United States Coal Commission, which reported to Congress in 1923-24.*
In addition to sheriffs and local and state police, we have witnessed the National Guard being used to break strikes in recent years. A strike of coal miners in Alabama in 1920-21 was the occasion for the employment of this military force against the workers. The Committee of Inquiry on Coal and Civil Liberties reporting to the United States Coal Commission in 1924, said:
"Our evidence shows that the National Guard, officially and by specific order of its Commanding General, prohibited and forbade all meetings, assemblies, and speeches of whatever sort, even down to the regular business meetings of union locals in their own lodge halls. The evidence is the official record of the National Guard itself. There is no dispute about the facts."
No martial law had been declared, no violence had been manifested upon the part of the workers. The troops simply took charge of the strike situation under the command of a certain General Robert E. Steiner. Every meeting was pro- hibited and the strike effectively broken by these means.
The use of various branches of the army and the military force of the United States to break strikes has been illus- trated also during the railroad and mining strikes of 1922, and in the textile strike in New England in the same year, when National Guardsmen, several companies of Coast Ar- tillery, and a Machine Gun Company were used against un- armed strikers in Rhode Island.
4 See in this connection Winthrop D. Lane : The Denial of Civil Liberties in the Coal Fields and also his Civil War in West Virginia.
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During the railroad strike, special gubernatorial procla- mations were issued in several states giving instructions to the military authorities as to how best to break the strike. The whole military force of the country was held in reserve to move against that strike had it become more general. The Military Intelligence Division of the Army and a number of army officials stationed in various parts of the country censored speeches, prevented meetings, and otherwise abrogated the civil liberties of the strikers.5
In the breaking of the Alabama coal strike, as also in the textile strike, state governors played an active role against the workers. In Alabama the governor not only ordered out the Guard, but he acted as personal arbitrator for the strike, and settled all the points in favor of the coal corporations.
These anti-union state governors elected by the business interests have faithfully served the purposes of those who put them in office. Not only do they veto bills to protect or strengthen labor unions, but, like Governor Sproul of Penn- sylvania in the coal strike of 1922, they issue orders which, in effect, forbid all meetings of strikers. These anti-strike proclamations of the governors are usually carried out by the local sheriff, the constables, the state police, and other "peace officers."
Not only state but Federal executive officials have shown complete devotion to the American business class in its war on organized labor. The last two Presidents, Harding and Coolidge, may be described as nothing more than the "business agents" of the corporate interests. The latter acquired his first national glory as a strike-breaker, and the other ener- getically helped his Attorney General, Harry M. Daugherty, to break strikes of coal miners and railroad workers. It is natural that these White House residents should have served
5 For a documented account of these maneuvers and other historic instances of the use of the military against strikers, see Jay Love- stone : The Government Strike-breaker, Chapter IX.
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so loyally the interests of Big Business. For never before in the history of this country has Big Business maintained such a firm hold on the Federal government as at present. These presidential servants of the business dictatorship refuse to receive delegations of striking textile workers or to do any- thing to assist the coal miners or any other group of un- employed or striking workers. At the same time they carry out every order and request of the corporations.
Not only in direct deeds against the unions but in more general ways these two presidents have helped business to put labor and the general public in the stocks. They have emasculated various Federal commissions in such a way that nothing is done to curb or regulate the powerful corporate interests that now run the American Empire.
Indeed, not one act of the Federal administration in the last eight years can be described as favorable to the funda- mental interests of the trade unions. On the contrary, the tendency has been all in the other direction. Business govern- ment has its way at present, and has really supplanted the old democratic political forms which are still maintained to placate the public and the working class. The politicians are permitted to debate, the legislatures to meet, presidents to deliver long platitudinous addresses. But the real power is in the hands of the capitalist class. And above all else, it owns the man in the White House and uses him against the interests of the organized workers.
Of all the strike-breaking agencies of the state, none is more thoroughgoing than the courts.6 There is room here for but a brief note concerning the judiciary's attacks on labor — attacks that have rendered the economic weapons of the unions almost valueless. The trade unions charge among other things that the judges have
6 In connection with this section see A. R. Ellingwood and W. Coombs: The Government and Labor; Leon Whipple': The Story of Civil Liberty in the United States.
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1. Declared the union shop illegal in public utilities, as in the case of the Cleveland Railway Co. in 1925, Ohio Supreme Court.
2. Applied the anti-trust laws to labor unions in spite of the special but vague provisions of the Clayton Act of 1914. In the Duplex Printing Press Co. decision, the right of a union to estab- lish a general combination against an employer by a sympathetic strike and secondary boycott was wiped out. (Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deering, 254 U. S. 443, 1921.) Later declared that strikes against handling unfair, non-union building material mar- keted in interstate commerce are illegal and to be enjoined, on the ground that they violate the anti-trust laws.7
3. Declared unions may be sued as corporate bodies for the acts of their agents, and their funds held for damages. This makes it quite possible for a corporation through an agent provocateur to cause some property damage during a strike and thus tie up the funds of the union in resulting legal action. (The United Mine Workers of America v. Coronado Coal Co., 259 U. S. 344, 1922.)
4. Declared child labor and other labor-advocated laws un- constitutional, thereby virtually ruling that congress has no power to pass remedial social legislation of any kind.
5. Declared unconstitutional state laws based on the Clayton Act and limiting the use of injunctions. (Truax v. Corrigan, 257 U. S. 312, 1921.)
6. Virtually abolished the right of workers to picket, no mat- ter how peaceably; and authorized lower courts to regulate the conduct of strikes and the number of pickets permitted. (Ameri- can Steel Foundries v. Tri-City Central Trades Council, 257 U. S. 184.)
INJUNCTIONS
The foregoing acts of judicial usurpation are tied up closely with the most menacing weapon possessed by the American equity courts — the injunction. These injunctions have vir- tually made the unions illegal in certain instances and have turned the judges into legislative dictators. They deprive
7 Bedford Cut Stone Co. Case. U. S. Supreme Court, April n, 1927.
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the workers of a trial by jury and interfere with every phase of strikes and organizing campaigns.
The most far-reaching injunctions have not only placed peaceful picketing under the ban of the law, but also meetings, speeches, writings, the payment of strike benefits to union members, telephone conversations, visiting and talking with strike-breakers, and other activities necessary to the proper conduct of a strike or an organization drive. These injunc- tions reveal the judges as practically the prosecutors and special pleaders for the employers.
Typical of the sort of injunction that is likely to be used increasingly in America was the one handed down by Judge Anderson in the Indiana Federal Court at the instance of Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty. It enjoined the officials of the United Mine Workers of America from taking any action in a strike voted by that organization in 1919.
Another and still more sweeping injunction was granted by