The fix was in during America’s late 19th Century. This era, remembered as the Industrial/Gilded Age, witnessed awed politicians who regularly legislated and protected those known as robber barons.
Ferocious drama played out for decades following the Civil War. In this fraught atmosphere courageous and determined union organizers risked all to seek economic justice in the face of dangerous obstacles. Unionizers faced their names appearing on a black list, (meaning no one would hire them), bodily harm, and government sanctioned violence. The historic record is littered with instances of brutality, hazardous working conditions, and bloodshed meted out by powerful business owners.
Particularly lethal for workers was attempting to organize workers in American mines, mills, and factories. It didn’t help that the general public was unsympathetic to workers plight, universally convinced by “The Gospel of Wealth,” a secular-sacred creed that maintained the rich were chosen by God, therefore entitled to lord over the working class. In general laborers, especially the foreign-born were viewed as a cheap commodity, a disposable cog in the wheel of production and profits.
Andrew Carnegie, in particular detested the working class, and even more the activists who threatened his control over Carnegie Steel. For example, as a remedy to thwart unionizers, managers deliberately placed workers of different nationalities next to one another on the production line. Language barriers effectively frustrated organizers trying to increase membership. Then there were corporate spies, and hired guns such as the Pinkerton Detectives out of Chicago, or Federal troops sent by Washington to quell strikes. If those measures failed to break the union, Carnegie opted to lock out strikers, filling jobs with scab labor.
The use of an injunction proved a particularly nasty device owners used. A state governor would claim interference of interstate commerce; meaning troops could move in to ensure the free transfer of mail and freight. Once the injunction was issued soldiers were deployed, guns blazing into crowds of strikers, not unlike battles from the recent Civil War.
The most significant use of the injunction concerned the Pullman Strike of 1894. Workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company (think Wild Wild West railcar) sold their freedom to the company’s powerful owner, George Pullman. Laborers lived in his company town, (Pullman, Illinois) where their wages were docked for utilities, rent, and other fees each month. During the economic downturn of the Panic of 1893, hourly wages were drastically cut, but Mr. Pullman still deducted his same monthly payments.
Demanding leniency the Pullman workers voted to strike.
Union leaders knew they had to avoid a federal injunction for armed troopers would intervene leading to violence. Seeking to avoid a military showdown strikers took extra care that the trains continued to roll through Illinois. In solidarity, rail workers helped by unhooking Pullman Cars, parking them on side tracks, then reconnecting the rest of the train cars. Off they chugged to adjacent states.
Mr. Pullman was not amused.
Of course the U.S. Attorney General at the time issued an injunction, ordering federal troops into the fray. Soldiers poured out of rail cars in Pullman, opened fire, killing some thirty strikers, and wounding many more. The strike was broken, but the heavy-handed tactics used by Pullman left some uneasy.
Not that he cared.
Could a land that aspired to liberty, also check the tyranny of powerful industrialists?
Other disputes followed the same pattern; The Haymarket Riot, the Homestead Strike, the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado, and New York City’s tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in 1911 which killed nearly 150 immigrant girls.
Still, despite many violent setbacks, changes began to come about for the working class. When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, he championed some real reforms. In 1902 when a coal strike threatened the coming winter supplies, TR stepped in.
Initially the mine owners refused to recognize the authority of the United Mine Workers and refused to budge.
With winter coming the President took drastic action. Roosevelt essentially sided with the strikers. He threatened the owners, warning he was willing to send in the army, but this time to work coal fields. In short the owners were obliged to sit down with union leaders and negotiate.
This President was not blind to the threat of social and economic injustice.
Fast forward to 1950’s where I grew up in a blue collar, union household. My dad, an active member of the United Steel Workers, tended white-hot pots of molten metal for Kaiser Aluminum. Because of his job, benefits, and union activities, his only daughter (me) earned a university degree, and pursued a fulfilling, professional calling in public education.
Because of the time and the place, my dad’s employment offered benefits neither my mother nor grandmother enjoyed. College, a degree in American History, and a professional career as a teacher. His union job made my professional path possible.
Of course at the time, I didn’t fully appreciate the price paid for my good life, but that four-year degree opened my eyes. The benefits that shaped my path did not come easily.
Today unions are still vilified by many. Nonetheless those who suffered and sacrificed built an American economy that still provides a good living for many . Those valiant few must be remembered.
BTW, industrial workers demanded and won the right to honor the Sabbath as a day of worship, not labor. Those of the Jewish faith and Christian established the tradition of weekends, setting aside Saturday and Sunday.
Have a thoughtful Labor Day
gailchumbley@gmail.com
Gail Chumbley 