The Labor Movement in the United States of America – Part 13-16

13 – The great crisis of 1893

On May 4, 1893, the National Cordage Company that just five months earlier announced 100% dividends on its shares, declared bankruptcy. A general collapse in the stock market came after, and soon the country found itself in the most serious economic crisis of its history up to that point: bank assaults, company bankruptcies, widespread unemployment were inevitable and predictable consequences. During the year, 642 banks and more than 16,000 companies went bankrupt, 22,500 miles of railways were placed under receivership. Thousands of stores, factories and workshops closed down and thousands more reduced their activities drastically.

Unemployment

Hundreds of thousands of workers were thrown out of work. At the end of the year it was estimated that for every 5 million employed workers there were about 3 million unemployed with no means of support. For each unemployed there were 2 to 5 people depending on him. Between 1893 and 1897, that very number always sat between 3 and 4 million. In a country that had about 65 million inhabitants, only 22 million lived in urban areas. These numbers alone are a representation of the dramatic condition of the proletariat in the “land of the free”, where the ruling class unscrupulously condemns to starvation those that in the previous years made the US enrich itself at a rate that was unparalleled in the capitalist world.

In addition to the inevitable and widespread misery that can be imagined and that is routine in capitalist society nonetheless, in the United States, more than anywhere else, the phenomenon that saw masses of workers moving long distances in search of work developed. Those who the bourgeois contemptuously called “vagabonds” or “hoboes” were actually migrants – very young on the average – reacting in this way to a crisis that would have periodically recurred in the following decades. However, the new destinations did not always guarantee a job for the masses. The latter were often flooding the places in which there was rumoured to be work, in the hope of finding one. In those years, the only relief came from charitable organizations, municipal governments, and especially from the strongest and most forward-looking unions. No help came from State administrations during the 1893‑97 depression period.

But that aid was not enough as it reached only a minority of those in need. An International Labour Conference, a conference of union representatives including foreign union leaders, was therefore convened in Chicago. Gompers, as chairman, delivered the opening speech. Although he still proclaimed himself a socialist, he was careful not to attack the capitalist system, blaming instead some unidentified «rich landowners in our country». Since the latter did not see a problem in workers starving, it was up to the government to «provide the means for the men and women of our country to survive». He then listed a series of measures that he believed would solve the problem. He called for public works in the cities, improvement of the major communication routes (roads, canals, etc.) in the various States, construction of a canal in Nicaragua and improvement of the navigability of the Mississippi at the federal government level. In other times Gompers could have aimed at the White House as his program was 40 years ahead of the Roosevelt New Deal!

The Conference produced three committees that took on different tasks of agitation and propaganda, but it was soon clear that nothing good could have come out of simple requests based on common sense. To move the waters a showdown was needed, and since no one proposed to mobilize the workers that were still employed (certainly blackmailed and frightened but also full of rage as hourly wages collapsed nonetheless and returned to what they were in the beginning of 1893 only in 1900), it was decided to mobilize the unemployed in mass demonstrations. The unemployed were even organized in specific unions, immediately recognized by the AFL.

The demonstrations, generally of large numbers although often attacked and disbanded by the police and its batons, had some local effect in pushing the municipalities to provide jobs – obviously very underpaid – to local unemployed. For the bourgeoisie that was a bargain. Generally, bachelors got only vouchers to eat and sleep, and fathers of families little more. For example, in S. Francisco the luckiest unemployed were allowed to sweep the streets for two and a half days a week for $1.40, when the average hourly wage before the crisis was 15 cents.

In spite of these cautious and stingy handouts, the wealthier strata of society had a problem with it. In Cincinnati, the bourgeoisie came to form a committee that objected to the aptness of the public jobs the unemployed were employed for. The jobs were deemed to be superfluous, a waste of taxpayers’ money, communistic in principle, and demoralizing to those receiving aid. Of course, these are to be considered as pathological outbreaks of the bourgeoisie, but they only ended up exasperating the spirits involved. In January 1894, at a large mass gathering at the Madison Square Garden in New York, even the good Gompers let very revolutionary words slip out of his mouth: «Let the conflagration light up the outraged skies! Let the red Nemesis burn the infernal clan, and chaos end the slavery of man!» Although he regretted those words soon after, that language reflected the sentiment of the masses, and he, as we have previously mentioned, tended to adapt to situations without any modesty.

Despite Gompers’ brazen and subversive expressions, the federal government did not feel the need to come to the aid of the unemployed and the destitutes, and not a penny was disbursed to them. On the other hand, the federal government did not hesitate to invest millions of dollars in armaments and military training. This is nothing new as the bourgeoisie has its priorities and it is precisely the times of crisis that push the former to equip itself with powerful armaments, while the proletariat is considered a “disposable” component of production.

The Coxey’s Army

In the meantime, a singular phenomenon was taking place. Masses of unemployed were moving towards Washington, some by train, some by waterways, some on foot, to demonstrate their discontent for the state of the country and to seek answers to the grievances arising everywhere. What was baptized by its originators as the “Army of the Commonwealth in Christ”, better known as “Coxey’s Army”, saw more than 10,000 men go on a journey that for many – meaning those who came from the other side of the country (California, Texas, Arizona) – was a long and very hard one. With no organization nor provisions, they begged for hundreds or thousands of miles. The movement was born in the fall of 1893 in Massillon, Ohio, on initiative of one Jacob Sechler Coxey, a theosophist in religion with populist political ideas. He was also a wealthy owner of a stone quarry and a horse farm. As a populist he thought it was the duty of Congress, and of the entire government, to alleviate social distress. He therefore published a proclamation in which he announced his intention to force, if necessary, those in power to do something for the poor. According to his plan, the unemployed would be employed in public, government jobs that would be financed by issuing paper money (he had a past as a greenbacker) that the States would repay, without interest, in 25 years. In addition, the federal government would issue an additional500 million for a federal road construction project. In short, another precursor to F. D. Roosevelt.

In order not to make the proletarians that were still working struggle, the A.F.L embraced Coxey’s cause, and in fact many leaders of the movement were also trade unionists. The movement’s participants reached Washington on May 1, 1894, after receiving support from the communities they passed through, happy to help them continuing their journey. In the East however, the reception was colder and the “Coxeyites” began to encounter problems with the police and population. So the armies began to thin out, as more and more participants decided to return to their homes.

Less than a thousand reached Washington. As planned, “General” Coxey led his followers through the streets to the foot of the Capitol. Here, in contravention of the law, he headed to the lawn to harangue the crowd, but was immediately arrested and put in a cell for twenty days. In addition, he paid a $5 fine for trampling on the grass. It is in this inglorious and somewhat comical way that Coxey’s march on the capital ended.

Hope travels by train

But American workers were not intimidated by the cowardly attack of the owners and fought back whenever they had the chance. In those years, a shining example of that came from the miners, with mixed fortunes. In February 1984, in Cripple Creek, Colorado, miners working in the gold mines went on strike when the owners tried to reestablish the ten hours work day. As usual, the struggle was tough as the workers went against thousands of mercenaries, policemen, militia and scabs, but after five months they returned at work preserving their eight hour work day.

Less fortunate was the struggle of 180,000 bitumen mine workers in four States, a number ten times greater than the members of the United Mine Workers. The struggle lasted “only” eight weeks but it was trounced by a lack of resources that made it not possible for it to last any longer. The blow the union suffered on that occasion was felt for many years. Right here, it is impossible to list all the miners’ struggles in Illinois, Pennsylvania, West Virginia. They were all very hard fought and often counted deaths and injuries among workers in particular. Desperate proletarians struggled against police, militia, scabs, Pinkerton mercenaries, judges, press even in the certainty of defeat.

It was clear the only possibility to fight back was to achieve a higher level of unity. The latter would make up for the difficulties of the situation by concentrating the few still valid forces in the interminable battle that is the one against capital. Therefore, a conference was called in Philadelphia for April 28, 1894. All the important trade unions and union federations participated, starting with the AFL and the Knights of Labour. A fine document came out of it, but no operational decisions that would turn the declamations of struggle and unity into action. Yet, while the importance of labour unity was being discussed, the benefits of achieving it were passing before the very eyes of the entire class. A new railroaders’ union, the American Railway Union, was born on the principle of unity among all workers in a set industry, realizing the industrial union. In a short time, the American Railway Union managed to rack up victories that, up until that moment, the railroaders had not dared to hope for. It was now evident that the model for a unified American labour movement was the one of the industry union, unifying skilled, semi‑skilled and unskilled workers.

Eugene Victor Debs

By the early 1890s, railroaders were unionised into five Brotherhoods. Only the train drivers’ one had a record of fighting for further demands, while the others, each in a different trade, had originally mutual aid purposes. In fact, the railroader profession was a very dangerous one as every year more than two thousand workers died on the job and thirty thousand were injured in various ways. Wages varied from 957 dollars a year for the train drivers – true aristocrats in the industry – to 575 for the guards, 212 for the brakemen, 124 for the labourers. The wages of the majority of the workers were below subsistence level. Deaths at work were defined by companies as “Acts of God”, or the result of “carelessness”. In reality, the responsibility was to be attributed to the greed of the companies. They were constantly reducing their staff by imposing double shifts on the remaining workers who, therefore, lacked sleep and suffered fatigue.

There was no coordination among the Brotherhoods. Each Brotherhood acted on its own, allowing the railroad companies to sometimes pit them against each other, therefore neutralizing them. Moreover, they represented only a small minority of the railroaders, ignoring the semi‑skilled and unskilled, and even trying to get black workers thrown out of work. Many amongst the skilled workers were not members also, and by 1893 there were about one hundred thousand members in total, one‑tenth of the North American railroad labour force.

Debs’ preaching started to catch on not so much with the Brotherhood leaders, who feared a drastic reduction in union officials, but with the base, which pushed for cooperation. Thus, in 1886, the orchestrated action of train drivers and stokers resulted in a few victories over the companies. A good start but insufficient in the toughest circumstances without the collaboration of the other categories.

Stokers, to whom Debs belonged, proposed a federation of the brotherhoods which was in fact founded in 1889, with the high‑sounding name of Supreme Council of the United Orders of Railway Employees. Unfortunately, despite good intentions, the organization did not get rid of some of the defects typical of the brotherhoods such as petty squabbles and the exclusion of blacks. These defects led to the complete failure of the initiative in 1892.

Shortly after the dissolution of the Supreme Council, a strike of switchmen in Buffalo, upstate New York, was a clear demonstration of how weak the struggling proletarians were if the brotherhoods would persist on the path of separatist policies.

As Buffalo deputies, sympathetic to the strikers, refused to intervene, the governor sent the militia in. The latter was put under the command of a general that was also an official of the railroad in question. Switchmen from the rest of the State went on strike in solidarity, but the opposition made of militia, police and scabs was such that the swingmen alone could not make it. Even as a special conference was called, the brotherhoods refused to strike, implicitly decreeing defeat.

The American Railway Union

However, the defeat left a tangible legacy. The base understood the importance of joining forces, and this awareness quickly resulted in the formation of a new organization open to all railroaders. The process came to an end on June 20, 1893 as the American Railway Union was founded. Admitted to the A.R.U. were all the white employees of the railroads, with the sole exclusion of high‑ranking officials. All workers in some way connected with the railroads were also included, such as miners, longshoremen, etc., as long as they were employees of the railroad companies. The absence of black members was a serious deficiency of the union, determined by a general underdevelopment of the union movement, not yet matured in that sense. A proposal for their admission was put to a vote, but it was rejected 113 votes to 102. Quite different was A.R.U’s attitude towards women. In addition to being admitted, it was declared that «when a woman does a man’s job, she must receive a man’s pay», a statement very ahead of its time and not to take for granted.

Stated purpose of the A.R.U. was to act in a unified manner whenever the rights of its members were threatened. Under Debs’ presidency – he started the publication of Railway Times, the bimonthly A.R.U.’s official organ that became popular among railroaders – there was a consistent migration of workers to the new union, even the specialized one such as the train drivers that came from the old brotherhoods. However, specialized workers were a minority among the new members as the majority was constituted by those workers who had not been organized until then, either because they were not admitted in the brotherhoods, or because they were kept away by the high dues required. To be a member of the A.R.U., one dollar a year was enough.

But the real takeoff in membership occurred after the resounding victory of the Great Northern Railroad strike, during the spring of 1894. After a series of wage cuts (we must remember that the company was in the midst of an economic crisis) the 9000 workers of the company decided to strike together, with no exception, despite the brotherhoods recommending to take the cuts. Faced with the compactness of the workers, the company opted not to make use of scabs (to whose recruitment the brotherhoods had collaborated). Faced with the sympathy of the population and farmers, although damaged by the strike, after 18 days the company capitulated, giving in to all the strikers’ demands. There could have been no better demonstration of the importance and effectiveness of the industrial union over the obsolete trade unions. In the weeks that followed, A.R.U.’s membership increased at the rate of 2,000 new members per day. One year from its founding, the A.R.U became the single largest union in the United States, with 150,000 total members (the entire AFL counted 175,000 members and the K.L. 70,000), while the old brotherhoods combined had less than 90,000 with their numbers steadily declining.

On the owners’ side, things were quite different, of course. The A.R.U. was the greatest threat railroad companies had ever encountered. They created the G.M.A. (General Managers’ Association) to implement a program of gradual wages reduction on all routes, as wages were “equalized” towards the bottom. In August 1893, as many as 58 companies met in Chicago to orchestrate their attack on the workers, just as the A.R.U. was starting to operate. The G.M.A. represented the owners of 410,000 miles of railroads, with 221,000 employees and a total capital of $2 billion. It was an adversary endowed with virtually infinite and inexhaustible resources, plus of course influences on local and national politics that the proletarians did not have. Its components soon realized that the new union represented a mighty obstacle to their plans, and started planning an attack in order to destroy it. In the spring of 1894, the opportunity came. The latter originated in the small town of Pullman, 12 miles south of Chicago and now absorbed into the metropolis.

The Pullman strike

Perhaps more than any other labour struggle occurred since the end of the Civil War, the Pullman strike, or the “Debs Rebellion” as the newspapers called it, shook the nation to its core. The strike exposed the harshness of the working-class conditions; it clearly demonstrated the role of the federal government in supporting the capitalists as they attempted to crush the labour movement with no mercy or compromise.

The Pullman Company was in the business of building luxurious railroad cars, and the establishments were based in the “Model Town of Pullman, Illinois”. Everything inside the town was owned by Pullman: houses, stores, streets, everything. The employees lived in Pullman’s houses, paying rents that were more expensive than the ones in neighbouring towns. They shopped in his stores and paid him for all their supplies with deductions made directly from their paychecks.

Following the crisis of 1893, wages (of those who had not been laid off) were cut several times, with reductions of 25, 33, 50 and in some cases 70%. During the year, the company still paid dividends of 9.5% to its shareholders, as it did in previous years. But rents and other life expenses of the proletarians were not reduced and soon their disposable wage was reduced to insignificant amounts. A worker who received a monthly wage of a mere 2 cents framed and hung his check on a wall instead of spending it. In many more aspects the workers were kept in servitude, although Pullman used to call them “my children”.

In March and April the workers began to organize sections of the A.R.U. Although they were not actual railroaders, the fact that the company owned and worked on a few miles of railroad authorized them to join Debs’s union. In a few weeks 4,000 company employees – almost all of them – joined the union.

In early May, an internal committee was created to present to the owners a series of grievances that needed to be addressed, such as rent reductions, wages at pre‑crisis levels and the elimination of various workplace abuses. Pullman granted nothing and a few days later three members of the internal commission were fired, despite the fact that there had been a no‑firing commitment. The event inflamed the workers, already worn out by their limited means. In a heated meeting the commission voted unanimously for the strike, despite the presence of A.R.U. officials preaching calm and asking for more time to clarify the situation.

On May 11, 1894, 4000 workers ceased work, and the few hundred who did not were sent away by the ownership, which shut down the establishment with no deadline in mind.

A strike committee was formed, and 300 workers were assigned to guard the establishments to defend them from vandalism. Strikers were hopeful as they expected to get the support of the now powerful A.R.U but in reality, the union had neither called nor authorized the strike. But being the strikers members of the A.R.U., Debs made a personal visit to verify the situation, and after several days of meetings with the workers he realized that the struggle was fully justified.

For a month the workers pulled through with the support of the Chicago working class. On June 12, the first national convention of the A.R.U took place right in Chicago and after the Pullman’s workers spoke a boycott of the company’s cars was proposed. Debs’s behaviour is described by one of his biographers: «On that occasion Debs used all the forms of control he had in his powers as president of the assembly. He resorted to all his skill, eloquence, and influence to prevent a resolute and obstinate confrontation but all was in vain… workers decided it was time to teach Pullman the leech a lesson… not a single sleeping car was to be touched until Pullman had come to an agreement with his workers… Debs refused to approve the motion. The union leadership even tried in every way to ward off any solidarity strike, but when Pullman arrogantly refused arbitration saying that “there was nothing to submit to arbitration”… the boycott proposal was resubmitted; when the delegates telegraphed to their places of origin for instructions, they realized that the overwhelming majority was in favour of the boycott and therefore voted unanimously for its implementation».

The boycott began on June 26th 1894, when those in charge of switching several lines leading out of Chicago refused to move the Pullman coaches, and for that got immediately dismissed. As a result, others that were working on the same lines stopped working in protest. Soon several Chicago lines were immobilized. What Debs was not expecting was committees and groups of railwaymen coming from everywhere to announce that their local sections decided to strike in support of the Pullman workers. Soon, each of the twenty‑six railways leading out of Chicago were paralysed. All continental lines stopped, except the Great Northern, which had no Pullman sleeping car.

The struggle spread to twenty-seven States and territories. It is estimated that 260,000 railway workers joined the strikes, almost half of whom were not members of the A.R.U. According to some estimates, 500,000 workers – others report over 660,000 – stopped working because of the strike.

The praetorians of the G.M.A arrive

At the moment the boycott was announced the G.M.A intervened. It did so not to resolve the dispute, nor to help Pullman but with the sole declared purpose of completely destroying the American Railway Union. At no time the General Managers’ Association showed interest in negotiating for a peaceful resolution of the dispute, nor in making any concession to achieve social peace.

G.M.A’s first move was to let it be known that anyone guilty of refusing to conduct his duties, or of leaving his jobs at the instigation of the A.R.U. would have never found work in any railroad company represented by the G.M.A again. However, those who would work in place of the strikers could count on a lifelong protection and job. These measures led to the spread of the strike as well, for when a switcher was fired for joining the boycott, his entire team would go on strike. Thus, the boycott soon turned into an actual strike.

The Association hired scabs from all parts of the country and from Canada, but couldn’t prevent the blockage of most rail traffic. In fact, it was impossible to replace the more than 250,000 strikers who were struggling all over the country, from north to south, from the east to California. The Pullman strike was the first, true national strike in US history. A strike that, since the railway companies were much hated for their stinginess, gathered support and solidarity from broad strata of the population. The Brotherhoods sided with the owners and even organized the strike-breaking, but they were generally disavowed by the base and many sections went over to the A.R.U.

On July 2, the G.M.A. had to admit that railroads were completely blocked and the companies alone could not beat the struggling workers: «It is now up to the government to handle the problem». Two days later a cheerful statement declared: «As for the approach of the railroad companies to this struggle, they are out of it. The fight is now between the U.S. Government and the American Railway Union, and let them handle it».

Shortly after the strike began, the Post Office in Washington was informed that the mail was blocked in the West because of the boycott of Pullman cars. Of course, it could have been decreed that mail should travel on trains with no Pullman cars until the strike was over, but from the beginning the government was determined to render a decisive service to the railroad companies in their attempt to annihilate the new railroad union. This “miracle” in favour of the companies was due to the fact that Richard Olney, General Attorney of the United States, was the one entrusted to handle the crisis. Before joining the Cleveland cabinet, for 35 years he was connected with the companies and was still managing one. Moreover, he was a member of the G.M.A., and had substantial personal investments in the railroad industry as well. So much for conflict of interest!

Olney got to work determined. He appointed other trusted figures from the establishment to handle the police and judicial aspects of the dispute, all of whom were also on the companies’ payroll.

On the basis of judicial quibbles that would not stand up to the most benign of criticism, an injunction was issued. The latter prohibited any activity that could disrupt the free movement of trains and commodities between States, anti strike-breaking propaganda included. Those violating the injunction would be guilty of criminal conspiracy, which would result in considerable prison sentences. In essence, the right to strike was suspended as appeared evident to all. The Chicago Times had to admit that it was «a menace to liberty… a weapon at the disposal of capitalists… the purpose of the injunction was not so much to prevent any obstruction to the movement of trains as a pretext for Federal Army’s intervention».

The State of Capital

Immediately following the injunction, the A.R.U. executive met to decide what was to be done. On the one hand, it was clear that any attempt to disregard the injunction would result in a citation for contempt of court and an immediate conviction by the judge. Nor would the benefit of a trial by jury be granted. On the other hand, obeying would have represented the defeat of the strike and the destruction of the union, as well as unemployment for thousands of workers as the owners had vowed. The final decision was to go on with the struggle.

On July 2, Olney received from his emissaries requests for the troops to enforce the injunction. The next day, thanks to a direct order from President Cleveland, troops from Fort Sheridan were sent off to Chicago. They arrived on July 4, in time for Independence Day.

Cleveland and Olney weren’t concerned at all with the legal aspects of the decision to send the federal troops. Under the Constitution, the president has the power to send troops into a State to protect it from violence, but only at the request of the State legislature or the governor. However, Cleveland enforced Civil War rules that never were applied in peacetime. The Governor of Illinois, Altgeld, was not even informed of the decision, surely because they knew that, in his opinion, the situation did not require such drastic measures.

Mind you, Altgeld was ready to use the militia, which in fact he had already used days before to maintain order, but in many cases the militia was recalled because there was no need for it. As Altgeld protested against the White House’s decision, the responses were evasive while the newspapers unleashed a smear campaign against him, calling him an “anarchist”, “enemy of society”, “threat to the American Republic”.

Thus, on July 4, 12,000 federal soldiers entered Chicago, greeted by the boos of the population. Up to the troops’ arrival, the strike in Chicago had continued without the slightest incident. But despite the union calling for calm, in the next four days there were clashes and destruction. Railroad equipment, cars were destroyed and a large fire broke out. Although the anger of the strikers and the unemployed was well justified, it seems that the first acts of violence were triggered by layabouts – present in large numbers among the demonstrators – hired by the companies and police officials. That the workers had a small part in the clashes, according to numerous testimonies, does not serve as justification, but to remind us once again that the bourgeoisie is ready to do anything to defend its profits. Despite reports non being very alarming, the newspapers filled their front pages with hysterical headlines about an impending revolution, anarchists from Europe invading the U.S., relentless and indiscriminate destruction in order to terrify public opinion and justify any repressive measure. A minister of God went so far as saying, «Soldiers must use their rifles. They must shoot to kill». And that is what the soldiers did. 25 workers were killed, and 60 were seriously wounded. Dozens more were killed in six other States.

The intervention of federal troops nor the sabotage operated by the Brotherhood’s officials stopped the strike. As clashes came near to an end, on July 10, Debs and other A.R.U. officials were jailed for conspiracy to prevent interstate trade. They were released the following day and arrested again a week later, this time for contempt of court. The injunctions effectively turned any union activity that was related to the strike into an act of insurrection, justifying arrests, imprisonment, use of force and even the use of firearms on unarmed crowds. In the meantime, the union headquarters were ravaged by the police and the workers found themselves alone, with no information besides the false one spread by the regime’s press.

Facing the injunctions, a weapon wielded with ease by the State, Debs understood that the match was lost unless the entire working class intervened in support.

In fact, at the last moment it seemed that the Chicago workers were giving the strike a last push, one last aid. They enthusiastically supported the strike. On June 30, the Trades and Labour Assembly, a civic trade union association – a sort of Chamber of Labour – offered the strike the strength of its 150,000 members but at the time Debs considered the proposal too drastic. As the conflict escalated, the pressure for a general strike throughout the country continued to stack. However, time was lost and troops and judges were given the time to consolidate their positions. Nevertheless, 25,000 non‑railroad workers from Chicago went on strike.

At the request of the Chicago unions, the head of the American Federation of Labour, Samuel Gompers, arrived in the city for a conference with other national union leaders. A committee of Chicago cigar workers asserted the necessity of a nationwide general strike, since the A.R.U. struggle regarded the welfare of all workers.

Between one arrest and another, Debs participated in the conference, but his attitude was not clear. What seems to have been his position was to finally ask for a solidarity general strike, but only if the companies refused to rehire the strikers in exchange for the end of the boycott. His was a renunciatory choice, that came late in any case. It was a choice made from a position of extreme weakness. At this point, it was easy for Gompers and the other union leaders to reject this action in a situation of a virtually defeated strike. Instead, they issued a statement intimating immediate and unconditional return to work. This attitude was more a confirmation of AFL’s nature than a betrayal, as the AFL had more interest in its business side than in the true defence of the class. An attitude that endeared the companies and the owners in general, and that was favoured by the entry of the Brotherhoods into the AFL (objective that Gompers pursued for years). At the same time, it got rid of a union that, because of its industrial nature and the success it had achieved, never sat well with the A.F.L, as Gompers himself admitted years later.

The strike ended on July 18, the day after the A.R.U. leadership was ultimately jailed. The union never recovered from its disastrous defeat. With its leaders in jail and its members completely demoralized, unemployed and blacklisted, it quickly disintegrated. From its remains the Social Democratic Party was later formed, precursor of the Socialist Party of the United States.

Class struggle and “prudential unions”

The least that can be said of the Pullman strike, one that had a reach never seen before, is that it made the mass of American workers see with their own eyes, in all of its evidence, the role of the government as one of the protectors of the interests of the capitalist class. Moreover, it became clear that monopolies could be defeated only by the utmost unity and organization on the union level. A single union, no matter how strong, could not defeat the joined forces of owners, State, and union opportunism.

Thus, the essence of trade unionism and of AFL itself can be summed in a few precepts: a) trade union action must never seriously challenge big companies and government, and thus avoid direct confrontations with both b) one must ally oneself with capitalists and politicians that believe in the politics of “live and let live” towards trade unions; c) one must reach agreements with the owners on terms that will keep trade unions alive, even if that means further crushing the living conditions of the semi‑skilled and unskilled workers.

But what happened in Pullman and in the States in which the strike had spread had a significance that transcended mere union tactics. Events showed a substantial difference between the American situation and what was happening in Europe. French, German and English workers, to name those in the most industrialized countries with a tradition of proletarian organization, lived in countries with strong governments accustomed to administer central power. Apart from revolutionary moments, not a few in fact, those workers very rarely felt State repression in the way American workers were subjected to. Open repression was almost never employed. Even in Bismarkian Germany, the killing of workers or unionists was a rare phenomenon. In England, the Peterloo massacre of 1819 was still looked at as a national calamity.

On the other hand, the US that enjoyed limited governmental intrusion on all levels, found itself to be singularly intolerant of organized labour movement. The US ownership was one that believed in social Darwinism, with the jealousy of power that distinguishes the parvenu. An ownership that amassed immense fortunes with a rapidity unprecedented in history, constituting a class insecure like it was never seen before. A class that was as ready as ever to turn to State force in its crises with the organized labour movement which it despised. And the government force, whether local, State or federal, never failed to make its decisive contribution. Any struggle, whether a mass struggle or an industrial struggle, was subjected to cause injunctions and violence against the workers, whose struggle was not one to change society but only for better wages, working hours, living conditions and union rights. This, in turn, determined methods of struggle that required a willingness to use as much violence in return. So much so that both before and after Pullman, the union struggle required adequate supplies of food and savings, but also weapons and ammunition so that a minimum chance of success was ensured. We had such examples in disputes we have reviewed and we shall see more of it in the course of the bloody history of the labour movement in the United States.

With the Pullman strike, the first, real revolutionary situation was created, with the working class ready to struggle to the extreme because it was not willing to suffer any longer. A working class that was ready to unify the struggle across the immense country that is the United States of America. However, never before was so tangible the importance of the presence of a conscious class leadership. One ready to take the battle to a higher level, the political one. In the best case scenario, the unions, like the A.R.U., were good at their job but were afraid to go all the way and support the healthy spontaneity of the proletariat’s struggle. In the worst case scenario, they were part of the opposing front. They were ready to boycott the struggle as soon as it showed some weakness, or even organize strikebreaking and act as informers for the owners.

14 – The American Federation of Labour takes shape

The AFL and the class

In the years at the turn of the century, miners distinguished themselves as one of the most combative sectors of the working class in the United States of America. We have spoken of the violent clashes that inevitably accompanied any trade union struggle in the sector, for the brutality and ruthlessness of the mine owners. It was therefore triumphant, to say the least, the news coverage of the victory of the United Mine Workers in the strike of 1897 that appeared in the working class press; it was the first that the union obtained as a national organization. Over 200,000 mine workers in Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois had gone on strike on July 4, 1897, crippling 70 percent of the country’s coal production. For 12 weeks the miners resisted without deflecting, and on September 4 the struggle ended with a resounding victory for the miners; on January 18, 1898 in Chicago, a contract was signed with the bosses. A contract that was the first national agreement that an important sector settled with its employees. A fact that surpassed in importance the immediate result of the struggle, which was also not of little importance: there would have been an increase of 33% in wages compared to those of 1893, and the eight‑hour working day was definitely recognized.

The American Federationist of October 1897 wrote, «The victory of the miners is an encouragement for all workers». In fact, the U.M.W. went from 8,000 members before the struggle to 117,000 in 1900.

But the managers of AFL did not show great enthusiasm. And one can understand why. The leaders of the Federation were concerned that the victorious struggle of the miners would show that the miners’ union represented industrial trade unionism, a trade unionism that united specialized and non‑specialized workers of all faiths, colours and nationalities. It was not the trade unionism that characterized AFL. On the contrary, just at that time AFL was moving more and more in the direction of an opposite trade unionism, which aimed at organizing mainly specialized workers. This built its organization on the trade rather than on the productive sector, and which was indifferent, if not hostile, towards unskilled or semi‑skilled workers, black workers, women, and immigrants.

For the leaders of the AFL, the history of the workers’ movement during and immediately after the crisis of 1893 had shown conclusively that an efficient trade union federation should be founded on a basis of trade unions. This would unite in the first place the most specialized workers, the most decisive of the unionised, who would remain in the organization both during times of full employment and during the depressions. The idea that trade unionism could be obsolete for them was unacceptable. On the contrary, the experience of recent years, according to them, showed that it was unionism supported by the Knights of Labour and the American Railway Union that was not good enough; a type of unionism based on the concept of uniting all workers in a productive sector in a single union, without discrimination on specialization, race, creed, colour, gender or nationality, had proved inadequate to overcome the economic crisis. Trade unionism, on the other hand, according to this interpretation, had proved to be able to survive crises and to recover when they ended.

In fact, the AFL grew in those years, reaching almost 800,000 members in 1901, but there were several million excluded workers, in particular: black people, immigrants, women, those who with a slang term were called underdogs, the weak, the defeated.

The AFL and the “underdog”

In those years, the management of the AFL constantly received protests about the discrimination against black people. To which Gompers invariably replied that it was not true, and that the trade unions that excluded black workers did not even have the right to belong to the Federation, all topped off by blusters made at rallies. But the declarations of principle meant nothing if in practice, as it happened, there was discrimination, and the AFL did nothing to prevent it, but if anything, it favoured it.

In its early years, the Federation demanded from unions who wanted to join that they remove any reference to skin colour from their regulations. But in the following years, while the rule persisted formally, the same AFL advised the new members to remove from the statute the reference to the exclusion of Black workers, but then to introduce it in the admission procedures, so that in fact black people could not be admitted. Later on, unions that mentioned the restrictive rule in the statute began to be accepted. This reached a point where some unions that had removed it, even if formally only, felt authorized to reintroduce it (apertis verbis).

On the other hand, the absence of an explicit exclusion certainly did not mean acceptance of black people. There were a thousand ways to keep them away: registration fees were too high, special licenses were required, black workers were forbidden to do their apprenticeship, etc. Moreover, since most black workers were not specialized, they were de jure excluded from trade unions. As a result, at the beginning of the century only about 40,000 black people were members of unions affiliated with AFL, half of whom belonged to United Mine Workers. In addition, most of the black workers were organized separately, in colour sections, or, as they used to say with another slang term, in Jim Crow sections; which in turn were discriminated against within the union because they were denied representation in the central levels.

For Gompers there was nothing wrong in all this, as it was only a matter of recognition of an existing social situation: while «the AFL does not intend to deny the Negroes the right to organize themselves, nor does it claim that the existing social barriers can be forgotten». The fault of the scarce presence of black people in the unions affiliated to the AFL «is mainly the fault of the Negroes themselves, because too often they have let the bosses manoeuvrer them against their own interests and against those of the white workers». While this hypocritical statement highlighted the real attitude of the AFL towards black people, it was also a false statement: the alleged scabbing of black workers, flaunted at every push, was based on the fact that the bosses always tried to use, importing it from afar, black labour whenever a struggle put them in crisis; but every time, when black workers were informed that there was a strike, the vast majority either went home or joined the workers in struggle.

The exclusion of black workers from trade unions had as a logical adjunct also a discriminatory attitude on the part of the employers, favoured by the trade unions themselves. In fact, in the ’90s the black workers who possessed some specialization gradually decreased due to the combined action of masters and unions (to the point that white workers were interested in expelling them from the specialized trades to take their place), and more and more they found themselves in non‑specialized activities in the railways, construction, and ships.

As a consequence, in the years at the turn of the century black workers were in the lowest positions in the various sectors of production. No matter in which sector, they received lower wages than whites for the same work; but usually it was not the same job, they were given the toughest, unhealthiest and dirtiest jobs. Even when they were in the unions they received little protection, to the point that many unions tolerated that black workers could work longer and for lower wages.

However, the racist attitude was more widespread among the management of trade unions and the AFL than among workers. In fact, even in the racist South, they soon realized that the policy of separation was mainly in the interests of the bosses. They benefit to have the class separated so as to keep wages low, thanks to the competition that would inevitably develop between the different opposing components. A significant example was in Galveston, Texas, in 1898, when 2300 black dockworkers went on strike for a wage increase; their place was offered to white workers, who refused «at any price… We support the Negroes in their demands, and wish them success». A success there was not. After four weeks of struggle the strike was stopped by the intervention of the militia, killings and arrests: routine matters.

Other underdogs

Not very different was the attitude of the management of AFL and most trade unions towards workers born abroad during the 90s. It was an attitude of racism, contempt and declared hostility, as well as a reactionary policy aimed at hindering the entry of immigrants into the country and trade unions. But even if the AFL had wanted to be more willing to organize these workers, this would have been made very difficult if not impossible by the fact that the vast majority of them were unskilled or semi‑skilled. On the other hand, the problem did not arise, because the AFL managers were certainly not interested in organizing the large numbers of workers who arrived continuously in those years from all over the world. For Gompers (himself born abroad) it was a problem of “racial purity”. In addition to the basic fact of the difficulty of organizing foreigners, in the decade 1890‑1900 the country of origin of the immigrants had changed: from the «willing and intelligent of northern and western Europe» they had moved to the hordes of «servile and degraded southern and eastern Europe, marked by crime, disease, poverty, filth, and slave‑like attitude to work for almost nothing and live on even less». These derelicts included Italians, Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, Romanians, etc. And they often carried with them an even more terrible characteristic: many of them, instead of being good citizens who loved democracy, were anarchists or socialists. The AFL could do without them.

This explains the campaign conducted by the Federation to reduce or eliminate immigration from those cursed countries. For example, subjecting them to a literacy test, even if in their own language. An initiative of the leaders who, to tell the truth, met a strong opposition within the Federation itself, so that Gompers had to withdraw it.

But, despite the fact that the leadership of the Federation cooperated in its crusade against immigrants with reactionary organizations, the ruffians of the South, the racist nativists, and other such initiatives, its effect on the influx of immigrants was very little. Not least because the big business, whose economy was growing at a higher rate than that of all industrialized countries, was not at all sorry for the arrival of cheap labour. However, this attitude was able to make life difficult for them. It kept them away from the unions with a thousand subterfuges, not least the raising of registration fees, up to $100, a very high figure for a newly arrived and poorly paid labourer.

The situation of women in the union was not very different from that of black people and immigrants. The trade unions kept them at a distance, even though very few prohibited their membership in their statutes. However, with expedients similar to those adopted with black people and immigrants, they actually made their membership impossible or almost impossible. If they accepted them, they did so only for jobs at the lowest levels, effectively preventing them from any kind of professional ascent. And the AFL, in the name of an unsympathetic non‑interference in the affairs of individual trade unions, did little or nothing to change their attitude. The women, they said, remained little in the world of work, as soon as possible they got married, had children and left work; then they stayed in the factory to support themselves until marriage. Why should the union spend money and energy to organize them? This was an old excuse, which may have had some foundation half a century before, but which was no longer valid. Large numbers of women had entered the world of work in the last decade of the century, and most of them lived off their work, often keeping others dependent on them. But thanks to the obstructionism of trade unions they were paid very badly, both because they did badly paid jobs and because they received lower wages than their male comrades for the same work.

If the situation was hard for white women, it was even harder for black women, who associated the two types of handicaps: if white women received 25 to 50% less for the same job as a man, black female workers could be paid between a third and a half less than white women; often they did not even know how much the pay was, they were simply used to accept any condition.

As Gompers said on one occasion « AFL maintains as one of its cardinal principles of the trade union movement that workers must organize, unite and federate, regardless of faith, colour, gender, nationality or political opinion». These beautiful proposals were reiterated in all the conventions of the Federation. Only that they had nothing to do with reality. Occupied almost exclusively in non‑specialized or semi‑specialized activities, black people, foreigners and women were not interesting for the organizations that formed the backbone of the AFL. In fact, their membership was usually hindered, as we have seen, in a thousand ways.

In the years following 1895, the fundamental characteristics of the American Federation of Labour were traced, and remained virtually unchanged until the 1930s. During these years the main objective of the AFL was the consolidation of an “aristocracy of labour”. In spite of the periodical proclamation of the most sacred principles of solidarity, AFL aimed to organize above all the specialized workers, giving up pertinaciously to organize the non‑specialized. In fact, it worked to prevent the organization of the overwhelming majority of the working class.

Why was this attitude taken, when after the early formative years the trend had been quite different? Surely an important push came from the decline of the Knights of Labour. Until that moment Gompers had to reckon with an organization that, with all its faults, had the merit of actually welcoming all the proletarians, without making any distinction. Therefore, he had to show that his AFL was no less in terms of solidarity. But after the fall of the K.L. there was no choice but unions affiliated to the Federation, so it was enough to keep the commitment in words, while nothing prevented him from transgressing it in deeds.

On a somewhat broader level, and seen from a distance, the AFL policy was a fundamental component of a program of class collaboration with monopoly capital, in which safety and well‑being for specialized workers was obtained at the expense of the unskilled and unorganized. We will see how its leaders will go hand in hand with the trusts. Indeed they will become the most strenuous defenders of them, so that their trade unions will obtain welfare zones in the backrooms of the mega monopolies. In exchange, they agreed to do absolutely nothing to organize the overwhelming majority of workers that the monopolies themselves exploited, and above all immigrants, black people and women.

We will see how this aristocracy will operate in North America against class combativeness, receiving the contempt of all Marxists, starting with Marx and Engels who had already described it as a consequence of the exploitation of other peoples by the metropolitan capital, which Lenin would later call imperialism. And it is Lenin himself, in an introduction to Imperialism in 1920, who condemned the phenomenon with words that cannot be misunderstood: «This stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labour aristocracy, who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is the principal prop of the Second International, and in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie. For they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, real vehicles of reformism and chauvinism. In the civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie they inevitably, and in no small numbers. take the side of the bourgeoisie, the “Versailles” against the “Communards”». Elsewhere (Left Wing Communism), the working class aristocracy is branded as «corporatist, petty, selfish, sordid, interested, petit-bourgeois, of imperialist mentality, enslaved and corrupted by imperialism».

15 – Capital and Labour at the Dawn of the New Century

The New Century and the “Age of Good Feeling”

American capitalism enters the new century in the grip of euphoria. The crisis of the ’90s is a memory and now the word to use to describe the present is “prosperity”.

Frederick W. Taylor has already written the first in a series of books and articles that illustrate his doctrine of “scientific management” of production: simple and repetitive operations, requiring less training, and therefore less specialization, measuring operations with the chronometer, linking the worker’s salary to the performance in relation to the “scientifically” established time; in this way the profit can increase to the maximum possible levels.

Despite the depression, the United States had emerged as the first industrial power in the 1890s. Already in 1890, they were the first producers of iron and steel; in 1899 they became so for coal. At the same time, the export of capital also grew. Small companies were being wiped out by ever larger and fewer corporations.

The United States was also a world power militarily, and in the last years of the century an empire had been built, thanks to the war with Spain, in Central America and the Pacific, as well as controlling politically and economically many Latin American countries.

For the working class, however, there was not much reason to be happy. The crisis of the ’90s had had a very hard impact on the living conditions of the proletariat, and there were not many fruits of the “unprecedented prosperity” they could enjoy. In 1900 wages were still 10% lower than before the crisis of ’93; nevertheless, this was an average, so while some more specialized trades had recovered their losses, wages were very low for the large working mass; of course for those who worked: six and a half million workers did not work a whole year, and two million of them for less than six months. This is a fact that makes the drama of the working-class condition in the golden age of American capitalism. The official statistics of almost a century later that give 1.4 million unemployed for 1900, or 5% of the labour force of 27 and a half million, as usual, do not make the reality of the working class situation, which is better described by the previous data from the 1901 work of a government commission. So, as we often demonstrate in our work on the history of the working-class movement, the bourgeoisie in retrospect tries in every way to describe the story that its mode of production has shaped as a story with few jolts and a lot, a lot of happiness for everyone.

The figure is then made even more dramatic, if such a thing is possible, by the trend in the cost of living, which in the same period had increased by at least 10% for food, and even more for rent and coal (the figure, from a 1904 study, reports 16% for food between 1896 and 1903, and for the same period 40% for coal and kerosene, and 20% for rent). In 1902, while the World Almanac listed 4000 millionaires in the USA, in the same country, out of 80 million inhabitants, 10% lived in poverty, inadequately fed and clothed, and in miserable homes. And, as far as the working class is concerned, the lowest in the ranking were the miners: it is not surprising that in the following years this will be the most combative category.

The picture is completed by terrible work shifts: the bourgeoisie had recovered in the decade the concessions on the 8‑hour day: the typical working day was 10 hours, but it was often much longer, for up to 7 days a week, as in the steel industry, where free Sundays were alternated with weekends with a tremendous 24‑hour shift “to recover”. The same situation of regression in the working-class condition was evident with respect to child labour and women.

Another aspect that is not secondary concerns working conditions: no protection from risks, and therefore very high mortality in industrial activities, railways, mines, in addition to that, less documented, due to unhealthy working environments. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York, where 500 Italian and Jewish girls who had recently immigrated worked, killed 145 of them because of the lack of escape routes, and of any fire precautions.

It comes as no surprise, then, if in the same years the workers’ movement, measured on the participation in the unions, showed a vigorous recovery: from less than half a million members in 1897, the unions in 1904 counted more than two million; and of course the lion’s share belonged to the AFL, which gathered in its unions 80% of the members. The number of strikes also increased more than twice as much during the period, strikes that in the majority of cases were successful.

During the ’90s, and especially towards the end of the decade, the willingness to reach collective agreements with trade unions on key issues such as wages and hours spread in certain sectors of industry. The most important of these agreements was between the owners of the mines and the UMW. Part of this willingness on the part of the employers was due to the desire to avoid conflicts during the Spanish-American War (1898‑1900), a period in which the lucrative State orders were not to be jeopardized. But even after the war the capitalists hesitated to create conditions that could endanger the river of profits that entered their pockets, and collective agreements became very frequent.

But there was another reason for this attitude of the bosses. It was the period of great development of monopolistic capital; in 1898 alone the capitalization of industrial concentrations doubled compared to the previous year. Monopolies in formation needed to control production and prices, and in this they suffered from competition from entrepreneurs not reached by the monopoly; it was therefore vital that these companies joined the monopoly, and, if this was not possible, they had to be crushed and taken out of the way. Here came into play the union, which could be the instrument to achieve the result. With this idea in mind, towards the end of the century the owners began to recognize the closed shop: on the basis of a contract between an employers’ association (a very representative case was that of construction) and the union, the former undertook to hire only union members (or to submit their choice to the union); in exchange the union guaranteed that none of its members would work for companies outside the employers’ association. Associating this control of the workforce with an increasing control of raw materials, the employers’ associations managed to put companies that did not want to submit to the monopoly into bankruptcy. The unions went so far in some cases as to inducing to strike the workers of those companies. The trade unions, generally the ones belonging to the AFL, thus became an instrument in the hands of the capitalists, who, by controlling the market, managed to put together enormous profits. In exchange for these services, the capitalists gave, temporarily, to the trade unions, crumbs of the rich profits.

The trade unions considered the concentration in monopolies to be positive: in this way it would have been easier to make collective agreements, while many small entrepreneurs would have been forced to compete to the bone primarily through the reduction of wages. But, apart from the fact that the advantages for the workers were reserved almost exclusively to those who were already well‑positioned in production, i.e., skilled workers, nobody mentioned the continuous increase in the cost of living, which almost cancelled wage increases. Nor was it remembered that, in many already-monopolistic mass-production industries, this idyll did not exist; not to mention the fact that, in parallel to the closed shop, there was still a great deal of real hostility towards the union, with the consequences that we have seen of brutality, lockouts, mass layoffs, blacklists, etc.

Blissful in their rosy vision of the business world, the AFL leaders did not see, or did not want to see, the dark side of the working-class condition, which concerned not only the lower strata of the class. They spoke of the “Age of Good Feeling” between capital and work, and they envisaged only idyllic relationships between two components that materialistically can only be violently opposed.

They would soon change their minds. The concessions to the unions were only temporary. A monopoly, once consolidated, no longer needs the union to bring down competition. On the contrary, it soon becomes ruthless in crushing unions, just as it had been for capitalists out of line. The so‑called peaceful relations between employers’ associations and trade unions could only end sooner or later; they would be replaced by the clash over the open shop.

The Open Shop

Even if some sectors of the bourgeoisie showed interested openings towards the trade union movement, the majority of the employers did not forget that their most important goal in that historical phase was destroying the trade union movement, either physically or by making it harmless. The resumption of the offensive was favoured by the crisis of 1893, and eventually the growth of the union was only a further incentive to mobilize for the crusade against unionism. When in 1902 U.S. Steel destroyed what was left of Amalgamated Iron Workers, a union whose previous defeat in the Homestead strike we have already described, employers’ associations began to flourish everywhere. The watchword was the open shop, which was in theory the denial of the closed shop: employees should not be forced to join trade unions, which therefore should not have any power in the company; this was in accordance with the much flaunted American myth of individual freedom, for which both workers and bosses count for one; a rule that, besides being in itself unfair, was never respected in the first place by the bosses, who, as in this case, did not hesitate to agree to fight the workers. But the real and not very hidden purpose of these associations was to ban the unions from the factories altogether, and to achieve this goal they only hired workers who were not union members and who committed themselves not to join unions, expelling those who didn’t; not to mention the other persecutory measures of which we have had plenty of examples in the course of this narrative.

The image of the worker victim of oppression was contrasted with that of the aggressor and oppressor: it was the employer who suffered from tyranny and oppression; he was the victim of the despotic power of the unions which, taking advantage of the blind obedience of their members, wanted to abolish the “natural” right to freedom of enterprise. By leveraging American individualism, this hammering propaganda succeeded in shifting public opinion support from the worker to the boss. But despite the successes at the local level, the open shop movement had no organization and leadership at the national level.

Soon the employers’ associations were joined by the Citizens’ Alliances, open to anyone who was not part of a trade union, a kind of duplication in reality, open to all citizens.

Finally, the need to centrally coordinate the activities of these bodies led the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), which had been created with technical tasks, to take on this responsibility; this took a much more political stance, warning that «if Gomperism [sic!], the laws for the 8 hours, the boycotts, etc.…are not halted, the United States will have to face a reign of terror, which will make the French Revolution look like a tea room».

Other associations were created, under various names, but all with the same objectives. During the first decade of the century they were very active in boycotting trade unions and their activities, giving economic support to companies lined up for the open shop, finding scabs, boycotting newspapers that did not sympathize with them, bribing trade unionists, managing blacklists, paying infiltrated spies, Forcing workers to sign “yellow dog” contracts, making propaganda by painting trade unionists as vermin and corrupt, and trade unionism as “un‑American”, using police, militia and private agencies to break strikes, using the courts to weaken unions, and organizing powerful lobbies against labour law. In short, the usual soup, but this time generalized and used with a wealth of means. A single agency of private agents had 35,000 agents available to take action in a very short time, spies with professional skills suitable to be infiltrated; later it became known that many trade unionists, even senior executives of AFL, were on the NAM payroll.

Not all capitalists were in agreement: some believed that it was worthwhile to conquer social peace, and thus make the workers forget the union, by granting pleasant working environments, incentives, or even company shares; others had developed “company unionism”, founding company unions that did everything but organize workers’ struggles. But the pressure to join the anti‑worker associations was strong, to the extent of intimidation.

Initially the unions gave little credit to these initiatives, but towards the end of 1903 it became clear that the campaign for the open shop was producing very harmful effects for the workers’ movement. The trade unions tried to defend themselves, especially through their press, but it only reached a minority of the population, which, by the way, was the one that needed least convincing. In fact, the campaign for the open shop was successful, not by destroying the unions, which was impossible, but by stopping their growth, which had been impetuous until 1904. It increased the number of strikes defeated; in the trust-abiding companies, the union, already weak, disappeared almost completely, with the exception of the railroads; collective bargaining on a large scale decreased substantially.

The blame for all this, however, was not only for the open shop campaign. Other forces had been at work, inside and outside the workers’ movement, to deprive the trade unions of the economic and militant force necessary to defend the class from the offensive.

The National Civic Federation

One of these, and perhaps the most important at the time, was the National Civic Federation, whose birth and purpose we have written about before. We should, however, return to the subject because the NCF was an important presence in the first decade of the century, and also because it indirectly provides us with a measure of the degree of corruption and domestication to which union leaders had already arrived.

“Our experience has convinced us – said a Federation spokesman in 1903 – that the best way to control workers’ organizations is to guide them, not to oppose them. We are also convinced that conservative elements of all unions can exercise this control if they are guided and assisted in the most appropriate way”. Unions that could not only keep workers within reasonable limits about demands and actions of struggle, but that would also constitute a barrier against the various forms of radicalism. In short, an open attempt to control the movement by bringing the leaders to participate in a program of class collaboration, thus taking away from the class vigour, militant spirit, combativeness, political perspectives.

There were certainly conflicts between workers and bosses; but they were avoidable conflicts, because in America there were no classes (for them), and therefore it was not obvious that there was class struggle like in Europe. In the United States there were only “misunderstandings” between bosses and workers. The purpose of the NCF was precisely to avoid the occurrence of these “misunderstandings”, with meetings, conferences, banquets.

Even without seeing the Federation at work, it would have been enough to examine its composition to understand how it would work, and for whom. Of the three main components, trade unions, entrepreneurs and the public (today we would say “civil society”), we saw that they had mainly enlisted the most right wing union leaders who had already shown a good attitude to boycott strikes that they did not like. The entrepreneurs were represented by lawyers and big business officials, all with well‑known anti‑union background, and in any case the vast majority of them representing the biggest trusts (steel, oil, railways, etc.), and certainly not small companies. However, the defenders of the Federation attributed its alleged impartiality to the third component. But on closer examination here too were executives or former executives of companies, bankers, trust lawyers, even a former US president, Grover Cleveland, who had sent troops to break the Pullman strike, and bishops and university professors who were also the favourites of the open shop movement for the positions they had taken previously. In fact, even if the trade union component had been less corrupt and willing to make the capitalists happy, the NCF could only be completely controlled by the bourgeoisie, a bourgeoisie enlightened only by its desire to nullify combativeness by the working class, and to nip any revolutionary ambitions in the bud. Nothing substantial separated the NCF from the defenders of the open shop, if not empty declarations and more devious methods to control the working class. The role of the NCF became clear from the very beginning, on the occasion of the US Steel strike.

The main union was the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel & Tin Workers, a trade union that included only a minority of the 148,000 employees of U.S. Steel, a huge newly formed trust. The policy of the trust was to exclude the union from new plants where it was not yet present, and to tolerate it in older plants, under certain conditions. It was clear to the union that its absence from a number of plants could lead to its general decline.

Negotiations for the new contract in some U.S. Steel plants began in the spring of 1901. The union, through President Shaffer, asked that the agreed wage scale be applied to all the factories of the trust together with the official recognition of the Unions. The other party accepted the proposal only for those factories where the union was already present.

The strike began in two factories and then extended to 62,000 workers by August. Shaffer relied on the support of other trade unions, particularly miners and railroad workers, for whom it was obvious that the trust of J.P. Morgan, owner of U.S. Steel, would deal with them after the steelmakers. Less obvious was the support of Gompers.

Shaffer was a member of an NCF Committee, but he had been chosen reluctantly; NCF Director Easley could not stand him, in agreement with Gompers, who was irritated by the criticism that the Amalgamated leader had addressed to the AFL leadership, especially in defence of industrial unionism, which, as we have seen, Gompers disliked. The leaders of the NCF did not like the fact that Shaffer counted on the support of other unions, including the solidarity strike, obviously held in dislike for the unpredictable consequences it could unleash. So in July, President Hanna wrote to John Mitchell, then president of the United Mine Workers Association, as well as Vice President of the AFL and member of the NCF, asking him to “work” to block the movement, adding that “the task of the responsible union leaders” was to resolve the conflict before Shaffer took “desperate measure”.

There were meetings attended by Morgan himself, who promised, shamelessly lying as was later proved, that even if it was not possible immediately, within two years agreements could be signed for all plants. Shaffer was persuaded by the NCF shysters to trust Morgan, but this was not the case for the Amalgamated executive committee, because the proposal effectively excluded the union from most of the steel factories and guaranteed better conditions only to a minority of skilled workers.

At that point, U.S. Steel resorted to scabs. The union appealed to Gompers to convene a meeting of the representatives of all unions to call solidarity strikes in other categories related to the activities of the steel industry, in particular railroad workers and miners. But Gompers refused, saying that it would be “a sign of weakness”. In reality, the subtle corruption resulting from the involvement of high‑ranking trade unionists in the NCF was beginning to bear fruit.

The steelworkers immediately understood that nothing good would come from that side. On the contrary, the members of the NCF Conciliation Committee went to great lengths to convince the union leaders that the solidarity strike requested by Shaffer was madness; and they succeeded, with the exception of the miners, despite Mitchell’s opposing pressure. The miners were for solidarity, but Mitchell managed to prevent any action.

So alone, without a penny paid into the resistance fund by the AFL, and weakened by the ancient resentment of the unskilled workers towards the trade union, the steelworkers had to resign themselves to the defeat, definitive this time after that of ten years before. The NCF had clearly shown what was the task it could perform in an anti‑worker’s key, and what was the use of the money that the capitalists had invested in it.

The result for steelworkers? A study by a State commission showed that, in 1910, a third of the 153,000 blast-furnace and rolling‑mill workers worked seven days a week, and a fifth of them had a working time of 84 hours and more per week, 12 hours a day including Sunday. Working conditions were below the average American industrial standard, and wages were barely enough to support an average family.

The NCF at work

The effects of the crawling corruption exerted by the NCF was also evident during the strike of the anthracite miners in Telluride, in eastern Pennsylvania, who lived and worked in terrible conditions. We will not go into detail here about a strike that involved nearly 150,000 workers, and lasted from May 15 to October 23, 1902. In short, the miners put in place exemplary combativeness and solidarity, resisting all the instruments we know of put in place by the bosses. Mitchell, the president of the UMW trade union and an important member of the NCF, did everything he could to prevent the extension of the strike, and to make them accept a final agreement that, if it granted important improvements to the miners, was enormously below the goals that the strength they had shown and the sacrifices they had endured could conquer. In reality, it was an only provisional agreement, which, among other things, did not include the recognition of the union and provided for the open shop regime.

If some workers were dazzled and flattered by the fact that their representatives sat at the same table as the bosses, that they dined together, well dressed and revered, for the majority, this closeness was not at all welcome. The opposition within the Unions, among many executives, and also in the working-class press was always strong, and manifested at all conferences and assemblies.

1 – If, as the defenders of the NCF claimed, there was an identity of interests between capital and labour, why did they continue to fight each other, and by such notorious means?

2 – Within the Federation there was a lot of emphasis and talk about the responsibility of big business to recognize trade unionism. In short, the bosses, thanks to the intercession of the NCF, had to repent. This shifted the commitment of the trade union leaders, and therefore of the struggles, at least to the point in which the leaders could influence, from direct struggle to endless negotiation.

3 – Collaborating in the same organization with the most ferocious bourgeoisie and company managers, who had fought the workers with all means, the union piecards allowed them to marshal themselves as philanthropists, unjustly misjudged. Instead of fighting them, they found good reasons to excuse or even defend their anti‑union activities, often attributing responsibility for clashes to workers who would listen to radical elements that would deceive them. In short, the base, who knew those characters and their minions well, was difficult to be convinced to accept this version, and accused the managers in the NCF of not representing them.

4 – The Federation said it wanted to show the public opinion a more enlightened and realistic image of the demands of the unions, but it was careful not to tell the almost constant refusals of the bosses to sit at the negotiating table with the representatives of the organized workers.

5 – The NCF worked to settle disputes quickly, but this did not mean that the closures were favourable to the workers, on the contrary, usually the workers obtained almost nothing, and everything was resolved in heavy pressure on the piecards who were part of the Federation to use all their influence to stop the strikers. And then invite them to dinner.

It is therefore clear that the aim of the Civic Federation, not even so much hidden, was to act as a long arm of the large corporations to keep the discontent of the working class at bay, attracting on its side with various forms of corruption, material, cultural, psychological, the most right‑wing leaders of the class, a process that would become increasingly institutionalized in the following years. All this while the initiative was cloaked in an image of generosity, philanthropy, good and sincere intentions, and instead tried to instil in the class the poison of inter-class collaboration and disorganization.

The spreading discontent in the movement in those years, initially controlled by the AFL piecards, exploded in 1904, when a New York subway strike was fought with all the most evil means by the transport company, whose manager was a certain Belmont, who at the same time held the position of President of the NCF. The good thing is that the bonzes of the NCF lovingly supported his leadership for the next three years of his mandate, despite the violent protests of the rank and file.

The fight against the NCF within the AFL continued in the following years, but by now the Federation’s task had been accomplished, in the lasting yoke of the union leaders to the interests of the big corporations.

“Business Unions”

In February 1901 an interesting article appeared in an Atlantic City trade union magazine on “Business in the Management of the Union”. It read: «Unions are more and more being based on business principles, and are more and more being managed by business-minded leaders who operate according to business methods. The more complete the mastery of these principles, the greater the success attained». A few years later, something similar appeared on the organ of the bricklayers’ union: «In practically every trade today we have one strong organization of labour, with large funds, and more than that, able businessmen and more and more conservative field general at the helm, with the unions conducted in a business‑like and conservative manner».

The original reason for the presence of managers with management skills was to enable unions to function effectively and efficiently as compact, well‑financed and organized instruments in the daily struggles of the working class against the enemy of all time. And indeed, an efficient trade union organization became increasingly vital for the survival of trade unions in the United States, especially in the years after 1873. The main innovations of “managerial” trade unionism were: centralized control of the organization, especially during strikes; subsidies for illness, unemployment and death; high membership and annual fees. From the very beginning, there were often managers who were so obsessed with the accumulation of reserves as an end in itself that they became the sole objective of the union; they were managers who consequently became reluctant to allow struggles, which would affect the reserves, accumulated with great care. But as long as the main purpose of this trade unionism remained the creation and maintenance of organizations capable of successfully fighting for the improvement of members’ wages, hours and working conditions, prudent management of funds was inevitable and even necessary.

Unfortunately, this business unionism, or managerial unionism, which at the turn of the century increasingly permeated and guided many unions, began to mean the application of the ethics of the businessman to the workers’ movement – an ethics that justified the use of position and influence for the enrichment of union leadership, as well as increasing profits for the bosses. The overwhelming majority of union organizers were willingly faced loss of job, and incurred discrimination and other risks, even serious ones, in order to organize their fellow workers for the struggles. The only reward they could aspire to was success in terms of follow‑up and class dedication as a result of their activity. A generous spirit that never left the class, on both sides of the Atlantic.

But another spirit was emerging within the class, represented by the kind of union leader who saw the development of the workers’ movement as a lush business through which to get rich, and in any case as an end in itself.

We have seen how during the ’80s and ’90s of the 19th century the unions had to sustain a very hard and systematic attack by the bourgeoisie. Spies infiltrated and wrecked entire sections; trade unionists ended up on blacklists and could no longer find work. Those who presented themselves to the boss to represent the category for trade union demands were very often thrown out of work and put on the blacklist. In the face of this employers’ offensive, the AFL trade unions considered it necessary to delegate the authority to organize and represent workers to professional organizers, who did not have to depend on the company to survive. They were called “walking delegates”, who were organizers and inspectors, salaried by the union, who were sent where and when there was an urgent need to organize the workers. By carrying out this activity full‑time they usually had an authority that overshadowed that of the local delegates elected from the base among their fellow workers.

Soon, the capitalists realized that this new type of union organizer was no longer subject to intimidation and persecution; they resolved to adopt the other more logical alternative tactic: buy him out, or at least try to do so. They didn’t always succeed: many union organizers were dedicated and honest, often had spent years working in the sector, which they knew well, and perhaps they had carried out that activity for free as workers elected by department committees.

But there were also those who, like the managers described above, saw that activity as a simple job, with which one simply tries to earn as much money as possible. And since they were not distracted by any form of idealism, they were also the ones who most easily moved up the union’s hierarchical ladder to positions of greater responsibility. Managers, according to the criterion that responsibilities and experience should be paid proportionately, received between $5,000 and $8,000 per year, plus expenses; in practice, 10‑15 times the average worker’s salary in the industry. But it was the extra income, which could be worth ten times more, that made them richer. Foner describes a series of incomes that were currently being established and rarely pursued.

– Income derived from robbing union treasuries. Managers often collected large amounts of cash for dues, subscriptions or otherwise, and almost never deposited them in bank accounts or kept books.

– The payment of large sums of money by employers for preventing or calling off strikes, negotiating “reasonable” contracts and neglecting contract clauses, favourable for the workers. It is evident that even a small saving of a few cents per hour allowed the capitalist enormous savings if multiplied by many thousands of hours, especially in big companies, and therefore a rich bribe to the piecard was a very profitable investment.

– Income derived from cooperating with employers to form monopolies in their particular trade. As we have seen above, the union could be of great service to capital also in calling strikes, in companies resistant to the call of the monopoly. This kind of support extended (sometimes with written contracts!) to the management of workers, who could be induced to abandon the unwelcome companies and employed into those of the monopoly, and other such favours. It was not uncommon for the trade unionist to obtain a stake in the company, with a quota of shares representing the bribe, in his or his wife’s name.

– Revenues from the sale of labels (today we would say logo) of the union. The logo meant that the product came from a company approved by the union, with the consequence of a favourable reception from the working class, and also the guarantee of not being subjected to boycott, which as we have seen was in those years a weapon of struggle of no little value.

– Sale or rental of “work permits”. Managers did not always want to increase the number of union members, for fear of losing control. The “work permits” were a temporary grant of membership status to work in a closed shop industry; sometimes the buyers were just workers, other times the same industrialists. At the end of the granted period the permit expired. Of course, the costs, which was money that entered without control into the pockets of the managers, were always borne by the proletarians in need of work.

We could continue with a thousand examples of small and large corruption, but what matters is that this state of affairs generated a trade union leadership that was less and less performing the task it was supposed to do. Gradually, their greater commitment was concentrated on maintaining power in the organization, on fraction struggles, on the hoarding of the money so shamefully earned.

Even what we could call “Law and Order Service”, and which the American unions had baptized, with a touch of humour, “Entertainment Committees”, in the late ’90s began to be made up of gangsters, and increasingly served to protect the bosses and their interests, rather than helping the strikers against Pinkerton agents and scabs.

The trade union was therefore turning into a company, with company logic, with company prospects, with managers who behaved with the same logic and prospects as those they were called to fight. Although worker combativeness was determined by much greater conditioning, this transformation, and above all its rapidity, in this in advance of European trade unionism, made it easy for the bourgeoisie overseas to control the class and overcome the serious social crises that would follow in the next half century.

The American Labour Union

In the West, the scene in those years was filled above all by the struggles of the miners who, united in the Western Federation of Miners, opposed the mine owners in a decisive way, and adapted to the violence put in place by the class enemy.

The bourgeoisie had fielded all the instruments at its disposal, which we have already described on several occasions, against the miners, who carried out the most dangerous activity ever, even at a time when safety measures were practically absent in all workplaces.

In 1903 a strike began in Colorado, with several demands, the most important of which was the 8‑hour day, vital for mine workers. As a matter of fact, a law had been passed in 1899, but the bosses didn’t care, and even managed to have it declared unconstitutional. In 1902 a referendum had confirmed the law with an overwhelming majority of votes, and a governor, J. H. Peabody, had been elected and committed to support the result of the referendum. But the law did not pass the legislative assembly, thanks to pressure from the mining lobby.

While the workers were preparing to respond with the only truly effective weapon, the governor sent militia troops to prevent picketing; the strike then began uphill for the workers, who soon became the object of a real persecution: the military arrested and deported outside the State all those they considered dangerous for social peace, according to them, that is the leaders of the strike, although they had not committed any crime. And when the matter was brought before the court, the military did not hesitate to intimidate the judges themselves, who obviously did not feel like endorsing blatantly illegal behaviour. Those who were not deported were locked up in makeshift stockades or “bull pens”, to suffer the most terrible conditions of detention; and this treatment was also dispensed to sympathizers of the strikers, including journalists. The strike officially ended in 1907, but in fact by the end of 1904 it had ended with the complete crushing of the union; this despite the fact that it had extended to Idaho and to the workers who were members of United Mine Workers, a union that belonged to the AFL.

The defeat was mainly due to the unscrupulous use of all the tools, legal and illegal, that the bourgeoisie could field; but an important component of the defeat was the absence of any help from the strong unions of the East, gathered under the aegis of the AFL. Gompers refused even to mention the ongoing struggle of this union that, unlike his own, was open to all workers in the sector, and had completely democratic decision-making mechanisms, in which the rank and file had no difficulty in making its voice heard.

16 – The Industrial Workers of the World

A summary and a balance sheet

At the end of the 19th century, the dominant form of organization in the American workers’ movement was that of various independent trade unions. Each of which brought together and organized autonomously on a local, State or, increasingly, national basis all the workers who carried out a given work process, i.e., trade unionism or craft unionism.

In the last decade of the century and in the early 1900’s there was a strong quantitative development of trade-unionism in the United States: the total number of union members increased from 447,000 in 1897 to 2,072,000 in 1904. At the same time, the American Federation of Labour grew steadily in importance: the number of its members went from 278,000 in 1898 to 1,676,000 in 1904, and in that year 80% of all those who were members of a trade union belonged to the AFL

But despite this growth, which seen separately appears imperious, the AFL at the beginning of the century only included less than 20% of American manual workers; the rest, with a few commendable exceptions, remained completely unorganized.

But what is more important is the fact that the AFL is mainly composed of unions of specialized, skilled workers, employed in the construction industry and in small businesses, such as print stores, tailors, shoemakers and barber shops. Also, in the mass production industries – steel, mechanics, chemicals, textiles, clothing, glass and shoes – the members are almost exclusively the specialized workers of these industries. Thus, in those very years of growth, the inability of the AFL to establish any effective control over the large mass‑production industries; and the impossibility of facing, on the basis of the organizational principles of trade unionism, the consequences for workers of the concentration of ownership and the mechanization and standardization of production that increasingly characterize American capitalism, provided that it had the will. In the parts preceding this one we have given ample documentation of the early passage of this Federation of Trade Unions in the field of monopolistic employers, at least as far as the highest-ranking officials are concerned.

The high mechanization and automation of the factories makes the skill and ability of skilled workers (and their tools, until now a symbol of their trade and pride) less and less important since, thanks to the introduction of new machines, unskilled or semi‑skilled workers (not specialized or semi‑specialized) can now perform work tasks following a very simple and quick training, very different from the long years of apprenticeship that specialized workers had to go through to gain their tradesman certificate. It is significant the change in the composition of the workforce that takes place in those years. From 1870 to 1900 the number of employees grew from 12 to 29 million; but at the same time the fraction of women employed (who are usually destined to unskilled jobs) rose from 1/8 to 1/5 of the total. Also, the number of boys from 10 to 15 years old grows to 1,750,000. In immigration the supremacy passes from England and Germany, countries that generally supplied workers with professional skills, to Austria-Hungary, Russia and Italy, and the extraction of newcomers is mainly peasant.

It is the workers who come from these countries, whose sphere of needs is reduced and are therefore satisfied with lower wages, which make up the lowest state of the working class, the unskilled worker that the new production processes can use.

The impossibility for organizations based on the principles of craft unionism to cope with these massive transformations that took place in the most advanced industrial sectors is demonstrated by the case of the steel industry, and we have seen how the employers managed to crush the workers’ resistance and the unions themselves in a few years at the turn of the 20th century.

In the end, in the hope of survival, the unions begin to give in systematically to every request from employers; and from this point on, their existence ultimately depends on whatever interest the bosses may have in keeping them alive. We have seen how for a trust, for example, keeping a trade union alive and, consequently, the cost of the workforce high, can be a way to force independent producers to join; or, keeping the wages of a small minority of the skilled workforce artificially high through appropriate agreements with trade unions, becomes the way to keep the wages of the majority of workers at a starvation level.

Once accepted this condition of subordination to the company, the trade unions not only necessarily become more conservative and bureaucratic, they completely change their function and devote themselves to insurance and welfare activities, acting against the employers only to defend the corporate interests of the working-class aristocracy.

Innovation in the organization

Not all unions had undergone this transformation: some unions had modified their structure in order to organize not only workers who performed a certain task, but an entire industrial sector. These new industry-based organizations, industrial unions, maintained many of the characteristics of the previous labour organizations from which they emerged. In fact, they were formed not so much under the push of the mechanization of the production process, with the consequent replacement of skilled workers with unskilled ones, but rather under the push of the process of concentration and trustification of property.

Therefore, these first industry-based organizational structures are obtained by combining the bargaining skills of skilled workers belonging to different trades; they arise through a process of aggregation (amalgamation) of different craft unions in order to oppose the unity of all workers in a given industrial sector to the unity of the employers.

Industrial unions that are born from scratch and that organize within them both skilled and unskilled workers – in order to prevent the bosses from using the latter as scabs – maintain the organizational principle of division by trade and are therefore realized with hybrid and contradictory elements. This was the case with the American Railway Union, formed in 1894 under the impetus of Eugene V. Debs, and ended prematurely after the defeat of the Pullman strike; although it included all those who worked on the railway lines, skilled and unskilled, men and women, with the sole but notable exception of Black workers, the ARU did not differ substantially in its structure from other industrial unions. In fact, its local sections were organized on a trade basis, and were united in a federation on each major railroad network. These federations, in turn, were unified in the national organization. The distinctive character of the new organization was its policy of unified action whenever the rights of any member were threatened. But the most significant example of industrial unionism was given, for those years, by the Western Federation of Miners, an organization that played a large part in the formation process of the Industrial Workers of the World and that for years coordinated and directed the very hard class struggle supported by the miners of the West.

As a consequence of these transformations the importance of skilled labour and its contractual strength declined considerably; this made easier and more frequent the attempts of the Mine Owners Association to replace it with green hands (workers without any handicraft skills) in order to break the strikes and eliminate the presence of WFM from the mines.

From the need to oppose a more compact front to the attack of the bosses, including the unskilled workers, the idea was born to create a larger organization that would include all workers of the West, the Western Labour Union, which we have already had occasion to talk about.

All these first experiences in the field of industrial unionism had led to a considerable departure from the fundamental organizational principle of the AFL, the complete autonomy of each craft union; but this did not yet mean a complete abandonment of the organizational principles of trade unionism and a complete opposition to the AFL On the contrary, more or less all these industrial unions had remained for some time affiliated to the AFL The Western Labour Union itself, to emphasize that it did not intend in any way to create an organization opposed to the AFL, allowed the unions that came to be part of it to maintain their ties with the larger federation. Even when the WLU, under the impetus of Debs, was transformed as we have seen into the American Labour Union, it was immediately made clear that the new organization did not intend «to oppose the American Federation of Labour, or invade its jurisdiction or create rival unions». Debs himself, while making it clear that «the Western movement could not be allowed to retreat and return to the American Federation» continued to hope that «one day the two progressive forces will be able to unite in the work of redemption that must be accomplished».

During the strikes of 1903 and 1904 the Western Federation of Miners had to suffer the toughest attack on its existence it had ever received. And all the normal means of resistance of a union – strike funds, union shops, etc. – had not served much purpose in the face of the violence used by the mines’ managers with the help of the State political authorities.

The repression had been enormous. Several areas of Colorado, in particular Cripple Creek, had been placed under the military control of the «State militia directly in the pay of the corporations…freedom of speech was strangled, the press gagged and the right to habeas corpus suspended by military imperialism». Haywood describes these events as follows; a total of 42 miners were killed, 112 injured and many illegally arrested and deported to other States under threat of death if they returned.

But in the face of this military attack against the class, the AFL, after having maintained a real conspiracy of silence about what was happening, did nothing other than to call for a fundraising by rejecting any more incisive forms of solidarity. By now it was clear that the closed form of trade union was no longer suitable to defend the working class from the attack of the employers; on the contrary, it had favoured the establishment of class collaboration between working class aristocracies and employers. The AFL had even officially reconfirmed, in 1903, the old organizational scheme, forcing important organizations to move away from it. The reactionary role now played by the AFL was crowned by the abandonment of the anti‑imperialist attitude held years ago: in 1904 the Cigar Makers Union (Gompers’ union) – affiliated with the AFL – refused to organize Filipino workers for fear that this would help the independence movement in the Philippines.

Also on this level the prestige of the AFL suffered a serious blow. And by now even Debs was convinced that “only when the moon had turned into green cheese would the Socialists be able to change the AFL, full to the brim of capitalist influences, into a revolutionary workers’ organization”. By now it was clear to everyone that a workers’ trade union organization with some chance of success had to make a qualitative leap in two main directions, one of an organizational type – large industrial unions, open to all workers without any distinction and united in a large federation – and one of a political type – the rejection of any theorization of common interests between the exploited class and the exploiter class.

A new general organization of the working class

It is not surprising, therefore, that the appeal launched in November 1904 by a group of six supporters of industrial trade unionism for a meeting to be held in January 1905 to «discuss ways and means to unite the working people of America on correct revolutionary principles, regardless of any general labour organization, past or present, and only restricted by such basic principles as will ensure its integrity as a real protector of the interests of the workers» was accepted.

The appeal was extremely innovative, since it was not limited to the hope for an organizational renewal of the workers’ movement, it placed for the first time on the level of class struggle claims that did not consider the existing social and political conditions as a limit. In fact, it expressed the conviction that «division by professions and political ignorance were condemned to a rapid end» and that the working class was able “if properly organized, both in the industrial and political fields, to take possession and run the country’s industries for its own interests”.

The Convention of January 2, 1905 was attended by 23 people, representatives of eight organizations: American Labour Union (ALU), Western Federation of Miners (WFM), United Brotherhood of Railway Employees (UBRE), Brewery Workers Union (BWU), Switchmen’s Union, United Metal Workers (UMW), Bakers’ Union, Switchmen’s Union and American Federation of Musicians (AFM), plus a few individuals. Two leaders of the Socialist Party did not show up, accusing the initiative of creating a rift in the class, and of making it more difficult to bring the AFL to the correct class positions, expelling its most conservative leaders. Of course, that this was impossible was now so obvious that no one was so worried about absences.

The conference elected William D. Haywood as permanent president, and over the next three days discussed and deliberated on how to build a new organization based on industrial unionism, class unity, class struggle; as a result, there was the adoption of a document called the Industrial Union Manifesto.

The Manifesto reviewed all the crucial points of the workers’ condition in the capitalist society of the time, in the light of the experiences arising from the struggles of the last three decades.

First of all, it was highlighted the effect of the increased mechanization and the concentration of ownership of the means of production both on the relations between workers and their organizations, and within the bourgeois class itself. Many trades disappear, the operations that workers have to perform are more and more simple, the worker is less and less differentiated and is increasingly treated as an amorphous material to be inserted in the production process until it becomes unusable; in this case it is thrown away as obsolete or unusable machinery. The mass worker is thus at the mercy of the master, who moves and uses it as he sees fit, without finding any resistance because workers’ organizations are unable to determine any. Where resistance manifests itself, the capitalists, increasingly united in employers’ organizations, with the complicity of collaborationist unions, use all the repressive equipment that the society they dominate can offer in a scientific way.

It is obvious that in this situation there is no prospect for the working class, if not of hopeless slavery. Craft unions are no longer suitable to defend working class conditions, on the contrary they have been used by the capitalists in their internal struggles and against the combative workers, to the point of making them organize the strikebreakers to break up the most determined struggles. «Universal economic evils affecting the working class can be eradicated only by a universal working class movement». on the basis of this statement it is necessary for the class to unite in a single industrial union that unites all sectors, based on the class struggle, without any affiliation to political parties, an organization that functions in a new and militant way.

The Manifesto concludes with the invitation, to those who recognize themselves in the principles we have briefly outlined, to participate in an assembly that would meet in Chicago on June 27, 1905, with the aim of founding the class economic organization capable of embodying the principles expressed in the Manifesto.

The document was printed to be disseminated among workers, and an addendum made further statements about the aims of the organization: to “combine the wage workers in such a way that it can most successfully fight the battles and protect the interests of the working people of to‑day in their struggle” and to “offer a final solution of the labour problem – an emancipation from strikes, injunctions and bull‑pens” (bull‑pens were hovels in which workers on strike were locked up and kept in inhumane conditions, even though they hadn’t broken any laws).

The document continues: “…this organization will build within itself…a Workers’ Co‑Operative Republic – which must finally have to destroy the shell of the capitalist government, and be the agency by which the working people will manage the industries, and appropriate the products to themselves”.

A very combative document, which invited the class to find a guide that would defend their interests to the most extreme consequences, in the belief that the trade union struggle could not be considered a definitive solution to the social question. Similar statements can also be found in the statutes of the European trade union confederations of the time, and in fact the main members of the promoting committee acknowledged that they were inspired by the European example. But in Europe the big trade unions were closely connected to the socialist parties, and they proceeded in parallel on the trade union and political level, while within the working class the distinction between the political level and the labour claims level was very clear; the Manifesto instead excluded links with political parties, and also any involvement in the electoral struggle, which in Europe was considered central to political tactics. These points were clarified a few days later by Trautmann, one of the main promoters, who did not hesitate to define the desired organization as one of “revolutionary trade unionism”. We are not going to make here a critique of revolutionary syndicalism, which spread in Europe as a reaction to the grip that reformism was having on socialist parties, and was an ideology of direct anarchist derivation and which can also be labelled as anarcho-syndicalism; these are positions outside Marxism, even if they take their starting point from it and accept some postulates. We will go deeper into the political aspects of the American movement in the parallel party work dedicated to them. However, these were positions that had already seen the light of day in the country many years before, along with the defence of industrial unionism, as we have documented previously. What revisionism had been able to cause in Europe, to push proletarian strata towards anarchism, already beaten in theory and practice in previous years, was instead determined in the USA in the first instance by the brazenly collaborative politics of the AFL Faced with the extreme weakness of the workers’ parties, the mirage of a new socialist society, generated by one big shoulder of the class gathered in the “One Big Union”, did not take long to fascinate large layers of proletarians: a great general strike, and then a country governed by the organization of trade unions alone.

The Industrial Union Manifesto was widely disseminated in trade union circles in the United States, and also in Europe, to the great annoyance of Gompers, who never stopped attacking the promoters accusing them of only wanting to destroy the union. One of the signatories, Moyer, did not defend himself against the accusation, but stated that nothing could have damaged the union movement more than the AFL In fact, in the hope of many of the promoters was the possibility of a painless passage of sections and entire unions into the IWW Undoubtedly, the immense power of the Federation, through its press organs and its capacity for blackmail, certainly held back many trade unions from joining the IWW, even if it is not possible to estimate the number.

The Chicago Convention

On June 5, 1905 the Convention that Haywood will call the “First Continental Congress of World Workers” opened in Chicago. Haywood himself gives the inaugural speech:

“In calling this convention to order I do so with a sense of the responsibility that rests upon me and rests upon every delegate that is here assembled. This is the Continental Congress of the working class. We are here to confederate the workers of this country into a working class movement that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism. There is no organization, or there seems to be no labour organization, that has for its purpose the same object as that for which you are called together to‑day. The aims and objects of this organization should be to put the working class in possession of the economic power, the means for life, in control of the machinery of production and distribution, without regard to capitalist masters.

“The American Federation of Labour, which presumes to be the labour movement of this country, is not a working class movement. It does not represent the working class. There are organizations that are affiliated, but loosely affiliated with the A. F. of L., which in their constitution and by‑laws prohibit the initiation of or conferring the obligation on a coloured man; that prohibit the conferring of the obligation on foreigners. What we want to establish at this time is a labour organization that will open wide its doors to every man that earns his livelihood either by his brain or his muscle. There is a great work to be accomplished at this convention, and every one of you must recognize the responsibility that rests upon you…

“There is no man who has an ounce of honesty in his make‑up but recognizes the fact that there is a continuous struggle between the two classes, and this organization will be formed, based and founded on the class struggle (applause), having in view no compromise and no surrender, and but one object and one purpose and that is to bring the workers of this country into the possession of the full value of the product of their toil”.

Forty-three workers’ organizations participate in the Convention, but only half of them instructed their delegates to join without fail. The others wanted to know more, or are hesitating in the face of threats from the AFL, or had not yet decided internally. So a good number of participants voted only in their personal capacity. Total representation is around 50‑60,000 workers. The participants, while combative, represented a fairly diverse range of opinions and positions. There were the parliamentary socialists, especially those of the Socialist Labour Party, the organization headed by De Leon, who put the parliamentary political struggle first, and according to them the economic organizations must bow to it. There are the “labour” socialists of the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs, who instead see the political struggle subordinate to the economic one, and therefore the party as a political representation of the unions. Finally, there are various shades of anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism, all fiercely opposed to any form of political organization, according to the best anarchist traditions. We will not elaborate on these aspects, which will be dealt with in the parallel party work.

Debs’ speech tries to define the new organism as something completely different from the AFL: «In taking a survey of the industrial field of to‑day, we are at once impressed with the total inadequacy of working class organization, with the lack of solidarity, with the widespread demoralization we see, and we are bound to conclude that the old form of pure and simple unionism has long since outgrown its usefulness; that it is now not only in the way of progress, but that it has become positively reactionary, a thing that is but an auxiliary of the capitalist class.

“They charge us with being assembled here for the purpose of disrupting the union movement. It is already disrupted…. The trades union movement is to‑day under the control of the capitalist class. It is preaching capitalist economics. It is serving capitalist purposes…. There is certainly something wrong with that form of unionism which has its chief support in the press that represents capitalism; something wrong in that form of unionism whose leaders are the lieutenants of capitalism; something wrong with that form of unionism that forms an alliance with such a capitalist combination as the Civic Federation, whose sole purpose it is to chloroform the working class while the capitalist class go through their pockets. There are those who believe that this form of unionism can be changed from within. They are very greatly mistaken…. I am satisfied that the great body of the working class in this country are prepared for just such an organization. I know, their leaders know, that if this convention is successful their doom is sealed…. [T]o accomplish its purpose this organization must not only be based upon the class struggle, but must express the economic condition of this time. We must have one organization that embraces the workers in every department of industrial activity. It must express the class struggle. It must recognize the class lines. It must of course be class-conscious. It must be totally uncompromising. It must be an organization of the rank and file. It must be so organized and so guided as to appeal to the intelligence of the workers of the country everywhere”.

On the sixth day of the Convention starts the discussion on the preamble, which is written by the secretary, rev Thomas Hagerty, who is credited to have said: “The vote is simply a concession of capitalists. Dropping pieces of paper into a hole in a box never did achieve emancipation for the working class, and in my opinion it never will”.

Thus begins the Preamble:

“The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

“Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come together on the political, as well as on the industrial field, and take and hold that which they produce by their labour through an economic organization of the working class, without affiliation with any political party.

“The second paragraph represents a compromise between different positions: that of syndicalists like Hagerty and Haywood, who saw the conquest of power as the work of economic organizations; that of the socialists of De Leon, who defended the dominant role of the party in the conquest of power; and that of the pure anarchists, so to speak.

“Joseph Gilbert asked to eliminate any reference to political action, in this supported by a large number of delegates, who saw the new organization as simply “an economic organization based on class conflict”. All “the electoral campaign like, confused language on political action”. had to be eliminated, and replaced by “a clear affirmation of the tasks of the working class in the economic field'”.

An attempt to affirm a traditional but independent political action, on the type of the British Labour Party, was rejected: according to the Constitution Committee, led by Hagerty, the members of the new organization could have political activity, but outside the political parties; in this they were supported by the anarchists.

It was De Leon, up to that moment a strong supporter of the pre‑eminent role of the party, to push through the compromise formula, which would condemn the IWW to an indefiniteness in theory and action that would undermine its whole existence. He argued, contrary to what was claimed until a short time before, that the process of taking possession of industry must be accomplished «through an economic organization of the working class… [because] it is out of the question to imagine that a political party can ‘take and hold”.

So the position, which was then a real radical change, almost a turnaround, of this socialist leader (who unfortunately showed wide gaps and misunderstandings of the Marxist doctrine, of which he claimed to be a defender) had the choice oriented in the sense set out in the preamble, which continues as follows:

“We find that the centring of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trades unions unable to cope with the ever‑growing power of the employing class. The trades unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trades unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.

“These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.

“Therefore we, the working class, join in the following constitution”.

The Constitution Committee proposed the name of Industrial Workers of the World, so that Canadians would not feel excluded. Thus, with the motto “an injury to one is an injury to all”, the new organization was born. Only wage workers were able participate, without any distinction of nationality, faith, colour, sex; the dues were kept low so as to not represent an impediment to participation.

The activities were divided into thirteen departments subdivisions (then reduced to six): mining, transportation, metal and machinery, glass and pottery, alcoholic beverages, farming, construction, textile, leather, wood working, public service, and miscellaneous. In these there were the local industrial unions; at the base there is the workshop or mine or factory, as the basic unit. All professions of the basic unit belong to the same union local. Of course, in many places where there were few members, the locals included all trades (mixed locals); moreover. in the West. many workers were migrants, and changed jobs several times a year (the famous “hobos”).

A missed opportunity

Thus began the adventure of an organization that would lead hard battles against the capital and its lackeys, the trade unionists of the AFL, even with all the limits that the Wobblies have carried with them since birth.

From the beginning, the problems were not lacking, starting from the leaders, who used the very few funds in an irresponsible way, and who were accused of wanting to oppose the revolutionary soul of the organization, to the extent of trying to make it a copy of the hated AFL. In 1906, Sherman was removed, although it had painful legal consequences. Unfortunately, the worst consequence was that of triggering a process that within a couple of years would also definitively cause the departure of the Western Federation of Miners, which was the strongest and most combative component of the organization.

The group that had expelled Sherman was not homogeneous, composed as it was by the faction that was headed by Trautmann and St. John, who aimed at the only union activity in view of the assault on power, and by that of De Leon, who instead did not want to give up the political option, in the sense of participation in elections. The organization avoided a further split, at least until 1908, at the price of compromises and endless discussions between socialists and anarcho-syndicalists, which had a negative effect on its operations.

In those years, however, the Wobblies had considerable success, both in the struggles that they directed, and in the membership of workers in the lower ranks, especially immigrants. In these activities the main opponent, alongside the organized forces of the bourgeoisie, was the American Federation of Labour, which saw in the IWW the main enemy. An opposition that manifested itself in propaganda and collaboration with the bosses to crush strikes by refusing to let their adherents strike and even providing the necessary strikebreaking support.

In the meantime, the crisis of 1907‑1908 hit the working class hard, and the IWW was nearly wiped out, due to their extreme organizational weakness, and the fact that their members were the hardest hit.

The exit of the WFM from the organization led to a trickle of abandonments by the socialists who were part of it, thus strengthening the anarchist component, in a vicious circle that soon led to the purge of De Leon himself. We cannot go into detail here, but the discussion developed both on the political and on the craft union levels, and both sides exposed in equal measure right and wrong concepts, each taking to the extreme limit the positions they defended. When in the end it came to the confrontation between proponents of direct action (anarcho-syndicalists) and proponents of political action (De Leon) the latter found themselves in the minority. The exit of the socialists further shifted the balance towards the anarchists, who obtained the inclusion in the Preamble of two additional paragraphs:

“Instead of the conservative motto “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work”, we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wage system“.

“It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old».

Naturally, the AFL piecards rejoiced to see how these internal travails agitated the Wobblies, predicting their imminent demise. Instead, the next few years saw them very active in a large number of labour struggles, often involving both militant IWW and AFL members.

Who and what were the “wobblies”

After the fourth convention, that of 1908, which saw the exit of De Leon and his followers, it was possible to resume seriously the organizational work. But this does not mean that within the organization, although more homogeneous after the exit of the socialists, the theoretical debate was over; on the contrary, the debate continued about the role of the IWW: should it be an efficient union, which combines the struggle for higher wages and better working conditions with a program of revolutionary socialism, or a revolutionary structure focused exclusively on the task of leading the working class to seize power? The national leadership was for the former hypothesis, while many of the membership, anarchists, were for the latter, arguing that there was a contradiction between revolutionary aims and trade unionism, and that focusing on the latter would divert the workers from the ultimate goal. Therefore, according to them, any pretence of union activity should have been abandoned, and all forces should have been devoted to propaganda and agitation alone.

Despite this situation, in 1909 there was enough homogeneity to launch the activities of the organization, so much so that that year is considered the year of the real take‑off of the IWW

Being part of the organization was easy and cost little. All you had to do was agree to the bylaws, and pay a small amount, too small for many critics. The monthly fee was no more than 50 cents, and often much lower; although this was a problem, it served to organize those migrant workers from the West whose income was very uncertain, and always scarce. The epic of the hobos has been recounted by many writers, singers, poets, film directors, and spans America, especially the West, from the beginning of the century until after World War II, although it has never fully ended.

The only doctrinal rule of which acceptance by the membership was required was that all workers should be considered equal, and united in a common cause. To be accepted there was only one condition: «Are you a wage labourer., exploited by a capitalist master? In that case you are welcome, whatever your colour, creed, nationality, sex or political opinion». In contrast to almost all labour organizations up to that time, the IWW actively sought to organize Chinese, Japanese, and Mexicans.

From a doctrinal point of view, the IWW accepted the Marxian critique of capitalist society, and the theoretical foundations of class struggle, while the “tactics and methods of struggle were generated from the everyday experiences of the exploits”. They were fiercely anti‑clerical and unpatriotic.

The primary method of struggle was for them “direct action”, even if the meaning of this expression was not the same for everyone. In the end, however, a definition was given in the press of the movement: “‘Direct action’ is any effort made directly for the purpose of getting more of the goods from the boss…. “Direct action” means dealing directly with the boss, through your labour union. The strike, in its various forms, is the best example of ‘direct action'”.

And indeed, the strike was always considered the best tool for the workers, although boycotts were also occasionally used. The tactics used for strikes by the IWW is difficult to describe because they had a talent for improvising new tactics in the course of strikes, a talent that made them famous. They did not like strikes to become “passive sieges”, in which workers stayed home or loitered on street corners until, after weeks or months, the strike was proclaimed won or lost. They then spread the habit of organizing mass picketing, marches or demonstrations. The idea was that, if the striker was not given something to do, he would be demoralized. Through collective activity, on the other hand, “strikers draw courage from one another, feel their common interest, and realize the necessity of solidarity… The Industrial Workers of the World always has one fundamental aim in view when going on strike. Other aims and purposes may be at times – in fact generally are – the most widely advertised and better known. Decent camp conditions, shorter work days, larger wages, the release of class‑war prisoners and other things may be put to the front as the main cause of the strike. But back of them all and vastly overshadowing them all in importance is the fundamental thing for which we strike: raising the standard of consciousness and aggressiveness of the working class”.

There was no truly losing strike. “Strike when you like and wherever you like!” was a central slogan of the IWW; but not for as long as you want. Even though the strike was considered the main tool, it was clear to all that the concentrated power in the hands of the capitalist class made strikes of long duration impractical. Little confidence was placed in the accumulated reserves, which they called “war chests”; in 1912 they wrote: «Being a fighting organization we place but little faith in well‑filled treasuries. They invariably lead the workers to rely upon the money rather than their own efforts, and demoralization results. The most conservative unions are always those with the largest treasuries». Thus, there was no custom of making contributions for strikes, unemployment, sickness or death, a practice called “coffin unions”. Only locally and temporarily were fundraisers organized for strikers. This was also why protracted struggles were discouraged: “We want no long, drawn‑out starvation strike…If we should fail to win our demands in a few days, let us go back to the job and get wages while we strike on the job”.

The “strike on the job” was nothing more than the work-to-rule, which of course often resulted in layoffs. In that case the wobbly would find a new job, and start over. Although it was considered a brilliant tactic, while on the one hand it was permitted by a situation of full employment, on the other hand it tended to become an individual attitude, with the opposite consequences to those that the IWWs were aiming for.

Once it was recognized that there was no commonality of interest between masters and workers, the IWW was for a continuous struggle against the former: «When you join the IWW, you are enlisting for a war. A bitter war». A war which for the IWW could result in neither victory nor defeat until the final victory of the workers had occurred; nor could there be any real agreement. If the demands of the struggling proletarians were accepted, work resumed, but this was neither a triumph nor a lasting agreement. It was merely the conclusion of another phase of the class struggle. The members of the IWW did not consider themselves committed to the agreement to which the master had adhered; new demands were usually prepared even before the end of the strike. At that time, one of the main objectives of the unions was recognition by the company, as it was believed that, without official recognition the workers would not be sufficiently protected, because the bosses would easily renege on any concession not backed by a written agreement. The IWW, on the other hand, rejected out-of-hand any concession to agreements between masters and workers. «No contracts, no agreements, no compacts», Haywood stated in 1910, «These are unholy alliances, and must be damned as treason». The position of St. John in 1912 was similar: «All peace so long as the wage system lasts is but an armed truce. At any favourable opportunity the struggle for more control of industry is renewed». Needless to say, equally inexorable was the condemnation of the proxy system.

“A labour organization, to correctly represent the workers – declared the IWW pamphlet One Big Union of All the Workers: the Greatest Thing on Earth – must have two things in view”. First, it must organize them «in such a way that it can most successfully fight the battles and protect the interests of the workers of today in their struggle for fewer hours of toil, more wages and better condition». Secondarily, it must propose “a final solution of the labour problem – an emancipation from strikes, injunctions, bullpens, and scabbing against one another”. Such an organization, it was clearly stated, was the IWW.

In refuting members of more anarchist tendencies, Karl Marx was quoted as saying that the struggle for immediate demands is a necessary step in the direction of the new society. Every strike for wages and hours trains the workers for the class struggle, and prepares them for the final abolition of the wage system. Those members who invoked arguments already beaten by history and theory were opposed to Marx’s pamphlet Value, Price and Profit. To those who complained of the futility of struggles for higher wages it was replied, “… if the wage increase is, as you say, irrelevant to the workers and the bosses, how is it that the bosses are so reluctant to grant it?”.

A balance sheet

The organization of the Industrial Workers of the World, although in principle structurally better suited to involve the workers and to lead their struggles, never managed to grow sufficiently to the point of gathering large masses of proletarians, as had been its vocation from the beginning. The causes of this failure are numerous, both related to the objective situation and, as we have seen, follow from defects visible from the beginning.

Objective difficulties lay in the characteristics of the proletarians to whom the Wobblies were directed: immigrants, unskilled, various minorities, who changed jobs and residences frequently, leading to an excessive fluidity of militancy. But other difficulties stemmed from serious errors of approach:

– propaganda often imbued with political messages that could exclude some of the potential adherents, such as rejection of patriotism, religion, etc.;

– too many enemies: the bosses and the State, which shifted on them the repression they often contained against the Trade Unions; the AFL, which rightly saw in the IWW a deadly enemy; from a certain moment on the socialists themselves, often considered as accomplices of the bosses;

– an organization that was not very solid and centralized, which raised little money and often allowed access to unreliable characters, thus making itself unreliable in the eyes of the proletariat;

– waiver of strike funds and for assistance to the unemployed, etc.

– giving up operating within the unions affiliated with the AFL, which although aristocratic were nevertheless penetrable, especially at certain times, both to help them be more combative and to empty them of members;

– even the renunciation of signing contracts, although appreciable in theory, was difficult to understand for the working masses, and deprived the grassroots unionists of an instrument of agitation against the employers; who found a way to use this attitude to their advantage.

But at the base of everything was a poorly defined fluctuation between the political vocation and the union: the rejection of the party form and of a State power after the conquest of power, worthy of the most classic, and by now dying in Europe, anarchist tradition, took away any revolutionary value from the otherwise determined formation born in opposition to collaborationist syndicalism; while the pollution with vague political perspectives of an organization that had to remain exclusively trade union to be able to extend to the majority of the class, severely reduced the potential for struggle and enfranchisement of the North American proletarian mass in the following decades, which will see the proletariat of the country under a tremendous attack of the bourgeoisie, an attack that will result in an overseas war and a very serious economic crisis.

The IWW represented a remarkable leap forward in theory and in combativeness for the North American proletariat, many of their insights surpassed the sleepy and little evolved socialists, not to mention the unions; but their theoretical flaws, due to an excessive detachment from the experiences of the European proletariat and which had immediate consequences on daily tactics, made them a blunt instrument, even if moved by the most sincere revolutionary passion. Even if the Wobblies continued to operate among the working class, paying high tributes of suffering and blood to their determined militancy, it was a lost opportunity, a high price paid to a tradition of virtual absence of the party, of collaborationist syndicalism, and other unfavourable characteristics innate to the American working-class movement, which have accompanied it throughout its course and history.