History of the Labor Movement in the United States: The T. U. E. L. to the End of the Gompers Era

422 Pages·1991·11.526 MB·English

by  Philip S. Foner

VOLUME IX:
The T.U.E.L. to the End of the
Gompers Era

HISTORY OF THE
LABOR MOVEMENT IN
THE UNITED STATES
VOLUME IX:
The T.U.E.L. to the End of the
Gompers Era
BY PHILIP S. FONER
INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS, New York
© 1991 by International Publishers Co., Inc.
First Edition, 1991
All rights reserved.
Manufactured in the United States of America
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
(Revised for volume 9)
Foner, Philip Sheldon, l9l0-
History of the labor movement in the United States.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Contents: - v.2. From the founding of the
American Federation of Labor to the emergence of
American imperialism —v. 5. The AFL in the prog-
ressive era, l910-l9l5 -- [etc.] — v..9. The T.U.E.L.
to the end of the Gompers era.
1. Trade-unions—United States—History. 2. Labor
movement—United States—History. I. Title.
HD6508.F57 l97S 33!.88'0973 75-315606
ISBN 0-7178-0092-X
ISBN 0-7178-0388-0 (pbk.)
Volume 9 ISBN 0-7178-0673-1
ISBN 0-7178-0674-X (pbk.)
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CONTENTS
Preface
Postwar Depression
New England Textile Strike,1 922 19
San Pedro Strike of the IWW 32
Women Workers 53
The TUE L — Predecessors 76
The TUEL — Formation and Early Development 104
The TUE L — Advances 133
The TUE L — Setbacks 159
The Railroad Workers 170
. Machinists and Carpenters 194
. The Miners, l 208
. The Miners, ll — Nova Scotia 230
. The Miners, Ill 245
. The Ladies’ Garment Workers 269
. The Fur Workers 287
. Men’s Clothing and Millinery Workers 302
. US Labor and the Soviet Union — RAIC 311
. The Black Workers 323
. Independent Political Action 339
20. End of the Gompers Era 361
Notes 374
Index 401

PREFACE
This is the ninth volume of my History of the Labor Movement in the
United States. The preceding volume covered the postwar labor militancy
between 1918-1920. The present volume carries the history of the labor
movement from late 1920 to the end of the Gompers’ era in late 1924.
The opening chapters deal with the effects of the postwar depression on
American workers, and two important strikes—New England textile strike of
1922 and the struggle waged by the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) in San Pedro, California, 1922-1925. The fourth chapter deals with
the position of women workers in industry and the labor movement and
the key issues that concerned them.
The rest of the volume is largely devoted to the background, early
history and activities of the Trade Union Educational League, founded and
led by William Z. Foster. The period covered by the present volume has
been viewed by nearly all labor historians as one hardly favorable to union
growth and militancy, marked almost entirely by retreat and “the quies-
cence of workers,” resulting from the frontal assault of employers using the
American Plan and every other possible belligerent tactic, along with “sci-
entific management” and paternalistic welfare capitalism. All of these forces
caused the “sapping [of] workers’ militancy during the 19205 until the
Opening of the Great Depression.”1
The view of labor historians that the years after the great postwar
militant upsurge of the labor movement was followed by quiescence did not
originate recently. Even Sylvia Kopald, who published an important study
in 1924 about the insurgency in the United Mine Workers of America,
stated that by the end of 1919 all that remained of the miners’ militancy
“were merely echoes, significant echoes, it is true, yet no more than byprod-
ucts of a struggle that had been lost.”2 The present volume devotes three
chapters to the militant insurgency in the United Mine Workers from 1920
to 1924. In addition, there are chapters that discuss militant insurgency in
the Railroad, Machinists, Carpenters, Ladies’ Garment, Fur Workers and
ii TUEL: TO THE END OF THE GOMPERS ERA
Millinery Workers unions, and its beginnings in the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers of America.
In reviewing Theodore Draper’s Roots of American Communism in
1937, William Z. Foster charged that he “virtually ignores the activities of
the Trade Union Educational League” (TUEL) during these early years. The
fact is, however, that especially after the beginning of 1922, this organiza-
tion, which was led by Communists, was a real factor in the labor move-
ment and in the big strikes and other struggles of these years of hard battle
for the workers. The TUEL had as its key slogans, the amalgamation of the
craft unions into industrial organizations, the organization of the unorgan-
ized,* the formation of a labor party, the recognition of Soviet Russia, and
generally the development of a militant fighting policy by the workers to
counter the powerful offensive of the employers. With its active participa-
tion in many big strikes of the period, the TUEL, based upon a Left-pro-
gressive united front, quickly became a national influence in Labor’s
ranks.”3
Roger Keeran says in the Introduction to his Communist Party and the
Auto Workers’ Unions that there have been three broad assumptions gov-
erning the study of the (Communist) Party’s role in labor: “The Commu-
nists were not legitimate trade unionists. They were not an important
influence in the labor movement. And they were not good Communists.”4**
To this one must add another: they simply did not exist.
Theodore Draper’s work, criticized by Foster, belongs to the last cate-
gory. But Draper is by no means the only historian who “virtually ignores
the activities of the [TUEL] during these early years.” In a criticism of
Michael Kazin’s review of David Montgomery’s The Fall of the House of
Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1886‘-
1925, published in The Nation of September 5, 1987, I observed:
Michael Kazin has no room for criticism of the author’s inadequate treatment of
the Trade Union Educational League. In a book of over 500 pages, Montgomery
devotes barely three pages to the T.U.E.L. His mention of William Z. Foster, head
of the league, is limited to three references. One is a footnote on page 420,
referring to Foster’s work as secretary of the National Committee to Organize
Iron and Steel Workers. This is certainly a shocking disregard of the driving force
* As the reader will see, in calling for “organizing the unorganized,” the TUEL placed
special emphasis on the need to organize Black workers.
"' Most scholars have by now abandoned these assumptions. But some, like Aileen S. Kradi-
tor and William L. O’Neill, remain rooted in their anti-Communism. The latter, in reviewing
Kraditor’s vitriolic Jimmy Higgins; The Mental World of the American Rank-and-File Com-
munist, 1.9301958, wrote that the book “exposes the hollowness of more recent efforts to
find in the communist experience redeeming merits of some usable past” (Labor History
30[Summer 1989]: 476). Fortunately for American workers, the labor leaders who formed
the 010 found many such “redeeming merits” in the communist experience in the Trade
Bnion Educational League, and, as we shall see in our next volume, the Trade Union Unity
eague.
PREFACE ill
behind the great steel strike of 1919 and one of the most influential labor figures
of the period.
Equally shocking is the absence of any reference to VJ. Lenin and in particu-
lar, his important pamphlet Lell-Wzng Communism: An Infantile Disorder. When
published in English in the United States, it played a significant role in assisting
Foster to overcome dual unionist influences among militant workers, including
those in the early Communist Party.
It is significant that David Saposs, one of the most astute observers of the
labor scene in the 19205 and whose papers Montgomery has researched at the
State Historical Society of Wisconsin, believed that the Trade Union Educational
League was the major force for progressive unionism in the labor movement
None of these activities of the league nor of any aspect of the organization
which caused Saposs’s observations are mentioned, let alone discussed, by Mont-
gomery....
The casual treatment of this organization in The Fall of the House of Labor,
along with the equally casual treatment of William Z. Foster, bespeaks an
anti-Communist prejudice that is startling.
To this Kazin tersely replied:
Criticism of what an author left out of his book are best addressed to the author
himself. But two points should be made about Foner’s special pleading. First,
Montgomery places the T.U.E.L. in the context of a declining labor movement and
an even weaker American left in the mid-19205. Neither Foner nor Lenin was able
to do much about that. Second, to accuse Montgomery of anti-Communism
because he doesn’t share Foner’s scholarly preoccupation is both ridiculous and
sad. Foner is either being sectarian or is merely jealous of the stature of another
historian.5
I leave it to readers to decide whether or not criticism of what an author
omits, especially if it is crucial to an understanding of the period the book
covers, is not the duty of a reviewer.
As for the stupid point he makes about “jealous,” it would be charitable
to ignore it. As for the observation about “Neither Foner nor Lenin”—a
strange positioning of names—this reflects the school of labor history in the
“realist vein,” which assumes that nothing could have been done by organ-
ized labor to stem the tide of the open shop drive, buttressed by the power
exercised by labor’s opponents in government. In short, since the work of
the left wing, led by the TUEL, was, in their eyes, irrelevant, it simply can
be ignored.
Are we to assume that militant struggles by workers in a decade when
the enemies of labor exercised great power in government and business, a
decade of passivity and even worse on the part of the labor leadership, are
to be ignored because these struggles did not, in many cases, end in
victory? Are we to ignore the fact that the left wing fought for union
policies which many—yes, many—trade unionists believed would reverse the
decline of the labor movement, especially when these policies were later