Related Articles

Page 2 of 3
Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3
1908-1914 The Third Revolution

<...Previous

America’s third revolution was not without bloodshed. Strikes and labor organizing brought out the absolute worst in factory, mine, mill, and company owners and managers.

Some of the 3,600 federal troops sent by U.S. Attorney General Richard Olney to the Chicago rail yards at the height of the Pullman strike of 1894.

Many IBEW employers were also hostile to the idea of expanded union activity. In 1892 members of the Amalgamated Association of’ Iron and Steel Workers, who were being paid unbearably low wages and subjected to harsh, dangerous working conditions, went out on strike against the forerunner of the United States Steel Company, Carnegie Steel. According to William Cahn’s History of American Labor, the United States at that time produced about half of the world’s cotton, corn oil and copper; about a third of its silver, pig iron and steel; and much of its coal. And most of that steel was made around Pittsburgh by the Carnegie mills.

Henry C. Frik, the manager of Carnegie’s homestead plant, closed the mill when the workers left their jobs. He tried to reopen it a few days later with scab labor brought by barge down the Monongahela River. The scab workers, led by a group of armed, union-busting Pinkerton “detectives,” were met on the river shore by angry striking Carnegie employees. Shots were fired, and after it was over 10 union men and three Pinkertons were dead. Eight thousand state troopers were called in and surrounded the workers. After starvation began to set in, the workers were forced to give up.

Angry workers in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1915 rebel against heavily armed, brutally forceful strikebreakers employed by antilabor management. The strike- breakers chased striking workers around the city, firing indiscriminately. Three workers were killed, and hundreds were shot and beaten.

In 1894, at the Pullman railroad car company outside of Chicago, management again resorted to violence to squash an until-then peaceful strike. After workers walked off the job to protest low wages and dangerous working conditions, U.S. Attorney General Richard B. Olney, over the objection of Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld, called in 3,600 troops to Chicago. Troop intimidation led to senseless violence, which combined with heavy-handed, antilabor court decisions to end the strike.

Previously, in Haymarket Square, Chicago, and later in Ludlow, Colorado, the turn of the century saw management—backed, antilabor troops openly gun down defenseless workers. Many were killed, many more were injured; but the labor movement continued. If anything, these management-sponsored massacres only strengthened labor’s resolve and pointed out to the world what a disgraceful place it would be if not for organized labor.

At the same time the IBEW was involved in its own fight. It never turned violent, but it was intensely divisive and resulted in a faction of angry and dissatisfied members breaking away from the Brotherhood. Led by J.J. Reid and J.W. Murphy, the breakaway group initiated a legal battle and vied for legitimacy for five years until most of the deserters merged back into the recognized, original union.

More...>

Page 2 of 3
Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3
1908-1914 The Third Revolution