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They Dared to Dream

What hath God wrought,” were the words which ushered in the electrical age. Samuel Morse’s experimental telegraph line between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, the first commercial application of electrical current, was a success. Between that day, May 24, 1844, and the 1890s, commercial use of electricity, for telegraphs, telephones, light bulbs and eventually a whole host of new machines, took off. And at the same time demand also grew for men to string the wires and build and maintain those machines.

Most of the men who answered the call to work with electricity worked in small groups. They traveled frequently as jobs ended one place and new ones started someplace else. There were few opportunities to speak to more than a handful of men at a time—and even then, speaking about building a union was cause for instant dismissal and loss of the small wage the men felt lucky to get. These conditions made organizing a union difficult and dangerous.

By 1890 when the U.S. flag had only 44 stars and the Dominion of Canada was still subject to the control of Great Britain’s Parliament, a group of these men had had enough. Led by a lineman, Henry Miller, and a wireman, J.T. Kelly, this group formed the basis of what today is one of the largest and most powerful trade unions in the world.

Next fall the union these men formed above Stolley’s Dance Hall in St. Louis, Missouri, will celebrate its 100th anniversary. As part of the commemoration, the IBEW Journal will run an 18-part series on the history of the IBEW-starting with the first section, focusing on the years 1890-1897, in this issue, and continuing to the 34th International Convention preview in September 1991.

Samuel Gompers, then the president of the American Federation of Labor, wrote to J.T. Kelly on December 5, 1891, the day after the AFl, granted a charter to the Brotherhood with jurisdiction covering all electrical work. He said, “There can be no doubt what with the general application of electricity for so many purposes and its possibilities yet unknown, the future of the Electrical Workers will exert a vast influence upon the industrial problems of the future. The responsibility is an enormous one, and I trust that you and your co-laborers may be enabled to protect your own interests and those of your fellow electrical workers and then those of your fellow workers of other trades and callings.”

Today Samuel Gompers’ words are no less pertinent, Henry Miller’s and J.T. Kelly’s determined mission no less important. In the last 100 years, the labor movement, with men like Gompers, Miller and Kelly as leaders, made great strides. As the IBEW moves into its second century, we all must work to keep their dream alive.