How much Bolshevism is there in America? : $b Also a series of articles entitled "Russia from the inside"Dosch-Fleurot, Arno
History
How much Bolshevism is there in America? : $b Also a series of articles entitled "Russia from the inside"
Dosch-Fleurot, Arno
Communism -- Soviet Union; Communism -- United States; Labor -- United States; Working class -- United States
The truth is, of course, that the big industries have been able to
prevent unionizing by keeping a steady flow of immigrants coming into
the country and they were clever enough to take them from the farms in
Europe, so they did not bring any class consciousness with them. Ever
since the famous Homestead strikes the steel industry has been
non-union. It was only when the flow of immigrants was dammed by the war
that a chance to unionize it came. It was then that John Fitzpatrick and
William Z. Foster began. But they tried out organizing industrially
first in the Chicago stockyards, and the steel manufacturers watched
them from afar, so, as one steel man said to me in Pittsburgh, “We saw
them coming and we were ready for them.”
What struck me as an interesting comment on the unionizing of factory
workers was made to me in Detroit by Mr. C. M. Culver, director of the
Employers’ Association, an institution which handles the labor problem
for its members. He said:
“When employers do not combine to hold down wages, unionism does not
grow. When employers are competing for workmen, as they have been doing
here in Detroit, when they are too busy turning out machines, when the
inventive minds are just boiling and the native American genius is
concentrated on getting results, men do not join unions.”
Unionism certainly made very little headway in Detroit. The A. F. of L.
played a very small role there and the automobile workers had succeeded
in enrolling less than one-twentieth of the men who were eligible to
this industrial union. It is significant, however, that the automobile
workers, even with their small membership, have their importance in the
industry, and the manufacturers consider their growth alone a possible
menace. It shows the power that would pass into the hands of the factory
worker if industrial unionism ever gets a hold on American industry.
In Detroit the percentage of foreign or foreign-born among the workers
is about 70 per cent. In Pittsburgh it is even higher. Manufacturers in
both places say they do not fear labor organization as long as this
percentage persists. Labor organizations built among the foreign workers
do not last. They can be organized quickly, as William Z. Foster found
when he organized the steel strike in 1919. They give their money freely
and enthusiastically for organization, but they expect quick results and
do not stand up under adversity. I have just passed through the steel
region in Ohio and Pittsburgh where Foster organized most successfully a
year ago and there is hardly a trace of his work to be found. With
difficulty I found the emaciated skeletons of the flourishing unions
Foster developed in a few months.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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