The Armies of Labor: A Chronicle of the Organized Wage-EarnersOrth, Samuel Peter
History
The Armies of Labor: A Chronicle of the Organized Wage-Earners
Orth, Samuel Peter
Labor unions -- United States -- History
Preparedness is the watchword of the Unions in this warfare. They have generals and captains, a war chest and relief committees, as well as publicity agents and sympathy scouts whose duty it is to enlist the interest of the public. Usually the leaders of the unions are conservative and deprecate violence. But a strike by its very nature offers an opportunity to the lawless. The destruction of property and the coercion of workmen have been so prevalent in the past that, in the public mind, violence has become universally associated with strikes. Judge Jenkins, of the United States Circuit Court, declared, in a leading case, that "a strike without violence would equal the representation of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet omitted." Justice Brewer of the United States Supreme Court said that "the common rule as to strikes" is not only for the workers to quit but to "forcibly prevent others from taking their place." Historic examples involving violence of this sort are the great railway strikes of 1877, when Pittsburgh, Reading, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Buffalo were mob-ridden; the strike of the steel-workers at Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892; the Pullman strike of 1894, when President Cleveland sent Federal troops to Chicago; the great anthracite strike of 1902, which the Federal Commission characterized as "stained with a record of riot and bloodshed"; the civil war in the Colorado and Idaho mining regions, where the Western Federation of Miners battled with the militia and Federal troops; the dynamite outrages, perpetrated by the structural iron workers, stretching across the entire country, and reaching a dastardly climax in the dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times building on October 1, 1910, in which some twenty men were killed. The recoil from this outrage was the severest blow which organized labor has received in America. John J. McNamara, Secretary of the Structural Iron Workers' Association, and his brother James were indicted for murder. After the trial was staged and the eyes of the nation were upon it, the public was shocked and the hopes of labor unionists were shattered by the confessions of the principals. In March, 1912, a Federal Grand Jury at Indianapolis returned fifty-four indictments against officers and members of the same union for participation in dynamite outrages that had occurred during the six years in many parts of the country, with a toll of over one hundred lives and the destruction of property valued at many millions of dollars. Among those indicted was the president of the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers. Most of the defendants were sentenced to various terms in the penitentiary.
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