Chapter 16

THE WAR-TIME BALANCE SHEET

The outbreak of the War in Europe in August 1914 found American labor passing through a period of depression. The preceding winter had seen much unemployment and considerable distress and in the summer industrial conditions became scarcely improved. In the large cities demonstrations by the unemployed were daily occurrences. A long and bloody labor struggle in the coal fields of Colorado, which was slowly drawing to an unsuccessful end in spite of sacrifices of the heaviest kind, seemed only to set into bold relief the generally inauspicious outlook. Yet the labor movement could doubtless find solace in the political situation. Owing to the support it had given the Democratic party in the Presidential campaign of 1912, the Federation could claim return favors. The demand which it was now urging upon its friends in office was the long standing one for the exemption of labor unions from the operation of the anti-trust legislation and for the reduction to a minimum of interference by Federal Courts in labor disputes through injunction proceedings.

During 1914 the anti-trust bill introduced in the House by Clayton of Alabama was going through the regular stages preliminary to enactment and, although it finally failed to embody all the sweeping changes demanded by the Federation's lobbyists, it was pronounced at the time satisfactory to labor. The Clayton Act starts with the declaration that "The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce" and specifies that labor organizations shall not be construed as illegal combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade under Federal anti-trust laws. It further proceeds to prescribe the procedure in connection with the issuance of injunctions in labor disputes as, for instance, limiting the time of effectiveness of temporary injunctions, making notice obligatory to persons about to be permanently enjoined, and somewhat limiting the power of the courts in contempt proceedings. The most vital section of the Act relating to labor disputes is Section 20, which says "that no such restraining order or injunction shall prohibit any person or persons, whether singly or in concert, from terminating any relation of employment, or from ceasing to perform any work or labor or from recommending, advising, or persuading others by peaceful means so to do; or from attending at any place where any such person or persons may lawfully be, for the purpose of peacefully persuading any person to work or to abstain from working, or from recommending, advising, or persuading others by peaceful and lawful means so to do; or from paying or giving to, or withholding from, any person employed in such dispute, any strike benefits or other moneys or things of value; or from peacefully assembling in a lawful manner, or for lawful purposes, or from doing any act or things which might lawfully be done in the absence of such dispute by any party thereto; nor shall any of the acts specified in this paragraph be considered or held to be violations of any law of the United States."

The government was also rendering aid to organized labor in another, though probably little intended, form, namely through the public hearings conducted by the United States Commission on Industrial Relations. This Commission had been authorized by Congress in 1912 to investigate labor unrest after a bomb explosion in the _Los Angeles Times_ Building, which was set off at the order of some of the national officers of the structural iron workers' union, incidental to a strike. The hearings which were conducted by the able and versatile chairman, Frank P. Walsh, with a particular eye for publicity, centering as they did around the Colorado outrages, served to popularize the trade union cause from one end of the country to the other. The report of the Commission or rather the minority report, which was signed by the chairman and the three labor members, and was known as the "staff" report, named _trade unionism_ as the paramount remedy--not compulsory arbitration which was advocated by the employer members, nor labor legislation and a permanent governmental industrial commission proposed by the economist on the commission. The immediate practical effects of the commission were _nil_, but its agitational value proved of great importance to labor. For the first time in the history of the United States the employing class seemed to be arrayed as a defendant before the bar of public opinion. Also, it was for the first time that a commission representing the government not only unhesitatingly pronounced the trade union movement harmless to the country's best interests but went to the length of raising it to the dignity of a fundamental and indispensable institution.

The Commission on Industrial Relations on the whole reflected the favorable attitude of the Administration which came to power in 1912. The American Federation of Labor was given full sway over the Department of Labor and a decisive influence in all other government departments on matters relating to labor. Without a political party of its own, by virtue only of its "bargaining power" over the old parties, the American Federation of Labor seemed to have attained a position not far behind that of British labor after more than a decade of independent political action. Furthermore, fortunately for itself, labor in America had come into a political patrimony at a time when the country was standing on the threshold of a new era, during which government was destined to become the arbiter of industry.

The War in Europe did not immediately improve industrial conditions in America. The first to feel its effects were the industries directly engaged in the making of munitions. The International Association of Machinists, the organization of the now all-important munition workers, actually had its membership somewhat decreased during 1915, but in the following year made a 50 percent increase. The greater part of the new membership came from the "munitions towns," such as Bridgeport, Connecticut, where, in response to the insatiable demand from the Allied nations, new enormous plants were erected during 1915 and shipment of munitions in mass began early the next year. Bridgeport and surrounding towns became a center of a successful eight-hour movement, in which the women workers newly brought into the industry took the initiative. The Federation as a whole lost three percent of its membership in 1915 and gained seven percent during 1916.

On its War policy the Federation took its cue completely from the national government. During the greater part of the period of American neutrality its attitude was that of a shocked lover of peace who is desirous to maintain the strictest neutrality if the belligerents will persist in refusing to lend an ear to reason. To prevent a repetition of a similar catastrophe, the Federation did the obvious thing, pronouncing for open and democratized diplomacy; and proposed to the several national trade union federations that an international labor congress meet at the close of the war to determine the conditions of peace. However, both the British and Germans declined. The convention in 1915 condemned the German-inspired propaganda for an embargo on shipments to all belligerents and the fomenting of strikes in munitions-making plants by German agents. The Federation refused to interpret neutrality to mean that the American wage earner was to be thrown back into the dumps of depression and unemployment, from which he was just delivered by the extensive war orders from the Allied governments.

By the second half of 1916 the war prosperity was in full swing. Cost of living was rising rapidly and movements for higher wages became general. The practical stoppage of immigration enabled common labor to get a larger share than usual of the prosperity. Many employers granted increases voluntarily. Simultaneously, a movement for the eight-hour day was spreading from strictly munitions-making trades into others and was meeting with remarkable success. But 1916 witnessed what was doubtless the most spectacular move for the eight-hour day in American history--the joint eight-hour demand by the four railway brotherhoods, the engineers, firemen, conductors, and trainmen. The effectiveness acquired by trade unionism needs no better proof than the remarkable success with which these four organizations, with the full support of the whole labor movement at their back and aided by a not unfriendly attitude on the part of the national Administration, brought to bay the greatest single industry of the country and overcame the opposition of the entire business class.

The four brotherhoods made a joint demand for an eight-hour day early in 1916.[84] The railway officials claimed that the demand for the reduction of the work-day from ten to eight hours with ten hours' pay and a time and a half rate for overtime was not made in good faith. Since, they said, the employes ought to have known that the railways could not be run on an eight-hour day, the demand was but a covert attempt to gain a substantial increase in their wages, which were already in advance of any of the other skilled workers. On the other hand, the brotherhoods stoutly maintained during their direct negotiations with the railway companies and in the public press that their demand was a _bona fide_ demand and that they believed that the railway business did admit of a reorganization substantially on an eight-hour basis. The railway officials offered to submit to arbitration the demand of the men together with counter demands of their own. The brotherhoods, however, fearing prejudice and recalling to mind past disappointments, declined the proposal and threatened to tie up the whole transportation system of the country by a strike on Labor Day.

When the efforts at mediation by the United States Board of Mediation and Conciliation came to naught, President Wilson invited to Washington the executives of the several railway systems and a convention of the several hundred division chairmen of the brotherhoods and attempted personal mediation. He urged the railway executives to accept the eight-hour day and proposed that a commission appointed by himself should investigate the demand for time and a half overtime. This the employes accepted, but the executives objected to giving the eight-hour day before an investigation was made. Meantime the brotherhoods had issued their strike order effective on Labor Day and the crisis became imminent. To obviate the calamity of a general strike, at a time when the country was threatened with troubles on the Mexican frontier and with the unsettled submarine controversy with Germany ready to flare up any moment, the President went before Congress and asked for a speedy enactment of an eight-hour law for train operatives without a reduction in wages but with no punitive overtime. He coupled it with a request for an authorisation of a special commission to report on the operation of such a law for a period of six months, after which the subject might be reopened. Lastly, he urged an amendment to the Newlands Act making it illegal to call a strike or a lockout pending an investigation of a controversy by a government commission. Spurred on by the danger of the impending strike, Congress quickly acceded to the first two requests by the President and passed the so-called Adamson law.[85] The strike was averted, but in the immediately following Presidential campaign labor's "hold-up" of the national government became one of the trump issues of the Republican candidate.

This episode of the summer of 1916 had two sequels, one in the courts and the other one in a negotiated agreement between the railways and the brotherhoods. The former brought many suits in courts against the government and obtained from a lower court a decision that the Adamson law was unconstitutional. The case was then taken to the United States Supreme Court, but the decision was not ready until the spring of 1917. Meantime the danger of a strike had been renewed. However, on the same day when the Supreme Court gave out its decision, the railways and brotherhoods had signed, at the urging of the National Council of Defense, an agreement accepting the conditions of the Adamson law regardless of the outcome in court. When the decision became known it was found to be in favor of the Adamson law. The declaration of war against Germany came a few days later and opened a new era in the American labor situation.

Previous to that, on March 12, 1917, when war seemed inevitable, the national officers of all important unions in the Federation met in Washington and issued a statement on "American Labor's Position in Peace or in War." They pledged the labor movement and the influence of the labor organizations unreservedly in support of the government in case of war. Whereas, they said, in all previous wars "under the guise of national necessity, labor was stripped of its means of defense against enemies at home and was robbed of the advantages, the protections, and guarantees of justice that had been achieved after ages of struggle"; and "labor had no representatives in the councils authorized to deal with the conduct of the war"; and therefore "the rights, interests and welfare of workers were autocratically sacrificed for the slogan of national safety"; in this war "the government must recognize the organized labor movement as the agency through which it must cooperate with wage earners." Such recognition will imply first "representation on all agencies determining and administering policies of national defense" and "on all boards authorized to control publicity during war time." Second, that "service in government factories and private establishments, in transportation agencies, all should conform to trade union standards"; and that "whatever changes in the organization of industry are necessary upon a war basis, they should be made in accord with plans agreed upon by representatives of the government and those engaged and employed in the industry." Third, that the government's demand of sacrifice of their "labor power, their bodies or their lives" be accompanied by "increased guarantees and safe-guards," the imposing of a similar burden on property and the limitation of profits. Fourth, that "organization for industrial and commercial service" be "upon a different basis from military service" and "that military service should be carefully distinguished from service in industrial disputes," since "the same voluntary institutions that organized industrial, commercial and transportation workers in times of peace will best take care of the same problems in time of war." For, "wrapped up with the safety of this Republic are ideals of democracy, a heritage which the masses of the people received from our forefathers, who fought that liberty might live in this country--a heritage that is to be maintained and handed down to each generation with undiminished power and usefulness."

We quote at such length because this document gives the quintessence of the wise labor statesmanship which this crisis brought so clearly to light. Turning away from the pacifism of the Socialist party, Samuel Gompers and his associates believed that victory over world militarism as well as over the forces of reaction at home depended on labor's unequivocal support of the government. And in reality, by placing the labor movement in the service of the war-making power of the nation they assured for it, for the time being at least, a degree of national prestige and a freedom to expand which could not have been conquered by many years of the most persistent agitation and strikes.

The War, thus, far from being a trial for organized labor, proved instead a great opportunity. For the War released organized labor from a blind alley, as it were. The American Federation of Labor, as we saw, had made but slow progress in organization after 1905. At that time it had succeeded in organizing the skilled and some of the semi-skilled workers. Further progress was impeded by the anti-union employers especially in industries commonly understood to be dominated by "trusts." In none of the "trustified" industries, save anthracite coal, was labor organization able to make any headway. And yet the American Federation of Labor, situated as it is, is obliged to stake everything upon the power to organize.[86] The war gave it that all-important power. Soon after the Federal government became the arbiter of industry--by virtue of being the greatest consumer, and by virtue of a public opinion clearly outspoken on the subject--we see the Taft-Walsh War Labor Board[87] embody "the right to organize" into a code of rules for the guidance of the relations of labor and capital during War-time, along with the basic eight-hour day and the right to a living wage. In return for these gifts American labor gave up nothing so vital as British labor had done in the identical situation. The right to strike was left unmolested and remained a permanent threat hanging over slow moving officialdom and recalcitrant employers. And the only restraint accepted by labor was a promise of self-restraint. The Federation was not to strike until all other means for settlement had been tried, nor was it to press for the closed shop where such had not existed prior to the War declaration. But at the same time no employer was to interpose a check to its expansion into industries and districts heretofore unorganized. Nor could an employer discipline an employe for joining a union or inducing others to join.

In 1916, when the President established the National Council of Defense, he appointed Samuel Gompers one of the seven members composing the Advisory Commission in charge of all policies dealing with labor and chairman of a committee on labor of his own appointment. Among the first acts of the Council of Defense was an emphatic declaration for the preservation of the standards of legal protection of labor against the ill-advised efforts for their suspension during War-time. The Federation was given representation on the Emergency Construction Board, the Fuel Administration Board, on the Woman's Board, on the Food Administration Board, and finally on the War Industries Board. The last named board was during the war the recognized arbiter of the country's industries, all labor matters being handled by its labor representative. The Department of Labor, which in the War emergency could rightly be considered the Federation's arm in the Administration, was placed in supreme charge of general labor administration. Also, in connection with the administration of the military conscription law, organized labor was given representation on each District Exemption Board. But perhaps the strongest expression of the official recognition of the labor movement was offered by President Wilson when he took time from the pressing business in Washington to journey to Buffalo in November 1917, to deliver an address before the convention of the American Federation of Labor.

In addition to representation on boards and commissions dealing with general policies, the government entered with the Federation into a number of agreements relative to the conditions of direct and indirect employment by the government. In each agreement the prevalent trade union standards were fully accepted and provision was made for a three-cornered board of adjustment to consist of a representative of the particular government department, the public and labor. Such agreements were concluded by the War and Navy departments and by the United States Emergency Fleet Corporation. The Shipping Board sponsored a similar agreement between the shipping companies and the seafaring unions; and the War Department between the leather goods manufacturers and leather workers' union. When the government took over the railways on January 1, 1918, it created three boards of adjustment on the identical principle of a full recognition of labor organizations. The spirit with which the government faced the labor problem was shown also in connection with the enforcement of the eight-hour law. The law of 1912 provided for an eight-hour day on contract government work but allowed exceptions in emergencies. In 1917 Congress gave the President the right to waive the application of the law, but provided that in such event compensation be computed on a "basic" eight-hour day. The War and Navy departments enforced these provisions not only to the letter but generally gave to them a most liberal interpretation.

The taking over of the railways by the government revolutionized the railway labor situation. Under private management, as was seen, the four brotherhoods alone, the engineers, firemen, conductors, and trainmen enjoyed universal recognition, the basic eight-hour day (since 1916), and high wages. The other organizations of the railway workers, the shopmen, the yardmen, the maintenance of way men, the clerks, and the telegraphers were, at best, tolerated rather than recognized. Under the government administration the eight-hour day was extended to all grades of workers, and wages were brought up to a minimum of 68 cents per hour, with a considerable though not corresponding increase in the wages of the higher grades of labor. All discrimination against union men was done away with, so that within a year labor organization on the railways was nearing the hundred percent mark.

The policies of the national railway administration of the open door to trade unionism and of recognition of union standards were successfully pressed upon other employments by the National War Labor Board. On March 29, 1918, a National War Labor Conference Board, composed of five representatives of the Federation of Labor, five representatives of employers' associations and two joint chairmen, William H. Taft for the employers and Frank P. Walsh for the employes, reported to the Secretary of Labor on "Principles and Policies to govern Relations between Workers and Employers in War Industries for the Duration of the War." These "principles and policies," which were to be enforced by a permanent War Labor Board organized upon the identical principle as the reporting board, included a voluntary relinquishment of the right to strike and lockout by employes and employers, respectively, upon the following conditions: First, there was a recognition of the equal right of employes and employers to organize into associations and trade unions and to bargain collectively. This carried an undertaking by the employers not to discharge workers for membership in trade unions or for legitimate trade union activities, and was balanced by an undertaking of the workers, "in the exercise of their right to organize," not to "use coercive measures of any kind to induce persons to join their organizations, nor to induce employers to bargain or deal therewith." Second, both sides agreed upon the observance of the _status quo ante bellum_ as to union or open shop in a given establishment and as to union standards of wages, hours, and other conditions of employment. This carried the express stipulation that the right to organize was not to be curtailed under any condition and that the War Labor Board could grant improvement in labor conditions as the situation warranted. Third, the understanding was that if women should be brought into industry, they must be allowed equal pay for equal work. Fourth, it was agreed that "the basic eight-hour day was to be recognized as applying in all cases in which the existing law required it, while in all other cases the question of hours of labor was to be settled with due regard to government necessities and the welfare, health, and proper comfort of the workers." Fifth, restriction of output by trade unions was to be done away with. Sixth, in fixing wages and other conditions regard was to be shown to trade union standards. And lastly came the recognition of "the right of all workers, including common laborers, to a living wage" and the stipulation that in fixing wages, there will be established "minimum rates of pay which will insure the subsistence of the worker and his family in health and reasonable comfort."

The establishment of the War Labor Board did not mean that the country had gone over to the principle of compulsory arbitration, for the Board could not force any party to a dispute to submit to its arbitration or by an umpire of its appointment. However, so outspoken was public opinion on the necessity of avoiding interruptions in the War industries and so far-reaching were the powers of the government over the employer as the administrator of material and labor priorities and over the employes as the administrator of the conscription law that the indirect powers of the Board sufficed to make its decision prevail in nearly every instance.

The packing industry was a conspicuous case of the "new course" in industrial relations. This industry had successfully kept unionism out since an ill-considered strike in 1904, which ended disastrously for the strikers. Late in 1917, 60,000 employes in the packing houses went on strike for union recognition, the basic eight-hour day, and other demands. Intervention by the government led to a settlement, which, although denying the union formal recognition, granted the basic eight-hour day, a living wage, and the right to organize, together with all that it implied, and the appointment of a permanent arbitrator to adjudicate disputes. Thus an industry which had prohibited labor organization for fourteen years was made to open its door to trade unionism.[88] Another telling gain for the basic eight-hour day was made by the timber workers in the Northwest, again at the insistence of the government.

What the aid of the government in securing the right to organize meant to the strength of trade unionism may be derived from the following figures. In the two years from 1917 to 1919 the organization of the meat cutters and butcher workmen increased its membership from less than 10,000 to over 66,000; the boilermakers and iron shipbuilders from 31,000 to 85,000; the blacksmiths from 12,000 to 28,000; the railway clerks from less than 7000 to over 71,000; the machinists from 112,000 to 255,000; the maintenance of way employes from less than 10,000 to 54,000; the railway carmen from 39,000 to 100,000; the railway telegraphers from 27,000 to 45,000; and the electrical workers from 42,000 to 131,000. The trades here enumerated--mostly related to shipbuilding and railways--accounted for the greater part of the total gain in the membership of the Federation from two and a half million members in 1917 to over three and a third in 1919.

An important aspect of the cooperation of the government with the Federation was the latter's eager self-identification with the government's foreign policy, which went to the length of choosing to play a lone hand in the Allied labor world. Labor in America had an implicit faith in the national government, which was shared by neither English nor French labor. Whereas the workers in the other Allied Nations believed that their governments needed to be prodded or forced into accepting the right road to a democratic peace by an international labor congress, which would take the entire matter of war and peace out of the diplomatic chancellories into an open conference of the representatives of the workers, the American workers were only too eager to follow the leadership of the head of the American nation. To this doubtless was added the usual fervor of a new convert to any cause (in this instance the cause of the War against Germany) and a strong distrust of German socialism, which American labor leaders have developed during their drawn-out struggle against the German-trained socialists inside the Federation who have persistently tried to "capture" the organization.

When on January 8, 1918, President Wilson enunciated his famous Fourteen Points, the Federation of course gave them an enthusiastic endorsement. In the autumn of 1918 Gompers went to Europe and participated in an Inter-Allied labor conference. He refused, however, to participate in the first International Labor and Socialist Congress called since the War, which met at Berne, Switzerland, in March 1919, since he would not sit with the Germans while their country was not formally at peace with the United States. The convention of the Federation in June 1919 gave complete endorsement to the League of Nations Pact worked out at Versailles,--on general grounds and on the ground of its specific provisions for an international regulation of labor conditions designed to equalize labor standards and costs. Contrasting with this was the position of British labor, which regarded the Pact with a critical eye, frankly confessing disillusionment, but was willing to accept it for the sake of its future possibilities, when the Pact might be remodelled by more liberal and more democratic hands.

The contrast in outlook between the mild evolutionism of the American Federation of Labor and the social radicalism of British labor stood out nowhere so strongly as in their respective programs for Reconstruction after the War. The chief claim of the British Labor party for recognition at the hands of the voter at the General Election in December 1918, was its well-thought-out reconstruction program put forth under the telling title of "Labour and the New Social Order." This program was above all a legislative program. It called for a thoroughgoing governmental control of industry by means of a control of private finance, natural resources, transportation, and international trade. To the workingmen such control would mean the right to steady employment, the right to a living wage, and the appropriation of economic surpluses by the state for the common good--be they in the form of rent, excessive profits, or overlarge personal incomes. Beyond this minimum program loomed the cooperative commonwealth with the private capitalist totally eliminated.

Such was the program of British labor. What of the Reconstruction program of American labor? First of all, American labor thought of Reconstruction as a program to be carried out by the trade union, not by the government. Moreover, it did not see in Reconstruction the great break with the past which that meant to British labor. The American Federation of Labor applied to Reconstruction the same philosophy which lies at the basis of its ordinary, everyday activity. It concerned itself not with any far-reaching plan for social reorganization, but with a rising standard of living and an enlarged freedom for the union. The American equivalent of a government-guaranteed right to employment and a living wage was the "right to organize." Assure to labor that right, free the trade unions of court interference in strikes and boycotts, prevent excessive meddling by the government in industrial relations--and the stimulated activities of the "legitimate" organizations of labor, which will result therefrom, will achieve a far better Reconstruction than a thousand paper programs however beautiful. So reasoned the leaders of the American Federation of Labor. During the period of War, they of course gladly accepted directly from the government the basic eight-hour day and the high wages, which under other circumstances they could have got only by prolonged and bitter striking. But even more acceptable than these directly bestowed boons was the indirect one of the right to organize free from anti-union discriminations by employers. Having been arrested in its expansion, as we saw, by anti-union employers and especially "trusts," the American Federation of Labor took advantage of the War situation to overflow new territory. Once entrenched and the organization well in hand, it thought it could look to the future with confidence.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] For the developments which led up to this joint move see above, 182-184.

[85] Congress ignored the last-named recommendation which would have introduced in the United States the Canadian system of "Compulsory Investigation."

[86] See below, 283-287.

[87] See below, 238-240.

[88] The unions again lost their hold upon the packing industry in the autumn of 1921.