USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people > Part 10
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and definitely expelled the few remaining employer-members from their ranks.
As a result of Irish famine and German revolution, immigrants to the State from 1845 to 1855 were averaging thirty thousand a year. With the help, in many instances, of immigrants from Europe who were experienced in workers' movements, many trade unions were organized. Few survived the panic of 1857, with the exception of those in highly skilled trades with a long tradition of militancy, such as the shipbuilders, or those which, in danger of going under, affiliated to form national unions.
In the period 1859-79 local trade unions increased from seventeen to forty-two, Massachusetts sharing with New York and Pennsylvania sixty per cent of the total number of unions in the United States.
The first important strike in the shoe trade occurred in 1858-59 at Na- tick, where six hundred shoe workers, after a fourteen weeks' struggle, gained an increase in wages. One thousand shoemakers of Lynn formed a union and struck in February, 1860. A hundred special police were ap- pointed by the Lynn authorities, and a detachment of Boston police was sent into the city. The strikers, announcing their peaceful intent, es- corted the Boston police out of Lynn with jeers. The strike became gen- eral throughout eastern Massachusetts, and was joined by women stitch- ers, binders, and machine operators. Delegations from Marblehead, Beverly, Salem, Danvers, and Woburn joined at Lynn on March 7, 1860, in the largest labor demonstration ever held in Massachusetts up to that time. Five thousand men and one thousand women paraded with over one hundred banners and twenty-six American flags, enlivened by several military and fire companies and five brass bands. Eventually, by import- ing strikebreakers from Maine and New Hampshire, the factory owners were able to end the strike.
The Order of the Knights of St. Crispin was founded by shoe workers at Milwaukee in 1867 after a plan of Newell Daniels, formerly of Milford, Massachusetts, and a Grand Lodge of that order was incorporated in 1870 in the State. In 1868 the 'Crispins' struck in Ashland to enforce the discharge of non-union men. The employer secretly brought in one hun- dred men from Maine, protected by State police. In North Adams man- ufacturers imported men whom they forced to sign each month an agree- ment not to join the Order. The men signed - and joined the 'Crispins.' Finding that supposedly 'loyal' workers were secretly joining the union, and that imported labor was being met at the railroad station by union men and warned against 'scabbing,' the factory owned by C. T. Sampson, at North Adams, actually imported Chinese from California. The firm
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of Stowe, Bills and Whitney, finding during a strike that workers refused to respond to advertisements for men to replace the workers, set up a school in 1875 and trained raw youths to the trade, thus finally succeeding in reopening the factory.
Largely through the demands of organized labor the first State Bureau of Labor Statistics in the United States was formed in 1869, 'to collect and publish statistical details relating to all departments of labor in the Commonwealth, especially in its relations to the commercial, industrial, social, educational and sanitary condition of the laboring classes, and to the permanent prosperity of the productive industry of the Common- wealth.'
In most trade unions, political discussion was not permitted at meetings. Workingmen, however, were vitally interested in labor legislation, and not only participated in but led many of the political movements of the 1870's and 1880's. Outside the trade unions were organized the Trades Assemblies, where political and social questions were discussed. The National Labor Union was created for this purpose in 1866, and continued to function until 1874. In April, 1878, at a regular meeting of the Boston Typographical Union, a motion was adopted to form a Central Union of the Trades in Boston and the vicinity.
Labor also began to consider the larger question of the rôle of labor in relation to production. Ira Steward, a machinist of Boston, developed in the period of 1869-80 the theory that by a general eight-hour day and a general increase of purchasing power the problems of capital and labor could be solved. He set forth his ideas in a book which he left uncompleted at his death in 1883. The manuscript was altered, added to, and com- pleted by George Gunther, a weaver of Fall River, who brought it out un- der the title of 'Wealth and Progress' in 1887. Later Gunther joined with F. A. Sorge, for a time the representative of Karl Marx's International Workingmen's Association in America, and with J. P. McDonnell the Fenian, to found the International Labor Union, which attempted to organize unskilled workers.
George McNeill also had a major part in labor's political movements of this period. His father, John McNeill, had been associated with John Greenleaf Whittier in the anti-slavery movement, and George himself took part in the strike of 1852 in the woolen mills of Amesbury, which was supported by Whittier and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Black- listed in the textile trade, George McNeill learned the trade of shoemaker. He was secretary (1863-64) of the Grand Eight-Hour League, president (1869-74) of the Boston Eight-Hour League, and president (1867-69) of the
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Workingmen's Institute. He drafted the first program for the Knights of Labor Assembly in 1874. At first he was associated with Wendell Phillips, but the theories of the eight-hour reformers and of greenbackism were mutually incompatible, and the association ended. Phillips and McNeill were partly responsible for the establishment of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1869, and McNeill was appointed the first assistant chief of the bureau in that year, but was discharged in 1873 on account of his labor activities .. McNeill resigned from the Knights of Labor to join the newly formed American Federation of Labor in 1886. He wrote a number of books on labor problems.
Wendell Phillips was largely responsible for the Greenback Movement of 1870-80, which, partly socialist and partly anarchist in inspiration, was an effort to displace bankers and middlemen from their key places in the economy of production. Currency and bonds, according to the green- backists, should be interchangeable. The basic economic theory common to socialism, anarchism, and greenbackism was that capital was solely the product of labor. This was no new doctrine, of course - Adam Smith and Ricardo had already voiced it, while Marx had employed it as a weapon. Its newness lay in its use by workingmen's political movements in Amer- ica. Greenbackism, popularly supposed to be a currency reform move- ment, was more than that - it aimed, by a new system of credit and by universal suffrage, at complete industrial reorganization.
Besides Wendell Phillips, Josiah Warren, the first American anarchist, Ezra Heywood, Warren's follower, William H. Channing, Albert Bris- bane, and John Orvis of Brook Farm were among the middle-class re- formers participating in the unions' political movements. The Independ- ent Party was formed in 1870, and in three weeks workingmen, without newspaper support, succeeded in electing twenty-one State representatives and one State senator, polling a vote of 13,000 in the State.
For more than twenty years after 1880, Massachusetts workers devoted themselves to 'pure and simple' trade unionism. In the period of 1881- 1900 there were 1802 recorded strikes and lockouts, Massachusetts rank- ing fourth among the States in strikes and third in number of lockouts. Nearly one-third of these disputes was in the shoe industry, the next largest number being in the cotton goods industry and the building trades.
In 1911, a labor law reduced women's working hours to fifty-four per week. In retaliation, manufacturers reduced wages proportionately, and this act precipitated the great Lawrence strike of 1912.
According to a report of the United States Commissioner of Labor, 'the average amount actually received [in Lawrence] by the 21,922 em-
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ployees, during a week late in 1911, in which the mills were running full time, was $8.76.' Most of the workers were unorganized - the United Textile Workers had twenty-five hundred members, and the Industrial Workers of the World a few hundred. After three days, however, nearly all the unskilled and semi-skilled operatives in the city were out. Joseph Ettor, a member of the General Executive Board of the I.W.W., came to Lawrence and assumed leadership of the strike. On January 15, strikers picketed in mass, and the Mayor requisitioned four out-of-town troops of militia in addition to the four local companies. On January 16, the mills were reopened with the protection of police and the militia, and picketers were driven back at the point of the bayonet. William M. Wood, president of the American Woolen Company, refused to meet with a strike com- mittee. On January 19, the skilled operatives joined the strike. Next day several sticks of dynamite were 'discovered' in the strike district, seven strikers were arrested, and four additional companies of militia were brought in. Subsequently a leading business man was tried, convicted, and fined five hundred dollars for 'planting' the dynamite; President Wood was exonerated in court after failing to explain a payment to the purchaser of the dynamite. On the day of a huge demonstration, Janu- ary 29, a woman striker was killed, and the city council voted to turn the town over to the commander of the militia, which was reinforced by the addition of ten more companies of infantry and two of cavalry. Ettor and Arture Giovanitti, editor of Il Proletario, were accused of the murder, and later acquitted. While Ettor was in jail, William ('Big Bill') Hay- wood took command of the strike. One hundred and nineteen strikers' children were sent to New York, where they were greeted by a crowd of five thousand. Later ninety-two more children were sent out of harm's way. When once more a new group of 'refugee' children was ready to board the train, fifty police and two companies of militia clubbed their parents and dragged children and parents to jail. After the organization of the largest picket line ever seen in Massachusetts, comprising twenty thousand workers, the strike was won, with wage increases, time-and-a- quarter for overtime, and guarantees of no discrimination against union members.
During the strike the relief committee had raised a large sum, appealing in a circular for 'bread' for the striking workers. The Attorney General of the State contended that this money should be spent only for bread, whereas portions of the fund had been used for legal expenses, transporta- tion of children, contributions to the national organization, etc. He se- cured a court order compelling the strikers to turn over $15,379.85 to the
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court to be expended for 'charitable purposes,' with an accounting for sums already paid out.
In August, 1919, the Boston Social Club, an organization of 1290 Bos- ton police, voted to join the American Federation of Labor in a body. The patrolmen complained that their wages had failed to keep pace with the cost of living, that the police stations were unsanitary, and that they worked overtime without compensation. Police Commissioner Edwin U. Curtis issued an order on August II forbidding members of the police force to 'join any organization outside the department except posts of the G.A.R., Spanish War Veterans, and American Legion.' Despite this or- der, on August 15 the Boston Social Club was chartered as the Police- men's Union under the A.F. of L., and the Boston Central Labor Union, representing eighty thousand organized workers, assured the new union of its support. Commissioner Curtis preferred charges against eight police- men; as sole judge, he passed on the validity of the ruling he had issued, and, declining to hear counsel for the policemen in rebuttal, found the men guilty. The Policemen's Union thereupon called a strike, to become ef- fective at the hour of the evening roll call on September 9. Only thirty of the four hundred and twenty patrolmen due at that roll call appeared. A citizens' committee, appointed as an arbitrating body, stated that 'the Boston Policemen's Union should not affiliate or be connected with any labor organization,' but urged that 'the present wages, hours, and work- ing conditions require material adjustment.'
The striking patrolmen placed twenty pickets at each police station. Mayor Peters called on 'all citizens to do their part to assist the authori- ties in maintaining order,' and Governor Calvin Coolidge called out one hundred State police. President Lowell of Harvard appealed to students 'to prepare themselves for such services as the Governor may call upon them to render.' Dean Greenough organized an 'emergency committee,' and Coach Fisher was reported by the press as having declared, 'To hell with football if men are needed.' 'Come back from your vacations, young men,' a press release credited Professor Hall of the Physics Department of Harvard with saying, 'there is sport and diversion for you right here in Boston.'
Sympathetic citizens of Boston gathered around police stations to cheer the strikers and boo patrolmen who remained on duty. Guardsmen opened fire with rifles and a machine gun on a cheering crowd of sympathizers in South Boston, killing two boys and wounding several bystanders, and in Scollay Square, cavalry charged on a crowd, shot a woman and killed a man. Metropolitan Park (State) policemen thereafter refused to go on
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further strike duty, were suspended, and joined the union. The possibility of a sympathetic general strike neared. Hoodlums began pouring into Boston from outside towns, and President McInnis of the Policemen's Union placed responsibility for rioting and looting with Commissioner Curtis. Mayor Peters placed the blame on Governor Coolidge, and the Governor offered an 'implied rebuke' of the Mayor. Volunteer police- men were called out on the morning of September II, by which time seven persons had been killed and some sixty injured. E. B. McGill was shot by guardsmen on Howard Street 'as he was merely passing by,' according to the press; Henry Grote was killed as he played 'craps' opposite the Armory in Jamaica Plain; and Richard D. Reemts, a striking patrolman, was killed as he attempted to disarm two special policemen.
President Wilson denounced the strike, and next day Samuel Gompers, president of the A.F. of L., ordered the strikers back to work. With the support of the Federation lost, the policemen were beaten, and their union voted on September 12 to return to work. Next day, according to the press, there 'was no recurrence of disorder except for the killing of one man and the wounding of a woman.' Corporal Newton of the National Guard was reported as killing a youth of twenty-two named Coist as he ran across Tremont Street. The street was crowded with people, and Mrs. Mary Jacques was about to cross the street when she screamed and fell, shot through the leg. The people on the street began to crowd around, but the guardsmen pushed them back, shouting, according to the newspaper accounts, 'Get back or you'll get the same thing!'
Gompers appealed to Governor Coolidge to reinstate the strikers, at the same time completely disavowing the strike. Coolidge disclaimed the power of reinstatement, and added that he was opposed to 'the public safety again being placed in the hands of these same policemen.'
The Boston police strike has always been considered a decisive factor in the career of Calvin Coolidge. In 1920, he was elected to the Vice- Presidency, and, upon the death of Warren G. Harding, in 1923, became President of the United States.
The shoe industry today is second only to textiles in the State both as to value of output and in the number of workers employed. One of the most recent of many bitter struggles for organization in the shoe industry occurred in 1929, when the shoe workers of Lynn, Boston, Chelsea, and Salem struck with the major demand for the recognition of their union, the United Shoe Workers of America, as opposed to the Boot and Shoe Workers' Union, an A.F. of L. affiliate, with which they were dissatis- fied. The strike lasted more than six months, but was broken by the Boot
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and Shoe Union, which imported men from Maine and New Hampshire. During this strike many 'runaway shops' left Massachusetts and moved to non-union centers in Maine and New Hampshire. The frequency with which these shops have moved has earned them the title of 'factories on wheels.'
In the summer of 1933, a movement started in Brockton for the amalga- mation of all the independent shoe unions into one national union. A new amalgamated union, the United Shoe and Leather Workers' Union, was formed; the Brockton Brotherhood, however, refused to enter. This new union, which included about fifty thousand workers, suffered from internal dissensions, to say nothing of wholesale factory removals. In 1933-34 there were twenty-one shoe factories in Boston, employing some seven thousand workers; by 1935-36 there remained only four factories, employing about two thousand. Weakened by these conditions, the mem- bership of the United Shoe and Leather Workers Union had dwindled to fifteen thousand in 1936. In 1937, a movement again developed for amalgamation, this time as an affiliate of the Committee for Industrial Organization. The United and the Protective voted overwhelmingly for amalgamation; but the Brotherhood defeated the proposal by nine hundred votes.
In the fishing industry the ancient 'share' or 'lay' system still governs the pay of all hands except the skipper, cook, and engineer. The foremast hand gets only his share of the 'stock' (proceeds of the voyage after deduc- tion of expenses) in lieu of a fixed wage. Theoretically, this workman thus becomes a partner in the venture. He has no property investment at stake, nor is he liable for financial losses involved in a 'broken voyage.' He does speculate, however, with his time, his labor, often with his health and not infrequently with his life.
All the old methods of fishing - trawling as the Gloucestermen prac- tice it, trap or weir fishing, hand-lining and seining - are skilled labor, and most of the work aboard the mechanized beam trawlers also requires specialized knowledge. Risk, though considerably reduced from the days of sail, is still large, especially in the use of dories for trawling. No regular working hours are possible, and in the course of the usual voyage, work never really ceases. When the men are not fishing, they have their gear to mend, they must work ship, they must prepare the bait for trawl lines and bait their hooks, and they must gut, clean, and stow the fish, and un- load it when it is sold.
Fish are sold, at the principal ports, through a fish exchange, similar to any commodity exchange save for one feature: the buyer is not held to his
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price, even after the deal is closed. Should a number of vessels bring in full loads of fish immediately following such a sale, thus increasing supply and driving the price lower, the buyer may refuse to accept such fish as have not been taken out of the hold. Usually he offers a lower price; and as he has taken the freshest fish - those on top, hence caught last - the skipper generally makes a concession. The chief burden of this sort of dealing falls, of course, upon the crew - the 'partners' in the voyage. The only chance such men have to make an unusually large 'stock' is to tie up at a wharf with a full hold when no other vessel has one. And the chances against this are large. For these reasons, mainly, the fisherman is almost invariably poor. On account of the share system, fishermen have remained largely unorganized.
In 1920, a fish peddler, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, and a shoe-worker, Nic- colà Sacco, both members of the Galleani group of anarchists, were ar- rested on the charge of murder and robbery in connection with the theft of a $15,000 payroll. Despite their alibis, the highly circumstantial nature of the evidence, and the commendations of previous employers, they were ultimately both adjudged guilty. During the seven years that elapsed between the murder and the execution of the sentence, protest demonstra- tions were held throughout the world. President Lowell of Harvard, Pres- ident Stratton of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Judge Robert Grant were invited by Governor Fuller to weigh the evidence and advise him. They upheld the finding of the court and Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on August 23, 1927. It was widely believed that, although legal forms were observed, the determining factor in the case from start to finish was the affiliation of the two men with an unpopular minority political group.
The Women's Trade Union League secured, in 1921, an extension of the fifty-eight hour law for women to further industries. Employers of woman labor in the textile industry were given power under the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 to make codes of fair competition, and in that year they secured the suspension of section 59 of chapter 149 of the General Laws of Massachusetts which prohibited the employment of women in textile mills after 6 P.M. This suspension was continued from year to year after the collapse of the National Industrial Recovery Act.
Of the 122,389 workers in the textile mills of the State in 1937, forty per cent were women. In the textile industry, women are a permanent labor force. Most of them enter the mills at a very early age and remain there for the greater part of their lives. Even marriage does not always take the textile working girl out of the mill, for the earnings of her husband seldom
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suffice to meet the family expenses. Weekly wages for women range from $8 for ordinary workers to $27 for the most highly skilled spinners or weavers. Since there are seasonal periods of unemployment, weekly earnings over long periods naturally average considerably less. The 'speedup' and 'stretchout' systems, together with improvements in machinery, have vastly increased the machine load per worker. Ten years ago an operative commonly took care of a single loom, now he cares for thirty or more. According to the May, 1937, issue of the Textile Worker of New England, 'Within the past two months the textile mills, while announcing a 10 per cent increase in wages, have actually increased the work load of the operatives from 25 to 200 per cent.'
The same conditions and social philosophy that have permitted the labor of women for long hours in industry have also permitted child-labor. Edward Johnson, in 'Wonder-Working Providence' (1654), spoke of the people of Rowley who 'caused their little ones to be very diligent in spin- ning cotton wool,' and with the rise of the factory system children took places beside their parents in the textile mills. An early memorandum by the proprietor of a cotton mill in Lancaster records that in 1815 Dennis Rier of Newburyport agreed to work with his family at the following wages: Himself, $5 a week; a boy of sixteen, $2 a week; a boy of thirteen, $1.50 a week; a girl of twelve, $1.25 a week; a boy of ten, 83 cents a week; and a girl of eight, 75 cents a week. In 1825, according to the report of that year by the Commissioner of Education, for children under sixteen 'the time of employment is generally twelve or thirteen hours each day, excepting the Sabbath.' At Bridgewater children worked twelve hours daily, and could not 'attend school and be employed.' In Duxbury chil- dren under sixteen worked from 'sunrise to sunset.' This report dealt with corporate establishments only - in many others the conditions were worse.
Hours of labor for children under twelve were limited to ten per day by a law of 1842, and a law of 1858 stipulated that employed children must have eighteen weeks' schooling each year. In 1913 was passed the first enforceable eight-hour law for children in an important textile State.
In 1937, minors under fourteen could not work during the hours school was in session, nor before 6.30 A.M. nor after 6 P.M. No boy under sixteen could sell papers or 'exercise the trade of scavenger' after 9 P.M. or before 5 A.M. Minors might still be bound as apprentices or servants, although above the age of fourteen only with the consent of the bound person.
Violations of child-labor laws are frequently reported. Uncontrolled home work by women and children is also common.
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According to the 1930 Census, there were 60,524 children from ten to seventeen years of age gainfully employed in the State. Of this number 9824 were between the ages of ten and fifteen. In 1924, the United States Congress accepted the so-called 'Child-Labor Amendment,' which is not a child-labor law, but an act authorizing Congress to pass such laws. The measure came up for ratification in Massachusetts in the same year. A campaign against the amendment, led by the Massachusetts Associated Industries, enlisted the aid of prominent citizens, including Cardinal O'Connell, A. Lawrence Lowell, and others. The campaign for the amendment was waged mainly by the State Federation of Labor and the Massachusetts League of Women Voters. The referendum showed a ma- jority against ratification of the amendment, and the General Court also returned unfavorable votes on ratification in each year from 1933 to 1937. At the 1937 legislative hearings on the amendment, the chairman abruptly closed the proceedings, and his action was protested by the proponents in a picket line before the State House, the first such since the Sacco- Vanzetti case in 1927.
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