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Perspectives on American Industrial Violence*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

H. M. Gitelman
H. M. Gitelman
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics, Adelphi University
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Abstract

Professor Gitelman suggests that the causes of industrial violence were similar in the United States and Europe, and that the apparently higher incidence of strike violence in this country was due to the greater willingness and/or ability of American management to utilize strategies of replacing striking workers and deploying armed men.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , Spring 1973 , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1973

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References

1 In Graham, Hugh Davis and Gurr, Ted Robert (eds.), The History of Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (New York, 1969).Google Scholar Still valuable is Fitch, John A., The Causes of Industrial Unrest (New York, 1924).Google Scholar

2 The Taft-Ross enumeration also appears to be limited to strike and lock-out violence involving large numbers of people. This makes sense because quantitative information about many of the other acts of violence associated with American industrial relations is impossible to obtain. This is particularly true of the violence perpetrated by underworld elements and of the violence visited upon individual workers and union organizers from many quarters.

3 Taft and Ross, “American Labor Violence,” 281.

4 The U.S. figure was derived from “American Labor Violence.” The figure for France is given in Shorter, Edward L. and Tilly, Charles, “Le déclin de la grève violente en France de 1890 à 1935,” in Le Mouvement Social No. 76 (Paris, July-September, 1971).Google Scholar

5 Ross, Arthur M. and Hartman, Paul T., Changing Patterns of Industrial Conflict (New York, 1960), 194–95 and 202.Google Scholar

6 Shorter and Tilly, “Le déclin,” and derived from “American Labor Violence.” My tally for the U.S. excludes the approximately 100 bombings perpetrated by officers of the International Association of Bridge Structural Iron Workers between 1906 and 1911 because they were part of a systematic policy conducted by a few men rather than spontaneous and mass outbreaks.

7 France had 19,782 strikes between 1890 and 1915 while the U.S., from 1890 through 1905, had 30,352; Shorter and Tilly, “Le déclin,” and Griffin, John I., Strikes: A Study in Quantitative Economics (New York, 1939), 38.Google Scholar No U.S. strike statistics are available for the period 1906 through 1913.

8 Taft and Ross, “American Labor Violence.”

9 Brown, E. H. Phelps, The Growth of British Industrial Relations (London, 1959), 318–324Google Scholar; Chesneaux, Jean, The Chinese Labor Movement, 1919–1927 (Stanford, Cal., 1968), 156–185Google Scholar; and Lorwin, Val R., The French Labor Movement (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), 239–240.Google Scholar

10 There is little reason to suppose that our more reliable contemporary figures misrepresent this point. Taft and Ross report that between 1947 and 1962, twenty-nine workers were killed in strike-related violence. In 1968 alone, 14,300 workers were killed in work-related accidents, according to the National Safety Council.

11 Letter to Mrs. Lloyd, October 22, 1902, reprinted in Labor History, XIII (Spring, 1972), 285–86.Google Scholar

12 Charles Tilly, “Collective Violence In European Perspective,” in Graham and Gurr, History of Violence in America, provides an illuminating discussion of the role of violence in industrial societies.

13 These arguments appear most recently in Kassalow, Everett M., Trade Unions and Industrial Relations: An International Comparison (New York, 1969).Google Scholar See also: Perlman, Selig, A Theory of the Labor Movement (New York, 1949)Google Scholar; and Sturmthal, Adolf, Unity and Diversity in European Labor (Glencoe, III., 1953).Google Scholar

14 Compare: Mitchell, John, Organized Labor (Philadelphia, 1903), 355–396Google Scholar and Karson, Marc, American Labor Unions and Politics, 1900–1918 (Carbondale, III., 1958), Chs. 2–3Google Scholar, with the position of the French labor movement in 1906 as indicated in Lorwin, French Labor Movement, 30–31; with the position of the German movement in the same year, in Sturmthal, Unity and Diversity, 48–49; and with the position of the Russian labor movement in 1905, as indicated in Deutscher, Isaac, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879–1921 (London, 1954Google Scholar), Ch. 5. See also: Ross and Hartman, Changing Patterns, Ch. 11, where the distinctive pattern of U.S. strike activity is explained largely in terms of decentralized decision making.

15 Taft and Ross, “American Labor Violence,” 380–81.

16 Braun, Kurt, The Right to Organize and Its Limits (Washington, 1950Google Scholar), Ch. 1. See also Groat, George G., Attitude of American Courts in Labor Cases (New York, 1911), Ch. 3.Google Scholar

17 See, for example, the objectives of the Knights of Labor, indicated in Ware, Norman J., The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860–1895 (New York, 1929), 378–380Google Scholar; and the A.F. of L.'s “Bill of Grievances” presented in Taft, Philip, The A.F. of L. in the Time of Gompers (New York, 1957), 294–95.Google Scholar See also Groat, Attitude of American Courts, Ch. 9.

18 Clarkson, Grosvenor B., Industrial America in the World War (Boston, 1923), 286–87.Google Scholar See also: Troy, Leo, “Labor Representation on American Railways,” Labor History, II (Fall, 1961).Google Scholar

19 Taft and Ross, “American Labor Violence,” 281.

20 Leadership must, of course, be present in some form in any purposive group action. The issue of whether this leadership emerges from the group or is voluntarily drawn from outside it is essentially an element of conflict rhetoric used to justify a desired pattern of response. It serves to mask the basic issue of whether those in positions of power are or are not prepared to acknowledge the existence of legitimate grievances.

21 This information was derived in part from a review of the strike data presented in the Third and Tenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor (Washington, 1888 and 1896).Google Scholar

22 Fitch, Causes of Industrial Unrest, 208–211. See also: Levinson, Edward, I Break Strikes! (New York, 1935).Google Scholar

23 See, for example, Bernstein, Irving, The Turbulent Years (Boston, 1970), 263–64Google Scholar; and Dubofsky, Melvin, When Workers Organize (Amherst, Mass., 1968), 122.Google Scholar

24 Spero, Sterling D. and Harris, Abram L., The Black Worker (New York, 1931), 139–142.Google Scholar

25 Reports of the number of striking employees relative to total employment confirm this point. Commissioner of Labor, third and tenth Annual Report. The other side of the coin was that union-called strikes often elicited unexpected support from non-union workers.

26 In addition, the calling of a strike often led many workers to depart in order to look for work elsewhere. The reports of the Commissioner of Labor include statistics on replacements following strikes. Many of these replacements were undoubtedly necessitated by voluntary departures rather than firings. See also: Greene, Victor R., The Slavic Community on Strike; Immigrant Labor in Pennsylvania Anthracite (Notre Dame, Ind., 1968), 108 and 183f.Google Scholar

27 Coleman, McAlister, Men and Coal (New York, 1943), Ch. 12.Google Scholar

28 Goldman, Emma, Living My Life (Garden City, N.Y., 1934), Chs. 8–10.Google Scholar

29 Apart from many scattered reports of property destruction, the only organized efforts of workers to use violence to further their ends include the depredations of the Molly Maguires in the 1870's and those of the International Association of Bridge Structural Iron Workers, 1906–1911. The I.W.W.'s espousal of sabotage had a very different thrust. See: Conlin, Joseph Robert, Bread and Roses Too (Westport, Conn., 1969), Ch. 4.Google Scholar

30 The volumes searched include: Cayton, Horace B. and Mitchell, George S., Black Workers and the New Unions (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1939)Google Scholar; Greene, Lorenzo and Woodson, Carter G., The Negro Wage Earner (Washington, 1930)Google Scholar; Jacobson, Julius (ed.), The Negro and the American Labor Movement (Garden City, N.Y., 1968)Google Scholar; Northrup, Herbert R., Organized Labor and the Negro (New York, 1944)Google Scholar; Spero, and Harris, Black Worker; Charles H. Wesley, Negro Labor in the United States, 1850–1925 (New York, 1927)Google Scholar; Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years and The Lean Years (Boston, 1960)Google Scholar; Commons, John R. et al. , History of Labor in the United States (New York, 1918), vol. IIGoogle Scholar; Millis, Harry A. and Montgomery, Royal E., Organized Labor (New York, 1945)Google Scholar; Newell, Barbara, Chicago and the Labor Movement (Urbana, III., 1961)Google Scholar; and Yellen, Samuel, American Labor Struggles (New York, 1956).Google Scholar

31 It is quite likely that the incidence of black strikebreaking has been under-recorded. A number of the authors cited above evidenced considerable ambiguity toward the phenomenon, feeling on the one hand that strikebreaking was ignoble and destructive and on the other that discriminatory practices may have justified it.

32 See: Uphoff, Walter H., Kohler on Strike (Boston, 1966), Chs. 5–6.Google Scholar It might argued that when a legal act (replacing striking workers) consistently elicits an illegal response, the question of liability is more ambiguous than the courts have been willing to allow.

33 E. H. Phelps Brown, Growth of British Industrial Relations, 166–67 and 335.

34 This is neither an original idea nor one borne of contemporary experience. Fitch, Causes of Industrial Unrest, Ch. 13.

35 Perlman, Theory of the Labor Movement, 169–176.

36 Fosdick, Raymond B., European Police Systems (New York, 1915), 38.Google Scholar

37 Auerbach, Jerold S., Labor and Liberty (Indianapolis, Ind., 1966), Ch. 1.Google Scholar

38 See, for example, Ibid., Ch. 5; Brooks, Robert R. R., As Steel Goes (New Haven, 1940), Chs. 5–6Google Scholar; and Fitch, Causes of Industrial Unrest, Ch. 11.

39 Yellen, American Labor Struggles, Ch. 3, and Fine, Sidney, Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1969), Ch. 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 The classic treatment of the injunction is Frankfurter, Felix and Greene, Nathan, The Labor Injunction (New York, 1930).Google Scholar

41 “Social and Economic Structure and Depression: American Labor in 1873 and 1874” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1959).Google Scholar

42 That the organizers of the events which led to the Memorial Day Massacre anticipated a police riot does not in any way absolve the police of blame. It is just added testimony of how predictable police responses were under given circumstances. See: Sofchalk, Donald G., “The Memorial Day Incident: An Episode of Mass Action,” Labor History, VI (Winter, 1965).Google Scholar The events at Lawrence are covered in detail in Dubofsky, Melvyn, We Shall Be All (Chicago, 1969)Google Scholar, Ch. 10.

43 Westley, William A., “Violence and the Police,” American Journal of Sociology, LVIII (July, 1953)Google Scholar; and Niederhoffer, Arthur and Blumberg, Abraham S. (eds.), The Ambivalent Force: Perspectives on the Police (Waltham, Mass., 1970).Google Scholar See also: Steffens, Lincoln, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York, 1931), 208–214Google Scholar; and Kempton, Murray, “Cops,” New York Review of Books, XV (November, 1970).Google Scholar

44 Adams, Graham Jr., Age of Industrial Violence, 1910–1915 (New York, 1966), 190–91 and 156–161.Google Scholar

45 Fine, Sit-Down, 243–44. The national guard which emerged partly as a response to the riots of 1877 has, as an organization, had a long-standing anti-labor bias. See: Derthick, Martha, The National Guard in Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 16f and 51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 GT-99, Labor Spy (Indianapolis, Ind., 1937)Google Scholar; Huberman, Leo, The Labor Spy Racket (New York, 1937)Google Scholar; and Calkins, Clinch M., Spy Overhead: The Story of Industrial Espionage (New York, 1937).Google Scholar

47 Adams, Age of Industrial Violence, Ch. 7; Coleman, Men and Coal, Ch. 10.

48 Jamieson, Stuart, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture (Washington, 1945), 39f and 437–39.Google Scholar

49 Fine, Sit-Down, 211–16 treats the Guide Lamp strike; Remington Rand is examined in Brooks, Robert R. R., When Labor Organizes (New Haven, Conn., 1937), 133–149Google Scholar; Clark, Norman H., Mill Town (Seattle, 1971), Chs. 9 and 10Google Scholar, treats Everett. On southern textile towns, see Bernstein, Turbulent Years, 309–311 and 621, and Lahne, Herbert J., The Cotton Mill Worker (New York, 1944), 228–231 and 249–256.Google Scholar

50 A definitive history of the activities of the staff of the National Labor Relations Board has yet to be written. On the role of the LaFollette Committee and its relationship to the N.L.R.B., see Auerbach, Labor and Liberty, 85–93 and Ch. 9.