The AFL and the IWW

I. AF of L, Gompers, and “Pure and Simple Unionism”


A. American Federation of Labor – established in 1886, in the aftermath of the Haymarket Square incident; provided an outlet for craft unions to distance themselves from the radicals arrested because of Haymarket.

1. Pure and Simple Unionism – emphasis upon so-called bread and butter issues—wages, working conditions. Accepted the capitalist system (which other working class movements did not do, including the Knights of Labor).

a. Need to control hiring practices – to maintain enough control to maintain wages and working conditions, workers had to maintain solidarity (by refusing to work at job sites that used non-union labor), and control the number of people who gained access to the trade.

b. The “Walking Boss” – craft unions developed system to police members and the companies that hired them—the business agent, or “walking boss.” BA’s job was to make sure that all of the craft people employed within a certain craft were union members; this left BA’s susceptible to bribes and “sweetheart” deals with firms.

2. Running a Labor Union like a business – AFL unions were often run on the business model, with up-to-date accounting practices, etc.

II. Labor Actions in the 1890s

A. Homestead (1892)

1. Carnegie’s “non-involvement” – Carnegie had not been an advocated of the non-union shop until the early 1890s, when he apparently began to feel that having union workers cost too much money.

a. Ford Clay Frick – Carnegie hired Frick, who had a reputation as a union buster, to run the operation at Homestead, and then left for an extended “vacation” at his newly purchased castle in Scotland.

b. Hiring of Pinkertons – Frick had retained the famed Pinkerton Detective Agency to protect the strikebreakers he expected to hire after locking out current employees at the plant, which had been “protected” by several miles of steel fencing.

2. The Defense of Homestead – Pinkertons were floated a barge downriver from Pittsburgh, expecting to take the workers in Homestead by surprise. Workers were expecting this maneuver, and after a pitched gun battle lasting several hours, workers of Homestead defeated the Pinkertons, who were then viciously beaten by townspeople by being made to run a gauntlet.

3. Aftermath – Pennsylvania militia sent in to “restore” peace, arrest “ringleaders.”

a. Attempted assassination of Frick – by anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Bergman

B. Coeur d’Alene – mining region in northern Idaho, which gave birth to the Western Federation of Miners.

1. 1st Strike – during 1892 mine owners organized themselves to resist miner’s insistence that they be paid $3.50/day. With the aid of a Pinkerton spy who had been able to infiltrate into the highest levels of the miners’ union (he was elected treasurer), the owners first locked out the miners during a rate dispute with the railroad. After the rate dispute was settled, the owners agreed to take back the miners; however, only skilled miners would receive the $3.50/day rate; unskilled miners would receive $3.00/day. The introduction of the steam powered drill had greatly reduced the demand for skilled miners. Miners struck in protest; mine owners brought in strikebreakers. Violence escalated until troops were called in; eventually, a combined state and federal force of 1500 was able to allow the strike to be broken. Union members were summarily arrested and held without trial in hastily constructed stockades called “bullpens.” Result was that miners became active in Populist politics in the state, and the Western Federation of Miners was founded.

2. 1899 “Dynamite Express” – the second Coeur d’Alene strike, in which a large group of miners (estimated at approximately 1000) hijacked a train and used it to transport themselves and a large amount of dynamite to the isolated town of Wardner, where they used the dynamite to blow up a breaker. State government in Idaho dismissed local officials, and asked for federal troops (the black 24th cavalry, just back from conquering San Juan Hill), so that the soldiers and miners would not fraternize). Miners again collected into bullpens; this time, however state takes more repressive measures, including requiring mine companies to use “yellow dog” contracts, which effectively breaks the control of the WFM in the state

a. Split in WFM leadership – this event caused a split in the WFM leadership; part of the group moves into socialist politics, while remaining in the union (the WFM eventually becomes Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers); the more radical left wing eventually evolves into the IWW.

b. Murder of former Governor Frank Stuenenberg – blame was laid to the WFM; Pinkertons were allowed to kidnap officers of the Union and transport them to Idaho for trial.

C. 1894 Pullman Strike

1. “Model town” of Pullman – George Pullman established his model city just south of Chicago, where he provided workers at his factory with housing, stores, schools, and places of worship—all owned by George Pullman.

2. Onset of the 1893 Depression – with the beginning of the depression, Pullman sought to cut costs by cutting his workforce, and by cutting the wages of those workers who remained. Pullman the landlord, however, refused to cut rent for those workers who were forced to remain in his housing, which eventually precipitated a strike in the spring of 1894.

3. Eugene Debs and the American Railway Union – Debs, a former officer in one of the Railroad Brotherhoods, came to see the need to organize railway workers on an industrial, rather than crafts basis. The reason for this was that railroad companies were able to play one set of craft workers against another, and undermine worker solidarity. 1894 ARU convention held in Chicago, voted to boycott any trains that Pullman Cars were attached to.

4. Breaking the strike – on the advice of Attorney General Olney, a former railroad attorney, companies begin attaching mail cars to trains with Pullman Cars, which the federal government then uses as a pretext to arrest union officials, including Gene Debs, for interfering with the US mails.

III. The AFL Alternative

A. Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) – the repression of the WFM led many members into socialist politics.

1. 1905 Founding Convention – “The working class and the owning class have nothing in common.”

2. Syndicalism – IWW used direct action, or sabotage, to fight for control of the workplace with management.

a. Refusal to sign contracts – IWW hostility to the capitalist system led them to refuse to sign contracts with management, which meant that they had to rely upon continued militancy to maintain concessions that they won during any particular labor action.

IV. Industrial Democracy

A) Definition – actually, there is no one definition of industrial democracy—it meant different things to different people. To workers, it meant that they would have a say in how a factory or other kind of business would be run. To owners of the factories and businesses, it meant that for the duration of the war they would tolerate government interference in the running of their business, in return for guaranteed profits—but only to the end of the war.

B) Different views of Industrial democracy
1) Americanization programs – largely under the control of the capitalist class, intended to make workers think and act like “Americans.”

(a) Banishment of German language newspapers – distribution of German language material through the mail was banished in 1917, which effectively ended the large German press in the United States.

(b) Company-sponsored programs

(i) Ford Motor Company – in the period just before the war, Ford introduced his famous “Five Dollars a Day” program, which he proposed to pay workers in his factories five dollars a day (about twice the then going rate for factory workers). To qualify, workers had to pass inspection from the Ford Social Department, who ensured that workers were living frugally and would not dissipate the salary that they were to receive. Immigrant workers, in addition to this, were also required to attend language classes if they did not speak English, and were lectured on work habits, personal hygiene, and table manners; they were also encouraged to move out of ethnic neighborhoods, and not to take in borders.

(ii) International Harvester Company.

(c) Loyalty organizations – groups like the American Protective League were formed by natives born to enforce their vision of Americanization upon the foreign born, as well as other natives who did not fit their vision of proper conduct.


(d) Restrictions on immigration – although the numbers of immigrants was not restricted by law until 1924, and the effect of that law did not come into effect until 1929 (when, due to the world-wide depression, immigration would have fallen off, anyway), restrictions were placed upon immigration before that time period.



(i) Literacy test – immigrants had to prove that they could read and write in their native language—a law the AFL staunchly supported. The law was passed by Congress over President Wilson’s veto

(e) Eighteenth Amendment – the amendment abolishing the manufacture (except for personal consumption), distribution, and sale of any alcoholic beverage. This concept had long been an aim of moralists in the country; what may have finally pushed the issue over the top was a backlash against the German American brewery owners who dominated the industry.


(f) Nineteenth Amendment – giving women the right to vote; this was another long political struggle that reached fruition by the end of hostilities in Europe. While this gave women the right to vote, most men who worked for passage did not expect this to change the political balance in the country, and it did not—the mostly middle class women who benefited most from this amendment voted in much the same way as the middle class men did. Leading women who worked for passage of this amendment went immediately to work on passage of an Equal Rights Amendment, meant to remove the remaining inequalities between women and men; most were not around to see Congress finally approve it in 1972, and practically none around to see its failure to pass muster among the states.



2) Industrial democracy for working people.
(a) Labor as a partner in society – the symbolic importance of the positions that AFL president Samuel Gompers held should not be discounted in importance; this gave the working people that he represented (the single largest group, and growing during this time period) the impression that they finally had some influence in government.


(b) Success of labor actions – with sympathetic members sitting on the War Labor Board, which was charged with adjudicating labor disputes, labor unions increasingly won recognition from companies, and modest wage increases for the workers they represented (which companies could afford to grant because many of them operated with “cost-plus” contracts from the Federal Government—which meant that the companies were guaranteed a certain level of profit).


V. Reaction to Industrial Democracy – after the signing of the Armistice, companies in the United States moved to rescind many of the agreements that had been reached during the war years.

A) 1919 Strike wave

1) Seattle General Strike – a strike instigated by the International Associations of Machinists, who represented shipbuilding workers in the city. Eventually, most workers in the city joined the machinists on strike, and a workers’ strike committee ended up running the city for three days—providing law enforcement, food distribution, and other essential services.


2) Rossford Ford Plate Glass strike – led by the IWW, began the same time as the Willys-Overland strike; strike leaders were swiftly arrested, and carted off to Wood County seat Bowling Green (with the assistance of a number of volunteer deputies recruited from the normal college there), where they were held largely incommunicado. Catholic school children were told that there parents would be excommunicated from church if they attended a strike rally in Toledo; management in the factory armed and deputized by county; after several weeks, with the assistance of strikebreakers, strike defeated.


3) Willys-Overland strike – Willys attempted to unilaterally impose a wage cut on workers; offered a profit-sharing scheme to workers, which was rejected. When wage cut imposed anyway (in the form of a longer work day with no increase in wage), many workers walk off job at normal quitting time; workers are fired, and strike called. Workers from Lagrange Street area board westbound streetcars on Central, all workers who cannot produce a Chevrolet work badge are made to get off the streetcar. Strikebreakers are hired, and housed within the company compound; strikers surround compound. Sweeping injunction granted after North Carolina auto dealer claims business adversely effected.

4) Steel strike – AFL made concerted attempt to organize steel workers during the war, and this attempt continued during period just after the war. Most success occurred in the area around Chicago, and result encouraged attempts to organize workers in the Pittsburgh area. Leadership of this drive was given to former Wobbly William Z. Foster, who had headed up a similar drive on the behalf of the Chicago Federation of Labor and the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butchers to organize packinghouse workers in Chicago area. Steel companies refused to negotiate; used Foster’s syndicalist past to discredit him, and eventually crush the strike.

5) Boston Police Strike – walkout of the Boston Police force led to widespread looting and general lawlessness; Governor of Massachusetts, Calvin Coolidge orders the firing of the entire police force, and mobilizes the state militia to police the city. This strike, perhaps more than any of the other of the hundreds that occurred, scared those in power most.

B) Reaction of governing elite


1) Red Scare – led by US Attorney General (and Presidential wannabee) Mitchell Palmer, a nationwide coordinated attack against known and suspected radicals took place in early January 1920, when hundreds were arrested, with a suspension of the rights of habeas corpus; some of those arrested are deported on minor violations; some of those who were American citizens—like Big Bill Haywood—jumped bail and left the country (Haywood fled to the Soviet Union, and is buried in the wall of the Kremlin).


2) Institution of the “American Plan” – this plan was part carrot, and part stick. While unions were unwanted in the workplace, in many factories the indiscriminate powers of the foreman were curtailed, and powers to hire and fire were given instead to newly instituted personnel departments.


(a) Power of foremen curtailed

(b) Institution of personnel departments

(c) Grievance procedures

(d) Profit-sharing and stock options plans

(e) No collective bargaining, however

Conclusion

V. Conclusion

Flexing American Muscle

I)                   Mexican Revolution

A)    Border raids

1)      Two Mexican governments – one in the north (led by Poncho Villa), and one in the south

2)      Anti-American sentiment – many people in Mexico resented the United States interference in political affairs previously in Mexico, as well as the way many of their relatives and former countrymen were being treated in the Southwest.

3)      Unstable business environment – for US businesses, anyway; fear of intervention by British or German forces which would conflict with US business interests.

(a)    Petroleum

(b)   Mining – particularly silver, lead, and copper mines

B)     Intervention – invoking the Monroe Doctrine, used as justification to interfere in affairs of Mexico.

1)      Tampico Affair – avenging US honor, or the humiliation of Mexico?  US sailors arrested, then quickly released with apology from Mexican government; naval commander insists Mexican officials salute US flag, which they refuse to do; Marines and sailors occupy Veracruz by force.

2)      Pursuit of Poncho Villa – Villa, looking to provoke US invasion, Villa’s forces raid Columbus, New Mexico, burn it to the ground, and kill sixteen US citizens; Wilson responds by sending Gen. John Pershing into Mexico to pursue Villa; Pershing is unable to capture Villa or his forces, however, and US forces are withdrawn, quietly, a year later (to be transported across the Atlantic).

C)    “Dollar Diplomacy” – interventions on the part of US government to protect the interests of American businesses, began in 1909 with personal appeal from Taft to Chinese leaders on behalf of US businesses; with Wilson, this “diplomacy” often took the force of arms

1)      Nicaragua

2)      Haiti

3)      Dominican Republic

4)      Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, USMC

II)                 War in Europe

A)    Hyphenated Americans

1)      German-Americans – number 8.25 million of German parentage

2)      Irish-Americans – 4.5 Million of Irish parentage

(a)    Both groups either expressed opposition for English war aims (Irish), or support for German war aims (German-Americans)

(b)   Why support Allies? – Cultural affinity with Great Britain by politicians; the fact that Great Britain controlled US access to information about the war, so US only heard about “Hun atrocities.”

B)     “Preparedness” v. anti-militarism – US had long held suspicion of large standing army, and of militarism, but this was in the process of changing.

1)      Preparedness advocates

(a)    Theodore Roosevelt – felt the military was the great democratic leveler (unless you were black and relegated to a segregated unit), and would restore masculinity that was sorely lacking, particularly in the middle class (desk jobs)

2)      Anti-militarists

(a)    William Jennings Bryan

(b)   Women’s Peace Party (40,000 members)

(c)    Most Progressives

(d)   Socialist Party

(e)    IWW – latter two believed that this was a capitalist war, fought to control overseas colonies (and largely, it was)

C. War and the National Interest--nations fight wars because they see  them serving  a particular national interest. Democracies must also convince their people that fighting a particular war is in their national interest

1. Convincing the American People--the Wilson administration had to put a great deal of effort to sell the war to the American people, both with propaganda and with severe punishment for speaking against the war effort.

a. Government propaganda--the US government had to sell the war to the people when the "preparedness" contingent became more vociferous after the sinking of the Lusitania and the loss of American lives.

b.German bumbling--Germany mad a series of rather bumbling attempts to keep the Unites States neutral or to at least keep the country from providing substantial aid to the Allies. These attempts ranged from the purchase of the New York World by German investors to aid the spread of German propaganda to the destruction of the Toms River Arsenal in New Jersey, which shattered windows in skyscrapers across the river in New York City. Espionage efforts by the German government were fairly easily uncovered by the US government, and eventually led to the largest portion of the American people supporting the war effort of the government.

2. Preparedness--a number of influential Americans--most prominently, Theodore Roosevelt--called for the United States' government to make greater efforts to prepare for the war than the government was then engaged in--or, indeed, than a majority of the people of the United States were willing to engage  in. Much of Roosevelt's frustration was the realization that what he advocated was profoundly out of step with what most Americans wanted--and Woodrow Wilson was in step with the desires.

a. Rio Roosevelt--Roosevelt's frustrations with the result of the election led him on one of his periodic sojourns to prove his manhoood--this time to chart an unexplored tributary to the Amazon. This trip nearly cost him his life, as he developed a bacterial infection in his leg and malaria. Only the unselfishness of his son Kermit kept him alive. Ironically, his great-granddaughter Anna Roosevelt works as an anthropologist in the Amazon rainforest, and has uncovered evidence that suggests that the "new world" was inhabited well before was previously thought.

D. Peace and the National Interest--many other Americans saw the threat of war being contrary to the national interest--particularly those Americans who would be asked to fight it.

1. Socialists--argued that the war in Europe was being fought to line the pockets of capitalists, and to further their economic interests. Socialists argued that instead, workers should refuse to kill other workers in this war.

a. Eugene Victor Debs--Debs had won over 900,000 votes in the presidential election in 1912, the most ever for the party to that time Debs was an outspoken critic of the war, and continued to be so until he was arrested in Canton, Ohio for making the above speech.

b. Debs,  William D. Haywood, other socialist (and IWW members) were arrested, tried, and convicted of sedition--of speaking out against the war

E. Feminism and Peace--women were very involved in the peace movement;  many women (among them Jane Addams) argued that the role that women played in society--the nurturing mother--made women suited for maintaining peace in the world.

1. Rosika (Rosa) Schwimmer--Hungarian feminist and peace activist, who helped to found the Women's Peace Party with  Jane Addams. Schwimmer was able to persuade Henry Ford to put up the money to pull together the first international conference, where she proposed that the women offer their services for continuous arbitration.

2. Addams' Role--Jane Addams, because of her prominence in the American political scene, was elected to head up this new organization--a role that she was very good at, and a position that she held for most of the next two decades.

D. Why the Peace Movement Fails--the Peace Movement in the  United States failed because of the inept actions of the German government, the success of the British government propaganda, and the shift in support among the majority of American people

1. Government take action--the United States government, in response to the subtle shift in public opinion over the cause of war, passed repressive legislation to be used against those who spoke out against the war; indeed, the government quashed all dissident political movements, arresting and jailing members of these organizations. "Foreigners" were deported to their home countries, as a matter of fact.

F)    Wilson’s position – shifting, depending upon the political climate

1)      1915 – recommends military build-up

2)      1916 – switches positions, promising to keep US from entangling alliances, because that position is more politically popular, and there was an election coming up.

3)      Peace tied to US economic expansion

G.    Economic Effects of War on US

1)      1914 recession – US securities were held abroad and cashed in for gold, which depleted reserves; between $2.5 and $6 billion worth of US securities were dumped in the fall of 1914.

2)      1915 boom – with orders for war materials from Europe, US business booming; also, with immigration from Europe cut off, workers seeing wages rise for first time after a series of recessions; however, wages do not keep pace with inflation which soon hits the economy.

(a)    Wall Street Journal – praised war’s “tendency toward conservatism” in financial matters.

H)     Effect of Total War in Europe on US

1)      British blockade – Most of German fleet was locked up in ports along the Baltic Sea due to British blockade and naval superiority.

(a)    Contraband – anything enroute to German ports was seized as contraband by British war ships, and transported to British ports.

2)      German U-Boats (Unterseebooten)

(a)    War ship inferiority – German navy smaller, had to rely upon U-Boats as equalizer.

(b)   SS Lusitania – British passenger liner, which German u-boat sank; suspected of ferrying small arms; of the 1200 passengers killed when it sank were 124 Americans (May 7, 1915)

(i)                  Bryan, greatest voice for peace in Administration, resigns post over Administration handling of Lusitania, which leaves hawks in control.

(ii)                Germany agrees to give warning to passenger boats in the future before torpedoing

(c)    German peace proposal – demands cessation of Belgium Congo, as well as other colonies; rejected by Allies.

I.     Russian Revolution (1917)

1)      Socialist revolution – overthrew czar, support for entering the war on the side of the Allies was gained from Russian Jews, Poles, and Scandinavian immigrants, who had feared policies of czarist policies.

2)      Allied war effort – in trouble; French leader Aristide Briand’s government falls; Britain forced to use conscription (and considers conscripting the Irish)

3)      Germany resumes unrestricted submarine warfare – in the spring of 1917

4)      Zimmerman telegram – Germany tries to make an allied pact with Mexico in case US should enter the war on the side of the Allies

The Early 20th Century Fight for Civil Rights

I) Prophets and Goals of the New South

A) Henry Grady – editor of the Atlanta Constitution; declared that the in his New South Creed that the old South of slavery and agriculture had to give way to a new South of diverse industry and racial harmony (note: he does not proclaim the need in the South for racial equality).

B) Economic Growth in the New South

1) Textile mills

2) Tobacco (the Duke family and the establishment of the American Tobacco Company)

3) Coal and iron ore – Birmingham is discovered as a source of low grade iron ore, and the city begins life as a manufacturing center

4) Lumber

5) Petroleum

6) Hydroelectric power

Most of these industries were based upon either extracting raw materials from the ground (and sending them elsewhere, or they were based upon agricultural practices). Even textile mills were dependent upon the supply of cotton that southern farmers could provide.

C) Agriculture in the New South

1) Problems

(a) Land ownership

(i) Sharecropping

(ii) Tenant farming

(b) Credit—the crop-lien system – farmers in the South, both sharecroppers and tenant farmers, operated in mostly a cashless society

(c) Collapsing prices – prices worldwide for farm products were spiraling downward throughout this period, meaning that farmers got less and less return on their investment per year.

2) Result: Stagnation. The concentration of ownership of the land, while tying people to the land through the system of sharecropping and tenant farming, kept wages depressed that resulted in economic stagnation.

B) The Political Leaders of the New South

1) Who and what was a Bourbon? – the same as a Redeemer, only named by an enemy rather than a sympathizer.

2) Bourbon ideology

(a) Allied politically with eastern conservatives – interested in seeing the powers of the Federal government reigned in

(b) Allied economically with eastern capitalists – Bourbons were closely allied with eastern capitalists because this is where they obtained most of their financing; southern banks were too small to handle the financing needed by most Bourbon planters.

(c) Retention of current social and economic system – Bourbons were most interested in retaining the then current social and economic system, because this system no only allowed them to retain control over southern blacks, but also over southern whites. This allowed them to maintain lower wages than the national average for both whites and blacks – another consequence of the “wages of whiteness.”

C) Effects of the Bourbon retrenchment

1) Greatly reduced government expenditures

(a) Slashed spending on education

(b) System of convict leasing (Parchman Farm and system of arresting blacks for “vagrancy” during harvest times; system also depressed wages for industrial workers

(c) Repudiation of state debts – refused to pay state debts incurred during Reconstruction.

2) Blacks and the New South

(a) Flexibility in Bourbon race relations

(i) Black voting – the rights of blacks to vote in elections was little disturbed during the early years of Bourbon rule—although steps were taken to ensure that blacks would have little say in the government composed as a result of these elections.

(ii) Little strict segregation

III) Rise of Populism – Populism today used to describe anyone who can be characterized as a demagogue; in the past, historians have often considered Populists racists and small minded.

A) Farmer’s Alliance

1) National Farmers’ Alliance (Northern Alliance)

2) National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union (Southern Alliance)

3) Colored Farmers’ National Alliance (also southern, covering black farmers who where not allowed into the Southern Alliance)

B) Popularity – Populism in general, and the Farmers’ Alliances in particular, were enormously popular, and threatened to become a viable third party when the group organized politically as the People’s Party. Strength was particularly in the Plains states of Kansas and Nebraska, as well as the southwestern states of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana

1) 1890 Election

(a) Kansas – Alliance supporters won 4/5ths of the seats in the legislature

(b) Nebraska – allied with Democrats to elect governor, and young William Jennings Bryan courted Alliance voters in his successful bid for a Senate seat.

2) Tom Watson – Georgia politician who exemplified to tentative efforts of southern populists to cross-racial boundaries. Poor whites were beginning to realize that they had more in common with poor blacks than they did with the rich Bourbon whites.

(a) Playing the race card – by judicious use of election time violence and racial epitaphs to discourage abandoning the Democratic Party, as well as appeals to Southern sympathies to those people who removed the Yankee threat and “redeemed the South.”

C) Institution of Jim Crow

1) Purpose – to divide poor whites from allying with poor blacks by allying poor whites more closely with middle class and upper class whites through a system of white privilege.

2) Political disenfranchisement

(a) Mississippi plan

(i) Residency requirement – had to live at the same address for two years (difficult for poor farmers to meet this requirement)

(ii) Disqualifications for certain crimes, usually crimes against property which were more likely to be perpetrated by the poor (both black and white)

(iii) One in the southern prison system, many prisoners were hired out by the state to work on large plantations in competition with free labor, which again helped depress wages (most famously at Parchman Farm, place where such African American blues performers as Huddie Ledbetter and Bukka White did time—as well as Angola Prison in Louisiana)

(iv) Poll tax

(v) Literacy test (with understanding clause)

IV) The New Old South
.
A) Segregation in the South

1) Supreme Court

(a) Civil Rights Cases (1883) – Supreme Court decided to allow individuals to discriminate, which meant that blacks could legally be forced to use segregated public facilities (restaurants, hotels).

(b) Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) – Plessy was hired by the railroad to violate the ordinance in New Orleans because they wanted to avoid the expense of having to have separate railroad passenger cars for whites and blacks. Established the legal fallacy of “separate but equal”.

B) Organized violence against blacks

1) Lynching – more than just vigilante justice; a system of terror utilized to ensure that blacks behaved in the “proper manner”—that is, in a subservient manner.

(a) Ritualized mutilation – ears, fingers (used as “souvenirs”), and genitalia.

(b) Ritualized torture – burning, mutilation

(c) Public spectacle

(d) Done not only in the South, but in the North as well, particularly as more African Americans moved to the North and became more of a perceived threat.

2) Leo Franks case – Mary Phelan, who worked in a factory of Franks (who was Jewish) in Atlanta, was found raped and strangled at the bottom of an elevator shaft in the factory. Even though evidence in the case pointed toward the African American janitor as the culprit, a jury in Marietta found Franks guilty, and the citizenry of the city stormed the jail and lynched Franks.

V) TR the President


A) Expansion of the role of President – Roosevelt had an activist bent that led him to try (largely successfully) to expand the role of the president. Chief executives since Lincoln had been rather weak administrators who were inclined to follow the lead of Congress. While TR was expanding the role of chief executive, however, he was expanding it for fundamentally conservative principles.

1) Trust busting – Roosevelt’s reputation as the “trust-buster” is largely undeserved—his successor, the lethargic William Howard Taft and his administration actually brought many more suits against trusts than did the Roosevelt administration. Roosevelt felt that monopolies were a logical consequence of capitalism; unlike many of his Progressive cohorts, he welcomed this development—as long as the government controlled these monopolies.

(a) Northern Securities Company – TR and his administration did pursue a case against the Northern Securities Company, which was a holding company for the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railroads; railroads were largely unpopular still, and a strong case could be made that the railroads were in fact engaged in interstate commerce, a crucial factor when the case went to the Supreme Court.

(b) Swift & Company v. United States – government contended that meatpackers combined together to restrict competitive bidding for livestock to slaughter; Supreme Court issued ruling using the “stream of commerce” doctrine, which held that some manufacturing processes did indeed take place in interstate means, and therefore were liable to federal regulation under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

(c) Bureau of Corporations – most trust regulation was handled by the newly formed Bureau of Corporations. The Bureau was charged with gathering information about corporations, in order to help them from violating the law. Roosevelt was less interested in busting trusts than he was in regulating them. He divided trust into good trusts and bad trusts; the determination into which pigeonhole a trust fell into was completely arbitrary. The good trusts were those whose officers came to the White House and had dinner with the president, and who cooperated with the Bureau; bad trusts did not do these things.

(d) Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) – although the ICC was established in 1887, it was little used until the Roosevelt administration. TR’s advocacy of regulation was resented by some businessmen (particularly Henry Clay Frick, who complained that “the son of a bitch” wouldn’t stay bought after many businessmen contributed heavily to his 1904 campaign); however, because these regulatory commissions tended to be staffed with officials from the industry the commission was charged to regulate. The Hepburn Act gave the ICC the right to set maximum freight rates, and it outlawed the payments of kickbacks to large volume shippers. Essentially what the ICC did was to allow the railroads to collude and set rail rates—something they had been trying to do for approximately thirty years anyway, and something farmers and workers had been working to prohibit for the same length of time.

(e) Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act – Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in early 1906, a hard-hitting expose of working and living conditions in the packinghouses and their environs in Chicago. That part of the book received very little notice, however; as Sinclair himself described it, “I aimed for people’s hearts, and hit their stomachs.” His descriptions of sausage making (combining putrid meat, rat shit, the occasional part of an extremity from a worker, and a blend of original spices) stirred TR and Congress into action.

Women and the Progressive Movement

I. Settlement House movement

A. Jane Addams and Hull House--Addams established Hull House with Ellen Gates Starr in 1889, and immediately attracted the attention of a large contingent of well-healed supporters and a great deal of favorable publicity.

1. Inspiration--Addams was inspired by her observations of what was happening at Toynbee Hall in the East End of London. There, young men from Oxford (often looking toward a career in the ministry) lived among the poorest of the poor in London, ministering to their needs.

2. Vision--Although Addams was inspired by the work at Toynbee Hall, she made important changes to the operation of the settlement house when she brought the idea to the near west side of Chicago.

a. Non-sectarian--Toynbee Hall was an arm of the Anglican Church, the established church of England. Many of the new immigrants living in the neighborhood around Hull House were Roman Catholic or Jewish, and the decision to remain unaffiliated with any religious body (although accepting help from all) made it seem less threatening to religious institutions in the neighborhood.

b. Democracy--Addams saw Hull House as an incubator for the democratic process, and therefore programming at Hull House was much freer than she had observed at Toynbee Hall. Although English language classes and the "classics" of English literature were available, neighbors were welcome to bring in their own cultural artifacts to supplement these materials.

3. Creating Public Space for Women--Addams graduated from the Rockford Seminary in 1881, but spent the next eight years floundering because she had no idea of how to make a career for herself outside of that fo housewife--which she had no interest in.

a. Death of her father--Addams' father was her source of self-confidence; when he died in the mid-summer of 1881, Jane Addams was left adrift.

b. The Family Claim--as the remaining unmarried female child in her family, Jane Addams was expected to be the companion of her step-mother until the step-mother's death.

c. Limited Female Public Role--the roles that middle class white women filled in American society was extremely limited at the beginning of the Progressive Era was extremely limited--school teachers, missionaries, lawyers, and doctors would make up most of a list of "respectable" occupations.

II. Municipal Housekeeping--During the Progressive Era, women began claiming the right to speak out and be heard in public as an extension of their duties in the home--a right claimed with the phrase "municipal housekeeping."

A. Settlement Houses--as discussed extensively above, this was a way for many women (and a few men) to reach out to recent immigrant groups--some more successfully than others.

B. Municipal politics--while women were restricted from participating in politics at the national level until passage of the 19th Amendment, women were active politically in a number of municipalities.

1. Toledo--Pauline Perlmutter Steinem--grandmother of feminist Gloria Steinem, Pauline Steinem was one of the earliest women to hold elective office in the state of Ohio when she was elected to the Toledo Public School Board in 1905.

2. Chicago--women also gained the right to vote in municipal elections in Chicago, in part because many had found a way to become politically active before being granted that right.

a. City Club of Chicago--a group of well-heeled, wealthy men roused to action as a result of the labor strife that had become endemic in Chicago (Great Upheaval of 1877, Haymarket Affair of 1886, Pullman Strike in 1894, among numerous other events). Organization formed in 1903, with the idea that citizens of a community should take responsibility for improving conditions in that community.

--The City Club of Chicago was an exclusive organization. Members had to be recommended by other members, and then prove through a written application that they adhered to the political ideology of the other members--which was very business-friendly.

--Resolution of issued tended to revolve around was Club members viewed as being most "cost-efficient"--that is, whatever result might return a profit or lower tax rates.

b. Women's City Club of Chicago--made up of many of the wives of the well-heeled, wealthy men of the Chicago City Club--but also a number of other women (including those involved in settlement work), and who had a more expansive and inclusive vision of what "betterment" of the community meant.

--Garbage disposal in Chicago: City Club called for the continuation of private contract for the disposal of garbage, since companies not only did it "efficiently," but through the process of  "reduction" produced on oil used in the production of soap. The fact that citizens were inconvenienced by having to separate garbage from trash, that the rickety wagons that transported the garbage to the reduction plant leaked and spilled garbage along the route, and ran infrequently, were not persuasive arguments for making garbage pick-up and disposal a municipal function.

The Women's City Club of Chicago not only supported efforts to make garbage pick-up a municipal function, but also funded a study to ascertain whether the city should not instead operate an incinerator to dispose of both trash and garbage, and to use the ash left over to make paving bricks for the city streets.

C. Women's Christian Temperence Union (WCTU)--a quasi-political national organization that advocated the total banishment of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages of any kind. Organization was formed as a result of the split formed in the women's suffrage movement. The WCTU's great moment of triumph was the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919.

Capitalism and the White Man's Burden

I)                   Pullman

A)    George Pullman – made his fortune hauling Chicago out of the muck; after the Great Fire of 1871, efforts were made to raise the remaining buildings as much of the swamp that the city was built on was filled. Pullman used this money to establish a company to build sleeping cars used on long trips by railroad companies.

B)     Town of Pullman – as the company grew, Pullman became concerned about the effect the radicals in Chicago were having upon his workers, so several miles south of the city he built a town (housing, stores, public buildings, a hotel he named after his daughter Florence, even churches) which he rented to workers, but which he retained title.

1)      “Model” town – Pullman the town was a great example of welfare capitalism—that is, subsidizing certain amenities for workers so they remain satisfied on the job.

2)      Depression of 1893 – the economic depression of 1893 cut deeply into the profits of the Pullman Company, and Pullman responded by cutting wages and laying off workers, as any good capitalist would do.

(a)    Pullman rents – Pullman refused to cut rents in the same manner, however, since that division of the business had to show a profit as well.

(b)   Pullman workers respond by going on strike in the spring of 1894.

C)    Eugene V. Debs – a former officer of the Brotherhood of Railway Firemen, Debs in early 1894 became president of an early industrial union for railway workers, the American Railway Union

1)      Railway “Brotherhoods” – each specialty in the railroad industry had its own union, The Brotherhood of Railway Engineers, Brakemen, Conductors, Firemen; problems arose when railway companies settled with one of the brotherhoods, and they crossed the picket line while others were still on strike. The ARU is meant to be a solution to this problem.

2)      1894 ARU convention – was held in Chicago; a delegation of workers from Pullman, who plead for the assistance of the ARU. Despite Debs opposition, convention delegates vote to assist Pullman workers, and vote to boycott all trains with Pullman cars. Despite the fact that the ARU represents a relatively small number of workers, traffic all over the country is interrupted.

3)      Government response – because there was little violence accompanying the strike the federal government was hamstrung; with a sympathetic John Peter Altgeld as Illinois governor, there was little chance that federal aid would be requested.

(a)    Richard Olney – the AG for the federal government was a railroad attorney, and it was he who suggested attaching Pullman cars to mail trains (interfering with the mail is, of course, a federal offense).

(b)   Troops from Fort Sheridan (and the Dakotas) are called in “to keep the peace,” which allowed the strike to be broken.

(c)    Debs and other union leaders were arrested and held incommunicado, which also helped break the strike; Debs spent a year in jail in Woodstock, Illinois, which he spent reading socialist tracts; he becomes the Socialist Party candidate for president in 1900, 1904, 1908, and 1912, when he polled the largest number of votes to that time in history for a third party candidate.

II. Multi-Culturalism

A. Riis and Roosevelt--Roosevelt's exposure to multi-cultural New York proved to be valuable experience for him, and was part of his inspiration when he began to organize the Rough Riders.

B. Police Commissioner setbacks--although Roosevelt implemented a number of reforms during his time on the Police Commission Board, his frustrations with the reforms that he was not able to implement led him to seek greener pastures back in Washington, D.C.

1. Reforms

a. Weapons training--the NYPD opened a pistol range, and required officers to be trained in the use of the weapon they were issued.

b. Civil service exams for positions, rather than relying upon political cronyism; this aided in his drive to get bigger, stronger, better educated police in uniform.

2. Failed attempts at  reform

a. Closing saloons on Sunday--Roosevelt was responding to the  middle class Protestant concerns of establishing a bourgeois culture in the city. Closing saloons on Sundays would mean limiting the time that their working-class customers could patronize these establishments, since Sunday's were often their lone day of leisure.

b.  Hoped to undermine the support that Tammany Hall gained from colluding with the liquor lobby, but the opposition this position engendered with the Platt Machine--the Republican Party machine that controlled New York state politics in Albany--meant that legislation was passed loosening the definition of a hotel,  and meant that most saloons in the city could legally sell alcohol on Sundays.

III.  Back to Washington Politics

A. On the Stump for McKinley--whole Theodore Roosevelt has a well-deserved reputation as a reformer, he was first and foremost a Republican Party partisan, and willingly went out on the stump to prove it.


1.  William Jennings Bryan--gained the1896 Democratic Party nomination largely on the strength of his "Cross of Gold" speech (reproduced in the YouTube clip above). Although Roosevelt was closer to Bryan's position on a  number of issues than to McKinley, he played the good political soldier and went out to harrangue the crowds  about the danger of class  warfare that Bryan's election posed.

2. McKinley's fundraising--the fear that the specter of a Bryan election posed for the business interests in the country  posed made Mark Hanna's fundraising problem easily  overcome; the "businesman's tax" provided the McKinley campaign with more than $3 million, while Bryan's campaign could only raise $300,000. The election became a forgone conclusion.

B. Undersecretary of the Navy--as a political reward for his work  on the  McKinley campaign, Roosevelt was given the post of Undersecretary of the Navy.

1. Alfred Thayer Mahan--the leading naval theorist of his time, Mahan argued that a nation could only achieve foreign policy success by building a strong navy. To achieve this objective, the nation would also have to obtain places for its large fleet to refuel--"coaling stations"--with the reliance upon steam for locomotion. This became the one of the excuses for the aggressive imperialism that became manifested in the foreign policy of the United States in the years just before the turn of the century.

2. Imperialist foreign policy--in many ways, 1890 is a pivotal year. In that year, the  Census Department determined that the frontier in the United States had ceased to exist. By 1892, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner had developed  a theory that the frontier had been the determining factor in the development of democracy in the United States. That same  year, Homer Plessy was arrested in New Orleans for violating the new segregated railroad car law in Louisiana; by 1896, the Supreme Court would institute the doctrine of "separate but equal," instituting legal segregation. Worries about having room to expand met racist presumptions about the ability of  non-white peoples of the earth to govern themselves in this new imperialist foreign policy.

III. Cuba Libre!

A. The "Yellow" Press--the  birth of the modern newspaper in the years just before the turn of the 20th century led many of the papers to promote lurid, sensationalist stories in an attempt to sell more  newspapers.

1. William Randolph Hearst

B. Remember the Maine

1. The USS Maine--in response to perceived "Spanish aggression," the USS Maine was dispatched to Havana Harbor to "show the flag." On the night of February 15,1898 the Maine suffered a catastrophic explosion, which an investigating committee concluded could only have happened from a mine placed  in the harbor (modern evidence points to spontaneous combustion in a coal bin).  As a result, pressure to declare war on Spain grows irresistible. When McKinley asks Congress to declare war (the Constitutional method  of doing so, by the way), Roosevelt resigns his position in the administration to join the Rough Riders he had been busy organizing.

1. Cuban rebels--had been fighting Spanish forces off and on for the previous thirty years, and at this point had nearly worn Spain into submission before the Americans even began their short voyage. Rebel forces, in fact, held off Spanish forces during the American invasion, which is the main reason why the American forces landed unscathed.

C. The Rough Riders--is really a manifestation of the multi-culturalism that Roosevelt learned from his association with Jacob Riis. The Rough Riders were a mixture of blue blood friends from New York (who made up much of the officer corps), with cowboys, Indians, Mexicans, and a smattering of other  ethnic groups--with one important exception--who all brought the "barbarian virtues" that Roosevelt felt  Anglo-Saxons had lost.

C. The Charge up Kettle Hill--this engagement, like the whole War With Spain, was a FUBAR mess. It took weeks to transport troops to Cuba, supplies were inadequate--as were preparations, medical attention, and just about everything else  about the operation.

1. The Role of the10th Cavalry--under the command of General John J. Pershing, the all African American 10th Cavalry actually bore much of the brunt of the fighting for both Kettle Hill  and  San Juan Hill. Their bravery under fire was remarked on by a number of officers,  including initially one Lt. Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. The 10th Cavalry did not have a personal war correspondent,  however, so none of them were awarded a Medal of Honor