AN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY, STUDY GUIDE QUESTIONS 20.b.1 20.d.5 20.f.2 Black v. White Elementary &
Secondary Schooling 20.f.3 African-American Educational
Gains 20.g.1 Samuel Gompers 20.g.2 "Big" Bill D. Haywood 20.g.3 Comparing the IWW with the
AFL 20.g.4 Ludlow Massacre WWW Links related to Chapter
20 BLACK
v. WHITE
ELEMENTARY
&
SECONDARY
SCHOOLING One statistic says it all: The Supreme Court's theory of "Separate
but Equal" was a racist sham. AFRICAN-AMERICAN
EDUCATIONAL
GAINS Cut off from advancement socially,
politically, and economically, education offered promise for
the future. All-Black schools like Howard University
(Washington D.C.) and Fiske University (Nashville, TN)
received large sums of money from northern philanthropists.
At Fiske, a student singing group raised money by touring
the US and Europe. The training received in higher education
at Black colleges in the South and integrated schools in the
North prepared leaders like Martin Luther King for greatness
during the 1960's. SAMUEL
GOMPERS
(1850-1924) founder of the A.F.L. Gompers founded the American Federation
of Labor (AFL). Gompers was not a Marxist like Haywood, but
his reading of Marx led him to believe that labor's only
chance against capital was to organize unions. Gompers and
associates insisted that skilled labor form the core of the
AFL. At the time, skilled labor played a significant role in
the production process. As time passed, however, unskilled
labor increased in importance, and the AFL responded by
recruiting more of them in its ranks Gomper's philosophy Gompers' philosphy was simple: Don't
fight management; bargain with them for the best terms
possible within the capitalist system. Gompers and the AFL
sought political protection for unions rather than social
change through legislative action. WILLIAM
D.
HAYWOOD
(1869-1928) Leader of the I.W.W. Haywood stood over 6 feet tall and well
over 200 lbs. He had a glass eye thanks to a boyhood
accident. Haywood led the IWW during its heyday of power. In
Silver City, Idaho, he headed the Western Federation of
Miners and earned a repution for being a brilliant crisis
manager. At first, Haywood believed in peaceful resolutions
with management. As time passed he became more militant. His
speeches drew as many as 60,000 listeners, and he conversed
with other revolutionaries around the world, including Lenin
(the Russian leader). Haywood led the successful textile
strike at Lawrence Mass. (1912), as well as the unsuccessful
ones the IWW organized. Sentenced to prison during WWI Under the Sedition Act (1917) during
World War I, Haywood was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The charge: He advocated sabotage of industrial machinery.
He jumped bail and fled to the USSR, where he died in 1928.
Half his ashed were buried inside the walls of the Kremlin
and half were shipped to Chicago His legacy Charges that the IWW advocated industrial
sabatoge need clarification. The term "sabotage", also
refers to "the conscious withdrawal of efficiency" (i.e.,
slowdowns, work-to-rule misdirection of deliveries, spoiling
product, etc.), not necessarily the destruction of
machinery. The I.W.W. want to take over the machinery of
production and use it for the benefit of mankind--not to
destroy it. Of course, individual Wobblies sometimes engaged
in destruction, as individual workers in other unions and
out of them have always done; but it was never approved by
the union, but rather was condemned. Haywood stands as one of the most
flamboyant, hard-thinking, and courageous opponents of the
capitalist system. His terms in prison demonstrate the
savage treatment the US governmet could dish out to those it
branded as dangerous. COMPARING THE
AFL WITH THE
IWW FOUNDED CONSTITUENTS PREFERRED METHODS MEMBERSHIP IWW 1905, Chicago, Illinois by Bill Haywood, EG
Flynn, E. Debs, Mother Jones, and others unskilled labor, women, minorities mass strike; influenced by theories of class
struggle 3 million joined over the years, but numbers
never exceded 150,000 at any one time. AFL 1886 by Samuel Gompers skilled workers bargaing and contracts 50% of skilled labor force by 1900. LUDLOW
MASSACRE What happened? Ludlow's impact on the nation The wanton shootings crushed the strike
in the Colorado coal fields, but public opinion was aroused.
The United Mine Workers union successfully turned public
opinion against the Rockefeller family, who owned the coal
mines. The incident also marked a shift in attitudes as more
and more owners moved toward a more liberal and humane
position with regards to wage earners. personal rumination I occaisionally wonder who has advanced
the cause of democracy more in America: soldiers who have
died in battle or American workers and their families who
died in efforts to bring attention to despotic practices in
our own nation? current event Recently, located
in the town of Ludlow. WWW LINKS RELATED TO CHAPTER
20
1900-1920


Source: Eric Foner, et al.
The Reader's Companion to American History
(1991).
Source: Mari Jo Buhle, et al.
Encyclopedia of the American Left (1992).
In
June 1998, I visited the site of the Ludlow Massacre, which
took place in southeastern Colorado on 20 April 1914. Coal
miners and their families protested the low wages, horrible
working conditions, payment in company scrip, the forced
education of their children in company schools. A monument
marks the spot where the Colorado National Guard,
infiltrated by company gunmen, opened fire on the workers
and their families with machine guns and rifles. The miners
fought back from rifle pits but quickly ran out of
ammunition. Two women and 11 children were among those slain
among the pathetic tents of the immigrant
workers.
Read about it by clicking "heads
missing."
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