CHAPTER 20

AN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY,
1900-1920

IWW poster
Emma Goldman

STUDY GUIDE QUESTIONS

20.b.1

The Gospel of Wealth click here

20.d.5

How the Other Half Lives click here

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

[f.2]

BLACK v. WHITE ELEMENTARY & SECONDARY SCHOOLING

One statistic says it all:

  • White schools in the South (where most African-Americans still lived before World War I) received an average of $22.50 per child per month for education.
  • The Black schools received $2.00 per month per child.

The Supreme Court's theory of "Separate but Equal" was a racist sham.

[f.3]

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.

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[g.1]

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.

Source: Eric Foner, et al. The Reader's Companion to American History (1991).

[g.2]

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.

Source: Mari Jo Buhle, et al. Encyclopedia of the American Left (1992).

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[g.3]

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.

[g.4]

LUDLOW MASSACRE

What happened?

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.

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. Read about it by clicking "heads missing."

WWW LINKS RELATED TO CHAPTER 20

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