trict Assembly 1, but even superior. As time went on, this feeling of disunion was accentuated, since the officers of District Assembly 3 were obliged to make their own "passwords, and in many other ways to depend on themselves for aid which should come from the officers of District Assembly 1, who were too busily engaged in the work of organising the eastern cities and towns." 26 Resulting from this rivalry the first attempts to establish a national organisation proceeded simultaneously from two independent centres, each claiming to be the legitimate head of the Order. One of the important issues which forced to the front the matter of national organisation was the question of secrecy. The disadvantages of absolute secrecy began to tell in the middle of the seventies when the criminal activities of the Molly Maguires threw an odium upon secret labour societies in general. The Catholic Church, especially in that region where the Molly Maguires operated, also joined the employers and the public in opposing the "extreme" secrecy of the Order. At the same time complaints were made in some sections of the Order that secrecy was hindering the work of organisation. As early as 1875, District Assembly 1 received a petition from the flint glass-blowers' Local Assembly 82, of Brooklyn, picturing the difficulties under which "it laboured in securing members," and winding up by asking that District Assembly 1 "take steps to make the name of the Order public, so that workingmen would know of its existence." 27 However, before the Knights definitely decided for independent national organisation, they were active participants in an attempt to bring together all labour orders for the purpose of creating a consolidated national organisation. The initiative for this move came from another secret organisation, the Junior Sons of '76. This was a partially secret" order, organised in Pittsburgh in May, 1874.28 It purported to be a national organisation, but in reality its membership was practically confined to the State of Pennsylvania. Like all labour reform organisations of the time, it placed the demand for money reform at the 26 Ibid., 191, 192. 27 Ibid., 224. 28 Pittsburgh National Labor Tribune, Oct. 31, 1874. head of its programme. 29 The other issues specifically mentioned were the recall of public officials and opposition to the militia. The tariff policy was left to the different congressional districts to decide for themselves. The Junior Sons of '76 advocated independent political action, and, to this end, the constitution provided for organisation by political units, local lodges, county assemblies, district assemblies, State conventions, and the national convention of the Junior Sons of '76 of the United States of America. Each subdivision "when compatible with the public good and the best interest of the Order," was to nominate candidates for public office, from the president of the United States down to county officers. To guard against destruction coming from within, it was provided that "no strictly professional person, practical politician, speculator, corporator or monopolist, be admitted without a four-fifth vote of all the active members of the lodge." The leading spirits in the Order were John M. Davis, the editor of the Pittsburgh National Labor Tribune, and D. D. Dunham, Altoona, Pennsylvania. The sphere of activity of the Order as such seems to have been limited, but, since it counted among its members a number of the prominent labour leaders in Pennsylvania, its influence was not inconsiderable. It thus took the initiative in bringing together all of the existing labour organisations and called a national convention to meet December 28, 1875 at Tyrone, Pennsylvania.30 The invitation was accepted, not only by the Knights of Labor, but also by the Social Democratic party of North America. This was the first appearance of socialism as an active participant in the American labour movement, after many years of struggle within the ranks of socialists on points of doctrine and methods of organisation. These struggles, although unknown to the public and even to the labour movement at the time, were important on account of their ultimate effect on trade unionism and the labour movement. 29 The platform, however, did not advocate Kellogg's scheme of interchangeable bonds and paper money." It merely set up the demand for an enlightened system of financial management in har mony with the interests of the producing masses... [as being] of absolute im portance and as the only means of averting coming disaster to the industrial and commercial interests." Constitution of the Junior Sons of '76 (Leaflet). 30 Pittsburgh National Labor Tribune, Jan. 8. 1876. CHAPTER II REVOLUTIONARY BEGINNINGS The International Workingmen's Association. Its emphasis on trade unionism, 204. Its attitude towards political action, 205. Lassalle's programme and the emphasis on political action, 206. Forerunners of the International in America, 206. The Communist Club, 206. F. A. Sorge, 207. The General German Workingmen's Union and its Lassallean programme, 207. The Social party of New York and Vicinity, 208. Failure and reorganisation, 209. Union 5 of the National Labor Union and Section 1 of the International, 209. New sections of the International, 209. The Central Committee, 210. The native American forerunner of the International, 210. Section 12, and its peculiar propaganda, 211. Rupture between the foreigners and Americans in the International, 211. The Provisional Federal Council, 212. The two rival Councils, 212. Decision of the General Council in London, 213. American Confederation of the International and its attitude on the question of the powers of the General Council, 213. The North American Federation of the International, 214. The Internationalist Congress at The Hague and the defeat of Bakunin by Marx, 214. Transfer of the General Council to New York, 215. Secession of a majority of the European national federations, 215. Section 1 of New York and the Local Council, 216. Abolition of the Local Council, 216. National Convention of 1874 and the resolution on politics, 218. The secession of six sections, 217. Adolph Strasser, 218. Panic and unemployment, 219. Organisation of the unemployed, 219. The riot on Tompkins Square, 220. John Swinton, 220. Organisation among the unemployed in Chicago, 220. Section 1 of New York and the struggle for the control of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, 221. The United Workers of America, 222. P. J. McDonnell, 222. The International and the Trade Union Movement. Lack of response among the native American workingmen, 223. Success among the Germans, 223. Die Arbeiter-Union, 223. Adolph Douai, 224. Temporary sway of greenbackism among the Germans, 224. Victory of the ideas of the International, 225. The Franco-Prussian War and the discontinuance of Die Arbeiter-Union, 225. Organisation of the furniture workers, 225. GermanAmerican Typographia, 226. Amalgamated Trades and Labor Council of New York, 226. Lassalleanism and Politics. Effect of the industrial depression on the spread of Lassalleanism, 227. The Labor party of Illinois and its form of organisation, 228. Its attitude toward trade unionism and politics, 228. Temporary Lassalleanisation of the sections of the International in Chicago, 229. The Labor party of Illinois in politics, 229. Overtures to farmers, 230. Return to the principles of the International, 230. The Lassallean movement in the East- The Social Democratic party of North America, 230. The first national convention, 231. Peter J. McGuire, 231. Reasons for Strasser's joining the Lassalleans, 231. The Sozial-Demokrat, 232. Change of sentiment in favour of trade unionism, 232. The second convention of the Social Democratic party and the partial return to the tenets of the International, 233. Attempts towards unification, 233. The remaining divergence of ideas, 233. Preparations for the national labour conventions in Pittsburgh, 234. The THE INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN'S ASSOCIATION MODERN American socialism began after the Civil War. socialistic movement during the fifties among the early German immigrants, the so called "forty-eighters," had been on the whole no less utopian than the native American Fourierism during the forties. The Weitling movement, which started in 1850 with the idea of a central bank of exchange, changed during the next year to a programme of socialistic colonisation upon the Fourierite pattern. Similarly, a German Workingmen's Alliance, which grew out of the movement of the unemployed in 1857, in so far as it possessed a programme of action, aimed to bring about a co-operative social order through an appeal to all, without distinction of classes. Only for a short time during 1853 and 1854, which coincided with a period of general aggressive trade union movement in the principal cities, did the Marxian conception of the aims of a labour movement occupy the foreground among the German immigrants of this country. The short-lived General (or American) Workingmen's Alliance, which was established by Joseph Weydemeyer, a close friend of Karl Marx, in April, 1853, in New York City, was based upon the principle of class struggle and recognised the necessity of trade unionism and of political action. The anti-slavery movement and the War absorbed all that remained of idealism of the "forty-eighters," and the socialist movement was obliged to begin over again in the sixties. The new movement, however, was radically different from the old, not only in its continuous existence, but also in its very nature. It received its impulse from two new sources in Europe: the International Workingmen's Association, founded by Karl Marx in London in 1864, and the Lassallean agitation in Germany, begun in 1863. The first was economic, the second political. The International is generally reputed to have been organised 1 See above, I, 512 et seq., 567 et seq. by Karl Marx for the propaganda of international socialism. As a matter of fact, its starting point was the practical effort of British trade union leaders to organise the workingmen of the continent and to prevent the importation of continental strikebreakers. That Karl Marx wrote its Inaugural Address was merely incidental. It chanced that what he wrote was acceptable to the British unionists rather than the draft of an address representing the views of Mazzini which was submitted to them at the same time. Marx emphasised the class solidarity of labour against Mazzini's harmony of capital and labour. He did this by reciting what British labour had done through the Rochdale system of co-operation without the help of capitalists, and what the British parliament had done in enacting the tenhour law of 1847 against the protest of capitalists. Now that British trade unionists in 1864 were demanding the right of suffrage and laws to protect their unions, it followed that Marx merely stated their demands when he affirmed the independent economic and political organisation of labour in all lands. His Inaugural Address was a trade union document, not a Communist Manifesto. Indeed not until Bakunin and his following of anarchists had nearly captured the organisation in the years 1869 to 1872 3 did the programme of socialism become the leading issue. The philosophy of the International at the period of its ascendency was based on the economic organisation of the working class in trade unions and co-operative societies. These must precede the political seizure of the government by labour. Then, when the workingmen's party should achieve control, it would be able to build up successfully the socialist state on the foundation of a sufficient number of existing trade unions and co-operative societies. This conception differed widely from the teaching of Ferdinand Lassalle. Lassallean socialism was born in 1863 with Lassalle's Open Letter to a workingmen's committee in Leipzig. It 2 See Jaeckh, Die Internationale. Karl Marx, in his letter to F. Bolte, says: Die Internationale wurde gestiftet, um die wirkliche Organization der Arbeiterklasse für den Kampf an die Stelle der sozialistischen oder halbsozialistischen Sekten zu setzen. Die ursprünglichen Statuten wie die Inauguraladresse zeigen dies auf den ersten Blick" (Briefe und ... 3 For an excellent account of this strug gle, see Hunter's Violence and the Labor Movement, 154-193. |