Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 3, 1910
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – “When the Sleeper Wakes” by Joseph E. Cohen, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of April 1910:
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[Part I of II.]
CHILD does not blossom into maturity in a day, nor can a weakling to transformed into a Hercules over night. It requires the lapse of many years in the one instance as in the other. And several decades may pass before a city or a nation attains its majority. Yet there is no telling for how long a time the elements have been gathering for some mighty upheaval; how soon, when the surface of things seemed as calm as ever, there would break out an eruption such as would rearrange all that seemed stable and permanent.
Philadelphia is the third city, in population, in America. It has its own peculiar makeup, fondles its own brand of conservatism and will have to work out its own method of salvation from the condition of “corruption and contentment” which has been ascribed to it.
It is a city of “magnificent distances.” That, of itself, explains a great deal, for solidarity and separation are usually antithetical, and Philadelphia is spread over such a wide territory, that people who work and live in Manayunk, Chestnut Hill, Germantown, Olney, Fox Chase, Frankford and Bridesburg—all within the city limits—come down to the center of the city much as country folk go “into town.” Many wage-workers in these localities have had no notion at all of what a trades union is. The seeds of class feeling were only beginning to be scattered among them, their outlook was for all the world, that of some fair sized village—not of the third city in America.
The trades union movement of Philadelphia, as would be expected, is in a backward condition. There is the Central Labor Union, composed of possibly a majority of the organizations of labor in the city. There is the Allied Building Trades Council, which broke away because of the scramble for control of the central organization. There are the Hebrew Trades and German Trades, practically independent organizations. And there is the Central Union of Textile Workers, comprising about thirty locals—the sinews of the Kensington mill district—and less than half a dozen of them have been sending delegates to the Central Labor Union. Unallied with the central body, too, are the railway organizations and some other unions.
It may also be said, in passing, that the Central Labor Union exercises about as much jurisdiction over the organized labor of the city as does the Executive Council over the American Federation of Labor. Its usefulness is largely advisory. Complete autonomy prevails among the craft organizations except in so far as they discuss each other’s grievances in the “sections” or “councils” consisting of delegates from the crafts most closely related. The powers of the sections and councils, in turn, are considerably circumscribed. The great ship yards, locomotive and car shops, steel works, refineries and larger industrial establishments in general are practically operated by unorganized labor.
Into this state of affairs was projected the strike of the street car men of the city, members of Division 477 of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Men of America.
The present strike was the logical outcome of the forming of the car men’s union. Ever since the defeat sustained by the men in the strike of 1894, there had been no organization. One incipient union was started in 1907 and 1908, but was quite easily discouraged by the display of police force, in the deliberate prevention of one mass meeting and the beating up of motormen and conductors at another. When the strike came in May, 1909, only a few hundred men out of a possible 6,000 were members of the union. The men as a whole were dissatisfied with their lot—but, they did not want organization; they wanted fight.
GENERAL STRIKE MEETING AT LABOR LYCEUM.
The company was appalled at the sentiment displayed, both among the employes and the public. Even at such notoriously non-union establishments as Baldwin’s Locomotive Works and Stetson’s Hat Factory, feeling ran strong against the strike breakers. At the navy yard a conflict between the marines and the police on strike duty was barely averted. The employes at the federal arsenals were so disaffected that all efforts to coerce them to ride the cars had to be abandoned. After a week of strike the company capitulated, granted some concessions and signed a contract promising to deal fairly with the men.The company made the contract in order to evade and break it. It had agreed to discharge no man without just warrant, and to permit the union’s grievance committee to plead the case of any one dismissed. On Friday, February 19 [1910], it locked out several hundred employes “for the good of the service.” It later admitted that it considered membership in the union to conflict with good service. Its avowed purpose was to exterminate the car men’s union.
The officials of the local union carried the news to Clarence O. Pratt, chairman of the international executive board, who was then in town. A meeting of the local executive board, consisting of representatives from the nineteen car barns, was promptly called. Sanction for the step to be taken was wired from international headquarters. Saturday noon [February 20th] the order was given to strike. By nightfall every union man had left his car.
The union was not anxious for a fight just then. The organization was less than a year old, and dissension had been spread by some of the old officers, who were finally expelled from the union, and not a few of whom were taken care of by the company or the local politicians. More over, the union did not desire a strike in the midst of winter, for obvious reasons. But when the lockout came, there was no alternative. It was fight or perish.
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The people were in sympathy with the union. In almost every part of the city there was “rioting,” cars were stoned and destroyed, crews beaten up and the strikers supported financially. Even Manayunk, with its most poverty stricken population, entered its protest against the company and the city authorities. But it was noticeable from the start, that, what ever sporadic outbursts there were elsewhere, the intensest feeling was manifested in the Kensington mill district. Here class consciousness was most acutely developed.
Sunday [February 21st] following the declaration of the strike crowds began congregating. It is safe to say that ten thousand people strolled about along Kensington avenue, within the radius of half a mile. The scene at one point will give an idea of how the crowd works.
Belgian blocks and culvert lids are piled up at the intersection of two streets. A car comes along. It stops at the obstruction. A volley of bricks and stones shatter every pane of glass. The policeman on the car throws up his hands and joins the crowd. The motorman follows suit. His coat and hat are ripped from him but he is not otherwise molested. The conductor tries to run away. In a minute he is writhing in the street from a shower of blows. He staggers to his feet, blinded by the blood which spurts from a gash in his forehead. He runs about like a trapped rat. A hundred hostile arms are raised against him. The crowd closes in. Again he is down in the dirt, being pummelled and kicked. He no longer stirs.
On the floor of the disabled car four strike breakers are crouching, their chins to their knees, their hands covering their faces. They do not know why the car has stopped, other than that the motorman has deserted in the face of the jeers and missies. One jumps up, grabs the controller and turns on full power. The car is derailed by the obstruction. He and the other strike breakers dash out of the car to get away. The crowd batters them into helplessness. By and bye an ambulance comes along and carries the injured men off to the hospital.
The “riot call” brings the chief of police and a hundred of his men. They try to drive the crowd back. The mounted men force their horses upon the sidewalk and against the women and children. The crowd is urged up into the cross streets, back and back, but it trickles through the cordon of police to the scene of disorder. By this time one of the company’s repair wagons has put the car into shape again. It is returned to the barn under the care of a troop of police. The company makes known its intention to run no more cars in the district. Rain begins to fall. The crowd disperses.
For a few days no cars were run in the northeast. When they were sent out later on, they were so well ventilated by the crowd and so poorly patronized that it was a matter of curiosity to see them running.
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The crowds that overflowed the streets were not organized or disciplined. They acted spontaneously. The smashing up of cars was a source of amusement rather than the consequence of resentment-only against the strike breakers was there animosity shown. The crowds fraternized with the regular policemen and laughed at the state fencibles, one hundred and seventy-five of whom were called out. The people helped themselves to the buttons from off the coats of the fencibles for souvenirs, and plucked the bullets from out their belts. The presence of these “darling boys” was provocative of so much hilarity that even the mayor became sarcastic. If, on this occasion, the state fencibles did not behave like an infantry corps, they did nevertheless establish a reputation as a corps of infants.
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CHILD does not blossom into maturity in a day, nor can a weakling to transformed into a Hercules over night. It requires the lapse of many years in the one instance as in the other. And several decades may pass before a city or a nation attains its majority. Yet there is no telling for how long a time the elements have been gathering for some mighty upheaval; how soon, when the surface of things seemed as calm as ever, there would break out an eruption such as would rearrange all that seemed stable and permanent.
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