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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 1, 1900
Chicago, Illinois – Great Lock-Out of Building Trades Continues
From the International Socialist Review of July 1900:
“The Chicago and St. Louis Strikes”
Part I of II.
At the beginning there were various points of contention, but as time passed these all gave way to one main point of contention, the question of the principle of federated trades. All the building trades of Chicago are federated for such common action as may be thought necessary in the Building Trades Council. The contractors insist that this body disband as a condition to any settlement whatever.
This is, of course, an absolutely impossible condition for the laborers, the concession of which would not be a settlement at all, but a crushing defeat. It would mean the setting back of labor one step in the long upward struggle of centuries; the abandonment of one vantage point gained at terrible cost. The individual union is almost if not quite as helpless in the face of the intensely concentrated capital of today as was the individual work man before the capitalist employer of a generation ago. This was especially emphasized in the Chicago struggle as the employers were all united in a Central Contractors’ Council. The fact that the contractors never dreamed of dissolving their central body proved the purely class nature of their demand and showed that the dispute was one that could be settled only by a test of strength.
Unfortunately there was one fact that gave apparent strength to this demand. Owing to the “pure and simple” position of the American trade unions, all labor politics are debarred, and Nature evidently abhorring a political as well as a physical vacuum, capitalist politics invariably dominate those unions pretending to keep themselves entirely free of politics. So it must be admitted that some Democratic and Republican stool pigeons of a most despicable character had gained entrance to the Building Trades Council. Here again it must not be overlooked that it was the contractors’ class who were responsible for these men and who could alone gain by their presence within the labor organizations. The entire insincerity of the contractors’ position was shown when the question was raised as to whether they would consent to a reorganization and the substitution of other men for these objectionable characters. To this they refused to listen and insisted upon the unconditional dissolution of the federal body. So the struggle has gone on up to the present time.
One of the most interesting phases of the strike has been the attitudes taken by the city government. Carter Harrison, the present mayor of Chicago, has always posed as the “friend of the workingmen” and it has been customary for the unions to endorse the candidates upon the Democratic ticket. Indeed so far had this gone that many of the unions were looked upon as practically Democratic organizations.
Many of the more influential and active trades-union leaders were given places in the Harrison administration. The result of all this was that politically the entire union movement of Chicago was debauched by the influence of capitalist politics. To be sure it was necessary for the Democratic politicians, if they wished to maintain their hold to keep up a pretense of friendliness to the laborers—but this never meant that anything substantial should be granted.
During the early portion of the strike this pretense of friendliness was kept up. The mayor even went so far as allow the police force to overlook cases of assault on non-union men. But as the contest continued the lines of the class struggle became more evident. The press soon arrayed itself with the employers and began to send out the most exaggerated stories of the “outrages” being perpetrated by the strikers and to demand that the police be used to annoy the pickets. For a time the mayor and city administration was still able to preserve an appearance of unfairness. Then the stories of violence multiplied and at last open threats were made that the militia would be brought in.
Mayor Harrison saw that it was time to move. When he once started he made a “clean break” with all pretensions of friendliness for the unions. Almost the first act was to organize a parade of the police force of the city, accompanied very conspicuously with the machine guns which are owned by the city to be used in “case of riot,” which has long ago come to mean in case laborers strike. This parade went entirely out of the route usually taken by parades in this city in order to pass the headquarters of the trade unions. Then there began to be a “cleaning out” of those labor leaders, who, as office holders in the municipal government had acted as the stool pigeons to keep the laborers in line politically. Finally Harrison issued his now famous order to the police justices that when any union man should be brought before them for any offense connected with the strike the justices should “give them the limit” in the way of punishment.
Various efforts have been made in the way of reconciliation and a great deal of nonsense talked about bringing in “the public” as an impartial arbiter. It is needless to say that all of these attempts failed as it was soon discovered, as the socialist had told them from the beginning, that the “public” is composed of two parties with divergent interests and in short, that the class struggle was a fact and not a theory.
Another delusion which is very prevalent among those who discuss socialism in connection with the strike is that the disorders that have accompanied the present movement and especially the errors that have been committed by the trade-union officials in some way argues against socialism; and it is a favorite bourgeois reply to socialist arguments to relate a string of real and imaginary abuses committed by the Building Trades Council with the air that if this indictment could only be made strong enough the socialist position would be overthrown.
They fail to understand that what the socialist is arguing against is the conditions that render necessary such conflicts with all the abuses found on either side. That violence is an inevitable accompaniment of strikes is something that the socialist saw long ago, and that such violence must invariably militate to the disadvantage of the laborers is a story that he has well-nigh grown tired of telling, but this does not mean that he believes that the laborer should meekly allow himself to be reduced to a state of unbearable slavery but simply that the manner of fighting must be transformed and that the scene of conflict must be changed to the political field, with the object, not simply of gaining a single point in a continuous battle, but of ending the whole war with one decisive victory.
[Emphasis and paragraph breaks added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote EVD, Proud Socialists SDP Conv,
SF Class Struggle p4, Mar 17, 1900
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/class-struggle-advance/000317-classstruggle-w293.pdf
Vol 1 No 1 = July 1900
The International Socialist Review, Volume 1
(Chicago, Illinois)
July 1900-June 1901
Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1901
https://books.google.com/books?id=KJ_VAAAAMAAJ
ISR of July 1900
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=KJ_VAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA1
“The Chicago and St. Louis Strikes”
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=KJ_VAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA58
See also:
“The Chicago Building Trades Conflict of 1900”
-by J. E. George of Northwestern University
The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 15, Issue 3,
of May 1901, Pages 348–370
https://doi.org/10.2307/1885196
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=x7MHAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA348
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Which Side Are You On? – Billy Bragg