American Gandhi. Leilah Danielson

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СКАЧАТЬ assumed key positions. For his part, Muste was elected executive secretary of the general strike committee, in effect making him the leader of the strike. Though he lacked experience, he had proven a charismatic and inspiring speaker whose ability to reconcile different points of view and construct a cohesive vision out of the strike’s ‘‘kaleidoscopic’’ ethnic and ideological diversity quickly endeared him to the workers. At his very first speaking appearance in Lawrence he told the assembled crowd: ‘‘You should learn all you can about the textile industry because very soon you are going to take it over for your own.’’²¹

      Muste also ‘‘demonstrated an ability to learn on the job’’ and to adapt his principles to fit the situation.²² Without a background in labor unions or industrial conflicts, he drew upon the pragmatic method and looked to experience and practice as guides to truth. As he explained of his approach to labor organizing, ‘‘there are no absolute roles, formulas. . . . You have, on the one hand, a ‘social situation’; [and] on the other hand, an individual. But neither of these terms is set and static; they are fluid and dynamic.’’ Ultimately the ‘‘rebel must submit himself to the test of results’’ and ‘‘the test of group discussion . . . in spite of all the risks of compromise involved.’’ Ideals ultimately must not be ‘‘petrified dogmas mechanically applied to living situations, but hypotheses fearlessly lived by so long as [no] better are in sight, but constantly made to meet (not evade) situations and thus enriched and corrected.’’ ‘‘The moral life’’ was indeed ‘‘an adventure!’’²³

      His response to the violence that characterized the strike illustrates his ability to be flexible and adaptable while maintaining his principles. The first day of the strike, on the first Monday in February, provided a harbinger of what was to come; as the strikers gathered at dawn outside the mills, the police attacked the picket lines, clubbing strikers, and even entered their homes, pulling women out of bed and beating them.²⁴ The repressive, brutal treatment of the striking workers continued throughout the strike and reflected the conviction, held by the city elite, that that the strike represented ‘‘Bolshevism, the enemy of democracy, the destroyer of property rights, the breeder of anarchy.’’ They were determined that ‘‘Bolshevism’’ would ‘‘get no grip-hold in Lawrence’’ as it had in Seattle, Winnipeg, and other cities, and they granted the police free rein in handling the strikers.²⁵

      Police brutality placed the problem of violence squarely before Muste and his fellow pacifist clergy. Though the FOR favored socialism, many of its members opposed strikes, viewing their coercive character as a form of violence. The organization held that ‘‘true reconciliation’’ came from identifying with ‘‘both sides of the quarrel’’ and then drafting a solution ‘‘in which the true interest of every party can be satisfied.’’ In the case that one party to a dispute was unwilling to ‘‘be converted,’’ they suggested that it was better to let evil triumph than to violate their fundamental principles of nonviolence and love.²⁶ When Cedric Long defended the right of workers to strike at an FOR conference, he was publicly chastised by John Haynes Holmes who, with the hearty approval of the audience, pointed out that strikes violated the ‘‘moral law.’’²⁷

      In Lawrence, however, law enforcement was the ‘‘creator of violence,’’ and the experience taught Muste, Long, Rotzel, and other left-wing pacifists that the language of peace could function to maintain the status quo. As Muste wrote in the New Textile Worker, the organization and agitation of workers may appear to disrupt the ‘‘social peace,’’ but in fact brings attention to the class struggle that already exists. Quoting the English economist and historian G. D. H. Cole, he insisted that ‘‘the interests of Capital and Labour are diametrically opposed and although it may be necessary for Labour sometimes to acquiesce in ‘social peace,’ such peace is only the lull before the storm’’ that must come if a fundamental restructuring of power and privilege is ever to occur.²⁸ While Muste certainly hoped that the final victory in the class struggle would occur nonviolently, he refused to abandon the Lawrence strike on the grounds that striking workers were not pacifists.

      Philosophical questions aside, as the leader of the strike, the problem of violence was also a practical one, for it seemed self-evident that the police were being deliberately provocative in the hopes of undermining the strikers and their cause. Police violence also undermined morale; several weeks into the strike, pessimism set in in the ranks ‘‘because of this business that every morning so many people got beat up.’’ ‘‘Naturally,’’ the impulse was for strikers ‘‘to go back to the mills’’ and attack strikebreakers. Muste, Rotzel, Long, and other strike leaders urged striking workers to avoid retaliatory violence, but as the conflict between strikers and scabs escalated, it occurred to them that something more dramatic was called for. ‘‘Back in the jungle era of 1919,’’ Muste recalled, it was the policy for strike leaders to avoid the picket line because they would be ‘‘picked off’’ by the police. But to boost morale, the strike committee decided that Muste, Long, and several other leaders would lead the picket line.²⁹

      On the afternoon of February 26, Muste and Long left strike headquarters, leading a throng of thousands on a picket line in front of one of the larger textile mills. No sooner had they begun the picket line when police on horseback swarmed into the crowd. In the confusion, Long and Muste ended up in a side street where police cut them off from the other picketers and began beating them. Long was immediately knocked unconscious, but they were more careful with Muste, systematically beating his legs and body and forcing him to continue walking to avoid being trampled by their horses. When he was finally unable to stand up, they placed him in the patrol wagon where Long was coming back into consciousness.³⁰

      At the police station, the two ministers were charged with disturbing the peace and loitering (Long received the additional charge of assaulting an ‘‘unknown girl’’). Placed in separate cells, Muste and Long received another bout of abuse; the police hammered incessantly on the metal bars and even brought in Newton’s chief of police, whose son had attended Muste’s Sunday school class, to chastise Muste for getting ‘‘mixed up’’ with ‘‘all these wops’’ and ‘‘this row.’’ The ministers grew increasingly anxious as night fell because at nine o’clock prisoners were transferred to a facility on the outskirts of town and it was ‘‘routine that en route prisoners ‘tried to escape and had to be beaten into submission.’ ’’ Yet their comrades had worked feverishly to raise funds and managed to bail them out before the deadline. The next morning Muste and Long were out on the picket line again.³¹

      The tactic proved a tremendous success. The persecution of the ministers turned liberal public opinion toward the strikers, lifted sagging spirits, and firmly established Muste’s leadership role. Yet, as the strike wore on, the general strike committee continuously feared that they would lose control of the strike or that the workers would return to the mills. Provocative behavior by the police continued to be a problem. One of their most incendiary acts occurred during the sixth week of the strike when they mounted machine guns at several principle intersections. In response, a member of the strike committee made a speech calling on the workers to turn the machine guns on the police. Much to Muste’s relief, the speaker was voted down when others pointed out that ‘‘they can’t weave wool with machine guns.’’³² A week later Muste would find conclusive evidence that the speaker was in the employ of a detective agency and had made the speech at the behest of the police. A similar discovery was made a few weeks later when the strike’s financial secretary revealed to Muste that he was a spy involved in a scheme with the mill employers to set him up for murder. Thus Muste learned firsthand about the role of labor spies and agents provocateurs in radical movements, a lesson he would not forget. They always posed ‘‘as the most intransigent Marxist and most militant labor fighter of them all,’’ and insisted ‘‘upon the most meticulous observance of all the rules,’’ Muste recalled of this perennial problem in labor and radical movements.³³

      But the main problem was dwindling funds. Muste’s СКАЧАТЬ