American Gandhi. Leilah Danielson

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СКАЧАТЬ of feeding and clothing thousands of striking workers, providing medical care for injured workers, and paying legal expenses for trials such as Long and Muste’s (ultimately dismissed for lack of evidence). Early in March, connections were made between the striking workers and Sidney Hillman of the ACW. Hillman had long envisioned a union of all workers in the apparel industry and he was eager to provide assistance. Along with money, the ACW dispatched staff members August Bellanca, Nathan Kleinman, Leo Robbins, Gioacchino Artoni, H. J. Rubenstein, and Anthony Capraro to assist in the strike.³⁵

      The relationship with the ACW reflected not only a desire for funds, but also the growing conviction that the struggles in Lawrence and other textile centers represented an opportune moment for the unionization of all textile workers, regardless of skill. The ACW appealed to Lawrence’s immigrant workforce because of its industrial character and because of its combination of revolutionary e´lan and practical achievements. Unlike the IWW, the ACW signed contracts through means of an impartial arbitrator and sought to maintain stable, efficient unions that provided tangible benefits to their workers.³⁶ There were also cultural similarities between clothing and textile workers; both groups were made up of immigrants with anarcho-syndicalist sympathies, giving their movements a spirit of militancy, localism, and democracy. Still, the ACW’s impressive victories during the war were the result of Hillman’s commitment to collaboration with the state and his willingness to discipline unruly members. As a result, the ACW secured a reliable foothold in the industry, and its membership increased from 48,000 in 1916 to 138,000 in mid-1919. By 1920, the union would be the fourth-largest body of organized industrial workers in the United States, after the miners, machinists, and railroad workers. The question was where this practical orientation would lead: would ‘‘industrial democracy’’ mean workers’ control or something more limited like co-management between workers and their employers, which was how Hillman increasingly defined it?³⁷

      Thus, as the Lawrence strike dragged on into its eighth week, Muste and other strike leaders laid plans for a textile workers convention in New York City under the auspices of the ACW. On April 12–13, seventy-five workers from half a dozen textile centers gathered at Labor Temple at Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue where they voted to give birth to the Amalgamated Textile Workers of America (ATWA) and elected Muste general secretary. The constitution was modeled after the ACW and was explicitly revolutionary: it declared the reality of the class struggle and asserted that the union was the ‘‘natural weapon of offense and defense’’ in the struggle for a socialist society. It rejected the craft orientation of the AFL as outmoded and suggested that democratic, industrial organization would provide the training for workers to assume ‘‘control of the system of production.’’³⁸ At the same time, reflecting the influence of the ACW, the union also made it clear that it aimed to be ‘‘practical.’’ As Muste explained, delegates felt that ‘‘former organizations had either been hopelessly conservative and thus played into the hands of the bosses, or, while radical in purpose, had been so extreme and impractical in method as likewise to fail in soundly organizing the industry.’’³⁹

      Although the headquarters of the new union were to be in New York City, Muste returned immediately to Lawrence where the situation had grown more desperate. On April 11, the mill owners rejected an offer of mediation that even conservative Massachusetts governor (and later U.S. president) Calvin Coolidge said was ‘‘fair.’’ Two weeks later, the city Marshall announced the withdrawal of police protection for the strike leaders, and editorials appeared in local papers calling for vigilante action against ‘‘reds and mobs.’’⁴⁰ Meanwhile, strike funds were so depleted that workers went without shoes and milk for their children, leading the organizers to imitate a famous tactic of the 1912 strike of sending children outside of the beleaguered city to stay with families who could afford to clothe and feed them. On May 2, in order to raise morale, the strike leadership snuck Carlo Tresca into town to rally the workers. A lovable, inspiring speaker, Tresca had been banned from Lawrence for slapping the face of the police chief during the 1912 strike. When the authorities learned of his visit, they became so enflamed that they organized a mob that went in search of Muste. Unable to find him, they kidnapped and brutally beat Anthony Capraro and Nathan Kleinman; the former only narrowly escaped a lynching.⁴¹

      Though such acts tended to unify strikers and generate liberal support, the strike leadership began to prepare for defeat. On Monday, May 19, they dispatched Muste to New York City ostensibly to raise more funds; in fact, they wanted the head of the union out of town if and when the workers capitulated and went back to work. As Muste walked despondently to the train station, an incredible turn of events occurred that revealed the personal power wielded by the mill owners, especially William Wood, and also how the solidarity and organization of workers could challenge that power. A man approached Muste and told him that Walter Lamont, the head of Wood’s American Woolen Company in Lawrence, wanted to see him. Together, they drove to Lamont’s home where the magnate began cursing him as an outside agitator who had created the trouble in Lawrence. After a while, Muste asked, ‘‘Is this what you got me here for?’’ ‘‘No,’’ he replied. ‘‘How can we settle this goddamn strike?’’ After Lamont assured him that he spoke for all of Lawrence’s mills, Muste returned to the strike headquarters to announce that management was ready to settle with a 15 percent increase in wages and no discrimination against strikers.⁴²

      After the strikers joyfully ratified the settlement, Muste focused on channeling their enthusiasm into a solid industrial organization. This was a huge educational and cultural undertaking, for workers with traditions of shop-floor militancy and strikes did not necessarily translate into reliable union members.⁴³ Moreover, as Muste was fond of saying, the ATWA was like a ‘‘proletarian League of Nations’’ and while differences in language, nationality, and custom could be overcome, they presented a constant challenge.⁴⁴

      TO overcome these ethnic and ideological differences, as well as a culture of resistance centered on the spontaneous strike, Muste and the ATWA leadership drew upon the example of the ACW and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), both of which stressed the importance of building a union culture. Revolutionary idealism alone was not enough, Muste argued; strikes should be supplemented by ‘‘a great deal of quiet educational work’’ to give workers practical skills in union organization and to foster a common workers’ culture. By offering members services that met ‘‘all their varied needs’’ as human beings, such as recreation, entertainment, and housing, Muste contended, unions would ‘‘hold the worker to his union and so build up labor morale.’’ It was ‘‘fundamentally bad to have these services handed to the workers from . . . above.’’ Workers must be prepared for the future, when they would run industry and society by themselves.⁴⁵ Thus, in that brief period from 1919 through 1920, the ATWA locals not only led strikes and organized shop committees, they also opened union halls, developed youth programs, sponsored lectures and classes for adult education, formed consumer cooperatives, and hosted festivities like picnics and dances, all in an effort to build up a union culture.⁴⁶

      In organizing schools, the ATWA also sought to counter the influence of the Americanization programs set up by employers and the public schools as part of the nativist sentiment that swept the country after the war. According to the ATWA, the language of Americanization ‘‘cloaked’’ a determination to exploit workers and preserve the status quo. In contrast to racist and deferential notions of citizenship, the ATWA and its supporters constructed a pragmatic definition of Americanism, viewing it as an inclusive, collaborative process that was constantly ‘‘in the making,’’ as Harold Rotzel put it. ‘‘I, for one, am for a rapidly changing Americanism which will represent the people of America and make democracy real where the people spend so much of their time—in industry,’’ he wrote.⁴⁷ ATWA educational programs thus sought to teach ‘‘in a spirit . . . of equals working out a problem together,’’ with the recognition that ‘‘what the alien knows’’ would help make American life ‘‘fuller and better.’’⁴⁸ Significantly, its cosmopolitan understanding of Americanism was embedded within a working-class, revolutionary internationalism. СКАЧАТЬ