|
Burying the Color Bar
From the moment he became International President, O'Connell
wanted to affiliate with the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The
head man of the AFL, Sam
Gompers, was a thickset, strong-jawed former
cigar maker whose philosophy of trade unionism O'Connell shared. In
his youth Gompers was exposed to every idea for reforming society:
socialism, anarchism, the single tax, cooperatives. The more he
studied, the more he concentrated on trade union goals: higher wages,
shorter hours, safer work places, better treatment--in short practical
rather than ideological goals. He saw no shortcuts to Utopia. For this
reason he strongly opposed efforts to involve the labor movement in
politics. His political philosophy was summed up by the
phrase--"Reward your friends, defeat your enemies". To
Gompers unions had one major purpose--to bargain for better wages,
hours and working conditions. Not only was this O'Connell's view of
unionism but he and Gompers were close personal friends. All in all
the IAM was far more palatable to the AFL's leadership than the openly
socialist International Machinists Union which had been chartered a
few years earlier.
Acceptance of O'Connell's application for AFL affiliation would
have been automatic were it not for the color bar which went back to
the IAM's Southern beginnings. One of Talbot's primary objectives in
working to establish this new union had been to restore and enhance
the image of machinists as "aristocrats of labor." From the
first, membership was strictly limited to an exclusive fraternity of
white male machinists. This meant no production workers, no
specialists, no women, and no blacks. By today's standards, such
bigotry is inexcusable. But it is not excusing Talbot and the others
to point out that these were not learned or worldly men. They were
limited to the time and place where they were born and bred. . . .
Notwithstanding the early Southern influence it is clear that at
least some Northern lodges ignored the ban on black membership from
the start. . . .In 1928, O'Connell, invited to speak at the IAM's
Grand Lodge Convention in Atlanta, recalled
|
|
O'Connell told of visiting the Eat Tennessee shops where the IAM
had begun and seeing Machinists sitting on benches amiably chatting
and eating lunch with their "colored helpers" while other
whites and blacks engaged in friendly wrestling and horse play.
O'Connell's attempt to persuade the Southern members to drop the
color bar was only partially successful. A majority of the delegates
to the 1895 Convention finally voted to take it out of the
Constitution--thus satisfying the AFL--but they promptly buried it
in the ritual, thus satisfying the prejudices of the Southern
founders. . . .
In addition to paving the way for affiliation with the AFL by
removing the color bar from the Constitution the delegates also
required future constitutional changes to be approved by referendum
of the membership as a whole. This insured grass-roots membership
control throughout the IAM's important formative years. Finally the
convention voted to move Grand Lodge headquarters from Richmond to
Chicago, the city that had become the undisputed center of the
nation's burgeoning railroad industry. In Chicago the Grand Lodge
consisted of two room--one shared by the International President
(IP), the other by the editor of the Journal and the General
Secretary-Treasurer (GST). They were assisted by one lone woman who
served as stenographer to the IP, typist to the editor, and
bookkeeper to the GST.
The Old Century Ends
|
