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Vigilantes and a Case of Mistaken Identity
Labor organizing has always been a high risk occupation.
Through the years IAM organizers have taken their share of bumps and
lumps at the hands of employer goons. Moreover, in many places the
law offered no recourse. Violence often began with officers sworn to
preserve and protect the peace. An incident in Jackson, Michigan, in
November, 1912, illustrates the point. An organizer named Fred
Griffith was sent to Jackson to meet with a group of workers who
were interested in the IAM. A member of Local Lodge 95 in Jackson,
Herbert Crawford, helped Griffith set up meetings and make the right
contacts. Late one Saturday night a uniformed police officer
appeared at Crawford's door and threatened to break it down if not
immediately admitted. Since Crawford had broken no laws he assumed
he had nothing to fear. But when he opened the door the was hustled
out to a car in which a group of vigilantes were waiting. He was
tarred and feathered and so brutally beaten he had to be taken to a
hospital in Chicago for special treatment. Griffith was marked for
the same treatment, but the vigilantes got the wrong man. They went
to the hotel room of an innocent and unfortunate traveling salesman
named Griffin. Unable to convince them he wasn't who they wanted, he
ended up like Crawford, tarred, feathered and in an emergency room.
Griffith nonetheless, stayed on in Jackson and signed up more than
100 new members the following week.
Socialism in the IAM
The cruelties of unrestrained corporate capitalism, together
with the callousness of the legislatures and the courts,
strengthened Socialism in the IAM as in the working class as a
whole. Between 1900 and 1912, the vote for the Socialist slate in
presidential elections increased almost ten-fold, from 94,700 in
1900 to 897,000 in 1912.
As Socialist sentiment grew in the IAM, divisions spread
between members who subscribed to the idealism of Eugene Debs and
those who believed in the practical business unionism of Samuel
Gompers. From time to time O'Connell sought to appease the Socialist
faction by voicing sympathy for Socialist goals. In practice,
however, he remained true to Gomper's brand of bread and butter
unionism, i.e. working for achievable day-to-day goals without
reference to social theories or ideological master plans.
Despite the Murray Hill betrayal O'Connell continued to seek
stable relationships with management through the National Civic
Federation. Having seen the IAM's treasury all but wiped out by
strikes time after time, he preferred to settle labor disputes by
mediation and arbitration. Employers, however, heeded the National
Civic Federation's line only when stability and continuity suited
their purpose. Most joined open shop drives whenever they had the
upper hand.
The IAM and Scientific Management
Among the problems facing IAM members in the work place in
those early years, the movement known as "scientific
management" was one of the most irritating. This was an attempt
to tighten employer control over the job and the work force. It
included a wide range of supervisory techniques: piecework,
incentive pay, time and motion study and efficiency ratings.
The father of scientific management, a late 19th Century
industrial engineer named Frederick Taylor, viewed workers as little
more than standardized attachments to machines. According to Taylor
every factory "exists first and last and for all time for the
purpose of paying dividends to its owners." He preached there
is only "one best way" for a job to be done. This could be
found through "scientific" analysis of the time and motion
involved in each operation. After finding the "best way"
employers could set a daily quota and a rate for every job. The
fallacy of scientific management, as described in an early Journal,
was that "it assigns a larger aggregate in profits to a few
capitalists than it assigns aggregate wages to thousands of
workmen." The Journal also warned, "He who would
build a permanent structure of scientific industrialism would leave
thousands out of work and would perpetuate child labor and
poverty."
To self-respecting machinists scientific management was an
insult, a put-down of their intelligence and training. Scientific
management was in vogue in American industry for many years. In some
places it still is. Then, as now, Machinists stubbornly resisted the
dehumanization inherent in Taylor's theories. Although employers in
the National Civic Federation tried to persuade O'Connell and other
early IAM leaders that piecework and incentive systems were a fair
exchange for the nine hour day, the members saw what experience has
proven ever since: piecework inevitably degenerates into speedups
and lower wages. In 1907, for example, the Journal reported
that when piecework was started in the Susquehanna shops of the Erie
Railroad "a set of class I rods that originally paid $35.00 now
pays . . . $7.00." Moreover, this report said, "From the
time the operation started until it was finished, the highest sped
and coarsest feed were required and no margin allowed for accidents.
When the price was once set, machinists had to accept it or get
out."
Local Lodge 81 at the Rock Island Arsenal also fought time
study and incentive pay for many years after being chartered in
1903. Members at Rock Island and other government lodges considered
"efficiency ratings" a formula for tyranny. Pay scales
were adjusted twice yearly according to supervisors' judgments of
"attendance, skills, accuracy, deportment and speed." A
worker caught looking out a window was fined an hour's pay each day
for six months. Another, who accidentally broke a tool holder, was
docked two day's pay and had his merit score reduced.
When federal officials announced that the Taylor system would
be introduced into all U.S. Navy yards and arsenals in the summer of
1911 IAM lodges affiliated with Federal District 44 were up in
arms.* |
