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The Era of O'Connell
Because of the embezzlement the new Grand Master
Machinists, James O'Connell, had to start from scratch. Though
membership growth was slowed by hard times, more than 350 lodges
were now meeting regularly in forty-five states, five Canadian
provinces, Mexico and the District of Columbia. Talbot, Creamer, and
O'Day all helped to provide the IAM with a firm foundation although
none stayed at the helm more than two years. It was now time for
leadership that could provide continuity. That is what the IAM got
from James O'Connell.
For the next eighteen years, longer than any
other International President before or since, O'Connell began to
shape the IAM into the organization it is today. . . .A goodly
number of machinists attending the convention (Knights of Labor,
1886) met to talk about establishing a National Machinists District
within the structure of the Knights. An effort to do so in New York
failed because, in O'Connell's words, it was a "conglomerated
mass" that extended beyond machinists to "all who were
employed in the construction of machinery: including "helper
boys" and "handymen."
By 1887 O'Connell was back in Oil City working
for the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1890, still convinced that
machinists needed a union of their own, he left the Knights,
organized a lodge of Machinists and affiliated with the IAM. A year
later he was named a delegate to the 1891 Grand Lodge Convention in
Pittsburgh where he was elected to the first General Executive
Board.
. . . .In appearance O'Connell was slim, dapper
and elegantly handsome. In manner, however, he seems to have been
some what aloof and distant. . . .An observer at the 1908 AFL
convention. . . .described O'Connell as a "veritable
iceberg," too cold blooded and deliberate to be a "true
Irishman." But he also credited O'Connell with being sharp and
shrewd in his dealings with employers and with "successfully
managing the affairs of the International Association of Machinists,
which has a record of being one the the best fighting labor
organizations in the country." Although not an orator in the
florid style of the time, he could deliver an effective stump
speech. In reporting remarks he once made in Boston, a local
newspaper noted that, "Mr. O'Connell riveted the attention of
his audience through the force and strength of his
personality."
Debs and The American
Railway Union
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