Chapter XIX. A Reduction in
Wages, Cart-tail Oratory, a
Big Strike, and the Joys
and Sufferings thereof
IN January of that year forty thousand mill operatives went on strike. I belonged to the union and had a voice in the preparations for the strike. The manufacturers wanted to reduce our wages ten per cent. Word was passed around the mule-room that there was to be a stubborn fight, and that every union member ought to be on hand at the next regular meeting, when a vote was to be taken which would be our answer to the officials.
Our union headquarters were then in a long, narrow room in one of the business blocks, lighted by smoky oil lamps. The room was crowded when the meeting was called to order. The men were allowed to declare their feelings in speeches.
“Th’ miserly manufacturers,” growled Hal Linwood, a bow-legged Socialist, “they never knows when they are well off, they dunno. Little enough we gets now, and worse off we’ll be if they slices our wages at the rate they would go. It ain’t just, and never will be just till we div—”
“Order!” shouted the chairman. “This here isn’t no Socialist meeting. What the man said at first is all right, though.”
“Hear! hear!” roared the crowd.
Linwood represented the prevailing opinion, and when the vote was taken we declared in favor of a strike by a large majority. Messengers were coming in from the other meetings, and we saw that a general strike would be effected.
The situation was serious, though, for we were in the heart of winter, the most inconvenient time for a strike.
I looked forward to it without any scruples, for it meant a chance for me to rest. I had been given no vacations either in winter or summer, and I felt that one was certainly due me.
I experienced a guilty feeling when I passed the silent mills the next Monday morning. I felt as if I were breaking some great, authoritative law. It was the same feeling I always experienced when I stayed away from work, even for a day. I always avoided passing the mill for fear the overseer would run out and drag me in to work.
During the early stages of the strike we were constantly in our strike headquarters, getting news and appointing committees. Collectors were sent out to other cities to take up contributions. Mass-meetings were held in the city hall, and we were addressed by Mr. Gompers and other labor leaders. Even in the public parks incendiary meetings were common, and wild-eyed orators called us to resistance—from the tail end of a cart.
The position of collector was eagerly sought, for to most of the men it offered a higher wage than could be earned in the mill. It also meant travel, dinners, and a good percentage of the collections. When I told my uncle that a man named Chad was earning more money as a collector than he could earn as a spinner, I was angrily told to mind my own business.
In fact, the conduct of the strike, as I looked on it from behind the scenes, was simply a political enterprise. Our leader kept urging us to resist. He himself was not working in the mill, but was getting his money from our dues. Several of our meetings were no more than drinking bouts. The strike manager, who conducted our part in it, elected his closest friends to important offices which offered good remuneration.
I have been to football games when the home team knew that it was beaten at the start, and yet the captain has pounded his men and said: “Come on, boys, we’ve got them whipped.” That sort of artificial courage was supplied us by our leaders. Perhaps it was necessary; for the most of us were hungry, our clothes were worn, and the fire at home had to be kept low. The grocers would not give us credit, and the winter was cold. But the leaders grinned at us, pounded the gavel on the table, and shouted: “This is a fight for right, men. We’ve got the right end of the stick. Keep together and we’ll come out all right!”
At one of the meetings, picketing committees were appointed, with specific instructions to do all in their power to prevent “scabs” from going into the mills. We boys were invited to special meetings, where we were treated to tobacco by the men and lectured on the ethics of the “scabbing system.”
“Just think, lads, here are those that would step in and take your work. Think of it! That’s just what they’d do! Take the bread right out of your mouths, and when the strike is done, you wouldn’t have no work at all to go to. It’s criminal, and you mustn’t let it pass. Fight, and fight hard. A ‘scab’s’ not human. Don’t be afraid to fight him by fair means or foul. And then, too, the manufacturers have the police and the judges and the governor on their side, because they are moneyed men! They will try to drive us off the streets so that we can’t show how strong we are. Look out for the ‘scabs’!”
His words came true, in part. The state police were called, several strikers were arrested, and given the full penalty for disorderly conduct and assault. We were not allowed to congregate on the street corners. The police followed every crowd.
These precautions intensified the anger of the strikers. Strike headquarters, in which we could meet and pass the day in social ways, were opened in vacant stores. Here we came in the morning and stayed through the day, playing cards, checkers, and talking over the strike.
In regard to newspapers, there was a prevailing opinion among us that the Boston Journal alone favored our side, so we bought it to the exclusion of all other dailies. Against the Boston Transcript there was a general antipathy. I liked to read it, but my uncle spoke against it.
“I don’t want anybody under my roof reading the paper that is owned hand and foot by our enemies,” he argued, and I saw that I had given him great offense.
The Boston papers sent their official photographers to take our pictures. I posed, along with several of my friends, before our headquarters, and had the pleasure of seeing the picture in the paper under some such caption as “A group of striking back-boys.”
I did not suffer during the strike. I had a splendid time of it. While the snow was on the ground I obtained a position as a sweeper in one of the theaters, and I spent nearly every day for a while at matinées and evening performances. The strike went on into the early part of May, and, when the snow had gone, I went out with a little wagon—picked coal and gathered junk. Through these activities I really earned more spending money than I ever received for working in the mill. I rather enjoyed the situation, and could not understand at the time how people could say they wanted it to end.
Before it did end, the state police withdrew, and we went on guard once more at the mill gates on watch for “strike-breakers.”
We boys made exciting work of this, encouraged by our elders. I recall one little man and his wife, who did not believe in unions or strikes. They did have a greed for money, and they had plenty of it invested in tenements. They had no children to support. They were, however, among the first to try to break the strike in our mill. Popular antipathy broke with direful menace upon their heads. Every night a horde of neighbors—men, women, boys, and girls—escorted them home from their work, and followed them back to the mill gates every morning. The women among us were the most violent. “Big Emily,” a brawny woman, once brought her fist down on the little man’s head with this malediction: “Curse ye! ye robber o’ hones’ men’s food! Curse ye! and may ye come to want, thief!” The poor man had to take the insult, for the flicker of an eye meant a mobbing. His wife was tripped by boys and mud was plastered on her face. The pettiest and the meanest annoyances were devised and ruthlessly carried into effect, while the strike-breaking couple marched with the set of their faces toward home.
Even the walls of their house could not protect them from the menace of the mob. One of the strikers rented the lower floor of their house, and one night, when we had followed them to the gate, he invited us into the basement, produced an accordion, and started a merry dance, which lasted well into the night.
The return of the swallows brought an end to the strike. We boys resolved to vote against a return, for the May days promised joyous outdoor life. But the men and women were broken in spirit and heavily in debt, and a return was voted. We had fought four long months and lost.