Empire In Wood

IN 1902 Peter J McGuire, who as long ago as 1872 had stormed across New York City from Union Square to the crowded ghettos of Spring Street with the crude hand-painted signs of the First Marxist International, slowly went to bits. The body which he had willfully exposed to a quarter-century of abuse and suffering in the interest of his beloved working class collapsed. The mind, so long the servant of two masters, practical trade unionism and utopian socialism, pulled apart, and led him to commit acts he would otherwise never have contemplated. And, as the century of which he was so much a product expired, he stood defeated, discredited, and bereft of power.

In 1891, at the age of thirty-seven, McGuire stood at the summit of a brilliant career. His achievements were many. He had conceived the idea of a national holiday for workingmen and had induced Congress to declare it Labor Day. he had helped found the Socialist Labor party, which, in 1891, was the most powerful radical party in existence. He had helped found the AFL and was its "leading genius ...during its early days." He "undoubtedly supplied what ideas the American Federation of Labor had for its foundation." Even Gompers admitted that besides himself only McGuire provided the early AFL with practical guidance as well as ideas. he had translated the abstract eight-hour day philosophy of the radicals into a practical working plan: he had made the shorter working day a reality far the workers. And, finally, he had single-handedly built the largest and most influential trade union in the land. More than any other man it was he who first amalgamated the philosophy of the foreign radicals with that of the American radicals and then translated this philosophy into practical trade union institutions.

Yet, for all his trade union successes, McGuire was not at heart a trade unionist. The coming day he saw dawning was not a trade union, but a Socialist day. He emphasized the first, or trade union, phase of his philosophy only to the temporary exclusion of its other parts. What for McGuire was a temporary means became to the men he led a permanent end. And, as the Socialist fat was melted off McGuire's philosophy, what emerged for them was pure and simple trade unionism.

McGuire's "organize, agitate, educate" trade unionism ("P.J. McGuire's Political Views," The Carpenter, Vol.16, No. 9, September 1896, p.8) might have been compatible with his Socialist goals. Pure and simple trade unionism could never be, for its apostles preached both present and future aloofness from socialism. McGuire counseled such aloofness only until sufficient workers were organized. Its apostles preached identity of interest between labor and capital; McGuire thought that "there is very little to expect ...at the hands of either the Democratic or Republican Parties for the working people."

Yet although McGuire and the men he led were set out upon different, even antithetical courses, McGuire refused to surrender either his Socialist goals or his trade unionism. Instead he tried to weld these two incompatible metals. 'The workingmen eventually will eliminate all middlemen standing between the worker and the full product of his toil," McGuire told a group of men in 1894. To whom did he make the statement? To a group of middlemen, business agents, who stood as much as any capitalist between the worker and the full product of his toil, to the 1894 convention of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America.

These men were simply not interested in the worker's receiving the full product of his toil. They wished only that he get a fair day's pay for a fair day's work and that he allow them to continue to lead them. All the finer points of Socialist theory were lost on them. They despised the Socialists who might gamble away hard-won trade union gains on political action. The Socialists returned the sentiment, and McGuire was caught in a cross fire.

During the mid-1890's socialism experienced a depression-inspired revival, and the Socialists tried to capture the AFL. Instead of opposing socialism completely, McGuire as AFL first vice-president took the position that the time was not yet ripe for trade unions to associate themselves with a Socialist party. "With 8 percent of the wage earners organized ...to rush into an independent political party is suicidal and dangerous," he told the Socialists. "Politically, we (the trade unions) will control this country in forty odd years." And, he added, "The man who is not content to wait will have to."

The Socialists failed in their attempt to capture the AFL, in large measure due to McGuire's opposition. His pleas that socialism was just around the corner fell on deaf ears. The trade unionists did not care where it was, and the Socialists rejected McGuire's position as mere rationalization. "Some one will say ...(I) was a socialist. Yes, of the trade union kind," McGuire told the hostile groups, trying vainly to keep a foot on each of two horses which were moving increasingly further apart.

From this point on McGuire was neither socialist fish nor trade union fowl. Although he continued to support the Socialist Labor party, his days as a political radical were behind him. And the professional organizers tried mightily to remove him from power because the Socialist vision he continued to foster prevented him from establishing the kind of union which they felt the industry called for.

Had McGuire completely surrendered either his ideology or his pragmatic trade unionism he might have avoided a tragic fate. But the former was too much a part of his emotional make-up, and the latter the only tangible result of a life's work. he could surrender neither. Rather, he tried to house both within the confines of the same personality. He paid the price of this impossible juggling. Under the burden of hard work and constant opposition he suffered a collapse so complete as to bring his career to a premature end.

The first signs of his inability to choose between practical trade unionism and socialism became obvious during the mid-1890's. At times McGuire rode high on the crest of a "pure and simple" exhilaration; at times he sunk deep into the doldrums of a socialist despair at ever changing the established order. After opposing an independent labor party at the 1894 AFL convention, he introduced a resolution calling for one at the 1897 convention. In 1898 he reversed his stand again and made a violent speech against such a party. Toward the end of the 1890's his indecisiveness became so serious that in the same articles and speeches he advocated diametrically opposite courses of trade union action. Thus, he wrote in 1897 that "The time is near at hand when the wealth of the world will be ...evenly divided among all creators of it, and the great instrument of the equalization of that wealth will be ..labor." On the same page of the same issue of The Carpenter, (Vol. 17, No. 5, May 1897, p.8) he also wrote that the United Brotherhood will "always uphold strict trade union principles and practical trade actions free from all isms, fads, and experimental abstractions."

McGuire tumbled downhill rapidly after 1894. Abandoned by the Socialists, fought by his own followers, yesteryear's most violent radical had to abandon agitation and become a not-very-effecient clerk. A man who had once held twenty thousand workers spellbound spent all his time poring over lists of figures or directing stenographers. His violent and explosive sentiments were no longer able to find an outlet. Confined within him, they turned to corrosive juices and ate away at his inner being. He was still a Socialist, to be sure. In 1901 he said, "We should never lose sight of the fact that our efforts after all in reducing hours of labor and in increasing wages are simply supplemental to the still greater movement of all branches of labor to claim and have the full results of their toil."

But his words no longer carried conviction. Men who had once hung on to his every word now walked in sullen, uninterested groups out of the lecture hall to leave him crushed. He was crushed, ironically, by the very reforms he had given his followers as a sop to sustain them on the socialist journey. Now these same men, entrenched firmly behind local trade union institutions, were grown fat and sleek.

The end came when McGuire turned to liquor to ease his troubled mind. He remained away from his duties for days at a time, brooding over his fate in Philadelphia saloons. "Nothing could be more pathetic at the end of his career. Resolute and self possessed, a great hill of strength to the cause of labor, he gradually came, as the result of intemperance, to lose all influence and to exist by the bounty of his friends."

Liquor magnified his existing faults a thousandfold. Never a good administrator, he started blatantly evading official responsibilities. In 1901 he wrote in a letter to Huber, "I ...can do much more for it (the Brotherhood) if not pestered and annoyed by visiting delegations and many ...(demands) made on me of the most trifling character."

The manner in which McGuire conducted the national office in 190l was described by Frank Duffy. (UBCJA, 1902 Convention Proceedings)

Letters by the hundreds were lying around in all directions, begging for a reply, asking the cause of delay, demanding explanations, threatening to bring charges, or to withdraw from the organization altogether. Even these were not answered. They were thrown in a heap on the floor behind the chair of the General-Secretary Treasurer, where they had lain for months, some of them for more than a year, forgotten or ignored.

On the desks, window sills, and other places, were to be found other communications already answered, with properly addressed envelopes, awaiting the signature of the General-Secretary Treasurer. Hundreds of these were three, six and twelve months old. Lawyer's letters threatening to bring suit ...and law suits already entered received no attention whatever. Complaints in general were to be found on all sides, while in several instances strikes and lockouts did not receive the slightest consideration or even a passing notice.

The final phase of McGuire's career opened shortly after the 1900 convention closed. Executive Board Members Frank Duffy and W.J. Grimes were sent by the convention to Philadelphia to help McGuire compile a report of the convention proceedings. They moved in on McGuire and found the office a shambles. Attempts to induce him to forsake the local saloons for his work were in vain.

Word of McGuire's condition spread around the country, and in December Chairman Cattermull of the executive board came in from Chicago to put the organization in order. Instead of going directly to McGuire, he went to New York and sought out Duffy. The boys in Chicago, he told Duffy, were in arms about McGuire's neglect of his work. Then he offered Duffy the following proposition: "Pete is not doing his work; he has got to step down and get out and another man go in his place that will. Grimes and Walz (two of the five executive board members) will vote together, Miller will vote with me --where do you stand?"

Duffy put him off, and the two journeyed to Yonkers to speak with Huber. The three repaired to a bar to talk. They agreed only that McGuire was finally cornered. Cattermull announced that he wanted McGuire's job. Huber described his answer. "Yes, and that was all." Huber had his own plans and Cattermull played no part in them. He and Cattermull then had a violent scene over the fact that Huber had rented an office for seven dollars a month to conduct the president's affairs.

From this point on, there was a falling out among the conspirators. Duffy sided with his New York neighbor Huber, and his vote tipped the delicate balance within the executive board in Huber's favor. With a majority of the executive board on Huber's side, the succession to the throne was decided. Events now moved rapidly.

At the January 1901 meeting of the executive board, Huber told of the many local complaints about McGuire's "not attending to his duty, failing to answer correspondence, neglecting to pay legal death claims and to send money donated (for organizing purposes) by the Scranton Convention (1900) to different localities as ordered by that body." When Huber wrote to McGuire inquiring about these complaints, McGuire told him to come to Philadelphia and do the job himself. The executive board took McGuire at his word and ordered Huber to appear and assist him. Huber held out for a salary and in contravention to the constitution was granted $100 a month.

Huber arrived in February 1901 and until the next quarterly meeting of the executive board was unable to work with the brooding and recalcitrant McGuire. He reported, "I have found the office in deplorable condition, and all efforts on my part to have Brother McGuire attend to his duties were virtually in vain. I received more complaints, but was powerless to do anything more than call the General Executive Board's attention to the matter."

When the board met again in April, the members took into consideration the administration of the union. Upon auditing the books, they discovered a deficit of $6,300. The board members called McGuire to account. He vehemently denied that there was a shortage but admitted that due to his illness the books might have become muddled. He asked for time. Four days later he appeared at a board meeting and told the members that the books were too confused to adjust immediately. He offered them a personal check to cover the $6,300, however, and promised to have the books in order for the next meeting of the board in July.

When the board met in July, McGuire pleaded that he was at home sick and could not appear. He asked for more time. The board members waited restlessly one, two, three days. On the fourth day Huber was sent to get McGuire. He was not at home. He was sick enough, but sick with fear of facing the board. On each of the four days he had set out for the office and each time ended in a nearby bar gathering courage to meet his antagonists. When, under the threat of legal action, McGuire finally appeared, he was given a date on which to square accounts or be suspended. "I never saw Brother McGuire blanch but twice in my life," said Board Member Grimes, "and that was one of the times."

All of these events transpired in early July 1901. On July 18, when it became clear that McGuire would give them no satisfaction, the board members started perusing the account books. They found that McGuire had

made deposits in the Penn National Bank (in the union's account) for the purpose of deceiving the Board as to the balance on deposit. On 3rd May, 1901, a draft on the Hanover National Bank, New York (McGuire's bank) for $6,300 was deposited by him, but as this draft was obtained from the Continental Title and Trust Company (another of the Brotherhood's banks) in exchange for a cheque of the Brotherhood for the same amount from the Penn National Bank, no additional funds were added to the balance. A deposit of $9,250 of a similar nature was made on July 18, 1901, but in the bank deposit book the figure 1 in the ...date was erased for the purpose of making it appear that the deposit was made on July 8, 1901.

McGuire stood accused of writing a total of three false checks each of which was designed to cancel the others out and of altering the books to obscure his deed. Had he become a private assassin for Czar Nichols, he would not have assumed a role more out of character than that of embezzler of union funds.

Huber and Duffy made the first move. Upon discovering the shortage on July 18, they called in all of McGuire's books. Several days later Duffy was put at the head of an executive board committee to handle all financial affairs. On July 23 the executive board pressed charges against McGuire under the United Brotherhood's constitution and he was temporarily suspended. On July 24 the executive board made Duffy acting general secretary-treasurer, and legal counsel was hired. Huber was advised to complete the prosecution of charges against McGuire under the constitution before taking civil action. Expert accountants were hired who found a shortage totaling $10,074.93. Five days later McGuire suffered a collapse from which he never fully recovered.

The collapse was complete. From this point on, McGuire's actions were erratic and he petulant and, on occasions, childish. He made appointments with the executive board members and repeatedly failed to keep them. He refused to turn valuable papers over to the board, holding them to be his personal property. On some occasions he stormed at the board; on others, he was contrite and humble. A letter he wrote to Huber just before his suspension tells the pitiful story of his condition:

My nervous system was shattered....
Certainly I made mistakes and neglected some details, but that was due to ill health and constant worriment. It was not due to lack of interest in the organization I founded and cherished for so many years. Friend Bill, be kind to me, for I have been sick and need encouragement, not abuse, from those I have stood up for for years.

McGuire, so long a fighter, now fought by reflex, and with such feeble weapons as were still at this command.

In September a struggle ensured for possession of The Carpenter. After preparing the September issue, Duffy had to leave Philadelphia. The sick McGuire called the printer to his home and asked him to publish his side of the story. The printer consented and ran off an issue in which many of Duffy's writings were deleted to make way for McGuire's article. McGuire defended himself hotly but vaguely and denounced the new general officers as an overambitious opposition. He was not specific about the shortage of cash.

Duffy returned to the office before all the copies of the altered Carpenter were in the mail. He destroyed the rest, fired the printer, and sent the original issue to all local unions. The whole affair served to heap more coals on an already raging controversy.

The organization was split down the middle. On October 19 the executive board met in search of a solution. The members asked McGuire to appear and to cooperate in drawing up a circular wherein both sides could present their view of the question to the United Brotherhood's court of final appeal, the membership, for a vote. On November 5 such a conference was held and the circular was sent out.

In December, on advice of counsel, while the vote was as yet untabulated, Huber decided to open suit against the bonding company for the amount McGuire had allegedly embezzled. He was advised that for the union to proceed with such a suit, McGuire would have to be arrested. McGuire agreed to appear in court without warrant but ignored his promise three successive times. On December 9, 1901, twenty years, four months, and one day after he founded the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, Peter J. McGuire was indicted by a grand jury for "making way with association property." Before McGuire could be brought to trial, the last ballot came into the office. A full 14,374 members favored McGuire's permanent suspension, but 12,702 others rallied around him. Lacking the two-thirds majority, the suspension was not made permanent.

McGuire appeared at the office on January 2, 1902, and demanded official reinstatement. But since no bonding company would deal with him, he could not provide the $30,000 bond required by the constitution. He stayed out of power. He countered by mailing to all locals a circular on official Brotherhood stationery in which he again maligned Huber and Duffy and defended his record, and which he signed as the official general secretary-treasurer. After this the various locals which supported McGuire also started sending out antiadministration circulars, thus compounding the chaos and breaking down all the lines of discipline. Said Huber:

Our motives were misconstrued and our actions severely criticized. Distorted reports prejudiced some of the members against us. Locals refused to abide by the decisions of the General Officers, withheld their per capita (tax) and even carried on open warfare against (them).

Throughout the first three months of 1902 McGuire intensified his campaign to get reinstated. He had locals write letters of protest to Huber (he himself wrote three), demanding that he be reinstated as a result of the referendum vote. Huber replied that the referendum vote did not dismiss the charges and that in any event McGuire could not be reinstated without a bond.

Finally, on the last day of April, McGuire gave up the fight. He agreed to pay $2,000 "in compromise of the claims of the United Brotherhood ...of $10,074.93 deficit in the amount of ...McGuire." He then took leave of the labor movement, saying:

I, Peter J. McGuire, formerly General Secretary-Treasurer of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, in consideration of one dollar do hereby remise, release, quit-claim and forever discharge the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America for any and all claims I have, may have or can have...

Whether or not the working carpenter -- McGuire's last source of support and one which had yet to fail him -- would accept his dollar offer remained to be decided by the 1902 convention.

A bitterly divided group of delegates met in the summer of 1902 to decide the fate of the man who had given each of them his trade union birthright. Said Huber, of the support accorded McGuire:

It was ...astonishing ..as quite a number of delegates ...on the eve of the Convention and even during the earlier part of its sessions were still laboring under the belief that a discrepancy in P. J. McGuire's accounts was an impossibility, that he had been unjustly accused and removed from office by the General Executive Board and the General Officers and maliciously persecuted by them.

Executive Board Member Grimes told the delegates "Now we have arrived here ...with a venom so well developed and a spleen so enlarged that if all of us can leave this city ...still in one organization ...I think we shall have achieved a miracle."

McGuire's trial began on September 23 and lasted for three days. Huber opened proceedings with the remark, "You wanted to have all your dirty linen washed; now wash it." All rules were abandoned, and the seven hundred delegates acted as a huge court of justice, while the critically ill McGuire remained in Philadelphia. Nerves were strained and tempers flared repeatedly, as the various officers mounted the platform to explain their role in the affair. All of the petty maneuvering for position came out as the various delegates hurled heated remarks at one another.

On the last day of the debate McGuire stunned the delegates with a surprise appearance. Mental collapse had been followed by physical collapse. Afflicted with rheumatism, dropsy, and gastric catarrh, he could no longer stand erect. Yet, as his words reveal, he labored under an enormous compulsion to explain how he had come to this low estate. He made his final accounting to the union movement:

I have no voice, no care about this little plan and that; I have no part in your little plans and schemes ....All I want to say is ...keep together; no split, no division, no disorganization ....I have always done everything in my power ...to bring the men together, the men of our craft, even by humbling myself ....I simply want you to judge me by the facts.

I do not care whether I sink or swim, so long as this organization is maintained.

I am not lost entirely in this world, but I have enough to wreck me physically; destroy me mentally; but while I live I will fight...

I throw myself entirely on the mercy ...of this convention. After many years of work for the organization I claim no great distinction, but I want fairness.

For some time I have felt completely broken down and lost in heart to find ...so much opposition to me. If some of the men had worked as hard as I did in my own humble way they would be broken down, too, and it was due to sickness, long travels and journeys and in strike movements that I got completely broken down. And I do not want any office in the Brotherhood, even if I am cleared of everything. I want other men to go ahead, and I want this organization to prosper and succeed.

It was not a defense but a plea. When it ended McGuire had spoken the last words he was ever to speak to the workers.

A roll call was held on the motion to accept McGuire's resignation and to close the books forever on this unfortunate page of labor history. By a margin of only 61 votes out of 335 cast, McGuire was expelled from the union.

Thus did a plot laid four years before hatch in 1902. Still one problem remains which can be resolved neither by court record nor convention proceedings: did McGuire actually embezzle the money? It is likely, but not proven, that McGuire used some of the union's funds to defray the cost of his illness. The circumstances under which he did so, however, could constitute a crime, or even a reprehensible act, only to the most caviling of critics. With the knowledge and permissions of various conventions, the Brotherhood's money was banked under McGuire's name until February, 1901, and the union's general fund and McGuire's salary were indistinguishable. in the early days, McGuire often passed up his salary, financed The Carpenter, and turned his own earnings over to the union's general fund. The miles he traveled, the abuse he suffered, the speeches he made, and the strikes he led were beyond financial evaluation. Without them there would have been no union to have a general fund, to have a shortage.

To speak of McGuire's owing the union money or the union's owing McGuire money in 1901 was a travesty in every sense but the legal one. Said McGuire when first accused of being an embezzler, "I was actually disgusted with the unexpected demands (to balance the books) made upon me ....I have cherished and protected the interests of this organization for twenty years, and saved it thousands of dollars." If McGuire did take the money, he took precious little, for he lived on after 1902 as an absolute pauper. Most of the shortage uncovered by the accountants was undoubtedly due to neglect. But the men who hounded him so mercilessly could not distinguish between neglect and embezzlement. Or perhaps they did not wish to make the distinction.

That McGuire had to be eased out of power somehow, there can be no doubt. That he had to be thrown from power by the means used, there can be much doubt. His successors hauled him to court as a common criminal, discredited him, and exposed the labor movement to ridicule for $10,000 they knew he did not possess. They sold their birthright for a mess of pottage.

After 1902 McGuire's crippled and bent form was still to be seen in the old haunts and bars where labor men met. For a time the great names in the labor firmament journeyed faithfully over to Camden to see the old rebel. Then, gradually, he was forgotten and left to die, without so much as a scroll of thanks or a paid doctor's bill.

On the evening of February 15, 1906, he wrote to an old comrade in arms in New England, the scene of some of his earliest trade union triumphs, "I'm very tired of it all, old boy, and, of late, in looking my past in the face, I wonder if the game was worth the poor candle, the more so when I see the ingratitude of those who benefited by our labor." *

Later that night he died at home alone with his daughter. His last words, spoken in a delirium, were: "I've got to get to California, the boys in Local 22 need me." He might better have saved his waning breath. The boys in Local 22 did not need him. They had but recently placed one Patrick H. "Pin Head" McCarthy, politician and labor boss extraordinary, in power.

* A. Charles Corotis and Charles W. Philips, The Life Story of a Forgotten Giant -- Peter J. McGuire, p.24. This pamphlet is a short sketch (26 pages) of McGuire's life.

One board from a Northwest log may go into the making of a cradle while another board may become part of a casket, but cradle or casket, the board is prepared and handled by men affiliated with the United Brotherhood .... From the man who swings the axe ..., to the man who wields the sandpaper on the finished product, the wood is handled by the men affiliated writhe the United Brotherhood. In every process from logging to cabinet making, only Brotherhood men are employed.
“Carpenters Include All Woodworkers,” The Carpenter, Vol. 57, No. 12, December 1937, p24.

THIS statement hailed the fact that the United Brotherhood was vertically integrated in its industries to a degree few other unions could boast in the mid-1930’s. It also indicated that the United Brotherhood was making no claims to craft unionism in the 1930”s. Rather, its leaders recognized it as “a craft union, taking in all the branches of the industry.”

The policy of the United Brotherhood was still craft-industrialism, as it had been since 1911. By the time John L. Lewis was preparing his bolt, this policy had made the United Brotherhood a union which had followed the technological evolution of its principal craft so scrupulously that it now had several complete industries nestled snugly within its jurisdiction. This is the prime fact to be kept in mind, for unless it is understood completely the events surrounding the creation of the Committee of Industrial Organizations make little historical sense. For Lewis did not leave the AFL. Hutcheson pushed him out.

The dispute which divided the AFL in 1935 was not primarily one between the advocates of craft unionsim and those of industrial unionism. Rather, it was between the advocates of craft-industrial unionism, led by Lewis. president Green made this amply clear while testifying before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor shortly after the CIO was created. He went to great pains to explain that his federation contained many craft-industrial unions. He then gave and example. “ While the basic membership of the International Association of Machinists ... comprises ... skilled craftsmen ... (it) also includes within its membership unions composed of a single craft, single trade as well as wholly industrial unions...”

During the now famous 1935 debate which erupted in blows between Hutches on and Lewis, Delegate John P. Frey, an old AFL hand, declared that he, for one, was confused by the dispute. Why, he said, “We (the AFL) have had for fifty-five years so-called industrial unions...; and we have had so-called craft unions, many of which are more industrial than those so-called.”

This evidence makes it clear that not craft unionism and the Scranton Declaration but craft-industrial unionism and the Atlanta Declaration were threatened by Lewis. At one point in the 1935 debate Lewis berated the policy of “the last quarter of a century.” His lieutenant, Van Bittner, said to Hutcheson’s group, “ You are just twenty-four years behind the times.’ Both referred to the year 1911, the year of the Atlanta Declaration.

In the course of the struggle with the CIO Hutcheson dropped all craft pretense and openly admitted that it was an industry, and not one of its crafts, for which he was fighting. The executive board of the United Brotherhood declared:

"The AFL gave the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America jurisdiction over the wood-working industry of North America, (and) that jurisdiction must be observed and protected at all hazards and all costs and under no circumstances or conditions can the AFL grant charters to other groups in the wood-working industry."

Hutcheson did not oppose organization along industrial lines because he was craft minded. On the contrary, he had collected such a wide variety of industries under the Carpenters’ jurisdictional claim that, had he chosen, he could very well have organized the whole of several industries. However, the United Brotherhood’s policy of policing an industry, rather than organizing it, prevented this. Had Hutcheson organized completely all the industries under his jurisdiction his union would have ceased being a carpenters’, or even a carpenter-centered union, as skilled carpenters were overwhelmed by unskilled millmen and lumberjacks.

Hutcheson would undoubtedly have been a much happier man had the unskilled and semi-skilled workers within his jurisdiction remained quiescent. For reasons to be discussed shortly, they did not do so. Lewis shrewdly saw that he unskilled of the mass-production industries could not possibly be organized on a craft, or even a craft-industrial basis. They could only be organized on a straight industrial as is. Hutcheson, for all his protestations to the contrary, had little to fear from the organization of the great mass-production industries like steel and automobiles. Rather, he feared the principle involved. He knew that the principle of he industrial unionism was narrower than that of the craft-industrialism and was afraid that if the principle of industrial organization were accepted by the AFL, the United Brotherhood stood in a fair way to lose both the woodworking and the lumber industries to new, ambitious industrial unions. Ironically, Hutcheson opposed Lewis not because he was narrower in his assertion of jurisdiction but because he was broader.

Neither Hutcheson nor Lewis, nor in fact, anyone in the AFL, however, brought the problem of organizing the unorganized to the fore. Rather, it welled out of the mass protest of millions of underpaid and insecure workers, brought by five years of depression and grinding poverty to the point of blind despair. Roosevelt gave them hope, in many respects as blind as their despair, and through Section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act seemed to point a finger to trade unionism as a specific way out of their plight. Although Section 7(a) proved a slender reed on which to lean, the unorganized workers accepted its promise avidly and literally stormed the unions. From 1933 to 1935 they pounded upon the AFL’s door, demanding admission. Scores of thousands were admitted into federal unions, where they were put into escrow while the officials of the AFL decided their ultimate fate. Millions more stood outside in the unorganized cold while the great debate raged.

Nothing in the history of the AFL had prepared its leaders to cope with such as vast social upheaval. The eight-hour movement of 1886 to 1890 had been a whimper, the burgeoning of unionism from 1900 to 1904 a meek cry, compared to this overwhelming clamor of social protest which dinned in the ears of AFL officials while they debated. Whether they liked it or not, they were forced to deal with the hot molten metal of social revolution and to mold it into an orderly trade union institution. And the quarter-century of history of which Lewis spoke, and which has been here summed up as craft-industrialism, blocked them at every turn.

Some index of the vastness of this upsurge can be gleaned from the lumber industry, with which the United Brotherhood was specifically concerned. Between 1933 and 1935 thousands of lumber workers stormed into one hundred and thirty federal unions. In 1932 there had not been a baker’s dozen of lumber workers’ federal unions. Although these workers were to be had for the asking, the AFL had done little to secure them. Their organization, for the most part, was completely spontaneous. The AFL put a few organizers in the lumber camps and printed, from time to time, a mild little pamphlet called the “Lumber Letter.” For there edification, this letter told the half starved lumberjacks how much softwood was produced in the Southeast between 1920 and 1030 and how Shingle Weavers’ Union Number So-and-So was infusing the spirit of trade unionism into this or that little hamlet in Idaho or Alabama. Like the men who printed it, this pamphlet failed completely to understand the nature, gauge the temper, or meet the needs of the lumberjacks. Still they flooded into the federal unions. They had no other place to go.

Throughout the 1920’s, though these workers had been placed under the United Brotherhood’s jurisdiction, Hutcheson had not raised a finger to organize them. Nor did he in 1933 and 1934 when they were frantically pounding on the door of the house of labor. He took them into the United Brotherhood, in 1935, only when their organized numbers were too many, and their dim to deafening, to ignore. Even then he took them not because it might benefit them but because:

“In the course of the years methods of work in the lumber industry have greatly changed.The logs taken into the lumber mill come out in the shape of flooring and finished products ready for assembly in building. Much of the work formerly done by the carpenter on the construction site is now done in the mill.”

They were taken in because it was necessary to do so in order to “police” the industry.

The restive lumber workers’ demand for unionization was the rule rather than the exception. In most of the basic, mass-production industries the clamor for unionism mounted after 1933. When the leaders of the AFL met in convention in the fall of 1933 they decided to organize the workers in mass-production industries only when given permission by the international unions whose jurisdiction was concerned. Then the mass-production workers were to be held in federal unions until they could be divided among the AFL unions claiming jurisdiction in a given industry. However, in what was almost an admission that this constituted no definitive answer to the problem, a conference of all union presidents was called to give further consideration to the problem during 1934.

This conference met in January, 1934, and decided to place the main emphasis on an organizing campaign and to allow the question of jurisdiction to mark time. When the 1934 convention met, Lewis, who had assumed leadership of a group of industrial unionists, felt that the formula established at the January conference “has not worked out as well as some of the delegates ... believe it should.” He then induced the delegates to approve a resolution which came out flatly for industrial organization, saying that they “realized that in many of the (mass-production) industries ... a new condition exists requiring organization on a different basis to be most effective.” The executive council was then directed to unleash a vast organizing campaign among these industries. When the resolution passed, with mild assurances to Hutcheson that his jurisdiction would not be violated, Lewis seemed to have won his every point.

Lewis was courting a vast disappointment, however, for in 1935 Green sent a swarm of mellow old business agent into the restive mass-production industries. The campaign in the lumbering industry was typical. After Green pushed the one hundred and thirty federal lumber and sawmill unions into the United Brotherhood, Hutcheson send Pacific Coast Executive Board Member Abe Muir, a former business agent, into towering forests afire with discontent. Muir was accustomed to dealing with city contractors, many of whom were themselves union men and most of whom welcomed the union. He walked into the North woods where employers were full well prepared to use machine guns, tear gas,and howling, professionally led mobs to exclude the union. The mild Scot tried to lead loggers who were “real he-men, with hair on their chests. They ... chew(ed) snuff ... and ...(drank) their hooch and ... (made) no pretense at being tin angels.” These men were rough-and-tumble direct actionists, with a “Wobbly” background and possessed of a democratic tradition reminiscent of earlier frontiersmen. They strongly resented Muir’s leadership, for he neither understood them nor the problems of their industry. Muir’s advent caused difficulty and disputes which were, on the whole, an “outright loss to the cause of unionism” in the Northwest woods. While some gains were registered, these were few, and far less than might have been made had Green given the lumberjacks only money and guidance and otherwise allowed them to erect their own union.

Nor did the situation vary in other basic industries. Lewis said: “Instead of leadership the AFL gave then (the mass-production workers) a number of chicken-livered business agents who knew nothing except collecting dues, issuing some charters and keeping peace and harmony. Their business agents feared any kind of upsurge as something ‘radical,’ or, of course, dangerous.”

Lewis felt he had been hoodwinked. Few enough industrial locals had been established by this halfhearted drive, he told the delegates, and they were “now dying like grass withering before the autumn sun.” “They seduced me with fair words,” he said of the AFL leaders at the 1935 convention. “Now ... having been seduced I am ready to rend my seducers limb from limb.”

He had his chance at the same convention. he tried a direct resolution for industrial unionism. it failed. Each of his allies then put forth resolutions thinly disguised but seeking the same end. But however adroitly he moved, the lumbering form of Big Bill Hutcheson slowly arose and blocked his path. Lewis threw the words of Shakespeare, biblical quotations, and a barrage of statistics at the implacable Hutcheson. Finally, when all else failed, he threw a bone-jarring right fist to the big carpenters jaw.

Hutcheson had silenced another of Lewis’s supporters with a “point of order.” As the delegates looked to President Green for the usual ruling in Hutcheson’s favor, Lewis leaped to his feet and roared at Hutcheson, “ This thing of raising points of order all the time ... is rather small potatoes. Hutcheson shot back, "I was raised on raised on small potatoes. That’s why I’m so small.” Lewis lumbered over to Hutcheson and told him at close range that his opposition was “pretty small stuff.” Hutcheson angrily replied, “We could have made you small and kept you off the Executive Council, you crazy bastard.’

At this point Lewis caught Hutcheson flush on the jaw and took a weaker right in return. Then, both men wildly clutching each other, they crashed through a table and down to the floor. With the delegates in an uproar, President Green pounded his gavel futilely as the leaders of the two largest and most powerful unions in the land rolled about on the floor, pummeling each other.

The blow that landed on Hutcheson’s jaw was delivered on cue and with the careful precision of a choreographer sending his prima ballerina on stage. Lewis told his biographer:

“Bill Hutcheson represented symbolically the kind of leadership in the American Federation of Labor that the workers of this country detested. it was Bill Hutcheson ... who successfully blocked every single move that was made in the direction of industrial unionism. All I will say is that i never walked an aisle so slowly and grimly as I did that day in the 1935 Convention.

At the end of that aisle stood Bill Hutcheson. Several well-chosen expletives were exchanged, a sharp scuffle ensued, and a new phase of labor history was inaugurated. John Frey said with a touch of nostalgia that this convention marked a definite turning point (and) that from now on our Federation of Labor will never be just what it was.” He could not have been more right. Twenty four days later eleven industrial unionists met in Lewis’s Washington office, and the Committee for Industrial Organization was born.

There is a vast historical irony in the fact that one of the most liberal governments the United States ever had, embarking on an anti-monopoly drive which had roots sunk deep in the tradition of American radicalism, should have chosen the Carpenters as its target. For the United Brotherhood was founded by a man schooled in the antimonopoly tradition. McGuire had participated in every political fad, from Greenback party to the Populist movement, which had ever taken an antimonopoly position. No American radical loathed the great monopolies more profoundly. And, but thirty-three years after his death, the one political administration most nearly committed to McGuire's general political goals chose his union for its first antimonopoly target.

Nothing points up as much as this attack upon the Carpenters how deep-rooted was the difference between McGuire and the men who deposed him. Their policies-- jurisdictional laissez faire, trade union alliances, craft industrialism -- all led to label unionism. And label unionism led to the very monopoly tactics which McGuire, as a traditional radical, had fought. History completed a circle when an administration which McGuire, if alive, would have given his complete support attacked the union to which he had dedicated his life. It is historically fitting that the target of the antimonopoly drive, William L. Hutcheson, entered the United Brotherhood the same year it cast out Peter J. McGuire.