Frank O'Hare with Eugene V. Debs, leading advocate of socialism. O'Hare's wife, Kate Richards O'Hare, became a well-known speaker for socialism in Missouri and the Southwest.

Original photo at library.pittstate.edu/ spcoll/ndxevdebs.html

Resistance to poor conditions and employers attempts to gain control over the workplace had been ongoing for a generation by 1900.

Workers in St. Louis also continued to debate the strategy and ideology of the the AFL, which was organized on a skilled craft basis, where the key organizing targets were those at the top of the working class job rung.

By 1900, local metal trades workers were among those in St. Louis pushing for an industrial and community-based strategy to effectively confront employer power.

In the years between the turn of the century and World War I, the St. Louis labor movement seemed poised to transcend the organizational limitations of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), to be more reflective of the entire working-class community, and to present a broad challenge to business at the community level.

AFL insignia

The ascendancy of the AFL, organized around craft-based unionism, was counterbalanced by networks of activists, many of them Socialists, who continued to agitate to reshape the AFL at the local level.

Some of these activists had experienced the tumult of the 1877 general strike, when workers had organized effectively, if momentarily, on a community basis.

Many activists also carried the perspective of the Knights of Labor into the AFL. Organized on an inclusive, community-wide basis, the Knights of Labor saw themselves as much an egalitarian citizen's reform effort as a workplace-based organization.

the symbol of the Knights of Labor

Systematic repression organized by employers associations spelled decline for the Knights of Labor and brought about the AFL, organized around the more limited goals of craft unionism, where unions strove to organize those with the most power and skill.

But the most influential unions over the next generation in the local St. Louis Central Trades and Labor Union (CTLU), the citywide central body of the AFL unions, were those that originated with the Knights of Labor and carried forward some of their ideals.

The German immigrant community provided the main base for radical politics and unionism. Socialists were very influential in many St. Louis trade unions, and some were leaders of the CTLU, advocating a form of industrial unionism within the AFL's craft-based structure.

One, the Brewery Workers Union (BWU), became the largest and strongest local union in St. Louis .

Its members and leaders included many Socialists, and it was the most influential local advocate of industrial unionism, that is, organizing all workers within the industry, not just the crafts. The use of the boycott to organize the brewery workers roiled the CIA and other employers organization. It was this working-class solidarity that they sought to crush with their own collective action.

Strong links between labor and radicals also advocated powerfully for inclusivity in an organizational apparatus founded on exclusivity.

The Federated Metal Trades Council of St. Louis and Vicinity (FMTC) represented another model, the attempt to bring together craft unions in order to set up shop committees to bargain with employers across crafts and to include the unskilled as well.

In 1900, the FMTC offices were not only union headquarters but also a center of activity for socialists and anarcho-syndicalists who debated strategies for achieving social justice. Workers entering there might just as well encounter a socialist meeting as a union meeting. At the time, the hopes of activists centered on creating a "cooperative commonwealth" that was strongy democratic, with workers controlling the workplace. Activists meeting there began encouraging a movement to organize less-skilled workers and to include them within the FMTC.

By 1900, shop committees composed of workers from the different trades were functioning in many St. Louis metal trades shops. These shop committees sought to address the limits of the craft basis of organization, to get united action among and across craft and skill divisions.

As these men (and they were almost all men, women were still a fairly negligible part of the metal trades workforce, and this radicalism was limited in respect to gender issues) gathered in this milieu, they sparked the idea of a community-based drive to contest the boundaries of the labor market.

It was recognition of the power of these sorts of local solidarities that launched the employers drive that was organized by the National Metal Trades Association, but acted out on a local level, to stymie these efforts.

In 1900, the NMTA sought to iron out a national agreement with a few trades, to end the St. Louis and other local disputes. But when St. Louis machinists refused to take lower pay along with a shortened workday, employers decided to use the strategy of taking on each group of militant workers one group at time, rather than allow uniform national agreements.

In 1900, the St. Louis metal trades workers won concessions from some employers, but were unable to get their shop committees recognized. Then, employers worked with some critical skilled trades unions in order to have a degree of labor peace during the period of the St. Louis World's Fair.

Afterward, they launched their open shop drive to eliminate the power of the unions and the shop committees. (see previous section) They won because employers at the local level united across trades in a variety of strategies, with the MTA and the CIA working together.

The machinists promised a fight and even threatened a general strike but reneged when it was evident that they were not strongly enough organized.

The diminished role of the workers' FMTC lent an advantage to the employers. The FMTC's radical goals had succumbed to the AFL crafts' success during the World's Fair honeymoon period.

The FMTC came increasingly into conflict with the national officers of craft unions, who compelled the locals to secure approval for strike votes, thereby preventing sympathy strikes based on local solidarities. This undermined the means to respond in kind to the locally-driven strategies of the NMTA.

Polarization between the FMTC leadership and the craft unions became more apparent by 1905, when the FMTC elected a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the radical rival to the AFL, as treasurer.

In reaction, local machinists (IAM)--the largest craft union--withdrew from the FMTC, and the FMTC soon withered away.

In 1907, machinists, shoe workers, and other workers who had experienced the CIA's assault countered the CIA campaign with a series of strikes.

For the metal industry, the IAM demanded the reestablishment of its wage scale and shop rules. Radicals sought to organize a general strike but were foiled by the trades rules. The machinists secured agreements at some companies, and others accepted the wage scale but refused to recognize the shop committees.

The key MTA firms held out successfully against the IAM drive, using spies, "gun squads," and imported scabs. Wagner stood firm as the bastion of the open shop

closer view of the banner in the photo

Victory in these battles enabled the leading NMTA and CIA firms to wield more control over the shop floor and to more effectively utilize the regional labor market.

Wagner warned that its policy "encourage[s] speed, and slow men are discharged at the option of the foremen."

Managers implemented payment systems of their choice, including "hourly rate, premium system, piece work, contract, or such other system as we may devise in each individual case."

Wagner's premium system encouraged speed by paying workers a low base rate and then half of any amount workers produced over the standard. De-skilling was coupled to a policy of hiring only workers from the "countryside between 16 and 22 years old" and avoiding hiring native St. Louisans, whom Wagner felt were too heavily influenced by local "radical" union culture.

Management proclaimed St. Louis "an excellent market for intelligent, green help from Arkansas , Tennessee , Oklahoma , Kansas , Iowa , Texas , Southern Illinois , as well as the more western states. They are trained readily, are subject to discipline, and [are] loyal Americans."

De-skilling also gave them access to a labor market of young women: "We consider girls superior to boys but inferior to men, and cheaper than either," Lord proclaimed.

This article gave advice about "methods established for [women's] discipline and protection. All are based on a common sense study of female psychology and are adapted for masculine control."

Women also had exclusive access to Wagner Electric's resort along the Meremac River.

Wagner touted its Employees Mutual Benefit Association, a sick and death benefit program established in 1910, as an alternative to unionism.

The company justified the "considerable expense" on the grounds that the programs attracted workers to the company, especially younger workers.

1917 punch press workers; Wagner managers thought that white painted machines would make work attractive to their new women workers. However, pay for women was as low the garment factories, which were known as sweatshops.

At Wagner, machinery could be moved to reveal a basketball court. (right)

Wagner considered its athletics programs a key asset in recruiting temporary young workers.

Wagner's welfare programs did little to reduce complaints about low pay (thirteen cents an hour base rate for women, twenty-two cents for men), speedup, and long hours (fifty-four-hour weeks).