Chapter 1 Photos

The Militant Minority in the St. Louis Electrical Industry and the Political Economy of Control, 1900-35

Chapter 2 Photos

A Vision of Unionism Takes Shape

Chapter 3 Photos

Human Rights over Property Rights: Forging Movement Unionism in District 8

Chapter 4 Photos

This 'Red' Gave them a Run for their money: Holding Ground, 1937-1940

Chapter 5 Photos

World War II and Civic Unionism

Chapter 6 Photos

"To Be Full Fledged Members of this Union": Contesting Anticommunism, 1945-1949

Conclusion

These photos are intended to enhance the reading of the book. Some of these were given to me by people who informed the book, others are those that are housed in archives I used. When I researched the book, I never expected to have an internet site, so in many cases, I didn't save the photos I looked at. I have made an effort to go back and get some of those materials I remembered, and especially appreciate the generosity of the UE Archives at University of Pittsburgh for allowing me to use so many of their photos. In a small # of cases, I am using photos to add to what is in the book, to re-insert comments that were taken out for page length, or to add to the human dimension. In the future, I intend to post excerpts of interviews as well.

While photos are powerful, they don't tell the whole story, either, and often, these photos in fact take away from the full story. For example, I have no photos of the nutpickers struggle, though I have sought some from a vast array of sources. Part of this is because of who was struggling: these worthy women were not thought critical enough to put into the pictorial record.

Below: St. Louis Bishop John Glennon's letter of support for the CIA. The CIA worked to gather community leaders to its fold.

The Catholic Church's opposition to socialism brought it into coalition with the CIA.

The Church's encyclical doctrines caused some clergy to become involved with workers' causes; to the top officials this also meant fighting radicals vigorously for the hearts and minds of workers. Many priests, such as Father Timothy Dempsey, were concerned with the means of diminishing class conflict, and this led them to mildly support strikes, as long as workers pledged to keep radicals at a distant.

By the second decade of the 20th century, management had gained more control over the urban and regional labor market, and 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.

World War I brought upheaval, and the struggle was focused on Wagner Electric, with the entire labor movement of southwest watching for the results. Tens of thousands of workers went on strike in St. Louis, the largest upheaval since the general strike of 1877.

Left: loyalty pledge Wagner workers were required to sign if they wanted to work at the plant during World War I. In Wagner management's view, dissent from the workplace wages and conditions was a sign of worker subversion of the war effort, and they blamed foreign elements for the dissent.

For close up version, click here

From: National Archives

The metal trades managers stood collectively against recognizing any union, and won the war-era battles, which presaged the 1919-1921 conflict that ended with a marked decline in the great hopes of the war period for a new form of "industrial democracy."

Lloyd Austin remembered "learning the ropes" at Emerson in the 1920s as a time of confused bitterness. "I remember learning about this stuff in high school, about the great American system, you know. Then, I went to work [at Emerson] and I started to see right away that what I had been told was a lot of bunk.. . . I knew something was wrong. But it wasn't until we started organizing [in the 1930s], when I met people like Bill Sentner and Bob Logsdon and Lou Kimmel . . . , that I could understand it, make sense of it. It was like a lot of bitterness, but nothing to do about it."

"Oh, it was a sweatshop, that's what we called it!" exclaimed Marie Strathman, an Emerson Electric worker who wound motor coils in the early 1930s.

“We had to suffer for them to make money,” Strathman added, describing women who came in before 7 a.m. well before starting time, to be able to make required output, and bandaged their entire hands to endure the work. Turnover among women was 100 percent during the year

Left: Weekly pay envelope for a woman who worked at Emerson in the early 1930s. The training period was especially penurious for the young women who tried to make the grade in the new motor winding operations.

St. Louis's community wage, managers explained, was part of the "special advantage" of St. Louis industry that allowed it to compete with the eastern companies. At least three times between 1933 and 1936, Emerson's managers, confronted with workers' wage demands, sent a "fact-finding" committee from the Board of Representatives (company union) to research the wage rates of other electrical companies in the area. These groups of workers reported their findings and confirmed the company's claims--that the "policy of the company is to pay the going wage in the community."

In January 1931, the Unemployed Council held the first sit-down of the 1930s in St. Louis . It began with a huge march, one contingent coming from the south and one from the north sections of the city, the symbolic unification of the two historic divisions and racial boundaries of the citizenry. By the time they came to city hall, their ranks had grown to five thousand. They demanded ten million dollars in aid to the unemployed, reduction of relief administrators' salaries, and taxing corporations and the wealthy for relief funds.

A delegation of the crowd entered city hall and refused to leave until their demands were heard and acted upon by the Board of Aldermen. But police clubs and tear gas prevailed in a bloody melee. The repression these activists met, including repeated long-term jailings for a substantial number, prevented a high level of activity; it also provoked in the group arguments about civil liberties, citizenship, and constitutional rights. Already by 1932 CP activists were carrying the American flag as well as the red flag of revolution in their demonstrations.

Through these experiences, activists revived forms of protests that are usually associated with labor activism in the later part of the decade.

January 1931 unemployed demonstration outside St. Louis city Hall, while workers occupy the chambers, demanding food and other relief for the unemployed

The painting illustrates an actual march to City Hall. The sign advocated support for HR 7598, the Workers Insurance Act, sponsored by Sen. Lundeen, a strong unemployment insurance bill then before Congress. The Unemployed Councils marches and protests got the St. Louis Board of Alderman to pass a resolution favoring the Lundeen bill over other more conservative bills. The Lundeen bill called for redistributive policy for social security, and included provisions for maternity leave and other progressive programs that were replaced by the more conservative Social Security Act of 1935, which was actually based on regressive form of taxation.

Jones captured some of the hallmarks of the marches in St. Louis after 1933: these tended to be integrated group of workers. This group would also establish a civil rights desegregation campaign in the 1930s.

Unemployed Workers occupy city hall, April 1936, to protest relief cut-offs. Integrated groups of workers fought to keep the city from cutting families from needed assistance. The goal of the American Workers Union, which organized the sit-in, was to unite unemployed and employed workers in order to keep the unemployed from use as a source of strikebreakers. Occupying relief stations and other seats of power had become a well-honed practice, and connected to the struggle for rights for the jobless. Some of the same people were the core community support for the CIO movement.

Workers hosted sit-ins in relief offices on a regular basis. In April 1936, for instance, a racially integrated group of women and men, mostly members of the AWU, took over the city's Aldermanic Chambers, refusing to leave until the city agreed to withdraw the threat to cut off relief to fifteen thousand families.

These community and workplace struggles created alternative networks among workers outside the AFL. During 1935 and through 1936, the AWU continued to play a key role in raising consciousness of the need to unite the unemployed and the employed as well as work and community issues. Thus, the Left's trade union approach was distinguished from the AFL's in the period before the CIO, not just by industrial versus craft unionism per se but also by the effective linkage of workers' struggle with community-based mobilizations.

The possibilities raised by these connections affected the aspirations of radical activists such as Sentner. The CP's focus on the black working class had helped to revive radical traditions and models for the labor movement, a vision of unionism that propelled Sentner into a lifetime of activism, where he sought to realize democratic, inclusive possibilities in the labor movement. That the CP was also an organization based on authoritarian and hierarchical principles antithetical to democratic ideals was a paradox that Sentner would never fully confront or resolve. But there is little doubt that to Sentner, the party would be an instrument to bring about a democratic, socialist future. "Every bone in his body was about democracy," avers Toni Sentner. "He lived and breathed the idea that the more democracy, the more power for workers. That was what socialism meant to him.

The community style of organizing honed in the unemployed movement was brought to bear in the CIO movement, starting with the Emerson Electric sit-down strike.

Above and below: Workers and community supporters march in front of the occupied Emerson plant, April 1937

photo is from the UE Archives. This is a xerox copy. A better photo version will be posted in the future.

The shop steward system established by District 8 workers was the heart of the democratic shop floor and community power. This shop steward meeting took place in 1945, in Local 810, the local of small shops in St. Louis.

Maude Mackle (standing) of Mines Equipment Company. discusses the proper listing fo the job classifications while Fin Sec W. Rap, Pres Clarence Bingaman and Financial Officer Vic Pasche (backs to camera) take notes. Others shown are T. Berend, V. Cole, N. Cole, I Scheidel, Ray Hutchinson, E. Hoollowell, L. Philips, R. Strawbrdige, Mary Jones, E. Watson, O. Kellar, Ludie Watson, Jas Watson, M. Scherer, Thomas Roberst., E. Monia , F. Glickert, O. Lillge.

Local 810 made significant progress on access to jobs for African-Americans by 1948, though it took years of education and agitation to make that full union policy.

Above: mass union meeting held at the Newton, Iowa Square, May 6, 1938. It was the community support for the union that led Sentner to suggest that it could be the base for advancing the CIO in the District and nation, to show a fighting spirit in the face of a defeatism and rollback campaign by employers.

Left: Maytag worker and UE Local 1116 leader Hollis Hall speaking at the meeting. Hall's role in the lockout and strike would eventually lead to a charge of "criminal syndicalism" against him .

Photos: National Archives

Deciding to return to work but not accept the contract, the workers issued a resolution:

"We only have our labor to offer to the Maytag Company at a fair price. Our wives, our homes, our children and the City of Newton depend upon our wages. We have no reserves--we cannot gamble with our wages against stock dividends. We stand firmly for the princip[le] that human rights take priority over property rights." The union emphasized that they were "returning to work under the compulsion of military force."

click here for detail: Maytag_1938_line.htm

The next morning, union members marched single file into the plant. They were surrounded by armored cars and guards stretched for two blocks around the plant gate; guardsmen on rooftops were armed with bayoneted rifles, tommy submachine guns, tear gas weapons, and automatic pistols.

The night before, ten rounds of ammunition were distributed to each guardsmen, and the union hall was prohibited from having more than two people in it at a time

The worker who was shot by a plant guard was held, while the guard was not.

Evansville Courier headline, March 17, 1939

Servel's President, Louis Ruthenberg emerged as the Midwest spearhead to keep unionism at bay. When the District headed a campaign in Evansville, Servel was it's target, but District 8's first campaign was a disaster, due to the lack of human rights in Evansville for workers. The Communist issue became the foil for their campaign

Evansville's Judge Spencer ordered the police to jail Sentner, Logsdon, and Meloan, without filing charges.

The courts, police, media local American Legion, even the Fire Department were brought into a campaign that resulted in destroying the momentum of the strike, with Bender directing the operations. The city even ordered the end to leaflet distribution by the union.

Most unionists refused to picket "because of the terrific amount of terror and intimidation." According to Logsdon, even some of the most militant shop floor activists "lit out like scared rabbits," and many could not be persuaded to picket.

Emerson Electric was the most transformed by the war, and set the course for St. Louis to be a major defense center for the rest of the 20th century. This Fortune article had originated as a vanity piece orchestrated by Symington, in order to earn him a better reputation among the Dillon Read financial military crowd who ran the government's war production agencies. Instead, Sentner's revelations about his Communist party membership became a major focus of the article and clearly annoyed Symington.

It is possible that Sentner's decision to tell the Fortune reporter about his membership in the CP was also a signal that Sentner was not ready to concede fundamental principles of labor rightsfor a degree of respectability or legitimacy. While Symington claimed that he had created the formula for labor's incorporation into managerial system, his private correspondence with the local revealed that workers' quest for power had no boundaries. Symington feared the loss of managerial power within a workers' movement that put rank-and-file concerns at the forefront. Instead, he wanted Sentner and the union to control workers' radicalism.

A children's picket line, 1946

The signs indicate that the children's future and health are tied to the goals of the union. "I am no cry baby, but my daddy got to have a raise."

One picture with milk reads "I want to drink lots of it, but mommy needs a raise to afford it."

Such scenes were common in strike struggles, building on the 1930s definition of the union as a civic organization

Gearing up for another union election at Servel in Evansville in 1946, the local focused on the large number of returning veterans (one-third of the workforce by 1946). It also set up special committees for the 350 women and 150 black workers in the plant.

The local sought to undermine fear and influence that had been so effective for Servel in 1939. As testimony to their evangelical spirit and effort to bring a community presence, the UE erected its revival tent across the street from the Servel plant. Winning the Servel plant had been a 10 year battle won through community unionism.

The effects of victories at Servel as well as local leaders commitment to progressive leadership under Sentner and Symington stymied the internal efforts to dislodge radical leadership

The dawn of the Cold War lent momentum to an internal campaign against Sentner. Chastened by the UE District 8 delegates who vowed that vouched for the democratic governance of the UE and vowed that Sentner did not control the UE on behalf of the CP as the anticommunists charged, this anti-Sentner faction sought and received support from outside the UE to continue their campaign.

Left: Father Leo Brown lent critical assistance, and church connections created bridges with employers, against the UE.

James Click, leader of the movement, relied on St. Louis University's Father Leo Brown, who by then "was a friend of mine," to arrange a meeting for him in New York with around six others. Click, who described himself as someone "without a religion," recognized the value of the anticommunist stance of the Catholic Church for his caucus. "The Catholic Church was pretty much involved. In all fairness, that's one of the reasons I went to Brown, other than being a friend. I also knew he had to have connections in other places who were probably interested in doing it, and he did."

Through these networks, Click's faction linked up with explicitly antilabor business forces. They connected through networks built in an earlier era and but now reinforced by ties to the FBI.

As the Cold War scare of 1948 elevated fear of domestic communism to new heights, workers struggles against corporate power in District 8 were painted as a base for Soviet terror in the U.S.

This cordone of state police were brought in under the heightened charges that the workers went on strike because of Communist influence, but in reality, the local police force could not be trusted by the corporations of Evansville.

Having lost in the vote contests, the anti-Left forces were preparing for an alternative method of taking power.

In October 1949 the CIO expelled eleven unions that were charged with being "Communist-dominated" and set up rival unions in their place.

The International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE) was now the CIO-affiliated union, backed by an enormous amount of money and support from the national CIO federation.

Above: Stuart Symington, now Secretary of Air, and President Truman appeal to Wagner workers to eliminate the UE as the bargaining agent, to replace it with the "legitimate" union sanctioned by the CIO and the President.

In this context, the argument that workers who remained allied with the Left would endanger their economic livelihood became extraordinarily powerful.

“Red meat on the table or red negotiators!!” one leaflet shouted. Now workers would have to choose between remaining in an ostracized union or a union sanctioned and supported by the CIO and the government.

The Left had emphasized the need for joint action with other CIO unions. Now it would have to persuade workers otherwise.

Hershel Walker years later was certain of the key factor in the defeat of the UE related to workers' jobs, which was “impossible” to counter.

Wagner Electric, now the largest employer of the St. Louis independents, had come to rely on defense work in the postwar, and when the company and the CIO showed workers evidence that the government would deny defense industry subcontracts if they did not vote for the IUE, it was too powerful to counter

One notable example took place in a struggle almost completely vanquished from the official memories of St. Louis civil rights struggles, and led by Wagner Electric worker and Communist Party (CP) member Hershel Walker, one of the original nutpickers' union supporters, under the aegis of the National Negro Labor Council. '

The campaign demanded that Sears Roebuck retail stores hire African American women as sales clerks. Their struggle was relentless, lasting six days a week for nine long months, and the core group included a number of white and black workers from the electrical plants.

Despite support from the black shoppers, official civil rights organizations in the city refused to ally, though the black Ministerial Alliance and the mayor of Kinloch did openly support the effort.

Their tenacity, despite harassment by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and St. Louis police Red Squad officials, paid off when Sears, embarrassed of the bad publicity as well as FBI and police surveillance in front to their stores, finally agreed to the demands.

Another example took place in Louisville, Kentucky, about 70 miles from District 8's Tell City local, where workers at International Harvester organized under the Farm Equipment Workers (FE) in 1947. District 8 gave steady assistance and advice to the local, especially in constructing a community campaign that continued before and after the FE merged with the UE in 1952. That campaign developed into a full-fledged effort for job rights in the plant and civil rights in Louisville .

Sentner urged FE Local 236 and two other Left locals in Louisville to hire Carl and Anne Braden in 1948 as joint editors for their labor paper. This experience launched the Bradens on a path that led to influence in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, especially among youth. (In his eloquent 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King cited Anne Braden as one of the cadre of white supporters who recognized the need for strong resistance strategies to racial oppression.)

The Sentners and Bradens became close friends as they faced prosecutions based on charges of subversion.

The critical alliance of labor with military Keynesianism of the Democratic Party and the Cold War agenda facilitated mainstream unionists' acceptance of capitalist disinvestments in this period.

Defense contracts from the Cold War military buildup, Korean War and Vietnam War spending kept many Emerson workers employed even as the company's commercial business left the area, a direct subsidy that took the political heat off the disinvestment campaigns, as was obvious by Emerson's announcement.

The subsidy was facilitated by Stuart Symington, whose political clout as Air Force Secretary and then as senator kept contracts coming to Emerson and other St. Louis area companies as he sounded (false) alarms about the "Soviet advantage" and advocated "preventive war" with the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, similar decentralization strategies linked to defense spending took hold in Evansville , Indiana , where for instance Servel garnered U.S. Air Force contracts, but gradually transferred its refrigeration line, influenced by Sears' agenda.

The crushing of the Left in the labor movement mattered greatly in the lack of clear understanding and strategy toward capitalist disinvestments.

There was no counterstrategy on the part of labor, and really very little interest in organizing around the power struggle that this represented, from the mainstream labor movement..

By the time the labor movement started to confront this seriously in the 1980s, a full scale “New Right” movement had constructed a cultural politics that replaced the agenda of economic power struggles.

This was a remarkably effective politics of Christian moralism, patriotic nationalism and only slightly veiled racism that trumped the politics of class.

Interestingly, that politics owed a debt to Servel's Louis Ruthenberg, a board member of the John Birch Society, the organization that helped give birth to the New Right. The society constructed a popular conservatism that denounced liberal reforms as a masquerade of elite subversion by Communists that needed to be countered by Christian Americanism. Much of their literature seemed lifted from Servel's playbook against District 8 from 1946-1955.

It is well to consider that the antiunion NMTA cohorts such as St. Louis independents, Ruthenberg, in conjunction with operators like Sears, networking with other NMTA firms had constituted the front lines of a battle to check labor's power.

It is well to keep in mind that their strategies were an updated repackaging of those invented by the Citizens' Industrial Association at the turn of the century, the countersubversive community-based strategies to take on workers one at a time.