Increasing Violence by W. W. P.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 11, 1912

Increasing Violence

By W. W. P.

ONE who has read the history of the French Revolution can hardly repress a shudder as he recalls the fateful year 1793, with its reign of terror. It was a fearful outbreak of the worst passions of human nature against the established organizations, both in religion and in government.

To see upon the cover page of a leading American journal (the Outlook, Feb. 17, 1912) the title “Terrorism in America,” in large letters, as one of the features of that issue, awakens serious reflections, and suggests that the history of the cataclysm in France may repeat itself in this country. The article in question deals with the extensive use of violence in the effort of organized labor to secure its demands. The first paragraphs run thus:—

Why do trade-unions resort to violence, bloodshed, and destruction of property to win strikes?

What hardens the heart of the union man when he sees non-union workers assaulted, maimed, and even done to death?

Tailors are commonly supposed to be mild-mannered, inoffensive people of peaceable dispositions. Yet during the strike of the Chicago garment-workers the “entertainment committees” of the union habitually forced the non-union tailors to quit work by snapping the bones of their needle fingers with a short, sharp twist. In San Francisco non-union teamsters had their wrists broken by blows delivered with steel bars. In Coalinga, Cal., two men were beaten to death in a crowd of striking metal-workers. On State Street, in Chicago, a non-union teamster was dragged from his seat and trampled to death. Three striking machinists in Los Angeles, seated in an automobile, followed a strike breaker when he boarded a car, attacked him with gas-pipes, and pounded him into a pulp. The victim did not leave the hospital for six months.

The writer next deals with specific instances of violence and the record of different organizations:—

Rioting, systematic violence, the maiming and killing of men, the cutting of the harness, the smashing of vehicles,—these things have been part of nearly every teamsters’ strike. One of the very worst of these battles occurred in Chicago when the union teamsters were called out to assist fifteen discharged garment-workers to regain their positions. The strike wrecked the union of the teamsters after it had run its bloody course. . . .

The International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron-Workers was organized in 1896. Its career was turbulent. Strikes, riots, and assaults marked its course. . . .

Six years ago there was a change in the management of the Iron-Workers’ Association. J. J. McNamara, considered a “resourceful man” by the members, was placed in nearly autocratic charge of the association’s destiny. Soon after his accession to power the long series of dynamite explosions began. Dynamite seemed to answer the purpose better than assaults upon non-union men. . . .

Though the National Erectors’ Association was formed to hold the weaker members in line and oppose the union’s explosive spread, though firms employing non-union labor were promised compensation for losses that might be inflicted by dynamite, the Iron-Workers’ Association under McNamara forged ahead. During the last four years, while systematic dynamiting was extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the organization grew as it had never grown before. In this period its influence increased until nearly seventy-five per cent of the craftsmen employed in the erection of steel structures became members of the union.

In discussing the responsibility of the heads of these organizations for educating the rank and file to condone the crimes perpetrated in their behalf, this conclusion is reached:—

In this condition, in forcing large bodies of men, by appealing to their self-interest, to become silent, passive partners in crimes that seem to benefit them, lies the greatest guilt, the heaviest responsibility, of those union leaders who believed that illegal means were justified by the end to be attained. By appealing to the self-interest of untutored men the lawless leaders hardened the moral fiber of their adherents, calloused their consciences, surrounded criminal acts with the halo of pseudo-justification.

Reference is also made to the contest between employers and employees in the effort to have an open or a closed shop:—

Black hatred is engendered by the relentless, unceasing struggle to unionize the industries. The atmosphere of shops, factories, labor headquarters, and employers’ offices is charged with it. Terrorism and murder are growing out of it. It forebodes evil unless the third party to the dispute, the hitherto indifferent public, which always pays the cost of every feud, steps in and asserts its rights.

In the closing paragraphs of the article some hope is held out that a better condition of things may be secured by proper and prompt action on the part of the commonwealth:—

Labor is in a mood to clean house, according to the observation of the writer.

Disgust, suspicion of the fanatical leaders’ and organs’ motives, a longing for methods better than criminal violence, have grown up in the minds of the perplexed union workers since the McNamara confession. It depends upon the employers and the public whether this mood shall be translated into action or pass away unheeded.

The paragraphs that we have quoted from this article, which occupies eight pages of the Outlook, are only an index of the subjects discussed, and fail to convey the same deep impression which is created by reading the entire article. Taken as a whole, it constitutes a most convincing testimony as to the spirit of the times, and contains much food for serious thought. Surely he can not be considered an extremist who declares that the spirit of violence is abroad in the land, and who regards this as one of the signs of the times.

W. W. P.