strikebreaker

The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America

by John Fabian Witt  · 14 Oct 2025  · 735pp  · 279,360 words

the Russian ambassador, Theodore Roosevelt and Samuel Gompers nearly came to blows when Gompers blamed the events in East St. Louis on employers and Black strikebreakers. The former president accused the labor leader of offering excuses “for the murder of women and children in our own country” and condemned the “appalling

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impoverishing wages for the unskilled.42 Baldwin did not make it to the strike’s bitter conclusion. Steel company officials soon suspected that the unusual strikebreaker was not who he said he was. Perhaps it was the clumsy “covert surveillance” he tried to perform while (as he later remembered) “pretending to

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desolate winter on $6 a week in union-provided strike relief, less than half a miner’s wages.17 Tensions between strikers, mine guards, and strikebreaking miners produced violence from the very start of the strike, especially at the largest and most important tent city at a railroad junction called Ludlow

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. Miners gathered at the Ludlow junction to watch would-be strikebreakers pass toward the CF&I mines and discourage them from doing so. Rumors abounded that the union was arming for battle. For its part, CF

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security detachments soon broke out. Within a month of the strike’s beginning, gunfire from recurrent battles had killed more than two dozen, including strikers, strikebreakers, guards, and bystanders. Violence abated over the winter when the state’s governor called in the Colorado National Guard to keep the peace. But fighting

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it. With few further casualties of their own, the strikers destroyed six mines, smashed company towns, and killed more than thirty company guards, militiamen, and strikebreakers. Only when President Wilson ordered federal troops into southern Colorado did the roaring guns of what locals would come to call the Ten Days War

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of 1896, miners torched the boss’s mine. In 1899, strikers in Idaho dynamited an ore mill employing scab labor and wrecked a train carrying strikebreakers, leading Governor Steunenberg to call on President McKinley to send federal troops. Martial law in the state led to the arrests of 1,200 striking

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. A few years later Haywood shot a deputy three times while defending himself in a Denver brawl. Another Western Federation officer shot and killed two strikebreakers and was sentenced to life in prison. Dozens of deaths arose out of the infamous conflict known as the “Labor Wars” in Colorado in 1903

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and 1904, including sixteen strikebreakers who died when the cage in which they were riding mysteriously fell in a deep mining shaft. A few months later, Western Federation strikers dynamited

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a train depot near Cripple Creek, which mine operators had been using to bring in nonunion labor. Thirteen strikebreakers died in an explosion that wrecked the station house.26 Coal-mine operators and western state authorities deployed ferocious violence, too. As the miners saw

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would embolden any and all to join. Low dues would encourage even the lowest on the economic scale—those most likely to be hired as strikebreakers—to become members. The IWW, moreover, organized workers by industry rather than by craft. Mine workers, or brewery workers, or railroad workers, joined together with

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workers went out on strike in Colorado City in early 1903, for example, sheriffs’ deputies patrolled the town alongside WFM pickets to keep out the strikebreakers. Small populations in places like Colorado City reduced the availability of surplus labor. Single roads in and out of town allowed picket lines to keep

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sheriff, and a district attorney. In Paterson, New Jersey, where the IWW led a strike that gained national attention, union-side vandals stoned dozens of strikebreakers’ homes. Bombs exploded near nonunion laborers’ residences. “I don’t say violence should not be used,” Flynn responded in a deliberately obscure circumlocution. Her view

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. John was quick to add that violence was often not a smart tactic. But under questioning he qualified the point by agreeing that fending off strikebreaking laborers was “certainly” an occasion in which such violence would be warranted. As everyone at the commission understood, such battles between strikers and their would

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provision of labor at a “quality and speed proportional to the payment offered by the employer.” Sabotage was the refusal of train engineers to deliver strikebreakers and soldiers to a struck mill or mine. It was the adulteration of delicate textiles like silk. It was the covert slipping of a machine

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, “homes were entered” and “scabs dragged from their beds and beaten.” A “secret night committee” of strikers “prowled after dark, spreading alarm” among would-be strikebreakers. The streets outside contested shops soon became sites of pitched battles between strikers, the police, and company security. Strikers shot a replacement worker and killed

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nation’s railroads to dwindle. At the same time, thousands of Black workers excluded from unions stood ready to serve as a reserve army of strikebreaking labor, often self-consciously pursuing the only path available to them for gaining industrial employment. Employers appealed to Black replacement workers to crush postwar strikes

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the Auto-Lite gates carrying the Unemployed League’s rattlesnake banners bearing the slogan of the American Revolution: “Don’t Tread on Me.” No longer strikebreakers, the jobless had become allies on the picket lines, raising the strike action (one observer noted) “to a level of mass picketing and militancy far

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the plant. Sherriff’s deputies threw tear gas bombs into the crowd, which promptly tossed them back. Fusillades of bolts and iron bars from the strikebreakers inside the plant alternated with volleys of bricks from the crowds in the streets. Strikers smashed factory windows and lit fires. A thousand men from

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picket line, the striker was in a tactically disadvantageous position: an unfamiliar setting exposed to the public gaze and forced to fend off scabs and strikebreakers. Picket lines practically invited the use of force, which in turn set off a cycle of employer reprisals and state repression. On the line, as

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Industrial Relations Created by the Act of August 23, 1912 (Government Printing Office, 1916), at 2:1445–62. 55. “Most assuredly”: Ibid., 2:1571. 56. strikebreaking laborers: Ibid. 57. “old abolitionists”: Final Report, 5:4239. “that kind of violence”: Ibid., 11:10592. 58. Carlo Tresca: Nunzio Pernicone, Carlo Tresca: Portrait of

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, 378, 382–86, 388–90 on railroads, 5, 327, 339–40, 383, 451, 513–15, 518–26, 519, 673n38 sharecroppers, see sharecropping and peonage as strikebreakers, 35, 340, 344, 353 wages of, 68, 182, 193, 343, 344 Blankenhorn, Heber, 49–50, 72, 73, 667n40 Bloor, Ella Reeve, 293–95, 396 Bly

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, 14, 58, 59, 68–73, 69, 71, 74, 75, 77–79, 82, 83, 107, 109, 112, 114, 192, 201, 229, 272, 306, 314, 364, 667n40 strikebreakers and scabs in, 35, 340, 344, 353, 490, 492, 513 textile worker, 228, 228, 252, 274, 297, 299, 311–14, 313, 330, 358, 361–63

Hard Landing

by Thomas Petzinger and Thomas Petzinger Jr.  · 1 Jan 1995  · 726pp  · 210,048 words

do your job at half the price.’ ” In the end, as they watched the company training every secretary in corporate headquarters to act as a strikebreaker, flight attendants making $30,000 a year decided that they would stay on the job and allow American to hire future flight attendants at about

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another wage concession, although a temporary one—a 14 percent wage deferral. All Eastern needed to fly through a machinists’ strike was a corps of strikebreaking mechanics. “We can kill these guys!” Borman’s people told each other. The machinists’ membership meanwhile remained squarely behind Bryan. When Borman appealed directly to

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. His answer, to Borman’s astonishment, was no. “We’re not going to waive the covenants,” Butcher said flatly. He was a banker, not a strikebreaker. Seldom in his life had Borman been so depressed. He knew that caving in to the machinists would devastate his credibility, not only with them

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in a number of cases they were put to work before they had received the requisite training in Continental’s aircraft. Anonymous callers harassed the strikebreakers at home and on the road, particularly at night, when they were trying to sleep between flights. Bakes instructed scabs to register in hotel rooms

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it could reverse the abrogation of its contracts, and in the corridors of Houston Intercontinental Airport, where striking pilots paraded with placards trying to discourage strikebreakers from flying. The picketing pilots received extensive written instructions for use in conversations with scab pilots: “Use Frank’s past lies against him.… Ask what

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. In their frustration some pilots adopted goon tactics. The putrefied head of an elk was thrown through the picture window at the home of one strikebreaker. A firebomb was later pitched at the home of a scab pilot in Boulder, Colorado. A Continental pilot was arrested outside a Continental office in

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all or even most of his pilots to stick by him. The cornerstone of his strategy to fly through a strike involved a corps of strikebreaking pilots, some 570 strong, who were now in Denver being trained in United’s operations, aircraft, and procedure. They would keep the airline aloft at

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instantly. Each of those intended scabs had to be convinced not to perform the job for which he had been hired. United was lodging the strikebreakers at two hotels near the company’s training center in Denver, where they had plenty of time on their hands. An ALPA leader named Jamie

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element, more discreet, in the campaign to keep the newly hired pilots from crossing. Some of the pilots who had been hired to train the strikebreakers were themselves on strike—at Continental Airlines. From the outside it appeared a case of union hypocrisy, strikers training

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strikebreakers. But Continental strikers were acting as double agents, a kind of fifth column within United. Some, when they weren’t conducting sessions on flap settings

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were picketing and the planes were grounded. Twenty-four-hour security went up around the Ferris home in the northern Chicago suburb of Northbrook. The strikebreaking pilots—what few there were—were horribly harassed. Some of their wives received threatening calls. Some of the working pilots found feces in their flight

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would get “super seniority,” jumping ahead of those who had struck. In an equally insulting move the union demanded job protection for the nearly 570 strikebreakers who had snubbed the company that hired them. For another three weeks the strike raged on, driving more passengers from the company, deepening further, if

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success solely to the benefits of bankruptcy. Continental was an on-time airline with good service and a crop of eager and compliant young workers, strikebreakers all. The traumas had been numerous. The pilots’ union was maintaining its pathetic strike against Continental, as if a strike would reverse the rulings of

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workers for their part were free to walk off the job. In doing so, however, they faced the risk that management would replace them with strikebreakers to keep the planes aloft. There was a certain historical beauty in the fact that the first contract expiring at Eastern under the Lorenzo-Bakes

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after all—facilitated by Chapter 11. By selling South America at the right price, Lorenzo could pay off Eastern’s creditors, recruit a cadre of strikebreaking pilots, and focus Eastern’s resources on Atlanta, fighting a one-front war against Delta. Lorenzo was so confident of the plan that he dispatched

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1/29/94 interview. 100. Willard C. Butcher: Ibid. Borman also discussed the meeting in Deposition of Frank Borman, Apr. 26, 1988. 101. not a strikebreaker: Borman 1/29/94 interview. Butcher denies making any inflammatory remarks but does not dispute the gist of Borman’s account. 102. ballots recounted: Smaby

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. Byrne, WSJ, May 20, 1985; “Pilots Go on Strike at United,” by James Warren and Carol Jouzaitis, Chicago Tribune, May 17, 1985. 71. lodging the strikebreakers: ALPA’s countertraining operation in Denver was described in the Babbitt 8/26/94 interview and the Higgins 6/8/94 interview. 72. “nuclear reactor

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20, 1985. 76. 30 management pilots: Ibid. 77. Twenty-four-hour security: Ferris 5/27/93 interview. Ferris also described the acts of intimidation against strikebreakers. 78. “I am the chairman”: Quoted in “ ‘Friendly Skies’ Now Cloudy,” by Carol Jouzaitis and Gary Washburn, Chicago Tribune, June 23, 1985. 79. “back to

A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919

by Claire Hartfield  · 1 Jan 2017  · 152pp  · 40,733 words

for delivery to Swift & Company. With his workers on strike, Swift was preparing to bring in outsiders to take their place and to provide the strikebreakers with temporary sleeping quarters inside the Stock Yard. This tactic was commonly used by industrialists to combat strikes and was well-known among laborers. Out

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. A crowd that included many children during the 1904 Union Stock Yard strike. The rocks on the ground might have been used later against the strikebreakers. Strikers idled in bars around the Yard, staring out the window at the steady stream of men and women the packers were bringing in. It

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newly arrived immigrants. Most visible, and most upsetting to the strikers, were the groups of blacks up from the South. The stories of the black strikebreakers died with the men who lived them, never recorded for future generations. But their decision to answer the packers’ call might have been based on

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in the sky when we die?” Cayton was clear: “I’d break a strike to get a decent job.” As trainload after trainload of black strikebreakers from the South rolled into the Stock Yard, they were met with violent anger. At regular intervals along the way, white strikers and their families

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stood along the train route and heaved barrages of stones and bricks. The strikers were consumed with hatred—not limited to strikebreakers but directed at blacks as a race. Strikebreakers were safe inside the Yard, but those who journeyed beyond the Great Gate at day’s end walked into danger. Mobs

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for attack, usually launching a hail of stones followed by a melee of fists and kicks. White strikebreakers were sometimes attacked, but blacks were the focus of the most vicious fury. Three black strikebreakers watching a baseball game in a vacant lot caught the attention of a Packingtown mob and were quickly

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her wedding dress in the Polish tradition was reported to have regifted it to the strikers’ relief fund. Stories like this were everywhere. Police escorted strikebreakers to the packinghouses during the strike. Still, as the strike wore on, food and money were running out. Some days more than six hundred families

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. Another family with eight children was reduced to living on crusts of bread for nearly a week. Packinghouse owners provided a male escort for women strikebreakers. As Labor Day rolled around, the strikers’ prospects looked dim. In the end, though the rank and file wanted to keep on fighting, union leader

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, the pre-strike configurations settled back into place. Even in defeat, the immigrants regained their dominance over laboring positions in the Stock Yard, and black strikebreakers returned to the South. Before long, however, blacks would be back. This time, it would be to stay. PART THREE UP FROM THE SOUTH The

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do big things. Like Barnett, he first looked to practice law, but as he saw the waiters lose their struggle for equal pay and the strikebreakers being used and discarded by Swift, Abbott turned to the power of the press to organize blacks to action. In 1905, Abbott scrounged together twenty

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a fever pitch. In the month of May alone, unions across the nation battled with employers in 413 strikes and lockouts. The owners’ access to strikebreakers was knocking the unions’ teeth out. Despite their victory at the polls, blacks continued to lose jobs to returning white veterans. The black work force

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wary of being manipulated by these same packers. The Defender called them out: “Capital has not played square with us; it has used us as strikebreakers, then when the calm came turned us adrift.” Union leaders continued to press for unity, but they were talking against a tide of hate and

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and six hundred black nonunion men marched in to take their places. White packinghouse workers in Chicago felt a bond with the Argo immigrants. The strikebreakers at Argo confirmed in the immigrants’ minds that nothing had changed, that blacks could not be trusted. On Friday, July 18, ten thousand packinghouse workers

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in, 60, 107–108; property owners’ protective associations in, 109; rooming houses in, 107; schools in, 62–63, 112–113; streetcars in, 60–61, 100; strikebreakers in, 69–70, 73, 74; Thompson, “Big Bill” and, 115; tuberculosis as problem in, 108; women in, 111 Black Hand Society (Jewish gang), 57 Black

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E., 122 Patriotism, 79, 82 Police: black, 62, 63; in Black Belt, 113–114; in Chicago race riot, 145–146, 149, 150, 153–154, 157; strikebreakers and, 72, 73 Private security guards, 148–149 Property owners’ property associations, 109 Pryor, Edward, 81 Public transportation workers, strike by, 148, 154–155 Q

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Street “Stroll,” 64 Stauber, George, 140, 141, 163 Steam locomotives, 36 Stockyards Aid Society, 72 Stockyards Labor Council, 121, 122–123 Streetcars, 60–61, 100 Strikebreakers, 69–75 Strikers, 31, 71–75, 148, 154–155 Stuart, Louise, 8 Sweitzer, Robert, 131, 132 Swift, Gustavus Franklin, 41–45, 42, 48, 67–68

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, 132; morning “shapeup” at, 46–47; need for workers in, 84; 1904 strike against, 69–74, 125; opening of, 39, 41; pecking order in, 104; strikebreakers and, 69–73; unskilled immigrants in, 35, 45–47; women in, 68, 84; working conditions in, 47–49, 48 United States Employment Service, 128 Urban

The Enemy Within

by Seumas Milne  · 1 Dec 1994  · 497pp  · 161,742 words

’ – but would nevertheless have surely been won if only the NUM leadership had called a national ballot or strikers had not fought running battles with strikebreakers and the police. It was the same story at the time of the twenty-fifth anniversary. From Thatcher’s close ally Norman Tebbit, who recalled

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domestic threat to state security in modern times. And they showed themselves prepared to encourage any and every method available – from the secret financing of strikebreakers to mass electronic surveillance, from the manipulation of agents provocateurs to attempts to ‘fit up’ miners’ officials – in order to undermine or discredit the union

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had ordered the seizure of the NUM’s assets. The same morning, the Sunday Times – closest of all the Tory newspapers to the government’s strikebreaking strategists – had run an exclusive front-page exposé, recounting in extraordinary detail Windsor’s furtive trip to the Libyan capital a week before in the

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miners’ leader go to Tripoli to ‘explain the NUM’s position’?7 Scargill refused, saying if Libya wanted to help British miners, it should suspend strikebreaking sales of oil to the United Kingdom. But when Ibrahim suggested Windsor as a substitute, the NUM chief executive officer ‘declared himself more than willing

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of the more clandestine operations – during the strike in South Wales. Looking back, he cites the killing of the taxi driver, who had been taking strikebreakers to work, in early 1985 as a key factor in his decision to push for an end to the dispute. Howells remembers running to the

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order in Great Britain’. Social-democratic trade-union leaders in Weimar Germany, meanwhile, invoked Soviet cash aid as an excuse for sanctioning the export of strikebreaking coal to Britain.4 Nevertheless, the huge scale of Soviet support and the large number of miners who visited the Soviet Union during the period

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hardly in a position to do a great deal else. But, combined with the parallel increase in oil exports to Britain from Romania, Poland’s strikebreaking export drive only served to emphasize the pass in which East-European-style socialism found itself by the mid 1980s.9 MOSCOW GOLD RUSH The

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. But the Russians were prepared to go beyond propaganda. Whereas there was little effort in other parts of Eastern Europe to staunch the flow of strikebreaking fuel to Britain, all Soviet coal and oil shipments to the United Kingdom were halted in support of the strike. The decision to impose the

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things that happen to you in your life that you never forget, experiences that are ingrained in your heart,’ he says, looking back.25 The strikebreakers were in contact with local Conservative Party figures at the time of their return to work, while security-service officers operated behind the scenes. Their

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policeman named Peter Devereux. Concentrating his efforts on the divided Midlands pit villages, the banker’s son set about organizing a network of disaffected and strikebreaking miners. Overcoming with cash and force of personality the suspicion that not surprisingly greeted his efforts, this bizarre Biggles-like figure travelled more than 35

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Joseph. In extravagant patrician style, he entertained his coalfield protégés at his suite in Claridge’s Hotel in London. Gradually, linking up with active local strikebreakers – like the former market trader, Chris Butcher, glamorized by the media as Silver Birch – Hart put together around twenty-five cells of dissident miners to

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other sources. Sir Hector Laing, chairman of United Biscuits, and Lord Hanson, who were both also major Tory Party contributors, stumped up for Hart’s strikebreaking miners. So did John Paul Getty II from his hospital bed in a London clinic, where Hart turned up with MacGregor after hearing that the

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sources, Hart also maintained close links with Stella Rimington and MI5’s operations against the striking miners as he roamed the country plotting and organizing strikebreakers in 1984–5. Both his legal and practical initiatives in the coalfields were coordinated informally with Gower Street. Brian Crozier, the Cold Warrior who worked

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. Indeed, when Portillo was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Hart laid on a free office for his ‘special adviser’, Alison Broome. As for the coal strikebreakers Hart once championed, their admiration for him had long since evaporated as formerly protected UDM collieries were ruthlessly shut down with the rest. In the

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cuttings from the strike period a decade later is to be transported back to an Alice-in-Wonderland world of long-suffering policemen and saintly strikebreakers fighting the good fight against swaggering picket-line thugs with money to blow, of impossible return-to-work figures and fantastic power-supply projections. Take

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the year-long stoppage. Through the two of them, IRIS had direct access to both the labour movement’s ruling bodies – essential intelligence in the strikebreaking effort. Another IRIS director from 1988 was Sir Jack Smart, former local NUM official and Labour leader of Wakefield council and the Association of Metropolitan

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for his alleged involvement in a coup attempt against its government. Neil Greatrex, president of the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers – formed out of the strikebreaking coalfield networks that had been championed and financed by Hart – was jailed in 2012 for stealing nearly £150,000 from a miners’ charity.19 Stella

A People's History of the United States

by Howard Zinn  · 2 Jan 1977  · 913pp  · 299,770 words

without Jackson being clearly pro- or antilabor, pro- or antibusiness, pro- or antilower, middle or upper class. It has been demonstrated that he was a strikebreaker [Jackson sent troops to control rebellious workers on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal], yet at different times . . . he and the Democrats received the backing of

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wages instead of company scrip, and to end fines for lateness. Fifteen hundred children and parents went out on strike, and it lasted six weeks. Strikebreakers were brought in, and some workers went back to work, but the strikers did win a twelve-hour day and nine hours on Saturday. That

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Yankees in flatly rejecting the myth of success. Irish and Yankee workers jointly . . . looked for labor candidates when they went to the polls, and resisted strikebreaking by local police.” Trying to understand why this fierce class spirit did not lead to independent revolutionary political action, Dawley concludes that the main reason

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twelve months of their wages to pay the cost of emigration. This gave the employers during the Civil war not only very cheap labor, but strikebreakers. More important, perhaps, than the federal laws passed by Congress for the benefit of the rich were the day-to-day operations of local and

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strike committee), called a general strike, involving half the population of the city. Work in New Orleans came to a stop. After three days—with strikebreakers brought in, martial law, and the threat of militia—the strike ended with a compromise, gaining hours and wages but without recognition of the unions

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, New York, and a copper miners’ strike in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The Coeur d’Alene strike was marked by gun battles between strikers and strikebreakers, and many deaths. A newspaper account of July 11, 1892, reported: . . . The long-dreaded conflict between the forces of the strikers and the nonunion men

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rifles. When the workers did not accept the pay cut, Frick laid off the entire work force. The Pinkerton detective agency was hired to protect strikebreakers. Although only 750 of the 3,800 workers at Homestead belonged to the union, three thousand workers met in the Opera House and voted overwhelmingly

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. Now the state went into action: the governor brought in the militia, armed with the latest rifles and Gatling guns, to protect the import of strikebreakers. Strike leaders were charged with murder; 160 other strikers were tried for other crimes. All were acquitted by friendly juries. The entire Strike Committee was

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arrested for treason against the state, but no jury would convict them. The strike held for four months, but the plant was producing steel with strikebreakers who were brought in, often in locked trains, not knowing their destination, not knowing a strike was on. The strikers, with no resources left, agreed

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, during a coal strike in Pennsylvania. Miners marching on a highway to the Lattimer mine—Austrians, Hungarians, Italians, Germans—who had originally been imported as strikebreakers but then organized themselves, refused to disperse, whereupon the sheriff and his deputies opened fire, killing nineteen of them, most shot in the back, with

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find. The well-paid leaders of the AFL were protected from criticism by tightly controlled meetings and by “goon” squads—hired toughs originally used against strikebreakers but after a while used to intimidate and beat up opponents inside the union. In this situation—terrible conditions of labor, exclusivity in union organization

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employer, because this had so often prevented workers from striking on their own, or in sympathy with other strikers, and thus turned union people into strikebreakers. Negotiations by leaders for contracts replaced continuous struggle by the rank and file, the Wobblies believed. They spoke of “direct action”: Direct action means industrial

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tent colonies. The death list of miners grew, but they hung on, drove back an armored train in a gun battle, fought to keep out strikebreakers. With the miners resisting, refusing to give in, the mines not able to operate, the Colorado governor (referred to by a Rockefeller mine manager as

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protect them, and greeted its arrivals with flags and cheers. They soon found out the Guard was there to destroy the strike. The Guard brought strikebreakers in under cover of night, not telling them there was a strike. Guardsmen beat miners, arrested them by the hundreds, rode down with their horses

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them to go back to work or the Italians will get their jobs.” More than thirty thousand black workers were brought into the area as strikebreakers—they had been excluded from AFL unions and so felt no loyalty to unionism. As the strike dragged on, the mood of defeat spread, and

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Gastonia. There, with the textile workers living in a tent colony, and refusing to renounce the Communists in their leadership, the strike went on. But strikebreakers were brought in and the mills kept operating. Desperation grew; there were violent clashes with the police. One dark night, the chief of police was

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that they may die, and dozens of others were nursing wounds from flying bottles, lead pipe, and stones after clashes between striking longshoremen and Negro strikebreakers along the Charlestown-East Boston waterfront. Detroit, November 28, 1931. A mounted patrolman was hit on the head with a stone and unhorsed and one

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that it will get completely out of the hands of the leaders.” Again, the machinery of the state was set in motion. Deputies and armed strikebreakers in South Carolina fired on pickets, killing seven, wounding twenty others. But the strike was spreading to New England. In Lowell, Massachusetts, 2,500 textile

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sit-down strike. The workers stayed in the plant instead of walking out, and this had clear advantages: they were directly blocking the use of strikebreakers; they did not have to act through union officials but were in direct control of the situation themselves; they did not have to walk outside

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, Trotskyists, Communists most of all. The CIO, influenced by the Communists, was organizing blacks in the mass production industries. Blacks were still being used as strikebreakers, but now there were also attempts to bring blacks and whites together against their common enemy. A woman named Mollie Lewis, writing in The Crisis

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, 79 Reagan buildup, 577, 594–85 rearmament since World War II, 426, 428, 436, 437, 441, 644, 654, 664 share of national budget, 569–60 strikebreaking in early days, 235, 246–51 passim, 269, 274, 276, 278 see also individual wars and conflicts Miller, Arthur, 487 Miller, Douglas, 216–17, 429

Andrew Carnegie

by David Nasaw  · 15 Nov 2007  · 1,230pp  · 357,848 words

now stood guard over the Edgar Thomson steelworks in preparation for Monday’s reopening. The Pinkertons had by 1888 established a well-deserved reputation as strikebreakers. The so-called Detective Agency had been founded by Allan Pinkerton, a Scotsman who had emigrated in 1842, just six years before Carnegie. Pinkerton at

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provided guards for banks and businesses, then expanded his operation to guarding railroads against robberies. Beginning in 1866, the agency began providing armies of paid strikebreakers to coal companies and manufacturers who had the means to hire them. Because the Pinkertons had no ties to the communities they were sent into

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dirty work companies feared that local officials would be reluctant to take up. On July 10, with the Pinkertons in reserve, Abbott dispatched thirty-one strikebreakers by train to Homestead, accompanied by Sheriff McCandless, who had stood guard with his deputies between the Pinkertons and the Knights at Edgar Thomson the

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squabble [between former strikers and scabs] whether it occurred in the town, or works, and deal with the guilty parties severely.” Union sympathizers who harassed strikebreakers on the job were discharged immediately. When such harassment occurred in the town, Schwab notified the police, who promptly arrested and fined offenders; they were

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mixed, make the most effective and tractable force you can find.” In the years that followed, Frick brought in Italian and African-American workers as strikebreakers—and allowed them, in many cases, to keep their jobs after the strikes were settled. After the Homestead strike, there would be a greater and

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for as partnership Pennsylvania Railroad and Pinkerton men at processes at profitability of shipping costs of shutdowns at skilled workers at staff of strategies at strikebreakers at strikes at union and union busting at unskilled workers at wage reductions at walkouts at workday at workers of, AC’s views on workers

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costs labor and union issues at labor-saving equipment at newspaper coverage of products of profitability of Schwab and shutdowns and lockouts skilled workers at strikebreakers strikes at. See Homestead strike (1892) structural products of superintendent of technology at union activities at. See also Homestead strike (1892) union busting at. See

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and Frick on investigation of Lauder and lead up to lockout newspaper coverage of Pennsylvania National Guard in Pinkertons’ role in presidential election and standoff strikebreakers support for sympathy strikes violence and deaths during workers’ advisory committee Home Trust Company n Homewood, Pennsylvania Hot Springs, Arkansas House of Commons House of

Midnight in Vehicle City: General Motors, Flint, and the Strike That Created the Middle Class

by Edward McClelland  · 2 Feb 2021  · 264pp  · 74,785 words

facing in Flint. During a violent longshoreman’s strike in San Francisco in the summer of 1934, police kill unionists who are trying to prevent strikebreakers from moving goods out of the port. In response, workers all over the city walk off the job. San Francisco grinds to halt. Roosevelt is

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remain armed until there is a settlement,” he says. “We will keep the strikers in the plants and General Motors can keep its detectives, guards, strikebreakers, clubs and tear gas.” Lewis knows how to get Sloan’s goat. In fact, he loves to impersonate the straight-laced Sloan for reporters, after

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Lippmann refers is a result of the Immigration Act of 1924, which restricted immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, previously sources of cheap labor and strikebreakers for industry. The Republican Congress that passed the act probably did not intend it as a boon to the labor movement. Inside Fisher Two, the

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injunction was written by John Thomas Smith in General Motors’ offices and signed by Judge Gadola, in his court. That is General Motors’ strikebreaking law. I am against strikebreakers. I don’t care who breaks this strike, whether it is General Motors or Judge Gadola or the president or you, Governor Murphy

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. I simply say I am against strikebreakers.” Lewis, himself a national figure, senses Murphy’s desire to raise himself to the same rank. He cannily plays on Murphy’s aspirations for higher

Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

by Bhu Srinivasan  · 25 Sep 2017  · 801pp  · 209,348 words

shut down the entire factory, locking out his workers. Immediately McCormick set about looking for new men with whom to reopen the factory. With his strikebreakers, he reopened the factory with locked-out workers protesting outside. This maneuver, however, required escalated protection in the form of hundreds of Chicago policemen. Seeing

…

at a rally of Chicago’s lumbermen. His speech took place within a few hundred yards of the McCormick factory, which continued to operate with strikebreakers. A couple of hundred locked-out McCormick workers joined the crowd to hear Spies. As he spoke, the bells at the McCormick factory rang, signaling

…

of 2,000-candlepower.” As the expiration date loomed, Frick’s strategy appeared to be to secure his plant, lock out the workers, and bring strikebreaking workers into Homestead. But Homestead was more than just a factory—it was a town of twelve thousand people. Families lived there. Understanding that this

…

the state militia dispatched by the governor. Management took back the factory and began a strategy of waiting out the increasingly desperate strikers. New workers, strikebreakers, soon started working at the factory. The actions of the Pennsylvania government, aiding property owners with the full force of the state without imposing any

…

act in the protection of property. Conversely, the union’s leverage stemmed from its physical ability to prevent, through the threat of violence, entry by strikebreakers to work on private property. But Roosevelt wasn’t comfortable with the use of federal force against labor. Anyway, it would not exactly be the

The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010

by Selina Todd  · 9 Apr 2014  · 525pp  · 153,356 words

what we were doing!’17 For people used to being treated as socially inferior, being honoured as patriots was a heady experience. Other working-class strikebreakers were hungry for work. In Bristol, eighteen-year-old Alf Canning, a bus conductor, stayed at work when others struck. His father, a labourer, was

…

were among those who volunteered, primarily in order to earn a few shillings, though some of them also expressed a conservative patriotic fervour. In Glasgow strikebreakers included members of the Billy Boys, a violent Protestant street gang who provided protection for local Conservative Party meetings throughout the 1920s and 1930s.19

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at heel in case a Bolshie should jump out of the hedge.23 Jessica’s sister Pam was accosted in the canteen she ran for strikebreakers by a filthy tramp … ‘Can I ’ave a cup o’ tea, miss?’ he leered at Pam, thrusting his dreadful face close to hers … ‘Can I

…

, the government decided to resort to force. On 7 May a notice placed in the Birmingham Post and a few other newspapers being produced by strikebreakers informed the public that ‘Any member of the civil or military defences who prevent disorder are assured that His Majesty’s government will support his

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was strength, just as they would never forget the determination of a ‘democratic’ government to repress them. Little wonder that in many mining villages the strikebreakers of 1926 were still social pariahs decades later.42 One consequence was an increase in the working-class vote for Labour. Despite the lukewarm backing

…

in 1926, for the first time, Labour won control of several important municipal councils, including Glasgow and Sheffield.43 Alf Canning, the eighteen-year-old strikebreaker from Bristol, was among these new Labour supporters. Although he hadn’t joined the General Strike, he was influenced by the solidarity shown by the

…

was launched ‘in primitive form’ by the Labour government and above all by the IMF.31 Callaghan’s government deployed thousands of police to help strikebreakers get through Grunwick’s gates. More than 500 people had been arrested on the picket line in bitter and often violent confrontations. In 1978 the

…

in Orgreave, Yorkshire, on 18 June 1984. Thatcher’s government ‘showed themselves prepared to encourage any and every method available – from the secret financing of strikebreakers to mass electronic surveillance, from the manipulation of agents provocateurs to attempts to “fit up” miners’ officials – in order to undermine or discredit the union

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by A. J. Baime  · 2 Jun 2014  · 502pp  · 125,785 words

also blockaded tunnel-ways and railroad tracks. No one could come in or out. Inside the factory, Bennett organized a group of 2,500 black strikebreakers. They were armed with knives, hand-sharpened metal rods, and badges saying 100% FOR FORD. Bennett had promised them they would be “paid around the

…

word of the strike by phone and jumped on the first plane he could, bound for Detroit. As the sun went down, the 2,500 strikebreakers locked inside the Rouge began to grow hungry and terrified for their lives. Union men were hurling stones through windows. Bennett and Henry monitored the

…

to the negotiating table and nothing more. “We’ll bargain until hell freezes over,” said Bennett. “But they won’t get anything.” When the black strikebreakers left the Rouge under police protection, federal investigators headed in to survey the damage. The next morning Edsel awoke and heard on the radio that

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and the Detroit Race Riot of 1943, [>], [>]–[>] within Ford, [>] impact of war production on, [>] long-standing, in Detroit, [>] shown by Bennett, [>] use of blacks as strikebreakers, [>]–[>], [>] and wildcat strikes at Willow Run, [>] radar systems, shortwave, [>] Radford, VA, gunpowder factory, [>] Rascher, Sigmund, [>]–[>] rationing deprivations associated with, [>]–[>] and need for accommodations near production

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