bread and water diet

war and jingoism might postpone, but couldnot fully suppress, the class anger that came from the realities of ordinary life. as the twentieth century opened, that angerremerged. emma goldman, the anarchist and feminist,whose political consciousness was shaped by factory work, the haymarket executions, thehomestead strike, the long prison term of

bread and water diet, her lover and comrade, alexander berkman,the depression of the 1890s, the strike struggles of new york, her own imprisonment on blackwell'sisland, spoke at a meeting some years after the spanish-american war:how our hearts burned with indignation against the atrocious spaniards!

but when the smoke was over, the dead buried,and the cost of the war came back to the people in an increase in the price of commoditiesand rent-that is, when we sobered up from our patriotic spree-it suddenly dawned onus that the cause of the spanish american war was the price of sugar that the lives,blood, and money of the american people were used to protect the interests of the americancapitalists. mark twain was neither an anarchist nor aradical. by 1900, at sixty-five, he was a world- acclaimedwriter of funny-serious-american-to-the-bone stories. he watched the united states and other westerncountries go about the world and wrote in

the new york herald as the century began:"i bring you the stately matron named christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonouredfrom pirate raids in kiao-chou, manchuria, south africa, and the philippines, with hersoul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies." there were writers of the early twentiethcentury who spoke for socialism or criticized the capitalist system harshly-not obscurepamphleteers, but among the most famous of american literary figures, whose books wereread by millions: upton sinclair, jack london, theodore dreiser, frank norris. upton sinclair's novel the jungle, publishedin 1906, brought the conditions in the meatpacking

plants of chicago to the shocked attentionof the whole country, and stimulated demand for laws regulating the meat industry. but also, through the story of an immigrantlabourer, jurgis rudkus, it spoke of socialism, of how beautiful life might be if people cooperativelyowned and worked and shared the riches of the earth. the jungle was first published in the socialistnewspaper appeal to reason; it was then read by millions as a book, and was translatedinto seventeen languages. one of the influences on upton sinclair'sthinking was a book, people of the abyss, by jack london.

london was a member of the socialist party. he had come out of the slums of san francisco,the child of an unwed mother. he had been a newsboy, a cannery worker, asailor, a fisherman, had worked in a jute mill and a laundry, hoboed the railroads tothe east coast, been clubbed by a policeman on the streets of new york and arrested forvagrancy in niagara falls, watched men beaten and tortured in jail, pirated oysters in sanfrancisco bay, read flaubert, tolstoy, melville, and the communist manifesto, preached socialismin the alaskan gold camps in the winter of 1896, sailed 2,000 miles back through thebering sea, and became a world-famous writer of adventure books.

in 1906, he wrote his novel the iron heel,with its warning of a fascist america, its ideal of a socialist brotherhood of man. in the course of it, through his characters,he indicts the system. in the face of the facts that modern man livesmore wretchedly than the cave-man, and that his producing power is a thousand times greaterthan that of the cave-man, no other conclusion is possible than that the capitalist classhas mismanaged criminally and selfishly mismanaged. and with this attack, the vision:let us not destroy those wonderful machines that produce efficiently and cheaply. let us control them.

let us profit by their efficiency and cheapness. let us run them for ourselves. that, gentlemen, is socialism. it was a time when even a self-exiled literaryfigure living in europe and not prone to political statements-the novelist henry james couldtour the united states in 1904 and see the country as a "huge rapp-acini garden, rankwith each variety of the poison-plant of the money passion." "muckrakers," who raked up the mud and themuck, contributed to the atmosphere of dissent by simply telling what they saw.

some of the new mass-circulation magazines,ironically enough in the interest of profit, printed their articles: ida tarbell's exposureof the standard oil company; lincoln steffens's stories of corruption in the major americancities. by 1900, neither the patriotism of the warnor the absorption of energy in elections could disguise the troubles of the system. the process of business concentration hadgone forward; the control by bankers had become more clear. as technology developed and corporations becamelarger, they needed more capital, and it was the bankers who had this capital.

by 1904, more than a thousand railroad lineshad been consolidated into six great combinations, each allied with either morgan or rockefellerinterests. as cochran and miller say:the imperial leader of the new oligarchy was the house of morgan. in its operations it was ably assisted bythe first national bank of new york (directed by george f. baker) and the national citybank of new york (presided over by james stillman, agent of the rockefeller interests). among them, these three men and their financialassociates occupied 341 directorships in 112 great corporations.

the total resources of these corporationsin 1912 was $22,245,000,000, more than the assessed value of all property in the twenty-twostates and territories west of the mississippi river. morgan had always wanted regularity, stability,predictability. an associate of his said in 1901:with a man like mr. morgan at the head of a great industry, asagainst the old plan of many diverse interests in it, production would become more regular,labor would be more steadily employed at better wages, and panics caused by over-productionwould become a thing of the past. but even morgan and his associates were notin complete control of such a system.

in 1907, there was a panic, financial collapse,and crisis. true, the very big businesses were not hurt,but profits after 1907 were not as high as capitalists wanted, industry was not expandingas fast as it might, and industrialists began to look for ways to cut costs. one way was taylorism. frederick w. taylor had been a steel companyforeman who closely analysed every job in the mill, and worked out a system of finelydetailed division of labor, increased mechanization, and piecework wage systems, to increase productionand profits. in 1911, he published a book on "scientificmanagement" that became powerfully influential

in the business world. now management could control every detailof the worker's energy and time in the factory. as harry braverman said (labor and monopolycapital), the purpose of taylorism was to make workers interchangeable, able to do thesimple tasks that the new division of labor required-like standard parts divested of individualityand humanity, bought and sold as commodities. it was a system well fitted for the new autoindustry. in 1909, ford sold 10,607 autos; in 1913,168,000; in 1914, 248,000 (45 percent of all autos produced). the profit: $30 million.

with immigrants, a larger proportion of thelabor force (in the carnegie plants of allegheny county in 1907, of the 14,359 common laborers,11,694 were eastern europeans), taylorism, with its simplified unskilled jobs, becamemore feasible. in new york city, the new immigrants wentto work in the sweatshops. the poet edwin markham wrote in cosmopolitanmagazine, january 1907: in unaired rooms, mothers and fathers sewby day and by night. those in the home sweatshop must work cheaperthan those in the factory sweatshops. and the children are called in from play todrive and drudge beside their elders. all the year in new york and in other citiesyou may watch children radiating to and from

such pitiful homes. nearly any hour on the east side of new yorkcity you can see them pallid boy or spindling girl-their faces dulled, their backs bentunder a heavy load of garments piled on head and shoulders, the muscles of the whole framein a long strain. is it not a cruel civilization that allowslittle hearts and little shoulders to strain under these grown- up responsibilities, whilein the same city, a pet cur is jewelled and pampered and aired on a fine lady's velvetlap on the beautiful boulevards? the city became a battlefield. on august 10, 1905, the new york tribune reportedthat a strike at federman's bakery on the

lower east side led to violence when federmanused scab labor to continue producing: strikers or their sympathizers wrecked thebake shop of philip federman at no. 183 orchard street early last night amid scenes of themost tumultuous excitement. policemen smashed heads right and left withtheir nightsticks after two of their number had been roughly dealt with by the mob. there were five hundred garment factoriesin new york. a woman later recalled the conditions of work:dangerously broken stairways windows few and so dirty. the wooden floors that were swept once a year.

hardly any other light but the gas jets burningby day and by night the filthy, malodorous lavatory in the dark hall. no fresh drinking water mice and roaches. during the winter months, how we sufferedfrom the cold. in the summer, we suffered from the heat. in these disease breeding holes, we, the youngsterstogether with the men and women toiled from seventy and eighty hours a week! saturdays and sundays included! a sign would go up on saturday afternoon:"if you don't come in on sunday, you need

not come in on monday." children's dreams of a day off shattered. we wept, for after all, we were only children. at the triangle shirtwaist company, in thewinter of 1909, women organized and decided to strike. soon they were walking the picket line inthe cold, knowing they could not win while the other factories were operating. a mass meeting was called of workers in theother shops, and clara lemlich, in her teens, an eloquent speaker, still bearing the signsof her recent beating on the picket line,

stood up: "i offer a resolution that a generalstrike be declared now!" the meeting went wild; they voted to strike. pauline newman, one of the strikers, recalledyears later the beginning of the general strike: thousands upon thousands left the factoriesfrom every side, all of them walking down toward union square. it was november, the cold winter was justaround the corner, we had no fur coats to keep warm, and yet there was the spirit thatled us on and on until we got to some hall. i can see the young people, mostly women,walking down and not caring what might happen the hunger, cold, loneliness.

they just didn't care on that particular day;that was their day. the union had hoped three thousand would jointhe strike. twenty thousand walked out. every day a thousand new members joined theunion, the international ladies garment workers union, which before this had few women. coloured women were active in the strike,which went on through the winter, against police, against scabs, against arrests andprison. in more than three hundred shops, workerswon their demands. women now became officials in the union.

pauline newman again:we tried to educate ourselves. i would invite the girls to my rooms, andwe took turns reading poetry in english to improve our understanding of the language. one of our favourites was thomas hood's "songof the shirt," and another, percy bysshe shelley's "mask of anarchy." "rise like lions after slumberin unvanquishable number! shake your chains to earth, like dew. which in sleep had fallen on youye are many, they are few!" the conditions in the factories did not changemuch.

on the afternoon of march 25, 1911, a fireat the triangle shirtwaist company that began in a rag bin swept through the eighth, ninth,and tenth floors, too high for fire ladders to reach. the fire chief of new york had said that hisladders could reach only to the seventh floor. but half of new york's 500,000 workers spentall day, perhaps twelve hours, above the seventh floor. the laws said factory doors had to open outward. but at the triangle company the doors openedin. the law said the doors could not be lockedduring working hours, but at the triangle

company doors were usually locked so the companycould keep track of the employees. and so, trapped, the young women were burnedto death at their work-tables, or jammed against the locked exit door, or leaped to their deathsdown the elevator shafts. the new york world reported:screaming men and women and boys and girls crowded out on the many window ledges andthrew themselves into the streets far below. they jumped with their clothing ablaze. the hair of some of the girls streamed upaflame as they leaped. thud after thud sounded on the pavements. it is a ghastly fact that on both the greenestreet and washington place sides of the building

there grew mounds of the dead and dying. from opposite windows spectators saw againand again pitiable companionships formed in the instant of death-girls who placed theirarms around each other as they leaped. when it was over, 146 triangle workers, mostlywomen, were burned or crushed to death. there was a memorial parade down broadway,and 100,000 marched. there were more fires. and accidents. and sickness. in the year 1904, 27,000 workers were killedon the job, in manufacturing, transport, and

agriculture. in one year, 50,000 accidents took place innew york factories alone. hat and cap makers were getting respiratorydiseases, quarrymen were inhaling deadly chemicals, lithographic printers were getting arsenicpoisoning. a new york state factory investigation commissionreported in 1912: sadie is an intelligent, neat, clean girl,who has worked from the time she got her working papers in embroidery factories. in her work, she was accustomed to use a whitepowder (chalk or talcum was usual) which was brushed over the perforated designs and thustransferred to the cloth.

the design was easily brushed off when madeof chalk or of talcum. her last employer therefore commenced usingwhite lead powder, mixed with rosin, which cheapened the work as the powder could notbe rubbed off and necessitate restamping. none of the girls knew of the change in powder,nor of the danger in its use. sadie had been a very strong, healthy girl,good appetite and colour; she began to be unable to eat. her hands and feet swelled, she lost the useof one hand, her teeth and gums were blue. when she finally had to stop work, after beingtreated for months for stomach trouble, her physician advised her to go to a hospital.

there the examination revealed the fact thatshe had lead poisoning. according to a report of the commission onindustrial relations, in 1914, 35,000 workers were killed in industrial accidents and 700,000injured. that year the income of forty-four familiesmaking $1 million or more equalled the total income of 100,000 families earning $500 ayear. the record shows an exchange between commissionerharris weinstock of the commission on industrial relations and president john osgood, headof a colorado coal company controlled by the rockefellers:weinstock: if a worker loses his life, are his dependents compensated in any way?

osgood: not necessarily. in some cases, they are and in some cases,not. weinstock: if he is crippled for life is thereany compensation? osgood: no sir, there is none. weinstock: then the whole burden is throwndirectly upon their shoulders. osgood: yes, sir. weinstock: the industry hears none of it? oscood: no, the industry bears none of it. unionization was growing.

shortly after the turn of the century therewere 2 million members of labor unions (one in fourteen workers), 80 percent of them inthe american federation of labor. the afl was an exclusive union-almost allmale, almost all white, almost all skilled workers. although the number of women workers keptgrowing-it doubled from 4 million in 1890 to 8 million in 1910, and women were one-fifthof the labor force-only one in a hundred belonged to a union. black workers in 1910 made one-third of theearnings of white workers. although samuel gompers, head of the afl,would make speeches about its belief in equal

opportunity, the negro was excluded from mostafl unions. gompers kept saying he did not want to interferewith the "internal affairs" of the south; "i regard the race problem as one with whichyou people of the southland will have to deal; without the interference, too, of meddlersfrom the outside." in the reality of struggle, rank-and-fileworkers overcame these separations from time to time. foner quotes mary mcdowell's account of theformation of a women's union in the chicago stockyards:it was a dramatic occasion on that evening, when an irish girl at the door called out"acoloured sister asks admission.

what shall i do with her?" and the answer came from the irish young womanin the chair-"admit her, of course, and let all of you give her a hearty welcome!" in new orleans in 1907 a general strike onthe levees, involving ten thousand workers (longshoremen, teamsters, freight handlers),black and white, lasted twenty days. from the realities of ordinary life. as thetwentieth century opened, that anger remerged. the atrocious spaniards! but when the smokewas over, the dead buried, and the cost of the war came back to the people in an increasein the price of commodities and rent-that is, when we sobered up from our patrioticspree-it suddenly dawned on us that the cause

of the spanish american war was the priceof sugar that the lives, blood, and money of the american people were used to protectthe interests of the american capitalists. mark twain was neither an anarchist nor aradical. by 1900, at sixty-five, he was a world- acclaimed writer of funny-serious-american-to-the-bonestories. he watched the united states and other western countries go about the worldand wrote in the new york herald as the century began: "i bring you the stately matron namedchristendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonoured from pirate raids in kiao-chou,manchuria, south africa, and the philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocketfull of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies."there were writers of the early twentieth

century who spoke for socialism or criticizedthe capitalist system harshly-not obscure pamphleteers, but among the most famous ofamerican literary figures, whose books were read by millions: upton sinclair, jack london,theodore dreiser, frank norris. for laws regulating the meat industry. butalso, through the story of an immigrant labourer, jurgis rudkus, it spoke of socialism, of howbeautiful life might be if people cooperatively owned and worked and shared the riches ofthe earth. the jungle was first published in the socialist newspaper appeal to reason;it was then read by millions as a book, and was translated into seventeen languages.one of the influences on upton sinclair's thinking was a book, people of the abyss,by jack london. london was a member of the

socialist party. he had come out of the slumsof san francisco, the child of an unwed mother. of adventure books. in 1906, he wrote hisnovel the iron heel, with its warning of a fascist america, its ideal of a socialistbrotherhood of man. in the course of it, through his characters, he indicts the system.in the face of the facts that modern man lives more wretchedly than the cave-man, and thathis producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, no other conclusionis possible than that the capitalist class has mismanaged criminally and selfishly mismanaged.and with this attack, the vision: let us not destroy those wonderful machinesthat produce efficiently and cheaply. let us control them. let us profit by their efficiencyand cheapness. let us run them for ourselves.

that, gentlemen, is socialism.it was a time when even a self-exiled literary figure living in europe and not prone to politicalstatements-the novelist henry james could tour the united states in 1904 and see thecountry as a "huge rapp-acini garden, rank with each variety of the poison-plant of themoney passion." by simply telling what they saw. some of thenew mass-circulation magazines, ironically enough in the interest of profit, printedtheir articles: ida tarbell's exposure of the standard oil company; lincoln steffens'sstories of corruption in the major american cities.by 1900, neither the patriotism of the war nor the absorption of energy in electionscould disguise the troubles of the system.

more clear. as technology developed and corporationsbecame larger, they needed more capital, and it was the bankers who had this capital. by1904, more than a thousand railroad lines had been consolidated into six great combinations,each allied with either morgan or rockefeller interests. as cochran and miller say:the imperial leader of the new oligarchy was the house of morgan. in its operations itwas ably assisted by the first national bank of new york (directed by george f. baker)and the national city bank of new york (presided over by james stillman, agent of the rockefellerinterests). among them, these three men and their financial associates occupied 341 directorshipsin 112 great corporations. the total resources of these corporations in 1912 was $22,245,000,000,more than the assessed value of all property

in the twenty-two states and territories westof the mississippi river. morgan had always wanted regularity, stability,predictability. an associate of his said in 1901:with a man like mr. morgan at the head of a great industry, as against the old planof many diverse interests in it, production would become more regular, labor would bemore steadily employed at better wages, and panics caused by over-production would becomea thing of the past. but even morgan and his associates were notin complete control of such a system. in 1907, there was a panic, financial collapse, andcrisis. true, the very big businesses were not hurt, but profits after 1907 were notas high as capitalists wanted, industry was

not expanding as fast as it might, and industrialistsbegan to look for ways to cut costs. one way was taylorism. frederick w. taylorhad been a steel company foreman who closely analysed every job in the mill, and workedout a system of finely detailed division of labor, increased mechanization, and pieceworkwage systems, to increase production and profits. in the business world. now management couldcontrol every detail of the worker's energy and time in the factory. as harry bravermansaid (labor and monopoly capital), the purpose of taylorism was to make workers interchangeable,able to do the simple tasks that the new division of labor required-like standard parts divestedof individuality and humanity, bought and sold as commodities.it was a system well fitted for the new auto

industry. in 1909, ford sold 10,607 autos;in 1913, 168,000; in 1914, 248,000 (45 percent of all autos produced). the profit: $30 million.with immigrants, a larger proportion of the labor force (in the carnegie plants of alleghenycounty in 1907, of the 14,359 common laborers, 11,694 were eastern europeans), taylorism,with its simplified unskilled jobs, became more feasible.in new york city, the new immigrants went to work in the sweatshops. the poet edwinmarkham wrote in cosmopolitan magazine, january 1907:in unaired rooms, mothers and fathers sew by day and by night. those in the home sweatshopmust work cheaper than those in the factory sweatshops. and the children are called infrom play to drive and drudge beside their

elders.all the year in new york and in other cities you may watch children radiating to and fromsuch pitiful homes. nearly any hour on the east side of new york city you can see thempallid boy or spindling girl-their faces dulled, their backs bent under a heavy load of garmentspiled on head and shoulders, the muscles of the whole frame in a long strain.is it not a cruel civilization that allows little hearts and little shoulders to strainunder these grown- up responsibilities, while in the same city, a pet cur is jewelled andpampered and aired on a fine lady's velvet lap on the beautiful boulevards?the city became a battlefield. on august 10, 1905, the new york tribune reported that astrike at federman's bakery on the lower east

side led to violence when federman used scablabor to continue producing: street early last night amid scenes of themost tumultuous excitement. policemen smashed heads right and left with their nightsticksafter two of their number had been roughly dealt with by the mob.there were five hundred garment factories in new york. a woman later recalled the conditionsof work: dangerously broken stairways windows few andso dirty. the wooden floors that were swept once a year. hardly any other light but thegas jets burning by day and by night the filthy, malodorous lavatory in the dark hall. no freshdrinking water mice and roaches. during the winter months, how we sufferedfrom the cold. in the summer, we suffered

from the heat.in these disease breeding holes, we, the youngsters together with the men and women toiled fromseventy and eighty hours a week! saturdays and sundays included! a sign would go up onsaturday afternoon: "if you don't come in on sunday, you need not come in on monday."children's dreams of a day off shattered. we wept, for after all, we were only children.at the triangle shirtwaist company, in the winter of 1909, women organized and decidedto strike. soon they were walking the picket line in the cold, knowing they could not winwhile the other factories were operating. stood up: "i offer a resolution that a generalstrike be declared now!" the meeting went wild; they voted to strike.pauline newman, one of the strikers, recalled

years later the beginning of the general strike:thousands upon thousands left the factories from every side, all of them walking downtoward union square. it was november, the cold winter was just around the corner, wehad no fur coats to keep warm, and yet there was the spirit that led us on and on untilwe got to some hall. the hunger, cold, loneliness. they just didn'tcare on that particular day; that was their day.the union had hoped three thousand would join the strike. twenty thousand walked out. everyday a thousand new members joined the union, the international ladies garment workers union,which before this had few women. coloured women were active in the strike, which wenton through the winter, against police, against

scabs, against arrests and prison. in morethan three hundred shops, workers won their demands. women now became officials in theunion. pauline newman again: we tried to educate ourselves. i would invitethe girls to my rooms, and we took turns reading poetry in english to improve our understandingof the language. one of our favourites was thomas hood's "song of the shirt," and another,percy bysshe shelley's "mask of anarchy." shake your chains to earth, like dew.which in sleep had fallen on you ye are many, they are few!"the conditions in the factories did not change much. on the afternoon of march 25, 1911,a fire at the triangle shirtwaist company that began in a rag bin swept through theeighth, ninth, and tenth floors, too high

for fire ladders to reach. the fire chiefof new york had said that his ladders could reach only to the seventh floor. but halfof new york's 500,000 workers spent all day, perhaps twelve hours, above the seventh floor.the laws said factory doors had to open outward. but at the triangle company the doors openedin. the law said the doors could not be locked during working hours, but at the trianglecompany doors were usually locked so the company could keep track of the employees. and so,trapped, the young women were burned to death at their work-tables, or jammed against thelocked exit door, or leaped to their deaths down the elevator shafts. the new york worldreported: screaming men and women and boys and girlscrowded out on the many window ledges and

threw themselves into the streets far below.they jumped with their clothing ablaze. the hair of some of the girls streamed up aflameas they leaped. thud after thud sounded on the pavements. it is a ghastly fact that onboth the greene street and washington place sides of the building there grew mounds ofthe dead and dying. when it was over, 146 triangle workers, mostlywomen, were burned or crushed to death. there was a memorial parade down broadway, and 100,000marched. there were more fires. and accidents. andsickness. in the year 1904, 27,000 workers were killed on the job, in manufacturing,transport, and agriculture. in one year, 50,000 accidents took place in new york factoriesalone. hat and cap makers were getting respiratory

diseases, quarrymen were inhaling deadly chemicals,lithographic printers were getting arsenic poisoning. a new york state factory investigationcommission reported in 1912: papers in embroidery factories. in her work,she was accustomed to use a white powder (chalk or talcum was usual) which was brushed overthe perforated designs and thus transferred to the cloth. the design was easily brushedoff when made of chalk or of talcum. her last employer therefore commenced using white leadpowder, mixed with rosin, which cheapened the work as the powder could not be rubbedoff and necessitate restamping. unable to eat. her hands and feet swelled,she lost the use of one hand, her teeth and gums were blue. when she finally had to stopwork, after being treated for months for stomach

trouble, her physician advised her to go toa hospital. there the examination revealed the fact that she had lead poisoning.according to a report of the commission on industrial relations, in 1914, 35,000 workerswere killed in industrial accidents and 700,000 injured. that year the income of forty-fourfamilies making $1 million or more equalled the total income of 100,000 families earning$500 a year. the record shows an exchange between commissioner harris weinstock of thecommission on industrial relations and president john osgood, head of a colorado coal companycontrolled by the rockefellers: weinstock: if a worker loses his life, arehis dependents compensated in any way? osgood: not necessarily. in some cases, theyare and in some cases, not.

osgood: no sir, there is none.weinstock: then the whole burden is thrown directly upon their shoulders.osgood: yes, sir. weinstock: the industry hears none of it?oscood: no, the industry bears none of it. unionization was growing. shortly after theturn of the century there were 2 million members of labor unions (one in fourteen workers),80 percent of them in the american federation of labor. the afl was an exclusive union-almostall male, almost all white, almost all skilled workers. although the number of women workerskept growing-it doubled from 4 million in 1890 to 8 million in 1910, and women wereone-fifth of the labor force-only one in a hundred belonged to a union.black workers in 1910 made one-third of the

earnings of white workers. although samuelgompers, head of the afl, would make speeches about its belief in equal opportunity, thenegro was excluded from most afl unions. gompers kept saying he did not want to interfere withthe "internal affairs" of the south; "i regard the race problem as one with which you peopleof the southland will have to deal; without the interference, too, of meddlers from theoutside." to time. foner quotes mary mcdowell's accountof the formation of a women's union in the chicago stockyards:it was a dramatic occasion on that evening, when an irish girl at the door called out"acoloured sister asks admission. what shall i do with her?" and the answer came from theirish young woman in the chair-"admit her,

of course, and let all of you give her a heartywelcome!" (longshoremen, teamsters, freight handlers),black and white, lasted twenty days. the head of the negro longshoremen, e. s. swan, said:the whites and negroes were never before so strongly cemented in a common bond and inmy 39 years of experience of the levee, i never saw such solidarity. in all the previousstrikes the negro was used against the white man but that condition is now past and bothraces are standing together for their common interests.these were exceptions. in general, the negro was kept out of the trade union movement.w. e. b. du bois wrote in 1915: "the net result of all this has been to convince the americannegro that his greatest enemy is not the employer

who robs him, but his fellow white working-man."racism was practical for the afl. the exclusion of women and foreigners was also practical.these were mostly unskilled workers, and the afl, confined mostly to skilled workers, wasbased on the philosophy of "business unionism" (in fact, the chief official of each afl unionwas called the "business agent"), trying to match the monopoly of production by the employerwith a monopoly of workers by the union. in this way, it won better conditions for someworkers, and left most workers out. afl officials drew large salaries, hobnobbedwith employers, even moved in high society. a press dispatch from atlantic city, new jersey,the fashionable seaside resort, in the summer of 1910:engaged in a game of bathing suit baseball

with president sam gompers, secretary frankmorrison and other leaders of the a.f. of t, on the beach this morning, john mitchell,former head of the mine workers' union, lost a $ 1000 diamond ring presented to him byhis admirers after the settlement of the big pennsylvania coal strike. capt. george berke,a veteran life guard, found the ring, whereupon mitchell peeled a hundred-dollar bill froma roll he carried in his pocket and handed it to the captain as a reward for his find.the well-paid leaders of the afl were protected from criticism by tightly controlled meetingsand by "goon" squads-hired toughs originally used against strike breakers but after a whileused to intimidate and beat up opponents inside the union.in this situation-terrible conditions of labor,

exclusivity in union organization-workingpeople wanting radical change, seeing the root of misery in the capitalist system, movedtoward a new kind of labor union. one morning in june 1905, there met in a hall in chicagoa convention of two hundred socialists, anarchists, and radical trade unionists from all overthe united states. they were forming the i. w. w.-the industrial workers of the world.big bill haywood, a leader of the western federation of miners, recalled in his autobiographythat he picked up a piece of board that lay on the platform and used it for a gavel toopen the convention: fellow workers. this is the continental congressof the working-class. we are here to confederate the workers of this country into a working-classmovement that shall have for its purpose the

emancipation of the working class from theslave bondage of capitalism. the aims and objects of this organization shall be to putthe working-class in possession of the economic power, the means of life, in control of themachinery of production and distribution, without regard to the capitalist masters.on the speakers' platform with haywood were eugene debs, leader of the socialist party,and mother mary jones, a seventy-five-year-old white-haired woman who was an organizer forthe united mine workers of america. the convention drew up a constitution, whose preamble said:the working class and the employing class have nothing in common. there can be no peaceso long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, whomake up the employing class, have all the

good things of life.between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come togetheron the political as well as on the industrial field, and take and hold that which they produceby their labor, through an economic organization of the working class without affiliation withany political party. one of the iww pamphlets explained why itbroke with the afl idea of craft unions: the directory of unions of chicago shows in1903 a total of 56 different unions in the packing houses, divided up still more in 14different national trades unions of the american federation of labor.what a horrible example of an army divided against itself in the face of a strong combinationof employers.

the iww (or "wobblies," as they came to becalled, for reasons not really clear) aimed at organizing all workers in any industryinto "one big union," undivided by sex, race, or skills. they argued against making contractswith the 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 strike breakers.negotiations by leaders for contracts replaced continuous struggle by the rank and tile,the wobblies believed. they spoke of "direct action":direct action means industrial action directly by, for, and of the workers themselves, withoutthe treacherous aid of labor impleader’s or scheming politicians. a strike that isinitiated, controlled, and settled by the

workers directly affected is direct action.direct action is industrial democracy. one iww pamphlet said: "shall i tell you whatdirect action means? the worker on the job shall tell the boss when and where he shallwork, how long and for what wages and under what conditions."the iww people were militant, courageous. despite a reputation given them by the press,they did not believe in initiating violence, but did fight back when attacked. in mckeesrocks, pennsylvania, they led a strike of six thousand workers in 1909 against an affiliateof the u.s. steel company, defied the state troopers, and battled with them. they promisedto take a trooper's life for every worker killed (in one gun battle four strikers andthree troopers were killed), and managed to

keep picketing the factories until the strikewas won. the iww saw beyond strikes:strikes are mere incidents in the class war; they are tests of strength, periodical drillsin the course of which the workers train themselves for concerted action. this training is mostnecessary to prepare the masses for the final "catastrophe," the general strike which willcomplete the expropriation of the employers. the idea of anarcho-syndicalism was developingstrongly in spain and italy and france at this time-that the workers would take power,not by seizing the state machinery in an armed rebellion, but by bringing the economic systemto a halt in a general strike, then taking it over to use for the good of all. iww organizerjoseph ettor said:

if the workers of the world want to win, allthey have to do is recognize their own solidarity. they have nothing to do but fold their armsand the world will stop. the workers are more powerful with their hands in their pocketsthan all the property of the capitalists. it was an immensely powerful idea. in theten exciting years after its birth, the iww became a threat to the capitalist class, exactlywhen capitalist growth was enormous and profits huge. the iww never had more than five toten thousand enrolled members at any one time- people came and went, and perhaps a hundredthousand were members at one time or another. but their energy, their persistence, theirinspiration to others, their ability to mobilize thousands at one place, one time, made theman influence on the country far beyond their

numbers. they travelled everywhere (many wereunemployed or migrant workers); they organized, wrote, spoke, sang, spread their message andtheir spirit. they were attacked with all the weapons thesystem could put together: the newspapers, the courts, the police, the army, mob violence.local authorities passed laws to stop them from speaking; the iww defied these laws.in missoula, montana, a lumber and mining area, hundreds of wobblies arrived by boxcarafter some had been prevented from speaking. they were arrested one after another untilthey clogged the jails and the courts, and finally forced the town to repeal its antspeech ordinance. in spokane, washington, in 1909, an ordinancewas passed to stop street meetings, and an

iww organizer who insisted on speaking wasarrested. thousands of wobblies marched into the centre of town to speak. one by one theyspoke and were arrested, until six hundred were in jail. jail conditions were brutal,and several men died in their cells, but the iww won the right to speak.in fresno, california, in 1911, there was another free speech fight. the san franciscocall commented: it is one of those strange situations whichcrop up suddenly and are hard to understand. some thousands of men, whose business it isto work with their hands, tramping and stealing rides, suffering hardships and facing dangersto get into jail. in jail, they sang, they shouted, they madespeeches through the bars to groups that gathered

outside the prison. as joyce kornbluh reportsin her remarkable collection of tww documents, rebel voices:they took turns lecturing about the class struggle and leading the singing of wobblysongs. when they refused to stop, the jailor sent for fire department trucks and orderedthe fire hoses turned full force on the prisoners. the men used their mattresses as shields,and quiet was only restored when the icy water reached knee-high in the cells.when city officials heard that thousands more were planning to come into town, they liftedthe ban on street speaking and released the prisoners in small groups.that same year in aberdeen, washington, once again laws against free speech, arrests, prison,and, unexpectedly, victory. one of the men

arrested, "stumpy" payne, a carpenter, farmhand, editor of an iww newspaper, wrote about the experience:here they were, eighteen men in the vigour of life, most of whom came long distancesthrough snow and hostile towns by beating their way, penniless and hungry, into a placewhere a jail sentence was the gentlest treatment that could be expected, and where many hadalready been driven into the swamps and beaten nearly to death. yet here they were, laughingwith boyish glee at tragic telling’s that to them were jokes.but what was the motive behind the actions of these men? why were they here? is the callof brotherhood in the human race greater than any fear or discomfort, despite the effortsof the masters of life for six thousand years

to root out that call of brotherhood fromour minds? in san diego, jack white, a wobbly arrestedin a free-speech fight in 1912, sentenced to six months in the county jail on a breadand water diet, was asked if he had anything to say to the court. a stenographer recordedwhat he said: the prosecuting attorney, in his plea to thejury, accused me of saying on a public platform at a public meeting, "to hell with the courts,we know what justice is." he told a great truth when he lied, for if he had searchedthe innermost recesses of my mind he could have found that thought, never expressed byme before, but which i express now, "to hell with your courts, i know what justice is,"for i have sat in your court room day after

day and have seen members of my class passbefore this, the so-called bar of justice. i have seen you, judge sloane, and othersof your kind, send them to prison because they dared to infringe upon the sacred rightsof property. you have become blind and deaf to the rights of man to pursue life and happiness,and you have crushed those rights so that the sacred right of property shall be preserved.then you tell me to respect the law. i do not. i did violate the law, as i will violateevery one of your laws and still come before you and say "to hell with the courts."the prosecutor lied, but i will accept his lie as a truth and say again so that you,judge sloane, may not be mistaken as to my altitude, "to hell with your courts, i knowwhat justice is."

there were also beatings, fairings and featherings,defeats. one iww member, john stone, tells of being released from the jail at san diegoat midnight with another iww man and forced into an automobile:we were taken out of the city, about twenty miles, where the machine stopped. a man inthe rear struck me with a blackjack several times on the head and shoulders; the otherman then struck me on the mouth with his fist. the men in the rear then sprang around andkicked me in the stomach. i then started to run away; and heard a bullet go past me. istopped. in the morning, i examined joe marko's condition and found that the back of his headhad been split open. in 1916, in everett, washington, a boatloadof wobblies was fired on by two hundred armed

vigilantes gathered by the sheriff, and fivewobblies were shot to death, thirty-one wounded. two of the vigilantes were killed, nineteenwounded. the following year-the year the united states entered world war i-vigilantes in montanaseized iww organizer frank little, tortured him, and hanged him, leaving his body danglingfrom a railroad trestle. joe hill, an iww organizer, wrote dozens ofsongs-biting, funny, class-conscious, inspiring-that appeared in iww publications and in its littlered song book. he became a legend in his time and after. his song "the preacher and theslave" had a favourite iww target, the church: long-haired preachers come out every night,try to tell you what's wrong and what's right; but when asked how about something to eatthey will answer with voices so sweet:

you will eat, bye and bye,in that glorious land above the sky; work and pray, live on hay,you'll get pie in the sky when you die. his song "rebel girl" was inspired by thestrike of women at the textile mills in lawrence, massachusetts, and especially by the iww leaderof that strike, elizabeth gurley flynn: there are women of many descriptionsin this queer world, as everyone knows. some are living in beautiful mansions,and are wearing the finest of clothes. there are blue-blooded queens and princesses,who have charms made of diamonds and pearl, but the only and thoroughbred ladyis the rebel girl. in november 1915, joe hill was accused ofkilling a grocer in salt lake city, utah,

in a robbery. there was no direct evidencepresented to the court that he had committed the murder, but there were enough pieces ofevidence to persuade a jury to find him guilty. the case became known throughout the world,and ten thousand letters went to the governor in protest, but with machine guns guardingthe entrance to the prison, joe hill was executed by a firing squad. he had written bill haywoodjust before this: "don't waste any time in mourning. organize."the iww became involved in a set of dramatic events in lawrence, massachusetts, in theyear 1912, where the american woollen company owned four mills. the work force were immigrantfamilies- portuguese, french-canadian, english, irish, russian, italian, syrian, lithuanian,german, polish, belgian-who lived in crowded,

flammable wooden tenements. the average wagewas $8.76 a week. a woman physician in lawrence, dr elizabeth shapleigh, wrote:a considerable number of the boys and girls die within the first two or three years afterbeginning work thirty six out of every 100 of all the men and women who work in the millthe before or by the time they are twenty-five years of age.it was in january, midwinter, when pay envelopes distributed to weavers at one of the millspolish women showed that their wages, already too low to feed their families, had been reduced.they stopped their looms and walked out of the mill. the next day, five thousand workersat another mill quit work, marched to still another mill, rushed the gates, shut off thepower to the looms, and called on the other

workers to leave. soon ten thousand workerswere on strike. a telegram went to joseph ettor, a twenty-six-year-olditalian, an iww leader in new york, to come to lawrence to help conduct the strike. hecame. a committee of fifty was set up, representing every nationality among the workers, to makethe important decisions. less than a thousand millworkers belonged to the iww, but the aflhad ignored the unskilled workers, and so they turned to the iww'' leadership in thestrike. the iww organized mass meetings and parades.the strikers had to supply food and fuel for 50,000 people (the entire population of lawrencewas 86,000); soup kitchens were set up, and money began arriving from all over the country-fromtrade unions, iww locals, socialist groups,

individuals.the mayor called out the local militia; the governor ordered out the state police. a paradeof strikers was attacked by police a few weeks after the strike began. this led to riotingall that day. in the evening, a striker, anna lopizzo, was shot and killed. witnesses saida policeman did it, but the authorities arrested joseph ettor and another iww organizer whohad come to lawrence, a poet named arturo giovanitti. neither was at the scene of theshooting, but the charge was that "joseph ettor and arturo giovanitti did incite, procure,and counsel or command the said person whose name is not known to commit the said murder."with ettor, head of the strike committee, in jail, big bill haywood was called in toreplace him; other iww organizers, including

elizabeth gurley flynn, came into lawrence.now there were twenty-two companies of militia and two troops of cavalry in the city. martiallaw was declared, and citizens were forbidden to talk on the street. thirty-six strikerswere arrested, many sentenced to a year in prison. on tuesday, january 30, a young syrianstriker, john ramy, was bayoneted to death. but the strikers were still out, and the millswere not working. ettor said: "bayonets cannot weave cloth."in february, the strikers began mass picketing, seven thousand to ten thousand pickets inan endless chain, marching through the mill districts, with white armbands: "don't bea scab." but their food was running out and the children were hungry. it was proposedby the new york call, a socialist newspaper,

that the children of strikers be sent to sympatheticfamilies in other cities to take care of them while the strike lasted. this had been doneby strikers in europe, never in the united states- but in three days, the call got fourhundred letters offering to take children. the iww and the socialist party began to organizethe children's exodus, taking applications from families who wanted them, arranging medicalexams for the youngsters. on february 10, over a hundred children, agedfour to fourteen, left lawrence for new york city. they were greeted at grand central stationby five thousand italian socialists singing the "marseillaise" and the "international."the following week, another hundred children came to new york, and thirty-five to barre,vermont. it was becoming clear: if the children

were taken care of, the strikers could stayout, for their spirit was high. the city officials in lawrence, citing a statute on child neglect,said no more children would be permitted to leave lawrence.despite the city edict, a group of forty children assembled on february 24 to go to philadelphia.the railroad station was filled with police, and the scene that followed was describedto congressmen by a member of the women's committee of philadelphia:when the time approached to depart, the children arranged in a long line, two by two, in orderlyprocession, with their parents near at hand, were about to make their way to the trainwhen the police closed in on us with their clubs, beating right and left, with no thoughtof children, who were in the most desperate

danger of being trampled to death. the mothersand children were thus hurled in a mass and bodily dragged to a military truck, and eventhen clubbed, irrespective of the cries of the panic-stricken women and children.a week after that, women returning from a meeting were surrounded by police and clubbed;one pregnant woman was carried unconscious to a hospital and gave birth to a dead child.still, the strikers held out. "they are always marching and singing," reporter mary heatonvorse wrote. "the tired, grey crowds ebbing and flowing perpetually into the mills hadwaked and opened their mouths to sing." the american woollen company decided to givein. it offered raises of 5 to 11 percent (the strikers insisted that the largest increasesgo to the lowest-paid), time and a quarter

for overtime, and no discrimination againstthose who had struck. on march 14, 1912, ten thousand strikers gathered on the lawrencecommon and, with bill haywood presiding, voted to end the strike.ettor and giovanitti went on trial. support for them had been mounting all over the country.there were parades in new york and boston; on september 30, fifteen thousand lawrenceworkers struck for twenty-four hours to show their support for the two men. after that,two thousand of the most active strikers were fired, but the iww threatened to call anotherstrike, and they were put back. a jury found ettor and giovanitti not guilty, and thatafternoon, ten thousand people assembled in lawrence to celebrate.the iww took its slogan "one big union" seriously.

women, foreigners, black workers, the lowliestand most unskilled of workers, were included when a factory or mine was organized. whenthe brotherhood of timber workers organized in louisiana and invited bill haywood to speakto them in 1912 (shortly after the lawrence victory), he expressed surprise that no negroeswere at the meeting. he was told it was against the law to have interracial meetings in louisiana.haywood told the convention: you work in the same mills together. sometimesa black man and a white man chop down the same tree together. you are meeting in conventionnow to discuss the conditions under which yon labor. why not be sensible about thisand call the negroes into the convention? if it is against the law, this is one timewhen the law should be broken.

negroes were invited into the convention,which then voted to affiliate with the tww. in 1900 there were 500,000 women office workers-in1870 there had been 19,000. women were switchboard operators, store workers, nurses. half a millionwere teachers. the teachers formed a teachers league that fought against the automatic firingof women who became pregnant. the following ''rules for female teachers" were posted bythe school board of one town in massachusetts: 1. do not get married.2. do not leave town at any time without permission of the school board.3. do not keep company with men. 4. be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and6 a.m. 5. do not loiter downtown, in ice cream stores.6. do not smoke.

7. do not get into a carriage with any manexcept your father or brother. 8. do not dress in bright colours.9. do not dye your hair. 10. do not wear any dress more than two inchesabove the ankle. the conditions of women working in a milwaukeebrewery were described by mother mary jones, who worked there briefly in 1910 (she wasclose to eighty at this time): condemned to slave daily in the wash-roomin wet shoes and wet clothes, surrounded with foul- mouthed, brutal foremen the poor girlswork in the vile smell of sour beer, lifting cases of empty and full bottles weighing from100 to 150 pounds. rheumatism is one of the chronic ailments and is closely followed byconsumption. the foreman even regulates the

time the girls may stay in the toilet room.many of the girls have no home nor parents and are forced to feed and clothe and shelterthemselves on $3.00 a week. in the laundries, women organized. in 1909,the handbook of the women's trade union industrial league wrote about women in steam laundries:how would you like to iron a shirt a minute? think of standing at a mangle just above thewashroom with the hot steam pouring up through the floor for 10, 12, 14 and sometimes 17hours a day! sometimes the floors are made of cement and then it seems as though onewere standing on hot coals, and the workers are dripping with perspiration. they are breathingair laden with particles of soda, ammonia, and other chemicals! the laundry workers unionin one city reduced this long day to 9 hours,

and has increased the wages 50 percent.labor struggles could make things better, but the country's resources remained in thehands of powerful corporations whose motive was profit, whose power commanded the governmentof the united states. there was an idea in the air, becoming clearer and stronger, anidea not just in the theories of karl marx but in the dreams of writers and artists throughthe ages: that people might cooperatively use the treasures of the earth to make lifebetter for everyone, not just a few. around the turn of the century, strike struggleswere multiplying-in the 1890s there had been about a thousand strikes a year; by 1904 therewere four thousand strikes a year. law and military force again and again took the sideof the rich. it was a time when hundreds of

thousands of americans began to think of socialism.debs wrote in 1904, three years after the formation of the socialist party:the "pure and simple" trades union of the past does not answer the requirements of today.the attempt of each trade to maintain its own independence separately and apart fromothers results in increasing jurisdictional entanglements, fruitful of dissension, strifeand ultimate disruption. the members of a trades union should be taughtthat the labor movement means more, infinitely more, than a paltry increase in wages andthe strike necessary to secure it; that while it engages to do all that possibly can bedone to better the working conditions of its members, its higher object is to overthrowthe capitalist system of private ownership

of the tools of labor, abolish wage-slaveryand achieve the freedom of the whole working class and, in fact, of all mankind.what debs accomplished was not in theory, or analysis, but in expressing eloquently,passionately, what people were feeling. the writer heywood broun once quoted a fellowsocialist speaking of debs: "that old man with the burning eyes actually believes thatthere can be such a thing as the brotherhood of man. and that's not the funniest part ofit. as long as he's around i believe it myself." eugene debs had become a socialist while injail in the pullman strike. now he was the spokesman of a party that made him its presidentialcandidate five times. the party at one time had 100,000 members, and 1,200 office holdersin 340 municipalities. its main newspaper,

appeal to reason, for which debs wrote, hadhalf a million subscribers, and there were many other socialist newspapers around thecountry, so that, all together, perhaps a million-people read the socialist press.socialism moved out of the small circles of city immigrants-jewish and german socialistsspeaking their own languages-and became american. the strongest socialist state organizationwas in oklahoma, which in 1914 had twelve thousand dues-paying members (more than newyork state), and elected over a hundred socialists to local office, including six to the oklahomastate legislature. there were fifty-five weekly socialist newspapers in oklahoma, texas, louisiana,arkansas, and summer encampments that drew thousands of people.james green describes these southwest radicals,

in his book grass-roots socialism, as "indebtedhomesteaders, migratory tenant farmers, coal miners and railroad workers, 'redbone' lumberjacksfrom the piny woods, preachers and school teachers from the sun-baked prairies villageartisans and atheists the unknown people who created the strongest regional socialist movementin united states history." green continues: the socialist movement was painstakingly organizedby scores of former populists, militant miners, and blacklisted railroad workers, who wereassisted by a remarkable cadre of professional agitators and educators and inspired by occasionalvisits from national figures like eugene v. debs and mother jones. this core of organizersgrew to include indigenous dissenters a much larger group of amateur agitators who canvassedthe region selling newspapers, forming reading

groups, organizing locals, and making soapboxspeeches. there was almost a religious fervour to themovement, as in the eloquence of debs. in 1906, after the imprisonment in idaho of billhaywood and two other officers of the western federation of miners on an apparently fakedmurder charge, debs wrote a naming article in the appeal to reason:murder has been plotted and is about to be executed in the name and under the forms oflaw. it is a foul plot; a damnable conspiracy;a hellish outrage. if they attempt to murder moyer, haywood andtheir brothers, a million revolutionists, at least, will meet them with guns.capitalist courts never have done, and never

will do, anything for the working class.a special revolutionary convention of the proletariat would be in order, and, if extrememeasures are required, a general strike could be ordered and industry paralysed as a preliminaryto a general uprising. if the plutocrats begin the program, we willend it. theodore roosevelt, after reading this, senta copy to his attorney general, w. ii. moody, with a note: "is it possible to proceed againstdebs and the proprietor of this paper criminally?" as the socialists became more successful atthe polls (debs got 900,000 votes in 1912, double what he had in 1908), and more concernedwith increasing that appeal, they became more critical of iww tactics of "sabotage" and"violence," and in 1913 removed bill haywood

from the socialist party executive committee,claiming he advocated violence (although some of debs's writings were far more inflammatory).women were active in the socialist movement, more as rank-and-file workers than as leaders-and,sometimes, as sharp critics of socialist policy. helen keller, for instance, the gifted blind-mute-deafwoman with her extraordinary social vision, commented on the expulsion of bill haywoodin a letter to the new york call: it is with the deepest regret that i haveread the attacks upon comrade haywood, such an ignoble strife between two factions whichshould be one, and that, too, at a most critical period in the struggle of the proletariat.what? are we to put difference of party tactics before the desperate needs of the workers?while countless women and children are breaking

their hearts, and ruining their bodies inlong days of toil, we are fighting one another. shame upon us!only 3 percent of the socialist party's members were women in 1904. at the national conventionthat year, there were only eight women delegates. but in a few years, local socialist women'sorganizations, and a national magazine, socialist woman, began bringing more women into theparty, so that by 1913, 15 percent of the membership was women. the editor of socialistwoman, josephine conger-kaneko, insisted on the importance of separate groups for women:in the separate organization, the most unsophisticated little woman may soon learn to preside overa meeting, to make motions, and to defend her stand with a little "speech". after ayear or two of this sort of practice she is

ready to work with the men. and there is amighty difference between working with the men, and simply sitting in obedient reverenceunder the shadow of their aggressive power. socialist women were active in the feministmovement of the early 1900s. according to kate richards o'hare, the socialist leaderfrom oklahoma, new york women socialists were superbly organized. during the 1915 campaignin new york for a referendum on women's suffrage, in one day at the climax of the campaign,they distributed 60,000 english leaflets, 50,000 yiddish leaflets, sold 2,500 one-centbooks and 1,500 five-cent hooks, put up 40,000 stickers, and held 100 meetings.but were there problems of women that went beyond politics and economics, that wouldnot be solved automatically by a socialist

system? once the economic base of sexual oppressionwas corrected, would equality follow? battling for the vote, or for anything less than revolutionarychange-was that pointless? the argument became sharper as the women's movement of the earlytwentieth century grew, as women spoke out more, organized, protested, paraded-for thevote, and for recognition as equals in every sphere, including sexual relations and marriage.charlotte perkins oilman, whose writing emphasized the crucial question of economic equalitybetween the sexes, wrote a poem called "the socialist and the suffragist," ending with:"a lifted world lifts women up," the socialist explained."you cannot lift the world at all while half of it is kept so small,"the suffragist maintained.

the world awoke, and tartly spoke:"your work is all the same; work together or work apart,work, each of you, with all your heart- just get into the game!"when susan anthony, at eighty, went to hear eugene debs speak (twenty-five years before,he had gone to hear her speak, and they had not met since then), they clasped hands warmly,then had a brief exchange. she said, laughing: "give us suffrage, and we'll give you socialism,"debs replied: "give us socialism and we'll give you suffrage."there were women who insisted on uniting the two aims of socialism and feminism, like crystaleastman, who imagined new ways of men and women living together and retaining theirindependence, different from traditional marriage.

she was a socialist, but wrote once that awoman "knows that the whole of woman's slavery is not summed up in the profit system, norher complete emancipation assured by the downfall of capitalism."in the first fifteen years of the twentieth century, there were more women in the laborforce, more with experience in labor struggles. some middle-class women, conscious of women'soppression and wanting to do something, were going to college and becoming aware of themselvesas not just housewives. the historian william chafe writes (women and equality):female college students were infused with a self-conscious sense of mission and a passionatecommitment to improve the world. they became doctors, college professors, settlement houseworkers, business women, lawyers, and architects.

spirited by an intense sense of purpose aswell as camaraderie, they set a remarkable record of accomplishment in the face of overwhelmingodds. jane addams, grace and edith abbott, alice hamilton, julia lathrop, florence kelley-allcame out of this pioneering generation and set the agenda of social reform for the firsttwo decades of the 20th century. they were defying the culture of mass magazines,which were spreading the message of woman as companion, wife, homemaker. some of thesefeminists married; some did not. all struggled with the problem of relations with men, likemargaret sanger, pioneer of birth control education, who suffered a nervous breakdowninside an apparently happy but confining marriage; she had to leave husband and children to makea career for herself and feel whole again.

sanger had written in woman and the new race:"no woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body. no woman cancall herself free until she can choose conscientiously whether she will or will not be a mother."it was a complicated problem. kate richards o'hare, for example, believed in the home,but thought socialism would make that better. when she ran for congress in 1910 in kansascity she said: "i long for domestic life, borne and children with every fibre of mybeing. socialism is needed to restore the home."on the other hand, elizabeth gurley flynn wrote in her autobiography, rebel girl:a domestic life and possibly a large family had no attraction for me. i wanted to speakand write, to travel, to meet people, to see

places, to organize for the i.w.w. i saw noreason why i, as a woman, should give up my work for this.while many women in this time were radicals, socialists, anarchists, an even larger numberwere involved in the campaign for suffrage, and the mass support for feminism came fromthem. veterans of trade union struggles joined the suffrage movement, like rose schneidermanof the garment workers. at a cooper union meeting in new york, she replied to a politicianwho said that women, given the vote, would lose their femininity:women in the laundries stand for thirteen or fourteen hours in the terrible steam andheat with their hands in hot starch. surely these women won't lose any more of their beautyand charm by putting a ballot in a ballot

box once a year than they are likely to losestanding in foundries or laundries all year round.every spring in new york, the parades for women's suffrage kept growing. in 1912, anews report: all along fifth avenue from washington square,where the parade formed, to 57th street, where it disbanded, were gathered thousands of menand women of new york. they blocked every cross street on the line of march. many wereinclined to laugh and jeer, but none did. the sight of the impressive column of womenstriding five abreast up the middle of the street stifled all thought of ridicule womendoctors, women lawyers women architects, women artists, actresses and sculptors; women waitresses,domestics; a huge division of industrial workers

all marched with an intensity and purposethat astonished the crowds that lined the streets.from washington, in the spring of 1913, came a new york times report:in a woman's suffrage demonstration to day the capital saw the greatest parade of womenin its history. in the parade over 5000 women passed down pennsylvania avenue. it was anastonishing demonstration. it was estimated that 500,000 persons watched the women marchfor their cause. some women radicals were sceptical. emma goldman,the anarchist and feminist, spoke her mind forcefully, as always, on the subject of women'ssuffrage: our modern fetish is universal suffrage. thewomen of australia and new zealand can vote,

and help make the laws. are the labor conditionsbetter there? the history of the political activities ofman proves that they have given him absolutely nothing that he could not have achieved ina more direct, less costly, and more lasting manner. as a matter of fact, every inch ofground he has gained has been through a constant fight, a ceaseless struggle for self-assertion,and not through suffrage. there is no reason whatever to assume that woman, in her climbto emancipation, has been, or will be, helped by the ballot.her development, her freedom, her independence, must come from and through herself. first,by asserting herself as a personality. second, by refusing the right to anyone over her body;by refusing to bear children, unless she wants

them; by refusing to be a servant to god,the state, society, the husband, the family, etc. by making her life simpler, but deeperand richer. only that, and not the ballot, will set woman free.and helen keller, writing in 1911 to a suffragist in england:our democracy is but a name. we vote? what does that mean? it means that we choose betweentwo bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. we choose between tweedledum and tweedle-dee.you ask for votes for women. what good can votes do when ten-elevenths of the land ofgreat britain belongs to 200,000 and only one-eleventh to the rest of the 40,000,000?have your men with their millions of votes freed themselves from this injustice?emma goldman was not postponing the changing

of woman's condition to some future socialistera-she wanted action more direct, more immediate, than the vote. helen keller, while not ananarchist, also believed in continuous struggle outside the ballot box. blind, deaf, she foughtwith her spirit, her pen. when she became active and openly socialist, the brooklyneagle, which had previously treated her as a heroine, wrote that "her mistakes springout of the manifest limitations of her development." her response was not accepted by the eagle,but printed in the new york call. she wrote that when once she met the editor of the brooklyneagle he complimented her lavishly. "but now that i have come out for socialism he remindsme and the public that i am blind and deaf and especially liable to error." she added:oh, ridiculous brooklyn eagle! what an ungallant

bird it is! socially blind and deaf, it defendsan intolerable system, a system that is the cause of much of the physical blindness anddeafness which we are trying to prevent. the eagle and i are at war. i hate the systemwhich it represents. when it fights back, let it fight fair. it is not fair fightingor good argument to remind me and others that i cannot see or hear. i can read. i can readall the socialist books i have time for in english, german and french. if the editorof the brooklyn eagle should read some of them, he might be a wiser man, and make abetter newspaper. if i ever contribute to the socialist movement the book that i sometimesdream of, i know what i shall name it: industrial blindness and social deafness.mother jones did not seem especially interested

in the feminist movement. she was busy organizingtextile workers and miners, and organizing their wives and children. one of her manyfeats was the organization of a children's march to washington to demand the end of childlabor (as the twentieth century opened, 284,000 children between the ages of ten and fifteenworked in mines, mills, factories). she described this:in the spring of 1903, i went to kensington, pennsylvania, where seventy-five thousandtextile workers were on strike. of this number, at least ten thousand were little children.the workers were striking for more pay and shorter hours. every day little children cameinto union headquarters, some with their hands off, some with the thumb missing, some withtheir fingers off at the knuckle. they were

stooped little things, round shouldered andskinny. i asked some of the parents if they wouldlet me have their little boys and girls for a week or ten days, promising to bring themback safe and sound. a man named sweeny was marshal. a few men and women went with me.the children carried knapsacks on their backs in which was a knife and fork, a tin cup andplate. one little fellow had a drum and another had a fife. we carried banners that said:"we want time to play. the children marched through new jersey andnew york and down to oyster bay to try to see president theodore roosevelt, but he refusedto see them. "but our march had done its work. we had drawn the attention of the nation tothe crime of child labor."

that same year, children working sixty hoursa week in textile mills in philadelphia went on strike, carrying signs: "we want to goto school!" "55 hours or nothing!" one gets a sense of the energy and fire ofsome of those turn-of-the-century radicals by looking at the police record of elizabethgurley flynn: 1906-16, organizer, lecturer for i.w.w.1918-24, organizer, workers defence union arrested in new york, 1906, free-speech case,dismissed; active in spokane, washington, free-speech fight, 1909; arrested, missoula,montana, 1909, in free-speech fight of i.w.w., spokane, washington, free-speech fight ofi.w.w, hundreds arrested; in philadelphia arrested three times, 1911, at strike; meetingsof baldwin locomotive works; active in lawrence

textile strike, 1912; hotel-workers strike,1912, new york; paterson textile strike, 1913; defence work for ettor-giovanitti case, 1912;mesaba range strike, minnesota, 1916; everett iww case, spokane, washington, 1916; joe hilldefence, 1914. arrested duluth, minnesota, 1917, charged with vagrancy under law passedto stop i.w.w. and pacifist speakers, case dismissed. indicted in chicago iww case, 1917.black women faced double oppression. a negro nurse wrote to a newspaper in 1912:we poor coloured women wage-earners in the south are fighting a terrible battle. on theone hand, we are assailed by black men, who should be our natural protectors; and, whetherin the cook kitchen, at the washtub, over the sewing machine, behind the baby carriage,or at the ironing board, we are but little

more than pack horses, beasts of burden, slaves!in this early part of the twentieth century, labelled by generations of white scholarsas "the progressive period," lynching’s were reported every week; it was the low pointfor negroes, north and south, "the nadir," as rayford logan, a black historian, put it.in 1910 there were 10 million negroes in the united states, and 9 million of them werein the south. the government of the united states (between1901 and 1921, the presidents were theodore roosevelt, william howard taft, woodrow wilson)-whetherrepublican or democrat-watched negroes being lynched, observed murderous riots againstblacks in statesboro, georgia, brownsville, texas, and atlanta, georgia, and did nothing.there were negroes in the socialist party,

but the socialist party did not go much outof its way to act on the race question. as ray ginger writes of debs: "when race prejudicewas thrust at debs, he always publicly repudiated it. he always insisted on absolute equality.but he failed to accept the view that special measures were sometimes needed to achievethis equality." blacks began to organize: a national afro-americancouncil formed in 1903 to protest against lynching, peonage, discrimination, disfranchisement;the national association of coloured women, formed around the same time, condemned segregationand lynching’s. in georgia in 1906 there was an equal rights convention, which pointedto 260 georgia negroes lynched since 1885. it asked the right to vote, the right to enterthe militia, to be on juries. it agreed blacks

should work hard. "and at the same time wemust agitate, complain, protest and keep protesting against the invasion of our manhood rights."w. e. b. du bois, teaching in atlanta, georgia, in 1905, sent out a letter to negro leadersthroughout the country, calling them to a conference just across the canadian borderfrom buffalo, near niagara falls. it was the start of the "niagara movement."du bois, born in massachusetts, the first black to receive a ph.d. degree from harvarduniversity (1895), had just written and published his poetic, powerful book the souls of blackfolk. du bois was a socialist sympathizer, although only briefly a party member.one of his associates in calling the niagara meeting was william monroe trotter, a youngblack man in boston, of militant views, who

edited a weekly newspaper, the guardian. init he attacked the moderate ideas of booker t. washington. when, in the summer of 1903,washington spoke to an audience of two thousand at a boston church, trotter and his supportersprepared nine provocative questions, which caused a commotion and led to fistfights.trotter and a friend were arrested. this may have added to the spirit of indignation whichled du bois to spearhead the niagara meeting. the tone of the niagara group was strong:we refuse to allow the impression to remain that the negro american assents to inferiority,is submissive under oppression and apologetic before insults. through helplessness we maysubmit, but the voice of protest of ten million americans must never cease to assail the earsof their fellows so long as america is unjust.

a race riot in springfield, illinois, promptedthe formation of the national association for the advancement of coloured people in1910. whites dominated the leadership of the new organization; du bois was the only blackofficer. he was also the first editor of the naacp periodical the crisis. the naacp concentratedon legal action and education, but du bois represented in it that spirit which was embodiedin the niagara movement's declaration: "persistent manly agitation is the way to liberty."what was clear in this period to blacks, to feminists, to labor organizers and socialists,was that they could not count on the national government. true, this was the "progressiveperiod," the start of the age of reform; but it was a reluctant reform, aimed at quietingthe popular risings, not making fundamental

changes.what gave it the name "progressive" was that new laws were passed. under theodore roosevelt,there was the meat inspection act, the hepburn act to regulate railroads and pipelines, apure food and drug act. under taff, the mann-elkins act put telephone and telegraph systems underthe regulation of the interstate commerce commission. in woodrow wilson's presidency,the federal trade commission was introduced to control the growth of monopolies, and thefederal reserve act to regulate the country's money and banking system. under taft wereproposed the sixteenth amendment to the constitution, allowing a graduated income tax, and the seventeenthamendment, providing for the election of senators directly by popular vote instead of by thestate legislatures, as the original constitution

provided. also at this time, a number of statespassed laws regulating wages and hours, providing for safety inspection of factories and compensationfor injured workmen. it was a time of public investigations aimedat soothing protest. in 1913 the pujo committee of congress studied the concentration of powerin the banking industry, and the commission on industrial relations of the senate heldhearings on labor-management conflict. undoubtedly, ordinary people benefited tosome extent from these changes. the system was rich, productive, complex; it could giveenough of a share of its riches to enough of the working class to create a protectiveshield between the bottom and the top of the society. a study of immigrants in new yorkbetween 1905 and 1915 finds that 32 percent

of italians and jews rose out of the manualclass to higher levels (although not too much higher levels). but it was also true thatmany italian immigrants did not find the opportunities inviting enough for them to stay. in one four-yearperiod, seventy-three italians left new york for every one hundred that arrived. still,enough italians became construction workers, enough jews became businessmen and professionals,to create a middle-class cushion for class conflict.fundamental conditions did not change, however, for the vast majority of tenant farmers, factoryworkers, slum dwellers, miners, farm laborers, working men and women, black and white. robertwiebe sees in the progressive movement an attempt by the system to adjust to changingconditions in order to achieve more stability.

"through rules with impersonal sanctions,it sought continuity and predictability in a world of endless change. it assigned fargreater power to government and it encouraged the centralization of authority." harold faulknerconcluded that this new emphasis on strong government was for the benefit of "the mostpowerful economic groups." gabriel kolko calls it the emergence of "politicalcapitalism," where the businessmen took firmer control of the political system because theprivate economy was not efficient enough to forestall protest from below. the businessmen,kolko says, were not opposed to the new reforms; they initiated them, pushed them, to stabilizethe capitalist system in a time of uncertainty and trouble.for instance, theodore roosevelt made a reputation

for himself as a "trust-buster" (althoughhis successor, taft, a "conservative," while roosevelt was a "progressive," launched moreantitrust suits than did roosevelt). in fact, as wiebe points out, two of j. p. morgan'smen- elbert gary, chairman of u.s. steel, and george perkins, who would later becomea campaigner for roosevelt- "arranged a general understanding with roosevelt by which theywould cooperate in any investigation by the bureau of corporations in return for a guaranteeof their companies' legality." they would do this through private negotiations withthe president. "a gentleman's agreement between reasonable people," wiebe says, with a bitof sarcasm. the panic of 1907, as well as the growingstrength of the socialists, wobblies, and

trade unions, speeded the process of reform.according to wiebe: "around 1908 a qualitative shift in outlook occurred among large numbersof these men of authority." the emphasis was now on "enticements and compromises." it continuedwith wilson, and "a great many reform-minded citizens indulged the illusion of a progressivefulfillment." what radical critics now say of those reformswas said at the time (1901) by the bankers' magazine: "as the business of the countryhas learned the secret of combination, it is gradually subverting the power of the politicianand rendering him subservient to its purposes." there was much to stabilize, much to protect.by 1904, 318 trusts, with capital of more than seven billion dollars, controlled 40%of the u.s. manufacturing.

in 1909, a manifesto of the new progressivismappeared-a book called the promise of american life by herbert croly, editor of the new republicand an admirer of theodore roosevelt. he saw the need for discipline and regulation ifthe american system were to continue. government should do more, he said, and he hoped to seethe "sincere and enthusiastic imitation of heroes and saints"- by whom he may have meanttheodore roosevelt. richard hofstadter, in his biting chapteron the man the public saw as the great lover of nature and physical fitness, the war hero,the boy scout in the white house, says: "the advisers to whom roosevelt listened were almostexclusively representatives of industrial and finance capital-men like hanna, robertbacon, and george w. perkins of the house

of morgan, elihu root, senator nelson w. aldrichand james stillman of the rockefeller interests." responding to his worried brother-in-law writingfrom wall street, roosevelt replied: "i intend to be most conservative, but in the interestsof the corporations themselves and above all in the interests of the country."roosevelt supported the regulatory hepburn act because he feared something worse. hewrote to henry cabot lodge that the railroad lobbyists who opposed the bill were wrong:"i think they are very short sighted not to understand that to beat it means to increasethe movement for government ownership of the railroads." his action against the trustswas to induce them to accept government regulation, in order to prevent destruction. he prosecutedthe morgan railroad monopoly in the northern

securities case, considering it an antitrustvictory, but it hardly changed anything, and, although the sherman act provided for criminalpenalties, there was no prosecution of the men who had planned the monopoly-morgan, harriman,hill. as for woodrow wilson, hofstadter points outhe was a conservative from the start. as a historian and political scientist, wilsonwrote (the state): "in politics nothing radically novel may safely be attempted." he urged "slowand gradual" change. this attitude toward labor, hofstadter says, was "generally hostile,"and he spoke of the "crude and ignorant minds" of the populists.james weinstein (the corporate ideal in the liberal state) has studied the reforms ofthe progressive period, especially the process

by which business and government, sometimeswith the aid of labor leaders, worked out the legislative changes they thought necessary.weinstein sees "a conscious and successful effort to guide and control the economic andsocial policies of federal, state, and municipal governments by various business groupingsin their own long-range interest..." while the "original impetus" for reform came fromprotesters and radicals, "in the current century, particularly on the federal level, few reformswere enacted without the tacit approval, if not the guidance, of the large corporate interests."these interests assembled liberal reformers and intellectuals to aid them in such matters.weinstein's definition of liberalism-as a means of stabilizing the system in the interestsof big business-is different from that of

the liberals themselves. arthur schlesingerwrites: "liberalism in america has been ordinarily the movement on the part of the other sectionsof society to restrain the power of the business community." if schlesinger is describing thehope or intent of these other sections, he may be right. if he is describing the actualeffect of these liberal reforms, that restraint has not happened.the controls were constructed skill fully. in 1900, a man named ralph easley, a republicanand conservative, a schoolteacher and journalist, organized the national civic federation. itsaim was to get better relations between capital and labor. its officers were mostly big businessmen,and important national politicians, but its first vice-president, for a long time, wassamuel gompers of the afl. not all big businesses

liked what the national civic federation wasdoing. easley called these critics anarchists, opposed to the rational organization of thesystem. "in fact," easley wrote, "our enemies are the socialists among the labor peopleand the anarchists among the capitalists." the ncf wanted a more sophisticated approachto trade unions, seeing them as an inevitable reality, therefore wanting to come to agreementswith them rather than fight with them: better to deal with a conservative union than facea militant one. after the lawrence textile strike of 1912, john golden, head of the conservativeafl textile union workers, wrote easley that the strike had given manufacturers "a veryrapid education" and "some of them are falling all over themselves now to do business withour organization."

the national civic federation did not representall opinions in the business world; the national association of manufacturers didn't want torecognize organized labor in any way. many businessmen did not want even the puny reformsproposed by the civic federation-but the federation's approach represented the sophistication andauthority of the modern state, determined to do what was best for the capitalist classas a whole, even if this irritated some capitalists. the new approach was concerned with the long-rangestability of the system, even at the cost, sometimes, of short-term profits.thus, the federation drew up a model workmen's compensation bill in 1910, and the followingyear twelve states passed laws for compensation or accident insurance. when the supreme courtsaid that year that new york's workmen's compensation

law was unconstitutional because it deprivedcorporations of property without due process of law, theodore roosevelt was angry. suchdecisions, he said, added "immensely to the strength of the socialist party." by 1920,forty-two states had workmen's compensation laws. as weinstein says: "it represented agrowing maturity and sophistication on the part of many large corporation leaders whohad come to understand, as theodore roosevelt often told them, that social reform was trulyconservative." as for the federal trade commission, establishedby congress in 1914 presumably to regulate trusts, a leader of the civic federation reportedafter several years of experience with it that it "has apparently been carrying on itswork with the purpose of securing the confidence

of well-intentioned business men, membersof the great corporations as well as others." in this period, cities also put through reforms,many of them giving power to city councils instead of mayors, or hiring city managers.the idea was more efficiency, more stability. "the end result of the movements was to placecity government firmly in the hands of the business class," weinstein says. what reformerssaw as more democracy in city government, urban historian samuel hays sees as the centralizationof power in fewer hands, giving business and professional men more direct control overcity government. the progressive movement, whether led by honestreformers like senator robert la follette of wisconsin or disguised conservatives likeroosevelt (who was the progressive party candidate

for president in 1912), seemed to understandit was fending off socialism. the milwaukee journal, a progressive organ, said the conservatives"fight socialism blindly while the progressives fight it intelligently and seek to remedythe abuses and conditions upon which it thrives." frank munsey, a director of u.s. steel, writingto roosevelt, seeing him as the best candidate for 1912, confided in him that the unitedstates must move toward a more "parental guardianship of the people" who needed "the sustainingand guiding hand of the state." it was "the work of the state to think for the peopleand plan for the people," the steel executive said.it seems quite clear that much of this intense activity for progressive reform was intendedto head off socialism. easley talked of "the

menace of socialism as evidenced by its growthin the colleges, churches, newspapers." in 1910, victor berger became the first memberof the socialist party elected to congress; in 1911, seventy-three socialist mayors wereelected, and twelve hundred lesser officials in 340 cities and towns. the press spoke of"the rising tide of socialism." a privately circulated memorandum suggestedto one of the departments of the national civic federation: "in view of the rapid spreadin the united states of socialistic doctrines," what was needed was "a carefully planned andwisely directed effort to instruct public opinion as to the real meaning of socialism."the memorandum suggested that the campaign "must be very skill fully and tactfully carriedout," that it "should not violently attack

socialism and anarchism as such" but shouldbe "patient and persuasive" and defend three ideas: "individual liberty; private property;and inviolability of contract." it is hard to say how many socialists sawclearly how useful reform was to capitalism, but in 1912, a left-wing socialist from connecticut,robert lamonte, wrote: "old age pensions and insurance against sickness, accident and unemploymentare cheaper, are better business than jails, poor houses, asylums, hospitals." he suggestedthat progressives would work for reforms, but socialists must make only "impossibledemands," which would reveal the limitations of the reformers.did the progressive reforms succeed in doing what they intended- stabilize the capitalistsystem by repairing its worst defects, blunt

the edge of the socialist movement, restoresome measure of class peace in a time of increasingly bitter clashes between capital and labor?to some extent, perhaps. but the socialist party continued to grow. the iww continuedto agitate. and shortly after woodrow wilson took office there began in colorado one ofthe most bitter and violent struggles between workers and corporate capital in the historyof the country. this was the colorado coal strike that beganin september 1913 and culminated in the "ludlow massacre" of april 1914. eleven thousand minersin southern colorado, mostly foreign-born- greeks, italians, serbs-worked for the coloradofuel & iron corporation, which was owned by the rockefeller family. aroused by the murderof one of their organizers, they went on strike

against low pay, dangerous conditions, andfeudal domination of their lives in towns completely controlled by the mining companies.mother jones, at this time an organizer for the united mine workers, came into the area,fired up the miners with her oratory, and helped them in those critical first monthsof the strike, until she was arrested, kept in a dungeon like cell, and then forciblyexpelled from the state. when the strike began, the miners were immediatelyevicted from their shacks in the mining towns. aided by the united mine workers union, theyset up tents in the nearby hills and carried on the strike, the picketing, from these tentcolonies. the gunmen hired by the rockefeller interests-the baldwin-felts detective agency-usinggatling guns and rifles, raided the tent colonies.

the death list of miners grew, but they hungon, drove back an armoured train in a gun battle, fought to keep out strike breakers.with the miners resisting, refusing to give in, the mines not able to operate, the coloradogovernor (referred to by a rockefeller mine manager as "our little cowboy governor") calledout the national guard, with the rockefellers supplying the guard's wages.the miners at first thought the guard was sent to protect them, and greeted its arrivalswith flags and cheers. they soon found out the guard was there to destroy the strike.the guard brought strike breakers in under cover of night, not telling them there wasa strike. guardsmen beat miners, arrested them by the hundreds, rode down with theirhorse’s parades of women in the streets

of trinidad, the central town in the area.and still the miners refused to give in. when they lasted through the cold winter of 1913-1914,it became clear that extraordinary measures would be needed to break the strike.in april 1914, two national guard companies were stationed in the hills overlooking thelargest tent colony of strikers, the one at ludlow, housing a thousand men, women, children.on the morning of april 20, a machine gun attack began on the tents. the miners firedback. their leader, a greek named lou tikka’s, was lured up into the hills to discuss a truce,then shot to death by a company of national guardsmen. the women and children dug pitsbeneath the tents to escape the gunfire. at dusk, the guard moved down from the hillswith torches, set fire to the tents, and the

families fled into the hills; thirteen peoplewere killed by gunfire. the following day, a telephone linesman goingthrough the ruins of the ludlow tent colony lifted an iron cot covering a pit in one ofthe tents and found the charred, twisted bodies of eleven children and two women. this becameknown as the ludlow massacre. the news spread quickly over the country.in denver, the united mine workers issued a "call to arms"-"gather together for defensivepurposes all arms and ammunition legally available." three hundred armed strikers marched fromother tent colonies into the ludlow area, cut telephone and telegraph wires, and preparedfor battle. railroad workers refused to take soldiers from trinidad to ludlow. at coloradosprings, three hundred union miners walked

off their jobs and headed for the trinidaddistrict, carrying revolvers, rifles, shotguns. in trinidad, itself, miners attended a funeralservice for the twenty-six dead at ludlow, then walked from the funeral to a nearby building,where arms were stacked for them. they picked up rifles and moved into the hills, destroyingmines, killing mine guards, exploding mine shafts. the press reported that "the hillsin every direction seem suddenly to be alive with men."in denver, eighty-two soldiers in a company on a troop train headed for trinidad refusedto go. the press reported: "the men declared they would not engage in the shooting of womenand children. they hissed the 350 men who did start and shouted imprecations at them."five thousand people demonstrated in the rain

on the lawn in front of the state capitalat denver asking that the national guard officers at ludlow be tried for murder, denouncingthe governor as an accessory. the denver cigar makers union voted to send five hundred armedmen to ludlow and trinidad. women in the united garment workers union in denver announcedfour hundred of their members had volunteered as nurses to help the strikers.all over the country there were meetings, demonstrations. pickets marched in front ofthe rockefeller office at 26 broadway, new york city. a minister protested in front ofthe church where rockefeller sometimes gave sermons, and was clubbed by the police.the new york times carried an editorial on the events in colorado, which were now attractinginternational attention. the times emphasis

was not on the atrocity that had occurred,but on the mistake in tactics that had been made. its editorial on the ludlow massacrebegan: "somebody blundered." two days later, with the miners armed and in the hills ofthe mine district, the times wrote: "with the deadliest weapons of civilization in thehands of savage-minded men, there can be no telling to what lengths the war in coloradowill go unless it is quelled by force. the president should turn his attention from mexicolong enough to take stern measures in colorado." the governor of colorado asked for federaltroops to restore order, and woodrow wilson complied. this accomplished, the strike peteredout. congressional committees came in and took thousands of pages of testimony. theunion had not won recognition. sixty-six men,

women, and children had been killed. not onemilitiaman or mine guard had been indicted for crime.still, colorado had been a scene of ferocious class conflict, whose emotional repercussionshad rolled through the entire country. the threat of class rebellion was clearly stillthere in the industrial conditions of the united states, in the undeterred spirit ofrebellion among working people- whatever legislation had been passed, whatever liberal reformswere on the books, whatever investigations were undertaken and words of regret and conciliationuttered. the times had referred to mexico. on the morningthat the bodies were discovered in the tent pit at ludlow, american warships were attackingvera cruz, a city on the coast of mexico-bombarding

it, occupying it, leaving a hundred mexicansdead-because mexico had arrested american sailors and refused to apologize to the unitedstates with a twenty-one-gun salute. could patriotic fervor and the military spirit coverup class struggle? unemployment, hard times, were growing in 1914. could guns divert attentionand create some national consensus against an external enemy? it surely was a coincidence-thebombardment of vera cruz, the attack on the ludlow colony. or perhaps it was, as someoneonce described human history, "the natural selection of accidents." perhaps the affairin mexico was an instinctual response of the system for its own survival, to create a unityof fighting purpose among a people torn by internal conflict.the bombardment of vera cruz was a small incident.

but in four months the first world war wouldbegin in europe.