Excerpt from The Socialist Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Through Both Revolutions , by Louis Hartz (Harcourt: Brace Publishers, 1955)
…The socialist tradition’s triumph among the American proletariat was not, as it might appear, the Red May Revolution of 1933. Such a victory, bold and obvious as it is, would be entirely impossible without a far more subtle but ultimately more earth-shattering development. That small but vital turning point can be found with the eclipse of Samuel Gompers and the AF of L, and the rise of “Big Bill” Haywood and Solidarity.
1912 would prove to be a year of revolutionary importance in the American socialist movement. February would bring Gompers’ capitulation, and the final abandonment of class-collaborationist “craft-union” strategies in American organized labor. The commitment to revolutionary industrial unionism among the American proletariat would serve to provide the organizational bedrock upon which the class could be mobilized to seize political power. For now, that was still largely confined within the norms of Fabian Socialism, but important deviations from the traditional Bernstein-Kautskyian line of the Second International were also embraced by the Socialist Labor Party.
As the chief intellectual theorist of the early Socialist Labor Party, Daniel DeLeon built the fundamental theoretical doctrine that would serve to distinguish the American movement from the parallel movements across Europe. For all of their zeal and scholarship, the European “Marxist” intellectuals of that era were almost without exception a sort of liberal reformer dressed in worker’s clothing. The leaders of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) led the international workers’ movement due to their mass organization and, on paper, powerful influence within the German Reich. However, the liberal whiggery of the Erfurt-era SPD confined the influence of the German working class to the narrow avenues provided by the bourgeois state. The left-wing dissidents of the SPD such as Luxemburg notwithstanding, the whole of the party was as bourgeois to the core as any of the other German parties.
The German reformists conceived of the class-struggle within the narrow confines of the bourgeois halls of government. In doing so, they neglected the very clear understanding that Marx and Engels had cultivated in their works for over three decades: the economic base of society is prior to and more fundamental than its superstructure.
The class struggle is a battle fought within the economic base of society between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. As such, it is also fought in all of the manifestations of the superstructure, of which the tiny parliament is but one of the many institutions of state, and the state in turn only one of many components of the social superstructure. These “Marxists” handily neglected the primary mode of the class-struggle, and the trade unions that had formed as a direct consequence of the class struggle. The trade union wasn’t just denied revolutionary potential; it was totally disregarded and placed as a secondary institution to the party’s parliamentary designs on power.
Even while the Socialist Labor Party made gestures to bourgeois respectability during the period immediately prior to the First World War, the party never abandoned its revolutionary orientation. The political struggle of the working class was properly understood to be broader than just elections. Elections would only be one aspect of the emerging vanguard’s function within the proletariat. In many ways, the experience of the Socialist Labor Party would serve as a prototype to Lenin’s writings on the nature of the revolutionary vanguard following the October Revolution.
As the vanguard party, the SLP would serve as the “university of the working class,” educating the the proletariat in the theory of revolution, and providing the organizational tools to teach the working class a means of resisting capital. In doing so, it would coordinate the totality of politics, and its intersection with social life. The vanguard party’s apparatus would provide an authentically proletarian alternative to the organized corruption of the city machines, offering the means of subsistence, and most importantly, dignity and self-respect as a worker. As a rule of American politics, wherever the machines retreated or were dissolved, the vanguard party quickly advanced to fill the vacuum. The Republican campaigns against the corrupt Democratic Party machines prior to the 1912 General Election, and which only barely ensured victory for the Republicans, would leave a fallow field for working class organization to grow in.
…The SLP’s and the Solidarity union’s policy with regards to small freeholders and rural farm workers was another important revolutionary deviation from the whiggish orthodoxy of the European Lasalleans. The unique absence of feudal legacies, especially serfdom and religious absolutism, in American history created a vital difference in American class dynamics. Unlike in Europe, the rural farmer was not a peasant. The whole of the rural areas of America were not populated with a vast reactionary mass; instead, the rural worker and the freeholder were members of and natural allies of the urban proletariat respectively.
The 1912 General Election demonstrated this abundantly to the ruling classes, as vast sections of the rural Midwest and Western states turned out to support the Socialist Labor Party. Almost half of the Socialist caucus in the House of Representatives would come from predominantly rural western states, and these states had large slates of Socialists in their own state legislatures.
Excerpts from Sean Hannity,A History of the Worker’s Vanguard in America, 1876-1946 , (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999)
The period from the mid-1890s to the start of the First World War is often described by historians of the left as the Rise of Monopoly Capital. This pithy phrase, while apt, unfortunately cannot capture the full terror of this era. Never before in history had the economic power of society been constituted and consolidated into so few hands. These robber barons, men like John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Charles Schwab and Henry Morrison Flagler, often amassed fortunes literally one million times greater than the wealth of the average worker.
Through entirely legal machinations, the cartels of this era centralized ever greater sections of capital into united combines called “trusts”. As they expanded, they plowed their lesser competitors under by the score.
The reasons for this expansion of capital have been well understood by modern political economy. The tendency of the rate of profit to fall in a capitalist society, first elucidated by Marx in Vol. 3 of Capital , is the inexorable historical force that drives the concentration of capital. As he noted, within the capitalist epoch “it is thereby proved a logical necessity that in its development the general average rate of surplus-value must express itself in a falling general rate of profit.” As the value of past labor, capital, increases exponentially with accumulation, the volume of current labor shrinks in proportion. Thus:
“…it follows that the portion of living labour, unpaid and congealed in surplus-value, must also be continually on the decrease compared to the amount of value represented by the invested total capital. Since the ratio of the mass of surplus-value to the value of the invested total capital forms the rate of profit, this rate must constantly fall.”
As the rate of profit fell, the very nature of capitalist market competition drove consolidation. It was no longer enough to be content with dozens of competitors in a given commodity market. But the size of the market for goods simply could not expand fast enough to keep in pace with the falling rate of profit. Without consolidation, each passing year would bring ever diminishing returns to capital, and thus stagnation. The successful firms, chiefed by the most ruthless and unscrupulous, acted first. They destroyed their competitors by whatever means they could, and absorbed their empires into their own. They colluded with one another to form cartels to maintain profits for themselves and their shareholders. And through the consolidation of power in the monopoly trust, they came to dominate political power within the state.
It was simply no longer the case that the state was “the executive committee to manage the common affairs of the bourgeoisie.” The state became the executive committee of the national bourgeoisie. The final logic of moribund capitalism was the corporatist state, in its liberal and fascist forms.
As part of the centralization drive, the trusts turned themselves to the seemingly largest champion of labor, and brought the full force of their might upon it. They crushed the American Federation of Labor, in spite of the pathetic class-collaborationist organization’s sycophantic attitude towards capital. True to the inexorable dialectic of history, every action taken to preserve capital only dug its grave deeper. Through their machinations, the trusts worked harder than any activist to build the Socialist Labor Party and the Solidarity industrial union. Only too late would they realize that they had created their personal undertaker and reaper.
**Important Events of Interest
1905
March 4:** Charles Fairbanks is inaugurated as President of the United States.
March 20: The Grover Shoe Factory disaster: a massive boiler explosion occurs in a factory in Brockton, Massachusetts. The building subsequently collapses, killing 60 workers and injuring numerous others.
April 6: The United States Supreme Court overturns a New York state law regulating the work week in the case Lochner v. New York. The sweeping decision invokes the Fourteenth Amendment’s “Due Process Clause,” and results in the widespread invalidation of many state laws regulating commerce and the work week. The doctrine of “substantive due process” as enumerated by the Court gives another blow to progressives in the GOP.
May 1: STLA deputy chairman William “Big Bill” Haywood announces the creation of two new unions within the STLA: The Yeoman Farmer’s Federation, and the Agricultural Worker’s Organization. As part of the declaration, Big Bill Haywood promotes the concept of the “One Big Union,” in which all members of the producing classes would organize together for a common socialist platform. The new organizations seek to organize cooperative mutual aid and revolutionary enthusiasm among small freeholders and the workers, sharecroppers and hired hands in big plantations respectively.
May 16: The beginning of the Congressional Revolt: Progressive GOP leadership in the House steer the passage of Comprehensive Federal Trade Act. The sweeping legislation, modeled in many ways off German Chancellor Bismarck’s “practical Christianity” or “Staatssozialismus ” programs, would establish a Department of Industrial Coordination, comprehensive safety regulations, an old-age safety net, as well as some limited collective bargaining standards.
June 1: National Steel, a trust controlling almost 3/4ths of steel production in the United States, begins a major anti-union campaign against the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, withdrawing recognition of the union in all of the organized mills. Though the AAISW and the AF of L attempt to organize a national campaign against this, many of the larger locals go down without a fight in the opening salvo. The Labor Wars begin.
June 4: The Senate narrowly gives assent to the Comprehensive Federal Trade Act. However, the act is quickly and aggressively vetoed by President Fairbanks. In his veto message, Fairbanks scathingly denounces the Congressional leadership who forged the compromise act, accusing them of bowing to “syndicalist-anarchist intimidation” and “waging a bloody, unconstitutional class war by despotically depriving men of their property and liberty.”
June 12: Amidst a growing sense of constitutional crisis and paralyzed government, Princeton University professor Woodrow Wilson’s monograph Congressional Government is cited by popular editorials in newspapers across the country.
June 30: The Labor Wars: The International Mercantile Marine Co. begins its own anti-union campaign, particularly against longshoremen, using the AF of L’s counter-reaction as a pretext to destroy affiliated unions.
July 1: Congressional leaders fire back at the President, accusing him of abuse of power, and of undermining the health of the nation by refusing any compromise over the growing inequalities of power in the country. Though attempts to override Fairbank’s veto fail, it’s clear that the honeymoon between Fairbanks and his party is over quite soon.
July 9: The Labor Wars: Standard Oil joins in the attack on the AF of L. Attempts at organizing at fields and refineries owned by the trust are met with strikebreakers and scabs, resulting in the accidental death of three labor organizers in Texas.
July 20: Governor Robert LaFollete of Wisconsin announces a major legislative deal with Victor Berger’s growing Social Democratic Party. LaFollete’s progressive Republicans and the Milwaukee “Sewer Socialists” agree to cooperate on a progressive agenda very close to the SDP’s minimum program.
July 31: The Women’s Trade Union League votes to quit the AF of L, citing the ineffectiveness of the craft union policies, and the perverse indifference within the AF of L towards women workers and the women’s suffrage movement. The predominantly socialist leadership of the League begin talks with the STLA to join the industrial union federation.
August 24: The American Amalgamated Coal Company forms. The new trust is an offshoot of the National Steel trust, formed as part of a vertical integration plan by the trust’s leadership. The new trust acquires the Consolidation Coal Company and the Pennsylvania Coal Company, two of the largest coal mining companies in the United States.
September 7: The American Telephone & Telegraph Company joins the Labor Wars, successfully crushing small union strikes within its branches.
September 20: Samuel Clemens, alias Mark Twain, publishes his political satire, What’s Mine is Mine , skewering the unashamedly servile press coverage of, among other things, the 1902 Anthracite Coal Strike. Even the great humorist is not immune to charges of being a “socialist-anarchist bombthrower.”
October 1: The Labor Wars: The Anaconda Copper Company, in Butte, Montana, begins a union-busting campaign at its flagship copper mines. The United Mineworkers responds by voting for a general strike against the Anaconda Company and its affiliates.
October 8: Congressional GOP leadership enter into a further row with President Fairbanks, over corruption within the executive departments. The “Imperial President” widely loses favor with the public over apparently rampant connections to major trusts, especially the much reviled Northern Securities Company.
November 1: One month into the Copper General Strike, there seems to be very little hope for a peaceful resolution. The Governor of Montana, Democrat Joseph K. Toole, is pressured into mobilizing the National Guard to “restore order” in Butte, Anaconda, and the surrounding counties. This move meets wide resistance from Farmer-Labor groups, and ends up pushing the remnants of Montana People’s Party organizations into the Socialist Labor Party, which has played a significant role in organizing the strike.
November 12: In one of the last votes of the year, the House of Representatives votes 254-99 to endorse the Congressional Government Amendment. The Amendment, authored by Democratic Minority Whip Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey, will be debated in the Senate next. The Amendment would significantly strip the powers of the presidency and establish a parliamentary governmental structure, with the Cabinet responsible to the House of Representatives.
1906
January 16: The President’s standoff with the legislative branch continues in the new year. Fairbanks’ barbed State of the Union address reveals an executive unintimidated by the Congress’ threatened rebuke. He appears confident that the Republican Party political machines in the states will side with the executive instead of the Congress in the upcoming Constitutional Amendment battle.
February 10: The HMS Dreadnought is launched, revolutionizing naval warfare. An impending naval arms race between the UK and the German Reich is on the horizon, with the lesser naval powers of France, Italy, the US, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Japan expected to take part to some degree.
February 14: An attack by the Montana National Guard against strikers in Butte is repulsed by an armed Farmer-Labor “Vigilance Committee.” Before the Montana front of the Labor Wars can further escalate, the Governor begins backing down, as he continues to lose support among the farmer constituencies that helped bring him into office. He urges the Board of Directors for the Anaconda Copper Company to enter the bargaining table with the strikers. Meanwhile, American Railway Union workers refuse to load shipments to and from the Anaconda Company, in solidarity with the UMW.
February 28: Upton Sinclair publishes his landmark novel, The Jungle. Though the socialist tract also spreads considerable concern about the health and safety of the meatpacking industry, the Supreme Court’s case law precedent, and the President’s threatened veto stymie attempts to make headway on regulation.
March 1: National leaders of the STLA and the United Mineworkers, including Eugene Debs and “Big Bill” Haywood, travel to Butte to begin a collective bargaining agreement with the Anaconda Company.
March 15: The US Senate votes 60-30 in favor of the Congressional Government Amendment, narrowly meeting the two-thirds constitutional requirement. The Amendment will now head to the states for ratification.
March 17: The six-month long Copper General strike reaches an end, with a negotiated settlement. The UMW is tacitly recognized, and a bare-bones collective bargaining agreement is instituted, giving the union a measure of control over dismissal of members from the mines. The mineworkers also win small pay raises and shorter hours.
April 6: The Congress and the President again enter into a row, this time over naval armament spending. The President finds himself reluctant to authorize the necessary spending increases to pay for a navy necessary to project America’s status as an emerging world power.
April 18: The Populists’ emergency national convention begins. At stake is the future of the organization and its mission of a broad, class-reforming government. The convention of the ailing organization is divided between two hostile camps. The “Left Populists,” consisting of Farmer-Labor and rural worker groups, endorse socialism and industrial unionism, and wish to enter the Socialist Labor Party led worker’s movement. The “Right Populists” wish to maintain electoral independence, and stay steadfastly opposed to collaboration with other groups. The “Left Populists” carry the day, and begin the process of affiliation with the SLP. “Right Populist” sections leave the organization, and vow to carry on the true Populist spirit in a new organization.
May 1: SLP activist and novelist Jack London begins serializing his novel White Fang in The Outing Magazine.
May 8: National Steel purchases its largest competitor, Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company. The J.P. Morgan backed steel trust controls nearly 3/4ths of American steel production. The corporation’s aggressive expansion is paved by innovation, combined with the nullification of American antitrust statutes.
June 1: With the near total eradication of the Amalgamated Iron Workers’ union, the STLA forms a Steelworkers’ Organizing Committee, to begin making cautious inroads into forming a steelworker’s industrial union. Other proposals for industrial oil workers and telephone workers are considered as well, but rejected in the interim to concentrate the STLA’s resources on the large steel industry.
June 18: House Speaker Joseph Cannon (R-IL) meets with a delegation of Democratic Party leaders, including several Southern state governors, the Minority Leader John Sharp Williams (D-MS) and Minority Whip Woodrow Wilson (D-NJ), to discuss a compromise agreement on the Congressional Government Amendment. The eventual agreement balances populist issues with trusts, a key Democratic constituency and something looked down upon even by Bourbon Democrat hardliners, as well as Democratic isolationism. In exchange for Southern state support for the amendment, a Cannon-led Congressional government will push for means to regulate and control trusts and improve wages for workers, hoping to shore up dwindling Democratic support among the industrial working class.
July 11: Seven Southern states ratify the Congressional Government Amendment, intensifying the conflict between the President and the Congress. However, hopes of getting the Amendment ratified before the 1906 election seem wildly optimistic.
August 1: President Fairbanks deploys the US Army to Cuba, to contain a Cuban rebellion that the puppet government has been incapable of putting down. The intervention quashes moderate Cuban leaders’ hopes of slow moves to independence.
August 14: With the mid-term elections looming on the horizon, the GOP heavyweights in the National Convention lock horns with one another over the future of the party. While the growing consensus is towards Legalist Progressivism, balancing the wishes of the electorate with the powerful business constituency in the Republican Party is difficult. While corporate interests can back the governmental reform of the Congressional Government Amendment, other proposals, such as an “antitrust” amendment to the Constitution, are unable to gain traction.
September 1: An electoral fusion alliance is negotiated in Wisconsin, with a number of Progressive Republicans running on Victor Berger’s Social Democratic Party ticket as well.
October 11: The Steelworkers’ Organizing Committee begins the first part of its unionization push, starting in the smaller foundries of the Pennsylvania-based Bethlehem Steel Corporation.
November 6: Midterm elections in the United States: The Republican Party gains an increased majority in both the House and the Senate. The Social Democrats and the Socialist Labor Party make their first entry into the US House of Representatives, as well as significant gains in state legislatures across the country.
December 2: After failing to obtain court injunctions or state aid against Steelworkers’ Organizing Committee actions at a number of plants, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation reluctantly recognizes the union. Bethlehem Steel stock prices fall, and orders for steel steadily shift to its monolithic competitor, National Steel.
Congressional Results, 1906
House of Representatives |
Seats | Change
---|---|---
Republican Party |
260 | 9
Democratic Party |
123 | -12
Social Democratic Party |
2 | 2
Socialist Labor Party |
1 | 1
U.S. Senate |
Seats | Change
---|---|---
Republican Party |
58 | 0
Democratic Party |
30 | -2
Social Democratic Party* |
2 | 2
1907
January 1: Daniel J. Tobin becomes president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
February 11: Progressive Republican-controlled states begin ratifying the Congressional Government Amendment, with Wisconsin leading the charge.
February 28: The American Federation of Labor receives a major blow, as the rail-based craft unions vote to leave the Federation, citing its inability to challenge the declining benefits for union members. The effectiveness of the industrial American Railway Union’s actions leads many members, and the entire Brotherhoods of Locomotive Engineers and Railroad Signalmen, to decide to join the ARU.
March 4: With the opening of the new Congressional term, freshman Congressman Victor Berger (SD-WI) delivers a scathing criticism of President Fairbanks’ failed leadership of the nation, reaching across the aisle to Progressive Republicans to curb the excesses of plutocracy in the US.
March 12: The Autoworker’s Organizing Committee is founded in Detroit, Michigan, by delegates of the STLA and workers from the Ford Motor Company. Almost immediately, Henry Ford attempts to destroy the fledgling union. The tide begins to turn in the Labor Wars.
March 30: The Agriculture Workers’ Organization reaches a membership of almost 100,000 workers.
April 4: Republican politician and figure of the Progressive movement Theodore Roosevelt delivers a major speech at an organization of Northeastern Republicans. Roosevelt criticizes the failed hardline policies of the GOP center, represented by the current president, charging them with ignoring the growing class war in the country.
April 17: The South American dreadnought race begins in earnest with the laying down of the Brazilian Minas Geraes at the Armstrong Whitworth yards in the UK.
April 18: The battleship USS Kansas (BB-21) is commissioned, the first of the American dreadnought type all-big-gun battleships.
June 6: The Lumber Workers’ Industrial Union organizes in the Pacific Northwest and South from a coalition of smaller local unions and craft union locals representing workers in the lumber industry. The Lumber Strike begins almost immediately.
July 8: The ailing AF of L begins a National Conference, with the hopes of finding a solution to its plummeting membership and distressed financial situation. While Gompers puts on a brave front, and his Voluntarist faction carries the day, behind closed doors it is grimmer than many had feared. The AF of L strike fund is nearly depleted, and a number of affiliates are on the verge of total bankruptcy.
August 1: The Aeronautical Division is established within the US Army Signal Corps.
August 14: The Seventh Congress of the Second International begins in Stuttgart, Germany. The Congress opens with the welcoming of a large slate of delegates from the fast growing Socialist Labor Party of America.
August 31: Count Alexander Izvolsky and Sir Arthur Nicolson sign the St. Petersburg Convention, which results in the establishment of the Triple Entente.
September 6: The Anaconda Copper Company, joined by a group of investors led by John D. Rockefeller, purchase a majority stake in the United Copper Company. The new cartel, which will become the US Copper Corporation, will soon control almost three-fourths of the American copper market.
November 16: The Oklahoma and Indian Territories are combined, entering the union as the 46th State.
December 6: Monongah Mining Disaster: A coal mine explosion kills 362 workers in Monongah, West Virginia.
December 11: The Great White Fleet departs from Hampton Roads, Virginia, as a display of growing American military might.
December 19: An explosion in a coal mine in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania kills 239. The second major coal mining disaster in a month, the central committee of the United Mineworkers vote to begin broad strikes in the coal mining industry to protest the lack of safety precautions. This time the unionists enter the battle from a position of strength, with major public sympathy on their side.
1908
January 1: The first ball drops in Times Square on New Year’s Day, beginning a long tradition.
January 6: The Amalgamated Coal Company reaches an agreement with the United Mineworkers, beginning a serious investigation by a joint company-union task force on mine safety, and agreeing to the Mineworkers’ wage increase demands. This successful coup ensures that Amalgamated Coal will be the only sure supply of coal this winter.
January 12: The American Railway Union and the Steelworkers’ Organizing Committee begin sympathy actions to support the United Mineworkers. ARU organized locomotives and railyards refuse to deliver coal from mines owned by companies still under strike, and Steelworkers strike at factories that buy coal from said mines.
February 1: The Lumber Strike ends, a major success for the Lumber Workers. Sustained by graft, lumber camp occupation, and generous donations from other working-class organizations, the Lumber Workers gain total recognition by much of the industry.
February 12: Following rumors that the West Virginia Governor will deploy the National Guard to end the strike, coal miners arm themselves and begin an occupation of many of the rural coal pits. This escalation leads to the federal mobilization of the National Guard, and of the US Army by the president, to suppress the strike.
February 15: Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon openly defies the President’s command authority of the military, invoking the Posse Comitatus Act. A Congressional Joint-Resolution, condemning the president’s violation of the Act (which prohibits the use of the military or National Guard under federal control for law enforcement within the borders of the US except when authorized by the Congress or the Constitution), and subtly threatening impeachment should he continue, passes both houses of Congress by a 2/3rds majority, gaining the support of nearly the entire Democratic Caucus as well as sufficient factions of the Republican Party.
March 1: Following the President’s retreat, and the refusal of state governors to intervene on behalf of mine-owners, shares of affected companies, and notably the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, plummet at the New York Stock Exchange.
March 15: Negotiations begin to end the largest strike in American history. Congressional leaders agree to mediate the negotiations between STLA leaders and the coal industry.
April 1: National Steel begins a hostile takeover of the ailing Bethlehem Steel Corporation, cornering the plummeting stock of the corporation. If the deal is allowed to be completed, National Steel will hold a near total monopoly on the US steel industry. Public outcry against the move is strong but impotent.
April 5: The Coal Strike ends, following a successful settlement. The massive press coverage of the strike make the United Mineworkers and the STLA’s victory a virtual propaganda coup. The Labor Wars effectively end.
April 27: The IV Olympiad begins in London, England.
May 26: At Masjid-al-Salaman in Southwestern Persia, the first major oil discovery in the Middle-East is made. The rights are quickly acquired by the United Kingdom, following a cryptic telegram delivered to the Home Office: “See Psalm 104, Verse 15, Line 3”.
June 16: The Republican National Convention begins in Chicago, Illinois. Following a series of ballots, the Legalist Progressive aligned delegates succeed in their coup, nominating William Howard Taft for President.
June 30: The Tunguska Event occurs in Siberia.
July 1: The Socialist Labor Party National Convention begins in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Party ratifies a new platform, and endorses a large slate of representatives, some running on fusion tickets. The new platform specifies a minimum and maximum programme for the first time.
July 3: The Young Turk Revolution begins in the Ottoman Empire.
July 18: As the election draws near, delegates of the SDP and the SLP meet to finalize an electoral cooperation agreement. Congressional candidates for both parties will not run against each other, with hopes of maximizing the left vote, and paving a road to reconciliation between the two groups.
August 12: The United Teamsters of America form a successful “dual-union”, effectively breaking the International Brotherhood of Teamsters craft-union policies, and IBT president Daniel J. Tobin’s stranglehold on the organization.
September 16: William C. Durant founds the predecessor to the General Motors Corporation.
September 25: The first Ford Model T is produced.
October 6: The Bosnia Crisis begins as the Austro-Hungarian Empire annexes Bosnia-Herzegovina.
October 15: The International Union of Brewery Workmen of America votes to leave the AF of L and join the STLA.
November 3: The 1908 US General Election. William Howard Taft is elected President of the United States, but the Republican Party faces a major defeat in Congressional elections as well as control of State Legislatures.
December 2: Child Emperor Pu-Yi ascends to the Chinese throne at the age of two.
General election, 1908
Presidential Results
Presidential candidate |
Party |
Popular Vote |
Percentage |
Electoral Count
---|---|---|---|---
William H. Taft |
Republican Party |
6,032,171 |
42.59% |
321
Alton B. Parker |
Democratic Party |
4,987,123 |
35.21% |
140
Eugene Debs |
Socialist Labor Party |
1,632,400 |
11.52% |
0
William Jennings Bryan |
Populist Democratic |
1,512,011 |
10.68% |
0
Congressional Results
House of Representatives |
Seats |
Change
---|---|---
Republican Party |
206 |
-54
Democratic Party |
165 |
37
Socialist Labor Party /
Social Democratic Party |
20 |
17
U.S. Senate |
Seats |
Change
---|---|---
Republican Party |
50 |
-8
Democratic Party |
40 |
10
Socialist Labor Party/
Social Democratic Party |
2 |
0
1909
January 1: Drilling begins on the Lakeview Gusher.
January 5: Colombia recognizes the “independence” of Panama.
February 4: The long string of AF of L defections and takeovers continue, with the syndicalist takeover of the mostly immigrant Journeyman International Barber’s Union. The new Revolutionary Barbers’ International federates with the STLA.
February 22: The Great White Fleet returns to Hampton Roads, Virginia.
March 4: William Howard Taft succeeds Charles Fairbanks as President of the United States.
March 31: Serbia accepts Austro-Hungarian control of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
April 1: The Bricklayers’, Masons and Plasterers’ International Union adopts an industrial unionist platform, beginning a power struggle in the AF of L between Gompers’ Voluntarists and the still AF of L-loyalist Bricklayers.
April 14: The government of Argentina begins negotiating with the German government and the Wilhelmshaven Imperial Shipyard to construction competing dreadnoughts, with Germany eager to use the premium price commanded by such a build to finance further shipyard expansions.
April 19: The Anglo-Persian Oil Company is founded.
May 6: The US Senate ratifies a treaty allowing co-recognition of corporations between the US and the Russian Empire.
May 14: Following the completion of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, the parent company is acquired by the Northern Securities Company, granting the new Enterprise Railroad Corporation a near monopoly on transcontinental travel in the north of the country.
June 16: President William Howard Taft recommends to Congress to vote to propose an amendment to the US Constitution to permit the federal government to levy an income tax upon persons and corporations, as well as clarify the meaning of the commerce clause.
July 13: STLA union workers, affiliated with the ARU, begin a walk-out at the Pressed Steel Car Company in Pennsylvania. Nearly three quarters of the six thousand employees of the company, which mass produces rail cars via assembly line methods, join the strike action. An attack by Pinkertons as well as the Pennsylvania State Police are unable to bring an early resolution to the strike.
July 18: With 36 states ratifying the Congressional Government Amendment, the Sixteenth Amendment becomes the supreme law of the land. Democratic Party Majority Leader Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey successfully forms a coalition government with Republican Progressives and the Social Democrats.5
July 30: President Taft welcomes the new First Secretary Woodrow Wilson to the White House, where the two hammer out a political agreement. The first “cohabitation” government appears to be a success, as talks are cordial, and a fair division of powers is achieved. The President will cede initiative in domestic affairs to the Cabinet, while the Cabinet assures the President’s initiative in foreign and judicial affairs.
August 2: The US Army Signal Corps purchases its first airplane.
August 8: With Gompers’ demands left unheeded, the AF of L votes to expel the Bricklayers from the Federation. Stung by this bitter betrayal, the Bricklayers naturally drift into the STLA.
August 14: First Secretary Wilson’s coalition government obtains its first legislative victory, steering the passage of the Mann-Elkins Act, expanding the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission to include communications, and also strengthening regulation of railroads, mines and the steel industry.
September 12: Emiliano Zapata begins his revolutionary career, when the city leaders of San Miguel Anenecuilco select him to recover lands owned by the village.
September 18: The Pressed Steel Car Strike ends, with the strikers winning company recognition of the Industrial Assemblers’ Union, as well as significant wage increases.
September 20: The Union of South Africa is created, following legislation in the British parliament.
October 4: The Industrial Assemblers’ Union begins its first national congress. The congress is attended by representatives of the Autoworkers’ Union, the Boot and Shoeworkers’ Union, the Boilermakers and Iron Shipbuilders’ Union, the Bridge, Structural and Ornamental Ironworkers’ Union, the Iron, Tin and Steel Workers’, and the International Association of Machinists. Attending unions are immediately suspended from the AF of L.
November 11: The US Navy founds a navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
December 17: King Albert I of Belgium succeeds his uncle, Leopold II, to the throne.
1910
January 17: By voice vote, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously approves a bill calling for statehood for the territories of Arizona and New Mexico.
February 4: The Boy Scouts of America youth organization is incorporated.
February 7: France joins the naval arms race, with the passage of a bill calling for the construction of 28 major surface combatants and 94 submarines over a 10-year period.
March 8: A battle begins for control of the Carpenters’ Union. One of the key organizations of the AF of L, its large membership constitutes the majority of current deflated AF of L membership. Gompers’ allies squash proposals to build a political program, or open the union up to racial minorities. “Outside agitators” linked with the STLA begin agitating for the union to quit the AF of L and join the STLA.
April 18: The White-Slavery Act, also known as the Mann Act, passes with strong majorities in the House and Senate.
May 11: The US Congress authorizes the creation of the United States Bureau of Mines.
June 1: The American Civil Service Act of 1910 is steered through the House by First Secretary Wilson. The popular bill, aimed at improving efficiency and fighting corruption in the Executive Departments, greatly expands the existing Civil Service system to large numbers of positions within the government. The Act also establishes a temporary commission to weed out corrupt federal employees within the government.
July 8: Social Democratic/Socialist Labor members of Wilson’s reform coalition meet with the First Secretary today to discuss collective bargaining and safety standards. With the passage of the Commerce Amendment a near foregone conclusion at this point, Wilson confidently assures progress on mediating between capital and labor.
August 22: The Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty is signed.
August 28: The Eighth International Congress of the Second International begins in the socialist-governed city of Copenhagen, to considerable fanfare. With over a thousand delegates from thirty-three countries, the Congress strengthens previous commitments against war, and entertains the American delegation’s draft proposals for a socialist trade union international, modeled off the American Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance.
October 7: The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified.
October 18: First Secretary Wilson introduces three bills on the floor of the House of Representatives. The first would establish a small progressive income tax to generate revenue for the federal government. The second would establish a new federal department, the Department of Industrial Coordination, to serve as the Cabinet’s oversight over the regulatory arms of government and to manage the increasingly tense conflict between labor and capital. The third would establish a central bank to regulate the American money supply and bring stability to the country’s chaotic financial institutions.
November 8: Midterm Senate elections begin. By the time the arcane process is done, the Democrats pick up five Senate seats, and the Socialist Labor Party picks up one, bringing the totals in the Senate to 45 Democrats, 44 Republicans, and 3 Socialist Laborites.
November 20: The Mexican Revolution of 1910 begins, as Francisco I. Madero declares the elections of 1910 are null and void, calling for an armed revolution against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz.
December 12: President Taft signs First Secretary Wilson’s “Progressive Slate” into law, following the lightning passage of the three bills. As per the previous agreement with the First Secretary, Taft submits his new Cabinet appointments to the House of Representatives: James R. Mann (R-IL) as Secretary for Industrial Coordination, and Victor Berger (SD-WI) for Secretary of Labor.
1911
January 31: At a special congress of the Social Democratic Party, the party votes to formally weld the party-apparatus to that of the larger Socialist Labor Party. The merger is expected to be confirmed by an early Summer special conference of the SLP.
March 4: Congress returns from recess to face a growing crisis of confidence among the American people over the role of big business in society. The events of the year will not do much to help that confidence.
March 8: The first installment of Frederick Taylor’s monograph, The Principles of Scientific Management , appears in The American Magazine. The three-month run gives a tremendous boost to the growing proto-corporatist movement among American Progressives.
March 29: The M1911 .45 caliber pistol is adopted by the United States Army.
May 1: The publicly owned central bank of the United States, the Bank of the Republic, begins formal operation today, with the appointment of economist Irving Fisher as Chairman of the Bank of the Republic.
May 15: Standard Oil achieves monopoly status in the oil industry, with greater than 99 percent control of the American domestic oil market. This news is met with great apprehension throughout much of the country. Two massive monopolies are now entrenched in the US market, and have been hostile to both organized labor as well as progressive government attempts to regulate them.
May 31: The RMS Titanic is launched. As the White Star Line’s new flagship, she promises to be the most luxurious ocean liner in the world.
June 14: A national seamen’s strike begins in Britain.
June 20: The National Executive of the SLP authorizes the mass enrollment of the Social Democratic Party into the SLP. The move is unpopular with Daniel DeLeon, and his allies, but Eugene Debs remains hopeful that the reformist wing can be won over to a revolutionary position.
July 1: The creation of a special committee to investigate the Monopoly Capital situation is announced by First Secretary Wilson. A joint creature of the Cabinet and the Commerce Committee, the committee’s chairman, James Mann, makes broad sweeping subpoenas to begin its task.
August 8: Public Law 62-6 sets the number of representatives in the House of Representatives at 435.
August 21: SLP National Secretary Daniel DeLeon passes away of a sudden stroke in the early hours of the morning. The powerful leader and brilliant Marxist theoretician will be sorely missed in the SLP. His funeral is attended by the First Secretary and the Speaker of the House. Future historians will remember DeLeon’s funeral as the last of the halcyon days of broad progressive reform.
September 8: Infighting begins in Wilson’s coalition government over the preliminary reports of Mann’s special committee. While the committee’s recognized the trend to increasing capital concentration and its potentially dangerous effects on the health of the Republic, the preliminary report’s cautiously pro-capital policy recommendations draw fire from the left-wing members of the coalition.
October 10: The Wuchang Uprising starts the Xinhai Revolution.
October 18: Revolutionaries under Sun Yat-sen overthrow China’s Qing Dynasty, founding a provisional government that would become the Republic of China.
November 14: Just before the end year recess, a preliminary policy agreement is reached by the Wilson Cabinet. A new antitrust law, narrowly tailored under the new Seventeenth Amendment and the Court’s interpretation of the takings clause from the case of Northern Securities Co. v. US , the new act would chiefly prevent vertical integration and collusions between trusts from different industries. The bill is chiefly aimed at separating the various parts of the J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller empires.
December 8: The Carpenter’s Union votes to quit the AF of L, and join the STLA, basically signally the death knell of the American Federation of Labor as a viable union federation.
December 31: Sun Yat-sen becomes the first President of the Republic of China
1912
January 5: The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party splits into two separate organizations along the Bolshevik/Menshevik divide.
January 18: Forty thousand workers walk out of textile mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts, beginning the Bread and Roses strike.
February 14: The now bankrupt American Federation of Labor capitulates to the industrial unionist STLA. The AF of L President Samuel Gompers accepts STLA President Big Bill Haywood’s offer for a “Continental Congress of labor” to handle the organizational task of merging the two union federations.
March 14: The Bread and Roses strike ends, with the combined forces of the craft-union United Textile Workers and the mostly woman, immigrant Revolutionary Textile Workers winning a forty-hour work week, better pay, and a collective bargaining agreement.
April 17: The RMS Titanic arrives in New York harbor, having bested the White Star Line’s previous Atlantic crossing record. The White Star Line flagship’s smashing success is a major coup for the International Mercantile Marine Company, the transnational cartel that holds a near monopoly on transatlantic shipping.
May 1: The streets of Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New York are paralyzed by May Day demonstrations organized by the Socialist Labor Party. The march this year is unique, making women’s suffrage a center issue alongside traditional labor issues.
May 5: The V Olympiad begins in Stockholm, Sweden. It is the first of the Olympic Games to have participants from all five continents.
May 16: Gompers’ and Haywood’s “Continental Congress of labor” meets in Chicago. The Congress, attended by representatives of every major trade union in America, including the internationalist Industrial Workers of the World, would lead to the merger of the AF of L and the STLA into a new trade union federation, the International Workers’ Solidarity Union. The new union would serve as a prototype for the international union federation endorsed by American delegates to the Second International.
June 6: The Socialist Labor Party National Convention begins in Toledo, Ohio. The motley convention, representing a broad spectrum from Western miner syndicalists and prairie socialist yeoman farmers, to dissident intellectual progressives from the Republican Party, ratifies what would later be known as the Toledo Programme, endorsing industrial unionism, revolutionary socialism, and fierce anti-imperialism.
June 18: The Republican Party re-nominates William Howard Taft for the presidency, almost completely unopposed.
June 25: The Democratic Party nominates William Jennings Bryan for President, healing the potential split between his Populist Democratic insurgents and the rest of the party apparatus.
July 3: The Socialist Labor Party and the International Workers’ Solidarity Union ratify a joint-constitution, welding the two organizations together while preserving union independence from the party.
August 6: Following pay-cuts dictated by the US Steel Corporation’s central management, the Steelworkers’ Organizing Committee votes to organize a walkout, to both win union recognition and push back the declining wages among steelworkers.
August 21: Membership in the Steelworkers’ Organizing Committee grows substantially, as the strike spreads like wildfire. The largest corporation in America is nearly paralyzed by striking workers. The only thing preventing a direct armed confrontation between the strikers and US Steel’s allies in state governments and private mercenary organizations is the direct intervention by Wilson’s coalition government to prevent such a catastrophe.
October 7: The Eighteenth Amendment, guaranteeing the right to vote for women, and supporting the principle of electoral fusion and free association, is ratified, though not quickly enough to come into full effect for the general election less than a month away.
November 5: William Howard Taft is narrowly re-elected President, while the Republican Party makes considerable gains in the House of Representatives. Negotiations soon begin between House Speaker Cannon and the incumbent First Secretary Wilson over whether the current cross-party coalition government will persist.
November 7: US Steel settles with the steelworkers, recognizing the organization and rolling back the pay cuts. However, the union was unable to win pay increases or shorter hours.
November 24: An extraordinary congress of the Second International is convened in Basel to address the rapidly escalating tensions between Austrians and Serbs and the growing fear that a general European war is on the horizon. The congress reiterates the International’s “war on war”, and called on all member parties to resist national war movements in their countries.
General election, 1912
The defection of large sectors of the Republican Party to support Woodrow Wilson’s trans-party reform coalition following the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment would prove to be a wakeup call for the party establishment. In spite of infighting in the coalition, Wilson governed effectively, and enjoyed broad support amongst the electorate, regardless of party affiliation. Neither could the stalwarts of the party ignore the growing class-war issue.
With the 1912 Republican Convention, these divisions were healed. The conservative, pro-business faction moved to the center to placate dissident Republicans. For the first time, the growing concentration of capital, and the formation of large monopoly trusts in steel, oil, transatlantic trade, transcontinental railroad, and even sugar, was addressed in a sober manner.
To the chagrin of the Populist Progressives, the Republicans would not go any further than mediating the class war, and regulating away its excesses through the application of a corporatist economic doctrine. The tacit endorsement of Legalist Progressivism by the Convention’s Platform Committee was made explicit by Taft’s renomination acceptance speech.
Thus, in the 1912 election, two ostensibly “Progressive” political parties would battle for control of the national political economy. Unfortunately for Wilson’s Democrats, the existence of a growing mass-based socialist party undermined the very point of Democratic Progressivism in electoral politics. The decline of the Northern working-class vote for the Democratic Party would prove fatal to the party’s prospects as a national political party. Only thanks to the socialists sapping away large portions of formerly Republican voting electorates was the party able to mount an effective national campaign in 1912.
For the Socialist Labor Party, 1912 seemed like the entrance into the big leagues. The growth of the party showed no signs of stopping or even slowing, and it seemed it would soon take power, perhaps by the end of the decade. So long as the party kept growing, the unresolved issues of reform vs. revolution could be put off for a later date. But even with the total capture of the formerly Democratic aligned northern working-class vote, and a significant further influx of Republican defectors, it was simply not likely that the party could crack the powerful Republican ideological dominance in many of the Northern states.
Regardless, the 1912 election is a particularly interesting one for historians, due to how close the electoral count ultimately was. The shift of a few thousand votes in just one of the several Midwest industrial states, such as Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio, would have given the state’s entire elector slate to the Democrats, and put William Jennings Bryan in the White House. In spite of almost a twenty-percent lead over Bryan, Taft was very nearly defeated in the election.
Presidential Results
Presidential candidate |
Party |
Popular Vote |
Percentage |
Electoral Count
---|---|---|---|---
William H. Taft |
Republican Party |
6,801,565 |
48.45% |
277
William Jennings Bryan |
Democratic Party |
4,122,721 |
29.37% |
254
Eugene Debs |
Socialist Labor Party |
3,115,015 |
22.19% |
0
Congressional Results
House of Representatives |
Seats |
Change
---|---|---
Republican Party |
235 |
29
Democratic Party |
160 |
-5
Socialist Labor Party |
40 |
20
U.S. Senate |
Seats |
Change
---|---|---
Republican Party |
49 |
5
Democratic Party |
44 |
-1
Socialist Labor Party |
3 |
0
**Amendments to the US Constitution, 1905-1913
Sixteenth Amendment (Ratified July 18th, 1909)**
§ One: The executive power shall be vested in the President of the United States; and in the Cabinet of the United States, consisting of the various Secretaries in charge of the executive departments, the First Secretary, and such other officers of the House of Representatives as determined by law.
The First Secretary and Secretaries of the Cabinet shall be elected by the House of Representatives without debate on the proposal of the President. The person who receives the majority vote of the House of Representatives shall be appointed by the President.
Members of the Cabinet may serve concurrently as members of the House of Representatives.
§ Two: The House of Representatives may express its lack of confidence in the Cabinet only by electing successors by majority vote of the members and requesting the President to dismiss the Cabinet. The President must comply with this request and appoint the successors.
If a motion of the First Secretary for a vote of confidence is not supported by a majority of members of the House of Representatives, the President may dissolve the House of Representatives, and order new elections to occur within twenty one days of dissolution.
§ Three: Save the following provisions, the House of Representatives shall be elected for four years. Its term shall end when a new House convenes. New elections shall be held no sooner than forty-six months and no later than forty-eight months after the electoral term begins. If the House be dissolved, new elections shall be held within sixty days.
The House of Representatives shall convene no later than thirty days following election.
Seventeenth Amendment (Ratified October 7th, 1910)
§ One: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
§ Two: The Congress shall have the power to regulate Commerce within the United States; specifically with respect to the fair standards of safe labor, the regulation of the operations of trusts, corporations, cartels, trade unions and other such commercial combinations.
§ Three: The Congress shall have the power to establish a national bank.
Eighteenth Amendment (Ratified October 7th, 1912)
§ One: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
§ Two: The right of citizens to form associations within and between political parties shall not be infringed. Neither the United States, nor any State, shall prohibit electoral fusion as a matter of free association in all elections.
§ Three: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
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