For this week’s Peace of History:

With economic insecurity currently on many people’s minds, let us look at the unique activities and principles of the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA). Founded in 1929 as primarily a research, educational, and central coordinating organization for the progressive labor movement, the group also provided relief, ran public awareness campaigns, and generally sought to build an expansive “labor culture” among working-class Americans. Under A.J. Muste’s leadership, the CPLA tactics were grounded in experience and more flexible than those of many other more ideological leftist groups at the time.

Muste was heavily influenced by his colleague David Saposs, who believed that “an effective labor movement is only possible when it is based upon a labor culture; that is, a mode of feeling, thinking and acting in terms of the problems and aspirations of labor.” Saposs, like many labor progressives of the time, viewed the American Federation of Labor (AFL) as “business unionism, which deliberately discouraged all working class organizational activity except unions, and which led the workers to immerse themselves in the capitalistic culture” (118). As a healthier and more fulfilling alternative to the dominant capitalist culture, some early CPLA projects focused on organizing recreational activities like picnics, dances, and singing clubs. They taught union songs and labor history, and generally attempted to educate working class people by framing the labor struggle as the next step in the expansion of American liberty. The ultimate goal was to develop a radical bloc within the conservative AFL to force the broader group to accept progressive measures.

From the start, the CPLA focused its attention on many of the “neglected” groups of the working class. Taking the opposite tact of the Communist Party, which was at once too reliant on long-winded theory and also too opportunistic with regards to strikes, the CPLA always started with the specific concerns of the workers to build sustainable, community-led movements. One of the first groups the CPLA started with was African-American laborers. Indeed, among the pamphlets published by the CPLA in its first year was “Negro Labor.” With both Black nationalism and Black capitalism becoming popular ideologies for many African-Americans in the early 20th century, the CPLA offered a third alternative to Black workers: working class solidarity with special attention to the unique challenges and implications of anti-Black racism. The theory was that barriers like racial prejudice and ideological differences would dissipate through the organic education of collective action and shared struggle. Although this proved to be an imperfect strategy, it was often the reason why the CPLA was successful when similar leftist and labor groups had failed.

The CPLA also regarded the concerns of woman-laborers to require special attention, similarly to those of African-American workers. Despite this wisdom, however, the CPLA was only somewhat more progressive with regards to views of women than many other leftist organizations of the time: the CPLA’s typical “labor feminism” sought to cultivate female leadership and female worker organization, but also presumed natural differences in ability between men and women, and continued to envision the prototypical “Worker” as a masculine force. Moreover, the CPLA recruited young people of all genders from the League for Industrial Democracy (youth wing of the Socialist Party especially active on college campuses), and from the YWCA’s industrial department (with which Muste was well-acquainted from past collaborative projects). Against the established leftist theory of the time, Muste also recruited intellectuals and “professional” wage-earners of “new capitalism” into the network, envisioning this new class of wage-earners as brothers to labor.

Perhaps the CPLA found some of its most dramatic successes in organizing jobless people -- first in Seattle, then spreading across the country (Ohio and Pennsylvania would ultimately organize the most, with approximately 100,000 and 50,000 people, respectively). With these numbers, the CPLA coordinated massive public awareness campaigns, educating the public of the invisible plight of unemployment as well as measures like government assistance that could mitigate them.

And yet, perhaps it could also be said that FDR’s federal response to the Great Depression helped end that era of progressive labor organizing. To Muste, the foundations of a movement, an organization, or a policy must be aligned with a diverse, anti-capitalist labor culture in order to win and maintain workers’ rights. He was unshakeable in his belief in the primacy of the common people’s will, even when FDR implemented some of the progressive policies while maintaining the dominant capitalist power structures.

It is a problem that continues, as contemporary leftists still contend with reactionaries and moderate liberals -- but perhaps the solution is to simply continue the work of building the culture of labor as a more attractive alternative to the individualistic, capitalist society in which we live. Culture, after all, is cumulative -- and history is not over.

For this week’s Peace of History:
We celebrate the first week of Labor History Month with the story of the 1919 Lawrence Textile Workers’ Strike: an episode that proved the power of nonviolent resistance in the American context decades before Dr. King, that bridged the gap between pacifism and trade unionism, and that sent A.J. Muste on the path to later co-found the influential Committee for Nonviolent Action.
A.J. Muste (for whom the VPT conference center is named) was a Dutch-born American pastor and activist known for his lifelong work in the labor, peace, and civil rights movements. Shortly after the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) was founded in 1916, A.J. Muste became an active member of the pacifist organization. By the end of the next year, with the United States’ entry into the First World War already several months in, Muste’s wildly unpopular pacifism led to the resignation of his pastorate in Newtonville, MA. Shortly thereafter, Muste moved to Boston and joined up with two other pacifist ministers involved in FOR, Cedric Long and Harold Rotzel, as well as three women of some social renown: Anna N. Davis, Ethel Paine, and Elizabeth Glendower Evans. Together, they formed the Comradeship: a group dedicated to investigating “the question of how to organize our lives so that they would truly express the teachings and spirit of Jesus.” In 1919, when FOR asked Long, Rotzel, and Muste to assist in the arbitration of the strike at Lawrence, MA, the Comradeship had their chance to put their philosophy to the test.

There were many challenges to resolving the strike from the start. The more than 30,000 striking workers came from over twenty different ethnic groups with different languages, spoke little English, and faced an ascendant and violent nationalism hostile to their foreignness. The workers had organized themselves into smaller ethnic groups, with a spokesperson for each group, but factory bosses had devised a divide-and-conquer strategy of rewarding “old” immigrants and exploiting “new” immigrants, further stoking ethnic tensions among the workers. And the brutality of police attacks on the workers began on the very first day of the strike, with police clubbing not just workers on picket lines and outside the mills, but also entering the homes of workers to attack women and other members of working families.

Many pacifists of the time, including some in FOR, believed that in irreconcilable situations, it might actually be better to cede victory to evil rather than to violate fundamental pacifist principles. Unlike mainstream pacifism of the time, however, when push came to shove, the Comradeship could not stand neutral. Moreover, while many American pacifists viewed labor strikes as inherently violent, the Comradeship realized almost immediately upon entering the situation in Lawrence that law enforcement was the “creator of violence” in the strike. Muste would argue later that, although worker activism might appear to disturb the “social peace,” the language of “peace” could often be used to maintain an unjust status quo -- one of the many important lessons he would learn from the 1919 strike. 

In helping to organize the strikers into a more sustainable force, the Comradeship helped to form the Amalgamated Textile Workers of America (ATWA), a new union of skilled and unskilled laborers. Muste was immediately elected to the office of Executive Secretary. His immigrant and working-class credentials helped him win the trust of the workers, but it was largely his strategic flexibility paired with a rigid commitment to justice that maintained that trust. 

One early episode in particular demonstrated both of these qualities especially well. Of course, the Comradeship discouraged the strikers from retaliatory violence against the police and scab workers, but sensing that some dramatic action was required to take its place, Long, Rotzel, and Muste took the risk of suffering police brutality to lead the picket line. On the first day of leading the line, Muste and Long were separated from the rest of the strikers, beaten until they could not stand, and then arrested. The Comradeship, however, turned the beating into a victory -- preceding the strategies that Dr. King would champion decades later, the brutalization of the clearly nonviolent pastors by the city police turned the city’s opinion of the situation overnight. More money began coming in for the strike fund. The tone of the press became more sympathetic. And the workers now had a living example of the power of nonviolent resistance.

So when police mounted machine guns in key locations of strike zones, and when “radicals” (who later turned out to be agents provocateur) called for the commandeering of the machine guns, the strike committee decided to continue the nonviolence strategy. To their great frustration, the police were unable to instigate any more significant bouts of violence from the strikers. Mill employers attempted to frame Muste for murder, but that plan was not carried through, in part because such an accusation would strain credulity.

At the end of 16-weeks, with both sides exhausted and preparing to give up, Muste was finally called in by the head of the American Woolen Company in Lawrence. They settled: 15% increase in wages and no discrimation against strikers. 
It was an important victory for the labor movement, a critical chapter of the early peace movement, and an essential learning experience for A.J. Muste -- the beginning of much of his decades-long work. 

Next week: we will compare the 1919 Lawrence strike with the much more famous, and decidedly more violent, 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike -- so-called the “Bread and Roses” strike organized by the Industrial Workers of the World. 

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Sources:
Danielson, Leilah. American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the Twentieth Century, 2014.
“Lawrence Mill Workers strike against wage cuts, 1919.” https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/lawrence-mill-workers-strike-against-wage-cuts-1919
“This Day in Resistance History: Hope College graduate A.J. Muste and the 1919 Lawrence textile workers strike.” https://griid.org/2013/02/03/this-day-in-resistance-history-hope-college-graduate-a-j-muste-and-the-1919-lawrence-textile-workers-strike/