The Truth about the Paterson Strike
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1914)
On January 31, 1914, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn analyzed
the Paterson strike in a speech before the
New York Civic Club Forum. The manuscript of
her talk is in the Labadie Collection. Born in
1890 in New Hampshire, Gurley Flynn joined the
I.W.W. in 1906 at the age of sixteen and for the
next ten years was a leading organizer, soapboxer,
and lecturer for the organization. She was arrested
in the Missoula and Spokane free speech fights in
1908 and 1909, was a strike leader in the Lawrence
and Paterson textile strikes and the 1912
strike of New York City hotel workers, and was
active in the defense of Joe Hill, Ettor, and Giovannitti,
and the I.W.W. prisoners arrested under
the wartime Espionage Law. After leaving the
I.W.W. about 1916, she helped launch the Workers'
Liberty Defense League, was active in the
Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, and, from
1927-30, was chaiman of the International Labor
Defense. In 1937, she joined the Communist Party
and in 1961 became chairman of the Communist
Party of the U.S.A. Her autobiography, I Speak
My Own Piece (New York, 1955), contains a great
deal of interesting material on the early organizing
and free speech activities of the I.W.W.
Comrades and Friends:
The reason why I undertake to give this talk at
this moment, one year after the Paterson strike
was called, is that the flood of criticism about the
strike is unabated, becoming more vicious all the
time, drifting continually from the actual facts,
and involving as a matter of course the policies
and strike tactics of the I.W.W. To insure future
success in the city of Paterson it is necessary for
the past failure to be understood, and not to be
clouded over by a mass of outside criticism. It is
rather difficult for me to separate myself from my
feelings about the Paterson strike, to speak dispassionately.
I feel that many of our critics are
people who stayed at home in bed while we were
doing the hard work of the strike. Many of our
critics are people who never went to Paterson, or
who went on a holiday; who did not study the
strike as a day-by-day process. Therefore it's rather
hard for me to overcome my impatience with
them and speak purely theoretically.
What is a labor victory? I maintain that it is a
twofold thing. Workers must gain economic advantage,
but they must also gain revolutionary
spirit, in order to achieve a complete victory. For
workers to gain a few cents more a day, a few
minutes less a day, and go back to work with the
same psychology, the same attitude toward society is to have achieved a temporary gain and not
a lasting victory. For workers to go back with a
class-conscious spirit, with an organized and a determined
attitude toward society means that even
if they have made no economic gain they have the
possibility of gaining in the future. In other words,
a labor victory must be economic and it must be
revolutionizing. Otherwise it is not complete. The
difference between a strike like Lawrence and a
garment workers' strike in New York is that both
of them gained certain material advantages, but
in Lawrence there has been born such a spirit that
even when 10,000 workers were out of employment,
the employers did not dare reduce the
wages of a single man still in the mills. When the
hours were reduced by law in New Hampshire
and Connecticut in the midst of the industrial
panic prevailing throughout the textile industry it
was impossible for those manufacturers to reduce
the wages at the same time, knowing full well that
to do so would create a spontaneous war. Among
the garment workers in New York there has unfortunately
been developed an instrument known
as the protocol, whereby this spirit is completely
crushed, is completely diverted from its main object
against the employers. This spirit has now to
assert itself against the protocol.
So a labor victory must be twofold, but if it can
only be one it is better to gain in spirit than to
gain economic advantage. The I.W.W. attitude in
conducting a strike, one might say, is pragmatic.
We have certain general principles; their application
differs as the people, the industry, the time
and the place indicate. It is impossible to conduct
a strike among English-speaking people in the
same way that you conduct a strike among foreigners,
it is impossible to conduct a strike in the
steel industry in the same manner you conduct a
strike among the textile workers where women
and children are involved in large numbers. So we
have no ironclad rules. We realize that we are
dealing with human beings and not with chemicals.
And we realize that our fundamental principles
of solidarity and class revolt must be applied
in as flexible a manner as the science of pedagogy.
The teacher may have as her ultimate ideal to
make the child a proficient master of English, but
he begins with the alphabet. So in an I.W.W.
strike many times we have to begin with the alphabet,
where our own ideal would be the mastery
of the whole.
The Paterson strike divides itself into two periods.
From the 25th of February, when the strike
started, to the 7th of June, the date of the pageant
in New York City, marks the first period. The second
period is from the pageant to the 29th of July,
when every man and woman was back at work.
But the preparation for the strike had its roots in
the past, the development of a four-loom system
in a union mill organized by the American Federation
of Labor. This four-loom irritated the
workers and precipitated many small outbreaks.
At any rate they sent to Mr. John Golden, the president
of the United Textile Workers of America,
for relief, and his reply was substantially, "The
four-loom system is in progress. You have no right
to rebel against it." They sought some other channel
of expressing their revolt, and a year before
the historic strike the Lawrence strike occurred.
It stimulated their spirit and it focused their attention
on the I.W.W. But unfortunately there
came into the city a little group of Socialist Labor
Party people who conducted a strike ending in
disaster under what they were pleased to call the
auspices of the "Detroit I.W.W." That put back
the entire movement for a year.
But in the beginning of last year, 1913, there
was a strike in the Doherty mill against the four-loom
system. There had been agitation for three
months by the Eight-Hour League of the I.W.W.
for the eight-hour day, and it had stimulated a
general response from the disheartened workers.
So we held a series of mass meetings calling for a
general strike, and that strike broke on the 25th
of February, 1913. It was responded to mostly by
the unorganized workers. We had three elements
to deal with in the Paterson strike; the broad silk
weavers and the dyers, who were unorganized
and who were as you might say, almost virgin
material, easily brought forth and easily stimulated
to aggressive activity. But on the other hand
we had the ribbon weavers, the English-speaking
conservative people, who had behind them craft
antecedents, individual craft unions that they had
worked through for thirty years. These people responded
only after three weeks, and then they
formed the complicating element in the strike,
continually pulling back on the mass through their
influence as the English-speaking and their attitude
as conservatives. The police action precipitated
the strike of many workers. They came out
because of the brutal persecution of the strike
leaders and not because they themselves were so
full of the strike feeling that they could not stay
in any longer. This was the calling of the strike.
The administering of the strike was in the hands
of a strike committee formed of two delegates
from each shop. If the strike committee had been
full-force there would have been 600 members.
The majority of them were not I.W.W.; were non-union
strikers. The I.W.W. arranged the meetings,
conducted the agitation work. But the policies
of the strike were determined by that strike
committee of the strikers themselves. And with the
strike committee dictating all the policies of the
strike, placing the speakers in a purely advisory
capacity, there was a continual danger of a break
between the conservative element who were in
the strike committee and the mass who were being
stimulated by the speakers. The socialist element
in the strike committee largely represented
the ribbon weavers, this conservative element
making another complication in the strike. I want
if possible to make that clear before leaving it,
that the preparation and declaration as well as
the stimulation of the strike was all done by the
I.W.W., by the militant minority among the silk
workers; the administering of the strike was done
democratically by the silk workers themselves.
We were in the position of generals on a battlefield
who had to organize their forces, who had to
organize their commissary department while they
were in battle but who were being financed and
directed by people in the capital. Our plan of
battle was very often nullified by the democratic
administration of the strike committee.
The industrial outlook in Paterson presented its
difficulties and its advantages. No one realized
them quicker than we did. There was the difficulty
of 300 mills, no trustification, no company
that had the balance of power upon whom we
could concentrate our attack. In Lawrence we had
the American Woolen Company. Once having
forced the American Woolen Company to settle, it
was an easy matter to gather in the threads of the
other mills. No such situation existed in Paterson.
300 manufacturers, but many of them having annexes
in Pennsylvania, meant that they had a
means whereby they could fill a large percentage
of their orders unless we were able to strike Pennsylvania
simultaneously. And those mills employed
women and children, wives and children
of union weavers, who didn't need actually to
work for a living wage, but worked simply to add
to the family income. We had the difficulty that
silk is not an actual necessity. In the strike among
coal miners you reached the point eventually
where you had the public by the throat, and
through the public you were able to bring pressure
on the employers. Not so in the silk industry.
Silk is a luxury. We had the condition in Paterson,
however, that this was the first silk year in about
thirty years. In 1913 fortunately silk was stylish.
Every woman wanted a silk gown, and the more
flimsy it was the more she wanted it. Silk being
stylish meant that the employers were mighty
anxious to take advantage of this exceptional opportunity.
And the fact that there were over 300 of
them gave us on the other hand the advantage that
some of them were very small, they had great liabilities
and not very much reserve capital. Therefore
we were sort of playing a game between how
much they could get done in Pennsylvania balanced off with how great the demand for silk was
and how close they were to bankruptcy. We had no
means of telling that, except by guesswork. They
could always tell when our side was weakening.
The first period of the strike meant for us persecution
and propaganda, those two things. Our
work was to educate and stimulate. Education is
not a conversion, it is a process. One speech to a
body of workers does not overcome their prejudices
of a lifetime. We had prejudices on the national
issues, prejudices between crafts, prejudices
between competing men and women,—all these to
overcome. We had the influence of the minister
on the one side, and the respect that they had for
government on the other side. We had to stimulate
them. Stimulation, in a strike, means to make
that strike and through it the class struggle their
religion; to make them forget all about the fact
that it's for a few cents or a few hours, but to make
them feel it is a "religious duty" for them to win
that strike. Those two things constituted our work,
to create in them a feeling of solidarity and a
feeling of class-consciousness,—a rather old term,
very threadbare among certain elements in the
city of New York, but meaning a great deal in a
strike. It means, to illustrate, this: the first day of
the strike a photographer came on the stage to
take a picture, and all over the hall there was a
quiver of excitement: "No, no, no. Don't let him
take a picture." "Why not?" "Why, our faces might
show in the picture. The boss might see it." 'Well,"
I said, "doesn't he know you are here? If he doesn't
know now, he will know tomorrow."
From that day, when the strikers were afraid to
have their pictures taken for fear they might be
spotted, to the day when a thousand of them came
to New York to take part in a pageant, with a
friendly rivalry among themselves as to which one
would get their picture in the paper, was a long
process of stimulation, a long process of creating
in them class spirit, class respect, class consciousness.
That was the work of the agitator. Around
this propaganda our critics center their volleys:
the kind of propaganda we gave the strikers, the
kind of stimulation and education we gave them.
Many of our critics presume that the strikers were
perfect and the leaders only were human; that
we didn't have to deal with their imperfections as
well as with our own. And the first big criticism
that has been made—(of course they all criticize:
for the socialists we were too radical, for the
anarchists we were too conservative, for everybody
else we were impossible) is that we didn't
advocate violence. Strange as it may seem, this is
the criticism that has come from more sources
than any other.
I contend that there was no use for violence in
the Paterson strike; that only where violence is
necessary should violence be used. This is not a
moral or legal objection but a utilitarian one. I
don't say that violence should not be used, but
where there is no call for it, there is no reason why
we should resort to it. In the Paterson strike, for
the first four months there wasn't a single scab in
the mills. The mills were shut down as tight as a
vacuum. They were like empty junk boats along
the banks of the river. Now, where any violence
could be used against non-existent scabs, passes
my understanding. Mass action is far more up-to-date
than personal or physical violence. Mass action
means that the workers withdraw their labor
power, and paralyze the wealth production of
the city, cut off the means of life, the breath of
life of the employers. Violence may mean just
weakness on the part of those workers. Violence
occurs in almost every American Federation of
Labor strike, because the workers are desperate,
because they are losing their strike. In the street
car strikes, for instance, every one of them is
marked with violence, because the men in the
power-house are at work, the power is going
through the rails and the scabs are able to run the
cars. The men and women in desperation, seeing
that the work is being done, turn the cars off the
track, cut the wires, throw stones, and so on. But
the I.W.W. believes that it is far more up to date
to call the men in the power house out on strike.
Then there won't be any cars running, any scabs
to throw stones at or any wires that are worth
cutting. Physical violence is dramatic. It's especially
dramatic when you talk about it and don't
resort to it. But actual violence is an old-fashioned
method of conducting a strike. And mass action,
paralyzing all industry, is a new-fashioned and a
much more feared method of conducting a strike.
That does not mean that violence shouldn't be
used in self-defense. Everybody believes in violence
for self-defense. Strikers don't need to be
told that. But the actual fact is that in spite of
our theory that the way to win a strike is to put
your hands in your pocket and refuse to work, it
was only in the Paterson strike of all the strikes
in 1913 that a strike leader said what Haywood
said: "If the police do not let up in the use of
violence against the strikers the strikers are going
to arm themselves and fight back." That has, however,
not been advertised as extensively as was
the "hands in your pockets" theory. Nor has it
been advertised by either our enemies or our
friends: that in the Paterson strike police persecution
did drop off considerably after the open declaration
of self-defense was made by the strikers.
In that contingency violence is of course a necessity
and one would be stupid to say that in either
Michigan or West Virginia or Colorado the miners
have not a right to take their guns and defend
their wives and their babiesvand themselves.
The statement has been made by Mrs. Sanger
in the "Revolutionary Almanac" that we should
have stimulated the strikers to do something that
would bring the militia in, and the presence of
the militia would have forced a settlement of the
strike. That is not necessarily true. It was not the
presence of the militia that forced a settlement of
the Lawrence strike. And today there is militia
in Colorado, they have been there for months.
There is the militia in Michigan, they have been
there for a long period. There was the militia in
West Virginia, but that did not bring a successful
termination of the strike, because coal was being
produced,—and copper was being produced,—in
other parts of the world, and the market was not
completely cut off from its product. The presence
of the militia may play a part in stimulating the
strikers or in discouraging the strikers, but it does
not affect the industrial outcome of the strike, and
I believe to say so is to give entirely too much
significance to political or military power. I don't
believe that the presence of the militia is going to
affect an industrial struggle to any appreciable
extent, providing the workers are economically in
an advantageous position.
Before I finish with this question of violence I
want to ask you men and women here if you realize
that there is a certain responsibility about
advocating violence. It's very easy to say, "We will
give up our own lives in behalf of the workers,"
but it's another question to ask them to give up
their lives; and men and women who go out as
strike agitators should only advocate violence
when they are absolutely certain that it is going
to do some good other than to spill the blood of
the innocent workers on the streets of the cities.
I know of one man in particular who wrote an
article in the "Social War" about how "the blood
of the workers should dye the streets in the city
of Paterson in protest" but he didn't come to Paterson
to let his blood dye the streets, as the baptism
of violence. In fact we never saw him in the
city of Paterson from the first day of the strike to
the last. This responsibility rests heavily upon
every man and woman who lives with and works
with and loves the people for whom the strike is
being conducted.
The second criticism is "Why did we go to
Haledon? Why didn't we fight out the free speech
fight in Paterson?" One of the humorous features
of it is that if Haledon had been a Democratic city
instead of a Socialist city, that criticism would
probably not have been made at all. It was not
that we went to Haledon, it was that we went to
a Socialist city, that irritates our critics. I want to
point out to you something that you possibly
never realized before, and that is that we had the
"right" to speak in Paterson. There was no conventional
free speech fight in Paterson. A conventional
free speech fight is where you are not permitted
to speak at all, where you are immediately
arrested and thrown into jail and not given
the right to open your mouth. That is not the
kind of free speech fight that existed in Paterson.
We had the right to speak in the halls of Paterson,
and we would have had that right to the last day
of the strike if it had not been for the position of
the hallkeepers. It was not the police that closed
the halls, it was the hallkeepers, and for the reason
that they could not afford to lose their licenses.
And a hallkeeper is usually a saloon-keeper first
and a renter of halls afterwards. If there had been
any hall in Paterson where a saloon was not attached
we would probably have been able to secure
that hall with but very little trouble. Some
of the hallkeepers in fact, if I may speak from personal
experience, were very glad to get rid of us,
because we were not paying any rent and we were
making a lot of work around their places. We had
the right to speak on Lafayette Oval. We hired a
piece of land on Water Street and used it during
the entire time of the strike. The only time meetings
were interfered with was on Sunday, and that
involved not a free speech issue but a Sunday issue,
the blue law of the State of New Jersey. When
you are fighting a strike with 25,000 people and
you are focussing your attention on trying to keep
those people lined up to win that strike, it is a
mighty dangerous procedure to go off at a tangent
and dissipate your energies on something that is
not important, even though you may have a right
to do it. We had a right to speak on Sundays, but
it meant to divide our energies and possibly to
spend our money in ways that did not seem absolutely
advisable at the time. The free speech fight
that we have in Paterson is something far more
intricate than just having a policeman put his
hand over your mouth and tell you you can't
speak. They let you talk. Oh yes. If I had invited
all of you to come to Paterson and speak they
would have let you talk, and the police and the
detectives would have stood off at one side and
listened to you. Then you have been indicted by
the grand jury for what you said, arrested and put
under bonds and a long legal process started to
convict you for what you said.
Therefore to call in the free speech fighters of
the country would have been an absurdity, since
every one of them would have been permitted to
say their say and afterward would have been indicted
for the language they used. There was quite
a different situation from Lawrence. In Lawrence
the halls were never interfered with. In Paterson
we had this peculiar technicality, that while you
had the right to speak they said, "We hold you responsible
for what you say, we arrest you for what
you say, what you meant, what you didn't say,
what we thought you ought to have said, and all
the rest of it." Our original reason for going to
Haledon, however, was not on account of the Sunday
law only, but goes deep into the psychology
of a strike. Because Sunday is the day before
Monday! Monday is the day that a break comes
in every strike, if it is to come at all during the
week. If you can bring the people safely over
Monday they usually go along for the rest of the
week. If on Sunday, however, you let those people
stay at home, sit around the stove without any
fire in it, sit down at the table where there isn't
very much food, see the feet of the children with
shoes getting thin, and the bodies of the children
where the clothes are getting ragged, they begin
to think in terms of "myself" and lose that spirit
of the mass and the realization that all are suffering
as they are suffering. You have got to keep
them busy every day in the week, and particularly
on Sunday, in order to keep that spirit from going
down to zero. I believe that's one reason why
ministers have sermons on Sunday, so that people
don't get a chance to think how bad their conditions
are the rest of the week. Anyhow, it's a very
necessary thing in a strike. And so our original
reason for going to Haledon—I remember we
discussed it very thoroughly—was to give them
novelty, to give them variety, to take them en
masse out of the city of Paterson some place else,
to a sort of picnic over Sunday that would stimulate
them for the rest of the week. In fact that is a
necessary process in every strike, to keep the people
busy all the time, to keep them active, working,
fighting soldiers in the ranks. And this is the
agitator's work,—to plan and suggest activity, diverse,
but concentrated on the strike. That's the
reason why the I.W.W. has these great mass meetings,
women's meetings, children's meetings; why
we have mass picketing and mass funerals. And
out of all this continuous mass activity we are
able to create that feeling on the part of the workers,
"One for all and all for one." We are able
to make them realize that an injury to one is an
injury to all, we are able to bring them to the
point where they will have relief and not strike
benefits, to the point where they will go to jail and
refuse fines, and go hundreds of them together.
This method of conducting strikes has proved
so successful and so remarkable with the I.W.W.
that the United Mine Workers have taken it up,
and in Michigan they are holding women's meetings, children's meetings, mass picketings and
mass parades, such as never characterized an
American Federation of Labor strike before.
This is the agitator's work, this continual activity.
And we lay awake many nights trying to think
of something more we could give them to do. I
remember one night in Lawrence none of us slept.
The strike spirit was in danger of waning for lack
of action. And I remember Bill Haywood said
finally, "Let's get a picket line out in Essex street.
Get every striker to put a little red ribbon on and
walk up and down and show that the strike is not
broken." A few days later the suggestion was carried
out, and when they got out of their homes
and saw this great body that they were, they had
renewed strength and renewed energy which carried
them along for many weeks more in the strike.
That was the original object in going to Haledon.
It has been asked "Why didn't we advocate
short strikes, intermittent strikes? Why didn't we
practice sabotage? Why didn't we do everything
we didn't do? It reminds me of the story Tom
Mann told. A very pretty young lady, you know
how many of them there are around New York of
this type, fluttering sentimentalists, came up to
him with a sweet smile and said, "Can you tell me,
Mr. Mann, why the women and the miners and
the railroad people and all these people don't get
together in England," and he said, "Can you tell
me why you didn't cut your dress on the other
side instead of this side?" People are not material,
you can't lay them down on the table and cut them
according to a pattern. You may have the best
principles, but you can't always fit the people to
the best principles. And for us to have gone into
Paterson for the first three months of the strike and
to have advocated a short strike would have said
"Aha, they got theirs, didn't they? That's what
happens in every strike. They are very revolutionary
until the boss gives them theirs, and then
they say 'Boys, go back to work.'" In other words,
we would simply have duplicated what every
grafting, corrupt labor leader has done in Paterson
and the United States: to tell them "Go back
to work, your strike is lost.'' And so it was necessary
for us first to gain the confidence of the people
and to make them feel that we were willing
to fight just as long as they were; that we were
not the first ones to call quits. And why should
we? We were not the ones that were making the
sacrifices, we were not the ones that were paying
the price. It was the strikers that were doing that.
But for us to advocate a short strike, on the other
hand, would have been directly contrary to our
own feelings. We felt that the strike was going to
be won. And it may seem to you a very foolish
piece of optimism when I say that I believed the
Paterson strike was going to be won up to the Sunday
before the Paterson strike was lost. We didn't
tell the people to stay out on a long strike knowing
in our hearts that they were losing. We couldn't
have talked to them if we had felt that way. But
every one of us was confident they were going to
win that strike. And you all were. Throughout
the United States the people were. To successfully
advocate an intermittent strike or to go back to
work and use sabotage was impossible for the
simple reason that the people wanted a long strike,
and until they themselves found out by experience
that a long strike was a waste of energy it
was no use for us to try to dictate to them.
People learn to do by doing. We haven't a military
body in a strike, a body to which you can say
"Do this" and "Do that" and "Do the other thing"
and they obey unfailingly. Democracy means mistakes,
lots of them, mistake after mistake. But it
also means experience and that there will be no
repetition of those mistakes.
Now, we can talk short strike in Paterson, we
can talk intermittent strike, we can talk sabotage,
because the people know we are not afraid of a
long strike, that we are not cowards, that we
haven't sold them out, that we went through the
long strike with them and that we all learned together
that the long strike was not a success. In
other words, by that six months they have gained
the experience that will mean it never needs to
be repeated.
Sabotage was objected to by the Socialists. In
fact they pursued a rather intolerant attitude. It
was the Socialist organizer and the Socialist secretary
who called the attention of the public to
the fact that Frederic Sumner Boyd made a sabotage
speech. Why "intolerant"? Because nobody
ever objected to anything that the Socialists said.
We tried to produce among those strikers this feeling:
"Listen to anything, listen to everybody. Ministers
come, priests come, lawyers, doctors, politicians,
Socialists, anarchists, A. F. of L., I.W.W.,—listen
to them all and then take what you think
is good for yourselves and reject what is bad. If
you are not able to do that then no censorship over
your meetings is going to do you any good." And
so the strikers had a far more tolerant attitude than
had the Socialists. The strikers had the attitude:
"Listen to everything." The Socialists had the attitude:
"You must listen to us but you must not
listen to the things we don't agree with, you must
not listen to sabotage because we don't agree with
sabotage." We had a discussion in the executive
committee about it, and one after the other of the
members of the executive committee admitted
that they used sabotage, why shouldn't they talk
about it? It existed in the mills, they said. Therefore
there was no reason why it should not be
recognized on the platform. It was not the advocacy
of sabotage that hurt some of our comrades
but denial of their right to dictate the policy
of the Paterson strike.
What the workers had to contend with in the
first period of this strike was this police persecution
that arrested hundreds of strikers, fined hundreds,
sentenced men to three years in state's
prison for talking; persecutions that meant beating
and clubbing and continual opposition every
minute they were on the picket line, speakers arrested,
Quinlan arrested, Scott convicted and sentenced
to 15 years and $1500 fine. On the other
side, what? No money. If all these critics all over
the United States had only put their interest in
the form of finances the Paterson strike might have
been another story. We were out on strike five
months. We had $60,000 and 25,000 strikers. That
meant $60,000 for five months, $12,000 a month
for 25,000 strikers; it meant an average of less
than 50 cents a month. And yet they stayed out
on strike for six months. In Ireland today there
is a wonderful strike going on and they are standing
it beautifully. Why? Because they have had
half a million dollars since the thirty-first of August
(five months) given into the relief fund, and
every man that goes on the picket line has food in
his stomach and some kind of decent clothes on
his back.
(N. B.: Unfortunately future history shows that
their pounds were not an adequate substitute for
solidarity, which we had and they lacked.)
I saw men go out in Paterson without shoes, in
the middle of winter and with bags on their feet.
I went into a family to have a picture taken of a
mother with eight children who didn't have a
crust of bread, didn't have a bowl of milk for the
baby in the house,—but the father was out on the
picket line. Others were just as bad off. Thousands
of them that we never heard of at all. This was the
difficulty that the workers had to contend with in
Paterson: hunger; hunger gnawing at their vitals;
hunger tearing them down; and still they had the
courage to fight it out for six months.
Then came the pageant. What I say about the
pageant tonight may strike you as rather strange,
but I consider that the pageant marked the climax
in the Paterson strike and started the decline in
the Paterson strike, just for the reason that the
pageant promised money for the Paterson strikers
and it didn't give them a cent. Yes, it was a beautiful
example of realistic art, I admit that. It was
splendid propaganda for the workers in New York.
I don't minimize its value but am dealing with it
here solely as a factor in the strike, with what
happened in Paterson before, during and after the
pageant. In preparation for the pageant the workers
were distracted for weeks, turning to the stage
of the hall, away from the field of life. They were
playing pickets on the stage. They were neglecting
the picketing around the mill. And the first
scabs got into the Paterson mills while the workers
were training for the pageant, because the
best ones, the most active, the most energetic, the
best, the strongest ones of them went into the
pageant and they were the ones that were the best
pickets around the mills. Distraction from their
real work was the first danger in Paterson. And
how many times we had to counteract that and
work against it!
And then came jealousy. There were only a
thousand that came to New York. I wonder if you
ever realized that you left 24,000 disappointed
people behind? The women cried and said "Why
did she go? Why couldn't I go?" The men told
about how many times they had been in jail, and
asked why couldn't they go as well as somebody
else. Between jealousy, unnecessary but very human,
and their desire to do something, much discord
was created in the ranks.
But whatever credit is due for such a gigantic
undertaking comes to the New York silk workers,
not the dilettante element who figured so prominently,
but who would have abandoned it at the
last moment had not the silk workers advanced
$600 to pull it through.
And then comes the grand finale—no money.
Nothing. This thing that had been heralded as the
salvation of the strike, this thing that was going
to bring thousands of dollars to the strike,—$150
came to Paterson, and all kinds of explanations.
I don't mean to say that I blame the people who
ran the pageant. I know they were amateurs and
they gave their time and their energy and their
money. They did the best they could and I appreciate
their effort. But that doesn't minimize the
result that came in Paterson. It did not in any
way placate the workers of Paterson, to tell them
that people in New York had made sacrifices, in
view of the long time that they had been making
sacrifices. And so with the pageant as a climax,
with the papers clamoring that tens of thousands
of dollars had been made, and with the committee
explaining what was very simple, that nothing
could have been made with one performance on
such a gigantic scale, there came trouble, dissatisfaction,
in the Paterson strike.
Bread was the need of the hour, and bread was
not forthcoming even from the most beautiful
and realistic example of art that has been put on
the stage in the last half century.
What was the employers' status during all this
time? We saw signs of weakness every day. There
was a minister's committee appointed to settle
the strike. There was a businessmen's committee
appointed to settle the strike. The governor's intervention,
the President's intervention was sought
by the manufacturers. Every element was brought
to bear to settle the strike. Even the American
Federation of Labor; nobody believes that they
came in there uninvited and no one can believe
that the armory was given to them for a meeting
place unless for a purpose. What was this purpose
but to settle the strike? The newspapers were
clamoring that the strike could and must be settled.
And we looked upon all this,—the newspapers
that were owned by the mill owners, the ministers
and the business men who were stimulated
by the mill owners,&mdahs;we looked upon all this as a
sign that the manufacturers were weakening. Even
the socialists admitted it. In the New York Call
of July 9 we read this: "The workers of Paterson
should stay with them another round or two after
a confession of this kind. What the press had to
say about the strike looks very much like a confession
of defeat." This was on the 9th of July.
Every sign of weakness on the part of the manufacturers
was evident.
But there came one of the most peculiar phenomena
that I have ever seen in a strike; that the
bosses weakened simultaneously with the workers.
Both elements weakened together. The workers
did not have a chance to see the weaknesses
of the employers as clearly, possibly, as we who
had witnessed it before, did, which gave us our
abiding faith in the workers' chances of success,
but the employers had every chance to see the
workers weaken. The employers have a full view
of your army. You have no view of their army and
can only guess at their condition. So a tentative
proposition came from the employers of a shop-by-
shop settlement. This was the trying-out of the
bait, the bait that should have been refused by
the strikers without qualification. Absolute surrender,
all or nothing, was the necessary slogan.
By this we did not mean that 100 per cent of the
manufacturers must settle, or that 99 per cent of
the workers must stay out till 1 per cent won
everything. The !.W.W. advice to the strikers was
—an overwhelming majority of the strikers must
receive the concession before a strike is won. This
was clearly understood in Paterson, though misrepresented
there and elsewhere. Instead, the
committee swallowed the bait and said, "We will
take a vote on the shop-by-shop proposition, a vote
of the committee." The minute they did that, they
admitted their own weakness. And the employers
immediately reacted to a position of strength.
There was no referendum vote proposed by this
committee, they were willing to take their own
vote to see what they themselves thought of it, and
to settle the strike on their own decision alone.
Then it was that the I.W.W. speakers and Executive
Committee had to inject themselves in
contradistinction to the strike committee. And the
odd part of it was that the conservatives on the
committee utilized our own position against us.
We had always said, "The silk workers must gain
their own strike." And so they said, "We are the
silk workers. You are simply outside agitators.
You can't talk to this strike committee even." I remember one day the door was virtually slammed
in my face, until the Italian and Jewish workers
made such an uproar, threatening to throw the
others out of a three-story building window, that
the floor was granted. It was only when we threatened
to go to the masses and to get this referendum
vote in spite of them that they took the referendum
vote. But all this came out in the local
press and it all showed that the committee was
conservative and the I.W.W. was radical, more
correctly the I.W.W. and the masses were radical.
And so this vote was taken by the strikers. It resulted
in a defeat of the entire proposition. 5,000
dyers in one meeting voted it down unanimously.
They said, "We never said we would settle shop
by shop. We are going to stick it out together
until we win together or until we lose together."
But the very fact that they had been willing to
discuss it made the manufacturers assume an aggressive
position. And then they said, 'We never
said we would settle shop-by-shop. We never offered
you any such proposition. We won't take
you back now unless you come under the old
conditions."
One of the peculiar things about this whole situation
was the attitude of the socialists on that
committee. I want to make myself clearly understood.
I don't hold the socialist party officially responsible,
only insofar as they have not repudiated
these particular individuals. The socialist element
in the committee represented the ribbon
weavers, the most conservative, the ones who were
in favor of the shop-by-shop settlement. They
were led by a man named Magnet, conservative,
Irish, Catholic, Socialist. His desire was to wipe
the strike off the slate in order to leave the stage
free for a political campaign. He had aspirations
to be the mayoralty candidate, which did not
however come to fruition. This man and the element
that were behind him, the socialist element,
were willing to sacrifice, to betray a strike in order
to make an argument, the argument given out in
the 'Weekly Issue" a few days before election:
"Industrial action has failed. Now try political action."
It was very much like the man who made
a prophecy that he was going to die on a certain
date, and then he committed suicide. He died, all
right. Industrial action failed, all right. But they
forgot to say that they contributed more than any
other element in the strike committee to the failure
of the strike. They were the conservatives, they
were the ones who wanted to get rid of the strike
as quickly as possible. And through these ribbon
weavers the break came.
On the 18th of July the ribbon weavers notified
the strike committee, "We have drawn out of your
committee. We are going to settle our strike to suit
ourselves. We are going to settle it shop by shop.
That's the way they have settled it in New York
at Smith and Kauffmann." But a visit had been
made by interested parties to the Smith and Kauffmann
boys prior to their settlement, at which they
were informed that the Paterson strike was practically
lost: "These outside agitators don't know
anything about it, because they are fooled in this
matter. You had better go back to work." When
they went back to work on the nine-hour day and
the shop-by-shop settlement, then it was used by
the same people who had told them that, as an
argument to settle in the same way in Paterson.
And the ribbon weavers stayed out till the very
last. Oh yes. They have all the glory throughout
the United States of being the last ones to return
to work, but the fact is that they were the first
ones that broke the strike, because they broke the
solidarity, they precipitated a position that was
virtually a stampede. The strike committee decided,
"Well, with the ribbon weavers drawing
out, what are we going to do? We might as well
accept;" and the shop-by-shop proposition was
put through by the strike committee without a
referendum vote, stampeded by the action of the
English-speaking, conservative ribbon weavers.
So that was the tragedy of the Paterson strike,
the tragedy of a stampede, the tragedy of an army,
a solid phalanx being cut up into 300 pieces, each
shop-piece trying to settle as best for themselves.
It was absolutely in violation of the I.W.W. principles
and the I.W.W. advice to the strikers. No
strike should ever be settled without a referendum
vote, and no shop settlement should ever have
been suggested in the city of Paterson, because
that was the very thing that had broken the strike
the year before. So this stampede came, and the
weaker ones went back to work and the stronger
ones were left outside, to be made the target of
the enemy, blacklisted for weeks and weeks after
the strike was over, many of them on the blacklist
yet. It produced discord among the officers in the
strike. I remember one day at Haledon, the chairman
said to Tresca and myself, "If you are going
to talk about the eight-hour day and about a general
strike, then you had better not talk at all."
And we had to go out and ask the people, "Are
we expected here today and can we say what we
think, or have we got to say what the strike committee
has decided?" We were unanimously welcomed.
But it was too late. Just as soon as the people
saw that there was a break between the agitators
and the strike committee, that the ribbon
weavers wanted this and others wanted that, the
stampede had started and no human being could
have held it back.
It was the stampede of hungry people, people
who could no longer think clearly. The bosses
made beautiful promises to the ribbon weavers
and to everybody else, but practically every promise
made before the settlement of the Paterson
strike was violated, and the better conditions have
only been won through the organized strikes since
the big strike. Not one promise that was made by
the employers previous to breakup on account of
the shop-by-shop settlement was ever lived up to.
Other places were stranded. New York, Hoboken,
College Point were left stranded by this action.
And on the 28th of July everybody was back at
work, back to work in spite of the fact that the
general conviction had been that we were on the
eve of victory. I believe that if the strikers had
been able to hold out a little longer by any means,
by money if possible, which was refused to us,
we could have won the Paterson strike. We could
have won it because the bosses had lost their
spring orders, they had lost their summer orders,
they had lost their fall orders and they were in
danger of losing their winter orders, one year's
work; and the mills in Pennsylvania, while they
could give the bosses endurance for a period,
could not fill all the orders and could not keep up
their business for the year round.
I say we were refused money. I wish to tell you
that is the absolute truth. The New York Call was
approached by fellow-worker Haywood, when
we were desperate for money, when the kitchens
were closed and the people were going out on the
picket line on bread and water, and asked to publish
a full page advertisement begging for money,
pleading for money. They refused to accept the
advertisement. They said, "We can't take your
money." "Well, can you give us the space?" "Oh,
no, we can't afford to give you the space. We
couldn't take money from strikers, but we couldn't
give space either." And so in the end there was no
appeal, either paid for or not, but a little bit of a
piece that did not amount to a candle of light, lost
in the space of the newspaper. However, on the
26th of July, while the ribbon weavers and some
of the broad silk weavers were still out, the Call
had published a criticism by Mr. Jacob Panken of
the Paterson strike. Lots of space for criticism,
but no space to ask bread for hungry men and
women. And this was true not only of the Call, but
of the other socialist papers. So between these
two forces, we were helpless. And then we had to
meet our critics. First came the socialist critic who
said, "But the I.W.W. didn't do enough for the
socialist party. Look at all the money we gave
you. And you don't say anything about it." Dr.
Korshet had a long article in the New York Call.
Anyone may read it who likes to refresh his memory.
Just this: "We gave you money and you didn't
thank us." Well, I would like to know why we
should thank them. Aren't the socialists supposed
to be workingmen, members of the working class,
just the same as we are? And if they do something
for their own class we have got to thank them
the next ten years for it. They are like the charity
organization that gives the poor working woman
a little charity and then expects her to write recommendations
to the end of the end of the earth.
We felt that there was no need to thank the socialist
party for what they had done, because they had
only done their duty and they had done very little
in comparison with what they have done in A. F.
of L. strikes, in the McNamara cases.
They make the criticism that we didn't give
them any credit. How about the 5,000 votes that
the I.W.W. membership gave the party in Paterson
for a candidate who was a member of the
A. F. of L. and who did not get a single vote from
his own union? All his votes came from the I.W.W.
If they wanted to invest money, the money that
they invested for each vote in Paterson was well
spent, on a purely business basis.
And then Mr. Panken's criticism was that we
should have settled the strike shop by shop. A
humorous criticism, a cynical, sarcastic criticism,
when you consider that's exactly what was done,
and that's exactly why we lost the Paterson strike.
But a few days before the strike was over, before
this collapse came, we received a little piece of
paper through the delegates to the New York-Paterson
Relief Comimittee, and on this little piece
of paper it said, "The following gentlemen are
willing to bring about a settlement of the Paterson
strike if the strike committee will send them a letter
requesting them to do it." And on this piece of
paper were the names of Jacob Panken, Meyer
London, Abe Cahan, Charles Edward Russell, and
two others. In other words, a few days before the
Paterson strike collapsed there were a committee
of six socialists in New York who had such faith
that the strike was going to be won, including the
man who criticized us for not settling shop by
shop, that they were willing to settle it for us on
this condition that they incidentally take all the
glory of the settlement if we asked them to do it.
We didn't ask them. We said, "If there is anybody
that thinks he can settle the Paterson strike and
he calls himself a socialist or a friend of labor he
will do it without being asked to do it in an official
manner." They did not do it. They criticized.
Our position to the strikers was "If the I.W.W.
conception had been followed out you would have
won all together, or you would have lost all together,
but you would still have had your army a
continuing whole." Every general knows it is far
better for an army to retreat en masse than it is to
scatter and be shot to pieces. And so it is better
to lose all together than to have some win at the
expense of the rest, because losing all together you
have the chance within a few months of recovering
and going back to the battle again, your army still
centralized, and winning in the second attempt.
What lessons has the Paterson strike given to
the I.W.W. and to the strikers? One of the lessons
it has given to me is that when the I.W.W. assumes
the responsibility of a strike the I.W.W.
should control the strike absolutely through a
union strike committee; that there should be no
outside interference, no outside non-union domination
accepted or permitted, no Magnet permitted
to pose as "representing the non-union
element." That direct action and solidarity are the
only keys to a worker's success or the workers'
success. That the spirit throughout this long weary
propaganda has remained unbroken, and I will
give you just three brief examples.
The 5,000 votes for the socialist party was because
the workers had this in mind: "Maybe we
will strike again, and the next time we strike we
want all this political machinery on our side."
They would not have done that if their spirit had
been crushed and they had no hope for another
strike. The free speech fight for Emma Goldman
that was recently successfully waged in Paterson
was made because the strikers have an unbroken
spirit still. Many of them did not know Emma
Goldman. I say this with no disrespect to her.
Many of them are foreigners and did not know
anything about her speeches and lectures. But
they knew somebody wanted to speak there and
their constitutional enemies, the police, were trying
to prevent it, and so they turned out en masse
and free speech was maintained in Paterson. And
just around Christmas time there was an agitation
for a strike, and then instead of stimulation we
had to give them a sort of sedative, to keep them
quiet. Why, they were so anxious to go out on
strike that they had great mass meetings: "now is
the time, eight-hour day, nine-hour day, anything
at all; but—we want to strike again!" Every time I
go to Paterson some people get around and say,
"Say, Miss Flynn, when is there going to be another
strike?" They have that certain feeling that
the strike has been postponed, but they are going
to take it up again and fight it out again. That spirit
is the result of the I.W.W. agitation in Paterson.
And so, I feel that we have been vindicated in
spite of our defeat. We have won further toleration
for the workers. We have given them a class
feeling, a trust in themselves and a distrust for
everybody else. They are not giving any more
faith to the ministers, even though we didn't carry
any "No God, no master" banners floating through
the streets of Paterson. You know, you may put a
thing on a banner and it makes no impression at
all; but you let a minister show himself up, let all
the ministers show themselves against the workers
and that makes more impression than all the
"No God, no master" banners from Maine to California.
That is the difference between education
and sensationalism.
And they have no more use for the state. To
them the statue of liberty is personified by the
policeman and his club.
Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology edited by Joyce L. Kornbluh
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