Reform or Repression. Chad Pearson
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activities were unavoidably messy. Strikebreaking coordination, usually orchestrated by Penton, was considerably more challenging than recruitment. The organization’s leadership recognized that breakdowns in negotiations often resulted in temporary work stoppages, which led to financial inconveniences and social disorder, forcing managers to scramble. Yet strikes did not mean that production must cease altogether. Penton had requested that the membership help out during these emergencies, explaining at the NFA’s second annual conference in 1899, “When men are wanted to take the place of strikers, much assistance can be rendered if each member will take it upon himself to offer the secretary the services of any volunteers whom they may secure in their own establishments, or of those applying for work who are willing to go to such positions.”45 Penton wanted his colleagues to remain vigilant by carefully monitoring the job market structure, recognizing that labor surpluses in one region could very possibly help beleaguered employers facing strike-related shortages in other sections. Managers could aid considerably, Penton maintained, by establishing relationships with loyal workmen willing to travel distances to break strikes. By pointing out how to resume production during industrial emergencies, the former union chief helped foundry owners understand the value of collective problem solving.
Recognizing the labor problem’s widespread adverse impacts on a variety of workplaces, NFA members sought to build defense networks beyond the foundry industry. Pfahler remained especially critical. In fact, he was principally responsible for laying the groundwork for the establishment of the National Metal Trades Association (NMTA), which included employers active in all types of metal-working activities and emerged in late August 1899 in response to a New York City pattern-makers strike. At the NMTA’s 1905 conference, the Philadelphian reminisced about the context surrounding the association’s creation. But instead of presenting a clear, detailed explanation of the specific conversations, disagreements, and strategies adopted by the men present at these initial meetings held in English-style gentlemen’s clubs, Pfahler noted that they came together because they developed “a feeling” about the usefulness of working “collectively.”46 Pfahler’s rather vague, yet upbeat, comments should not be surprising. The era’s reporters noted that NMTA members, a group of sentimental joiners, ambitious industrialists, and forward-looking reformers, concealed most of the details of their activities from the general public, “pledging themselves to secrecy.”47
The two organizations shared much in common. While the NFA and the NMTA believed that they must enjoy the right to hire whomever they wanted irrespective of union status, members initially chose to bargain with organized labor’s representatives. They acknowledged that they could both negotiate with “responsible” union leaders and insist on the right to employ nonunionists. For years, the two groups, seeking to resolve grievances in mutually satisfactory and peaceful ways, met regularly with union leaders to discuss issues relating to workloads, hours, wages, and recognition. But an undercurrent of dissatisfaction recurrently afflicted each side during bargaining sessions. Union heads often made demands that irritated employers’ association leaders, and rank-and-file workers regularly staged strikes, failing to uphold their contractual obligations. In light of these tensions, both the NMTA and the NFA, unlike the SFNDA—which continued to bargain with unionists—ultimately decided to reject negotiations altogether following intense strikes in 1901 and 1904 respectively.
It is worth considering the two agreements before more fully exploring the individuals behind these organizations. The Murray Hill Agreement, signed by the NMTA and the International Association of Machinists (IAM) in May 1900, called for a nine-hour day to take effect the following year. Questions of wages were to be determined individually between workers and employers in their respective workplaces. Yet shortly before the agreement was to go into effect, the IAM’s James O’Connell demanded that the employers also provide an across-the-board pay raise of twelve and a half cents per hour and accept national arbitration. The NMTA flatly refused, prompting 45,000 machinists to leave their stations; this national work stoppage lasted from late May to June 1901. In the face of this insurgency, the NMTA’s Henry F. Devens nonchalantly summed up the employers’ response: “This will close our relations with the International Association of Machinists. We are not going to bother with them further.”48
The NFA’s New York Agreement, signed with the IMU in 1899, lasted longer. The organization continued meeting with IMU leaders ritualistically until spring 1904, when the leadership became too annoyed to continue in the face of repeated demands from union leaders and routine eruptions of strikes. In fact, the agreement called for a prohibition on strikes and lockouts, but walkouts over pay and hours broke out regularly before the agreement ended. Over the course of four years, leaders from both sides, illustrating various levels of patience, had sought to resolve their differences through negotiations. Yet the meetings became increasingly acrimonious as the two sides found themselves disagreeing over a host of issues, including wages, hours, the number of apprentices employed in shops, the subject of labor saving technology, and the employment of strikebreakers—the most contentious issue of all. Under the leadership of the Minneapolis-based Otis P. Briggs, one of the owners of the sprawling Minneapolis Steel and Machinery Company, the NFA decided to put a formal stop to negotiations following an especially aggressive molders’ strike in Utica, New York, in 1904.49 Briggs, Penton’s successor, had come to regret the years of cooperation:
The entire undertaking was a complete failure so far as concerns arriving at any agreement whatever with the Iron Molders’ Union—a sad commentary upon the boasted broadmindedness of the union leaders. At the close of these conferences it was plainly evident that instead of meeting the foundrymen in any spirit of conciliation whatever it was the union’s sole purpose to force still more unreasonable conditions upon them.50
Both the NMTA and the NFA had become, in the face of a growing, more militant labor movement—one that seemed to them to have been directed by both unmanageable rank-and-file activists and “unreasonable” leaders—what Clarence E. Bonnett called in 1922 “belligerent” associations.51 Amid this uptick in working-class combativeness, employers, unambiguously and passionately asserting their preference for undiminished control, sought to provide their members with helpful services: shipments of strikebreakers during periods of labor unrest, management consultants, attorneys, and spies. They also circulated joint publications, including the aptly named Open Shop, which began in 1903. Speaking in 1910, Dayton’s John Kirby, Jr., who had helped develop one of the nation’s first citywide open-shop organizations ten years earlier, explained that “these two great National organizations of employers stand as a unit for the open-shop, and against union dictation in their shops.”52
Hundreds of metal-working and foundry employers found the era’s upsurge of working-class protests worrisome, joined these self-proclaimed defense associations, paid their dues, lent a hand in union avoidance campaigns, and spoke favorably to their colleagues about the open-shop principle’s emancipatory potential. Started in 1899, the NMTA, the slightly larger of the two groups, leaped from 423 firms in March 1905 to 523 in March 1906. By March 1907, under the leadership of Cleveland’s Walter D. Sayle, the membership grew to 755. The NFA remained a more modest-sized group, growing to a peak of 536 in 1903. Its numbers fell in subsequent years, but the organization remained a formidable outfit committed to solving the labor question in the nation’s foundries.53
Yet despite Bonnett’s claim, few members saw themselves as “belligerents” after declaring their refusal to negotiate with organized labor’s representatives. Instead, they viewed themselves as agents of managerial and technological progress, publicly spirited men eager to help the nation reap the benefits of industrial improvements and an expanding economy. Biographical sketches reveal that many were respected civic leaders and well-regarded members of the engineering elite. For instance, one of the NMTA’s first presidents, Edwin Reynolds, also served as head of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the preeminent society of professional engineers.54 Reynolds, the general manager of Milwaukee’s sizable and profitable Allis-Chalmers Company, developed the company’s popular immobile pumping engines. “All of the large builders,” a fellow ASME member explained in 1899, “have adopted Reynolds’s pumping engines.”55 He became NMTA president in 1901, and served as one of three chief negotiators responsible for the