Reform or Repression. Chad Pearson
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and Wuest agreed to help, ordering nonunionists from two of the association’s hardest-working secretaries, Philadelphia’s D. H. McPherson, a former NMTA organizer, and New York’s Henry C. Hunter, an activist who had mastered the craft of strikebreaking in New York and New Jersey shipyards.80 The leadership’s generosity, combined with the organization’s efficient and reliable union-busting services, warmed Glover’s heart and transformed him into an open-shop ideologue: “I feel that you gentlemen ought to know what a good work you have done for a poor little devil like me.” In reply, the audience, consisting principally of mechanical engineers, proprietary capitalists, and veteran union fighters, broke into laughter.81
Glover learned that his largely northern-based comrades were a supportive and amusing bunch. That Glover lived hundreds of miles from the majority of the NMTA’s membership did not matter; the NMTA was organized on class and industry rather than geographic lines. The IAM established locals and staged nationwide protests; the NMTA leadership learned that, in order to perform its union fighting effectively, it too needed to maintain chapters in southern cities. It appears that Glover had less self-assurance and fewer acquaintances than his more educated, seemingly more experienced and cosmopolitan Yankee brothers, though he shared their concern over the labor movement’s growth and combativeness. More importantly, he shared a willingness to fight and reform his community. One certainly did not need a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering to hold membership in the NMTA and win battles against trade unions.
Glover had become a dedicated NMTA member, served on committees, and recruited fellow employers in his home state of Georgia. In 1906, he began serving as secretary of the newly formed southern district, based in Atlanta, where he helped build an open-shop presence in the heart of the “New South.” No longer intimidated by abusive labor activists, he was now part of a proud alliance enjoying the discretionary power of managing unilaterally. By testifying about the association’s help, Glover reinforced the organizing by Du Brul and his successor, Eagan.82
The movement’s successes continued to multiply in the second part of the decade. According to NMTA secretary Wuest, the association responded to 126 strikes in 1907, winning all but four.83 Not coincidentally, 1907 was a year of significant growth. Of course, such effective strikebreaking and membership increases occurred in the context of a deep recession. High levels of unemployment meant a larger pool of potential strikebreakers, which certainly assisted the organization’s union-breaking operations. In July of that year, Wuest, who had helped place many nonunionists in struck workplaces, reported that “practically all of the strikes called in the shops of our members have failed in their purpose.”84 Victory rates of over 90 percent compelled employers, both organized and independent, to take notice. After triumphant campaigns, numerous employers became eager open-shop advocates, acknowledging that their labor problems could be solved with help from professional antiunionists. Employers like Reeves, Bates, and especially Glover, toughened and educated by their experiences, became collaborators in this national movement because they profited personally from it. They were in awe of the NMTA’s strikebreaking operations, thankful to the panoply of participants, and grateful to have managerial hegemony restored, and as members, they too were prepared to engage in further campaigns designed to reform their communities against “union dictation.” And Bates, Reeves, Glover, and hundreds of others saved money in the process. According to Cleveland’s Sayle, a leader of both the NFA and the NMTA, members paid their union-free workforces “a low average rate of $2.50 per day.”85 The NMTA, effectively using strikebreakers, guards, and management consultants in the interests of its members, had proved itself a central player in the open-shop movement. Writing about the NMTA in 1922, Bonnett observed that “the Association has reduced the combating of strikes to a science.” Other historians have more recently referred to its activities as an “art.”86
“We too must organize”: The Movement Spreads
Employers from other sectors of the economy demonstrated equal annoyance with organized labor’s activities. And by mid-decade, large numbers from coast to coast had elected to follow the lead of the NMTA and the NFA. Organizers formed both city- and trade-based associations. Some of the more influential groups included the National Association of Manufacturers, the Laundrymen’s National Association, the National Association of Employing Lithographers, the National Erectors’ Association, the Building Trades Employers’ Association (BTEA), and the American Anti-Boycott Association (AABA), led by lawyers determined to use the courts against organized labor’s boycott drives and demands for closed shops.87
The AABA chief organizer, Bridgeport, Connecticut-based attorney Daniel Davenport, was especially active, pointing out, as he asserted to a room full of employers in 1904 “the duty, the importance, and the necessity of standing firmly for the right of the individual to run his own business.” Davenport, known in part for his endorsement of women’s suffrage rights, insisted that employers must feel no obligation to succumb to union pressure because the courts had routinely upheld the legality of the open-shop system of management. By providing legal support and by pointing out the significance of decades of judicial backing, Davenport had reminded employers they were far from alone.88
But the presence of anti-union laws did little to discourage labor leaders from making what open-shop proponents believed were outlandish demands. And few felt more overwhelmed by such demands than building contractors in places like New York City. Take, for instance, the circumstances surrounding the BTEA’s decision to follow in the NMTA’s footsteps. Like the NMTA, it spent the twentieth century’s first few years bargaining with union leaders. But its members increasingly found the process unnecessarily laborious, frustrating, and ultimately fruitless. In 1903, speaking in front of a crowd of over 700 men, Charles L. Eidlitz, a well-known building architect and NCF leader, pointed to what he considered the repetitiveness of preposterous union demands:
At first you were asked simply to take down the bar from the door. Later the chain was to be taken off. Still later the key must be left on the outside. All these demands and many others were granted. And now, what is asked of you? That the door shall be taken off the hinges and thrown into the street. What will be your answer to this request?89
Inspired by his colorful and dramatic analogy, the men in attendance, who, according to its Bulletin, had links to “various building trades representing eighty percent of all the building interests of New York,” had finally recognized the slippery slope nature of negotiations and thus reached the same conclusions drawn by the NMTA two years earlier: “By a unanimous vote it was determined to solidly unite and stand for the rights of employers to manage their own business.”90
This same impulse inspired thousands of others to form locally based employers’ associations. Defense associations of the sort that Pfahler, Penton, Davenport, Du Brul, and Eidlitz helped build had sprung up in large and small cities throughout the country. By late 1903, Birmingham, Chattanooga, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dayton, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Louisville, Minneapolis, Omaha, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Worcester had become movement hubs.91 And some of these urban-based employers’ associations were led by individuals outside the heavy manufacturing and the building trades. The Chicago Employers’ Association, for instance, was launched largely by John G. Shedd of department store Marshall Field’s in 1902. “Labor is organized,” Shedd announced. “We, too, must organize.”92
There was, from the perspective of Chicago’s merchants and manufacturers, a profound sense of urgency. Chicago’s participating employers obtained the help of attorney Frederick W. Job, a former member of the Illinois State Board of Arbitration. As ambitious as Penton and Du Brul, Job sent notices to Chicago’s employers, explaining the importance of unity in the face of a relentless uptick in strikes, boycotts, and organizing campaigns. His persistent activities bore fruit, resulting in the creation of forty “sub-associations,” including the Building Owners’ Association, the Laundry Owners’ Association, and the Manufacturing Confectioners’ Association. All functioned under the umbrella of the larger Chicago Employers’ Association. With a growing and increasingly confident membership behind them, Job and Shedd promised to supply struck workplaces with “independent” replacement workers,