American Gandhi. Leilah Danielson
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avoid retaliatory violence, but as the conflict between strikers and scabs escalated, it occurred to them that something more dramatic was called for. ‘‘Back in the jungle era of 1919,’’ Muste recalled, it was the policy for strike leaders to avoid the picket line because they would be ‘‘picked off’’ by the police. But to boost morale, the strike committee decided that Muste, Long, and several other leaders would lead the picket line.29
On the afternoon of February 26, Muste and Long left strike headquarters, leading a throng of thousands on a picket line in front of one of the larger textile mills. No sooner had they begun the picket line when police on horseback swarmed into the crowd. In the confusion, Long and Muste ended up in a side street where police cut them off from the other picketers and began beating them. Long was immediately knocked unconscious, but they were more careful with Muste, systematically beating his legs and body and forcing him to continue walking to avoid being trampled by their horses. When he was finally unable to stand up, they placed him in the patrol wagon where Long was coming back into consciousness.30
At the police station, the two ministers were charged with disturbing the peace and loitering (Long received the additional charge of assaulting an ‘‘unknown girl’’). Placed in separate cells, Muste and Long received another bout of abuse; the police hammered incessantly on the metal bars and even brought in Newton’s chief of police, whose son had attended Muste’s Sunday school class, to chastise Muste for getting ‘‘mixed up’’ with ‘‘all these wops’’ and ‘‘this row.’’ The ministers grew increasingly anxious as night fell because at nine o’clock prisoners were transferred to a facility on the outskirts of town and it was ‘‘routine that en route prisoners ‘tried to escape and had to be beaten into submission.’ ’’ Yet their comrades had worked feverishly to raise funds and managed to bail them out before the deadline. The next morning Muste and Long were out on the picket line again.31
The tactic proved a tremendous success. The persecution of the ministers turned liberal public opinion toward the strikers, lifted sagging spirits, and firmly established Muste’s leadership role. Yet, as the strike wore on, the general strike committee continuously feared that they would lose control of the strike or that the workers would return to the mills. Provocative behavior by the police continued to be a problem. One of their most incendiary acts occurred during the sixth week of the strike when they mounted machine guns at several principle intersections. In response, a member of the strike committee made a speech calling on the workers to turn the machine guns on the police. Much to Muste’s relief, the speaker was voted down when others pointed out that ‘‘they can’t weave wool with machine guns.’’32 A week later Muste would find conclusive evidence that the speaker was in the employ of a detective agency and had made the speech at the behest of the police. A similar discovery was made a few weeks later when the strike’s financial secretary revealed to Muste that he was a spy involved in a scheme with the mill employers to set him up for murder. Thus Muste learned firsthand about the role of labor spies and agents provocateurs in radical movements, a lesson he would not forget. They always posed ‘‘as the most intransigent Marxist and most militant labor fighter of them all,’’ and insisted ‘‘upon the most meticulous observance of all the rules,’’ Muste recalled of this perennial problem in labor and radical movements.33
But the main problem was dwindling funds. Muste’s connections in Boston had raised thousands of dollars and had helped to raise spirits by joining the workers on the picket line.34 But the strike fund was quickly depleted by the costs of feeding and clothing thousands of striking workers, providing medical care for injured workers, and paying legal expenses for trials such as Long and Muste’s (ultimately dismissed for lack of evidence). Early in March, connections were made between the striking workers and Sidney Hillman of the ACW. Hillman had long envisioned a union of all workers in the apparel industry and he was eager to provide assistance. Along with money, the ACW dispatched staff members August Bellanca, Nathan Kleinman, Leo Robbins, Gioacchino Artoni, H. J. Rubenstein, and Anthony Capraro to assist in the strike.35
The relationship with the ACW reflected not only a desire for funds, but also the growing conviction that the struggles in Lawrence and other textile centers represented an opportune moment for the unionization of all textile workers, regardless of skill. The ACW appealed to Lawrence’s immigrant workforce because of its industrial character and because of its combination of revolutionary e´lan and practical achievements. Unlike the IWW, the ACW signed contracts through means of an impartial arbitrator and sought to maintain stable, efficient unions that provided tangible benefits to their workers.36 There were also cultural similarities between clothing and textile workers; both groups were made up of immigrants with anarcho-syndicalist sympathies, giving their movements a spirit of militancy, localism, and democracy. Still, the ACW’s impressive victories during the war were the result of Hillman’s commitment to collaboration with the state and his willingness to discipline unruly members. As a result, the ACW secured a reliable foothold in the industry, and its membership increased from 48,000 in 1916 to 138,000 in mid-1919. By 1920, the union would be the fourth-largest body of organized industrial workers in the United States, after the miners, machinists, and railroad workers. The question was where this practical orientation would lead: would ‘‘industrial democracy’’ mean workers’ control or something more limited like co-management between workers and their employers, which was how Hillman increasingly defined it?37
Thus, as the Lawrence strike dragged on into its eighth week, Muste and other strike leaders laid plans for a textile workers convention in New York City under the auspices of the ACW. On April 12–13, seventy-five workers from half a dozen textile centers gathered at Labor Temple at Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue where they voted to give birth to the Amalgamated Textile Workers of America (ATWA) and elected Muste general secretary. The constitution was modeled after the ACW and was explicitly revolutionary: it declared the reality of the class struggle and asserted that the union was the ‘‘natural weapon of offense and defense’’ in the struggle for a socialist society. It rejected the craft orientation of the AFL as outmoded and suggested that democratic, industrial organization would provide the training for workers to assume ‘‘control of the system of production.’’38 At the same time, reflecting the influence of the ACW, the union also made it clear that it aimed to be ‘‘practical.’’ As Muste explained, delegates felt that ‘‘former organizations had either been hopelessly conservative and thus played into the hands of the bosses, or, while radical in purpose, had been so extreme and impractical in method as likewise to fail in soundly organizing the industry.’’39
Although the headquarters of the new union were to be in New York City, Muste returned immediately to Lawrence where the situation had grown more desperate. On April 11, the mill owners rejected an offer of mediation that even conservative Massachusetts governor (and later U.S. president) Calvin Coolidge said was ‘‘fair.’’ Two weeks later, the city Marshall announced the withdrawal of police protection for the strike leaders, and editorials appeared in local papers calling for vigilante action against ‘‘reds and mobs.’’40 Meanwhile, strike funds were so depleted that workers went without shoes and milk for their children, leading the organizers to imitate a famous tactic of the 1912 strike of sending children outside of the beleaguered city to stay with families who could afford to clothe and feed them. On May 2, in order to raise morale, the strike leadership snuck Carlo Tresca into town to rally the workers. A lovable, inspiring speaker, Tresca had been banned from Lawrence for slapping the face of the police chief during the 1912 strike. When the authorities learned of his visit, they became so enflamed that they organized a mob that went in search of Muste. Unable to find him, they kidnapped and brutally beat Anthony Capraro and Nathan Kleinman; the former only narrowly escaped a lynching.41
Though such acts tended to unify strikers and generate liberal support, the strike leadership began to prepare for defeat. On Monday, May 19, they dispatched Muste to New York City ostensibly to raise more funds; in fact, they wanted the head of the union out of town if and when the workers capitulated and went back to work. As Muste walked despondently to the train station, an incredible turn of events occurred that revealed the personal power wielded by the mill owners, especially William Wood, and also how the solidarity