American Gandhi. Leilah Danielson
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One historian has suggested that the ‘‘naïve’’ leadership of the union’s ‘‘middle-class intellectuals’’ further contributed to the union’s demise. For evidence, he cites the union’s reluctance to stage strikes in the spring and summer of 1920, and argues that this reflected a politics of moderation out of step with the militancy of the rank and file.63 Underlying his argument is the problematic assumption that religious faith leads to moderation. As we have seen, pacifists like Rotzel, Long, Evan Thomas, and Muste risked their careers for their antiwar stance, and showed courage and militancy in organizing and leading the ATWA, which is why they earned the respect and trust of the workers. Muste’s ambivalence about striking in the spring of 1920 did not reflect a failure of nerve so much as his pragmatism—with the union facing unilateral reductions in hours and even lockouts, an offensive strike to double the wages of textile workers and obtain union recognition seemed almost certain to end in defeat.64
Still, there were cultural differences between Protestant pacifists and the largely immigrant workforce; some of Lawrence’s Italian workers, with their strong tradition of anticlericalism, never overcame their suspicion of the ministers.65 For their part, pacifists often experienced union politics as an ‘‘assault’’ on their affinity for moral consistency.66 Long would ultimately decide that his ideals found better expression in the cooperative movement, where he remained for the rest of his life. Evan Thomas, who served as the ATWA’s organizer in Paterson, observed that his loyalty to individuals rather than to ideas or groups could rouse ‘‘real suspicion from some of the workers’’ in Paterson. ‘‘Many of us intellectual radicals are too introspective and ego-centered’’ to serve the labor movement, he surmised in a letter to his mother. Soon thereafter he turned away from organized politics to focus on his career and family. Likewise, following the demise of the ATWA, pacifists tended to stay on the sidelines of the labor movement, feeling morally compromised in the trenches.67
It would, however, be a mistake to exaggerate the divide between pacifism and labor. Left-wing members of the FOR continued to give the labor movement valuable support, and some of them remained actively involved.68 And John Haynes Holmes may not have liked strikes very much, but he defended the rights of labor to free speech and free assembly as a member of the ACLU. Holmes’s approach to the ‘‘labor question’’ was typical of pacifists and mainline Protestants throughout the 1920s: they served as crucial allies of the labor movement, while staking their hopes for industrial and international peace on moral suasion and legalistic formulas like the ‘‘outlawry of war’’ movement and a world court.69
Even so, Muste’s continued and active engagement in the labor movement was unusual. In contrast to many of his fellow pacifists, he rejected the notion that individual conscientious objection alone would lead to peace. He was also deeply skeptical of legalistic and moralistic methods for achieving social change, instead placing his hopes in labor organization, militancy, and solidarity.70 The difference probably reflected his immigrant and working-class background. Union organizer James Dick’s memories of the ATWA are suggestive: ‘‘We had seven or eight ministers in the Amalgamated Textile Workers, and that was six or seven too many. But there was one who did understand the workers and did understand labor organization: that was A. J. Muste. There is no man in the United States that I would rather go on the picket line with where there is real danger of getting heads cracked.’’71
For Muste’s part, he felt a ‘‘very strong’’ sense of identification with men like Sidney Hillman, Carlo Tresca, Arturo Giovannitti, Abraham Cahan, and other ethnic leaders and workers with whom he had become closely connected, and his impression was that they felt the same toward him. His early experiences of poverty and factory work gave him empathy for ‘‘the conditions under which they had to live, the suffering which they had to undergo, the deprivation,’’ and conditioned him to live simply. Like them, he also enjoyed the camaraderie of East Side coffeehouses and union meetings, often one and the same, though his Protestant heritage made him ‘‘congenitally’’ unable to sit around drinking and playing cards. ‘‘I had to get my relaxation going to plays or listening to music, and so when the boys went out to drink I didn’t go along.’’ Yet he refused to moralize, reflecting a deeply held conviction that idealists, whether religious or secular, should keep their ideals to themselves in a diverse and multifaceted movement.72
Ultimately, Muste found the experience of being part of something larger than the self deeply satisfying, a sentiment that contrasts with the strongly libertarian bent of other pacifists. Like other pragmatists, he believed that the individual could only find himself or herself through and in community rather than over and against it. ‘‘There is no such thing as an individual,’’ Muste explained years later in his oral history. ‘‘He’s a part of a community, a society’’ and has responsibilities to it.73
In 1920–21, as Muste watched the ATWA collapse all around him, he came to believe that the labor movement should combat not only the conservatism of the AFL, but also the increasingly out-of-touch insurrectionary politics of the left. Radicals had fallen ‘‘into the formulation of rules, orthodoxies,’’ escaping into ‘‘dogmatic radicalism’’ rather than facing ‘‘life and reality.’’74 Indeed, one reason the postwar Red Scare was so devastating to the labor movement was that the Palmer raids tended to exacerbate the left’s millenarianism; from 1919 to 1921, anarchists entered a conspiracy to avenge their repression, the Socialist Party split into rival right- and left-wing factions, and the subsequently formed Communist Party went underground. These insurrectionary politics deeply affected the ATWA. Union meetings often centered on ‘‘doctrinal disputations’’ rather than ‘‘straight-out trade union organization of the workers for the immediate improvement of their conditions.’’ More dramatically, anarchists in textile centers bungled several bombings and the union’s Communist Party members became scarce.75
Muste’s decision to leave the ATWA and turn to workers’ education emerged out of this context. It was clear to him that labor’s expansive vision for the postwar order had been defeated and that the United States had entered a period of reaction. Yet he found reason to be hopeful. John Golden, the UTW’s reactionary president, died in 1921 and was replaced by Thomas McMahon, a more progressive unionist who reached out to Muste and who would fight closely with progressives in the 1922 New England textile strike. Perhaps the ATWA had served its purpose in spurring the UTW into more aggressive action; ‘‘for the time being,’’ a more practical approach was to push for a federation of textile unions under the auspices of the UTW. At any rate, the ‘‘extraordinary instability’’ of textiles, the specter of an economic downturn, and the extreme hostility of textile magnates made dual unionism now seem like a suicidal policy.76 Meanwhile, workers’ education became a means whereby he could build a culture of industrial unionism within the American working class, which his experience within the ATWA had taught him would be no easy task. As he reflected, building class consciousness and organizing workers required more than an ‘‘evangelistic’’ method of intensive organization campaigns, big strikes, and generating popular enthusiasm; it was a long-term educational and cultural project. It might also serve as a means whereby he could press his vision for a more realistic left, on the one hand, and a more idealistic labor movement, on the other.77
Progressive unionists and independent radicals throughout the United States shared Muste’s deep interest in workers’ education. The needle and clothing trades were especially supportive, having initiated cultural and educational programs for their members, but so too were the machinists, mine workers and railroad brotherhoods, and central labor councils. James H. Maurer, a machinist who had risen to the presidency of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor, was one of its most passionate advocates. Mortified by the pro-war, pro-corporate, nationalistic stance of the schools during World War I, Maurer became convinced that labor needed ‘‘schools of its own . . . for free and open discussion, from the workers’ point of view, of the social and economic questions that are of vital interest to workingmen.’’ Other prominent backers of the movement included John Brophy, the president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) District 2, who served as a center of insurgency against the