A Striking Remembrance
Sheesh! I take one measly week off - no, you're not getting your 50 cents back - and everyone's on my case. Fortunately, today is Labor Day, so you should be a little more sensitive to the rights of workers without forcing me to go to hysterical, historical extremes.
But I will anyway.
It's what I do best.
And when it comes to labor-related extremes here in Manch Vegas, one need go no further than the Great Textile Strike of 1922 against Amoskeag Manufacturing. Yes, it took place more than 75 years ago, but nothing has been the same in this city ever since.
It's not that previous strikes were unheard of at Amoskeag. In 1885, the Knights of Labor - sounds more like a Lamaze class than a union - staged a brief walkout, but events of that kind were so rare, so inconsequential that Manchester was known far and wide as "the strikeless city."
Maybe it had something to do with the paternal tone that had always marked Amoskeag's dealing with its workers. Historian Tamara Hareven likened it to "a social contract based on loyalty and mutual respect," so, when unionization began sweeping the country, Manchester's workers were characteristically cautious in choosing a union.
Not so in nearby Lawrence, where workers had once aligned themselves with the radical socialist group know as International Workers of the World. They had a great nickname - they were known as "the Wobblies" - but their penchant for violent strikes, such as the "Bread and Roses" strike of 1912, was a turn-off for local workers who eventually sided with the United Textile Workers.
The wisdom of that choice was seemingly affirmed in 1919 when a brief strike was settled in just five days - with a 15 percent raise - but things changed drastically on Feb. 2, 1922 when the ham-handed Amoskeag agent, William Parker Straw, abruptly posted a terse notice in the Millyard.
"Commencing Monday, Feb. 13, 1922, a reduction of 20 percent will be made in all hour and piece rates in all departments of the Amoskeag. At the same time, the running time of the mill will be increased from 48 to 54 hours per week in accordance with the schedule posted herewith."
As written documents go, it didn't have the global impact of Hammurabi's Code or the Magna Carta, but on a local scale, it signaled the end of the innocence in this tiny hamlet we call home.
If I wanted to be fair, I would point out that management cited a post-war economic slump and southern competition in calling for the changes but hey, it's Labor Day, and I'm a union guy so I'll be as fair as Amoskeag was.
Not very.
The workers were outraged - like me - but even while the carders, spinners, spoolers, warpers and weavers waited for advice from UTW vice president James Starr, Amoskeag spin doctors were busy trying to sell their package. "It's not really a 20 percent pay cut," they insisted. "It's only a 10 percent pay cut because - purely as a convenience to you - we're going to let you work an extra eight hours a week so you can make up some of the money we're not paying you in the first place."
The result of that pitch?
A called strike.
On Feb. 10, the UTW polled its membership and by a vote of 12,032 to 118, they rejected the package. Even if you allow for a little Jimmy Hoffa-type fudging of the figures - I'm a union guy but I'm not a naïve union guy - it was the biggest landslide on the books since Super Bowl XXIV (San Francisco 55, Denver 10) a game in which a wild-eyed wager netted me 10 bucks.
If Lawrence was known as "Spindle City," millworkers now thought of Manchester as "Swindle City." On Feb. 13, they walked. Fewer than 100 workers crossed the picket line. Amoskeag shut down.
In hindsight, union momentum may have peaked that day. The deck was hopelessly stacked against the workers. Even the elements seemed to conspire against them in the beginning when the mercury dipped to 10-below.
"Icy blasts sweeping down the canals nipped the ears of the pickets.. but not a girl gave up her assignment," wrote The Manchester Union. "They may keep us out, but they can't freeze us out,' cried one picketer."
There was some hot air blowing down from Concord - some things never change - but when Gov. Albert O. Brown declined a request from the Manchester delegation to consider a law mandating a 48-hour work week, the strike continued.
While picketing went on during the day, union officials scheduled evening social events like dances and whist parties to keep spirits high. Union-run commissaries offered free food and medical care to cash-strapped strikers. Other unions donated money as well, but the scope of the strike - with as many as 16,000 workers idled - soon depleted those funds.
More ominously, as the weeks turned to months, Amoskeag removed its velvet glove and showed its iron fist.
After first allowing the strikers to conduct fund-raising tag days, Mayor George Trudel - under pressure - pulled the plug on them. The Board of Aldermen was stacked with Amoskeag overseers and superintendents and police chief Michael J. Healy, a buddy of AMC Treasurer Fred C. Dumaine, "openly urged the police force to protect the corporation and demoralize the workers," according to Hareven.
Healy barred out of town speakers from addressing rallies, thereby silencing national union leaders like James Starr. He allowed Amoskeag to photograph picketers (for later reprisals) but refused to let the union photograph scabs. He got a court order permitting no more than two picketers at each gate and he even pulled the police team out of the city basketball league so his men couldn't refuse overtime duty.
Newspapers also fell in line. The French language L'Avenir National was so transparent in its efforts to undermine the solidarity of the French-Canadian strikers that workers began referring to the paper as tete de cochon - "the head of the pig."
Thanks to the pliant Gov. Brown, Amoskeag got the Coolidge Mill running in June with imported strikebreakers. By September, Amoskeag had withdrawn the 20 percent pay cut, but Straw still insisted on the 54-hour work week and the chant of "eight hours" became a union rallying cry.
Come November, it was all over but the crying. After nine months without income, workers began trickling back to the mils and on Nov. 25, 1922, union members reluctantly voted to return.
The cost? Workers lost $11 million in wages. Amokseag lost $10 million in production but the greatest loss - the loss of trust - was incalculable.
'The Strike of 1922 was not only a cataclysmic event for all those associated with Amoskeag," wrote Hareven, "but it also had a profound impact on the economic and social life of the city of Manchester.
"To a large extent, the strike broke the spirit of Amoskeag," she added, and as we all know, the ghosts of that spirit haunt us to this very day.
