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Abortive Reconstruction: Federal War Labor Policies, Union Organization, and the Politics of Race, 1917–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Joseph A. McCartin
Joseph A. McCartin
Affiliation:
State University of New York College at Geneseo
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Extract

During the early months of 1919, the term “Reconstruction,” of concern to few but historians and the friends and foes of D.W. Griffith in the years immediately preceding the Great War, was again on the lips of Americans. Alabama State Federation of Labor President, William L. Harrison, noted that “Since the signing of the Armistice, and the cessation of hostilities, the questions of reconstruction and re-adjustment are being diligently studied by the people generally.” Out of the war, he argued, came “new and progressive ideas on reconstruction.” He was right. As the war ended, dozens of books and articles bearing titles like Reconstructing America, Democracy and Reconstruction, and Social Reconstruction joined a new journal called Reconstruction: A Herald of the New Time. This literature celebrated the role that a strong federal government had played in helping workers secure the right to join unions during the war, and it laid out hopeful plans for what the government might do to solve the “labor question” after the war. Such ideas helped convince Harrison's counterpart, Florida State Federation of Labor President John H. Mackey, that the postwar era would bring “a silver ray which carries with it wondrous tidings for the uplift of the masses.”

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , April 1997 , pp. 155 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1997

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References

Notes

1. Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Convention of the Alabama Scute Federation of Labor (Mobile, Ala., 1919), 11.Google Scholar

2. For example, see Cleveland, Frederick A., and Schafer, Joseph, eds. Democracy in Reconstruction (Boston, 1919)Google Scholar; Wildman, Edward, ed. Reconstructing America (Boston, 1919)Google Scholar; Ryan, John A., Social Reconstruction (New York, 1920)Google Scholar; Tead, Ordway, “Labor and Reconstruction,” The Yale Law Review 7 (April 1918): 529–542Google Scholar; The Negro and the New Social Order: Reconstruction Program of the American Negro (New York, 1919)Google Scholar; Report of the Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor (Washington, DC, 1919), 70–80Google Scholar. See also Kennedy, David M., Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York, 1980), 245–6.Google Scholar

3. Annual Report of Officers of the Florida State Federation of Labor (n.p., 1919), 5.

4. New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 3, 1919, 1, 14.

5. See, for example, Brody, David, Labor In Crisis: The Steel Strike of 1919 (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; Hurvitz, Haggai, “Ideology and Industrial Conflict: President Wilson's First, Industrial Conference of October, 1919,” Labor History 18 (Fall 1977): 509–524CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wakstein, Allen M., “The Origins of the Open Shop Movement, 1919–1920,” Journal of American History 51 (1964): 460–475.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. David Montgomery has argued that class conflict was the “submerged shoal” upon which the Reconstruction foundered in the 1870s. See Montgomery, , Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans (New York, 1967), xGoogle Scholar. Here I suggest that the politics of race and class played a crucial role in subverting another reconstruction in 1919. This argument sheds light on one aspect of the complex history of race, class, and political power in the Jim Crow South that recent historical studies have overlooked. Among the most important recent contributions are Zeiger, Robert, ed., Organized Labor in the Twentieth Century South (Knoxville, Term., 1991)Google Scholar; Lewis, Earl, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth Century Norfolk, Virginia (Berkeley, Cat., 1991)Google Scholar; Amesen, Eric, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Poliacs, 1863–1923 (New York, 1991)Google Scholar; Arnesen, Eric, “‘It Ain't Like they do in New Orleans’: Race Relations, Labor Markets, and Waterfront Labor Movements in the American South, 1880–1923,” in van der Linden, Marcel and Lucassen, Jan, eds., Racism and the Labour Market: Historical Studies (New York, 1995)Google Scholar; Letwin, Daniel, “Interracial Unionism, Gender, and ‘Social Equality in the Alabama Coal Fields, 1878–1908,” Journal of Southern History 61 (August 1995): 519–554CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gottlieb, Peter, Making Their Own Way: Southern Blacks' Migration to Pittsburgh (Urbana, Ill., 1987)Google Scholar; Trotter, Joe William Jr., Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915–32 (Urbana, Ill., 1990)Google Scholar; Lewis, Ronald L., Block Coal Miners m America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict, 1780–1980 (Lexington, KY., 1987)Google Scholar; Kelley, Robin D.G., Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1990).Google Scholar

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8. Woodrow Wilson to Ben R. Tillman, Mar. 21, 1913, Ben R. Tillman to Woodrow Wilson, Mar. 24, 1913, and W. B. Wilson to Woodrow Wilson, May 13, 1913, series 4, casefile 19c, reel 172, Woodrow Wilson Papers, Library of Congress [hereafter cited as Wilson Papers, LC]. See also Jones, Dallas Lee, “The Wilson Administration and Organized Labor, 1912–1919” (Ph.D. Dissertation Cornell University, 1954), 95–7.Google Scholar

9. National Industrial Conference Board, Strikes in American Wartime Industry (Boston, 1918), p. 3Google Scholar; Watkins, Gordon, Labor Problems and Labor Administration in the United States during the World War (Urbana, Ill., 1920), 41.Google Scholar

10. Watkins, Gordon S., Labor Problems and Labor Administration in the United States During the War (Urbana, Ill., 1920)Google Scholar; Bing, Alexander M., Wartime Strikes and Their Adjustment (New York, 1921)Google Scholar; Grossman, Jonathan, The Department of Labor (New York, 1973)Google Scholar; Breen, William, Uncle Sam at Home: Civilian Mobilization, Wartime Federalism, and the Council of National Defense, 1917–1919 (Wesport, Conn., 1984).Google Scholar

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12. Conner, Valerie Jean, The National War Labor Board: Stability, Social Justice, and the Voluntary State in World War I (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1983).Google Scholar

13. The industrialists nominated to the NWLB by the National Industrial Conference Board were: L. F. Loree, President of the Delaware & Hudson Railroad; C. Edwin Michael, of the Virginia Bridge and Iron Company; Loyall A. Osborne, of Westinghouse Electric; W.H. Van DerVoort, of a prominent Illinois engineering concern; and B.L. Worden, of the Submarine Boat Corporation. The labor representative nominated by the AFL were: Frank J. Hayes, of the United Mine Workers; William L. Hutcheson of the Carpenters; William H. Johnston, of the International Association of Machinists; Victor Olander, of the International Seamen's Union; and Thomas A. Rickert, president of the United Garment Workers.

14. Dubofsky, Melvyn, We Shall Be All: A History of the IWW (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Preston, William Jr., Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903–1933 (Cambridge, 1963).Google Scholar

15. Conner, The Narional War Labor Board, 33. For the best summary of the Wilson administration's labor program, see Melvyn Dubofsky's “Abortive Reform: The Wilson Administration and Organized Labor, 1913–1920,” in Cronin, James E. and Sirianni, Carmen, eds., Work, Community, and Power: The Experience of Labor in Europe and America, 1900–1925 (Philadelphia, 1983).Google Scholar

16. Josephson, Matthew, Sidney Hillman: Statesman of American Labor (Garden City, N.Y., 1952), 167Google Scholar. On the relationship between union leaders and the federal government during the war, see McCartin, , Labor's Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modem American Labor Relations, 1913–21 (Chapel Hill, forthcoming), Chap. 3.Google Scholar

17. Unions tended to grow most quickly in the industries in which federal regulation was most visible and constant. Wolman, Leo, The Growth of American Trade Unions, 1880–1925 (New York, 1924), 33Google Scholar; McCartin, Joseph A., “Using the ‘Gun Act’: Federal Regulation and the Politics of the Strike Threat During World War I,” Labor History 33 (Fall 1992): 520–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. The Auto Worker 1 (May 1919): 3–4. Business leaders tended to concur in this assessment. Judge Elbert Gary confided that “no one can tell what is going to happen with respect to the labor question, because the Government is very powerful.” Gary quoted in Brody, David, Steelworkers in America: The Non-Union Era (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 204.Google Scholar

19. IAM leaflet, casefile 172, Records of the National War Labor Board, Record Group 2, National Archives, [hereafter cited as NWLB Records, RG 2, NA.]

20. While there is as yet no full length study of southern black labor during World War I, a number of recent studies have thrown new light on the complex history of race, labor, and capital in the South during the Progressive and New Deal eras. These have generally both illuminated heretofore neglected attempts at interracial unionism and illustrated their limitations. Some of the best recent work includes: Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans; Trotter, Coal, Class, and Color, Lewis, Black Coal Miners m America; Letwin, “Interracial Unionism, Gender, and ‘Social Equality’ in the Alabama Coalfields”; Rachleff, Black Laborin the South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865–1890; McKiven, Henry M. Jr., Iron and Steel: Class, Race, and Community in Birmingham, Alabama, 1875–1920 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Honey, Michael, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (Urbana, Ill., 1993)Google Scholar; Zeiger, ed., Organized Labor in the Twentieth Century South. A trenchant summary of some of this literature is to be found in Amesen, Eric, “Following the Color Line of Labor: Black Workers and the Labor Movement Before 1930,” Radical History Review 55 (Winter 1993): 53–87.Google Scholar

21. Gudza, Henry P., “Social Experiment in the Labor Department: The Division of Negro Economics,” The Public Historian 4 (Fall 1982): 8Google Scholar. See also, Grossman, Jonathan, The Department of Labor (New York, 1973)Google Scholar; Lombardi, John, Labor's Voice in the Cabinet: A History of the Department of Labor from its Origins to 1921 (New York, 1942)Google Scholar, passim.

22. For insights into Walsh's view of the Democratic party, see Frank P. Walsh to Stephen S. Wise, Nov. 12, 1916; Wise to Walsh, Nov. 15, 1918, Box 4, Frank P. Walsh Papers, New York Public Library [hereafter cited as Walsh Papers, NYPL].

23. Walsh to John Shillady, Feb. 25, 1919, Box 7; Walsh to M.S. Warfield, June 11, 1918, Box 5; Walsh to Rev. Daniel S. McCorkle, Dec. 26, 1917, Box 5, Walsh Papers, NYPL.

24. Walsh to J. Fitzpatrick, Feb. 11, 1921, Box 10, Walsh Papers, NYPL.

25. Frank P. Walsh to Charles McCarthy, July 15, 1914, reel 7, Charles McCarthy Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin [hereafter cited as McCarthy Papers, SHSW].

26. A. M. Daly, “Steel and Iron at Birmingham,” August 1914, Records of the USCIR, University Publications of America, reel 12 [hereafter cited as USCIR Records].

27. Congressional Record 63rd Cong. 2 sess. (7 July 1914), 11681–3.

28. Those who voted against the commission included Senators Bryan (Fla.), Clarke (Ark.), Fletcher (Fla.), Overman (N.C.), Ransdell (La.), Reed (Mo.), Shields (Tenn.), Simmons (N.C.), Swanson (Va.), and Thornton (La.). Hoke Smith continued to feud with Walsh over the Atlanta strike. See Walsh to Charles McCarthy, July 15, 1914; L.O. Bricker to Walsh, July 14, 1914; telegram, Lewis K. Brown to Walsh, July 24, 1914; telegram, Walsh to Brown, July 24, 1914, all in reel 7, McCarthy Papers, SHSW.

29. Among the NWLB investigators were Anton Johannsen, who had previously served as Walsh's liaison to anti-AFL radicals and Elizabeth Christman, of the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL). Although the NWLB hired no black staff members despite Walsh's pleas that it do so, many of the Board's labor investigators were outspoken defenders of the rights of black workers. On Walsh's attempts to hire a black staffer for the NWLB, see Walsh to W. Jett Lauck, Aug. 30, 1918, Box 6, Walsh Papers, NYPL.

30. Swing, Raymond Gram, “Good Evening!”: A Professional Memoir by Raymond Suing (New York, 1964), 11Google Scholar; Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 53.

31. T.E. Carroll to H.R. Seager, September 17, 1918, and Miller and Blitch to Capt. W.R. Bowler, May 9,1918, Carroll file, entry 290, box 10, United States Shipping Board Records, Record Group 32, National Archives [hereafter cited as USSB Records, RG 32, NA].

32. Sidney J. Cans to W. B. Wilson, April 7, 1919, Cans to Wilson, April 22, 1919, file 8/102D, box 19, entry 1, Records of the Department of Labor, Record Group 174, National Archives, [hereafter cited as DOL Records, RG 174, N A]. See also Gov. Cornwell (W. Virginia) to W. B. Wilson, June 27,1917, file 121/1, box 132, DOL Records, RG 174, NA; Gudza, “Social Experiment in the Labor Department,” 24.

33. “Transcript of Proceedings,” March 28, 1918, 117–20, entry 372, Box 4, USSB Records, RG 32, NA.

34. Docket JY-620, entry 112, box 7, United States Railroad Administration Records, Record Group 14, National Archives [hereafter cited as USRA Records, RG 14, NA].

35. Docket AG-731, entry 112, box 8, USRA Records, RG 14, NA.

36. A. A. Walker to Wm. G. McAdoo, Sept. 12, 1918, entry 86, box 8, caseflle 194, USRA Records, RG 14, NA.

37. A. A. Walker to William G. McAdoo, September 12, 1918, entry 86, box 8, casefile 194, USRA Records, RG 14, NA.

38. Conner, The National War Labor Board, Chap. 4.

39. “Transcript of Proceedings,” September 30, 1918, p. 71, entry 2, box 7, casefile 98, NWLB Records, RG 2, NA.

40. W. Celles to Mr. Taft and Mr. Walsh, September 11,1918, casefile 98, box 46, file 1, folder 2, NWLB Records, RG 2, NA.

41. W. H. Taft to Walsh, October 20,1918, reel 199, William H. Taft Papers, Library of Congress [hereafter cited as Taft Papers, LC].

42. Unsigned letter to President Wilson, September 6,1918, casefile 98, box 46, file 1, folder 2, NWLB Records, RG 2, NA.

43. Elex Anderson to William G. McAdoo, July 31,1918, entry 86, box 5, casefile 95, USRA Records, RG 14, NA.

44. Casefile 160, entry 86, box 7, USRA Records, RG 14, NA.

45. Quarles and Mallice to Hanger, December 19,1918, entry 86, box 9, casftle 238, USRA Records, RG 14, NA.

46. John H. Dailey, et al. to J. J. Forrester, September 14, 1919, entry 86, box 35, casefile 878, USRA Records, RG 2, NA.

47. See Spero, Sterling D. and Harris, Abram L., The Black Worker: The Negro in the Labor Movement (New York, 1931)Google Scholar; Northrup, Herbert, Organized Labor and the Negro (New York, 1944)Google Scholar; Foner, Philip S., Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619–1973 (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; Harris, William H., The Harder We Run: Black Workers Since the CM War (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Turtle, William M., “Labor Conflict and Racial Violence: The Black Worker in Chicago: 1894–1919,” Labor History 10 (Fall 1969): 408–32Google Scholar; Norrell, Robert J., “Caste in Steel: Jim Crow Careers in Birmingham, Alabama,” Journal of American History 73 (December 1986): 669–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Roediger, David R., The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York, 1991)Google Scholar. An enlightening discussion of trade union racism in the era of Jim Crow has emerged in the famous debate between the followers of Herbert Gutman and those of Herbert Hill. For background, see Hill, Herbert, “Myth-Making as Labor History: Herbert Gutman and the United Mine Workers of America,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 2 (Winter 1988): 132–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and articles by Shulman, Steven, Painter, Nell Irvin, Roediger, David, Wilson, Francille Rusan, Bernstein, Irving, Fried, Albert, and Brier, Stephen in International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 2 (Spring 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48. See Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans; Corbin, Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal FUlds: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880–1922; Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression; Lewis, Black Coal Miners in America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict, 1780–1980 (Lexington, 1987)Google Scholar; Rachleff, Peter, Black Laborin the South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865–1890 (Philadelphia, 1984)Google Scholar; Rosenberg, Daniel, New Orleans Dockworkers: Race, Labor, and Unionism, 1892–1923 (Albany, N.Y., 1988)Google Scholar; Stein, Judith, “Southern Workers in National Unions: Birmingham Steelworkers, 1936–1951,” in Zieger, Robert H., ed., Organized Labor in the Twentieth-Century South (Knoxville, Term., 1991)Google Scholar; Trotter, Joe William Jr., Cool, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915–32 (Urbana, III., 1990)Google Scholar; Letwin, Daniel, “Interracial Unionism, Gender, and ‘Social Equality in the Alabama Coal Fields, 1878–1908,” Journal of Southern History 61 (August 1995): 519–554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49. Comer quoted in Straw, Richard A., “The Collapse of Biracial Unionism: The Alabama Coal Strike of 1908,” Alabama Historical Quarterly 37 (Summer 1975): 92–114Google Scholar. An excellent treatment of the power of the social equality charge is to be found in Le twin, “Interracial Unionism, Gender, and ‘Social Equality’ in the Alabama Coalfields, 1878–1908.” For more background see Ward, Robert D. and Rogers, William W., Labor Revolt in Alabama: The Great Strike of 1894 (University, Ala., 1965)Google Scholar; Straw, Richard A., “‘This is not a strike, it is simply a revolution’: Birmingham Miners' Struggle for Power, 1894–1908,” (Ph-D. Dissertation, University of Missouri—Columbia, 1980)Google Scholar; Taft, Philip and Fink, Gary, Organizing Dixie: Alabama Workers in the Industrial Era (Westport, CT, 1981), 46.Google Scholar

50. On the companies' tactics, see J. White to F. S. Peabody, Committee for Coal Production/Committee for National Defense, June 13, 1917, file 33–618, Records of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, Record Group 280, National Archives [here after cited as FMCS Records, RG 280, NAJ.

51. Birmingham Labor Advocate June 9, June 23, 1917; Birmingham Age-Herald June 4, 1917; J.R. Kennamer to W.R. Fairley, June 8, 1917, file 33–618, FMCS Records, RG 280, NA.

52. Letwin, “Interracial Unionism, Gender, and ‘Social Equality,’” p. 553.

53. Birmingham Age-Herald, August 2, 1917.

54. Birmingham Labor Advocate, March 4, 1916.

55. Birmingham Labor Advocate, September 29, 1917.

56. C. A. Moffett to Franklin K. Lane, June 6, 1917, and James L. Davidson to F.S. Peabody, June 8,1918, file 33–618, FMCS Records, RG 280, NA.

57. For background on the Mine Mill union, see Ozanne, Robert, “Mine Mill and Smelter Workers Union,” chapter 3 in Ozanne's “The Effect of Communist Leadership on American Trade Unions,” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Wisconsin, 1954)Google Scholar; Wyman, Mark, Hard-Rock Epic: Western Miners and the Industrial Revolution (Berkeley, 1979).Google Scholar

58. W. R. Crowell, G. H. House, and W. A. Quillan to J. W. McQueen, April 9, 1918, and “Case Digest,” casefile 12, RG 2; Executive Session Minutes, May 11, 1918, morning session, pp. 3–5, NWLB Records, RG 2, NA.

59. “President's Report,” International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, Proceedings of the 1918 Convention (n.p., 1918), 30.

60. Arkansas Democrat, May 30, May 31, Sept. 3, 1918. The Little Rock laundry case was one of the most interesting the NWLB handled in the South. On the recommendation of female examiner Marie Obenauer, the NWLB section in charge of this case, decided in favor of the workers on November 9, 1918. Their decision reinstated a union shop in the laundries, raised all pay by $3.50, and, most importantly, it abolished pay discrimination based on color among women who did the same work. Fatefully, however, the Board's decision came only two days before the Armistice. For more on this case see Haiken, Beth, “‘The Lord Helps Those Who Help Themselves’: Black Laundresses in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1917–1921,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 49 (Spring 1990): 20–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61. Most Little Rock laundresses were black. Whites and blacks usually worked together, even in the same room, but rarely at the same tasks. Whites usually worked as mangle operators, and blacks on the pressing machines. Employers acknowledged that black women's work required more skill, and that it was harder. A campaign by Little Rock's white club women around 1915 succeeded in having white women removed from such work. However, white women generally earned $8 per week, black women $7.50.

62. Laundry owner, J. F. Massey, elaborated: “They live in a little shack and they don't care what they eat anyhow… You don't live here or you would know that if they get a big watermelon for breakfast, they are fixed up where a white girl isn't.” “Transcript of Proceedings,” September 3,1918, 209, casefile 233, NWLB Records, RG 2, NA.

63. “Finding,” November 9,1918, casefile 233, NWLB Records, RG 2, NA.

64. For background, see Spero and Harris, The Black Worker, 248; Taft and Fink, Organizing Dixie, 49–50. For an account of this strike that differs from my own, see McKiven, Henry M., Iron and Steel: Class, Race, and Community in Birmingham, Alabama, 1875–1920 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995), 105–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65. Machinists' Monthly Journal (April 1918), 374–5.

66. Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Convention of the Alabama State federation of Labor(Tuscaloosa, Ala.,1918),29.Google Scholar

67. For an interpretation of this strike as an effort by white skilled workers to “reestablish their power to shape their working lives, power that included control of the black laboring population,” see McKiven, Henry M., “Class, Race, and Community: Iron and Steel Workers in Birmingham, Alabama, 1880–1920” (Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt Univ., 1990), 176Google Scholar, 177–207. My interpretation, based upon records of the NWLB and the letters of AFL secretary Frank Morrison not cited by McKiven, grants more significance to the effort of blacks themselves to organize a union. While I do not wish to overlook the racism of white workers, I do not see the union effort of 1918 as merely the result of a drive to secure white supremacy in the workplace.

68. Spero and Harris, The Black Worker, 248; “Tar and Feathers Applied to Negro,” clipping, and B. M. Squires to W. B. Wilson, June 22, 1918, casefile 33–1061, FMCS Records, RG 280, NA; Raymond G. Swing, “Examiner's Report,” June 20, 1918, casefile 12, NWLB Records, RG 2, NA; Birmingham Age-Herald, April 19,1918.

69. B.W. King to Frank Morrison, April 10, 1918, casefile 2, NWLB Records, RG 2, NA.

70. B. M. Squires to W B. Wilson, June 22, 1918, casefile 33–1061, FMCS Records, RG 280, NA.

71. Mrs. G. H. Mathis to L. Post, September 3,1917, file 33–618, FMCS Records, RG 280, NA.

72. Birmingham Age-Herald, May 7, 1918.

73. Frank Morrison to U.W. Hale, May 24,1918, and Morrison to Hale, June 4,1918, vol. 502, Frank Morrison Letterbooks, George Meany Memorial Archive, Silver Springs, Md.; R. Swing, “Examiners Report,” June 20,1918, casefile 2, NWLB Records, RG 2, NA.

74. “Examiner's Report,” June 20, 1918, NWLB Records, casefile 2, RG 2, NA.

75. “Tar and Feathers Applied to Negro,” clipping, casefile 33–1061, FMCS Records, RG 280, NA; “Examiner's Report,” June 20,1918, casefile 2, NWLB Records, RG 2, NA. See also Taft and Fink, Organising Dixie, 49–50; Spero and Harris, The Black Worker, 248.

76. The Workmen's Chronicle (Birmingham, Ala.), March 9, 1918.Google Scholar

77. Birmingham Reporter, May 25, and June 8, 1918.

78. Fortney Johnston to C. E. Michael, June 22, 1918; J. Gaslin to Forney Johnston, June 7, 1918; Swing, “Report,” all in casefile 2, NWLB Records, RG 2, NA.

79. “Executive Session Minutes,” July 8, 1918, afternoon session, 29–33, July 9, 1918, afternoon session, 29–33, July 11,1918, morning session, 3–5, NWLB Records, RG 2, NA.

80. The Birmingham Ledger, July 10,1918; New York Times, September 1, 1918; Snell, William Robert, “The Ku Klux Klan in Jefferson County, Alabama, 1916–1930,” (M.A. Thesis, Samford University, 1967), 14–16.Google Scholar

81. Formey Johnston to C.E. Michael, June 22,1918, casefile 2, NWLB Records RG 2, NA.

82. Thomas E. Carroll, “Report Fortnight Ending Aug. 31st [1918],” entry 290, box 10, Carroll file, USSB Records, RG 32, NA.

83. P. Colfax Rameaux to Harry Garfteld, January 15,1918, entry 19, box 1355, U.S. Fuel Administration Records, Record Group 67, National Archives [hereafter cited as USFA Records, RG 67, NA].

84. Thomas E. Carroll to William Blackburn, May 3, 1918, Series 350, box 16, file 18229–1, USSB Records, RG 32, NA.

85. Barr, William H. of the National Founders Association, quoted in Iron Age (November 14, 1918): 1208.Google Scholar

86. New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 3, 1919.

87. R.S. Salas, National Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co. to SLAB, November 7,1918, series 290, box 10, Carroll file, USSB Records, RG 32.

88. Weekly Report, Southern Dist., February 2,1919, entry 290, box 10, USSB Records, RG 32, NA.

89. Memo re Alabama Coal Miners, n.d., entry 1, Box 18, White File, USFA Records, RG67.

90. Diary of Thomas Duke Parke, November 9,1918, T.D. Parke Papers, Birmingham Public Library Manuscript Division.

91. Congressional Record, 65th Cong., 2 sess. (April 10, 1918), 4906–7.

92. Sidney J. Catts to W.B. Wilson, April 7, 1919, Cans to Wilson, April 22, 1919, entry 1, box 19, file 8/102D, DOL Records, RG 174, NA. The South was not the only region where the work of the USES engendered controversy. See Breen, William J., “Administrative Politics and Labor Policy in the First World War The U.S. Employment Service and the Seattle Labor Market Experiment,” Business History Review 61 (1987): 583–605.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

93. Samuel M. Wolfe to A. Mitchell Palmer, April 18,1919, A. Mitchell Palmer File, box 46, Joseph Tumulty Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division [hereafter cited as Tumulty Papers, LC].

94. Congressional Record, 66 Cong., 1 sess. (May 29, 1919), 420–424.

95. Congressional Record, 66th Cong., 2 sess. (May 11,1920), 6879.

96. Congressional Record, 66th Cong., 2 sess. (May 11, 1920), 6879.

97. New York Tribune, April 21, 1918.

98. Congressional Record, 66th Cong., 2 sess. (Feb. 3, 1920), 2395.

99. House Committee on Appropriations: Third Deficiency Appropriation Bill, 1919 65th Cong., 3 sess., vol. 185(Washington, DC),421, 444.Google Scholar

100. Following the war, Taft argued that “there ought to be a board upon which labor and capital shall both be represented” to continue to mediate conflict as the NWLB had done. See Pringle, Henry F., The Life of William Howard Taft (New York, 1939), 920–1Google Scholar; Conner, The National War Labor Board, 174.

101. Joseph Tumulty to Woodrow Wilson, June 15, 1918, box 48, Tumulty Papers, LC.

102. For background, see Montgomery, David, “Thinking About American Workers in the 1920s,” International Labor and Working-Class History 32 (Fall 1987): 7–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dubofsky, Melvyn, “Abortive Reform: The Wilson Administration and Organized Labor, 1913–1920,” in Cronin, James E. and Sirianni, Carmen, eds., Work, Community and Power (Philadelphia, 1983), 214.Google Scholar

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104. A.B. Wolfe, “Preliminary Report of the Available Supply of Negro Labor,” n.d., entry 353, “Information File,” Tray 23, “Negro Labor” File, USSB Records, RG 32, NA.

105. Wolfe, A.B., Works Committees and Joint Industrial Councils: A Report (Philadelphia, 1919), 100.Google Scholar

106. Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Convention of the Louisiana State Federation of Labor(Lake Charles, LA,1919),53–54.Google Scholar

107. New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 10, 1919