--Minneapolis
Mrs. Ebert, housewife, is being cross-examined at the mass public trial--The People vs. Mayor Latimer--held under the auspices of the Non-Partisan Labor Defense to determine exactly what happened on the night of September 11 when the police fired on a crowd of men and women at the Flour City Ornamental Iron Works, where the workers were on strike. Two boys were killed that night and thirty people injured.
Q. You say before the police started to shoot, the people were standing in the street in front of your house?
Yes, I tell you how I saw it. I saw people standing there like it was in my church it was so quiet. I belong to the Pentecost Church. It was on the corner like it was in my church.... It was so quiet that I don't know a strike was there. I could see nothing. Then I heard a shot. I thought it was something else, and then it came again a second time, and then there came right there on the corner where I live, people standing all quiet, a rush, and my heart almost stopped beating. The people started to run up in my yard and I bet I had a hundred people there. One of the cars then came close to the house, then I took the people inside so they could get away from this. Then comes the police with the shotguns, running, I don't know how many, about fifteen or twenty of them, and then shots. I started back in my house and started to pray to God that if I was able, that no soul should be harmed in my house. The police were shooting and I heard screams and then I heard, I don't know, I think it was the ambulance was taking two people right away from between my house and the next house. Right on the porch they was shot. Then after I thought everything was quiet and I went to the window and then I stepped to the side and then there was a pain in my arm. It was a shot from the window.
The Ornamental Iron workers won their strike. Now the local press announces the formation of vigilante gangs to war on strike leaders. The employers are split into warring factions. Farmer-Labor Mayor Latimer stumbles off to Washington to invoice the aid of William Green. The strike of the Strutwear hosiery workers drags on, with the employers pressing hard on the police to reopen the plant although it would be certain to provoke another massacre.
The Minneapolis labor movement has been torn asunder in recent months by the long-distance manipulations of Daniel J. Tobin, president of the International Teamsters' Union, functioning through T. E. Cunningham, president of the State Federation of Labor, and other local trade-union officials. Actually there exist today two trade-union movements, each with its own headquarters and press: the Central Labor Union (A. F. of L.) and those workers grouped around Local 574, which won such a dramatic victory in 1934. The official central body has its headquarters behind a bank building in the financial district. Its offices resemble those of a brokerage firm still struggling along waiting for the "turn." Its official organ, the Labor Review, is one of those typical labor weeklies whose editorial columns accurately brother the temperature of the labor movement and forever fail to give a diagnosis.
In the workers' district, a mile away, in a large building which formerly housed a roller-skating rink, are the headquarters of Local 574. At any hour of the day or night one finds some sort of meeting in progress. On Monday the full membership of the General Drivers' union gathers, on Tuesday the taxi drivers, on Wednesday the ice drivers or the market workers, on Thursday the independent truck owners. A large unit of federal workers recently organized by Local 574 meets each Friday evening in the third-floor auditorium. Every Saturday night there is dancing. A workers' forum is held Sunday afternoon. In one or another of the numerous halls a stewards' meeting is usually in session; or a group of raw workers is busy organizing itself, with the help of 574. On the second floor is located what must be the most popular bar in town, where every evening crowds of workers with their wives and sweethearts sit around the tables gossiping, or dance to the music of a mandolin and guitar. It is doubtful whether, since the 1890's, a union has come to mean so much to so many thousands of workers.
Local 574 has been forced outside the American Federation of Labor. Yet in membership and prestige it is stronger than ever. Just a year has passed since the elections terminating the strike of General Drivers' Local 574 gave to that union the right to represent the majority of the workers in the local trucking industry. The employers, since their defeat, have steered clear of a showdown with Local 574, but that does not mean that the General Drivers' union has not engaged in numerous battles, all of them in behalf of brother unions. Besides rescuing the strikes of the iron workers and the hosiery workers, members of 574 have appeared on the picket lines in the Arrowhead steel strike, the Minneapolis-St. Paul mechanics' strike of last January, the Fargo drivers' strike of last winter, and the New England building-trades strike. In each instance the truck drivers gave a good account of themselves. A picket detachment from 574 is bad news both to employers and the police.
The story of how Local 574, with its militant record, was squeezed out of the local labor movement has significance for every worker. In April, 1935, a letter arrived from Daniel Tobin demanding that Local 574 hand over its charter. The ostensible reason was that the Minneapolis body was not keeping up its per capita payments. The real reason of course was that the general policies of Mr. Tobin and the local trade-union officialdom collide at every step with the policies of the Workers' Party men in the leadership of Local 574. When a committee from the Minneapolis Central Labor Union journeyed to Indianapolis to question Tobin, he amplified his demands. He called upon the Minneapolis union to deny membership to all "inside" workers, independent truck drivers, and those who do not devote at least 51 per cent of their time to driving; he demanded that the ice drivers, the coal drivers, and the taxi drivers be organized in separate locals; he further demanded that a new charter be issued on the following basis: all present officers and active members of Local 574 to be denied membership; all applications for membership to be subject to Tobin's approval; the teamsters' joint council to reorganize the local under supervision of Tobin's special representative. These shameful demands, which would have reduced the local labor movement to impotency, were actually more reactionary than those put forward by the employers last summer.
The action of the International Teamsters bewildered the majority of local trade unionists. The central body was evenly divided on the question of expelling Local 574 from its ranks, but the threat of further expulsions from the A. F. of L. was effective. For six months Local 574 has been a fatherless child, though certainly a precocious kid and well able to take care of itself. Nevertheless, despite its treatment at the hands of the International and of the city and state federation officials, Local 574 is by no means anti-A. F. of L. A recent issue of the Organizer states: "Local 574 believes that the A. F. of L. is the proper organization for the American workers, it supports the A. F. of L. in every manner possible, it believes that its expulsion from that body was unjustified and is fighting for reinstatement."
Five or ten years ago a union could hardly have stood up under the blows the Minneapolis organization has received. The depression years have had their effect on the workers, and revolutionists have come a long way since the days of De Leon, the I. W. W., and the late unlamented T. U. U. L. So Local 574, though ostensibly an "outlaw," is in reality an integral part of the official labor movement. It forms a joint council with the unions of the filling-station attendants and the automobile mechanics. Its leaders are invited to sit in on all strike committees. The organizer of the Central Labor Union comes to 574's hall and appeals for help on the picket lines. A few days ago a delegated conference of fifteen local unions met in the machinists' headquarters and voted to send resolutions to Tobin, Green, the State Federation of Labor, and the Central Labor Union, demanding reinstatement of Local 574 as essential to the welfare of all local unions.
The trade-union movement is further complicated by the local political set-up. The municipal elections of last June brought to power for the first time a Farmer-Labor mayor and a Farmer-Labor majority in the city council. The Farmer-Labor Party campaigned on pledges not to use the police in industrial disputes, and to fight for more liberal unemployment relief. These campaign promises have been broken. Two weeks after taking office, Mayor Thomas Latimer personally escorted strike-breakers through the iron workers' picket line. In August the police were used several times against the Strutwear strikers. One of the officers of the General Drivers, Vincent Dunne, received three broken ribs at the hands of the police and a sentence of fifteen days in the workhouse for his picketing activities in behalf of the Strutwear workers. In the second week in September it was the "Farmer-Labor cops" who wound up their three-night attack on the picket line at the Flour City plant with a murder charge in armored cars. The Farmer-Labor administration has cut down on relief allowances and has twice used riot squads to break up unemployed demonstrations. To cap the climax, it is Mayor Latimer who has taken the lead in forming an "employer-employee committee" to bring about "industrial peace." State and city leaders of the "official" labor movement have conveyed to Mayor Latimer that he will have their support should it become necessary to exercise law and order against "unlawful picketing." "Progress," says the Mayor, "has been and is being endangered by industrial strife.... I call upon both employers and employees to use the means of adjustment provided by this board, and in future misunderstandings which may arise, to follow this same orderly procedure without interruption of operations."
The statement has a familiar ring, but hitherto it has not been heard from labor mayors. Members of Latimer's committee include President Cunningham of the State Federation of Labor, two other conservative trade-union officials, a vice-president of the local Manufacturing Association, the managers of the Northern States Power Company and of General Mills--neither of whom has allowed a union within hollering distance of his workers--and a seventh "neutral" member, director of a local industrial institute. As Bill Brown, 574's president, put it: "The board bats four to three against the labor fakers, and seven to nothing against the workers." It is extremely doubtful whether this latest industrial peace plan has a future; the waves of tear gas and the ping of bullets furnish too discordant a background. The local unions continue to negotiate directly with the employers. And the latter, though they call for "a sane and reasonable development of the labor movement," refuse to arbitrate, continue to organize vigilantes, and import such men as Richard Enright, former New York police commissioner, to appear at luncheon clubs and call openly for violence against the "reds and other lawless elements."
In the meantime the General Drivers' union continues to forge ahead and win increasing support for its struggle against the right-wingers. In the past few days it has signed what amounts to closed-shop contracts with the employers in the coal and transfer industries. When one of the employers jokingly mentioned to Local 574's secretary that his group had received a tempting offer from another union (robin's Local 500, a reconstituted drivers' union without officers or members), the reply was: "You can sign agreements right and left with all the organizations you wish. But when you're all through, you will still have to deal with Local 574 -because we've got the men." Local 574 has the men in Minneapolis--and the leadership.
The actions of the city officials have not passed without protest in Farmer-Labor ranks. The night after the shootings at the Flour City plant, the Farmer-Labor Women's Federation called an open meeting. The Mayor was booed loudly as he begged for three more months in which to prove himself. He was repudiated by sincere Farmer-Laborites-aldermen and state representatives--who called for his expulsion from the party and his recall from office. The parties of the right grow fat on Latimer's mistakes; the parties of the left are busy drawing the lessons of the Farmer-Labor disaster. Local branches of the Communist Party and the Workers' Party of the United States work overtime with meetings and proclamations. At the Farmer-Labor Hennepin County central meeting the delegates cursed their elected representatives for hours and finally decided to ignore them. Rank-and-filers are asking, What is the use of electing our representatives to office if the only result is that we are forced to give up the struggle to improve our conditions?
Incidentally the Minneapolis battles are bringing the old-time rebels out of their lairs. From Christian Socialists to ageless wobblies, they are making pilgrimages to Minneapolis and the 574 hall to see for themselves the new militants, to offer advice, to recall old times. Last week an old Socialist, inactive in the movement since he was jailed as a war objector, came back to town. "I've just made the rounds of the country, and Minneapolis is the hope of the movement," he said. "I heard things were breaking wide open here, and I've come to see the fireworks." So far he has not been disappointed.
