Long overdue, the U.S. left began a reevaluation of racial/class history in the 1920s as the ‘New Negro’ movement at home, the colonial revolt abroad, and this insistence of the Communist International forced the issue. Labor historian Amy Schechter began a series in 1926 placing Black workers, the most proletarian population in the U.S., at the center of the workers’ movement and its failings. Here, she looks at the possibilities of inter-racial class organizing opened at the end of the Civil War and the progressive views of of the National Labor Union and its gone-too-soon leader, William H. Sylvis.

‘The Negro Worker in Labor History’ by Amy Schechter from the Daily Worker Supplement. Vol. 2 No. 306. January 9, 1926.

Most of the histories of the American Negro give the impression that their writers have tried very hard to evade the phase of that history which reveals the Negroes’ problem as a labor problem. To ignore the Negro’s status as a WORKER is to falsify and to sterilize his history. The important thing is that a true history of the Negro must reveal the basis of his problems and thus lay wide open their solution. The Negro worker has been placed on the order of the present day in the labor movement not thru any honest help from the reactionary union bureaucracy, but by history itself and the initiative of some of the Negro workers. The recent national convention of the American Negro Labor Congress forced the issue in a hundred ways. It is the only one that has occurred within the memory of the present generation. But there was an earlier Negro Labor Congress more than a half century ago. The writer of the following article, and of future articles of the same series, explores the early history of the Negro wage laborer following the civil war. In doing so, she has discovered some highly interesting material which she undertakes to present in this and subsequent issues of the Saturday Magazine supplement of The DAILY WORKER.

THE close of the civil war found the workers of the United States face to face with a tremendous new problem–the problem created by the “emancipation” of the toiling masses of Negroes of the south. In its economic aspects the question was primarily one of a vast reserve of labor being suddenly thrown upon the market, adding a new and portentous element to the supreme danger with which American labor was confronted at the moment–the systematic attempt of the employing class to smash the rising organizations of the workers, by the use of immigrant and contract labor to break strikes and undermine wage and living standards.

The capitalist class of post civil war days–whose development as the dominant force in society had received tremendous impetus from the great railroad expansion of the fifties followed by the profiteering orgy in war supplies, the immensely high war-time protective tariff, and the rapid extension of machine industry–was determined to crush the rapidly growing labor movement, which, in answer to the same conditions, was for the first time organizing on a national scale, and becoming a force to be reckoned with in industrial life. Capital was endeavoring to press to the limit the advantage gained at the close of the war, when two million men had been flung back from the battle onto the labor market, with acute unemployment as a consequence. The resulting conflict which culminated in the great nation-wide strikes of ‘77, forms as militant an episode as any in the history of the American workers’ movement.

The capitalist press of the period is quite open in dealing with this campaign against organized labor. In those days the capitalist class still had the crude aggressiveness of a class newly feeling its strength; and its newspapers had not yet acquired the knack of ascribing a high and holy purpose to its union-smashing tactics. During the hot struggle of 1874 in the New York building industry, for example, the New York Times wrote with engaging frankness recommending the use of an Italian scab-herding agency to break the resistance of the Irish and American workingmen. “The workingmen,” it writes, “would undoubtedly give way but for the defense afforded by the labor unions. These enable them to hold out.

“The time has come in which the employers are beginning to make a determined effort to break up this stagnation, and reduce the scale of wages. They have the advantage in this city of being able to get access to a class of foreign workmen who are not in such intimate connection with trades unions as our own or the German and Irish laborers–we mean the Italians. Yet there is no more industrious or sober nationality among the working classes.

“This effort is made by the employer in the form of an incorporated company, and with purely business objects. The association is entitled the ‘New York Italian Labor Company’. This arrangement will almost do away with strikes, and as  the Italians are, a remarkably sober set of workmen, a contract beginning with them…can reasonably hope to keep them thru his job…These men work their full number of hours, and only charge from $2.75 to $3.30 per day, while the unhappy house-holder has previously paid from $4 to $5 for an eight-hour day, with every now and then a strike…

“The men know nothing of the language and nothing of the customs of the country. But they are willing to work; are steady, sober and industrious; they have nothing to do with trades unions and they are accustomed to low wages. THE IRISH MALCONTENTS CAN DO LITTLE NJURY TO THE ITALIANS, AND THE AUTHORITIES WILL PROTECT THE EMPLOYERS IN THEIR RIGHTS.” (our emphasis.)

It is, by the way, amusing to compare this rapt admiration on the part of the “Times” for the “sobriety and industriousness” of the Italian worker in this country–so long as he could be employed as a scab–with its lurid portrayal of the Italian worker since he has entered the ranks of militant labor–of a Sacco or Vanzetti, for example.

The importation of contract labor and the bringing of workers over on lying promises to be used as strike-breakers, or be stranded penniless in a strange country if they refused, was a question of the utmost concern to the workers on both sides of the Atlantic. It was this question that first compelled American labor to think in international terms, and to enter into relations with European labor as represented by the International Workingmen’s Association (First International.) In 1869, two years before the formation of a section of the International in the United States, the National Labor Union (a loose federation of national unions and trades assemblies, formed in 1866, representing some 600,000 organized workers at the height of its development, and largely partaking of the character of a labor party) sent one of its leaders, A.C. Cameron to the Basle congress of the international, on the invitation of the latter body, in order to take up the question of the establishment of an emigration bureau for the regulation of emigrant labor in the interests of the workers of both continents. After the congress the general council of the international (of which Karl Marx was then a member) passed the following resolutions:

“1. That an emigration bureau shall be established in conjunction with the National Labor Union of the United States.

“2. That in the case of strikes the council shall by all possible means endeavor to prevent workmen being engaged in Europe to be used by American capitalists against the workmen of America.”

Commenting on the action of the first international in correspondence to the Chicago Workingmen’s Advocate of which he was editor, Cameron writes:

“Ever since the completion of the Atlantic telegraph it has been the threat of unprincipled employers in every state. to threaten the importation of foreign workmen; to use their expression, ‘Well–if our men do not see fit to accept our terms, we can telegraph for those who will’.”

Cameron then tells as a case in point how the mine-owners were duping Scotch and English miners into coming over to break the great anthracite strike then being fought out in the Pennsylvania district. After failing in their attempt to smash the strike by “lashing the public into a furor” over the “exorbitant” demands of the miners, when the committee on mining of the National Labor Union had given publicity to the actual facts in the case, and showed the starvation wages that the strikers had been receiving, the owners, as soon as “their little game was blocked and the truth made known, set on foot a movement to secure, by misrepresentation, the services of Scotch and English miners. Consequently the most outrageous falsehoods were circulated and the most exaggerated inducement held out to those ignorant of the true state of affairs…On landing in Liverpool we found the docks placarded with advertisements for miners…which contained the most false and shameless statements–yet statements which succeeded in duping many an honest, unsuspecting miner, who would sooner have cut off his right arm than defraud his brother of his due. Now under the system proposed, no such deception can succeed. Where a legitimate demand exists, the truth will be made known; when the ‘crushing’ process is attempted, the fact can be as easily understood on the other as on this side of the Atlantic.” (Vol. 9. Cummins & Andrews Documentary History.)

It can readily be seen that American capital would view a mass of Negroes transferred from chattel to wage slavery as a heaven-sent instrument for their campaign of beating down the living standards of labor as a whole. The fact that the supply was so vast and immediately available, and that, moreover, the Negro workers had for generations been beaten into submission to the will of the master-class, rendered the danger particularly pressing. The advanced elements in the labor movement fully realized the urgent necessity of winning over the Negro proletariat, both for the sake of the general cause of American labor, and because of the merciless exploitation to which they foresaw these newly “emancipated” workers would be subjected should the capitalist class succeed in its aim. The “Address to the Workingmen of the United States” issued by the National Labor Union in 1867, as a statement of principles of the organization, devotes a large amount of attention to this question. It deals with both the economic aspects of the problem, as stated above, and with the highly important political role that Negro labor must necessarily play in the future of the workers’ movement in this country. Both aspects are treated with a clarity of vision and definite class-viewpoint that make the maunderings of a William Green anent the recent convention of the present American Negro Labor Congress appear curiously archaic by comparison. Some of the paragraphs seem almost prophetic of the tragic incidents of the half century intervening between their time and ours–of race clashes, with, as the “address” puts it, “labor warring against labor, and capital smiling and reaping the fruits of this mad contest. Altogether, the “address” shows a remarkably just estimate of the part of the labor militants of the day, of the drama upon which the curtain had just risen: the struggle of the vanguard of the workers and the capitalists (with the bourgeois politicians of both races as lieutenants) for the Negro proletariat.

“The condition of the Negro as a slave,” the “address” declares, “and the moral and economical effects of slavery, were discussed by the press, from the public rostrum and in the halls of congress for years and years with great energy and zeal; what shall be his status as a free man is at present a matter of no less national anxiety. But aside from this, his interests as a workingman, and especially the part he is to take in advancing the cause of labor, have, as yet, received no consideration.

“The first thing to be accomplished before we can hope for any great results is the thorough organization of all the departments of labor…This work, altho its beginning is of such recent date, has progressed with amazing rapidity…In this connection we cannot overlook the important position now assigned to the colored race in this contest…it is needless to disguise the fact that they are destined to occupy a different position in the future to what they have in the past; that they must necessarily become in their new relationship an element of strength or an element of weakness, and that it is for the workingmen of America to say which that shall be.

“The systematic organization and consolidation of labor must henceforth become the watchword of the true reformer. To accomplish this the cooperation of the African race in America must be secured. If those most directly interested fail to perform this duty, others will avail themselves of it to their injury. Indeed a practical illustration of this was afforded in the recent importation of colored caulkers from Portsmouth, Va., to Boston, Mass., during the struggle on the eight-hour question. What is wanted then, is for every union to help to inculcate the grand, ennobling idea that THE INTERESTS OF LABOR ARE ONE; THAT THERE SHOULD BE NO DISTINCTION OF RACE OR NATIONALITY; NO CLASSIFICATION OF JEW OR GENTILE, CHRISTIAN OR INFIDEL; THAT THERE IS BUT ONE DIVIDEND LINE…THAT WHICH SEPARATES MANKIND INTO TWO GREAT CLASSES, THE CLASS THAT LABORS AND THE CLASS THAT LIVES BY OTHERS’ LABORS. THAT, IN OUR JUDGEMENT, IS THE TRUE COURSE FOR US AS WORKING MEN. THE INTEREST OF ALL ON OUR SIDE OF THE LINE IS THE SAME, and should we be so far mislead by prejudice or passion as to refuse to aid the spread of union principles among any of our fellow toilers, we would be untrue to them, untrue to ourselves and to the great cause we profess to have at heart. If these general principles be correct, we must seek the cooperation of the African race in America.

“But aside from all this, the working-men of the United States have a special interest in seeking their cooperation. This race is being rapidly educated, and will soon be admitted to all the privileges and franchises of citizenship…They are there to live amongst us, and the question to be decided is, shall we make them our friends, or shall capital be allowed to turn them as an engine against us? They number four million strong, and a greater proportion of them labor with their hands than can be counted from among the same number of any other people on earth. Their moral influence, and their strength at the ballot box would be of incalculable value to the cause of labor. CAN WE AFFORD TO REJECT THEIR PREFERRED COOPERATION AND MAKE THEM ENEMIES? BY COMMITTING SUCH AN ACT OF FOLLY WE WOULD INFLICT GREATER INJURY ON THE CAUSE OF LABOR REFORM THAN THE COMBINED EFFORTS OF CAPITAL COULD ACOMPLISH, THEIR CHERISHED IDEA OF AN ANTAGONISM BETWEEN WHITE AND BLACK LABOR WOULD BE REALIZED, AND AS THE AUSTRIAN DESPOTISM MAKES USE OF THE HOSTILITY BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT RACES, WHICH COMPOSE THE EMPIRE TO MAINTAIN HER EXISTENCE AND HER BALANCE, SO CAPITALISTS, NORTH AND SOUTH, WOULD FOMENT DISCORD BETWEEN THE WHITES AND BLACKS, AND HURL THE ONE AGAINST THE OTHER, AS INTEREST AND OCCASION MIGHT REQUIRE, TO MAINTAIN THEIR ASCENDANCY, AND CONTINUE THE REIGN OF OPPRESSION, LAMENTABLE SPECTACLE! LABOR WARRING AGAINST LABOR, AND CAPITAL SMILING AND REAPING THE FRUITS OF THIS MAD CONTEST.”

The Saturday Supplement, later changed to a Sunday Supplement, of the Daily Worker was a place for longer articles with debate, international focus, literature, and documents presented. The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v02b-n306-supplement-jan-09-1926-DW-LOC.pdf