The specific kind of craft unionism practiced by the A.F.L. was both a magnet and breeding ground for racketeers and corrupt capitalist politics. Chicago, being the moral and organizational center of craft unionism, was a city where much of the official labor movement was in the hands of gangsters. A look at the four types of gunmen that preyed on Chicago’s working class with a close look at the “union” gunman.

‘Enslaved by Gunmen’ from One Big Union Monthly. Vol. 2 No. 3. March, 1920.

In Chicago there has recently been a clash between gunmen that bares a state of affairs which deserves the attention of the whole country.

To hire assassins is a trick of wealthy evildoers and tyrants which goes as far back as history. But in no country has the hired gunman risen to such a prominence as in the United States of recent years. Here the field has been so encouraging for the gunmen that they have regularly established themselves in business as gunmen, carrying on their murderous work in open for years, buying luxurious homes and automobiles and getting “respectable”, all the time remaining at their bloody task. The Chicago incident is proof of this.

The gunmen may be divided into four classes:

1. The “stick-up” man, who holds up people and robs them, occasionally killing a few to save his own skin, and only occasionally hiring out for a “dirty” job.

2. The “special police”—gunmen or the “operatives” of “detective agencies”, which are really the murder departments of big business. These fellows pack a gun for the purpose of terrorizing workers and frequently wound and kill striking workers. They are also the mainstay of “citizens’ posses” and Ku Klux parties who drive I.W.W. men out of town and leave them in the desert, who tar and feather and beat up I.W.W. men or other “undesirables”, and who occasionally do a little lynching job, as in the case of Frank Little, and in the frequent cases of “suicide by hanging”, now taking place in the western woods.

3. The politician gunman. This specimen is active in politics and terrorizes his ward or his precinct and “delivers the goods” on election day. He is spending most of his time in saloons (now in blind pigs) where he talks politics and gambles. He is usually decked out in many rings and flashy diamonds. Frequently he is the owner of a saloon or a brothel or both and enjoys respect among his fellows in proportion to the number of notches in his gun, that is in proportion to the number of murders committed. He is chummy with the politicians and officeholders, police and judges included, and enjoys “protection” for his saloon, his gambling den or his brothel and has other kinds of swag besides. Not infrequently he is on the city’s payroll. Drunks with a big roll are frequently taken in hand by him. This type frequently has a fine residence and a family and nearly always an automobile. As he increases in prosperity he gradually hires men to “work for him”. That’s how the apprentice murderer-gunman—gets a chance to get up in life. After this type of gunman has made his pile he gradually retires from the dangerous “work”, leaving it to the younger “boys” who have yet a political carrier to make and a pile to gather. At this stage he may go into politics and run for office, and he is frequently found in the city council or holding down “a payroll job” in the city’s service. A political grafter, he remains to the end, and there is not much use putting up a political ticket in his ward without first consulting him.

4. The labor union slugger and gunman. It is this latter type that has recently sprung into prominence in Chicago, incidentally revealing the fact that there are immense bodies of workers—tens and tens of thousands–“organized” in the A. F. of L. who do not actually constitute bona fide labor unions, but who merely are victims of gangs of bandits—thieves and murderers—who have gotten control of their unions or themselves “organized” the unions and taken out charters in the A. F. of L.

The incidents are briefly as follows:

One, “Moss” Enright, a well-known labor slugger and gunman, with several notches in his gun, it is said, and at the same time an officer of the plumbers’ union, was murdered early in February. He was just stopping his $6,000 automobile outside his $60,000 mansion when another automobile drove up and its occupants pumped him full of slugs and poisoned tacks from a “sawed-off shotgun,” before he himself had a chance to get his own gun out of his overcoat pocket.

Well, Enright, who once started to serve a life sentence for murder of another labor union gun man years ago, but later “got clear” through “pull”, got a funeral that would make the uninitiated think that he was a public benefactor. There Were over 200 floral contributions and 5,000 people attended when the coffin was taken out of the house. Among the attendants were a state senator and a state representative, a judge and several other public officials and a number of A. F. of L. officials. The majority of those attending came from the underworld where “Moss” had his chief admirers and protegees. There were magnates from the brothel district, saloonkeepers, gamblers and gunmen and those who “hang out” in their places. “Moss” was popular among these people for most of his business seems to have been transacted in saloons and back parlors. Such places seem to be most suitable for the collection of bribes and blackmail and for division of swag as well as for the planning of dark business. “Moss” probably also “set them up” freely. Easy come, easy go. So “Moss” was considered “a fine fellow” in the circles where a more honest and innocent person is considered a “boob” and a good for nothing.

But the thing that interests us most is that “Moss” Enright, the gunman, was a very prominent man in the A. F. of L. The investigation has revealed the fact that there are several unions in Chicago that are absolutely under the control of the likes of Enright. If it had not been for a feud between these labor gunmen which ended in murder, we would have known nothing about this, but now the investigation by the police brings out that the street sweepers’, the street repairers’, the gashouse workers’ unions and several other unions, have been helplessly in the hands of Enright and other sluggers. Among these the names of Tim Murphy and Mike Carozzo are the most prominent, and they are booked for complicity in the murder of Enright.

But it should not for a moment be thought that it stops there. It appears from the investigation, as reported in the papers, that these bandit chiefs have whole gangs of underlings or operatives which have been entrusted with the various offices of the unions. Not enough with that, but these bandit gangs seem to have very close connections with other unions. So f. i. with auto repairers, steamfitters, bricklayers and painters and many more.

The question arises whether the larger part of A.F. of L. officialdom in many cities does not consist of this kind of bandits. Such is the bodyguard of Samuel Gompers and such is largely the make-up of the delegates to the A.F. of L. conventions where all progressive measures are killed.

The way these labor union bandits operate seems to be that they terrorize all decent elements to stay away, on penalty of slugging or facing a gun. Thereupon the murderous conspirators nominate and elect one another for all offices, paying one another good salaries, and giving unbounded opportunities for graft. The officers in the office seem, according to the papers, to be increasing their income by “holding out” that is by reporting a smaller membership than the actual. The walking delegates, who, of course, always have their guns handy, collect small sums from the man who wishes to join or who wishes a job and bigger bribes from the contractors “to keep labor troubles off”.

Furthermore it seems that the real bandit chiefs devote themselves to the extortion of larger sums from large corporations to desist from strikes. In fact, it is hinted that the present feud and the murder may have grown out of. the fight over the division of a large bribe of this kind. This explains the mansions and the automobiles.

Tim Murphy began his career as special “bodyguard” or gunman for a well-known politician, Senator Hamilton Lewis of Illinois, while Mike Carozzo can look back upon a career as a divekeeper before he used his gun to get control of a body of workers largely composed of his countrymen, Italians.

Only a corner of the curtain concealing the secret manipulations of the A.F. of L. has been raised, accidentally. What it lays bare is enough to shock hope and faith in the labor movement out of the staunchest.

A large part of the workers in the A.F. of L. are completely enslaved by these labor sluggers and bandits. They are under the spell of terrorism. They dare not strike out for control of the union by the workers themselves, for fear of being slugged or killed. These bandits naturally oppose every reform, every advanced idea. It is largely these bandits and their low-browed tools who oppose industrial organization and the I.W.W. in general. They hate us and persecute us because they know that our success would mean the elimination of sluggers and murderers and crooks from the union.

The I.W.W. stands for job control by the workers themselves, for democracy within the union, in fact it is a union where the officials are servants and not masters. This is naturally repulsive to the gentry from the underworld.

The proper thing for these workers to do is to drop their fake union, which is only an agency of extortion, and form a real bona fide union according to I.W.W. principles, electing men to office who are known to be honest and capable and devoted to the cause of the workers.

The sluggers and murderers must get out of the labor movement, together with Sam Gompers and his whole rotten machine, and a new era must be ushered in.

One Big Union Monthly was a magazine published in Chicago by the General Executive Board of the Industrial Workers of the World from 1919 until 1938, with a break from February, 1921 until September, 1926 when Industrial Pioneer was produced. OBU was a large format, magazine publication with heavy use of images, cartoons and photos. OBU carried news, analysis, poetry, and art as well as I.W.W. local and national reports.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/one-big-union-monthly/v02n03-mar-1920_One%20Big%20Union.pdf