From one end of the country to the other, not just workers, but capital, relied on the myriad of privately run street car companies that moved people and things in a disjointed web of rail lines in the years before the automobile. An extensive system it was, even with its many problems, far easier to get around in many places then than it is today. The purposeful destruction of the street car by the auto companies and their allies ended the system, and every city has their own story. For decades the street car strike was also often the labor struggle experienced by most people, as they directly affected whole cities. Sometimes violent, and always contentious, the street car unions were a mirror of all that was good and bad in the U.S. labor movement; militant and civic minded members in craft unions dominated by conservative, often racist, leaderships engaged in fierce struggle with both capital and local government while intimately tied to both. A labor history document of interest, here is an early I.W.W. look at changes to the industry, the history of craft failures, questions of municipal ownership, and industrial unionism from a then lead organizer, William E. Trautman.

‘Address to Street Car Workers’ by William E. Trautman from Industrial Union Bulletin. Vol. 1 No. 12. May 18, 1907.

Fellow Workers:

Again you hear throughout the land about revolts by thousands of Street Railway Employes. Again you read about scenes accompanying all these spontaneous outbreaks of discontent against unbearable conditions of employment. Yes, and watching events closely, you will see again the spirit of the men crushed. They will be defeated, forced into submission, compelled to bow down under the burdensome yoke of unrestricted exploitage by the owners of the street railway systems and the defenders and champions of capitalist class interests.

The chief of all strikebreakers, the unscrupulous criminal Farley, is again at work with hired Hessians and professional thugs, helping his masters to defeat the working men in their justified efforts to get redress from the most appalling wrongs and outrageous working conditions.

But Farley and his horde of strikebreakers would never be able to defeat the street railway workers. All his and his masters’ powers combined would not be able to strike the crushing blows against the army of the workers if their ranks were solidified, if the workers would present an unbroken phalanx against the compact organization of capitalists.

The street railway workers were always defeated by men who are with them in the employment of the same corporations.

The most dangerous foe against the Street Railway Employe was his fellow worker in the same service, who, although organized, would not pull together with all others because he is tied to his job by a piece of paper. by a sacred contract, by which he is prevented from making common cause with all others who are exploited by the same master, the same corporation.

CHANGES IN OPERATION.

“Get together!” This was the answer to the many queries made by street railway employes in the past. They felt that they could not accomplish anything as individuals. They got together, instinctively believing that when once in a union they were in a body of workers in which an injury to one was the injury of all. “We are all workers!” They knew that, and when the horse-pulled car of yore traversed the streets of cities the duties. of employes on these car-lines was not so diversified as to mark any distinction between them. But when steam and electric motive power supplanted the horse, when power generated in one place radiated in all directions, and harnessed and regulated by the hand of the motorman, drove the huge cars with velocity unknown before over the streets and highways, the relation of the street railway worker to this new force for locomotion changed considerably, and apparently also to his fellow workers in the same. industry.

In years gone by the street railway employes, when they no longer could endure the hardship imposed on them in their wearisome toil, conceived the necessity of handing together in a union. They would organize. With an instinctive feeling they realized the fact that the most appropriate way to give effective expression to their organized efforts would be the getting control of that power by which the car-service was kept in operation. The unharnessing of the animals by car-drivers in cases of strikes brought service many a time to a standstill, and often strikes could be won, because the organization of the workers operating the means of passenger transportation was so constructed that the most essential functions in the service could be impeded by their general stoppage.

When in the course of changes heretofore described. the horse gave way to the electric current transmitted from the generating plant, a simultaneous change in the working conditions of workers took place. No longer is the running of one car dependent on one man; but the systematic operation of all lines fed from one central point with motive power imposes the necessity of co-operative labor, beginning in the boiler house, the engine room, and extending to the most remote line in a given service.

No longer is it the horse to be unharnessed. The engine that produces the current, the boiler in which the steam for the engine is generated, the trolley through which the current transfers its powerful energies, the motor by which the rotation of the wheels is controlled, all must now be unharnessed before the car-service can be brought to a standstill.

When formerly the car-driver would unharness the horse, the car could not move; when to-day he leaves his post of employment the car could be run nevertheless, if somebody be on hand to take his place at the motor, providing the electric power does not stop in the power houses, and the electric wires are kept repaired so that the power can be transmitted where needed to keep the cars running.

“That’s right.” you say. “We workers must organize in order to be able to unharness, bring to a standstill, all the energies that are essentially needed for the carrying on of adequate service on the street and elevated railway lines.” But as all these energies can only be created and utilized by human labor-power being primarily and continually applied to all instruments, we must have all these human beings organized for a common interest and cause.” “Yes, we are all workers.’ “One is as much needed as the other.” “We must stand and pull together.” “We must have one union, as we have only one class of employers to fight!”

THE HISTORY OF THE PAST-BETRAYALS GALORE.

Aye, while you hesitated, the enemies of the workers have always acted. Of course, you thought that when you organized in the American Federation of Labor, you would be in an organization that embraced all your fellow workers in the same industry; in fact, all the working people in this land. You imagined when you had a grievance, and you were forced to combat the employers that everyone of your comrades was bound by his obligation to the union to help you and each other.

Ah, how many times did you swear and curse when finding that while in the same organization you were virtually more separated from the other branches of workers than you were before joining a union. How many times did you ask yourselves the question how it is that the firemen keep on feeding the boilers, that engineers continue running the power-generating engines; how many linemen did not refuse to repair the wires; how even other union men bore arms against you when you were forced into conflicts with the corporations and the employers of labor.

The history of the strikes and lockouts of street railway workers for the last 15 years is a dreadful repetition of working class betrayals, of defeats, and of scabbery of one union of workers against the others.

We will explain later why in the strikes of street railway workers at Buffalo, Brooklyn, Cleveland, St. Louis, and scores of other places the employers, backed by the government authorities, invoked the aid of the militia to crush down all your peaceful revolts against oppression. You could not expect any other treatment from an institution that is the organized agency for the protection of the interests of the exploiting class. Your first question at this time is: “How does it come that either our own fellow-workers or labor leaders always go back on us, and support our enemies?”

You look aghast when you hear that the incidents connected with the recent strike of the San Francisco street railway employes were only repetitions of what has happened many times before. It is not the first time that Mr. W. Mahon, President of the National Association of Street Railway Employes, connected with the American Federation of Labor, issued mandates that all workers on strike must return to their duties under penalty of being disfranchised by the organization of which they were members.

Remember the ignominious defeat of brave workers on the Subway Electric Lines of New York City, when leaders of the American Federation of Labor, after consultation with leading capitalists organized in the National Civic Federation, of which the labor leaders were then and are still members, commanded the strikers to return to work unconditionally or they would help to fill the places of the strikers with “other union men.”

Never forget that during the gigantic struggle of street railway employes in St. Louis, in the course of which a crowd of strikers who had marched in a peaceful demonstration, were brutally attacked and several killed by the militia, a prominent leader of the American Federation of Labor, a certain G.A. Hoehn, enlisted himself as member of the armed force organized to fight the strikers. Never lose sight of the fact so amply proven in all these heroic fights of street railway employes that the union men organized in craft unions, or in unions that do not prohibit the members serving in the militia, are as much to blame, could justifiably be denounced as organized strike-breakers as those men whom a Farley, a Currey or any other of these strike-breakers’ leaders had trained to fight the battles of the employers.

CRAFT UNIONS ARE WORTHLESS.

Craft unions (that is the style of organization by which the workers were organized according to the tool that they used in their daily toil), was even defective in its infancy. But strikes could be fought more effectively because these unions were brought into existence by a right and admirable instinct of the wealth producers. They were born as the first significant resistance on organized lines, as first demonstrations of the fact that there were interests within society that needed a settlement by means other than of mutual understanding and good will.

Although this was primarily the cause of forming trades-unions in the past, the forms and methods were inadequate and crude, but all those unions could have changed their forms with the constant changes taking place in industrial developments because the relation of one set of workers to another remained the same as when the first unions on handicraft-lines were formed; no employer of labor would have ever been able to use one set of workers against the others in wage wars, if by such a style of unionism the solidarity of the wage earners could have been promoted.

But such a change in forms, by which working class unity would have been preserved, could not be in the interests of the corporations and their servants. They are fostering and encouraging a form of organization by which the workers are divided and are made, under a false pretext, to scab on each other not only in a general way, but in every industry where a smaller or larger proportion of workers are organized on craft union lines. To accomplish this you are told by the great friends of labor, and the leaders to organize in a craft union: This craft union is attached to a craft union national organization. The employers are desirous to show that they are the true friends of the sons of toil, for if they don’t show their pretense of friendship some wily agitator may get a notion to tell you that might alone has solved all economic problems, and that you should therefore organize also in a powerful organization like the employers of labor have.

The representatives of the Stationary Engineers are called to confer with the capitalists. Both sides come to an agreement, by virtue of which Mr. Engineer in the powerhouse must be a faithful worker for the employer for a stipulated length of time. Mr. Delegate of the Stationary Firemen is called upon, and again a contract is agreed upon by which the firemen, oilers and ash-wheelers are compelled to be good for a fixed period. The linemen, organized in the Brotherhood of Electric Workers, get a hearing. They are appeased and commence to praise the steel railway owners because they see in black and white on paper that their union has been recognized and that they should not strike, no matter what may happen elsewhere, as long as the ink denotes that they dare not exercise their right to be dissatisfied with their working conditions.

And, queer enough, each contract expires on a different date. The document of organized servitude is sealed, signed and looked upon as a sacred, binding chain. Mr. Motorman and Conductor, Barnman or Switchtender may also get a contract–if he behaves–if not, he is at liberty to walk out. He will not be able to unharness the motive power. It will be furnished right along. Not Farley is the real strike-breaker. Other organizations connected with the American Federation of Labor have helped to defeat the street railway workers in every conflict in the past. There were instances that street railway employes, only partially organized in a union, went out on strike in a body. That means all the workers in the same service–and have won. But in many cases, notably so of the strike in San Francisco in 1902, their leaders of the American Federation of Labor told them that they were not allowed to retain their united, strong organization, and so the engineers were forced to join the National Union of Stationary Engineers; the linemen had to belong to the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; the firemen to another body, and so on without end. And when during the strike of street railway workers in Chicago the engineers, firemen and teamsters threatened to walk out with the striking motormen and conductors, the companies immediately called for the national officers of the various craft unions and signed contracts, by which all these workers, all employed by the same corporation, were compelled to stay at work and scab it upon those who had to fight the battle for themselves and those also who had remained at work, because without that fight the companies would never have had thought of raising the wages and reducing the hours of work of those who assisted to betray their brothers.

ORGANIZE INDUSTRIALLY, THE ONLY REMEDY.

This is all true.” you say; “but what are we going to do about it? We must have an organization, otherwise we will be helplessly left to the mercy of the employers.

We ask you this question: Is it not infinitely better to be not organized at all than to be organized in such a way as to be compelled to scab upon each other? Is it not, then, preferable to organize for immediate and final victory, although such an organization will be objected to by the employers most vigorously, than to have an organization that will continually lead you to defeat, and compel you to do the organizing work over and over again when the oppression becomes unendurable?

The Industrial Workers of the World proposes to you a form and system of organization, which you cannot help to be in accord with, providing the cobwebs fastened on your eyes by the prejudice fostered by the employers and their agents are not impenetrable.

It is the purpose of the Industrial Workers of the World to unite and organize the entire working class throughout all industries into one unconquerable union, recognizing “an injury to one as an injury to all.”

To accomplish this, the organization recognizes the fact that the scab to a large degree is the product of the wrong system of organization as exemplified in the American Federation of Labor. “Once a union man, always a union man” is one of the strongest cementing bonds that will link the workers together in this land and the world over. Debarring none who earns his living with the sweat of his brow as a wealth producer, the doors being thrown wide open for every toiler to come in without any distinction whatever, to join and become members of the union of workers in whatever industry they may be employed; and as often as a worker has occasion to change his employment, he will be transferred to whatever industry he may find employment in, there will be no excuse for the existence of strike-breakers, far less for that sort of scabbery that is the most despicable, finding its expression in the scabbing of union men against other union men in the same industrial occupation.

A Local Industrial Union organizes all the workers in a given industry (not in a given craft only), in a given locality. Differently from the old way of forming a Motorman’s Union, an Engineer’s Union, a Lineman’s Union, etc., we bring together in these Industrial Unions all the employes of one system, allowing each line to have its own shop organization, to handle its own immediate affairs and grievances, while all the workers in all the street railway and elevated lines in a city are members of one union under one industrial charter. Thus it can be seen that while each car barn may have its own shop meetings, the bringing together of all the employes in one Industrial Union creates a solidarity and sense of connection between all the workers that effectually blocks the old scheme of the bosses of playing one set of workers against another, the men against the women, the women against the men, and the boys and girls against both. When we, all of us, of both sexes, and of all races, who work in mills or factories. realize that we are all skinned by the same bosses and that the bosses are united in the skinning process, and that it is time for us to get together and call a halt to the skinning game, the old plan of playing us one against another will work no more.

Each union of street and elevated railway workers would embrace every employe in the service, so that again, as in times of yore, the workers would control the power by which the cars are kept in motion, and will be able to stop that power, through concerted action, whenever exigency or emergency demands it.

As the great industries and also the city and rural electric railway lines. are owned and controlled by large corporations, or trusts, such as the Elkins and the Rockefeller syndicates, and the plants or shops in each industry are united and a line kept on them in this manner, it becomes logically necessary for the workers after having organized a local industrial union designed to meet the local end of the trust power or the local combination of bosses, to unite the local industrial unions under a general executive board of a National Industrial Union fitted to cope with the national power of the trust outfit or that of the national association of employers in the industry. So the I.W.W. provides that this be done.

National Industrial Unions and Industrial Departments are organized as soon as there are a sufficient number of industrial unions organized, each department having an administration composed of representatives of the various National Industrial Unions comprising that department of industry. MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP DOES NOT CONCERN THE WORKERS. Due to the manifest despair among the middle class element in this country, which is crying for redress against the inevitable ruin staring them in the face, and taking advantage of the growing unrest among the workers, cunning statesmen and politicians have been and are still advocating public ownership of the city street railway lines, and wherever the workers in that service have grown restless they were told to support such a propaganda, because–so they are told–as employes of a city or government owning and controlling the street railways, their positions would be more secure and their working conditions better provided for. The capitalists, always vigilant in the guarding of their class interests, had to take up that issue. Upon investigation they found that the control of the street railway service by either private corporations or municipalities in no way affected the real ownership of these means of transportation. The National Civic Federation, an organization of which August Belmont, a street railway magnate, is president, and Mr. Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor is vice-president, an organization composed of big capitalists, and labor’s misleaders, appointed in one of its meetings a committee to investigate this apparently important question. Mr. W. Mahon, National President of the Association of Street Railway Employes, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, was on the committee, which in its report declared that municipal ownership would not be detrimental to the interests of the stock-holders of securities in street railway investments. Of course, what is good for the capitalists must be adverse to the best interests of the workers. This is the reason we make these things clear to you.

Street Railway Workers have tasted enough of the dope handed out by the strong arm of government when they were in conflicts. Policemen’s clubs, the bullets of the armed forces of the militia, the injunction chains, all these agencies of oppression used against you have shown that the authorities are there to protect the interests of the corporation.

If the street railway lines would be turned into control of the municipalities, the latter would only function as protectors of the interests of the capitalist bondholders, more so as it was done in the past. You would still be exploited for their profit; the government or city officials would have to serve as agents to guarantee the pay of interest to the city bondholders, and if the street railway workers would dare to resist against encroachments, the strong arm of the government would again be called into action; police, militia, injunctions and jail would again tell the tale of your defeats by those who possess and rule.

WHAT YOU MUST ORGANIZE FOR.

The organizations, as represented in the American Federation of Labor, teach that the relations between capital and labor are determined by the good will on either side; therefore these organizations clamor for arbitration, and stand for the perpetuation of the system which guarantees the large share of the products of labor to a small number of capitalists who produce nothing. The Industrial Workers of the World teaches that all relations are determined by the economic might that either side in the irrepressible class conflicts wields. Economic might alone, as organized in the earlier days by the workers, forced concessions from the exploiters; economic might, as exercised by an integrally compact Industrial Union of the working class, will finally also enforce the rule that the producer should also be the sole enjoyer of the wealth created. Without the street railway workers, no service could be maintained. They are the ones who are needed; the capitalist shareholders have nothing to do with the operation of the lines. They could quit altogether, yet you would still be able to keep up the traffic.

The Industrial Workers of the World aims to organize the Street Railway Workers, and in fact the entire working class, for the purpose of making the capitalists “quit” their jobs. This organization does not organize for strikes. When a strong, compact working class organization, by which the workers intend to get all that they alone produce, confront the exploiters of labor, they will, for fear of being compelled to give up everything, relieve the pressure of economic discontent by ameliorating the worst features of exploitation. But when such an organization of workers, when its very existence will not suffice to show its economic might, is compelled to bring an industry to a standstill, or all industries if necessary, there will no longer be the scabbing of workers upon workers. United and powerful, they will be able to enforce the mandates of the working class, and if not strong enough to win at the first attempt, the membership will have acquired the training to resume operations at will, bide the time, and at the best opportunity exercise the might to cease operations without any contract on paper binding the workers into servitude to the employers of labor.

Finally, when might will give the workers the right, they will undertake the administration of all industries through their industrial organization; the unions of street railway workers will, through its selected representatives, carry on the management as well as the operation of street railway service; no longer will a capitalist or a shareholder stand between the workingman and his product, and enjoying the full product of its toil, the working class will be economically free, and truly masters of the earth.

We feel confident that this union, based upon these principles. will appeal to the working class, and we invite you to join with the thousands who are building up a true labor organization. This effective industrial organization of the workers is destined to soon supplant the ineffective trade unions which have until now held the field. We are making splendid progress. On every hand craft or trade unionism is giving way to Industrial Unionism. The dawn of hope is breaking for the working class.

The Industrial Union Bulletin, and the Industrial Worker were newspapers published by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) from 1907 until 1913. First printed in Joliet, Illinois, IUB incorporated The Voice of Labor, the newspaper of the American Labor Union which had joined the IWW, and another IWW affiliate, International Metal Worker.The Trautmann-DeLeon faction issued its weekly from March 1907. Soon after, De Leon would be expelled and Trautmann would continue IUB until March 1909. It was edited by A. S. Edwards. 1909, production moved to Spokane, Washington and became The Industrial Worker, “the voice of revolutionary industrial unionism.”

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iub/v1n12-may-18-1907-iub.pdf