In the shoe-making center of the West, strikers with the then dissident United Shoe Workers struggle with the Hamilton-Brown Co. and the sell-out Boot and Shoe Workers Union led by John Tobin.

‘The St. Louis Shoe Workers’ from International Socialist Review. Vol. 14 No. 9. March, 1914.

WE WANT to tell the boot and shoe workers that their officials are again serving the bosses who exploit the workers. This time the trouble comes in St. Louis. In that city there are members of the Boot and Shoe Workers’ Union and a strong organization of the United Shoe Workers of America. The companies whose products bear the stamp of the Boot and Shoe Workers’ Union pay their cutters from $15 to $18 for a 59-hour week. The Hamilton-Brown Company shoes, bearing the United Shoe Workers’ label, have been receiving from $21 to $30 a week.

The Hamilton-Brown people finding that the militant United Shoe Workers’ organization was gaining ground steadily in its factory, decided to call in the officials of the Boot and Shoe Workers, who have notoriously served the bosses at the expense of the shoe workers in every known instance. They recalled the letter sent the shoe manufacturers by President John Tobin of the Boot and Shoe Workers in which he said:

“In view of the fact that you can use the stamp without in any way surrendering control of your business or placing yourself to the least disadvantage, either as TO WAGES OR OTHERWISE, there appears to be no good reason why you should not secure the use of the union stamp immediately, which you can do by addressing a letter to the undersigned, who will be pleased to furnish you with all necessary information. We have made the splendid record of having gone through the last four years without a strike in any department in any factory throughout the entire country where the union stamp is used. It is perfectly SAFE TO DO BUSINESS with the Boot and Shoe Workers’ Union, no matter what may have been your disappointments in doing business with any past organization in the shoe trade. We stand ready to take your factory at its existing scale of wages and issue our union stamp under an arbitration contract, WHICH ABSOLUTELY PROTECTS YOU AGAINST BEING REQUIRED TO PAY ABOVE THE MARKET RATE OF WAGES.”

The Hamilton-Brown people decided to call in the Tobin WAGE REDUCERS to help them in cutting down the wages of their working force. They immediately laid off all their employes and later sent word that they could return to work, one department at a time. The Boston & Fitchburg Leader says:

“The officials of the Boot & Shoe Workers are in and out of the Hamilton Brown factory daily, trying their utmost to hold in check the few that have gone back to work. Fifteen thousand shoe workers, union men, have been forced by conditions for which the B. & S. are responsible into the independent field in order TO HAVE A VOICE CONCERNING THE WAGES, HOURS AND CONDITIONS OF LABOR. Tobin has appealed directly TO THE MANUFACTURERS offering them terms injurious to the members. The officials of the B. & S. have conspired with the manufacturers to reduce wages and employ scabs.”

The 5,000 employes of the Hamilton-Brown people have refused to surrender to the bosses and the officials of the Boot & Shoe Workers’ Union. They know surrender means longer hours, scabbery, lower wages and disruption of a bona fide union that seeks to better the conditions of the shoe workers instead of improving the profits of the bosses. There have been but six desertions from the ranks of the strikers.

Strike benefits are being paid all and the United Shoe Workers will allow nobody to suffer. The officials of the Boot & Shoe Workers are scouring the country to secure scabs to help break the strike. Twenty-five so-called shoe workers have been sent in. The Tobin traitors have paid their railroad fare and told them to take taxicabs to the best hotel in town, where general vice-president of the B. & S., Collis Lovely, entertains them until they are taken to the factories.

A concerted effort is being made to kill the new REAL union. The workers in the B. & S. will soon see that the United Shoe Workers’ Union is the only one that can really serve their interests and will refuse to take the places of their brothers and sisters on strike who belong to this organization.

Strikes have been forced on the United Shoe Workers in Lynn, Stoneham, New York, Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Louis and the Boot & Shoe Workers’ OFFICIALS are trying to send men to fill the places of the strikers. You B. & S. men, DON’T SCAB. Rather leave the organization which your officials is using as a scabbing agency. The Boot & Shoe Workers’ Union officials are LOWERING WAGES. They are tying you up with contracts that will force you to SCAB. They are helping your bosses to INCREASE HOURS.

The United Shoe Workers of America are organized to HELP THE SHOE WORKERS. They have raised wages, shortened hours. Get in the real organization that fights the battles of the workers.

The shoe strikers in St. Louis are putting up a glorious fight. They intend to win and then they mean to win all the shoe workers to the organization that the workers control. They have seen John Tobin helping the bosses long enough. These striking comrades are now out in the streets doing picket duty in St. Louis, while the Tobin strikebreakers are inside planning how to help the bosses to beat them.

You shoe workers, take this matter up in your local union and join the United Shoe Workers which serves the workers all the time and the workers only.

A Lynn (Mass.) newspaper says: “The A. F. of L. is constitutionally barred from recognizing the two organizations and is prevented from taking away the charter from the one that has eased to be a legitimate labor organization and alienates a large body of workers who have organized and maintain a bona fide union.”

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v14n09-mar-1914-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf