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  • Making the World Safe for Workers: Labor, the Left, and Wilsonian Internationalism by Elizabeth McKillen
  • Anthony B. Newkirk
Elizabeth McKillen, Making the World Safe for Workers: Labor, the Left, and Wilsonian Internationalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press 2013)

In 2013, several North American trade unions came out against the Keystone xl Pipeline project. On the 20th anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement, afl-cio President Richard Trumka expressed misgivings about the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. (New York Times, 28 February 2013; Center for American Progress, americaprogress. org, 25 March 2014) This, plus years of protests by union-members against US wars abroad, show that organized labour is keenly aware of international relations.

Following up on work presented in a special issue of Diplomatic History (no.4, 2010) devoted to the US working-class and international policy, Elizabeth McKillen puts this awareness into historical context by addressing the role the US Left had in shaping the international policies of the Woodrow Wilson administration during World War I. McKillen focuses on President Wilson, his ally Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor (afl), and their leftwing working-class opposition [End Page 396] composed of Socialist Party rank-and-filers, afl-affiliated unions, the Industrial Workers of the World (iww), Irish-Americans, European immigrants, women, and people of colour.

According to diplomatic historian Norman Graebner, Wilson promoted an “ideal, principled, peace program.” (The Versailles Treaty and Its Legacy, [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011], 23) McKillen, instead, contends Wilson was committed to furthering US business interests. There is nothing new about this argument, but the author links it to the activities of the labour movement, which has been long ignored by diplomatic historians. McKillen argues that leftwing labour activists were convinced that the goal of Wilson’s “internationalist agenda” was to maintain a capitalist world order. (11) McKillen holds that rejection of the League of Nations scheme by most leftists doomed US membership in that organization.

The first and second sections of Making the World Safe for Workers cover the Mexican Revolution and US neutrality. Because Wilson had always opposed colonial liberation, he was not concerned with Socialist and iww charges that the invasion of Mexico in 1914 was hypocritical. Common enmity toward leftist factions in the Mexican Revolution and the anti-war “majority wing” of the US Socialist Party brought Wilson and Gompers together. (57) Gompers’ promotion of corporatism, and friction with the United Mine Workers Association (umwa), trumped questions about Wilson’s inaction with problems like the Ludlow Massacre. Wilson’s need for working-class support of his preparedness campaign impelled him to appoint Gompers to the Council of National Defense in 1916. The Committee on Public information funded Gompers’ pro-war American Alliance for Labor Democracy. Gompers willingly collaborated with the Wilson administration.

The third and fourth sections cover US belligerency and the Paris Peace Conference. McKillen sheds light on conflicts within the US labour movement, and within the afl itself. Strong anti-war sentiment existed in the labour movement before war was declared in 1917. McKillen examines Seattle and Chicago labour federations, the umwa, and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ilgwu) to show that dissimilar groups of workers opposed the war. Deeply opposed to the anti-war socialists, Gompers would later write in his memoirs that they composed an “adjunct in America of the German Socialist Party.” (168) Nor was Wilson’s commitment to industrial democracy genuine since labour unrest was an abiding concern of his during the war. Government repression of Socialists and Wobblies, abetted by Gompers, was necessary due to the popularity of their positions.

McKillen covers relations between the afl and labour leaders from Allied countries at the Paris Peace Conference. Because Gompers and most European socialists did not get along with each other during the war, there would be discord within the Commission on International Labour Legislation at Versailles over labour provisions in the peace treaty. The Wilson administration had to contend with rival labour conferences in neutral countries. Like African, Asian, Irish, Mexican, and Russian delegations, German and Austrian trade unionists were banned from Versailles. Of crucial significance is the discussion of the International Labour...

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