Politics, Labor, and the War on Big Business: The Path of Reform in Arizona, 1890-1920

5. Worker Unrest, Organization, and Confrontations

69 WorkerUnrest,Organization,andConfrontations Arizona’s working class in the last decades of the nineteenth century consisted of native-born Anglos, Hispanics, and European-born immigrants who found employment in farming, mining, and transportation (especially with the railroads ). Workers were divided by skilled-unskilled differentials, language, and ethnic backgrounds. The native-born and European Anglos held the skilled and semi-skilled positions. Hispanics were more prevalent among the unskilled workers.1 The most highly skilled workers organized first—for social purposes as well as to protect and advance their economic status. Much of this activity took place inareasimpactedheavilybyrailroadandminingactivities.Arizonarailroadworkers had organized in the early 1880s, and many had participated in the Pullman Strike in 1894. Following the crush of this strike, however, rail unions generally became less aggressive. Brotherhood leaders representing workers on the Santa Fe, for example, made virtually no new demands on the railroad and stood back as management violated existing agreements with impunity.2 Some rail workers were drawn to the Populists and were onboard when it came to such job-protection measures as laws against blacklisting and increasing F i v e 70 W o r k e r u n r e s t , o r g a n i z a t i o n , a n d c o n f r o n t a t i o n s requirements for engineers and other positions to limit competition. They were reluctant, however, to back rail rate regulation out of fear that this would reduce company revenues and mean lower wages or the loss of jobs. Railroad officials commonly used the threat of such disasters as a way of generating rail worker opposition to rate regulation proposals.3 Overall, most Railroad Brotherhoods were conservative craft organizations dedicated to bread-and-butter unionism. They were more concerned with their own economic well-being than with that of the entire working class.4 To some Socialists the Brotherhoods were “the aristocrats” of the labor movement whose views were not sufficiently working-class radical.5 Socialist leader Eugene Debs complained in 1908 that “railroad employees as a rule are densely ignorant of the real spirit and purpose of the trade union movement. They know very little concerning the traditions and principles of unionism and absolutely nothing of its history. Of economics they are as guiltless of knowledge as babes.” Making a possible exception for the Switchmen’s Union, Debs declared that “each of the railroad organizations is run on the theory that the interest[s] of labor and capital are identical.”6 Debs saw the western mining unions as altogether different. They had been slower to develop, but once they did, many of them became associated with the radicalized Western Federation of Miners (WFM). These developments began to take place in Arizona in the late 1890s, and with them came a push for political reform and considerable organizing activity and conflict in the industrial field. Formed in 1893, the WFM initially focused on protecting the jobs of miners and others working in and around mines and smelters—leaders refrained from making statements regarding the class struggle or Socialism. Starting in the late 1890s, however, employer and state resistance to its demands and the growing influence of Socialists within the organization increasingly radicalized the WFM. WFM leaders came to view themselves as heading something that was far more than a traditional labor organization. Rather, in their eyes the WFM had become the heart of a powerful working-class movement that was leading the way toward fundamental economic and political change. The swing to the left was especially pronounced under the leadership of Edward Boyce, WFM president from 1896 to 1902. Frustration on the industrial front led Boyce’s organization into a series of strikes in the Mountain West region, some of which resulted in violence and death, the calling out of troops, and the deportation of striking miners. Speaking to the WFM’s fifth annual convention in 1897, he contended: “Corporations are constantly reducing the wages of their employees, fastening upon them a bondage from which there is no escape. If they 71 W o r k e r u n r e s t , o r g a n i z a t i o n , a n d c o n f r o n t a t i o n s object, they are easily suppressed by the courts of the...