CHAPTER XV

STRIKES AND VIOLENCE

Value of legal rights to picket-Union position in regard to violence in strikes-Authorized methods-Conflicting elements on picket field-Paterson strike-Mass picketing-Lawrence strike-Outside testimony in regard to violence-Failure of law to protect picketing in New York-Order to regard pickets as vagrants-Story of Calumet strike-Strike of Colorado Miners-Citizens' alliances.

THE state laws generally recognize that strikers have a right to approach fellow workers and to peacefully persuade them to refrain from working. But the right vouchsafed a picket to walk up and down in front of a work-shop where the strike occurred, to speak to men and women on their way to work in the shop and to dissuade them if possible from entering, is not a particular right of a picket but of any man or woman. The withholding of such a right would be a clear case of discrimination against strikers.

The value of the right as a practical concession is constantly in review. The question centers around whether the speaking of a picket to others or his presence in the vicinity causes disturbance. Also questions of disturbance are questions of degree. And as an actual fact the simplest form of picketing is a disturbance. A striker, by speaking to a man whose in

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tention is fixed on working, about the desire of others that he should discontinue his intention, disturbs the man and his would-be-employer. The purposes of the picket and of the other two are opposed. If the picket is effective, if he actually pickets, he must persist in spite of the annoyance. A vigilant police officer or a soldier, stationed in the strike field to maintain order and interpreting the order literally and in the interest of the struck plant, will arrest any active picket on the ground of annoyance. On the same ground he will be sentenced by a magistrate or held by military command for disorderly conduct. Such are the common interpretations of peaceful picketing. Innumerable

records of such rulings may be found in magistrates' courts.

Labor unions do not claim that strikers are never disturbers of the peace. But unions of all affiliations insist that: (1) rioting and violence are good for the cause of the employer and bad for the cause of the strikers directly concerned except in certain aggravated cases; (2) that the importation of thugs and professional strike-breakers into strike zones precipitates riots; (3) that the presence of militia is not conducive to order but to violence; (4) that "striker" and rioter" are synonymous terms to the average judge. The usual instructions given by union officers to strikers is to picket with hands in pockets, to walk singly or in twos, to watch closely for every possible strike-breaker, and to persuade, to persist in persuad

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ing them by all peaceful means, that is, by means of speech only, to forego their intention of taking strikers' jobs.

If the strike occurs in the city, the pickets on reaching their field of activity find applicants for the struck jobs who had not known that a strike was on; they find others who are not unionists but as scornful of scabbing as they are; they find others who are curious to hear the pickets' story; then they find the other sort who resent the attitude of all strikers and are interested only in their personal relation with the employer and the opportunity which he holds out for work. In all strikes the applicants for the struck job vary from those who are sympathetic with strikers and susceptible to persuasion to those who are antagonistic.

It is the object of the pickets to reach all of these men before they are reached by the employer. It is the object of the employer to reach all of the men before they are reached by the pickets. If the field is clear between the applicants for work and the pickets no question of peaceful picketing arises. There is no one there to draw the fine distinctions as to what constitutes disturbance in picketing; and a strike-breaker, if alone with a picket, while he may have no ground for fear of physical harm, will not have the moral courage to face alone the odium of scabbing.

But picketing under such circumstances seldom happens or when it does is of short duration. The moment a strike occurs and before picketing actually begins

employers usually inform the police that a strike is on, that trouble is expected and that their protection is needed. The police department answers the call on the assumption that strikers are rioters. Or if a strike is in a rural district, the smallest disturbance is used as an excuse for calling in the militia, who like the police answer the call with a well-settled understanding that it is the strikers who need to be suppressed. To keep up an official guard it is important that the public be reassured that violence is active or imminent. It is important that applicants for work be reassured that the pickets are their enemies lying in wait to attack and that the employers are their protectors and friends. The employers' private detectives and guards, who are usually professional strike-breakers, intensify the situation as they aggravate the pickets and induce riots and disorder.

These private guards, together with the police or the militia, are on hand ostensibly to keep order. But they line up together on the assumption that the pickets are disturbers of law and order and the employer is the law-abiding factor in the situation. The picket field thus divided seethes with suggestion of violence, with official and unofficial provocation.

A strike occurred in the silk mills of Paterson, New Jersey, where picketing is legal. The New York Globe in an editorial pointed out that local newspapers, although bitterly opposed to the strike, were brought to comment: The strike has had one remarkable

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feature which the people of Paterson will never forget. It is that although many thousand strikers stayed away from the mill for five months, not only was there practically no violence but the rank and file of the strikers behaved themselves during a trying time in a manner that entitled them to admiration." The Press believes that "this phase of the great strike of 1913 stands without a parallel in this or any other country." Together with this testimony of a paper unfriendly to the strikers it is enlightening to remember that 1,200 pickets were arrested and 300 fined or sentenced. The Globe in the same editorial explained why wellbehaved strikers were arrested by the wholesale.

Paterson is afflicted with anarchistic administration officers and with a judge and a public prosecutor who recall Jeffreys and his hanging assistant. These stupid and wicked persons when the strike began thought to suppress it by breaking up peaceable meetings and preventing free speech and making arbitrary arrests. The result has been the struggle has lasted five months and the estimated cost to the city is $5,000,000. As often as it was about to collapse the public authorities started it up again. . . . Is it strange that the workers of Paterson are bitter at heart? Lawlessness does not pay. It does not pay labor organizations as they have discovered and hence the advice of Haywood to his pickets, "Keep your hands in your pockets." ..

The popular belief is that the Industrial Workers incite pickets to commit violence. The opposite is true. The mass picketing introduced and advocated by them