Industrial Invaubn O~ the 89 Green Strange allies fought 19th century manufacturers for domination of America's small cities HERBERT

G. G U T M A N

Apart from the dislocations of the Civil War, the economic and social history of the United States in the second half of the last century--both the glory and the agony--is in large part the histories of the booming and changing industrial cities. No place felt the radical and far-reaching effects of the post-1850 industrial boom more than the mill towns of the East. Peaceful villages, proud of their green spaces and leisurely ways, saw great factories and towering smokestacks rise to dominate their skylines and atmospheres in a few short years. Their populations often doubled and even tripled in a single decade as propertyless workers, many of them immigrants, jammed together in what soon became tenements, slums, and shacks. Their economies came under the domination of hard-driving manufacturers, many from out of town, who were used to playing rough with competition and opposition and were careless or contemptuous of the old ways. Historians--conservative or liberal, the chroniclers of business as well as of labor and the city--exhibit rare agreement about what life in those mill towns was like. From the start, they imply, the industrialists had the social and political power and prestige to match their economic force, and controlled the towns. Local politics zigged and zagged according to their interests. Other property owners--especially small businessmen and professionals--identified with them, applauded their innovations and successes, and made common cause; and the factory workers almost inevitably found themselves totally alienated from the general community, practically helpless before their all-powerful employers. Stated in another fashion, from the beginning there existed a close relationship between economic class, social status, and power, and that control over "things"--most especially industrial property and machinery--was transformed quickly and with relative ease into legitimate authority so that industrialists could do little wrong. This picture is distorted. These historians have accepted much too uncritically a misleading generalization. They MAY/JUNE

have made too much of the early New England textile towns as later "models" or have drawn inaccurate paraliets with large cities. As a result they have tended to bypass the actual histories of the mill towns they describe. Detailed study of the history of almost any victorian American mill town reveals these errors. Throughout their early years for at least a generation the large impersonal corporations, the new factories with their new methods, and the wage earners, remained unusual and even alien elements in the industrial town. They disrupted tradition, challenged the accepted and respected modes of thought, and threatened the old ruling groups. How then could the mill owners from the first have dominated the social and political structures ? Conservatism is not always automatic obeisance to wealth ; it is more often resistance to change and challenge. The industrialists had great economic power and influence over things; but in my studies I have found that often they

"Mill town economies came under the domination of hard-driving manufacturers who were used to playing rough with competition and opposition and were careless or contemptuous of the old ways." (Officers, Dexter, Lambert & Co., Paterson, New Jersey.)

could not even control the public decisions and judgments that directly affected their own economic welfare. The nonindustrial property owners often opposed them; they did not dominate the government; and the professional groups and middle-classes frequently criticized them and rejected their leadership. Even the apparently resourceless workers were able to find friends and support where their employers could not, in spite of the lack of strong unions. Take as an example the industrial city of Paterson, New Jersey, with its highly suggestive official motto, Spe eI

"Paterson was regarded by New Yorkers, only fourteen miles away, as an 'up-counti3, hamlet, chieflynoted for fine waterfall and valuable waterpower.' " Labore (With Hope and Labor). Its development provides clear examples of the early, frustrated search for status and unchallenged authority by big mill and factory owners.

THE SILKEN THREAD OF POWER The history of an industrial town can often be divided into two almost distinct stories: what happened in the more isolated village before the large factories came, and what happened after. Until 1850 Paterson's growth was fitful and relatively slow, its industry (mostly cotton textiles) not very efficient. As late as 1838 it was regarded by New Yorkers, only fourteen miles away, as an "upcountry hamlet, chiefly noted for its fine waterfall and valuable waterpower." But its closeness to a market and to a port, that "valuable waterpower," and the skilled machinists and machine shops that the cotton mills had attracted, made it very attractive to industry in the booming years before, during, and just after the Civil War. By the early 1870's Paterson was a major American industrial city, producing one-fourth of the nation's locomotives, and much of the ironwork used in the great public buildings and bridges in New York and Pennsylvania. It 20

led the country in silk textile production, and its jute, flax, and mosquito net mills were the largest of their kinds in the nation. Since most of these mills were founded after 1850 and the others had had their greatest growth in the same period, the older inhabitants of Paterson saw a new city they hardly recognized spring up around them between 1850 and 1870. The first locomotive shop was founded in 1836; by 1873 three large locomotive works employed 3000 men. A machine shop which had ten workers in 1845 employed 1100 in 1873. The textile factories, taking advantage of the water power, cheap mills, and help left behind by the declining cotton industry, rose even faster. In 1860 four silk mills employed 590 workers; just sixteen years later fourteen silk factories employed 8000. Although small spinning and weaving shops started in the 1840's, the great stimulus to the textile industry came from outside the city in the 1860's when New York and Boston textile manufacturers and importers moved their mills to Paterson or built new ones there. A Coventry Englishman brought his silk mill from New York in 1860. Two years later, the nation's leading importer of tailor trimmings moved there from Boston. In 1868, a great New York silk importer came to Paterson. Eighty-one years after its founding in Northern Ireland, Barbour Brothers opened a linen factory that quickly became one of Paterson's great mills. From the start, these men of wealth constructed large mills, introduced power machinery, and made other significant innovations. One even imported an entire English factory. A new industrial leadership alien to the older city, these men represented a power unknown in earlier years. And they transformed the city. In 1846 Paterson had 11,000 inhabitants; by 1870 it had 33,000. More than a third of these--a group larger than the whole 1846 population--were European immigrants, including skilled silk workers from France, Germany, and England. Large numbers of unskilled Irish laborers came, too. The booming city offered employment to whole families. Iron factories hired only men, and textile mills relied mainly on female and child labor. Two-thirds of the silk workers in 1876 were women, and one of every four workers under 16 years of age. Small business also prospered: from 1859 to 1870 the number of grocers more than doubled, and saloonkeepers increased from 46 to 270. The social dislocations were severe, but prosperity was general--until the depression of I873-1878. The decline then was almost as extreme as the rise had been. The economy was crippled. "Among all classes (in 1873) there is a feeling of gloom and intense anxiety in regard to the future." In three years these fears had been realized, and a silk worker reported that "Paterson is in a deplorable condition." The production of locomotives fell off by five-sixths. Wages paid locomotive workers in 1873 amounted to $1,850,000; by 1877 they had fallen to $165,000. The unemployed overtaxed all available charities and even paraded in the streets demanding public works. In 1876 a New York Sun reporter called Paterson an industrial TRANS-ACTION

ghost town, and compared it to a Southern city after Lee's surrender. Generally, historians contend that the depression of 1873-78, because of the great suffering and insecurity it caused, broke the back of labor's independence and immeasurably strengthened employers. Again, this narrow economic interpretation ignores the total reality. The workers were not the only ones put to the test. The city government, the middle class, and the older inhabitants also faced grave problems. So did the new industrialists. Trying to meet the economic crises resulting from declining markets, declining profits, and strikes, they needed support and help at critical times from the community and its leaders. Did they always get it ? Four conflicts involving the mill owners occurred between 1877 and 1880--two textile strikes and two libel suits against a newspaper editor. They tell the story pretty well. They reveal much about the actual prestige and politicaI influence the owners had at that time.

terms in the state legislature before winning the 1875 mayoralty election. Buckley believed his primary duty was to maintain order, and he used his small police force with great skill and tact, but only to stop open conflict. He would not suppress the strikers or their leaders. This infuriated the industrialists, who insisted that the mayor's inaction allowed a few agitators to dominate hundreds of workers. The Paterson Board of Trade, controlled by the largest mill owners, charged

Revolt of the Ribbon Weavers In June of 1877, immigrant silk-ribbon weavers struck because of a 20 percent wage cut and an irksome contract. At its height the strike was Patterson's largest up to then: it idled 2000 workers and closed down the mills. The workers had no union to speak of ; they had endured forty-four months of depression. They showed great staying power, but in practical economic terms they had very little to bargain with. Yet after ten weeks the employers accepted a compromise which rescinded the wage cut and ended the strike. Why ? Local people refused to give their approval and support to the mill owners. Elected city officials either supported the strikers, or, even more significantly, refused to bow to pressures and "'commands" from owners. A few examples: small shopkeepers gave credit and raised money for the strikers; the daily newspapers, though critical of the strikers too, urged the employers to use "conscience as well as capital." The courts remained independent. Weavers on trial for disorderly conduct went free or received small fines. When a manufacturer successfully prosecuted two weavers for violating contracts, city officials, including the mayor, persuaded a local judge to postpone forty similar trials indefinitely. Republican Mayor Benjamin Buckley and the Democratic-controlled board of aldermen gave the manufacturers their greatest trouble. The aldermen were mostly self-made men: skilled workmen of independent means, retail shopkeepers, and professionals, their number included neither factory workers nor large manufacturers. Mayor Buckley personified the pre-corporate American dream. Born in England in 1808, he had come to Paterson as a young man, worked first in a cotton factory, and then achieved much. By 1877, he owned a small spindle factory, headed a local bank, and thrived in Republican politics, serving several MAY/ JUNE

"Paterson produced one-fourth of the nation's locomotives and much ironwork used in the great pubtic buildings and bridges in New York and Pennsylvania." that "the laws of the land are treated with contempt and trampled upon by a despotic mob" led by immigrant radicals and "Communists." {This in 1877.) They tried to pressure the city authorities to enlarge the police force and declare a state of emergenq* that would severely hamper the strikers. A manufacturer warned that unless the authorities put down these troublemakers, the city would be left "with nothing . . . but the insignificant industries of an unimportant town." One urged that strike leaders be "taken out and shot"; another offered to finance a private militia. Mayor Buckley refused all these demands. He charged that the Board of Trade did "great injury to the credit of the city," and commended "the good sense of the working people." All elected city officials, Republican and Democratic, were property owners, but they remained independent, and rejected the claim that the Board of Trade was "best able to judge what the city needed to protect it." The Democratic-controlled Board of Aldermen unanimously commended Republican Mayor Bu&ley's "wise and judicious course" and added insult to injury by passing a resolution urging immediate prosecution of mill owners who violated local fire-escape ordinances. No wonder iron manufacturer Watts Cooke lamented: "All the classes of the community are coming to tean towards and sympathize with the men rather than the employers." After the strike the manufacturers turned away from politics and raised a private militia. The Board of Trade 2l

listened approvingly m a member who found "more virtue in one well-drilled soldier than in ten policemen, or in one bullet than in ten clubs in putting down a riot." Money was quickly collected and 120 militiamen quickly recruited. But for ten years after the strike the ratio of policemen to population remained the same. Clearly it was easier to get up money for a private militia than to "reform" the stubborn city government. And the fact that the mill owners were forced to raise this militia was a measure of their local weakness, not of their strength.

The Adams Company Strike A year after the ribbon weaver's strike was settled, 550 more unorganized textile workers, mostly women and chil. dren, reacted to their third wage cut in a year by striking the factories of Robert and Henry Adams, the largest manufacturers of mosquito netting in the country. More unequal adversaries could hardly be imagined. The Adams brothers had brought a small factor), from New York in 1857, and in twenty years had added several large and efficient mills to it, so that by 1878 they were practically dominating their industry, exporting huge quantities of mosquito netting to Africa and Asia. Yet after a strike of nine months, they conceded defeat. The senior partner, Robert Adams, bitterly quit the firm and left Paterson. It was he, not the strikers, who had fought the lonely and friendless battle. No one publicly protested his repeated threats to move the mills. The press stayed neutral. With only one exception, he got no encouragement from other manufacturers, retail businessmen, or professionals. He even was forced to fire some of his own foremen for defending the strikers. On the other hand, strikers received much support. Some took jobs in other miIls. Strike funds were collected from other workers--and especially from shopkeepers and merchants. Concerts and picnics were given in their honor and to their benefit. Street demonstrations supported them; more than one-eighth of all Patersonians signed petitions attacking the Adams brothers. "Two-thirds of the silk workers in 1876 were women, and one of every four workers was under sixteen years of age."

An outspoken Irish Socialist, Joseph P. McDonnell, came to Paterson from New York to support the strikers and to successfully organize them. He found a socialist weekly, the Paterson Labor Standard. The front pages quoted Karl Marx, and called Robert Adams "Lucifer" and his mills "a penitentiary." But the back pages carried advertisements from forty-five retail enterprises, which kept it going. When Adams recruited new workers from nearby towns, they were met at the rail depot or in the streets by as many as 2000 strikers and sympathizers, and persuaded to go back. The strikers had full use of the streets. The city authorities arrested a few workers when tempers flared, but quickly released them and did not restrain them so long as they stayed peaceful. By carefully discriminating between peaceful coercion and "violence," the authorities effectively (even if unintentionally) strengthened the strikers. Adams had only his firm's money with which to fight, and it was limited. His power was checked, his impotence revealed, and he was forced to surrender and leave the city.

The Libel Trials--I Socialist Joseph P. McDonnell, though only thirty-two years old when he came to Paterson, already had a long and active career in political agitation. He had edited Irish nationalist newspapers, engaged in Fenian "conspiracies," represented Ireland at the 1872 Hague Congress of the First International (siding with the Marxists), helped organize several huge London labor demonstrations and served four prison terms before coming to the United States. In this country he indignantly exposed the steerage conditions of his passage, edited a New York Socialist weekly, and traveled the East denouncing capitalism and organizing weak Socialist-led trade unions. According to the usual historical stereotypes, he should have been a pariah to almost all Patersonians and easy game for his opponents. But even though he did have trouble and went to prison, he and his newspaper nevertheless soon won acceptance and popularity. His legal difficulties started with the first issue of the Labor Standard and lasted for eighteen months. He called some loyal Adams workers "scabs"; they filed a formal complaint and he was indicted, convicted, and fined $500 and costs. He narrowly averted a second libel indictment a few months later. But in the fall of 1879 he was indicted again, this time for publishing a bitter letter by a brickyard worker, denouncing working and living conditions in a Passaic River brickyard. Both he and the worker were found guilty and sent to the Passic County Jail for three months. Did these convictions illustrate the power of "capital" and the supineness of judges before it? Not entirely, if at all. At his first trial McDonnell was still a newcomer and radical and controversial; nevertheless his lawyer was an old Patersonian, wealthy in real estate, father of the state's first ten-hour law and important banking reforms, organizer of the city's waterworks, and a prominent Republican for TRANS-ACTION

twenty years before standing as Greenback candidate for New Jersey governor. Predictably, the prosecutor castigated McDonnell as a "woman libeler," a threat to established order, and a "foreign emissary" sent by English manufactures to "breed discontent" in America. Nevertheless, the jury stayed deadlocked for three days and nights and only unusual pressure from the judge brought in a conviction. Even then, another judge, himself originally a Lancashire worker and then the owner of a small bobbin pin factory, convinced the presiding judge to go easy, and the $500 fine was a great deal less than the $2000 and two years in prison that could have been assessed. Workers crowded the courtroom to cheer McDonnell, and after conviction quickly raised the fine and costs, hoisted their hero aloft, and carried him triumphantly through the streets. Storekeepers and merchants contributed handsomely to a defense fund. The trial occurred during the bitter 1878 Congressional election, and the prosecutor suddenly found himself surrounded by hostile voters. Workers, supported by sympathetic shopkeepers, jammed the Democratic meetings, and demonstrated against him or walked out when he tried to speak. Politicians got the point. A Republican argued that only free speech and a free press could preserve American liberty. The Democrats defended the right to strike and one declaimed: "Away with the government of the aristocracy! Away with legislators only from the wealthy classes! We have had enough of them!" A nearby non-Socialist newspaper concluded: "In Paterson he (McDonnell) is stronger than his accusers. Today he has the sympathy of the people."

The Libel Trials--II The second trial--and the imprisonment--were, paradoxically, even greater triumphs for McDonnell. Outside the courtroom, no one publicly attacked him. The decision was severely criticized. The judge justified the prison sentence only because he felt that a fine would, again, be paid by others. McDonnell's support was overwhelming and bipartisan. His lawyers were the son of a former Democratic mayor, and Socrates Tuttle, Paterson's most respected attorney and Republican ex-Mayor. Turtle called the trial an attack on a free press and on the right of workers to protest. Two former silk factory foremen, one German and the other English, led McDonnell's sympathizers and got help from a Baptist and a Methodist clergyman, the latter active in Republican politics and Paterson's most popular preacher. Several aldermen, former aldermen, and county freeholders visited him in prison. Even a nephew of Robert Adams, McDonnell's 1878 adversary, gave the Socialist $20 and visited him in jail. Garrett A. Hobart, a rising corporation lawyer, president of the New Jersey State Senate and chairman of the Republican State Committee, (later to be Vice President of the United States), sent ten dollars for McDonnell's defense, offered "to do his best," and tried to get the state libel law changed. (During the 1896 national election, McDonnell's paper still carried Karl Marx's MAY / JUNE

"Joseph McDonnell, with a long career in political agitation, edited his newspaper and organized a national campaign of protest from his prison cell." words on its masthead. Though a strong foe of McKinley conservatism, the Labor Standard said of Hobart: "a rare specimen of manhood in the class in which he moves . . . to know him is to like him whether you agree with his opinions or not.") McDonnell's jail experience is one of the most unusual in American penal history. Warden Buckley, the former mayor's son, did his best to assure the comfort and freedom for his guest. McDonnell edited his newspaper and organized a national campaign of protest from his cell. He received his visitors (and their children) daily in the warden's office one day he entertained twenty-one visitors. His meals came from outside the jail, and saloon and boarding house keepers overstocked him with cigars, wines, and liquors. Others brought fresh fruit, cakes, and puddings. Shamrocks came on St. Patrick's Day, and two fancy dinners on his birthday. Released ten days early, McDonnell had the warden's personal commendation for good behavior. On his release, 15,000 persons greeted him in Paterson's greatest demonstration. He went on to found the New Jersey Federation of Trades and Labor Unions in 1883, and to push for protective labor legislation. Less than six years after coming to Paterson, and four years after release from prison, a Democratic governor appointed him New Jersey's first Deputy Inspector of Factories and Workshops. The prosecutor who had convicted him advertised his legal services in McDonnell's paper ; the City of Paterson brought 23

space for its official announcements. The paper survived and prospered until his death in 1908. A NATIONAL PATTERN Was this general pattern of events confined to Paterson ? Not at all. It was, instead, typical of the history of many factory towns during that period. The examples are common: the merchant mayor of an Illinois mining town disarmed Pinkerton police imported to guard an operator's properties; Ohio Valley newspapers condemned iron manufacturers for arming strikebreakers; northern Pennsylvania merchants housed striking, evicted coal miners. The pattern had recognizable and common elements. Poorly organized and unorganized workers displayed surprising staying power and received much sympathy from non-workers. Local politicians often rejected or at least modified pressures from industrialists. Most surprising, and most significant, were the attitudes of the non-industrial property owners. They enjoyed **traditional" prestige and power; they believed in competitive free enterprise and used it for their own enrichment; nevertheless they responded equivocally or critically to the practices of the new industrialists. How can these facts, so contrary to the usual historical interpretations, be explained? First, we must rid ourselves of some misconceptions. One, that the new industrialist and his power achieved standing and acceptance quickly and easily in the local communities; in most cases they did not. Two, that all urban property owners share common attitudes, interests, and prejudices. Grocers--or even local bankers--are not the same as factory owners. Because Andrew Carnegie applauded Herbert Spencer, it does not mean that all urban property owners cheered along, too. Three, we cannot equate the patterns in mill towns with those occurring in large cities, states, or even the nation. Congress gave huge land grants to railroads and state governors frequently supplied militia to "settle" strikes; but paradoxically, it does not necessarily follow that mill owners commanded equivalent power and prestige in their own towns. What then is the explanation ? 9 It must be emphasized again that in nineteenth century America power and standing had meaning almost entirely within a given community--at least as far as that community was concerned. The new industrialist--especially if he came from elsewhere--was an outsider and a disruptive one. He found a more or less static city which thrived on small and personal workshops and an intimate and personal way of life. It was not ideal, but it was settled and familiar. He brought in radical new ways of making things and using people. Where he violated community traditions or made extreme or new demands--such as the special use of a police force or the suppression of a newspaper--he often provoked opposition. 9 In the smaller towns change--and power--were more visible and vulnerable than in the large, complex cities. 24

Since relationships tended to be personal, the middle class and the older residents could themselves see and understand what was happening to the town and the workers instead of accepting second-hand information through the opaque filter of laissez-faire economic thought or pseudo-Darwinian ideology. 9 In the factory town, the worker had more economic and political power than in the metropolis. A larger percentage of grocers, saloon-keepers, and other shopkeepers depended on him and knew it; his vote meant much more in Paterson than it would have in New York, and the politicians knew that, too. 9 Strangely, the rapid growth of the mill town, which the industrialists had themselves brought about, weakened their chances for civic and police control. A number of studies of the mobility patterns of Paterson men show that the more ambitious and able workers found expanding opportunities outside the factories in small retail business, politics, and the police force--the very areas in which the industrialists demanded cooperation or control. Conservative in many ways, these men had a **stake" in the new society. But they still had memories, roots, and relatives among the workers. They had, in fact, often suffered from the same employers they were now called on to protect. During strikes and other crises the industrialists could not expect unswerving loyalty or approval from them ; nor did they get it. Wealth does talk; and eventually it will be heard. The factories and their owners dug deeper and deeper into the lives of the mill towns and became more and more accepted and powerful. Yesterday's innovators became today's watchdogs of tradition. The old middle class, and those who remembered and revered the old, pre-corporate towns, lost influence and diecl off; they were replaced by others closer to the corporate image. The city governments became more bureaucratic, less responsive to '*popular" pressures. But the notion that the 19th century factory owners moved into overnight control of the industrial towns is a myth that must be discarded in order to understand the real nature of these twentieth century changes.

Herbert G. Gutman, associate professor of history at the State University of New York at Buffalo, has published numerous articles on labor and social history and is completing two books: American Labor Thought: The Mind o[ the Worker, 1860-I900, and The Shock of American Industrialization. He will be a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciencesat Palo Alto for 1966-67. TRANS-ACTION