Forgotten History - Tuesday, November 28, 2006
"Little known facts and overlooked history"
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Opposition to the American Labor Movement
By Denis Mueller

By all accounts the story of the American Labor Movement
raises some very important questions as to why labor was
met by so much opposition and why that opposition was so
violent. This is question that I will examine in a series
of articles about the history of the American Labor
Movement.

One of the major reasons was the existence of private
police forces that were not constrainedb by the law. The
detective agencies like, although not limited to the
Pinkertons, served as the muscle for the industrialists.
They were thugs, criminals who were recruited from the
dregs of society, whose violent tendencies were now under
the cover of the law. The companies not only used them to
break strikes but to actively commit violence against those
who were trying to organize. No other western democracy had
a private army that was quasi sanctioned by the government.
The polices of the detective agencies included murder,
setting people up for crimes they did not commit, lies and
deception, all of which was done at the behest of the
robber barons.

Another reason was that our court system was clearly on the
side of the industrialists. We tend to think of the court
as an arbitrator whose point of view is neutral but nothing
could be further from the truth. As an example let us look
at the struggle to establish an eight-hour day and how that
manifested itself regarding the western miners, and their
allies, who tried to establish an eight hour day.

For years the Western Miner Federation (WMF) argued for the
establishment of an eight-hour day. The WMF felt, and all
the medical evidence agreed and has been proven to be true,
that the long hours that miners worked underground was
unhealthy and the poisonous gases that the mines generated
was dangerous to the miners health. This is now an obvious
fact but at the time, the industrials fought the creation
of laws, such as the eight-hour day, which were needed as
protection from the dangerous conditions. Other factors
were the claims by the industrials that these claims were
without proof.

The refusal to enact the eight-hour legislation was a major
factor in the Colorado Coal Wars that plagued the state for
the next twenty years. The governor of Colorado maintained
that he was acting in the interests of the people saying he
was "preserving the commercial and industrial enterprises
of Colorado from assault and annihilation."

These kinds of scare tactics were used as justification for
the assault that occurred on the workers of America during
the next forty years. It was obviously not true because
American industry was never hurt by the eight-hour day. It
was never hurt by workers who demanded a fair share. The
simple fact is after these laws were passed, the companies
still recorded huge profits. So when you hear dire
predictions and consequences about what might happen, we
should remember that these predictions are often just
bullshit.