Congress created the Industrial Relations Commission in 1912 to study the rise in labor violence. As the labor movement grew steadily between 1900 and 1910, some unions adopted more aggressive methods for gaining recognition and concessions. Many employers met the new growth and militancy of the labor movement with rigid opposition. They were willing to adopt more aggressive means for defeating strikes and keeping unions out of the workplace. Their methods included industrial spying, private security forces, and using local police forces and state militias to physically remove striking employees. When employers launched a counteroffensive against the labor movement, violent confrontations escalated. The incident that prompted Congress to take action was the October 1, 1910, bombing of the antiunion newspaper, the Los Angeles Times. The commission was created as one of the last actions of William Howard Taft’s presidency.
The new president, Woodrow Wilson, had developed ties with the American Federation of Labor (AFL). In 1912, he was the first U. S. president elected with the backing of organized labor. Looking to strengthen government’s labor ties and concerned that the spread of labor violence would spill over into a larger class conflict, Wilson named labor progressive Frank Walsh to head the Commission on Industrial Relations. As chair of the commission, Walsh had strong ideas about the plight of American workers.
Under Walsh’s direction, the Industrial Relations Commission went beyond its original mandate of uncovering the reasons behind the recent rise in labor violence. In its report, the commission laid most of the blame at the feet of employers and the growth of economic inequality. The final report of the commission argued that workers found it increasingly difficult to organize unions and conduct successful strikes. Employers fired suspected union sympathizers, secured court injunctions against strikes and boycotts, hired replacement workers to break strikes, created company controlled unions, and forced employees to sign yellow-dog contracts agreeing not to join an independent union. Workers and unions felt frustrated at every turn. This situation was exacerbated, the commission concluded, by the use of spies, private security forces, and state and federal troops, which intimidated, harassed, and even killed union members. The commission also pointed out that the turn-of-the-century boom in industrial production had created tremendous poverty and suffering.
Although the commission covered numerous labor disputes, it spent much of its time examining the causes of the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. During a routine mining strike, private security forces and local National Guard troops fired upon striking miners and their families, resulting in 32 deaths. In investigating the causes of the violence, the commission called dozens of witnesses, including mine owner John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The commission’s final report was extremely critical of Rockefeller’s handling of the strike and held him personally responsible for the miners’ deaths. Released in the summer of 1915, the report was a scathing indictment of Rockefeller in particular and antiunion employers in general. It set off a political firestorm. Antiunion employers and conservative politicians were outraged. Arguing that Walsh was in the pocket of the labor movement, they maintained that the report should be ignored. Conversely, the generally divided and contentious labor movement greeted the Industrial Relations Commission’s findings with universal support and enthusiasm. Many in the labor movement agreed with commission chair Walsh when he concluded that the only viable way to prevent future labor violence was for employers, the courts, and government to adopt a policy of industrial democracy. Workers should be allowed to form unions, he argued, free from employer interference and company violence. Under such a system, wealth would be distributed more equitably and social peace would reign. In the long run, both politicians and industrialists ignored the commission’s recommendations, and violent clashes between workers and employers continued to occur.
See also New Unionism.
Further reading: Joseph McCartin, Labor’s Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern Labor Relations, 1912-1921 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
—Robert Gordon
World History
