Our View: Labor had rocky road last century

The following are excerpts from a piece done by Ryan Reft, a historian at the Library of Congress. It provides a taste of what Labor Day meant to Americans during World War I. In 1917, as detailed on Page 1 of today’s Pine Knot News, Cloquet workers first took to the streets to celebrate the power of unions. But things were far from cheery when it came to organizing. Labor still had a long way to go, as reflected here and across the country:

Amid war, Labor Day in 1918 took on increased importance. Mobilization had presented unprecedented opportunities, and workers achieved remarkable advances during America’s months at war. Many reached out to President Woodrow Wilson before the 1918 holiday, hoping that he might make an appearance at their celebration

For labor, Wilson seemed an unlikely ally. As a younger politician, he had assailed the labor movement, describing it simultaneously as “economically disastrous” and “politically divisive.” When presidential ambitions and political necessity collided, Wilson courted labor.

In his first term, Wilson elevated the Department of Labor to a cabinet body and supported the passage of several labor reforms. In November 1917, Wilson became the first president to address the American Federation of Labor (AFL) at its annual convention.

Behind its president, Samuel Gompers, the AFL lent its support to Wilson and mobilization, even declaring labor’s “undivided support . . . so that it shall be a war of the people” in defense of the “fundamental institutions for human liberty transmitted to us by the forefathers of our country.”

The AFL expanded its membership from 2 to 3 million between 1917 and 1919. By the war’s conclusion, nearly a fifth of the workforce, excluding agriculture, belonged to a union. That is to say nothing of the benefits that nonunion labor in wartime industries enjoyed due to the achievements of their unionist counterparts.

With nearly 440 strikes in the first month after the U.S. entered the war, Wilson agreed to the creation of numerous wartime labor agencies. The President’s Mediation Commission was created in September 1917. The National War Labor Board was established in April 1918 to intervene in labor disputes.

Achievements included de facto recognition of unions, eight-hour work days, better wages, improved work conditions and collective bargaining. Critically, Wilson and Congress never institutionalized these gains. Or as historian Melvyn Dubofsky argued, “Wilsonians stocked the barest of legislative cupboards.” Moreover, the government’s wartime agencies lacked the power to actually enforce decisions; outcomes hinged on their ability to manipulate nationalism and wartime patriotism to cajole industry and labor to cooperate.

Consequently, when armistice arrived on Nov. 11, 1918, many of the gains afforded labor quickly evaporated. With the pressure of war removed, business leaders, who had always chafed at government intervention, rolled back reforms. Under duress from an economy afflicted by inflation, workers soon went on strike; 1919 witnessed 3,000 strikes involving 4 million laborers. (There were many in Cloquet.)

Despite these admitted setbacks, World War I enabled labor to weaken what Frankfurter and others called “industrial autocracy.” It might not have enacted the “industrial democracy” that had been on the lips of workers during the war, but business now had to acknowledge labor, even if with halfhearted company unions.

Later, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was assistant secretary of the Navy during World War I, drew upon his wartime experience to sign labor reforms into law through New Deal legislation. World War II then normalized and undergirded the labor movement, putting postwar retrenchment out of reach.