CHAPTER V

CRISPIN STRIKES

Five principal causes of Crispin strikes may be distinguished: resistence to green hands, defence of the order, opposition to wage reductions, refusal to work with non-Crispins and attempts to abolish contractors. Hostility to machinery and disputes ever shop rules occasionally provoked local controversies but resulted in no really important strikes.

The green hand strikes were principally in the factories for it was there that unskilled labor could be most easily and profitably employed. Green hands were of little value to manufacturers employing hand methods. Both their "cutters" and their "makers" had to be skilled workmen.

Strikes in defence of the order were common both in the factories and in merchant capitalist establishments, in the one because the manufacturers desired to rid themselves of Crispin restraints on their employment of cheap labor, and in the other because the employers sought freedom to reduce wages. These strikes were more frequent and less successful after the winter of 1871. Manufacturers seldom succeeded in efforts to break up local lodges during 1868, 1869, and 1870, but seldom failed during 1872, 1873 and 1874.

A typical case is that of Lynn. The Lynn lodges were strong and successful in 1869 and 1870. They enforced their demands vigorously. Strikes were frequent. Manufacturers hardly dared to take orders. Some moved their factories to Pittsfield and other New Hampshire points to escape the annoyance. Finally, in the spring of 1870, at his own suggestion, a leading employer was invited to a Crispin meeting where he proposed that a system of arbitration and wage agreements be established. The Crispins thereupon appointed a committee of five to meet

a self appointed committee of manufacturers, and on July 21, 1870, an agreement governing wages for the next twelve months was established. A year later it was renewed, though much difficulty in carrying out the agreement had been experienced because certain employers cut under the schedule. At the end of the second year, an understanding could not be at tained. The Crispins alleged "that in the spring of 1872, when contracts with the dealers were made for the next season's work, there was such sharp competition among manufacturers that they were taken at rates too low to afford the prices for labor established by the board of arbitration, and that this, more than any other cause, led to the strike the next summer and united the employers to overthrow the Crispin organization."3

The strike started in the trimming and edge-setting departments of thirty-five shops on account of a wage reduction of cne-half cents a pair, equivalent to a loss to the journeymen of seventy-five cents a day. It soon spread to fifteen other shops and shortly involved the very existence of the order.*

The

"Matters in Lynn," wrote a correspondent during the strike, "are now in a more chaotic condition than last week, a determined war upon the Crispin organization having been inaugurated by the manufacturers who first insisted upon a reduction of wages. They have made, as a condition for employment the. absolute renunciation of the order by the men No compromise is listened to. Some prominent men are reestablishing their business in other localities more satisfactory to them. stand so promptly taken by the employers is doubtless the result of an impression that the order is not strong enough to resist them. On the other side there is an indignant and determined spirit of resistance, especially for the reason that they are not met in a spirit of reconciliation and concession. Trade and public meetings are held and the current of feeling runs high. A retaliatory measure has been called for in the shape of an entire withdrawal of the workingmen's savings bank de

1 Massachusetts Statistics of Labor. Report 1877, pp. 19-49.

2 American Workman, Aug. 13, 1870. "The position of affairs in Lynn, so far as mutual good feeling and understanding between employers and employed are concerned was never better than today."

* Massachusetts Statistics of Labor, Report 1877, p. 33. See also U. S. Bulletin of labor, No. 8, pp. 5, 6.

• Workingman's Advocate, Aug. 17, 1872. p. 1, c. 6.

posits, though dispassionate observers doubt whether the measure will be carried out, or if so, whether the results desired would follow. New complications of the problem are involved in the use of Hodge's new machinery for burnishing, edge setting and trimming.'"

"It is believed that had the dispute about prices been the real question at issue, and had it been left to be decided upon its merits, the Crispins would have gained their point. It very soon became evident, however, that 'it was only the first move,— a mere outpost in the battle-the real object of which was to be the utter and complete overthrow of the Crispin organization in Lynn. For with this object openly avowed the manufacturers commenced to organize, funds were raised and agents sent to the several employers to enlist their aid and sympathy in the movement.

The manufacturers claimed that they could no longer compete with the flourishing factories of distant towns where labor was untrammeled and cheaper, but in one shop, even before the strike started, the wage scale asked by the Crispins was offered if the men would leave the order. This they refused to do.

By the 24th of August the strike was virtually ended. The exhaustion of the Crispin treasury, the high wages offered by the manufacturers, and the hopelessness of the fight won the men away from the lodges and completely broke the organization's power. By the end of the year the last charter was surrendered. In 1875 some of the Lynn lodges reorganized but without any attempt to control the green hands or to enforce a "closed shop." They were Crispins only in name.

The reduction of wages was the most prolific cause of Crispin strikes and, to the average member, probably the most important. He could see more clearly the value of an organization that prevented wage reductions than the value of one which hoped, by controlling the labor supply, ultimately to increase wages. His loyalty rested heavily upon the conviction that "but for the Crispin order shoemakers would today have been virtually beggars."

American Workman. Aug. 17, 1872.

• Massachusetts Statistics of Labor, Report 1877, p. 35.

7 Id. p. 40.

Cf. Chapter VII.

'Massachusetts Statistics of Labor, Report 1871, p. 612.

11

Wage reductions came in three forms, "cuts," seasonal wage changes, and divisions of labor. All three resulted in strikes,10 but those against wage cuts were the most numerous and important. They occurred in every year, in every shoe manufacturing state, and in every type of manufacture, though most markedly in the shoe centers and in the merchant-capitalist shops. The latter were in a difficult situation. The factories, with their machinery and green hands, were lowering wholesale prices. The custom shops, with their individual markets, were keeping up wages. The merchant-capitalists had to meet the price-competition of the factory and the quality-competition of both the factory and the custom shop. To compete with the one they had to reduce labor costs, to compete with the other they had to have skilled workmen.

The strikes were usually provoked by employers' associations agreeing upon a schedule of wages and telling the Crispins to accept or quit. Typical instances occurred in San Francisco and Danvers in 1869. In the former city, six leading manufacturers agreed upon a scale12 which they offered the Crispins in lieu of loss of employment; in the latter, a "ring" of manufacturers endeavored to force a lowered wage schedule." In both cases the Crispins struck successfully. The issues in controversy were often more complex. The Worcester strike of 1870 is a case in point and is best described in the words of a correspondent of the American Workman:14

13

"Early last month the boot manufacturers of this city had a meeting, at which they adopted a schedule of prices of crimping,

10 Some members, and even some locals, deprecated the attempt to force fair wages. A correspondent of this type wrote from Haverhill in 1870. "My idea is this, that more than one-half of our troubles arise from an overzealous desire to create or maintain artificial prices for our labor. I believe the order should have nothing whatever to do with the question of prices, i. c. [wages] but return to the first principle of the order; they are broad and strike at the root and very foundation of all our difficulties, and the law of supply and demand is inevitable, and as soon as you can control one, the other can be handled with pleasure." American Workman. Feb. 5, 1870.

11 Strikes for wage increases were very rare. Even the custom workmen found it a period not favorable to strikes for wage betterment. When they did strike successfully for better wage, the extra wage was taken from the consumer. cf. Workingman's Advocate. July 15, 19. Aug 19, 1871. 13 American Workman. June 12, 1869.

18 Same as above. Aug. 14, 1869.

14 Jan. 29, 1870.

bottoming, siding and treeing, which is a great reduction on the prices of last summer and which they offer for the five months of winter. Besides this they require that every man who works for them shall sign a contract, according to the terms of which a man will be obliged to stay with his employer one year, whether he has full work for him or not, take his pay twice a month, with the exception of 10 days' pay, which they require to be left in the hands of the employer, thus intending to oblige an employee to forfeit whatever money may be due him if he should exercise his undoubted right of leaving his employer, whenever he deems it necessary to do so for the benefit of himself or family. The Lodge, after due consideration of the above, in a spirit of compromise and cooperation for the common interests of both, offered to submit to a reduction of 10 per cent from the first of January to the first of April.

The events leading to this strike made the refusal or acceptance of an individual contract the principal issue in dispute. But to neither side of the controversy was this the whole question involved. The employers in demanding the contracts were virtually demanding that the men give up their union, collective bargaining and the right to strike-which they knew the men would not do. The men in refusing the contract and offering to accept a 10% reduction from the first of January to the first of April were merely offering to accept a seasonal reduction and refusing all the employers really sought. The real issue involved was the union's control of the wage-bargain. The employers sought, and the Crispins refused to accede to, a return to the individual labor contract. The strike lasted three months, involved one thousand two hundred workmen and cost the Crispins in wages $175,000.15 Its exact issue is uncertain.

The struggle which occurred in Philadelphia in January and February 1870, between thirty-one of the eighty-five manufacturers of the city16 and the three thousand members of the Philadelphia lodges was one of the most bitter in Crispin history.17 It seems to have been the result of a deliberate attempt upon the part of the employers to break up the unions. Their asso

15 Proceedings, 1870, p. 33.

16 American Workman. Feb. 12, 1870.

17 Not all of the 3,000 Crispins were on a strike but all united in directing and financing the efforts of the strikers.