Through the Lense of Syndicalism : Fragmentation on the Vancouver
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THROUGH THE LENSE OF SYNDICALISM: FRAGMENTATION ON THE VANCOUVER AND BRITISH COLUMBIA LEFT BEFORE THE GREAT WAR James Mark Leier B.A., Simon Fraser University, 1985 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF' MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of History @ James Mark Leier 1987 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY July 1987 All rights resewed. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. APPROVAL Name: James Mark Leier Degree: Master of Arts Titleofthesis: ThroughtheLenseofSyndicalism: Fragmentationonthe Vancouver and British Columbia Left Before the Great War. Examining Committee: Chairman: Dr. J, I. Little Dr Al len C seager,keni& Supervisor - Dr. Don Kirschner, Supervisory Cornmi ttee Dr. ~ric~~.sag6r;€xternal Examiner Associate Professor of History University of Victoria PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENSE I hereby grant to Simon Fraser University the right to lend my thesis, project or extended essay (the title of which is shown below) to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the l ibrary of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for flnanclal gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Titi e of Thes i s/Project/Extended Essay Author: I ' J- (signatyre) (date) ABSTRACT This thesis is an examination of the Industrial Workers of the World and its relations with capital, organized labour, and the socialist movement in British Columbia before the First World War. Unlike most studies of the IWW, the paper argues that the union's syndicalism was not merely a response to bad conditions created in a climate peculiar to the west. Instead, it argues that the IWW was a response to monopoly capitalism in North America. More specifically, the call for workers' control of industry arose from the efforts of capital to de-skill the work process and remove what control workers had in the work place. The reaction of the American Federation of Labor was quite different. The leaders of the AFL embraced conservatism, and in place of the IWW's call to organize the unorganized, they excluded unskilled and immigrant workers from their ranks. Between these poles of syndicalism and labourism, the rest of the B.C. labour movement worked out a range of responses. These different responses were rooted in different class experiences, and often led to conflicts between the syndicalists, socialists, and trades unionists. Several incidences of this conflict are examined, and some preliminary work outlining the different class backgrounds of the three groups is presented. b iii DEDICATION To my parents. Jim and Margaret, and my brother, Ben QUOTATION The liberty of the ballot is the greatest comedy of the century. Anonymous Wobbly, 1909 TABLE OF CONTENTS Approval .......................................................................................................................................................................ii Abstract .........................................................................................................................................................................iii Dedication .................................................................................................................................................................... iv Quotation ......................................................................................................................................................................v List of Tables ...................................................................................................................................................... vii Preface .......................................................................................................................................................................viii I . Syndicalism and the Rise of Monopoly Capitalism ................................................................ 1 I1. Rallying 'Round the Standard in Canada and British Columbia ........................................... 22 I11 . Wobblies. Socialists. Unionists. and Free Speech .........................................................................47 IV . Class and Ideology in Vancouver ........................................................................................................75 Co~iclusion ..................................................................................................................................................................94 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................................................96 MANUSCRIPTS ........................................................................................................................................... 96 NEWSPAPERS .............................................................................................................................................96 THESES AND UNPUBLISHED STUDIES .....................................................................................96 BOOKS ...........................................................................................................................................................97 ARTICLES ................................................................................................................................................... 100 LIST OF TABLES Table Page Transiency and stability by group and year .............................................................................................................................................................................87 Transiency and stability: appearances in the city directories, 1909-1914 ..............................................................................................................................................................................88 Ethnicity of IWW, SPC and WLC ........................................................................................................................................................................... 89 Free speech fight, 1909 arrests ..............................................................................................................................................................................90 Percentages of arrests ..............................................................................................................................................................................91 Free speech fight, 1912, arrests .............................................................................................................................................................................92 Percentages of arrests ..............................................................................................................................................................................93 vii PREFACE The Industrial Workers of the World has not been treated well by modem historians. This is a surprising claim to make in light of the extensive works on the union published in the last twenty-five years. Several historians, among them Melvyn Dubofsky, Philip Foner, and Joseph Conlin, have examined the IWW in great detail. Its story has been charted from northern B.C. to Australia, from the founding convention of 1905 to the failures of the 1970s. The histories of Wobbly martyrs have been well-documented, while even the "songs to fan the flames of discontent" are well-known. Yet in spite of the meticulous attention paid to the historical record, the beliefs which inspired the songs and urged on the martyrs have been treated with condescension. Historians have been quick to judge the ideology of the IWW and find it wanting. Nurtured on the Wagner Act and the post-war settlement, most historians view the anarcho-syndicalism, or, more properly, the revolutionary industrial unionism, of the Wobblies as quixotic. Liberal historians prefer the parliamentary shadow-boxing of social democracy to the direct action of the IWW, while Marxist-Leninists attack the critique of the vanguard and the state it posed. b Historians friendly to the labour movement prefer the class collaboration of the AFL-CTO to the class warfare of the Wobblies. Since the IWW and anarcho-syndicalism were effectively beaten by competing ideologies by the end of the Second World War, most historians assume they must have been truncated lines of evolution. The IWW is often considered quaint but hopelessly utopian and irrelevant to the history of the modem world. But this assumption deprives us of many valuable insights. If we abandon it and see the IWW as a realistic historical alternative, we view the development of class relations in North America from a very different perspective. We gain a new understanding of the specific role of monopoly capitalism in redefining the work process and work relations. We appreciate how different strata in the working class responded to new pressure in different viii ways; we see how socialist and labow leaders preferred to abandon syndicalism in order to seek compromises with capital and the state. These compromises may have initially