An Eight-Hour Day Or a Big Strike,” the 1903 Operative Millers’, Nailers’, Packers’

UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

“An Eight-Hour Day or a Big Strike,” The 1903 Operative Millers’, Nailers’, Packers’,

and Loaders’ Strike in the Minneapolis Flour Mills

Shannon Elizabeth Murray

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

CALGARY, ALBERTA

SEPTEMBER, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-494-44650-8

ABSTRACT

On September 21, 1903, men in the operative millers’, nailers’ and packers’, and loaders’ unions left the Minneapolis flour mills where they worked. On the 22nd, they returned as strikers walking a picket line, to support the eight-hour workday for the loaders. The three unions united under the International Union of Flour and Cereal Mill

Employees (IUFCME) in 1902, and this was the first test of their solidarity. Throughout the strike divisions like age, birthplace, marital status, wage, and skill among the men were clear. The millwrights’ union, also IUFCME members, did not strike. The men who were married and had ties to the area were the most militant during the strike. The mill owners, members of the Citizens’ Alliance (CA), fought to undermine worker solidarity and establish the open shop. The strike failed, resulting in a strengthened CA and an open shop principle in Minneapolis.

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would first like to thank my advisor, Dr. Elizabeth Jameson, for her guidance and aid during my research and writing period. Also thanks to Dr. Kurt Hackemer, whose guidance and supervision during my undergraduate career has led me to where I am today. I would like to thank my friends and family for supporting me during my thesis writing and research. Thank you to Gretchen, Amy, and Pernille for all of your support and help and to Kris and Robyn for bouncing ideas around. Thank you Ryan who was patient with my schedule and helped in every way he could. Thanks to Becky for being there always. Thanks to my mom, dad, and sister for supporting me and giving me a place to stay while I researched.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………....ii

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………....iii

Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………iv

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION AND REVIEW OF LITERATURE………………1

CHAPTER TWO: INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT…………………………………...30

CHAPTER THREE: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CAPITAL AND

LABOR………………………………………………………….…………….....50

CHAPTER FOUR: THE STRIKE…………………………………………………….....71

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION…………………………………………………….119

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………..……..124

List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………..iii

Table 2.1: Nativity of Minneapolitans, Ward Five Inhabitants, and Mill

Employees Studied ………………………………...…………………………….43

Table 4.1: Number of Married Heads of Household With and Without

Boarders ………………………………………………………………………..108

Table 4.2: Mill Employees In Enumeration Districts Fifty through Fifty-Six

Birthplace ………………………………………………………...…………….110

Table 4.3: Marriage Rates of Mill Employees Studied by

Occupation ………………………………………………………….………….112

Table 4.4: Marriage Rates of Mill Employees Studied by Occupation and

Birthplace ……….…………………………………………………...... 114

iv Table 4.5: Average Weeks of Unemployment Among Minneapolitan

Laborers and Mill Employees Studied, 1900…………………………………...115

List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………….iv

Fig 1.1: Map of Minneapolis’s Ward Five, Including the Mill

District……………………………………………………………………………28

Fig 1.2: Enumeration Districts Fifty through Fifty-Six in Minneapolis’s

Ward Five Defined, 1900………...……………………………………....29

Fig 4.1: Minneapolis Mill District and Location of Prominent Boarding Homes

for Millwrights and Mill Operatives……………………………………………107

v 1

Chapter One: Introduction and Review of the Literature

At the turn of the twentieth century, just over 200,000 men, women, and children called Minneapolis, Minnesota home. Three of them, who represented many more, were

Ward Ormmond, John Rung, and Andrew Haley. All three men worked in the city’s flour mills. Ormmond was a single boarder living on 2nd Avenue South. A millwright, the forty-one-year-old worked eight hours a day, five days a week, setting up and maintaining mill machinery. Ormmond had moved to Minneapolis from Ohio. He made

$16.00 a week doing his job. Living just four blocks away was Andrew Haley, a thirty- eight-year-old from Wisconsin. Haley was an operative miller who oversaw the progress of grain as it was milled into flour. Like Ormmond, Haley worked eight hours a day, five days a week, though Haley earned only about $15.00 weekly. A married man with no children, Haley was the head of his household at 629 6th Street South. Rung was also married, and the father of five children. Head of his household, Rung resided in the 200 block of 8th Avenue South. Born in Minnesota, Rung, age thirty-four, was a packer, responsible for putting flour into sacks and barrels for shipping. Rung, like Ormmond and Haley, worked an eight-hour day, five days a week. However, Rung earned only

$11.25 a week, nearly $5.00 a week less than Ormmond.1 These men shared a place of occupation, and lived in similar neighborhoods, but were divided along craft lines as well by their wages, and marital status. These demographic differences in combination with different life experience had profound effects on the mill employees.

In the autumn of 1902, the operative millers’ union and the nailers’ and packers’ union negotiated for an eight-hour day. This was the first negotiation between mill

1 “Mill Wages in Minneapolis,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 3 June 1903. 2

employees and mill owners since the unions of the millwrights, operative millers, nailers

and packers, and loaders had joined with an international organization, the International

Union of Flour and Cereal Mill Employees (IUFCME). Although the operative millers,

nailers, and packers got their demand, neither the loaders’ nor the millwrights’ union

were included in the negotiation.2 As negotiations were taking place among the unions of the operative millers and nailers and packers, the millwrights’ union not only demanded an eight-hour day but also a wage increase. The millwrights, unsuccessful in negotiating with the mill owners, struck for ten days until mill owners gave them an eight-hour day and a very small pay raise.3 The loaders continued working ten- and twelve-hour days.

In the spring of 1903 the loaders, the least-skilled men working in the mills, approached the operative millers’ and nailers’ and packers’ unions to seek support in acquiring the eight-hour day. The operative millers’ and nailers’ and packers’ unions pledged support for the loaders. However, when the loaders approached the millwrights’ union, the millwrights declined to support the loaders for the eight-hour workday. Why did the millwrights refuse the loaders’ request while the others supported it? There is evidence to suggest that the nailers, packers, and loaders shared similar backgrounds and life experiences and were very different from the millwrights. Although Rung, Haley, and Ormmond shared an occupational and residential location, Ormmond and the millwrights were very different from the operative millers like Haley and the nailers, packers, and loaders like Rung. These differences affected the mill employees’ attitudes toward other workers and influenced how they acted in response to the loaders’ request for support.

2 “Flour Mill Employees: Eight Hours a Day is Granted Without a Struggle,” The Union, 3 October 1902. 3 “Millwrights,” The Union, 10 October 1902. 3

Other factors, too, affected the mill employees’ autumn 1903 strike. In the year between the successful negotiations among the mill owners and the unions of the operative millers and nailers and packers, there was an increased tension in the relationship between labor and capital in Minneapolis. The mill employees joined the

IUFCME in the autumn of 1902. At the same time, the mill owners made their membership in the Citizens’ Alliance (CA), a national organization with locals that advocated the establishment of the open shop in all industries in the United States, public.4 The tensions among mill employees and between capital and labor came to a head in the autumn of 1903 when the operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders struck in support of the eight-hour day for the loaders. The story of flour milling in

Minneapolis, however, began seventy-three years before the autumn strike.

Minneapolis was established in one of the most potentially lucrative locations in the state of Minnesota. The Mississippi River was on the eastern edge of the city, on its western edge, a large hinterland with fertile soil that reached to the Missouri River in the

Dakotas; to its north, thick forest and thousands of lakes, and to its south its twin city, St.

Paul and the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. St. Anthony Falls, the largest drop the Mississippi River took in its 2340-mile stretch between Itasca, Minnesota and New Orleans, was situated in the center of the city.5 This drop allowed for massive industry to set up in Minneapolis, none larger than flour milling.

From the falls to the world, flour milled at St. Anthony Falls would bear familiar names: Washburn-Crosby, sold as Gold Medal and General Mills, and Pillsbury. At the turn of the century, there were three major flour milling firms, Washburn-Crosby,

4 An open shop prevents any requirement for workers to be in a union when they worked in a particular industry. 5 Lucille Kane. The Falls of St. Anthony (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987), 1. 4

Northwestern Consolidated, which bought small independent flour mills and

amalgamated them under one company, and Pillsbury. These “big three” dominated the

waterfront along St. Anthony Falls. The mill district ran along Washington Avenue

South and the Mississippi River between Marquette Avenue South and 9th Avenue South, and was at the north end of Minneapolis’s Ward Five.6 The largest mills in the district, the Washburn A and B mills, stood next to one another between Washington Avenue

South and the Mississippi River. Their elevators and tall limestone structures towered over the rest of the city. North from the Washburn A and B mills were smaller Washburn mills, small Pillsbury mills and mills that belonged to the Northwestern Consolidated. As the mills grew, so too did the city. The flour mills employed thousands of people, nearly

1,800 directly involved with milling wheat into flour and packaging it for transport, in skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled positions. As a result, Minneapolis drew workers from all corners, both through in-migration within the United States and from foreign immigration, primarily from Scandinavian countries and English Canada. In the late- nineteenth century, railroads in the upper Midwest began to develop quickly; many terminated or had hubs in Minneapolis.

By 1900, the city had several booming industries and a vibrant population.

Although flour mills were still dominant, there were lumber mills, garment factories, breweries, banking, railroads, and other industries that contributed to the economic growth of the city. This thesis analyzed 115 mill employees that lived in Ward Five, enumeration districts fifty through fifty-six. The 115 men studied were the only millwrights, operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders listed as living in this

6 See Minneapolis Ward 5 map at the end of Chapter One. 5

geographic boundary.7 Studying demographic categories and life experiences of these twenty-seven millwrights, forty operative millers, and forty-eight nailers, packers, and loaders aided in making hypotheses to answer the question of why the millwrights rebuffed the loaders’ request for support in 1903.

There were two types of unions operating in the Minneapolis mills at this time.

Craft unions are unions that are based around the tools a worker uses to do his job. There were four major craft unions in the mills: those of the millwrights, the operative millers, the nailers and packers, and the loaders. Industrial unions organize all workers in a type of industry. The IUFCME was supposed to represent the four major craft unions in the mills, but it was not as much an industrial union as an international organization that represented mill employees in the United States. The IUFCME was affiliated with the

American Federation of Labor (AFL). After the Civil War, the United States entered into a period of rapid industrialization. Worker organization also flourished during this period, and its major cause was establishing the eight-hour workday. In the flour milling industry, capital and labor had had a fairly agreeable relationship in Minneapolis for decades until the early years of the 1900s when the mill owners began their attempts to establish an open shop in their industry and the city.

Events like the Haymarket Strike in Chicago in 1886, the Cripple Creek strike in

Colorado in 1894, and the Pullman strike in Chicago were catalysts for owners to organize themselves nationally in order to more effectively combat labor organizations.

By the turn of the twentieth century, employer organizations like the Citizens’ Alliance

(CA) and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) became prominent in

7 The ward boundaries were not organized in square blocks. Rather, select sections of streets belonged to each enumeration districts. Districts fifty through fifty-six were chosen due to their close proximity to the mill district. For a breakdown of the districts, see Figure 1.2 at the end of Chapter One. 6

industrial centers across the United States. The chief objective of both groups was to

establish the principle of the open shop in industries throughout the United States. The

mill owners were most active with the CA at this time. The mill owners likely joined the

CA because they agreed with the principle of the open shop. During times of labor

conflict, the mill owners used CA-established tactics like firing unskilled laborers who

made demands for improved conditions.8 However, one of the CA’s principles was to undercut worker solidarity and community support for labor, which the mill owners tried to do in Minneapolis as well. In 1902, the Minneapolis mill owners secretly joined the

CA, and they strictly followed the organization’s principles.9 Minneapolis was not the only city in which the CA became active during this period. The CA was most effective in the Midwest, in cities like St. Louis and Sedalia, Missouri, though it had burgeoning groups outside of the Midwest in New York at this time.10

In September 1902, the mill employees founded the IUFCME.11 Although it unified workers in one industry regardless of skill, the IUFCME was not exactly an industrial union. This was because the four craft unions of the millwrights, operative millers, nailers and packers, and loaders remained active in addition to joining the

IUFCME. Industrial unions, too, only functioned if all employees supported one another despite skill differences, which was not achieved in the IUFCME. The IUFCME was an international union, which represented workers in an industry but whose members

8 Unskilled laborers are those workers who did not receive formal training for their occupation. Skilled workers received formal training, either through school or apprenticeship, for their occupation. 9 William Millikan, A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903-1947 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001), 26. 10 CA members in these two states communicated with the Minneapolis CA. Letter form President of Mason Builders’ Association in NY to Wallace Nye in Minneapolis, 25 August 1902. Citizens Alliance Records, 1903-1953, M465 MHS; Letter from J. West Goodwin to Wallace Nye in Minneapolis, 11 September, 1903. Citizens Alliance Records, 1903-1953, M465 MHS. 11 “Flour Mill Employees,” The Union, 26 September 1903. 7

remained in their own distinct unions. The IUFCME had jurisdiction over all mill

workers. As a sign of how important Minneapolis was to the industry of milling, the

IUFCME was headquartered in the city and its first president was a former packer with

the Washburn-Crosby company.12 The separate craft unions that were represented by the

IUFCME nationally retained their individual unions locally. The millwrights’, operative millers’, nailers’ and packers’, and loaders’ unions were all affiliated with the IUFCME.

The aforementioned mill employees were a part of the working classes, though they still retained differences from one another. At this time, all of the millwrights, operative millers, nailers, packers. They sold their labor for wages and were therefore a part of the working class. However, they were in different echelons of the working classes because class functions in relation to the rest of society. The millwrights earned higher wages than the operative millers who earned more than the nailers, packers, and loaders. The difference in wages affected how these men related to each other as mill employees as well as how they functioned under the umbrella of the IUFCME.

One year after the IUFCME was formed, it had a battle over the eight-hour workday that would be of significance not only in the fight against the open shop in

Minneapolis, but to unionized mill employees across the nation. When the IUFCME met resistance from the mill owners and the CA, the IUFCME advised the striking mill employees to end the strike, but many of the operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders remained on the picket line. Why would the IUFCME try to end the strike without achieving its goal of obtaining the eight-hour day for the loaders? Why did the millwrights refuse to strike with the other member unions of the IUFCME? Why did the

12 “Minutes of the Flour Packers and Nailers Union No 1548 of Minneapolis, Minn. American Federation of Labor ,” 28 July 1901. Jean E. Spielman Papers, 1901-1936, M535 MHS. 8

operative millers decide to strike in sympathy with the loaders? Why did the nailers’ and

packers’ union so eagerly support the loaders’ union in its pursuit of the eight-hour day?

This strike illuminated the differences among the millwrights, operative millers, and

nailers, packers, and loaders. It also showed how owners’ organizations often exploited

the divisions among workers to undermine the solidarity of strikers. This thesis will

explore the demographic factors and work experiences that created solidarity and

divisions among mill workers.

Although other historians have used this type of analysis to explain labor conflicts before, the case of the Minneapolis mill employees is different. The majority of flour mill employees were white and male. At this time, few food processing industries were as white and male as the Minneapolis flour mills, as many employed non-whites and women.13 Another difference of the Minneapolis flour mills outside of its workforce being comprised predominantly of white men was that the employees studied who participated in and supported the 1903 strike were mostly married. Traditional labor history often suggested that men who led and participated in strikes were young, single radicals.14 However, more recent community studies show that there are contexts in which married men led and participated in strikes.15 Additionally, the case of the 1903 mill employees’ strike is exceptional in that it was primarily unskilled workers leading

13 See: Rick Halpern, Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago’s Packing Houses, 1904-54 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997); Vicki L. Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987). 14 See: Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969). 15 See: Elizabeth Jameson, All That Glitters: Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998); Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976); Mary Blewett, Men, Women, and Work: Class, Gender, and Protest in the New England Shoe Industry, 1780-1910 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988). 9

and supporting the strike. In other contexts where married men led strikes, they were

also skilled men. One of the hypotheses presented in this thesis to be tested in future

research is whether the majority of all of the men participating in the 1903 strike were

married and unskilled. Another way in which the context of this thesis is different than

many other community and labor studies performed in the past is the character of

Minneapolis. The city connected agricultural hinterlands to urban centers throughout the

United States. It also had many big industries, like textiles, garments, lumber, and

breweries and over 200,000 people. Most other community and labor studies examined

smaller cities where one industry dominated the economy.16 The 1903 strike also spoke to larger themes of craft versus industrial unionism. The American Federation of Labor

(AFL) was mostly active in the East and industrial unions were active in the West, particularly in mining and brewing. Minneapolis was the northern nexus of the dialogue between craft and industrial unionism, which was evident in the 1903 strike. Also, the

Citizens’ Alliance (CA) was embryonic at this time, and its role in Minneapolis, particularly the autumn 1903 mill strike, was pivotal to the outcome.

This thesis employed methodologies and frameworks from the new working class history. Using the 1900 United States manuscript census of population, quantitative data have been compiled in the categories of employment, age, marital status, birthplace, parental birthplace, and whether a person was a roomer, boarder, lodger, or head of a household. Summary numbers from the census in population and manufactures were also employed in this thesis. However, this information was generally used only when it was

16 Halpern’s study of meatpackers in Chicago is one of the exceptions. Dawley’s study focused on Lynn, where shoemaking dominated the city, and Jameson’s study centered on the Cripple Creek district whose main industry was mining. Also see: Peter Rachleff, Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the Labor Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1993). 10

compiled specifically for Minneapolis, because using numbers from Hennepin County as

a whole would have offered misleading demographic data.17 The census was published in 1900 and the strike examined in this thesis occurred in 1903. Consequently, some of the demographics could have changed. For example, men who were single could have gotten married and men who were married could have become widowers. In future research, the 1910 U.S. and the 1905 Minnesota state census could be used to verify data found in the 1900 federal census. The census was also used for qualitative purposes, as reading each page of the census in districts fifty through fifty-six offered a sense of the demographics of the people living there who were not mill employees. Many of the working men in these districts were day laborers, unskilled and unemployed for weeks every year. There were other types of workers, mostly in the service industry. Railroad porters, who were almost exclusively African-American, also lived in the area, living mostly in the southern areas of the districts studied. There were also waitresses and waiters who lived throughout the districts, though many lived close to Washington

Avenue South and Fourth Street South. Near where Marquette Avenue and Washington

Avenue South converge were a number of theatres and a circus. As a result, there were many actors and actresses living in the area as well as trapeze artists and other circus performers.18 Enumeration districts fifty through fifty-six were chosen because they surround the mill district and had many mill employees in their boundaries.

Other sources, such as newspapers, have helped to show how the community viewed the actions of the mill owners and mill employees. The Weekly Northwestern

17 The other cities in Hennepin County at the time, like Minnetonka and Edina, were more affluent and less diverse than Minneapolis, particularly Ward Five. Thus using Hennepin County data would have skewed demographical data, which would not have been representative of Minneapolis. 18 Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900. 11

Miller, a trade magazine aimed at mill owners in Minneapolis and elsewhere across the nation, was particularly valuable in helping to understand the perspective of the employers.19 The magazine reported on union activity in the mills frequently. William

Crowell Edgar, the editor and publisher of The Northwestern Miller, favored improvements in work conditions for laborers, but remained an ally of the mill owners.

Edgar was covering the mill industry in Minneapolis from its earliest days, and when the mills implemented new technology that mass-produced pure white flour, Edgar stated that the Minneapolis mills had just “democratized” flour, allowing for even the poorest of people to enjoy pure flour.20 Edgar led famine relief efforts in Russia, and often used his magazine to support the fair treatment of mill employees in Minneapolis.21 Although it was an industry journal, The Northwestern Miller provided weekly updates on the activities of the craft unions in the mills and of the growth and actions of the IUFCME.

The Union, an outlet for the Minnesota Trades and Labor Council, reported on the

IUFCME and other unions from the viewpoint of the organized workers. The St. Paul

Pioneer Press and Minneapolis Journal were of use for examining how the general community reacted to the 1903 strike and other labor disputes that involved the mill employees. All newspapers were used with caution, particularly The Northwestern

Miller and The Union whose publishers likely had biases that affected their reporting of the actions of capital and labor. Beyond these primary sources, many secondary sources on Minnesota, community, labor, and the working class were also valuable.

19 Prior to April 1902, the Weekly Northwestern Miller was the Northwestern Miller, which was published in La Crosse, Wisconsin. The offices formally moved to Minneapolis and changed the name of the publication in April 1902. 20 Robert M. Frame, Millers to the World: Minnesota’s Nineteenth Century Water Power Flour Mills (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1977), 80-81. 21 Letter from W.C. Edgar to Family, April 16, 1892. “W.C. Edgar and family Papers 1832, 1855, 1882- 1917,” MNHS A/.E23 Box 1. 12

To research the context of this thesis, many works of history on Minnesota or

Minneapolis and other cities in the state were consulted. It is important to distinguish

between works that focused more on place than on larger historical questions. Most of

the monographs used focused on the Iron Range, southeast Minnesota, and the Twin

Cities.22 There were a few histories of the state employed for this thesis as well, which were imperative for understanding how the state progressed over time and how the 1902 and 1903 labor conflicts in the Minneapolis mills fit into that development. The questions asked about these books centered on how authors treated the ideas of class, labor, and peoples’ life experiences and demographics. Some of the books followed a more political history framework and focused more on the state, government, and political leaders while others were closer to social history that examined the population of an area and social trends, though social and political history do overlap in most of the books. Although all of these works have shortcomings and biases, and some of them do not focus solely on Minneapolis, they still contribute to an understanding of the context of the state and the city at the turn of the century.

Carol Brink’s The Twin Cities is an example of a local history done by someone enamored with the location.23 Brink provided basic facts and a chronology of events that occurred in the Twin Cities, though her narrative got lost in anecdotes and a lack of analysis. Her tendency to depict the Twin Cities optimistically meant that she did not scrutinize social classes nor did she investigate labor conflicts. Brink’s narrative style

22 See: Richard Hudelson and Carl Ross, By the Ore Docks: A Working People’s History of Duluth, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006); Peter Rachleff, Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the Labor Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1993). The arrowhead of northern Minnesota is often called the Iron Range because of the rich iron ore and taconite deposits there that gave rise to the mining industry there. Southeast Minnesota has food processing plants like Hormel. 23 Carol Brink, The Twin Cities (New York: Macmillan Company, 1961). 13

followed a political chronology that did not fully explore or analyze the social side of

Minnesota’s history. The first social history of Minnesota was the 1945 book North Star

Country by Meridel Le Sueur.24 Le Sueur’s book focused on how Minnesota’s population affected the state’s development. Describing Minnesota’s socialist heritage, she described Ignatius Donnelly travelling through the state touting the “‘Rights of

Man,’” in his efforts to organize a farmer-labor party.25 Her work was a people’s history of the state and showed how influential Minnesota’s immigrants were in its political and social development.

The contrast to Le Seur’s work was Theodore Blegen’s Minnesota: A History of the State.26 Although it drew from North Star Country, the book had a broader scope, and while its nearly 600 pages may have put off casual readers, Minnesota is an invaluable source. Blegen’s Minnesota mostly followed a political history framework, though he took special notice of immigration, which he suggested drove the state’s progress socially. Blegen used an extensive time period, pre-history to the early 1960s, that allowed him to describe the development and progression of the state in terms of economy, politics, infrastructure, and society. Minnesota included examinations of the relationship between capital and labor in the state, and showed that labor conflict has been a part of Minnesota’s past. As a political history, though, Blegen just reported that strikes occurred without analyzing the roots of labor conflicts. Very few other books

24 Meridel Le Sueur, North Star Country (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1945). 25 Ibid., 204. 26 Theodore Blegen, Minnesota: A History of the State (1963; repr., new chapter by Russell Fridley, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1978). 14

used political frameworks to write the history of Minnesota were published after Blegen’s

book.27

Annette Atkins’ Creating Minnesota: A History from the Inside Out moved away from the political framework Blegen and Clark used.28 Whereas Blegen provided a political history of the state, Atkins provided a more social history. Atkins successfully integrated Minnesotans from all classes and backgrounds into the state’s history.

Creating Minnesota discussed how classes interacted throughout the state, and outlined the growth of labor organization beginning with the first Knights of Labor chapter in

1878.29 Creating Minnesota also showed that there were considerable class struggles in the state, and discussed the development of labor and owner organizations. Atkins showed how class functioned in society, and showed how it affected peoples’ attitudes and actions.

Beyond general histories of the entire state, books and articles were written about the state and, more specifically, Minneapolis. Early works, like Lucille Kane’s The Falls of St. Anthony focused on the technical history of the industry located there. 30 Kane provided incredible detail on the history of the falls. Her focus was only on the falls, and as a result, her social analysis was lacking. Kane did discuss the large economic scale of the flour mills, but did not link the mills specifically to how their economy affected

Minneapolitans. Robert M. Frame III helped to expand Kane’s work. His Millers to the

World: Minnesota’s Nineteenth Century Water Power Flour Mills chronicled the

27 Clifford E. Clark, ed., Minnesota in a Century of Change (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1989). 28 Annette Atkins, Creating Minnesota: A History from the Inside Out (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2007). 29 Ibid., 110. 30 Lucille M. Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony: The Waterfall that Built Minneapolis (St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1997). 15

development of milling in the nineteenth century.31 While he explained the flour milling processes in detail, he did not fully examine how changes in this process affected those who worked in the mills. Frame’s research was extensive. The Minnesota Historical

Society in St. Paul has seven boxes filled with Frame’s research, which included social data on the mill owners among other documents.32 This collection was an indispensable resource for this thesis.

In 1978, one year after Millers to the World was published, Frame wrote an article for Minnesota History that called for more work to be done about Minnesota’s flour mills. He argued that they had been “neglected by historians,” and that more attention needed to be paid to them before they disappeared.33 That same year, a history that included the mill district was published. David Rosheim’s The Other Minneapolis: A

History of the Minneapolis Skid Row chronicled the demographic changes in the Gateway district, where Hennepin Avenue intersected with Nicollet Avenue, from its height of prosperity in the 1890s to its descent into dilapidation in the 1940s.34 Rosheim’s book, although it included some flour mill employees, did not satisfy Frame’s plea for flour mill history. Historians did not heed Frame’s call for more than two decades.

In 1981, the Minnesota Historical Society Press published a unique history of

Minnesota. Edited by June Drenning Holmquist, They Chose Minnesota was a series of

31Robert M. Frame, Millers to the World: Minnesota’s Nineteenth Century Water Power Flour Mills (St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society, 1977). Frame’s Ph.D. dissertation was published as a book as well. See: Robert M. Frame, “The Progressive Millers: A Cultural and Intellectual Portrait of the Flour Milling Industry, 1870-1930, Focusing on Minneapolis, Minnesota” (Ph. D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1980). 32 Almost all of Frame’s documents are in boxes available in the reading room at the Minnesota Historical Society Archives (MHSA) in St. Paul, most of the boxes are just titled “General Subject Files,” but they include personal correspondence of W.C. Edgar, who wrote and edited the Weekly Northwestern Miller, and other prominent men associated with flour milling in Minneapolis. 33 Frame, “Mills Machines and Millers,” in Minnesota History 46:4 (1978), 162. 34 David L. Rosheim, The Other Minneapolis: or A History of the Minneapolis Skid Row (Maquoketa, Iowa: The Andromeda Press, 1978). 16

ethnographies that provided exposition on Minnesota’s various ethnic groups in and their

journeys to the state.35 Compiling census data from each of the eighty-seven counties in the state from 1860 to 1930, the authors examined how migration patterns developed statewide. The book’s authors showed how various ethnic groups established themselves in Minnesota, and illustrated where the people of these groups worked, the organizations they formed, and how they interacted with other ethnic groups in the state. Peg Meier’s

Bring Warm Clothes featured a variety of primary sources that told the social history of

Minnesotans.36 Meier’s book was very much a work of social history. She compiled as many letters, diaries, newspapers, advertisements, and other documents as possible to create a portrait of life around the state from the 1700s through the 1940s. The book offered first-hand perspective on events happening in the past, and provided an understanding of the opinions and beliefs of Minnesotans in the past.

In its spring 1994 issue, Hennepin County History published two articles by

Tasslyn Frame that were based in the mill district in Minneapolis, which used to be St.

Anthony. “The Workers of St. Anthony Falls” showed where workers lived in

Minneapolis and offered insights into how they lived while “Women Workers at St.

Anthony Falls” showed how women were involved with both the labor and social

developments of Minneapolis.37 Frame offered data about the living conditions in St.

Anthony Falls and Minneapolis around the turn of the twentieth century, and gave insight

35 June Drenning Holmquist, ed., They Chose Minnesota: A Survey of the State’s Ethnic Groups (St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1981). 36 Peg Meier, Bring Warm Clothes: Letters and Photos from Minnesota’s Past (Minneapolis, MN: Minneapolis Star and Tribune Company, 1981). 37 Tasslyn Frame, “The Workers of St. Anthony Falls As Pictured in the Manuscript Censuses of 1895, 1900, and 1910,” Hennepin History 53:1 (1994); Tasslyn Frame, “Women Workers at St. Anthony Falls,” Hennepin History 53:2 (1994). See also: Emily Goodridge Grey, "The Black Community in Territorial St. Anthony: A Memoir,” Minnesota History 49 (Summer 1984). 17

into how people spent their money for entertainment. These articles were useful in

comparing mill employees with other workers at St. Anthony Falls.

There are several books that are labor and community studies of areas within

Minnesota. Elizabeth Faue’s Community of Suffering and Struggle was a study of the

working-class community in Minneapolis between 1915 and 1935.38 Published in 1991, it was centered on the growth and development of working-class consciousness in the city. Faue showed how community affected relations within the working class. In the

1934 Teamster’s strike, the workers of Minneapolis crossed trade, industrial, and gender lines to support each other’s unions. The book showed how class-consciousness existed and functioned. Faue’s work used a definition of class that applied to more of the community of Minneapolis than did previous writers. She disagreed with the idea that

“class solidarity existed in the public realm” only, because the public realm had so long been an “arena…assigned to men.”39 Rather than adhere to a definition that eliminated women workers, Faue’s definition of class incorporated women who worked from home and women who did not work for wages.40 This thesis examined how class existed in the public realm, though by examining how life experience and demographic factors affected workers’ attitudes toward work it also examined how class existed and functioned outside of the workplace. Also, this thesis examined men who traded labor for wages, and although this is an androcentric definition it applies in this context because all of the 115 mill employees studied were male. Faue’s definition of class was more about shared beliefs and concerns than about occupation and wage level, a concept that was used in

38 Elizabeth Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis 1915-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). 39 Ibid., 16. 40 Ibid., 18. 18

this thesis as well. Faue also used poems, songs, and literature created by the working

class at the time as well as oral histories she conducted.

Most of Minnesota’s labor histories have focused on the Iron Range or industrial centers outside the Twin Cities. By The Ore Docks: A Working People’s History of

Duluth analyzed how Duluth’s society affected the relationship between capital and labor

in that city. 41 One of the few books on labor in Minneapolis besides Community of

Suffering and Struggle by Faue was William Milliken’s The Minneapolis Citizens

Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903-1947.42 It chronicled the development of the CA in Minneapolis beginning in 1902, and included several paragraphs on how the CA affected the 1903 mill employees’ strike.43 Millikan did extensive research and showed how the relationship between capital, in the form of the

CA, and labor, in the form of unions, operated in the community of Minneapolis.

In 2003, there was renewed interest in Minneapolis as a community to study.

That year, the Mill City Museum opened in the shell of the ruined Washburn A mill that fire destroyed in 1991. The spring and summer volumes of Minnesota History were dedicated to Minneapolis history. Several of the articles involved the mills, though most were still focused on the technical side of milling and the falls.44 Through renewed

41 Richard Hudelson and Carl Ross, By the Ore Docks: A Working People’s History of Duluth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.) Mining in the Cuyuna, Mesabi, and Vermilion ranges in the state’s arrowhead region attracted thousands of Finns whose approach to labor and unionism led to severe labor disputes of national importance. One example of mining history is Marvin G. Lamppa, Minnesota’s Iron Country: Rich Ore, Rich Lives (Duluth, MN: Lake Superior Port Cities, 2004). 42 William Millikan, A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903-1947 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001). 43 The CA was affiliated with the Citizens Industrial Alliance (CIA), the purpose of which was to take away community support for unions and to increase the influence of capitalist owners over an entire community, particularly in the courts and local government. 44 See: John O. Anfinson, “Spiritual Power to Industrial Might: 12,000 Years at St. Anthony Falls,” Minnesota History 58:5-6 (2003); Scott F. Anfinson, “Unearthing the Invisible: Archaeology at the Riverfront.” Minnesota History 58:5-6 (2003); David B. Danbom, “Flour Power: The Significance of Flour Milling at the Falls,” Minnesota History 58:5-6 (2003). 19

preservation of and interest in the mill district, the need for research on the men and

women who worked in the mills has become clear. Understanding the community

dynamics of Minneapolis, particularly during one of its major growth periods at the turn

of the twentieth century, is imperative. This was the time when the city’s flour mills rose

to prominence on both the national and international levels, and it is necessary to

undertake a new study of the mills and its laborers to understand the experiences and acts

of the workers who helped to build the flour empire. Histories of Minnesota and its cities

were important for understanding the broader context of Minneapolis’s history at the turn

of the twentieth century. Labor and community studies also informed the context of this

thesis.

American labor history became a prominent field in history in the early 1910s.

Since then, labor history has transformed into working class and community studies. The questions asked in early labor history centered on leaders of unions and leaders of industry in conflict. These works rarely included social analysis of the workers involved in strikes, and hardly covered workers who were women, non-white, or unorganized.

Early labor historians defined class as a public phenomenon expressed by political action in organizing for better wage, hours, working conditions.45 This definition informed the definition employed in this thesis, as it included an examination of the mill employees engaged in political action when they demanded the eight-hour day. However, this thesis also expanded this definition to include how class functioned in workers’ homes and how their life experiences affected their attitudes toward their fellow workers and toward work.

45 Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle, 15. 20

The historians of the Commons school best exemplified early American labor history. They used a framework that showed labor history as a series of conflicts between the power structures of government, business, and labor and depicted labor history with a binary vision of organized labor versus management. The Commons school dominated labor history from the 1900s through the 1940s. Its most notable achievement was their multi-volume series on the history of American labor.46 Although this thesis focused on a strike, it did not follow the Commons framework. Instead of focusing only on the leaders of the unions and the leaders of capital, this thesis examined every worker in select occupations who lived in the same geographic area, providing a better understanding of the rank-and-file workers in the mills and their divisions along craft lines. The 1903 strike was used in this thesis to illuminate how demographic categories and life experiences altered how workers related to one another and to their work. The Commons school, however, rarely analyzed strikes by researching the rank- and-file members of unions and did not always investigate the underlying causes and ultimate consequences of strikes.

Labor history’s growth stagnated in the 1950s partially because of a shift away from the Commons school into Consensus history. The Consensus historians centered on the idea of shared culture, of a common set of values based on shared experiences and ideas. A significant issue with this approach, however, is that while all people have shared experiences, it is actually the circumstances of experiences that affect a person.

46 See: Selig Perlman and Philip Taft, History of Labor in the United States, 1896-1932 Volume IV: Labor Movements (New York: Macmillan Company, 1935). 21

The Consensus historians portrayed American society as an essentially classless society.47

The tumultuous social change of the 1960s drastically altered historians’ approaches to labor history and reflected the heterogeneity of American society. The new social history heavily influenced this thesis as it focused more on the working classes. Although unions and business owners were central to the history in this thesis, how they were studied and the questions asked about them and their actions followed closely those of the new social historians. Historians like E.P. Thompson, Herbert

Gutman, Stephan Thernstrom, Alan Dawley, Milton Cantor, Bruce Laurie, Elizabeth

Jameson, Laurie Mercier, Elizabeth Faue, and many others altered labor history, changing it into working-class history.48 Instead of focusing solely on a worker at work, these, and other, historians focused on characteristics such as marital status, gender, religion, ethnicity, age, wage, and residence and how they affected the workers both at home and at work.

When E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class was published in 1963, labor history was forever changed.49 Thompson defined class as a relationship, stating that classes could not exist independently without relating to one another. He

47 Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient Medieval and Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 366. Breisach characterized the Consensus Historians by stating that their “analysis of the American past must eschew philosophies and concepts which [did] not fit the American experience.” 48 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1972); Herbert Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America (New York: Vintage Books, 1976); Stephan Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (New York: Atheneum Press, 1973); Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976); Milton Cantor and Bruce Laurie, eds., Class, Sex, and the Woman Worker, (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977); Elizabeth Jameson, All That Glitters: Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998); Laurie Mercier, Anaconda: Labor, Community, and Culture in Montana’s Smelter City (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001); and Elizabeth Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis 1915-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). 49 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1972). 22

suggested that class was an “historical phenomenon,” meaning that it existed differently

in 1903 than it did in 1953 or 2003 and varied by place and context. Class was the result

of shared experiences, whereby people “feel and articulate the identity of their

differences as between themselves and against” others.50 Essentially groups of people in similar circumstances who shared similar outlooks grouped themselves as separate from other such groups of people who shared similar circumstances and outlooks among themselves. Thompson’s definition of class and how it functioned in society was implemented in this thesis. In this thesis, by examining whether workers were similar in characteristics such as wage, birthplace, age, marital status, and housing, it is clear that millwrights, operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders shared a class. However, within that class, the nailers, packers, and loaders saw themselves as similar to one another and different from the operative millers and millwrights. This type of division played an important part in why the millwrights did not support the loaders in their demand for an eight-hour day.

Herbert Gutman, Stephan Thernstrom, and Alan Dawley helped to expand the social roots of labor history. Gutman, Dawley, and Thernstrom, along with other

American labor historians, included more unskilled workers, women workers, and non- union workers. The new American labor histories focused on class rather than organized workers and labor as it related to the entire community, excluding the binary vision the

Commons school had. The historians in the new labor history showed that labor was at the center of urban communities and affected, as it was affected by, social structures, infrastructure, politics, and other community factors. Similarly, this thesis examines how the growth of Minneapolis just prior to the turn of the nineteenth century affected capital

50 Ibid., 9. 23

and labor in the city. Changes in transportation, demography, and industry within

Minneapolis had consequences for the mill owners and mill employees.

Stephan Thernstrom was among the first American social historians to use significant levels of quantitative evidence and analysis to help substantiate his claims.

Thernstrom’s book, Poverty and Progress, showed the expansion of labor history in the mid-twentieth century.51 The quantitative methods that were a part of the book allowed

Thernstrom to use statistical evidence to help generate his conclusions regarding the abstract concepts of class and consciousness. Poverty and Progress showed that many of these male laborers, who had similar wages, housing styles, and occupations, shared a belief in social mobility as well. Thernstrom’s definition of class as a group of, in this case, men who shared an occupation and set of beliefs is applicable for this thesis. 52 For example, although the millwrights saw themselves as a separate group from the operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders, the latter groups shared more similarities in occupational status, wage, and housing with each other than they did with the millwrights, showing that these groups of workers, while all in the working class, were still divided.

Herbert Gutman’s Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America was a collection of essays written over a fourteen-year period.53 Gutman’s essays reflect the changes in labor history between 1959 and 1973, and offered a brief historiography that included a call for significant change. While Thernstrom’s quantitative evidence was an

51 Stephan Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (New York: Atheneum Press, 1973). 52 Ibid., 56. Thernstrom discovered that although significant social mobility, such as rags-to-riches, existed it was exceedingly rare. However, Thernstrom found that most of the male laborers he studied still believed that America would never be a nation of have and have-nots, and that social mobility would eventually occur for most laborers. 53 Herbert Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America (New York: Vintage Books, 1976). 24

effective tool to gather data, Gutman professed that, taken alone, it stripped the meaning

from people’s actions.54 Gutman focused on the worker at and away from work that helped to illustrate a more complete depiction of American workers than did previous

American labor historians. Similar to Thompson, Gutman’s definition of class involved assessing categories like housing, marital status, occupation, religion, ethnicity, and wage. Gutman used some quantitative methodology combined with a cultural approach, which included using workers’ songs and poetry, to get an understanding of the abstract motives behind the actions of workers at the turn of the twentieth century.

A later example of the new working-class history focus on labor in the context of an entire community was Alan Dawley’s Class and Community.55 The book focused on shoemakers in Lynn, Massachusetts struggling with the destruction of their artisanal culture during industrialization. Dawley’s definition of class was based on relation to production. Artisans, like the Minneapolis mill employees in this study, were organized and were fighting for better working conditions. Dawley analyzed the relationship between culture and work, and brought the relationship between capital and labor into a community context. Dawley used the manuscript census to research the shoemakers in

Lynn.56 The data Dawley derived from the manuscript census and city directory included birthplace, residence, and marital status, which were also included in this thesis using the same types of sources.

54 Ibid., xiii. 55 Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976). 56 Ibid., 136 “Table 3. Nativity of Shoemakers: Factory, Nonfactory, and Cutters, 1870.” This table showed how the three groups of workers were different from one another in the category of birthplace, using data from the manuscript census, though they were all working class nonetheless. 25

Another difference between the new working-class historians and the Commons

School was the understanding of history as a cohesive subject. Rather than writing new volumes of “definitive” American labor history, Gutman approached the problem of writing a cohesive labor history of the United States with the answer that there could not be one – yet.57 Thernstrom, Gutman, and Dawley, among others, presented a platform from which labor, working class, and community historians would launch their research and writing.58 They had helped to alter labor history from a study of union leadership in battle with capital owners, to studies of how workers related to their labor and how the relationship between capital and labor affected a community.

In 1987, David Montgomery published a monograph that re-assessed the state of

American labor history. The Fall of the House of Labor studied workers at the point of production.59 The book also raised questions on demographic categories and associations

outside of the workplace. Many community studies were published in the late 1980s and

in the 1990s. Mary Blewett’s examination of gender and labor in the shoe industry in

New England, Men, Women, and Work studied workers’ attitude toward work,

particularly worker militancy.60 Blewett’s conclusions about marital status affecting a worker’s militancy were important to this thesis and its findings on a smaller scale regarding the majority of men who led and supported the 1903 strike being married.

57 58 See: Milton Cantor and Bruce Laurie, eds., Class, Sex, and the Woman Worker, (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977); Dana Frank, Purchasing Power: Consumer Organizing, Gender, and the Seattle Labor Movement, 1919-1929 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Elizabeth Jameson, All That Glitters: Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998); and Laurie Mercier, Anaconda: Labor, Community, and Culture in Montana’s Smelter City (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001). 59 David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 60 Mary Blewett, Men, Women, and Work: Class, Gender, and Protest in New England Shoe Industry, 1780-1910 (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1988). 26

Expanding how gender analysis was used in labor history was Ava Baron’s edited work

Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor.61 The book was a re- evaluation of American labor history from a gender standpoint that included analysis on how concepts of masculinity affected male workers in male-dominated industries. Both

Blewett and Baron’s works brought labor history away from the point of production and centered it in a larger community setting.

Adding to the movement toward community studies of labor was Dana Frank.

Her book, Purchasing Power, analyzed how unions and labor movements treated women, particularly as consumers who were told to only buy union label goods if they wanted to support their husbands, brothers, and sons in labor unions.62 Frank found that unions specifically targeted women as consumers, and their shopping habits became politicized.

This thesis, too, analyzed the role of consumerism in community-labor relations, and had similar conclusions to Frank’s. The most recent community study that was employed for this thesis was Laurie Mercier’s Anaconda.63 Her conclusions that class and culture bound workers in Anaconda, and union objectives divided them apply to this thesis.

Although all of the mill employees were in the working class, the millwrights did not adhere to the IUFCME’s objective of getting the eight-hour day for all of its employees.

Community studies helped to bring American labor history outside of the workplace, ultimately expanding how historians examine workers’ relations to one another and to their work.

61 Ava Baron, ed., Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). 62 Dana Frank, Purchasing Power: Consumer Organizing, Gender, and the Seattle Labor Movement, 1919- 1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 63 Laurie Mercier, Anaconda: Labor, Community, and Culture in Montana’s Smelter City (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001). 27

New labor history, working class history, and community studies informed this thesis. In order to study the 1902 and 1903 labor conflicts outside of just a labor union against capital, this thesis examined 115 mill employees. What made John Rung and

Andrew Haley side with supporting the loaders, while Ward Ormmond and the millwrights refused? The research undertaken for this thesis helped to answer questions about how demographic categories and life experiences affected workers’ attitudes toward each other, their work, and capital. There were other themes affecting the mill employees and mill owners as well. Both capital and labor were becoming increasingly politicized around the turn of the twentieth century, and the state was becoming more involved in labor conflicts. This brought the conflict between the mill employees and mill owners to a public platform that affected the community of Minneapolis and even involved the city’s mayor. At this time, too, nascent national organizations like the

IUFCME and the CA were trying to establish themselves as dominant groups in

Minneapolis. The 1903 strike of the operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders was a stage for competition between these two groups who were vying for control in the city. It is essential to examine how Minneapolis developed in relation to Minnesota and the upper Midwest in order to understand the importance of the 1902 and 1903 labor conflicts.

64 Figure 1.1: Map of Minneapolis's Ward Five, including the mill district.

64 Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, Ward Maps of United States Cities: A Selective Checklist of pre-1900 Maps in the Library of Congress (Washington: Library of Congress, 1975). 29

Figure 1.2: Enumeration districts 50 through 56 in Minneapolis’s Ward 5 defined, 1900.65

65 “Enumeration Districts in Minneapolis Ward 5,” [http://content.ancestrylibrary.com/Browse/list.aspx?dbid=7602&path=Minnesota.Hennepin.Minneapolis+ Ward+5], accessed July 2008. 30

Chapter Two: Industrial Development

The city of Minneapolis is a man in his late thirties who made a tremendous success at twenty-five. His parentage is mixed and racial differences quarrel in his veins. Ideas, too, and emotions thwart each other in his head. He is not quite sure of himself. And yet – he is pugnacious and still young with plenty of blood in him. His friends wonder where he is going next. Minneapolis isn’t like any other city. -Charles Rumford Walker, American City: A Rank and File History of Minneapolis1

At the turn of the twentieth century, Minneapolis was entering into a new age.

Developments in infrastructure and transportation brought the city into the twentieth century as a metropole for flour milling and a hub for many other industries. In the mid-

1860s, flour mills began to dominate the banks of St. Anthony Falls. Finally able to effectively harness the water power from the falls, the flour industry grew until the

Washburn A exploded in 1878. Nearly destroying the entire mill district, the explosion was timely in its destruction. The mill owners rebuilt using new technology, and upon re-opening in 1881, Minneapolis would come to dominate the industry. It must be noted that such rapid industrial change affected both the city and the mill employees. During the mill developments, the industry attracted thousands of workers to the city, both skilled and unskilled. The new technology in the mills had de-skilled hundreds of jobs in the mills, changing how those employees interacted with the remaining skilled workers and mill owners. This shift will be examined further. Concurrent with these changes in the mill district, Minneapolis’s population grew considerably, mostly through in- migration. The influx of newcomers changed the character of the city, as the wealthy moved out of the downtown, their homes were turned into boarding and rooming houses

1 Charles Rumford Walker, American City: A Rank and File History of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1937). 31

and the working class took over the formerly affluent areas along Hennepin Avenue,

Marquette Avenue, and Nicollet Avenue. This change in urban demography and its

affects on the community and the mills will also be examined. Shortly after the new

mills were built, Minneapolis mill owners turned their attention away from improving

their facilities in Minneapolis to improving how they received wheat and transported their

goods.

Due to lack of transportation, Minneapolis bloomed later than its twin, St. Paul.

By the 1890s, though, the city found itself a center of railroad development and its population growth and development followed. It was on the cusp of the milling revolution that would carry it to national and international fame. Pillsbury, Washburn-

Crosby, and Northwest Consolidated expanded rapidly. While James J. Hill was building his Great Northern and other lines, the mill owners created their own rail lines from

Minneapolis to the eastern Dakotas, Manitoba, and Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, which made Minneapolis the center for grain and wheat transport in the upper Midwest. With this improvement in infrastructure, other industries, like breweries, canneries, textile factories, and banks made their home in the city as well. This industrial growth made

Minneapolis a more attractive city for workers, particularly those who were “unskilled.”

The city’s demographics changed greatly between 1890 and 1900 from mostly native-born Minnesotans to mostly non-Minnesotans and immigrants. With this shift in population came intra-urban migrations: the upper class left the crowded downtown area to live on the outskirts of the city and new immigrants and the working class moved downtown. The period between 1895 and 1905 was crucial for Minneapolis. The city 32

was propelled to a new status. A quaint town on the Mississippi became a metropolitan

center that was a gateway to the West.

The flour mills and their owners and employees found themselves at the center of

Minneapolis’s transformation. However, the flour mills would not have existed were it not for St. Anthony Falls and the Mississippi River. The river has acted both as a source of power and a major thoroughfare from the Gulf of Mexico to St. Paul. In what is now

Minneapolis, the river takes its biggest fall at St. Anthony Falls.2 The Ojibwa who made

Minnesota their home had long revered the falls as a source of power and spirituality.3

By the 1830s, the land around the falls and the island in the middle of them had been ceded to the federal government and, in 1838, became open to settlement.4 The area around the falls was initially home to three cities: St. Paul, Minneapolis, and St. Anthony.

St. Paul was the first to be developed, because it was so close to the earliest settled locations in the state, Fort Snelling and Mendota.5 Moreover, before the falls were harnessed it was too difficult to have safe travel on the Mississippi north of St. Paul. Just below the falls was “a rock-filled channel that frightened even courageous captains accustomed to the treacherous” river. As a result, St. Paul became the navigational head of the river so that steamboats would not have to navigate the “gauntlet” north of the city.6 The non-navigability of the Mississippi retarded Minneapolis’s growth because it was long dependent on several dilapidated roads between it and the capitol city.

2 Lucille M. Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony: The Waterfall that Built Minneapolis (St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1997), 1. 3 Carol Brink, The Twin Cities (New York: Macmillan Company, 1961), 12. 4 Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony, 14. 5 Fort Snelling was established in 1819, and Mendota was founded in the 1830s. 6 Robert M. Frame, Millers to the World: Minnesota’s Nineteenth Century Water Power Flour Mills (St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1977), 41. 33

The falls had some development as early as the 1830s. Originally, the federal government erected flour and lumber mills in what would become the famed mill district in Minneapolis to provide for troops living at Fort Snelling in Mendota.7 It was clear that the falls provided significant levels of water power and, if properly channeled, they could be an important source of power in the upper Midwest. In 1848, the same man who had first “claimed” Hennepin Island, Franklin Steele, built dams above the falls and used the power to build and operate lumber mills.8 The lumber industry prospered in Minneapolis through the 1860s, until disaster struck. The dams, sluiceways, aprons, and canals that had been created to power the mills and carry their products down river failed and in

1869 they collapsed, bringing dozens of mills with them.9 It was also at this time that the vast expanses of forest in northern Minnesota and western Wisconsin were becoming depleted. The decimation of resources coupled with the complete obliteration of the lumber mills at St. Anthony Falls meant the end of the lumber era in Minneapolis. As historian John Anfinson stated, “While lumber initially yoked the falls, flour would become its master.”10 Indeed, while lumber was the dominant industry in the city for close to four decades, flour led Minneapolis into the twentieth century.

Washburn-Crosby, Pillsbury, and the Northwestern Consolidated mills began to

build on the west bank of the Mississippi in the 1870s. The Red River and Minnesota

River Valleys in western Minnesota, eastern Dakota Territory, and southern Manitoba

7 Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony, 13. 8 John O. Anfinson, “Flour Power,” Minnesota History, 58:5-6 (2003), 257. Steele, son-in-law of the future governor Henry Sibley, received a tip the night before Hennepin Island was made available for white settlement. The rules of availability stated that whoever first built a home and settled the land on Hennepin Island would “control half the falls’ power.” Steele made his way to the island at midnight on July 15, 1838, and built a crude cabin. When, at first sunlight, others showed up to claim the island, Steele had breakfast cooking on a fire and offered it to his runners-up. Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony, 13-14. 8 Annette Atkins, "At Home in the Heart of the City,” Minnesota History, 58:5-6 (2003), 289. 9 Anfinson, “Flour Power,” 258. 10 Ibid., 261. 34

had the ideal soil and climate for growing large quantities of spring wheat at a very low

cost. However, the new mills were not equipped effectively to mill the hard spring

wheat. Winter wheat, which was easily grown in the East, had a softer husk and was

easily ground into flour. That spring wheat grew so well in southern Manitoba and east

of the Missouri River pushed Minneapolis forward as a manufacturing center.

Minneapolis entered into a metropole-to-hinterland relationship with the region to its

north and west. Minneapolis acted as the metropole, which meant that it processed the

raw materials provided by the eastern Dakotas and southern Manitoba. The areas that

provided the raw materials to Minneapolis to be processed were the hinterland.11 There were both regional and national metropoles. Minneapolis was a regional metropole for flour milling because it received the raw materials and manufactured them into flour, sending the manufactured product to New York for further transport. It was because of

Minneapolis’s status as the flour milling metropole that it eventually became the headquarters for the International Union of Flour and Cereal Mill Employees (IUFCME).

Fortunately for mill owners, innovation saved their mills. Edmund LaCroix and his brother had been working on a middlings purifier that took the “imperfections” out of milled spring wheat. It had high levels of gluten, meaning that it made more flour per grain, and higher quality flour overall.12 George Llewellyn Christian, head miller of the

11 William Cronon, “Chicago and the Great West,” in Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson, The Blackwell City Reader (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 171. See also: William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991). Cronon described the relationship between Chicago and its hinterland like a “country fair,” where farmers sent “the fruits of their labor to [Chicago’s] markets.” Most of the small towns that developed outside of Chicago, “seemed to spring magically into being when railroads in their vicinity,” which was similar to the corresponding growth to Minneapolis’s north and west as rail lines were developed there. 12 Joseph Hart, 11 June 1997. Lost City, 2. City Pages. Leftover dust and wheat chaffe stayed in the flour, which were referred to as “middlings.” The purifier blew flour into the air, sifting away the “middlings” from edible flour, thus enabling mills to produce higher quantities of flour from the same or less quantities of wheat than before. 35

Washburn B mill on the west bank of the Mississippi River, picked up on the LaCroix

brothers’ technology and convinced them to build their purifier in his mill. By 1877,

Pillsbury, Washburn-Crosby, and the Northwestern Consolidated mills all had the

LaCroix technology in use.13 Employing this technology allowed the mills to build a relationship with the agricultural hinterland to the west and north. By 1878, the

Minneapolis mills were able to mill more wheat than ever before because of the implementation of new technology.

In the spring of 1878, flour milling hit an early peak. Despite the state-of-the-art

LaCroix technology in the mills, they did not have sufficient safety technology in place.

Milling wheat into flour creates a fine dust comprised of gluten and other particles that is extremely flammable. Mills were made out of wood, and after years of operation that wood was saturated with the flour dust. Additionally, men working in the mills were often coated in flour, which stuck to the sweat on their skin, caking them in layers of up to a half-inch of flour.14 On May 2, a spark in the Washburn A mill ignited an explosion so colossal that not only was that mill completely obliterated, but a full one-third of the mills on the west bank. Inside the mills were eighteen men, coated with the highly flammable flour, who were killed in the blast.15

This could have been the end of flour milling in Minneapolis, but the owners of the mills rebuilt. They saw that they had the opportunity to implement the LaCroix method on a larger scale, and essentially start anew in a location that they knew would support success. Dust collectors were installed in every floor of the new mills, as were

13 Theodore Blegen, Minnesota: A History of the State (1963; repr., new chapter by Russell Fridley, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1978), 351. 14 Hart, 3. 15 Blegen, Minnesota, 352. 36

brand new machines, and a new separate ground floor was reserved for trains to run

through the bottom of the mills. When completed, the Washburn-Crosby A mill paid

homage to what it had replaced. On the outside of the new mill, a marble plaque was

dedicated to the men killed in the explosion, bearing Thomas Carlyle’s words: “Labor,

wide as the earth, has its summit in Heaven.”16

With control of the LaCroix technology, brand new mills, room for direct rail service, and a large and fertile hinterland growing wheat exclusively for Minneapolis,

Pillsbury, Washburn-Crosby, and Northwest Consolidated were poised to take over the nation’s flour milling. Only one thing stood in their way: control of transportation.

Minneapolis had long been dependent on other cities for the bulk of its transportation needs. It had to depend on St. Paul to get goods by boat or Chicago for rail shipments.

Railroad development was key to Minneapolis’s success, not only as a milling center but as a city.

Just before Minnesota became a state in 1858, the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad began a line from St. Paul through St. Anthony, Anoka, and St. Cloud to Pembina.17 So disruptive was the Civil War to development of infrastructure that by 1862 only ten miles of that route, connecting St. Paul and St. Anthony, had been completed.18

Minneapolitans would have to wait until after the war, when labor, capital, and resources were more plentiful and there was a new focus on repair of old lines and creation of new routes. Almost a decade after the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad was completed, new rail construction began in Minnesota. Early lines in the 1860s had been built to service

Minneapolis via Chicago only. In 1867, the Milwaukee & St. Paul created a link to

16 The Northwestern Miller, 5 December 1879. 17 Blegen, Minnesota, 296. 18 Brink, The Twin Cities, 45. 37

Chicago that linked to other rail networks that went to the East.19 This, however, meant that Minneapolis mill owners were at the mercy of Chicago receivers’ rates. Chicago receivers were well paid by the industries in their own city and charged higher rates for handling goods from Minneapolis.

In the 1870s and thereafter, the focus changed from connecting to the East to laying tracks to the North and West. Cadwallader C. Washburn, John Crosby, and John

S. Pillsbury, the men who owned Washburn-Crosby and Pillsbury mills wanted to have control of their products from the fields to the store; this meant they had to control the railroad lines. These men also had one very powerful ally in their railroad-building ventures: James J. Hill. The railroad magnate had made St. Paul his home for over a decade before the intense development of railroads started in Minneapolis. Hill had already been working for the St. Paul and Pacific and was simply waiting for the opportunity to take over the line, when, in 1878, he and other investors bought the decaying St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. 20

The timing of Hill’s railroad investments could not have come at a better time for the mill owners. Bell, Crosby, Pillsbury, and Washburn were in the midst of rebuilding their recently annihilated west bank. Seeing Hill’s railroad development, the mill owners adapted their new mills with the capability to have rail cars go through the mills. Jay

Cooke, a wealthy banker and railroad financier from Pennsylvania, was interested in developing rail lines in Minnesota as well. While Hill concentrated on Minneapolis,

19 Kenneth M. Hammer, “Genesis of a Miller’s Road: The Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Sault Ste. Marie,” Railroad History 146 (1982), 23. 20 Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony, 87. 38

Cooke built from Duluth. Cooke’s Northern Pacific did not directly benefit

Minneapolis’s milling; it was the major competitor for Hill’s Great Northern.21

Hill’s line, eventually named the Great Northern, ran just south of the Canadian border in order to create perpendicular feeder lines that could ship wheat grown in

Saskatchewan and Manitoba to Minneapolis, and transport flour back north. The Great

Northern connected Puget Sound to Minneapolis, Chicago, and the Atlantic, but was not without competition. 22 The Northern Pacific, which focused on building a transcontinental railroad in the 1870s, also built northward in Minnesota. To circumnavigate Chicago, it created the Lake Superior & Mississippi road between St.

Paul and Duluth in 1870.23 The Minneapolis mill owners favored this line because they could send their product out of Minnesota through Lake Superior, avoiding Chicago. The most obvious concern with this, though, was that Lake Superior froze for many months of the year, thus cutting off the mill owners’ transportation line.24 Subsequently, despite having an alternative route, the Minneapolis mill owners were forced to export their products for a good portion of the year using the Milwaukee & St. Paul, through Chicago.

The explosion of railroad development coincided with the needs of Minneapolis’s flour mills. After the mill owners had built and secured their new mills, they, too, began to invest in building railroads. The 1880s brought a time of considerable expansion for the mill owners. William D. Washburn, then a state senator, came up with a new solution to the mill owners’ railroad woes. He believed that adding a new line from the Twin

Cities to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan could link nicely with the Canadian Pacific Railroad

21 M. John Lubetkin, Jay Cooke’s Gamble: The Northern Pacific Railroad, The Sioux, and the Panic of 1873 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 62-63. 22 Brink, The Twin Cities, 48-49. 23 Hammer, “Genesis of a Miller’s Road,” 23. 24 Blegen, Minnesota, 355. 39

in Sudbury, Ontario that would then connect to eastern ports like Montreal.25 Washburn worked to gather capital investments from other businessmen in the city, most of whom happened to be prominent mill owners. The proposed line would be called the SOO Line after the phonetic sound of Sault Ste. Marie. In 1887, the SOO Line was completed, giving the mill owners a route that avoided both Duluth and Chicago.26 The SOO was completely financed by flour makers, and it was so successful that they planned several other routes, including the Minneapolis & St. Louis, and tertiary lines that reached into western Minnesota and toward the Missouri River.27

After Minneapolis had been connected to the East, Minneapolis mill owners sought to connect to the West. Another new line, the Minneapolis & Pacific Railway

Co., was established in September 1884, and ran from Minneapolis to the Red River and the Dakotas. The line was created to compete with the Great Northern, which shipped grain from the hinterland to Duluth to be milled outside Minneapolis. With the

Minneapolis & Pacific Railway running, however, Minneapolis became more connected with its grain-growing hinterland. Connected to the shipping centers in the East,

Minneapolis mill owners had a new market.28 With the cunning business move of owning many of the rail lines into and out of the Minneapolis mills, the Pillsbury,

Washburn-Crosby, and Northwest Consolidated mills elevated Minneapolis to new levels of trade. With the help of controlling transportation rates and wheat rates, Minneapolis’s mill owners were able to provide quality white flour in large quantities at a low cost. The level of control the Minneapolis mill owners had and the fact that their mills provided

25 Hammer, “Genesis of a Miller’s Railroad,” 23. 26 Blegen, Minnesota, 355. 27 Ibid., 356. 28 Hammer, “Genesis of a Miller’s Railroad,” 24. 40

flour cheaply, allowed the Pillsbury, Washburn-Crosby, and Northwestern Consolidated

brands to a sell their goods to larger markets.

The railroads were also tied closely with farmers in outlying areas. Farmers could plant more wheat and send more in to the mills because they did not have to transport their product on their own. It also meant that it was no longer imperative for farmers to be near rivers to get their harvest to the mills.29 The railroad expansion brought a landmark change to rural skylines: grain elevators. Having grain storage and pickup nearby meant that farmers would not have to transport their wheat as far as they had in the past. Minneapolis mills were able to outbid smaller mills that were in rural areas by buying wheat directly from farmers and storing it in the grain elevators along their rail lines until they needed the grain. Eventually mill owners erected their own grain elevators and bought elevators from farmers’ co-ops, which enabled the mill owners to secure grains from their hinterland and ensured that the Minneapolis mills would be the metropole of the upper Midwest.30 With an ever-expanding rail network, the

Northwestern Consolidated, Pillsbury, and Washburn-Crosby mills began looking beyond

Minnesota and the Dakotas for resources.

As the mill owners expanded their rail lines toward the Missouri River,

Minnesota’s farmers responded by diversifying their crop production. By 1892, after the mills created rail lines north and west, wheat production in Minnesota began to drop.

The profits from growing wheat were so considerable that farmers in northern and western Minnesota had been consistently growing the crops for years, damaging the formerly rich soil. Many farmers in the state did what the citizens of Gentilly, a small

29 Blegen, Minnesota, 343. 30 Ibid., 355. 41

Red River Valley town in the northwest of the state did: they rotated their crops. Father

Elie Theillon urged his parishioners there to stop growing wheat exclusively, as the

town’s previously fertile soil had been nearly destroyed with overproduction of wheat.31

In the years leading up to 1900, more and more farmers in Minnesota rotated their crops and became less dependent on selling to the flour mills. In addition to soil preservation, crop rotation provided a safety net for Minnesota farmers who had diverse harvests and were not, as many farmers in the Dakotas and Manitoba were, dependent on the success of one crop and the patronage of few companies. This greater independence of

Minnesota’s farmers did not harm the Minneapolis mills. The mill owners had helped to establish such a vast hinterland that their growing resources seemed almost unlimited.

The astonishing growth and shrewd management of the flour industry led to its being the dominant economic force in the state at the turn of the century. With this power, the mill owners also had a growing stronghold on labor in Minneapolis, by the turn of the twentieth century.

At the turn of the century, flour milling comprised a significant proportion of the

Minnesotan and American economy and was the backbone to the development of

Minneapolis. In 1900, flour milling made up 46 percent of Minnesota’s economy and an even larger proportion of Minneapolis’s economy.32 Moreover, it also accounted for 14 percent of the United States’ grain output.33 Mills set and broke new records seemingly every week.34 Although the mill owners controlled transportation, used the most

31 Sarah P. Rubinstein, “The French Canadians and French,” They Chose Minnesota, 43, 47. 32 Meier, Bring Warm Clothes, 191. 33 Frame, Millers to the World, 78. 34 Robert Frame, “Pillsbury A Mill, Minneapolis and other Pillsbury Mills: Production,” Minnesota Flour Milling Research Files. Robert M. Frame Papers, 147.E.10.10(F ) MHS. In just under a decade, the Pillsbury A mill alone beat its own record by more than 6,000 barrels per day. In 1900 producing over 42

sophisticated technology in their mills, and had access to inexpensive raw materials due

to their relationship with a large hinterland, they were not ensured success.

The mill owners depended on nearly eighteen hundred employees, some skilled

and some unskilled, to run their mills efficiently. On any working day, din and

commotion filled the mill district as the thousands of employees coming to and from

work combined with the constant noise of machinery. The Census of Manufactures listed

a number of occupations within large mills that were not directly related to milling: “belt-

makers, blacksmiths, box-makers, brush-makers, carpenters, case-makers, coopers,

electricians, engineers, firemen, steam fitters, machinists, masons…painters, planermen,

and tinners.”35 While these jobs did not directly involve the milling of wheat, they were essential to making a mill operate, and these workers depended on the mills for much of their work. The Census of Manufactures was not explicit in its definition of how many of the 1,800 mill employees listed in the document were only those directly involved in milling or if it included managers, clerical staff, and transportation workers as well.

However, by the early 1900s, there were few highly skilled men working in the mills. At the time, a mid-sized mill may have only had about twenty millwrights total.36 Other sources, such as city directories, were consulted, though the numbers of men reporting themselves to be millwrights, nailers, packers, operative millers, and loaders were not consistent with the number of men in these occupations as enumerated by the census. As

16,000 barrels daily was viewed as another record to beat by Washburn-Crosby and Northwestern Consolidated. 35 Twelfth Census of the United States, Taken over the Year in 1900, Manufactures: Minnesota (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Office, 1901-1902), 1192. The manuscript census did not always enumerate these men as working in the flour mills, and consequently they were not included in the mill employees examined for this thesis. 36 “Mechanical department,” The Northwestern Miller, 8 April 1903. After the Standard Mill went through construction to become a larger mill, the Northwestern Miller reported that it was increasing its millwright workforce to twenty. 43

the mills grew, there was an increased need for more workers, many of whom were

immigrants to the city.

Minneapolis’s greatest numbers of newcomers were from Norway, Denmark, and eastern Europe. For the time, Minnesota had a high number of foreign born, approximately 505,318 people, or 40 percent of the entire population, were foreign born.37 The majority of the immigrants were from Scandinavia, mostly Sweden and

Norway. Many Scandinavians, particularly the Danes, were initially attracted to

Minnesota because the topography and climate resembled those of Scandinavia.38

Another consequence of having so many Swedish and Norwegian immigrants was that most of the immigrants in Minneapolis had been educated and could read and write.

Fourteen percent of Minneapolis’s residents could not speak English, though most could still read and write in their native tongues.39 Progress in the mills occurred at the same time as the population boom in Minneapolis. The mills grew larger and needed more workers. Several of the mills were running twenty-four-hour days and needed enough workers to ensure that the supply of flour would meet the demand.

Table 2.1: Nativity of Minneapolitans, Ward Five Inhabitants, and Mill Employees Studied Minneapolitans Ward Five Inhabitants Mill Employees Studied United States- 141,697 (70%) 17,511 (75%) 84 (73%) born Foreign-Born 61,021 (30%) 5,791 (24%) 31 (27%) Source: Abstract of the Twelfth Census of the United States 1900, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, pps 26, 432-433, 624, 653.

37 Twelfth Census of the United States, Taken over the Year in 1900, Population (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Office, 1901-1902), xxi. This was not unusual in northern states west of Minnesota. 38 Ann Regan, “The Danes” They Chose Minnesota, 277. 39 Twelfth Census of the United States, Taken over the Year in 1900, Population (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Office, 1901-1902), cxxvi. Most of the non-English speakers were German, Norwegian, Swedish, or Bohemian. 44

Between 1890 and 1900, Hennepin County grew by 43,046 people; all but 5,066 of those people settled in Minneapolis (Table 2.1). This was significant growth for the city. The mill employees studied in enumeration districts fifty through fifty-six reflected the demographics of Ward Five overall. Table 2.1 shows that while there were many immigrants living in Minneapolis, Ward Five was dominated by men and women born in the United States, a fact that was also true of the mill employees studied. That the inhabitants of Ward Five and the mill employees were so similar in their nativity could have helped to create connections and solidarity between the mill employees and the community of Ward Five.

Of the Ward Five inhabitants who were foreign-born, many were long-term settlers who likely did not intend to return to their country of origin. The Scandinavians were the largest ethnic group in Minneapolis, the Twin Cities, and one of the largest in the entire state.40 Norwegian migration began in the 1880s, and while many of the early immigrants settled in the south and west of Minnesota, by the turn of the twentieth century these rural Norwegians were heading to the Twin Cities in search of industrial work. This coincided with a new wave of people coming from Norway, and the two groups met in Minneapolis.41

The Norwegians who descended upon Minneapolis moved into the Cedar-

Riverside area, just south and east of Ward Five that already had a large population of

Swedes. The Swedes followed a similar pattern of immigration to the Norwegians.

Many early Swedish immigrants were rural until the turn of the century when, concurrent with another immigration boom from Sweden, the rural Swedes moved to Minneapolis

40“Introduction,” They Chose Minnesota, 2-3. 41 Gjerde and Qualey, “The Norwegians,” They Chose Minnesota, 232-235. 45

and St. Paul.42 The Danes’ immigration pattern did not fit those of the Swedes and

Norwegians. The Danes had remained predominantly urban in the United States and, between 1880 and 1905, their population steadily grew in Minneapolis. In the Cedar-

Riverside area, the urban Danes established churches and other institutions, and erected

Dania Hall, a community center for Scandinavians in Minneapolis.43 The city, particularly the south side, was a destination for many Scandinavians, many of whom never planned to return to their home country.

The booming population at the turn of the century quickly found work in many of the large industries in the city. In the mills, the LaCroix method had increased production levels, but it also de-skilled many jobs in the mills. As a result, machinery often took over for human power and many of the skilled jobs in the Minneapolis mills disappeared. This meant that most of the new workers in the mills were not highly skilled and trained millwrights or operative millers, but nailers, packers, and loaders whose jobs required skill but for which there was no formal training. For example, between 1890 and 1900 while there was an overall gain of 298 operative millers, packers, and general laborers in the mills, this increase was not uniform throughout all occupations. Although the general labor workforce grew by 72 percent and the packer workforce by 126 percent, the millers only increased by 3 percent. 44 The implications of such numbers reached deeply into the community. These numbers indicate that while jobs in the mills were increasing, the wages were dropping.

42 Rice, “The Swedes,” They Chose Minnesota, 262-263. Many of the Swedes who arrived in Minneapolis in the 1890s spent time in the Pillsbury Settlement House, located in the Cedar-Riverside area, before moving up Washington Avenue South. 43 Regan, “The Danes,” They Chose Minnesota, 278. 44 Twelfth Census of Manufacturers, “Central States,” Table 58 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Office, 1901-1902), p 456-458. In 1890 there were 225 general laborers, 106 packers, and 68 millers; in 1900 there were 387 general laborers, 240 packers, and 60 millers. 46

Workers making Minneapolis a labor destination made several significant impacts on the city’s economy. Those employed in the flour and milling process had secondary effects on the economy. Restaurants, saloons, movie houses, as well as more necessity- based outlets like grocery and second-hand goods stores all depended on money earned in the mills. Restaurateurs and bar owners saw mill employees inside their businesses consistently, and by consuming at these restaurants and bars mill employees supported waitresses and waiters, cooks, farmers who grew the food they were eating, and the teamsters who delivered the goods to the establishments.

A large number of men moved to Minneapolis to work in the mill industry. They lived near the mill district and many of them were single. The operative millers and millwrights were mostly single.45 The service industries reflected the demographics of the area. Most of the service industries that mill employees frequented were within local neighborhoods where workers would congregate with their fellow workers and neighbors and establish relationships. Women were employed outside the mill district. Some women working in districts fifty through fifty-six were skilled, some of whom worked designing and making hats as milliners. However, most women worked in the service industry where they prepared food and did laundry at rooming and boarding houses or were waitresses and actresses.46 Brothels were another service industry that mill employees supported. At 218 1st Avenue South, just across from one of the most populated boarding houses and near the entrance to the mills, lived seven prostitutes.47 It was not coincidence that there were so many service industry jobs available near the mill

45 Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900. Sixty-five percent (twenty-six of forty) operative millers and 67 percent (eighteen of twenty-seven) were single. 46 Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900. 47Ibid. These were the only people listed as “prostitutes” in districts fifty through fifty-six. There were likely many other prostitutes living in this area, but census enumerators were instructed not to count them. 47

district. Before the turn of the century, mill employees had some of the highest wages in

the city, and with many of them being single men there was money to be devoted to

alcohol, eating at restaurants, prostitutes, and other services.

As new waves of immigrants arrived in Minneapolis, a definite urban migration pattern became evident. While a significant portion of newcomers to the city were from neighboring states, particularly Wisconsin, the largest of the groups arriving from foreign countries in the last two decades of the nineteenth century were the Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes. The Scandinavians’ introduction to Minneapolis set an urban migration pattern that nearly all new immigrant groups would follow. The Danish Flats was located at the end of Washington Avenue South where it met the Mississippi, just downriver from the falls. The area was a marsh and was often flooded. In the 1880s, the Danes and

Norwegians moved out of the Danish Flats, the Danes mostly moved to the Cedar-

Riverside area. There they established the Society Dania, a splinter of the Norden

Scandinavian group, which met in the prominent Dania Hall on 6th Avenue South.48 The

Norwegians moved up Washington Avenue South where they established grocery stores, book stores, the Lutheran Deaconess Hospital, and a post-secondary educational institution, Augsburg College. 49 This path of urban migration, from the flats to Cedar-

Riverside or up Washington Avenue South became a common transition for immigrants to the city, as after the Scandinavians moved out and the eastern Europeans moved in, the area was re-named the Bohemian Flats.

The Minneapolis of the nineteenth century was still quite small, which meant that all except the exceptionally wealthy lived downtown. John S. Pillsbury was one of the

48 Regan, “The Danes,” They Chose Minnesota, 285. 49 Carlton C. Qualey and Jon A Gjerde, “The Norwegians,” They Chose Minnesota, 233, 235. 48

first upper-class citizens to move out of downtown Minneapolis, choosing an estate near

Loring Park, nearly two miles away from the mill district, over the hustle and bustle of

the city. Another example was Samuel C. Gale, a Harvard-educated lawyer and real

estate man who lived with his family in a large estate at the corner of 4th Street South and

Marquette Avenue.50 By the 1890s, though, Gale and his family moved to the outskirts of the city near Pillsbury. Within a decade, mainly lower-middle-class and working-class people populated the downtown area.51 The homes left behind were similar to Gale’s, large estates built with limestone or other quarry rock, left empty by their former owners.

After the upper-class out-migration of these homes, they were often refurbished into boarding and lodging homes.

After the exodus of the wealthy, the downtown core of Ward Five underwent a profound transformation. The service industry remained intact: businessmen as well as those who lived there made use of the saloons, bars, and theatres. Those who ran the shops and saloons tended to live above or next door to their shops. The Hershman family, for example, ran a grocery store in the 700 block of Washington Avenue South in

1903 and lived just above it. Neighboring the Hershmans’ grocery store was a secondhand furniture store operated by a family who also lived above their store.52

As the upper class moved out of the city core, it was clear that the area was going through a period of social re-identification. The 1900 census listed a number of occupations with fair consistency in enumeration districts fifty through fifty-six: entertainers such as actresses and trapeze artists, milliners, day laborers, storekeepers,

50 Annette Atkins, “In the Heart of the City,” Minnesota History, 58:5-6, 288. 51 Ibid, 288-289. 52 Atkins, “In the Heart of the City,” 289. 49

hotel and restaurant workers, and, of course, mill employees.53 Barely present were professional occupations like lawyers, teachers, and large business owners.54 During this time an obvious pattern began to develop with the people who remained downtown: the further outside the core people lived, the more money they had. This transition created class-based social and spatial stratification.

Social and class stratification and changing housing patterns altered the character of Minneapolis. As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, the city was primed for tremendous economic growth due to its successful flour mills. In just over a quarter century, the city had gone from a small town dependent on St. Paul to the home of the

Great Northern Railroad and the largest flour mills in the world. Contemporaneous with this economic growth and the need for a larger workforce was an expansion in the population, and a contestation of ideas about how capital and labor should relate. The aforementioned urban migrations and housing patterns shaped peoples’ attitudes toward work, working, and wages. No longer was the separation between laborers and owners limited to the workplace; the two groups, for the most part, lived in entirely different sections of the city. This, coupled with the fact that companies like the flour mills were increasingly impersonal, gave rise to the increased separation of workers from owners.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, the relationship between labor and capital was strained further when both sides began to ally with national organizations.

53 Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900. These other workers were not enumerated because of time restraints. They will be examined further in future research. 54 Ibid. 50

Chapter Three: The Relationship between Capital and Labor

In the first two years of the twentieth century, the outside influences of national organizations changed the relationship between capital and labor in the mills. The mill employees affiliated with the International Union of Flour and Cereal Mill Employees

(IUFCME) and the owners with the Citizens’ Alliance (CA). The organizations contested for control of the city’s industries as the IUFCME advocated for the respect of unions and their demands while the CA advocated for the open shop. That the IUFCME represented craft unions and was not an industrial union, too, affected the events of the

1903 strike. As Minneapolis’s unions appealed to consumers, mostly women, to be loyal to buying the union label, the mill owners changed their public images. Formerly known mostly for showing the might of their industry, the mills’ new image was family-friendly and aimed at cultivating consumer loyalty. Although the mill owners had been involved in owners’ organizations and the mill employees were in craft unions before the twentieth century, their involvement in national organizations and the principles that came with them altered how labor and capital interacted in Minneapolis, particularly in the 1902 and

1903 conflicts.

The relationship between labor and capital in Minneapolis was reflective of national trends. Beginning in the 1880s, workers and owners were both uniting into national organizations. In Minneapolis, the independent unions of the millwrights, millers, nailers and packers, and loaders united under the IUFCME. By 1903, the

IUFCME was very effective at achieving its goals. Mill owners, in response, joined organizations like the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the Citizens’ 51

Alliance (CA). The NAM and CA both sought to undermine unionism by establishing

the open shop in the United States, though they used slightly different approaches. The

NAM saw its main purpose as lobbying for more stringent restrictions on organized

labor. The CA sought to destroy community support for labor and establish the open

shop in every city in which there was a CA partner.1

Before becoming affiliated with the NAM or CA, many Minneapolis mill owners had been connected through formal and informal fraternal organizations. Millers’ organizations like the Minneapolis Millers’ Club and the Minneapolis Miller’s Protective

Association formalized social and economic bonds mill owners had had before the founding of these groups. At a local level, the methods by which labor and capital organized had great effects on who joined the groups and why. While the formation of the IUFCME in 1902 was public, the CA formed and operated in Minneapolis that same year without the knowledge of the public. Tensions between the American Federation of

Labor (AFL) and the NAM and CA reached an apex in Minneapolis in the autumn of

1903 during the AFL-affiliate IUFCME-supported operative millers’, nailers’, loaders’, and packers’ strike.

When Minneapolis’s industry started to boom in the mid-nineteenth century, many new jobs were created and the population of the city changed. As business increased, so, too, did employment opportunities in the industrial sector that lured thousands of men and women to Minneapolis. The city’s demography had a profound influence on relations between capital and labor. Organization and coalitions were central to labor and capital in the city. In 1894, the mill owners established the

1 Rosemary Feurer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 245. 52

Minneapolis Millers’ Club, which was a federation of mill owners in the city, and would

eventually be replaced by the NAM and the CA. By the early 1900s, the IUFCME had

established itself as the international organization of the millwrights, operative millers,

nailers, packers, and loaders.

The milling industry went through an extraordinary transformation between the

1870s and 1903. In 1878, the ideal mill only needed three head millers and a small number of laborers. While some of the workers in small flour mills were unskilled, there were more skilled and semi-skilled men involved in the process, particularly before the middlings purifier was introduced. After the revolution in technology in the Minneapolis mills when new machinery was installed and new techniques were employed, more people were employed in the mills but by the mid-1880s, many of the positions had become de-skilled and compartmentalized. After the milling revolution, fewer operative millers were needed to keep a mill running. Head operative millers attended to the grinding and supervised the mill laborers, machine men, oilers, sweepers, roustabouts, and watchmen who populated the “unskilled” portion of the mill.2 Packers, who packed and weighed the flour, and nailers, who headed and stenciled the barrels, and millwrights who were “constantly employed in attending to the repairs” in a mill were all listed as defined positions in the 1900 Census of Manufactures.3 Early connections among the workers were clear in labor disturbances before 1900.

The strikes in 1902 and 1903 were not the first major labor disturbances in the flour mills. Early in 1879 The Northwestern Miller published an article from the New

2 These men were not always enumerated by the census, and none of these occupations were covered in the IUFCME. 3 Robert M. Frame, “The Progressive Millers: A Cultural and Intellectual Portrait of the Flour Milling Industry 1870-1930, Focusing on Minneapolis, Minnesota” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1980), 91. 53

York Mercantile Journal titled “Capital and Labor One.” It was a social commentary on

the state of labor and capitalism in the United States, and it took special aim at the new

class system that was forming. In regard to class conflict, the article stated that:

It behooves both parties to look the difficulties squarely in the face; to grapple with the inconsistencies which mark the sub-stratum of our social condition; to remove all causes of distrust; to cultivate a reciprocity of interest; to foster higher and nobler sentiments than unenlightened self-interest engenders, and to promote a fraternity that will break down the barriers now excluding from circles of social life all save the wealthy, the idle and profligate.4

This was printed at a time when the new mills were beginning to operate with technologies that not only replaced many mill jobs but made others increasingly specialized. With all of these changes came a discussion among mill owners about decreasing some of the mill workers’ wages. The Weekly Northwestern Miller printed an article that preached cultivating a “reciprocity of interest” that would promote fraternalism among classes.5 This did not, however, reach the mill employees in the same way it had the mill owners. The philosophy expressed in the article was not employed during times of labor duress.

Many of the major milling companies in Minneapolis were involved in loose organizations of manufacturers as early as the 1870s. The Minneapolis Miller’s

Protective Association was the first such group to form in the city in 1873. The owners’ aim was to “protect themselves” from transient workers who were farmhands in the summer and mill workers in the winter.6 The Minneapolis Miller’s Protective

Association formalized the casual relationship most of the mill owners in the city had had with one another. Making these ties official helped in uniting the managerial class of the

4 “Capital and Labor One,” The Northwestern Miller, 10 January 1879. 5 Ibid. 6 Minneapolis Tribune, 30 November 1873. 54

city and set a precedent for the future of labor-capital relations. John S. Pillsbury created

the next fraternity of owners. In 1883, he founded the Minneapolis Club, the

membership of which represented many industries and included local and state

politicians.7 This was not the only managerial club to which mill owners belonged. On

July 10 they formed a wheat committee: A.C. Loring, F.B. Foote, S. Morse, and C.

Pillsbury. The membership of the Minneapolis Millers’ Club accounted for 54,000 barrels a day of output and included owners of the big three mills as well as smaller companies like Minneapolis Flour Manufacturing Co., L. Christian & Co., and the

Phoenix Mill Co.8 Despite the fact that the club was initially founded to be “purely social,” the men discussed everything from where to buy wheat for the coming year to legislation that concerned milling and business.9 The meetings were lavish; some were held at the West Hotel, and when they hosted the Philadelphia Miller’s Club in August of

1896 they went to the Minneapolis Club on Lake Minnetonka.10 This organization helped to foster camaraderie and fraternity among the mill owners. Though they were business competitors, the Minneapolis Miller’s Club enabled the mill owners to have a united front against challenges from the government and labor. The Minneapolis Miller’s

Club held sporadic meetings between its founding in 1894 and its complete dissolution in the 1940s. The business purpose of the club was essentially replaced in 1903 when the

7 William Millikan, A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903-1947 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001), 75. 8 W.C. Edgar, “Miller’s Club,” 29 May 1894. Club Minute Book and Article, 1894, 1896, 1942, P1214 Minnesota Historical Society (MHS). The minute book that W.C. Edgar kept had a few entries, mostly from 1894 and 1896. 9 Ibid., 5 June and 7 August 1894. 10Ibid., 26 August 1896. The West Hotel and the Minneapolis Club both catered to the wealthiest citizens of Minneapolis. 55

mill owners joined a new organization binding them with owners nationwide. The mill

owners first entered a national organization publicly in 1901.11

The Anti-Adulteration League (AAL) was an early alliance among wheat manufacturers that did not meet the legal criteria of a trademark. The AAL stamp on a product was an indicator of a certain standard for products.12 The advertisements for

Washburn-Crosby, Northwestern Consolidated, and Pillsbury products in 1901 displayed the AAL symbol, a star and the statement “Member Anti-Adulteration League.”13 The mill owners likely thought that having their flour bear the AAL stamp would give their products a competitive edge against generic brands because a certain flour quality was guaranteed through self-regulatory standards created in the AAL. The other advantage was that formal organizations were vital to establishing important connections among the mill owners and managers.

The AAL was not the mill owners’ only foray into groups with national membership that affected capital’s relations with the public and labor. By 1902, the mill owners had joined with a new, more powerful organization of manufacturers. The CA branch in Minneapolis was formed in early 1902. Men like J.S. Pillsbury, Washburn,

Loring, and Little had long professed the importance of keeping an open shop in their mills, and joining the CA formalized these sentiments. They were well aware that their employees had strong ties among themselves and within the community of enumeration districts fifty through fifty-six and elsewhere, and that should labor be disrupted they would need special tactics to attack community-based support for the workers. The CA

11 “Washburn’s Rolled Oates” Advertisment, The Northwestern Miller, 16 January 1901. 12 Norman F. Hesseltine, A Digest of the Law of Trade-Marks and Unfair Trade, (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1906), 24. 13 Advertisements, Northwestern Miller. 16 January 1901 for Washburn-Crosby, and 29 May 1902 for Pillsbury and Northwestern Consolidated. 56

was particularly weak in Minneapolis before Pillsbury and Washburn-Crosby signed on

as members in mid-1902, but after they clandestinely joined the group, the CA gained

significant strength in the city.14 The membership already included Edmund J. Phelps, the former president of the Commercial Club, and Judge Martin B. Koon, who was also a director and general counsel for the SOO Line.15 In 1903 the group became more active by adding new members and generating considerable funding. It listed its objectives as,

“To promote, on a fair and equitable basis, industrial peace and prosperity in the community, and the steady employment of labor…To discourage strikes, lockouts, and unfair demands by either employer or employee. . . [and] to uphold the principle of the

Open Shop.”16 To make clearer the subversive nature of the CA in Minneapolis, it is essential to note the surreptitious nature of the organization.

In September 1903, shortly before the operative millers and mill operatives’ strike began, the Minneapolis CA solicited advice from a chapter in Sedalia, Missouri. J. West

Goodwin, who responded by letter was also the author of The Bazoo, a CA-run newspaper in Sedalia. Goodwin made particular reference to the recent Labor Day parades throughout the country that “should alarm the people that their liberty will be fast slipping away from them and that we are walking on a volcano that is liable to burst forth at any time unless the people organize against it.”17 The letter went on with instructions on how to ensure the growth of the Minneapolis CA. The group was advised to

“organize secretly” because the “secrecy of the organization is one of its greatest

14 Millikan, A Union Against Unions, 26. 15 Phelps and Koon were both very anti-union and felt that complete unionization in Minneapolis were a menace to the city’s industry. Millikan, A Union Against Unions, 23. 16 “The Citizens Alliance of Minneapolis,” undated 1903. Citizens Alliance Records, 1903-1953, M465 MHS. 17 Letter from J. West Goodwin to Wallace Nye in Minneapolis, 11 September, 1903. Citizens Alliance Records, 1903-1953, M465 MHS. 57

elements of strength,” and secrecy “has had the desired effect and controls them by that

fear that always evolved so many hidden punishments, in fact, it strikes terror to their

ranks.”18 The idea was to undermine community ties and support and make it appear to the public as though it was the labor unions that were disrupting milling. Social and economic ties were developed and reinforced at the CA meetings, and the fact that mill owners and other business leaders had been allied for so long before the IUFCME was formed would have considerable ramifications on the labor struggles in 1902 and 1903.

In the summer of 1903, the NAM was actively expanding. It organized management to combat the AFL’s efforts to organize labor. NAM President David M.

Parry urged owners and managers to come together in the fight against unions. At the

NAM’s convention in 1903, Parry called organized labor a “tyranny” and encouraged support of the open shop movement.19 The owners of Pillsbury, Washburn-Crosby, and

Northwest Consolidated agreed to support the movement and thus, in the summer of

1903, joined with the NAM. 20 In the autumn of that year, Parry became president of the

Citizens’ Industrial Association (CIA), the national organization of the CA. He was attending a meeting of the Commercial Club in Minneapolis when he addressed the men in attendance with unusual forthrightness. The CA and its support of the open shop movement, Parry stated, was “a war between the owners of the American industry and the working class.”21 Parry had admitted to something that the AFL and other unions had been claiming for years, that the owners were uniting to fight unionism and workers’ rights. Enlisting in manufacturers’ national organizations may have helped the mill

18 Ibid. 19 Perlman and Taft, History of Labor in the United States Volume IV, 133. 20 “A Circular Issued by Federation Committee Makes an Exhaustive Statement,” Minneapolis Tribune, 1 October 1903. 21 Millikan, A Union Against Unions, 30. 58

owners in their campaign against closed shops, but it went against their family-friendly

images. It was during this time that the Minneapolis milling companies altered their

marketing strategies.

Joining a national organization contradicted the local identity the big three mills had before 1903. Pillsbury, Washburn-Crosby, and the mills that comprised the

Northwestern Consolidated were viewed as Minneapolis’s mills, and while there was pride in the fact that these companies provided so much flour to the nation and the world, the mills perform strong ties with the community. The mill owners wished to preserve an image that they were, in fact, no longer able to maintain: the image of the benevolent employer. As early as 1892, the mill owners were trying to express their empathy with the working class. In that year the Weekly Northwestern Miller reported on the Bemis

Brothers Bag Company, with whom the big three mills had had long-term contracts. The

Weekly Northwestern Miller reported that Minneapolis was proud of the Bemis Brothers’

flour bag company, because the company, like the mills, was “firmly wedded to the belief

that money expended in liberally compensating employees is well invested.”22 Pillsbury had installed a tub for employee use in their mills before the 1878 explosion.23

Washburn-Crosby, Pillsbury, and Northwestern Consolidated all had policies of giving turkeys to their employees for Thanksgiving and Christmas as late as 1902, a gesture mill owners used in an attempt to cultivate goodwilll between working men, their families, and the mills.24 During 1902 and 1903 Pillsbury and Washburn-Crosby, in particular, attempted to change their images drastically. As they joined national associations, the

22 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” The Northwestern Miller, 22 April 1892. 23 “Local and Personal,” The Northwestern Miller, 27 June 1879. 24 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” The Northwestern Miller, 24 December 1902. 59

two companies began to rely on advertising to project an impression that these massive

companies were a part of every home in every location.

As greater segments of the American population became literate and had money

to spare, print advertising in magazines such as Ladies Home Journal began to increase.

In “‘To the Markets of the World: Advertising in the Mill City 1880-1930,’” Kate

Roberts and Barbara Caron examined the mills’ changes in advertising styles. Initial

advertisements from the major milling companies prominently featured the strength of

industry. Often these early advertisements were drawings of the mills, where either the

falls would be larger than scale or the picture would be of the row of mills along the west

bank of the Mississippi. These early ads were aimed at showing the world the might of

the Mississippi and the industrial strength of Minneapolis mills.25 It is clear when comparing advertisements from 1900 to 1903 and then through the 1930s that they reflected a shift in the images the companies wished to portray. For example, a 1900 advertisement for Washburn-Crosby’s Gold Medal Flour claimed that “a long loaf is a wise loaf,” and that Gold Medal had the most nutritious flour for home bakers to use to get the best bread. The text was located inside of an outline shaped like a long grain of wheat.26 Northwestern Consolidated’s Ceresota flour ran advertisements at the same time that showed a view of Minneapolis from the East Bank, looking over the falls with all of the Northwestern Consolidated’s mills running at full steam.27 Similar ads ran for all three companies until early 1902 when, as the owners were becoming more deeply

25 Barbara Caron and Kate Roberts, “‘To the Markets of the World: Advertising in the Mill City 1880- 1930,’” Minnesota History 58:5-6 (2003) 308-309, 310. 26 Advertisement, Northwestern Miller, 25 July 1900. 27 Advertisement, Northwestern Miller, 15 August 1900. 60

involved in national organizations, Pillsbury and Washburn-Crosby altered the tone and

content of their marketing.

The new image of Pillsbury and Washburn-Crosby was friendly to family consumers of flour. No longer focused on their industrial might alone, the two companies tried to create an allegiance to one flour over the other by convincing their consumers that these major, international companies were “good” and worthy of loyalty.

In one of Washburn-Crosby’s earliest attempts at showing the brand’s friendliness, an ad in the Weekly Northwestern Miller featured a man, likely a grocer, pushing a dolley with

a Gold Medal barrel of flour with a sack of flour draped over it. The man, wearing an

apron and a hat, was quoted as saying “We ought to charge more than we do.”28 Running in a trade magazine, this ad portrayed a contented worker, satisfied with his position and loyal to his company. With this ad, Washburn-Crosby also gave the impression that they were doing the consumer a favor by selling their high-quality flour at such an affordable price. It was intended to evoke a feeling of goodwill; the consumer gained new respect for Washburn-Crosby because it was providing Gold Medal Flour affordably. Eventually consumers might associate the feelings of respect and goodwill with the company itself.

As a result, when labor troubles arose, consumers would be more likely to side with

Washburn-Crosby than with the workers out of loyalty to the company.

The more approachable the company appeared it was likely that consumers identified themselves more with the brand and esteemed the company that produced the brand. In the 1880s and 1890s, Washburn-Crosby and Pillsbury began tailoring their ad campaigns. They needed to target home consumers and make consumers feel that they had a reason to buy a certain brand of flour over others. The mill owners believed that if

28 Advertisement, Northwestern Miller, 23 April 1902. 61

they could cultivate brand loyalty in home consumers, mostly women, they could

undercut the power of any potential boycotts. While the main consumers of bread flour

were large bakeries, women at this time were still buying generic flour from their local

grocery stores. Therefore, hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on ads in

magazines, the best example being Ladies Home Journal, whose main target was women

consumers.29 On the back cover of its February 1903 issue, the Ladies Home Journal featured a large, colored advertisement for Gold Medal Flour. The image was of four large loaves of bread. Within each, texts said “Washburn-Crosby’s…Gold Medal

Flour…makes the bread….that makes the man,” and just outside the loaves was “Watch the Name, Be sure it is Gold Medal, Washburn-Crosby’s, Ask Your Grocer.”30 The underlined words on the side were written in a vertical pattern, so a consumer’s eye would only be drawn to the words “Name,” “Gold Medal,” and “Crosby’s.” Thus even with a quick glance consumers were exposed to the name of both the company and brand.

The statement made within the large loaves of bread indicate that bread made with Gold

Medal Flour made men strong, so a woman should buy this brand of flour to keep her men and her family strong.

Advertisements that emphasized the brand name and health, families, and strength intended to associate good attributes with one brand over another, and aided consumers in identifying themselves and their lifestyle with one particular brand. It was not coincidence that the mills took out ads in publications like the Ladies Home Journal that

29 David D. Danbom, “Flour Power: The Significance of Flour Milling at the Falls,” Minnesota History 58:5-6 (2003) 270-285, 283. Pillsbury was still trying to market its industrial might in 1903. That year it ran a series of ads in the Northwestern Miller in both Chinese and Japanese. So much curiosity arose from the strange advertisements that the magazine printed a translation: “The Pillsbury-Washburn Flour Mills Co., Limited, Minneapolis, U.S.A. The largest manufacturers of flour in the world, solicit correspondence and business from buyers in China and Japan.” “The Pillsbury Advertisement,” The Northwestern Miller, 27 May 1903. 30 Advertisement, Ladies Home Journal, February 1903. 62

targeted women, the main consumers at the time. The mill owners wanted their brands to

become household names, brands which people swore by and to which they had

allegiance. Slogans like “Pillsbury’s Best” and “Eventually, Why Not Now?” became a

part of the American lexicon.31 Washburn-Crosby and Pillsbury became household names across the country and were etched into the minds of consumers.

The Northwestern Miller noted that the mills had treated their workers with respect and it hoped the new unions would remember that fact.32 This assertion, particularly from a trade magazine, could be seen as misleading. However, there is significant evidence supporting this claim. For example, day laborers at the time stated that they preferred working in the mills over working in the breweries or lumber mills.

This was because the mills paid $2.00 a day for work, compared to the $1.00 or $1.50 offered elsewhere.33 Further substantiations of the Weekly Northwestern Miller’s claim that the mill owners treated their employees well became evident in an examination of unemployment rates. The average Minneapolitan worker was unemployed four months a year, while most mill employees averaged less than six weeks a year out of work. 34 The contrast of the unemployment rates between mill employees and other workers in the city makes clear that acquiring a job within the mill meant more stable employment and a more consistent paycheck. Unemployment rates will be discussed further in Chapter

Four. W.C. Edgar, the editor of The Weekly Northwestern Miller often used his journal to promote improvement of labor conditions for the unionized workers in the mills, as

31 Blegen, Minnesota, 357. 32 “Local and Personal,” Northwestern Miller, 27 June 1879. and “Local and Personal,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 30 December 1903. 33 Federal Writers Project, The Bohemian Flats (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1986), 16. 34 Atkins, “At Home in the Heart of the City,” 292. Calculated from manuscript census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900. Millwrights averaged 3.1 weeks of unemployment, operative millers for 3.3 weeks, and nailers, packers, and loaders for 1.1 weeks a year. 63

long as progress was made through moderate action.35 There were other advantages to working in the mills, such as turkeys at Thanksgiving and Christmas and other small paternalistic gestures.

In 1902 the formerly independent unions of the millwrights, millers, nailers and packers, and loaders affiliated with the IUFCME. That year on 26 September, the flour mill employees formed the IUFCME, with its national headquarters in Minneapolis. The

AFL turned over twenty-eight local charters to the newly formed IUFCME. The union included nearly 1800 men, and a union label was promptly created and distributed to mills to put on their products that acknowledged the unions.36 The IUFCME, it was hoped, would be better able to represent mill employee needs and to draw from a larger pool of resources than the separate unions could have on their own. The Minneapolis

IUFCME was under a lot of pressure to succeed immediately. Mills around the nation did not have many union employees and if the Minneapolis chapter could succeed in securing better wages and hours for its employees against the big three mills, mill employees of smaller companies would be more inclined to join with the IUFCME. The creation of a successful industry-wide union came with its share of challenges.

The IUFCME suffered initially due to occupational separation within the mills.

Certain jobs within the mills were regarded as “unskilled,” such as the loaders, packers, and nailers.37 There were various unions that included mill employees as early as 1879, and the operative millers and millwrights’ unions existed as early as 1881.38 Although

35 “The International Union,” The Northwestern Miller, 24 June 1903. The article that reported on the IUFCME in this edition stated that the journal was in support of workers acquiring the right-hour day, “providing it could be secured without working a hardship upon the individual millowner.” 36 “Flour Mill Employees,” The Union, 26 September 1903. 37 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” The Weekly Northwestern Miller, 14 October 1903. 38 “Almost a Strike,” The Weekly Northwestern Miller, 2 May 1879. and Photo of Unsatisfied Millers, The Weekly Northwestern Miller, 11 November 1881. 64

the loaders, packers, and nailers were not specifically trained for their occupations, their

work was not without skill. Training of new loaders, nailers, and packers occurred within

the mills themselves in a process similar to apprenticeship. Once they became more

experienced, these men ensured that the flour was moved within the mill swiftly, safely,

and accurately. The IUFCME took a direct approach to try to erase some of the stigma surrounding skill levels within the mills. John M. Finley, president of the IUFCME, had in fact been a nailer and was heavily involved with the Nailers and Packers Union local

1548.39 Finley was formerly a packer in Pillsbury’s B mill, and was at the meeting where

the nailers and packers wrote a letter to the millwrights, loaders, and operative millers

that requested that the four unions “consider forming an allied council to benefit our

conclusions at large.”40 Finley’s experience as a packer likely influenced his actions as president of the IUFCME. He intended to try to ameliorate some of the tensions between the “skilled” and “unskilled” men.

Finley and other union leaders were also keenly aware that the union needed to at least appear as though it had the best interest of the entire community in mind, including both capital and labor. He set up meetings that promoted the mingling of union members with powerful city leaders. In March of 1903, the IUFCME held a “smoke social” with cigars and apples. Four hundred mill employees and Mayor James C. Haynes attended.41

This was happening at the same time that Finley was refusing to offer official IUFCME sanction to striking employees at the Kelly Milling Company in Kansas City, Missouri.

Finley argued that a boycott of the Kelly Milling Company was “not justifiable” in this

39 “Minutes of the Flour Packers and Nailers Union No 1548 of Minneapolis, Minn. American Federation of Labor ,” 28 July 1901. Jean E. Spielman Papers, 1901-1936, M535 MHS. 40 Ibid. 4 April 1901. 41 “Mechanical Department,” The Northwestern Miller, 25 March 1903. 65

case and that the men would not be given money from the IUFCME.42 In taking the controversial stance, Finley caught the attention of Minneapolis business leaders because he showed that he took his position as president seriously and considered solutions to labor problems with reason and fairness to both capital and labor.

When the leaders of the IUFCME congregated in Minneapolis in June 1903,

Finley brought them to tour the offices of the Weekly Northwestern Miller. Finley told them that the trade magazine “had always treated the operatives fairly and had discussed the union in an open-minded and just manner” and that it had “always been in favor of an eight-hour day for operative millers, providing it could be secured without working a hardship upon the individual millowner.”43 Finley’s efforts to help create ties between the union and the city as well as improve relations between the men within the union did not prove fruitful by the time labor disruptions came to the mills in 1902 and 1903.

Like Pillsbury and Washburn-Crosby, the IUFCME was trying to create an image for the community that it was friendly and relatable. To do this, the IUFCME created and promoted a label to be placed on sacks and barrels of flour coming from union mills. The

Union ran an article that said that the label “to the union workingman is what the cross is to the Christian; it is an emblem of principle.”44 Such imagery was aimed at appealing to the predominantly Christian population of the city. At this same time in Minneapolis the bakers, coopers, stenographers, and many other occupations were applying their label to their goods as well. Stressing that people buy union-made goods was also an appeal to the main consumers in this era: women.

42 Ibid. 43 “The International Union,” The Northwestern Miller, 24 June 1903. 44 “Union Label Habit,” The Union, 26 September 1902. 66

Reaching out to consumers meant appealing to a community beyond the men working in the mills. The Union ran an article in September 1902 stating that the “wives of the workingman” were responsible for supporting label buying. The article went on to say that the label represented “American independence, and no woman who knows her son must work when he reaches the proper age, can forget the label, and remember the future welfare of her boy, for they are one and the same.”45 The appeal to women was twofold. The first was to ensure that women understood what buying label goods meant.

The other was to show that, even though strikes and negotiations were difficult, unions were acting in the best interests of a man and his family. Although the article stated that

“women…dislike to go out after trouble” and that they “falsely reason,” about unions, it went on to say that women must understand that strikes do create “hard” times, “but after the short, hard season of a strike” would come permanent wage increases, shorter hours, and tranquility.46 This addressed the reality that strikes were difficult, and were felt acutely in working-class homes. It also spoke to the larger context of unions appealing to women because they had the purchasing power in most homes.

In its appeal to women consumers, labor stressed that women who bought non- label goods were undoing labor’s progress and that women whose husbands were in a union were also members of the union.47 The Union claimed that “the wives, sisters and mothers of union men, who do the greatest proportion of the buying of all classes of goods, do not realize the importance of demanding the union label when purchasing,”

45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Elizabeth Jameson, All That Glitters: Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 137. 67

thus weakening the efficacy of the union label.48 It was advantageous for unions to impart the union-label buying habit on consumers, particularly women, because it gave unions an advantage for calling a boycott. Women were responsible for most of the shopping for working class families, and as a result their support of boycotts was vital for its success.49 However, appeals to consumers to buy union label goods politicized women’s consumer habits, affecting women who worked at home or did not work for wages. Dana Frank suggested that consumer tactics alienated women workers, fortifying male leadership in organized labor.50

The Label League helped to promote union labels and educate consumers about what it meant to buy union-label goods. Beginning in 1902, there was a women’s auxiliary, the Women’s Label League, that participated in labor affairs in Minneapolis as well.51 On Labor Day in 1903, it was the second group in the parade in the city.52 The nailers’ and packers’ union helped to support the Label League and the Women’s Label

League. The label leagues put on entertainment for the workers of Minneapolis, to which they invited “every union man and their friends.”53 In September of 1903, the nailers and packers donated $2.00 to the groups for “their entertainment.”54 Beyond its main purpose of educating people about the purpose of a union label, the functions promoted working- class solidarity and education as well as an opportunity for workers in different industries to meet one another. Individual craft unions held similar socials. In September 1902, the

48 “Women’s Label League,” The Union 21 November 1902. 49 Dana Frank, Purchasing Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 117. See “The woman question” section in the chapter “Boycotts,” pages 117-133. 50 Frank, 245. 51 “Women’s Label League,” The Union 21 November 1902. 52 “Labor Day,” The Union 4 September 1903. 53 “Minutes of the Flour Packers and Nailers Union No. 1548,” 21 April 1901. Jean E. Spielman Papers, 1901-1936, M535 MHS. 54 Ibid., 4 September 1903. 68

Dressmakers’ Union No. 1 held a “Round Post Dance” at Kimball Hall on Nicollet

Avenue, charging $0.50 per couple to attend.55 Socials like these allowed labor to better integrate itself in the community.

The IUFCME and its craft unions may have seen another advantage to appealing to women for support. Sixth Street South, particularly between 2nd and 8th Avenues, was home to a lot of women workers. The area had two women’s boarding homes, the

Women’s Boarding Home at 409 6th Street South and the Women’s Christian

Association, and expanded in 1906 to include the Lutheran Hospice and Women’s

Boarding Home at 828 6th Street South.56 Women who lived in this area were predominantly “waitresses, landlords, [and] washerwomen,” and would eventually enter into the “men’s realm” of labor in the 1910s when they became stenographers and bookkeepers.57 Also living in this area were twelve mill employees, ten packers, one millwright, and one operative miller. Six of the men were heads of household, though the others were roomers, lodgers, and boarders. 58 There was likely interaction between the male mill employees and these working women. How much interaction there was and what it meant can only be speculation at this point. These men could have lived in a building where a woman was the landlady, or they could have been patrons at the restaurants and bars where the women who lived on 6th Street South were waitresses.

The mill employees’ craft unions wished to insure that union label products were used in boarding homes, and that the women of working-class neighbourhoods supported union- label goods.

55 “Dressmakers,” The Union 26 November 1902. 56 Tasslyn Frame, "Women Workers at St. Anthony Falls,” Hennepin History 53:2 (Spring 1994) 4-17, 6-7, 10-11. 57 Ibid., 6-7. 58 Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900. 69

The interactions between working women, whether organized or not, and unionized mill men helped to integrate labor and its causes in the community. Due to proximity, there would likely have been interaction between the mill employees and the working women, which could have worked to foster support for the mill employees in their efforts to secure better working conditions. Many of the women residing in this area were waitresses, and during the strike in 1903 restaurants abided by the IUFCME-called boycott on serving the mills and strikebreakers. While men involved with unions in the mills were cultivating relationships with workers outside of the mills, the relationship between capital and labor at this time was undergoing significant change.

In the autumn of 1902, the millwrights struck to get an eight-hour day after failing to negotiate with the mill owners. By this time, there was a very contentious relationship between capital and labor in the mills. Although the mill owners gave in to the millwrights’ demands in their 1902 strike, the same would not happen in the 1903 nailers’, packers’, and loaders’ strike. They had joined the ranks of the NAM and the CA and the mill owners believed that the future strength of these organizations lay in their immediate success in the strike in 1903. The IUFCME, too, was a burgeoning organization in the fall of 1903 and its success and the future organization of mills across the nation depended on winning its demands that year. It had been unorganized and unprepared to make any substantial contribution to the millwrights during their struggle and the IUFCME needed to send a message of strength in 1903. To do this, Finley and the IUFCME had to overcome stigmas within its organization. In order to create unity among the men in different occupations in the IUFCME, the organization had to overcome many non-occupational factors. The millwrights and operative millers differed 70

from the nailers, packers, and loaders in age, marital status, ethnicity, wage, and

residential locations. How they varied in helps to explain their attitudes and actions in

the 1902 and 1903 strikes.

Minneapolis was a young city with predominantly white inhabitants from

Scandinavia, England, Ireland, and the United States and Canada. These demographics extended to the men working in the mills as well as the men who owned them. The similarities between men of different occupations in the mills will be covered more thoroughly in Chapter Four. Before the turn of the century, labor and capital had fairly good relations. As industry grew, however, the relationship between the two was altered.

The demographics of the city began to change and, due to technology, occupations within the mill became less skilled, save for operative millers and millwrights. The mills also became more occupationally separated by floor and men working as nailers, packers, and loaders, had little significant contact with millwrights. This separation undercut their familiarity and thus aided in dividing the workforce. Changes in technology and demographics of the city as well as the formation of manufacturers’ associations and industrial unions contributed to later labor troubles. All of these factors would collide during the 1903 strike of the operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders.

Chapter Four: The Strike

In Minneapolis [the AFL] organized some of the workmen in the flour mills and demanded the closed shop. This was the first skirmish, and the millers resisted them successfully. - A.J. Hain, “The Twin Cities Team Up.”1

By the autumn of 1903, the relationship between capital and labor in Minneapolis had become very contentious. While there were external influences on both sides from national organizations, 1903 was a particularly difficult year for the milling industry.

Britain placed tariffs on American flour and spring harvests were lower than anticipated, meaning that Minneapolis mill profits were low compared to previous years. When the loaders sought support from the craft unions with which they were affiliated under the

International Union of Flour and Cereal Mill Employees (IUFCME), only the millwrights refused. There were many reasons for their refusal, some of which were demographic factors and life experiences like marital status, nativity, age, and wage. How those factors affected the 1903 strike will be analyzed in this chapter. The loaders were looking for the eight-hour day, an issue that labor had fought for since the mid-nineteenth century in the United States. The owners, and their affiliates the Citizens’ Alliance (CA), were opposed to granting the eight-hour day to all of their employees and were prepared to use CA-style tactics to undermine worker solidarity and community support to establish an open shop in the mills. When, just over a week into the 1903 strike, the leaders of the IUFCME recognized that they would not succeed and called off the strike officially, cross-craft support for the loaders disintegrated rapidly. The loaders did not

1 A.J. Hain, “The Twin Cities Team Up,” The Iron Trade Review, 17 March 1921, 762-768. 72

get the eight-hour day, but more importantly, the road for the mill owners and the CA to

establish the closed shop in the mills and the city had been paved.

The actions of both capital and labor in 1902 added more tension to an already

delicate relationship. In the autumn of 1902, the millwrights struck and the operative

millers, nailers, and packers arbitrated to get the eight-hour day and a wage increase. The

millwrights’ strike lasted less than a week when the mill owners gave in to their demands

for an eight-hour day. The operative millers’ and nailers’ and packers’ unions both went

through negotiations with the mill owners to get a wage increase and the eight-hour day.

These three unions threatened to strike if they were not given an eight-hour day and a pay

raise. The mill owners, not wanting to have their employees strike, agreed to negotiate,

and the two sides came to an agreement. “The change asked for was a radical one,”

reported The Union, “and but for the wise and sensible attitude of the employers, it might

have developed into a struggle which would have proved costly for both sides.”2

The millwrights’ strike and operative millers’, nailers’, and packers’ negotiation occurred in the first week of October in 1902, just days after the IUFCME was established.3 In this conflict, like the strike in 1903, the millwrights had refused to join with the operative millers, nailers, and packers. Instead, the millwrights struck on their own. Another similarity between the 1902 conflict and the 1903 strike was that the operative millers, nailers, and packers persistently made the demand for an eight-hour day and a wage increase and stated they would only strike if they could not arbitrate or

2 “Eight Hours in the Mills,” The Union, 3 October 1902. 3 The IUFCME was created on September 26, the operative millers’ union and nailers’ and packers’ union settled arbitration on October 3, and the millwrights’ strike ended in the first week of November in 1902. “Flour Mill Employes,” The Union, 26 September 1902; “Eight Hours in the Mills,” The Union, 3 October 1902; “Millwrights,” The Union, 31 October 1902. 73

negotiate.4 Yet another parallel between the two incidents was that the nailers’ and packers’ union supported the operative millers, and the millwrights only supported themselves.5 The divisions among the millwrights and the operative millers, nailers, and packers would play a significant role in the loaders’, nailers’, packers’, and operative millers’ strike in the autumn of 1903. During that strike, the millwrights again acted independently of their affiliation with the IUFCME, while the operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders acted in solidarity with one another.

In the summer of 1903, there was an anxious atmosphere within the mill district.

The mill owners had publicly joined the CA, openly declaring their aim to end negotiations or arbitrations with unions and establish the open shop. The mill employees, also organized under the national organization of the IUFCME, opposed the mill owners’ objectives. The loaders’ union was affiliated with the IUFCME, and they did not work eight-hour days. In the spring of 1903, the loaders appealed to the millwrights’, operative millers’, and nailers’ and packers’ unions for support in their effort to acquire an eight- hour workday for themselves. Despite the fact that all four unions were members of the

IUFCME, the loaders did not receive support from all of the member unions.

In the summer of 1903, mill employees in Minneapolis were earning the highest wages among all mill employees nationwide. This was mostly because Pillsbury,

Washburn-Crosby, and the Northwestern Consolidated had a record-breaking year in

1902, averaging 225,000 barrels a week, which garnered them exceptional profits.6

4 “Eight-Hour Day for Mill Operatives,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 14 May 1902. 5 “Minutes of the Flour Packers and Nailers Union No 1548 of Minneapolis, Minn. American Federation of Labor ,” 28 July 1901. Jean E. Spielman Papers, 1901-1936, M535 MHS. 6 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 21 September 1902. The average weekly output in 1903 was approximately 122,000 barrels, while they produced 315,390 barrels a week during April 1901. Such a higher production rate in 1901 compared to 1903 was likely due to a combination of factors like the size of farmers’ wheat crops and harvest success. 74

Output slowed slightly in 1903 compared to 1902, but compared to other mills, Pillsbury,

Washburn-Crosby, and the Northwestern Consolidated were set to have a year with good

profits again. The mill owners blamed part of this output drop on the fact that talc and

deodorants had replaced flour for hygienic use. These three mills paid their employees

well for their work. The average cost of living in Minneapolis at the time was $6.00 a

week per person.7 At the time, nailers were earning almost double the cost of living, as working a five-day week they earned $11.25.8 The wage was not enough to support two people a week, a fact that was particularly problematic for the married nailers and other mill employees that supported their families. The big three companies used their pay scale as a defense during periods of arbitration, particularly with the nailers, packers, and loaders. While mill owners were more apt to concede to the demands of the millwrights and millers, they knew that they could replace their less-skilled workers with ease.

Dismissing workers who demanded more pay was common, and the CA advocated the practice. In August, just a month before the Minneapolis strike began,

W.H. Foster, the president of the Mason Builders’ Association in New York and a CA member, wrote to Minneapolis’s CA president, Wallace G. Nye. The letter was filled with advice on how to run a CA, and Foster stated, “whenever the laborers have struck to enforce an unwarrantable demand, there has been no great difficulty in filling their places.”9 Foster was clear that most of the “unwarrantable demands” were based around wages. Other letters from men running CAs in different cities confirmed that they successfully used these types of tactics to fight organized labor and create an open shop,

7 Tasslyn Frame. “Women Workers at St. Anthony Falls,” Hennepin History 53:2 (1994: 4-17), 7. 8 “Mill Wages in Minneapolis,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 3 June 1903. 9 Letter from President of Mason Builders’ Association in NY to Wallace Nye in Minneapolis, 25 August 1902. Citizens Alliance Records, 1903-1953, M465 MHS. 75

but Foster’s was especially noteworthy for its frank discussion of replacing laborers

should they attempt to incite change. Foster’s letter offered the type of support that

bolstered the Minneapolis CA, and assured its members that these types of tactics were

necessary, not extreme, in order to establish an open shop. The big three mills’

memberships in the NAM and especially in the CA hindered the chances of success for

the IUFCME, but it was not the only impediment they faced.

In 1903, the British government interfered with American mills by placing a tariff on American-milled flour. This coupled with British companies like Peek Freans trying to buy out the United States’ largest producers, Pillsbury and Washburn-Crosby, created major setbacks for Minneapolis’s mills. The drop in profits and production in 1903 was the first time since the depression of 1893-1897 that the Minneapolis mill suffered profit loss. When wheat prices were affected by railroad ownership, the mill owners simply built their own lines. This time there was not such an easy solution. The Weekly

Northwestern Miller asserted, “of the 8,000 merchant mills, it is safe to say that not one per cent” made profit in the first quarter of 1903.10 The Minneapolis mills, in conjunction with other mills in the northwest, ceased operation for nearly a week to curtail supply to make demand rise as a protest to the British tariff. This was done at a loss of 122,000 barrels in Minneapolis alone.11 The shutdown resulted in an abrupt loss of work for their 1,800 employees and was not taken kindly. There had been little warning of the shut down, and its employees lost their wages for that time. The shutdown, “marked the extreme limit of the depression which had been common

10 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 22 April 1903. 11 Ibid. 76

throughout the entire milling industry,” and presented mill employees with an uncertain

future.12

Shortly after the mills temporarily shut down, the millwrights and the flour loaders sought to change their hours and wages. In late April, the Standard Mill was refurbishing its interior and had hired new millwrights to do the work. The millwrights’ union argued that this was new work and as such, under their contract, they were to be paid $0.40 per hour for eight hours, much more than the regularly employed millwrights were earning. Mill owners feared that if they conceded to the millwrights’ demands, there would be turmoil over the wage difference between the men in the Standard mill and those who were regularly employed elsewhere. James Pye, one of the managers of the Standard mill, stepped in to pay the difference out of his own pocket, though the millwrights still worked 10-hour days at the Standard Mill.13 The discrepancy was settled within one week.

In mid-May, just over two weeks after the millwrights’ strike, a committee from the loaders’ union “acquainted [the mill owners] with the views of the union,” concerning the eight-hour workday.14 This was the first of many times that the loaders would request the eight-hour workday in 1903. However moderate the request was intended to be, its timing was poor and did not garner them any favors from the mill owners. As the mills were reporting their biggest losses of the year, and major wage concessions were being made for the millwrights, the mill owners said they were not in a position to yield to the most recent demands from their workers. The official response from the mill owners to the loaders’ request for an eight-hour workday was that due to “the unprofitable condition

12 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 29 April 1903. 13 “Millwrights’ Strike Settled,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 29 April 1903. 14 “Mechanical Department,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 20 May 1903. 77

of milling in the northwest, coupled with the fact that no other mills are employing such

labor on that basis,” the loaders’ request was “impracticable.”15 The prominence of the mill owners’ positions in the CA, too, affected their decision to deny the loaders the eight-hour day. If they had been amenable to the loaders’ request immediately, the CA would have viewed the mill owners as subverting the principle of the open shop.

However, the mill owners did not join the CA ignorant of its principles. An article in the

Weekly Northwestern Miller noted that the loaders should wait a more favorable time to approach again the mill owners. These two incidents illuminated the different treatment the mill owners bestowed on millwrights and the loaders. The millwrights received special treatment and attained their wage increase while the loaders were told to wait for better conditions to consider an eight-hour day.

By the spring of 1903, the IUFCME was gaining strength and numbers. It had established chapters in Tacoma, Washington, upstate New York, and St. Louis. One of the first tests of its ability to achieve gains came in St. Louis. That May, IUFCME local

19 struck. The wages the St. Louis mill employees demanded, if obtained, would have made them much higher paid than Minneapolis operatives. The St. Louis operative millers would have received $21.00 a week, or $0.52 an hour, while in Minneapolis even the millwrights were only earning $16.00 a week, or $0.40 an hour.16 St. Louis was a growing competitor for Minneapolis in milling, and winning higher wages there could potentially have buttressed the Minneapolis IUFCME’s attempts at changing labor standards. Conversely, it could have meant that Minneapolis mill owners would be less willing to increase wages for their employees or allow the loaders to have an eight-hour

15 “Mechanical Department,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 27 May 1903. 16“Strike of Mill Employees,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 6 May 1903. And “Millwrights’ Strike Settled,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 29 April 1903. 78

day because they needed to compete with St. Louis flour. The St. Louis strike was the

first to be IUFCME-sanctioned in a major market in 1903 since Finley rejected the strike

of the employees at the Kelly Milling Co. in Kansas City, Missouri in March.17 The

IUFCME in Minneapolis voted in its June 20 meeting to send $23.00 in support of the strikers in St. Louis.18

Success in the St. Louis strike was imperative for future success in Minneapolis.

If the employees in St. Louis could have gotten the wages for which they asked, the

Minneapolis mill operatives would no longer be the highest paid mill employees in the nation, thus taking this defense away from the Minneapolis mill owners. The strike in St.

Louis lasted through the mill shutdowns that protested the British tariffs, but by the middle of June, the unions and the mill owners there had reached an impasse. The owners there refused even to recognize that their employees were organized, let alone concede the demands of the union. This attitude coupled with the fact that the St. Louis mills, like those in Minneapolis, were suffering lower than average output, led to a defeat in the quest for higher wages for mill operatives. The Weekly Northwestern Miller aptly noted that a setback for labor in St. Louis was a setback for labor in Minneapolis. The trade magazine stated that while union men “naturally expect some setbacks and hard knocks in bringing about a great reform like the adoption of an eight-hour day,” the St.

Louis strike was ill-timed and the “millowners [sic] had the best of the situation from the

start.”19 The leadership of the IUFCME in Minneapolis took note of the St. Louis strike, but still made similar mistakes, particularly with regard to timing.

17 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 25 March 1903. 18 “Minutes of the Flour Packers and Nailers Union No. 1548 of Minneapolis, Minn. American Federation of Labor,” 20 June 1903. Jean E. Spielman Papers, 1901-1936, M535 MHS. 19 “Two Strikes Abandoned,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 17 June 1903. 79

Throughout the summer of 1903, the unions that comprised the IUFCME strove to create working-class solidarity, particularly among organized workers. Having this solidarity would fortify the IUFCME’s ability to initiate changes in labor standards in the flour mills as well as give the union to aid other organized workers. At its meetings, the

Flour Packers and Nailers Union No. 1548 occasionally heard reports from its delegate to the city and state Trades and Labor Councils. At the union’s August 6 meeting, the packers and nailers were informed that they should not buy tools from D. Maydole

Hammer Co. because it was an unfair company. It was also informed that the “telephone girls” were on strike and that any measure to help them should be taken.20 The IUFCME often donated money to other unions on strike in Minneapolis and, as aforementioned, to other mill-related unions in the nation. It fiercely promoted only buying union-label goods, and served only McLaughlin’s coffee at its meetings because McLaughlin’s was the only union-label coffee in the city.21 These attempts to cultivate solidarity and become more integrated into the larger labor community in Minneapolis were necessary for the IUFCME to succeed. It would need the support of other members of the working class to buy their label, boycott certain brands, and send money in times of need. This type of solidarity was exactly what the CA declared it wanted to destroy. If the working class worked in concert to assist unions in making labor reforms, it could be very dangerous to CA principles, particularly the open shop.

In 1903, the CA was still a burgeoning organization in Minneapolis. Only in the latter half of 1902 did the mill owners publicly state that they were members of the CA,

20 “Minutes of the Flour Packers and Nailers Union No. 1548,” 6 August 1903. Jean E. Spielman Papers, 1901-1936, M535 MHS. 21 Ibid., 20 September 1903. 80

after which time the organization gained more influence in the city.22 The mill owners showing that they were members of the CA also strengthened the CA nationally. Known as an organization for small and mid-sized businesses in the Midwest, it was rare at this time for large industries to be involved with the CA at all. In 1902, leaders in the NAM criticized the CA for being too small to be effective. 23 The criticism was apt for the earliest years of the CA. However, the mills were one of the largest industries involved with the CA at this time. The mill owners, then, had the opportunity to show that the CA could be effective in implementing its principles. A victory in the Minneapolis flour mills could have helped support the CA at a national level, as it would have shown that the CA was capable of supporting large industries during labor conflicts.24 As a result, the CA needed to succeed in Minneapolis with Pillsbury, Washburn-Crosby, and the

Northwestern Consolidated to show that it could be just as effective as the NAM.

Establishing the open shop in Minneapolis would not be easy. In the first two years of the twentieth century, Minneapolis experienced an economic boom. As a result of the boom, many industrial jobs were created and the city’s union leaders tried to organize as many of the new workers as possible. By 1902, union membership was

28,338, almost double the number in 1900.25 Such growth did not deter the Minneapolis

CA. They raised money and awareness by selling anti-union buttons for twenty-five cents that featured the phrase “Minneapolis Makes Good.”26 One of the ways the

Minneapolis CA was effective at establishing the open shop in their mills was that they

22 William Millikan, A Union Against Unions (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001), 26. 23 David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 272-273. 24 Millikan, 26-27. 25 Ibid., 5. 26 David Montgomery, Workers' Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 60. 81

followed CA policy of firing any unskilled workers that threatened to walk out or made

“unwarranted demands” and replaced them.27 This tactic allowed the mill owners to bypass negotiations, arbitrations, and strikes and simply dismiss dissenting workers from their jobs only to replace them with other unskilled workers. Immediately replacing the unskilled workers also meant that the mills could continue running, and would set an example to the newly hired unskilled employees that mill owners would not tolerate opposition from workers.

The practice of firing unskilled workers who made demands and hiring new unskilled men effectively paved the way toward establishing an open shop in the mills.

The larger labor community also suffered because of this practice. Although union membership was growing in Minneapolis, many unskilled and transient workers were not yet organized. When they entered the mills after mill owners fired unskilled workers for making demands, it undercut the unskilled workers’ bargaining power. The IUFCME had included the loaders, nailers, and packers in their industrial organization, which was likely an attempt to protect the mill’s unskilled workers from the mill owners firing them for making demands. However, the IUFCME did not function well as an industrial organization. As will be shown in the 1903 strike, the IUFCME did not force the most skilled workers, the millwrights, to strike in sympathy with the loaders. As a result, the majority of the men striking were unskilled and, from the mill owners’ viewpoint, easily replaced. This would be an important factor in the defeat of the loaders in their 1903 strike. The IUFCME’s struggle to generate cohesion among the millwrights, operative

27 Letter from President of Mason Builders’ Association, New York to President Nye, 25 August 1903. Citizens Alliance Records, 1903-1953, M465 MHS. 82

millers, nailers, packers, and loaders not only weakened its ability to get arbitrations with

mill owners, but it also undercut their ability to lead a successful strike.

When the IUFCME formed in 1902, its goal was to engender more solidarity among the millwrights, operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders. The set up of the modern mills meant that the men were often separated by skill on different floors from one another. The nailers and packers worked on the bottom floor in line with the loaders while the operative millers worked in the middle floors overseeing and operating machinery. The millwrights also worked on the upper floors setting up and maintaining machinery and mill facilities.28 The millwrights’ actions showed that they were more concerned with improving their own work conditions than helping to improve the conditions for operative millers and mill operatives like the nailers, packers, and loaders.

When, in October 1902, the millwrights acted independently from the negotiations among the mill owners and the operative millers, nailers, and packers, it showed that the millwrights wanted the mill owners to see them as separate from other mill employees.29

Acting independently on October 10, 1902, the millwrights made their own request for an eight-hour day and a wage increase.30 When the mill owners refused their demands, the millwrights immediately struck. They were well aware that they were the most skilled employees in the mills and their skills were transferrable to other crafts, like carpentry and machining. Being the most skilled workers in the mill meant that mill owners were not able to use the CA tactic of dismissing the millwrights for making demands or striking. Instead, the mill owners acceded to the millwrights’ demands of the

28 “A Flour Mill,” Mill City Museum, permanent exhibit: Minneapolis. Visited 21 August 2008. 29 “Flour Mill Employees: Eight Hours a Day is Granted Without a Struggle,” The Union, 3 October 1902. The IUFCME characterized loaders as “unskilled,” and so their interests were likely not represented during this particular negotiation. 30 “Millwrights,” The Union, 10 October 1902. 83

eight hour day and a very small pay increase that resulted from not changing hourly

wages.31 The millwrights struck again in the spring of 1903 without the support of the

IUFCME or the other craft unions in the mills.32 Although the millwrights succeeded in both of those strikes, that they acted out of concert with the IUFCME and the operative millers’, nailers’ and packers’, and loaders’ unions indicates that they saw themselves as separate from the other mill employees. This view made it difficult for John Finley to ensure that the least skilled members of the IUFCME would have bargaining leverage, because they did not have the support of the most skilled workers in the mills.

Despite the lack of support from the millwrights, the IUFCME still made gains for the operative millers, nailers, and packers. The IUFCME won the right to eight-hour days without incident within weeks of the millwrights’ strike, providing a stark contrast between the attitudes, tactics, and behaviors of each group. The IUFCME worked for weeks negotiating the eight-hour day with the mill owners. The leadership of the

IUFCME made no threat to walk out, which comforted the mill owners and helped to foster a cordial relationship. The millwrights, conversely, did not work to build a similar relationship with the mill owners. They were aware of the shortage of skilled millwrights, and knew they were in demand as employees. The events in 1903 further deepened the occupational divides that existed among the millwrights, operative millers, and nailers, packers, and loaders.

During their April strike at the Standard mill, the millwrights sought sympathy from the IUFCME. A committee from the millwrights’ union had attended the April 19 meeting of the nailers’ and packers’ union while the millwrights were striking at the

31 “The Millwrights’ Strike,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 22 April 1903. 32 “Millwrights’ Strike Settled,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 29 April 1903. 84

Standard mill. They informed the nailers and packers of their labor dispute and sought

sympathy, though did not seek monetary support. 33 The millwrights received support from the nailers and packers, and were successful in their April strike because James Pye, a manager at the Standard Mill, paid the wage difference out of his own pocket.34 The millwrights again attended a meeting of the nailers’ and packers’ union in June. At that meeting, the loaders presented their case to request an eight-hour day. The loaders stated that they had already approached three firms and felt they had been “ignored” by all. 35

The nailers and packers voted to support the loaders on their quest for an eight- hour day, though the millwrights did not. It was in this action that the separation between the millwrights and the nailers, packers, and loaders within the workplace became quite clear. It also points to the differences in their demographics and life experiences that affected their relationships with one another. The millwrights were older than the nailers, packers, and loaders, and were mostly unmarried men who were from outside Minnesota or Wisconsin.36 These factors alone allowed them to be more transitory than the operative millers and mill operatives. In addition, the millwrights had skills that were in high demand across the country. This fact coupled with their unattached status enabled them to move to find another location and job, a privilege they did not share with other mill employees. The millwrights did not depend on the working class acting in concert to

33 “Minutes of the Flour Packers and Nailers Union No. 1548,” 19 April 1903. Jean E. Spielman Papers, 1901-1936, M535 MHS. 34 “Millwrights’ Strike Settled,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 29 April 1903. 35 Ibid., 20 June 1903. 36 The millwrights’ average age, 42.2, was almost exactly ten years older than the average age of the nailers, packers, and loaders, which was 32.5. Six of the twenty-seven millwrights were married, while twenty-one of forty-eight nailers, packers, and loaders were married, and only seven millwrights were from Minnesota or Wisconsin, while twenty-five of the nailers, packers, and loaders were from those two states. Calculated from Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900. 85

accomplish their goals, an attitude that undermined the IUFCME’s efforts to build

solidarity and significantly hindered its chances for success in the autumn of 1903.

As the IUFCME worked to appeal to the working-class community, it did not fail to address women workers. At the time there were very few women working in the flour mills. Mostly women worked sewing flour sacks before they were filled, or worked sewing sacks shut after they had been filled, though it is not clear how many women worked in the mills at this time. There is only a record of seven women operative millers at this time.37 At their August 6 meeting, the nailers’ and packers’ union moved to ensure that when the executive board of the IUFCME visited with James S. Bell, manager of the

Washburn-Crosby A mill, that it requested that they pay “the girls $2.75 and $2.25 per day and eight hours to constitute a days’ work.”38 Being paid that much meant that the women’s wages in the mills would be closer to the men’s. Despite calling the women workers “girls,” this motion was indicative of the IUFCME’s dedication to represent all mill employees. While it was exceptional that the nailers’ and packers’ union were advocating higher wages for women workers at the mills, it must be noted that the unions dismissed the issue when they encountered the mill owners’ resistance to the issue. At this time, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) had organized some women workers, though its member unions were still male-dominated. The AFL’s interests remained in the men’s realm as they advocated protectionist policies whose aim was not always to protect all workers, rather to protect all male workers.39

37 Twelfth Census of the United States, Taken over the Year in 1900, Population (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Office, 1901-1902), 527, 577. 38 Ibid., 6 August 1903. 39 Eileen Boris, “A Man’s Dwelling House is his Castle,” Ava Baron ed. Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 141. 86

The initiative to include women’s wages as an issue in the strike was dismissed in

September when, in the midst of preparing for their own strike, the nailers and packers voted “no” on the “girl question,” on whether to include demands to pay women workers the same as the male workers.40 That during the 1903 strike, the IUFCME abandoned the request to pay women workers more indicated that their commitment to improving the wages of women mill workers was shallow and that the IUFCME and its member unions did not deem the request as important as their own demands.

Neither the loaders nor the mill’s women workers were included in the negotiations in September of 1902. There are two potential explanations for this. The first is that the operative millers’ and nailers’ and packers’ unions did not want to include the loaders or the women in the negotiations at all. The second, and more likely, potential was that the operative millers, nailers, and packers under the same umbrella organization as the loaders believed that if the eight-hour day was established for them, the mill owners might have been conducive to establishing that principle for all of the mill workers. There is no direct evidence to point to either possibility, though there are two pieces of evidence that speak to the legitimacy of the latter potential. In the notes from the nailers’ and packers’ union, the cause of supporting the loaders for the eight- hour day surfaced less than nine months after the negotiations ended in September of

1902.41 Contrasting this, the “girl question” did not surface again in the union’s notes through 1905. Also in support of the latter potential as an explanation for why neither the loaders nor women workers were included in 1902 but both were considered in 1903 had to do with the IUFCME as an organization. It was not coincidence that Minneapolis was

40 Ibid., 20 September 1903. 41 “Minutes of the Flour Packers and Nailers Union No. 1548,” 20 June 1903. Jean E. Spielman Papers, 1901-1936, M535 MHS. 87

the location for the organization’s headquarters. The city was the center for flour milling

in the United States at the time. The IUFCME tried to establish practices like the eight-

hour day in Minneapolis because they believed that mills like Pillsbury, Washburn-

Crosby, and Northwestern Consolidated could set the industry standard for working

conditions. As aforementioned, a setback for one milling center, such as St. Louis, was a

setback for all mill employees. Furthermore, this meant that a gain for one milling

center, such as Minneapolis, was a gain for all mill employees.42 In the 1903 strike, the

IUFCME also used the reasoning that other, smaller mills would follow the practice of the big three. The IUFCME did not require employees of the smaller mills in

Minneapolis to walk off in support, as it believed that those mills would simply follow whatever practices the big three implemented.43 The logic that any gain at any level in any city would help workers in any position in any milling center shows that it was probable that the loaders and women workers were deliberately left out of the 1902 negotiations. It was likely that the IUFCME, the operative millers, nailers, and packers did not include the loaders’ or women’s causes in their 1902 negotiations because it believed that the mill owners would, after giving the other members of the IUFCME the eight-hour day, establish an eight-hour principle in the Minneapolis mills. This miscalculation cost the women, loaders, and IUFCME greatly in the 1903 strike.

Throughout the summer of 1903, the IUFCME had been working to ensure that

Minneapolis’s mills were paying union scale to their male workers. In August they created a special committee on wage scale that visited mill managers to determine whether scale was being paid and if not, to convince the mill managers to increase the

42 “Two Strikes Abandoned,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 17 June 1903. 43 “Flour Mill Strike Now Grim Reality,” Minneapolis Journal, 25 September 1903. 88

pay in that particular mill.44 The committee found that the only major mill paying scale was the Christian Milling Co., owned by George Llewellyn Christian. Henry Little, manager of the Pillsbury A mill refused to meet with the committee because none of them worked in his mill, and James Bell of the Washburn-Crosby A mill delayed meeting with the committee entirely.45 The reactions of Little and, particularly, Bell indicate the mill owners’ position on how to treat their least-skilled laborers. Mill owners in the CA received confirmation from W. H Foster and other CA members in the nation that if there was a labor dispute with “unskilled” workers, they should get rid of those men and hire new ones.46

The IUFCME and others listed the loaders as unskilled workers. The Weekly

Northwestern Miller noted that for being classified as unskilled work, loaders still had better hours and wages than did most other laborers, and when compared to the wages and hours of loaders outside Minneapolis, the loaders were paid and treated well. The

Weekly Northwestern Miller stated that loaders in other cities received “$1.75 per day of

12 hours and frequently less,” while Minneapolitan loaders garnered $2.00 per day of 10 hours.47 The mindset that nailers, packers, and loaders were easily replaceable proved to hurt mill owners during the initial days of the autumn strike. While the pay and hours were attractive to many of the working men in Minneapolis, the work was not easy.

Lifting forty to seventy pound barrels and flour sacks into trains was physically exhausting and not every worker was capable of the job. The mill owners also

44 Ibid., 6 and 15 August 1903. 45 Ibid., 15 August 1903. 46 “The Minneapolis Strike,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 14 October 1903. The article stated that loaders “cannot be properly described as skilled labor,” because their primary purpose was just lifting. 47 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 14 October 1903. 89

underestimated the time necessary to recruit, hire, and train new nailers, packers, and

loaders who could do their jobs as efficiently as did their former workers.

In mid-July, the IUFCME officially sanctioned the loaders’ initiative to attain an eight-hour workday. The Weekly Northwestern Miller predicted that it was “most

improbable” that the executive committee of the IUFCME would have any trouble in

securing the eight-hour day for all of its members.48 However, after 1902, the mill owners were bound to uphold the principles of the CA, which meant that they could not bend to the will of unions. When they allowed the operative millers, nailers, and packers an eight-hour day it was after arbitration. When they agreed to pay millwrights at the

Standard Mill $0.40 an hour for their new work it was only because James Pye agreed to cover the costs himself.49

In the summer of 1902, Minneapolis hosted the Convention of Employers and

Employees. There, speakers addressed a crowd of several hundred, including the mill

owners, on issues that employers faced. There was much debate over the issue of an

eight-hour workday. In the United States, the eight-hour day had been an issue since the

mid-nineteenth century. Although labor had succeeded in establishing the principle in

some cities and industries, workers in many industries were still working ten- and twelve-

hour days at the turn of the twentieth century. One of the speakers at the Convention of

Employers and Employees was Elizabeth C. Wheeler, a social secretary for the Shepard

Company in Rhode Island, took a conservative approach to the issue. In her address at

the convention she asked if the woman who “fit my gown spends her evening in a

brothel” or if her cobbler “frequents saloons out of work hours.” These issues, she

48 “Mechanical Department,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 15 July 1903. 49 “Millwrights’ Strike Settled,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 29 April 1903. 90

assured her audience, were of concern to the community, but she emphasized that “it

even more concerns the employer.”50 The apprehension that employees would, if left with more time outside of work, engage in acts that were objectionable was common among employers, and was an excuse for not granting employees an eight-hour day.

Wheeler’s speech confirmed fears and frustrations that the members of the CA likely had. Their belief that keeping ten-and twelve-hour days was a way to protect their employees from sinful behavior could have been one of the reasons many Minneapolis employers gave for not allowing an eight-hour workday. It is possible that the CA members and the mill owners believed that maintaining a ten- or twelve-hour workday helped their employees lead decent and honorable lives. However, it is also possible that

CA members and mill owners used the morality logic to conceal their more business- minded interests that saw an eight-hour day as a cut into profits.

The morality argument of keeping laborers to work ten-or twelve hours a day to save them from illicit behavior was not a tenable one in Minneapolis. Neighboring the mills were countless saloons and “theatres.” There were seven prostitutes listed as living within a few blocks of the mills themselves.51 Saloons and brothels thrived during the first few years of the 1900s, despite the fact that most of their patrons would have been working-class laborers who worked ten-or twelve-hour days. The confluence of

Washington Avenue South and Marquette Avenue South was the theatre district at this

50 Elizabeth C. Wheeler, “Opportunities of the Industrial Social Secretary,” Employers and Employes: A Full Text of Addresses Before the National Convention of Employers and Employes Held at Minneapolis, Minn., Sept. 22-25, 1902 (Chicago: Public Policy, 1902, 163-189), 168-170. 51 As mentioned in Chapter Two, the women listed as “prostitutes” on the Census form lived at 218 1st Avenue South. Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900. There were a number of theatres in this area of Minneapolis as well, though some were actually burlesque houses in disguise. Having “prostitute” listed as an occupation in the 1900 census was rare, as census takers were instructed not to enumerate prostitutes. These were the only prostitutes listed as such in districts fifty through fifty-six, though it was likely that there were many others. 91

time in Minneapolis. Kohl and Middleton’s Dime Museum featured Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced

Man, Tom Thumb, and the Bearded Lady and several theatres showcased acrobats, in the

theatre area adjacent to the mills. There is little doubt that mill employees were patrons

of these theatres, freak shows, circuses, and burlesque houses, as every payday there was

increased activity in these establishments.52 This essentially refutes the “moral” argument to denying workers an eight-hour day. While mill owners may have claimed this as a reason for denying the IUFCME’s requests for an eight-hour day for mill operatives, it is most likely that the decision was based mostly in economics. Switching to eight-hour shifts meant either running only two shifts or adding an extra shift in the mills that, in turn, meant hiring more employees. The money to pay the wages of the extra employees would have cut into overall profit.

However, another economically based point of view favored the eight-hour workday. Frank L. McVey, a professor of political science at the University of

Minnesota, covered the other side of the debate in his address to the employers’ convention titled “Economic Effects of the Eight Hours Day.” McVey placed the debate in an economic context, showing employers that they could, in fact, improve their business if their employees had an eight-hour day. He argued that with shorter hours came an “increased standard of living, wider consumption,” and “a larger demand,” which meant that although goods sold at a lower price but demand would be so high that

“the continuous employment of labor” would be necessary to “furnish the supply.”53

While this approach might have been effective for some employers, the flour milling industry in 1903 had been ravaged economically. With the British tariffs, Minneapolis

52 David Rosheim, The Other Minneapolis or The Rise and Fall of the Gateway, The Old Minneapolis Skid Row (Maquoketa, IA: Andromeda Press, 1978), 38, 45. 53 Frank L. McVey, “Economic Effects of the Eight Hours Day,” Employers and Employes (192-209), 195. 92

mills lost one of their largest markets for flour. This isolation, in turn, caused wheat and

flour supply to go up in Minneapolis, causing a crash in prices during the first quarter of

the year. The flour depression complicated the fact that the owners of the Minneapolis

mills entered a contract with the CA to maintain the open shop in their mills and, as a

result, were very resistant to any demands the IUFCME made, however mild they may

have been.

The IUFCME noticed that the mill owners’ relationships with their employees had changed over the summer of 1903. When the operative millers’ and nailers’ and packers’ unions approached the mill owners in the autumn of 1902 to try to negotiate the eight-hour day, mill owners listened and cooperated with their employees. During that negotiation with the operative millers, nailers, and packers, the mill owners had not made public their membership in the CA. In 1903, however, the mill owners were publicly members of the CA and had to uphold the CA’s principles, which included refusing to arbitrate with unions. Implementing CA tactics and principles may not have been difficult for the mill owners, as they joined with the organization aware of its purpose.

When, in the spring of that year, the loaders approached the mill owners asking for arbitration, the mill owners refused. IUFCME President John Finley attributed this attitude shift to the mill owners’ membership in national owners’ associations, and he would not let that go unnoticed. In a circular he co-authored during the autumn 1903 strike, Finley attributed the mill owners’ resistance to their new membership in the

National Manufacturers’ Association and said that the “influence of Parryism was becoming apparent.”54

54 “Appeal to Unions: A Circular Issued by Federation Committee Makes an Exhaustive Statement,” Minneapolis Journal. 1 October 1903. “Parryism” refers to David Parry, then president of the NAM. 93

As Minneapolis mills were beginning to make a profit again in the summer of

1903, the loaders renewed their campaign for an eight-hour day. By late summer of that year, the mills were beginning to come out of the depression they had been experiencing since late 1902. When, on August 26, the loaders approached mill owners requesting an eight-hour day, the mill owners again turned them down. The owners’ response was that the milling industry had been so unfavorable for so long that they could not “incur the increased expense” of allowing an eight-hour day for all workers in the mills.55

The economic circumstances in the Minneapolis mills were quite similar to those in the St. Louis mills during their mill operatives’ strike. That strike, which occurred during one of the largest depressions in flour milling in the United States for nearly a decade, failed, in part because the St. Louis operatives’ timing was poor. With this most recent denial of the loaders’ request in Minneapolis, the IUFCME executive committee again took over the fight for the eight-hour day. Their approach was more forceful than that of the loaders’ union. In fact, the IUFCME’s approach was so forceful, the press reported that “fire-eating organizers” had been badgering mill managers with their

“pugnacious and tyrannical” attitudes, which was to the “detriment of the cause.”56 John

Finley, president of the IUFCME, was one of the “fire-eating organizers” to whom the press referred. Finley stated that he was unaware that he had made himself “obnoxious,” and that his relationship with the mill managers had been “most pleasant.”57 Finley had worked with the mill owners in 1902 on the negotiation to give the operative millers, nailers, and packers the eight-hour day. As early as 1901 when he was a member of the nailers’ and packers’ union as a packer, Finley was involved in union committees. In

55 “Mechanical Department,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 26 August 1903. 56 “Mechanical Department,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 9 September 1903. 57 “Both Sides Stand Pat; Mill Strike Certain,” Minneapolis Journal, 22 September 1903. 94

July 1901, the nailers’ and packers’ union elected Finley and other men to approach the

mill owners to try to secure a one-year contract.58 He worked on other such committees until he was elected president of the IUFCME, where he performed duties of a walking organizer: making sure that mills were in compliance with union contracts, following up on union men’s grievances, and representing the IUFCME in arbitrations and negotiations with mill owners. The mill owners’ belief that Finley was “pugnacious” in his meetings with them was especially interesting considering that the mill owners, by this time, had declared that there was nothing to arbitrate because they were simply unwilling to allow an eight-hour day.59 By mid-September, both sides had become firmly entrenched. The loaders, with the support of the unions of both the operative millers and nailers and packers, used the IUFCME to escalate the matter.

The IUFCME sought opportunities to arbitrate to get the eight-hour day for the loaders several times between the end of August and mid-September. Each time they were turned away, with the owners informing them that arbitration was not an option.

The IUFCME turned to city leaders with an appeal to get the mill owners to participate in arbitration. Minneapolis Mayor James C. Haynes was the organization’s first contact.

He had attended the local union number two of mill employees’ smoke social in March.60

Haynes had also attended the IUFCME’s national conference in June where he spoke on the importance of an eight-hour day for workers.61 Leading into September 1903, Mayor

Haynes and other city and state leaders implored mill owners to consider arbitration to no

58 “Minutes of the Flour Packers and Nailers Union No. 1548,” 28 July 1901. Jean E. Spielman Papers, 1901-1936, M535 MHS. 59 The Union, 25 September 1903. 60 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 25 March 1903. 61 “International Union Meeting,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 10 June 1903. 95

avail.62 Haynes’ inability to force the mill owners to negotiate was likely affected by his relationship with capital in the city. Although he had spoken in support of the eight-hour day, attended the smoke social, and agreed to be an independent arbiter if mill owners agreed to arbitration, employers also called on Haynes to defend their side when labor conflicts arose. In the past, and eventually during the 1903 mill employees’ strike,

Haynes appointed special police forces to protect company property and strikebreakers.63

This action did not necessarily mean that Haynes was only paying lip service when he spoke of the virtues of the eight-hour day for mill employees. Haynes’ appeals to mill owners to get an arbitration set up for the mill employees were unlikely to come to fruition because of other influences, and it is possible that Haynes was mostly concerned that his city not become the site of a violent strike.

The CA’s influence was clear; the mill owners very much believed in what W.H.

Foster had written from New York, that unskilled workers were replaceable. Both the

IUFCME and the mill owners knew that September through October was the busiest time in the Minneapolis mills.64 Additionally, there were questions about why the millers, nailers, and packers were involved at all. They had received the eight-hour day through arbitration one year previously, and did not need to risk their employment to help the loaders get the same. The mill owners felt that after the arbitrations with the millers, nailers, and packers in September of 1902, the question had been “permanently settled…[and] there was, in fact, an implied understanding that no employees should strike unless upon grievance.”65 The mill owners were unwilling to arbitrate with the

62 Millikan, 27. 63 Ibid., 37. 64 “An 8-Hour Day or a Big Strike,” Minneapolis Journal, 21 September 1903. 65 Ibid., 21 September 1903. 96

IUFCME because they believed that the only group with which they had a grievance was

the loaders. That the millers, nailers, and packers became involved and threatened to

strike in sympathy likely bolstered the mill owners’ anti-union feelings that fit in with the

CA’s policy of maintaining an open shop. Whether or not there had been an implicit

agreement in 1902, mill owners’ predilection for the open shop was solidified when the

millers, nailers, and packers acted in sympathy in 1903. This, coupled with the fact that

the mill owners’ membership in the CA was now public, meant that the loaders had an

exceedingly difficult time in trying to procure an eight-hour day. The loaders, in

conjunction with their IUFCME brethren the millers, nailers, and packers stood as firmly

for an eight-hour day as the mill owners did against it.

At midnight on September 23, 1,800 mill operatives finished their shifts and walked off their jobs. Millwrights and watchmen, among others, stayed working in the mills. The operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders studied in this thesis were among the nearly two thousand men who were active in this strike. Although the sample in this thesis is small, it allowed for hypotheses and questions to be formed around why some of the men supported this strike while others did not. The only mills affected were the big three, as the IUFCME decided that the smaller mills followed the lead of the larger ones, so the men there were allowed to keep working.66 Finley, with aid from

IUFCME secretary A.E. Kellington, and president of the loaders’ union Thomas Curran, wrote a proposal to the mill owners. The proposition suggested that the two sides seek out independent arbiters who could review and solve the dispute fairly.67

66 “Flour Mill Strike Now Grim Reality,” Minneapolis Journal, 25 September 1903. 67 Ibid. 97

Finley knew well that, upon starting a strike, obtaining the support of the public would be essential to winning. By appealing to the mill owners and offering a possible solution to the strike, Finley was showing the community that the loaders had been pushed to strike and that the IUFCME was making every effort to end the strike as quickly and fairly as possible. The mill owners, however, refused the offer. They stated that there was nothing to arbitrate because they were unwilling to make any compromises, adding that they would rather “shut down [the] mills rather than go into any discussion.”68 The owners had support from the CA, and had the finances to withstand a long strike. The contest to win over public opinion and community support was more important to the IUFCME and its members than it was to the mill owners.

The mill owners made a strong proclamation to their striking employees. Signs posted in the big three mills stated that any employee who walked off his job to “help the flour loaders gain their point” would not have a place of employment within the mills after the strike ended.69 This allowed the mill owners to offer their newly recruited workers permanent positions, which was much more attractive than just being hired as a strikebreaker. The mill owners had been courting St. Paulites to work in their mills, mostly because they were the closest urban center with laborers. Those workers also did not have social ties to the striking men and were thus more apt than the Minneapolitans to be strikebreakers. While the mills suffered initially, there were many men who responded to the call for workers to replace the striking millers, nailers, packers, and loaders. Just a day into the strike, J.W. Cooper, a lawyer from St. Paul, wrote to E.J.

Phelps, CA member. Cooper wrote with regret about the mills shutting down in

68 “Millers Stand Firm to Protect Industry,” Minneapolis Journal, 23 September 1903. 69 Ibid. 98

Minneapolis due to the strike. He offered any help the Minneapolitans needed to “break

this apparent dead-lock.”70

Picket lines were immediately set up outside the mills. One of the purposes of the picket line was to cajole potential strikebreakers into not crossing the line to work in the mills. The picketers were successful initially, as they turned back five men who had come from St. Paul to work there.71 Without strikebreakers, the mills were left with little opportunity to continue producing flour. As time went on, members of the IUFCME went to the train depot on a tip that a group of sixteen experienced mill men were going to be arriving from Duluth to work in the embattled Minneapolis mills. That the striking men could make this interception was due to a tip from railroad employees, which showed how working-class connections aided the IUFCME. 72 There were questions as to how experienced the men being used to break the strike actually were at milling, nailing, packing, or loading. In a circular put out by the IUFCME, it was stated that

“bums, hobos, Greeks, negroes, and university students” were the primary strikebreakers and that acquiring them and training them had cost the mills more than if they had just made the eight-hour adjustment for the loaders.73 The power of the IUFCME was that it had affiliates in Duluth and Stillwater, and that any organized worker in any mill stood to gain from a successful strike.

The union men’s success at persuading strikebreakers not to cross the picket line became most evident when the mill owners came up with a drastic plan to prevent

70 Letter from J.W. Cooper of Griggs, Cooper & Co in St. Paul to E.J. Phelps, 24 September 1903. Citizens Alliance Records, 1903-1953, M465 MHS. 71 “Millers Hire Men ‘For Steady Work,’” Minneapolis Journal, 25 September 1903. 72 “Diverted Duluth Men Who Came to Take Work in the Mills,” Minneapolis Journal, 1 October 1903. 73 “Circular Issued by Federation Committee Makes an Exhaustive Statement,” Minneapolis Journal, 1 October 1903. 99

strikebreakers from talking to any of the striking men. They converted a Pillsbury cereal

mill into dormitories and the Crown Roller mill, which the Northwestern Consolidated

owned, into a dining room, providing strikebreakers cots and three meals a day so they

never had to leave the mill compound. The mill owners also built a fence around the

entire mill compound to keep strikebreakers in and strikers out. This was a practice that

worked so well in Minneapolis that the CA decided to adopt it and employ it in other

strikes across the country.74 The mill owners’ primary reason for creating the dormitories was the high attrition rate of strikebreakers because striking operatives convinced them as they came to and from the mills for work to stop what they were doing and fight for the union’s demands.75 That there was such a high attrition rate of strikebreakers is noteworthy. The 1903 strike suffered due to a lack of industrial integration among the

IUFCME and other unions that were related to the mills.

Had the IUFCME consulted with other unions involved with milling, the railroad workers who brought wheat into and flour out of the mills for example, the workers could have had more control over their strike. The railroad switchmen’s union told the striking mill employees that they were “prepared to take whatever action [was] necessary to sustain the mill men in their fight.”76 Although the switchmen were prepared to strike in support, they did not because they would have broken their own contract that stated that they had to give a thirty-day notice to their employers if they wanted to strike.77

Although the switchmen were unable to strike in support, they may have participated in the product boycott or, as previously mentioned, tipped off the striking mill employees in

74 Millikan, 37. 75 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 7 October 1903. 76 “The Minneapolis Strike,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 7 October 1903. 77 Ibid. 100

Minneapolis when strikebreakers were on the trains. The latter, while unofficial, was still

supporting their fellow working class laborers and was part of the reasons for mill owners

to erect fenced-in dormitories and kitchens to house strikebreakers. While there was

support from some other unions in the city, the IUFCME was not able, in its short year of

existence, to cultivate significant loyalty to their label, which undermined the boycott

they called as well.

The IUFCME had approached the owners and employees of the hotels and restaurants and asked if they would support the striking mill operatives and operative millers by refusing to serve men who took work at the mills after the strike was announced. As a result, many restaurateurs and hoteliers refused service to strikebreakers and to the mills. This was likely another cause for the mill owners to keep strikebreakers within the fenced area of the mill compound. After the dormitory system was established, the striking men also approached grocers and asked if they would boycott the mills during the strike and refuse to sell goods to them. While some were amenable to the request, others stated that they were “ready to sell to all who cared to buy.”78 The fact that local hotels and restaurants refused service to strikebreakers and that some grocers refused to sell to the mills who were feeding the strikebreakers shows the community ties that the IUFCME had. Hoteliers and restaurateurs likely lost money by refusing service to the new men, but they were willing to support the striking millers, nailers, packers, and loaders out of solidarity. Also, hoteliers and restaurateurs could have lost even more money if labor boycotted them. Their support helped to push the mill owners into providing dormitories for the strikebreakers, a drastic move which would not have had to happen if the hoteliers and restaurateurs had given the strikebreakers service.

78 “The Minneapolis Strike,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 7 October 1903. 101

In the beginning of October, circumstances were no longer favoring the strikers.

Many of the operative millers had returned to work, thus weakening the IUFCME’s solidarity as well as the strength of the strike in the eyes of the mill owners.79 The mill owners delivered another blow to the solidarity among the striking workers when they announced that they had rescinded their earlier proclamation that no man who walked off the job could return to the mills for employment. They stated that they would take back

“good men, regardless of their membership or non-membership in a union.”80 Within a week, many men had reapplied for their jobs. The mill owners were pleased to see so many experienced men return, while the IUFCME saw the men who returned to their old jobs as strikebreakers undercutting the strength of the strike. Even the Weekly

Northwestern Miller, which had been an advocate of an eight-hour day for the loaders, began to condemn the strike. “It is impossible,” it wrote,” to heat the house with hot air talk or to clothe the body with warm resolutions.”81 Indeed, many of the striking nailers, packers, and loaders were married, many with children to support, and the long, cold

Minnesota winter was fast approaching. Most of the mills were up and running by this time, some at full capacity, which contributed to the waning efficacy of the strike.

After it became obvious that this strike was being lost, on October 9, President

Finley called a meeting of the IUFCME at which he requested that the unions call off the strike. The members of the nailers’ and packers’ union called him “Judas” and “Benedict

Arnold,” and carried him out of the Labor Temple.82 When Finley tendered his resignation the next day, he stated that there was “a serious difference of opinion in

79 “The Minneapolis Strike,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 7 October 1903. 80 “Both Sides Active,” Minneapolis Tribune, 5 October 1903. 81 “The Minneapolis Strike,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 14 October 1903. 82 Ibid. 102

regard to the existing strike.”83 After Finley requested that the men go back to work and give up on the strike, the IUFCME cut its support to the striking men. While the AFL promised aid, it was never delivered, leaving the remaining strikers to support themselves while they were not working.84

Finley’s call to end the strike was, to many men of the IUFCME, a sign that they could return to work. The same day that Finley surrendered his presidency, thirteen of the seventeen struck mills were running at capacity, including the Washburn-Crosby A mill.85 This meant that enough men from the IUFCME returned to work that the mills could run almost unaffected by the remaining picketers. Despite the dismal news, the nailers’ and packers’ and the loaders’ unions remained optimistic. George Dahl, a member of the nailers’ and packers’ union stated that the “Packers and Nailers could win this scrap alone,” referring to the fact that the millers’ union had allowed their men to return to work, and the nailers and packers were the only remaining “skilled” workers striking in sympathy with the loaders.86

Washburn-Crosby, Northwestern Consolidated, and Pillsbury owners had all offered the striking men the opportunity to re-apply for their previously held positions.

By late October, very few men remained on strike. The mills declared the strike had ended on the 23rd, when all seventeen affected mills came back online, with only 1500 employees.87 Many of the men the mill owners did not accept back in their old positions moved on to work at other labor. After the mid-point of the strike, it was clear that a

83 “Union Calls on Managers,” Minneapolis Journal, 12 October 1903. 84 “The Strike in Minneapolis,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 30 September 1903. The AFL promised $100,000 at the end of September and likely did not pay it because Finley tried to end the strike. 85 Ibid. 86 “Minutes of the Flour Packers and Nailers Union No. 1548,” 18 October 1903. Jean E. Spielman Papers, 1901-1936 Roll 14, M535 MHS. 87 “Another Mill Starts,” Minneapolis Journal, 23 October 1903. 103

battle of attrition was happening. The mill owners had access to their own funds plus

those of the CA and NMA, while the striking men had few resources from which to draw.

The strike had significant consequences on the state of labor in Minneapolis. The number of men who continued striking after mid-October dwindled drastically. The remaining strikers were depending on financial assistance from sympathetic unions and the AFL, which promised but did not deliver $100,000 in aid. Their money was quickly running out.88 The nailers’ and packers’ union, still supporting the loaders’ strike, voted to have the strike committee help to pay the striking men’s dues because they had been out of work so that long they themselves could not afford to pay the dues.89 These actions are indicative of a union struggling to continue a very much failed strike. The

IUFMCE had distanced itself from the loaders’ and nailers’and packers’ unions that kept pushing the strike when Finley stepped down, which meant a significant loss of funding for these trade unions. The mill owners, in contrast, had few limits to their fight against the strike. With the aid of using CA and NAM-style tactics and with access to these organizations’ money, the mill owners operated at a loss to ensure that the loaders did not achieve the eight-hour day. The loaders, however, returned to working ten-hour days at the same wages as before the strike, and the mill owners, as they stated every time the loaders approached them about the eight-hour day, did not compromise. The mill owners were committed to the CA principle of the open shop and, in succeeding in this strike with little difficulty, helped establish the open shop in Minneapolis.

There were other consequences of the IUFCME’s failure during this strike. Not only did the CA, through the mill owners’ victory, prove that the closed shop movement

88 Ibid. and “The Strike in Minneapolis,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 30 September 1903. 89 “Minutes of the Flour Packers and Nailers Union No. 1548,” 15 November 1903. Jean E. Spielman Papers, 1901-1936, M535 MHS. 104

could be defeated, they also successfully split Minneapolis’s working class. The CA also

proved that it was not only effective in small industries. Upon realizing that the strike

was unlikely to succeed, John M. Finley attempted to bring a resolution to the strike,

which created a rift among the union men.

When Finley left his leadership position and the strike, many men decided to follow him, while others stayed on strike through April 1904. The men who continued the strike grew increasingly bitter toward their peers who returned to work, deepening the rift between them and the other mill men. In December, they exemplified this bitterness when they created a “scab list,” which was comprised of all of the names of the men who departed with Finley. To remove themselves from the scab list, men had to appear in front of the nailers’ and packers’ union and “square themselves” with its members.90 One of the CA’s outlined principles was to undermine community support and union solidarity, which clearly was effective in the autumn 1903 strike of operative millers and mill operatives.

How did men who were so united at the beginning of the strike become so divided? The mill owners used three tactics the CA had established. They first threatened their employees by stating that any worker who struck in support of the loaders would not have a position to which he could return. The operatives thought that if they were already forbidden to return to their previously held positions, they had nothing to lose by continuing to strike. The mill owners recruited hundreds of strikebreakers to replace the striking men. While this enabled the mill owners to run their mills in some capacity, it was not enough to bring the mills to peak production. The third tactic the mill owners used was to tell striking employees that they could have their jobs

90 Ibid., 3 December 1903. 105 back if they abandoned the strike. Coupled with the fact that the IUFCME withdrew from the strike, the third tactic was particularly effective in destroying solidarity among the operative millers and mill operatives. Through the mill owners, the CA had succeeded in the largest industry in Minneapolis, while it had not, with this victory, succeeded in establishing the open shop. This meant that the CA had established a foothold and could further impose its principles in Minneapolis.

The demographic and situational differences among the millwrights, operative millers, and nailers, packers, and loaders contributed to why the mill employees were split along craft and skill lines during the 1903 strike of operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders. The events of 1903 illuminated how class solidarity affected the relationship between labor and capital. The nailers, packers, and loaders shared many characteristics, like marriage rates, housing types, age, wage, and birthplace that allowed them to achieve group solidarity. The millwrights, on the other hand, shared few attributes with the nailers, packers, and loaders, and were a very separate group of workers. The means by which these two groups attempted to initiate labor changes elucidates how owners interacted with laborers of different skill levels, incomes, and with different life experiences and demographics, as the IUFCME and the CA collided in the autumn of 1903.

The CA’s efforts to break the connections among the mill employees began to target the nailers, packers, and loaders specifically. The mill owners knew that these three groups of men were the most similar and had a strong sense of solidarity. When the strike began in September, the CA and the IUFCME, in trying to appeal to

Minneapolitans to gain sympathy, tried different tactics that had been approved by their 106

national affiliates. The CA provided unlimited resources that the IUFCME could not

match. The CA viewed this strike as a “must win” for their side. Conversely, the

IUFCME was in its infancy and it, too, was fighting to establish national precedents.

This strike was thrust onto the national stage, and would change the course of how major

trade unions and managerial organizations in this industry would fight in the future.

The men who worked at the Pillsbury, Washburn-Crosby, and Northwestern

Consolidated mills and lived in Minneapolis’ Ward Five in enumeration districts fifty

through fifty-six differed by occupation as well as by age, wage, ethnicity, and marital

status. The nailers, packers, and loaders shared more with each other in the categories of

age, marital status, ethnicity, residential patterns, and wages than they shared with the

operative millers or millwrights. This meant that the millwrights, operative millers, and

mill operatives, so separate at work, were also segregated socially. The nailers, packers,

and loaders were younger, more married, and less skilled than the operative millers and

millwrights. The operative millers, with an average age of 37.5, were almost exactly the

average age of the entire group of mill operatives, operative millers, and millwrights, 37.

The millwrights’ average of 42.2 was almost exactly one decade older than the nailers,

packers, and loaders.91 To be a millwright required years of formal training, which is one of the reasons they were much older than the other two groups.

Housing patterns can divulge a lot of information about workers during this period. Workers were rooming, which involved only a place to stay, or lodging and boarding, which involved getting meals and a room for rent. Three-quarters of the men studied (eighty-six) roomed, boarded, or lodged. Fifty-six percent (twenty-seven) nailers, packers, and loaders, 80 percent (thirty-two) of the operative millers, and 93 percent

91 Calculated from Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900. 107

(twenty-five) of the millwrights were roomers, boarders, or lodgers.92 There were certain boarding and rooming houses that housed several mill employees at the same time. Of those who were not heads of household, some of the mill employees lodged, roomed, or boarded at the same address. Seven of the twenty-five rooming and boarding millwrights

(28 percent) lived in a boarding

house at 233 6th Avenue South in

enumeration district fifty-three,

though no operative millers, nailers,

packers, or loaders reported living at

that address.93 At 409 Washington

Avenue South were three of the Figure 4.1: Minneapolis Mill District and Location of Prominent Boarding Homes for Millwrights and Mill Operatives94 twenty-seven rooming and boarding nailers, packers, and loaders (11 percent) and one of the thirty-two (3 percent) rooming and boarding operative millers who roomed at the same address.95 There were only three sets of operative millers, six men (19 percent) in total, living at the same addresses, while over seventeen (35 percent) of the nailers, packers, and loaders lived together in six different rooming and boarding houses throughout enumeration districts fifty through fifty-six.96 It is important to note who lived with whom when considering how the

92 Calculated from manuscript census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900. 93 Ibid. 94 Source: J. Manz and Co. Map of Minneapolis Accompanying Hudson’s Dictionary of Minneapolis, Hudson Map Company, 1900. From Minneapolis Public Library Website: [http://www.reflections.mndigital.org/u?/mpls, 3291]. and Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900. 95 Ibid. Percentages for this section were taken with a denominator of the number of lodging, rooming, and boarding mill employees studied (twenty-five millwrights, thirty-two operative millers, and twenty-seven nailers, packers, and loaders). 96 Ibid. 108

millwrights, operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders divided in the 1903 strike.

The number of millwrights and nailers, packers, and loaders that shared addresses with

other men in their respective occupations was approximately one-third in both cases.

However, there were no millwrights studied that lived at addresses where operative

millers, nailers, packers, or loaders lived. Although the percentage of men who were

operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders living together was very small, 11 and 3

percent, it is still noteworthy that these two groups of men shared time and space outside

of the mills. The boarding house that had seven millwrights was also several blocks from

Table 4.1: Number of Married Heads of Household With and Without the 409 Washington Boarders Total Heads Married (27) Single (3)* Avenue South address (30) With Without Children Children where operative millers, With 14 9 4 1 Boarders nailers, packers, and Without 16 9 5 2 Boarders Source: Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration loaders lived. Districts 50-56, 1900. *No single mill employee studied had children.

The alternative to being a boarder, lodger, or roomer was being the head of a household. Only thirty (26 percent) of the 115 mill employees studied were heads of household. Of that thirty, all except one head of household rented the house that they headed.97 Due to costs alone, it could be hypothesized that the workers who headed their residences would be the highest paid. However, that was not true in this instance.

Nailers, packers, and loaders had a higher head of household rate than did either the millwrights or operative millers. Only two of the twenty-seven millwrights (7 percent) were heads of household, while only eight of the forty operative millers (20 percent) were

97 Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900. 109

in the same position (data not included in table).98 In contrast, the census listed twenty- one of the forty-eight nailers, packers, and loaders (44 percent) as heads of household.99

In order to keep costs down, many of the men who were heads of household had boarders or roomers living with them. Forty-seven percent of mill employees who headed their households kept at least one roomer or boarder. Most of the men who had boarders and roomers were married. This is because workers’ wives and daughters often provided meals and other services like laundry for the boarders and roomers living in their homes. Of the thirty mill employees studied that were heads of household, 90 percent were married, and of those employees who were heads of household and kept roomers and boarders, 93 percent were married (Table 4.1). Sixty percent of the heads of households had children (Table 4.1). Workers who were heads of household, particularly those who were married and those who had children, likely had stronger ties to

Minneapolis than did those who were just rooming, lodging, or boarding. As aforementioned, only one head of household owned his residence. Of the remaining twenty-nine heads of household were responsible for paying rent every month to keep a roof over his and his family’s head. This responsibility meant that workers needed to take in a good wage and they could not afford to lose their jobs suddenly. Other factors, like skill, also affected a worker’s mobility and local ties.

As previously mentioned, the nailers, packers, and loaders had the least skill of the three categories of workers studied. Millwrights and operative millers had a lot of training and, as a result, were in demand at all mills. The Weekly Northwestern Miller ran requests for workers under its “Mechanical Department” section. In May of 1903,

98 Ibid. 99 Ibid. 110

this section showed the vast difference in desirability between the skilled and unskilled

mill jobs. While there was a call from Independence, Missouri for fifteen millwrights,

and a demand for more millwrights in Kansas City, there were only “occasional calls” for

flour packers.100 The shortage of experienced millwrights meant that if they asked for improved conditions, they were more likely to attain it without an altercation.

Millwrights also had transferrable skills; they could work as carpenters or work in other types of mills, such as iron foundries, setting up machinery. These two factors meant that they could be more mobile, as their skills were in demand throughout the country, particularly in new milling centers like Kansas City and St. Louis. If millwrights were dissatisfied with the labor situation in their current market, they could move to obtain conditions that were more favorable. An examination of birthplace by occupation also makes clear that the millwrights were a more mobile workforce than the unskilled nailers, packers, and loaders.

Birthplace varied among the millwrights, millers, and nailers, packers, and loaders. In all three sets of occupations, nearly three-quarters of all 115 workers were

Table 4.2: Mill Employees In Enumeration Districts Fifty through Fifty-Six Birthplace All Mill Millwrights Operative Nailers, Employees (27) Millers Packers, and Studied (115) (40) Loaders (48) Foreign-Born 32 (28%) 7 (26%) 10 (27%) 13 (27%) U.S.-Born 83 (72%)* 20 (74%) 30 (72%) 35 (73%) Minnesota-Born 33 (40%) 4 (20%) 11 (37%) 19 (54%) Wisconsin-Born 14 (17%) 3 (15%) 5 (17%) 6 (17%) Other U.S. States 36 (43%) 13 (65%) 14 (46%) 10 (29%) Source: Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900. Note:* The U.S.-born totals are shown with Minnesota and Wisconsin-born men incorporated into their totals, and the categories that show the percentage of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and other U.S. states- born men show what percentage of all 83 U.S.-born mill employees studied men born in Minnesota and Wisconsin were.

100 “Mechanical Department,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, 6 May 1903. 111

American-born. However, there were major differences in the subset of where within the

United States a worker was from. Examining the number of men born in Minnesota or

Wisconsin sheds light onto their mobility as workers and their ties to the Minneapolis

area. Just over half of the thirty U.S. born operative millers were born in either

Minnesota or Wisconsin, while nearly three-quarters of the thirty-five U.S. born nailers,

packers, and loaders, double the proportion of U.S. born millwrights, were from the area

(Table 4.2). These numbers indicate that most of the millwrights had moved a long

distance to work in the Minneapolis mills, whereas most of the nailers, packers and

loaders who were born in Minnesota or Wisconsin had stronger local ties. This meant

that it was less likely that the nailers, packers, and loaders would pick up and move than

the relatively mobile millwrights. Workers with local ties were more apt to fight to

improve labor standards because they were dedicated to the location. Struggling for

improvements meant that it was more likely that the nailers, packers, and loaders could

stay in the same area over a longer period. It is also possible that the men from

Wisconsin and Minnesota saw acquiring an eight-hour day, higher wages, and a safe

workplace were ways to ensure that future generations of workers would not have to

struggle for fair treatment as they had. In addition to birthplace, marriage rates were

good indicators of mill employees’ ties to Minneapolis.

Marriage may have also been a factor that influenced worker support for this strike. In total, 36 percent of mill employees studied were married. It is noteworthy, however, that the marriage rate of nailers, packers, and loaders (44 percent, Table 4.3) was double that of millwrights. The marriage rate of operative millers (35 percent, Table

4.3) fell in between the other two occupations. It is evident that in the context of this 112

strike, the marital status of workers affected their attitudes toward their work. In this

study, marriage rates, particularly among foreign-born workers, signaled that workers

were more willing to strike than their single counterparts. It is probable that the married

workers studied in this context were more likely to want to stay in their local area and

improve labor conditions in preference to moving elsewhere.

An analysis of the marriage rates among the millwrights, millers, and nailers, packers, and loaders shows why the nailers, packers, and loaders, were more likely to fight for better hours and wages than were the millwrights. The marriage rates between operative millers (35 percent) and millwrights (22 percent) had very little variation (Table

4.3). Although the nailers, packers, and loaders had only a slightly different rate of

Table 4.3: Marriage Rates of Mill Employees Studied by Occupation All Mill Millwrights Operative Millers Nailers, Packers, Employees Studied and Loaders Single 71 (62%) 18 (67%) 26 (65%) 27 (56%) Married 41 (36%) 6 (22%) 14 (35%) 21 (44%) Widowed 3 (2%) 3 (11%) 0 0 Source: Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900. marriage than the operative millers, the comparison of the marriage rates between the nailers, packers, and loaders and the millwrights shows a division between the two groups. The proportion of nailers, packers, and loaders to millwrights who were married is exactly double (Table 4.3). The similarity of the marriage rates of the operative millers and nailers, packers and loaders suggests that marriage rates could have helped to engender support among these workers during the strike of 1903. However, that the millwrights’ marriage rate was half that of the nailers, packers, and loaders shows that marriage rates were a point of division between those two groups of workers and could have influenced the millwrights in their decision not to strike with the rest of the

IUFCME. 113

One piece of evidence that shows how marriage could have affected attitudes toward work is available. Two days into their autumn 1903 strike, one nailer exemplified how marriage affected his attitude toward work. He stated that he intended to stay in support of the strike until his side had won, adding “of course, if I were a single man I would have jumped the town within twelve hours after the strike was declared, but I’m married and I’ve got to stick.”101 This statement shows that some married men were, in this instance, very dedicated to keeping and improving their labor conditions. Unmarried men could be more mobile and did not need as much money as consistently as did a married man with a family to support.

Birthplace and occupation influenced marriage and procreation rates. Of the six married millwrights, two (34 percent) were from Minnesota or Wisconsin, though none of them had children. Three of the fourteen (21 percent) operative millers from

Minnesota or Wisconsin were married, and two of those three (66 percent) had children.102 The nailers, packers, and loaders had a slightly higher marriage rate among

Minnesotans and Wisconsinites, as fourteen of the twenty-one (56 percent) of the men were married, and nine of the fourteen (43 percent) married nailers, packers, and loaders from Minnesota and Wisconsin had children. 103 The millwrights and operative millers had similar rates of marriage in their foreign-born populations. One-quarter of foreign- born millwrights were married, while one-third of foreign-born operative millers were

101 “Millers Hire Men ‘For Steady Work,’” Minneapolis Journal, 25 September 1903. There is a debate among working class historians as to whether marriage made workers more or less likely to strike. Elizabeth Jameson and Alan Dawley wrote that married workers were more likely to strike because they had more to fight for. However, in both Jameson and Dawley’s works the married, more militant workers were skilled. The case presented in this thesis is different because the married, more militant workers were the least skilled men in the mills. See: Elizabeth Jameson, All That Glitters: Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998). and Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976 102 Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900. 103 Ibid. 114

married (Table 4.4). However, none of the foreign-born nailers, packers, and loaders

were married (Table 4.4). The proportions of married and single millwrights and

operative millers in both the U.S.-born and foreign-born categories are very similar.

However, marriage rates in the sub-categories of U.S.- and foreign-born likely influenced

the nailers and packers to strike in sympathy with the loaders. The twenty-one married

U.S.-born nailers, packers, and loaders likely had contact with the fourteen U.S.-born

single men in the same occupations. Those fourteen single men could have seen

themselves as on the same paths as the married nailers, packers, and loaders, which may

have made them more inclined to support the loaders in the autumn of 1903.

Table 4.4: Marriage Rates of Mill Employees Studied by Occupation and Birthplace Millwrights Operative Nailers, Packers, Millers and Loaders

(18) (18) Single (6) Married (26) Single (14) Married (27) Single (21) Married

U.S.-Born 12 4 17 10 14 21 (Including (75%) (25%) (63%) (37%) (40%) (60%) Minnesota- and Wisconsin- born men) Foreign-Born 6 2 9 4 13 0 (75%) (25%) (69%) (31%) (100%) (0%)

Source: Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900.

The fact that the marriage rates among Minnesotans and Wisconsinites in any group was high shows that those men definitely had local ties. It is of note that the loaders initiated the 1903 strike. Their employment options outside the mills were dismal. The mills had some of the highest wages and although the loaders worked ten- hour days, the work was more consistent than other industries in the city. They were 115

predominantly local men who were married heads of household, which meant that they

had significant ties to Minneapolis and likely did not want to have to leave to find work.

It is not surprising that the nailers and packers, who shared many characteristics with the

loaders, offered the most support. The nailers and packers already had secured an eight-

hour day and a wage increase, but, bound by union ties, they struck in sympathy with the

loaders.

Work stability was very important to mill workers at this time. The big three flour mills became the most steady source of employment in Minneapolis. The 1900 census for Minnesota had a category not included in previous censuses. The category was “number of months unemployed during the year.” As Annette Atkins suggested in

Table 4.5: Average Weeks of Unemplyment Among Minneapolitan Laborers and Mill Employees Studied, 1900

15 12 9 6 Weeks 3 0 (40) Nailers, Loaders Millwrights Studied(27) Studied(48) Operative Packers,and AllWorking Studied(115) MillersStudied MillEmployees Minneapolitans Source: Manuscipt Census, Hennepin County, Minn., 1900. and Atkins, "At Home in the Heart of the City," 291.

“In the Heart of the City,” the inclusion of such a category was indicative of the living conditions of workers in the city.104 Thousands of day laborers who lived in Ward Five looked for work on a daily basis. Others would go work in the fields to sow and harvest in the spring and summer, then came back into the city to process the raw materials they

104 Atkins, “At Home in the Heart of the City,” 291. 116

had just helped to produce. Atkins reported that in 1900 the average worker worked eight

of twelve months of the year.105 The mill employees were well under the average four months’ unemployment of other working Minneapolitans. Of all the mill workers studied, the average time out of work was 2.5 weeks for the year, with only fourteen of all mill employees studied reported any time unemployed (Table 4.5). The operative millers had the highest average weeks of unemployment, 3.3, while the millwrights averaged 3.1 weeks of unemployment. The lowest levels of unemployment belonged to the nailers, packers, and loaders whose average was only 1.1 weeks (Table 4.5).106

These averages indicate that the mill employees had stable employment compared to the non-mill workers in their neighborhoods. This became one of the strongest defenses for the mill owners when arbitrating with potential strikers. Mills offered consistent work and even if pay was lower than workers wanted they could still make more than being a day laborer due to the fact that mill employees would work more days of the year. The men who always worked in the mills, though, believed they needed to protect their occupation and wages with consistency. The operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders took the first step toward increased job protection by grouping together their unions under the umbrella of the IUFCME. The organization was successful in arbitrating the eight-hour day for the operative millers, nailers, and packers without incident or work stoppage in the autumn of 1902. When, in the spring of 1903, the loaders said that they had been asking for the eight-hour day only to have the mill

105 Ibid., 292. 106 The millwrights’ unemployment statistic has been altered here because there was one millwright, Edward Harmon, aged 75, reported having been out of work for all twelve months of the previous year. Including him, the average was a month and a week of unemployment for the year, but his unemployment was likely because he had retired or was ill, not because he could not find work. The millwrights’ 3.1 weeks of unemployment as cited above excluded Harmon’s twelve months of unemployment. With Harmon’s unemployment, the average went up to 2.8 months of unemployment. 117

owners reject their requests, the IUFCME and its member unions agreed to help.

However, the nailers, packers, and loaders chose a poor time of year for this fight.

The 1903 strike of operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders provided a public stage on which labor and capital fought. It was the first strike of unskilled workers since the mill owners had joined the CA, and the first strike the IUFCME in which the represented its workers. A must-win for both sides, the strike was pivotal for labor in the fight against the establishment of the open shop. In retreating from the strike, the

IUFCME was likely aware that its actions would have significant consequences. It is improbable that the organization’s leaders understood that the strike’s failure was a catalyst for owners and the CA to gain more leverage in the labor-capital relationship in

Minneapolis. The IUFCME continued to represent mill employees, though it remained weak for years after this strike. In 1921, the IUFCME dissolved after Pillsbury and

Washburn-Crosby hired secret agents to infiltrate the union and name who was active in the organization.107

Other factors were important during the 1903 strike. In this study, demographic categories and life experience like marital status, age, birthplace, wage, and housing were factors that often separated millwrights from nailers, packers, and loaders. They accounted for some of the reasons the millwrights opted not to support the loaders.

Further study is needed to expand this hypothesis beyond the 115 men studied in this thesis. Other factors that may have dissuaded the millwrights from supporting the loaders were that they were likely aware of the financial troubles at the mills that year and believed the timing of the loaders’ strike to be poor. Indeed, the timing of the strike hindered the chances of success for the autumn 1903 strike. The role of the mill owners

107 Hart, “Lost City,” 11 June 1997, 4. 118 being involved with the CA, too, affected how the mill owners dealt with their employees, particularly those who were unskilled. The operative millers and mill operatives’ strike in autumn 1903 helped to illuminate the differences between three levels of wage-earning mill employees in the big three Minneapolis flour mills. In examining the 115 millwrights, operative millers, and mill operatives during the autumn

1903 strike, it is likely that, in this context, the categories of wage, marital status, age, and birthplace affected the beliefs and actions of mill employees toward labor and toward each other.

119

Chapter Five: Conclusion

The 1903 operative millers’, nailers’, packers’, and loaders’ strike ended poorly for the strikers. Not only did the loaders did not get the eight-hour day, many of them lost their jobs entirely. There were divides among the mill employees due to differences in skill, demographics, and life experiences. The nailers, loaders, and packers were younger and had a higher rate of marriage than the operative millers or millwrights. That the nailers, packers, and loaders had a higher marriage rate meant that they had more reasons to strike because they had families to support, but also that they risked more in doing so. Also, the nailers, packers, and loaders studied had more local ties to

Minneapolis because many of them who were United States-born were from Minnesota or Wisconsin, meaning that they might have been more dedicated to improving labor conditions in Minneapolis than the mobile millwrights.

The millwrights and operative millers were more skilled than the nailers, packers, and loaders, which meant that they had more job opportunities outside of the Minneapolis mills and could leave Minneapolis if they did not have good working conditions. High skill level also meant increased wages, which divided the mill employees. The millwrights and operative millers made nearly $5.00 more a week, a $238.00 difference over fifty weeks of work, than the nailers, packers, and loaders. Such a difference in wage meant that the nailers, packers, and loaders had to be defensive of their wages and hours because they could not afford to make less than they did.

The embryonic IUFCME, too, suffered as a result of the outcome of the strike.

The solidarity among the operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders was damaged, 120

and the division between the millwrights and the rest of the mill employees was

deepened. Had the IUFCME been a fully-functioning industrial union, the millwrights

likely would have walked off their jobs in support of the loaders, and the mill owners

would have had a more difficult time replacing striking workers. The International Union

of Flour and Cereal Mill Employees (IUFCME) and the four craft unions it represented

advocated union label consumerism. The call for a boycott of Washburn-Crosby,

Pillsbury, and Northwestern Consolidated flour was not effective, as some grocers and

suppliers sided with the mill owners. Consumers also had not yet developed a union

label habit, undermining the efficacy of the boycott.

The mill owners’ use of CA tactics also led to the defeat of the striking operative millers, nailers, loaders, and packers. When the mill owners stated that any man who walked out of his job would have nothing to which he could come back in the mills, then retracted the threat after the strike started, solidarity among the strikers was stretched to the limit. It did not appear that the strikers would be successful and it was likely tempting for many men to abandon supporting the loaders and go back to their old jobs.

When IUFCME President Finley recommended stopping the strike, he exacerbated the division the mill owners had created among the strikers. Many of the operative millers followed Finley and returned to their jobs, undercutting the strength of the strike because they were the most highly skilled workers involved in the walkout.

After the mill owners’ success in 1903, the CA grew in Minneapolis. The CA had been weak prior to the mill owners’ joining it publicly, and this victory bolstered support for the CA and its principles among business owners citywide. The formerly cordial relationship between capital and labor in the city was disappearing, and the open shop 121

principle was gaining predominance in most businesses. Building makeshift dormitories,

as the Minneapolis mill owners and other owners did, became a common practice for CA

in strikes across the country.1 The divisions between the mill employees who stayed on the picket line and those who went back to work as strikebreakers were evident when the nailers’ and packers’ union resolved that any employee who crossed the picket line and returned to work “square” himself in front of the union. There is research to be done that could further an understanding of the causes and consequences of the 1903 operative millers’, nailers’, packers’, and loaders’ strike. The AFL archives could provide information on which cities had IUFCME charters. It would be important, in furthering this research, to find out whether St. Paul had IUFCME charters, as many strikebreakers came from that city.

The hypotheses derived from the sample of 115 mill employees studied in this thesis will be examined in future studies. The most significant finding in the research for this thesis was that the least skilled and most married men studied led and supported the strike. Future research must be performed to test if that hypothesis proves true for the other Minneapolis mill employees. Previous historians suggested that workers who led and supported strikes were primarily young, single men, though other historians’ conclusions were the opposite.2 Although historians debate over how marital statuses affected workers’ behavior during a strike, it is clear that there were times when young, single men led strikes, and times when the obverse was true. It is essential, then, to examine what the historical context of a particular strike. In the autumn of 1903, of the

115 mill employees studied, most of the men leading and participating in the strike were

1 William Millikan, A Union Against Unions (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001), 37. 2 Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969). 122

married. In addition to having high marital rates, the men who led and supported the

strike were unskilled, although further research is needed to determine if the majority of

the remaining nailers, packers, and loaders were married.

This study also shows that the working class was active in Minneapolis before the

1910s. In Community of Suffering and Struggle, Elizabeth Faue investigated the 1934

truckers’ strike in Minneapolis.3 She suggested that the working class in Minneapolis became active much later than the 1903 strike of the operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders. This thesis was also a response to Robert M. Frame’s request that historians examine the mills and their effects on Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the region. It was not a technical examination of the Falls of St. Anthony. Rather, it was an examination of some of the mill employees, their lives, how they related to other mill employees, and to their work. The turn of the twentieth century was a crucial time for capital and labor in

Minneapolis, and the community must be further studied to better understand how its development reflected or differed from the experiences of other cities at the same time.

A wider study of the census and other documents to garner information on all of the other mill employees in Minneapolis is necessary. Not all mill employees lived in districts fifty through fifty-six, nor only in Ward Five. Finding information on the demography and life experiences of other mill employees will help to clarify the causes and long-term results of the strike on the milling community and the city of Minneapolis itself. There is also more work that could be done on other industries in Minneapolis.

Expanding this type of research to men and women in the breweries, textile factories,

3 Elizabeth Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis 1915-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). 123

clothing factories, and other industries would give a better understanding of how the

working classes related to one another and to other classes in the city.

In the autumn of 1903, tensions between capital and labor in Minneapolis came to a head. On the night of September 21, men like John Rung and Andrew Haley, an operative miller and a packer, quietly left work in the mills knowing that they would not return the next day. Rung and Haley joined the loaders and nailers on the picket line in support of the loaders getting an eight-hour workday. Ward Ormmond, a millwright, passed through the picket line to work as he and the millwrights decided not to support the loaders. The mill owners, backed by the CA and using its tactics, combated the strikebreakers by creating divisions among the men at the picket line. The demographic categories of wage, birthplace, age, residence, and marital status affected the attitudes and actions of the mill employees studied. The strike illuminated the demographic and life experience differences and similarities among the millwrights, operative millers, nailers, packers, and loaders studied.

124

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Millikan, William, A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903-1947. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001.

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Montgomery, David, The Fall of the House of Labor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Montgomery, David, Workers' Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Painter, Leonard, Through Fifty Years with the Brotherhood Railway Carmen of America. Kansas City, Mo: Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America, 1941.

Perlman, Selig and Philip Taft, History of Labor in the United States, 1896-1932 Volume IV: Labor Movements. New York: Macmillan Company, 1935.

Powell, W.J., Pillsbury’s Best: A Company History From 1869. Minneapolis: The Pillsbury Company, 1995.

Rachleff, Peter, Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the Labor Movement. Hushion House, 1993.

Rosheim, David L, The Other Minneapolis: or A History of the Minneapolis Skid Row. Maquoketa, Iowa: The Andromeda Press, 1978.

Ruiz, Vicki L, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987.

Thernstrom, Stephan, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City. New York: Atheneum Press, 1973.

Thompson, E.P., The Making of the English Working Class. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1972.

Vorse, Mary, Labor’s New Millions. New York: Arno & The New York Times, 1969.

Walker, Charles Rumford, American City: A Rank and File History of Minneapolis Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1937.

Articles:

Anfinson, John O., "Spiritual Power to Industrial might: 12,000 Years at St. Anthony Falls." Minnesota History 58, no. 5-6 (2003): 252-269.

———, "The Secret History of the Mississippi's Earliest Locks and Dams." Minnesota History 54, no. 6 (1995): 254-267. 128

Anfinson, Scott F., "Unearthing the Invisible: Archaeology at the Riverfront." Minnesota History 58, no. 5-6 (2003): 320-331.

Anfinson, Scott, "Territorial Views: Remnants of the Built Environment." Minnesota History 1998- 56, no. 4 (1999): 250-258.

Atkins, Annette, "At Home in the Heart of the City." Minnesota History 58, no. 5-6 (2003): 286-304.

Brody, David, “Reconciling the Old Labor History and the New,” The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 62, No. 1. (Feb., 1993): 1-18.

Danbom, David B., "Flour Power: The Significance of Flour Milling at the Falls." Minnesota History 58, no. 5-6 (2003): 270-285.

Frame, Robert M., III., "Mills, Machines and Millers: Minnesota Sources for Flour- Milling Research." Minnesota History 46, no. 4 (1978): 152-162.

Grant, H. Roger, ""Minnesota's Good Railroad": The Omaha Road." Minnesota History 57, no. 4 (2000): 198-210.

Grey, Emily Goodridge, “The Black Community in Territorial St. Anthony: A Memoir,” Minnesota History 49, (Summer 1984): 42-53.

Hain, A.J., “The Twin Cities Team Up,” The Iron Trade Review (17 March 1921): 762- 768.

Hall, Peter Nelson, "Minirara, Minneapolis' Internationally Historic Falls." Historic Preservation 23, no. 3 (1971): 36-44.

Hammer, Kenneth M, "Genesis of a Miller's Road: The Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie." Railroad History no. 146 (1982): 23-28.

Jensen, Joan M., "Out of Wisconsin: Country Daughters in the City, 1910-1925." Minnesota History 59, no. 2 (2004): 48-61.

Leikin, Steve, "The Cooperative Coopers of Minneapolis." Minnesota History 57, no. 8 (2001): 386-405.

Lucas, Paul R., "The Church and the City: Congregationalism in Minneapolis, 1850- 1890." Minnesota History 44, no. 2 (1974): 55-69. 129

Mason, Sarah Refo, "Liang May Seen and the Early Chinese Community in Minneapolis." Minnesota History 54, no. 5 (1995): 223-233.

Phelan, Craig et al., “Labor History Symposium.” Labor History 47, no. 4 (November 2006).

Roberts, Kate and Barbara Caron, ""To the Markets of the World": Advertising in the Mill City, 1880-1930." Minnesota History 58, no. 5-6 (2003): 308-319.

Ron Rothbart, “‘Homes are What Any Strike is About:’ Immigrant Labor and the Family Wage.” Journal of Social History 23, no. 2 (Winter 1989): 267-284.

Saul, Norman E., "Mill Town Kansas in the Age of Turkey Red." Kansas History 23, no. 1-2 (2000): 26-41.

Schultz, Robert, "More than Wages: Twin Cities Theater Workers' Control Struggles." Minnesota History 53, no. 8 (1993): 323-333.

Smith, Harold F., "Bread for the Russians: William C. Edgar and the Relief Campaign of 1892." Minnesota History 42, no. 2 (1970): 54-62.

Watts, Alison., "The Technology that Launched a City: Scientific and Technological Innovations in Flour Milling during the 1870s in Minneapolis." Minnesota History 57, no. 2 (2000): 86-96.

Weiner, Lynn, "Our Sister's Keepers": The Minneapolis Woman's Christian Association and Housing for Working Women." Minnesota History 46, no. 5 (1979): 189-200.

Dissertations:

Frame, Robert M. “The Progressive Millers: A Cultural and Intellectual Portrait of the Flour Milling Industry 1870-1930, Focusing on Minneapolis, Minnesota,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota Twin Cities, 1980).

Magazines:

Hart, Joseph. "Lost City." City Pages, 11 June 1997, 1-4.

Primary:

MHS – Minnesota Historical Society 130

Books:

Employers and Employes: A Full Text of Addresses Before the National Convention of Employers and Employes Held at Minneapolis, Minn., Sept. 22-25, 1902. Chicago: Public Policy, 1902.

Federal Writers Project, The Bohemian Flats. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1941, reprint 1986.

Censuses:

Manuscript Census, Hennepin County, Minn., Enumeration Districts 50-56, 1900.

Twelfth Census of the United States, Taken over the Year in 1900, Manufactures: Minnesota. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Office, 1901-1902.

Twelfth Census of the United States, Taken over the Year in 1900, Population. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Office, 1901-1902.

Newspapers:

Minneapolis Journal. Minneapolis: Journal Print Co., 1888-1939. MHS.

The Union. Minneapolis: Stevens, Martin, and Martin, 1892-1908. MHS.

The Northwestern Miller. La Crosse, WI: Ostrander and Hoppin, 1873-1902. HD9056.N8 v.1:1 – v. 53:16 MHS.

The Weekly Northwestern Miller. Minneapolis: Miller Publishing Company, 1902-. HD9056.N8 v.53:17-, v.116 MHS.

Collections:

Citizens Alliance Records, 1903-1953. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1984, M465 MHS.

Edgar, William C. Club Minute Book and Article, 1894, 1896, 1942. P1214 MHS.

Jean E. Spielman Papers, 1901-1936 Roll 14, M535 MHS.

Minnesota Flour Milling Research Files, Robert M. Frame Papers. 147.E.10.6F- 147.E.11.1B, 142.C.19.3 MHS.

131

Maps:

Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, Ward Maps of United States Cities: A Selective Checklist of pre-1900 Maps in the Library of Congress (Washington: Library of Congress, 1975).

“Enumeration Districts in Minneapolis Ward 5,” [http://content.ancestrylibrary.com/Browse/list.aspx?dbid=7602&path=Minnesota.H ennepin.Minneapolis+Ward+5]. July 2008.

J. Manz and Co. Map of Minneapolis Accompanying Hudson’s Dictionary of Minneapolis, Hudson Map Company, 1900. From Minneapolis Public Library Website: [http://www.reflections.mndigital.org/u?/mpls, 3291].