Sunland Tribune Volume 18 Article 6 1992 City in Turmoil: Tampa and the Strike of 1910 Joe Scaglione Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/sunlandtribune Recommended Citation Scaglione, Joe (1992) "City in Turmoil: Tampa and the Strike of 1910," Sunland Tribune: Vol. 18 , Article 6. Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/sunlandtribune/vol18/iss1/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sunland Tribune by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CITY IN TURMOIL: TAMPA AND THE STRIKE OF 1910 By JOE SCAGLIONE STORM SURGE As sixty mile an hour winds pounded sheets This industry, the lifeblood of Tampa's of rain across the Tampa area on 18 October economy, was paralyzed. Manufacturers had 1910, the storm's ferocity cut the city's ties closed all factories in both Tampa and West to the outside world. The heavy winds Tampa, while opening branch factories in forced telegraph wires down. Two trains that other Florida cities and in New York. Cigar connected Tampa with other parts of Florida workers had left the area in droves, some could not be located. Officials thought them migrating to work in the new factory lost. But as this storm began to subside, branches, while others returned to Havana or allowing Tampans to begin surveying the Key West. Those who stayed filled their idle damage in the early morning hours, a more time with meetings, marches, confrontations dangerous whirlwind stirred the muddy and violence. Tampa's armed citizens' rainswept streets of Ybor City and West patrols ruled the city streets. Tampa.1 Three hundred "special police" armed with weapons patrolled the streets Within this environment occurred one of the and avenues of the cigar manufacturing longest and most violent cigar industry districts. This mobilized force, riding four strikes. The 1910 strike lasted seven months. men to an automobile, represented Tampa's One man was assassinated, two men were response to assassination, assault and arson. lynched, others were shot and assaulted.5 The Tampa Morning Tribune proclaimed Three members of the Joint Advisory Board that "No violence or disorder will be of the Cigarmakers International Union allowed within city limits-police to disperse (CMIU) were convicted of "conspiring to mobs," and thus the armed patrols, including prevent cigarmakers from working in members of Tampa's most prominent Tampa's cigar factories," and the welfare of families, acted to enforce Tampa Mayor D. both the cigar industry and the community B. McKay's edict in the Latin districts of suffered.6 The strike action of 1910 Ybor City and West Tampa.2 displayed a set of dynamics which belong exclusively to that event. However, this The growing city of Tampa, Florida, with a violent confrontation had its antecedents in population of 38,524 and West Tampa, with the history of the cigar industry labor 8,258 citizens, entered the year 1910 riding movement in Tampa and in the nature of the high on a crest of prosperity and cigar worker himself. confidence.3 As the Tribune reported, Tampa had just completed the most prosperous fiscal year in its history, A NEW INDUSTRY ARRIVES indicating a strong financial foundation.4 By October 1910, that foundation, the clear The Tampa cigar trade owes its very birth Havana cigar industry, was crumbling. to labor strife in other areas such as Key West and New York where union movements had precipitated relocation. The way into the community. Each night the decision to move the factories of Don stories and the latest news reached eager Vicente Martinez Ybor and Ignacio Haya to ears at the family dinner table. In this Tampa in 1885 was based on a fear of manner, the social and political issues of the continued labor strife.7 But labor troubles day spread through the community, did not wait long to manifest themselves in nurturing the socialization and this new location as a labor dispute delayed politicalization of these new Americans in the opening of Ybor's El Principe de Gales the process. factory. Ybor had hired a Spanish bookkeeper, and Cuban cigarmakers would The nature of the factory work, inside the not work until the Spaniard was removed. galeria where hundreds of workers sat side Ybor acceded to his employees demands. by side, helped develop the labor However, because of this delay, Haya's temperament of cigarmakers. Mere Factory No. 1 rolled the first production proximity to quickly developing cigar in Tampa.8 labor-management confrontations created an immediate and threatening response. This incident illustrates the role that labor Because a production-based industry must assumed in Tampa. Ybor and Haya had not maintain operation in order to compete, the shed themselves of labor dissent by their manufacturers normally met their move. In the period from 1887 to 1894, the employees' demands quickly for fear of Tampa cigar factories witnessed 23 losing productive capability over a trivial "walkouts."9 Major strikes occurred in 1899 matter. In this sense, the character of the (the weight strike), 1901 (La Resistencia), cigar factory laborer may have been slightly 1910, 1920 and 1931.10 The character of the spoiled, as it was not until the 1901 strike, cigar worker played a significant role in the La Resistencia, that workers met with any nature and frequency of these strikes and substantial labor defeat. walkouts. The dissolution of the labor union called La The status of immigrant workers in the cigar Resistencia fueled the growth of the CMIU, factory was an important factor. John which in 1910 claimed a membership of Bodnar contends, "Skilled workers could 6,000 in Tampa.13 In June 1910, the Clear overcome ethnic differences in the forma- Havana Manufacturers Association tion of narrow craft unions.”11 The members in Tampa began dismissing local interaction of Cuban, Spanish and Italian selectors and importing selectors from Cuba. laborers in the Tampa factories produced This discharge ignited the feud that erupted such a blend. Aided by the educational into a full shutdown of Tampa's cigar trade exposure received from the "lector" or over the manufacturers' refusal to recognize "reader", the craftsmen that tolled within the the union. On 25 July 1910, at the Vega "galeria", the cavernous workroom, became Cigar factory eighty-five workers walked well-versed in the classics, as well as the out at two P. M., because Vega, the owner, political themes of the day. Many workers had refused to recognize the local union of flocked to the powerful siren call of the CMIU.14 The walkout would spread as anarchism and socialism.12 other owners followed Vega's lead, and the strike would not officially end until 25 The education and philosophy, which these January 1911, when the CMIU's Joint immigrant workers absorbed, wove their Advisory Board (JAB) declared the strike up to two thousand had already left Tampa over.15 with more sure to follow.18 The United States Tobacco Journal backed the union's contention that the sole motive in the RECOGNITION IS SERIOUS conflict was the manufacturers' refusal to BUSINESS recognize the union.19 Due to the violent dynamics of this struggle, issues of race, Union recognition is an important question ethnicity and class also surfaced. But the which separates the employer and the central driving force was the pursuit for employed. Recognition is an issue over the union recognition. control of labor. Until a union is officially acknowledged as the representative agent of the employed, the employer may restrict his THE LINE IS DRAWN responsibilities to his employees to those mandated by law. Recognition creates a Neither side would back away easily. The parallel power structure and a modus line was drawn in the leaves of tobacco left operandi by which both parties must rotting on factory floors, and each dared the contractually abide. This question other to cross. The owners began using transformed a grievance over the use of police to protect their factories against union foreign selectors into a general strike that subversion.20 The use of "special police" to crippled Tampa in 1910. augment the regular force reached immense proportions before the strike ended. Tampa The CMIU publicly announced its move for recruited many of these special police from recognition during a mass meeting at The other towns and cities in Florida.21 During Labor Temple, 29 June 1910. Angelo Leto, a Tampa's mayoral campaign in April 1910, member of CMIU local No. 400, ignited the D. B. McKay, the White Municipal Party crowd declaring it was the manufacturers candidate, bragged about his part in the 1901 who were forcing the victimized strike and the use of "citizens' committee" to cigarmakers to strike by not recognizing destroy La Resistencia. He declared there 16 their union. had been "a demand for the action of determined men."22 Six days later on July 5th at the Bustillo Brothers and Diaz factory, the union The use of special police and citizens' organizing committee confronted the firm's committees was nothing new. In 1886, when bookkeeper, J. F. Easterling. Angered by Tampa secured the fledgling cigar industry, their impertinence, Easterling pulled a gun the city's Board of Trade, the antecedent to and fired at one committee member, barely today's Chamber of Commerce, guaranteed 17 missing. This action made the bookkeeper Ybor and Haya protection against agitators a main target of union radicals. who might interrupt business-as usual.23 With the recent memory of the Haymarket The CMIU held another mass meeting on Riot in May 1886, the union's power to dis- July 13th.