Du Brul described his “duty” in patriotic terms, declaring that he joined the open-shop movement because it was “a call on my patriotism, just as much as if it were a call to shoulder arms in defense of our country’s institutions from any other sort of an attack.”107 The stakes involved were, as Du Brul, Post, Parry, and others made abundantly clear, significantly weightier than their own inconvenient financial struggles. In this spirit, organizers sought to recruit and motivate hundreds more, explaining to them that, together, they had the power to stop the irredeemable forces of immorality and economic destruction by building organizations that publicly prioritized the interests of ordinary people and the nation as a whole over the demands of any particular class. Their statements clearly indicate that they chose to fight unions not because they wanted to limit their employees’ rights while maximizing profits, but rather because they felt a moral obligation to defend what they defined as the labor movement’s most vulnerable targets: innocent children, widows, small tradesmen, modest-sized business owners, and, above all, “free” workers.
The movement leaders announced that they were especially active in defending nonunionists. Open-shop employers from coast to coast, Parry eagerly told his colleagues in 1904, had finally stepped up and come to the rescue of these “liberty loving people”:
Shop after shop has been opened to the non-union man, and protection has been given him against the sluggers in most of our industrial centers. I believe that fully one thousand manufacturing establishments have, in the last year, abandoned the closed shop and thrown their doors open to workmen without regard to their membership or non-membership in a union.108
These victories ignited renewed feelings of confidence and clarity of vision. And there was little public disagreement about the overall soundness of the open-shop system in management circles across the country’s diverse industrial landscape. As one unnamed observer explained in The Iron Trade Review the following year,
the “open-shop” idea is becoming very much more prominent in the minds of all manufacturers. They no longer debate the question; they have given up feeling timid over the issue, and when the alternative of the open-shop is placed before them they are ready to make whatever sacrifice is necessary to maintain the open-shop and will not listen to any other method of conducting their business.109
Importantly, the movement’s primary contribution was not that it was somehow responsible for educating thousands of diverse employers about the magnitude of the problem; in most cases, they were painfully aware of it. Instead, Davenport, Du Brul, Job, Parry, Pfahler, Post, and many others contributed most meaningfully by providing their likeminded colleagues with practical resources, emotional reassurance, and strategic guidance as they charted a new course. They had, essentially, armed their comrades with the confidence and the tools necessary to solve this many-sided problem. And in return, together, they enthusiastically welcomed the development of an advanced stage of employer empowerment. The optimism was immensely contagious.
But what about the NCF, a joint labor-management organization formed in 1900 committed—at least publicly—to trade agreements and peaceful collective bargaining in a spirit of mutual respect? Did its merchants, manufacturers, corporate moguls, and railroad operators—a very prosperous fraternity—abandon closed-shop agreements like so many others? Based on the conclusions reached by generations of scholars, it would appear that it was the least inclined of any association of employers to support the open-shop movement’s efforts.110
We must resist the temptation to view the NCF businessmen as genuine supporters of organized labor’s main, workplace-centered goals in light of both the documentary record and simple common sense. In essence, like other organized businessmen, the NCF employer members believed that union demands for exclusive bargaining rights were unfair to nonunionists and, like all employers, dreaded eruptions of labor militancy. Of course, this class-collaborationist organization hardly spoke with one voice on the issue of the open versus closed shop—its union representatives understandably wanted recognition and collective bargaining rights. But a number of its employer members were unrepentant Parryites, holding overlapping membership in hardcore open-shop associations, including the NFA, the NMTA, and the NAM.111 Pfahler, for example, was an especially influential open-shop proselytizer. He actually spoke positively about trade unions and defended the employer’s right to employ nonunionists. In fact, few of these people publicly said that unions should not exist; yet they still tended to insist that closed shops were un-American, dictatorial, tyrannical, and so on.
But let us consider additional evidence, including the role played by the NCF’s full-time secretary and strategist, Ralph M. Easley, who occasionally sought assistance from leaders in the emerging open-shop movement to help suppress strikes. For example, in summer 1902 he secured Du Brul’s aid in settling a New York City strike of skilled blacksmiths; Du Brul made the lengthy trip from Cincinnati shortly after becoming NMTA commissioner.112 The circumstances surrounding Easley’s hire are noteworthy: the NCF secretary decided to employ Du Brul a year after the NMTA ceased all formal negotiations with the IAM. Indeed, it is highly difficult to imagine that Easley, who was well-connected in the world of business and had studied labor questions carefully, was somehow unaware of Du Brul’s principled and vocal opposition to closed-shop unionism.113
Finally, we must ponder the words and actions of the NCF’s employers at meetings. Writing about the organization’s fall 1903 gathering in Chicago, the journal World’s Work, for example, described an absolutely polarized atmosphere, noting that “every employer [at the conference] favored the open shop, and every union man opposed it.”114 Furthermore, consider the case of Eidlitz, a leader of both the BTEA and the NCF. Eidlitz apparently felt only mildly reluctant about making a provocative speech in front of mixed company, including the AFL’s Samuel Gompers and the United Mine Workers of America’s John Mitchell, in late 1903. “Gentlemen,” he began, “I have been told to make it funny, but I can’t be humorous, for I have something that I am boiling to say.” Recognizing the controversial nature of his subject, Eidlitz claimed that “I am speaking my personal views.” Less confident and combative than Du Brul or Parry, Eidlitz nevertheless went on: “when organized labor interferes with the rights of a free white man over twenty-one who lives in this country something must be done, and I hope the Civic Federation is going to do it.” As an NCF member, perhaps Eidlitz appreciated organized labor’s campaigns against child labor, but he believed that the same forces were misguided to interfere with the rights of nonunion white adults. Echoing Du Brul, Parry, and Post, Eidlitz called on fellow employers to offer them protection. In essence, he wanted the businessmen in the room, many of whom had experienced their own rather unpleasant brushes with strikes and boycotts, to acknowledge what growing numbers had already concluded: that the open-shop principle constituted a progressive and just solution that promised to protect the individual rights of employers, workers, and Americans generally. How did the crowd respond? Rather favorably, according to a report in the Building Trades Employers’ Association Bulletin: “There was a sharp buzz of comment when Mr. Eidlitz sat down. He got considerable applause, and there were one or two cries of ‘You’re right’!”115
Chapter 2
“For the Protection of the Common People”: Citizens, Progressives, and “Free Workers”
American public opinion is more liable to be with the underdog. In other words, it is more apt to sympathize with the demands of organized labor than with the demands of organized capital, because of an indefinable feeling that capitalists are able to take care of themselves, while labor is less able to do so. For this reason the employers’ associations usually make studious and intelligent efforts to so regulate their