--- title: Labor organizing and anti-union campaigns in the United States, 1910-1941 url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/labor-organizing-and-anti-union-campaigns/ description: unions campaigned with songs, meetings, relief appeals and harsh labels for opponents; employers campaigned with signed advertisements, open-shop slogans… section: Case studies --- ![Illustration: a pre-1914 imperial intelligence-dossier collage of colonial telegraph logs, sepia field photography and empire maps.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-pre1914.jpg) [Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/) # Labor organizing and anti-union campaigns in the United States, 1910-1941 At a glance Unions campaigned with songs, meetings, relief appeals and harsh labels for opponents… - **When:** 1910 - **Actor:** Unions and strike committees… - **Target:** Workers, residents of strike towns, soldiers and police on strike duty, and the national… - **Source:** Unidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure - **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures - **Techniques:** [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Semantic hijacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/semantic-hijack/) [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Astroturfing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/astroturf/) [Narrative laundering](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/narrative-laundering/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) Full details - **Actor:** Unions and strike committees (Industrial Workers of the World, the 1912 Lawrence strike committee, the CIO's Steel Workers Organizing Committee, the McNamara brothers, iron workers' union members who pleaded guilty to the 1910 Los Angeles Times bombing); employers and their allies (Remington Rand, the 'Little Steel' companies, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Iron and Steel Institute, open-shop associations, detective agencies and company-backed citizens' committees); and, acting in strikes, police and National Guard units - **Target:** Workers, residents of strike towns, soldiers and police on strike duty, and the national newspaper-reading public On this page - [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/labor-organizing-and-anti-union-campaigns/#what-happened) - [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/labor-organizing-and-anti-union-campaigns/#how-it-works) - [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/labor-organizing-and-anti-union-campaigns/#then-and-now) - [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/labor-organizing-and-anti-union-campaigns/#positions-on-the-record) - [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/labor-organizing-and-anti-union-campaigns/#same-method-test) - [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/labor-organizing-and-anti-union-campaigns/#how-to-spot-it) - [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/labor-organizing-and-anti-union-campaigns/#images) - [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/labor-organizing-and-anti-union-campaigns/#sources) On this page **Content note:** this page quotes strike-era labels for soldiers, police, employers and unionists ("hirelings and butchers", "murderous machine", "lousy Communist") and describes fatal shootings, a fire that killed children, and a bombing. **In one line:** unions campaigned with songs, meetings, relief appeals and harsh labels for opponents; employers campaigned with signed advertisements, open-shop slogans and harsh labels for unions, and a Senate committee also documented labor spies, company-funded "citizens' committees" and a telegram issued in workers' names that they had not written. In these episodes a bombing by two men tied to the iron workers' union killed 21 people at the Los Angeles Times (1910); a fire set by the National Guard at Ludlow killed eleven children and two women (1914); and Chicago police shot ten marchers dead, seven of them in the back, on Memorial Day (1937). ## What happened - **1 October 1910.** The Los Angeles Times building is dynamited. On 1 December 1911 James B. and John J. McNamara, described in the press as prominent labor leaders identified with the structural iron workers' union, plead guilty. A contemporary report gives twenty dead and notes that the Times had been "opposed to the labor unions". - **January to March 1912, Lawrence, Massachusetts.** A drop in weekly pay after a state law cut hours from 56 to 54 starts a strike that grows to about 23,000 workers, led by a committee chaired first by the IWW's Joseph Ettor. The federal Bureau of Labor records two deaths in clashes with the authorities, 28 sticks of dynamite found and blamed on strikers, and the later conviction of a local businessman "who had no connection with the strikers" for planting it. Strikers send children to families in other cities; the Bureau writes that this "doubtless proved an excellent method of attracting public attention". On 24 February police stop a departure, with some 30 arrests. - **1913 to 1914.** Labor papers advertise the IWW song book ("Forty-three songs... Songs of Revolution"). At an April 1914 IWW rally in New York a demonstrator wears the card "Bread or revolution". - **20 April 1914, Ludlow, Colorado.** Guardsmen fire on a strikers' tent colony, and "eleven children and two women died in a fire set by the National Guard" (Library of Congress). A 30 April headline reports President Wilson ordering federal troops in; the strike lasts until December. - **1918.** The Sedition Act passes; a New York Herald cartoon files "IWW" with "Spy" and "Traitor". - **1920s.** Employers promote the "American plan". A 1922 Montana report describes restaurants reopening "on the American plan, or open shop basis". - **1936.** Remington Rand breaks a strike at Ilion, New York. James H. Rand, Jr. tells the reopening crowd the method "would go down into history as the Mohawk Valley formula". The National Labor Relations Board rules against the company on 13 March 1937 and sets out the method in nine steps, starting with "Label the union leaders 'agitators'". - **1936 to 1941.** The Senate's La Follette Civil Liberties Committee reports on spies, munitions, the Chicago Memorial Day shooting of 1937 and the "Little Steel" strike. ## How it works - [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/): *union side:* Lawrence strike committee proclamations, reprinted by the Bureau of Labor, call the militia "hired military Hessians" and "an army of hirelings and butchers", the owners "a parasite class", and say "A good soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine." *Employer side:* the NLRB's first step of the Mohawk Valley method is to label union leaders "agitators"; a 1914 cartoon renders I.W.W. as "I Won't Workers"; a 1937 Chicago patrolman described a marcher who was shot as "the lousy Communist". The same test applies to each: the label arrives before, or instead of, evidence. - [Semantic hijacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/semantic-hijack/): *employer side:* a Burns detective agency sales letter offered spies to find "communists and agitators"; its Portland manager replied that employers' concern "is not the Communist but the labor agitators" and inserted "labor" into the circular. The Senate committee concluded that "Raising the 'red' scare is a common practice with detective agencies"; the superintendent of Pinkerton's Atlanta office, asked how many Communists it had found, said "I don't believe we found any." *Union side:* no example in the sources used here. - [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/): *union side:* "Bread or revolution" offers a single remedy against a threatened upheaval. *Employer side:* Rand told Ilion businessmen he was thinking of moving the plant, and the Senate committee calls this a "veiled threat"; a 1936 steel industry advertisement in 382 papers warned of "many disturbing indications" that organizers would "employ coercion and intimidation". - [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/): *employer side:* the Johnstown citizens' committee campaigned under "Law and Order" and "The Right to Work is Sacred", raising over $60,000. *Union side:* the Lawrence appeals attach numbers ("cut our pay to an average of 50 cents a week, which to us means 10 loaves of bread"), a testable claim, so the tag is not applied. - [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/): *employer side:* "American plan" attaches a national adjective to the open shop; its San Francisco advocate argued in print that it differed from "the old-time, so-called open shop", which is open argument. The 1918 cartoon puts Uncle Sam and the Capitol behind the round-up. *Union side:* none tagged. - [Astroturfing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/astroturf/): *employer side:* a 1937 telegram from Monroe, Michigan, signed by four employees, asked the union leader "Is it because you want to set up a dictatorship in America?"; the Senate committee found the signers "were in no way consulted" on its contents, and Hill & Knowlton issued it as a news release. The NLRB found, as the Senate committee reports, that the Ilion citizens' committee "had been created because Mr. Rand threatened the community with the loss of Remington Rand's plants". In Johnstown the committee passed over $36,000 of Bethlehem Steel money to the mayor. *Union side:* no example in these sources. - [Narrative laundering](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/narrative-laundering/): *employer side:* the Senate committee calls a Youngstown civic group the "front" organization for "Harmony Ads" placed by a steel-company group and written, in their author's words, to "organize a community against labor agitators before they get in their work". - [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/): *employer side:* the NAM's 1936 bulletin told Ilion as aroused citizens defending "the right to work"; "Nothing was said of the causes of the strike nor of the part which the company played," the committee writes. *Union side:* no documented omission of this kind in these sources; the Lawrence proclamations are one-sided but state their figures, and their claim that troops were "ordered to shoot to kill" is not shown in these sources. - **Open persuasion, both sides.** Much of the record is ordinary attributed advocacy, not a technique in the taxonomy: strike meetings with speakers in English, Italian, Polish and French; song books; relief appeals signed by the strike committee; leaflets at plant gates; Canton pickets told to act "by persuasion only"; and, on the other side, the steel industry's signed advertisement, the Industrial Association's signed article, and executives' sworn testimony. ## Then and now ![Man at an IWW rally in Union Square, New York, wearing a hat card reading Bread or revolution](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/iww-bread-or-revolution-1914.jpg) *[I.W.W. Hat Card](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/iww-bread-or-revolution-1914/), IWW rally (Bain News Service photo), 1914. Public domain.* ![Cartoon of idle men under an I Won't Workers banner refusing to shovel snow](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/iww-i-wont-workers-1914.jpg) *[The unemployed](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/iww-i-wont-workers-1914/), John Scott Clubb, 1914. Public domain.* ![Uncle Sam dragging figures labelled Spy, Traitor, IWW and German money away from the Capitol](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/now-for-a-round-up-iww-1918.jpg) *[Now for a round-up](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/now-for-a-round-up-iww-1918/), W. A. Rogers, New York Herald, 1918. Public domain.* ![Puck centerfold: a cannon marked Violence explodes backwards over the McNamara brothers and Samuel Gompers](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/puck-flareback-1911.jpg) *The flareback, Puck, 27 December 1911, after the McNamaras' guilty pleas. Public domain.* ![Children of Lawrence strikers after arriving in New York, February 1912](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/lawrence-strike-children-1912.jpg) *Children of Lawrence strikers in New York, 19 February 1912 (Bain News Service). Sending strikers' children to other cities drew national coverage, as the Bureau of Labor noted. Public domain.* The Monroe telegram used real workers' names for a message they had not written. In 2016 a foreign company's accounts posed as American activists to promote a "Miners for Trump" rally (['Miners for Trump' rally poster (Internet Research Agency)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/miners-for-trump-ira-2016/)). The borrowed identity is the same device; the differences are real: a domestic employer and its publicists in 1937, a foreign company in 2016. ## Positions on the record - **Strikers, in their own words (Lawrence, 1912):** "We, textile workers of Lawrence, are on strike. We are striking against unbearable conditions." To the militia: "Most of you are workingmen!" - **Union officials (1937):** an Amalgamated Association official told the Senate committee: "We don't ask a man whether he is a Communist or not." - **Employers, in their own words:** the American Iron and Steel Institute stated that "The Steel Industry believes in the principles of collective bargaining" and would oppose any attempt "to compel its employees to join a union". The Industrial Association of San Francisco described the American plan as serving "the public, labor and the employers". The NAM said it had no knowledge of the NLRB's "nine steps" and had not publicized them. - **Police (Chicago, 1937), as the Senate committee summarizes them:** the marchers intended to capture the plant, and the casualties were "a regrettable but necessary incident" of dispersing them. - **This archive's reading:** documented: the proclamations, advertisements and letters quoted above; the McNamaras' guilty pleas; the Lawrence dynamite conviction; the Ludlow deaths; the Memorial Day findings (ten marchers fatally shot, "Seven received the fatal wound in the back"; 35 police with minor injuries; police force "far in excess of that which the occasion required"; union leaders' claim that the march was unplanned rejected); and, for Little Steel, that pickets "at times carried clubs", some strikers were convicted for explosives in Warren, but no "concerted campaign of violence on the part of the union". Not shown here: that the NAM circulated the nine steps (the NLRB said it "added certain steps"), or the Lawrence proclamation's claim that troops were "ordered to shoot to kill". The Senate reports use strong language of their own; this page relies on the documents and testimony they reproduce and quotes their conclusions as theirs. That committee was set up to investigate employers' interference with organizing, and no comparable inquiry into union methods is used here, so "no example in these sources" above is not a finding that none existed. A 1957-59 Senate investigation into labor-management racketeering (the McClellan Committee) found corruption in some Teamsters locals, but this page has not reviewed it against these same tags, so it is not cited as such an example here. ## Same-method test If a union had signed workers' names to a telegram they had not seen, or routed its money through a "citizens' committee", this page would tag it astroturf in the same words. If an employer's circular had called strikers "Hessians" and "butchers", it would be tagged name-calling as the Lawrence proclamations are. The tags follow the method, not the side. ## How to spot it - Ask who wrote a "citizens'" or "employees'" statement, and who paid for it. - When a label ("agitator", "Communist", "Hessian", "I Won't Worker") comes first, look for the named act behind it. - Check casualty and violence claims against inquest, court and committee findings, for both sides. - Treat a slogan with two outcomes ("Bread or revolution"; moving the plant or ending the strike) as a choice someone framed, and look for the options left out. ## Images | Image | Source | Licence | | --- | --- | --- | | "Bread or revolution" hat card, IWW rally (1914) | [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2014695690/), Bain News Service | Public domain (no known restrictions) | | *The unemployed* ("I Won't Workers"), Clubb (1914) | [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2009616454/) | Public domain (no known restrictions; no renewal) | | *Now for a round-up*, Rogers, New York Herald (1918) | [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2010717793/) | Public domain (no known restrictions) | | *The flareback*, Puck (1911) | [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2011649091/) | Public domain (published 1911; no known restrictions) | | *Children of Lawrence, strikers in N.Y.* (1912) | [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/97506433/), Bain News Service | Public domain (published 1912; no known restrictions) | ### Image gaps - **The Masses, June 1914, cover by John Sloan** on Ludlow ([LoC](https://www.loc.gov/item/2016652761/)): public domain, but not added to the gallery because no taxonomy technique clearly fits a depiction of a documented massacre. Ruins of the Ludlow colony ([LoC](https://www.loc.gov/item/2014695836/)) are also available. - **The IWW's "Pyramid of Capitalist System" (1911):** no Library of Congress copy found and no scan with verified rights was reachable, so its publication details are left out. - **Hill & Knowlton and NAM advertisements (1936-37), CIO leaflets and the Paramount Memorial Day newsreel:** not hosted; the items or their rights could not be verified from here. ## Sources - [EBSCO Research Starters: the McClellan Committee (Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, 1957–1959)](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/mcclellan-committee) - [Los Angeles Almanac: the 1910 Los Angeles Times bombing](http://www.laalmanac.com/history/hi06e.php) - [Library of Congress research guide: the Ludlow Massacre](https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-ludlow-massacre) - [U.S. Senate, S. Rep. 77-151 (1941), *The "Little Steel" Strike and Citizens' Committees*](https://www.loc.gov/item/2026585400/) (quotes the NLRB's Remington Rand decision, 2 N.L.R.B. 626) - [U.S. Senate, *Industrial Espionage* (1937)](https://www.loc.gov/item/2026581376/) - [U.S. Senate, preliminary report and *The Chicago Memorial Day Incident* (S. Rep. 46, pts. 1-2, 1937)](https://www.loc.gov/item/2026579627/) - [U.S. Bureau of Labor, *Report on Strike of Textile Workers in Lawrence, Mass. in 1912*](https://www.loc.gov/item/2024874585/) (strike committee proclamations in Appendix B) - [Library of Congress, *Ludlow Massacre: Topics in Chronicling America*](https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-ludlow-massacre) - [Evening Times-Republican (Marshalltown, Iowa), 2 December 1911: McNamara pleas](https://www.loc.gov/item/sn85049554/1911-12-02/ed-1/) - [The Voice of the People (New Orleans), 11 September 1913, p. 3: IWW song book advertisement](https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn88064458/1913-09-11/ed-1/?sp=3) - [Great Falls Tribune, 16 January 1922, p. 10: "American plan" restaurants](https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83045217/1922-01-16/ed-1/?sp=10) - [St. Charles Herald, 29 July 1922, p. 4: H. B. Allen, "The American Plan as Established and Enforced in San Francisco"](https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn85034322/1922-07-29/ed-1/?sp=4) - Scholarship: [Jerold S. Auerbach, *Labor and Liberty: The La Follette Committee and the New Deal*](https://books.google.com/books/about/Labor_and_Liberty_the_La_Follette_Commit.html?id=3o4FAQAAIAAJ); [Ahmed A. White, "Industrial Terrorism and the Unmaking of New Deal Labor Law", *Nevada Law Journal*](https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?httpsredir=1&article=1172&context=nlj)