Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has practical and ideological roots in the radical labor movement. This diary explores some aspects of that relationship.

What is radical labor? All of organized labor believes that labor organizations "must combine the wage workers in such a way that [they] can most successfully fight the battles and protect the interests of the working people of to-day in their struggles for fewer hours, more wages and better conditions." Radical labor is radical in the one sense that it includes an additional goal: organizing "must offer a final solution of the labor problem – an emancipation from strikes, injunctions and bull-pens." (A bull-pen is a temporary, and intentionally spartan jail, such as those set up in warehouses during political convention protests.)

We might believe that labor organizations seek to become ever more powerful; certainly, labor's enemies assert this. But many labor organizations carefully avoid measures that even hint at any sort of preference for a different economic system in order to avoid possible consequences.

I believe the most revealing quotation from all of labor history is found in an obscure document from more than a century ago. The railroad tycoons – the most powerful capitalists of the era – feared one particular type of labor organization because of its inherent power, and because of its leadership's willingness to embrace that power.

The American Railway Union (ARU) headed by Eugene Debs was one of the first organizations formed along industrial lines. (Industrial unionization would later be re-defined, and somewhat moderated, by the CIO.) The railroad brotherhoods – organized by craft, rather than by industry – presented a weak, but internally cohesive (and easy to organize) labor structure. The division by craft meant that if a fireman who shoveled coal wished to move three steps over and accept the job of an engineer (with whom he had shared the locomotive throughout his career), he was forced to join a different union. Craft organizing (the specialty of the old AF of L union federation that eventually became the AFL-CIO) was, and frequently is, comparatively weak.

In contrast, the industrial organizing of the era not only sought to revolutionize society to improve the lot of working folk, it sought to build mass organizations, with all workers in the same union. To frustrated members of the railway brotherhoods, the ARU appeared both powerful and promising. Thus, the ARU was perceived as a threat not only to wealthy industrialists, but also to supporters of the railway brotherhoods.

The ARU demonstrated the power of industrial organization when it shut down commerce throughout the country in 1894, in support of workers striking against the Pullman Company. In the Journal of the Switchmen's Union, 1907, we find this comment about the 1894 railway strike/boycott of Pullman railway cars:



E. St. John, who was at one time general manager of the C. R. I. & P. Railway and was chairman of the General Managers' Association, said to the general managers in meeting assembled on the eve of the strike, "Gentlemen, we can handle the various brotherhoods, but we cannot handle the A. R. U. We have got to wipe it out. We can handle the other leaders, but we cannot handle Debs. We have got to wipe him out too."

Federal intervention soon followed. This was no small operation; it included national guard organizations throughout the country, the U.S. army, and federal marshals. The ARU was crushed, and ARU leadership was sent to jail.

After the federal intervention, many of the railway workers returned to the brotherhoods that they had recently abandoned for the ARU. Samuel Gompers (chief of the AF of L) was at the time courting the craft-based railway brotherhoods, and he assisted the government in suppressing the strike by the ARU. It was at the height of the ARU strike that the U.S. Congress rewarded Gompers with declaration of a national labor day, and it was signed into law just six days after the strike was finally crushed. (Organized labor has sometimes been its own worst enemy.)

What parallels are there between radical labor, and Occupy Wall Street? Both concepts question the legitimacy of the existing economic order. Both assert that mass organizations are necessary to effect change. Both extend acceptance of allies broadly, rather than narrowly. And both are open to creative, and sometimes controversial tactics, in order to "break through" the stranglehold that the perceived ruling class has upon the social conversation.

Radical labor and Occupy have both exerted influence well beyond what their numbers might suggest. And the reaction to the Occupy movement, and to radical labor have been of a pattern, including disinformation, vilification, demonstrations of massive state power, sabotage by agents provocateurs, and repression.