You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Monday October 18, 1915
From the Chicago Day Book: Amos Pinchot on Rockefeller's Plan for Colorado Miners
John D. Rockefeller has returned home to New York with a plan to establish a benevolent dictatorship over the miners of southern Colorado. While we prefer this form of dictatorship to Rockefeller's former plan of government by gunthugs, we agree with Amos Pinchot that the so-called employe representation plan is a denial of industrial democracy.
From The Day Book of October 11, 1915:
ROCKEFELLER'S PLAN CALLED A DENIAL OF
DEMOCRACY BY PINCHOT
BY AMOS PINCHOT
When Mr. Rockefeller, Jr., went to Colorado there was just one question of public importance for him to answer.
This question was not whether the Rockefellers have had a change of heart, or whether young Mr. Rockefeller is a sincere and Christian character. These are matters that chiefly concern the Rockefellers and not the public, though the press has rung the changes on them to the exclusion of all else.
The question the public is interested in is: What is the final stand of the Rockefellers about labor unions? This question is of importance. For recognition of the union is the one irreconcilable issues between capital and labor and the storm center of every great industrial strike.
It is true that Mr. Rockefeller's decision was veiled, to a large extent, by his announcement that he would permit, in fact, encourage labor to have its own local organization (which would be about as helpless in a clash with the Rockefellers as a child's toy boat in a battle with a super-dreadnought). It is true also that the real issue has been obscured in a cloud of amazing press-snobbism through which only the young master is revealed grasping the hand of his grateful, grimy man. But nevertheless, the real issue is there, and Mr. Rockefeller himself meets it with as clear-cut a decision as any one could ask for.
Mr. Rockefeller says his employes may bargain with the company through small local unions which may select their own representatives and confer with those of the company. He says they may do this without fear of punishment or dismissal. But to the union, to the real union, to the strong labor organization with national scope and power, he denies both recognition and existence. Mr. Rockefeller's decision to crush unionism and collective bargaining is not modified in the least degree by his permission to labor to organize locally. No union is a union in anything but name unless it has power to bargain with capital - with combined, highly organized capital such as the Rockefellers represent. And this power to bargain is only conceivably possible when there is a broad, non-local labor union of wide solidarity, through which men who are striking for their rights in one section can get encouragement and support from men still earning wages in another.
As Mr. Rockefeller and every great employer knows, there is an immense and increasing surplus supply of labor in the field of low-skilled industry. As they know, while this surplus exists, labor remains sunk in a position of helplessness that is not far removed from slavery. As they know, as every one knows, the wage-earner's one hope of possessing even a minimum of economic power with which to fight for some semblance of prosperity and freedom lies in the labor union, and when the union goes that goes with it.
Under these circumstances it is hardly necessary to say that Mr. Rockefeller's plan to crush unionism will not receive the support of labor. Under this plan, if the employe has a grievance, or finds that he is not receiving a living wage, he has no appeal, except to the benevolent will of his master. If he rebels against that will or organizes to force a compromise, his employer informs him that he must be good or find work elsewhere. He may also take occasion to inform him that this is a free country and that the wage-earner is not a slave, but a free man-free to live and work on whatever terms his employer decides on; free to quit if he does not like these terms; free to move out with his family; free to join the enormous army of the unemployed, and free to drift about in misery and want until he can find work at any wage that will stave off hunger from his wife and child.
This is the reality, not the theory, of the Rockefeller proposal. It is a denial of democracy, and an insult even to that veneer of Christianity with which our industrial over-lords gloss over the savagery of their economic code.
In addition the plan has not the virtue of sound business basis; for, unless the workers of the United States bow to it, which is unlikely, the result will be a series of strikes that will disorganize industry and keep the country in ferment for years to come. Here is where a heavy responsibility rests on the Rockefellers and the gentlemen who stand on their side of the fence.
And this result will be the more regrettable on account of its needlessness from all points of view. For in the anthracite coal fields, where the union has received recognition (the same union, by the way, that Mr. Rockefeller is fighting in Colorado) there has been an almost complete absence of industrial discord, and, instead, a healthy co-operation between capital and labor during the last decade that has worked out in large advantage to both.
There are few intelligent persons today who do not realize that political machinery alone does not and cannot produce real democracy. Economic power is the only dominant power of the world. Without a fair division of this power between the different classes, democracy is impossible and drops to the level of a mere catch-word for political campaigns.
After all the agitation and education of the last two years; after the strikes with their bloodshed and loss in money and suffering, it is discouraging to find that capital-the great bulk of capital-has learned nothing and is thinking of nothing, except how to reinforce its power. This means that the chief fight for democracy must be made, not against the reactionary politician, who opposes progressive machinery of government, but against the industrial absolutist who dominates society by economic power.
[Photograph added.]
Below the fold our readers can find a few recent reports from
The New York Times on the Rockefeller Plan.
From The New York Times of October 4, 1915:
UNION MINERS ATTACK ROCKEFELLER PLAN
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Committee in Denver Declares It Insures
Domination of Situation by Company.
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Special to The New York Times.
Now We Will Talk by R. K. Chamberlain,
from The Masses of March 1915
`````
DENVER, Oct. 3.-A committee of the United Mine Workers of America, composed of Robert H. Hartin, Percy Tetlow and J. F. Moran, has issued a statement which practically rejects the plan for industrial peace just proposed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The statement in part says:
The proclamation fails to provide for meetings or conventions of the miners, except locally, and by so doing insures company domination of its workings. All meetings, except local mine meetings, are to be joint meetings, where the company will have equal representation, thus eliminating the danger of the collective action that might result if the men from several mines met together free from company influence.
The document arbitrarily fixes living and working conditions until Jan. 1, 1918, with a provision that any increase in wages granted in competitive districts where the company does not conduct operations, a proportional increase shall be made: no doubt with the end in view of safeguarding the competitive advantage the company now has over the Wyoming and other adjacent fields where the union scale is much higher than in Colorado.
[Photograph added.]
From The New York Times of October 5, 1915:
Special to The New York Times.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 4.-Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, today gave out a statement regarding John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s, new industrial plan. In the statement he said:
So Mr. Rockefeller has formed a union-a union of his employes of his Colorado Fuel and Iron Company-and perhaps imagines that he has solved the problem of just relations between himself and his employes. But with all his wealth and all his brains and the brains that he could buy and suborn, he has missed his mark. Imagine an organization of miners formed by the richest man in the world, who employs its members!
What influence can such a pseudo union have to insist upon the remedying of a grievous wrong or the attainment of a real right? And what about the representatives of the men sitting around the table with Mr. Rockefeller and his angelic representatives in Colorado, should the miners' spokesman have the temerity of insistence in the rightful demands of the miners?
The miners employed by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, of which Mr. Rockefeller is the head, have been whipped by means of atrocious brutality and hunger into submission, back to the mines. And these miners have been formed into a union by Mr. Rockefeller's benevolent altruism. But he has organized them, and for that at any rate labor is truly grateful, for when men come together to discuss, even in the most cursory way, their rights and their interests and their welfare, there is afforded a splendid field for development and opportunity.
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[Photograph added.]
From The New York Times of October 13, 1915:
ROCKEFELLER'S TRIP HAD FEW SURPRISES
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Back from Colorado, He Denies Father
Made Him Big Gift of Stock.
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CONDITIONS AS EXPECTED
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Keeps Pretty Thoroughly in Touch with Mines, He Says-
Still Favors the Open-Shop Policy.
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John D. Rockefeller, Jr., returned yesterday to his home in Pocantico Hills from his three weeks of investigation of labor conditions in the mines of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, of which he is a Director.
He is still for the open shop, but otherwise is in favor of unions. He denied a story to the effect that his father, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., had given to him the control of the Colorado corporation by presenting him $34,000,000 of the common stock...
The younger Mr. Rockefeller arrived on the Broadway Limited over the Pennsylvania Railroad from Chicago at 10 o'clock yesterday morning, and while he was waiting for a train in the Grand Central Terminal for Tarrytown, he was interviewed, as to his impressions of the mining conditions...
Mr. Rockefeller said he was feeling well and had enjoyed his stay among the miners...
He returns confirmed in his intention to do what he can to bring about a "republic of labor" as outlined by him before the Industrial Commission and later at the meetings of the miners in Colorado.
"I found conditions about as I expected." said he. "You see I keep pretty thoroughly in touch with conditions in our mines."
"What is your position now toward organized labor?" Mr. Rockefeller was asked.
"My position on that question now is the same as it has always been. I believe in organized labor," he replied. "I believe that labor should have a voice about the affairs in which it is engaged. I am not, however, and have never been in favor of what is known as the 'closed door.'"
...He remarked that he had discussed conditions with the miners and their leaders, and that he had talked with "Mother" Jones, but that she had not offered any remedial suggestions of value.
He declared that he could not then go into details. What plans he might have for the Colorado mines would be made public later...
Mr. Rockefeller reached his home at Pocantico Hills in time for luncheon. He sent out word that he had said all that he intended to say for the present. He rested in the afternoon, as he was tired from his railroad journey....
[Photograph added.]
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WE NEVER FORGET
SOURCES
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Oct 11, 1915
https://www.newspapers.com/...
The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-Oct 4, 1915
http://query.nytimes.com/...
-Oct 5, 1915
http://query.nytimes.com/...
-Oct 13, 1915
http://query.nytimes.com/...
IMAGES
Amos Pinchot
http://spartacus-educational.com/...
Now We Will Talk by R. K. Chamberlain,
from The Masses of March 1915
http://dlib.nyu.edu/...
Samuel Gompers, Oakland Tribune,
May 17, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
John D Rockefeller Sr and Jr,
NYT Oct 3 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Ludlow Remembered, UMWJ Cover, Apr 15, 1915
http://books.google.com/...
See also:
Search: New York Times + Rockefeller Colorado
for Sept 1 - Oct 31, 1915
http://query.nytimes.com/...
The Survey, Volume 39
Survey Associates, 1918
https://books.google.com/...
From The Survey of October 6, 1917:
"Two Years of the Rockefeller Plan"
by John A. Fitch, of Survey staff.
https://books.google.com/...
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Hazel Dickens-They'll Never Keep Us Down
We’ve been shot, we’ve been jailed, Lord, it’s a sin
Women and children stood right by the men
We’ve got a union contract that keeps the worker free
They’ll never shoot that union out of me
They’ll never shoot that union out of me
They’ll never shoot that union out of me
Got a contract in our hand signed by the blood of honest men
They’ll never shoot that union out of me.
-Hazel Dickens
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