General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"Frank Little, murdered by capitalist interests for organizing and inspiring his fellow men."
On this day in 1917:
It was August 1, 1917. After organizing a strike of metal miners against the Anaconda Company (Anaconda Copper Mining Company was one of the largest trusts of the early 20th century), Wobbly organizer Frank Little was dragged by six masked men from his Butte, Mont., hotel room and hung from the Milwaukee Railroad trestle.
Frank Little may be the greatest figure in American labor history. He fought for and won free speech rights before the American Civil Liberties Union was created. He successfully implemented tactics of non-violent resistance years before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - even years before Mahatma Gandhi used it to free India from British rule. He successfully implemented farm worker organization years before Cesar Chavez.
Frank Little was a charter member of the Socialist Party and Industrial Workers of the World. He was a hard-rock miner associated, like Bill Big Haywood, with the Western Federation of Miners until their split from the IWW. He led free speech fights among lumberjacks and farmworkers all around the West. He organized miners from Bisbee, Arizona, to the upper reaches of Montana and Minnesota.
At the time of his death, Little was Chairman of the Executive Committee of the IWW. He took the position that the IWW was a revolutionary organization and, consequently, should resist the draft and oppose America's entry into WWI the Great War of 1917. Actually, he lost the vote in the Executive Committee just before going to Butte, but he kept his anti-war militancy and expressed it fully in speeches to the Butte miners. The Anaconda Copper Mining Company insisted that the miners go back to work, even though a large number of them had just been killed by unsafe working conditions, because copper was needed for the coming war effort. Frank Little basically told the miners, "To hell with the companies, and to hell with the war!"
<snip>
Frank Little, Presente.
http://www.peoplesworld.org/today-in-labor-history-the-murder-of-frank-little/
MotherPetrie
(3,145 posts)Zorra
(27,670 posts)rarely get the cred they deserve.
To Frank
leftstreet
(36,106 posts)DURec
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)Brigid
(17,621 posts)Huge K&R.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Let's not forget the spirit of Frank Little.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)limpyhobbler
(8,244 posts)SaveOurDemocracy
(4,400 posts)starroute
(12,977 posts)And they did it 100 years ago.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)Brickbat
(19,339 posts)struggle4progress
(118,278 posts)struggle4progress
(118,278 posts)Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)hfojvt
(37,573 posts)Did this murder break the strike?
If he had not been killed, he probably would have gone to prison for opposing the war, just like Eugene Debs did.
The Wobblies though were never "one big union". At their peak they were not even as large as the Knights of Labor, who predate them by a couple decades.
Interesting what wiki writes, sorta the story of the left...
"Nonetheless, membership declined dramatically in the 1920s due to several factors. There were conflicts with other labor groups, particularly the American Federation of Labor (AFL) which regarded the IWW as too radical while the IWW regarded the AFL as too staid and conservative.[8] Membership also declined in the wake of government crackdowns on radical, anarchist and socialist groups during the First Red Scare after WWI. The most decisive factor in the decline in IWW membership and influence, however, was a 1924 schism due to internal conflict, from which the IWW never fully recovered.[8][10]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World
"schism due to internal conflict"
Yep, that is the story of the left in America, just as ready to fight their own heretics in a search for purity as they were ready to fight their common enemy.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)There were definitely weaknesses in both the IWW and the AFL. It is easy in hindsight to see what they were, but at the time both probably felt that their stance was best. After 1920 many of the main Wobblies like Big Bill Haywood joined the new Communist parties in the US. The left in general took awhile to work out a real labor program. There wouldn't be another General Strike in the West until 1934, after the CIO was formed.
leftstreet
(36,106 posts)and probably what got him killed. Butte was full of Irish immigrant workers and they weren't sympathetic to the Brits getting their war on
No that's not really the 'story of the left in America,' that's the story of the capitalists infiltrating, weakening, and compromising the left in America. A story that appears to be without end...
PETRUS
(3,678 posts)TBF
(32,047 posts)Catherina
(35,568 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Frank Little is a name that seems to have been forgotten from U.S. history.
http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/4067
Thank you for the heads-up on a true American hero, Starry Messenger.
rwsanders
(2,596 posts)Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)Richard Wheeler's historical novel The Richest Hill on Earth is a very worthwhile read on the working conditions of the miners as well as the machinations of the feuding plutocrats.
Thanks for this.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Brigid
(17,621 posts)Just like the Battle of Blair Mountain or much of anything else about the labor movement in this country. And this is no accident.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)We have to be the history books now.
heaven05
(18,124 posts)And duly elected congresscritters like Rand Paul, that senate jerk from OK and 3/4 of the Repthuglican Caucus want to turn back workers rights or lack of them to that time. American's voted them in. I won't forget that, I wont/don't let them forget it. Had one whining in my favorite watering hole the other evening, I just looked at him. He shut up. Whining, whining, whining. geez
Stargazer99
(2,584 posts)even of life itself for unions....something not taught in school anymore...and I want to know why?????
If we don't start getting involved with and support each other there will again be murder and if you don't
think it is possible, just take a good look at human nature once it has acquired wealth and power.
G_j
(40,366 posts)for this essential history!
Oakenshield
(614 posts)Thanks for sharing with us his powerful role in history. We sorely need someone like him today.
navarth
(5,927 posts)Frank Little was and is a hero.
The Pinkertons/Dashiell Hammett connection fascinates me because of Hammett's book Red Harvest, which is widely believed to be about Butte. Red Harvest is one of the most hard-bitten, mean-spirited 'detective' stories I've ever read. Loved it.
MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)What was the price of the earth's iron ore? ... Little matter, for it was for the war machine.....
What price we pay to extract oil and gas? You've reminded us that this history repeats itself. Thanks for this read, Starry Messenger.
What price for wind, sun and biomass?
When... when... WHEN?
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)TheJames
(120 posts)and I've pointed out to more than one foreman that "better men than you or I fought and died for the 40 hour work week, and you can't make me work overtime. You are perfectly capable of asking me, and you might still get a yes. Not, if you argue the point." Needless to say, I've worked in a lot of different shops, with an attitude like that.