Ray Stannard Baker

McClure’s Magazine/November, 1903

AFTER four months of struggle, costing untold millions of dollars, the building strike in New York has at last worn itself out. Sam Parks, the union leader, broken down by an incurable disease, convicted of blackmail, is awaiting sure return to State’s Prison at Sing Sing. The men are at work again; the employers are counting their losses; the public draws a long breath of relief,—the public really believes that something has been settled.

Sam Parks, indeed, has been settled; he will ride his white horse at the head of no more labor parades; he will “pull out” no more “jobs.” Nine-tenths of the people of New York fully and earnestly believe that Sam Parks and his friends were the chief cause of the strike. Many of the employing builders and not a few of the union workmen themselves, closely familiar with all the conditions, will assert the same conviction.

Well, if Sam Parks has really blocked for months the building industry of the greatest American city in the time of its most spectacular growth—and that at a time when there was no dispute between employer and employee as to wages, or hours, or recognition of the union; when the workmen were never better paid, never so thoroughly organized, never more independent—then this man Parks is surely worth knowing. It is an irresistible conclusion that he must either be a genius of extraordinary force or else he must have represented some vital basic condition or principle, which, in the inevitable expression of itself forced upward from the mass the strong man who best represented it. Is Parks the god in the machine or is he the tool in some mightier hand?

Who is Sam Parks?

Who is this Parks? Last May his name, now grown to such resounding importance, had never been heard outside of a limited circle of the building industries in New York City. He is one of the four walking delegates or business agents of the Housesmiths’ and Bridgemen’s Union. For many terms now he has been duly elected by his 4,500 fellow workmen to conduct their collective business with their employers in New York. All unions have such an officer—a paid agent receiving, usually, the wages of an ordinary workman in the trade—a necessary, useful, important officer, recognized and favored by employers as well as by workmen. The walking delegate is supposed to be strictly accountable to his union, to make full reports at each meeting, and to receive instructions as to what he shall do in the intervals between meeting days of the union. I say he is “supposed to be accountable,” and in the best unions he really is accountable; in the Housesmiths’, however, Sam Parks was delegate.

As one of the representatives of his union Sam Parks had a seat and a vote in the Board of Building Trades, a central body composed of walking delegates from each of thirty-nine trades connected with the New York building industry. This body was supposed to discuss questions looking to the betterment of conditions among all employees on buildings, to settle disputes between unions, and, on occasion, to enforce the demand of any one union there represented by a sympathetic strike of all the other unions; it was also supposed to be wholly under the direction of the great body of unionists which it represented.

The Walking Delegate in Theory and in Fact

In short, this organization was built upon the lines of our political system. Here was the delegate elected to represent the wishes of his constituents, here was the congress composed of these representatives. A visitor from Mars, examining the wise constitutions and by-laws of these unions and this central body, might conclude that we had reached the millennium of perfection in the self-government of our workingmen. When Mr. Steffens went to Philadelphia they showed him with pride their magnificent city charter, perfect in every regulation, a model for the nations; but Philadelphia, none the less, is the worst governed city in America if not in the civilized world. The difficulty with constitutions and by-laws is that they regulate everything except human nature.

According to all the rules, Sam Parks, the faithful servant of his constituents, was worrying along on the wages of an ironworker, reporting regularly to his union, taking his instructions with earnest meekness, meeting the employers in the quiet, dignified manner of a businessman, and never calling strikes when there was any other way out.

In reality, however, Sam Parks was riding about in his cab, wearing diamonds, appearing on the street with his blooded bulldog, supporting his fast horses, “treating” his friends. How this reminds one of the familiar, affluent aldermen or police captains of our cities building $50,000 residences on salaries of $1,500 or less and living happily ever after!

Stuff the Boss is Made Of

In other ways, qualities of manner and method, our Parks may claim kinship with the Deverys of New York, the Bath-House Johns of Chicago, the Ed. Butlers of St. Louis. A striking and impressive figure: A County Down Irishman, forty years old, all his life long he has done the roughest, hardest work, river-driver and lumberman in the North Woods, coal-heaver on the Lake docks, roustabout-sailor, railroad brakeman, bridge-builder; time was when, unerringly balanced on a steel beam, two hundred feet in blue space, he could drive more rivets to the hour than any other man in the trade. A rough, tough nut of a man who loves to fight, he says, better than to eat. Ignorant, a bully, a swaggerer, a criminal in his instincts, inarticulate except in abuse and blasphemy, with no argument but his proficient and rocky fists, he yet possesses those curious Irish faculties of leadership, that strange force of personality, that certain loyalty to his immediate henchmen familiar among ward politicians,—so that he could hold his union with a hand of iron. No, it is not strange: Tweed ruled and robbed New York for years; only yesterday Croker was our king; Quay bosses Pennsylvania. They are all of a stripe, all bosses: Parks a little ruder and rougher, perhaps, but the same sort.

Robbing His Union

And this man, elected to carry out the instructions of his union, actually reversed the process and bossed the union. His four thousand iron-workers obeyed like children. He called strikes when and where he pleased, often deigning to give the men no reason why they were called out; he spent the money of the union lavishly and made no accounting. Once, when an overbold member ventured to inquire in open meeting what had become of a certain sum of money, Parks replied by hurling a table at him. Several others who opposed him were “beaten up” in near-by saloons. Others mysteriously lost their jobs. When a man disagreed with him, he “gave him a belt on the jaw,” as he has said, “and that cleared his mind.” Of $60,000 received in fees and dues by the union in 1901, over $40,000 disappeared without detailed accounting, mostly under Parks’ direction. Of $75,000 received in 1902, some $60,000 was spent practically without accounting. What these great sums went for (strikes. Parks said, vaguely), no one but Parks really knew, and he wouldn’t tell. Every member of the union knew the exact character of Parks, that he was a “grafter”—and yet he could not be displaced. Even after being arrested for blackmail, he was reelected by his union; when he went to State’s Prison his salary as walking delegate was continued, and when he was released under Court orders he marched at the head of the Labor Day parade, cheered by his followers.

Blackmailing Employers

But the money he received from the union treasury probably did not equal the amount he got from the employers. Behold the extraordinary spectacle of builders and manufacturers of large interests summoned by this former coal-heaver to come to his house or to the saloon of his appointment and pay him two hundred or nine hundred or two thousand dollars for his personal use to secure permission to go on with their business! This happened not once, but many times, as the evidence presented to District Attorney Jerome has abundantly shown. And if a builder was recalcitrant his jobs were “struck” and the men kept out until he “settled.”

I am not entering here into the question of the justice of these strikes; some of them may have been warranted; I suspect they were; but the point is that Sam Parks and other men of his type called them without consulting anything but their own personal pleasure, with no instructions from their unions, often without giving any reasons to the men who were thus compelled to lie idle, and, worse still, strikes were often accompanied by a demand for money or to enforce the payment of money. Did this money go to the men who struck and lost their wages? Not a bit of it; they won the battle. Parks pocketed the spoils, though he sometimes spent it liberally “setting up” for his friends at near-by bars. I heard a housesmith say:

“Sam Parks is good-hearted all right; if he takes graft he spends it with the boys.”

A curious conception, surely, of good-heartedness, but one that is already familiar in political circles: robbing his constituents of their rights and perhaps of their wages, he is “good-hearted” because he treats some of them to beer!

How the Graft was Worked

We find Parks approaching the superintendent of the Hecla Iron Works, of Brooklyn, by appointment in a saloon.

“You’ve never done anything for the walking delegates,” he remarked. “Ain’t it about time?”

He accused the company of violating certain union rules, but said he “would leave them alone for $1,000.” They gave him two minutes to get out, and he used the time; then he called strikes which cost the company some $50,000 and threw 1,200 men out of work for weeks. President Poulsen finally tried to make terms, meeting Parks by appointment:

“I’m it; you pay me,” said Parks. “You can go to work when you pay Sam Parks.”

“What about the men who are striking?” asked Mr. Poulsen.

“To hell with those ______” responded this leader, concerning his constituents.

Without entering into the many complications of the case, which have no real bearing on the attitude of our hero, the Hecla people finally paid Parks $2,000 and the men were allowed to go back to work. I am not saying that this money was blackmail, nor a bribe, nor that it was not a just payment for “waiting time.” Confusion here exists in definitions that must be settled in the courts. But of one thing we are certain: Parks got the money; the check endorsed by him is now in the hands of District Attorney Jerome. Owing, however, to the publicity given the case, the union is reported really to have received some of this money—after Parks had been provided with a diamond ring bearing the legend “Victory, Strike Hecla Iron Works.”

Boss Parks’ Opinion of the Law

 Parks’ attitude toward things in general and his peculiar method of expression are displayed in a remark which he made to F. D. Jackson, secretary of the Hecla Iron Works, during the negotiations (reported in the sworn testimony before Justice Mayer):

“I don’t care a damn for the law or for any damn man on the face of the earth. I’m going to get square with the Hecla Iron Works if it takes me to the end of my days, and I’ll settle this strike when I get good and ready.”

But in most of the cases the money passed quietly from the pocket of the employer to the pocket of Parks, and nothing more was ever heard about it.

How did Sam Parks do it? How was it possible for such a man to control absolutely his thousands of ironworkers, most of whom were intelligent, high-class workmen, respectable and patriotic American citizens? Why were rich employers ready to pay him money almost on request?

An able labor leader answered me thus: “If you will explain how Croker bossed the Democratic party in New York—a party full of honest men—when everyone knew he was grafting; how he collected money from the wealthy owners of the street railway companies and gas companies, and from other prominent business men, I will explain how Parks gets his hold on the building trades in New York.”

The Croker of the Building Trades

And, truly, the more closely one examines the situation the more striking the parallel between the government of the trade unions and our politics. We have to-day the Labor Boss and the Industrial Machine in many unions (the germs of them in all) with much the power and founded on exactly the same basic defects that we find in our political organizations. Why not? The union is a voluntary elective association and its offices are prized places. We find it, therefore, subject to all the approved American electioneering methods. Sam Parks is the Croker of the building trades. Other bosses there are in other trades: Carvill of the derrick-men, for instance, who was second only to Parks in his appetite for the money of the employers, and Murphy of the stone-cutters, who stole $27,000 of the union’s money and is now in Sing Sing. There was a ring in most of the unions and a ring in the Board of Delegates, just as there are little political bosses in the election districts and a big boss in Tammany.

In the first place the union is composed of the same elements as the political party—of American citizens, the majority of whom, perhaps, are honest, intelligent, conservative and well-to-do, but also too often criminally selfish, stupid, willing to be led by the nose so long as their business is not disturbed. This majority in politics does not go to the party primary, often does not vote; in the union it does not attend the meetings, takes no interest. Of 4,500 members of the Housesmiths’ Union there were rarely 500 in attendance at a meeting, and never, even at important elections, anywhere near the full number. Mannerchor Hall, where the union met, does not seat comfortably 600 men. As a result the business was conducted by a very small minority, composed largely, as in the political organization, of the young, unattached fellows, the out-of-work, and those who would rather play politics than drive rivets. The other men, the workers, some of whom lived twenty-five miles from the meeting hall, were tired at night and wanted to go home and play with their babies. Oh, it is the old familiar American story, bragging that we can govern ourselves, and then not governing.

An Honest Labor Leader Helpless

The real quality of the majority of the housesmiths finds expression in the election and reelection of a thoroughly honest and able president, Robert Neidig, who, in the face of threats of personal injury and loss of work, has marshaled a steady opposition to Parks. Neidig has taken high grounds of civic patriotism.

“I have got to be a union man,” he says. “Should I let the union run itself, and not attend meetings because I do not like its methods, or should I turn in and do my best to help change the methods?”

And Neidig really has done his best, working patiently without a cent of salary, though he has not succeeded in arousing the honest majority to overthrow the Boss. So our political parties elect some fine, honest, ingenuous, not over energetic man as mayor or governor and “point with pride” to him, while the Boss stands behind him grinning, runs everything, and steals the people poor.

A Boss cannot come to power unless he really does something to help his party, his union. After all, his sway must have some basis of good service. It is Parks who is chiefly credited with the present effective organization of the iron-workers, and it was he also who led in the fight for advanced wages; he has been largely instrumental in nearly doubling the income of the ironworker in five years. In 1897 the housesmith received $2.50 a day. In 1903 he receives $4.50 a day. Parks has made life better worth living—at least in a material sense—for 25,000 New Yorkers.

How Unionism Excuses Parks

You will hear honest men saying: “Yes, Parks is a grafter, but see what he has done for us! Yes, he steals, but he steals mostly from the employers. What difference is it to us if he makes the employer give up? They get more than their share anyhow.”

It takes high moral stamina to resist such speciousness as this.

Gratitude, however, never kept a man in office, especially in political office, and we find Parks engaged in all the familiar electioneering devices to maintain his power. A meeting hall holding only a small fraction of the membership was easily packed by friends of the boss when he needed a vote of confidence. We find him securing his own judges at elections, once even rushing the polls so that the city police were called in to quell the riot. We hear of repeaters and purchased votes, even of fraudulent ballots and fraudulent counts. I was told of one instance in which, after the adjournment of a meeting, when President Neidig and many other members had gone home, the Parks ring called the union together again at 2:30 o’clock in the morning, suspended the constitution, elected Parks for another term as walking delegate, and voted him a three months’ vacation at full pay. Alarmed by this scandal, however, a subsequent meeting reversed the action.

Pursuing all these approved bruiser and criminal methods of the ward politician, Parks, nevertheless, could not have held his place without drawing around him a ring of adherents (heelers) who would support him through thick and thin. It is rather difficult to see, at first, how Parks, unlike the Crokers who get men paid from the public treasury, could confer enough favors to keep a clique together. In practice it was simplicity itself, and the methods here, too, were strikingly similar to those of the political boss.

Parks’ “Entertainment” Committee for Recalcitrants

Making an excuse that he needed money and a free hand to conduct the fight against the employers, he was allowed too easy an entrance to the union treasury. He organized a paid committee, called with grim humor an “entertainment” committee, the chief duty of which was to command the pickets during strikes and to “entertain” the non-union man by punching his head or gouging his eyes. These men were expressively known as the “Rough Riders.” Here was the nucleus of the ring: faithful heelers and henchmen. It easily followed that anyone who was so temerarious as to oppose the Boss found himself “slugged” some night—very mysteriously to police and public; not at all mysteriously to himself. He was careful next meeting to support Parks.

Parks himself was easily the most accomplished slugger in the union. He relates having had as many as twenty fights in one day. The very physical force of the man, the terrorism which he inspired, were no negligible factors in his rise. We recall that Croker, in his earlier years, was also a mighty slugger— slugging his way upward to a condition of fame and favor in which he could afford to be dignified and business-like. Indeed, we are not surprised to find the labor boss and the political boss, birds of a feather, flocking together. We find Parks the close friend and supporter of Devery. We find Devery signing Parks’ bond when he is arrested; Devery is an honorary member of the Housesmiths’, and he has actually told Parks that he shall have a place on the Devery ticket as President of Manhattan Borough! And why not? “Dick” Butler, another iron-worker, one of Parks’ union men and supporters, has been sent to the Legislature. Our politics have been instructive to unionism!

Even this policy of force, however, might not have sustained the Boss against the aroused indignation of the union if he had not been supported by another powerful source of influence, in short, his ability to cause the discharge of men he did not like and to get his favorites into choice places. When an employer needs more men he notifies the union, and the officers send out some unemployed workman who has registered at headquarters. Many unions make it a rule to send out the man whose name is first on the list, but Parks sent out, not the man who had been longest out of work, or who was most needy, but the man who was his friend, or promised to be his friend; so that he soon had a large number of men working who owed their jobs to him. On the other hand, if any workman displeased the Boss, influence was brought to bear on the employer—most employers are easily frightened—to discharge that man.

Sometimes he got his friends appointed to jobs as foremen at $7 a day, when ordinary workers received only $4.50. A strike being called on the new Empire Theatre, Parks told the builder that the work would not be resumed until he was allowed to appoint a new foreman. The former foreman—a union man named Lawson—had opposed Parks, even threatening to run for delegate, and Parks wanted to discipline him. The builder yielding, Parks appointed one of his henchmen, J. W. Kelly, to the place. At the next meeting of the union Lawson complained in private to President Neidig. Parks saw the two men talking, and suspecting that Lawson was telling his story, walked over and knocked him down. Lawson had Parks arrested, but for reasons not at all mysterious to those who know the ways of the labor boss, the case was not pushed in court.

Some Unions See the Evils of the Boss

So Parks built up his machine. So machines were built up in most of the unions in the building trades of New York. Indeed, the hardest problem in unionism today, as in our political life, is the Boss. Wise leaders recognize the danger, and some of the more experienced unions, grappling earnestly with the question, have adopted such remedies as the referendum, the supervising committee, and, more important still, strict business methods—smaller local union bodies and rules forcing the attendance of all members at important meetings, until some of them have reached a degree of self-government far in advance of anything in our political parties.

The Board of Building Trades in New York was, then, in reality, a Board of Bosses, as Tammany Hall is a Board of Bosses. Sam Parks being the big boss in his union and having much experience at the business, became a great influence in the board, forming there his coterie of friends and supporters, and being finally elected as its president. This board, a secret body, so secret that even the presidents of the unions represented were not allowed admittance to the floor, not properly accountable to the union, too powerful in the use of that terrible weapon—the sympathetic strike—and not powerful enough (or not willing) to force discipline among its constituent unions, this board was able, practically to control the building industries of New York City. Controlled by such bosses as Parks, Carvill, McCarthy, and others, it is not surprising that it often conducted its business not for the good of the building trades, not even for the good of its own constituents, but for the personal advantage of its members. Quay’s ring, Croker’s machine, Addicks’ machine, have all done exactly the same thing.

Such was the condition of bossism in the unions: What about “graft” among the builders? Where bribes are received bribes must be paid. Where a man is discharged at the request of the Boss there must be an employer to discharge him.

The Other Side—The Grafting Employers

It has its humorous aspects—the astonishment and horror with which we heard the stories of graft given out by members of the employers association—we Americans who take credit for knowing ourselves so well! Here was a builder doing his million or two million dollars’ worth of business a year indignantly telling how he paid $200 or $2,000 to a walking delegate six months or two years ago! Why has he kept his indignation to himself so long? and why did he pay the money, anyway?

We are asked to look upon these things as if bribery and graft and blackmail were new in the building trades of New York.

Why is it that for years the building department has been notably one of the most corrupt branches of the city government? Why have several former high officials of this department, employed at a modest salary, gone out of office after a few years of service with fortunes large enough to make them resplendent for the remainder of their days? Why are the positions of building inspector even to-day in such demand? The inspector is paid only $1,200 a year, out of which he must buy his uniform, pay his own expenses (and his political assessments), and he must, if he is an efficient officer, be a man of experience and ability as a builder. Why, his earnings are not more than an ordinary carpenter or blacksmith will make—not so much, perhaps. On this exact point the new superintendent of buildings, Henry S. Thompson, has said:

“With $100,000,000 worth of building being done every year in this city, and every dollar of it subject to the supervision of inspectors of this department, the opportunities for graft and blackmail in the building department are equaled by no other department in the city, except, possibly, the police.

“These $1,200-a-year men overlook $3,000,000 buildings. They are the ones to pass on the materials being used. If inferior material is put in, if the plans are deviated from, if the plumbing is not placed properly, if there is the least deviation from the prescribed plan, or from the law, the inspector on the ground is the man to bring it to notice and to require the builder to comply with the law. How wide a field this opens if the inspector is not an honest man anyone may see.”

Bribery in the Building Department

For long there was a regular schedule of bribe money: So much for the construction inspector, so much for the plumbing inspector, so much for the iron work inspector, and so on. Often the bribes were contemptible five-dollar bills for breaking little laws, and sometimes as high as $2,000 paid to high officials for breaking big laws. And who has made the building department for years a favorite place for grafting? The builders—no one else. Not all builders—no one may accuse a whole class—but enough of them to give a great city department its evil reputation. Why have they paid graft and bribed building superintendents and inspectors?

Because they wanted to break the law.

That, indeed, is the secret of all graft. They wanted to put in cheaper materials than the law called for, they did not want to make their building really fireproof, they did want to hurry and scamp their work and increase their profits, or they were too cowardly to resist the demand of corrupt officials; so they used bribe money.

Similarly there were times when the purchase of the labor boss also became “a regular business expense.” And this is not new; it is as old as the unions themselves. In the case of the walking delegate, the builder wants to break, not a law, but his agreement with the union; he wants to deal unfairly, he wants to “keep in” with the union, but at the same time he wants to prostitute the union to his own private ends; or he is too cowardly to resist in court the demands of the corrupt delegate.

Here, for instance, are non-union men working on a job, or laborers doing the work of skilled artisans; the delegate protests, as his duty requires; how much simpler and cheaper it is to hand out a hundred-dollar bill, quiet the delegate, and keep the nonunion men and laborers working at cheap wages. No matter if it is the purchase of a man’s honor, no matter if the delegate sells out his friends, business has not been interrupted.

Do Employers Want Honest Labor Leaders?

And does any one really suppose that all builders really want honest delegates? Does anyone suppose that our street railway owners, our gas concessioners, our owners of dock privileges, really want honest aldermen, honest city officials? No, sir; they do not. If the delegates and officials were honest, profits would be decreased, the builder would not be able to beat his competitor, and the street-car capitalist to rob the public of franchises. After all, this is a republic, a government by the people; if, as a people, we really did not want bosses we should not have them. Grafting is only one expression of our American lawlessness.

New York was deeply stirred the other day over the revelation of the demands made by the stone-cutters’ union on their employers for a large sum of money which the union called a “fine” for disregarding union regulations. Fifty thousand dollars was at first demanded from Andrew J. Baird and his associates of the Stone Dealers’ Association, but employers and employees finally compromised on ten thousand dollars. I am not here entering into the discussion as to whether this payment was “graft” or not, or whether the union had a right to demand this large sum. The significant fact was that the public would never have heard of this transaction—which surely meant something—if the union treasurer, Murphy, had not stolen the money, with the result that the whole affair was dragged into the courts. At no time in the proceedings was there an accusation of employer against employee, or employee against employer. Here was a curious, unaccountable sum of money passing, and the men who paid it making no public protest. After Murphy was in State’s Prison he made the statement that there was a secret agreement and understanding between the union and the employers’ association, similar to the combinations which I have described in my article on Chicago labor conditions.The fact is, the employers wanted to use the union to fight their competitors and to form a monopoly, and the union was willing to be used, if paid for it.

No; the dishonest Labor Boss, if not too greedy, is very often a useful tool for the employers. A single instance, a story told by District Attorney Jerome, from evidence in his possession, will show how happily the Boss serves the employer when he does not want to meet the demands of the union squarely, fairly, honestly; it also throws an impressive light on some other ugly conditions of our modern building system.

A Story of Graft

For years the Amalgamated Association of Painters and Decorators worked in amity under agreements with the employers’ association of their trade. To the Amalgamated Association belonged practically all the painters and decorators in New York City and vicinity. In the summer of 1902 the Amalgamated Association demanded an increase in wages and a half holiday on Saturday—as they had a perfect right to do. I am not here questioning the justice of these demands or the provocation of the employers; the plain point is, that instead of meeting this demand of their old partners in the industry fairly and squarely with argument or refusal, or offer of arbitration, the employers bethought themselves of an evasive scheme—a business scheme—to fight the demands. In other parts of the country, having headquarters in Indiana, there existed a national organization of painters called the Brotherhood of Painters and Decorators. The employers opened secret negotiations with this organization to come to New York, organize, and fight the Amalgamated Association. When the members of the Amalgamated Association heard of this plan they prepared at once, and not unnaturally, to wage a bitter fight, finally striking against all the members of the Association of Interior Decorators and Cabinet Makers, tying up, among other buildings, the new Union Club. The employers knew that they could not fight the Amalgamated Association, backed up as it was by the Board of Building Trades, unless the new Brotherhood could also get a representation in the board. The natural way to get this representation—at least no one seemed to think of any other way—was to use graft, and plenty of it.

President Bahlhorn of the Brotherhood came on from Indiana and offered $2,500 in cash to be used in the proper manner. It wasn’t nearly enough. The opulent New York labor bosses sniffed at this western money, and President Bahlhorn himself began, as a labor leader expressed it, “to have cold feet.” He expected to appear soon for reelection by his organization and ugly questions might be asked by honest members as to where and how that $2,500 was expended in New York—and he couldn’t well explain. So fifteen members out of seventeen of the employers’ association—two refused to pay—subscribed $450 each; the Union Club, which was anxious to have the work on its building go forward, made a handsome contribution, and this, with other funds subscribed elsewhere, a total of some $17,000, was used among the Labor Bosses, chiefly in the credentials committee as an “initiation fee.” The names of the firms who paid $450 each are as follows:

William Baumgarten, 325 Fifth Avenue ; D. S. Hess & Co., 421 Fifth Avenue; The Hayden Company, 520 Fifth Avenue; Pottier & Stymus, 375 Lexington Avenue ; Herts Bros., 507 Fifth Avenue; Kimball & Sons, 328 Fifth Avenue ; Allard & Sons, 437 Fifth Avenue; T. D. Wadelton, 160 Fifth Avenue; Lowenbien & Sons, 383 Fifth Avenue; Newman & Co., 375 Fifth Avenue; Herter & Co., 382 Fifth Avenue; W. & J. Sloane, 848; Broadway; The Tiffany Studio, 333 Fourth’ Avenue; Peter Taucharden, 173 Clinton Street, Brooklyn.

Unions “Grafting” on Each Other

After this money had passed influences favorable to the Brotherhood began curiously to ferment in the board. An umpire—Boss Richard Carvill—was appointed to decide certain questions between the two painters’ organizations. After many significant delays and charges of “graft,” Boss Carvill decided in favor of the Brotherhood. As a condition of its admission to the board, on December 20, 1902, the Brotherhood agreed not to work for less wages than the Amalgamated Association was demanding, $4 and $4.50 a day. Three days later the Brotherhood deliberately signed a secret agreement for one year with the employers’ association to work for $3.25 and $3.50 a day. The $450 paid by each employer was thus a first-class investment; it was soon returned to him, with much more, in the saving of wages. “I knew that the end was coming,” said a prominent labor leader, “when the unions began to graft on each other.”

Every step in this transaction was marred by graft, by bad faith, by indirect dealing; and one side was exactly as bad as the other. Yet the employers call upon the public for sympathy in their fight against union corruption. A little common honesty and determination, a good deal less greediness on both sides to meet business issues squarely, and such a sickening transaction as this would never have occurred. “Only a higher conception of business honor among the building contractors themselves,” says the New York Evening Post, “will lead to an absolute and enduring reform.”

The Cause of Graft Higher Up

Bossism and venality, then, existed in New York long before the great lockout of May, 1903. The builder had long paid money to break the law or his agreements, and the delegate had long taken money to sell out his union, and neither had fared so poorly. It was a sort of balanced venality which might have continued to this day if another element—an outside, unrelated influence—had not entered the field and disturbed the evil equilibrium of the industry. It is of little importance what the immediate causes of the hostilities really were, of no more importance than the shots fired on Fort Sumter in 1861. This, too, was an irrepressible conflict; if it had not come in May it would have come in June, or July, or later. The same issues have already been fought out in Chicago and San Francisco, are now being contested in Pittsburg, and will have to be met in Boston. They are fundamental and national, not special and local issues.

The cause given by the employers’ association for the lockout was that the exactions of the Parkses and Carvills and of the Board of Building Trades had become absolutely unbearable, and the only way out was to smash the Boss system. No one who knows anything of the senseless strikes, trade disputes, and blackmail which the builders unquestionably had to suffer, will minimize this provocation or excuse the Labor Boss.

But there is much more to say in regard to the position of the employers’ association, an organization hardly older than the lockout itself—some things that may have escaped the attention of the casual reader of the newspapers, to whom the fight may seem a plain issue between the high-minded and abused employer and the blackmailing Labor Boss. If the real truth were known it might be found that these extortions of the Labor Boss, never very large compared with the millions and millions of dollars involved, and not half so hateful, be it whispered, as we have been led to believe, that these petty strikes and trade disputes, while maddening enough, were not to be compared in seriousness with one other tremendous fact of the building industry of New York and other cities. The gnat stings of the Labor Bosses won public sympathy for the employers’ association; the other thing, if generally admitted, would have merited none at all.

Enter the Trust

The plain fact is, a gigantic hand had reached into New York and was revolutionizing the building industry of the city—the hand of the Trust.

During the whole time of the lockout the man on the street may have noticed that work on many new buildings, some of the most important in New York, went forward without interruption, quietly, persistently. Farther inquiry would have shown that all, or nearly all, of these buildings were under contract by a single concern—the George A. Fuller Construction Company. Now, why was this company working when all the other builders of New York were idle? How did it rise superior to strikes and lockouts? Had it solved at last the labor problem?

The George A. Fuller Construction Company, the first of several great concerns of a similar character, all of Chicago origin, based on Chicago ideas and experience and backed by Chicago push, came to New York several years ago, its advent, curiously enough, being contemporaneous with that of Boss Parks. Starting with no business at all, it has, within some five or six years’ time, become the greatest construction company in the world, with the largest single building business in New York and important branches in Chicago, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.

The Fuller Company, itself capitalized at $20,000,000, is today owned and operated by a gigantic corporation known as the United States Realty and Construction Company, with a capitalization of $66,000,000. It is the trust idea applied to the building industry.

It was as inevitable sooner or later that such combinations should appear in the building trades, as in the steel or oil industries; they were the logical result of the era of the skyscraper. And it was also inevitable that their advent should work mighty changes, that the old-line builders and contractors—their competitors—should suffer before the centralized management and unified purpose of the new corporations.

Indeed, the independent contractors faced a similar danger on both sides. On one they had the leviathan combinations of capital, which were taking their business and cutting into their profits; in six years’ time they saw half the important building business of New York pass into the hands of these new corporations; on the other side they had the hardly less formidable preying combination of labor levying blackmail and forcing up wages. What could they do but organize? They were literally whipped into organization; that it must have required tremendous pressure to drive these contractors together, no one can doubt who knows the fierce competition and rivalry which exists among them. In short, it was a part of the common struggle of the times; organization and combination against disorganization, a clashing of great elemental forces, not the gnat stings of a little, insignificant, bullying Boss Parks.

How the Trust Worked

There was a vital idea and high-class brains behind the United States Realty and Construction Company. The managers devised new methods of economy—doing away in many instances with middlemen, tending to eliminate independent architects and contractors; they had new schemes for dealing with labor, learned in the Chicago strike of 1900, and they cunningly contrived new avenues of getting political influence—for the building business hangs on the will of a political appointee, the City Superintendent of Buildings. And, instead of waiting for business, they went out and made business; they organized neglected opportunities. Here was a man who had land, but no money to build: they supplied the money and built for him; often they bought the land themselves and built.

The new corporation was, moreover, fortified in its position in a hundred ways. In the first place it was intimately related to most of the other great trust and financial interests, which, after all, are nothing more than a family party, with headquarters in Wall Street. Naturally, therefore, when any of these interests were concerned in important new buildings, they favored the Fuller Company, for thus, in some degree, they paid the profit of one pocket into the earnings of another.

Forces Behind the Fuller Company

Here we find the Standard Oil Company represented in the person of James Stillman, president of Rockefeller’s bank, the greatest money institution in America. Mr. Stillman is chairman of the executive committee. It was well for a large consumer of steel like the Fuller Company to have a steel connection, and we find, accordingly, that the United States Steel Corporation is represented in the directory by Charles M. Schwab and E. C. Converse; and that the Fuller Company owns $550,000 of stock in the Steel Trust. At one time the Fuller Company is said to have had a contract whereby it got its steel at especially favorable rates. Railroad interests (the railroads haul the steel and other materials) were represented by Cornelius Vanderbilt and John W. Gates. Banking and other huge financial interests found a voice in James H. Hyde, vice-president of the Equitable Life Insurance Company; in James Speyer, one of the most conservative bankers in New York; in Augustus D. Juilliard and G. G. Haven, of the Mutual Life Insurance Company—all large owners or agents of real estate and buildings, who might need the services of a building company. Thus, we find the new Equitable Life building in Broadway going naturally to the Fuller Company. But perhaps the most important of all its connections was with the real estate interests of New York—the men who are on the inside, who know when and where buildings are to be built, and who is to build them—and who know these things first; so we find Bradish Johnson, an acknowledged real estate expert, as president of the company, and Albert Flake, Robert E. Dowling, Henry Morganthau, all very prominent real estate men, represented in the directory. Stockbroking interests—an important department in such a concern—were represented by Henry Budge. Nor did the company omit to cast a political line to windward. The city regulates building, and it is well to have influence where it will count. So we find among the directors Mr. Dowling, Mr. Flake, and Hugh J. Grant, former mayor of New York, a big politician, and an associate in a trust company composed largely of Tammany interests. It is common talk in the building trades that the new Superintendent of Buildings, Mr. Thompson, was appointed through the influence of these directors, though there are no charges of maladministration against him. Legal acumen, of which such a company may have urgent need, is represented by one of the ablest New York lawyers, B. Aymar Sands. Also we have representatives from Chicago and Boston, where the company does a large business. The actual management of the building interests was in the hands of Judge S. P. McConnell, president of the Fuller Company, and Harry S. Black, a relative of the founder, George A. Fuller, both Chicago men.

Buying a Supply of Labor Bosses

When the Fuller Company first came to New York and introduced the “department store idea” in building, the old-line contractors naturally did their best to fight it. So the old-line storekeeper has waged a losing war against the department store. In several trades there existed combinations between the associated employers and the unions (like those in Chicago) which fought the new companies with effect; in other trades, not so well organized, there came to be a wholesale bidding for labor. The oldline contractors would raise wages and get the men away from the Construction Company, and the Construction Company would bid up and get the men back again. Here were sown still other seeds of corruption, for both sides sought the favor of the walking delegates. There can be no doubt that the arrogance of the Labor Boss, knowing his power, is largely traceable to this courting of the labor monopoly by both parties to the gigantic struggle between trust and independent builder.

The Fuller Company, fresh from bitter strike experiences in Chicago, had learned the simple business lesson that the labor union has come to stay quite as surely as the trust, that it is better to work with it than to fight it. Instead of antagonizing labor it went out of its way to win labor—or at least the Labor Bosses. It yielded to the demands of labor and, doing not a little of its work on a percentage basis, it simply charged the added expenses up to the owner—-in other words, “took it out of the public,” as the pools in certain Chicago building trades are doing. Also, it made a policy of quick work, which is always worth a premium to the owner. But it went a step farther, perhaps the next universal step; the Chicago “pools” were mere voluntary agreements of competing contractors with the unions—”gentlemen’s agreements” in which, in spite of oaths, and promises, and bonds, the gentlemen would not remain gentlemen. The Fuller Company was a corporation, a unit in which there could be no internal dissension, which could deal with the union as a single man.

It is a significant fact that the Fuller Company brought Sam Parks from Chicago when it came—and, curiously enough, as a “scab,” to help assist the trust’s entry into New York—and there is evidence that he was on their pay-roll long after he became a leader of the union: that while he was drawing wages from his union to look after its interests he was also drawing money from the Fuller Company to look out for its interests. Rather strange, perhaps, but modern! The check paid by the Hecla Iron Works to Parks—I have told why this check was paid—was cashed by the Fuller Company. One of the officers of the Fuller Company was the go-between in the payment of money for the admission of the Brotherhood of Painters to the Board of Delegates.

Trust at War

The Fuller Company, as a labor leader expressed it to me, “went the old builders one better on their own game.” Instead of buying delegates occasionally, they were able to own a supply outright. It is common talk in the building trades that the Fuller Company, through its influence with the labor bosses, could and did cause strikes against their competitors, and even invited strikes against themselves when they wished to secure immunity from penalties under the “strike clause” in their contracts, but I could not find any specific evidence, even from the company’s worst enemies, of this dastardly sort of warfare. But this idea of being friends with labor, good or bad, has kept the Fuller buildings going through all the strikes, has made good their claim to getting their buildings done on time—at any cost of money or honor. Other construction companies, like the Thompson-Starrett Company, more conservatively managed, buried their differences with the old-line contractors temporarily, and joined the employers’ association in their fight to down the blackmailing Labor Boss.

The Unions the Tool of the Trust

Was this attitude of unfailing friendliness expressed by the Fuller Company a sign that Judge McConnell and his associates recognized more clearly the rights of labor, or that they were thrilled with any new conception of the brotherhood of men? Not a bit of it. It was a simon pure business proposition, and business does not feel! They believed as firmly as ever that the working-man was created for the natural use of the employer, but recognizing that if they could not use the workers individually as in older times, play them off against one another and secure lower wages, then they must be used as a union—but used. Instead of fighting organized labor they appeared as its best friend, and the foolish union, greedily swallowing the bait, looking at the immediate advance in wages, the immediate surrender to their demands, and not seeing that they were being employed as a tool by a mighty corporation to crush its competitors, went onward serenely proclaiming the Fuller Company its dearest supporter! But should the trust accomplish its purpose, and crush its competitors, which this trust is not likely to do, what would become of the useful tool?

This is a question now rising in many of the greatest American industries.

In all the accusations of extortion and blackmail against union men has anyone heard any complaints from the Fuller Company? It has been able somehow to proceed steadily, in the midst of strikes and lockouts. It did exactly the same thing in Chicago during the building strikes there. How? Why? This may be laid down as a law: The larger the corporation the more danger of graft.

Corruption a Good Investment

This point of danger in the trust problem, has not, it seems, been sufficiently emphasized. The larger the corporation the greater the need of “standing in” with the union. A general strike where enormous capital is involved is a very serious matter, not only for employer and employee, but for the public. The anthracite coal strike showed this conclusively. The more extensive its operations the less the corporation feels the small expense of owning delegates, and corruption becomes a good investment. In the trust, the men who really own and control the business—the employers—are widely separated from the men who do the work. What does Mr. James Stillman, president of the National City Bank, know about the building industry? or can he be suspected of having even a remote interest in Sam Parks or the struggles and trials or human life of the “rough-necks”—as the iron-workers call themselves?

What personal interest has Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mr. Charles M. Schwab, Mr. John W. Gates, Mr. James K. Hyde, all directors in this Construction Company, in the actual operations of building? Of the twenty-seven millionaire officers and directors of this trust only two have any practical knowledge of the building business, and they are not professional builders.

They don’t know, and they don’t care; all they demand is results in dividends. A practical manager is placed in control of the active operations of the company. The tremendous weapon of capital and capitalistic influence is placed in his hands and he is told to get results. If he does not earn dividends they hire a manager who will—by one means or another. If there is a need of “dirty work” their smug consciences are never troubled with it.

How Watered Stock Leads to Grafting

So conservative a financial authority as the New York Evening Post, criticising the first annual report of this building trust, which, it says (August 5, 1903) “has been conspicuously in the public eye in the last few months, chiefly as the place at which Samuel Parks’ checks were cashed,” concludes that over half of its capitalization of $66,000,000 is pure water and wind.

In other words, the manager of the trust is set to earn dividends on a capitalization over half of which is water. Is it surprising if he tries by fair means or foul to control the labor market, the demands of which make up so large a proportion of the total out-go? His own business existence depends on his getting results. Will he buy human honor? Anyone can answer that question.

The corruption began high up when the stock of the corporation was watered by $35,000,000—a crime by the side of which the blackmailings of a Parks are mere gnat pricks. It is some satisfaction to know that this particular watered trust is a stock exchange failure, that the promoters who hoped to sell their lying shares to the innocent public have been caught in their own trap and have suffered large losses.

In one respect, indeed, there is the same fundamental difficulty and danger in the trust that there is in the labor union. In the union we have the conservative, respectable, “honest” members, staying at home and leaving their collective business in the hands of a rascally walking delegate and profiting by his management. In the great modern trusts we have the respectable “honest” millionaires, the Stillmans and the Vanderbilts, pillars of society, permitting the use of their influential names to float questionable companies, leaving their collective business in the hands of a manager, paying no attention to the manner in which he does the work if only he gets results, they profiting by his management.

It is all too common a belief that when a man puts his money in a corporation there his duty ends; but the investor or stockholder is exactly as responsible for the morals of his company, down to the smallest details, as the workman is for the morals of his union. Who is blamable for the corporation manager who robs innocent investors, corrupts labor, buys public officials? Who but the stockholder who gives him power. Who is responsible for the blackmailing delegate? Who but the members of the union who elect him.

How likely we are to get our causes mixed up with our effects! Sam Parks no more caused this great strike than the man in the moon. Parks is an effect. It is not Parks who is at the bottom of the trouble, but Parksism. Parks is the visible sore of the disease, the invisible germ of which—money corruption—is circulating in the blood of the American people, and takes its victims high and low.

Who is Responsible?

Mr. Jerome has said: “This corruption in the labor unions is simply a reflection of what we find in public life. Everyone who has studied our public life is appalled by the corruption that confronts him on every side. It goes through every department of the national, state, and local government.

“And this corruption in public life is a mere reflection of the sordidness of private life. Look what we find on every side of us—men whacking up with their butchers and grocers, employers carrying influential labor leaders on their pay-rolls, manufacturers bribing the superintendents of establishments to buy their goods.”

The time must come when the responsibility for these dangerous conditions will be placed where it belongs; upon the stay-at-home, conservative voter who regards politics as beneath his honorable attention; upon the stay-at-home, conservative union man who does not wish to disturb his ease, to take part in the turmoil of the union meeting; upon the millionaire stockholder in the corporation who sits at home and draws his dividends without knowing or wanting to know by what trail of blood and dishonesty they have been earned.

In short, if we want self-government—not the name, but the real thing mentioned in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, we have got to work at it ourselves. President Roosevelt is right when he preaches broad morality; the necessity of each man getting down and doing something himself. We are willing to swallow any sort of patent nostrum for our disease—municipal socialism, the single tax, the referendum, cooperation—instead of getting down and doing personal work. These remedies may be good enough in their way, but we shall have no need of them if we obey the laws we already have.

“And men still call for special revolutions,” says Henrik Ibsen, “for revolutions in politics, in externals. But all that sort of thing is trumpery. It is the human soul that must revolt.”