The People’s History of Cape Breton, a project completed in 1971, is itself a window into the history and the people of Cape Breton as the historical events it had reported were intended to be. It was an initiative facilitated by the federal Liberal government of the day under a scheme known as ‘Opportunities for Youth’. The political bent of the authors is unmistakable and utterly without apologies. The spirit of the authors is identical to the spirit of Cape Breton characters such as J.B. McLachlan, Dan Livingstone, and Dan Willy Morrison. As radical and pure of political spirit as these men may have been, it was the spirit of the mass of workers that held explosive revolutionary potential.
The People’s History of Cape Breton is laid out here for you to read. It may be read as a historical document, a sociological analysis, or as an historical drama. It is each of these things in spades.
It may strike you odd that such events had taken place in Canada within living memory. This is the stuff of other continents where the hegemony of the British Empire or American capitalism has not had much effect.
It is worth considering the nature of the collective spirit when reflecting on these events in Cape Breton. It is the nature of capitalism to bring out individualism. Most are held at the edge of an abyss where it is possible, if we slow down, to go over; over into a world of hunger and deprivation of our own basic needs and the basic needs of our children and loved ones. The coal and steel industrialists in Cape Breton pushed the workers over that edge and brought forth, as a result, a spirit that lies beneath the surface in all societies and all individuals. That is the spirit of collective struggle and mutual cooperation. It is that spirit, more than anything else that threatens the status quo. Those that harvest from the labour of others understand this reality better than anyone else.
On the island of Cape Breton this revolutionary spirit was awakened and burned with tremendous heat in the 1920s. Evidence that it continues to smoulder may be found in the spirit of these authors who have not identified themselves in the pages of this document. Evidence that this spirit still lives may be found in the people of Cape Breton and when you look it may be found in all individuals and all cultures the world over.
The People’s History of Cape Breton is laid out here before you as it was written in 1971. The book held some cartoons and quotes in the margins that are omitted, some of which are reproduced here.
Friday, 28 December 2007
INTRODUCTION
This is a story of the working people of Cape Breton. It is not your usual kind of history. It is not about kings and queens, explorers, adventurers, politicians and prime ministers. It is a history of the common people of Cape Breton, of their day-to-day fight to improve their working conditions and their struggle to build a better way of life. The story of Cape Breton tells us a lot about the social system that Canadians live under, and about how ordinary men and women, when they work together, can change it.
This booklet, we hope, will be read and learned from by both Cape Bretoners and workers across the country. For Cape Bretoners it will chart the poorly known courses of the great struggles and accomplishments of the past and tell why the basic causes of those struggles has yet to be resolved. For Canadians generally, it will picture the little-known history of Cape Breton in its true light —— as a birthplace of militant working class struggle in Canada. This is the people’s history.
The earliest history of Cape Breton is shrouded in controversy. The arguments are about who first discovered Cape Breton Island. Some say it was Leif Erikson, who crossed the AtlantIc with his Norse Sailors in 1000 A. D. Others say it was’ Basque fishermen, who sailed here after the cod fish. The most popular version says that John Cabot, the Italian explorer working for the British Crown, landed here on his famous voyage of 1497.
Really, none of these people were the “discoverers” of Cape Breton. They couldn’t be, since the island was already inhabited. At the time of’ the so-called “great discoveries” Cape Breton was part “of the territory of the Micmac tribe of Indians. These people led a wandering hunting and fishing life style which was rudely disrupted by the intrusion of Europeans eager for fortune and empire. The mark of the Micmac people has been left on the island in the form of place names -- Baddeck, Malagawatch, Whycocomagh and the people themselves have not perished entirely either.
The Europeans, when they claimed Cape Breton for themselves, were the conquerors of a foreign land. The bountiful fishing grounds and the strategic location of Cape Breton on the Atlantic coast were the island’s great attractions. In the long battles for control of the North American empire, Cape Breton changed hands more than once. Eventually the British won out and the future of the island -- called Oonamagik by the Micmac people and Isle Royale by the French -- was settled. To consolidate their victory the British destroyed the mighty French fortress at Louisbourg.
New kinds of people now joined the Micmacs and scattered French settlements. The main source of the population of Cape Breton were the Scottish highlanders. They came to North America, mainly in the 1820’s, because there was no room left for them in Scotland. The Scottish landowners had decided to turn most of their land over to sheep farming and had to get rid of the families farming the land. Most of them came to Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island. After this period the main waves of immigration, to Canada largely bypassed Cape Breton, although the opening of the coal mines did bring experienced mining families from the British Isles.
The greatest resource of Cape Breton was its coal. Coal, the fuel of industry, made Cape Breton a very attractive piece of real estate to the builders of industrial empires. In l826 a British duke was given sole right to the coal resources of all Nova Scotia. He got rich by leasing land to mining companies. A long parade of corporations followed, all of them dedicated to mining coal as cheaply as possible and selling it at as a high a price as they could get.
Over the years, say these corporations, Cape Breton was “developed.” We would prefer to say it was robbed blind. It was a one-sided process; the coal was extracted and shipped off to Montreal, Upper Canada and New England. The steel industry, located at Sydney because of the enormous quantity of coal it needs, followed the same pattern. Its iron and steel went to feed manufacturing and industry in the heartland of the empire. Hundreds of millions of dollars of profits created by the coal miners and steelworkers of Cape Breton have been invested not here, but in distant industrial centres. All this was made possible because the riches of our country are not distributed wisely and rationally; they are distributed by the business decisions of huge international corporations. Cape Breton, more than almost any other part of Canada knows this well.
What was the price of all this “development” of Cape Breton? The past is strewn with untold stories of starvation and murder, children who were worked like dogs, 24-hour shifts and seven-day work weeks. Its conditions that make people rebel, that turn them into radicals and revolutionists. In this booklet we look at some of those conditions and at the system which produced them. We also look at the answers working people found as they struggled through victory and defeat to the present day. The patterns of the past have not changed; the struggle is not over. The day has not yet come when the working people of Cape Breton own and control the riches of their land and the products of their hand and brain.
This booklet, we hope, will be read and learned from by both Cape Bretoners and workers across the country. For Cape Bretoners it will chart the poorly known courses of the great struggles and accomplishments of the past and tell why the basic causes of those struggles has yet to be resolved. For Canadians generally, it will picture the little-known history of Cape Breton in its true light —— as a birthplace of militant working class struggle in Canada. This is the people’s history.
The earliest history of Cape Breton is shrouded in controversy. The arguments are about who first discovered Cape Breton Island. Some say it was Leif Erikson, who crossed the AtlantIc with his Norse Sailors in 1000 A. D. Others say it was’ Basque fishermen, who sailed here after the cod fish. The most popular version says that John Cabot, the Italian explorer working for the British Crown, landed here on his famous voyage of 1497.
Really, none of these people were the “discoverers” of Cape Breton. They couldn’t be, since the island was already inhabited. At the time of’ the so-called “great discoveries” Cape Breton was part “of the territory of the Micmac tribe of Indians. These people led a wandering hunting and fishing life style which was rudely disrupted by the intrusion of Europeans eager for fortune and empire. The mark of the Micmac people has been left on the island in the form of place names -- Baddeck, Malagawatch, Whycocomagh and the people themselves have not perished entirely either.
The Europeans, when they claimed Cape Breton for themselves, were the conquerors of a foreign land. The bountiful fishing grounds and the strategic location of Cape Breton on the Atlantic coast were the island’s great attractions. In the long battles for control of the North American empire, Cape Breton changed hands more than once. Eventually the British won out and the future of the island -- called Oonamagik by the Micmac people and Isle Royale by the French -- was settled. To consolidate their victory the British destroyed the mighty French fortress at Louisbourg.
New kinds of people now joined the Micmacs and scattered French settlements. The main source of the population of Cape Breton were the Scottish highlanders. They came to North America, mainly in the 1820’s, because there was no room left for them in Scotland. The Scottish landowners had decided to turn most of their land over to sheep farming and had to get rid of the families farming the land. Most of them came to Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island. After this period the main waves of immigration, to Canada largely bypassed Cape Breton, although the opening of the coal mines did bring experienced mining families from the British Isles.
The greatest resource of Cape Breton was its coal. Coal, the fuel of industry, made Cape Breton a very attractive piece of real estate to the builders of industrial empires. In l826 a British duke was given sole right to the coal resources of all Nova Scotia. He got rich by leasing land to mining companies. A long parade of corporations followed, all of them dedicated to mining coal as cheaply as possible and selling it at as a high a price as they could get.
Over the years, say these corporations, Cape Breton was “developed.” We would prefer to say it was robbed blind. It was a one-sided process; the coal was extracted and shipped off to Montreal, Upper Canada and New England. The steel industry, located at Sydney because of the enormous quantity of coal it needs, followed the same pattern. Its iron and steel went to feed manufacturing and industry in the heartland of the empire. Hundreds of millions of dollars of profits created by the coal miners and steelworkers of Cape Breton have been invested not here, but in distant industrial centres. All this was made possible because the riches of our country are not distributed wisely and rationally; they are distributed by the business decisions of huge international corporations. Cape Breton, more than almost any other part of Canada knows this well.
What was the price of all this “development” of Cape Breton? The past is strewn with untold stories of starvation and murder, children who were worked like dogs, 24-hour shifts and seven-day work weeks. Its conditions that make people rebel, that turn them into radicals and revolutionists. In this booklet we look at some of those conditions and at the system which produced them. We also look at the answers working people found as they struggled through victory and defeat to the present day. The patterns of the past have not changed; the struggle is not over. The day has not yet come when the working people of Cape Breton own and control the riches of their land and the products of their hand and brain.
INDUSTRIAL FEUDALISM
The first giant mining company to come to Cape Breton was the Dominion Coal Company. This was in 1892. In a sweeping deal with the Boston financial interests who owned Domco, the Liberal government, awarded them the right to mine Nova Scotia’s coal for 99 years. In return for $88 million, Domco won the right to exploit the miners of Cape Breton to their heart’s content.
Quickly Domco whipped the existing mines into shape. Taking over more than half a dozen small and inefficient mining companies, Domco increased coal production enormously. Within six years of the takeover coal production more than doubled, mounting to 1.5 million tons in 1898. By 1902 production doubled again. Domco meant business.
As part of Domco’s efficiency drive, the people of the mining towns found themselves being organized into a modern day feudal system in which every single aspect of their life depended directly on the Company.
The company ran the stores. When you owed money to the store, which was most of the time, the company would take it out of your pay. If you caused trouble, went on strike, or got laid off, the company could cut off all credit at the stores. Since they quickly became the only stores in the area, the company stores were free to charge any price they wanted for the staples of life.
The company owned the houses in the mining towns. They had no trouble collecting rent, of course, since it came off the top of the wage packet. Evictions were a common weapon to keep the miners in line, or to punish striking workers. Many families spent the winter of 1909-10 in canvas tents after losing their homes during the strike of that year.
The company supplied coal to the miners’ homes, and water too was controlled by the company. The local doctors were all company doctors. A manager at one of the mines during the night would show up the next day as a magistrate in court.
To look at the way they all rallied to support the company against the workers, you’d think that the clergy, the newspapers, the army and the provincial and federal governments all worked for the company too. In 1907 more than one-third of the income of the provincial government came from Domco.
What happened to the money Domco made selling vast quantities of coal? A small portion found its way into the pockets of the working people of Cape Breton. Most of this, however, went right back to Domco as rent, or food money, or for doctors, clothes or fuel. Another part was spent on opening new mines and expanding Domco’s ability to produce more coal. Some of it went to the provincial government as royalties and in the form of outright bribes to the political party, in office.
But the biggest part of the money Domco got by selling coal went to the small handful of individuals who owned the corporation. These people either spent the money personally to lead a luxurious life, or invested it in other parts of Canada, in the U.S., in Latin America-- any place they could drive a hard bargain.
One thing is clear. Very little of the wealth created by the coal miners ended up in the, miners’ pockets. As far as Domco was concerned, the people who did all the work deserved nothing more than a meagre share.
Quickly Domco whipped the existing mines into shape. Taking over more than half a dozen small and inefficient mining companies, Domco increased coal production enormously. Within six years of the takeover coal production more than doubled, mounting to 1.5 million tons in 1898. By 1902 production doubled again. Domco meant business.
As part of Domco’s efficiency drive, the people of the mining towns found themselves being organized into a modern day feudal system in which every single aspect of their life depended directly on the Company.
The company ran the stores. When you owed money to the store, which was most of the time, the company would take it out of your pay. If you caused trouble, went on strike, or got laid off, the company could cut off all credit at the stores. Since they quickly became the only stores in the area, the company stores were free to charge any price they wanted for the staples of life.
The company owned the houses in the mining towns. They had no trouble collecting rent, of course, since it came off the top of the wage packet. Evictions were a common weapon to keep the miners in line, or to punish striking workers. Many families spent the winter of 1909-10 in canvas tents after losing their homes during the strike of that year.
The company supplied coal to the miners’ homes, and water too was controlled by the company. The local doctors were all company doctors. A manager at one of the mines during the night would show up the next day as a magistrate in court.
To look at the way they all rallied to support the company against the workers, you’d think that the clergy, the newspapers, the army and the provincial and federal governments all worked for the company too. In 1907 more than one-third of the income of the provincial government came from Domco.
What happened to the money Domco made selling vast quantities of coal? A small portion found its way into the pockets of the working people of Cape Breton. Most of this, however, went right back to Domco as rent, or food money, or for doctors, clothes or fuel. Another part was spent on opening new mines and expanding Domco’s ability to produce more coal. Some of it went to the provincial government as royalties and in the form of outright bribes to the political party, in office.
But the biggest part of the money Domco got by selling coal went to the small handful of individuals who owned the corporation. These people either spent the money personally to lead a luxurious life, or invested it in other parts of Canada, in the U.S., in Latin America-- any place they could drive a hard bargain.
One thing is clear. Very little of the wealth created by the coal miners ended up in the, miners’ pockets. As far as Domco was concerned, the people who did all the work deserved nothing more than a meagre share.
THE FIRST UNION
The first formal organization of Cape Breton workers was not really a trade union. The Provincial Workmen’s Association was not much more than an “association.” It was no fighting force. Its longtime Grand Secretary, John Moffat, was greatly admired in government circles for being opposed to strikes and usually doing his utmost to prevent them.”
The main activity of the PWA was to request favours from the provincial government. Sometimes these favours related to working conditions. For instance, laws were passed limiting the use of child labour in the mines and regulating safety conditions, but they were never strictly enforced. Other times the favours were of a more personal nature. One of the PWA’s founders, Bob Drumond, gladhanded his way into a comfortable seat in the appointed upper house of the provincial assembly.
Trapped by the conditions of industrial feudalism we described, and working a 12-hour day for meagre pay, the Cape Breton miner turned to the PWA to help him fight back. The PWA turned a deaf ear. The workers’ only real weapon -- the strike -- would be kept under wraps.
When a sudden wage cut at the Sydney steel plant in 1904 took the workers by surprise, the PWA was catapulted into an unwelcome strike situation. All 1500 steelworkers left the plant and shut it down. The strike was swiftly and brutally crushed when the PWA’s buddies, the Liberal government, sent troops to help Domco reopen the plant with imported scabs.
Despite its failure as an effective tool for the workers, the PWA was still an important step forward. Originally a miners’ association set up at Springhill in 1879, the PWA spread the idea that working people should get together to fight for their rights all across the province. The PWA took in glassblowers, ironworkers, rail men, boot and shoe workers, steelworkers, quarry men, tramway men, longshoremen and even retail store clerks.
The main activity of the PWA was to request favours from the provincial government. Sometimes these favours related to working conditions. For instance, laws were passed limiting the use of child labour in the mines and regulating safety conditions, but they were never strictly enforced. Other times the favours were of a more personal nature. One of the PWA’s founders, Bob Drumond, gladhanded his way into a comfortable seat in the appointed upper house of the provincial assembly.
Trapped by the conditions of industrial feudalism we described, and working a 12-hour day for meagre pay, the Cape Breton miner turned to the PWA to help him fight back. The PWA turned a deaf ear. The workers’ only real weapon -- the strike -- would be kept under wraps.
When a sudden wage cut at the Sydney steel plant in 1904 took the workers by surprise, the PWA was catapulted into an unwelcome strike situation. All 1500 steelworkers left the plant and shut it down. The strike was swiftly and brutally crushed when the PWA’s buddies, the Liberal government, sent troops to help Domco reopen the plant with imported scabs.
Despite its failure as an effective tool for the workers, the PWA was still an important step forward. Originally a miners’ association set up at Springhill in 1879, the PWA spread the idea that working people should get together to fight for their rights all across the province. The PWA took in glassblowers, ironworkers, rail men, boot and shoe workers, steelworkers, quarry men, tramway men, longshoremen and even retail store clerks.
THE FIRST BATTLE: 1909
Unhappy withy the lack of fighting spirit in what was supposed to be their union, the miners began to look for an organization which would really be a defender of their interests. To J.B. McLachlan, J.D. McLennan, Dan McDougall and other strongwilled young miners, the answer seemed to be a union like the United Mine Workers of America, the coal miners’ union which was making great gains in the U.S. coalfields.
The movement for a new union began formally in 1907. The aim of the rank and file miners who started signing up their fellow workers was to have the PWA dissolve itself and join the United Mine Workers. In 1908 this goal was approved in a referendum among the Cape Breton miners. They rejected the idea of “improving” the old PWA.
Instead of bowing to the will of their membership, the PWA leaders schemed to stay in power and keep their comfortable jobs. At their convention that fall, the doors were simply locked to arriving miners’ delegates.
It was clear that the new union would have to organize entirely outside of the PWA. After an intensive membership campaign, District 26 of the UMWA was formed in March 1909. Seven thousand of the more than 10,000 miners had joined.
What were the aims of the new union? The new union would confront the mineowners directly to seek for the miners a “fair and equitable share of the wealth they produce.” The union would fight for higher wages, for an eight-hour day, for payment of the miners in cash rather than in credit, and for adequate health and safety provisions in the mines. This was-not a radical programme - - except by the standards previously set by the PWA.
While District 26 was getting on its feet, the coal operators were meeting secretly to plot their strategy -- smash the new union and keep the PWA alive. You can easily understand why the mineowners would make this choice. The PWA meant every worker for himself; the UMW meant all the workers together, fighting back.
How would the new union be smashed? Domco began with several forms of intimidation, threats and reprisals. The most active union men found themselves laid off, while others were warned they would lose their jobs too unless they deserted their union. A force Of 625 special police was recruited, armed with iron bars, and paid for by Domco. Barbed wire went up around the mines.
Domco was determined to have a showdown with it’s unruly workers. It began on July 6, when Domco refused under any conditions to meet with the miners’ chosen union.
That morning Domco’s operations were seriously çrippled by the first strike in the history of the coalmines. Only two mines managed to operate that day, and production was cut to one-third of normal. Afraid that their 625 “special police” wouldn’t be enough, Domco wired to Halifax for 500 regular combat troops. Explosive confrontations developed at the mine gates, where “loyal” PWA men coming off work were jeered at by angry crowds of striking workers and their families. The mayor of Glace Bay refused to disperse these crowds, and Domco’s top superintendent had to do it himself by leading a charge of mounted “specials” into a crowd of several thousand townspeople.
The strike was over a single issue - - whether the company or workers would choose which union the company would deal with. This is a struggle which has still not been completely won in Nova Scotia. A basic principle of trade unionism is that the workers must be able to choose and control their union. If they can’t do this, their union is probably not worth very much.
With the miners on strike, Domco decided to wait them out. Production would be lost for a while, but in the end, Domco was sure the miners would have to give in.
To try to break the will of the miners Domco used one of the oldest weapons available to capitalists -the scab. Unemployed men were shipped in from all over the province, put in encampments behind barbed wire, and treated royally -- astronomically high wages, fine meals, plenty of liquor -- in return for helping to break the strike. The PWA men who kept working were also scabs, but they got none of this special treatment.
Other company tactics included evicting strikers from their company-owned homes and cutting off food and fuel supplies through the company stores. During the first three months of the strike Domco was able to inch production in the mines back up to 3/4 of normal. With great pain, the strikers were learning that unless there is 100 per cent solidarity among the workers, the company will find a way to divide them.
Domco could afford to wait, the striking families couldn’t, but they did anyway. Through the winter of 1909-10 they persisted grimly in a battle they were losing. Living in tents pitched in snowfilled fields, many families survived on a basic diet of bean soup and bread.
In the spring it had to be admitted that the strike had been smashed by the powerful combination of the coal operators, the armed forces and a company union. The mineowners promised there would be no reprisals against men who had fought for the right to organize an effective union, but nevertheless hundreds of unionists found themselves blacklisted for life. Some left the country; some changed their trade. Others, like J.B. McLachlan, who would never again be allowed to work in the coalfields he had entered at the age of seven, stayed to fight again.
In 1909 the miners of Cape Breton tried to organize themselves into a trade union. It was the first blow in a battle against an entire way of life, an entire system.
It was far from the last.
The movement for a new union began formally in 1907. The aim of the rank and file miners who started signing up their fellow workers was to have the PWA dissolve itself and join the United Mine Workers. In 1908 this goal was approved in a referendum among the Cape Breton miners. They rejected the idea of “improving” the old PWA.
Instead of bowing to the will of their membership, the PWA leaders schemed to stay in power and keep their comfortable jobs. At their convention that fall, the doors were simply locked to arriving miners’ delegates.
It was clear that the new union would have to organize entirely outside of the PWA. After an intensive membership campaign, District 26 of the UMWA was formed in March 1909. Seven thousand of the more than 10,000 miners had joined.
What were the aims of the new union? The new union would confront the mineowners directly to seek for the miners a “fair and equitable share of the wealth they produce.” The union would fight for higher wages, for an eight-hour day, for payment of the miners in cash rather than in credit, and for adequate health and safety provisions in the mines. This was-not a radical programme - - except by the standards previously set by the PWA.
While District 26 was getting on its feet, the coal operators were meeting secretly to plot their strategy -- smash the new union and keep the PWA alive. You can easily understand why the mineowners would make this choice. The PWA meant every worker for himself; the UMW meant all the workers together, fighting back.
How would the new union be smashed? Domco began with several forms of intimidation, threats and reprisals. The most active union men found themselves laid off, while others were warned they would lose their jobs too unless they deserted their union. A force Of 625 special police was recruited, armed with iron bars, and paid for by Domco. Barbed wire went up around the mines.
Domco was determined to have a showdown with it’s unruly workers. It began on July 6, when Domco refused under any conditions to meet with the miners’ chosen union.
That morning Domco’s operations were seriously çrippled by the first strike in the history of the coalmines. Only two mines managed to operate that day, and production was cut to one-third of normal. Afraid that their 625 “special police” wouldn’t be enough, Domco wired to Halifax for 500 regular combat troops. Explosive confrontations developed at the mine gates, where “loyal” PWA men coming off work were jeered at by angry crowds of striking workers and their families. The mayor of Glace Bay refused to disperse these crowds, and Domco’s top superintendent had to do it himself by leading a charge of mounted “specials” into a crowd of several thousand townspeople.
The strike was over a single issue - - whether the company or workers would choose which union the company would deal with. This is a struggle which has still not been completely won in Nova Scotia. A basic principle of trade unionism is that the workers must be able to choose and control their union. If they can’t do this, their union is probably not worth very much.
With the miners on strike, Domco decided to wait them out. Production would be lost for a while, but in the end, Domco was sure the miners would have to give in.
To try to break the will of the miners Domco used one of the oldest weapons available to capitalists -the scab. Unemployed men were shipped in from all over the province, put in encampments behind barbed wire, and treated royally -- astronomically high wages, fine meals, plenty of liquor -- in return for helping to break the strike. The PWA men who kept working were also scabs, but they got none of this special treatment.
Other company tactics included evicting strikers from their company-owned homes and cutting off food and fuel supplies through the company stores. During the first three months of the strike Domco was able to inch production in the mines back up to 3/4 of normal. With great pain, the strikers were learning that unless there is 100 per cent solidarity among the workers, the company will find a way to divide them.
Domco could afford to wait, the striking families couldn’t, but they did anyway. Through the winter of 1909-10 they persisted grimly in a battle they were losing. Living in tents pitched in snowfilled fields, many families survived on a basic diet of bean soup and bread.
In the spring it had to be admitted that the strike had been smashed by the powerful combination of the coal operators, the armed forces and a company union. The mineowners promised there would be no reprisals against men who had fought for the right to organize an effective union, but nevertheless hundreds of unionists found themselves blacklisted for life. Some left the country; some changed their trade. Others, like J.B. McLachlan, who would never again be allowed to work in the coalfields he had entered at the age of seven, stayed to fight again.
In 1909 the miners of Cape Breton tried to organize themselves into a trade union. It was the first blow in a battle against an entire way of life, an entire system.
It was far from the last.
EIGHT YEARS LATER
The bitter ten month strike was lost, but it’s memory survived. The determination to have a strong militant union of their own choice grew stronger during the war years. By the end of 1916 more than half the mine-workers again belonged to the United Mine Workers.
The success of the union in recruiting members scared Domco. The war years were high profit years and they didn’t want to see any disruption of their booming production schedule. During 19l6 Domco came across with two unexpected pay raises. The scheme was to show the workers that with such kind employers there was no need to have a union. The effect was the opposite. The workers learned that when they united together to back up their demands, the company was forced to give in.
The company tried out some of its old tricks. But harassment by the company police and the firing of active trade unionists didn’t work this time. Instead, mass walkouts began at the mines.
All, this upheaval worried the government. It could prove dangerous to the wartime economy if the coalfields became idle. The government stepped in and called for more wage increases for the miners and told the PWA and the new union to amalgamate. ‘Since the PWA was practically extinct by now, what this really meant was recognition of the miners’ own union.
The Amalgamated Mineworkers of Nova Scotia was formed in June 1917. Two years later the union entered the United Mine Workers of America as District 26. Why did they join this international union? Since corporations like Domco are based on international alliances between capitalists and financiers, the workers too would have to unite to fight them.
But getting a union was just the first step. Now the miners would have to learn how to keep it under their control and how to use it in their struggle.
The success of the union in recruiting members scared Domco. The war years were high profit years and they didn’t want to see any disruption of their booming production schedule. During 19l6 Domco came across with two unexpected pay raises. The scheme was to show the workers that with such kind employers there was no need to have a union. The effect was the opposite. The workers learned that when they united together to back up their demands, the company was forced to give in.
The company tried out some of its old tricks. But harassment by the company police and the firing of active trade unionists didn’t work this time. Instead, mass walkouts began at the mines.
All, this upheaval worried the government. It could prove dangerous to the wartime economy if the coalfields became idle. The government stepped in and called for more wage increases for the miners and told the PWA and the new union to amalgamate. ‘Since the PWA was practically extinct by now, what this really meant was recognition of the miners’ own union.
The Amalgamated Mineworkers of Nova Scotia was formed in June 1917. Two years later the union entered the United Mine Workers of America as District 26. Why did they join this international union? Since corporations like Domco are based on international alliances between capitalists and financiers, the workers too would have to unite to fight them.
But getting a union was just the first step. Now the miners would have to learn how to keep it under their control and how to use it in their struggle.
THE PRICE OF COAL
A miners’ life is one of the most difficult and dangerous working people face anywhere. Only miners themselves know the real cost of coal. A man’s life is cut short by the strain of working underground in the dark. Thousands of Cape Bretoners have suffered serious injuries in the mines. Hundreds have perished in underground disasters.
On July 26, 1917 a sudden explosion in the Domnco mine at New Waterford took the lives of 65 men and young boys. The townspeople were enraged; a coroner’s jury ruled that both the government and the company were guilty of gross neglect of the workers’ safety. A government inquiry was forced to agree.
But the miners refused to let the issue die a quiet death under a mound of official condolences. Direct action had to betaken to drum the message into the heads of Domco and the Liberal Party -- the value of human life is far greater than the market value of coal.
In October the union took it’s stand – all the men would walk off the job twice a week until those responsible for the explosion were dismissed. Faced with an ultimatum like this, the usually slow ‘normal channels’ immediately charged three Domco officials with manslaughter, while the company itself as charged with ‘causing bodily harm’ to it’s employees.
-“Mining is a tough job,
really tough. God knows
there’s many people be-
ing injured and getting
killed. Well, if that’s
not going to make them
militant,. I don’t know
what is.”
Once the affair got into the courts, the govern1nent’s real strategy became clear. When the fight was taking place at the level of the mine -- when the miners were actually threatening profits and the orderly operation of the mines -- the government was anxious to appear sympathetic. But as soon as the fight could be switched to the government’s ground --the courts -- it was a different tune.
Twice the trials were delayed. It was more than a full year after the original tragedy that a court considered the cases.
The name of the judge was Mellish, a Justivce of the Supreme Court of the province. This was his first important case. But Mellish had a good background for the job. At the time of the actual explosion, Mellish was a lawyer for the Dominion Coal Company. If he hadn’t been sitting in the judge’s chair, he would have been busy preparing the defence.
After three days of evidence in which it was shown that the explosion was caused by the accumulation of dangerous gases in the shafts -- something Domco and the safety inspectors were supposed to keep close, watch on -- Mellish told the jury to return a not guilty verdict. They did.
Domco was off the hook and so was the government. But the miners would continue to go back day after day to face dangers which could be kept under control. This could only be done if the priorities of the coal owners, and their friends who run the governments and the courts could be changed. For them a miner’s life was only a small sacrifice.
On July 26, 1917 a sudden explosion in the Domnco mine at New Waterford took the lives of 65 men and young boys. The townspeople were enraged; a coroner’s jury ruled that both the government and the company were guilty of gross neglect of the workers’ safety. A government inquiry was forced to agree.
But the miners refused to let the issue die a quiet death under a mound of official condolences. Direct action had to betaken to drum the message into the heads of Domco and the Liberal Party -- the value of human life is far greater than the market value of coal.
In October the union took it’s stand – all the men would walk off the job twice a week until those responsible for the explosion were dismissed. Faced with an ultimatum like this, the usually slow ‘normal channels’ immediately charged three Domco officials with manslaughter, while the company itself as charged with ‘causing bodily harm’ to it’s employees.
-“Mining is a tough job,
really tough. God knows
there’s many people be-
ing injured and getting
killed. Well, if that’s
not going to make them
militant,. I don’t know
what is.”
Once the affair got into the courts, the govern1nent’s real strategy became clear. When the fight was taking place at the level of the mine -- when the miners were actually threatening profits and the orderly operation of the mines -- the government was anxious to appear sympathetic. But as soon as the fight could be switched to the government’s ground --the courts -- it was a different tune.
Twice the trials were delayed. It was more than a full year after the original tragedy that a court considered the cases.
The name of the judge was Mellish, a Justivce of the Supreme Court of the province. This was his first important case. But Mellish had a good background for the job. At the time of the actual explosion, Mellish was a lawyer for the Dominion Coal Company. If he hadn’t been sitting in the judge’s chair, he would have been busy preparing the defence.
After three days of evidence in which it was shown that the explosion was caused by the accumulation of dangerous gases in the shafts -- something Domco and the safety inspectors were supposed to keep close, watch on -- Mellish told the jury to return a not guilty verdict. They did.
Domco was off the hook and so was the government. But the miners would continue to go back day after day to face dangers which could be kept under control. This could only be done if the priorities of the coal owners, and their friends who run the governments and the courts could be changed. For them a miner’s life was only a small sacrifice.
WHOSE WAR?
The war brought bloodshed and killing to the millions of men who fought it. But while the armies suffered through the poison gas and bullets of the battlefields, Canadian industry was humming happily along. During wars the capitalist economy usually booms. The demand for war materials - - guns, tanks, planes, ammunition, uniforms -- creates a whole new market, it also creates enormous profits for the industries who get government war contracts. Many Canadian fortunes were founded during the high profit years of the First World War.
The war taught the Canadian people several lessons. They learned that in wartime, as in peacetime, it was all right to sacrifice the lives of workers, but not to sacrifice the making of profits. The government broke its promise not to conscript workers for the army but refused to conscript the wealth of Canadians.
But the biggest lessons were reserved for the years after the war. With the fighting over, Canadians expected to find some of the freedom and happiness they had been told they were fighting for. They were disappointed.
The complete irrationality of our economic system is shown by the fact that once the war was over, the economy fell into a major depression. As the demands of the country switched from war supplies to the needs of ordinary people -- good homes, good food, cheap clothes and other goods, steady work -- the economy slowed right down. There was little profit to be made from selling the necessities of life at a reasonable price. The owning class preferred to sit on its wartime profits rather than satisfy the needs of working people.
Soldiers returning home found their families in poverty and no jobs available. In Cape Breton fewer and fewer shifts were required in the mines as the pace of the economy slowed down. The steel plant was operating only two days a week, and in the middle of 1919, it shut down completely.
Canadian workers did not take the crisis quietly. Militancy increased drastically all across Canada at the end of the war. The workers wanted their share of the profits that had been earned from their sweat during the war, both on the battlefields and in the factories and sweatshops at home. It was not right for the capitalists to reap all the profits in good times and for the workers to bear the brunt of the suffering in bad.
Canadian workers were beginning to understand the crisis in terms of more than whether they could get higher wages or have a union of their own. These battles would still be fought for years, but the workers were gaining a deep understanding of the nature of the capitalist system as a whole. They were looking for alternatives.
The government was extremely worried about the spread of radical ideas among Canadians. Under the War Measures Act -- the same piece of legislation Pierre Elliott Trudeau was to use more than 50 years later -- the prime minister outlawed 14 different political and trade union organizations and made it a crime to possess any one of 1,000 books.
During May and June of 1919 the workers of Winnipeg fought the first of a series of militant union struggles which spread across the country during the following years. In the midst of these battles – over wages, prices and the principles of trade unionism --something new was being born. An awareness was growing that an entire system was under question; Canadian workers, were looking for alternatives. It would require the brute force of the Canadian state to suppress them.
The war taught the Canadian people several lessons. They learned that in wartime, as in peacetime, it was all right to sacrifice the lives of workers, but not to sacrifice the making of profits. The government broke its promise not to conscript workers for the army but refused to conscript the wealth of Canadians.
But the biggest lessons were reserved for the years after the war. With the fighting over, Canadians expected to find some of the freedom and happiness they had been told they were fighting for. They were disappointed.
The complete irrationality of our economic system is shown by the fact that once the war was over, the economy fell into a major depression. As the demands of the country switched from war supplies to the needs of ordinary people -- good homes, good food, cheap clothes and other goods, steady work -- the economy slowed right down. There was little profit to be made from selling the necessities of life at a reasonable price. The owning class preferred to sit on its wartime profits rather than satisfy the needs of working people.
Soldiers returning home found their families in poverty and no jobs available. In Cape Breton fewer and fewer shifts were required in the mines as the pace of the economy slowed down. The steel plant was operating only two days a week, and in the middle of 1919, it shut down completely.
Canadian workers did not take the crisis quietly. Militancy increased drastically all across Canada at the end of the war. The workers wanted their share of the profits that had been earned from their sweat during the war, both on the battlefields and in the factories and sweatshops at home. It was not right for the capitalists to reap all the profits in good times and for the workers to bear the brunt of the suffering in bad.
Canadian workers were beginning to understand the crisis in terms of more than whether they could get higher wages or have a union of their own. These battles would still be fought for years, but the workers were gaining a deep understanding of the nature of the capitalist system as a whole. They were looking for alternatives.
The government was extremely worried about the spread of radical ideas among Canadians. Under the War Measures Act -- the same piece of legislation Pierre Elliott Trudeau was to use more than 50 years later -- the prime minister outlawed 14 different political and trade union organizations and made it a crime to possess any one of 1,000 books.
During May and June of 1919 the workers of Winnipeg fought the first of a series of militant union struggles which spread across the country during the following years. In the midst of these battles – over wages, prices and the principles of trade unionism --something new was being born. An awareness was growing that an entire system was under question; Canadian workers, were looking for alternatives. It would require the brute force of the Canadian state to suppress them.
DEFEAT AT THE POLLS
“But the miners and all the other men
Saw the prices go up once again;
And the workers began to blame the laws
That always acted against their cause.
Yes, the very men that they used to cheer
were greeted now with a hiss and a jeer.
For they said that now, to change the law,
They would send McLachlan to Ottawa.”
--Dawn Fraser
There are two main political parties in Canada. Although there are superficia1 differences between them, on basic principles there is no real distinction. This is because they are both paid for and run by Canada’s big businesses.
To win elections the parties resort to lies and promises, threats, intimidation and bribes. In Cape Breton the food and whiskey wagons were standard parts of Liberal and Conservative Party apparatus.
The 1921 election is a good example of what happens at election time. The whole country was in a turmoil that year. Unemployment, high prices and poverty were the rewards Canadians got for fighting a war for freedom and democracy. Because the cost of living rose so rapidly, Cape Bretoners actually suffered a drop of 30 per cent in their earnings from 1918 to 1920. In 1921 the two party system (one party in office, and the other one out but waiting to take over) did not perform well. The Conservatives, who ruled through the war, were thrown out. The Liberals became the government. But a crucial new force had appeared on the scene -- the Farmer and Labour men. A group of 67 candidates nominated by Canadian farmers and workers was the second largest group elected to the House of Commons.
In Cape Breton it was logical that Farmer and Labour candidates would run in the election. In 1918 labour men won elections to the town councils of New Watèrford, Glace Bay and Sydney. For years candidates picked and elected by the working people of these towns occupied the most important positions on these councils.
J.B. McLachlan was the popular choice for a labour candidate in Cape Breton. His campaign was so turbulent and enthusiastic that local politicians and the mineowners panicked. Their newspapers raved bitterly against “Bolshevism” and the clergy preached the evils of “atheism.” The general manager of the British Empire Steel and Coal Company (Besco had replaced Dosco as the owner of the mines and steel plant) 1eaped into the fray himself, shutting down several mines as a warning calling for “a return to sanity.”
Big business and frenzied finance control both Govern-
ment and Opposition and both Mr. Meighen and Mr. King
march to the click of typewriters in the offices of
Canadian Pacific Railways, British Empire and Steel
Corporation, and the Royal Bank of Canada. Meighen
and King are but corporals working under a general
staff composed of bank presidents, railway owners
and captains of industry. It is from this source that
Meighen and King get their marching orders and have
their election expenses paid.”
-—J.B.McLachlan
The night before the election the Liberal candidate, a Besco lawyer named Billy Carroll (all the other candidates were lawyers), produced a forged document aimed at discrediting McLachlan. He produced this document -- which alleged that McLachlan had betrayed the miners by making a secret pact with Besco - - in the final ten minutes of the last public meeting of the campaign.
Before he actually made the charges, they had been printed on the front page of the Sydney Record. Naturally, McLachlan had no chance to make a reply to the charges, later shown to be ridiculous.
But the dirty work had its desired result. Although McLachlan won handily in the mining districts of his riding, he was defeated in Sydney. When the totals were added up Carroll had defeated him by just over 1800 votes.
Saw the prices go up once again;
And the workers began to blame the laws
That always acted against their cause.
Yes, the very men that they used to cheer
were greeted now with a hiss and a jeer.
For they said that now, to change the law,
They would send McLachlan to Ottawa.”
--Dawn Fraser
There are two main political parties in Canada. Although there are superficia1 differences between them, on basic principles there is no real distinction. This is because they are both paid for and run by Canada’s big businesses.
To win elections the parties resort to lies and promises, threats, intimidation and bribes. In Cape Breton the food and whiskey wagons were standard parts of Liberal and Conservative Party apparatus.
The 1921 election is a good example of what happens at election time. The whole country was in a turmoil that year. Unemployment, high prices and poverty were the rewards Canadians got for fighting a war for freedom and democracy. Because the cost of living rose so rapidly, Cape Bretoners actually suffered a drop of 30 per cent in their earnings from 1918 to 1920. In 1921 the two party system (one party in office, and the other one out but waiting to take over) did not perform well. The Conservatives, who ruled through the war, were thrown out. The Liberals became the government. But a crucial new force had appeared on the scene -- the Farmer and Labour men. A group of 67 candidates nominated by Canadian farmers and workers was the second largest group elected to the House of Commons.
In Cape Breton it was logical that Farmer and Labour candidates would run in the election. In 1918 labour men won elections to the town councils of New Watèrford, Glace Bay and Sydney. For years candidates picked and elected by the working people of these towns occupied the most important positions on these councils.
J.B. McLachlan was the popular choice for a labour candidate in Cape Breton. His campaign was so turbulent and enthusiastic that local politicians and the mineowners panicked. Their newspapers raved bitterly against “Bolshevism” and the clergy preached the evils of “atheism.” The general manager of the British Empire Steel and Coal Company (Besco had replaced Dosco as the owner of the mines and steel plant) 1eaped into the fray himself, shutting down several mines as a warning calling for “a return to sanity.”
Big business and frenzied finance control both Govern-
ment and Opposition and both Mr. Meighen and Mr. King
march to the click of typewriters in the offices of
Canadian Pacific Railways, British Empire and Steel
Corporation, and the Royal Bank of Canada. Meighen
and King are but corporals working under a general
staff composed of bank presidents, railway owners
and captains of industry. It is from this source that
Meighen and King get their marching orders and have
their election expenses paid.”
-—J.B.McLachlan
The night before the election the Liberal candidate, a Besco lawyer named Billy Carroll (all the other candidates were lawyers), produced a forged document aimed at discrediting McLachlan. He produced this document -- which alleged that McLachlan had betrayed the miners by making a secret pact with Besco - - in the final ten minutes of the last public meeting of the campaign.
Before he actually made the charges, they had been printed on the front page of the Sydney Record. Naturally, McLachlan had no chance to make a reply to the charges, later shown to be ridiculous.
But the dirty work had its desired result. Although McLachlan won handily in the mining districts of his riding, he was defeated in Sydney. When the totals were added up Carroll had defeated him by just over 1800 votes.
WAR IS ON CLASS WAR
Capitalism is a system where people are divided into two classes -- those who live by working, and those who live by owning. Under capitalism the property owners are more important than the people who create the wealth. This is because they control the state, the army, the newspapers and the schools, as well as the industries and factories. Through these institutions they make the rules for the working people to follow. If the workers produce more goods than can be sold at a profit, many of them will be fired or laid off. If the owning class decides it wants more income from its properties, then the workers’ wages will be cut. This is what happened in Cape Breton in 1922.
Once the dangerous 1921 election was safely over, Besco could move from its defensive position to the attack. During 1921 Besco had been forced by government pressure to jack up the miners’ wages to meet the soaring cost of living. Now Besco set out to recover lost ground and abolish the “1921 rates.“
-Why did Besco decide
it had to cut wages?
--Because it needed more
money.
--More money for what?
--To pay more dividends
to the owning class.
Within two weeks after the election, just in time for Christmas, Besco issued its ultimatum —-wages would be cut by 37½ per cent. This meant that for every dollar a miner had earned in 1921, he would be earning 62½ cents in 1922. It was a fine Christmas greeting for the workers.
What would this cut mean to the workers and their families? In terms of cash it meant this: a family would be expected to live on about $700 a year, provided the miners worked four or more shifts a week. After paying for clothes, rent, water, fuel and other needs, a family would have $250 left for food. For a five person family -- and many were much larger -- this added up to four cents per person per meal. According to the statisticians in Ottawa, a family of five required an income of $2200 a year to survive at a reasonable level. The cutback meant hunger and near starvation, it meant children would wear potato sacks and have neither coats nor shoes to wear to school...
And what would the wage cut mean to Besco? It meant a good chance of topping the $9.6 million profit for 1921. And continuing to pay healthy dividends on their inflated stock values to the coupon clipping class.
Remember our old friend Justice Mellish? The old company lawyer? In his capacity as a judge he granted the corporation permission to put the wage cut into effect. Besco thanked him and went ahead. Shortly afterwards a government “conciliation” board also agreed to the cut.
But the workers didn’t. More than 10,000 miners cast votes against the cut, while a meagre 486 men were willing to take it. “War is on,” declared J.B. McLachlan, “A class war.” McLachlan argued that the workers should adopt a bold and imaginative tactic -- the slowdown strike. Production in the mines would be cut back to the level where Besco’s profits would vanish; only enough coal would mined to pay the miners wages. This strategy exposed the very roots of capitalism - - - the robbery of part of the workers’ labour power. The minister of labour in Ottawa declared the slow-down “un-British, un-Canadian and cowardly.” Both he and Prime Minister Mackenzie King were publicly voted enemies of the Canadian people’ at a union meeting.
In June the miners gathered in convention to map their strategy. They would not accept any wage cut at all. A strike deadline was set for August 14. That the miners understood clearly the importance of their fight against the mineowners is shown by this resolution they adopted:
“We proclaim openly to all the world that we
are out for a complete overthrow of the ca-
pitalist system and of the capitalist, pea-
ceably if we may; forceably if we must; and
we call on all workers, soldiers and minor
law officers in Canada to join us in libe-
rating labour.”
___________________________________________
“In the 1909 strike the Dominion Coal Co. Put a live wire around
Their stockade at No. 2 mine. One old man and two boys were killed by
accidentally coming into contact with the live wire.
“In the 1922 strike the Company were preparing to, put
a live wire around the stockade at No. 2 mine. But the
strike was 100 per cent strong and the workers refused
to furnish the necessary electricity to kill men and boys.
In the first strike capital was in control. In the second strike labour was in control.”
--Maritime Labour Herald
Sept. 14, 1922
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
On August 13, the day before the strike was to start, Besco lost its nerve. That Sunday afternoon the corporation summoned the union leaders to an eleventh hour conference. If the union leaders would call off the strike, Besco promised to cut wages only 21 percent.
While the union leaders were closeted with Besco, the rank and file were meeting in a Glace Bay theatre. In anticipation of a tough strike, the miners planned to buy a schooner to bring in potatoes from PEI and fish for cod to supply their families.
Fresh from their long meeting with Besco, the union leaders tried Sunday night to call off the showdown. But they couldn’t do it. The men wouldn’t listen to their leaders. On the Monday morning 5,000 angry miners assembled at the Glace Bay ballpark. McLachlan was forced to admit that the union’s executive did not have the power to call off a strike for less than the demands the men themselves had set,-- no cuts at all. The strike was back on. By midnight Monday 12,000 men were on strike -- the entire work force. The local paper reported: “The executive found that the rank and file had taken charge, and that the officials had but to obey the men whom they serve.”
As in 1909 the mineowners resorted to armed force to back up their position. Barbed wire, machine gun nests and searchlights went up around the pits. More than 1,000 soldiers and 1,000 “special police” were despatched from Halifax. A squadron of British battleships with marines entered the Glace Bay harbour. The town councils in the mining towns refused flatly to pay the cost of sending in troops they considered unnecessary. The miners’ union, the veterans’ association and the town police cooperated in keeping law and order -- subduing rowdy “specials” and keeping company liquor out of town.
The 1922 strike was a 100 per cent strike. This means there was great solidarity among the workers, but it also refers to a special tactic they adopted. Every last worker left the mines, including pumpmen and firemen. Since most of the Cape Breton coal seams run out under the ocean floor; continuous pumping is required to keep the mines in good working order. When the miners refused to scab on themselves by keeping maintenance men on the job, they added a powerful weapon to their grim determination. If the mineowners wanted to minimize the damage to their mines, they would have to settle quickly. To the workers the hunger of their families and their struggle for a decent life style were more important than the private property of Besco.
“If a half—drowned pump
is put up aqaiflst a
half-starved baby, there
are those people who
will exclaim ‘the poor
pump.
In 1922 the people of Cape Breton pitted their empty stomachs and empty pockets against the millions of the British Empire Steel and Coal Company. Locked out of many mines by shutdowns and with a huge wage cut hanging over the heads of those who were allowed to work, starvation stared many families in the face.
In the midst of this privation the company stores became the centres for showdowns. The first raid ona company store that year took place at New Aberdeen, when the father of nine hungry children came to ask credit. When the No.9 mine re-opened, the company could take it out of his pay, as it had always done. He was refused credit.
“This miner thereupon ordered the manager
aside,” reported the Maritime Labour Herald,
“and helped himself. He asked the manager to
to weigh the butter he took and take note of
the other stuff. The manager refused. The
other miners present followed the example of
the miner. They took ~hat they needed. There
was no disorder. Only food was taken.”
The miner, Frank Maclntyre, and four others were arrested for stealing. One of the men had taken only a bag of flour to give his family a meal of pancakes. Under the laws of capitalism the claims of private property take priority over the rights of hungry stomachs. Thirteen men were sentenced to two years in jail each for stealing food. They were only a handful of the hundreds who took part in raids on the company stores.
During that same month in 1922 three children under one year of age died because they had no milk.
By the beginning of September the strike was over. The miners voted 8,000 to 3,000 to accept a wage cut of 18 per cent, a much softer blow than the original 37½ per cent Besco sought to impose. A major factor in the vote was the fact that the international headquarters of the UMW failed to come through with strikefunds.
The strike was not won, but it was not lost either. The miners had tested their solidarity, won some concessions, and learned that if they stuck together they caused considerable fear among the owning class. It was not a quiet surrender, but a defiant one. Dan Livingstone, the newly-elected District 26 president, declared:
“The wage schedule was accepted by the miners
under the muzzles of rifles, machine guns,
and gleaming bayonets, with further threate-
ned invasion of troops, and marines with war-
ships standing to.The miners, facing hunger,
their dominion and provincial governments
lined up with Besco, were forced to accept
the proposals.”
Once the dangerous 1921 election was safely over, Besco could move from its defensive position to the attack. During 1921 Besco had been forced by government pressure to jack up the miners’ wages to meet the soaring cost of living. Now Besco set out to recover lost ground and abolish the “1921 rates.“
-Why did Besco decide
it had to cut wages?
--Because it needed more
money.
--More money for what?
--To pay more dividends
to the owning class.
Within two weeks after the election, just in time for Christmas, Besco issued its ultimatum —-wages would be cut by 37½ per cent. This meant that for every dollar a miner had earned in 1921, he would be earning 62½ cents in 1922. It was a fine Christmas greeting for the workers.
What would this cut mean to the workers and their families? In terms of cash it meant this: a family would be expected to live on about $700 a year, provided the miners worked four or more shifts a week. After paying for clothes, rent, water, fuel and other needs, a family would have $250 left for food. For a five person family -- and many were much larger -- this added up to four cents per person per meal. According to the statisticians in Ottawa, a family of five required an income of $2200 a year to survive at a reasonable level. The cutback meant hunger and near starvation, it meant children would wear potato sacks and have neither coats nor shoes to wear to school...
And what would the wage cut mean to Besco? It meant a good chance of topping the $9.6 million profit for 1921. And continuing to pay healthy dividends on their inflated stock values to the coupon clipping class.
Remember our old friend Justice Mellish? The old company lawyer? In his capacity as a judge he granted the corporation permission to put the wage cut into effect. Besco thanked him and went ahead. Shortly afterwards a government “conciliation” board also agreed to the cut.
But the workers didn’t. More than 10,000 miners cast votes against the cut, while a meagre 486 men were willing to take it. “War is on,” declared J.B. McLachlan, “A class war.” McLachlan argued that the workers should adopt a bold and imaginative tactic -- the slowdown strike. Production in the mines would be cut back to the level where Besco’s profits would vanish; only enough coal would mined to pay the miners wages. This strategy exposed the very roots of capitalism - - - the robbery of part of the workers’ labour power. The minister of labour in Ottawa declared the slow-down “un-British, un-Canadian and cowardly.” Both he and Prime Minister Mackenzie King were publicly voted enemies of the Canadian people’ at a union meeting.
In June the miners gathered in convention to map their strategy. They would not accept any wage cut at all. A strike deadline was set for August 14. That the miners understood clearly the importance of their fight against the mineowners is shown by this resolution they adopted:
“We proclaim openly to all the world that we
are out for a complete overthrow of the ca-
pitalist system and of the capitalist, pea-
ceably if we may; forceably if we must; and
we call on all workers, soldiers and minor
law officers in Canada to join us in libe-
rating labour.”
___________________________________________
“In the 1909 strike the Dominion Coal Co. Put a live wire around
Their stockade at No. 2 mine. One old man and two boys were killed by
accidentally coming into contact with the live wire.
“In the 1922 strike the Company were preparing to, put
a live wire around the stockade at No. 2 mine. But the
strike was 100 per cent strong and the workers refused
to furnish the necessary electricity to kill men and boys.
In the first strike capital was in control. In the second strike labour was in control.”
--Maritime Labour Herald
Sept. 14, 1922
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
On August 13, the day before the strike was to start, Besco lost its nerve. That Sunday afternoon the corporation summoned the union leaders to an eleventh hour conference. If the union leaders would call off the strike, Besco promised to cut wages only 21 percent.
While the union leaders were closeted with Besco, the rank and file were meeting in a Glace Bay theatre. In anticipation of a tough strike, the miners planned to buy a schooner to bring in potatoes from PEI and fish for cod to supply their families.
Fresh from their long meeting with Besco, the union leaders tried Sunday night to call off the showdown. But they couldn’t do it. The men wouldn’t listen to their leaders. On the Monday morning 5,000 angry miners assembled at the Glace Bay ballpark. McLachlan was forced to admit that the union’s executive did not have the power to call off a strike for less than the demands the men themselves had set,-- no cuts at all. The strike was back on. By midnight Monday 12,000 men were on strike -- the entire work force. The local paper reported: “The executive found that the rank and file had taken charge, and that the officials had but to obey the men whom they serve.”
As in 1909 the mineowners resorted to armed force to back up their position. Barbed wire, machine gun nests and searchlights went up around the pits. More than 1,000 soldiers and 1,000 “special police” were despatched from Halifax. A squadron of British battleships with marines entered the Glace Bay harbour. The town councils in the mining towns refused flatly to pay the cost of sending in troops they considered unnecessary. The miners’ union, the veterans’ association and the town police cooperated in keeping law and order -- subduing rowdy “specials” and keeping company liquor out of town.
The 1922 strike was a 100 per cent strike. This means there was great solidarity among the workers, but it also refers to a special tactic they adopted. Every last worker left the mines, including pumpmen and firemen. Since most of the Cape Breton coal seams run out under the ocean floor; continuous pumping is required to keep the mines in good working order. When the miners refused to scab on themselves by keeping maintenance men on the job, they added a powerful weapon to their grim determination. If the mineowners wanted to minimize the damage to their mines, they would have to settle quickly. To the workers the hunger of their families and their struggle for a decent life style were more important than the private property of Besco.
“If a half—drowned pump
is put up aqaiflst a
half-starved baby, there
are those people who
will exclaim ‘the poor
pump.
In 1922 the people of Cape Breton pitted their empty stomachs and empty pockets against the millions of the British Empire Steel and Coal Company. Locked out of many mines by shutdowns and with a huge wage cut hanging over the heads of those who were allowed to work, starvation stared many families in the face.
In the midst of this privation the company stores became the centres for showdowns. The first raid ona company store that year took place at New Aberdeen, when the father of nine hungry children came to ask credit. When the No.9 mine re-opened, the company could take it out of his pay, as it had always done. He was refused credit.
“This miner thereupon ordered the manager
aside,” reported the Maritime Labour Herald,
“and helped himself. He asked the manager to
to weigh the butter he took and take note of
the other stuff. The manager refused. The
other miners present followed the example of
the miner. They took ~hat they needed. There
was no disorder. Only food was taken.”
The miner, Frank Maclntyre, and four others were arrested for stealing. One of the men had taken only a bag of flour to give his family a meal of pancakes. Under the laws of capitalism the claims of private property take priority over the rights of hungry stomachs. Thirteen men were sentenced to two years in jail each for stealing food. They were only a handful of the hundreds who took part in raids on the company stores.
During that same month in 1922 three children under one year of age died because they had no milk.
By the beginning of September the strike was over. The miners voted 8,000 to 3,000 to accept a wage cut of 18 per cent, a much softer blow than the original 37½ per cent Besco sought to impose. A major factor in the vote was the fact that the international headquarters of the UMW failed to come through with strikefunds.
The strike was not won, but it was not lost either. The miners had tested their solidarity, won some concessions, and learned that if they stuck together they caused considerable fear among the owning class. It was not a quiet surrender, but a defiant one. Dan Livingstone, the newly-elected District 26 president, declared:
“The wage schedule was accepted by the miners
under the muzzles of rifles, machine guns,
and gleaming bayonets, with further threate-
ned invasion of troops, and marines with war-
ships standing to.The miners, facing hunger,
their dominion and provincial governments
lined up with Besco, were forced to accept
the proposals.”
PROFITS
In 1922 the average amount of coal produced by each of Besco’s more than 12,000 workers was three tons of coal a day. The average daily wage was just under $6.
When Besco took the coal to market, the corporation got a price of $6 per ton. For three tons, $18. So, for the produce of one man’s daily labour -- three tons of coal -- Besco could get $18. After you subtracted the cost of the worker’s labour --$6-- the capitalists still had $12.
It is out of this $12, value created by the worker but not paid to him, that the capitalists pay their own handsome salaries, pay the costs of equipment and pocket their profits.
In 1921 the profits pocketed by Besco in this way amounted to a clear $9.6 million. During the war years, we might add, profits were frequently double this amount. That’s why it was so important for Besco to cut the workers’ wages: they wanted to get back to that higher profit level.
This profit amounted to a robbery of about $800 from each of the men who toiled in Besco’s mines in 1922. A miner was lucky if he was paid that much in a year of work.
This whole process amounts to little more than a socially sanctioned form of robbery. The owning class says to the workers: ‘You go and produce the wealth and you can have half of all you produce if you give us the other half.’ The capitalists control the state, the armies, the newspapers and the school systems to teach people to accept this arrangement.
When Besco took the coal to market, the corporation got a price of $6 per ton. For three tons, $18. So, for the produce of one man’s daily labour -- three tons of coal -- Besco could get $18. After you subtracted the cost of the worker’s labour --$6-- the capitalists still had $12.
It is out of this $12, value created by the worker but not paid to him, that the capitalists pay their own handsome salaries, pay the costs of equipment and pocket their profits.
In 1921 the profits pocketed by Besco in this way amounted to a clear $9.6 million. During the war years, we might add, profits were frequently double this amount. That’s why it was so important for Besco to cut the workers’ wages: they wanted to get back to that higher profit level.
This profit amounted to a robbery of about $800 from each of the men who toiled in Besco’s mines in 1922. A miner was lucky if he was paid that much in a year of work.
This whole process amounts to little more than a socially sanctioned form of robbery. The owning class says to the workers: ‘You go and produce the wealth and you can have half of all you produce if you give us the other half.’ The capitalists control the state, the armies, the newspapers and the school systems to teach people to accept this arrangement.
THE WORKER'S PRESS
When you pick up a newspaper the best question to ask is ‘Who owns it’. The answer determines whose interests the paper will serve. If it is owned by capitalists, the main purposes of the paper will be first, to make money, and secondly, to convince you that cpitalism is a good system. A newspaper which is in itself a business enterprise bent on profit-making cannot be a true champion of the working people. Instead, it will defend the interests of the newspaper owner and his friends and advertisers.
In Cape Breton the newspapers of the ruling class have played a leading part in attacking the workers whenever they have tried to fight the monolithic corporations which control their daily lives. The hysterical election day smear against J.B.McLachlan in the 1921 election is a good example. But these newspapers not only lied about the workers’ struggle.
A main problem with having the capitalists controlling the news media was that important information could not be circulated among the workers -- information about the activities of the various local unions, the struggles and conditions of workers abroad and across Canada, the ghastly incompetence of the industries of Cape Breton. All of this information would rightly considered downright subversive by the press.
The workers of Cape Breton needed their own spokesman, a newspaper which would help them in their fight for a better world. It had to be a newspaper which did not have a vested interest in making profits; it had to be a workers’ newspaper.
The Maritime Labour Herald, the first of Cape Breton’s working class papers, was set up in the fall of 1921 by two militant trade unionists --, J.B. McLachlan and D.N.Brodie. The initial capital was raised among the locals of the UMW and privately. The first issue, published on October 14, 1921, launched the paper’s remarkable five-year career with a clear statement of where the paper’s heart lay:
“The Maritime Labour Herald is different from
other papers. The other papers have their nice
clothes on and wear a collar and tie. The Ma-
ritime Labour Herald is a paper with its
shirtsleeves rolled up and its neckband
turned under. We are ..the workingman’s paper
and wear no frills.”
Quickly, the paper got a warm response from Cape Bretoners. Circulation climbed to well over 6,000, which meant perhaps ten times as many people actually read it. Its pages are filled with letters from workers describing working conditions and daily problems. One of the goals of the paper was to have the workers themselves write as much of the paper as possible. Crammed with lively humour and a clear grasp of economic problems, the paper won the respect and sympathy of working people.
On the front page of the first issue the basic theme was set in this brief analysis of the economic crisis of the time:
“The workers produce a great deal more wealth
than the wage they receive will enable them
to buy back, and the surplus left over fills
warehouses, cold storage plants, etc. There
are more ships, more engines, more steel pro-
ducts, more food and clothing than is needed
but these things are in the hands of the capi-
talists who cannot sell them, and because the
workers are unemployed they cannot buy the
food they so badly need, and hence go short
amid plenty...
“Capitalism and capitalism alone is the evil
tree that bears such bitter fruit.”
Twice the building of the Maritime Labour Herald burned down, but it never failed to publish. Eventually the weekly paper incorporated its principles into its banner on the front page:
“Workers of all lands unite, you have nothing
to lose but your chains, and a world to win.
We demand a Labour Party, Industrial UnionisM
and Nationalization of Industry with Workers’
Control.”
For, five, hard years the paper fought bravely for these principles.
In Cape Breton the newspapers of the ruling class have played a leading part in attacking the workers whenever they have tried to fight the monolithic corporations which control their daily lives. The hysterical election day smear against J.B.McLachlan in the 1921 election is a good example. But these newspapers not only lied about the workers’ struggle.
A main problem with having the capitalists controlling the news media was that important information could not be circulated among the workers -- information about the activities of the various local unions, the struggles and conditions of workers abroad and across Canada, the ghastly incompetence of the industries of Cape Breton. All of this information would rightly considered downright subversive by the press.
The workers of Cape Breton needed their own spokesman, a newspaper which would help them in their fight for a better world. It had to be a newspaper which did not have a vested interest in making profits; it had to be a workers’ newspaper.
The Maritime Labour Herald, the first of Cape Breton’s working class papers, was set up in the fall of 1921 by two militant trade unionists --, J.B. McLachlan and D.N.Brodie. The initial capital was raised among the locals of the UMW and privately. The first issue, published on October 14, 1921, launched the paper’s remarkable five-year career with a clear statement of where the paper’s heart lay:
“The Maritime Labour Herald is different from
other papers. The other papers have their nice
clothes on and wear a collar and tie. The Ma-
ritime Labour Herald is a paper with its
shirtsleeves rolled up and its neckband
turned under. We are ..the workingman’s paper
and wear no frills.”
Quickly, the paper got a warm response from Cape Bretoners. Circulation climbed to well over 6,000, which meant perhaps ten times as many people actually read it. Its pages are filled with letters from workers describing working conditions and daily problems. One of the goals of the paper was to have the workers themselves write as much of the paper as possible. Crammed with lively humour and a clear grasp of economic problems, the paper won the respect and sympathy of working people.
On the front page of the first issue the basic theme was set in this brief analysis of the economic crisis of the time:
“The workers produce a great deal more wealth
than the wage they receive will enable them
to buy back, and the surplus left over fills
warehouses, cold storage plants, etc. There
are more ships, more engines, more steel pro-
ducts, more food and clothing than is needed
but these things are in the hands of the capi-
talists who cannot sell them, and because the
workers are unemployed they cannot buy the
food they so badly need, and hence go short
amid plenty...
“Capitalism and capitalism alone is the evil
tree that bears such bitter fruit.”
Twice the building of the Maritime Labour Herald burned down, but it never failed to publish. Eventually the weekly paper incorporated its principles into its banner on the front page:
“Workers of all lands unite, you have nothing
to lose but your chains, and a world to win.
We demand a Labour Party, Industrial UnionisM
and Nationalization of Industry with Workers’
Control.”
For, five, hard years the paper fought bravely for these principles.
THE GENERAL STRIKE: 1923
“Steel is the backbone of Sydney. The long rows of ugly chimneys
belching forth torrents of smoke and fire bear witness to the fact (of
which the papers are so proud) that Sydney is a town of steel. Under this
small forest of chimneys toil the slaves 0f steel - - chained, by grim necessity,
to the chariot of a brutal, relentless corporation.
Yes. Slaves. ‘Tis a strong word - - but then the facts are strong and demand
strong words. Sydney is a town of steel slaves. Just That!”
-- Maritime Labour Herald
February 3, 1923
Little more can be said about conditions at the steel plant. The men worked shifts os 11 and 13 hours a day, seven days a week, with a 24 hour swing shift from 7 a.m. Monday every second week. The steelworker was paid $2.85 for each gruelling day’s labour. This was even less than the mineworkers received, for when Besco tried to slash the miners’ wages37 ½ percent in 1922, they got away with a 45 percent cut in the steelworkers’ pay. This was the opening staggering blow in Besco’s attempt to smash the spreading idea of trade unionism among the steelworkers.
1923 was a year of great union militancy in Cape Breton. The miners were still smarting over their failure to win a victory over Besco the previous year, and the steelworkers were preparing to fight the basic fight - - for the right to a union of their own choice.
At the end of 1922 Besco offered its men a company union. A company union is an organization set up by the company for the workers. Naturally, it has no powers. The workers voted the offer down. They preferred to stick with their own idea - - a real trade union. Since 1917 militant workers had been organizing (in spite of constant spying and harassment by company police) a local of Amalgamated Iron, Steel and Tin Workers. Open to all employees at the steel works, this industrial union would unite all of the men there into a single force. Instead of having blacklists in one union, carpenters in another and moulders in the third, they would all belong to a single union.
As part of their escalating organizing campaign, the union members - - about 400 of the 2700 employees belonged to the union at this stage - - posted huge signs about the steel palnt calling for wage raises, recognition of the union and proclaiming: “Every day in every way, we are getting stronger and stronger.” These signs were greeted enthusiastically by the men, but were found distasteful by the plant management. An order was put out forbidding posters anyplace on company property. Besco itself continued to post its posters - - signs encouraging the men to take flowers home with them.
In Canada in 1923,681,490
workers produced $3.5 bil
lion worth of goods. For
this ,Canadian workers
were paid only $700 mi—
lion.
The workers got one dol-
lar in salaries and wa-.
ges for every five dol-
lars they produced.
There was a brief scuffle in February, several months before the big showdown between the workers and the corporation. When a union’ activist was fired and blacklisted , the men walked out en masse, refusing to let anyone into the plant. With their backs to the wall, Besco promised immediate recognition of the union if the men would come back to work.
Besco was lying. The company would never recognize the union, for, said Besco,”trade unionism is wrong in principle.” it took a lot of gall for a monopoly the size of Besco to preach the evils of “organizing.” Stiffly, the, workers were warned that Besco would allow no changes in hours or wages. This turned out to be false again. Two weeks later Besco’s hard heart softened and an across the board wage hike of ten percent was benevolently announced.
Meanwhile Besco went carefully about its preparation for a violent showdown. They convinced the premier of the province to beef up his provincial police to fight “Bolshevism” at the steel plant. The authorities recruited several hundred unemployed men off the streets of Halifax, armed them and shipped them to Sydney. Besco organized its own private police force under the command of a character by the name Of D.A.Noble. Noble also worked as an RCMP special agent and an army intelligence officer. Noble’s goon ‘squad consisted of 400 men armed with 20-pound steel bars. The provincial police force, an unruly collection of waterfront toughs, drunkards and criminals, numbered more than 1,000 men. Feeling secure with’ this assemblage of armed might, Besco took the offensive, launching a systematic campaign of blacklisting and the replacement of fired men with scabs. Laughing and defiant, Besco was soon to taken by surprise.
On June 28, at 3 a.m. the night shift began to walk out of the plant. Noble’s goons, stationed inside the steel works, began to drag men physically back to their jobs and a pitched battle was fought. The struggle centred on the blast furnaces and the coke ovens. For two days, as the strike spread to include more than 80 percent of the steelworkers, a small battalion of workers defended the ovens and refused to surrender them. Outside the plant the striking night shift was greeted by men from the day shift arriving to form picket lines. The plant was tied up tight by mass picketing. The Riot Act was read several times during these two days, and on one occasion troops fired into the air over the heads of a crowd of strike supporters.
For Besco the steel plant, was in enemy hands, its lifeline, the coke ovens, was held by rebellious workers. The rights of private property had to be asserted. On the morning of June 30 a trainload of 250 infantry arrived from Halifax. The provincial police were thrown Into battle and managed to overpower the men at the coke ovens. Private property was preserved, but the crisis was deepening.
In the early evening of the next day, Sunday July 1, 1923, there occurred one of the most vicious incidents in the entire history of Cape Breton - - an unprovoked attack by mounted police on a peaceful group of citizens. The wild charge took place on Victoria Road, Whitney Pier. Swinging whips and baseball, bats, the police beat and trampled men and women sparing neither the old nor the young, chasing them down and whipping them. Many were followed into their own homes. One man was followed to the second floor of a building by a mounted policeman. Most of the people on the street were returning from evening church services.
Here’s how J. B. McLachlan, at this time Secretary-Treasurer of the miners’ union, described the incident in a report sent to the union’s locals:
“On Sunday night last the provincial police,
in the most brutal manner, rode down the
people of Whitney Pier, who were out on
the street, most of whom were coming from
church. Neither age, sex, nor physical disa-
bility were proof against these brutes. One
old woman over 70 years of age was beaten
into insensibility and may die. A boy of nine
years old was trampled under the horses’
hooves and had his kreast bone crushed in. A
wolan, being beaten over the head with a po-
lice club, gave premature birth to a child.
The child is dead and the woman’s life is
despaired of. Men and women were beaten up
inside their own homes.”
And here is how a government Royal Commission, later set up to investigate the “unrest” among the steelworkers, recorded the incident:
“On Sunday evening July 1, between eight and nine
and nine O’clock a riotous condition prevai-
led outside gate No.4 and in the adjacent
streets. The provincial police were called
upon to suppress the riot and to disperse
the unlawful assembly. They did that. After
that there was no more rioting.”
Later in the month J.B. McLachlan was arrested for writing his description of the incident even though several Sydney policemen said publicly that the attack was pre-arranged by the provincial police.
The strike spread, Besco and its allies had tried crudest form of intimidation but they had not broken the will of the Steelworkers. The police riot of July 1 propelled the strike onto a higher level. It became a general political strike. “No miner or mineworker can remain at work while this government turns Sydney into a jungle,” declared McLachlan. And the miners agreed. On July 3 they closed down the mines to show their Solidarity with the striking steelworkers and to demand the withdrawal of troops and police from Cape Breton. This gesture of solidarity turned the strike into more than a wage struggle; it had become a political struggle as well.
Besco and the government launched a second offensive to answer the miners’ action. First, troop strength was boosted to more than 2,000 men. Secondly, warrants were issued for the arrest of the two men Besco and the Liberals hated most -- Dan Livingstone the president of District 26, and J.B. McLachlan, the union’s secretary-treasurer. They figured that if they could get rid of the leaders of the miners, resistance would collapse. At the same time raids were carried out on the homes of people who had “participated in the “riot” of July 1. The idea was to fix responsibility for the outrage on innocent citizens. In Western Canada, meanwhile, miners went on strike to support the demands of their Cape Breton brothers.
If Besco thought these tactics could break the miners they reckoned poorly the deep roots of the miners’ solidarity. But this was not all. There was a secret element in Besco’s strategy.
The surprise was the intervention of John L. Lewis, the international president of the UMW. Lewis issued a simple order to the men of D1strict 26 saying that the contract they had signed with Bésco in 1922 had to be observed and that nothing could take priority over a signed contract. Lewis was ignored.
Lewis’ idea of trade unionism was quite different from that of the ordinary workers. The main object of trade unionism according to Lewis, was to make peace between the owning and working classes. If working and living conditions happened to be improved this way; that was fine. But the main purpose was to make a deal, to establish a stable, business-like relationship between the exploiter exploited. This kind of unionism which is known as business unionism is preferred by employers above all other forms of unionism except company unionism. Naturally, Lewis could have no sympathy for the idea of a general political strike such as was taking place in Cape Breton in the summer of 1923.
The other characteristic of business unionism is that it is fundamentally undemocratic. Decisions are not madeby the rank and file of the membership, but by all-powerful leaders. Once Lewis found himself in the presidency of the UMW (he was not elected to the job) he did not relinquish the post for 40 years. Surrounding himself with personal supporters, he set up a virtual one-man dictatorship and ruthlessly suppressed criticism and dissent.
And so, John L. Lewis pulled the rug out from under the feet of the people of Cape Breton. On July 18 he revoked the district’s hard-won charter and declared the executive offices of the district vacant. He appointed a provisional president, Cape Bretoner Silby Barrett. Lewis delighted the mineowners by publicly denouncing the strike as “indefensible and morally reprehensible.”
To the miners of Cape Breton this was an outrage. To them, their union was the organized fighting force of the working people. They would use it to defend themselves and their lives against intimidation, blacklisting, beatings and starvation, against the company and against the government. A defiant mass meeting that same day left no doubts. When to go back to work - and when to go off - was the worker’s own decision. It could not be dictated by any “leader.”
McLachlan, now released on bail from prison, was cheered wildly as he hurled defiance at the government, press, army, Besco and the international headquarters of the union. As far as capital was concerned, said McLachlan, the miners had committed a great crime by becoming solidly organized.
While workers’ meetings all over the district voiced defiance of Lewis, his supporters in Cape Breton were also making headway. Using the courts, Barrett managed to take over the union offices. With the cooperation of Besco, the flow of union dues to the local unions was diverted to Barrett. A back-to-work campaign was launched by Barrett. Using the daily press, he created the impression that this was a widespread grassroots movement. In these ways Lewis and his local supporters broke the miners solidarity. By August they had succeeded. Without enough funds to support a lengthy strike, the miners went back to work.
He crushing of the miners speeded the defeat of the steelworkers as well. With police and troops outnumbering them two to one, the steelworkers voted to go back to work. Neither of their main demands – union recognition and wage increases -- had been won. It would be more than 12 years before the steelworkers again fought to win these goals.
Casting a sorrowful eye over developments in Cape Breton, Canada’s business newspaper lamented: “The situation is not even one of armed neutrality. It is that of a conquered territory held down by the sword.” Besco moved swiftly to make sure that no more labour trouble would disturb its conquered territory. Most of the steelworkers who had so ungratefully gone out on strike were never allowed back to work. This included men who had slaved more than 20 years in the plant. Secondly, the company union scheme, previously rejected by the workers, was introduced at once, but without a vote among the workers this time.
Advice was also given to Besco by a royal commission set up by Liberal Prime Mintster Mackenzie King. (When working for the Rockefellers in the U.S. King had helped originate company union schemes.)
The investigators highly favoured the idea of a “general plant council.” It would preserve “personal sympathy and the human touch” while still increasing production and efficiency. Whether such a goal could ever be achieved under exploitative and undemocratic conditions was never considered. That would have involved questioning the ownership and goals of the corporation. It would have involved pointing out that the plant should be turned over completely to the Canadian people and managed and operated by its workers.
The royal commission also urged Besco to follow a second American example - - to switch from the longstanding two-shift plan to a three-shift system of eight hour spells. “The 12-hour day is inhuman,” the commissioners admitted in their only words of sympathy for the workers. Although such a plan would cut into Besco’s profits, the commission pointed out that Besco’s profits were quite substantial.
The question the commissioners didn’t dare to ask the question the workers themselves had asked. If conditions were inhuman, why shouldn’t men fight back? Men work to live, they don’t live to work. To show that this right was more important than the capitalist’s profit, the working people had to revolt.
JB’s crime
‘Fore he went and broke the laws
Jim McLachlan was the cause
Of all sin, distress, and crime
That occurred in modern time,
Now they can’t blame it on him -—
Merry Christmas to you, Jim
--Dawn Fraser
It was an unwritten law that McLachlan had broken. So they had to fish about among the various written laws available to find one that would match JB’s “crime.”
Four days after the events of July 1 warrants were obtained for the arrest of Livingstone and McLachlan on charges of “unlawfully publishing false tales.” The police drove up to union headquarters in Glace Bay and asked the two men to step outside. They were jumped by a small army of police who handcuffed, gagged and shackled them and then took them to Halifax. Bail was refuised and no charges were laid. Eventually the two men appeared in court and were charged with “publishing misleading information and importing communistic literature into Glace Bay.” By August, after the strike was broken the charges were revised to “seditious libel” and the charge against Livingstone was dropped.
--What laws did Jim
McLachlan break?
--He broke the unwritten
law.
--What unwritten law?
--The law that it is a
crime to tell the truth
about capitalism and to
organize your fellow
workers to fight back.
It turned out that the specific crime for which McLachlan was to be tried was his truthful description of the events of July 1. How JB’s brief report to the union locals could be described as “seditious libel” takes a lot of imagination. But then we have to remember that the government and the corporations were out to “get” the man they considered responsible for all the “trouble” in Cape Breton. It was a rare honour to be charged with “seditious libel.” The charge had not been used since the days when Joseph Howe did battle against the merchant aristocracy of his time.
When the trial began in October the courts decided it had to be held in Halifax. A Sydney jury, familiar with the real facts of the July 1 riot, would be likely to support McLachlan instead of branding him a criminal. The judge in the case was our old friend Justice Mellish, the onetime corporation lawyer, still serving his masters’ interests.
The trial turned into a hysterical witch-hunt. The province’s attorney-general came down to the courtroom personally to make a fool of himself by arguing:
“The issue is not whether the statement
(McLachlan’s) published is true or false.
There are many things which are true, but
cannot be published. It is not a question
of the truth of the statement, but a question
of whether it was said with the intention of
creating dissatisfaction and disturbance.”
This line of reasoning reveals part of the secret logic of capitalism. It is all right to have free speech as long as you don’t say anything that upsets anyone. Mellish sentenced McLachlan to two years in Dorchester Penitentiary. Under pressure from Farmer and Labour MP’s in Ottawa the Prime Minister ordered the release of JB in the spring. But those five months in prison had taken their toll. It was there that McLachlan contracted the bronchial disease he was to die of 13 years later.
The only difference bet-
ween jail and a job is
that here I am separa-
ted from my wife and fa-
mily. Under capitalism.
all the workers are in
jail all the time. And
lots of them haven’t
got the security of
shelter and food that
is offerred in a
penitentiary.”
belching forth torrents of smoke and fire bear witness to the fact (of
which the papers are so proud) that Sydney is a town of steel. Under this
small forest of chimneys toil the slaves 0f steel - - chained, by grim necessity,
to the chariot of a brutal, relentless corporation.
Yes. Slaves. ‘Tis a strong word - - but then the facts are strong and demand
strong words. Sydney is a town of steel slaves. Just That!”
-- Maritime Labour Herald
February 3, 1923
Little more can be said about conditions at the steel plant. The men worked shifts os 11 and 13 hours a day, seven days a week, with a 24 hour swing shift from 7 a.m. Monday every second week. The steelworker was paid $2.85 for each gruelling day’s labour. This was even less than the mineworkers received, for when Besco tried to slash the miners’ wages37 ½ percent in 1922, they got away with a 45 percent cut in the steelworkers’ pay. This was the opening staggering blow in Besco’s attempt to smash the spreading idea of trade unionism among the steelworkers.
1923 was a year of great union militancy in Cape Breton. The miners were still smarting over their failure to win a victory over Besco the previous year, and the steelworkers were preparing to fight the basic fight - - for the right to a union of their own choice.
At the end of 1922 Besco offered its men a company union. A company union is an organization set up by the company for the workers. Naturally, it has no powers. The workers voted the offer down. They preferred to stick with their own idea - - a real trade union. Since 1917 militant workers had been organizing (in spite of constant spying and harassment by company police) a local of Amalgamated Iron, Steel and Tin Workers. Open to all employees at the steel works, this industrial union would unite all of the men there into a single force. Instead of having blacklists in one union, carpenters in another and moulders in the third, they would all belong to a single union.
As part of their escalating organizing campaign, the union members - - about 400 of the 2700 employees belonged to the union at this stage - - posted huge signs about the steel palnt calling for wage raises, recognition of the union and proclaiming: “Every day in every way, we are getting stronger and stronger.” These signs were greeted enthusiastically by the men, but were found distasteful by the plant management. An order was put out forbidding posters anyplace on company property. Besco itself continued to post its posters - - signs encouraging the men to take flowers home with them.
In Canada in 1923,681,490
workers produced $3.5 bil
lion worth of goods. For
this ,Canadian workers
were paid only $700 mi—
lion.
The workers got one dol-
lar in salaries and wa-.
ges for every five dol-
lars they produced.
There was a brief scuffle in February, several months before the big showdown between the workers and the corporation. When a union’ activist was fired and blacklisted , the men walked out en masse, refusing to let anyone into the plant. With their backs to the wall, Besco promised immediate recognition of the union if the men would come back to work.
Besco was lying. The company would never recognize the union, for, said Besco,”trade unionism is wrong in principle.” it took a lot of gall for a monopoly the size of Besco to preach the evils of “organizing.” Stiffly, the, workers were warned that Besco would allow no changes in hours or wages. This turned out to be false again. Two weeks later Besco’s hard heart softened and an across the board wage hike of ten percent was benevolently announced.
Meanwhile Besco went carefully about its preparation for a violent showdown. They convinced the premier of the province to beef up his provincial police to fight “Bolshevism” at the steel plant. The authorities recruited several hundred unemployed men off the streets of Halifax, armed them and shipped them to Sydney. Besco organized its own private police force under the command of a character by the name Of D.A.Noble. Noble also worked as an RCMP special agent and an army intelligence officer. Noble’s goon ‘squad consisted of 400 men armed with 20-pound steel bars. The provincial police force, an unruly collection of waterfront toughs, drunkards and criminals, numbered more than 1,000 men. Feeling secure with’ this assemblage of armed might, Besco took the offensive, launching a systematic campaign of blacklisting and the replacement of fired men with scabs. Laughing and defiant, Besco was soon to taken by surprise.
On June 28, at 3 a.m. the night shift began to walk out of the plant. Noble’s goons, stationed inside the steel works, began to drag men physically back to their jobs and a pitched battle was fought. The struggle centred on the blast furnaces and the coke ovens. For two days, as the strike spread to include more than 80 percent of the steelworkers, a small battalion of workers defended the ovens and refused to surrender them. Outside the plant the striking night shift was greeted by men from the day shift arriving to form picket lines. The plant was tied up tight by mass picketing. The Riot Act was read several times during these two days, and on one occasion troops fired into the air over the heads of a crowd of strike supporters.
For Besco the steel plant, was in enemy hands, its lifeline, the coke ovens, was held by rebellious workers. The rights of private property had to be asserted. On the morning of June 30 a trainload of 250 infantry arrived from Halifax. The provincial police were thrown Into battle and managed to overpower the men at the coke ovens. Private property was preserved, but the crisis was deepening.
In the early evening of the next day, Sunday July 1, 1923, there occurred one of the most vicious incidents in the entire history of Cape Breton - - an unprovoked attack by mounted police on a peaceful group of citizens. The wild charge took place on Victoria Road, Whitney Pier. Swinging whips and baseball, bats, the police beat and trampled men and women sparing neither the old nor the young, chasing them down and whipping them. Many were followed into their own homes. One man was followed to the second floor of a building by a mounted policeman. Most of the people on the street were returning from evening church services.
Here’s how J. B. McLachlan, at this time Secretary-Treasurer of the miners’ union, described the incident in a report sent to the union’s locals:
“On Sunday night last the provincial police,
in the most brutal manner, rode down the
people of Whitney Pier, who were out on
the street, most of whom were coming from
church. Neither age, sex, nor physical disa-
bility were proof against these brutes. One
old woman over 70 years of age was beaten
into insensibility and may die. A boy of nine
years old was trampled under the horses’
hooves and had his kreast bone crushed in. A
wolan, being beaten over the head with a po-
lice club, gave premature birth to a child.
The child is dead and the woman’s life is
despaired of. Men and women were beaten up
inside their own homes.”
And here is how a government Royal Commission, later set up to investigate the “unrest” among the steelworkers, recorded the incident:
“On Sunday evening July 1, between eight and nine
and nine O’clock a riotous condition prevai-
led outside gate No.4 and in the adjacent
streets. The provincial police were called
upon to suppress the riot and to disperse
the unlawful assembly. They did that. After
that there was no more rioting.”
Later in the month J.B. McLachlan was arrested for writing his description of the incident even though several Sydney policemen said publicly that the attack was pre-arranged by the provincial police.
The strike spread, Besco and its allies had tried crudest form of intimidation but they had not broken the will of the Steelworkers. The police riot of July 1 propelled the strike onto a higher level. It became a general political strike. “No miner or mineworker can remain at work while this government turns Sydney into a jungle,” declared McLachlan. And the miners agreed. On July 3 they closed down the mines to show their Solidarity with the striking steelworkers and to demand the withdrawal of troops and police from Cape Breton. This gesture of solidarity turned the strike into more than a wage struggle; it had become a political struggle as well.
Besco and the government launched a second offensive to answer the miners’ action. First, troop strength was boosted to more than 2,000 men. Secondly, warrants were issued for the arrest of the two men Besco and the Liberals hated most -- Dan Livingstone the president of District 26, and J.B. McLachlan, the union’s secretary-treasurer. They figured that if they could get rid of the leaders of the miners, resistance would collapse. At the same time raids were carried out on the homes of people who had “participated in the “riot” of July 1. The idea was to fix responsibility for the outrage on innocent citizens. In Western Canada, meanwhile, miners went on strike to support the demands of their Cape Breton brothers.
If Besco thought these tactics could break the miners they reckoned poorly the deep roots of the miners’ solidarity. But this was not all. There was a secret element in Besco’s strategy.
The surprise was the intervention of John L. Lewis, the international president of the UMW. Lewis issued a simple order to the men of D1strict 26 saying that the contract they had signed with Bésco in 1922 had to be observed and that nothing could take priority over a signed contract. Lewis was ignored.
Lewis’ idea of trade unionism was quite different from that of the ordinary workers. The main object of trade unionism according to Lewis, was to make peace between the owning and working classes. If working and living conditions happened to be improved this way; that was fine. But the main purpose was to make a deal, to establish a stable, business-like relationship between the exploiter exploited. This kind of unionism which is known as business unionism is preferred by employers above all other forms of unionism except company unionism. Naturally, Lewis could have no sympathy for the idea of a general political strike such as was taking place in Cape Breton in the summer of 1923.
The other characteristic of business unionism is that it is fundamentally undemocratic. Decisions are not madeby the rank and file of the membership, but by all-powerful leaders. Once Lewis found himself in the presidency of the UMW (he was not elected to the job) he did not relinquish the post for 40 years. Surrounding himself with personal supporters, he set up a virtual one-man dictatorship and ruthlessly suppressed criticism and dissent.
And so, John L. Lewis pulled the rug out from under the feet of the people of Cape Breton. On July 18 he revoked the district’s hard-won charter and declared the executive offices of the district vacant. He appointed a provisional president, Cape Bretoner Silby Barrett. Lewis delighted the mineowners by publicly denouncing the strike as “indefensible and morally reprehensible.”
To the miners of Cape Breton this was an outrage. To them, their union was the organized fighting force of the working people. They would use it to defend themselves and their lives against intimidation, blacklisting, beatings and starvation, against the company and against the government. A defiant mass meeting that same day left no doubts. When to go back to work - and when to go off - was the worker’s own decision. It could not be dictated by any “leader.”
McLachlan, now released on bail from prison, was cheered wildly as he hurled defiance at the government, press, army, Besco and the international headquarters of the union. As far as capital was concerned, said McLachlan, the miners had committed a great crime by becoming solidly organized.
While workers’ meetings all over the district voiced defiance of Lewis, his supporters in Cape Breton were also making headway. Using the courts, Barrett managed to take over the union offices. With the cooperation of Besco, the flow of union dues to the local unions was diverted to Barrett. A back-to-work campaign was launched by Barrett. Using the daily press, he created the impression that this was a widespread grassroots movement. In these ways Lewis and his local supporters broke the miners solidarity. By August they had succeeded. Without enough funds to support a lengthy strike, the miners went back to work.
He crushing of the miners speeded the defeat of the steelworkers as well. With police and troops outnumbering them two to one, the steelworkers voted to go back to work. Neither of their main demands – union recognition and wage increases -- had been won. It would be more than 12 years before the steelworkers again fought to win these goals.
Casting a sorrowful eye over developments in Cape Breton, Canada’s business newspaper lamented: “The situation is not even one of armed neutrality. It is that of a conquered territory held down by the sword.” Besco moved swiftly to make sure that no more labour trouble would disturb its conquered territory. Most of the steelworkers who had so ungratefully gone out on strike were never allowed back to work. This included men who had slaved more than 20 years in the plant. Secondly, the company union scheme, previously rejected by the workers, was introduced at once, but without a vote among the workers this time.
Advice was also given to Besco by a royal commission set up by Liberal Prime Mintster Mackenzie King. (When working for the Rockefellers in the U.S. King had helped originate company union schemes.)
The investigators highly favoured the idea of a “general plant council.” It would preserve “personal sympathy and the human touch” while still increasing production and efficiency. Whether such a goal could ever be achieved under exploitative and undemocratic conditions was never considered. That would have involved questioning the ownership and goals of the corporation. It would have involved pointing out that the plant should be turned over completely to the Canadian people and managed and operated by its workers.
The royal commission also urged Besco to follow a second American example - - to switch from the longstanding two-shift plan to a three-shift system of eight hour spells. “The 12-hour day is inhuman,” the commissioners admitted in their only words of sympathy for the workers. Although such a plan would cut into Besco’s profits, the commission pointed out that Besco’s profits were quite substantial.
The question the commissioners didn’t dare to ask the question the workers themselves had asked. If conditions were inhuman, why shouldn’t men fight back? Men work to live, they don’t live to work. To show that this right was more important than the capitalist’s profit, the working people had to revolt.
JB’s crime
‘Fore he went and broke the laws
Jim McLachlan was the cause
Of all sin, distress, and crime
That occurred in modern time,
Now they can’t blame it on him -—
Merry Christmas to you, Jim
--Dawn Fraser
It was an unwritten law that McLachlan had broken. So they had to fish about among the various written laws available to find one that would match JB’s “crime.”
Four days after the events of July 1 warrants were obtained for the arrest of Livingstone and McLachlan on charges of “unlawfully publishing false tales.” The police drove up to union headquarters in Glace Bay and asked the two men to step outside. They were jumped by a small army of police who handcuffed, gagged and shackled them and then took them to Halifax. Bail was refuised and no charges were laid. Eventually the two men appeared in court and were charged with “publishing misleading information and importing communistic literature into Glace Bay.” By August, after the strike was broken the charges were revised to “seditious libel” and the charge against Livingstone was dropped.
--What laws did Jim
McLachlan break?
--He broke the unwritten
law.
--What unwritten law?
--The law that it is a
crime to tell the truth
about capitalism and to
organize your fellow
workers to fight back.
It turned out that the specific crime for which McLachlan was to be tried was his truthful description of the events of July 1. How JB’s brief report to the union locals could be described as “seditious libel” takes a lot of imagination. But then we have to remember that the government and the corporations were out to “get” the man they considered responsible for all the “trouble” in Cape Breton. It was a rare honour to be charged with “seditious libel.” The charge had not been used since the days when Joseph Howe did battle against the merchant aristocracy of his time.
When the trial began in October the courts decided it had to be held in Halifax. A Sydney jury, familiar with the real facts of the July 1 riot, would be likely to support McLachlan instead of branding him a criminal. The judge in the case was our old friend Justice Mellish, the onetime corporation lawyer, still serving his masters’ interests.
The trial turned into a hysterical witch-hunt. The province’s attorney-general came down to the courtroom personally to make a fool of himself by arguing:
“The issue is not whether the statement
(McLachlan’s) published is true or false.
There are many things which are true, but
cannot be published. It is not a question
of the truth of the statement, but a question
of whether it was said with the intention of
creating dissatisfaction and disturbance.”
This line of reasoning reveals part of the secret logic of capitalism. It is all right to have free speech as long as you don’t say anything that upsets anyone. Mellish sentenced McLachlan to two years in Dorchester Penitentiary. Under pressure from Farmer and Labour MP’s in Ottawa the Prime Minister ordered the release of JB in the spring. But those five months in prison had taken their toll. It was there that McLachlan contracted the bronchial disease he was to die of 13 years later.
The only difference bet-
ween jail and a job is
that here I am separa-
ted from my wife and fa-
mily. Under capitalism.
all the workers are in
jail all the time. And
lots of them haven’t
got the security of
shelter and food that
is offerred in a
penitentiary.”
THE SLAVE PACT
The Christmas season of 1923 was a lean one for the miners of Cape Breton. One man was killed and two others seriously injured in an explosion at Dominion No.6. The miners were working short weeks --- as little as one shift a week. The steel plant had been shut down for weeks. Seven fellow workers were in jail for their part in the struggle of the summer months. The miners’ union had been taken from them was being ruled by an appointed dictator.
How did District 26 function under the direct rule of the international? In the first months of 1924 a contract had to be negotiated. Now the miners got a taste of what business unionism, John L. Lewis’ unionism, meant. The rank and file of the miners never laid eyes on the new contract until it had been signed, sealed and delivered to Besco.
In the new “Slave Pact”, as the miners labelled it, District 26 undertook never again to engage in a 100 per cent strike as in 1922, and to stop supporting the working people’s newspaper, the Maritime Labour Herald. Another item fixed responsibility for mine accidents on the workers themselves: everytime a worker was killed in the pits, every miner was to be fined 5O cents.
A slight wage increase was allowed, but this was takeaway with the other hand through a 50 per cent rise in the cost of house coal to the workers’ families. Under pressure Silby Barrett finally allowed the men to vote on the contract. In a two to one vote, they rejected the “Slave Pact.” The workers’ opinion was ignored.
What kind of trade unionism was this? The workers wanted an end to backrooms negotiating; they wanted everything out in the open, where they could see it. When they went out on strike, they had to know exactly why, and when they came back to work they had to know exactly what they had won or how badly they had been defeated. Undemocratic business unionism allowed them none of this.
A further step of the international was to prohibit the deposed union executive from ever again holding office in District 26. This lifetime blacklist included the most active, experienced and militant group of trade unionists in Cape Breton. It would have a great effect on the future shape of the UMW.
In May the grassroots resentment against the emasculation of the IJMW began to take a solid form. An “outlaw” convention with representatives from the district’s 1ocals formed a Committee of Action to fight for the restoration of the union’s autonomy, democratic procedures and fighting traditions. They managed to persuade the second provisional president, William Houston of Pennsylvania, to allow district elections in the fall. The return of autonomy after more than a year of suspension brought a militant slate of officers back into command.
How did District 26 function under the direct rule of the international? In the first months of 1924 a contract had to be negotiated. Now the miners got a taste of what business unionism, John L. Lewis’ unionism, meant. The rank and file of the miners never laid eyes on the new contract until it had been signed, sealed and delivered to Besco.
In the new “Slave Pact”, as the miners labelled it, District 26 undertook never again to engage in a 100 per cent strike as in 1922, and to stop supporting the working people’s newspaper, the Maritime Labour Herald. Another item fixed responsibility for mine accidents on the workers themselves: everytime a worker was killed in the pits, every miner was to be fined 5O cents.
A slight wage increase was allowed, but this was takeaway with the other hand through a 50 per cent rise in the cost of house coal to the workers’ families. Under pressure Silby Barrett finally allowed the men to vote on the contract. In a two to one vote, they rejected the “Slave Pact.” The workers’ opinion was ignored.
What kind of trade unionism was this? The workers wanted an end to backrooms negotiating; they wanted everything out in the open, where they could see it. When they went out on strike, they had to know exactly why, and when they came back to work they had to know exactly what they had won or how badly they had been defeated. Undemocratic business unionism allowed them none of this.
A further step of the international was to prohibit the deposed union executive from ever again holding office in District 26. This lifetime blacklist included the most active, experienced and militant group of trade unionists in Cape Breton. It would have a great effect on the future shape of the UMW.
In May the grassroots resentment against the emasculation of the IJMW began to take a solid form. An “outlaw” convention with representatives from the district’s 1ocals formed a Committee of Action to fight for the restoration of the union’s autonomy, democratic procedures and fighting traditions. They managed to persuade the second provisional president, William Houston of Pennsylvania, to allow district elections in the fall. The return of autonomy after more than a year of suspension brought a militant slate of officers back into command.
THE RAW CLASS STRUGGLE: 1925
The world is nicely arranged for them
Who live by the sweat of other men,
Live by the sweat of the poor and the weak,
Then marvel that men turn Bolshevik.
- Dawn Fraser
1925 was the bloodiest, hungriest and most bitter year Cape Bretoners ever saw. It started with an open declaration of war instead of a New Year’s greeting. In 1925, Besco decreed, the miners would have to work for 20 percent less ages than they had the year before.
It was a staggering blow to families already on the verge of starvation. For even when there was no strike being fought, Besco’s wage earners were still far from secure in their living conditions. The thousands of men were lucky to work one or two shifts a week. Hundreds were idle. Time and time again the miners would come home from the pits with without a cent of cash in their pockets – the many tentacles of Besco’s industrial feudalism had picked is earnings clean. Every week the worker was deeper in debt.
Besco’s harsh greeting got a tough response from the miners. Weak and wasted though they were, they were not going to let the British Vampire Steel and Coal Company, as it came to be known, sink it’s teeth into their necks once again. Even when the corporation backed down slightly, offering to cut wages ten percent instead of 20, there was no change in the workers attitude. They stood firm.
“Less than a 100 percent strike,” insisted the Maritime Labour Herald, “means well fed horses for Besco, starvation for miners’ babies, protection for Besco property while stripping the backs of the miners’ families - - and a lost strike.” To protect their wages - - already 40 percent lower than other coal miners in Canada - - there would have to be a 100 percent effort.
“I used to go up to the
pay office for my father,
for his pay sheet. There
was a little piece on
the bottom that you just
teared off. This was the
bobtail.
“Well there was nothing
on them, never anything,
never any money coming
to my father. It was all
taken up in the company
store, the pluck-me as
we called it then.”
Relishing the way they had smashed the steelworkers two years earlier, Besço pulled off its gloves to go after the miners. Scabs were signed on to do maintenance work in the event of a 100 per cent strike. The work schedule was cut back even more sharply, especially at the pits where the most militant workers’ locals were based. Then mines began to shut down. By March, 11 mines had been closed and the workers locked out. The final step was the cutting off of credit at the company stores. On the even of the strike thousands of Cape Breton families had little more than a crust of hard bread between them and starvation. On March 6, their patience worn thin, the miners declared they wereon strike.
This suited Besco fine. The general manager, McClurg declared enthusiastically:
“We hold the cards. Let them stay out two
months or six months. It matters not. Even-
tually they will come to us. They can’t
stand the gaff.”
For more than five months, the miners and their families -- some 50,000 Cape Bretoners -- did stand the gaff. Denied relief from government sources, the miner received donations from organized labour all across the country and from the U.S. Unexpected sources of support included the Quaker Oats Company, which despatched several freight cars of oats and flour, and the Miners’ Union in the Soviet Union, which donated $5,000. The international headquarters of the UMW were not that kind - - relief payments were cut off after one month.
“Carrying the bag” – taking a potato sack up to the union hall or the church basement to get relief -- became a regular part of the miners’ way of life. The food was never enough. Families would supplement their meals by eating snails on the ocean shore to add to their thin soup made of potato peelings. At New Waterford adventurous boys would climb out on a cliff face to pick away at an outcropping of coal. Usually they were watched by company police who confiscated their fuel and fined them.
While the miners starved, the company stores, stocked full with the necessities of life, stood close at hand but out of reach. They were a deliberate taunt to the hungry families, reminding them of the dreadful effect of the laws of property.
“Besco sneers at the hunger of the miners,” reasoned the workers. “All right, let the miners show just the same respect for Besco’s rights. Any weapon the miners can lay their hands on ought to be used to win this fight.”
And so, the hated pluck-mes were raided. One miner recalls:
“They rolled down ~half-barrelS of flour and
cases of bacon arid quarters of beef and this
stuff and that stuff. The rumour was going
around that all the houses were going to be
searched and raided and the stuff taken from
them and dire consequences meted out. The
miners and the families didn’t care. They
were desperate. Let them come —— they’re not
taking. They’ll take my neck, but they~re nt
not going to take that barrel of flour that’s
in there. And they wouldn’t have taken it,
they couldn’t have taken it.”
For the first several months the strike was comparatively quiet. Both sides waited in grim determination. For a corporation like Besco, to weather a long strike is rather simple. As long as there is no serious threat to the company’s property, the only, price to pay is lost markets. And if the markets were slow, as they were now, the company thought its time was being well spent -- smashing the workers.
One reason for the quietness of the strike so far was that the provincial government had refused Besco’s routine call for troops. An election was approaching that summer and the government was not anxious to risk such an unpopular move. But in the place of government troops, there was still the company’s own private police force.
Since the beginning of the strike, the miners had been holding the New Waterford power plant, several miles from the town at Waterford Lake. This was to keep its output at a low level - - high enough to supply the town with water and power, but low enough to prevent Besco from reopening any of its mines. On June 4 the company police seized the plant from the workers and cut off water and power to the town and the local hospital. Besco refused to restore service and the townspeople had to set up an emergency bucket brigade to get water to the hospital.
On June 10 the miners surrounded the power plant and argued with the scabs inside, appealing to them to quit. Most of the scabs were convinced and left; the miners were back in possession of the plant. That night, however, Besco police drove the strikers out again, and recaptured the plant. All this back and forth struggle was the prelude to the major confrontation of the year.
On the morning of June 11 a mounted force of police charged up Plummer Ave. in New Waterford, trampling and riding down townspeople, using whips, clubs and chains to beat them. As in the infamous charge of 1923, it was a wholesale police riot.
But this time there was an immediate spontaneous outburst to match this unprovoked violence. Shortly, a crowd of more than 3,000 workers assembled and headed out of town towards Waterford Lake, four miles away. Alerted, the company police met them on the road as they approached the plant.
Nearly 100 armed, mounted and according to some witnesses, drunken, company police confronted the angry crowd. While most of the people held back, several hundred miners headed through the barbed wire fences towards the plant. Firing their guns, the police charged into the line of workers. In the battle that followed the police were thoroughly routed by the unarmed miners who hurled stones and rocks, pulled the police from their horses and beat them with handy sticks and branches.
In the police gunfire one man, Bill Davis, was shot dead. Two other miners, bleeding on the ground, were believed dead as well, although they later recovered. As the police scattered into the woods, the workers advanced on the power plant, broke in and completely wrecked it. Then they headed after the fleeing police. Some 30 bruised and battered company cops were rounded up and marched back into town. As they stumbled up Plummer Ave., the scene of their outrage that morning they received kicks and blows from a gauntlet of townspeople. The sad group was locked up in the town jail to be tried for murder. Later in the day a squad of Besco cars arrived at the jail and rescued their men and put them aboard a special train for Sydney.
Learning a couple of lessons from the day’s event the New Waterford town council dismissed several town policemen for letting their prisoners escape. A special workers’ militia, composed of 70 trade unionists, was also set up. Mayor P.C. Muise blamed Besco directly for the death of Bill Davis. A coroner’s jury agreed and Joseph MacLeod, a company policeman, was charged with capital murder. He was never convicted.
That night the struggle entered a new phase. The miners’ grim persistence erupted in a gale of rage. All over the mining district that night and during the rest of the month there was increased looting of company stores. Thousands of dollars worth of food was distributed to the hungry communities. Fires were lit at emptied stores and other Besco buildings burned to the ground as well. The corporation suffered more than half a million dollars worth of damage to its property and installations during this period.
There was no delay now in the arrival of troops from Halifax. New Waterford alone was allotted more than 1500 troops. Once again Cape Breton was under an iron heel. As the troops poured in, Besco made a settlement offer. The ten per cent cut would stand and there would be further conditions: the check-off of union dues would end, no men considered “disorderly” during the strike would be rehired, no “reds” or “radicals” would ever be allowed to negotiate with Besco on the workers’ behalf.
Besco’s real goals became clear now. The UMW was to be turned into a harmless “company” union. The offer was an insult and was unanimously rejected by the locals. In New Waterford the proposals were publicly burned.
There were two aspects to the workers’ activities during the strike. Both of them matured during this new phase. We have seen the purely defensive and destructive aspect -- how the enraged workers robbed food, flooded mines (the use of scabs minimized the effectiveness of this) and destroyed company property.
The second aspect which matured at this time was the question of what positive action the miners could take to win their struggle. This was the question that was churning in people’s minds. An understanding was maturing that this was much more than a battle over wages. The workers were learning that, as one miner put it, they were engaged in “the real raw class struggle,” a struggle which could only be won by a complete transformation of society.
This understanding came slowly. It took years to mature. On May Day, the international day of solidarity of the workers, several thousand people marched in the streets of Glace Bay. The parade was led by the town mayor, Dan Morrison, bearing aloft a red flag. “Workers of the world unite,” the banners proclaimed, “Down with capitalism.”
It was highly unlikely that tens of thousands of workers whose families were on the verge of starvation could outlast a mighty corporation in a waiting game. It was also unlikely that the corporation would take pity and initiate a radical transformation of society. What positive action could the workers take?
“There was strong talk among the miners of
occupying the mines,” recalls one veteran.
“Occupying the communities. Putting pickets
here and there to disallow anybody in au-
thority to pass over. And to hoist coal from
the mines, and to bank it, and to sell it.
To market it in Nova Scotia and the tradi-
tional markets , Quebec and Massachussetts.
And to finance it by occupying the banks.
“It was talked of in the local unions. There
were some against it, quite a lot for it.
But it was definitely on the agenda in those
days.. .If the strike had continued much longer
there would have been a very clear cut orga—
nized effort to occupy the communities.
“And they could have done it. The armed forces
could hardly have ousted such a move.. . Since
then mines have been occupied —- in Belgium,
in France, in Germany, Scotland, Wales. We
around here were perhaps one of the first to
move in that direction, to talk about it.”
Such radical action would completely change the rules of the system and the “live and let live” attitude of business unionism. The workers would have taken a first step towards seizing ownership and control of the economy for themselves. These actions were never carried out, but the workers were seriously thinking about them. Some important lessons were being learned.
The complexion of the strike was changed again by the crushing defeat of the Liberal Party in that summer’s provincial election. Bowing to public pressure, the premier forced Besco to back off from its all-or-nothing demands. In return for government subsidies, Besco would reopen the mines on these terms: a six to eight percent wage cut would take place and there would be no blacklist of any of the strikers.
By a narrow referendum vote the miners accepted the deal. Wasted by hunger and over-run by troops, they reasoned that, under capitalism, they could get no better deal. 0n August 10 the strike was over. In the new year the miners saw their modest gain wiped out by a government commission which allowed Besco the full ten per cent wage cut. In 1926 the miners were working for only 3/4 of the wages they had earned five years earlier.
Who live by the sweat of other men,
Live by the sweat of the poor and the weak,
Then marvel that men turn Bolshevik.
- Dawn Fraser
1925 was the bloodiest, hungriest and most bitter year Cape Bretoners ever saw. It started with an open declaration of war instead of a New Year’s greeting. In 1925, Besco decreed, the miners would have to work for 20 percent less ages than they had the year before.
It was a staggering blow to families already on the verge of starvation. For even when there was no strike being fought, Besco’s wage earners were still far from secure in their living conditions. The thousands of men were lucky to work one or two shifts a week. Hundreds were idle. Time and time again the miners would come home from the pits with without a cent of cash in their pockets – the many tentacles of Besco’s industrial feudalism had picked is earnings clean. Every week the worker was deeper in debt.
Besco’s harsh greeting got a tough response from the miners. Weak and wasted though they were, they were not going to let the British Vampire Steel and Coal Company, as it came to be known, sink it’s teeth into their necks once again. Even when the corporation backed down slightly, offering to cut wages ten percent instead of 20, there was no change in the workers attitude. They stood firm.
“Less than a 100 percent strike,” insisted the Maritime Labour Herald, “means well fed horses for Besco, starvation for miners’ babies, protection for Besco property while stripping the backs of the miners’ families - - and a lost strike.” To protect their wages - - already 40 percent lower than other coal miners in Canada - - there would have to be a 100 percent effort.
“I used to go up to the
pay office for my father,
for his pay sheet. There
was a little piece on
the bottom that you just
teared off. This was the
bobtail.
“Well there was nothing
on them, never anything,
never any money coming
to my father. It was all
taken up in the company
store, the pluck-me as
we called it then.”
Relishing the way they had smashed the steelworkers two years earlier, Besço pulled off its gloves to go after the miners. Scabs were signed on to do maintenance work in the event of a 100 per cent strike. The work schedule was cut back even more sharply, especially at the pits where the most militant workers’ locals were based. Then mines began to shut down. By March, 11 mines had been closed and the workers locked out. The final step was the cutting off of credit at the company stores. On the even of the strike thousands of Cape Breton families had little more than a crust of hard bread between them and starvation. On March 6, their patience worn thin, the miners declared they wereon strike.
This suited Besco fine. The general manager, McClurg declared enthusiastically:
“We hold the cards. Let them stay out two
months or six months. It matters not. Even-
tually they will come to us. They can’t
stand the gaff.”
For more than five months, the miners and their families -- some 50,000 Cape Bretoners -- did stand the gaff. Denied relief from government sources, the miner received donations from organized labour all across the country and from the U.S. Unexpected sources of support included the Quaker Oats Company, which despatched several freight cars of oats and flour, and the Miners’ Union in the Soviet Union, which donated $5,000. The international headquarters of the UMW were not that kind - - relief payments were cut off after one month.
“Carrying the bag” – taking a potato sack up to the union hall or the church basement to get relief -- became a regular part of the miners’ way of life. The food was never enough. Families would supplement their meals by eating snails on the ocean shore to add to their thin soup made of potato peelings. At New Waterford adventurous boys would climb out on a cliff face to pick away at an outcropping of coal. Usually they were watched by company police who confiscated their fuel and fined them.
While the miners starved, the company stores, stocked full with the necessities of life, stood close at hand but out of reach. They were a deliberate taunt to the hungry families, reminding them of the dreadful effect of the laws of property.
“Besco sneers at the hunger of the miners,” reasoned the workers. “All right, let the miners show just the same respect for Besco’s rights. Any weapon the miners can lay their hands on ought to be used to win this fight.”
And so, the hated pluck-mes were raided. One miner recalls:
“They rolled down ~half-barrelS of flour and
cases of bacon arid quarters of beef and this
stuff and that stuff. The rumour was going
around that all the houses were going to be
searched and raided and the stuff taken from
them and dire consequences meted out. The
miners and the families didn’t care. They
were desperate. Let them come —— they’re not
taking. They’ll take my neck, but they~re nt
not going to take that barrel of flour that’s
in there. And they wouldn’t have taken it,
they couldn’t have taken it.”
For the first several months the strike was comparatively quiet. Both sides waited in grim determination. For a corporation like Besco, to weather a long strike is rather simple. As long as there is no serious threat to the company’s property, the only, price to pay is lost markets. And if the markets were slow, as they were now, the company thought its time was being well spent -- smashing the workers.
One reason for the quietness of the strike so far was that the provincial government had refused Besco’s routine call for troops. An election was approaching that summer and the government was not anxious to risk such an unpopular move. But in the place of government troops, there was still the company’s own private police force.
Since the beginning of the strike, the miners had been holding the New Waterford power plant, several miles from the town at Waterford Lake. This was to keep its output at a low level - - high enough to supply the town with water and power, but low enough to prevent Besco from reopening any of its mines. On June 4 the company police seized the plant from the workers and cut off water and power to the town and the local hospital. Besco refused to restore service and the townspeople had to set up an emergency bucket brigade to get water to the hospital.
On June 10 the miners surrounded the power plant and argued with the scabs inside, appealing to them to quit. Most of the scabs were convinced and left; the miners were back in possession of the plant. That night, however, Besco police drove the strikers out again, and recaptured the plant. All this back and forth struggle was the prelude to the major confrontation of the year.
On the morning of June 11 a mounted force of police charged up Plummer Ave. in New Waterford, trampling and riding down townspeople, using whips, clubs and chains to beat them. As in the infamous charge of 1923, it was a wholesale police riot.
But this time there was an immediate spontaneous outburst to match this unprovoked violence. Shortly, a crowd of more than 3,000 workers assembled and headed out of town towards Waterford Lake, four miles away. Alerted, the company police met them on the road as they approached the plant.
Nearly 100 armed, mounted and according to some witnesses, drunken, company police confronted the angry crowd. While most of the people held back, several hundred miners headed through the barbed wire fences towards the plant. Firing their guns, the police charged into the line of workers. In the battle that followed the police were thoroughly routed by the unarmed miners who hurled stones and rocks, pulled the police from their horses and beat them with handy sticks and branches.
In the police gunfire one man, Bill Davis, was shot dead. Two other miners, bleeding on the ground, were believed dead as well, although they later recovered. As the police scattered into the woods, the workers advanced on the power plant, broke in and completely wrecked it. Then they headed after the fleeing police. Some 30 bruised and battered company cops were rounded up and marched back into town. As they stumbled up Plummer Ave., the scene of their outrage that morning they received kicks and blows from a gauntlet of townspeople. The sad group was locked up in the town jail to be tried for murder. Later in the day a squad of Besco cars arrived at the jail and rescued their men and put them aboard a special train for Sydney.
Learning a couple of lessons from the day’s event the New Waterford town council dismissed several town policemen for letting their prisoners escape. A special workers’ militia, composed of 70 trade unionists, was also set up. Mayor P.C. Muise blamed Besco directly for the death of Bill Davis. A coroner’s jury agreed and Joseph MacLeod, a company policeman, was charged with capital murder. He was never convicted.
That night the struggle entered a new phase. The miners’ grim persistence erupted in a gale of rage. All over the mining district that night and during the rest of the month there was increased looting of company stores. Thousands of dollars worth of food was distributed to the hungry communities. Fires were lit at emptied stores and other Besco buildings burned to the ground as well. The corporation suffered more than half a million dollars worth of damage to its property and installations during this period.
There was no delay now in the arrival of troops from Halifax. New Waterford alone was allotted more than 1500 troops. Once again Cape Breton was under an iron heel. As the troops poured in, Besco made a settlement offer. The ten per cent cut would stand and there would be further conditions: the check-off of union dues would end, no men considered “disorderly” during the strike would be rehired, no “reds” or “radicals” would ever be allowed to negotiate with Besco on the workers’ behalf.
Besco’s real goals became clear now. The UMW was to be turned into a harmless “company” union. The offer was an insult and was unanimously rejected by the locals. In New Waterford the proposals were publicly burned.
There were two aspects to the workers’ activities during the strike. Both of them matured during this new phase. We have seen the purely defensive and destructive aspect -- how the enraged workers robbed food, flooded mines (the use of scabs minimized the effectiveness of this) and destroyed company property.
The second aspect which matured at this time was the question of what positive action the miners could take to win their struggle. This was the question that was churning in people’s minds. An understanding was maturing that this was much more than a battle over wages. The workers were learning that, as one miner put it, they were engaged in “the real raw class struggle,” a struggle which could only be won by a complete transformation of society.
This understanding came slowly. It took years to mature. On May Day, the international day of solidarity of the workers, several thousand people marched in the streets of Glace Bay. The parade was led by the town mayor, Dan Morrison, bearing aloft a red flag. “Workers of the world unite,” the banners proclaimed, “Down with capitalism.”
It was highly unlikely that tens of thousands of workers whose families were on the verge of starvation could outlast a mighty corporation in a waiting game. It was also unlikely that the corporation would take pity and initiate a radical transformation of society. What positive action could the workers take?
“There was strong talk among the miners of
occupying the mines,” recalls one veteran.
“Occupying the communities. Putting pickets
here and there to disallow anybody in au-
thority to pass over. And to hoist coal from
the mines, and to bank it, and to sell it.
To market it in Nova Scotia and the tradi-
tional markets , Quebec and Massachussetts.
And to finance it by occupying the banks.
“It was talked of in the local unions. There
were some against it, quite a lot for it.
But it was definitely on the agenda in those
days.. .If the strike had continued much longer
there would have been a very clear cut orga—
nized effort to occupy the communities.
“And they could have done it. The armed forces
could hardly have ousted such a move.. . Since
then mines have been occupied —- in Belgium,
in France, in Germany, Scotland, Wales. We
around here were perhaps one of the first to
move in that direction, to talk about it.”
Such radical action would completely change the rules of the system and the “live and let live” attitude of business unionism. The workers would have taken a first step towards seizing ownership and control of the economy for themselves. These actions were never carried out, but the workers were seriously thinking about them. Some important lessons were being learned.
The complexion of the strike was changed again by the crushing defeat of the Liberal Party in that summer’s provincial election. Bowing to public pressure, the premier forced Besco to back off from its all-or-nothing demands. In return for government subsidies, Besco would reopen the mines on these terms: a six to eight percent wage cut would take place and there would be no blacklist of any of the strikers.
By a narrow referendum vote the miners accepted the deal. Wasted by hunger and over-run by troops, they reasoned that, under capitalism, they could get no better deal. 0n August 10 the strike was over. In the new year the miners saw their modest gain wiped out by a government commission which allowed Besco the full ten per cent wage cut. In 1926 the miners were working for only 3/4 of the wages they had earned five years earlier.
THE 'NEW SPIRIT'
Workers who have a union
have the fundamental
right to do two things:
the right to elect any
one of their members
to any office that they
like; second, the right
to reject any wage
contract put up to them
to vote on.”
—-Nova Scotia Miner,
1930
The years after 1925 saw the betrayal of the principles of militant trade unionism by the workers’ elected leaders and the transformation of the once militant UMW into an agent of business and company unionism.
To do this, the union leaders had to break down the traditions of grassroots control. The president, John Macleod, forbade the union locals to support the Maritime Labour Herald financially. Just as Besco considered the workers’ newspaper a major threat, so did the union leaders. Although it still had close to 5,000 paying readers in 1925 the paper could not survive the crushing blow. Macleod also tightened control over union dues so that he could withhold money from locals which didn’t toe the line. Another tactic of business unionism was to juggle the results of votes, contriving ways to exclude the opinions of the more militant locals.
Why did the miners’ leaders betray their trust? They placed their own personal interests above those of the workers who elected them. To go from the pits to a comfortable, well-paid job, to hobnob with leaders of business and government, to be placed in a position of great power and influence, can prove a corrupting experience. When Macleod was turfed out of the presidency in 1927, he did not go back to the pits as a miner. No, he showed how much he had changed by taking a job as a Dominion Coal Company official and working his way up through through the ranks to become president of the local Conservative Party Association.
The new union was much more than a giant “dues-collecting machine”. It was fast becoming a useful tool of the employers. “A new spirit has been injected into the minefields,” a business paper boasted, negotiations had become “harmonious” affairs. The new union president Dan Morrison, cooed back: “Conditions in and around the collieries are prosperous.”
Yes, 1929 was a prosperous year -- for Besco, that is. It was the most profitable year the corporation had seen since the big boom of the war years. For the union president it was prosperous too. With two jobs (Morrison was also “labour” mayor of Glace Bay), he was earning more than $3400 a year. But for the workers, conditions were far from prosperous. Few men worked more than three days a week, and in the winter months less. Wages were always falling in terms of real worth.
The union failed to win any increases from the coal operators. Instead, after hush-hush negotiations and an appearance of great sweat and effort, the union leaders would serve up a slightly revised version of the previous contract. Union policy passed at conventions was treated merely as “advice” by the leaders, rather than as instructions on what they were to fight for.
‘You cannot permanently bring peace to the workers
under capitalism. To retain the confidence and maintain
the interests of the workers, you have to lead them
from struggle to struggle. But if you get out of line
with the other sections of the working class army, your
head is lopped off. Faced by this dilemma, you can
understand why so many trade union officials who start
as militants end as bureaucrats, bleeding instead of
leading the workers. They are thinking of their own
skins, their own sinecures.”
--J.B.McLachlan
Here’s a straightforward example of the “new spirit of the union. At the No. 12 mine in New Waterford two new men were brought in to replace two longtime miners. Denouncing the new recruits as scabs, all the men at No. 12 walked out, closing the mine for two days. The scabs were expelled from the union by the local and fined $100. Then, the district executive stepped into the affair and reversed the decisions the men had taken. Under the 1930 contract which these leaders in the process of negotiating it was made illegal stop work over any “labour trouble.” Yet the power to stop working is the only hold the worker has over the employer. Their leaders had signed it away.
In 1932 the full implications of the new kind of unionism were brought home. Because of depressed economic conditions, the mineowners were suggesting that workers place their necks on the chopping block. Wages would be cut ten per cent all around, and one out of four men would be “reallocated”, as they delicately put it, to unemployment. The union leaders argued for accepting these terms, but in a referendum vote the miners angrily turned it down. They would not consent this scheme of making the workers bear the brunt of economic depression. A rank and file movement against the mine closings was able to save about half the jobs the leaders didn’t think were worth fighting for. But as for the wage cut, the workers would have to take it. Exploiting the division between the workers and their leaders, Dosco went ahead and implemented it.
have the fundamental
right to do two things:
the right to elect any
one of their members
to any office that they
like; second, the right
to reject any wage
contract put up to them
to vote on.”
—-Nova Scotia Miner,
1930
The years after 1925 saw the betrayal of the principles of militant trade unionism by the workers’ elected leaders and the transformation of the once militant UMW into an agent of business and company unionism.
To do this, the union leaders had to break down the traditions of grassroots control. The president, John Macleod, forbade the union locals to support the Maritime Labour Herald financially. Just as Besco considered the workers’ newspaper a major threat, so did the union leaders. Although it still had close to 5,000 paying readers in 1925 the paper could not survive the crushing blow. Macleod also tightened control over union dues so that he could withhold money from locals which didn’t toe the line. Another tactic of business unionism was to juggle the results of votes, contriving ways to exclude the opinions of the more militant locals.
Why did the miners’ leaders betray their trust? They placed their own personal interests above those of the workers who elected them. To go from the pits to a comfortable, well-paid job, to hobnob with leaders of business and government, to be placed in a position of great power and influence, can prove a corrupting experience. When Macleod was turfed out of the presidency in 1927, he did not go back to the pits as a miner. No, he showed how much he had changed by taking a job as a Dominion Coal Company official and working his way up through through the ranks to become president of the local Conservative Party Association.
The new union was much more than a giant “dues-collecting machine”. It was fast becoming a useful tool of the employers. “A new spirit has been injected into the minefields,” a business paper boasted, negotiations had become “harmonious” affairs. The new union president Dan Morrison, cooed back: “Conditions in and around the collieries are prosperous.”
Yes, 1929 was a prosperous year -- for Besco, that is. It was the most profitable year the corporation had seen since the big boom of the war years. For the union president it was prosperous too. With two jobs (Morrison was also “labour” mayor of Glace Bay), he was earning more than $3400 a year. But for the workers, conditions were far from prosperous. Few men worked more than three days a week, and in the winter months less. Wages were always falling in terms of real worth.
The union failed to win any increases from the coal operators. Instead, after hush-hush negotiations and an appearance of great sweat and effort, the union leaders would serve up a slightly revised version of the previous contract. Union policy passed at conventions was treated merely as “advice” by the leaders, rather than as instructions on what they were to fight for.
‘You cannot permanently bring peace to the workers
under capitalism. To retain the confidence and maintain
the interests of the workers, you have to lead them
from struggle to struggle. But if you get out of line
with the other sections of the working class army, your
head is lopped off. Faced by this dilemma, you can
understand why so many trade union officials who start
as militants end as bureaucrats, bleeding instead of
leading the workers. They are thinking of their own
skins, their own sinecures.”
--J.B.McLachlan
Here’s a straightforward example of the “new spirit of the union. At the No. 12 mine in New Waterford two new men were brought in to replace two longtime miners. Denouncing the new recruits as scabs, all the men at No. 12 walked out, closing the mine for two days. The scabs were expelled from the union by the local and fined $100. Then, the district executive stepped into the affair and reversed the decisions the men had taken. Under the 1930 contract which these leaders in the process of negotiating it was made illegal stop work over any “labour trouble.” Yet the power to stop working is the only hold the worker has over the employer. Their leaders had signed it away.
In 1932 the full implications of the new kind of unionism were brought home. Because of depressed economic conditions, the mineowners were suggesting that workers place their necks on the chopping block. Wages would be cut ten per cent all around, and one out of four men would be “reallocated”, as they delicately put it, to unemployment. The union leaders argued for accepting these terms, but in a referendum vote the miners angrily turned it down. They would not consent this scheme of making the workers bear the brunt of economic depression. A rank and file movement against the mine closings was able to save about half the jobs the leaders didn’t think were worth fighting for. But as for the wage cut, the workers would have to take it. Exploiting the division between the workers and their leaders, Dosco went ahead and implemented it.
A FIGHTING UNION
Under capitalism the
working class has
but two courses to
follow: crawl
or fiqht.
During these years a strong feeling was growing that the miners should replace the UMW with a new union, as the UMW had itself replaced the PWA years ago. The opposition culminated in 1932 in the formation of a rival union --the Amalgamated Mineworkers of Nova Scotia. It started with an initial 3400 members and a pithead vote went overwhelmingly for the new union, but instead of restoring militancy and solidarity among workers, the new union divided them. The UMW refused to throw in the towel and allied itself even more closely with the corporation, which helped its partner through selective layoffs and harassment of men.
The way a basis for the new union was laid within the structure of the old is valuable to recall. “Militant committees” of workers were set up at every mine by men who wanted to restore the fighting traditions of the past. The plan was that these rank and file committees would eventually be the basis of Pit and Shop Committees. The Pit and Shop Committees would form the structural basis for the new unionism. The workers would elect their best fighters to these bodies which would control all the operations of the union. These committees would elect the district council and the executive officers would be responsible directly to the district council. This structure would ensure the greatest possible rank and file control of the union.
The constitution of the AMW is model of what a fighting union responsible to its membership could be like. All officers of the union were to be working miners: they would be compensated only for time lost on union business. The final decision-making power was firmly held by the workers- -the pithead referendum was the deciding authority on every issue. All mine employees except superintendents were to be eligible to join the union. The union’s locals would keep their autonomy. The Nova Scotia Miner, a newspaper which succeeded the Maritime Labour Herald in 1929, was to be the union’s official organ and would get four per cent of all union dues collected.
Among the policies approved by the 1932 convention were commitments to fight for unemployment insurance for Canadian workers (this was at a time when half the Canadian work force was jobless), to participate in any general strike called by Canadian trade unionists, and to fight for a six hour day.
The miners were only too aware of the drawbacks this “dual unionism” created. When rival unions compete within a given sector of the working class, they divide the workers’ strength. The owning class can sit comfortably back and enjoy the fracas. If the workers spend all their time fighting each other, they will have no time left to organize against their real oppressors.
Although by 1934, the AMW, with more than 6,000 members outnumbered the UMW’s membership, it was never recognized by Dosco and never took part in negotiations. Essentially it was a huge “pressure group” of men outside the “real” union. Realizing this tragic situation was unlikely to change, rank and file workers began to work for the reunification of the two unions. Without the participation of the leadership of either, a workers’ unity committee hammered out the basis for reunification.
The new District 26 included these safeguards: there was to be continuous reporting by the leaders to the workers, especially during negotiations; the pithead referendum would be the final deciding voice of the workers; the district would be autonomous within international union (to this day Cape Bretoners are one of two groups within the UMW to have this right). Finally, a priority was to be put on political militancy.
With the return of the most militant and aware workers to the mainstream of the UMW, discontent with the leadership spread. Dan Morrison, the man who had once carried the red flag in Glace Bay on May Day, still headed the union executive.
During contract negotiations in 1940-41 the leaders favoured a settlement handed down by a government comission. Immediately they faced a rank and file revolt. A general strike took place in three of the districts sub-districts and names were gathered on a petition to remove the executive. Shortly, the men resolved to go back to work on a “strike on the job” basis – cutting down production to eliminate profits.
Once again, John L. Lewis stepped into the picture. Lewis again appointed Silby Barrett provisional head of the district, just as in 1923. Barrett ordered men back to full production, Thirteen men were expelled from the UMW and the flow of money was cut off to defiant locals. Still, the tide of discontent could not be stemmed by the union officials alone. Dosco itself landed the final punches by locking out more than 1500 men and promising more reprisals against union militants. The union promised new negotiations and new elections, neither of which actually came about until the end of 1942.
In October 1942 a solid left wing slate swept the district. The district’s autonomy was regained, and such democratic checks on the leadership as pithead referendums and rank and file participation in negotiations were restored. Realizing the importance of putting forth the stand of the working class in a forceful and effective way, the mineworkers union bought the floundering Glace Bay Gazette. For eight years Glace Bay Gazette, once a ruling c1ass mouthpiece, transformed into one of the only daily newspapers Canadian workers have ever owned and operated.
working class has
but two courses to
follow: crawl
or fiqht.
During these years a strong feeling was growing that the miners should replace the UMW with a new union, as the UMW had itself replaced the PWA years ago. The opposition culminated in 1932 in the formation of a rival union --the Amalgamated Mineworkers of Nova Scotia. It started with an initial 3400 members and a pithead vote went overwhelmingly for the new union, but instead of restoring militancy and solidarity among workers, the new union divided them. The UMW refused to throw in the towel and allied itself even more closely with the corporation, which helped its partner through selective layoffs and harassment of men.
The way a basis for the new union was laid within the structure of the old is valuable to recall. “Militant committees” of workers were set up at every mine by men who wanted to restore the fighting traditions of the past. The plan was that these rank and file committees would eventually be the basis of Pit and Shop Committees. The Pit and Shop Committees would form the structural basis for the new unionism. The workers would elect their best fighters to these bodies which would control all the operations of the union. These committees would elect the district council and the executive officers would be responsible directly to the district council. This structure would ensure the greatest possible rank and file control of the union.
The constitution of the AMW is model of what a fighting union responsible to its membership could be like. All officers of the union were to be working miners: they would be compensated only for time lost on union business. The final decision-making power was firmly held by the workers- -the pithead referendum was the deciding authority on every issue. All mine employees except superintendents were to be eligible to join the union. The union’s locals would keep their autonomy. The Nova Scotia Miner, a newspaper which succeeded the Maritime Labour Herald in 1929, was to be the union’s official organ and would get four per cent of all union dues collected.
Among the policies approved by the 1932 convention were commitments to fight for unemployment insurance for Canadian workers (this was at a time when half the Canadian work force was jobless), to participate in any general strike called by Canadian trade unionists, and to fight for a six hour day.
The miners were only too aware of the drawbacks this “dual unionism” created. When rival unions compete within a given sector of the working class, they divide the workers’ strength. The owning class can sit comfortably back and enjoy the fracas. If the workers spend all their time fighting each other, they will have no time left to organize against their real oppressors.
Although by 1934, the AMW, with more than 6,000 members outnumbered the UMW’s membership, it was never recognized by Dosco and never took part in negotiations. Essentially it was a huge “pressure group” of men outside the “real” union. Realizing this tragic situation was unlikely to change, rank and file workers began to work for the reunification of the two unions. Without the participation of the leadership of either, a workers’ unity committee hammered out the basis for reunification.
The new District 26 included these safeguards: there was to be continuous reporting by the leaders to the workers, especially during negotiations; the pithead referendum would be the final deciding voice of the workers; the district would be autonomous within international union (to this day Cape Bretoners are one of two groups within the UMW to have this right). Finally, a priority was to be put on political militancy.
With the return of the most militant and aware workers to the mainstream of the UMW, discontent with the leadership spread. Dan Morrison, the man who had once carried the red flag in Glace Bay on May Day, still headed the union executive.
During contract negotiations in 1940-41 the leaders favoured a settlement handed down by a government comission. Immediately they faced a rank and file revolt. A general strike took place in three of the districts sub-districts and names were gathered on a petition to remove the executive. Shortly, the men resolved to go back to work on a “strike on the job” basis – cutting down production to eliminate profits.
Once again, John L. Lewis stepped into the picture. Lewis again appointed Silby Barrett provisional head of the district, just as in 1923. Barrett ordered men back to full production, Thirteen men were expelled from the UMW and the flow of money was cut off to defiant locals. Still, the tide of discontent could not be stemmed by the union officials alone. Dosco itself landed the final punches by locking out more than 1500 men and promising more reprisals against union militants. The union promised new negotiations and new elections, neither of which actually came about until the end of 1942.
In October 1942 a solid left wing slate swept the district. The district’s autonomy was regained, and such democratic checks on the leadership as pithead referendums and rank and file participation in negotiations were restored. Realizing the importance of putting forth the stand of the working class in a forceful and effective way, the mineworkers union bought the floundering Glace Bay Gazette. For eight years Glace Bay Gazette, once a ruling c1ass mouthpiece, transformed into one of the only daily newspapers Canadian workers have ever owned and operated.
THE STEELWORKER'S UNION
The greatest labour battles of the 1930’s and 1940’s were fought in the process of organizing the masses of previously unorganized workers -- especially in the basic industries -- into strong and militant industrial unions.
Usually the story is told in terms of John L. Lewis’ decision to form
the Congress of Industrial Organizations to oppose the traditional craft unionism of the American Federation of Labour. As part of its drive to organize industrial workers, the ClO set up its Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee in 1936. But by this time the steelworkers of Sydney had already organized themselves into a union, thus pioneering the drive to bring ClO-type unionism to Canada.
The steelworkers’ union at Sydney grew out of the workers’ frustrations in dealing with the company union set-up Besco had awarded them after the 1923 strike. It was in the “plant council” that a group of workers got together and decided to form a real union.
This, the steelworkers’ second union, was “organized on an industrial basis and completely under the domination of the rank and file.” It would fight for basic rights such as the eight hour day, time and one half for overtime work, seniority rights and other conditions we now consider essential. The union would also fight to get the workers back to the 1932 wage level.
Within two weeks of the formation of the Independent Steelworkers’ Union of Nova Scotia, Dosco was running scared. As membership in the new union climbed, Dosco tried to buy the workers off with wage increases - -ten per cent, then 7.5 per cent and then 7.5 per cent again. In the fall, Dosco granted a six-day work week, eliminating the notorious 24-hour swing shift on Sundays. Still, the union continued to attract members.
A vigorous recruiting drive, directed primarily by steelworker George MacEachern netted more than 2600 members. During the two year drive the ISWU became Lodge 1064 of the ClO’s Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee. Several years later the SWOC became the United Steel Workers of America.
In 1937 the right to the union check-off and collective bargaining were secured by forcing the Liberal government to enact the Nova Scotia Trade Union Act which guaranteed these rights to the union of the workers’ choice. Coincidentally, there was a provincial election two months later, and the Liberals reaped their reward for this “favour to labour” by sweeping the province.
One of the bad aspects of the SWOC was that organisers were appointed from above rather than from the rank and file. Although autonomy was ostensibly guaranteed to the Canadian locals in 1938, the practice of appointing organizers from above continued. This led to clashes with the elected leadership. When the SWOC appointed Forman Waye, an oldtime Cape Breton trade unionist, as organizer for Nova Scotia, local 1064 still took exception since this infringed the grassroots principles of democratic trade unionism.
But in spite of these problems, a fundamental victory had been won by the steelworkers of Cape Breton. The long years of struggle had culminated in the winning of a strong union. While Dosco made consistent profits at the steel plant -- $1.5 million in 1938 – they stood fast against giving the steelworkers any share. The basic rate at the steel plant remained 43½ cents an hour amounting to a weekly take home pay of less than $20 for 48 hours of work. With the cost of living jumping quickly ahead of these wages during the war, the stage was set for confrontation. This time the steelworkers were stronger and more united than ever before.
Usually the story is told in terms of John L. Lewis’ decision to form
the Congress of Industrial Organizations to oppose the traditional craft unionism of the American Federation of Labour. As part of its drive to organize industrial workers, the ClO set up its Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee in 1936. But by this time the steelworkers of Sydney had already organized themselves into a union, thus pioneering the drive to bring ClO-type unionism to Canada.
The steelworkers’ union at Sydney grew out of the workers’ frustrations in dealing with the company union set-up Besco had awarded them after the 1923 strike. It was in the “plant council” that a group of workers got together and decided to form a real union.
This, the steelworkers’ second union, was “organized on an industrial basis and completely under the domination of the rank and file.” It would fight for basic rights such as the eight hour day, time and one half for overtime work, seniority rights and other conditions we now consider essential. The union would also fight to get the workers back to the 1932 wage level.
Within two weeks of the formation of the Independent Steelworkers’ Union of Nova Scotia, Dosco was running scared. As membership in the new union climbed, Dosco tried to buy the workers off with wage increases - -ten per cent, then 7.5 per cent and then 7.5 per cent again. In the fall, Dosco granted a six-day work week, eliminating the notorious 24-hour swing shift on Sundays. Still, the union continued to attract members.
A vigorous recruiting drive, directed primarily by steelworker George MacEachern netted more than 2600 members. During the two year drive the ISWU became Lodge 1064 of the ClO’s Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee. Several years later the SWOC became the United Steel Workers of America.
In 1937 the right to the union check-off and collective bargaining were secured by forcing the Liberal government to enact the Nova Scotia Trade Union Act which guaranteed these rights to the union of the workers’ choice. Coincidentally, there was a provincial election two months later, and the Liberals reaped their reward for this “favour to labour” by sweeping the province.
One of the bad aspects of the SWOC was that organisers were appointed from above rather than from the rank and file. Although autonomy was ostensibly guaranteed to the Canadian locals in 1938, the practice of appointing organizers from above continued. This led to clashes with the elected leadership. When the SWOC appointed Forman Waye, an oldtime Cape Breton trade unionist, as organizer for Nova Scotia, local 1064 still took exception since this infringed the grassroots principles of democratic trade unionism.
But in spite of these problems, a fundamental victory had been won by the steelworkers of Cape Breton. The long years of struggle had culminated in the winning of a strong union. While Dosco made consistent profits at the steel plant -- $1.5 million in 1938 – they stood fast against giving the steelworkers any share. The basic rate at the steel plant remained 43½ cents an hour amounting to a weekly take home pay of less than $20 for 48 hours of work. With the cost of living jumping quickly ahead of these wages during the war, the stage was set for confrontation. This time the steelworkers were stronger and more united than ever before.
THE WAR - AND AFTER
“Instead of the government taking
over industry when the war broke out,
industry took over the government.”
--Clarie Gillis
There were a number of differences between the First World War and the Second World War. The main one was that the war which began in 1939 was more than a mad scramble among imperialist powers; it was a war against fascism and the brutal principles it stood for. It was a war against the effects of monopoly capitalism in Germany.
But on the home front, this war was not much different from the first. In fact, it was the war that really broke the back of the Great Depression and restored “prosperity.” Knowing that the war would provide capitalists with unlimited opportunities to make money, the government tried to put a ceiling of five per cent on profits during wartime. But they quickly found that under these conditions few capitalists were willing to participate in the war effort. The ceiling had to be raised to a more “normal” 25 per cent.
The war years saw the first strike of the newly organized steelworkers. Although business was booming at the steel plant, the workers were earning only the chance to pour their sweat and labour into the production of more and more steel. Conditions had changed little from the “slavery” of the 1920’s. To get a share of the profits they were creating, the workers would have to strike. In January 1943 the men at the steel plant walked off the job and, joined by fellow steelworkers at the Ontario plants, won their wage demands. (Actually, the men in Nova Scotia were short-changed by 5 cents an hour on the new national rate.)
One of the demands the steelworkers had struck for was a guarantee of jobs for soldiers returning from the war. Canada, the workers argued, could not honestly fight for the principles of freedom and democracy abroad unless some changes were made at home. But when the war ended the country was plunged into an economic crisis.
The aftermath of World War 2 wrought many contradictions for the labour movement across Canada. On the one hand it had substantially increased its membership during and immediately following the war. But the other side of the coin saw massive unemployment, particularly in the Maritimes. The steel works of Sydney and Trenton and the dockyards of Halifax and Saint John were less useful to the war profiteers who, with the blood and sweat of Maritimers fully in their grasp, left for Upper Canada.
During the war outmoded equipment and substandard plants in the Maritimes were used to the utmost. But now they were considered unprofitable and not worth restoring. Although Dosco was receiving a $3.00 a ton subsidy from the government a later investigation showed that the monopolies preferred to invest their money in industries in Upper Canada rather than keep their local operations in proper shape. According to Dosco boss Arthur Cross this was just part of “running a business in a business way”.
In 1946, the Dosco ‘business’ closed its steelworks at Trenton. The shutdown of the Trenton plant was one of the first big setbacks the economy of the Maritimes was to see in these years. By May of 1946 unemployment in Cape Breton reached 4,100, 1,600 of whom were veterans. A year later unemployment on the Island had soared to 10,000. In 1947~ over 1600 Cape Bretoners were shipped off or deported to Montreal and other centres to look for work. Many drifted back and by 1948 Sydney unemployment rates were the highest of any industrial centre in Canada -- 15.8% of the work force.
The post-war period was a turbulent time likened very much to the 1920’s. But there had been several changes in the structure of trade unionism since then. The steelworkers were no longer weak. United in an international union with their fellow workers in Canada and the U.S., they could mount massive pressures to win concessions from the steel monopolies. In the spring of 1946, flaunting government intervention and the threat of severe penalties the 14,000 men of the United Steelworkers brought the entire steel industry to a halt. The strike lasted ten weeks joined in solidarity by the miners and union policemen of Cape Breton.
In November of the same year the miners had begun negotiations for raises up to $2.50 per hour. The negotiation committee had been given a mandate to strike if the demands were not met by the company. But history repeated itself. The international stepped in again stating that the demands were too high and pressured the figure down to $1.40. However the company was still unwilling to agree to the raises and in January of 1947 the miners went out on strike for the first time in over twenty years.
The ball began rolling. Support messages poured in from around the province and across the country. In early spring the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour organized a demonstration in support of the UMW at the legislature in Halifax. It was the hope of organizers to see Premier Angus L. MacDonald and demand that the government intervene to ensure that miners would receive a fair wage. Miners and steelworkers from Cape Breton, workers from Halifax and around the province, and officials from the trade union movement all gathered for the march. The large demonstration of militant workers produced the meeting with Angus L. but it was hardly a success. After a lengthy discussion, Angus L. finally jumped up and said that “this is not Red Square where the workers gather to tell the government and business how to run the economy”. It had been fruitless and one tired worker expressed the sentiments of all when he replied to the premier. “I’ve learned one thing today. I’ve always been told that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state, but now you tell me that the workers control the economy. That sounds like democracy to me.”
Although enthusiasm ran high among the workers their leadership was weak and indecisive. After an initial $50,000 in strike funds the International cut District 26 off and in May of 1947 the miners were forced to sign a wage agreement tied to production goals. The men would get an extra 40 cents a day if certain increases in production were achieved within six months. This was the kind of agreement that hides the real difference between the capitalist and the worker that one is an owner and the other a producer of wealth. By tying wages to production -goals workers were forced to increase production and therefore the profits of the company in order to increase their own wages. They came to have a vested interest in the increased productivity of the company. A smokescreen had been established to cover the basic contradiction of capitalism from the workers’ eyes. Never in a hundred years would the militant workers of the 1920’s - - the men who had fought against the entire system of wage slavery -- have signed an agreement to guarantee profits to the mine-owners.
As a result of the strike Dosco blacklisted some 800 of the 13,000 miners. The corporation did not want any repetition of the militancy of the earlier years and so got rid of the potential troublemakers. The union did nothing to stop these purges. In fact in just a few short years the union would become one of the main instruments for rooting out workers with radical ideas. At the same time the Glace Bay Gazette was forced to fold for a lack of money leaving the Sydney Post-Record with a monopoly in “interpreting” the news in Cape Breton.
That spring of 1947 saw the unfolding of a drama that continues to be played out today. It was the first attempt to organize fishermen into trade unions. The Canadian Seamen’s Union (CSU) had been struck by the plight of the Nova Scotia fishermen and proceeded to set up and organize the Canadian Fishermen’s Union (CFU). But as is the case today the fishermen ran into the combined opposition of the companies, the courts and the Liberal government of Angus L. MacDonald.
The CFU had applied for certification on trawler vessels and was granted union status by the Labour Relations Board of Nova Scotia. But the companies challenged the certification in the courts and were successful in having it overturned. The fishermen went on strike to defend their union. Like a broken record the provincial government Intervened once again on the side of the companies. Because the fishermen were paid a percentage of the “catch” they were classified as part owners in the business, that is, as businessmen. According to the government if the fishermen were to band together they would become a monopoly corporation and the poor fish companies would surely suffer. Thus legislation was passed during the strike excluding fishermen from the Nova Scotia Trade Union Act and classed them instead as “co-adventurers” without the right to bargain collectively.
The fishermen had been dealt a heavy and lasting blow. The companies managed to get the boats, manned by strikers, back out to sea and effectively crushed the strike. Fishermen who had participated in the strike were blacklisted from the industry. Under the new legislation any further organization was prevented. It would be twenty years before fishermen would band together to fight again.
over industry when the war broke out,
industry took over the government.”
--Clarie Gillis
There were a number of differences between the First World War and the Second World War. The main one was that the war which began in 1939 was more than a mad scramble among imperialist powers; it was a war against fascism and the brutal principles it stood for. It was a war against the effects of monopoly capitalism in Germany.
But on the home front, this war was not much different from the first. In fact, it was the war that really broke the back of the Great Depression and restored “prosperity.” Knowing that the war would provide capitalists with unlimited opportunities to make money, the government tried to put a ceiling of five per cent on profits during wartime. But they quickly found that under these conditions few capitalists were willing to participate in the war effort. The ceiling had to be raised to a more “normal” 25 per cent.
The war years saw the first strike of the newly organized steelworkers. Although business was booming at the steel plant, the workers were earning only the chance to pour their sweat and labour into the production of more and more steel. Conditions had changed little from the “slavery” of the 1920’s. To get a share of the profits they were creating, the workers would have to strike. In January 1943 the men at the steel plant walked off the job and, joined by fellow steelworkers at the Ontario plants, won their wage demands. (Actually, the men in Nova Scotia were short-changed by 5 cents an hour on the new national rate.)
One of the demands the steelworkers had struck for was a guarantee of jobs for soldiers returning from the war. Canada, the workers argued, could not honestly fight for the principles of freedom and democracy abroad unless some changes were made at home. But when the war ended the country was plunged into an economic crisis.
The aftermath of World War 2 wrought many contradictions for the labour movement across Canada. On the one hand it had substantially increased its membership during and immediately following the war. But the other side of the coin saw massive unemployment, particularly in the Maritimes. The steel works of Sydney and Trenton and the dockyards of Halifax and Saint John were less useful to the war profiteers who, with the blood and sweat of Maritimers fully in their grasp, left for Upper Canada.
During the war outmoded equipment and substandard plants in the Maritimes were used to the utmost. But now they were considered unprofitable and not worth restoring. Although Dosco was receiving a $3.00 a ton subsidy from the government a later investigation showed that the monopolies preferred to invest their money in industries in Upper Canada rather than keep their local operations in proper shape. According to Dosco boss Arthur Cross this was just part of “running a business in a business way”.
In 1946, the Dosco ‘business’ closed its steelworks at Trenton. The shutdown of the Trenton plant was one of the first big setbacks the economy of the Maritimes was to see in these years. By May of 1946 unemployment in Cape Breton reached 4,100, 1,600 of whom were veterans. A year later unemployment on the Island had soared to 10,000. In 1947~ over 1600 Cape Bretoners were shipped off or deported to Montreal and other centres to look for work. Many drifted back and by 1948 Sydney unemployment rates were the highest of any industrial centre in Canada -- 15.8% of the work force.
The post-war period was a turbulent time likened very much to the 1920’s. But there had been several changes in the structure of trade unionism since then. The steelworkers were no longer weak. United in an international union with their fellow workers in Canada and the U.S., they could mount massive pressures to win concessions from the steel monopolies. In the spring of 1946, flaunting government intervention and the threat of severe penalties the 14,000 men of the United Steelworkers brought the entire steel industry to a halt. The strike lasted ten weeks joined in solidarity by the miners and union policemen of Cape Breton.
In November of the same year the miners had begun negotiations for raises up to $2.50 per hour. The negotiation committee had been given a mandate to strike if the demands were not met by the company. But history repeated itself. The international stepped in again stating that the demands were too high and pressured the figure down to $1.40. However the company was still unwilling to agree to the raises and in January of 1947 the miners went out on strike for the first time in over twenty years.
The ball began rolling. Support messages poured in from around the province and across the country. In early spring the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour organized a demonstration in support of the UMW at the legislature in Halifax. It was the hope of organizers to see Premier Angus L. MacDonald and demand that the government intervene to ensure that miners would receive a fair wage. Miners and steelworkers from Cape Breton, workers from Halifax and around the province, and officials from the trade union movement all gathered for the march. The large demonstration of militant workers produced the meeting with Angus L. but it was hardly a success. After a lengthy discussion, Angus L. finally jumped up and said that “this is not Red Square where the workers gather to tell the government and business how to run the economy”. It had been fruitless and one tired worker expressed the sentiments of all when he replied to the premier. “I’ve learned one thing today. I’ve always been told that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state, but now you tell me that the workers control the economy. That sounds like democracy to me.”
Although enthusiasm ran high among the workers their leadership was weak and indecisive. After an initial $50,000 in strike funds the International cut District 26 off and in May of 1947 the miners were forced to sign a wage agreement tied to production goals. The men would get an extra 40 cents a day if certain increases in production were achieved within six months. This was the kind of agreement that hides the real difference between the capitalist and the worker that one is an owner and the other a producer of wealth. By tying wages to production -goals workers were forced to increase production and therefore the profits of the company in order to increase their own wages. They came to have a vested interest in the increased productivity of the company. A smokescreen had been established to cover the basic contradiction of capitalism from the workers’ eyes. Never in a hundred years would the militant workers of the 1920’s - - the men who had fought against the entire system of wage slavery -- have signed an agreement to guarantee profits to the mine-owners.
As a result of the strike Dosco blacklisted some 800 of the 13,000 miners. The corporation did not want any repetition of the militancy of the earlier years and so got rid of the potential troublemakers. The union did nothing to stop these purges. In fact in just a few short years the union would become one of the main instruments for rooting out workers with radical ideas. At the same time the Glace Bay Gazette was forced to fold for a lack of money leaving the Sydney Post-Record with a monopoly in “interpreting” the news in Cape Breton.
That spring of 1947 saw the unfolding of a drama that continues to be played out today. It was the first attempt to organize fishermen into trade unions. The Canadian Seamen’s Union (CSU) had been struck by the plight of the Nova Scotia fishermen and proceeded to set up and organize the Canadian Fishermen’s Union (CFU). But as is the case today the fishermen ran into the combined opposition of the companies, the courts and the Liberal government of Angus L. MacDonald.
The CFU had applied for certification on trawler vessels and was granted union status by the Labour Relations Board of Nova Scotia. But the companies challenged the certification in the courts and were successful in having it overturned. The fishermen went on strike to defend their union. Like a broken record the provincial government Intervened once again on the side of the companies. Because the fishermen were paid a percentage of the “catch” they were classified as part owners in the business, that is, as businessmen. According to the government if the fishermen were to band together they would become a monopoly corporation and the poor fish companies would surely suffer. Thus legislation was passed during the strike excluding fishermen from the Nova Scotia Trade Union Act and classed them instead as “co-adventurers” without the right to bargain collectively.
The fishermen had been dealt a heavy and lasting blow. The companies managed to get the boats, manned by strikers, back out to sea and effectively crushed the strike. Fishermen who had participated in the strike were blacklisted from the industry. Under the new legislation any further organization was prevented. It would be twenty years before fishermen would band together to fight again.
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