Audio Of Historian Michael Kazin On Labor and the 1906 Quake

http://www.sfbctc.org/71805-kazin.htm

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July18, 2005

Historian Michael Kazin: Labor and the 1906 Quake

By Doug Perry
‘Organized Labor’

Labor historians and local union leaders came together at the ILWU Hall in San Francisco last week to hear a lecture by Professor Michael Kazin of Georgetown University. Kazin is best known in local Bay Area circles for his book, "Barons of Labor-The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era." His book contains the definitive history of the construction unions from the late 1890s to the mid-1920s. In his presentation on July 12th Kazin focused on the period immediately before and after the 1906 earthquake. Guests at the event were also treated to songs and banjo music from the turn of the century by Jim Nelson and Jack Chernos.

The event was sponsored by the 'Rebuilding San Francisco' Committee that was formed earlier this year to commemorate the working people who rebuilt the City after the quake of 1906. Professor Kazin was introduced by ILWU historian, Harvey Schwartz. He was welcomed by Michael Theriault, the Secretary Treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council. In his remarks Kazin acknowledged the presence of Stan Smith retired Secretary Treasurer of the Building Trades Council who had helped him gather material for his book.

Kazin received his Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1983 and had worked as an adjunct professor at San Francisco State University, the University of California and San Francisco City College. He has been a professor in the History Department at Georgetown since 1999.

Kazin's remarks provide us with some social perspective regarding the rise of union power in San Francisco in the Progressive era, and focused specifically on 'how one of America's most powerful labor movements confronted the challenge of the earthquake.' He describes the power of the Building Trades Council headed by Patrick Henry McCarthy and Olaf Tveitmoe. Professor Kazin contends that the unions gained power during this period because most of the workers were from a homogeneous ethnic group, white European.

They identified themselves as members of the 'working class' with interests separate from their employers. Kazin also talks about the racially charged atmosphere in the City at that time with the Asiatic Exclusion League and points out that Asians were systematically denied union membership.

The Building Trades Council was very active politically during this period and worked with the San Francisco Labor Council - most of the time. They joined forces under the banner of the Union Labor Party and ultimately elected P.H. McCarthy as Mayor in 1909, with a pro-union Board of Supervisors.

Ray Stannard Baker in an essay in 1904 entitled, 'Where Unionism Holds Undisputed Sway,' comments, "In San Francisco we have a new kind of industrial peace, a condition perhaps without precedent, in which the ancient master, the employer, has been hopelessly defeated and unionism reigns supreme."

Kazin ruminated on the reasons for the rise of union power during this period commenting that economic power must be matched with political activism. He suggested that labor needs to represent all of the working class and not just it's members, and that you need a labor culture and social cohesiveness for a strong labor movement.

Before the 1906 earthquake Kazin describes the power of the building trades unions who had coalesced around their Council with a membership of from 20,000 to 30,000 members. He mentions that the Council did not have written collective bargaining agreements but rather bargained directly with the employer setting wage rates, hours and conditions of employment. Contractors were tightly controlled by the Council and often fined for labor violations. Kazin says that when the earthquake hit on April 18, 1906, 20,000 buildings were destroyed, 300,000 people were evacuated and that 450 people were killed, by Mayor Schmitz's official count. He notes that San Francisco manufacturing went into a permanent decline and was eclipsed by Los Angeles. By edict, the saloons were closed for over two months. The Building Trades reported that three quarters of their members had lost their homes and their tools of the trade.

Kazin reports that U.S. Army General Fred Funston based at the Presidio had his troops patrol the City in the days immediately following the disaster. A Citizens Committee was set up and there followed a brief respite from class hostility. The 'Organized Labor' newspaper in the name of eliminating partisan politics, vowed to restrain it's demands with the headline, ''No Greed, Small Profits and Plenty of Western Patriotism.' The Building Trades Council imposed a wage freeze.

In a few months the goodwill subsided and organized labor consolidated its political power. An initial pay raise of $1 per day by the plumbers, paved the way for other craftsmen who raised their pay by an average of 20 percent in the first year of reconstruction.

The reaction of the employers was predictable and their spokesman, Patrick Calhoun of the United Railroads said that, 'labor's refusal to hold down wages was a treacherous act.' Calhoun called P.H. McCarthy, 'a czar with power to strangle the future of the community.'

Kazin reports that in the next year the unions and class-conscious businessmen returned to their former roles as antagonists, with the streetcar strike in 1907. The Carman's union demanded a wage of $3 a day. Strikebreakers were called in to drive the streetcars and in the ensuing strife 25 people were killed and 2,000 injured. It was only two years later that P.H. McCarthy was elected mayor with 46% of the vote in a 3-way race. He was the last union mayor in San Francisco. Kazin commented that labor's power peaked during this period. He notes that in the 1920s the open shop movement took hold and that labor did not rebound until the 1930s.

The presentation by Professor Kazin gave us a vivid picture of San Francisco's labor history around the turn of the century. For those of us working on the 'Rebuilding San Francisco' committee, the information was especially graphic and relevant to our goal of highlighting the contributions of working people in this era.


This article quotes freely from the remarks of Professor Michael Kazin on July 12th and from his book, Barons of Labor.


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DEFD81438F934A35755C0A961948260
June 7, 1987
IN SHORT: NONFICTION
By JULIA GILDEN

LEAD: BARONS OF LABOR: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era. By Michael Kazin. (University of Illinois, $24.95.) This welcome labor history covers broad trends in San Francisco in the Progressive Era: building trades union and business interplay, the personalities and careers of the ''labor barons,'' mayors of San Francisco who came out of the labor movement and the decline of labor influence prior to World War I.

BARONS OF LABOR: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era. By Michael Kazin. (University of Illinois, $24.95.) This welcome labor history covers broad trends in San Francisco in the Progressive Era: building trades union and business interplay, the personalities and careers of the ''labor barons,'' mayors of San Francisco who came out of the labor movement and the decline of labor influence prior to World War I. San Francisco's story is unique and is one that has not been told until now. The Great Earthquake of 1906 and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 provided a wealth of construction work and arenas of influence for San Francisco's building trades. ''In the years from 1912 through 1915,'' Michael Kazin writes, ''every public event in San Francisco took second place to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The exposition was unmatched as a device to boost the good name of San Francisco and the morale of its citizens. . . . It promoted a growing American commercial empire around the rim of the Pacific. It even made a profit.'' This, in spite of intense haggling between laborers and business promoters to control the exposition builders' conditions. The Progressive labor leaders in San Francisco displayed a class consciousness not evident in any other American city in the early 20th century, a time when most Eastern labor movements were weakened by internal issues. Mr. Kazin, who teaches history at American University, suggests his book ''may prove enlightening to readers concerned with the severe crisis facing contemporary unionism: an aggressive corporate elite, a dwindling membership, and an increasingly hostile political environment, the very same problems faced by unions seventy years ago in San Francisco.''