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From: Neil A Hofland< >
Subject: O. A. Tveitmoe - 3 of 5
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 10:03:01 +0000

Hi All,

Tveitmoe's style varied with the occasion. He could publish what
amounted to written lectures in a clear, logical, and sober fashion. When
ideas became bigger than his language could carry, he drifted into
slogans and epigrams. While he often pleaded for temperate language,
especially in negotiations, he did not hesitate to call names when
reconciliation was impossible or unwanted. He assessed the Petaluma Daily
Courier as follows: "One of the most bitter and densely ignorant, stupid,
irascible, anarchistic, anti-union-labor country sheets that has ever
mutilated grammar, spoiled rhetoric, or disgraced a venerable but
dilapidated printing press." His affinity for alliteration could go to
lengths like "Its [the trusts'] clammy claws clutch the whole world." To
the publisher-editor of the Los Angeles Times he wrote: "Pass, brutal
bully, into the oblivion you have merited." He described Los Angeles as
follows: "There she stands the queen of the southland, with her hand
outstretched for the tourists' gold and her heel upon the neck of the
wage worker. The mistress of Huntington's all-devouring industrial
system, bowing in servile obedience to a band of putrid pirates, whose
[19] carcasses were so rotten and decayed they could neither be saved nor
purified by all the salt and water in the Pacific Ocean." Rarely in labor
history have secretary's reports included poetic pieces like the
following: "When the earth was young and warm and moist, storing up
treasures and wealth for the life, comfort, happiness, and well being of
its future inhabitants, there was no 'Big Business' and no children of
Big Business." Tveitmoe rarely used humor. He could be ironic when he
converted MM&E (Manufacturers, Merchants, and Employers Association) to
"Money, Misery, and Exploitation' When William Randolph Hearst turned
against labor he was dubbed "Willie Worst." Tveitmoe was perhaps at his
best when confusion and comedy set in at the time the San Francisco
hackmen were being organized. Union drivers refused to take part in the
same funeral procession with nonunion hackmen. Each party therefore took
a separate route to the cemetery, but ultimately had to meet in a ugly
mood at the grave site. Tveitmoe's conclusion was that "A nonunion corpse
is nearly as bad as a living scab." {26}
Test and triumph came early for the new secretary of the Building Trades
Council of San Francisco. The mill workers, still on a ten-hour day,
wanted a reduction to eight. Organized Labor took a moderate and
conciliatory tone, hoping for successful negotiations. Before any strikes
were called, the mill owners declared a lockout on August 11, 1900.
Building contractors ran out of materials and unions throughout the
building trades were threatened with work stoppages. The Building Trades
Council established its own mill which ran around the clock, supplying
the contractors with the needed materials and thereby frustrating the
mill owners' plan to enforce support from the building contractors. The
mill owners had to yield, but they argued that now they could not compete
with outside mills having longer [20] hours and lower wages. The Council
came to the rescue. It promised that their unions would work only with
materials prepared by union mills where working conditions equaled or
surpassed those for which they had bargained, establishing not only a
closed shop but a closed market as well. It would be difficult to
overstate what this victory meant to the Building Trades Council in terms
of future power. From 1901 to 1905 it controlled not only its labor body
but the entire industry. When S. H. Kent, president of the Builders
Exchange, was asked in the East about labor problems in San Francisco,
his abrupt answer was, "We have no labor troubles, we give the men what
they want." In 1905, Tveitmoe could weep with Alexander the Great, "There
is nothing more to organize in the building industry in San Francisco."
The Labor Council, which regarded the Building Trades Council as its
subordinate, claimed credit for the victory. Tveitmoe was magnanimous. He
denied the truth of this, but pointed out that goals were more important
than who received the credit. All of labor had gained. {27}
In fact there were hardly any strikes within the building trades in San
Francisco for the next twenty years. The electrical workers wanted a
strike in 1907, but the Council refused to endorse it. When this union
refused to obey, it was expelled and the Council created a new union,
made up of members loyal to the central body. The most serious strike
came in 1910. Because they had to prepare their material, hod carriers
began work fifteen minutes early, morning and noon, making an
eight-and-one-half-hour day. They wanted an eight-hour day. The strike
put the bricklayers out of work, which in turn put others out of work.
After more fuss than the issue warranted, the strike was settled. The hod
carriers continued to work the additional half-hour but received extra
pay. By 1914 the employers had [21] banded together into the Building
Trades Employers Association. The Council waited for the day it could put
an end to this threat. This happened when the house-smiths wanted an
eight-hour day. Fifty firms agreed but ten companies locked out their
workers. The Employers Association demanded return to work under the old
conditions. The Council responded that these workers had been locked out
and that they had found other work. The lockout ended in 1917 and the
Employers Association disbanded.
The beginning of the end of the McCarthy-Tveitmoe regime can be traced
back to 1916. The longshoremen's strike of that year, which had nothing
to do with the Building Trades Council, aroused San Francisco employers.
The Chamber of Commerce created a law and order committee which became
the Industrial Relations Committee of the Chamber of Commerce when the
United States entered World War I. Its main objective was to make San
Francisco an open-shop city. The war did much to demoralize the building
industry. Perhaps half of the workers went to the shipyards. Prices rose
faster than wages, yet there were no strikes. The attitude grew that San
Francisco was backward, that Los Angeles, with its open-shop policy, was
thriving, that the unions prevented initiative on the part of the
employers, that the closed-shop system prevented the normal flow of
capital into construction, and that union rules were oppressive and added
to costs.
Confrontation took place in 1920 when seventeen of the building crafts
unions asked for an increase in wages. Their case was just. Based on 1914
index figures, the cost of living stood at 200 while wages registered
170. The Builders Exchange, the employers' association in the building
trades, now a strong body of contractors and suppliers, ordered the
employers to refuse all increases. Negotiations broke down and the
Exchange [22] threatened a lockout for October 7, 1920. The Industrial
Relations Committee of the Chamber of Commerce held the balance of power.
The Building Trades Council agreed to arbitrate. While the arbitrators
were in session prices began to fall at an astonishing rate and when the
award was made the arbitration board announced a seven-and-one-half
percent reduction in wages. The Building Trades Council refused to accept
the award, arguing that the issue was only whether wages should be
increased. The Builders Exchange declared a lockout for May 9, 1921. The
Industrial Relations Committee obtained the support of bankers,
suppliers, and other local employers. Union employers could obtain
neither materials nor loans. The Building Trades Council tried, as it had
done in 1900, to provide the needed supplies, but the materials field was
too broad. Against a background of earlier successes, it tried litigation
but failed. The Building Trades Council voted to accept the award on June
10. But there was more humiliation. The employers notified their
employees that they could return to work only under open-shop conditions.
A general strike followed, but it was soon lost, marking a complete
overthrow of the closed-shop system which had dominated San Francisco
building trades for more than twenty years. Tveitmoe, now a sick man, was
spared much of the hostility that came P. H. McCarthy's way. McCarthy
resigned as president of the San Francisco Building Trades Council in
January, 1922, and shortly thereafter as president of the state council.
Tveitmoe as secretary did likewise, but continued as editor of Organized
Labor. Against a background of beneficial labor legislation which had
been passed in California after 1910, the defeat was not as crushing as
it would appear on the surface.
How did McCarthy and Tveitmoe transform a fledgling central labor body
into a machine that for twenty [23] years dominated the building industry
in San Francisco, if not in the entire state of California? The answer is
centralization of power, discipline, and conservative prudence. From the
beginning the Council isolated its component unions by not allowing them,
at the cost of expulsion, to ally themselves with any other federation.
Believing that solidarity was more important than numbers, care was
exercised as to what unions were admitted, and unruly ones were expelled.
The Council had, in fact, the awesome power to unseat delegates regarded
as detrimental to the interests of the Council, and could therefore crush
any seeds of strife that could grow into civil wars. This power went so
far that several delegates were fined in 1914 for taking President
McCarthy's name in vain. Another source of power was that only the
Council could issue quarterly working cards, without which no union man
could work. In some cases unions were kept in line through heavy
assessments which created debt obligations. At no time was there any hint
that the officers of the Council were corrupt in financial matters, but
there were frequent mutterings that they intervened in local union
elections, and that the election laws were loose enough to permit
manipulation.
Whatever the truth may be, McCarthy's and Tveitmoe's positions were
secure as long as they had the support of the Council delegates. It was a
sore point for many that a general referendum was not used between 1904
and 1921. In fact, the rules did not even require majority support of the
individual unions, only that of the larger ones. Unions with 100 or fewer
members seated three delegates. Larger unions added one delegate for each
100 additional members. For example, the Carpenters Union, Local 22, of
which McCarthy was also president, had twenty delegates, ten percent of
the entire Council. This practice was in direct violation of [24]
American Federation of Labor (AFL) regulations which did not permit
representation from any one union to exceed ten. So confident was the
Council that it did not affiliate with the AFL until 1908, when the AFL
granted flexibility on some of its rules. {28}
If the methods of the Council were not at all times democratic, the
blessings that flowed from it were many. It brought about much needed
uniformity of practice within the building trades. Independent strikes
became virtually impossible. Without the support of the Council, strikes
would lead to certain Failure and expulsion. Control over the business
agents prevented any "private arrangements" between union and employer
and eliminated graft like "strike insurance." The Council brought into
line unions which exacted too high initiation fees, imposed exorbitant
fines, or gave unduly severe examinations. In fact, the Council
functioned as a court of appeals and could reverse decisions made by
local unions. If the unions at times chafed at their loss of former
independence, the San Francisco employers were pleased. So carefully did
the Council monitor the economic climate that it informed its unions in
1903 that it would endorse no demands for higher wages until times became
more prosperous. When the earthquake struck San Francisco in 1906, the
Council suspended its working regulations and did not exploit the
disaster to labor's advantage. The same cannot be said for many other
segments of the San Francisco business world. {29}
Contributing to the success of the Council and to the building of a
trust base with San Francisco employers was Tveitmoe's patience and
"pragmatic conservatism' Organized labor, he pointed out, was as
susceptible to arrogance of power as any other group, and periods
following successful strikes were specially dangerous. He urged that the
unions be loyal to their [25] employers, that they live up to the letter
of their contracts, that the business agents be candid and open in their
negotiations and never resort to "diplomatic trickery.'' He went so far
as to support fines for shoddy workmanship. Tveitmoe, to be sure, was
never gentle with external agencies that threatened organized labor, but
he was no less firm when he went after unions for petty quibbling, for
feuding, for incessant jurisdictional disputes, and for their too
frequent attention to immediate goals at the expense of long-range ones.
While Tveitmoe defended to the end labor's right to strike, he saw it as
a last resort --- as an industrial war where the losses on both sides
were heavy. He believed that seventy-five percent of past strikes could
have been prevented, and that the ideal union was the one that reached
its goals with the fewest strikes. But, if a strike could not be averted,
careful preparation was a prerequisite: educational meetings, increase in
dues, acquisition of good lawyers, sympathy of at least one or two daily
newspapers, and finally the patience to wait for the right moment. {30}
Tveitmoe's "go slowly" thinking, which prevailed throughout his
lifetime, emerged as early as 1901. When the Labor Council took in a rash
of newly-created unions, hastily put together by an eastern organizer who
did not remain to watch over the children he had fostered, Tveitmoe
became worried. "A group of men with union cards," he wrote, "is no more
a union than a pile of bricks is a house." It was sad, he continued, "to
behold the embryo union tumble out of the cradle and endeavor to carry
away the earth and the planets on top of it." Borrowing imagery from Hans
Christian Anderson, he noted that the Labor Council had "gathered under
its wings a varied collection of eggs and hatched some curious ducklings
and labeled them trade unions." Unskilled labor had done what skilled
labor never dreamt [26] of doing, namely, "Organize today! Strike
tomorrow!" {31} When one shaves away the bombastic Populist-Labor
rhetoric that Tveitmoe could and often did use, a responsible citizen
emerges.

More through fickle fate than through personal wish or design, Tveitmoe
became involved in San Francisco politics. The background for this is
highly complicated, but a simplified explanation must suffice. The
teamster strike in San Francisco in 1901 was bitter and violent. When the
teamsters were defeated, they, and many unions with them, felt that the
city administration had favored the employers. This led to the formation
of the Union Labor party, which considered Andrew Furuseth as a candidate
for mayor. He not only refused to be a candidate, he rejected the entire
concept of the party, calling it "class politics," a party rising more
out of resentment than common sense. Furuseth reversed his position later
when a San Francisco grand jury failed to indict men involved in violence
against the unions. We already have class politics, he concluded. {32}
Tveitmoe, speaking for his Council, opposed the idea of a labor party,
claiming that a municipality was best served when public servants were
selected from the broader community without regard to class. What was
worse, he added, working men ceased to be working men when they became
politicians. {33} Undaunted by such rebuffs from high places, the party
found a candidate for mayor in Eugene E. Schmitz, president of the
Musicians Union, an orchestra conductor and a composer of modest talents.
Astonishingly enough the young, handsome, affable, but politically
inexperienced Schmitz blossomed into a successful campaigner, and to the
consternation of the "better people" won the 1901 election. Organized
Labor, which had supported the Democratic candidate, proved to be a
gracious loser and [27]
Tveitmoe wrote kindly about Schmitz as a person. But when Schmitz ran
for reelection in 1903, Tveitmoe was far from gracious: "The prattling
parasite who preaches class hatred and scares away investors from this
great city is a public enemy. {34} In this election Organized Labor
supported the Republican candidate, but Schmitz won handily.
When the next election came up, in 1905, new developments had taken place
which led Tveitmoe's newspaper to support the Union Labor party as
strongly as it had formerly opposed it. Many were puzzled, claiming
opportunism as a motive. Whatever motives may have been involved, the
surface arguments were convincing enough. The San Francisco Citizens'
Alliance, an avowed enemy of labor, had been formed in 1904. Organized
Labor believed that the Alliance was behind the move which fused the
Democrats and Republicans on a common ticket for the sole purpose of
defeating the Union Labor party. The alternative to supporting the Union
Labor party, the argument went, was to back the Citizens' Alliance, an
unthinkable position. The Building Trades Council could not have chosen a
worse time to shift position. Schmitz and his administration were
embroiled in multiple but as yet unproven charges of graft and
corruption. Later, word had it that when the Union Labor party was swept
into office in the fall of 1905, all the burglar alarms in San Francisco
went off on their own initiative. {35}
Dating back to the election of 1901, Abraham Ruef a brilliant attorney
and a genius in campaign strategy, had step-by-step entrenched himself as
"city boss." He had visions of becoming a United States senator, and was
more interested in power than in money, though he did not shun the
latter. He had taught Sehmitz all he needed to know to be mayor and
proved to be an able counselor in both good deeds and bad. Sketched in
bold lines, the [28] picture was as follows: If business establishments
both small and large were in doubt as to the outcome of franchises,
licenses, contracts, and proposed ordinances, they could "retain" Ruef as
their attorney; he in turn would exert influence on Schmitz and his
eighteen-member Board of Supervisors. The largest of the "attorney fees"
that Ruef received was $200,000 from Patrick Calhoun's United Railroads
of San Francisco. Ruef passed on some of his disguised bribe money to
Schmitz and the supervisors.
Some of the leading citizens of San Francisco had become suspicious as
early as 1902. Among them were Fremont Older, the crusading editor of the
San Francisco Bulletin, and Rudolph Spreckels, the multi-millionaire
owner of the San Francisco Gas and Electric Company. They wanted to "get
Ruef" and "clean up" the city. President Theodore Roosevelt assisted. He
released to their services Francis J. Heney, a government special
prosecutor, and William J. Burns, a competent and relentless detective
who worried little about the ethics or legality of his methods. In this
arrangement, Spreckels paid the bills and Older provided the publicity.
The famous San Francisco graft prosecution, however, was not formally
inaugurated until October 20, 1906. For five months the state labored to
build a case on slender evidence. Then in March, 1907, Older, Spreckels,
Heney, and Burns forced one Golden M. Roy, under threat of exposure for a
forgery in Oklahoma, to participate in a trap which led to the successful
bribing of several supervisors. This trap in turn led to confessions from
sixteen supervisors that they had accepted bribes. They were granted
immunity for the evidence they provided against Ruef and the mayor. Based
on a promise of immunity for all but one indictment, Ruef confessed on
May 15, 1907, and changed his [29] plea to guilty. The "Immunity
Contract" was, however, later voided and Ruef was tried again, found
guilty, and sentenced to San Quentin penitentiary for fourteen years. In
a separate trial, Schmitz was found guilty on June 13, 1907. The judge
ordered him jailed immediately and on July 8 sentenced him to San Quentin
for five years. The district court of appeals later reversed this
decision and was upheld by the state supreme court. {36}
On January 17, 1907, Schmitz appointed Tveitmoe and J. J. O'Neil, editor
of the Labor Clarions, the Labor Council's newspaper, to fill two
vacancies on the Board of Supervisors, and they were inducted into office
January 21, 1907. As matters turned out, they were the only two
supervisors not involved in the graft scandal. When the mayor was absent,
Tveitmoe found himself in the unique position of presiding over a board
made up of self-confessed felons, men whom Tveitmoe had labeled as
lacking even "the honesty to stay bought." The reason that these men
continued to serve on the board for more than three months after their
confession was that they had become Rudolph Spreckels' puppets. Had they
resigned immediately, then an indicted but yet not convicted mayor would
have had to appoint their replacements. When the mayor was sentenced on
July 8, his office had to be declared vacant. A likely course of events
would have been that the supervisors would elect Tveitmoe or O'Neil as
mayor. The supervisors would then resign from office, leaving their
vacancies to be filled by the new mayor. Nothing of the sort happened.
Instead, the supervisors, at the behest of Spreckels, chose Charles
Boxton, a fellow grafter, as mayor. This gave the prosecutors time to
produce a "candidate" from outside the board. A week later the "boodle
board," as it had come to be known, elected Edward B. Taylor their mayor.
His first order of business [30] in that office was to accept the
resignations of those who had voted for him. Tveitmoe declared that he
would not sit on the new board until a court had ruled on the legality of
this election. When the court found the methods valid, Tveitmoe returned
to fill out his term. {37}
"We are intent on redeeming the city and vindicating Union Labor," wrote
Tveitmoe to his wife and his son Angelo, who were visiting relatives in
Norway. In the coming election he hoped for a ticket "made up of the
best, ablest and cleanest men in the city." {38} This was more than a
dream. By 1905 the Union Labor party had become rather a name than a
reality, and a rehabilitated Union Labor party had high potential for
success. In addition, public opinion was turning against the prosecution,
which many felt had promised more than it had delivered. True, they had
succeeded in convicting two men for receiving bribes, but progress was
slow in prosecuting the sources of bribes higher up. By August, 1907,
Tveitmoe was frequently mentioned as the likely candidate for mayor on
the Union Labor ticket; in fact, he was the only one mentioned. Tveitmoe
made no formal announcement, but played an "I am in the hands of friends"
role, letting, as it were, the office seek him rather than he it. {39}

==============End of Part 3

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• O. A. Tveitmoe - 3 of 5 by Neil A Hofland< >