Paterson Strike Addendum

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post on the Paterson strike pageant, I was moderating a panel of really first-rate historians on the anniversary of the strike. I am going to write up the panel for another forum pretty soon and will link to it. But I wanted to mention one important point that came out of the discussion. Steve Golin, who wrote the definitive book on the Paterson strike, and Mary Anne Trasciatti, who is writing a biography of Elizabeth Gurly Flynn, both made the point that while workers lost the strike, the real defeat was for the IWW. The workers themselves did manage to stave off the four-loom system they dreaded for awhile after the strike and eventually did have successful labor actions down the road.

But it was the IWW that the Paterson loss and the pageant’s ineffectiveness destroyed. Again, the union was completely devastated in the east. Bill Haywood and others wanted to win in Paterson and then start organizing the looms in Pennsylvania. That never happened. Flynn and Haywood and others got into a huge internal battle over who was at fault. Most interesting, and I didn’t really know this, both Flynn and Haywood began calling for centralized control over strikes after the Paterson debacle, which was counter to the IWW’s rhetorical emphasis on placing power in the hands of workers. When workers didn’t respond the way Haywood and Flynn wanted, that became much less appealing in practice than theory.