This Day in Labor History: May 18, 1900

On May 18, 1900, the International Association of Machinists and employers signed what became known as the Murray Hill Agreement. This brief and failed attempt to create rational labor relations by agreement in the iron industry demonstrated both the possibilities and limitations of Gilded Age relations in the Progressive Era.

As the nineteenth century moved toward its conclusion, a lot of American workers finally began to realize that capitalism was really not working for them. Immigrant socialists and anarchists had said this for years, but it took a long time before the core of the American labor movement was ready to hear that message. Instead, they preferred one off ideas such as Henry George’s single tax or Chinese Exclusion or Edward Bellamy’s cooperative commonwealth–anything but questioning the core values of the system. But the Panic of 1893 pretty much killed the dream of the 19th century laborer as a skilled man with a single income using his power as a union member to control conditions of work. If most workers really did not reject capitalism–and most did not–the appeal of socialism had more power than ever before.

By 1897, this new spirit had changed the International Association of Machinists. The IAM was a pretty typical craft union, mostly working in metal fabricating plants of various sizes and the railroad repair shops. These workers had been hit pretty hard by the beginnings of scientific management. They were unhappy at their annual convention that year. They called for the 8-hour day by May 1, 1898, with a big strike if that didn’t happen. However, at the same time, as that date approached, English employers were locking out the Amalgamated Society of Engineers in England over similar issues. The union leadership got scared and backed off. The day came and went.

The problems did not change though. In Chicago especially, IAM members determined to fight for change and the union generally supported them. Class consciousness was on the rise with these workers. Chicago was the great union city in America at that time–thank German immigrants especially–and so the pressure for employers to work with unions in that city was high and backed up by protests, boycotts, attacking scabs, refusing to sell to nonunion employers, and other strategies. So, Chicago IAM workers proposed a new set of demands in 1900 that included a 9 hour day, closed shop, seniority in layoffs, recognition of shop committees, and a 28 cents per hour minimum wage. Employers refused and the workers went on strike on March 1. This soon spread to other IAM centers in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, and Paterson.

Employers in Chicago came to support compromise pretty easily, largely because they felt they needed to. Seventeen firms caved entirely. The rest decided to work together with the union, coming up with a national agreement on the issues. They worrired that if they cut the workweek, they would face overcompetition from other cities where the union had not forced that issue, a reasonable concern in an era when overcompetition was a huge problem in many industries. The employers did not care about the wage, since most workers made more than that anyway. They were OK with some level of union recognition too. They hated the idea of a grievance procedure though, since management so detested giving workers any prerogatives on these issues.

But the bigger point was one of rare maturity in the employer class of this time–come to a national agreement. So the National Metal Trades Association and the IAM sat down and hashed out what would be known as the Murray Hill Agreement. IAM president James O’Connell was more than happy to do so. Now, this led to a lot of compromise and some of the Chicago workers who started this were angry by what they considered too much caving by union leadership. Still. the overall victory was significant for the union. The work week would be reduced to 57 hours in 6 months and then 6 months later, to 55 hours. They created arbitration systems to work out questions around wages, apprenticeship rules, and other outstanding questions. The union did give up their demands for the closed shop, the minimum wage, and seniority rights, though again, the second of those was not really much of an issue for most workers because a skilled machinists made a lot more than that generally. That happened first in Chicago, where workers did end up approving the end of the strike by a 3028-396 vote. Then came the national agreement negotiations.

The final national agreement came together on May 18, 1900 after eight days of bargaining at the Murray Hill Hotel in New York (nice neighborhood today), with O’Connell representing the IAM and several of the biggest iron employers in the country showing up personally for management. They worked up something slightly better for the union than the initial Chicago deal. For one, the IAM got that 55 hour week down to 54 hours. A permanent arbitration board was created. But remember that union contracts also discipline workers, which is one reason the Industrial Workers of the World eschewed contracts entirely upon its creation in 1905. The agreement also ensured workers could not strike for the duration of the contract.

Now, for socialists, this was a huge victory. Much of the IAM leadership were active in one or another socialist party. For them, using scientific methods to create labor standards was serious progress out of the era of industrial strife and toward the era of rationalization and agreement around common cause. Moreover, both the labor movement and the iron manufacturers did the work to get their members to go along. The National Civic Federation, which combined mostly elite progressive capitalists with “respectable” members of the labor movement such as United Mine Workers of America head John Mitchell, brought everyone involved to its big conference at the end of the year as a model for the future.

But Murray Hill did not last long. Part of industry’s goal was to end the sympathy strikes that they believed plagued the workplace and the IAM had to stop its members from doing that when other unions struck. Moreover, the win did empower workers to make more demands upon employers, with led employers to demand their national leaders resist the union. So within a year, the Murray Hill Agreement was basically dust, with recriminations on both sides flying in the media. Union power would remain strong in Chicago, and a 1902 strike there led to even greater gains for workers in that town, but employers mostly took the initiative back elsewhere. In the end, it was not possible for employers and unions to come to a lasting agreement with active government involvement, and that would not happen until the New Deal over three decades later.

I borrowed from David Montgomery, Workers Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles, to write this post.

This is the 563rd post in this series. Previous posts are archived here.