Immigrants, Industrial Unions, and Social Reconstruction in the United States, 1916-1923

Between 1916 and 1922 workers in the United States participated in the longest and most intensive strike wave in the country's history. Four characteristics of the epoch's strikes help us understand the interaction between an emerging collectivist style of capitalism and workers' use of the strike weapon. First, individual strikes frequently closed an industry across the nation, or else precipitated city-wide sympathetic strikes. Second, an aspiration for industrial unionism was evident in both official collaboration among craft unions and all-grades action by workers undertaken in defiance of their unions. Third, much of the strike activity was informed by a One Big Union myth, despite the lack of influence of either the IWW or the OBU. Fourth, immigrants were especially prominent among the strikers. The attraction of notions of "workers' control" to older immigrants and the power of nationalism among all immigrants shaped the goals and structures of unions and of strikers. Although no united working-class movement could congeal, let alone prevail, under these circumstances, a significant minority of highly politicized workers remained to make its presence felt in urban life after the strike wave had subsided.