ethnicity, class, and wilsonian internationalism reconsidered: the mexican-american and...

Ethnicity, Class, and WilsonianInternationalism Reconsidered: The

Mexican-American and Irish-AmericanImmigrant Left and U.S. Foreign

Relations, –*

As revolution convulsed Mexico in , the Los Angeles-based Partido LiberalMexicano (PLM) issued an urgent appeal to American workers to support therevolution and to work against U.S. intervention in the conflict. “The MexicanRevolution,” wrote the passionate anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón on behalfof the PLM organizing junta, “is labor’s revolution because the Mexicans havebeen stripped to the bone by the very powers which labor is organized tofight. . . . The profits wrung from American labor have been taken across theMexican border and used to grind out even vaster fortunes by slavery of thegrossest type [.]” Flores Magón thus counseled American workers not tobecome Wall Street’s or Washington’s “cat’s paw” but instead to work with thePLM in aiding the true revolutionary forces in Mexico. Over the next dozenyears, Ricardo Flores Magón and his brother Enríque remained in the UnitedStates despite criticism from other Mexican revolutionary leaders, and prose-cution and imprisonment by U.S. authorities. The Flores Magóns and the PLMjunta, as well as an extensive network of PLM cells that operated throughoutthe American Southwest and Northern Mexico, propagandized incessantlyagainst the interventionist policies of the Woodrow Wilson administration anddeveloped searing indictments of its policies toward Mexico, Latin America,World War I, Pan Americanism, and the League of Nations. U.S. workers, theyurged, must thwart Wilson’s imperialist designs throughout the world and workon behalf of the Mexican revolution because their own future well-beingdepended on international labor solidarity.

D H, Vol. , No. (Fall ). © The Society for Historians of AmericanForeign Relations (SHAFR). Published by Blackwell Publishers, Main Street, Malden, MA,, USA and Cowley Road, Oxford, OX JF, UK.

*Research for this article was made possible by grants from the American Council of LearnedSocieties and the Bird and Bird Research Fund at the University of Maine. I thank them for theirgenerosity.. “Manifesto to Fellow Workers from the Organizing Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party,”

May , per R. Flores Magón in U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,Investigation of Mexican Affairs, th Cong., d sess., , S. Doc. , . See also “Manifesto of

Similarly, Irish-American labor and left activists, although neither anarchistnor socialist in their predominant orientation, sought to rally the Americanworking class on behalf of the Irish revolution by appealing to principles ofinternational working-class solidarity. Groups such as the Chicago-basedLabor Bureau of the American Commission on Irish Independence, the Pearse-Connolly Irish Independence Clubs in the West, and the Irish ProgessiveLeague and American Women Pickets for the Enforcement of America’s WarAims in the East all characterized the Irish revolution as a key battle in theinternational class struggle whose outcome would critically influence thewell-being of workers in the United States. As John Fitzpatrick, president ofboth the powerful Chicago Federation of Labor and the Labor Bureau of theAmerican Commission on Irish Independence explained, “the same imperial-istic British capitalists who are grinding down the Irish workers into subjection,through alliance with the pro-British New York House of Morgan Companyand other supposed money concerns are exploiting the workers of the UnitedStates.” Dismissing claims by Wilson that a future League of Nations wouldensure Ireland’s independence, the leaders of the Labor Bureau campaignedagainst the League on the grounds that it would be dominated by imperialistgovernments that were controlled by “money bosses” seeking “to cement aninternational control of industry by the small group of men who manipulatethe bulk of the world’s wealth.”

the Organizing Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party to the Workers of the United States,”Regeneración, March , , on microfilm, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison,Wisconsin. On the PLM movement in the United States see especially Colin MacLachlan,Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution: The Political Trials of Ricardo Flores Magon in the United States(Berkeley, ); James Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands: Anarchism and the Plan of San Diego, –(Norman, OK, ), –; Juan Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores: Ricardo Flores Magón y El PartidoLiberal Mexicano: A Eulogy and Critique (Los Angeles, ); Dirk Raat, Revoltosos: Mexico’s Rebels in theUnited States, – (College Station, ); Emilio Zamora, The World of the Mexican Worker in Texas(College Station, ); Thomas C. Langham, Border Trials: Ricardo Flores Magón and the MexicanLiberals (El Paso, ); and Douglas Munroy, “Fence Cutters, Sedicioso, and First-Class Citizens:Mexican Radicalism in America,” in The Immigrant Left in the United States, ed. Paul Buhle and DanGeorgakas (New York, ), –. For a sampling of the activities and perspectives of PLM cellsand groups see especially their newspaper, Regeneración, January , , February , , May, .. Fitzpatrick, speech to the First Convention of the American Association for the Recognition

of the Irish Republic, n.d., Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago,Illinois. New Majority (paper of the Chicago Federation of Labor and Cook County Labor party), December , . On the Labor Bureau of the American Commission of Irish Independencesee especially Elizabeth McKillen, “American Labor, the Irish Revolution, and the Campaign fora Boycott of British Goods: –,” Radical History Review (Winter ): –; and idem,Chicago Labor and the Quest for a Democratic Diplomacy: – (Ithaca, ), chap. . For informationon the Irish Progressive League and American Women Pickets for the Enforcement of America’sWar Aims see Joe Doyle, “Striking for Ireland on the New York Docks,” in The New York Irish, ed.Ronald Bayor and Timothy Meagher (Baltimore, ), –; David Brundage, “The IrishProgressive League,” Encyclopedia of the American Left, d ed. (New York, ), ; and FrancisCarroll, American Opinion and the Irish Question, – (New York, ). On the Pearse-ConnollyClub see David M. Emmons, The Butte Irish: Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town, –(Chicago, ).

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Such appeals and critiques by grass-roots left activists have received someattention from borderlands and labor historians but have been largely ignoredby diplomatic historians, who remain preoccupied with ethnic lobbies and tradeunion groups that wielded substantial political clout in Washington. Yet anexamination of the perspectives and activities of the Mexican- and Irish-American left suggests the need to rethink fundamental issues surroundingworking-class alignments on Wilsonian internationalism. Most obviously, itdemonstrates that while ethnic and trade union groups operated as discreteentities in Washington, ethnic and labor identities overlapped at grass-rootslevels. Through the efforts of the immigrant left activists, local labor organiza-tions often became centers for immigrant nationalist activities, while localethnic organizations often supported labor campaigns.

The overlapping identities of immigrant labor and left activists in turn ledthem to develop hybrid forms of working-class internationalism that divergedin significant respects not only from the internationalism of AFL leaders butalso from the internationalism of a Eugene Debs, Vladimir Lenin, or MichaelBakunin. Propelled both by “idyllic images” of the possibilities of “life on theland” in former homelands and by their experiences with the harsh realities ofindustrial society in the United States, Mexican- and Irish-American leftactivists sought to fashion forms of internationalism that would allow for amaximum of “workers’ control” in rural as well as in industrial settings. Dueboth to their differing nationalist heritages and to their diverging experiencesas immigrants in the United States, Mexican- and Irish-American left activists

. On borderlands and labor history literature on the Irish- and Mexican-American left seethe notes above. For a recent synthetic account that examines the influence of American leftistand labor leaders in Washington see Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Questfor a New World Order (Oxford, ). By contrast, Knock gives little attention to immigrant leftleaders or local labor activists who were consistently hostile to the Wilson administration. See alsoRonald Radosh, American Labor and United States Foreign Policy (New York, ); and Simeon Larson,Labor and Foreign Policy: Gompers, the AFL and the First World War (London, ). A sophisticated bodyof literature on Mexican-American labor relations has better explored the significance of grass-roots labor and ethnic agitation, but it too has given insufficient attention to the Mexican-Americananarchist movement – perhaps because some of the best research on the Mexican-American lefthas only recently become available. See especially Gregg Andrews, Shoulder to Shoulder: TheAmerican Federation of Labor, the United States and the Mexican Revolution, – (Berkeley, );Harvey Levenstein, Labor Organizations in the United States and Mexico: A History of Their Relations(Westport, CT, ); and Sinclair Snow, The Pan-American Federation of Labor (Durham, ). Fornumerous case studies on ethnic lobbying groups with political clout in Washington see thebibliography in Alexander DeConde, Ethnicity, Race, and American Foreign Policy: A History (Boston,).. On the overlapping nature of ethnic and class identities see especially McKillen, Chicago

Labor, and David Montgomery, “Nationalism, American Patriotism, and Class Consciousnessamong Immigrant Workers in the United States in the Epoch of World War I,” in “Struggle a HardBattle”: Essays on Working-Class Immigrants, ed. Dirk Hoerder (Dekalb, ), –.. On idyllic notions of living back on the land in former homelands among immigrant workers

and labor leaders as well as the importance of the concept of “workers control” to U.S. workerssee Montgomery, “Nationalism, American Patriotism, and Class Consciousness,” ; and idem,Workers’ Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles (New York,).

Wilsonian Internationalism Reconsidered :

ultimately pursued different means in attaining their goal of workers’ control;the PLM promoted anarchism, while the Labor Bureau and most other Irishlabor groups supported a Labor party. Yet Mexican- and Irish-American leftactivists converged in their passionate opposition to the liberal internationalismpromoted by the Wilson administration, believing that its policies wouldstrengthen global capitalism at the expense of workers’ autonomy and rights inboth industrial creditor and developing nations. Such perspectives, whileclearly at odds with many recent post-revisionist evaluations of Wilson, deserveto be incorporated into ongoing historical debates, for they suggest that Wil-sonian oratory about a new world order reverberated far differently in thecopper camps of Cananea and the stockyards of Chicago than they did ingovernment corridors in Washington or even in AFL headquarters.

An examination of the Mexican- and Irish-American immigrant left alsosuggests the need to rethink questions of working-class foreign policy influenceand power. To date, historians of American labor and U.S. foreign policy haveconcentrated most attention on the AFL, which developed a corporatist alli-ance with the Wilson administration during this era and was awarded for itsloyalty with key positions in government bureaucracies. By contrast, theinfluence of most immigrant labor activists in Washington policymaking circleswas obviously quite nominal. Yet immigrant labor and left activists enjoyedsubstantial transnational contacts with revolutionaries in former homelands,often supplying them with critical financial aid garnered from the pockets ofAmerican workers, and sometimes directly influencing their agendas. Thus, thePLM is credited with sponsoring at least forty-four guerrilla units in Mexicothat helped to undermine the regime of Porfirio Díaz, while the Labor Bureauof the American Commission on Irish Independence provided critical assis-tance to Irish president Eamon de Valera for his fundraising campaigns in theUnited States after he feuded with the leaders of the more well known Friendsof Irish Freedom.

. Some recent accounts have downplayed older revisionist arguments emphasizing thatWilson’s foreign policies were often driven by a desire to protect U.S. business interests. They haveinstead focused on Wilson’s idealism and on his close relationship with some liberal, labor, andleft leaders. See David Steigerwald, “The Reclamation of Woodrow Wilson?” Diplomatic History (Winter ): –, for a summary of some of this literature. See also Knock, To End All Wars; andDavid Steigerwald, Wilsonian Idealism in America (Ithaca, ). For a recent account by a laborhistorian casting Wilson in a more positive light see Joseph McCartin, Labor’s Great War: The Strugglefor Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, – (Chapel Hill, ).On the value of peripheral perspectives to an understanding of U.S. diplomacy see EmilyRosenberg, “Walking the Borders,” in Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, ed. MichaelJ. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson (New York, ), .. On the AFL’s corporatist alliance with the Wilson administration see especially Radosh,

American Labor and United States Foreign Policy; Larson, Labor and Foreign Policy; and Andrews, Shoulderto Shoulder. On the recent trend toward using transnational frameworks to understand working-class communities see especially Nina Schiller Glick, Linda Basch, and Christina Blanc Szanton,eds., Toward a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered(New York, ); Ian Tyrrell, “American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History,”

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Equally significant, the Irish-and Mexican-American left enjoyed substan-tial influence within or upon local labor organizations and often promotedstrikes and other labor political activities that undermined the AFL’s corporatistalliance with the Wilson administration in promoting national foreign policygoals. That both the Wilson administration and the AFL took this threat fromthe immigrant left seriously is evidenced by the energy they devoted tosuppressing the PLM and the labor insurgency launched by John Fitzpatrickand the Chicago Federation of Labor during the immediate aftermath of war.

A study of the Mexican- and Irish-American left thus demonstrates that thestory of U.S. diplomacy during the World War I era can be understood onlyagainst the backdrop of constant tension and interaction between corporatistelites and their grass-roots detractors.

Born in a remote rural area of the Southern Mexican state of Oaxaca to anIndian father and a Mestiza mother, PLM leaders Ricardo Flores Magón andhis younger brother Enríque have been characterized as “low status intellectualswho secured their education by their own work.” The Flores Magón brothers’father, Teodora Flores, was a lieutenant colonel in the Mexican army, and thefamily led a “marginal middle-class” existence for most of the boys’ youth. Theirmother, Margarita Magón, frequently enrolled them in schools, but they wereoften forced to find employment to help with family finances. Ricardo andEnríque attended law school, but dropped out after only a year to support theirwidowed mother. Colin MacLachlan suggests that Ricardo’s “deep hatred forauthority” may have stemmed in part from a sense that in turn-of-the-centuryMexico, “the struggle for socioeconomic betterment appeared hopelesslystacked against people like Flores Magón.”

Equally important in shaping the political viewpoints of the Flores Magónbrothers were the traditions of communal landholding and the communalvalues that still predominated in Oaxaca while they were growing up, but thatwere being undermined by the policies of Porfirio Díaz (–). To manyMexican intellectuals, labor activists, and agrarian reformers – among them theFlores Magón brothers – anarchism seemed better suited to these Mexicanconditions than socialism or liberalism. On the one hand, traditions of localself-government in the countryside convinced the Flores Magóns and othersthat workers and peasants were capable of self-government. On the otherhand, the destructive role of the government in abolishing communally

American Historical Review (October ): –; Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class,–; Raat, Revoltosos, ; and McKillen, “American Labor, the Irish Revolution.”. On the efforts of the Wilson administration to suppress the PLM and Chicago Federation

of Labor see especially MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution; and McKillen, ChicagoLabor.. Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, . On the similar backgrounds of other PLM leaders see

Raat, Revoltosos, .. MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution, ; Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, –;

Raat, Revoltosos, ; Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, .


owned lands and impoverishing peasants reinforced a strong distrust of cen-tralized authority.

Ricardo Flores Magón professed anarchist beliefs privately as early as ,but did not publicly embrace anarchism until after . Instead, he posed asa liberal who wanted to rid Mexico of a corrupt and exploitative ruler, therebymaking possible coalitions with other oppositional groups. The Flores Magónsbegan their agitation against the Díaz regime around the turn of the century,producing the first edition of their newspaper Regeneración in Mexico City in. But they were repeatedly imprisoned for their activities and fled acrossthe border in , setting up their base of operations first in San Antonio, thenin St. Louis, Missouri, and finally in Los Angeles. Ricardo and Enríque, inconjunction with other PLM junta leaders Juan Sarabia, Librado Rivera,Antonio Villarreal, and Anselmo Figueroa, established the Organizing Com-mittee of the Mexican Liberal Party (PLM) in . One of many Mexicanrevolutionary movements operating in exile, the PLM became the most impor-tant and influential voice of the Mexican left.

Perhaps most crucial in winning early support for the PLM cause was therenewed publication of Regeneración, which continuously propagandized againstthe Díaz regime and boasted twenty to thirty thousand subscribers throughoutthe United States and Mexico. The viewpoints and ideas presented in Regener-

ación, moreover, circulated far beyond the list of subscribers, for it was commonpractice for subscribers from Mexican and Mexican-American borderlandcommunities to gather with friends and coworkers to read the paper aloud tothose who were illiterate or could not afford to subscribe. The success ofRegeneración in turn stimulated organizing efforts and by over PLMgroups and at least guerrilla units existed in Mexico and the United States.Mexican historians agree that agitation by these PLM groups was critical inigniting the revolution against Díaz in –. During these years the PLM alsowon a significant following among American socialists, liberals, anarchists, andtrade unionists – including the leaders of the American Federation of Labor –who joined them in propagandizing against the Díaz government.

. MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution, ; Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, –;Raat, Revoltosos, ; Lawrence Cardosa, Mexican Immigration to the United States, – (Tucson,), –; Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, vii, –. Regeneración, February ,, November , .. Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, .. U.S. Senate, Investigation of Mexican Affairs, , –; Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican

Working Class, ; Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, –; Raat, Revoltosos, xii.. See especially Regeneración, September ,, the first edition of the newspaper to include

a separate English-language section. See also Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, , ; Hart,Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, viii, –; Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, ; and Raat,Revoltosos, .. U.S. Senate, Investigation of Mexican Affairs, , –, –; Regeneración, January ,

, May , , May , . Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, –; Sandos, Rebellion in theBorderlands, –, , –; Andrews, Shoulder to Shoulder, , ; Raat, Revoltosos, , –, , ;MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution, –, , ; Zamora, World of the Mexican Worker,

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Following the overthrow of the Díaz regime, the PLM embraced anarchismmore openly and launched a failed invasion of Baja, California, hoping to establishanarchist communities there that could be used as a model in other parts ofMexico. Ricardo and Enríque would both ultimately face jail time for their rolein the Baja revolt (for violating U.S. neutrality laws), but in the interim the juntaissued a manifesto of anarchist principles that they hoped would be used as a setof guidelines by workers in establishing anarchism in revolutionary Mexico. Themanifesto declared war on the oppressive triumvirate of capital, authority, and theclergy and outlined several steps by which workers were to proceed with theexpropriation of lands, mines, and factories. Significantly, the manifesto insistedthat workers take control of industrial and agricultural production “withoutdistinction of sex,” for to the PLM junta, male authority over women was as muchanathema as government authority over workers. The manifesto argued that nowwas the time to act, because “different political bands,” especially FranciscoMadero’s, sought to establish new governments for the “protection of the interestsof the rich[.]” In defending the viability of his anarchist vision, Ricardo citedhundreds of years of local self-government in Mexico.

But if the junta anticipated that their anarchist appeals to either men orwomen would gain them increased support they miscalculated. While theIndustrial Workers of the World and American anarchists like Emma Goldmanremained loyal to the PLM after , American socialists and AFL leadersabandoned the Magóns, instead preferring the more moderate approach ofFrancisco Madero. Even some long-standing PLM activists disliked the abruptshift toward anarchism and left the organization. As the Flores Magóns lan-guished in jail during and , they also lost any remaining opportunitiesto directly influence the Mexican revolution. Thus, some have portrayed thePLM as a movement in decline after and scant attention has been given toits activities after this date.

Yet in many respects the period from – was one of enormous creativityfor the PLM. Preoccupied with Wilson’s meddling in Mexico, the PLM juntapropagandized incessantly against the Wilson administration’s foreign policies. Nolonger recent immigrants to the United States, they also took a greater interest in

; Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, –; Casillas Mike, “The Cananea Strike of,” Southwest Economy and Society (Winter /): –.. Lowell Blaisdell, The Desert Revolution: Baja California, (Madison, ); Sandos, Rebellion

in the Borderlands, –; Regeneración, March , January .. “Manifesto of the Mexican Liberal Party,” signed September , in Regeneración, June

, ; January , ; May , . On the PLM’s anarchism see also Munroy, “Fence Cutters,Sedicioso and First-Class Citizens,” –; and Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, .

On women’s participation in PLM campaigns see especially Regeneración, January , , May , , March , , May , ; Raat, Revoltosos, ; Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands,, ; Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, ; Zamora, World of the Mexican Worker, ; and Munroy,“Fence Cutters, Sedicioso and First-Class Citizens,” –.. Raat, Revoltosos, –; Andrews, Shoulder to Shoulder, –; Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands,

; Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, –; MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution , .On Madero’s San Luis Potosi Plan see U.S. Senate, Investigation of Mexican Affairs, , –.


U.S. labor questions and used a new English-language section in Regeneración toencourage binational, grass-roots labor cooperation. Although subscriptions toRegeneración declined during this era, tantalizing new case studies suggest that thePLM’s refrains continued to resonate powerfully in many borderlands communi-ties, sometimes encouraging class solidarity between Mexican and U.S. workersandprovokingmilitantstrikeactivity andatother timeshelpingtostimulateviolentoutbursts of anti-Americanism that undercut class solidarity.

Regeneración, April , . An image of Ricardo and Enríque Flores Magón published in thenewspaper of the PLM shortly after they were arrested for their alleged role in the Plan of SanDiego uprising. In the background are birds representing the free press, such as Regeneración andthe anarchist papers Mother Earth and The Blast, and chains comprised of U.S. dollar signs.Courtesy of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.

. The first English-language section in Regeneración appeared in September . WilliamOwen, an English aristocrat and anarchist, assumed editorship of the section in September and used his columns to educate English-speaking readers on the Mexican revolution and

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The Flores Magón brothers’ first impression of Woodrow Wilson waslikely forged while they were still in jail at MacNeil Island. The PLM juntaappealed to Wilson to review the case against Ricardo, Enríque, LibradoRivera, and Anselmo Figueroa, suggesting that they believed the presidentto be a man who could “see beyond the narrow limits of a ledger due to hisbackground as a scholar.” They were also encouraged by the president’s“unprecedentedly bold stand” against “plutocracy[.]” Wilson subsequentlystudied the case but refused to grant clemency to any of the PLM activists.

The incident inspired an early distrust of Wilson and reaffirmed PLMnotions that principles of justice were trampled upon as surely in so-calledmodel republics as they were in the worst dictatorships. They also criticizedthe Wilson administration’s early foreign policy, characterizing the UnitedStates as “an empire of crime” controlled by trusts that suppressed the rightsof workers from West Virginia to Nicaragua.

Wilson’s decision to send eight hundred soldiers to occupy the Mexicanport of Veracruz as a response to an alleged affront by Victoriano Huerta tothe United States in April confirmed the PLM’s worst fears about thepresident. Virtually all major revolutionary factions in Mexico viewed theoccupation as a violation of Mexican sovereignty and a symbol of U.S.imperial arrogance. But the PLM perceived the unfolding events in Mexicoin more ominous terms than most: Wilson, they feared, sought to discreditHuerta in order to ensure that Venustiano Carranza would seize power andserve U.S. economic interests. As early as February , the editors of Regener-

ación had warned that Carranza was “a lackey of the White House,” who would“hand over the soil of Mexico to the exploitation of Yankee capital.”Followingthe invasion, Regeneración suggested that Wilson favored Carranza over Huertabecause Huerta was in the pocket of the Europeans while Carranza wouldpromote U.S interests.

When Wilson proclaimed an interest in land reform issues and honestgovernment in Mexico, the PLM junta warned workers not to listen to the“mermaid songs” of either the U.S. president or his lackeys in Mexico. If Wilsonwere really interested in land reform, they suggested, he would begin in theUnited States were there were millions who didn’t have a lump of dirt upon

anarchist theory. The Flores Magóns used the page to issue direct appeals to U.S. workers. For agood case study of how the PLM inspired an upsurge in militance among Mexican workersbetween and see Zamora, World of the Worker, –. For a study of the links between thePLM , anti-Americanism, and border raids see Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, –, –.See also David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas (Austin, ).. Regeneración, May , , March , , June , . MacLachlan, Anarchism and the

Mexican Revolution, .. Regeneración, June , , May , , May ,. For assistance with some translations

of Regeneración from –, I wish to thank Marie Carmen Sandweiss.. Regeneración, February , , March , , September , ; Sandos, Rebellion in the

Borderlands, .. Regeneración, May , .


which they could rest their heads. What Wilson and Carranza really sought wasU.S. control of the lands, the mines, the factories, the warships, and the railroadsof Mexico. Workers, argued the junta, needed to understand that governmenthad only one function: to protect the interests of the rich. U.S. and Mexicanworkers must not only fight against the U.S. invasion but also work to preventthe triumph of another bourgeois government in Mexico.

. Ibid., May , , May , , May , , April , , July , . Historianshave, of course, painted a more complex picture of the relationship between Wilson and Carranza,on the one hand, and Wilson and the U.S. business community on the other. Yet in some respectsthe PLM was prophetic in anticipating that Wilson and Carranza would find common ground inpromoting limited concessions to Mexican workers and peasants while maintaining the integrityof free enterprise in Mexico, for this was far from obvious in . See especially Friedrich Katz,The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution (Chicago, ); LloydGardner, Safe for Democracy: The Anglo-American Response to Revolution, 11–1 (New York, 1);idem, “Woodrow Wilson and the Mexican Revolution,” in Woodrow Wilson and a Revolutionary World,

Regeneración, May , . This cartoon portrays Uncle Sam driving the oxen Venustiano Carranzaand Pancho Villa. It symbolizes the belief of the PLM junta that Carranza and Villa were lackeysof the Wilson administration and would serve the interests of capitalists rather than workersthroughout the world. Courtesy of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.

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The British-born editor of the English language page of Regeneración,William Owen, brought the PLM’s anti-interventionist message to English-speaking readers. Like the PLM junta, Owen denounced Wilson’s hypocrisy inclaiming that he was trying to help Mexico, querying, “Why don’t we [the U.S.]come out flat-footed as honest bandits do?” Owen saw the hands of the Britishas well as the Americans at work in the movement to overthrow Huerta andimpose Carranza. The British, he argued, as the most “powerful and devotedupholder of plutocracy today,” had united with the next most powerful up-holder of plutocracy – the United States – to ensure a new president for Mexicowho would reestablish “Diaz-like conditions” there. What workers of allnationalities needed to know was that “capitalism is a cat: a coldly-calculatingbeast that follows instinct blindly hunting power and profit as part of the lawof its existence.” Government was the servant of capitalism. “Mr. Plain Citizen”must therefore be wary of the designs of both capitalists and politicians andwork to prevent their schemes to involve the United States in a war in Mexico.

Ironically, even as Regeneración vigorously chastised Carranza as a lackey ofWilson and Wall Street in , Carranza was engaged in recruiting organizedlabor in Mexico to his cause. Foremost among the converts to the Carrancistamovement was the anarcho-syndicalist Casa del Obrera Mundial (Casa), whichformally committed itself to the constitutionalist military effort in the VeracruzPact of . Subsequently, Casa helped to organize red brigades of workers thatfought with constitutionalist forces against Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.Despite its anarchist orientation, Casa was attracted by Carranza’s insistencethat he sought a social revolution in Mexico and was lured by the idea ofdeveloping a close working relationship with the new revolutionary govern-ment. The PLM, however, bitterly castigated Casa, arguing that it had beenduped by the Carranza regime. Meanwhile, Casa leaders denounced theMagonistas as “renegades thousands of miles away who are exaggerating eventsin Mexico.”

This division between Mexican and Mexican-American anarchists high-lights the hybrid nature of the internationalist vision promoted by the PLMjunta during the World War I era. Having experienced persecution and direlabor conditions in two societies, members of the PLM junta were even moredistrustful of government authority than Mexican anarchists. Far removed from

–, ed. Arthur Link (Chapel Hill, ), –; and Mark T. Gilderhus, Diplomacy and Revolution:U.S.-Mexican Relations under Wilson and Carranza (Tucson, ).. Regeneración, April , .. Ibid., May , , April , , March , .. Ibid., May , , April , , May , .. Ramón Eduardo Ruiz, Labor and the Ambivalent Revolutionaries: Mexico, – (Baltimore,

), –; Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, –; Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands,; Andrews, Shoulder to Shoulder, –; U.S. Senate, Investigation of Mexican Affairs, , –,.. Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, ; Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, ;

Regeneración, May , –, November , , November , , September , .


power centers in either Washington or Mexico City, they saw only peril inevolving labor-government partnerships throughout the world during the war.Their fears were at least partly justified with respect to Mexican labor for, afterCarranza consolidated his military position against Villa and Zapata, he dis-solved the red battalions and implemented a decree making strikes treasonagainst the government, a crime punishable by death. When general strikescontinued to paralyze the country, Carranza crushed the Casa Del ObreraMundial. Enríque Flores Magón, in response to this turn of events, argued that“[a]s soon as Carranza felt himself master of the situation, he kicked overboardhis old friends the workingman.”

Yet if the PLM’s decision not to support a labor alliance with Carranza wouldin the long term seem farsighted to many Mexican trade unionists, in the shortterm the PLM faced a difficult political situation. With the apparent betrayalby the Casa del Obrera Mundial of an anarchist agenda, the only major PLMallies remaining in Mexico were the Zapatistas, whom Ricardo Magón charac-terized as “sincere and valiant Southern Revolutionists.” Indeed, EmilianoZapata’s Plan of Ayala incorporated some anarchist PLM theories, and Zapatahad asked the PLM junta to move Regeneración to Morelos under his protection.Yet the PLM nonetheless seems to have feared Carranza’s retribution if theymoved to Mexico.

Even more significantly, the Wilson administration’s de facto recognition ofCarranza reaffirmed PLM beliefs that Wilson and Carranza were conspiring tocrush the real revolution in Mexico, convincing them that they must remain inthe United States to combat the duo. The PLM junta viewed both men’s claimsto an interest in reform as duplicitous and extensively detailed the concessionsCarranza made to foreign business interests in order to gain U.S. recognition.They also alleged that Carranza backtracked on land redistribution followingU.S. recognition and even implied that Wilson and Carranza were in connivanceto allow U.S. troops to pursue PanchoVilla into Mexico. In a passage later usedin a U.S. indictment against the Flores Magóns, Ricardo claimed that “Wilsonhelps Carranza because the old sharper has promised to tie up the Mexicanpeople hand and foot so that the American bourgeoisie may exploit them totheir hearts content.”

. Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, . Ruiz, Labor and the Ambivalent Revolutionaries, –.Regeneración, May , , August , , , November , , September , , January, . MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution, , ; Hart, Anarchism and the MexicanWorking Class, , –, ; Andrews, Shoulder to Shoulder, –.. Regeneración, November , .. MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution, –; Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands,

; Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, ; Regeneración, November , , May , , October, , November , .. Regeneración, March , , July , , September , , November , ,

October , , October , , March , , April , , October , , , November, , July , , January , , July , . Raat, Revoltosos, ; MacLachlan, Anarchismand the Mexican Revolution, .

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The PLM junta believed they could utilize their position of relative freedomin the United States to undermine the Wilson-Carranza conspiracy in two ways.First, they sought to use Regeneración to “educate and organize the Mexicanpeople into an effective weapon of revolution.” Second, and “still more impor-tant – and more difficult,” they hoped “to enlighten the American people to thereal issues involved in the Mexican uprising.” In an effort to inspire bothMexican nationalism and international working-class solidarity, Regeneración

contested U.S. journalistic portraits of Mexico as a backwater within theevolving world order. “When the American unconscious folks and the capital-ists talk about Mexico and the Mexicans,” suggested Enríque Magón, “they doso as if they were talking about Darkest Africa and its natives.” Yet workingconditions in “[t]he lumber camps of Louisiana, the mines of Colorado andWest Virginia” were “practically the same as the hell-holes of Yucatan and theValle Nacional.” William Owen echoed similar themes in the English-language section. “[I]t is becoming fashionable,” he suggested, “to pity the[Mexican] peon as a victim of a feudalism from which we superior beings freedourselves long ago.” But “nothing could be more erroneous.” The Mexican peonwas instead the “victim of the most up-to-date capitalism being milked scien-tifically by Wall Street syndicates.”

The Mexican worker, moreover, was in the forefront of resistance to“expanding international capitalism” and should therefore be emulated ratherthan pitied by the world’s workers. The “yoke of wage slavery,” suggested thejunta, had already been extended to “India, Africa and the greater part of theworld,” but had “received its first decided check” from Mexico, “a nation whichknows what capitalism is, loathes it, and is fully determined to have none ofit.” Striking a note that would likely resonate with today’s environmentalists,the junta particularly highlighted the Mexican workers’ fight for land, “thenatural mother of all riches,” as one that needed to be imitated by other workers.Human beings, they suggested, could not fully develop their potentials orachieve economic independence without land. Mexican workers were fightingfor the principle that “[t]he earth is for the use of man as a species, and not forthe exclusive use of any one set of men[.]” More controversially, Enrique alsoargued that the international working class needed to learn from Mexicanworkers that the struggle for land would be violent and “that violence has to bemet by violence.” So convinced was the junta of the valuable lessons that theMexican revolution contained for the international class struggle that they

. Regeneración, March , ; MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution, , Gómez-Quiñones, Sembradores, .. Regeneración, February , ; Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, .. Regeneración, June , –, August , .. Ibid., June , .. Ibid., March , , February , , June , –, November , , February

, , March , .. Ibid., August , , December , .


wrote the International Anarchist Congress and asked them to “make a clear-cut declaration that the Mexican peon is right in holding that economic libertycan be won only by retaking possession of the land; that he is right in expellingthe land monopolist; that you urge the disinherited of all countries to imitatethem.”

Yet the junta did not expect U.S. workers to support the Mexican revolutionsimply because they admired Mexican workers. In an insightful manifestowritten in , the junta argued that U.S. workers would be serving their owneconomic interests by supporting the Mexican revolution. The capitalist press,they argued, tried “to portray the Mexican Revolution as a useless quarrelamong political leaders” when it was in fact “a social phenomena produced bythe atagonism [sic] of the interests of the two classes in which [the] capitalistsystem has humanity divided, that of the rich and that of the poor.” The fate ofthe U.S. workingman, argued the junta, depended on the outcome of thisstruggle. “If the Mexican proletariat succeeds at last in emancipating himselffrom his executioners, he will not have to come out of Mexico to earn his living.. . . Mexicans already in the U.S. will return home and salaries of U.S. workerswill be raised immediately.” If the revolution were crushed, on the other hand,there would be a greater flow of Mexican immigrants to the United States. Evenworse, “The wealth of the magnates of American industry willflow into Mexico,to then, a land of permission for all the adventurers and all the exploiters. . . .The manufactures of [the] United States would be transplanted to Mexico[.]”

In their attempts to enlist U.S. workers on behalf of the Mexican revolution,the PLM junta thus anticipated many of the problems that the twentieth-cen-tury capitalist world system would pose for workers in both underdevelopedand industrially advanced countries. A profound pessimism about the direeffects of international capitalism on Mexican and American workers fueledthe PLM’s revolutionary fervor as surely as did its idealistic faith in theanarcho-communist traditions of Mexico’s ejidos and villages.

The binational orientation of the PLM also proved important in shaping itsresponse to World War I. On the one hand, the junta cheered the coming ofwar, assuming that it would distract the superpowers and provide Mexico andother small countries with an “immunity from invasion” and an “opportunityfor self realization which the white man in his hour of peaceful prosperity waseager to filch from [them].” Yet, on the other hand, the junta felt someresponsibility for preventing Mexican-Americans as well as other U.S. workersfrom becoming victims of the slaying and joined oppositional U.S. groupsin trying to discredit the patriotic appeals made by the U.S. government andthe AFL to the nation’s workforce. Patriotism, suggested Ricardo, had been

. Ibid., June , , November , , June , , February , .. Ibid., March , .. Ibid., August , , August , , September , , . See also MacLachlan,

Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution, xiii.

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“invented by the rich and the politicians so that the people may be disposed totear each other to pieces when it be to the convinience [sic] of their masters.”

When the United States declared war against Germany, Ricardo ridiculedthe notion that the United States entered the conflict to defend its freedom,suggesting that “[t]he European conflict did not endanger the liberty of theAmerican people but the liberty of plundering that the bourgeoisie abrogatesto itself.” Echoing a popular theme among workers during the war, the FloresMagóns also insisted that the U.S. declaration of war demonstrated conclusivelythat democracy was a sham, for no democratic referendum was held on the issueof whether the United States should enter the war. The junta joined othergroups in protesting conscription and the suppression of free speech as aviolation of democratic principles. Enríque noted with irony that the first pickin the national lottery for conscription was a striking Mexican miner.

The junta also attacked Wilson’s peace agenda from an early date, fearingthat workers might be deceived into supporting the war effort by the president’smisleading rhetoric. No one, they suggested, should melt “into tears whenMr. Wilson speechifies on the benevolence of Uncle Sam,” for what he reallysought was a peace that would serve the interests of the business class.

Although the PLM did not become as obsessed with the League of Nationsdebate as the Irish-American left, their critique was similar. Wilson sought aninternational league, they argued, to act as a “policeman” to “put down nefari-ous malcontents.” This applied as well to his plans for a Pan American League,that the president promoted so that “henceforth there shall be no morerevolutions” in Central or South America.The only hope for a just settlementto the war, argued the PLM, was direct action by the workers themselves andperhaps by the Stockholm Conference of trade unionists. In reporting on theStockholm Conference, Ricardo argued that it was a “patent manifestation thatthe popular masses have lost faith in governments and they want to settle bythemselves the relations existing among them.”

How deeply PLM perspectives penetrated the world of the Anglo workerafter is problematic. On the one hand, the pages of Regeneración oftencontained letters from U.S. workers expressing solidarity with the Mexicanrevolution and illustrating some knowledge of PLM viewpoints. One suchletter, written by a man who characterized himself only as an “unskilled worker,”inquired after the Veracruz incident “where in the hell does he [Wilson] getthe right to say who shall or shall not be President of Mexico.” Moreover,

. Regeneración, April , , November .. Regeneración April , , July , . On the popularity among labor groups of the

campaign for a referendum vote on questions of U.S. involvement in World War I see McKillen,Chicago Labor.. Regeneración, March , , January , .. Ibid., March , , March , .. Ibid., October , , August , , February , , March , , .. Ibid., May , .


although subscription rates to Regeneración declined after , PLM appeals wereoften published in the anarchist papers Mother Earth and the Blast, and in theIWW journal Solidarity. When worker opposition to U.S. intervention in Mexicoand World War I swelled, PLM leaders thus liked to believe that they had playeda role. Yet it remains uncertain whether such sentiments among the Angloworking-class population bore any relation to PLM agitation.

What can be said with greater confidence is that Mexican-American laborunrest in the Southwest increased dramatically after , and that the PLMplayed some role in fomenting this unrest. Emilio Zamora suggests that in Texas“the PLM’s public ideological shift coincided with an upsurge of Magonistaactivity that increasingly addressed problems Mexicans faced in the UnitedStates.”Similarly, PLM activists played an important role in the copper strikesin Clifton-Morenci, Arizona, where Mexican-Americans formed a criticalcomponent of an international work force that shut down the mines. Accordingto Colin Maclachlan, such strike actions greatly alarmed Wilson, whose “fearthat a truculent working class might hinder military expansion approachedparanoia.” Wilson’s short-term answer to the Arizona strike was to order federaltroops to occupy the copper camps. But his fear of anarcho-syndicalism in theSouthwest continued to build and ultimately led him to support AFL and PanAmerican Federation of Labor initiatives that called for Mexican labor organi-zations to work to restrain Mexican immigration to the United States. In return,Mexican labor officials were assured that the Arizona and Texas State Federa-tions of Labor would work to incorporate Mexican nationals and U.S.-borncitizens of Mexican heritage into area unions. PLM activities thus helped tostimulate the labor unrest that provoked the labor diplomacy of WoodrowWilson and Samuel Gompers.

Yet another factor stimulating Wilson’s, and to some extent Gompers’s,interest in the borderlands was the Plan of San Diego (PSD). Framed by nineHuertistas while they were jailed in Monterrey prison, the first draft of the plancalled for an armed uprising against the U.S. government to begin on Feb-ruary with the goal of liberating New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, andCalifornia. The plan also articulated a desire to emancipate Mexicans, Negroes,

. Ibid., May , , May , , March , , April , , July , ; Sandos,Rebellion in the Borderlands, , .. Zamora, World of the Mexican Worker, –, –, –.. MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution, , ; Raat, Revoltosos, ; Andrews,

Shoulder to Shoulder, –; Juan Gómez-Quiñones, “The First Steps: Chicano Labor Conflict andOrganizing, –,” Aztlan (Summer ): –. Zamora, World of the Mexican Worker, ; U.S.Senate, Investigation of Mexican Affairs, , , –; Regeneración, September , , October, , October , , July , . Philip J. Mellinger, Race and Labor in Western Copper: The Fightfor Equality, – (Tucson, ), –, notes the role of PLM activists in organizing Mexican-American workers but doubts that PLM ideology played any major role in strike activities. Heinstead insists on the primacy of workplace issues. But treatments by Zamora and others listedabove emphasizing the interconnectedness of ethnic and labor concerns seem more convincing.. See Andrews, Shoulder to Shoulder, –; Zamora, World of the Mexican Worker, –; and

Mellinger, Race and Labor in Western Copper,

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Orientals, and Indians and shockingly called for every North American maleover the age of sixteen to be put to death. Such a racist proposal clearly hadlittle in common with the working-class internationalism preached by PLMleaders, but on the day the revolt was to begin new proletarian language wasintroduced into the plan that drew deeply, if selectively, on the intellectuallegacies of the PLM. The new language increased the appeal of the plan tolocal PLM supporters, as did the harsh treatment of innocent Mexican citizensin the aftermath of the first few attacks by Plan of San Diego adherents. Thus,historians suggest that some local activists imbued with the anarchist traditionsof the PLM supported the Plan of San Diego because it seemed compatiblewith the PLM’s insistence on “labor resistance to capitalist coercion.”

Typical of one of the PLM sympathizers recruited to the Plan of San Diegowas Aniceto Pizaña, whose small ranch was attacked by U.S. authorities.Investigators found ten years’ worth of copies of Regeneración as well ascorrespondence with PLM leaders and presumed that Pizaña must be aleader of the Plan of San Diego Revolt. Yet Pizaña later wrote Ricardo FloresMagón that he joined the revolt only after the unprovoked attack on hisranch resulted in the loss of his son’s leg. Between three and five thousandMexicans and Mexican-Americans took part in the revolt, many of them localPLM supporters, and launched over twenty-seven border raids. Also partici-pating in some of the raids were Japanese, Germans, and African Americans.Thirty-three Americans lost their lives, twenty-four were wounded, and severalthousand dollars worth of property was destroyed. The question of how toend the border raids subsequently inspired a flurry of diplomatic activity onthe part of the Carranza and Wilson administrations, with some suggesting thatCarranza used the raids to secure formal diplomatic recognition by the UnitedStates.

Despite the fact that no evidence was ever found linking the PLM juntadirectly to the Plan of San Diego, the PLM backgrounds of some Plan of SanDiego activists and the defense of PSD adherents in Regeneración suggestedconspiracy to government prosecutors. On February , they enteredRegeneración’s offices and arrested Ricardo and Enríque, with William Owencharged in abstentia. During their trial in May and June, the government failedto meet legal standards for proving conspiracy but convicted Enríque andRicardo on lesser charges that amounted to using the pages of Regeneración to

. Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, –.. Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, –; Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of

Texas, –.. Zamora, World of the Mexican Worker, –; MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican

Revolution, –, , , ; Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, ; James Sandos, “The Plan of SanDiego: War and Diplomacy on the Texas Border, –,” Arizona and the West (Spring ):. Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, –. U.S. Senate, Investigation of MexicanAffairs, , –, –.. Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, –.


incite insurrection. While out on appeal, Ricardo continued to publish Regen-

eración intermittently, inspiring a new government crackdown on the PLM in. Now at war, the United States was governed by the Espionage and SeditionActs, which essentially allowed for the repression of any dissent against thegovernment. Under the loose legal standards established by this legislation,Ricardo was rearrested and sentenced to twenty years on charges of conspiracy,publishing false statements that interfered with U.S. military efforts, mailing“indecent” materials, and “printing in a foreign language matters dealing withpolitics without filing a translation with the Post Master[.]” Ricardo would diewhile serving his sentence at Leavenworth in .

His tortured final years and early death helped make him a folk hero amongmany Mexican workers, who viewed him as remaining more true to theMexican revolution than subsequent Mexican political leaders. By contrast,James Sandos suggests that historians, because of the practice of writingnational histories that fail to explore binational movements, have “orphaned”the PLM, neglecting its importance to both Mexico and the United States.

Yet the grass-roots radicalism that the PLM helped to inspire in the borderlandshad significant repercussions for the Mexican Revolution, U.S.-Mexican labordiplomacy, and U.S.-Mexican government relations. Equally significant, thePLM’s writings and publications afford a window – albeit a narrow one –through which to view the world of the Mexican and Mexican-Americanworker and to understand the anti-Americanism and opposition to Wilsonianinternationalism that sometimes manifested itself among these workers.

Similarly, an examination of Irish-American labor and left organizations cancast new light on the opposition of this immigrant community to Wilsonianinternationalism. To date, diplomatic historians who have examined Irish-American lobbying during the Wilson years have focused primarily on Anglo-phobic nationalist groups and fraternal organizations such as the Clan na Gael,Ancient Order of Hibernians, and Friends of Irish Freedom with substantialpolitical clout in Washington. Yet by the eve of World War I, Irish-America wasan extremely diverse and stratified community. In major cities like New York,Chicago, and Seattle, both wealthy elite and militant working-class elementsof the Irish-American community had begun to pull away – in oppositedirections – from the web of political connections afforded by traditional Irishfraternals. Elites coalesced around organizations like the Irish Fellowship Clubthat were open only to the most prominent Irish-Americans. On the other hand,many Irish-American labor activists made local AFL bodies such as the SeattleCentral Labor Council, Chicago Federation of Labor, and New York Central

. Ibid., –, –; MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution, –; Raat, Revol-tosos, –. In Regeneración see especially February , , March , , June , , and July , .. Sandos, Rebellion in the Borderlands, ; MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution,

–.

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Labor Union a base for Irish activities. Such municipal labor bodies became thebackbone of Fitzpatrick’s Labor Bureau of the American Commission on IrishIndependence and helped provoke a showdown between the AFL leadershipand local activists over the AFL’s foreign policy. In the east, prominent Irish-American Progressives joined with exiled Irish feminists, socialists, and nation-alists to create the Irish Progressive League and American Women Pickets forthe Enforcement of America’s War Aims. Meanwhile, in the west an underclassof transient Irish workers joined groups such as the Pearse-Connolly IrishIndependence club of Butte, Montana, which drew directly on the socialist andsyndicalist thought of Irish rebels. These organizations, while often differingon specifics, shared in common a desire to promote a social as well as politicalrevolution in Ireland and repudiated Wilsonianism not simply because Wilsonwas anti-Irish, but because they believed his international plans would provedamaging to workers throughout the world.

John Fitzpatrick’s Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL) and Labor Bureau ofthe American Commission on Irish Independence became the coordinatingcenters for the most sustained labor agitation on behalf of the Irish revolutionbetween and . Born in Athlone, Ireland, Fitzpatrick immigrated to theUnited States as a child and retained a lifelong commitment to Irish republi-canism. After his parents died when he was eleven, he began working in theChicago stockyards, doing a brief stint on the killing floor before taking uphorseshoeing. As a young man, Fitzpatrick became active in the Horseshoer’sUnion and quickly gained a reputation as an individual of exceptional intellect,idealism, and integrity. He was elected president of the CFL in , a positionhe retained until his death in . Upon assuming the presidency, Fitzpatrickmoved to rid the council of corruption and to democratize procedures withinthe AFL.

The CFL president’s advocacy of democratic reforms won him the supportof a talented group of labor militants. Foremost among this group were EdNockels, CFL secretary; Robert Buck, a former alderman and future editor ofthe CFL’s militant paper, the New Majority; and Lillian Herstein of the ChicagoTeacher’s Federation – all of whom would eventually also be on the executive

. See especially, DeConde, Ethnicity, Race, and American Foreign Policy; Michael Funchion,Irish-American Voluntary Organizations (Westport, CT, ); Joseph Cuddy, Irish America and NationalIsolationism (New York, ); Alan Ward, Ireland and Anglo-American Relations, – ( Toronto,); John Patrick Buckley, The New York Irish: Their View of American Foreign Policy: – (NewYork, ); Bayor and Meagher, eds., The New York Irish; Emmons, The Butte Irish; McKillen, ChicagoLabor; idem., “American Labor, the Irish Revolution,” –; and Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, “Massa-chusetts Labour and the League of Nations Controversy, ,” Irish Historical Studies (September): –.. McKillen, Chicago Labor, –; John Keiser, “John Fitzpatrick and Progressive Unionism,

–” (Ph.D diss., Northwestern University, ), –, ; James Barrett, Work and Communityin the Jungle: Chicago’s Packinghouse Workers, – (Urbana, ), –; Nathan Fine, Labor andFarmer Parties in the United States (New York, [], ), . Eugene Staley, The History of the IllinoisState Federation of Labor (Chicago, ), .


board of the Labor Bureau of the American Commission on Irish Inde-pendence. Although great admirers of the socialist thought of Irish rebel JamesConnolly, CFL leaders did not believe socialism to be ideally suited to theAmerican setting. They instead devoted their efforts during the World War Iera – largely in defiance of AFL wishes – to forging industrial unions in thecity’s stockyards and steel mills and to building a viable labor party that wouldestablish genuine industrial and political democracy in the United States.Assisting CFL leaders in these campaigns was talented organizer and futureCommunist William Z. Foster.

The CFL also cultivated support for its campaigns by developing close tieswith the city’s immigrant communities. Thus, Fitzpatrick served as a laborambassador at diverse ethnic functions and regularly solicited input fromimmigrant organizers.During the World War I era, the CFL – like many othermunicipal labor councils – also sponsored activities and groups promotingnationalist rebellions in Mexico, India, Russia, and Ireland. So strong wereCFL resolutions and activities opposing U.S. policies during the Veracruzincident that even Regeneración, which was usually highly critical of AFLaffiliates, thanked the Chicago Federation of Labor for its efforts. Fitzpatrickemphasized that the CFL’s activities on behalf of nationalist rebellions werelogical extensions of its trade union work, not a distraction from it, for imperi-alism buoyed the power of the business class.

Not surprisingly, given the large number of Irish-American activists withinthe CFL, municipal labor leaders devoted even more time to work on behalfof the Irish nationalist cause than to other nationalist rebellions. CFL activistsbrought Irish labor leader Jim Larkin to speak at CFL meetings and stagedparades and picnics to raise funds and educate workers on the issue of Irish

. McKillen, Chicago Labor, , ; idem, “American Labor, the Irish Revolution,” ; Barrett,Jungle, ; William Z. Foster, Pages from a Worker’s Life (New York, ), –; idem, American TradeUnionism: Principles and Tactics (New York, ); Fine, Labor and Farmer Parties, ; Chicago Federationof Labor Minutes (CFL Minutes), November , .

On the socialist and syndicalist thought of the Irish left see especially W. K. Anderson, JamesConnolly and the Irish Left (Dublin, ); Carl Reeve and Anne Barton Reeve, James Connolly and theUnited States: The Road to the Easter Rebellion (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, ); and E. Larkin, JamesLarkin (London, ).. See especially Receipt from Commission on Irish Independence, n.d., Fitzpatrick Papers,

B-F; Dziennik Ludowy to Fitzpatrick, n.d., Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F; Forrester B. Washing-ton to Fitzpatrick, February , Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F; Agnes Smedley to Fitzpatrick, May , Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F. New Majority, January , .. McKillen, Chicago Labor, , –. For an example of another city labor council that was

active in these kinds of campaigns see Minutes of the Seattle Central Labor Council and Vicinity,– at the University of Washington and the Seattle Union Record, August , , September, , and June , .. Regeneración, May , . CFL Minutes, July , –, August , –.. McKillen, Chicago Labor, –; CFL Minutes, July , –, August , –. See also,

David Brundage, “Denver’s New Departure: Irish Nationalism and the Labor Movement in theGilded Age,” Southwest Economy and Society (Winter ): –; and Eric Foner, “Class, Ethnicity,and Radicalism in the Gilded Age: The Land League and Irish America,” Marxist Perspectives (Summer ): –, –.

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independence. The cause of Ireland, they suggested, should be the causeof workers throughout the world because British capitalists exploited bothIrish peasants and U.S. workers and “for a still greater period of time,” had“dominated and exploited the working class of England and . . . made use ofthe working class of England to hold Ireland in military and political subjec-tion.” The activities of Irish nationalists within the CFL intensified followingthe ill-fated Easter Rebellion in Ireland during April . Staged by aboutfifteen hundred rebels, the uprising was brutally suppressed by British troopsand its leaders summarily executed.Although the rebellion initially won littlesupport in either Ireland or Irish-America, the executions provoked outrage onboth sides of the Atlantic. Distinctions between different socioeconomic groupsand political factions within the Chicago Irish community temporarily blurredas John Fitzpatrick joined with the city’s Irish-American elites and middle-classclan leaders in creating a local branch of the Friends of Irish Freedom, anorganization that originated in New York during the spring of and wasdesigned to rally support for an ill-defined Irish Republic. Irish-American laboractivists used FOIF branch meetings to publicize their concerns about theexcessive influence of British finance and industry in the United States. CFLactivists, in turn, brought FOIF critiques back with them to CFL meetings andincreased their lobbying within labor circles on behalf of Irish independence.

Growing Irish-American hostility toward British imperialism meshed har-moniously with the antiwar impulses coursing through the CFL between and . Convinced from the outset of hostilities in Europe that British andAmerican economic interests would try to drive the United States into the war,CFL members in officially resolved that wars were “unnecessary and causedby the exploiters of labor for the express purpose of advancing the positionof large capitalists” and urged the AFL Executive Council to call a congress oflabor groups in the United States for the purpose of arranging a referendum ofall trade union members on the war. If the vote was against U.S. involvement,argued CFL activists, then the AFL should develop effective methods ofresistance to the Wilson administration’s foreign policies. Significantly, a visit-ing representative from the Irish Federation of Labor urged CFL delegates to

. See CFL Minutes, December , , December , , January , , May ,–, July , –; Relief Fund Committee to John Fitzpatrick, June , Fitzpatrick Papers,B; Fitzpatrick, speech to the First Convention of the American Association for the Recognitionof the Irish Republic, n.d., Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F; McKillen, “American Labor, the IrishRevolution,” –; and idem, Chicago Labor, –.. CFL Minutes, May , –.. Lawrence McCaffrey, Ireland: From Colony to Nation State ( Englewood Cliffs, NJ, ),

–.. See especially Funchion, Irish-American Voluntary Organizations, . McKillen, “American

Labor, the Irish Revolution,” –; idem, Chicago Labor, ; resolutions passed at the Mass meetingof the Friends of Irish Freedom, General John Stark Branch at St. Anne’s, Fitzpatrick Papers,B-F; Friends of Irish Freedom to Fitzpatrick, , Fitzpatrick Papers, B; Chicago Citizen, January , , January , June , ; CFL Minutes, May , –, May , –, July , –.


support the measure. “Stand for your class,” he argued, “and if needs be, fightfor your class and help the men and women of Ireland to destroy the masterclass of Europe.” The delegate was wildly cheered and the resolution sub-sequently passed unanimously.

But the AFL failed to act on the proposal, temporarily throwing the antiwaractivists within the CFL into disarray. Only in , as support for the president’spreparedness programs began to mount, did the CFL systematically renew itsantiwar activities. CFL leaders argued that the Chicago labor movement had apeculiar responsibility to fight the headlong rush to war because it was situated“in the very center of America, feeling the life of both the East and West[.]” Itwas therefore especially suited to “counteract the hysteria and speak for theinternational spirit of labor which we hope will revive when the guns of Europehave been stilled and we are able to start to build upon the ruins of a bettercivilization.”

The CFL organized a variety of local activities to thwart the growing spiritof militarism within Chicago, including boycotts of preparedness parades, acompelling crusade against the introduction of military training in the schools,and a campaign attacking the local press for its unfair coverage of the war. CFLleaders even developed their own oppositional preparedness program. Turningrhetoric about preparedness on its head, they argued that the best way toprevent war was not to be militarily prepared but to develop a humane worldsociety. The CFL preparedness program thus recommended expanding thepower of the trade union movement and creating a democratically controlledmilitary system. Following the German decision to commence unrestrictedsubmarine warfare in early , the CFL reaffirmed its old antiwar declarationof August and called on Gompers to demand that American citizens beprevented from entering war zones. It also joined other labor and progressivegroups in calling for a national referendum on the issue of U.S. involvement inthe war.

But Samuel Gompers and the AFL leadership chose to move in anopposite direction from the CFL and other militant city labor councils. InMarch of , a group of AFL national and international union leaders

. CFL Minutes, May , –, June , –; McKillen, “American Labor, the IrishRevolution,” .. CFL Minutes, April , –. McKillen, “American Labor, the Irish Revolution,” .. On boycotts of parades and antibusiness activities see CFL Minutes, April , –,

May , –, –, June , . For the military training issue in the schools see especiallyCFL Minutes, January , –. On the campaign against local press coverage of the war see CFLMinutes, April , –, May , –, May , –, June , , October , , October , –, January , –. See also draft of Fitzpatrick letter – intended recipientunknown, March , Fitzpatrick Papers, B. For the CFL’s oppositional preparedness programsee especially CFL Minutes, February , –. See also McKillen, Chicago Labor, chaps. and ;and idem, “American Labor, the Irish Revolution,” .. McKillen, Chicago Labor, chap. . Fitzpatrick tel. and Ed Nockels to Gompers, February

, Correspondence Collection (CC) – Gompers Microfilm Collection (GMC) at the WisconsinState Historical Society, Madison; and CFL Minutes, February .

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carefully selected by Gompers pledged the AFL’s support for any future U.S.wareffort in return for a guarantee that labor would be represented on nationaldefense councils. Gompers’s support for Wilson’s war policies appeared in-spired both by his anti-German sentiments and by his corporatist vision oflabor’s role in the United States, while the motivations of other union leadersvaried. Not consulted about the AFL’s war policies were municipal labor bodieslike the CFL, which Gompers viewed as hotbeds of pacifism because of theirclose ties to immigrant communities.

The AFL leadership’s decision to support the U.S. war effort left Fitzpatrickand the Chicago Federation of Labor in a difficult position, for without AFLbacking their efforts to launch a national labor campaign against U.S. involve-ment in the war seemed futile. Using the analogy of a scab during a strike,Fitzpatrick and other local officials also argued that it was unethical and unwiseto oppose the AFL’s position in a time of national crisis whether one agreedwith it or not. Two months after the Washington Trade Union Conference andover one month after Wilson’s declaration of war the CFL, in a lively andcontentious meeting on the issue, thus finally voted to to endorse theAFL’s loyalty pledge.

But the endorsement did not prevent the CFL from fulfilling its self-ap-pointed roles as watchdog of union democracy and independence and cham-pion of oppressed nationalities. Many within the CFL immediately objectedto the adjustment commissions created by the Council of National Defense andpromoted by Gompers as a method of ensuring future industrial peace. Gov-ernment leaders on these boards, they argued, would more frequently promotebusiness than labor interests. Mirroring the arguments of the shop stewards’councils in Britain, CFL activists charged that the wartime partnership betweentrade union leaders and government officials was undermining the judgment oftheir superiors and threatening the independence of the union movement.

Local leaders also continued to play a gadfly role in publicizing Ireland’squest for independence, a cause not championed by either the AFL or theWilson administration. In May , the CFL passed a resolution urging thatlabor pressure the U.S. government to demand that the British governmentgrant to “the Irish nation full and complete independence.” The CFL furtherasked that these demands be made a part of “any and all agreements and thatIreland be named with Belgium and other small nations in the demand forprotection and freedom.” The AFL, however, chose simply to ignore the Irish

. McKillen, Chicago Labor, , –; idem, “The Corporatist Model, World War I, and thePublic Debate over the League of Nations,” Diplomatic History (Spring ): –.. CFL Minutes, May , –, –, October , –.. Ed Nockels tel. to Gompers, August , CC – GMC. McKillen, Chicago Labor, –.

On the shop stewards’ movement in Britain see James Hinton, The First Shop Stewards’ Movement(London, ); and Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society: England since (London, ).. CFL Minutes, May , . Friends of Irish Freedom to Fitzpatrick, March ,

Fitzpatrick Papers, B; Bulletin – Friends of Irish Freedom, n.d., Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F.


issue in . During , the AFL convention disappointed many Irish-Ameri-can activists by substituting a resolution demanding immediate independencefor Ireland with a request that Wilson bring the question of Irish home rulebefore the peace conference. A delegate complained that the AFL had doneless for the Irish than the British Labour party, which had “come out flat-footedfor the independence of Ireland.”

Unsuccessful in encouraging the AFL to champion the cause of Irishindependence during the war, the nationalist hopes of Irish-American laboractivists were likely transferred in early to Frank Walsh, a labor lawyer andfriend of Fitzpatrick who served on the American Commission on Irish Inde-pendence. Because Walsh had been a member of President Wilson’s NationalWar Labor Board, many Irish-Americans believed it would be politicallyimpossible for Wilson to refuse to meet with Walsh when the commissiontraveled to Paris in the winter of . They were also heartened by Walsh’smilitant defense of the Irish Republic and believed that he alone among themembers of the commission would refuse to back down in demanding completeindependence for Ireland. But the first appointments between Wilson, LloydGeorge, and the commission were canceled and rescheduled for a later time.

The commission instead proceeded to Ireland where it launched a campaigndefending the viability of the Irish Republic and publicizing British atrocitiesin Ireland. When Walsh returned for a meeting with Wilson, Wilson claimedthat Walsh had “overturned the applecart” by his activities in Ireland. Thecommission, he argued, had so inflamed British opinion that British delegatesin the peace commission would never consent to allow the Irish delegates.

Walsh felt betrayed by Wilson and subsequently became an ardent opponentof the League, believing that it would work against the interests of oppressednationalities like the Irish. Instead, Walsh worked to create a League of Op-pressed Nationalities that would include such diverse groups as Lithuanians,Liberians, Filipinos, and Puerto Ricans and become a powerful anti-imperialistforce in world politics. Walsh also aided Eamon de Valera in a successful bondcertificate drive to raise money for Irish military efforts and was, in all likeli-hood, influential in the decision to appoint Fitzpatrick chair of the LaborBureau of the American Commission on Irish Independence.

. Proceedings of the AFL, , –; McKillen, “American Labor, the Irish Revolution,” .. Frank Walsh, “Diary of Frank P. Walsh at the Peace Conference, ,” April –June , ,

– and in general, Walsh Papers, box , New York Public Library, New York. Patrick McCartan,With DeValera in America (New York, ) ; Julie E. Manning, Frank P. Walsh and the Irish Question:An American Proposal (Washington, ), –.. McCartan, With Devalera in America, ; Manning, Frank P. Walsh, –.. Manning, Frank P. Walsh, –; Walsh Peace Diary, –, Walsh Papers, box ; Walsh to

Reedy, July , Walsh Papers, box ; Sean T. O’Caillaigh to Walsh, May , Walsh Papers,box ; Arthur Upham Pope to Walsh, n.d., Walsh Papers, box ; S.N. Glase to Walsh, April ,Walsh Papers, box ; Agnes Smedley to Fitzpatrick, May , Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F. SinceWalsh was the only one with a labor background on the American Commission on Irish Inde-

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Officially an auxiliary of the American Commission on Irish Independence,the Labor Bureau was created in the summer of “to make effective” AFLresolutions expressing support for the Irish revolution and to “centralize thetremendous power and influence of the men and women of organized labor inthe great struggle of the Irish people for the maintenance of their dulyestablished Republic.” Frank Walsh particularly hoped to use the LaborBureau to force the AFL to launch a labor boycott of British goods, which wouldin turn put pressure on the British to grant Ireland its independence. To achievethis goal, Walsh tried to forge an alliance prior to the convention betweentraditional union leaders with strong Irish sympathies and the Fitzpatrickcoalition centered in the Labor Bureau. Walsh unofficially urged Peter Brady,a union leader with close ties to the Gompers machine, to champion the boycottcause within the AFL. He also solicited Fitzpatrick’s help in promoting Brady’scampaigns and in ensuring that Brady did not sell out to the AFL hierarchy.

But even before Irish-American labor activists began to lobby on behalf ofa boycott, Samuel Gompers was informed of their plans and moved quickly tosabotage their efforts. As Gompers’s close confidante John Frey reminisced, theboycott resolution “involved so many issues to which Sam was opposed thatSam did what he could to prevent the Walsh idea from gaining ground in theFederation of Labor.” Although Frey never fully explained his remarks, onecan make a calculated guess about why the AFL president opposed the boycott.In part, Gompers likely worried that AFL endorsement of such a militantcampaign might provide ammunition for those seeking to red-bait AFL lead-ers. He may additionally have feared that by endorsing the boycott he wouldcompromise the principles of the International Labor Organization (ILO), anadjunct to the League of Nations that he played a major role in creating andhoped the AFL would one day join. In contrast to other labor organizations, theILO included business, state and labor representatives and was designed toencourage cooperation among these groups in resolving world economicproblems. Boycotts were obviously anathema to such corporatist principles and

pendence and was a friend of Fitzpatrick, it seems likely that he was the one to recommend him.Moreover, Walsh corresponded constantly with Fitzpatrick regarding the Labor Bureau.. Labor Bureau of American Commission on Irish Independence, unsigned letter, n.d.,

Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F; New Majority November , . American Commission on IrishIndependence to Fitzpatrick, August , Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F; American Commissionon Irish Independence to Fitzpatrick, November , Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F. Unsignedletter to Fitzpatrick, August , Walsh Papers, box ; Fitzpatrick to Walsh, October ,and Walsh to Fitzpatrick, October Walsh Papers, box ; T. J. Vind to Walsh, March ,Walsh Papers, box . New Majority January , –. McKillen, Chicago Labor, –; idem,“American Labor, the Irish Revolution,” .. McKillen, “American Labor, the Irish Revolution,” –; Harry Boland to Frank Walsh,

May , Walsh Papers.. John Frey, “Reminiscences of John P. Frey” (), v. , , Columbia University Oral

History Collection, Columbia University.. Proceedings of the AFL, , –, .


would alienate business and government representatives within the organiza-tion. Supporters of the boycott resolution, by contrast, argued that it was the

New Majority, March , . Published in the newspaper of the Chicago Federation of Labor,which was also home to the Labor Bureau of the American Commission on Irish Independence,this illustration aptly expressed the belief of Irish-American labor activists that workers wereentitled to a voice in the peace negotiations in due to their wartime service. Ironically, thisillustration may have originally been used in a British Labour party campaign. Courtesy of theNewberry Library, Chicago.

. See especially McKillen, Chicago Labor, chap. ; minutes of the Commission on Interna-tional Labour Legislation, February to March , The Origins of the International LaborOrganization, ed. James T. Shotwell (New York, ), :–.

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necessary “enacting clause” without which other resolutions expressing sup-port for the Irish revolution would be meaningless.

Gompers’s first step in trying to thwart the drive for a boycott amendmentwas to encourage Frey to bring the major factions promoting Irish inde-pendence during the convention together in a hotel room and serve ampleamounts of whiskey. Frey gladly complied and later argued that participants inthe hotel conference hammered out a compromise resolution that excluded theboycott provision. Militant Irish supporters like Ed Nockels, John Fitzpatrick,and Sam Evans, on the other hand, told a different story. They argued that AFLleaders bribed Peter Brady, official boycott spokesman, by offering him a trip toBritain as a fraternal delegate if he successfully suppressed the boycott move-ment. So seriously did Brady take his job that he had detectives follow thosewho continued to support the boycott resolution – apparently in an effort tofind evidence that would discredit them. Sam Evans claimed that one suchdetective even tried to encourage him to go into a “house of ill repute.” TheFitzpatrick coalition persisted in the boycott campaign despite harassment bythe AFL hierarchy, eventually gaining enough signatures to submit the boycottresolution for official consideration by the AFL.

Gompers, however, used parliamentary procedures to suppress the boycottresolution and instead proposed a substititute resolution that endorsed Irishindependence but excluded any plans for a boycott. Not wanting to voteagainst Irish independence, the Fitzpatrick coalition finally succumbed andaccepted the substitute resolution. In the wake of the convention, CFL leaderslambasted Gompers as a “wizard” who killed the boycott resolution by manipu-lating convention protocols. But the convention also illuminated the difficultiesthat local activists faced in forging alliances with national union leaders likePeter Brady, whom they described as a “New York political job-holder.” Takencollectively, the experiences of CFL leaders in promoting the boycott illus-trated how powerless local militants were to foment change from within theAFL.

Yet while municipal labor leaders lacked significant influence within theAFL, their talents as grass-roots activists often enabled them to circumvent the

. Sam Evans, Supplemental Report to Frank Walsh on the Trip to the Forty-First AnnualConvention of the American Federation of Labor, , n.d. (circa. June ), Walsh Papers, box .. Frey, “Reminiscences” :–. For details on the Irish issue during the AFL convention

in see McKillen, “American Labor, the Irish Revolution,” –.. Evans, Supplemental Report, , –; Nockels to Walsh, June , –, Walsh Papers,

box ; Fitzpatrick to Walsh, June , Walsh Papers, box . Proceedings of the AFL, , –,, –. McKillen, “American Labor, the Irish Revolution,” –; idem, Chicago Labor, –.. Evans, Supplemental Report, , –; Nockels to Walsh, June , –, Walsh Papers,

box ; Fitzpatrick to Walsh, June , Walsh Papers, box . Proceedings of the AFL, , –,, –, –.. Ibid. New Majority, September , . McKillen, “American Labor, the Irish Revolution,”

–.. New Majority, September , , June , , July , , September , .

McKillen, “American Labor, the Irish Revolution,” .


opposition of the AFL hierarchy. From the beginning, Fitzpatrick – in contrastto Frank Walsh – sought the assistance of city federated bodies, municipal laborpapers, the Irish Women’s Consumers League, and other progressive Irishgroups in implementing campaigns on local levels. As a veteran of many AFLbattles, he likely realized that the chances of securing AFL support for a boycottresolution were slight. By contrast, local labor bodies and ethnic groups oftensupported campaigns deemed too radical or left-leaning by the AFL hierarchy.In the late summer and autumn of – long before the AFL convention –Fitzpatrick sent correspondence to over central labor bodies who wereasked to organize Labor Bureau committees in their communities. At least central bodies responded, many framing resolutions in support of Irish inde-pendence that were then used by the Labor Bureau in its campaigns to win U.S.recognition of the Irish republic. Even more importantly, these municipallabor bodies played a critical role in implementing the boycott of British goodsthat was organized by the Labor Bureau and Irish Women’s Consumers League(IWCL).

The IWCL apparently bore primary responsibility for creating the list ofgoods to be boycotted. For symbolic reasons it particularly targeted British teas.To publicize the boycott of the British national beverage, IWCL women stageda dramatic reenactment of the Boston Tea Party, theatrically drawing parallelsbetween the American and Irish revolutions. Following the tea party, it sentlists of British teas and other boycotted goods to the Labor Bureau, whichdistributed them to cooperating city labor councils. The IWCL then estab-lished a mail order service to sell non-British tea to desperate working-classfamilies honoring the boycott and used central labor bodies to publicize itsproducts. State federations and local labor papers assisted central labor bodiesin publicizing the boycott and mail order service in many communities.

The financial impact of the boycott was dramatic enough in certain heavilyIrish-American neighborhoods to inspire lawsuits against the Irish Women’sConsumers League for falsely placing some American products on its lists ofgoods to be boycotted.Equally important were the psychological and politicalramifications of the boycott. An integral part of Irish traditions of rural protest,the boycott was also a highly popular trade union tactic. For those working-

. For details on the Labor Bureau campaigns see McKillen, “American Labor, the IrishRevolution,” –; Labor Bureau Memo B, n.d.,Walsh Papers, box ; “Report of Labor Bureauof American Commission on Irish Independence,” Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F; extracts of Repliesfrom Central Bodies to Labor Bureau, Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F. New Majority, June , .. Coupon from Irish Women’s Purchasing League, Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F; unsigned

letter to Victor Olander, April , Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F. New Majority, December ,, January , –, April , . McKillen, “American Labor, the Irish Revolution,” .. Walsh to Miss Leonora O’Reilly, January , and May , Walsh Papers, box ;

Leonora O’Reilly to Walsh, May , Walsh Papers, box .. On the history of the boycott in Ireland and the United States see John McKivigan and

Thomas Robertson, “The Irish American Worker in Transition, –,” in Bayor and Meager,eds., The New York Irish, .

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class families who even sporadically chose to eschew a British product for amore expensive substitute, the boycott thus likely encouraged both a sense ofethnic pride and of international labor solidarity. By infusing the act of groceryshopping with political meaning, the boycott also fueled the growing antipathytoward Wilson for his failure to fulfill wartime pledges to the workers of bothIreland and the United States.

Such arguments have added force if one considers that the network of localcontacts created by the Labor Bureau provided an important forum for Chicagolabor activists to spread their class-based critique of Wilsonian internationalismand to promote their campaign for a national labor party. Not content to focuson the issue of Irish independence in isolation, CFL leaders from the beginningused the Labor Bureau to publicize a more far-ranging indictment of Wilsonianinternationalism first conceptualized during Labor party crusades. In its pressreleases the bureau lambasted the “war to make the world safe for democracy,”declaring that it was “the most gigantic and successful fraud ever practiced toinduce millions of gullible human beings to kill each other and leave any whoescaped to be treated disgracefully.” The bureau also highlighted the imperi-alist roots of the war, arguing that “[T]he real motive and actual effect of thetremendous holocaust was imperialist expansion, England’s commercial su-premacy, exploitation of the common people (the workers), and the dangerouscombination of autocracy and concentrated wealth to treat the industrialcommunity as pawns and run the world for the benefit of that dangerouscombination.”

Such critiques reinforced the efforts of both the Cook County Labor Partyand the national Farmer-Labor party spearheaded by the CFL to discredit theWilson administration and draw workers as well as other central labor unionsinto the new political movement. Labor party crusaders, meanwhile, reinforcedthe messages of the Labor Bureau, frequently denouncing the Peace Treatyand League charter on the grounds that they were “dictated by the imperialistsof the great world powers, in behalf of international capital, the United Statesassisting.” Labor party leaders also often highlighted the parallel struggles ofworkers in the United States, Russia, Mexico, and Ireland arguing that they didnot “distinguish between the imperialism of a Hollenzollern and a Gary,” butwould instead support a policy of “freedom for all peoples.” Sounding sur-prisingly like the PLM junta, labor party leaders argued that a just and lastingpeace could be achieved only by an international labor organization “pledgedand organized to enforce the destruction of autocracy, militarism and economic

. New Majority, January , –; McKillen, “American Labor, the Irish Revolution,” .. New Majority, September , , , July , . On the Labor party campaign see

McKillen, Chicago Labor, chap. .. New Majority, December , –; Hayes to Mrs. Hayes, November , Hayes papers,

Ohio State Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio.


imperialism throughout the world . . . to the end that there shall be no morekings and no more wars.”

The position of Irish-American labor activists was further strengthened bya new split within the leadership of Irish-America in late . Upset by someof the tactics of the FOIF, Irish revolutionary leader Eamon de Valera formedhis own organization, the American Association for the Recognition of the IrishRepublic (AARIR). In staffing the new organization, de Valera bypassed promi-nent Irish-American officials and instead relied heavily on local activists outsidethe traditional networks of ethnic fraternals. Among these was John Fitzpatrick,who created a vigorous Chicago branch from a rump of the old FOIF councilto which he had belonged. Although the AARIR abstained from official affilia-tions with other Irish groups and contained many large financiers and indus-trialists, the Chicago branch worked closely with the CFL and Labor Bureauin campaigns to gain U.S. recognition of the Irish Republic. Partly because ofits strong support within the labor community, the local branch was soonattracting over one thousand people to its weekly meeting.

Further strengthening the link in the public mind between the ChicagoFederation of Labor, the Labor Bureau, and the AARIR was de Valera’s decisionto speak at the CFL-sponsored Farmer-Labor party convention held in Chi-cago. Angered that neither the Democratic or Republican parties would includea plank on Ireland in their platforms, de Valera pledged not to interfere withthe U.S. elections but gave an unofficial endorsement of the Farmer-Labor partyby announcing that he was “perfectly satisfied with the third party [Farmer-Labor party] plank for the recognition of the Irish Republic.” An importantsegment of Irish-America closely allied with local labor movements thus likelysaw nationalist and class issues as intimately intertwined by . They rejectedWilsonian blueprints for a new world order not simply because of their concernwith Ireland’s fate but because they believed that Wilson’s internationalismwould enhance the power of international finance at the expense of workers inboth developing and industrialized countries.

Also helping to shift the center of political gravity within Irish-Americaaway from professional politicians and clan leaders and toward a left blocclosely allied with the labor movement were the Irish Progressive League and

. Independent Labor Party Platform (), Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F; Stanley Shapiro,“Hand and Brain: The Farmer-Labor Party of ,” Labor History (Summer ): –.. New Majority, April , , November , , April , , April , , Eamon de

Valera tel. to Fitzpatrick, November , Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F; Fitzpatrick draft ofspeech, n.d., Fitzpatrick Papers, B-F; Fitzpatrick to Walsh, July , Fitzpatrick Papers,B-F. Fitzpatrick to Walsh July , Walsh Papers, box ; Thomas Prendergast to Walsh, July , Walsh Papers, box ; Prendergast to Meatcutters and Butcher Workmen June ,Walsh Papers, box ; Walsh to New York Times October , Walsh Papers, box . Chicago Citizen, November , , November , , December , , January , , June , , July , . Funchion, Irish-American Voluntary Organizations, . McKillen, “American Labor, theIrish Revolution,” ; idem, Chicago Labor, –.. Chicago Citizen, August , . Seattle Union Record, July , .

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the American Women Pickets for the Enforcement of America’s War Aims.Created in , the Irish Progressive League included prominent Irish andIrish-American socialists, feminists, and labor activists. Like the Fitzpatrickcoalition, these groups preached international labor solidarity and also believedthat Ireland’s fate was intertwined with that of other oppressed nationalitiessuch as the Indians and Egyptians. Some members of the Irish ProgressiveLeague also worked on behalf of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improve-ment Association.

Particularly noteworthy were the prominent women members of the IrishProgressive League, including Gertrude Kelly, an eminent New York surgeonborn in Waterford, Ireland, but raised in the United States, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, a noted Irish suffragist and pacifist whose husband was murderedby the British in the aftermath of the Easter Rebellion, and Leonora O’Reillyof the United Garment Workers Union. All of these women were strongIrish nationalists but before had held aloof from male-dominated Irishgroups that advocated physical force to achieve Irish independence, believ-ing, as Gertrude Kelly explained, that as women they were “conservators ofthe race” and should work “to call a halt to the immolation of Irish youth.”

But British atrocities in Ireland after the Easter Rising convinced evendevoted pacifists like Kelly and Sheehy-Skeffington that Irish and Irish-American women must join Irish male nationalists in doing everythingnecessary to expell Britain from Ireland. Support from the United Stateswas deemed critical. Kelly and other women in the Irish Progressive Leaguethus helped arrange extensive speaking tours in the United States for Irishwomen whose husbands, fathers, or brothers had been murdered by theBritish in the aftermath of the Easter Rising.

Many women of the Irish Progressive League also played a critical role inthe campaigns of the American Women Pickets for the Enforcement of Amer-ica’s War Aims. This group staged colorful pickets at the doors of both Congressand the British embassy in with signs proclaiming “America Cannot

. David Brundage, “Irish Progressive League,” in Encyclopedia of the American Left (New York,) ; Joe Doyle, “Striking for Ireland on the New York Docks,” Bayor and Meagher eds., TheNew York Irish, –; Carroll, American Opinion and the Irish Question, –.. Doyle, “Striking for Ireland on the New York Docks,” .. David Brundage, “‘In Time of Peace, Prepare for War,’” Bayor and Meager, eds., The New

York Irish, . For similar sentiments voiced by Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington and her husband Francissee McKillen, “Irish Feminism and Nationalist Separatism: –,” Eire-Ireland, (pt. : Autumn; pt. : Winter ): –, –. For an argument supporting women’s participation in Laborparty affairs on the grounds that they were conservators of humanity and would help to preventfuture war see McKillen, Chicago Labor, .. See especially Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Impressions of Sinn Fein in America: An Account of

Eighteen Months’ Irish Propaganda in the United States (Dublin, ), –; Seattle Union Record, June, and June , ; Doyle, “Striking for Ireland on the New York Docks,” ; Margaret Ward,Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism (London, ); and McKillen, “IrishFeminism and Nationalist Separatism.”


Continue Relations With an England Ruled by Assassins.”Their most impor-tant campaign, however, was staged not on the steps of Congress but on theNew York Docks, where thirty women pickets protested the imprisonment bythe British of Irish Archbishop Daniel Mannix and Irish nationalist TerrenceMacSwiney in the summer of . Dockworkers soon walked off their jobsin solidarity, provoking a three and one-half week strike that shut down thewaterfront. The strikers included British and Irish seamen as well as Italiansand African Americans. Marcus Garvey apparently helped secure the alle-giance of African Americans for the strike despite a long history of racial tensionon the docks. In explaining workers’ actions during the strike, Teddy Gleason,president of the International Longshoremen’s Association from to ,recalled that “the West Side longshoremen were attuned to the struggles ofIreland and endless collections were taken up on the waterfront for Irish relieffunds.”

The strike came in the midst of growing tensions between Eamon de Valeraand the leadership of groups like the Clan na Gael and Friends of Irish Freedomand gave both women and workers an unprecedented opportunity to shape Irishnationalist agitation in the United States. In the aftermath of the strike, the IrishProgressive League and the American Women Pickets for the Enforcement ofAmerica’s War Aims merged their activities with the AARIR, whose member-ship skyrocketed to over seven hundred thousand in while that of the FOIFdramatically declined.

Less is known about Irish-American labor radicalism in the west, but DavidEmmons’s study of Butte, Montana, suggests that realignments in the Irish-American community were also occurring there. Butte was one of the mostheavily Irish cities in the country during the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies and, not surprisingly, the Irish dominated the conservative local labormovement. Yet a considerable gap always existed in Butte between the largetransient Irish work force and the stable workers who dominated the labormovement and the local Irish groups. The chasm between these two groupsincreased after as a new wave of Irish immigrants with different values fromthe older generation entered the city.

Particularly important in shaping the perspectives of the new immigrantswas Irish labor leader, syndicalist, and IWW member Jim Larkin, who touredthe country during the war. A frequent speaker at Chicago Federation of Labormeetings, Larkin also appeared in Butte on several occasions during and

. Doyle, “Striking for Ireland on the New York Docks,” –.. MacSwiney’s case was dramatized when he went on a hunger strike and died in jail,

provoking outrage on both sides of the Atlantic. See especially F. S. L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine(London, ), –.. Doyle, “Striking for Ireland on the New York Docks,” , –.. Ibid., –; McKillen, Chicago Labor, .. Emmons, The Butte Irish, , –.. Ibid., –.

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and denounced the local Irish elite while describing the Irish EasterRebellion as “a working-class rising to keep Irish boys out of the British army.”

In late , new Irish immigrants in Butte responded to Larkin’s appeal byforming the Pearse-Connolly Irish Independence Club. The new group quicklygained notoriety for sponsoring a large antidraft protest that ended in a riot.Also contributing to the Pearse-Connolly club’s radical reputation was itsdecision to share offices with left-leaning Finnish groups, the IWW, and themilitant new Metal Mine Workers Union at Finlander Hall.

Because of the close association between these groups, a subsequent copperstrike called by the Metal Mine Workers Union was widely viewed as beingstaged at the behest of the Pearse-Connolly Club and the Finnish Workers Clubto obstruct the war effort. Emmons disputes such claims, suggesting that thestrike was instead the result of pragmatic concerns such as job stability andsafety. Yet antiwar sentiment may well have gone hand in hand with bread andbutter concerns in fueling the strike activity, for a truly patriotic work force likethat envisioned by Gompers would have deferred strike activity until after thewar. Whatever the motivations behind the strike, Emmons’s study demon-strates that left-leaning groups were also emerging in the west to challenge thetraditional leadership of the Irish fraternals.

Thus, for a brief moment in time the Irish and Irish-American left seemedto dominate Irish-American politics at the expense of traditional fraternals andIrish-American politicians with close ties to the Democratic or Republicanparties. Two factors ultimately undermined the agenda of leftists within Irish-America. First, the signing of the unpopular Anglo-Irish treaty in December provoked civil war in Ireland. The treaty divided Ireland into two sections;under its terms Northern Ireland remained a British province while the Southwas accorded self-rule but not independence. Eamon de Valera and othersviewed the treaty as unsatisfactory and engaged the new Irish government inmilitary battle. Both the Labor Bureau and the American Association for theRecognition of the Irish Republic were torn asunder as members divided overwhether to support pro- or anti-treaty forces. Arguably, the demise of theCFL-sponsored Farmer-Labor party – devastated by AFL opposition, the redscare, strike defeats, and heightening ethnic-racial tensions – also underminedthe Irish-American left for it deprived them of a chance to merge their domesticand international agendas with a national reform platform and to form coali-tions with other like-minded groups.

If the influence of the Irish-American and Mexican-American left provedtemporary, their activities and viewpoints nonetheless suggest the need to

. Ibid., , –, ; Larkin, James Larkin.. Emmons, Butte Irish, –.. McKillen, Chicago Labor, ; idem, “American Labor, the Irish Revolution,” –;

Funchion, Irish-American Voluntary Organizations, –; Chicago Citizen, July , ; July , ;Gaelic American, May , .. On the demise of the Farmer-Labor party see McKillen, Chicago Labor, chaps. and .


rethink ethnic and class alignments on Wilsonian internationalism during theWorld War I era. Too often diplomatic historians seem to have unquestioninglyaccepted the comments of a much quoted blue collar worker in the s whotold an inquiring pollster “Foreign Affairs! That’s for people who don’t have towork for a living.” Thus, the most influential model of public opinion in thefield utilizes a pyramid, explaining that only those in the upper portions of thepyramid, comprising about percent of the population, are “well read” aboutforeign affairs and exert systematic influence over U.S. foreign policy. Bycontrast, percent of the population “does not much care about foreign affairsexcept in the case of national crises.” While such generalizations may have somelegitimacy for the post period, they create a distorted view of working-classforeign policy opinion in the early twentieth century.

The world of the early-twentieth-century worker was pervasively transna-tional and international in character. Workers maintained extensive contactswith former homelands and lived and labored amid a diversity of immigrantsfrom other lands. Against this backdrop, immigrant labor and left activistsplayed a critical role, for they formed a bridge between the ethnic and jobconcerns of workers. Thus, while it may approach the ludicrous to assume thatthe average Mexican-American mine worker in Arizona had the leisure, edu-cation, or financial means to frequently read the New York Times, it is not out ofthe range of plausibility to assume that such workers occasionally read Regen-

eración or showed up at informal gatherings or union meetings where Regener-

ación was read. Similarly, it seems not only possible but likely to assume thatmany Irish-American workers in Chicago at some time heard John Fitzpatrickor Jim Larkin speak on the travails of Ireland or denounce the evils ofinternational capitalism, participated in counter-preparedness parades andLabor party rallies, and pushed their way into Wrigley Field to hear de Valeraaddress a crowd of forty thousand. With no radio or television to distract, suchactivities formed a vital part of the social and leisure, as well as political, worldof the worker.

. DeConde, Ethnicity, Race and American Foreign Policy, .. Melvin Small, “Public Opinion,” in Hogan and Paterson, eds., Explaining the History of

American Foreign Relations, –. The pyramid model of public opinion may apply better to thepost-World War II period because the immigration act of reduced the flow of new immigrantsto many ethnic communities and thus had the long-term effect of “Americanizing” them andperhaps making them less critical of U.S. foreign policy. The centralization of foreign policypowers in the executive branch and the anticommunist purges within the unions may also havecreated a more docile, less informed working class after World War II. Some additionally believethat the rise of mass media such as radio and television helped to create a public that was moremalleable to elite manipulation. On the Americanization of the working class during the interwarperiod see Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, – (Cambridge,). On mass media and the political culture of labor in the s and s see especially NathanGodfried, WCFL: Chicago’s Voice of Labor, – (Urbana, ); and George Lipsitz, Rainbow atMidnight: Labor and Culture in the s (Urbana, ). For a view that emphasizes the persistenceof labor radicalism on international issues in the post- period see Victor Silverman, ImaginingInternationalism in American and British Labor, – (Urbana, ).. On de Valera’s appearance at Wrigley Field see McKillen, Chicago Labor, –.

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The hybrid forms of internationalism promoted by Mexican- and Irish-American leftists differed in many respects but converged in their desire topromote workers’ control in both developing and industrial creditor nationsand in their vehement belief that the Wilson administration and its allies – bothat home and abroad – threatened this goal. Utilizing their significant influenceover rank-and-file workers, they often promoted strike and political activitiesthat undermined the corporatist partnership between the AFL and the Wilsonadministration, and between the AFL and corporatist-oriented labor groups inMexico. Immigrant left leaders also often enjoyed substantial transnationalcontacts and influence with revolutionary leaders in their former homelandsand funneled funds from American workers in ways that often directly undercutthe foreign policy of the Wilson administration. Such groups thus deserve aplace alongside that of corporatist elites and traditional ethnic lobbies in thecontinuing reevaluation of Wilsonian internationalism.

. On the legacies of the PLM see especially Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class,–, ; and MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution, –. On the ways in which theinternationalist thought of the CFL and labor organizations affiliated with it may have reinforcedisolationist thought in the interwar period see McKillen, Chicago Labor; and John Roberts, PuttingForeign Policy to Work: The Role of Organized Labor in American Foreign Relations: – (New York,).. See Steigerwald, “The Reclamation of Woodrow Wilson,” –.


ethnicity, class, and wilsonian internationalism reconsidered: the mexican-american and...

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