Making the workers safe for Wilson

“Making the World Safe for Workers” is a study of how American labor unions and leftist organizations responded to President Woodrow Wilson's decision to intervene in World War I and his proposals for a more “liberal” post-war order. I happen to be familiar with most of the anti-Wilson organizations mentioned (the IWW and the Socialist Party being the most prominent), so I found the chapters on AFL president Samuel Gompers and the pro-war socialists to be the most interesting ones. Another interesting chapter deals with the Liberal Party of Mexico (PLM), really a party of the far left, and its conflicts with both the Wilson administration and the moderates around Carranza during the Mexican Revolution. The PLM was based in Los Angeles, hence its inclusion in this book.

Faced with U.S. entry into World War I, labor and the left were split. The United Mine Workers, one of the few AFL unions organized on an industrial basis and open to all ethnic groups, was a particular stronghold of anti-war opposition. Other opposition forces included the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or Wobblies), feminist groups and most of the Socialist Party. In ethnic terms, strong opposition came from German-Americans, Irish-Americans, African-Americans and Mexicans. It's interesting to note that Victor Berger and Morris Hillquit, who belonged to the “right wing” of the Socialist Party, both opposed the war. Berger was a German Austrian, while Hillquit was a Germanized Jew.

By contrast, the AFL leadership headed by Samuel Gompers decided early on to support the Wilson administration. Gompers and the relatively small pro-war faction of the Socialist Party (Charles Edward Russell, Upton Sinclair, etc) were de facto integrated into Wilson's political machinery. The AFL formed a pro-war political association to compete with the anti-war coalitions further to the left. Gompers served on the Council of National Defense, attended the Versailles peace conference, and took part in the deliberations of the International Labor Organization (ILO), set up in the aftermath of the war as part of the League of Nations. During the last phase of the war, Gompers backed Wilson's hard line opposition to a socialist conference in Stockholm, to which the German Social Democratic Party was invited, fearing that this would somehow aid Germany's war propaganda. Gompers also supported or tolerated Wilson's policy towards Latin America, in return for government support for union organizing drives in Puerto Rico, a U.S. dependency. During the Mexican Revolution, the AFL president acted as an unofficial mediator between the U.S. administration and Carranza. When the Czar was overthrown in Russia, the United States sent a special mission to Petrograd to persuade the Russians to stay in the war. Pro-war socialist and NAACP officer Charles Edward Russell was included to make the U.S. delegation more palatable to the Russian socialists and soviets.

Wilson's administration was seriously worried about labor unrest and its capacity to hamper the U.S. war effort. Mining and the forest industry were particularly important – and vulnerable – in this regard, with the anti-war United Mineworkers being strong among miners, and the IWW being active among forest workers. Wilson followed a two-pronged strategy, mercilessly clamping down on the IWW in particular, while promoting a partnership between the AFL, private business and government, a partnership the author dubs “corporatist”. The author notes that both the IWW and AFL-affiliated unions in forestry struck for higher wages during the war, but the IWW bore the brunt of the repression, suggesting a certain degree of political cunning from Wilson's part. The uncompromising “Wobblies” were clearly seen as the biggest threat in the long run! Internationally, President Wilson (grudgingly) promoted a reform agenda for labor by supporting the creation of the ILO.

In one sense, Wilson was successful. The Allies, after all, did win the world war and revamped the world under Anglo-American auspices. Yet, Wilson lost in the end, the United States Congress refusing to ratify the Versailles peace treaty. The U.S. never joined the League of Nations or the ILO, instead embarking on an “isolationist” course. However, this didn't strengthen the left, since the main bulk of the anti-Wilsonian opposition came from the right. Somehow, the story ends without any real “winner” (except maybe the right-wingers). The author believes that the labor/left reactions to Wilsonian internationalism heralded future cleavages during World War II, the Cold War and the present wars of the Bush and Obama administrations. Collaboration or opposition with U.S. war efforts has always been a central point of contention within the progressive movements.

“Making the World Safe for Workers” is interesting for those who know little about the subject, but probably contains little new for those well-read on U.S. labor and socialist history. The book is written in a somewhat annoying, detached style, constantly referring to the very real conflicts and battles between the Wilson Administration and the anti-war movements as “debates” or “disagreements” (perhaps a university press won't publish a more explicitly revolutionary book). It also contains an amusing gaffe: Kerensky's Russia is referred to as “the Soviet Union” twice! Admirers of Woodrow Wilson and his elusive quest to make the world “safe for democracy” might be annoyed by the book's rather obvious anti-Wilsonian sympathies. Elizabeth McKillen describes herself as having a “Socialist-labor perspective”.