Revolution Aborted; Society Sacralized:
Class War in Buffalo, 1910-1920*

By Dr. Elwin H. Powell
(Design of Discord -1973)

"All Buffalo flocked to Main Street in hope of excitement," This Buffalo Express photo from April, 1913 shows the crowds being moved along by police and guardsmen.

The respectable community alternatively ignored and ridiculed the Socialists, but one eminent Buffalonian wrote in Harpers in 1911:

"Socialism is a movement of such a nature . . . as seems likely to break suddenly, someday into avalanches and floods."

To alert Buffalonians 1913 must have seemed the beginning of the floodtide. As a year of labor unrest it is comparable only with 1877, 1892, and 1919. MacTaggart's thorough study of Buffalo labor history indicates that there was an average of less than two strikes a year between 1824 and 1917. In 1913, thirteen major strikes were recorded and the most notable of these involved 1700 street railway workers and 2300 national guardsmen. The strike was initially organized by the man who was editor of the Buffalo Socialist (and also vice president of the Proletarian Club)." Maximum wages of streetcar workers amounted to 28 cents an hour for a man of nine years' service, and some employees worked as many as eighteen hours a day for $1.. When the strike was called the company imported 500 strike breakers from Chicago and Philadelphia, and the local police force was increased by 250 uniformed men. Still unable to establish car service the company pressed city officials to call out the national guard (both the sheriff and the mayor refused but a local judge was prevailed upon to sign the order activating the guard). No strike before had so directly affected the total population of the city, and the public reaction was a mixture of alarm and delight which did not necessarily follow class lines. The excitement was a welcome relief from the tedium of daily life. "All Buffalo flocked to Main Street in hope of excitement," wrote the Express.

The crowds were as dense as appeared on election nights in the days before voting machines . . . a moving mass of people . . . one double procession of automobiles. Trucks were fitted with seats offering joy rides for ten cents. .

A trip of a patrol wagon would attract a following of easily a 1000 men and boys screaming and yelling . . . . The surging crowds poured through the side streets making the night hideous with their noise.

The crowd was made up largely of the idly curious out to see rather than to take part in whatever trouble occurred. Fathers and mothers regardless of their own or their children's safety brought them out in baby buggies or toted them along by hand . . . dozens of young hoodlums passed insulting remarks and acted in a way which ought to have been sufficient to drive decent people off the streets.

. The young girls were out in force also, chattering and giggling. . . . (April 8, 1913)

But the next day rioting took a more serious turn, "revolver shots were exchanged between the police and the mobs . . . the police chief's car was the target of a fusilade of bullets, though no one in the machine was hit" (Express, April 9, 1913). The following day the entire 4th National Guard Brigade 2300 men policed the city, but their efforts, said the Express, "were met with jeers."

Troops with fixed bayonets held no terrors for the disorderly elements." Finally, the troops fired on the mobs; the Express describes the scene:

"Fire!" came the command. A dozen rifles cracked. The crowd scattered and a woman came reeling down the bank. There was another spit of bullets from the other side of the bridge, and a boy got one of them in the arm. The crowd thronged to the area. The soldiers followed with fixed bayonets and drove the throng back to the curb. More than one felt the butt of a rifle against his ribs . . . and one received a bayonet thrust in the hand." (Express, April, 10)

No fatalities resulted, but the firing on the crowd tilted public opinion to the side of the strikers, after it had become apparent that neither the police, the military, nor the strike breakers could operate the street car lines. Even the Express demanded that the company accede to the strikers' demands, which had been reduced to the issue of union recognition.

a question of union recognition is a minor matter. If the strikers as their leaders say, are willing to go back to work provided the union is recognized, then the company has no right to deprive the city of safe transportation.

The business of this company is to furnish transportation, not to fight a sociological question. (April 11, 1913)

In the meantime the socialists had been eased out of the strike leadership, and the conservative AFL element was recognized; the situation returned to normal (without pay increases). Under the caption: "Wicked Loss to Business" the Express (April 12) totaled up the cost of the strike:

During the remainder of 1913, twelve other strikes occurred car workers of the railroad, street car laborers, store clerks, delivery drivers, teamsters, truck drivers: icemen, railway express men, machinists, taxi drivers, baggage helpers, plus an abortive strike of school children.

Throughout the country 1913 and '14 were years of unrest and unemployment; in Buffalo vagrancy arrests rose from 969 in 1910 to 1931 in 1914; in this period the total number of arrests increased by 50 per cent (see Table 14). Although it is difficult to generalize about trends in crime, Table 14 parallels rather closely the pattern Arthur Wood found for Detroit. Arrests reached a high point in 1917 and 1918, but the upward climb had begun earlier.

TABLE 14 -Male Arrests in Buffalo (1910-1921)

With the outbreak of World War I the economic picture improved almost instantaneously. "The war had been in progress only one week," writes Dickman, "when Buffalo producers began making ex tensive preparation for a boom in the export field . . . . Steel was soon operating at or above capacity and more grain passed through the port than ever before in history." All of the daily papers except the Times (published by a Bryan Democrat) were united in their support for loans to belligerents. "The proposition is essentially simple," said the Express, "the question for us to decide is whether we would rather refuse credits and go without the trade or grant credits and keep the trade. We cannot refuse credits and keep the trade." The loans were justified by the local press because "business not politics was behind them." The question of which Europeans benefit . . . "is of little interest to Americans compared with the fact that it will be a great benefit to the United States" (Express, Sept., 1915). Economically, the war could not have come at a more opportune moment. Up to the time of U.S. entry (April 1917) $1,500,000,000 had been lent to the Allies and $27,000,000 to the Central Powers which amounts were spent in the United States. In the last year of neutrality, exports, for the United States as a whole, jumped from $2,500,000,000 to $4,300,000,000. By 1916 there was "a continuous and extraordinary prosperity."

From the outbreak of hostilities the press, first subtly and then overtly, promoted the idea of U.S. intervention, but the public was slow to respond. On August 4, 1914, the Express called for increasing U.S. strength to full wartime levels. On the other hand, the local Socialists were holding peace meetings six months before that date, and in mid August 1914 conducted an open air meeting to protest the war at which "3,000 people listened with interest but displayed no great enthusiasnism" (News, August 16, 1914). Toward both war and peace the public was apathetic. "It never entered into discussion," writes the local historian Sweeny, "not even into our thoughts, that we had need to take sides in such a conflict. The announcement by the umpire . . . at the Ferry Street ball park occasioned about the same relative interest as the telegraph dispatches from French and Belgium battlefields. The neighborhood press ignored the subject entirely, and "the mayor's [annual] message of 1915 contained no mention of the war or its local effects. His communication of 1916 was likewise barren of war reference.. The people "went their war listless way," says Sweeny, but:

On November 3, 1915, Joseph Choate, former American ambassador to England held a meeting at the Bankers Club in New York City . . . . Every American city was invited to participate through its mayor . . . . Addressing the meeting the mayor of Buffalo said, "Buffalo . . . is solidly in favor of the great enterprise which inspires our coming together . . . 450,000 of us stoutly favor every reasonable effort looking to national preparedness . ..While neither the mayor's speech nor the occasion for it attracted any great amount of attention here at home . . . the mayor did not delay putting the city in entire accord with the plans of the National Security League."

The main function of the National Security League, composed locally of men of high status from different segments of the community, was to promote sentiment for military preparedness. The pomp and drama of the preparedness parades and rallies delighted the populace, but as Sweeny reflects, sadly; "the interest was largely recreational . . . opinion was divided on the question of whether the trouble might reasonably be expected with England or Germany. In one such demonstration the Buffalo Courier could detect "the vibrant spirit of American nationalism" (Nov., 1915). On the other hand the Express later wondered: "With all the popular enthusiasm for preparedness it is strange that membership in the local regiments of the national guard should have fallen off to an extent which threatens the disbandment of these organizations" (Jan., 1916). While the press and powerful voices in the national elite were urging a belligerent policy, it was clearly the peace issue that elected Wilson in 1916 by the narrowest vote of any President prior to Kennedy. When local troops returned from Mexican border duty in March 1917 patriotic fervor was at such a low ebb that the News was moved to ask: "Are we decadent . . . indifferent to everything save personal business pursuits?" (Mar., 1917).

Patriotism increased after the declaration of War but was still insufficient to inspire much volunteering for active service, and it was necesary to resort to conscription. Although the Socialist party lost some of it's top leadership in the split over the war, its electoral strength increased. In 1917 Morris Hillquit came close to winning the mayoralty of New York City, and in Buffalo the Socialist candidate for mayor in the primary polled 14,200 as opposed to 14,400 for the Republican and 17,000 for the Democratic candidate. (The Republican won in the run off as a result of Socialist support.) In Rochester the socialists won half a dozen city and county offices. The high vote was attributed to the anti war sentiment (Express, Oct., 1917).

For Buffalo, World War I meant a maximum of prosperity with a minimum of hardship. About 20,000 residents served in the armed forces, and of these some 951 were either killed or died of disease. The war had an integrating effect: "There was no east side, south side, west side or north side only Buffalo," says one historian, "Personal affairs were secondary. Buffalonians will never forget the stirring, inspiring, self sacrificing days of 1917 18." Profits and wages were equally inspiring, as Table 15 indicates. In July 1917 the offi- ...CONTINUED NEXT PAGE >>

* This text was transcribed from: Powell, Elwin. H (1925-1991). The Design of Discord, Studies of Anomie. Suicide, Urban Society, War. Oxford Universirty Press. 1970.

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