“6. Paternalism and Community” in “Workers and Dissent in the Redwood Empire”
Paternalism and Community
After the demise of the Knights of Labor, the organized labor movement failed to resuscitate itself in the following decade. The weakness of the county’s labor movement in the 1890s paralleled a decline in the fortunes of the movement at the state and national levels. In Humboldt County, only longshoremen, sailors, carpenters, and printers preserved their organizations. For most of the 1890s, their presence was little more than vestigial, owing much to their affiliation with well-established national and regional labor organizations. The depression of the mid-1890s was an important factor in undermining the strength of existing unions and preventing the revival of others. But the weakness of the labor movement was not simply a result of a depressed economic climate. In many cases, especially among lumber workers, the fragility of the union movement was apparent before the depression hit the county.
Factors working against the organization of stable trade unionism among lumber workers were formidable, but this does not provide a full explanation of the ephemeral and episodic nature of lumber unionism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Any account of labor relations in this period must weigh the considerable influence of paternalism and mutualism.1
The Roots of Reciprocity
Several elements fostered the ideal of a fundamental harmony and reciprocity between labor and capital among a significant segment of the Humboldt community. The fact that many of the county’s lumber entrepreneurs had risen from humble origins in Humboldt County lent credence to the ideology of social mobility so integral to the democratic–republican ideal. The county’s increasing reliance on the lumber industry also encouraged an interdependent relationship between employers, workers, and community. In addition, the small and often intimate setting of both workplace and community social relations sustained a distinctly personal quality to human contact between all classes. Finally, the scope of the social and economic power of lumber employers militated to some extent against an antagonistic perception of the social order. In the face of this power, it was tempting for workers to cling to notions of reciprocity and obtain whatever concessions they could within this framework. In their turn, lumber employers, conscious of their power and moral legitimacy, strove to foster a paternalistic and deferential ethos among their workers.
An early example of an attempt to create a benevolent image occurred in 1882 when pioneer Joseph Russ opened his mill. The Humboldt Times pronounced it to be a “model mill,” especially with respect to the “generous and liberal concessions allowed to the men.”2 Russ’s mill had a large, well-equipped cookhouse, and each man had a room and comfortable bedding. The main living quarters had a large reading room, which was kept supplied with newspapers from around the country. At a special dinner for his workers, shortly after the mill opened, Russ dwelt at length on the improvements he had made: “I try always to measure such things as I would have them measured out to me . . . your physical and mental powers are your capital, and I have endeavored by these changes to so protect that capital.” Russ’s speech reveals that his benevolence was not motivated solely by altruism but that he was also acutely sensitive to the precariousness of the relationship between labor and capital and the fact that a well-treated worker might be a more productive one:
At present it seems to be the sole aim of employers to obtain the greatest amount of work at the least possible cost, while those employed too often take no further interest in their work than to put in the alloted hours. . . . I am convinced that labor adjusted on this basis has a constant and almost inevitable tendency to engender and precipitate strikes and the other harsh and desperate remedies for supposed and actual grievances. The remedy for this is a community of interest between employer and employee.3
Over a quarter of a century later, Noah Falk, one of Humboldt County’s few surviving pioneer lumbermen, echoed Russ’s views. The actions of “self-interested persons” caused “friction and ill-feeling” between labor and capital, and could be avoided if labor was “treated with justice.” Falk insisted that “the capitalist is the friend of his men, or should be,” and he added, “I sincerely believe that the workingmen of this county will bear me out when I say that never in the long years I have been here, have I been unwilling to give them their due.”4 The fact that a year earlier (1907), the Elk River Mill and Lumber Company, owned by Falk, had not been touched by a strike that closed down most of the Humboldt County lumber industry suggests Falk’s benevolence was more than rhetoric.
Dan Newell, who operated the largest independent logging operation in the county during the late nineteenth century and who had migrated directly from the woods of Maine to the redwoods of Humboldt County in the late 1850s, was renowned for his managerial ability and the generosity with which he treated his employees. In an interview with the Western Watchman in 1896, Newell spoke candidly of the reasons why he treated his workers so well: “A man has got to know what he is about in the first place; and so far as I’m concerned I hire good men and pay good wages; you can’t log worth a cent with cheap men; get good men, pay ’em good wages, and you do good work; at least that’s been my experience.”5
The decision of Humboldt County lumber owners to grant the ten-hour day to all mill workers illustrates the complex motives underlying their paternalism and provides good evidence that a significant number of lumber workers had deferential attitudes toward their employers. The length of the working day had been a recurrent issue in Humboldt County since the mid-1880s. In the late 1880s, after the demise of the Knights, the carpenters’ and clerks’ unions kept it alive. Against this background, in late August 1890, William Carson announced that he was instituting a ten-hour day for mill workers without any reduction in wages.6 Within a few days, all the major lumber operators in Humboldt County followed suit. Their action was hailed in the county press as a deed of supreme benevolence.
Undoubtedly, Carson and the other employers did not reduce hours in the face of direct and immediate pressure on the part of the mill hands. John Haist, the Eureka agent of the Coast Seamen’s Union, stated bluntly that “this concession cannot be called a labor victory, for it came to them unexpected, unsolicited and perhaps undeserved.”7 Several factors account for the sudden reduction in hours. First, by 1890, the lumber market had recovered fully from the slump that had beset it in the mid-1880s, thus making the reduction in hours more economically palatable. Second, since lumber employers were often closely involved in the day-to-day supervision of operations, some may have desired a shorter working day themselves and been acutely aware of the hardship that a twelve-hour day imposed on workers. George Speed recalls that his boss at the Flanigan and Brosnan logging camp was strongly in favor of the ten-hour day, as it would allow him more time with his family; and Speed’s employer even offered to donate money to support the organizing drive in Mendocino to bring about a ten-hour day in the redwood lumber industry.8 More important, with the ten-hour day established in the Great Lakes and Pacific Northwest lumbering regions, the twelve-hour day in the redwood region threatened to become something of an anachronism and to undermine the employers’ reputation for benevolence. In a retrospective analysis two years later, the Western Watchman offered this as the primary reason for the concession.9 Finally and relatedly, although not confronted with an immediate groundswell of discontent over the working day, the lumber employers were motivated in part by a desire to preempt future agitation on the issue. The concession in 1890 occurred during the peak of a campaign for shorter hours by clerks, carpenters, painters, and masons. Three days before Carson’s announcement, a letter appeared in the Humboldt Standard, signed by 91 men from the building trades, declaring that after September 1, they would work only a nine-hour day.10 At this time also, the Knights were showing fleeting signs of making a comeback in Humboldt County. In terms of defusing a resurgent labor movement, it was rational for lumber employers to grant the ten-hour day and portray it as an act of benevolence, rather than appear to be succumbing to another round of pressure by lumber workers on the issue at some future point.
Most of the mill hands employed in the Humboldt Bay region were surprised and elated by the concession. The news broke on Saturday, August 30, and as rumors spread that the other lumber operators were going to follow the lead of Carson, mill workers decided that some kind of demonstration of gratitude was in order. Shortly after 8:00 P.M., hundreds of mill workers began assembling in front of City Hall. A procession led by two bands then marched to the house of lumber employer David Evans. By the time the parade reached Evans’s residence, there were at least 1,000 people present. Evans threw open the doors and windows of his house as the bands serenaded him. George Murray then made a formal statement of thanks to Evans on behalf of the mill workers. In his response, Evans claimed that during his life he had occupied almost every position in the mill, and insisted that he still considered himself “a laborer.” For many years, he said, he had felt that a reduction in the millmen’s working day was overdue. The procession then marched to the residences of William Carson and John Vance, where almost identical scenes followed.11
Not everyone regarded the ten-hour concession as a supreme act of benevolence. In a long and scathing letter published in the Western Watchman, W. Bolonies of Eureka chided the mill workers for their passivity over the issue and for participating in a charade “in which the laborer is made to play the role of recipient of this or that man’s bounty.” He was especially cynical about the motives of Eureka Mayor John Vance: “The idea he sought to convey is, that, employers are dispensers of bounty to those they employ and consequently laborers should regard them as benefactors.”12 Bolonies asked lumber workers to consider who really produced the wealth and concluded by urging millmen and woodsmen to form unions.
The spontaneous outburst of jubilation and the lavish expressions of gratitude that followed the news of the ten-hour day indicate that many mill workers perceived the concession as a supreme act of benevolence. It is also significant, as the Western Watchman noted critically,13 that the mill workers did not choose a spokesman from among their own ranks to thank the mill owners; instead, they selected a prominent figure in the community to speak for them. The anniversary of the ten-hour day was celebrated for several years, especially by William Carson’s employees. On the first anniversary, a letter of gratitude from “All Employees of the Bay Mill” appeared in the local press:
When we read of the existing troubles between employers and employed in various sections of this and other countries . . . we are most impressed with the fortunate circumstances of our situation. . . . While it is a source of regret that differences between capital and labor in other places should lead to misunderstandings, loss, and bitter contentions, it yet contributes to our pleasure that our hours of labor were lessened without loss of wages and without any request by us. We sincerely hope that each recurring anniversary of this event will turn the thoughts of every mill laborer toward the person to whom we are all indebted for the reduction. Finally, we hope that you may recall our appreciation of your act each year and never have occasion to regret . . . that the step was taken.14
Lumbermen, Paternalism, and Republicanism
The integral role played by many lumber employers in the social and political life of the community reflected and reinforced the esteem in which they were held by both lumber workers and the community at large. In the realm of politics, four prominent lumbermen—John Vance, David Evans, C. C. Stafford, and D. J. Flanigan—served as mayors of Eureka between 1888 and 1901. William Carson served several terms on the Eureka City Council. He was a Republican presidential elector in 1896 and ran unsuccessfully for mayor against David Evans in 1899. Joseph Russ was twice elected to the California state assembly on the Republican ticket. This is not to argue that lumber entrepreneurs dominated the political life of the community. With the possible exception of tax assessments and internal improvements, lumbermen could do relatively little to foster their business interests at the local (especially municipal) level. Lumbermen were far more concerned with political developments at the state and national levels, which had a greater impact on their fortunes. The political role of the lumbermen at the local level was primarily a function of the fact that they were highly esteemed members of the community and, like the “best men” in many communities, believed it was their civic duty to run for office.
The role of lumber operators in local politics mirrored the important social role they played in the life of the community. The Gilded Age was an age of voluntarism, and many social institutions depended on the generosity of local businessmen. Lumbermen in Humboldt County gave important financial support to such institutions as churches, charities, educational institutions, and the free public library. They frequently sponsored communitywide events, such as the annual Fourth of July celebrations, the Admission Day anniversary, and a midsummer fair. In 1879, John Vance began organizing an annual picnic for the schoolchildren of Humboldt County, which often drew as many as 2,000 people.
In evaluating paternalism in late-nineteenth-century Humboldt County, it is important to appreciate that, even in the “metropolis” of Eureka, Humboldters lived essentially in a face-to-face setting where interpersonal relations were such that many members of the community were on a first-name basis. This is conveyed most vividly in some of the recollective accounts. J. C. Blake nostalgically recalled the “fraternity” that existed among the old pioneers: “Everyone knew everyone else, including his peculiarities and many were the tales told around the big open fireplace in the evening when one would stop at a neighbor’s, and we were all neighbors, even if we lived many miles apart.”15 As a child, Blake was well acquainted with lumber operators Isaac Minor, William Carson, and John Vance. He remembered how kind and friendly these men were to children, and recalled specific occasions when he was approached by them to be asked what type of hogs he was caring for or how he was progressing in school.16
This web of relationships was reinforced outside the workplace by such institutions as the churches, schools, charitable institutions, and a plethora of fraternal orders. Fraternal orders played a central role in the life of the community from the 1850s until well into the twentieth century.17 The Humboldt County press repeatedly boasted that Eureka had more fraternal societies than any other city of its size in the United States.18 In 1889, the Times reported that the Odd Fellows’ membership was over 500 in Eureka alone,19 and in 1919 the Odd Fellows retained 10 lodges countywide, comprising 1,426 members, in addition to 9 sister Rebekah lodges with 1,213 members.20 The Masons, the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, the Knights of Columbus, and the Woodmen of the World, to name but a few, all had large memberships. At a grand celebration in 1899, the Woodmen of the World, a fraternal order founded in Colorado in 1890, drew over 2,000 participants.21 The small community of Blue Lake, with a population of not more than 800 people, possessed 11 different fraternal orders in 1907.22
The size of these fraternal orders indicates that they were hardly exclusive domains restricted to the elite members of the community. Obituaries of lumber workers in the local press reveal quite often that they belonged to a fraternal order. At a jubilee celebration of the Odd Fellows in 1899, one of the keynote speakers insisted that the order encompassed men from all classes: “It is not confined to those of any occupation or avocation. We find the laborer and the professional men, the merchant and the mechanic, all engaged in the noble work. And it is right that it should be so for the benefit of the community in general.”23
Communitywide events such as the New Year’s ball and Sunday picnics fostered the spirit of fraternity. Sunday picnics were especially important social occasions. Whether sponsored by the Odd Fellows, the Farmers’ Association, The Blue Noses (people of Canadian origin), the Union Sunday school, or in honor of (California) Admission Day, Sunday picnics often attracted 2,000 people. The annual Fourth of July celebrations invariably drew the largest crowds. Mill and woods operations usually ceased at this time for a few days. At the Independence Day festivities, besides the patriotic orations and the reading of the Declaration of Independence, there were elaborate parades, gun salutes, sports programs with prizes for the winners, literary renditions, band music, pie-eating contests, a free barbecue, horseraces, and bike races. The day was usually capped off by a Grand Ball. Retired lumber worker Ralph Frost recalled the “good old days” in the 1880s when people from all over the county flocked to Eureka for a “three day carnival on the streets, side shows, fireman’s hose contests, lots of firecrackers and fireworks.”24
The Independence Day ritual was not simply a convivial occasion that helped foster a sense of social harmony in the community by drawing people from diverse class, religious, and national backgrounds to a common meeting place. It also provided the perfect setting for people of different political persuasions to venerate the shared and cherished republican principles on which the nation was founded.25 Occasionally, dissenters attempted to use the July Fourth ritual to popularize the more radical precepts of the democratic–republican tradition. For example, in 1880, when the Greenback Labor party was gathering momentum, Keller stated at the Independence Day celebration in the small township of Centerville that he and his fellow Greenbackers would “on that day declare anew the principles that all men are equal before the law,” and they would examine “the duties that devolve upon us in order that we may hand over to our posterity the privileges that were conferred upon us by our forefathers.”26 Such instances were rare, however. Invariably, Independence Day was one on which conservative political elements invoked the individualistic, corporatist, and chauvinist strains of the democratic–republican tradition to try and dispel the notion that a class system had evolved in America. The Humboldt Times called for a spectacular Fourth of July celebration in 1881 in rhetoric typical of that accompanying Independence Day festivities:
We have one of the best countries in the world. It is a common country and belongs to John Smith, just as much as it does to Dick Jones and Tom Brown. We are granted privileges alike, and one receives shelter or protection to the same extent as another. There is no such thing as an aristocracy, codfish or otherwise, and such ideas are only advanced by the narrow minded, bigoted, sordid, sour disappointed individuals. There is no such thing as caste.27
Such eulogies were not confined to Republican organs like the Humboldt Times. The Western Watchman, one of northern California’s most established and outspoken dissident newspapers in the late nineteenth century, wrapped the memory of the sacred day in almost identical rhetoric in 1889: “The Fourth of July is a national day on which all hearts may throb in unison to a common aspiration of patriotic sentiment.”28 The following year, the Watchman described the Declaration of Independence as “one of the greatest advances made in human liberty, civilization and government.”29 The invocation of a shared and unique republican heritage on July Fourth, and indeed on other occasions, engendered a sense of local and national community that helped transcend underlying actual or potential social conflicts.
It is worth noting that as early as 1874, 3,000 people attended Independence Day celebrations in Ferndale with the Grangers contributing a significant complement.30 In 1898, the Sailors’ Union, the successor to the Coast Seamen’s Union and still a militant union, played a prominent role in the Fourth of July parade.31 Independence Day celebrations continued to attract several thousand people throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century. Only at the height of their power in the early twentieth century did the labor movement and the Socialist party attempt to organize rival festivities.
One aspect of the editorial in the Humboldt Times, quoted above, is especially important in understanding how the ritual could be used as a forum for the moral legitimation of the existing social order. This was the strong emphasis on the link between republicanism and the ideology of social mobility: the notion that America provided an arena in which all had an equal chance to compete and succeed. This assertion had considerable plausibility in a community where many of the lumber capitalists came from humble origins—a fact that David Evans and John Vance stressed when they responded to the mill workers’ effusions of gratitude at being granted the ten-hour day. But the county press did not dwell on Horatio Alger stories solely in the context of Independence Day. They harped on the theme repeatedly, often during times of social and political dissension within the community. In 1888, the Arcata Union, fearful that the newly formed Union Labor party might attract significant support in the county, vigorously denied that the country’s laws had produced a rigid class system. Malcontents who made such assertions were accused of ignoring the fact that:
Ninety percent of the wealthy men of Humboldt County started in life poor, some of them without a dollar, and that it was by pluck, strict economy and indomitable industry by which they accumulated money to help themselves, and that not one single one of them has made his fortune at banking. Is there any other country on earth where this state of things can be found? It seems to us that a country cannot be wholly misgoverned where the way is thus open for a poor man to get to the front.32
When William Carson ran for mayor of Eureka in 1899, the Humboldt Standard reminded citizens that, forty years ago, Carson had come to Humboldt County as a “poor man and worked as a common laborer in the woods,” who by dint of hard work and frugality had “laid the foundation for his present ample fortune.”33 Not only did such stories lend credence to the ideology of social mobility, but they also heightened the deference and respect with which the self-made lumber entrepreneurs were viewed by their workers and the community at large and inclined people to regard their benevolence as acts of altruism inspired by empathy for the lot of the common man.
Although a substantial element of calculation inspired the benevolence of many lumbermen, it would be mistaken to view the Humboldt County lumber patrician in a totally cynical light. As Eugene Genovese has argued with respect to American slavery, paternalism could be born out of a genuine human concern and empathy as well as a shrewd sense of self-interest.34 That many lumber operators had come from humble origins, that they often had worked in a wide range of logging and milling occupations, and that even after they had become entrepreneurs, they were involved in the day-to-day supervision of the work process and knew almost all their workers on a first-name basis were facts that made it hard for lumber operators not to feel some sympathy and responsibility for their workers.
The closest approximation to a bona fide altruistic paternalist was William Carson. No one in the county’s history has been more revered for his beneficence. A newspaper tribute to him in 1899 presaged eulogies that would be bestowed on him after his death in 1912:
There are hundreds of poor people in Humboldt County who have been aided by him and did not know from whom the assistance came. . . . No man has ever gone to William Carson for help in a good cause and gone away empty-handed. No man has gone to him on behalf of the widow or the orphan, the sick or the needy and been refused assistance. During the hard times of the past few years his hand was always open to assist the worthy poor, and many a person has been clothed and warmed and fed by his generosity.35
Carson’s reputation was not simply the mythical creation of the local press. Carson gave generously to many philanthropic causes, in and outside Humboldt County, including churches, orphanages, a meeting hall for Civil War veterans, and to victims of an Italian earthquake in 1908. He also mailed checks semiannually, ranging from $50 to $250, to people (usually women) who lived in New Brunswick and Maine.36 Some of the recipients might have been relatives, but none bore Carson’s name, and there was never an accompanying letter to indicate that this was the case.
Carson’s benevolence extended to the welfare of his employees. He had a firm policy by the late nineteenth century of hiring only Humboldt County residents, as job seekers from all parts of California and the nation were cordially informed. Carson paid men incapacitated by injury or illness anywhere from half to the full amount of their wages for the duration of their affliction.37 At Christmas, he customarily gave his employees a bonus. A few days before Christmas in 1904, he gave his married employees a $5 gold piece and the unmarried employees $2.50 in silver.38 Upper-echelon employees got more generous amounts. On Christmas Eve, 1903, Carson wrote to his director of railroad operations enclosing a check for $250 “as an expression of my appreciation of your faithful and efficient service . . . and the loyalty you have always shown to the interests of the company.”39
Carson’s correspondence indicates clearly that he sometimes felt very genuine bonds of affection and concern for an employee. In 1904, he was compelled to fire his woods foreman, Fred Christie, because he had become an alcoholic. For many years, Carson and his son Milton showed great concern and interest in the fate of Christie and his wife. In 1909, Carson wrote to his San Francisco agent informing him that Christie was in the city and that, should he need any funds, he was to be provided with them.40 In 1911, when Christie applied for a job in the Oregon lumber industry, Milton Carson wrote a glowing letter of recommendation stating that he would make an excellent foreman if “he had mastered that habit.”41 Periodic newspaper descriptions of the Dolbeer and Carson operations, and Carson’s obituaries, noted that many employees had served with the company from twenty to forty years. “Workers were a big family at Carson’s,” stated one obituary.42 When Carson died in 1912, he bequeathed sums that ranged between $1,000 and $15,000 to 33 of his employees, almost all of whom had worked for him for ten to forty years.43
In evaluating the overall impact of paternalism in shaping the nature of labor relations in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Humboldt County, it is important to note that its extent varied among employers. Even within the same enterprise, there were significant differences in how workers were treated. The archetypical patrician, William Carson, did not exhibit the same concern for the welfare of an unskilled and unmarried woodsman as he did for his foreman or one of his highly skilled employees who had worked for him for over a decade. Evidence suggests that it was the skilled worker of long standing who was invariably the recipient of acts of benevolence when misfortune struck. As a general rule, the pioneer lumbermen who could trace their roots in the county to the 1850s and 1860s were the greatest bestowers of beneficence. Significantly, one of the first mills founded by outside capital had the reputation for being the harshest regime in Humboldt County. J. C. Blake, who recalled men like Carson and Vance with reverence, remembered the cruelty with which Colonel Bauer of the Humboldt Lumber Mill Company, founded in 1883 by the Korbel brothers, treated his workers. Blake described Bauer as a “perfect gentleman” in social matters “but in the management of the Company he was more of a tyrant.” The company employed many men from Bohemia. Bauer, a “Bohemian gentleman,” viewed the workers as “serfs.” Not uncommonly, he used his walking cane to chastise workers from his native country. Not all workers were as submissive. One day, Bauer crept up on a worker who was illicitly smoking a pipe and brought his cane down heavily on the offender’s posterior. The smoker pivoted and delivered a “haymaker” that sent Bauer sprawling. On learning that the man was Irish, Bauer decreed that, in future, no Irishmen would be employed.44
It is difficult to gauge the extent of the benevolence of the lumber employers. To draw attention to the deeds of a man like Carson, and indeed those of other lumbermen, is not to suggest that most felt a boundless sense of social responsibility toward their employees and the community at large. If one assumes that, in general, lumber employers were as willing to trumpet their acts of benevolence as they were after the ten-hour-day concession, and that most of the county press was willing to serve as their publicity agents, then grandiose acts of munificence were comparatively rare. Charity was usually dispensed selectively by the lumbermen: to their own church, their pet local institution, and ordinarily to employees of long standing and then only in exceptional cases of hardship. The poverty during the depressions of the late 1870s, the mid-1880s, and mid-1890s, and the inability of local charitable institutions to cope with it, points to distinct limits to the lumbermen’s benevolence. Their refusal to concede the ten-hour day in 1887 and their unwillingness to extend this concession to woodsmen in 1890 also indicate the boundaries of this benevolence. Moreover, notwithstanding the glowing descriptions of Russ’s mill, recollective accounts and the early reports of the California Commission of Immigration and Housing indicate that living conditions in almost all lumber camps remained very spartan until at least World War I.
Regardless of the limits and motives underlying their benevolence, lumber employers were successful, to some degree, in instilling feelings of gratitude among a significant proportion of their workforce. The scenes that followed the ten-hour-day concession are evidence of this. Further evidence can be offered. In 1896, William Carson posted a notice in the mill, under a picture of William McKinley, promising employees a pay raise if McKinley was elected.45 When Carson honored his promise, over a year later, his employees decorated the picture of McKinley with white roses and yellow ribbons.46 It was not without significance that John Vance was known by his employees and throughout the community as “Uncle John.” The funerals of pioneer lumbermen such as Vance and Carson were very well attended by lumber workers and people from the community. Even the funeral of Mrs. Carson in 1904 witnessed a “general outpouring of rich and poor alike that lined the streets in front of the house,” including over 200 lumber workers.47 But perhaps the best evidence that paternalism paid off in Humboldt County was the failure of the International Brotherhood of Woodsmen and Sawmill Workers (founded in the county during the early twentieth century) to organize many of the lumber workers employed by the surviving pioneer operators. It was in the large mills established or taken over by capitalists from outside the county that the union attracted most of its following.
The ability of the lumber entrepreneurs to foster paternalism and mutualism was greatly enhanced by the fact that, by the late nineteenth century, the fate of the local economy was inextricably tied to the fortunes of the lumber industry. The lumbermen did not have to broadcast the interdependence of the community, the workers, and the lumber industry. It was self-evident, and other businessmen and the county press reminded the community of this on repeated occasions. This interdependency partially helps explain the effusions of gratitude with which workers greeted the ten-hour day. A more widespread and revealing manifestation of the degree to which workers perceived a link between their well-being and that of the community occurred in 1892 after a federal River and Harbor Bill, appropriating $1.7 million for harbor improvements, became law. A parade took place on the Saturday after the news was received that the Western Watchman described as the “largest and most enthusiastic ever” in the county’s history. Every union in the county—including the carpenters, the printers, and the sailors—took part, and all the mills were represented by a large contingent of workers with a lumber employer at their head. Woodsmen from Flanigan, Brosnan carried a banner that read Humboldt Will Go Ahead. Dolbeer and Carson’s mill crew carried a placard stating Deep Water Brings Railroads. We’ll Get Them You Bet.48
To recognize the role played by paternalism in mitigating tensions between labor and capital is not to argue that labor becomes so totally subservient to capital that it abrogates all notion of its rights. As Genovese and other historians of the subject have argued, paternalism almost inherently entails an element of reciprocity between the subordinate and the superordinate. Labor relations in the Humboldt County lumber industry, particularly during the 1890s, illustrate this point.
The ten-hour day, while it was not an immediate or direct outgrowth of pressure from the mill workers, was not one that they were willing to relinquish easily. Two weeks after the announcement was made, a “laborer” from the lumber town of Scotia wrote to the local press admitting that while the news had taken the mill hands by surprise, “we got there and we mean to stay there.”49 The clearest manifestation of the mill workers’ determination to preserve the ten-hour day occurred in 1892 during a protracted struggle by their counterparts in Mendocino County to obtain a similar concession and the attempt by one Humboldt County lumber operator to extend the working day. In April 1892, Isaac Minor threatened to increase the workday in his Glendale mill to eleven and a half hours. Minor later claimed that this was a temporary expedient to meet a backlog of orders and that he had obtained the consent of his employees. The accounts are conflicting; nevertheless the vast majority of Minor’s millmen walked out and closed down the mill.50 “Not since the ecision [sic] of the foul cancer of Chinese labor, which formerly knawed [sic] at the vitals of Humboldt’s progress has such excitement prevailed,” wrote a “Ten Hour Adherent.”51 In the face of such resolute opposition, Minor abandoned his attempt to lengthen the working day.
The Millmen’s Union and the Limits of Paternalism
The events at Minor’s mill sparked a mass meeting of mill workers in the Humboldt Bay area. In early May 1892, representatives from nine mills met to consider a course of action.52 The mill workers were alarmed, not only by what had transpired at Glendale, but by the continued and bitter opposition of the Mendocino lumber owners to the establishment of the ten-hour day. They feared that the obstinacy of the Mendocino lumbermen might cause the Humboldt lumber manufacturers to retract their concession.53 Many mill workers believed that the situation called for some kind of organization. The Western Watchman urged the mill workers to join the Knights, who were spearheading a struggle for the ten-hour day in the Mendocino mills.54 The mill hands, however, spurned the advice of the Watchman and formed an independent Millmen’s Union. The preamble of the new union’s constitution noted the “happy experience in this county of the ten hour system” and stressed the mill workers’ determination to maintain the ten-hour day.55
Several features of the founding meeting of the Millmen’s Union and the nature of the union are of note. To begin with, many of the major lumber employers in Humboldt County were present at the founding meeting. The mill owners participated in the proceedings for three main reasons. First, while they stressed the competitive disadvantage they were operating under vis-à-vis their Mendocino rivals, they were at pains to assuage fears that the ten-hour concession was about to be abrogated. Second, they were keen to support an organization that might lend valuable assistance to the ten-hour-day struggle in Mendocino. Finally, they were anxious to exert as much control as possible over the new union.
The Millmen’s Union, while born of a determination to preserve the ten-hour day, demonstrated the limits of “militancy” among the lumber workers in the 1890s. The mill workers allowed their employers to attend their founding meeting and refused to consider seriously affiliating with the Knights or any other regional or national labor organization. This was in stark contrast to the mid-1880s when lumber workers readily joined the Knights and when lumber employers were excluded from the Order. At the founding meeting of the Millmen’s Union, the Western Watchman observed that “the rank and file of the working men did not show up very prominently in the discussion.”56 The Watchman accused the mill owners of playing a major role in the establishment of the union and of deliberately diverting the mill workers from forming “a sound labor organization, upon true economic principles.” The Watchman admitted that the union might do some good, but warned that it “will return no strength for continued effort in labor’s cause for reason that the prompting influence will be withdrawn.”57 The Eureka correspondent to the Coast Seamen’s Journal concurred. Although he thought that there were many “earnest” men in the new organization, he lamented the fact that “the promoters of the new organization are all men who hold responsible positions in the various mills, and the men to whom the millowners would look to for the carrying out of their plans.”58 Indeed, many of the officers of the Millmen’s Union were upper-echelon mill employees.
In January 1893, leaders of the Millmen’s Union wrote a long and melodramatic letter appealing to the Mendocino mill owners to grant the ten-hour day. The letter began by reminding the Mendocino lumbermen of an old axiom: “The better the boss the better the hand.” It also drew attention to the fact that employers in many industries had recently reduced the hours of labor and insisted that the ten-hour concession in Humboldt County had not reduced the workers’ daily output. “The establishment of the ten hour day will relieve you from the stigma of selfishment, and give you a place in the column of progress that is now marching over the land.”59 The Mendocino mill owners, however, ignored the appeals. The Millmen’s Union never attained more than a few hundred members, and by 1894 it had vanished. In spite of its short-lived existence and its fundamentally conservative nature, the fact remains that, notwithstanding the stubbornness of their Mendocino competitors and the severe depression of the mid-1890s, the Humboldt County lumber employers adhered to the ten-hour day.
Assessing the precise extent to which paternalism affected labor relations in Humboldt County is complex. Even more complex is the question of the degree to which deferential attitudes at the workplace and in the community at large affected political values and voting behavior. The deference and respect accorded the lumber owner may not have been manifested in the polling booth. Nor can the success of lumbermen in local politics necessarily be regarded as evidence of their political hegemony. It is worth repeating that local elections in the late nineteenth century were almost always of a nonpartisan character between the “best men,” and only rarely were there serious divisions over substantive local issues. The defeat of William Carson by rival lumberman David Evans in the Eureka mayoral election of 1899 also indicates that lumbermen were not a monolithic entity in the local political arena and that the man with the best paternalist credentials did not necessarily win. Moreover, the scope of local government power and activity in a small community was relatively limited in the late nineteenth century. Only in the Progressive era was municipal government in a rapidly growing city like Eureka forced to expand its scope as it confronted problems largely attendant on growth, such as maintaining streets and providing public transportation and efficient and low-cost public utilities. Local politics became at once more contentious and partisan; the “best men,” especially lumber owners, ceased to play a conspicuous role.
It is possible that in state and national electoral contests, Humboldt County lumber employers may have had an important influence from the pioneer days. Almost without exception, they were Republicans. Is it purely coincidental that in every election in the Gilded Age and the Progressive era, the Republican presidential nominee obtained a majority in Humboldt County, in spite of the fact that, statewide, the California Democratic party established itself as a viable alternative party within a decade of the end of the Civil War? In 1890, F. A. Cutler, the chairman of the Humboldt Democratic party, expressed hope in a letter to California Democratic Congressman Stephen White that the fortunes of the Humboldt Democratic party were about to take a turn for the better, asserting that his voice had “reached deep into the laboring classes of our county, the majority of whom hitherto have been controlled by our mill owners and the redwood kings.”60
Notwithstanding Cutler’s judgment, electoral mechanics, and Carson’s interest in the outcome of the 1896 presidential election, it would be a mistake to overemphasize the political influence of the lumber owners. Carson and the others did not play the conspicuous role in state and national elections that they had in 1896. Moreover, impressive third-party performances by the Workingmen’s party, the Greenbackers, and the Populists indicate the parameters of their political hegemony.
In the sphere of social relations, however, the evidence indicates that notions of reciprocity, deference, and paternalism played a significant role in mitigating social conflict, even though it remains hard to determine precisely the extent of paternalism and the degree to which workers internalized a mutualistic ethos. In single-industry and company towns dotted across the American landscape of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the power of employers alone fostered a spirit of accommodation among some workers. Powerlessness need not have this effect, but as John Gaventa has noted with respect to Appalachian coal mining communities: “Powerlessness may affect the consciousness of potential challenges about grievances strategies, or the possibilities of change. Participation denied over time may lead to the acceptance of the role of non-participation.”61
Paradoxically, while some elements of the democratic-republican tradition provided the foundations for a radical critique of Gilded Age America, others provided the basis for a reciprocal conception of class relations. The democratic–republican tradition contained a mix of individualistic and corporatist ideas that could be invoked to extol a harmonious model of the social order. In particular, an important strand of the tradition glorified the ideology of social mobility while stressing that there was nothing incompatible between the sum total of individual endeavors and the greater good of society. Although the contradictions of this logic became increasingly apparent to dissenters, in a community setting such as Humboldt, this mutualistic view of social relations still had considerable appeal to certain segments of the community.
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