Final Flavor Stories

[Judge Sam]

There are still a bunch of extra flavor materials I found before the game started that I want to share with you all. I won't be able to arrange them into summarized stories with pictures but you should check them out if you're interested, maybe read one a day or something.


This is a newspaper article about a battle between Colorado miners union and the mine owners. Was tons of these in the 1900s and this one is pretty interesting.


It's not just the US that is being affected by evil union busters. The practice has spread through the rest of the western world. This is a report from a British agency documenting some of the scariest things from US union busters and how it is spreading to their shores.

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A National Labor Relations Board chairman testified about the results of these union busting techniques:

The mystery and deadly certainty with which this scheme [labor spying] operated was so baffling to the men that they each suspected the others, were afraid to meet or to talk and the union was completely broken.

A labor spy observed, "Those labor unions were so hot, crying about spies, that everything was at fever pitch and they look at each other with blood in their eyes."

[youtube]Once in a while, a worker is impeccable. So some consultants resort to lies. To fell the sturdiest union supporters in the 1970s, I frequently launched rumors that the targeted worker was gay or was cheating on his wife. It was a very effective technique... ”

Martin Jay Levitt, 1993, Confessions of a Union Buster[/youtube]

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Pinkerton operatives drove out all but five officers in a United Auto Workers local in Lansing, Michigan. The remaining five were Pinkertons.

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Bill Haywood, a leader of the WFM and the IWW during the period 1899-1918, offered an opinion indicative of the growing frustration of union leaders:

A detective is the lowest, meanest and most contemptible thing that either creeps or crawls, a thing to loathe and despise. ... That you may know how small a detective is, you can take a hair and punch the pith out of it and in the hollow hair you can put the hearts and souls of 40,000 detectives and they will still rattle. You can pour them out on the surface of your thumbnail and the skin of a gnat will make an umbrella for them.

When a detective dies, he goes so low that he has to climb a ladder to get into Hell— and he is not a welcome guest there. When his Satanic Majesty sees him coming, he says to his imps, "Go get a big bucket of pitch and a lot of sulphur, give them to that fellow and put him outside. Let him start a Hell of his own. We don't want him in here, starting trouble."

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In 1944, historian J. Bernard Hogg, surveying the history of labor spying, observed that Pinkerton agents were secured "by advertising, by visiting United States recruiting offices for rejectees, and by frequenting water fronts where men were to be found going to sea as a last resort of employment,"[54] and that "[to] labor they were a 'gang of toughs and ragtails and desperate men, mostly recruited by Pinkerton and his officers from the worst elements of the community.'"

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[Judge Sam]

In his exposé of the Pinkerton Agency, Friedman provides background on the sabotage efforts of A.W. Gratias, known to Pinkerton supervisors as "No. 42."

No. 42 was invited to join the union, and a short time after was an influential member... Mr. McParland himself drew up the instructions for No. 42. To begin with, the operative was instructed to create trouble between the leaders of the union. This he accomplished, and soon the union was divided into a number of hostile camps... The operative was next instructed to agitate the question of strike benefits among the men, so that they would demand financial aid from the Western Federation of Miners, and he was also told to intrigue against some of the leaders, so that the union would expel them. The chiefs being out of the way, Mr. McParland hoped that the rank and file would call the strike off.[78]

The operative became so popular with the men for demanding relief that he was appointed chairman of the Relief Committee. McParland instructed him to provide relief in such large amounts that it would drain the treasury of the Federation.

He not only supplied the men with necessities, but even with luxuries and cash to spend. The operative's extreme liberality endeared him to the men, who rewarded him by electing him president of the union. We now see the unique spectacle of a Pinkerton spy, under the direct orders of Manager McParland, as president of a Western Federation of Miners' local union, and directing a bitter strike against the smelter trust. On his elevation to the presidency the operative did not relinquish his position on the relief committee, nor would the men have permitted him to do so, as they were perfectly satisfied with the way the operative squandered the money of the Federation...[79]

No. 42 then became a delegate and reported to the Pinkerton Agency everything that happened at the annual WFM convention.[80] The operative also reported that WFM Secretary-Treasurer Haywood objected to the enormous weekly relief bills. McParland instructed the operative to "cut the relief down to an extent that would almost starve the strikers, and while doing this, to throw the blame on Secretary Haywood." The operative, now holding the key positions of delegate to the convention, head of the relief committee, and president of the local, responded that he would cut the relief "as much as possible, so as to cause dissatisfaction, and get the men against the union..."

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After the Battle of Matewan took the lives of seven Baldwin-Felts agents, Sid Hatfield and his friend Ed Chambers were summoned from the union stronghold at Matewan to answer minor strike-related sabotage charges in McDowell County. They walked up the courthouse steps, accompanied by their wives. They were shot dead by Baldwin-Felts agents C.E. Lively, Bill Salter, and Buster Pence on August 1, 1921. According to Mrs. Chambers, Lively placed a gun behind Ed Chambers' ear and fired the last shot even though she was pleading with him not to shoot again.

Neither of the two men had been armed, but one of the women reported that upon returning to the steps after having been led off by the guards, she discovered that both men had pistols in their hands. Pence was heard to remark, "kill 'em with one gun, and hand 'em another one." Although scores of people witnessed the attack, due to its brazeness they were afraid to testify. The three agents were acquitted on grounds of self-defense.[87] The murder of Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers led to a general uprising of West Virginia coal miners.

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A detective will join the ranks of the strikers and at once become an ardent champion of their cause. He is next found committing an aggravated assault upon some man or woman who has remained at work, thereby bringing down upon the heads of the officers and members of the assembly or union directly interested, the condemnation of all honest people, and aiding very materially to demoralize the organization and break their ranks. He is always on hand in the strikers' meeting to introduce some extremely radical measure to burn the mill or wreck a train, and when the meeting has adjourned he is ever ready to furnish the Associated Press with a full account of the proposed action, and the country is told that a "prominent and highly respected member" of the strikers' organization has just revealed a most daring plot to destroy life and property, but dare not become known in connection with the exposure for fear of his life!

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

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At its height, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency employed more agents than there were members of the standing army of the United States of America.

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"Dirty tricks"

A number of tactics used in union-busting are considered underhanded, including incrimination and falsification.[21] Some corporations have been accused of illegal practices such as tapping the phone of a union organizer,[22] and exploiting managers' racial, class, and gender prejudices and fears.[22]

However, many tactics employed by corporations are more subtle. For example, federal labor law requires the employer to provide the union with the names and home addresses of all union election eligible employees. A labor consultant may advise the company to provide nothing more than the very minimum necessary legal address requirements, which do not include zip codes, apartment numbers, or street designations such as Street, Avenue, Drive, or Place. The union is forced to spend significant resources to translate the minimal required legal addresses into usable addresses, and may therefore fail to contact many potential members.


Labor relations consultants put the union on the defensive by criticizing its leadership and forcing the union to spend hours defending itself during meetings rather than organizing the union's planning efforts or campaign strategy.[25] The workers won't find the time to discuss their own issues if they're sufficiently bombarded with the "twisted disinformation" sown by the union buster.[25]

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