Peter J. McGuire

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Peter J. McGuire (1852–1906), American socialist and trade union leader

Peter James McGuire (born July 6, 1852 in New York , †  February 18, 1906 in Camden , New Jersey ) was an American socialist . He was one of the most prominent union leaders in the United States in the nineteenth century and the founder of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America .

youth

Peter J. McGuire was born to a poor Irish - Roman Catholic immigrant family. His father, John J. McGuire, was porter of a department store and his mother, Catherine Hand O'Riley managed the household. When his father was drafted as a soldier on the side of the Northern States for the American Civil War (1861-1865) in 1863 , he left school as a boy at the age of 11 to make a living for the family. He worked as a newsboy, shoe shiner and cleaner boy in shops.

Despite his hard work, he found interest and energy to continue learning. He attended the evening courses in economics , labor market theory and rhetoric of the Cooper Union , which was known for providing education and knowledge to poorer sections of the population. McGuire eagerly absorbed all knowledge and very quickly became a recognized speaker and agitator . In the Cooper Union he also found his first contact with Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), with whom he would later connect for many years of union cooperation.

In 1867, at the age of 15, he began an apprenticeship as a piano maker at Haines Piano and at the same time became active in the New York branch of the International Workingmen's Association . He made his first practical experience in actions of the labor movement in 1872, when about 100,000 workers successfully demonstrated for the eight-hour day in New York . It didn't take long for McGuire to take action himself and lead an argument about wage cuts against his employer.

The economic crisis of 1873 gave him the experience of hundreds of thousands in New York being unemployed from one day to the next. He did not stand idle. McGuire was featured as a speaker at the city's daily meetings. In addition to his daily agitation, he wrote pamphlets for leaflets, and his speeches and ideas were increasingly popular and respected. Startled by his growing popularity, the New York Times finally branded the 21-year-old as a "disruptor of public peace".

The turning point for him to become a union leader came with the Tompkins Square uprising of January 13, 1874, in which the New York police brutally violated a public meeting he had registered.

Union leader

With the experience of Tompkins Square and to bundle the political forces, McGuire founded in May 1874 together with Adolph Strasser (1843-1939), the leader of the cigar makers union, and other political activists the Social Democratic Workingmen's Party of North America , whose presidium member he has been.

McGuire left New York shortly afterwards and "fought through" the country for the next eight years with the aim of mobilizing the workers to organize themselves and to fight for their workers' rights.

In July 1876 he helped found the Workingmen's Party of the United States in Philadelphia and started his campaigns to organize workers in the country with their support . On a six-week tour of New England in 1877, for example, he gave 107 speeches, mostly to an audience of more than a thousand. He called on the people to organize themselves by forming cooperatives for production and distribution to the capitalism to counteract and fight for the abolition of the existing wage system.

He lived for a short time in New Haven , Connecticut , where he won 9,000 votes in just 6 weeks as a freshman in an election. As a representative of New Haven, he sat on the committee of the first congress of the Workingmen's Party of the United States in December 1877, which took place in Newark , New Jersey . At this congress the Socialistic Labor Party was founded, in which he was also actively involved.

In 1878 he moved to St. Louis , Missouri , where he worked as a cabinet maker and began organizing carpenters and joiners.

In 1879 he accompanied the legislative process in the state of Missouri with regard to improving the climatic conditions in the mines and improving the regulations on child labor . He successfully campaigned for the first nationwide introduction of an office for workers' statistics and was appointed its deputy representative.

In 1880 he resigned from his post to join the campaigns of the Greenback Labor Party and the Socialist Labor Party , which had renamed itself in December 1878 from the Socialistic Labor Party .

United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America

In 1881 he was elected secretary of the St. Louis Trades Assembly and published a call for the first national assembly of all carpenters, joiners and joiners in Chicago . On August 8th of that year, 36 delegates from 14 unions in 11 cities across the country, which together represented just over 2,000 members, gathered in the Trades Assembly Hall in Chicago and founded the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBC), the Union that was to become McGuire's most important task and challenge in the years to come. As initiator of the convention and founding member, he was appointed first secretary of the new union, went back to New York in 1882, took over administrative management of the main office, edited the union newspaper The Carpenter , and became involved in the eight-hour day movement.

Even in 1881 he wrote a call for a national congress of all trade unions. At this congress, which took place on November 15 of the same year, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU) was founded for the USA and Canada , which served as a pioneer of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

Not tired, he also co-founded the Central Labor Union (CLU) in New York City in 1882 and became a member of the Knights of Labor through the Local Assembly 1562 in Brooklyn , the " Spread the Light Club ". He did not get along particularly well with the ideas of the Knights of Labor, was excluded from membership on November 29, 1882 for disregarding the statutes , but was re-admitted on August 8, 1883 due to a formal error.

The authorship of Labor Day , which was celebrated on September 5, 1882 in Elm Park, Port Richmond, Staten Island with up to 50,000 participants, was also assigned to him. But this point is controversial, since a hobby historian in 1973 could assign the authorship of the historic day to Matthew Maguire (1850-1917), Secretary of the Central Labor Union.

In 1884, at the Congress of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions , he initiated together with Gabriel Edmonston as a representative of the UBC to set May 1, 1886 as the day for a general strike to introduce the eight-hour day and to organize it accordingly. The strike took place and moved more than 350,000 workers from 11,000 companies across the country over 4 days. It was the largest labor movement demonstration the world had seen before. The breakup and failure of the strikes resulted from the May 4th attack on the Haymarket in Chicago .

In 1884 he married Christina Wolff , with whom he had four children.

American Federation of Labor

On December 8, 1886, he was elected the union's first secretary at the founding convention of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in Columbus , Ohio , a position that he held up to that of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions Filled out in 1889 parallel to his function as leader of the UBC.

The fact that he did not neglect his job in the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBC) was shown by the rapid influx of members from 1886 to 1890, when the number of those organized had more than doubled to 50,000 in four years. McGuire boasted that it had now "built the largest and most powerful trade union organization the civilized world had seen".

In order to have more time for the UBC, McGuire gave up his position at the AFL in 1889, but remained as Vice President in support of Samuel Gompers until 1900. Ultimately, he was forced to give up the office because of his alcoholism and poor health.

In the United Brotherhood , after McGuire swapped the position of secretary for the position of treasurer in 1895, there was increasing resistance. In 1902 he was eventually expelled from the union for alleged embezzlement of funds. That was the end of his union career. He died on February 18, 1906 in Camden, New Jersey, where he was also buried.

In 2004 he was posthumously inducted into the Labor Hall of Fame by the US Department of Labor for his service to the labor and union movement .

literature

  • Gary M. Fink, Biographical Dictionary of American Labor Leaders , Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1974. ISBN 0-8371-7643-3
  • Norman J. Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States 1860-1895 (A Study in Democracy) , Vintage Books, Toronto, Canada, 1929.
  • The Samuel Gompers Papers - Volume 1 - The Making of a Union Leader - 1850-1886 , University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1986. ISBN 0-252-01137-6
  • The Samuel Gompers Papers - Volume 3 - Unrest and Depression - 1891-1894 , University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1986. ISBN 0-252-01546-0
  • William Maxwell Burke, History and Functions of Central Labor Unions , Macmillan, New York, 1899.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hall of Honor Inductee: Peter J. McGuire . United States - Department of Labor , accessed January 11, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME McGuire, Peter J.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES McGuire, Peter James
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American socialist
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH new York
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 1906
Place of death Camden , New Jersey