1913 El Paso smelters' strike

American labor dispute in Texas February 2023 February 2023 1913 El Paso smelters' strike Smeltertown (1910s).jpg Photo of Smeltertown & ASARCO Plant in the 1910s April 10 – June 30, 1913note While a start date of April 10 is given in a contemporary source,The Engineering and Mining Journal 1913 958 sources are unclear regarding an official end date for the strike. According to a 1995 book by historian Philip J. Mellinger, the strike was mostly broken by late June 1913.Mellinger 1995 136 Additionally, contemporary reports issued by the company on June 30 state that they had returned to prestrike production levels by that time.Engineering and Mining World 1913 474Commercial & Financial Chronicle 1913 663 A magazine published on August 14, 1913, by the Western Federation of Miners also states that the strike had been broken by that time.Hepting 1913 13(04 10 1913 06 30 1913) El Paso, Texas, United States Increasing tensions between Mexican workers and smelter management * Daily wage increase from $1.40 to $1.75 Eight-hour day Changes to company store policy Replacement of the company physician Union recognition * Strike action Walkout Strike crushed after company began to bring in strikebreakers and evict strikers and their families from company-owned housing Smelters Industrial Workers of the World Western Federation of Miners El Paso Mill and Smelter Workers Local Number 78 American Smelting and Refining Company 1 collapsed The 1913 El Paso smelters' strike was a labor strike involving workers of the American Smelting and Refining Company's copper smelting plant in El Paso, Texas, United States. The workers, almost entirely Mexican Americans, went on strike on April 10, primarily seeking a pay increase, among other demands. The strike collapsed by the end of June, with many of the strikers leaving El Paso in the aftermath. During the early 1900s, the smelting plant in the border town employed about 3,000 workers, primarily recent immigrants from Mexico. El Paso during this time was a hotbed for radical political activity, and Mexican workers in the city engaged in numerous labor strikes wherein they demanded better wages and improved working conditions. In 1907, the smelting plant was hit by a strike that was partially successful, resulting in pay increases, but also the firing of many strikers. By 1913, tensions had again mounted in the plant, with many workers pushing for a pay increase from $1.40 to $1.75 per day. Additional demands included a reduction in working hours from 12 to 8 per day, changes to the company store policies, and the replacement of the company physician. On April 10, about 100 workers performed a spontaneous walkout, and within the next few weeks, about 1,000 workers were on strike. During the labor dispute, both the Industrial Workers of the World and the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) fought to recruit strikers to their labor unions, with the latter going as far as creating a local union, though neither group gained full control over the strike. The company benefitted from having the support of local law enforcement officials and, later, the Texas Rangers, and within a few weeks, they began to bring in strikebreakers. In late April, the Texas Rangers and strikers were involved in several confrontations that resulted in a Ranger shooting and killing one striker and injuring another. The strikebreakers damaged the strike, and the strikers were further hurt when the company began to evict strikers and their families from company-owned homes in the Smeltertown neighborhood surrounding the plant. By late June, the strike had been broken. While many strikers attempted to get their jobs back, many were not rehired, and the WFM organized new metallurgical jobs for many workers in places throughout the Southwestern United States. While the strike ended in failure for the workers, several historians have noted the significance of the strike, with historian Monica Perales stating in a 2010 book that, "[a]lthough it ultimately failed, the action represented a critical moment in border labor history and revealed that the Mexican workers were willing to risk their jobs and their lives to be respected as smelter men". Additionally, historian Philip J. Mellinger speculates that many of the strikers who left El Paso after the strike may have been involved in future labor disputes involving Mexican Americans in the region. At El Paso, the WFM local union barely survived the strike with a few dozen members, but it would not be until the 1930s and 1940s that the Congress of Industrial Organizations succeeded in organizing the plant, later leading a strike in 1946. In the 1970s, residents of Smeltertown were forced to relocate after environmental studies revealed dangerous amounts of lead in the area due to the plant. Background thumb|350x350px|El Paso, Texas, 1910 In the early 1900s, the American Smelting and Refining Company, which was owned by the Guggenheim family of New York City,Benton-Cohen 2009 203 operated a copper smelting plant in El Paso, Texas.Mellinger 1995 135 The smelter was one of the largest industries in the city and employed about 3,000 people, primarily Mexican Americans,Harris Sadler 2007 124Ivey 2018 451 who lived in the nearby Smeltertown neighborhood.Alexander 2013 231 During this time, El Paso and its neighboring city of Ciudad Juárez across the Mexico–United States border in Mexico, were hotbeds for radical political activity, primarily among the Mexican populations.Mellinger 1995 135 Mexican workers in El Paso engaged in several labor strikes in an effort to obtain better pay and working conditions,Guerin-Gonzales 1996 72 such as in 1901, when about 200 Mexican construction workers for the El Paso Electric Street Car Company went on strike, demanding a wage increase of 50 percent.García 1981 107 In 1907, about 150 workers at the smelter went on strike,Perales 2010 131–132 demanding a wage increase from $1.20 to 1.50 per day.García 1981 107Mellinger 1995 135 This strike ended in partial success for the smelters, as the company agreed to a $1.40 daily wage, but also fired several workers who had been involved in the labor dispute.García 1981 107Mellinger 1995 135 This strike was one in a series of labor disputes concerning Mexican workers in the metallurgical industry in the Southwestern United States during this time.Mellinger 1995 138 By 1912, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a militant labor union, had established a presence in the city, with several organizers from their regional offices in Phoenix, Arizona, traveling to the city.Acuña 2007 176Mellinger 1995 135 However, despite this, the Mexican workers at the smelter were nonunionized.Mellinger 1995 135 In early 1913, tensions began to escalate between the workers and plant management, reaching a peak in April.Ivey 2018 451 At the time, the workers worked 12-hour shifts and made $1.40 per day.Mellinger 1995 136 However, many workers began to demand a wage increase to $1.75 per day.García 1981 107Green 2004 18 Additionally, some of the workers wanted an eight-hour day,García 1981 107 and others had grievances against the company physician and the company store, pushing for changes to the latter and a replacement of the former.Derickson 1988 209Mellinger 1995 136 Course of the strike Initial strike action On April 10,The Engineering and Mining Journal 1913 958 the workers began a strike against the smelter with a spontaneous walkout of about 100 workers.Derickson 1988 209García 1981 107Mellinger 1995 136 The next day, an additional 300 workers joined the strike,García 1981 107 and by the third day, about 650 Mexican workers were on strike.García 1981 107 By mid-April, the strike involved about 1,000 workers.Mellinger 1995 136Perales 2010 132 The only non-Mexican workers were five non-Hispanic white carpenters who worked at the smelter.García 1981 107Perales 2010 132 These five men were union members affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).Mellinger 1995 136 Through the duration of the strike, about 250 non-Hispanic white workers, mostly Anglo and Irish Americans, continued to report to work at the smelter.Mellinger 1995 136Perales 2010 132 About a week after the start of the strike, some of the striking carpenters spoke at a meeting of El Paso's Central Labor Union (CLU), the local membership organization of the AFL, and convinced them to lend their support to the strike.Mellinger 1995 136 The CLU donated $15 to the strike fund and toned down the anti-Mexican sentiment that was often present in their publications.Mellinger 1995 136Perales 2010 132 However, according to historian Philip J. Mellinger, this support may not have been wholehearted, as some of the non-Hispanic white workers at the smelter were union members, and had the CLU been fully willing to support the strike, they could have called on greater solidarity from these workers.Mellinger 1995 136 IWW vs WFM Labor federation competition in the United States During the dispute, both the IWW and the competing Western Federation of Miners (WFM) had organizers present in El Paso in an attempt to organize the strikers with their respective unions.Mellinger 1995 137Acuña 2007 176Benton-Cohen 2009 203 IWW organizer Fernando Palomarez had about 200 workers sign up with the union during the strike, saying, "the winning of this strike will be the means of organizing large unions of Mexicans all over Texas and the South".Mellinger 1995 137 While the exact role that the IWW played in the strike is difficult to ascertain with certainty,García 1981 107 Mellinger states that the organization "was only a minor player" in the strike.Mellinger 1995 163 However, according to historian Mario T. García, the IWW presence contributed to the CLU's decision to support the strike, and the CLU pushed the strikers to affiliate with the more conservative and AFL-affiliated WFM.García 1981 107–108 Additionally, the CLU disputed a claim made by a local newspaper that the IWW had initiated the strike.García 1981 108 The WFM sent organizer Charles Tanner to help organize the strikers,Acuña 2007 176 and the union established a local union (El Paso Mill and Smelter Workers Local Number 78) that signed up 413 members.Mellinger 1995 137 In addition to demands for increased pay and changes to the company's physician and store policies, this local union also added union recognition as a demand.Derickson 1988 209–210 Ultimately, neither union gained control of the strike, and many strikers remained nonunionized during the strike.García 1981 108Green 2004 18 Local strike leaders held rallies and meetings where they kept fellow strikers informed and sought to prevent the hiring of strikebreakers.García 1981 107 End of the strike From the beginning of the strike, the smelter management had the support of local law enforcement.Mellinger 1995 135 The sheriff of El Paso County, Texas, requested additional support from the Texas Rangers, and several rangers were stationed in El Paso during the strike.Harris Sadler 2007 124Alexander 2013 231 In the second week of the strike,Mellinger 1995 135 the company began to bring in strikebreakers, including about 350 African Americans that they brought in via train from East Texas and Louisiana.García 1981 108Mellinger 1995 135 Others hired included a large number of local non-Hispanic whites and recent Mexican immigrants,Mellinger 1995 137 and these strikebreakers were protected by company guards, Texas Rangers, and other law enforcement officers.García 1981 108 On April 22, a confrontation occurred when strikers began throwing rocks at strikebreakers outside of the smelter, and one Texas Ranger responded by opening fire at the strikers, injuring one.Harris Sadler 2007 124–125Alexander 2013 231García 1981 108 The following day, another confrontation broke out between strikers, strikebreakers, and Texas Rangers that saw one striker shot dead by a Texas Ranger.Harris Sadler 2007 125 Eventually, the company began to evict striking employees and their families from company-owned housing,García 1981 108Mellinger 1995 135 with the smelter owning 98 houses in the area.Harris Sadler 2007 124 By late June, the strike appeared to be crushed,Mellinger 1995 136 and reports by the company issued on June 30 stated that they were operating at prestrike capacity.Engineering and Mining World 1913 474Commercial & Financial Chronicle 1913 663 Aftermath thumb|300x300px|The copper smelting plant in El Paso, Texas, 1972 Speaking of the strike in a 1981 book, García called the 1913 dispute "one of the largest strikes in El Paso's early history".García 1981 107 The strike marked one of the first largescale disputes between the IWW and the WFM over organizing workers,Acuña 2007 176Benton-Cohen 2009 203Mellinger 1995 137 and for the WFM, it marked one of their first large attempts to organize Mexican workers in the Southwest.Mellinger 1995 149–150 According to historian Katherine Benton-Cohen, the strike for the IWW was "a harbinger" of later IWW activity in Bisbee, Arizona.Benton-Cohen 2009 203 While the WFM local union survived the strike, claiming about 40 members in 1914, the company refused to rehire many of the strikers, and by the end of 1913, many of them had left El Paso.Mellinger 1995 137–138García 1981 108 Following the strike's collapse, Tanner helped to get the strikers jobs elsewhere throughout the American Southwest.Mellinger 1995 138Acuña 2007 176 According to an article published by the WFM shortly after the strike's end, the strike may have been undercut by a large availability of workers caused by a mass influx of refugees to El Paso during the Mexican Revolution.Hepting 1913 13 Speaking of the strike in a 1996 book, historian Camille Guerin-Gonzales stated that, despite its failure, "Mexican immigrant workers had demonstrated their organizational abilities and showed their willingness to fight exploitative conditions",Guerin-Gonzales 1996 72 while historian Monica Perales stated in a 2010 book that, "[a]lthough it ultimately failed, the action represented a critical moment in border labor history and revealed that the Mexican workers were willing to risk their jobs and their lives to be respected as smelter men".Perales 2010 132 According to Mellinger, "[m]ore Mexican working-class community activism developed in the Southwest soon after this strike", and Mellinger theorizes that some of the workers who left El Paso and took up jobs in other metallurgical fields throughout the American Southwest may have been involved in other labor disputes over the next several years.Mellinger 1995 138 It would not be until the 1930s and 1940s that another major push for unionizing the Mexican workers of the smelter came to fruition, this time under the leadership of the Congress of Industrial Organizations,Perales 2010 132 and the 1913 strike would remain the last one at the plant until a 1946 strike that also involved workers for the Phelps-Dodge smelting plant in El Paso.De León 2010 201 In the 1970s, residents of Smeltertown were forced to relocate after environmental studies revealed hazardous amounts of lead in the area caused by the smelter.Kohout 2019 Notes note References Sources 30em yes Acuña Rodolfo F. https://books.google.com/books?id=OMcfEAAAQBAJ Corridors of Migration: The Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600–1933 University of Arizona Press 2007 978-0-8165-4329-8 Tucson, Arizona Rodolfo Acuña Alexander Bob https://books.google.com/books?id=m-zNWi_-QvAC Riding Lucifer's Line: Ranger Deaths Along the Texas–Mexico Border University of North Texas Press Foreword by Byron A. Johnson 2013 978-1-57441-499-8 Denton, Texas Benton-Cohen Katherine https://archive.org/details/borderlineameric0000bent/ Borderline Americans: Racial Division and Labor War in the Arizona Borderlands Harvard University Press 2009 978-0-674-05355-7 Cambridge, Massachusetts September 6, 1913 American Smelting & Refining Co. https://books.google.com/books?id=6L0zAQAAMAAJ Commercial & Financial Chronicle New York City William B. Dana Company 97 2515 663 Commercial & Financial Chronicle 1913 De León Arnoldo https://books.google.com/books?id=AZNEAqTauREC The Texas Left: The Radical Roots of Lone Star Liberalism Texas A&M University Press 2010 978-1-60344-189-6 Cullen David O'Donald College Station, Texas 191–208 More than a Somnolent Type: Tejanos Resist the Rule of Dominance Wilkison Kyle G. Derickson Alan https://books.google.com/books?id=bO2YDwAAQBAJ Workers' Health, Workers' Democracy: The Western Miners' Struggle, 1891–1925 Cornell University Press 1988 978-1-5017-4569-0 Ithaca, New York May 10, 1913 Chronology of Mining for April, 1913 https://books.google.com/books?id=Q1ZJAQAAMAAJ The Engineering and Mining Journal 95 19 958 The Engineering and Mining Journal 1913 September 13, 1913 Semi-Annual Report of American Smelting & Refining Co. https://books.google.com/books?id=Wn09AQAAMAAJ Engineering and Mining World Chicago Mining World Company XXXIX 11 474 Engineering and Mining World 1913 García Mario T. https://books.google.com/books?id=S31EO-TpsdEC Desert Immigrants: The Mexicans of El Paso, 1880–1920 Yale University Press 1981 978-0-300-02883-6 New Haven, Connecticut Green George N. July 2004 The Texas Labor Movement, 1870-1920 The Southwestern Historical Quarterly Texas State Historical Association 108 1 1–26 0038-478X 30239492 Guerin-Gonzales Camille https://books.google.com/books?id=t1FGKWTz-F8C Mexican Workers and American Dreams: Immigration, Repatriation, and California Farm Labor, 1900–1939 Rutgers University Press 1996 978-0-8135-2048-3 Second paperback New Brunswick, New Jersey 1994 Harris Charles Houston https://books.google.com/books?id=kUnzbJL3LIIC The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution: The Bloodiest Decade, 1910–1920 Sadler Louis R. University of New Mexico Press 2007 978-0-8263-3484-8 First paperbound Albuquerque, New Mexico 2004 Hepting John August 14, 1913 The Fight in Michigan is a Life and Death Battle https://books.google.com/books?id=BT4tAQAAMAAJ The Miner's Magazine Denver Western Federation of Miners XIV 529 11–13 Ivey Darren L. https://books.google.com/books?id=G_Z5DwAAQBAJ The Ranger Ideal University of North Texas Press 2018 978-1-57441-744-9 2: Texas Rangers in the Hall of Fame, 1874–1930 Denton, Texas Kohout Martin Donell March 5, 2019 July 1, 1995 Smeltertown, TX https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/smeltertown-tx live https://web.archive.org/web/20230130045113/https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/smeltertown-tx January 30, 2023 February 27, 2023 Handbook of Texas Texas State Historical Association Mellinger Philip J. https://archive.org/details/racelaborinweste0000mell/ Race and Labor in Western Copper: The Fight for Equality, 1896–1918 University of Arizona Press 1995 978-0-8165-4772-2 Tucson, Arizona Perales Monica https://books.google.com/books?id=i6AVt2MO0tYC Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community University of North Carolina Press 2010 978-0-8078-9956-4 Chapel Hill, North Carolina Further reading Barton Josef https://books.google.com/books?id=Tcdm2ulZk24C Repositioning North American Migration History: New Directions in Modern Continental Migration, Citizenship, and Community University of Rochester Press 2004 978-1-58046-158-0 Rodriguez Marc S. Rochester, New York 141–205 Borderland Discontents: Mexican Migration in Regional Contexts, 1880–1930 García Mario T. Summer 1975 Racial Dualism in the El Paso Labor Market, 1880-1920 Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center 6 2 196–218 10.1525/azt.1975.6.2.197 Tanner Charles H. June 5, 1913 The Situation at El Paso, Texas https://books.google.com/books?id=BT4tAQAAMAAJ The Miner's Magazine Denver Western Federation of Miners XIV 519 10 Category:1913 in Texas Category:1913 labor disputes and strikes Category:Asarco Category:Copper industry Category:Hispanic and Latino American history Category:History of El Paso, Texas Category:Industrial Workers of the World in Texas Category:Labor disputes in Texas Category:Labor disputes led by the Industrial Workers of the World Category:History of Mexican Americans Category:Manufacturing industry labor disputes in the United States Category:Progressive Era in the United States Category:Texas Ranger Division Category:Western Federation of Miners Category:1910s strikes in the United States