The Gospel of Progressivism by R. Todd Laugen

Author:R. Todd Laugen [Laugen, R. Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781607320531
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Published: 2010-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

COLORADO WORKERS AND POSTWAR ELECTORAL POLITICS

The immediate postwar years saw workers nationwide experimenting with new electoral tactics. Colorado was no exception. Given union frustrations with the Industrial Commission in Colorado and the wartime Democratic Party, labor Progressives attempted to rally workers for a class-based challenge at the polls in 1920.78

The 1920 campaign initially revealed divisions over political tactics among labor leaders. Some AFL loyalists within the Colorado labor federation insisted that nonpartisan action was preferable to direct cooperation with the Democratic Party. Labor was partisan, insisted AFL president Samuel Gompers, to principles and not to any political party. Workers should campaign on behalf of the people against privilege. “The trend of the times is distinctly non-partisan,” claimed Denver Labor Bulletin editor Ralph Moser. The splits within the state Democratic Party only reinforced the editor’s conviction that nonpartisan action was essential.79

Yet early support for nonpartisanship in Colorado gradually faded. The promise of a farmer-labor alliance was more appealing. The Non-Partisan League (NPL) of North Dakota appeared to show the way. Initially a group of North Dakota farmers, the NPL highlighted agrarian discontent with the Republican-dominated government in 1915. Tapping former Socialists to lead the revolt, the Non-Partisan League worked to capture the Republican Party in the 1916 and 1918 primaries. Although not technically creating its own party structure, the NPL gained control over North Dakota government and launched an ambitious experiment in state ownership of banking and distribution networks. Working with the Industrial Workers of the World, which had effectively organized harvest workers in the state, the NPL also initiated a labor program with broad appeal to workers.80

Attempting to expand its success after 1916, the NPL relocated its headquarters to St. Paul, Minnesota, in January 1917. There the NPL generated a great deal of support, especially among farmers. Yet the more heterogeneous economy in Minnesota made an NPL sweep of the state more difficult than in North Dakota with its one-crop, export-dependent economy. The Minnesota GOP launched an offensive to crush the NPL, drawing upon state government agencies during wartime to intimidate supporters and limit their access to public space. Still, NPL candidates made a strong showing in Minnesota’s GOP primary of 1918. Organized labor in Minnesota allied with the NPL in August 1919, creating the Working People’s Political League.81

NPL organizers from St. Paul appeared in Colorado in 1918, and the next year a number of union activists promoted a farmer-labor alliance for the 1920 election. Several leaders of the state labor federation worked to link NPL tactics with the nonpartisan program promoted by the AFL’s national leadership. In 1920 the AFL had launched a “radically new and important departure from its previous tactics,” according to one sympathetic observer. AFL unions could now focus energies on the primary elections in an effort to capture a major party, following the lead of the North Dakota NPL. This would mean a new application of the “rewarding friend, punishing enemies” policy, one that would wrest control of primaries from the party machines.82 While Colorado

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