William
Bauchop Wilson, the son of a coal miner, was born in Blantyre, Scotland,
on 2nd April, 1862. His father, Adam Wilson, was an active trade
unionist and in 1868 his family was evicted from their company-owned
house. Blacklisted, Wilson was unable to find work in Scotland and
in 1870 the family emigrated to the United States.
The
Wilson family settled in Arnot, Tioga County, Pennsylvania. William's
father was barely literate and they used to attend lessons together
at Hugh Kerwin's cobbler shop. Wilson later wrote: "As I look
back on the group of men that formed our little circle in the early
days at Arnot, many of them classed as illiterate, I am still amazed
at the knowledge they possessed of many religious, social, economic,
political, historical and scientific questions, their wisdom and tolerance
in discussing them, and their wide acquaintance with good literature.
It was a splendid school for any boy to attend."
At
the age of nine William began work with his father in the local coal
mine. In 1874 the two men joined the Miners and Laborers Benevolent
Association. When they went on the strike later that year the family
were evicted from their company owned home. However, the miners won
the dispute when it was agreed that in future they would have the
freedom to shop at non-company stores. At the age of fourteen Wilson
agreed to become secretary of the local Miners' and Laborers' Benevolent
Association.
Wilson
remained active in the union until he was sacked and blacklisted in
1882. Forced to leave Tioga County, Wilson worked as a lumber jack,
wood chopper, bark peeler and a log driver. Later he found employment
as a fireman on the Illinois Central Railroad and as a typesetter
in Blossburg, Pennsylvania.
On
7th June, 1883, Wilson married Agnes Williamson. Over the next few
years the couple had eleven children. During this period he worked
for the Amalgamated Association of Miners and the Knights
of Labor.
In January 1890, he helped establish the United
Mine Workers of America (UMWA). The following year
he became a member of the UMWA's National Executive Board.
Wilson led the
campaign to try to get a eight-hour workday. This brought him into
conflict with the mine owners and he was arrested and imprisoned several
times. Between July, 1899 and February, 1900, Wilson and Mary
'Mother' Jones led
a bitter strike in Tioga County that led to a lockout and evictions
from company-owned homes.
In 1900 John
Mitchell,
the president of the United
Mine Workers of America, appointed Wilson as Secretary-Treasurer
of the organization.
Wilson
was
member of the Democratic Party and
in November 1906 was elected to Congress for the 15th Congressional
District (Lycoming, Clinton, Potter and Tioga counties). Soon after
his election Wilson introduced a bill to appoint a committee to investigate
mining disasters. This committee eventually developed into the Bureau
of Mines and Mining.
Reelected
in November 1908, Wilson served on the Committee on Patents and the
Committee on Ventilation and Acoustics during his second term in Congress.
He also served on the committee that organized the 1910 Census. After
the 1910 election Wilson was appointed chairman of the Labor Committee.
However, Wilson lost the 1912 election when the Socialist
Party candidate split the left-wing vote.
On
4th March 1913, President Woodrow Wilson
appointed Wilson as America's first Secretary of Labor. During the
First World War Wilson had the task of coordinating
the movement of 6 million workers from non-essential to essential
industries. He was also a member of America's Council of National
Defense.
In
1917 the
American government became concerned about the conviction and imprisonment
of Tom
Mooney and
Warren Billings. Both
men were trade union activists in San
Francisco, and it was claimed they had not received a fair trial.
Wilson
delegated John Densmore, the Director
of General Employment, to investigate the case. By secretly installing
a dictaphone in the private office of the District Attorney it was
discovered that Mooney and Billings had been framed by Charles
Fickert and Martin Swanson.
The
report was leaked to Fremont Older who
published it in the San Francisco Call
on 23rd November 1917. There
were protests all over the world about this miscarriage of justice
and President Woodrow Wilson called on
William Stephens, the Governor of
California, to look again at the case. Two weeks before Tom
Mooney was
scheduled to hang, Stephens commuted his sentence to life imprisonment
in San Quentin. However, the two men remained in prison for another
twenty-two years.
After
leaving office in March 1921 Wilson became a member of the International
Joint Commission created to prevent disputes regarding the use of
the boundary waters between the United States
and Canada. William Bauchop Wilson died
on 25th May, 1934.
(1)
William
Bauchop Wilson wrote about his early life in an unpublished autobiography.
We moved to Haughhead in
the suburbs of Hamilton. There I witnessed the only mine explosion
I ever saw. I was playing with a number of children not far from the
pit. In the midst of our games we were startled by a loud roar, and
a great cloud of black smoke and rubbish shot out of the shaft as
though propelled from the mouth of a cannon. Immediately there was
consternation in the village. Women and children ran, excitedly screaming,
to the pithead. Fortunately there were a number of experienced miners
at hand. The mines had been shut down for repairs and most of the
miners were at home. It was known, however, that there were eight
men in the pit making repairs. A rescue party was organized at once.
It was comprised of my father, two uncles and two other men. Shortly
after they had been lowered into the pit, a second explosion took
place. They were all given up for lost. Yet they were safe. Their
search for the other men had taken them into a place where there was
only one opening... and the explosion swept past them leaving them
uninjured...This was in 1868, but young as I was it left a deep impression
on my mind.
(2)
Roger
Babson, William B. Wilson and the Department of Labor (1919)
Mr. Wilson took charge
of the situation (1899-1900 strike) resulting from a prolonged lockout.
A change of managers of a mine property and the abrogation by the
new manager of the conference system...resulted in a lockout. It was
a long and bitter contest in which Mr. Wilson, while steadily working
to bring the opposing forces together and to re-establish the conference
plan, sometimes lost the confidence of some of the more radical of
the men he was leading.
(3)
In
her autobiography Mary
'Mother' Jones wrote
about William Wilson and the 1899-1900 strike in Tioga County (1925)
After months of terrible
hardships the strike was about won. The mines were not working. The
spirit of the men was splendid. William B. Wilson had come home from
the western part of the state. I was staying at his home. The family
had gone to bed. We sat up late talking over matters when there came
a knock at the door. A very cautious knock.
"Come in," said
Mr. Wilson.
Three men entered. The
looked at me uneasily and Mr. Wilson asked me to step in an adjoining
room. They talked the strike over and called Wilson's attention to
the fact that there were mortgages on his little home, held by the
bank which was owned by the coal company, and they said, "We
will take the mortgage off your home and give you $25,000 in cash
if you will just leave and the strike die out."
I shall never forget his
reply: "Gentlemen, if you come to visit my family the hospitality
of the whole house is yours. But if you come to bribe me with dollars
to betray my manhood and my brothers who trust me, I want you to leave
this door and never come here again."
The strike lasted a few
weeks longer. Meantime, Wilson, when strikers were evicted, cleaned
out his barn and took care of the evicted miners until homes could
be provided. One by one he killed his chickens and his hogs. Everything
that he had he shared. He ate dry bread and drank chicory (instead
of coffee). He knew every hardship that the rank and file of the organization
knew. We do not have such leaders now."
(4)
In
his unpublished
autobiography William
Bauchop Wilson wrote about his campaign for a closed shop in the mining
industry.
Union men generally believe
that there is no such thing as an open shop except on a small and
insignificant scale. An operation either becomes all union or all
non-union and is ... promulgated principally by antagonistic employers
who do not hesitate to discharge a union man whenever they find him
in their establishment.... It is generally acknowledged that the aggressive
power of a union in periods of industrial activity and its defensive
strength during periods of depression maintain a higher standard of
living not only for themselves but for nonunion men in the same line
of work than would be obtained with out it. Reasoning from that standpoint,
they insist that common honesty should teach the person who receives
the benefits brought about by the union to pay his share to maintain
it.
(5)
In
1917 Wilson delegated John Densmore,
the Director of General Employment, to investigate the Mooney
and Billings Case. Densmore's report was passed to Wilson in November
1917.
As
one reads the testimony and studies the way in which the cases were
conducted one is apt to wonder at many things - at the apparent failure
of the district attorney's office to conduct a real investigation
at the scene of the crime; at the easy adaptability of some of the
star witnesses; at the irregular methods pursued by the prosecution
in identifying the various defendants; at the sorry type of men and
women brought forward to prove essential matters of fact in a case
of the gravest importance; at the seeming inefficacy of even a well-established
alibi; at the sangfroid with which the prosecution occasionally discarded
an untenable theory to adopt another not quite so preposterous; at
the refusal of the public prosecutor to call as witnesses people who
actually saw the falling of the bomb; in short, at the general flimsiness
and improbability of the testimony adduced, together with a total
absence of anything that looks like a genuine effort
to arrive at the facts in the case.
These things, as one reads and studies the complete record, are calculated
to cause in the minds of even the most blasé a decided mental
rebellion. The plain truth is, there is nothing about the cases to
produce a feeling of confidence that the dignity and majesty of the
law have been upheld. There is nowhere anything even remotely resembling
consistency, the effect being that of patchwork, of incongruous makeshift,
of clumsy and often desperate expediency.
It is not the purpose of this report to enter into a detailed analysis
of the evidence presented in these cases - evidence which, in its
general outlines at least, is already familiar to you in your capacity
as president, ex officio, of the Mediation Commission. It will be
enough to remind you that Billings was tried first; that in September
1916, he was found guilty, owing largely to the testimony of Estelle
Smith, John McDonald, Mellie and Sadie Edeau, and Louis Rominger,
all of whom have long since been thoroughly discredited; that when
Mooney was placed on trial, in January of the year following, the
prosecution decided, for reasons which were obvious, not to use Rominger
or Estelle Smith, but to add to the list of witnesses a certain Frank
C. Oxman, whose testimony, corroborative of the testimony of the two
Edeau women, formed the strongest link in the chain of evidence against
the defendant; that on the strength of this testimony Mooney was found
guilty; that on February 24, 1917, he was sentenced to death; and
that subsequently, to wit, in April of the same year, it was demonstrated
beyond the shadow of a doubt that Oxman, the prosecution's star witness,
had attempted to suborn perjury and had thus in effect destroyed his
own credibility.
The exposure of Oxman's perfidy, involving as it did the district
attorney's office, seemed at first to promise that Mooney would be
granted a new trial. The district attorney himself, Mr. Charles M.
Fickert, when confronted with the facts, acknowledged in the presence
of reputable witnesses that he would agree to a new trial. His principal
assistant, Mr. Edward A. Cunha, made a virtual confession of guilty
knowledge of the facts relating to Oxman, and promised, in a spirit
of contrition, to see that justice should be done the man who had
been convicted through Oxman's testimony. The trial judge, Franklin
A. Griffin, one of the first to recognize the terrible significance
of the expose, and keenly jealous of his own honor, lost no time in
officially suggesting the propriety of a new trial. The attorney general
of the state, Hon. Ulysses S. Webb, urged similar action in a request
filed with the Supreme Court of California.
Matters thus seemed in a fair way to be rectified, when two things
occurred to upset the hopes of the defense. The first was a sudden
change of front on the part of Fickert, who now denied that he had
ever agreed to a new trial, and whose efforts henceforth were devoted
to a clumsy attempt to whitewash Oxman and justify his own motives
and conduct throughout. The second was a decision of the Supreme Court
to the effect that it could not go outside the record in the case
- in other words, that judgment could not be set aside merely for
the reason that it was predicated upon perjured testimony.
There are excellent grounds for believing that Fickert's sudden change
of attitude was prompted by emissaries from some of the local corporate
interests most bitterly opposed to union labor. It was charged by
the Mooney defendants, with considerable plausibility, that Fickert
was the creature and tool of these powerful interests, chief among
which are the Chamber of Commerce and the principal public-service
utilities of the city of San Francisco. In this connection it is of
the utmost significance that Fickert should have entrusted the major
portion of the investigating work necessary in these cases to Martin
Swanson, a corporation detective, who for some time prior to the bomb
explosion had been vainly attempting to connect these same defendants
with other crimes of violence.
Since the Oxman exposure, the district attorney's case has melted
steadily away until there is little left but an unsavory record of
manipulation and perjury, further revelations having impeached the
credibility of practically all the principal witnesses for the prosecution.
And if any additional confirmation were needed of the inherent weakness
of the cases against these codefendants, the acquittal of Mrs. Mooney
on July 26, 1917, and of Israel Weinberg on the 27th of the following
October would seem to supply it.
These acquittals were followed by the investigation of the Mediation
Commission and its report to the President under date of January 16,
1918. The Commission's report, while disregarding entirely the question
of the guilt or innocence of the accused, nevertheless found in the
attendant circumstances sufficient grounds for uneasiness and doubt
as to whether the two men convicted had received fair and impartial
trials.
Ordinarily
the relentless persecution of four or five defendants, even though
it resulted in unmerited punishment for them all, would conceivably
have but a local effect, which would soon be obliterated and forgotten.
But in the Mooney case, which is nothing but a phase of the old war
between capital and organized labor, a miscarriage of justice would
inflame the passions of laboring men everywhere and add to a conviction,
already too widespread, that workingmen can expect no justice from
an orderly appeal to the established courts.
Yet this miscarriage of justice is in process of rapid consummation.
One man is about to be hanged; another is in prison for life; the
remaining defendants are still in peril of their liberty or lives,
one or the other of which they will surely lose if some check is not
given to the activities of this most amazing of district attorneys.
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