New Booklet Portrays Struggles of Maine Labor in 1907
Contact: Bill Murphy, 581-4126; George Manlove, (207) 581-3756; Charles Scontras, (207) 799-3469
ORONO — For those who might take for granted the progress and achievements of Maine’s labor movement, University of Maine labor historian Charles Scontras has produced another publication — a snapshot of Maine labor in 1907.
As Sept. 3, Labor Day 2007, approaches, Scontras, a researcher with the UMaine Bureau of Labor Education and author of numerous publications on labor history in Maine, has outlined some setbacks and milestones for Maine’s labor movement a century ago. The latest in a series of booklets, “Labor Day 2007: Pausing to Reflect on Images of Maine Labor One Hundred Years Ago,” is being published by the UMaine Bureau of Labor Education. The bureau, a department within the University of Maine’s Division of Lifelong Learning, conducts labor-education programs and presentations throughout Maine for workers and their organizations, students, educators and government officials.
Scontras’s newest booklet is significant because of its historical perspective, says bureau Director Bill Murphy.
“Many of the issues and problems confronted by workers in the past still exist. It is important to study labor history in order to learn from past worker experiences as we confront the challenges of today,” Murphy says.
According to Scontras, organized labor has never enjoyed a permanent respite from anti-union ideas, values and beliefs.
“The struggle to protect and enhance the interests of workers continues in these times of economic transformation, liberalized trade policies, global markets, global competition, global hiring halls and the resurgence of a new ‘offensive’ against organized labor,” Scontras says.
The year 1907 was a time when most factory workers had no unions to represent them and many laborers toiled 60 hours a week in buildings without adequate heat, ventilation or proper toilet facilities. Scontras writes that with few worker safety measures in place in 1907, the workplace had become increasingly dangerous to life and limb as a consequence of the continued application of science and technology to the process of production. Dangerous shafting, pulleys and belts, gears, wheels, planers, jointers, fumes, dust, poisons, structures filled with molten metals or hot liquids created new hazards for workers in mills, factories, workshops and mines.
In the early 20th Century, Maine had only one inspector to police more than 8,000 establishments employing more than 75,000 workers.
Crusaders for labor reform fought an uphill battle trying to persuade a state legislature largely unsympathetic to Maine mill, quarry or woods employees. The Maine legislature, for instance, adopted the “Peonage” law in 1907, providing for the prosecution and jailing of hundreds of workers who quit woods jobs after accepting cash advances to travel to worksites to discover the jobs were deceptively advertised.
“Over the years, it was the labor movement and its struggles in Maine and the nation that challenged private power and its abuses, made capitalism more equitable, extended democracy to the workplace and proved critical in the creation of the nation’s middle class,” Scontras says. “It was labor, too, along with other progressive voices, that reminded us that the government which governs least is not necessarily the best. A weak government simply left the economic arena in the hands of private power, which history had demonstrated could also be quite as arbitrary and capricious as any unrestrained government.”
Organized labor supported the movement for grass-roots democracy through citizen referenda and initiatives, which allowed labor to circumvent the legislature by taking its case directly to the people.
“The initiative and referendum political reforms that are now frequently utilized by Maine citizens owe their origins to the labor movement and others who were intent on restoring democracy and ‘power to the people,'” Scontras observes.
Other milestones from 1907 included the organizational efforts by Maine lobster fishermen which gave rise to the Lobster Fishermen’s International Protective Association, the first of its kind in the nation. Successful strike action led to increased catch prices. Also, the infamous textile worker strike at Marston Woolen Mills in Skowhegan led by the radical and militant Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), highlighted the tensions between some of Maine’s competing labor unions.
“Labor Day 2007: Pausing to Reflect on Images of Maine Labor one Hundred Years Ago” is available at $3 per copy and can be ordered through the UMaine Bureau of Labor Education at (207) 581-4124.