Moving down the panel is a representation of an early industrial union leader, Eugene V. Debs. Debs is represented as a convict - - he went to prison for being opposed to World War I, and in 1920 while in prison he ran for President of the United States and received nearly a million votes (at a time when the voting population was much smaller than it is today). Debs, a secretary of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, was dissatisfied with the conservative craft brotherhoods which organized only skilled railroad workers. In 1892, he began organizing the American Railway Union -- an industrial union which represented all railroad workers regardless of skill.
Above Debs is the Spindletop oil field, where the Oil Field, Gas Well and Refinery Workers of America got its start organizing scattered local unions. To the right of the IWW is a representation of a chemical facility; below it are drawn two charters and a newspaper. The Guffy oil workers headline tells the story of the almost instantaneous formation of that union around a cut in wages and lessening of the work week imposed by Guffy in 1905.
Unionists, like the Guffy oil workers, struggled to build locals; however, there were severe hardships entailed in trying to keep locals together due to turbulent economic times and ever more powerful corporations.
Implicit in the attempt to keep local unions together is another one of the key struggles -- the effort to build a national organization. Such scattered local unions as represented by the Guffy oil workers many times had very short lives. Those early local unionists in the Texas, Louisiana, and California oil fields, as well as the gas locals in upper New England, were all aware of the fact that they needed a national organization to knit together scattered local unions to provide programs and a financial umbrella so that one or the other need not go out of existence when members were laid off.
It was not just any national organization they were looking to establish, but rather a national industrial organization that represented all the workers in their respective industries. So, in 1918 some oil workers sought a charter from the AFL (the American Federation of Labor), the federation of craft unions. The charter was for all oil field, gas well, and refinery workers in the U.S. That effort touched off a long-standing fight with the AFL over the industrial union concept.
That same story can be told about the United Gas, Coke and Chemical Workers. At a much later time (the mid-'30s), scattered local unions joined together and went to the AFL and sought a charter for all employees in the gas, coke and chemical industries. The AFL ignored their request for such a charter, and it was a couple of years later that John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers granted a charter for the gas, coke, and chemical workers under the auspices of the UMW's District 50.
In the mural, the two charters, the Spindletop oil fields, and the chemical plant represent those two principle struggles; that is, the struggle to build a national organization and the struggle for industrial unions. These types of early struggles occurred in all major new industries (auto, steel, rubber, etc.) and produced the modern industrial union movement represented by the building of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations).
The CIO paper represents the CIO oil worker and the ever-present need to organize.
The central symbol in this panel, the ancient oil derrick encased in weatherboard with Edwin Drake who drilled the first well standing in front of it, represents the first oil well in Pennsylvania, the founding of the oil industry, and the turning of black gold into money and power. From this modest beginning grew oil and petrochemical transnational corporations influencing, controlling, and exploiting the globe. The birth of the oil industry created a whole group of robber barons (depicted by and on the sacks of money), who put together trusts and combines and became the financiers of renown in American history.
One such financier was John D. Rockefeller, symbolized by the Standard Oil truck behind the striking workers. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil empire in the early twentieth century which was subsequently split up in the anti-trust movement. Most major oil companies today, such as Chevron, Amoco, Mobil, and Exxon, stem from that Standard Oil empire.
In another way, John D. Rockefeller influenced the development of the Oil Workers International Union and also the Gas, Coke and Chemical Workers as well as other unions throughout the industrial union movement. He pioneered the development of company unions to confuse the workers and make it more difficult for the industrial unions to organize them.
The machine gunner raining bullets on the tent colony at Ludlow represents that chapter in Rockefeller labor relations history. The massacre at Ludlow, Colorado, occurred in April 1914. The UMW organizing effort at Ludlow centered on an effort to win a wage increase from Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I). CF&I, owned by the Rockefellers, kicked the miners out of company housing so the workers and their families moved into tents. CF&I relied upon the Colorado State Militia to enforce their will on the strikers and to machine gun and set fire to the tents. Fifteen people were killed in the massacre itself; in all, 33 were killed and more than 100 injured throughout the course of the strike. Mother Jones marched in the funeral for those killed. "John D. Rockefeller, Jr., won the Ludlow Massacre. The women and children were no match for him," wrote Harvey O'Connor in his "History of Oil Workers International Union."
Ludlow, along with the killing of nine workers (and wounding of 50 more) in Bayonne, NJ a few years later, resulted in great public outcry and congressional investigations. Rockefeller recruited Canadian McKenzie King to assist in setting up a system of company unions. McKenzie King, who later became Prime Minister of Canada, is in the upper right of the panel, wearing the elaborate hat. Struggling against company unions became an ongoing battle in the foundation of the Oil Workers International Union.
The Klan figures represented behind McKenzie King symbolize the terror that always stands behind the formation of a subtle and sophisticated device like a company union. It is the iron fist over which the velvet glove of company unionism has been drawn.
The company union system was not confined to the oil industry; it spread throughout all industries. For example, DuPont in the chemical industry is as much a citadel of company unionism today as is Exxon, the inheritor of the Standard of New Jersey mantle. The foundation of company unions and the fight against them was a key part of the struggle to build industrial unions in the oil industry and the chemical industry in the U.S.