1. Frank Roney, Irish Rebel and California Labor Leader: An Autobiography , ed. Ira B. Cross (Berkeley, 1931), 455. [BACK]

2. Organized Labor (hereafter OL ), Feb. 16, 1907. [BACK]

3. Local Union No. 104, Amalgamated Sheet Metal Workers International Alliance, Souvenir Pictorial History (San Francisco, 1910), 119-121. [BACK]

4. The most complete study of the anti-Asian politics of the labor movement is Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley, 1971). However, Saxton slights the anti-Japanese aspects of the campaign. [BACK]

5. On Tillman and other racialist "radicals" in the period from 1890 to 1915, see Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation (New York, 1984), 111-139. [BACK]

6. The concept of a political "common sense" is drawn from the work of Antonio Gramsci. Anne Showstack Sassoon defines it as "the incoherent and at times contradictory set of assumptions and beliefs held by the mass of the population at any one time." Approaches to Gramsci , ed. Anne Showstack Sassoon (London, 1982), 13.

The following discussion is necessarily limited to the written records of the BTC and thus can only speculate on the degree to which leaders' views were shared by rank-and-file building workers. However, not until 1920 was the persistent resistance to McCarthy's methods of rule broadened into a political alternative. Before then, the leadership under McCarthy and Tveitmoe clearly initiated an engagement with issues larger than wages and the maintenance of the closed shop. [BACK]

7. Michael P. Rogin, "Voluntarism: The Political Functions of an Antipolitical Doctrine," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 15 (July 1962), 532. [BACK]

8. George B. Cotkin, "The Spencerian and Comtian Nexus in Gompers' Labor Philosophy," Labor History (hereafter LH ) 20 (Fall 1979), 510-523. [BACK]

9. Quoted in William M. Dick, Labor and Socialism in America: The Gompers Era (Port Washington, N.Y., 1972), 60. [BACK]

10. For good descriptions of this tendency, see James Weinstein, The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912-1925 (New York, 1967), 5-10, 29-53; Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920 (Urbana, 1981), 176-213. [BACK]

11. For Fitzpatrick, see Weinstein, The Decline of Socialism , 222, 271, 279, 280; John H. Keiser, "John Fitzpatrick and Progressive Unionism, 1915-1925," Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1965. For Moyer, see Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the IWW (New York, 1969), 45-55, 80-81, 304-307; John H. M. Laslett, Labor and the Left: A Study of Socialist and Radical Influences in the American Labor Movement , 1881-1924 (New York, 1970), 241-286. Also see Dick, Labor and Socialism , 63-68. [BACK]

12. The best study of the IWW is Dubofsky, We Shall Be All . [BACK]

13. For the history of syndicalism through World War I, see André Tridon, The New Unionism (New York, 1917); Robert Wohl, French Communism in the Making (Stanford, 1966), 21-42; Peter N. Stearns, Revolutionary Syndicalism and French Labor (New Brunswick, N.J., 1971); Robert Michels, Political Parties (New York, 1959; orig. pub., 1915), 345 (quote). [BACK]

14. OL , Aug. 6, 1910, Oct. 11, Nov. 1, 1913. On Mann's early thought and career, see Tridon, New Unionism , 126-147. [BACK]

15. OL , Feb. 3, 1900. [BACK]

16. Charles Stephenson claims this pattern held for other cities as well. "A Gathering of Strangers? Mobility, Social Structure, Political Participation in the Formation of Nineteenth-Century American Working Class Culture," in American Workingclass Culture: Explorations in American Labor and Social History , ed. Milton Cantor (Westport, Conn., 1979), 42-43. [BACK]

17. San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Municipal Reports (hereafter SFMR) (1902-1903), 297-298; ibid. (1916-1917), 322, 462-463; U.S., Bureau of the Census, Census of Occupations , 1900. For the 1926 case, I did not compare building trades registrants to the proportion of construction workers in the next decennial census. Since there was far more construction in 1920 than in 1916, a comparison would not have been useful. Fee was certainly exaggerating, but his perception was common among businessmen. U.S., Congress, Commission on Industrial Relations, Final Report and Testimony (hereafter CIRR) (1912-1915), vol. 6, 5173. [BACK]

18. Steven Erie, "Politics, the Public Sector, and Irish Social Mobility: San Francisco, 1870-1900," Western Political Quarterly 31 (June 1978), 281-282. [BACK]

19. OL , March 30, 1901, Dec. 30, 1905, Aug. 27, 1910. On the attraction of the New Zealand example, see Peter J. Coleman, "New Zealand Liberalism and the Origins of the American Welfare State," Journal of American History 69 (Sept. 1982), 372-391. [BACK]

20. OL , Nov. 1, Sept. 7, 1902, March 12, 1904, Aug. 15, 1914, July 3, Aug. 7, 1915. At the same time, both Gompers and Frank Duffy, General Secretary of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, were opposing legislation to enforce an eighthour day in private industry. Walter Galenson, United Brotherhood of Carpenters: The First Hundred Years (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 165-166. [BACK]

21. CIRR, vol. 6, 5191; OL , Mar. 30, Apr. 6, 20, Oct. 12, 19, June 26, 1920. The San Francisco Labor Council (SFLC) then opposed the proposal, and the California Federation of Labor did not take a position on it. Philip Taft, Labor Politics American Style: The California State Federation of Labor (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 56. For working-class reformers in the East and Midwest, see John D. Buencker, Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform (New York, 1973). [BACK]

22. OL , Mar. 15, Apr. 24, 1915. [BACK]

23. Lucile Laves, A History of California Labor Legislation with an Introductory Sketch of the San Francisco Labor Movement (Berkeley, 1910), 440-441, 79-80. [BACK]

24. George Mowry, The California Progressives (Berkeley, 1951), 92-96. [BACK]

25. Gilman M. Ostrander, The Prohibition Movement in California , 1848-1933 (Berkeley, 1957), 120-133. [BACK]

26. Lillian Ruth Matthews, Women in Trade Unions in San Francisco (Berkeley, 1913), 92. The BTC took a generally positive attitude toward reforms, ranging from higher wages to suffrage to even birth control, that would benefit wage-earning women. See Michael Kazin, "Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades, 1896-1922," Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1983, 584-585. [BACK]

27. On municipal water and streetcars, see Ray W. Taylor, Hetch Hetchy, The Story of San Francisco's Struggle to Provide a Water Supply for Her Future Needs (San Francisco, 1926); Morley Segal, "James Rolph, Jr. and the Early Days of the San Francisco Municipal Railway," California Historical Quarterly (hereafter CHQ ) 42 (March 1964), 3-18. [BACK]

28. OL , Nov. 23, 1901. [BACK]

29. Ibid., June 11, 1904. [BACK]

30. Ibid., Nov. 29, 1902. [BACK]

31. Eric Hobsbawm, Workers: Worlds of Labor (New York, 1984), 26. [BACK]

32. OL , Feb. 13, 1909; CIRR, vol. 6, 5217. The BTC also organized a campaign to urge the city to reject the Carnegie Foundation's offer of a library or other major gift. Tveitmoe to San Francisco Labor Council, Oct. 25, 1912, Carton III, San Francisco Labor Council Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (hereafter SFLCP). [BACK]

33. For fine examples of the literature on labor republicanism, see Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class (New York, 1984) (quote, 237-238); Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge, Mass., 1976); Leon Fink, Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana, 1983); David Montgomery, "Labor and the Republic in Industrial America: 1860-1920," Le Mouvement Social , no. 111 (April-June 1980), 201-215. [BACK]

34. Ira B. Cross, A History of the Labor Movement in California (Berkeley, 1935), 36, 44, 57, 145, 164, 172, 178, 213-214, 274, 339; on the Labor Exchange, see various articles in Voice of Labor (San Francisco) in 1897; H. Roger Grant, Self-Help in the 1890s Depression (Ames, Iowa, 1983), 41-58. [BACK]

35. OL , Dec. 24, 1904, Mar. 23, Nov. 9, 1907, Apr. 9, 1910; The Rank and File , Nov. 3, 1920; Frederick L. Ryan, Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Building Trades (Norman, Okla., 1936), 137. [BACK]

36. OL , Sept. 12, 1914, Apr. 1, 1916. [BACK]

37. Ibid., Jan. 19, 1901; Albert Sonnichsen in The Carpenter , March 1921. [BACK]

38. Walton Bean, California: An Interpretive History , 3d ed. (New York, 1978), 188-189. On the California origins of George's ideas, see John L. Thomas, Alternative America: Henry George, Edward Bellamy, Henry Demarest Lloyd, and the Adversary Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 49-71. [BACK]

39. CIRR, vol. 6, 5203; for examples, see OL , Nov. 28, Dec. 5, 1903, Sept. 23, 1905, Sept. 26, 1908, Dec. 27, 1913. [BACK]

40. OL , July 9, 1910; Phillips Russell, "The Class Struggle on the Pacific Coast," The International Socialist Review (Sept. 1912), 238; State BTC of California, Proceedings: Fifteenth Annual Convention, 1915 (San Francisco, 1915), 175-178. [BACK]

41. Richard White, "Poor Men on Poor Lands," Pacific Historical Review 49 (February 1980), 105-131; OL , Mar. 18, 1095, Jan. 28, 1911, Sept. 20, 1913, Sept. 1, 1917. [BACK]

42. Arthur Young, The Single Tax Movement in the United States (Princeton, 1916), 163-167; OL , Apr. 27, 1912; Cross, History of the Labor Movement , 172, 188-189; Samuel Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labour (New York, 1925), vol. 2, 231, 251, 304, 337; OL , Feb. 28, 1914. In 1902 Guttstadt and Gompers had co-authored an anti-Chinese pamphlet, entitled "Meat vs. Rice: American Manhood Against Asiatic Coolieism. Which Shall Survive ?" [BACK]

43. Henry George, Progress and Poverty (New York, 1961; orig. pub., 1879), 552; Commonwealth Club of California (San Francisco), Transactions 11 (October 1916); OL , June 14, 1913, June 24, 1916, Nov. 4, 1911 (quote). In 1916, the "single tax" itself was on the state ballot but lost badly. However, working-class assembly districts in San Francisco favored the proposal. SFMR (1916-1917), 487; Franklin Hichborn, "California Politics, 1891-1939," typescript, Green Library, Stanford University, 1805-1806. [BACK]

44. OL , Mar. 2, 1907, Apr. 27, May 4, 1912, June 14, 1913. Also see Paul Scharrenberg, "Reminiscences," an oral history conducted in 1954, Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1954, 42; Revolt , Apr. 6, 1912. [BACK]

45. On the IWW, OL , Feb. 25, 1905, Apr. 2, 1910, Dec. 6, 1913, Nov. 7, 1914; on organizing industrial workers, ibid., Dec. 18, 1909, Aug. 23, 1913. [BACK]

46. Ibid., Apr. 3, 1909. The SFLC took a cooler attitude toward the IWW leader; see San Francisco Examiner , Oct. 12, 1907. According to Joseph Conlin, Haywood gradually came to the conclusion that the IWW should become "more like the old Western Federation of Miners, a union as highly organized and disciplined as the corporations it combatted." Big Bill Haywood and the Radical Union Movement (Syracuse, 1969), 171. [BACK]

47. Ralph E. Shaffer, "A History of the Socialist Party of California," M.A. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1955; David Shannon, The Socialist Party of America (Chicago, 1967), 40-42; Bruce Dancis, "The Socialist Women's Movement in the United States, 1901-1917," senior thesis, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1973, 202-233. [BACK]

48. Ira B. Cross, "Socialism in California Municipalities," National Municipal Review (1912), 611-619; Ralph E. Shaffer, "Radicalism in California, 1896-1929," Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1962, 166, 168; Ira Kipnis, The American Socialist Movement , 1897-1912 (New York, 1952), 373. [BACK]

49. On labor party sentiment within the national Socialist Party, see Dick, Labor and Socialism , 63-67. Harriman later founded a collective agricultural colony north of Los Angeles, which the BTC supported. See Kazin, "Barons of Labor," 339; Paul Kagan, "Portrait of a California Utopia," CHQ 51 (Summer 1972), 131-154. [BACK]

50. OL , Nov. 9, 1912. [BACK]

51. Labor Clarion (San Francisco) Sept. 2, 1910. The most complete study of the anti-Japanese campaign is Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice (Berkeley, 1962). Also see Hichborn, "California Politics," 1200-1287; Frank P. Chuman, The Bamboo People: The Law and Japanese Americans (Del Mar, Calif., 1976), 18-103. [BACK]

52. OL , Apr. 14, 1900. [BACK]

53. Quoted in John Modell, "Japanese-Americans: Some Costs of Group Achievement," in Ethnic Conflict in California History , ed. Charles Wollenberg (Los Angeles, 1970), 104. [BACK]

54. On business attitudes, see OL , Apr. 14, 1900; Merchants' Association Review (San Francisco), Sept., 1907; San Francisco Chamber of Commerce Journal , June, 1912; San Francisco Business , Oct. 15, 1920, Aug. 19, 1921. On the Socialist Party, Shaffer, "Socialist Party of California," 53-55; Aileen S. Kraditor, The Radical Persuasion , 1890-1917: Aspects of the Intellectual History and the Historiography of Three American Radical Organizations (Baton Rouge, La., 1981), 177-185. On Yorke, Joseph Brusher, S.J., Consecrated Thunderbolt: A Life of Father Peter C. Yorke of San Francisco (Hawthorne, N.J., 1973), 267-268. [BACK]

55. OL , May 5, Nov. 24, 1900; Daniels, Politics of Prejudice , 21-22. [BACK]

56. OL May 20, 27, Aug. 19, 1905. [BACK]

57. The minutes of the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League (JKEL) and the Asiatic Exclusion League (AEL) were routinely reprinted in OL . Throughout its existence, over 90 percent of League affiliates were trade unions. See JKEL minutes, OL , Sept. 8, 1906; AEL minutes, OL , June 12, 1909, Mar. 12, 1910. Saxton, Indispensable Enemy , 252. [BACK]

58. Daniels, Politics of Prejudice , 33; Matthews, Women in Trade Unions , 34-36. [BACK]

59. David Brudnoy, "Race and the San Francisco School Board Incident: Contemporary Evaluations," CHQ 50 (September 1971), 295-312; San Francisco Chronicle , Sept. 17, 1906; OL , Sept. 28, 1907, Oct. 17, 1908, Mar. 12, 1910; Yoell to SFLC, Sept. 14, 1911, AEL File, Carton II, SFLCP. [BACK]

60. OL , Jan. 20, 1906; CIRR, vol. 6, 5203. [BACK]

61. Harry H. L. Kitano, "Japanese," in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups , ed. Stephan Thernstrom (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), 563; Yamato Ichihashi, Japanese Immigration: Its Status in California (San Francisco, 1915), 11; Dennis K. Fukumoto, "Chinese and Japanese in California, 1900-1920: A Case Study of the Impact of Discrimination," Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1976, 264-265. [BACK]

62. OL , May 13, 1905, Jan. 13, 1906. [BACK]

63. In the 1890s, Samuel Gompers had corresponded regularly with Fusatoro Takano, a union organizer who tried to apply the AFL model in his homeland. Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States , 6 vols. (New York, 1947-1982), vol. 3, 274. In 1903, Japanese and Mexican agricultural workers waged a joint strike near Los Angeles and tried, unsuccessfully, to get the national AFL's support. Tomás Almaguer, "Racial Domination and Class Conflict in Capitalist Agriculture: The Oxnard Sugar Beet Workers' Strike of 1903," LH 25 (Summer 1984), 325-350 [Chapter 6 of this volume]. [BACK]

64. OL , Nov. 17, 1906, Dec. 6, 1907, Jan. 4, 1908, Aug. 18, 1900, May 16, July 25, 1908. [BACK]

66. OL , May 30, 1903. [BACK]

67. On the 1909 Oahu strike, see Ronald Takaki, Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii (Honolulu, 1983), 153-164. For BTC views, see OL , July 24, Nov. 6, 1909; Tveitmoe to SFLC, Apr. 22, 1910, Carton III, SFLCP; OL , July 5, Nov. 22, 1919. [BACK]

68. Scharrenberg, "Reminiscences," 63-64. On the "new immigrants" from Southern and Eastern Europe, both the BTC and SFLC were ambivalent. OL occasionally called the newcomers "ignorant tools of corporations" but vigorously advocated organizing all white wage-earners into unions. [BACK]

69. OL , Sept. 11, 18, 1909. [BACK]

70. Margaret Canovan, Populism (New York, 1981), 55-56. [BACK]

71. OL , Sept. 9, 1911; Richard O'Connor, Jack London: A Biography (Boston, 1964), 220. [BACK]