In 1935, the gas house workers’ of the Laclede Gas Light Company were earning above average wages and had gone to an eight-hour day, forty-hour week. Skilled workers were paid eighty-one cents per hour and common laborers earned fifty cents per hour. These salaries were about the same as those paid in 1929, but they represented an increase of about twenty-five percent over the 1932 pay scale, when the Depression had forced wages down internationally.[1] Why then did the 510 members of the Gas House Workers’ Union Number 18799 of the American Federation of Labor walk off their jobs for nearly four months in on of the most violent strikes in St. Louis Labor History?

The answer to this question probably does not lie specifically in the area of hours, wages and working conditions, usually at stake in most strikes. The Gas House Strike was the first time that a public utility struck—which is significant in itself—and, more important, it is indicative of the trade union movement of the 1930’s.

There was no industry or occupation immune to the march of organized labor. The Depression had created common problems and common goals for workers. The New Deal paved the way for the organization of the labor begun in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century. The Gas House Workers truck for recognition. They were fighting (often literally) for the right to organize and bargain collectively. The Laclede Gas Light Company had a number of internal financial troubles and fought from the beginning the nearly inevitable unionizing of their employees.

One of the many New Deal measures initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first term in office was the National Recovery Administration (NRA). This was authorized by the Emergency Congress of 1933 in the National Industrial Recovery Act passed on July 16^th, and was designed to assist industry, labor and the unemployed. Individual industries were to work of codes of “fair competition” under which work hours would be reduced so that employment could be spread over more men, and minimum wag levels were established. In addition, under Section 7a of the Act, labor was formally guaranteed the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing—not through company chosen agents. Anti-union contracts were forbidden and child labor restricted. It was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935 for some very good reasons, but while in effect it did prove some stimulation to industry and much encouragement to the trade union movement. The Laclede Gas Light Company subscribed to the provisions of the NRA when they signed the President’s Reemployment act on August 21, 1933.[2]

Within a month (according to the union) six hundred of the seven hundred and twenty mechanical employees at the Laclede Gas Light Company had joined the Gas House Workers’ Union which was chartered by the American Federation of Labor on November 1, 1933 as Local 18799.[3] Prior to this, the workers had experienced two ten percent cuts in pay and layoffs.[4] Negotiations for the union’s first contract began that same month but quickly bogged down. It was not until a strike was threatened and civic leaders intervened that both the company and the union agreed to submit the dispute over recognition and conditions of employment to the St. Louis Regional Labor Board for a decision. The Board’s decree became effective on December 4^th for the period of one year and proved to be a favorable ruling for labor. The agreement declared:

1.      That the Laclede Gas Light Company Shall pay its employees the same wages that it paid its employees on June 30, 1932

2.      That employees receive pay and one half for all work done before or after regular working hours.

3.      That five days or nights of eight consecutive hours shall constitute a week’s work of work for each employee

4.      That a designated starting hour for reporting to work and a lunch period of at least thirty minutes be guaranteed.[5]

Apparently in response to the success of the Gas House Workers’ Union and this arbitration award, the company began to take steps to counteract its impact. Laclede formed and financed its own union— “Laclede Gas Light Representative Association”—and granted to all its employees the same wage increase as that obtained by the Gas House Workers’ Union.

Employees were encouraged to join the company Association and those belonging to the Union were discriminated against. In a letter to William R. Green, the President of the American Federation of Labor, the gas workers claimed that their union members were fired or demoted without cause and some laid off members were not reemployed until they informed the company that they were through with Local 18799.[6] Joe Davis, a black conveyor belt operator in the company’s coke plant for the past fourteen years and irregularly employed by Laclede for twenty-eight years, was accused of sleeping on duty and was fired in April 1, 1934. Earlier that day, at about 3:30 a.m. Davis and two non-union employees had been found by their superintendent in a shanty, where men customarily rested when their work permitted. While Davis was discharged, the two workers with him were only temporarily laid off.[7] This arbitrary treatment of union members was a frequent grievance throughout the year that the Regional Labor Board’s decision was in effect and naturally influenced the negotiations for a new contract.

A month before the working agreement between the Union and the Gas Company was due to expire on December 4, 1934, a proposal covering wages, hours and working conditions was submitted by the Union. The first provisions of this proposal called for a closed shop—that only union members be employed by the company. This section was flatly rejected by the company on November 28^th and they refused to negotiate any of the other points until this provision was removed. At the next conference on December 4 the Union representatives submitted a counter-proposal to the closed shop request, which would allow non-union workers to remain in the employ of the company. Any new employees, though, would be required to join the union within thirty days after being hired. This proposal was designed to answer the company’s objection to the closed shop because they did not feel they had any right to ask present employees who were not members of the union to join the union. This proposal, however, was also rejected by the Laclede negotiators.[8]

In a December 7^th memorandum, the company submitted a counter-proposal offering to arbitrate any issue with the Union except wages, hours and working conditions (which seem to be the heart of any collective bargaining agreement.) That same day the Union rejected this offer and withdrew its request for a closed shop, submitting, instead, a request that the company recognize the Gas House Workers’ Union as the “exclusive bargaining agency” for all of its employees in the mechanical departments. Again the company rejected their offer and resubmitted its own arbitration proposal, which had already been rejected.[9]

On December 5^th a secret vote of the Gas House Workers’ Union empowered its representative by a margin of three hundred and sixty five to nineteen to negotiate for a closed shop agreement, and, if unsuccessful, to call a strike at whatever time they deemed best. When negotiations finally halted on December 12^th with the company’s last rejection, a strike was called for December 15^th.[10] Only last minute intervention by the officers of the Central Trades and Labor Union and government officials averted the strike this time. The Union was persuaded to remain on the job and again allow the St. Louis Regional Labor Board to adjust their differences with the company.

On December 27, 1934, the Regional Labor Board for the Twelfth District announced a favorable decision for the Gas House Workers’ Union. Their recommendations included the provisions that the company bargain collectively with Gas House Workers’ Union Number 18799 as representative of the employees engaged in the company’s manufacturing, distributing, service and maintenance department, and that Joe Davis be reinstated.[11] The Laclede Gas Light Company refused to participate in the hearings that lead to this decision and likewise refused to comply with the findings of the Board. The case was then referred to the National Labor Relations Board.

On February 18, 1935, a fact-finding hearing of this Board on the Gas House Workers’ Union case (Number 266) reported these facts among others:

I.              The Laclede Gas Light Company subscribed to the President’s Reemployment Agreement on August 21, 1933, and continues subject to that agreement.

II.           Gas House Workers’ Union Number 18799 represents a majority of the total number of employees engaged at work in the company’s manufacturing and operating departments, including the maintenance, service, and distribution departments.

III.         While the various departments of the company referred to in Paragraph II are not grouped together under on roof the employees of these departments are liked together by a strong community of interest, including geographical proximity and for purposes of collective bargaining properly constitute on unity…

XV.   The discharge of Davis was due to his union affiliation

XVI. In conclusion, the National Labor Relations Board finds that the Laclede Gas Light Company has violated Section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery act, as incorporated by reference in the President’s Reemployment Agreement, by failure to bargain collectively in good faith with Gas Workers’ Union No. 18799 as representative of a majority of its employees, and has, by its discharge of Davis, interfered with, restrained and coerced its employees in their self-organization.[12]

The company had declined to participate in the hearings but on March 12^th the attorneys for the company finally appeared before the National Labor Relations Board at a “show cause” hearing, and confined their arguments to the jurisdiction of the Board. They maintained that as a manufacturer of gas, Laclede operated under no code – and thus was not bound by the directives of the National Industrial Recover Act. Fred M. Switzer, Jr., on of the lawyers for Laclede, argued that the company had surrendered its Blue Eagle (the distinctive symbol of NRA industries) voluntarily on February 26, 1935, and, since no formal notice of the extension of the President’s Reemployment Agreement had ever been received, then it was no longer binding. He further argued that: “the distribution of gas within a community was not interstate commerce and therefore the National Labor Relations Board had no jurisdiction in this dispute”.[13] These were valid arguments and ones which indicate some of the weaknesses in the NRA, which eventually led to is being declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. But, nevertheless, the company could show no cause why the Board’s findings should not be made final. So on March 19, 1935, the Board, consisting of Chairman Francis Biddle, H. A. Millis and Edwin S. Smith, ordered Laclede to bargain in good faith with the Gas Workers’ Union as the exclusive bargaining agent of its employees for the purpose of reaching an agreement covering hours, wages and working conditions, and to offer immediate and full reinstatement to Joe Dais, with back pay to December 27, 1934. If the company did not comply within ten days the case was to “referred to the Compliance Division of the National Recover Administration and to other agencies of the government for appropriate action”—probably referring to the Justice Department.[14]

In fact, less than a week after the NLRB decision was released on March 22^nd, the gas workers went out on strike at 6:00 a.m. on the twenty-eighth of March.[15] The strike was wholly the decision of the Local’s negotiating committee. Martin Wagner, the President of the Gas House Workers’ Union Number 18799, and Thomas Morley, the Union’s Secretary, had written President William Green on the A.F.L. in December of 1934 asking for support if a strike had to be called, but had received no confirmation.[16] William Brandt, secretary of the Central Trades and Labor Union, had not been consulted. The strike came as a complete surprise to Laclede Company. The first that the company officers knew of the strike was when they reported to work and were greeted by pickets around the Laclede Building.

The union, however, did not call the strike without advanced preparation. They had invited a man by the name of Mike Dunn from Minneapolis, Minnesota to publish a daily strike bulletin. Dunn and his two brothers had put out a daily bulleting called the Organizer during a successful Teamster strike in Minneapolis from June to September of 1934. The gas workers quietly brought him and a man named Satir from Chicago in from out of town and they, along with David Burbank, a local member of the Workers’ Party, published a daily bulletin from the very first day of the strike until June 18^th – when they began to print only three times a week. These three men operated completely behind the scenes throughout the strike and even found it necessary to frequently change their base of operations after Mickey Dunn was arrested and released after being in St. Louis only a matter of hours. About one thousand copies of each edition of the bulleting were printed by local printers, who were only too happy to receive such and order.[17] Subscriptions were sold at the rate of twenty-five cents per week and this income – plus the money received for advertising in the paper – provided the bulk of financial aid needed to carry on such a prolonged strike.

On Friday March 29^th, Mayor Bernard Dickmann tried to intervene and offered a proposal that would have recognized the Union as the exclusive bargaining agent, but did not guarantee a closed shop-nor did it deal with the new demand of the strikers that a seventy-five cents charge for service calls that was to go into effect on April 1^st be dropped.[18] The company pointed to the rising costs as the reason for the service charge but the Union opposed it because they saw it as a way to reduce the service calls, and thereby reduce the labor force in the service department. The Union rejected the Mayor’s proposal on March 31^st, and voted to maintain demands for a closed shop and free service calls.[19] This rejection and restatement of demands apparently set the tone for the rest of the strike that was to last until July 15^th. The lines were sharply drawn with each side at the other’s throat and neither side willing to conciliate or temper their demands.

The daily violence, apparently perpetrated and encouraged by both sides, began almost immediately and continued until the strike’s conclusion. On April 3^rd, the Laclede Gas Light Company took an ad in the St. Louis Star-Times listing interruptions in service and attacks on employees believed to be the work of the Union.[20] That same day the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported an attempt to bomb the natural gas intake pipeline from Louisiana at the Catalan Street Plant – which was the only production unit in operations at full capacity.[21] On April 11^th, Alfred Diggs, a watchman at the Natural Bridge and Chevrolet Plant, reported firing at two men who had entered the yard.[22] Two days later the Post reported that Diggs had been beaten by four or five men as he left work.[23] Numerous gas mains were exploded or flooded with water, impeding service around the city. Not a week went by that some incident of the violence wasn’t reported in one of the local papers or in the Union’s Strike Bulletin from the beginning of the strike until it’s settlement; usually the reports were more frequent. On July 5^th, a tower owned by the Laclede Power and Light Company, a sister company of the gas company, was dynamited and by this time some serious negotiations were taking place.[24]

When the President of the Gas House Workers’ Union, Martin Wagner, reported to President Green of the AFL in December, 1934, on the status of negotiations with Laclede and the possibility of a strike, he wrote: “We are frank to say that if we cannot win our strike in forty-eight hours, our cause is lost.”^[25] Certain measures taken by Laclede in the early days of the strike, however, set the stage for a long, prolonged battle. On of the first moves was the hiring A. A. Ahner Detective Agency to guard its property. This agency had an infamous reputation for specializing in “strike breaking” that was not enhanced during the strike nor when the Post-Dispatch printed a picture of Ahner agents being forcibly marched to a train station by striking bakers in Des Moines, Iowan on July 18^th – only days after the gas strike was settled.[26]

Frequent attacks on the Ahner agency and its “thugs” were launched by the Strike Bulletin.

A second piece of strategy by Laclede was a bitter blow to the plans of the strikers for a short strike. The Louis J. Cuneo Gas Fitting Contractor at 1009 Pine Street was contracted on, April 4th by Laclede to perform all installation and service required in the distribution of gas in St. Louis.[27] This included pipe laying, fixture installation and repairs. Cuneo had been used similarly from 1903 to 1907[28] and from 1918 to 1921[29] by Laclede and had been in business since 1896. On April 5 a want ad appeared in the Post-Dispatch offering work to men and boys as gas fitters for Cuneo.[30] That same day Louis Cuneo also offered to hire the strikers and to pay them wages ten percent more than the gas company scale. This was rejected by the Gas House Workers' Union because only about 300 of the over 500 members on strike were installation or service workers, and the rest would have been left out of the arrangement. Cuneo had previously employed union gas and steam fitters in his business of installing gas appliances. But Local 562 of the Steam and Gas Fitters Union refused to supply workers for gas company service and any union member caught working in that capacity was to be expelled from the union.[31]

Between the Cuneo workers and those employees that had not joined the union and gone out on strike, Laclede managed to provide some semblance of service. Many of these workers never left the plant, as the company provided food and housing for its workers at the plants. But work was often sabotaged and the “scabs” attacked on several occasions--even though some protection was provided by the Ahner detectives and the St. Louis Police. Throughout the strike, though, the company was under fire from several directions for a number of different reasons.

One of its larger problems came from the proposed seventy-five cents service charge that the strikers listed among their grievances. Laclede had not received permission from the Missouri Public Service Commission to levy this charge and on April 4^th the Commission ordered them to cease charging for service calls until an investigation was completed.[32] On April 6 a petition was filed with the Public Service Commission by St. Louis City Counselor Hay and Associate City Counselor Ferris charging that the service charge was a “subterfuge” by the company to increase its earnings. On November 30^th, 1934, the Commission had ordered a rate reduction of $350,000 (a six percent reduction) to go into effect on February 1, 1935. This deadline was postponed until a hearing could be held, but until that time Laclede had been directed by the Cole County Circuit Court in Jefferson City to deposit monthly in the Central Missouri Trust Company of Jefferson City the sum equal to the refund (about $30,000 a month). City Counselors Hay and Ferris argued that instead of reducing its net income as had been ordered in November, the Laclede Gas Light Company was attempting to increase its yearly earnings by about $125,000 (the estimated income from the seventy-five cents service charge), or at least recoup its losses if it could not block the reduction. They maintained in their petition to the Commission that the reason for the increased expenditure for service in the last two years was not due to the increased costs of labor and materials, as indicated by the company, but to the changeover from straight manufactured gas to a mixture of artificial and natural gas. They pointed out that servicing costs had jumped from $65,519 in 1932 to $143,124 in 1933 after the changeover. Also, the counselors noted that service calls had never been “free”; they had always been figured in with costs and charged to the consumer in their rates. They felt that this charge would only serve to make the customer pay twice for the same thing.[33]

On June 18^th, late in the strike, the Missouri Public Service Commission ordered Laclede to rescind its notice that as of April 1^st there would be a seventy-five cents charge for each call made by a company employee to a customer’s premises for service on any customer owned appliance. The Commission explained that service costs had been treated as regular operating expenses and was already figured into the rate of return that the company was receiving.[34]

The rate problems, though, were only among the many that the company had to face during the strike. Its whole corporate structure and financing was under attack. In April the Reconstruction Financing Corporation (RFC), a New Deal program to aid the banks, became the controlling interest in the Public Utilities Securities Corporation--the top holding company in a utilities conglomerate, of which the Laclede Gas Light Company was a part. The RFC had loaned ninety million dollars to the Central Bank and Trust Company of Chicago to put the bank on its feet. As collateral for this loan, the RFC received stock in the Public Utilities Securities Corporation (PUSCO). The bank had held this stock as security on a two million dollar loan to a financing company controlled by Harley Clarke--the head of PUSCO and president of the Utilities Power and Light Corporation, which controlled a number of utility corporations, including the Laclede Gas Light Company.

When Harley Clarke failed to repay this two million dollar loan, the RFC assumed controlling interest in PUSCO and five of the eight directors to the Board were appointed by Jesse Jones, the Chairman of the RFC.[35] One of these directors, Adolph A. Berle was a member of President Roosevelt’s “brain trust” and believed to be sympathetic to labor. But an appeal by Francis Biddle, the Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, to him to force Laclede to comply with the Board’s ruling proved fruitless.[36] The RFC was more interested in recouping its own losses than the plight of the St. Louis gas workers, and sold its interests in PUSCO in mid-June to the Atlas Corporation.[37]

A receivership suit by J. Lionberger Davis filed against Laclede on May 15^th further revealed the company’s financial problems and the extensive entanglement in the “holding company maze.” Mr. Davis’s suit alleged that the Utilities Power and Light Corporation had been draining the assets of the Laclede Gas Light Company into its own treasury through various transactions and contracts that it had caused the gas company to enter into with affiliates or subsidiaries of the holding company. One example was the dealings that Laclede had with the Management and Engineering Corporation--owned by the Utilities Power and Light Corporation. Even though Laclede had an engineering service of its own, $189,829 was paid to the Management and Engineering Corporation in 1932 for “technical services.” In 1933, $204,603 was paid for “various construction work.” Mr. Davis further pointed out that between 1932 and 1933 $180,000 was charged to miscellaneous.[38]

During the strike the local newspapers reported more suspicious transactions within the holding company. It was revealed that the coal that Laclede burned to manufacture the gas was shipped on the Litchfield and Madison Railroad, a subsidiary of the Utilities Power and Light Corporation of Chicago. No bids were taken on the coal. The coke that was left as a byproduct to the burning of the coal was sold by United Colleries, another subsidiary of the corporation. $2000.00 per month was paid to the Utilities Power and Light Corporation for office personnel in the holding company’s building in Chicago, even though Laclede had no special employees or space there.[39]

J. Lionberger Davis was eventually elected to the board of Laclede in an attempt to settle the suit, but the problems continued. A story in late June reported that many of the workers at the gas company had lost a great deal of money on Laclede Gas Light Company stock. Between 1929 and 1932 about one hundred employees of Laclede Gas were licensed by the Laclede Securities Corporation--another holding company subsidiary--to sell stock. Most of their customers were fellow workers, friends and relatives. For their work they received between one and two dollars commission per share. Most of the stock sold was for the Utilities Power and Light Corporation and other Harley Clarke companies. At the time that it was sold it was worth about one hundred dollars a share, but by 1935 the stock was worth only about fourteen dollars per share--which is indicative of the financial problems that the gas company was involved in. Many of the strikers and their families lost all of their savings in this venture.[40]

These problems and other attacks on the company went on throughout the strike and were somehow oblivious to the strike. The workers hung on and the violence continued. Bricks were thrown at Cuneo trucks, non-­striking workers were beaten and service was disrupted, but Laclede never was brought “to its knees” as the Gas House Workers had supposed would happen. The company obviously had more resources than the workers. In addition to those problems already mentioned, an unsuccessful investigation of the quality of the gas sold (heating volume and intensity) was held[41] , another receivership suit was filed in July claiming that Laclede's charter had expired either in 1887 or 1917.[42] And the push towards straight natural gas began in earnest in 1935--with a franchise for this awarded on July 16^th to the McKnab Oil and Gas Company of Winfield, Kansas.[43] Laclede just had too much power behind it to fold under this sort of pressure.

The workers, on the other hand, were faced with very limited resources. They had failed to go through proper channels to call the strike and the American Federation of Labor was reluctant to offer the Gas House Workers’ Union any strike benefits. The first time that the national was informed of the strike was in a telegram on April 1^st from Martin Wagner.[44] A letter followed on April 5^th explaining the situation and requesting financial assistance.[45] But President Green of the AFL waited for a report from William Schoenberg, a General Organizer from Cincinnati, whom he asked personally to investigate the situation. On Schoenberg’s recommendation, a five hundred dollar donation was sent to the local through William Brandt, the Secretary of the St. Louis Central Trades and Labor Union, on April 22^nd.[46]

On May 7 an additional $1500 dollars was sent by Frank Morrison, the secretary of the AFL, to Brandt for the gas workers, on the instructions of President Green.[47] Martin Wagner appealed only a week later for more money on the basis that what happened in this strike would determine the possibilities of any future organization in the utility field.[48] Green advised Wagner to take up the matter of relief with Brandt--who then advised that more money be sent.[49] On May 25^th, Green wrote to Tom Morley, the union secretary:

I have asked Secretary Morrison to send check for $1500.00. I feel that this contribution must be accepted as final. It does not seem possible for the American Federation of Labor to make any further financial contribution to this strike.[50]

The letter left little to the imagination, but a request on July 6^th asking for additional monies from the AFL illustrates the extreme nature of the gas workers’ plight.[51] This time Green wrote:

I have sent your local union $3,500.00. I stated when I sent you $1,500.00 on May 25^th  that ‘I feel that this contribution must be accepted as final.’ Evidently you did not accept this statement in the spirit in which it was meant. I meant exactly what I said. The last contribution I sent you was final. I was certain then, and I am certain now that the American Federation of Labor has discharged its obligations to your local union fully and completely. We can not do more. I regret that it is impossible for me to comply with your request for an additional contribution of $2,000.00.[52]

Thus the support received from the national was very slim for a strike that lasted nearly four months. By May 23^rd, the Central Trades and Labor Union had voluntarily donated $803 and contributions from other local trade unions made up a sizeable portion of the Union's income.[53] The Strike Bulletin brought in about $300 per week from subscriptions and advertising. Out of all their sources (amounting to about $1000 a week) the Union had to pay dues to the AFL (thirty-five cents per month per member), print the Strike Bulletin, maintain fifty automobiles used for the strike effort, and run kitchens for the strikers.[54] Many of the union members went on welfare and an office was set up by the Union to assist them in getting this relief. In April, Martin Wagner wrote to Harry Hopkins complaining that the local officials were dragging their feet on giving aid to the strikers.[55] A letter to Green also asked for assistance in this matter and Secretary Morrison of the AFL talked to the labor advisor of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, Nels Anderson, who then requested a report on the situation from the Missouri State Administration.[56] In any case, the Gas House Workers’ Union relied heavily on public support both financially and otherwise.

If their major tactic in dealing with the company was violence, rather than arbitration or conciliation, then just the opposite was true in their dealings with the public. In striking a public utility, such as the gas company, the workers were risking a backlash against them, instead of the company--and the union seemed to be well aware of their predicament. The demand for an end, to the service charge was a real issue to the union in terms of jobs for its members, but the approach that was taken when presenting the problem to the public was that of customer safety. If a fee were imposed on service repair calls, then many would be unwilling or unable to have faulty appliances checked and would risk the danger of a leak or explosion. The union pointed this out as an example of Laclede’s disregard for their customers. The many interruptions in service were also cited as examples of this-- even though the strikers were probably responsible for many of these interruptions due to explosions or air and water deliberately introduced into the lines.

Union sound trucks and the Strike Bulletin offered daily evidence of the ineptness of the Cuneo workers and the corruptness of the Ahner guards. The approach that was taken in regard to police protection of “scab” workers was again one of public safety. A supposed increase in traffic accidents was explained by the fact that too many police officers were spending their time protecting Laclede rather than conducting regular police business. A large effort was also launched to convince people not to pay estimated bills. During the strike almost no meters were being read and Laclede had been sending estimated bills. All of these strategies, as well as the direct violence and sabotaging, took their toll on the company--but never to the point where Laclede was ready to agree to the union’s demands. The Gas House Workers’ Union had a limited income and had received no assistance, financially or otherwise, after the end of May from the American Federation of Labor. They were on their own and, by the time June came to an end, they had to start to consider serious arbitration of their disputes with the company. The Laclede Gas Light Company was under fire on many fronts, but their main manufacturing plant was still in operation and between the workers who lived at the plant and the Cuneo Company service was being maintained--even if it was not the best. The workers needed their jobs more than Laclede needed the workers.

On July 2, Father Timothy Dempsey brought the union leaders, headed by Martin Wagner, and the company representatives, headed by Laclede president E. P. Gosling, together at his church, St. Patrick's in downtown St. Louis. Father Dempsey had a history of settling labor disputes and was asked to help arbitrate this one. At this meeting Gosling agreed to take the strikers back with full seniority and the same wages and hours as before. But he also indicated two major problems for the company in settling the strike: 1. Adjusting the contract with Cuneo. 2. Deciding on problems at the coke plant in Carondelet, where the majority (over 100) of the workers had their own organization and had not gone out c strike, and about 70 union members had struck.[57] The trend of this conference was to submit all problems to arbitration, but the strikers were still unwilling to accept anything but a closed shop agreement. On July 4^th the workers met to discuss the negotiations and on Saturday, July 6^th, the workers made a big concession, in their estimation, towards settling the dispute. They voted 292 to 70 to submit all of the items, including the closed shop provision, to a mediation board consisting of Father Dempsey, one representative from the company and one representative from the union. They dropped their unilateral demand for a closed shop and some of the quotes from the union meeting suggest the weariness of the strikers. They had thought their services would be demanded within forty-eight hours after they walked out. One union member said, “It’s hard to maintain morale on an empty stomach.” Wagner exhorted the members to “go back to work and build up a solid union.”[58]

Four days later, though, Laclede rejected the arbitration plan, refusing again to even consider the closed shop question.[59] On July 11^th, Mayor Dickmann threatened in a letter to Robert W. Otto, the attorney for Laclede, to file a complaint with the Missouri Public Service Commission stating that the gas company had failed to live up to its franchise obligations.[60] The next day Otto accepted for Laclede a plan drawn up by Munro Roberts, the union lawyer, calling for a permanent “Board of Arbitration.”[61] But the workers rejected it because it made no provisions for a closed or preferential shop. On July 13^th however, the union agreed to waive this demand and the way was opened for a final settlement of the strike.[62]

On July 14^th, 109 days after they walked off their jobs, the members of Gas House Workers’ Union Number 18799 voted 322 to 59 to ratify the agreement worked out with the company. The main points of the settlement were these:

1.      The 573 strikers were returned their jobs without discrimination under the terms prevailing before the strike.

2.      The company was to refrain from sponsoring a company union and was not to force anyone to join or not join a union.

3.      The company would recognize the Gas House Workers’ Union Local 18799 as representative of its membership for the purpose of negotiation.

4.      The union agreed to forego its demand for a closed or preferential shop.

5.      An “Arbitration Committee” was to be set up chaired by Father Dempsey and including one representative of the union. This committee would settle all complaints, except for ones concerning wages, hours and working conditions.

6.      A board of arbitration was to be set up having one member from the company, one member from the union and one selected by both. If no agreement was reached on the third party within ten days, then either member of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri would decide.[63]

On July 15^th, the final edition of the Strike Bulletin was published and the union and company representatives met with union leaders to iron out the details of the settlement and adjust individual complaints. By-the sixteenth the workers began returning to their old jobs and the Cuneo Company settled its contract with Laclede.

Was the strike a success? In terms of union demands being met by the company, it hardly seems so. The service charge was dropped, but only on the orders of the Missouri Public Service Commission. The demand for a closed shop had to be withdrawn in order to settle the strike. What was won by the gas workers union was a solid organization. Their membership had stayed out for the full strike and many of the leaders from this union went on to organize and lead other unions. The Strike Bulletin had proved to be an effective tool for keeping unity, dispensing information, and boosting morale. The very survival of the union in the face of such a prolonged strike strengthened its membership. The company had tried to break the union and he’d failed.

When trying to place this lengthy and violent strike in the perspective of St. Louis and New Deal history, it is difficult to assess its significance. It was the first strike of a public utility in the nation. This, in itself, makes it important, but this doesn’t have all of the implications that we might suspect, because gas was not yet such an essential fuel to the average consumer. It was to become that following the smoke abatement legislation, but in1935 coal was still the most important fuel. About 200,000 customers were served by Laclede at this time and this fact forced a different handling of the strike by both sides. The strike is also important as an indicator of the trade union movement that was so pervasive in the thirties. The fact that a public utility was struck for nearly four months shows something of the scope of labor organization encouraged under the New Deal. The NRA was struck down by the Supreme Court during the strike, but later in 1935 Congress passed the Wagner Act which took up where the NRA left off, without many of its flaws and weaknesses. The Gas House Workers’ Union strike is particularly interesting because we have a daily log of the union’s activities during the strike in the Strike Bulletin. Although much of it is union propaganda, the Bulletin does give an account of this one union's struggle for recognition. The thirties in St. Louis and across the nation were marked with similar strikes and labor unrest, but not all were as violent or as long as the gas strike. It is, though, an archetype of a 1930’s labor dispute and many of the problems of government, business and labor following the Depression and during the New Deal are revealed in the story of the first strike of a public utility.

 

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