The Unemployed Councils of the USA (UC) was a mass organization of the Communist Party, USA established in 1930 in an effort to organize and mobilize unemployed workers.
The UC was the organizational successor of the Unemployment Council of New York, a broad-based organization established by various trade unions in New York City in the spring of 1921, during the economic downturn which followed the termination of the First World War. The organization was dissolved through merger into the Workers Alliance of America, a parallel organization affiliated with the Socialist Party of America, in April 1936.
Organizational history
Forerunners
In March 1921 a conference was held in New York City to address the unemployment question.Franklin Folsom, Impatient Armies of the Poor: The Story of Collective Action of the Unemployed, 1808-1942. Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1991; pg. 222. This effort was widely supported by the local agencies of organized labor, with some 35 independent or associated locals of the American Federation of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World sending delegates.
This Unemployment Conference of Greater New York elected Israel Amter, a member of the underground United Communist Party of America (UCP), as the secretary of a new organization, the Unemployment Council of New York.
Shortly after the conference, Amter was embroiled in a raid on UCP headquarters in New York City, in which he was arrested and charged with having committed the crime of criminal anarchy under New York state law. Following his release on bail, Amter threw himself into unemployment work, launching a small newspaper called Jobless and agitating on street corners to crowds of passersby.
Meetings of the Unemployment Council of New York were held at which the slogan "Fight and Live! Work or Compensation!" was advanced and an organizational agenda calling for unemployment relief, employment through public works, and the establishment of subsidized low-cost housing was cobbled together. The group attempted to expand at the local level through the establishment of neighborhood units called "Councils of Action."Daniel J. Leab, "'United We Eat': The Creation and Organization of the Unemployed Councils in 1930," Labor History, vol. 8, no. 3 (Fall 1967), pg. 300. A national organization was envisioned, to be known as the Worker's Unemployed Council of America.Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pp. 300-301.
The Harding administration was moved to action on the issue by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who drew up the blueprint for a President's Conference on Unemployment, which brought together leaders of industry and labor to further discuss the issue.Folsom, Impatient Armies of the Poor, pp. 223-224. The conference envisioned a city-based solution to the problem. By the end of 1921 some 209 localities had established Mayor's Committees on Unemployment to deal with the issue locally, making use of voluntarism.Folsom, Impatient Armies of the Poor, pg. 224.
This activity proved to be largely inadequate to the scope of the problem, with some minor progress made in some localities establishing emergency housing or setting up local employment bureaus to aid in matching up unemployed workers with prospective employers.Folsom, Impatient Armies of the Poor, pg. 225. These efforts did also undercut the radical New York movement as well, with the Communist-backed Unemployment Council of New York rapidly running out of organizational energy.Folsom, Impatient Armies of the Poor, pg. 223.
By the end of 1922 the post-war depression more or less had come to an end as the economy stabilized and businesses slowly began to hire more workers again to expand production.Folsom, Impatient Armies of the Poor, pg. 227. The New York-based Unemployed Council movement rapidly faded into obscurity with the improvement of business conditions.Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pg. 301.
Despite the failure of the 1921 launch of a mass movement of unemployed workers to gain traction, the Communist Party continued to pursue the issue, reiterating in 1923 its desire to bring about "the organization of groups of unemployed" in order to "force resolute action for the improvement of their position."Resolutions and Decisions of the Second World Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions. Chicago: Trade Union Educational League, 1923; pg. 8. Quoted in Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pg. 301. Such proclaimed intentions were met with no practical success throughout the rest of the comparatively prosperous decade of the 1920s, however.
Depression era reorganization
The global crisis of capitalist economies remembered to history as the Great Depression which began in the 4th Quarter of 1929 accelerated the efforts of American Communists to organize unemployed workers. The party conducted its initial organizational work under the auspices of its radical trade union subsidiary, the Trade Union Unity League, advancing the slogan "Fight—Don't Starve!" and seeking to build a new network of so-called Unemployed Councils.Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pg. 302.
As one pioneer scholar of the topic has observed, these Unemployed Councils were conceived as an adaptation of the St. Petersburg Councils of the Unemployed, soviets of unemployed workers which emerged during the Russian Revolution of 1905 and which helped to organize opposition to the Tsarist regime of Nikolai II.Helen Seymour, "Organization of the Unemployed." Master's thesis. Department of Sociology, Columbia University, 1940; pg. 10. Quoted in Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pg. 302. The American Communists hoped to establish the Unemployed Council movement as a similar mechanism to turn isolated and atomized unemployed workers towards mass action in the advance of revolutionary objectives.
Paid organizers for the Unemployed Councils were set to work attempting to build the organization, searching out potential members in breadlines or queueing for soup kitchens, loitering at factory gates or near employment agency offices, or sitting around near cheap hotels.Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pg. 303. Organizers sought to form local Councils at the neighborhood level, sometimes down to the level of one or two large apartment buildings.Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pg. 304. In addition to the prevailing method of organizing on a geographic basis, in some cases Councils were alternatively organized on the basis of language, including, for example, Yiddish-language locals in New York City.Eleanor Kahn, "Organizations of the Unemployed as a Factor in the American Labor Movement." Master's thesis. Department of History, University of Wisconsin, 1934; pg. 106. Cited in Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pg. 304.
Historian Daniel Leab indicates that the early Unemployed Councils were far from a rigidly directed and monolithic movement:
"During this embryonic period the Councils existed on an extremely unstable basis. No real interaction existed between the separate components. Rarely did one Council act in unison with another. Indeed, the only points they had in common were their demands for more relief and more public works, their emphasis on the philosophy of class struggle, and their overall Communist sponsorship."
Over the course of three years, 1930-1932, the Unemployed Councils organized or participated in more than 700 protest actions in 138 cities and towns, nearly half occurring in 1932.
International Unemployment Day
The Unemployed Councils were thrust into the public limelight in connection with the coordinated mass demonstrations organized by the Communist Party on March 6, 1930, deemed International Day for Struggle against Worldwide Unemployment by the Communist International.Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pg. 305. Under the slogan "Work or Wages" hundreds of thousands of often ill-organized protestors turned out across the United States to protest against unemployment and to demand government relief. The network of Unemployed Councils was used by the Communist Party as one of the primary mechanisms for building attendance at these public demonstrations.
While the majority of these International Unemployment Day demonstrations passed without notable incident, violence erupted in several locals, including scores of injuries resulting from a full scale police riot in New York City, lesser police-protestor violence in Boston, and the use of tear gas to disrupt rallies in Washington, D.C., and Seattle.Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pp. 306-307. The demonstrations and so-called "riots" associated with them served to publicize the existence and activities of the Unemployed Councils, as the March 6 events gained widespread attention in the press as the first large scale protests resulting from the recent economic downturn.Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pg. 308.
The tiny Communist Party, which counted only about 10,000 members at this time,Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pp. 305-306. was anxious to capitalize upon the massive publicity generated as a result of the March 6 action and rapidly conducted a "First Preliminary Conference on Unemployment" in New York City on March 29–30, 1930. This gathering was addressed by a number of prominent Communist Party worthies, including head of the TUUL William Z. Foster, long time Unemployed Council activist Israel Amter, and editor of the Daily Worker Robert Minor.Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pg. 309. The gathering determined to call another convention, larger and more formal, to establish a new national organization which would exist in its own right, independent of Trade Union Unity League auspices. TUUL leader Pat Devine was elected National Secretary of the Unemployed Leagues on an interim basis.Harvey Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade. New York: Basic Books, 1983; pg. 50. Divine's tenure as head of the UC was brief, as by the middle of May he had been "called away from the country by personal affairs" and replaced by George Siskind.Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism, pg. 51.
Establishment and early activity
On July 4 and 5, 1930 this founding convention met in Chicago. The gathering was attended by an impressive 1,320 delegates and established for the first time a new independent organization called the Unemployed Councils of the USA. The composition of the gathering was less astounding, however, with some 468 delegates hailing from the Communist Party or its youth section and another 723 connected with the party-sponsored TUUL. The gathering elected Communist Party leader Bill Mathieson as National Secretary of the new organization and named a governing National Committee of 38.Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pp. 309-310. Minor, Amter, and Foster — all of whom had begun serving 6-month jail terms in connection with the International Unemployment Day riot in New York City, were named as honorary members of the organization.Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pg. 310.
The primary organs of the new Unemployed Councils of the USA were again called "Committees of Action," these to be organized at the electoral precinct or ward level and combined to form a "City Unemployed Council."Leab, "'United We Eat,'" pg. 311. The City Unemployed Councils of smaller towns were to be additionally combined to form County Councils. City and County Councils were to elect delegates to state and national Unemployed Council bodies. No formal size requirements were set for Committees of Action until 1934, at which time a minimum of 25 members was established.