People's History of the United States_ 1492 to Present, A - Zinn, Howard [183]
The official organ of the Connecticut AFL, The Craftsman, also warned about the hysteria worked up by the sinking of the Maine:
A gigantic . . . and cunningly-devised scheme is being worked ostensibly to place the United States in the front rank as a naval and military power. The real reason is that the capitalists will have the whole thing and, when any workingmen dare to ask for the living wage . . . they will be shot down like dogs in the streets.
Some unions, like the United Mine Workers, called for U.S. intervention after the sinking of the Maine. But most were against war. The treasurer of the American Longshoremen’s Union, Bolton Hall, wrote “A Peace Appeal to Labor,” which was widely circulated:
If there is a war, you will furnish the corpses and the taxes, and others will get the glory. Speculators will make money out of it—that is, out of you. Men will get high prices for inferior supplies, leaky boats, for shoddy clothes and pasteboard shoes, and you will have to pay the bill, and the only satisfaction you will get is the privilege of hating your Spanish fellow-workmen, who are really your brothers and who have had as little to do with the wrongs of Cuba as you have.
Socialists opposed the war. One exception was the Jewish Daily Forward. The People, newspaper of the Socialist Labor party, called the issue of Cuban freedom “a pretext” and said the government wanted war to “distract the attention of the workers from their real interests.” The Appeal to Reason, another Socialist newspaper, said the movement for war was “a favorite method of rulers for keeping the people from redressing domestic wrongs.” In the San Francisco Voice of Labor a Socialist wrote: “It is a terrible thing to think that the poor workers of this country should be sent to kill and wound the poor workers of Spain merely because a few leaders may incite them to do so.”
But after war was declared, Foner says, “the majority of the trade unions succumbed to the war fever.” Samuel Gompers called the war “glorious and righteous” and claimed that 250,000 trade unionists had volunteered for military service. The United Mine Workers pointed to higher coal prices as a result of the war and said: “The coal and iron trades have not been so healthy for some years past as at present.”
The war brought more employment and higher wages, but also higher prices. Foner says: “Not only was there a startling increase in the cost of living, but, in the absence of an income tax, the poor found themselves paying almost entirely for the staggering costs of the war through increased levies on sugar, molasses, tobacco, and other taxes. . . .” Gompers, publicly for the war, privately pointed out that the war had led to a 20 percent reduction of the purchasing power of workers’ wages.
On May Day, 1898, the Socialist Labor party organized an antiwar parade in New York City, but the authorities would not allow it to take place, while a May Day parade called by the Jewish Daily Forward, urging Jewish workers to support the war, was permitted. The Chicago Labor World said: “This has been a poor man’s war—paid for by the poor man. The rich have profited by it, as they always do. . . .”
The Western Labor Union was founded at Salt Lake City on May 10, 1898, because the AFL had not organized unskilled workers. It wanted to bring together all workers “irrespective of occupation, nationality, creed or color” and “sound the death knell of every corporation and trust that has robbed the American laborer of the fruits of his toil. . . .” The union’s publication, noting the annexation of Hawaii during the war, said this proved that “the war which started as one of relief for the starving Cubans has suddenly changed to one of conquest.”
The prediction