Peter J. McGuire

Peter James McGuire ( born July 6, 1852 in New York; † February 18th 1906 in Camden, New Jersey ) was an American socialist. He was one of the most famous trade union leader of the United States of America in the nineteenth century and founder of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America.

Youth

Peter J. McGuire was born as the son of a poor Irish- Roman Catholic immigrant family. His father, John J. McGuire, was a warehouse porter and his mother, Catherine O'Riley hand managed the household. When his father was drafted in 1863 as a soldier on the side of the northern states of the American Civil War (1861-1865 ), he left the school to deny the livelihood of the family as a boy of 11 years. He worked as a newsboy, bootblack and Shine Boy in stores.

Despite his hard work, he found interest and energy to form on. He attended evening classes in economics, labor economics and rhetoric of the Cooper Union, which was known to make it accessible to the poorer segments of the population education and knowledge. McGuire sucked all knowledge eager in on and was quickly recognized as a good orator and agitator. In the Cooper Union, he was also the first contact with Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), which would connect him and for years the trade union cooperation.

1867 with now 15 years he began a piano manufacturers teaching at Haines piano and was also active in the New York branch of the International Workingmen 's Assiociaton. His first practical experience in actions of the labor movement he made in 1872, when approximately 100,000 workers successfully demonstrated in New York for the eight-hour day. It did not take long to McGuire himself was active and a dispute over pay cuts against his employer led.

The economic crisis of 1873 then let him make the experience as hundreds of thousands in New York, to be unemployed at a time from one day to another. He did not remain idle. At all held daily meetings of the city McGuire was found as a speaker. In addition to his daily agitation he wrote pamphlets for flyers and found more and more popularity and attention for his speeches and ideas. Alarmed by its growing popularity, branded the New York Times the only finally 21 -year-old as " disturbers of the public peace ."

The decisive turning point for him to be union leaders, came through the Tompkins Square uprising of 13 January 1874 in which the New York police broke up an he declares public meeting with brutal violence.

Union leaders

To combine with the experiences from Tompkins Square and the political forces McGuire founded in May 1874 along with Adolph Strasser ( 1843-1939 ), leader of the cigar makers union and other political activists, the Social Democratic Workingmen 's Party of North America, whose board member he been.

McGuire went shortly afterwards away from New York and " fought by " the country in the next eight years with the aim of mobilizing the workers to organize themselves and to fight for their labor rights.

In July 1876 he was present at the founding of the Workingmen 's Party of the United States in Philadelphia here and started their campaigns to support its organization of the workers in the country. On a six-week tour of New England in 1877, he held, for example, 107 speeches and the most in front of more than a thousand listeners. He urged the people to organize themselves to counter the capitalism through the formation of cooperatives for production and distribution and to advocate for the abolition of the existing wage system.

He lived for a short time in New Haven, Connecticut, where he was able to unite as a freshman in an election in just 6 weeks 9,000 votes. As a representative of New Haven he was in December 1877 the committee of the first Congress of the Workingmen 's Party of the United States, which took place in Newark, New Jersey. At this congress the Socialistic Labor Party was founded, where he was again actively involved.

In 1878 he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he worked as a cabinet maker and began the carpenters and joiners to organize.

In 1879 he accompanied the legislative process in the state of Missouri in terms of improved climatic conditions in the mines and improvements in the rules for child labor. He successfully lobbied for the nation's first introduction of an office for statistics, and was appointed to the Deputy Commissioner.

In 1880, he then resigned from his post to get the campaigns of the Greenback - Labor Party and the Socialist Labor Party, which had been renamed Coming in December 1878 by the Socialistic Labor Party to join her.

United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America

In 1881 he was elected secretary of the St. Louis Trades Assembly and published a call to the first national meeting of all carpenters, joiners and carpenters in Chicago. On August 8, the year gathered 36 delegates from 14 unions in 11 cities across the country, representing together about 2,000 members in the Trades Assembly Hall in Chicago and founded the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America ( UBC), the union that the most important task and challenge should now be in the following years for McGuire. As the initiator of the meeting and a founding member, he was appointed first secretary of the new union, in 1882 returned to New York, took over the administrative management of the head office, gave up the trade union newspaper, The Carpenter and was involved in the eight-hour day movement.

Even in 1881 he wrote a call for a national conference of all unions. At this congress, which took place on November 15th of the same year, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions ( FOTLU ) was established for the United States and Canada, which served as a pioneer of the American Federation of Labor ( AFL).

Not tired, he was also a co-founder in 1882 of the Central Labor Union ( CLU) in New York City and became a member of the Knights of Labor over the Local Assembly in 1562 in Brooklyn, the "Spread the Light Club". With the ideas of the Knights of Labor, he clashed not particularly, was excluded on November 29, 1882 for violating the statutes of the membership, but readmitted on a technicality on August 8, 1883.

The authorship of Labor Day, which was celebrated on September 5, 1882 in Elm Park, Port Richmond, Staten Iceland with up to 50,000 participants, was also assigned to it. However, this point is controversial, as a hobby historian was unable to allocate 1973, the authorship of the historic day Matthew Maguire ( 1850-1917 ), secretary of the Central Labor Union.

1884, at the Congress of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, he initiated together with Gabriel Edmonston as representatives of the UBC, set May 1, 1886 as the day for a general strike to introduce the eight-hour day and organize accordingly. The strike took place and moved more than 350,000 workers in 11,000 businesses throughout the country for 4 days. That was the biggest demonstration of the labor movement, which had seen the world until then. The crash and failure of the strikes came the assassination on May 4 concluded on the Haymarket in Chicago.

In 1884 he married Christina Wolff, with whom he had four children.

American Federation of Labor

On December 8, 1886, he was elected at the founding congress of the American Federation of Labor ( AFL) in Columbus, Ohio, which had come here from the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions for the first Secretary of the Union, a position he held until 1889 filled parallel to his role as leader of the UBC.

That he did not neglect his job in the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America ( UBC), showed the rapid inflow of members from 1886 to 1890, in which the number of organized had more than doubled to 50,000 in four years. McGuire boasted " to have built the largest and most powerful trade union organization that had seen the civilized world until then, " the now.

In order to have more time for UBC, McGuire gave his position in the AFL in 1889, but remained as Vice President to support Samuel Gompers until 1900. Eventually, he was compelled to abandon the post because of his alcoholism and poor health.

In the United Brotherhood stirred, after McGuire 1895 the post of Secretary exchanged for the position of treasurer, more and more resistance. In 1902, he was eventually expelled for alleged misappropriation of funds from the union.

That was the end of his union career. He died on February 18, 1906 in Camden, New Jersey, where he was buried.

In 2004, he was posthumously received the U.S. Department of Labor for his services to the workers and trade union movement in the laboratory Hall of Fame.

Swell

All sources in English

• Gary M. Fink, Biographical Dictionary of American Labor Leaders, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1974. ISBN 0-8371-7643-3
• The Samuel Gompers Papers - Volume 1 - The Making of a Union Leader - 1850-1886, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1986, ISBN 0-252-01137-6.
• The Samuel Gompers Papers - Volume 3 - Unrest and Depression - 1891 to 1894, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1986, ISBN 0-252-01546-0.
• William Maxwell Burke, History and Functions of Central Labor Unions, Macmillan, New York, 1899.
• Peter J. McGuire - The Story of a Remarkable American and Trade Unionist - United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America
• SLP History - Socialist Labor Party of America
• The Samuel Gompers Papers - Glossary - University of Maryland - Department of History