Doomed to Fail: Press Coverage of the Denver Tramway Strike of 1920
By: Sophia Allred
On August 5, 1920, a mob of four hundred people sacked The Denver Post’soffice on Champa Street in Denver. Staff at the Post fled the building as rocks rained through the windows and the jubilant mob broke down the doors, set on destroying everything it could get its hands on. For nearly an hour the mob overturned furniture, smashed windows, threw papers into the street, and attempted to light the building on fire. After firemen initially failed to disperse the crowd with a fire hose, the arrival of police an hour later finally put an end to the parade of destruction.[1] Harry Heye Tammen, co-owner of The Denver Post, was on the scene within the hour. “We…have not yet been able to ascertain the full extent of the damage,” he told reporters from The Rocky Mountain News, “but from outward appearances I believe we will be able to operate.”[2] The Denver Post staff worked through the night and published a paper the following morning in which they announced that an “orgy of terror” had gripped Denver for seven hours on August 5.
The attack on The Denver Post was only one among a series of riots that occurred in Denver that night. The press immediately associated the riots with the local union of streetcar workers who were on strike at that time. Henry Silberg, the president of the Tramway Employees’ Union, was quick to insist that the riots were not the fault of the union. “My God, they would never have done such a thing,” he told the press. “It was a mob; and you can’t do anything with a mob….I tell you it is terrible.”[3] Silberg’s reaction reflected his fear that the riots might influence the strike’s prospects if tied to the strikers. Although hardly any strikers were involved in the riot, the mob attacked The Denver Post in part because of the paper’s anti-strike sentiment, and Silberg was concerned that the press would blame the incident on a vengeful union regardless of guilt. This situation exhibits the dynamic that defined the Denver Tramway Strike of 1920, one where the press undermined the union by directing public sentiment against the strike. The Denver Post did this by pretending to speak for its ideal public, a classless audience that already agreed with the position of the Post, which encouraged the actual audience of Denver citizens to agree with the Post too.
The years immediately following World War I marked a national labor war. Unions fought not just for wages and working conditions, but for the right to unionize in the first place. A wave of strikes occurred in 1919 as workers in all industries fought to maintain or increase wages and protect union power. In order to remain functional, many companies assured their employees that “industrial democracy” was on the way, which would give workers a stronger voice in their industries.[4] At the same time, fearful of what they saw as a “labor monopoly” controlled by unions, companies reduced wages and created the open-shop movement. “Open-shop” policies were an attempt to limit the power of unions by firing union members, refusing to allow collective bargaining, and showing favoritism toward non-union workers.[5] An open-shop company reserved the right to hire non-union members, which limited the reach of the union. Companies that supported such policies did so because they did not want to recognize unions or collective bargaining.
The Red Scare occurred around the same time as the strike wave, and many newspapers argued that strikes were a sign of Bolshevism spreading within the United States. In 1919, the editor of a popular opinion magazine stopped in Denver on an anti-Bolshevism speaking tour. An ad for the event appeared in The Rocky Mountain News and gave a preview, where the editor announced that Bolshevism was born of “class hatred” and that “Socialism, Bolshevism and anarchy unite to subjugate and Russianize the entire country.”[6] This sort of rhetoric became common among newspapers like The Denver Post and tied Bolshevism to class conflict and anti-Americanism. This also made confronting the class conflicts dredged up by strikes extremely unappealing, because it broke the illusion fearful newspapers liked to push that true American society was a single obedient, classless entity. When combined with the strike wave, these growing fears drew attention to organized labor and the media started to monitor it as a “barometer to the real extent of radicalism in the nation.”[7] Since organized labor often exhibited class conflict and challenged authority in very public ways, it was the group most likely to be swayed by communist ideas in the eyes of the media and a measure of spreading radicalism. The American Federation of Labor, a national organization of unions, tried to protect unions from the media’s claims by insisting that workers were immune to Bolshevist influence as long as they retained the right to organize.[8] To avoid appearing as radicals, unions around 1920 had to carefully consider their image in order to earn public sympathy.
The Denver Tramway Strike of 1920 exemplified the problems facing the post-World War I labor movement. A tense, eight-day affair, the strike stalled Denver’s streetcar system and quickly escalated as alliances formed and frustration grew on all sides. Picketing and protests by tramway workers devolved into two days of riots. Mobs of strikers and strike sympathizers attacked Tramway Company property, fought strikebreakers in the streets, and, as previously described, raided the office of The Denver Post. With the situation beyond the control of local police, the city called in federal troops to quell the violence and union leaders called off the strike. By the end, there were seven dead, fifty-one injured, and almost three thousand soldiers and volunteer police active in Denver. It resulted in nearly $250,000 in losses to the company.[9] Newspapers like The Denver Post effectively blamed the tramway union for all this destruction. A district court, persuaded by the Post, responded by revoking tramway workers’ right to strike.
Several historians have studied the relationship between the press and labor movement. William Puette explores how various types of media have presented unions, noting local press coverage to be particularly biased and harsh. He observes that the press created an image of unions as corrupt, greedy, and power-hungry by promoting stories that supported this narrative.[10] Christopher R. Martin argues that press in the 1990s began more commonly placing strikes within a consumer narrative, which hides media bias by focusing on the inconvenience for public consumers.[11] Martin’s argument actually applies much earlier than the 1990s, as the focus on consumer inconvenience can be seen throughout the press coverage of the 1920 Denver Tramway Strike. This paper will expand on these arguments by explaining how the Denver Tramway Strike of 1920 fits the patterns noted by these historians and how The Denver Post utilized the tactics described, even when such tactics didn’t become common until decades later.
The Denver Tramway Strike of 1920 marked a shift in the perception of strikes in Denver, which aligns with national trends. The Denver Post provided much more negative coverage in 1920 than it had for a strike by the same union the prior year and fixated on “law-and-order” as the answer to the supposed anarchy of the strike. This popularized law-and-order as a term so much that it became a talking point of the Ku Klux Klan as it expanded throughout Colorado during the early 1920s.[12] The Denver Post also envisioned a public free from the class divisions that fomented the tramway strike and argued that the strike infringed on the public’s right to have a functioning transit service. Through these tactics The Denver Post attempted to prevent the strikers from gaining any support and challenged the idea that public transit workers had the right to strike in the first place. This paper will explore reactions to the tramway strike of 1920 in order to explain how The Denver Post tried to influence public opinion by removing class from its coverage of the strike and framing the strike as a violation of the public’s consumer rights.
The Tramway Employees’ Union Before 1920
The first domino in the chain that led to the 1920 strike fell in 1918, when the Tramway Employees’ Union formed and sparked a heated debate about streetcar fares. Immediately after Tramway Company workers created their union, they began pressing for a wage increase to account for the nationwide inflation from WWI. When the National War Labor Board approved the increase, the Tramway Company—unable to pay out the new wages themselves—requested that Denver’s city council approve a raise in streetcar fares so that they could offload the cost of the increased wages onto streetcar users. The city raised fares at the end of 1918 from five cents to seven, and the policy faced immediate public backlash.[13] On the first day of the increase, protestors refused to pay the new price and crowds stalled streetcars across the city. In response, the Tramway Company issued a statement calling the protesters “Bolsheviks, foreigners, or workers who had enjoyed their own wage increases during the war but now sought to deny others similar wage gains.”[14] The company found hypocrisy in the actions of the working-class crowd and connected the demonstrations of protestors to the popular image of Bolshevism in Russia, using the argument to defend their own interests in keeping the higher fares. This entire scenario demonstrated the burgeoning conflict between the Denver Tramway Company and the working-class of Denver, with the new tramway union caught in the middle. Here, the working-class was successful, as the protests caused the city to drop fares down to six cents.
The 1919 mayoral election between Cass Herrington and Dewey C. Bailey demonstrated that fares concerned the public more than labor issues. Herrington campaigned as an ally of the labor movement who defended the right to union recognition. He was endorsed by the representatives of several unions, including the Tramway Employees’ Union. Bailey, on the other hand, was referred to by the Denver Labor Bulletin as a “scheming ward politician” due to his connection with the Speer political machine. As safety commissioner, he had sent police support to employers during recent strikes.[15] Although newspapers portrayed him as a machine candidate, Bailey pledged to reduce the fare back to five cents and had earned working-class support by refusing to designate police efforts to enforce the tramway’s increased fares in 1918. Bailey’s popularity with Denver’s Democratic working class demonstrated that the fare issue was a major concern for union members outside of the Tramway Company and moved them to vote for an anti-labor candidate.
Despite winning the election by promising to reduce fares, Bailey earned only criticism when he followed through and ordered the Tramway Company to return streetcar fares to five cents in summer of 1919. The sudden reduction forced the company to reduce wages and triggered the tramway workers to go on strike, creating a stalemate as the company fought the mayor over higher fares. On the third day of the strike, The Denver Post published photos of Mayor Bailey and Charles Boettcher, president of the Tramway Company board of directors. The Post declared the two men solely responsible for the state of the strike and insisted that the public should “recall” both men if they couldn’t settle the strike within a day.[16] Rather than blaming the union for the tie-up, the newspapers placed the blame squarely on Mayor Bailey and the Tramway Company for arguing about the price of fares. The press coverage caused Bailey in the future to be more reluctant about getting involved in tramway affairs. This situation also marked a shift for the public where the inconvenience of having a stalled transit system outweighed annoyance with increased fare prices.
The Denver Tramway Company was generally unpopular among Denver citizens and had a reputation for being exploitative, which was not helped by the fare issue. The Denver Post argued that the city “received nothing from the Tramway Company for the use of its streets,” especially compared to what transit companies in the comparable Kansas City and Toronto paid those cities.[17] This reputation had become firmly established when the company applied for a new franchise in 1906, hoping to expand its lines at a relatively small payment. To get the franchise approved, the company financed the Speer political machine, hoping Speer’s government might return the financial favor. The franchise, with its small payment to the city, passed in a largely fraudulent election in which the political machine helped the Denver Tramway Company cast fake ballots to get the reform approved by a small minority.[18] The need to resort to fraud demonstrated low voter support for the tramway company, and the payment amount in the franchise supported the claim of The Denver Post that the company underpaid the city.
The 1906 vote contributed to debates about municipal ownership and further regulation of the Tramway Company, which became a regular debate over the next decade as the company claimed an indefinite franchise. In 1909, The Rocky Mountain News called the city’s lawsuit against the Tramway Company’s claims “[t]he most important suit which the city of Denver has or can have” and expressed disgust that Mayor Speer’s appointed attorney for the city in the case was also the personal attorney of the Tramway Company president.[19] This showcased the collusion that continued between the Speer administration and the Tramway Company, which ended with Speer’s death in May of 1918, just before the fare controversy. By the 1919 strike, The Denver Post called the Tramway Company “one of the most badly mismanaged” companies in the state, adding, “[T]here is every justification for the bitter feeling which the people hold against this corporation.”[20] Caught off-guard and without either public sympathy or replacement workers, the Tramway Company had no choice but to compromise with the mayor rather than waiting out the strike.
In an attempt to avoid taking the blame for the 1919 strike, Mayor Bailey argued that it was an opportunity to move away from streetcars. Bailey was generally considered anti-union, but refrained from deploying police against the tramway workers in 1919. After triggering the strike by lowering fares, he attempted to distance himself, calling the strike “not the city’s affair” and celebrating the increase in automobile and bus usage as the “end of corporation rule in Denver.”[21] Apparently sharing the public’s distaste for the Tramway Company monopoly, Bailey hoped the strike would encourage a shift toward automobiles and jitney buses and demonstrate to the company that Denver citizens were not as reliant on it as expected.
In spite of his arguments, Bailey couldn’t escape taking the blame, and the strike damaged his reputation. Right under Bailey’s statement dismissing the city’s responsibility was a statement from the manager of the Tramway Company, where he noted that “full service will be impossible with a five-cent fare.”[22] This was a subtle call for Bailey and the city council to reinstate the six-cent fare, which would allow the company to pay the demanded wages and end the strike. In saying this, the company was pinning the blame for an unresolved strike directly on the city government. The Denver Post criticized Mayor Bailey directly, particularly for his attempt to distance himself from the consequences of his own actions by shifting blame.[23] Although Bailey and the Company compromised with each other in order to end the strike—which the Post gladly took credit for encouraging—the return to the six-cent fare made Bailey look weak and the bad press discouraged him from taking initiative in tramway affairs in the future.
Throughout 1919, the press caused a negative shift in perception of strikes by connecting strikes to violent Bolshevik uprisings or even anarchy. Nationally, the media implied organized labor represented a form of communism, and strikers a form of internal enemy. One strike in Canada offered a worst-case scenario for conservatives when strike leadership temporarily took control of Winnipeg. This was followed with rumors of a general strike in the US, where various types of workers in all cities planned to go on strike at the same time.[24] These events spawned a wave of bad press that further portrayed organized labor as a threat to law and order and deepened fears that strikes symbolized Bolshevism spreading through the country. Denver was not immune to the effects of the Red Scare with media coverage, such as that from The Denver Post, pushing the same fear-based narrative that Bolshevik agitators were encouraging strikes and unions were not resisting.[25] All of this fear caused a shift in perception of strikes between 1919 and 1920, in a way detrimental to the labor movement.
The Strike of 1920
The court’s effort to prevent another streetcar strike caused the tramway workers to incite one in an attempt to defend both their rights and the existence of the union. In late July 1920, Judge Greeley Whitford ordered the Denver Tramway Company not to reduce wages and banned the Tramway Employees’ Union from striking based on a “pre-liberal, almost feudal understanding of worker obligations” in which the tramway workers had an obligation to provide services to the city.[26] The judge prioritized the interests of the riding public and attempted to enforce a perceived contract between the workers and the city by not allowing them to halt streetcar services. The tramway workers, concerned that their position would worsen if the Colorado Supreme Court upheld the injunction, voted almost unanimously to strike on August 1, 1920.[27] The union expressed concerns that the courts were more interested in helping the Tramway Company prevent a strike than supporting the workers’ fight for a living wage. By calling a strike in protest, the union was no longer striking only against the company but against the city itself.
The workers and companies of Denver were adaptable in the face of the strike, finding alternate methods of transportation and new ways to provide services. The Denver Post proclaimed that “the bicycle staged a comeback” on the first day of the strike, which was a boost in business for bicycle sellers.[28] The majority of Denver workers were prepared for the strike and rode to work on bicycles, even reporting that they might continue to do so to save money on fares. Shoemakers reported a similar sales jump as people decided to resole their shoes in light of the strike.[29] Some companies like the Lewis & Son Department Store had set up shopping by phone services in advance of the strike to continue providing services as conveniently as possible.[30] Overall, both citizens and companies used the strike as a reason to adapt, using new technologies and improving old in order to continue moving when streetcars were stalled. These actions suggest the public was prepared and fairly good-natured about the strike at first.
The Denver Tramway Company tried to pressure the strikers into calling off the strike by calling in hundreds of replacements. Aware that it had the courts on its side this time, the Denver Tramway Company prepared for the strike by employing outside workers and strikebreakers with the aim of ending the strike quickly. The company also called in the notorious San Francisco strikebreaker John “Black Jack” Jerome the week before the union called a strike.[31] Jerome’s presence early on demonstrated the company’s eagerness to avoid the stalemate that had occurred in 1919 by putting pressure on the workers. The Tramway Company converted parts of its office building to house the more than six hundred strikebreakers who poured into Denver. To ensure success, the Company also put the strikebreakers under Jerome’s leadership.[32] Frederic Hild, the Tramway Company’s general manager, also announced that 500 trainmen from across the country were headed to Denver to fill the jobs of the strikers. Hild added, “I can get 5,000 men on the job if I need that many….We are going thru! We are going to break this strike.”[33] If the strikers knew they were easily replaceable, Hild hoped, they wouldn’t wait it out.
Open-shop policy—the right of a company to employ non-union members—was gaining steam nationwide around the time of the strike. In early 1919, a series of strikes in Beaumont, Texas served as “an indication [to local companies] of the arrogance and irresponsibility of the unions” and pushed them in favor of open-shop.[34] After similar events, employers in Dallas collaborated to press the city’s Chamber of Commerce to declare the city open-shop.[35] Such scenarios played out all over the country in what became a national strike wave during 1919, which convinced companies that unions had too much power and encouraged a move towards open-shop to give power back to the employers. Since the end of WWI, unions had used “mounting militancy” in their campaigns and were validated by success, which clashed with belief of employers in “the autocracy of management.”[36] The constant threat of strikes made open-shop appealing to companies, and they created or gained advocacy groups over the following year, which increased support for open-shop by the time of the 1920 Denver Tramway Strike. Open-shop ideas also paired nicely with the belief that organized labor was embracing Bolshevism, which turned open-shop into a “principle…completely identified with American democracy.”[37] This put unions, whose majority of members were as fearful of radicalism as other citizens, into a tough spot as they had to prove their own patriotism while pro-union policies became anti-American ones.
Due to the growing open-shop movement as a threat to unionization, other unions supported the tramway workers on strike. The Denver Typographical Union published a statement on August 2 denouncing open-shop policy as “industrial feudalism,” explaining that, as companies had grown larger, workers no longer had the option of finding a new employer if they were discontent with conditions. They needed collective bargaining and unions to force improvements.[38] The Typographical Union shared these open-shop concerns with the Tramway Employees’ Union. The tramway union included a request that the Tramway Company only employ union members among its list of demands, directly attempting to prevent the company from becoming open-shop.[39] The Tramway Strike was not just about wages, but also about preserving the ability of unions to demand improvements for the workers they represented. The Tramway Employees’ Union hoped to stand alongside other unions to fight open-shop policy, but it was undermined by the company’s rapid replacements. The Denver Trades and Labor Assembly, a coalition of workers across Denver, acted as another ally to the striking workers by submitting a petition to the mayor to settle the strike in exchange for a pledge of no violence.[40] The assembly had represented the interests of Denver workers and promoted the right to unionize since 1882, so it had an interest in aiding the fight of the tramway workers. It was also interested in ending the strike quickly, since many members relied on the tramway’s services.[41] The Denver Tramway Strike marked a notable battle between the unions of Denver and the anti-union policies of the Tramway Company, which played out on the city streets for several days.
Mayor Bailey’s primary goal during the 1920 strike was to enforce the law by any means necessary. The mayor was quick to pledge support for the Tramway Company and assure the public that “every effort will be made to give the company proper protection if an earnest effort to run the cars is made.”[42] Unlike in 1919, Bailey was staunchly on the side of the company and willing to promise police support to run the cars. The shift in alliances likely occurred for two reasons. First, Bailey did not trigger the 1920 strike personally, so he and the company were not automatically at odds and he had no need to distance himself. Second, and more importantly, the court injunction justified any actions taken by city officials to end the strike. Although he was on the same side as the company, Bailey still resented it. Municipal Facts, a newsletter published by the city government, declared that the union was “unreasonable and wrong in its action” but that “[b]oth sides in the Tramway strike have been guilty of unwise, provocative measures; both sides have closed their ears to reason; both sides have overlooked the rights of the majority.”[43] In this case, the majority refers to the public, or the citizens of Denver who had suffered because the Tramway Company and workers had initiated a strike. This view presents the idealistic impression that most Denver citizens were unconcerned with the cause of the strike or the class divisions that first created the conflict between the company and union, a view which was also promoted by The Denver Post. Bailey admitted to representatives of the Denver Civic Association and Rotary Club—both organizations that supported open-shop policies—that he believed the city had made every effort to prevent the strike and settle differences between the union and company. He had “taken the right and only stand.”[44] Bailey intended to enforce the court injunction against the union and ensure the city could function even if that meant aligning himself with the Tramway Company.
From the beginning of the strike, the staff at The Denver Post attempted to spread the opinion that the strike would fail without public sympathy and that it infringed on the public’s rights as consumers. After the union’s vote to strike, The Denver Post observed a single cheer that it compared to “the last salve of applause after the final curtain at a theater.”[45] This description depicts the response as a sign that the supposedly ill-advised strike was over before it even began. The newspaper continued this rhetoric in a notice the next day, where an anonymous author wrote, “The Tramway Strike is doomed to fail…for the excellent reason that the Real Rulers of Denver, the ordinary, plain citizens, will insist that it fail, because it is an infringement upon the rights of the common humanity of this city.”[46] In this article the author explained how the strike was unjustified and undeserving of public sympathy, which would decide the outcome. The article also defined the public in a manner similar to the municipal newsletter, as an overseeing and classless group that identified with the interests of the city over the interests of workers. This definition may have been an attempt to convince the newspaper’s large readership not to sympathize with a “doomed” strike, because this vague public majority had already decided against the tramway workers. If the reader considered themself part of the victimized public, they should also condemn the strike. Insisting that the strike was an “infringement” upon the public’s rights as consumers is a tactic discussed by Christopher R. Martin, who writes that “framing coverage of labor and strikes around the narrow interests of the consumer…and not the broader interests of the citizens…appears to take a neutral ground.”[47] The press attempted to hide its anti-strike sentiment by instead making the issue about how the strike hurt consumers of transit services, which is what The Denver Post did by arguing for the rights of the public instead of supporting efforts to satisfy the tramway workers long-term. The Denver Post used this imaginary public as an excuse to argue against the strike for the simple reason that the union was going against court orders and causing an inconvenience in doing so. In the early days of the strike, The Denver Post aligned itself with the Tramway Company by romanticizing the strikebreakers and blaming union leadership and agitators for misleading workers.[48] The newspaper chose to use company talking points instead of featuring the perspective of the tramway workers, all in an effort to control the public opinion it valued as the deciding factor in strikes.
Press coverage was vital to influencing the public’s impression of strikes. Reformers like Upton Sinclair and Eugene Debs argued that national outlets such as the Associated Press created the national image of strikes through what they shared, and their tendency to draw more attention to violent strikes than peaceful ones created the impression that strikes were a violent affair.[49] Media portrayal had great influence over how the public perceived strikes, so when the press shared only violent stories it naturally made people afraid. The media could, purposely or otherwise, make the actions of a minority of people in a minority of strikes seem like a majority of instances. Many newspapers also had anti-union owners who used the papers to spread their opinions, which turned the papers into “instruments of antilabor propaganda” that “had the power to shape public opinion and drive political action.”[50] Neutrality could be flexible based on the owner, and personal agendas took precedence over objective facts.
Due to the power of the media, strikers had to be mindful of how violence affected public sympathy. Upton Sinclair worried about newspapers spreading stories of violent strikes because “[g]reat strikes are determined by public opinion, and public opinion is always against strikers who are violent.”[51] To earn sympathy and avoid accusations of Bolshevism, strikers had to prove they were law-abiding citizens and refrain from violence in their demonstrations. R. Todd Laugen explains that pro-labor newspapers in Denver keenly reminded the public that the tramway workers were law-abiding and tax-paying citizens while some of the strikebreakers were criminals.[52] For the purposes of earning sympathy and avoiding Bolshevik connotations, it was important that the public saw the strikers as regular citizens forced to strike by the actions of the Tramway Company, not as radicals eager to overturn law and order in Denver. The strikers were also aware of this, as union leaders stated multiple times in both 1919 and 1920 that there would be no violence.[53] With few allies and a court injunction against the union, the strikers couldn’t risk losing public sympathy by becoming associated with violence.
Strikebreakers were also concerned about violence, particularly going into the Denver Tramway Strike. During a 1914 coal miners’ strike in Ludlow, Colorado, state troopers burned down an encampment of strikers and their families. The so-called “Ludlow Massacre” created bad press for the coal company and proved that violent methods were incredibly unpopular with the public.[54] This incident determined responses to the tramway strike by making it clear to city, company, and strikebreakers that the public would not permit unwarranted violence. Citizens were typically neutral towards strikebreakers because it was a company’s right to hire whomever it pleased, but this could be easily swayed. Individual strikebreakers like “Black Jack” Jerome built notoriety over time by pressuring strikers to return to work by temporarily filling their jobs, ideally with limited violence in their tactics.[55] In an interview with The Denver Post, a member of Jerome’s strikebreaking crew claimed that the guns they carried were “a last resort” and “a shot, accidental or otherwise, is the last thing we’re looking for.”[56] This statement expressed the strikebreakers’ realization that they would likely lose public support if they employed violence for any reason other than self-defense.
Riots Push the Strike to the End
In spite of the declarations that there would be no violence, for two days crowds of non-tramway unionmen led riots that strikebreakers responded to with bullets. After the Denver Trades and Labor Assembly presented its petition to Mayor Bailey on August 5, the crowd of two thousand unionmen separated and began marching through the city. One group attacked two streetcars at Fifteenth and California, where the strikebreakers inside the cars fired at the crowd. The mob then attacked the Tramway Building with bricks and bullets, attempted to catch Jerome at Union Station, protested outside car barns, and raided the office of The Denver Post.[57] For several hours crowds chased after streetcars they spotted and attempted to overturn them, engaging strikebreakers at every location. The following evening, another confrontation between crowds and strikebreakers occurred at the company’s east car barns, where strikebreakers in the building shot at a crowd outside.[58] By the time all the riots ended, casualties included seven dead and fifty-one wounded, with all deaths credited to shots fired by strikebreakers.[59]
The violence pushed the public in favor of ending the strike. On August 6, citizens joined the crowd outside the car barns simply out of curiosity. One eyewitness stated that the crowd outside the car barns was “reasonably orderly…[and] talking casually…[as] if collected for a parade.”[60] While they weren’t there as sympathizers, the bystanders bore no ill-will towards the protesters either. When the strikebreakers fired into the crowd they injured members of the public including women and children, many of whom were working-class inhabitants of the neighborhood around the barns. Many of the injured later testified that they were either headed towards the crowd to observe the situation or leaving in fear of escalation when strikebreakers shot at them.[61] Not only were the majority of victims not associated with the Tramway Company or its union, but the shooting was by most accounts unprovoked. Considering that bystanders made up a large portion of the crowd on August 6 and behaved casually, the public was not universally opposed to the strike as The Denver Post implied but instead curious about the state of the situation. Following the violence against them, however, the public supported the efforts to end the strike and regulate violence. Around six hundred volunteers answered the mayor’s call to form a militia and patrol the streets to prevent further riots.[62] As the press worked to tie the riots to the strikers, many members of the public worked with the city to prevent further damage or violence. The aim was to regulate both strikers and strikebreakers, but the strikers had significantly more to lose. Just as interest in keeping streetcars running overcame the fare issue in 1919, the public in 1920 chose to prioritize peace over the cause of the tramway workers.
As the Tramway Company continued its attempts to get streetcars running, it also tried to distance its employees from the consequences of the strike. Manager Hild blamed two “professional labor agitators” for convincing the workers to strike and pledged to hire back as many as possible.[63] Since replacing the entire workforce would have failed to resolve tensions and been an inconvenience, the company offered to rehire the strikers while attempting to cut off the union. Hild used the agitation claim to justify the hirings and save the company’s image. In the same statement, he also declared that the company would no longer work with the “unreasonable” union and as far as he was concerned, “When the men severed their connection…with the Tramway Company, they lost all voice in Tramway matters.”[64] Hild argued that since its creation the union had only inconvenienced the public and become increasingly demanding, so the condition for continuing to employ the strikers was that they no longer use the union to control the company. A subsequent investigation found that only ten of 530 strikers interviewed actually stayed with the Tramway Company six months after the strike.[65] Those who didn’t either didn’t make the deadline to return to work or were dissatisfied with the company. Given that the failure of the strike essentially toppled the union, anyone returning would have no further means of challenging the company’s policies.
The mobs that wreaked havoc in Denver on August 5 and 6 consisted of some combination of strikers, other union men, and random citizens, but the press always separated them from the general public. Newspapers generalized the crowd as “strike sympathizers” and “union men,” noting that the majority of crowd members were associated with the Denver Trades and Labor Assembly and belonged to unions other than the Tramway Employees’ Union, such as Pacific Railroad.[66] The Tramway Strike was an effort to prove that unions were necessary for workers, so naturally workers and unions outside of the Tramway Company had a stake in the outcome. However, the press separated the rioters from the public, because once involved in the strike they had challenged the law and were as worthy of critique as the strikers. Police arrested dozens of rioters, mostly young men who admitted their roles in the riot directly to police. One man bragged to a court clerk about destroying The Denver Post headquarters and suggested “pulling another job” only to be escorted to jail.[67] These unassociated citizens had little direct stake in the strike but were excited to join the parade of destruction, and in doing so they made a transition from being part of the silent public that The Denver Post claimed to speak for to becoming part of the problem.
Scott Molloy explains that transit strikes, being highly visible, were often an opportunity for the working class to express “frustration with wayward corporate rule.”[68] In this case, it was an opportunity to take out anger on the Tramway Company and its monopoly under the guise of supporting the strike. Molloy adds that transit strikes could result in a “temporary breakdown in law and order” through what he calls “guerilla progressivism,” where crowds would hold demonstrations or riot in order to express their anger towards transit companies or the authority they typically represented.[69] The mobs during the Denver Tramway Strike reflected this exact anger in the way they attacked physical representations of the company, which were themselves physical representations of corporate ownership. Transit strikes like this affected the entire city, so the entire city got involved in some way.
Finding itself unable to stop the violence, the city resorted to more drastic measures to enforce the law. The riots on August 5 caused the mayor to immediately call for two thousand volunteers to supplement police forces in preserving peace around Tramway Company property.[70] Although Bailey had promised police support to the Tramway Company at the start of the strike, the riots took the issue beyond something that could be solved by the company and forced Bailey to call for more support. His call was answered by volunteers, mostly ex-servicemen or American Legion members, and also a legion of federal troops, who arrived in Denver from Kansas following the second day of out-of-control rioting. Colonel C. C. Ballou, the leader of the troops, immediately placed Denver under martial law, banned public assemblages, and declared that only members of the military or law enforcement could carry weapons.[71] The riots managed to overwhelm the city enough to justify the presence of federal troops, who disarmed both citizens and strikebreakers. The army’s priority was preventing the outbreak of more violence and ensuring law and order prevailed in Denver, regardless of how this impacted the strike. The city’s newsletter proudly proclaimed that the federal troops “represent the majesty and power of the federal government. Order is being preserved and sanity is returning.”[72] The city government felt that the strike and associated riots threatened the rule of law and undermined its authority. Restoring law and order in the city was necessary to maintain Denver’s reputation of “sane Americanism” and show that it wouldn’t fall to anarchy or Bolshevism.[73] In this regard, Denver was happy to let the federal government step in and put an end to the strike.
The Denver Post was determined to demonstrate resilience following the attack on its headquarters. The Denver Post managed to put together an issue in the hours after the attack, as it announced with delight on its August 6 issue: “Business as usual!”[74] An article dedicated exclusively to describing the damage explained how the mob of “shouting, cursing youths” moved through the building, adding that they had “trouble finding press room” and passed over a collection of chemicals that “evidently held a mystery for the wreckers that they were not anxious to solve.”[75] In these front-page columns, The Denver Post stressed the amount of destruction but called out the valuable objects that were spared, as if to tell the mob exactly where it had failed if it had hoped to shut down the newspaper and attempt to make the invaders look foolish. The presentation of the crowd as ignorant “youths” made the destruction seem impulsive and immature, trivializing any intention or justification on the part of the crowd.
The paper immediately concluded that the raid was a response to its initial condemnation of the tramway strike and used the event to prove itself a beacon of truth. Within the same notice, the Post simultaneously announced that it had been attacked “without the slightest reason” and also because “we differed from [the union] in the present strike.”[76] This demonstrates some awareness that its publications were part of the reason for the attack, but also an unwillingness to address its own bias. The rest of the article instead described how the Post had been an ally of labor in the past and portrayed the strikers as violent anarchists. The staff claimed that the strikers wanted to “control the world and force mental slavery upon all mankind.”[77] This is an exaggeration by any measure, but The Denver Post felt personally wronged and wanted its readership to share in the fear and anger toward the strikers. The paper’s notice ended by saying, “[The Denver Post] will continue to fearlessly expose wrong and evil by whoever practiced. It will utterly refuse to be frightened or intimidated.”[78] The Denver Post wanted to discourage further violence against it by expressing that nothing would make it back down, while also making the unfounded claim that the strikers would target others who spoke out against the strike.
The newspapers associated the riots, and therefore the strike, with anarchy and emphasized the importance of law and order. The Denver Post announced on August 6 that “Bolshevism, Sovietism and Anarchy, with gun and torch, have leaped from bloody and ravished Russia to our beloved land.”[79] The newspaper had already shared its association between Bolshevism and the labor movement the prior year, but the attack triggered a fresh wave of paranoia that the violence would spread unless the public stood up for law and order. During other strikes across the country like the Great Steel Strike in Pennsylvania in 1919, newspapers made the same connection between lawlessness and Bolshevism and urged law-abiding citizens to avoid strike activities because they promoted disorder.[80] The Denver Post went a step further, moving from accusations of Bolshevism to anarchy and calling for citizen action by announcing that it was time for “all men who love their country and respect her laws…to stand together…[and] repel this wave of lawlessness that is sweeping over the United States.”[81] The obedient public needed to help the city enforce the laws and decry the strikers alongside The Denver Post, lest the anarchy of the riots spread. The Post was very clear: “[I]f the laws of our country can’t give us protection, we must and will protect ourselves.”[82] This sentiment, interestingly, was a huge reason for the growth of the Ku Klux Klan throughout Colorado in the early 1920s, and The Denver Post pushed that growth by repeating the idea at least through 1924.[83] The violence of the strike and its portrayal as anarchistic set a standard for promoting law and order in the following years, eventually becoming a talking point of the KKK.
The municipal government expressed similar fears and took the strike as a warning. The city newsletter claimed that such a strike as this one, if not halted by government intervention, could have shut down public transit and been “but a step to the point when strikers cut off the public’s supply of water, coal and food in the effort to win public sympathy.”[84] This argument was the city government’s way of justifying its actions during the strike by using the same fears expressed by The Denver Post that Denver had come close to being fully in the hands of a minority. Only the intervention of all levels of government had prevented the catastrophe of a communist uprising that overpowered the city. The city’s newsletter added that “Denver stood for sane Americanism during the war,” but the “anarchistic disturbance” of the Tramway Strike “besmirched this fair record.”[85] If anarchy or Bolshevism had come to Denver, then it could arise anywhere unless the government and law-abiding public stamped it out.
The riots forced the union to end the strike in order to distance itself from violence. On August 6, Henry Silberg, the union president, insisted that leadership had reminded the strikers daily to avoid violence and no union member had been among the mob. “We felt we were on the way to a settlement,” he told the press. “Now God only knows when this thing will be settled. I tell you it is terrible.”[86] The union leader’s reaction showed his awareness that the riots, even if no union members had been involved, hurt the cause and made it difficult to count on public sympathy. The union failed to work jointly with other unions even though it had their support and didn’t effectively spread its viewpoint because it lacked the aid of the mainstream press. These factors, in part, failed to prevent the riots and prevented any massive public support for the strike. This then forced the tramway workers to call off the strike as if to prove that they didn’t condone the actions of the mob.
The union had intended to prove tramway workers had a political right to strike, but the strike’s failure and trial of the union’s board members proved otherwise. Following the riots, Judge Whitford tried the union leaders for contempt of court since they had gone against the injunction by striking, and the trial continued the debate over workers’ rights. Whitford used the “common-law precedent” as justification for the injunction against striking, an idea that applied master-servant obligations to employees and dictated that only the employer (the public in this case) could modify the arrangement. The union’s defense attorney argued that this was a constrictive and outdated concept in which workers “lacked the power to negotiate terms of employment or to terminate employment at will,” and if they agreed that workers could quit at will, then they shouldn’t be bound by the other parts of common-law.[87] Ultimately, the union board served thirty-three days in prison before the Colorado Supreme Court ordered their release, without disputing the judge’s stance. Only a week after the end of the strike, the Employers’ Association of Denver published a statement declaring that open-shop was the only way to “head off economic disaster.”[88] Although the organization was fearful of economic depression when it published the statement, the tramway disaster certainly did not give unions or closed-shop policy a good reputation in Denver.
In contrast to the union’s legal difficulties, the Tramway Company and its strikebreakers faced few consequences for their roles in the violence. After the shooting on August 6, “Black Jack” Jerome defended the actions of his strikebreakers as defensive, declaring, “Any talk…that my men fired into the mob without provocation is utterly false….We do not shoot until it becomes absolutely necessary to protect our lives and the property we are guarding.”[89] The strikebreakers naturally wished to shift the blame for the deaths, and there was already a precedent of mobs attacking Jerome’s men from the prior day. The city briefly investigated the shootings but decided the following month that no one would be held responsible for the deaths, so the only consequence for the strikebreakers was their disarmament at the hands of federal troops.[90] The strikebreakers were able to claim self-defense and the courts wished to move on from the events of the strike, so no one received punishment outside of the union. Despite the occasional criticism of the Tramway Company’s methods, both the company and the strikebreakers it employed faced minimal legal consequences for the events of the strike.
Investigations after the fact determined that the strike resulted from poor decisions on all sides. The Industrial Commission of Colorado claimed that the public was responsible for preventing the strike and failed when it refused to support an increase in streetcar fares. The Commission’s report noted that every Denver worker “seemed to feel the need of an increase in his own wages, but refused the smallest sacrifice to aid his fellow worker.”[91] This stance proposed that the strike was the fault of hypocritical workers who depended on the streetcar system and were unwilling to pay higher fares for the sake of their fellow workers. A report by the Denver Commission of Religious Forces, formed specifically to investigate the strike due to what they considered “a peculiar and common obligation in such an emergency,” came to a different conclusion.[92] It argued that the public understood that high fares were vital to keeping transit services running, but had failed to regulate the company. The report declared that the company deserved no sympathy and the tramway workers were correct to expect a living wage, but in going against the injunction “[t]hey should have known…that the course which they took was certain to forfeit public sympathy.”[93] Although the Commission of Religious Forces agreed with the union’s cause and considered the injunction irresponsible, it recognized that public opinion was a defining factor in the success of strikes, and that the union failed to prioritize it. The union did not effectively present its side of the issue, so newspapers like The Denver Post could present whatever argument they wanted without being challenged.
The language promoted by The Denver Post during the riots became the blueprint for KKK talking points about law and order. Recruiters for the Klan, arriving in Colorado in early 1921, tried to “exploit any issue or prejudice that would lure men to the movement” and took immediate advantage of the concerns that had developed from the 1920 Tramway Strike.[94] As crime and corruption among law enforcement increased during Prohibition, they repeated the same law-and-order arguments that the Post had already promoted, that it was the duty of citizens to enforce the law when it was not being enforced. Recruiters also tied the Klan to conservative “Americanism,” which helped to draw in those most paranoid about Bolshevist infiltration, fears The Denver Post had been spreading since 1919.[95] Under such ideas, KKK membership skyrocketed in Colorado in the early 1920s and targeted immigrants in the state, which they saw as criminals.[96]
The Denver Tramway Strike was the culmination of several years of growing tension between the Denver Tramway Company, the tramway union, and Denver’s working class. The press, fueled by hatred of the Tramway Company, supported the union until the Red Scare created fear about the labor movement. The union lacked support during the 1920 strike because it violated a supposed pledge to provide services to the public and raised issues of class division that neither the city nor the press wanted to address. The riots in the later days of the strike brought these divisions even closer to the forefront and spurred fears of a Bolshevistic uprising, so The Denver Post jumped at the opportunity to blame the tramway union and turn public opinion against the strike. The Denver Post argued that it was a public duty to preserve law and order, which was threatened by the city’s internal strife and class divisions, so it celebrated as the court limited the union’s power. With the press against it, the union proved unable to use other methods to earn public sympathy, argue its case, or defend itself from associations with the riots, ultimately giving in entirely.
[1] Joseph Emerson Smith, “Post Building Gutted and Attempt is Made to Destroy it by Fire,” The Denver Post, August 6, 1920, 3.
[2] “Mob Wrecks Denver Post Plant; Two are Arrested,” The Rocky Mountain News, August 6, 1920, 4.
[3] “Mob Action is Deplored by Tram Union President,” The Rocky Mountain News, August 6, 1920, 1.
[4] Philip Sheldon Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States: Postwar Struggles, 1918-1920 (International Publishers, 1988) 3-5.
[5] Allen M. Wakstein, “The Origins of the Open-Shop Movement, 1919-1920,” The Journal of American History 51, no. 3 (1964): 460–75, https://doi.org/10.2307/1894896.
[6] “Bolshevism is Menace, Says Iconoclast Editor,” The Rocky Mountain News, September 6, 1919, 2.
[7] Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920 (University of Minnesota Press, 1955) 106.
[8] Ibid., 106-8.
[9] “6 Dead, 52 Hurt, $249,000 Loss, Is Tram Strike Cost,” The Rocky Mountain News, August 8, 1920, 1.
[10] William J. Puette, Through Jaundiced Eyes: How the Media View Organized Labor (Cornell University Press, 1992) 59.
[11] Christopher R. Martin, Framed! Labor and the Corporate Media (Cornell University Press, 2004) 51.
[12] Robert Alan Goldberg, Hooded Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Colorado (University of Illinois Press, 1981) 7.
[13] Edward T. Devine, John A. Ryan, and John A. Lapp, The Denver Tramway Strike of 1920 (Denver Commission of Religious Forces, 1921) 10-1.
[14] R. Todd Laugen, Gospel of Progressivism: Moral Reform and Labor War in Colorado, 1900-1930 (University Press of Colorado, 2011) 77.
[15] Ibid., 78.
[16] “So the People May Know,” The Denver Post, July 10, 1919, 1.
[17] Fred Greenbaum. “The Colorado Progressives in 1906,” Arizona and the West 7, no. 1 (1965): 24, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40167111.
[18] Ibid, 25-6.
[19] “Should Retire From City’s Case,” The Rocky Mountain News, September 20, 1909, 12.
[20] “So the People May Know,” The Denver Post, July 9, 1919, 1.
[21] “How Strike Stands From Viewpoints of City, Company, Men,” The Rocky Mountain News, July 9, 1919, 1.
[22] Ibid.
[23] “So the People May Know,” The Denver Post, July 10, 1919, 1.
[24] Murray, Red Scare, 111-7.
[25] Laugen, Gospel of Progressivism, 82-3.
[26] Ibid., 83-4, 91-3.
[27] “Calm Decisiveness Features Vote of Union Men on Strike,” The Denver Post, August 2, 1920, 7.
[28] “Bicycles Pressed Into Service to Beat Car Strike,” The Denver Post, August 2, 1920, 4.
[29] “Tramway Strike is Glad Tidings For Shoemakers,” The Denver Post, August 2, 1920, 4.
[30] Lewis & Son Advertisement, The Denver Post, August 2, 1920, 7.
[31] Bruce A. Gustin, “Tram Union Votes to Walk Out After Scoring Officials,” The Denver Post, August 1, 1920, 11.
[32] “Strikebreakers are Quartered in Tramway Building,” The Denver Post, August 2, 1920, 7.
[33] F. W. Hild, “‘We Are Going Thru!” The Denver Post, August 2, 1920, 9.
[34] Wakstein, “The Origins of the Open-Shop Movement,” 463.
[35] Ibid., 463.
[36] Ibid., 464.
[37] Murray, Red Scare, 164-5.
[38] Denver Typographical Union No. 49, “The Open Shop,” The Denver Post, August 2, 1920, 7.
[39] “Demands of the Union Refused by Tramway,” The Denver Post, August 1, 1920, 1.
[40] “Mob Holds Control of City,” The Rocky Mountain News, August 6, 1920, 1.
[41] David Brundage, The Making of Western Labor Radicalism: Denver’s Organized Workers, 1878-1905 (University of Illinois Press, 1994), 32.
[42] Dewey C. Bailey, “Bailey Makes Promise,” The Denver Post, August 2, 1920, 6.
[43] “The Tramway Strike,” Municipal Facts 3, no. 8 (1920): 2, https://digital.denverlibrary.org/nodes/view/184195?keywords=tramway+strike&type=all&highlights=WyJ0cmFtd2F5Iiwic3RyaWtlIl0%3D&lsk=95de3fd47fd63d1e96ce07bebc192d2d.
[44] “Commerce Bodies Thruout Country Favor ‘Open-Shop,’” The Rocky Mountain News, May 2, 1920, 10.“Denver Rotary Club Adopts Labor Policy, Advocating Open Shop,” The Rocky Mountain News, August 6, 1920, 9. Arthur Frenzel, “Official Commendations,” The Denver Post, August 6, 1920, 3.
[45] “Calm Decisiveness Features Vote of Union Men on Strike,” The Denver Post, August 2, 1920, 7.
[46] “It Will Fail,” The Denver Post, August 3, 1920, 16.
[47] Christopher R. Martin, “The News Media and Strikes,” in The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History, ed. Aaron Brenner, Benjamin Day, and Immanuel Ness (Routledge, 2009) 49.
[48] Laugen, Gospel of Progressivism, 85-7.
[49] Martin, “The News Media and Strikes,” 44-5.
[50] Philip M. Glende, “Labor Makes the News: Newspapers, Journalism, and Organized Labor, 1933–1955,” Enterprise & Society 13, no. 1 (2012): 44.
[51] Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check (1920) 353.
[52] Laugen, Gospel of Progressivism, 87.
[53] “How Strike Stands From Viewpoints of City, Company, Men,” The Rocky Mountain News, July 9, 1919, 1; “Mob Holds Control of City,” The Rocky Mountain News, August 6, 1920, 1.
[54] Kim Phillips-Fein, “Corporate Strike Strategy,” in The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History, ed. Aaron Brenner, Benjamin Day, and Immanuel Ness (Routledge, 2009) 68.
[55] Robert Smith, “The Business Community’s Mercenaries: Strikebreakers and Union Busters,” in The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History, ed. Aaron Brenner, Benjamin Day, and Immanuel Ness (Routledge, 2009) 55-7.
[56] Ryley Cooper, “Boy Heads Passenger List of Tramway and Tieup Ends,” The Denver Post, August 5, 1920, 4.
[57] “Mob Holds Control of City,” The Rocky Mountain News, August 6, 1920, 1-2.
[58] “Strike Breakers Fire on Crowd Gathered Around Sheds After Bricks Are Rained on Auto,” The Rocky Mountain News, August 7, 1920, 1-2.
[59] Devine, Ryan, and Lapp, The Denver Tramway Strike of 1920, 62.
[60] Ibid., 31.
[61] “Strike Breakers Fire on Crowd Gathered Around Sheds After Bricks Are Rained on Auto,” The Rocky Mountain News, August 7, 1920, 2.
[62] “Volunteers Placed at Division Points to Keep Down Mobs,” The Rocky Mountain News, August 7, 1920, 1.
[63] “Manager Hild Blames Labor Agitators For Denver Strike Riots,” The Denver Post, August 7, 1920, 2.
[64] Ibid.
[65] Devine, Ryan, and Lapp, The Denver Tramway Strike of 1920, 45.
[66] “Mob Holds Control of City,” The Rocky Mountain News, August 6, 1920, 1.
[67] “Twenty-three Men Arrested As Result of Tram Riots,” The Rocky Mountain News, August 6, 1920, 1-3.
[68] Scott Molloy, “Trolley Wars,” in The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History, ed. Aaron Brenner, Benjamin Day, and Immanuel Ness (Routledge, 2009) 533.
[69] Ibid., 532-3.
[70] Dewey C. Bailey, “To the People of Denver,” The Denver Post, August 6, 1920, 1.
[71] “Proclamation Placing City Under Army Rule,” The Rocky Mountain News, August 7, 1920, 1.
[72] “The Tramway Strike,” 2.
[73] Ibid., 2.
[74] “Important Notice!” The Denver Post, August 6, 1920, 1.
[75] Joseph Emerson Smith, “Post Building Gutted and Attempt is Made to Destroy it by Fire,” The Denver Post, August 6, 1920, 3.
[76] Ibid.
[77] “So the People May Know,” The Denver Post, August 6, 1920, 1.
[78] Ibid.
[79] Ibid.
[80] Philip Kopatz, “The Red Scare and Construction of a White American Identity: The Role Newspapers Played in Undermining the Great Steel Strike of 1919” (BA thesis, Walsh University, 2019), 30-32, https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/send_file/send?accession=walshhonors1555618327121869&disposition=inline.
[81] “So the People May Know,” The Denver Post, August 8, 1920, 3.
[82] “So the People May Know,” The Denver Post, August 6, 1920, 1.
[83] Goldberg, Hooded Empire, 7.
[84] “The Tramway Strike,” 2.
[85] Ibid., 2.
[86] “Mob Action is Deplored by Tram Union President,” The Rocky Mountain News, August 6, 1920, 1.
[87] Laugen, Gospel of Progressivism, 93.
[88] Wakstein, “The Origins of the Open-Shop Movement,” 469-70.
[89] “Bullet From Mob Started Fatal East Side Shooting, Says ‘Black Jack’ Jerome,” The Denver Post, August 7, 1920, 3.
[90] Laugen, Gospel of Progressivism, 94.
[91] Industrial Commission of Colorado, Fourth Report of the Industrial Commission of Colorado, December 1, 1919 to December 1, 1920 (1921), 116.
[92] Devine, Ryan, and Lapp, The Denver Tramway Strike of 1920, 3.
[93] Ibid., 56-8.
[94] Goldberg, Hooded Empire, 4.
[95] Ibid., 7-8.
[96] Ibid., 7.
