Labor Day in 1922 at the Afternoon Paper

Though the afternoon paper was engaged in a campaign against reactionary forces in the second Klan, about Labor it was not progressive, a little sullen even.

September 4th and September 5th, 1922

From September 4th:

This is "Labor Day," a day which the walking delegate has influenced the politician to set aside as a holiday to commemorate the "dignity" of labor in the way we celebrate, by parades and orations, picnics, auto races, baseball games and other devises not calculated for dignity. Just why labor should have to have a holiday any more than capital can be answered better probably by those who work the worker, and whose eloquence deluges the land today.

It is the custom of the union leader to ascribe the advance of labor from gunny-sack serfdom to the present silk-shirt and auto aristocracy to labor unions, and yet but a small percentage of labor is organized, and those principally the skilled workmen, who have as little sympathy with their unskilled brother workers, as the so-called capitalist. Labor's advance is due principally to the advance of society and improvement of living conditions generally, and not solely to the efforts of professional labor organizers.

The next day, George Putnam, the editor and publisher of the paper, made clear a personal grievance:

Among the great triumphs of the past year of union labor being cited by President Gompers of the American Federation of Labor, is the strike of the members of the Typographical union for a 44 hour week at 48 hours pay for printers.

It is rather a far stretch of imagination to style this strike a labor victory, but it is typical of the tendency of organized labor to impose absurd conditions and restrictions that make for economic waste, restrict production and increase costs to the public

The forty-four hour week cannot be defended either on hygenic or economic grounds. It is not essential to the workers health. It converts' into idleness time that would other wise be employed in useful production. It curtails output unnecessarily and benefits no one.

The forty-four hour week is labor profiteering....

The entry for George Putnam at the Oregon Encyclopedia locates his anti-union stance after the Klan actions in the early 1920s:

In 1919, Putnam sold the Medford paper to purchase the Salem Capital-Journal, so he was a new editor in the capital city when the Ku Klux Klan began efforts to dominate Oregon politics. Putnam immediately became the state’s strongest newspaper opposition, ridiculing the secret society and its “senseless and silly public appearances in nightgown regalia.” His ridicule extended to fellow editors, particularly in Portland, for timidity in facing the KKK.

A lifelong Democrat, Putnam supported Republican Governor Ben W. Olcott, who the Klan attacked in the 1922 Republican primary. Putnam overcame physical threats and an attempted advertising boycott when he continued to attack the KKK.

In later years, the Salem editor was, according to newspaper historian George Turnbull, “probably the leader” among Oregon editors in urging control of lawless behavior on the part of some labor leaders, often called “labor goons” in parlance of the day. Rivalry between AFL and CIO unions often exploded into violence. The burning of the Salem Box Factory in 1937 brought matters to a head and Putnam strongly backed Gov. Charles Martin in his hiring a special prosecutor for the case. Martin was defeated by a liberal Democrat, Henry Hess, in the 1938 primary; that led to the election in November of Republican Charles A. Sprague, Putnam’s Salem rival as publisher of The Oregon Statesman.

But as we see from these editorials, he was already not a fan of unions and of much power for labor.

One detail in the Encylopedia entry is worth underlining. The style, outfits, and tactics of of the second Klan, rather than their values and goals, were the primary object of Putnam's criticism. If they were more polite, less secret, and not so much of a grift and marketing scheme, he might have been ok with them. You may recall the chapters he published with approval.

August 7th, 1922

The first Klan was a mostly reasonable response to the "evils and abuses [of the] reconstruction period." It was authentic compared to the "historical fraud" of the second Klan.

August 10th, 1922

Unpacking all this will be for a later post, and the whole of Putnam's attitude is not yet clear. And of course it might have developed and changed from the beginning of 1922 through 1923 and beyond. But a more civil, more polite, and less secret organization might have elicited real sympathy. Equally, one that focused on anti-Black sentiment and "admitted both Jews and Catholics" might also have been acceptable. The nature of Putnam's criticism of the Klan (and of criticism he endorsed) is complicated and likely more than a little ambiguous.

His criticism of labor, however, is clear.