ad no success in local elections; the party foundered. In fact, the 1919 strike was deemed a failure on the whole (Cohen, 13). Reasons for the failure abound, such as the Red Scare tactics of government, employer combativeness, and the AFLs ambivalence about organizing non-craft workers into unions (Cohen, 13). In Chicago, there was one other significant reason why the labor movements throughout the 1920s failed. Chicago was inundated with ethnic workers who were not unified. Despite their failure, the ethnic workers of that time became the precursor for great advances in labor. Knowing that, it is even more interesting to read about the affects of ethnicity on the earlier labor movements.Chicago industry consisted heavily of steel towns and packing towns. Immigrants lived in those towns, but there were also immigrant neighborhoods where they worked in garment factories and did other light industry (Cohen, 17). The steel towns, packing towns, and immigrant neighborhoods were geographically and culturally insular (Cohen, 21). Technically, their isolation from one another was why the first striking workers of Chicago failed, but to sum that abortive labor movement in one sentence would do injustice to labor history.The Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL) began to nationally organize the steel mills in 1918 (Cohen, 39). With assistance from the American Federation of Labor, the CFL formed the National Committee for the Organization of Iron and Steel Workers, which combined twenty-four steel unions. The new organization could not raise enough funds, had poor organizers, and neglected to incorporate leaders who spoke foreign languages (Cohen, 39). Labor leaders not attempting to bond ethnic workers early on was a mistake. Employers knew well beforehand that ethnic workers were more likely to become intransigent than non-ethnic workers who worked under the same miasmal conditions (Cohen, 40). Some employers even hired detectives to create animo...
