The stormy teamsters' strike, ostensibly undertaken in defense of
the garment workers, but really arising from causes so obscure
and dishonorable that they have never yet been made public, was
the culmination of a type of trades-unions which had developed in
Chicago during the preceding decade in which corruption had
flourished almost as openly as it had previously done in the City
Hall. This corruption sometimes took the form of grafting after
the manner of Samuel Parks in New York; sometimes that of
political deals in the "delivery of the labor vote"; and
sometimes that of a combination between capital and labor hunting
together. At various times during these years the better type of
trades-unionists had made a firm stand against this corruption
and a determined effort to eradicate it from the labor movement,
not unlike the general reform effort of many American cities
against political corruption. This reform movement in the
Chicago Federation of Labor had its martyrs, and more than one
man nearly lost his life through the "slugging" methods employed
by the powerful corruptionists. And yet even in the midst of
these things were found touching examples of fidelity to the
earlier principles of brotherhood totally untouched by the
corruption. At one time the scrubwomen in the downtown office
buildings had a union of their own affiliated with the elevator
men and the janitors.
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