Two organizers for the American Federation of Labor, a newspaper editor, an officer of the Negro local during the strike, the head waiter of one of the large hotels (all Negroes), and John Fitzpatrick, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, were asked to tell the facts.
Reports are conflicting in many instances. However, the explanations of circumstances as presented to the Commission are as follows:
The union of cooks and waiters involved in the strike of 1903, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, had a membership of 20,000, of whom over 2,000 were Negroes. The Negroes had only recently been taken into the union as a separate local under their own officers. The strike first centered on Kohlsaat's chain of restaurants. This lasted seven weeks, during which time all of the union members were out. The strike terminated in circumstances on which there is general disagreement. Negroes state that the white unionists "double-crossed" them, and when Kohlsaat refused to take back the Negro waiters who had walked out with the whites the latter went back to work and left the Negroes without jobs. It is known that during the general excitement the charter of the Negro local was revoked, although no one appears to know how or by whom this was done. The white union leaders have frequently attempted to absolve the union of responsibility for this situation and place the blame on the Kohlsaat restaurants and the Chicago Herald, controlled by Kohlsaat. John Fitzpatrick, before the Commission, referred to the incident thus:
Commissioner: Concerning the waiters' strike several years ago, the Kohlsaat strike, were they unionized under your direction in order to raise the scale of dinner men [they were known as dinner men] to the union scale? What was the success of it as far as the colored waiters were concerned?
Mr. Fitzpatrick: They weren't organized for financial purposes. They were organized as workers. We felt they ought to have our co-operation, so we went out to organize them. The Kohlsaat newspaper was one of the instruments by which they perpetrated the conspiracy, and some other papers went into a scheme and tried to bring about an atmosphere of fear and suspicion between the colored and white workers.
It was Sunday, and the charter of the colored workers was in my possession. That night they met, and I was installing officers at Twenty-third Street and Washington Avenue. That morning the Herald ran a front-page story, first column, teeming with a set-up against organized labor and warning the colored workers to beware.
When I got up on the platform I read the story to them and said, "That sets up one side of the story, and there is a conspiracy to destroy your rights. What do you want to do about it?"
They said, "We will go ahead. We know what the employers want and you go ahead and instal us." They went ahead and got into that strike. The employers said: "We are going to supplant colored men with white union girls." We told them we wouldn't permit union girls to go on the job. The Kohlsaats begged of us to give them white union women, and we refused to do so.
Now then, while this was going on, the newspapers had different reports out, and they went out and had the charter of this local revoked. How they did it, I don't know. But I have my own notions how a newspaper operates. I think that a newspaper has influence and money and other things, and that is the only way I can account for that thing happening. They went to the international organization to revoke the charter of this organization.
This whole situation was obscured by a mass of charges and counter-charges, but the fact that the strike failed was evident enough. Regardless of what the facts actually were, there is a widespread belief among Negro workers that the colored waiters were "double-crossed" by white unions in this strike. Since it is men's belief about facts which determines behavior, it is not surprising to find that Negro strike breakers could be found in large numbers to take the place of waiters who went on strike in May, 1920.