The
Boss Who Fought
for the Working Class
by
Walter Brasch
He was born into poverty in New Hampshire
in 1811.
His father was a struggling farmer. His
mother did most of the other chores.
He was a brilliant student, but the family
often moved, looking for a better life—a couple of times so the father could
avoid being put into debtor’s prison.
At the age of 15, he dropped out of school
and became a printer’s apprentice, sending much of his wages to help his
family.
For several years, he worked as an
apprentice and then as a printer, his hands covered by ink, his body ingesting
the chemicals of that ink.
He worked hard, saved money, helped others
achieve their political dreams, became the editor of newspapers, and soon
became an owner.
In the two decades leading to the Civil
War, Horace Greeley had become one of the most powerful and influential men in
America. His newspaper, the New York
Tribune, was the nation’s largest circulation newspaper.
But instead of becoming even richer, he
used his newspaper as a call for social action. For social justice.
In 1848, as a congressman fulfilling the
last three months of the term of an incumbent who was removed from office,
Greeley introduced legislation to end flogging in the Navy, argued for a
transcontinental railroad, and introduced legislation to allow citizens to
purchase at a reduced price land in unsettled territories as long as they
weren’t speculators and promised to develop the land. The Homestead Act, which
Congress finally passed 13 years later, helped the indigent, unemployed, and
others to help settle the American west and Midwest. But in his three months in
office he also became universally hated by almost everyone elected to Congress.
The social reformer in his soul had pointed out numerous ethical and criminal
abuses by members of Congress; his party didn’t ask him to run for a full term.
He called for all American citizens—Blacks
and women included—to be given the rights of the vote.
In 1854, Greeley became one of the
founders of the Republican party. For more than two decades, he had been a
strong abolitionist and now the new political party would make the end of
slavery one of its founding principles. He was one of the main reasons why his
friend, Abraham Lincoln, whom he helped become president, finally relented and
two years after the civil war began, finally issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
More than 225,000 Americans (of a nation
of about 35 million) bought his relatively objective and powerful history of
the civil war, making the book one of the best-sellers in the nation’s nine
decade history. In today’s sales, that would be about two million copies.
Unlike some editors who pandered to the
readers and advertisers, he maintained a separation of editorial and
advertising departments, and demanded the best writers and reporters, no matter
what their personal opinions were. Among those he hired were Mark Twain, Henry
David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Karl Marx. And at a time when newsrooms
were restricted to men, he hired Margaret Fuller to be his literary editor.
He believed in a utopian socialism, where
all people helped each other, and where even the most unskilled were given the
opportunity to earn a living wage.
He demanded that all workers be treated
fairly and with respect. In 1851, he founded a union for printers.
When his employees said they didn’t need a
union because their boss paid them well and treated them fairly, he told them
that only in a union could the workers continue to be treated decently, that they
had no assurances that some day he might not be as decent and generous as he
was that day. The union was for their benefit, the benefit of their families,
and their profession, he told them.
In 1872, Horace Greeley ran for the
presidency, nominated on both the Democrat and Liberal Republican tickets. But,
his opposition was U.S. Grant, the war hero running for re-election on an
establishment Republican ticket.
Weeks before the electoral college met,
Horace Greeley, who lost the popular vote, died, not long after his wife.
The printers, the working class, erected
monuments in his honor.
And everyone knew that the man with a
slight limp, who usually dressed not as a rich man but as a farmer coming into
town to buy goods, who greeted everyone as a friend, who could have interesting
conversations with everyone from the illiterate to the elite, was a man worthy
of respect, even if they disagreed with his views. For most, Horace Greeley was
just a bit too eccentric, his ideas just too many decades ahead of their time.
On this Labor Day weekend, when not one
Republican candidate for president believes in unions, when CEOs often make
more than 100 times what their workers earn, when millionaires and billionaires
running for office pretend they are populists, when even many in the working
class seem more comfortable supporting the policies and political beliefs of
the elite, the nation needs to reflect upon the man who knew that without the
workers, there would be no capitalism.
[Dr.
Brasch has been a member of several crafts, arts, and trade labor unions. He
proudly sees himself not as among the elite but as a part of the working
class.]
