The Cape Cod Mystery, 1931
"We might as well do the thing up brown while we're at it."
DO UP BROWN - 1. To swindle, victimize, trounce, or defeat (someone) thoroughly. 1824 in Partridge. He is said to be "cooked," or "done brown" and "dished." 2. To do (something) thoroughly, excellently, or perfectly. 1843 in G. W. Harris "High Times" 29: Those are places where things are done up brown! From "Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Volume 1, A-G" by J.E. Lighter, Random House, New York, 1994.
DO IT UP BROWN - "Do something well; do it to one's satisfaction. In England the phrase has had the meaning of deceive or take in. Either way, it carries the implication of doing something thoroughly and probably comes from the roasting of meat, yielding a brown color that is the result of thorough cooking. One can see the term in the making in 'Liber Cure Cocorum' " 'Lay hur (the goose) to frye and rost hyr browne.'" From the "Dictionary of Cliches" by James Rogers (Ballantine Books, New York, 1985).
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/12/messages/668.html
"And I'll telegraph a man I used to work for out West who's the head or something of a Labor Fed'ration an' see if he knows anything about this Schonbrun bein' a labor agitator."
There is a ton of info in an article about Labor Federations at Wikipedia. I share several paragraphs, go to Wikipedia if you're curious enough to see more.
Labor Union
The first labor federation was the National Labor Union (NLU). The NLU professed that all wealth and property were the products of labor, and that a just monetary system was necessary to ease labor's distress. Working men were receiving too little, and "nonproducing capital" was receiving too much of the wealth produced.
William H. Sylvis, president of the Iron Molders International Union and, in 1868, president of the NLU, believed that unionization was important, but by itself it could not solve the problem of poverty. He declared,
The cause of all these evils is the WAGES SYSTEM. So long as we continue to work for wages... so long will we be subjected to small pay, poverty, and all of the evils of which we complain.
The federation was anti-monopolist, and advocated communitarianism — the pursuit of a more just society established on cooperative principles. The organization also favored shorter work hours, and the establishment of libraries for the express purpose of educating workers.
The 1868 NLU convention also embraced Sylvis's view that a "bank... is a licensed swindle." Sylvis was against privatizing the commons, and also appeared to favor progressive taxation. The NLU wanted congress to control interest rates, which they thought would help to address the fairness issue.
From the very first convention, certain divergent union tendencies were in conflict. The Workingmen's Union of New York City expressed opposition to a call by the officers of national unions for a "National Convention of Trades." The compromise that avoided an impasse allowed organizations such as eight-hour leagues, composed of individuals supportive of labor but not themselves workers, to send representatives.
Thus, due to suspicion of the large, national unions of skilled craftsmen by a general workmen's union, reformist political groups became a part of the National Labor Union. One of the problems with the NLU was the inability to levy an authorized annual dues assessment of twenty-five cents per member, because of "the difficulty in determining who were actually members."
Although the NLU boasted half a million members by 1869, numerous divisions hurt its effectiveness. The question of race was raised, debated, but then evaded in the NLU conventions of 1867 and 1868. By 1869, employers were using blacks as strike breakers, and white workers were sometimes replaced by cheaper black workers. It became apparent that the question of race must be settled. It was recognized that blacks had formed their labor organizations and were actively engaged in strikes, especially in the South. Certainly, black workers were capable of unionizing.
It appears that the practical impact of black workers on organizations of white workers finally resolved the question. A resolution was passed by the NLU convention to invite all Negro labor organizations to send delegates to the next convention. The NLU voted to seat all nine delegates who applied.
However, the constituent national trade unions refused to admit black workers in spite of the federation's decision. Heated opposition against admitting black workers came from the cigar makers, the typographical union, and the bricklayers.
Practical differences between white and black workers complicated the issue. In electoral politics, some NLU factions favored the Greenback-Labor Party, or the Democrats. Black workers maintained allegiance to the Republican Party, which had helped to abolish slavery.
Black workers had an interest in securing civil rights, jobs, the right to vote, land and homesteads, but little concern about currency reform. For the most part until after the 1880s, black workers remained outside the organized labor movement. In the meantime, excluded by the trade unions and finding little common cause with white workers, they developed a reputation as lower wage workers, and as strikebreakers. Black workers likewise had a less than favorable image of white workers. In Richmond, Virginia, for example, memories of slavery were fresh, and even those whites who had not owned slaves had staffed the local militia, and agitated for employment restrictions on both free blacks and slaves.
This, then, was one of the challenges. Sylvis declared of the black workers,
If we can succeed in convincing these people to make common cause with us...we will have a power...that will shake Wall Street out of its boots... Capital is no respecter of persons and it is...a sheer impossibility to degrade one class of labor without degrading all."
Exhibiting somewhat contradictory tendencies, the NLU advocated support of the Anti-Coolie Act of 1862 that was passed by the state of California, yet approved voluntary emigration of Chinese to the United States. When Chinese workers were used as strike breakers at a Massachusetts shoe factory in 1870, the NLU came under intense pressure to oppose both "coolie" labor and Chinese immigration.
After a bitter internal argument, the NLU endorsed the women's labor movement, which consisted mostly of protective organizations formed to look after women's rights on the job. At the fourth NLU congress, Susan B. Anthony's credentials were challenged and subsequently rejected on the grounds that she had used the Workingwomen's Protective Union as a strike-breaking organization. The NLU continued to seat delegates from women's organizations, but support for those organizations eroded.
Nonetheless, the NLU was one of the first labor organizations to advocate equal rights and equal pay for women, even though it remained opposed to women's suffrage. But the national trade unions that were a part of the NLU refused to support equal rights or equal pay for women, and few of them accepted women as members.
For a time a significant faction of the NLU embraced Greenbackism, which aimed to make capital cheaper and, it was hoped, would lead to producers' cooperatives and the abolition of the wage system. Divisions over the greenback issue eventually split the NLU.
Alliances with farmers became problematic because of different monetary interests.
Joseph G. Rayback, author of A History of American Labor, has written:
It is usually concluded that the National Labor Union disappeared because it turned political. The judgment is too simple. The National Labor Union was inherently weak from its origin because its membership held two conflicting philosophies which were never resolved: one was the politically conscious, humanitarian, and reform philosophy inherited from the [eighteen-] thirties and forties; the other was the "pure and simple" trade-unionist philosophy of the [eighteen-] fifties...
David Brundage explains pure and simple unionism as "the view that the labor movement should confine itself to fighting over wages and working conditions and avoid entanglements with those seeking more fundamental social change."
Rayback continues,
When reformers urged cooperation with women and Negroes in industry, trade unionists who were inclined to look upon both groups as cheap labor competition became incensed. During the postwar recession trade unionists accepted Greenbackism as a means of establishing cooperatives which would eliminate "wage slavery" and alleviate the "miserable condition of workingmen." After 1870, however, when labor began to share in business recovery, the same trade unionists found Greenbackism "highly amusing," a description which in turn angered the reformers.
By 1870, local and state workingmen's groups favoring political action were gaining strength, and the national trade unions were becoming unhappy with the direction of the NLU. The craft-based trade unions began to disafiliate.
By the time of its demise, the political and reform groups were in control. Rayback concludes,
[The National Labor Union] represented the transition between the democratic, egalitarian, politically-conscious, humanitarian, and reformist labor movement of the antebellum period, and the self-centered, wage-conscious, trade-unionist labor movement of the late nineteenth century.
In 1872 the NLU split into separate organizations — the industrial, and the political — a particularly important demarcation that would connote a contentious fault line in future labor organizations.
The trade union organizations that left the NLU had not yet developed "pure and simple unionism" as a philosophical concept. Yet the prospect of political action — particularly for goals that seemed tangential to the perceived needs of union members — caused not only the trade unions, but also the local workingmen's organizations to lose faith in the NLU. To the unions, it seemed, the NLU had lost its balance. Reform at the national level didn't seem to conflict with the quest for a higher standard of living at the local level, so long as some balance between the goals was maintained. But by 1870, it seemed apparent that the NLU was focused more upon reform and political action, than on the goal of representing working people.
But one significant cause of the tension, and the subsequent struggle for power in the NLU was the fact that a significant number of workers hadn't yet comprehended the changed nature of the industrialized system, in which corporations were not only beginning to create their own powerful combinations, they were able to rely upon their close relationship with the state to enforce their requirements upon the labor force. The workers were still thinking in terms of "the simple master-workman relationship" of a previous era. They hadn't yet developed a "mature sense of class consciousness."
Workers were unaware of the importance of establishing not only a strong labor movement, but one with sufficient resources to enable it to meet employers on an equal footing. The NLU had no integral structure of its own; its constituent organizations were autonomous, and the federation could do little more than agitate, pass resolutions, or offer advice. The federation's officers had no salaries, and in 1870, its most successful year, expenses were double receipts. Bereft of resources, focused on political action almost to the exclusion of practical gains for union members, the NLU did not succeed in launching even a single new national trade union.
Yet for its time, the NLU played an important role in labor history.
The founding of the NLU, with its pioneer fight for Negro-labor solidarity, the rights of women, independent political activity, and international solidarity, had been a great step forward despite its weaknesses and despite its defeat.
The problems that the federation confronted were not going away, and some of the ideas promoted by the NLU — accumulated wealth as unpaid labor; the inadequacy of traditional "bread and butter" unionism; the culpability of the wage system in the impoverishment of working people; the desire for a more equitable society; the importance of educating working people about the ways in which they are exploited — these ideas would resonate in other labor organizations in the decades yet to come,at times as a dominant theme, but increasingly as a cry of opposition against the mainstream.
"You might as well have all the strings you can to your bow."
A very old saying - from the Greek.
Labor UnionThe first labor federation was the National Labor Union (NLU). The NLU professed that all wealth and property were the products of labor, and that a just monetary system was necessary to ease labor's distress. Working men were receiving too little, and "nonproducing capital" was receiving too much of the wealth produced.
William H. Sylvis, president of the Iron Molders International Union and, in 1868, president of the NLU, believed that unionization was important, but by itself it could not solve the problem of poverty. He declared,
The cause of all these evils is the WAGES SYSTEM. So long as we continue to work for wages... so long will we be subjected to small pay, poverty, and all of the evils of which we complain.
The federation was anti-monopolist, and advocated communitarianism — the pursuit of a more just society established on cooperative principles. The organization also favored shorter work hours, and the establishment of libraries for the express purpose of educating workers.
The 1868 NLU convention also embraced Sylvis's view that a "bank... is a licensed swindle." Sylvis was against privatizing the commons, and also appeared to favor progressive taxation. The NLU wanted congress to control interest rates, which they thought would help to address the fairness issue.
From the very first convention, certain divergent union tendencies were in conflict. The Workingmen's Union of New York City expressed opposition to a call by the officers of national unions for a "National Convention of Trades." The compromise that avoided an impasse allowed organizations such as eight-hour leagues, composed of individuals supportive of labor but not themselves workers, to send representatives. Thus, due to suspicion of the large, national unions of skilled craftsmen by a general workmen's union, reformist political groups became a part of the National Labor Union. One of the problems with the NLU was the inability to levy an authorized annual dues assessment of twenty-five cents per member, because of "the difficulty in determining who were actually members."
Although the NLU boasted half a million members by 1869, numerous divisions hurt its effectiveness. The question of race was raised, debated, but then evaded in the NLU conventions of 1867 and 1868. By 1869, employers were using blacks as strike breakers, and white workers were sometimes replaced by cheaper black workers. It became apparent that the question of race must be settled. It was recognized that blacks had formed their labor organizations and were actively engaged in strikes, especially in the South. Certainly, black workers were capable of unionizing.
It appears that the practical impact of black workers on organizations of white workers finally resolved the question. A resolution was passed by the NLU convention to invite all Negro labor organizations to send delegates to the next convention. The NLU voted to seat all nine delegates who applied.
However, the constituent national trade unions refused to admit black workers in spite of the federation's decision. Heated opposition against admitting black workers came from the cigar makers, the typographical union, and the bricklayers.
Practical differences between white and black workers complicated the issue. In electoral politics, some NLU factions favored the Greenback-Labor Party, or the Democrats. Black workers maintained allegiance to the Republican Party, which had helped to abolish slavery.
Black workers had an interest in securing civil rights, jobs, the right to vote, land and homesteads, but little concern about currency reform. For the most part until after the 1880s, black workers remained outside the organized labor movement. In the meantime, excluded by the trade unions and finding little common cause with white workers, they developed a reputation as lower wage workers, and as strikebreakers. Black workers likewise had a less than favorable image of white workers. In Richmond, Virginia, for example, memories of slavery were fresh, and even those whites who had not owned slaves had staffed the local militia, and agitated for employment restrictions on both free blacks and slaves.
This, then, was one of the challenges. Sylvis declared of the black workers,
If we can succeed in convincing these people to make common cause with us...we will have a power...that will shake Wall Street out of its boots... Capital is no respecter of persons and it is...a sheer impossibility to degrade one class of labor without degrading all."
Exhibiting somewhat contradictory tendencies, the NLU advocated support of the Anti-Coolie Act of 1862 that was passed by the state of California, yet approved voluntary emigration of Chinese to the United States. When Chinese workers were used as strike breakers at a Massachusetts shoe factory in 1870, the NLU came under intense pressure to oppose both "coolie" labor and Chinese immigration.
After a bitter internal argument, the NLU endorsed the women's labor movement, which consisted mostly of protective organizations formed to look after women's rights on the job. At the fourth NLU congress, Susan B. Anthony's credentials were challenged and subsequently rejected on the grounds that she had used the Workingwomen's Protective Union as a strike-breaking organization.
The NLU continued to seat delegates from women's organizations, but support for those organizations eroded. Nonetheless, the NLU was one of the first labor organizations to advocate equal rights and equal pay for women, even though it remained opposed to women's suffrage. But the national trade unions that were a part of the NLU refused to support equal rights or equal pay for women, and few of them accepted women as members.
For a time a significant faction of the NLU embraced Greenbackism, which aimed to make capital cheaper and, it was hoped, would lead to producers' cooperatives and the abolition of the wage system. Divisions over the greenback issue eventually split the NLU.
Alliances with farmers became problematic because of different monetary interests.
Joseph G. Rayback, author of A History of American Labor, has written:
It is usually concluded that the National Labor Union disappeared because it turned political. The judgment is too simple. The National Labor Union was inherently weak from its origin because its membership held two conflicting philosophies which were never resolved: one was the politically conscious, humanitarian, and reform philosophy inherited from the [eighteen-] thirties and forties; the other was the "pure and simple" trade-unionist philosophy of the [eighteen-] fifties...
David Brundage explains pure and simple unionism as "the view that the labor movement should confine itself to fighting over wages and working conditions and avoid entanglements with those seeking more fundamental social change." Rayback continues,
When reformers urged cooperation with women and Negroes in industry, trade unionists who were inclined to look upon both groups as cheap labor competition became incensed. During the postwar recession trade unionists accepted Greenbackism as a means of establishing cooperatives which would eliminate "wage slavery" and alleviate the "miserable condition of workingmen." After 1870, however, when labor began to share in business recovery, the same trade unionists found Greenbackism "highly amusing," a description which in turn angered the reformers.
By 1870, local and state workingmen's groups favoring political action were gaining strength, and the national trade unions were becoming unhappy with the direction of the NLU. The craft-based trade unions began to disafiliate.
By the time of its demise, the political and reform groups were in control. Rayback concludes,
[The National Labor Union] represented the transition between the democratic, egalitarian, politically-conscious, humanitarian, and reformist labor movement of the antebellum period, and the self-centered, wage-conscious, trade-unionist labor movement of the late nineteenth century.
In 1872 the NLU split into separate organizations — the industrial, and the political — a particularly important demarcation that would connote a contentious fault line in future labor organizations.
The trade union organizations that left the NLU had not yet developed "pure and simple unionism" as a philosophical concept. Yet the prospect of political action — particularly for goals that seemed tangential to the perceived needs of union members — caused not only the trade unions, but also the local workingmen's organizations to lose faith in the NLU. To the unions, it seemed, the NLU had lost its balance. Reform at the national level didn't seem to conflict with the quest for a higher standard of living at the local level, so long as some balance between the goals was maintained.
But by 1870, it seemed apparent that the NLU was focused more upon reform and political action, than on the goal of representing working people.
But one significant cause of the tension, and the subsequent struggle for power in the NLU was the fact that a significant number of workers hadn't yet comprehended the changed nature of the industrialized system, in which corporations were not only beginning to create their own powerful combinations, they were able to rely upon their close relationship with the state to enforce their requirements upon the labor force. The workers were still thinking in terms of "the simple master-workman relationship" of a previous era. They hadn't yet developed a "mature sense of class consciousness."
Workers were unaware of the importance of establishing not only a strong labor movement, but one with sufficient resources to enable it to meet employers on an equal footing. The NLU had no integral structure of its own; its constituent organizations were autonomous, and the federation could do little more than agitate, pass resolutions, or offer advice. The federation's officers had no salaries, and in 1870, its most successful year, expenses were double receipts. Bereft of resources, focused on political action almost to the exclusion of practical gains for union members, the NLU did not succeed in launching even a single new national trade union.
Yet for its time, the NLU played an important role in labor history.
The founding of the NLU, with its pioneer fight for Negro-labor solidarity, the rights of women, independent political activity, and international solidarity, had been a great step forward despite its weaknesses and despite its defeat.
The problems that the federation confronted were not going away, and some of the ideas promoted by the NLU — accumulated wealth as unpaid labor; the inadequacy of traditional "bread and butter" unionism; the culpability of the wage system in the impoverishment of working people; the desire for a more equitable society; the importance of educating working people about the ways in which they are exploited — these ideas would resonate in other labor organizations in the decades yet to come, at times as a dominant theme, but increasingly as a cry of opposition against the mainstream.
"We might as well have all the strings we can to our bow."
An old saying, going way back to the ancient greeks.
He has). He is provided against contingencies; if one business or adventure should fail, he has another in reserve; two sweethearts; two devices, etc.
Latin: “Duabus anchoris nititur” (i.e. “He is doubly moored”), or “Duabus anchoris sis fultus.” Greek: “E.”
French: “Il a deux cordes a son arc.” Italian: “Navigar per piu venti.”
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
