Poles Together:
Leo Krzycki and Polish Americans in the American Labor
Movement
years, whose primary occupation all of her life was roboty (work): first in
cigar factories, then raising children at home, working as a seamstress or
doing other work wherever she was; and to all of her Polish hard-working,
female soul mates, who continue to be the foundation of both Poland and Polonia.
Mary (Maria) Zuk addressing a group of women during the national meat strike
of 1935. Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University.
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Originally, this manuscript was composed to be published in one volume. When it was discovered that the size exceeded the publisher’s requirement, it was relatively easy to divide the work into two volumes. It may have been a Godsend. Volume 1, Poles Together: Leo Krzycki and Polish Americans in the American Labor Movement, constitutes Krzycki’s singular contribution to the formation of the clothing workers, steel workers, rubber workers, and the auto workers for five decades, 1896-1946. The age 65 mandatory retirement forced the Amalgamated Vice President to abide by the Clothing Workers Constitution and retire in 1946.
Because of four decades of anti-Soviet propaganda generated by the Cold War (1947-1989) and the fact that Poland found itself under Soviet dominion, few are interested in Krzycki’s involvement with the pro-Soviet organizations. Volume 2, Leo Krzycki and the Detroit Left, details his presidency of the American Slav Congress and the American Labor Council as well as Polonia’s response. The Polish American community treated him as a pariah and distanced themselves from him beginning with their cold war in 1943 over Katyn. Consequently, those repelled by Krzycki’s short-lived career with the pro-Soviets, 1942-1950, a mere eight years, can easily refrain from reading about them.
The author has pled throughout the manuscript to view Krzycki’s life as a whole, but few, especially in Polonia, appear to be in the mood to give him any benefit of doubt or engage in Christian forgiveness. Hopefully, these detractors can view his labor involvement without confronting his activities with the pro-Soviets, called the “Detroit Left,” a label devised by the anti-Communist Poles and supporters of the Polish Government-in-Exile at London.
At no time was Krzycki ever a member of the CPUSA as his FBI file verified after 20 years of futile surveillance. Shortly after the Korean War, Krzycki resigned in 1950 from the American Slav Congress and retired from the political scene.
Unfortunately, the division of the two volumes is not ideal. The chapters recounting Krzycki’s retirement and the epilogue and the Appendices dealing with socialism were placed in Volume 2 to meet the size requirements. However, this then ties the two volumes together.
Leo Krzycki (1881-1966) was one of the most talented speakers in the union movement, and only John L. Lewis (1880-1969), considered the most skillful agitator in the union movement, could surpass him. While he was described as “one of the most dramatic men in the American Labor movement,” Krzycki has generally been ignored by historians and writers. Today, no one in the labor movement remembers him.
“There was no one like him,” exclaimed Mrs. Mildred Jeffrey. “He was a real orator; a very effective speaker who could make rousing speeches bringing people to their feet. Whenever they needed a speaker, they called on Leo.” Accordingly, Krzycki has been recognized in every labor who’s who since 1925.
No labor organizer has made such large contributions to the formation of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), the steel workers, the rubber workers, and the auto workers as Krzycki. For over five decades he dedicated himself to securing social justice for the American worker through the union movement as well as the Socialist Party. Krzycki proved to be a premier organizer who met regularly with workers; walked the picket lines; and was arrested on several occasions. Unlike other union leaders who directed strategy from their offices safely ensconced from the battle lines, Krzycki struggled in the trenches, in the front lines, personally leading rank and file workers.
A product of Polonia (Latin describing the Polish American community), Krzycki was molded by his Polish American environment. Born in Milwaukee, Krzycki learned early of the brutality inflicted upon striking workers. “The story of Grandpa Martin Krzycki’s association with the steel workers at the Bay View rolling mills was told many times, of workers beaten and bloodied strikers gathering at Martin’s saloon during the strike in 1886 and of ‘matkas (mothers)’ coming there tearfully seeking word of their sons and husbands,” recalled Gene Krzycki. Fired at the age of fifteen while leading a lithographers walkout of teen-age press tenders in Milwaukee, Krzycki was blacklisted two years.
Later he began his organizing career on behalf of unions. Initially, he was a member of the Lithographers Union becoming a vice president in the International President Lithographer Press Feeders Union. A founding member of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in 1914, Krzycki enjoyed a life-long, collegial relationship with President Sidney Hillman. Promoted from chief labor organizer to the Executive Board of the Amalgamated in 1922, Krzycki became a vice-president eleven years later.
Naming his first son, Eugene, for Eugene Debs and his second son, Victor, for Congressman and socialist leader, Victor Berger, Krzycki joined the Socialist Party in 1908. Elected twice on the socialist ticket, he served as a Milwaukee alderman and then under sheriff. Running for Congress with Berger, he too was arrested in 1918. He ran again for Congress and also the U.S. Senate on the Socialist ticket. Working with all of the celebrated Socialist leaders of the XXth century, like Debs, Morris Hillquit, Berger, Norman Thomas, Hoan, Oscar Ameringer, Powers Hapgood, Krzycki became a member of the Executive Board and then its national chairman. Gene Krzycki revealed that “the closeness of Berger must have felt to my Dad and his family” was expressed in the token of gifts like the silver commemorative cup, a wooden play pen on casters, and tricycle bestowed upon Victor Krzycki. As testimonial of his rhetorical skills, Krzycki joined Thomas and Theodore Debs in a “Debs Commemoration Dinner.”
Using his Polish language skills, Krzycki traveled to the various Polonian centers of clothing workers organizing and resolving strikes. Polish Professor Adam Walaszek documented the many Polish locals of the Amalgamated, which also included Ukrainians and Russians. Often, Krzycki combined union activities with socialist events.
According to Gene Krzycki, “Dad was called upon many times to lend a hand in United Mine Workers (UMW) organizing activity, particularly in Southern Illinois, West Virginia and especially in Eastern Pennsylvania’s anthracite region. As a youngster, probably in the late 1920s, I was with Dad to several of these action spots, the names of which escape me now.” UMW activist Van Bittner acknowledged Krzycki’s assistance. “As I said, I have been close to the ACWA, and I remember back in 1934 when Brother Leo Krzycki came into my office in Charleston, W. Virginia, and said the ACWA had a strike. He wanted to know if the miners in Southern West Virginia could help when that company was selling much of its clothing to the mine workers in Southern West Virginia.”
To maintain contact with European socialists, Anna and Leo Krzycki went to Europe in 1930. The Milwaukee labor paper reported: “Accompa-nied by his wife, Krzycki studied conditions, political and economic, in England, France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Austria and Switzerland.” From Geneva, Switzerland Krzycki sent a card to Hillman. “All day meeting leaders of International Labor Bureau, also members of League of Nations at Geneva. Of all American unions, Amalgamated is best known. High regards expressed for it and its President by all leaders here.”
In addition to his other duties, Krzycki became a member of the Advisory Committee of the Amalgamated Trust and Savings Bank Advisory Committee of the Amalgamated Trust and Savings Bank, Chicago; first labor bank and the Wisconsin; member; Board of Directors of the Co-Operative Clothing Factory.
By 1934, Hapgood and Krzycki were “now field representatives of the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO; later Congress of Industrial Organizations). They, with Rose Pesotta, had a decisive part in the conduct of the great rubber strike in Akron this Spring. … They were roving CIO organizers.”
As veteran labor activist Len DeCaux verified from other observers, Krzycki was “eloquent,” possessed of oratorical talents. “If speaking could organize—and it certainly helped—Leo was one of the ‘greats’ as organizer for ACW and CIO. He could sway the hard-to-sway Poles and stir things up in English too.”
“How many know that fully 40 percent of the original membership of the CIO when it was founded in 1937 were Slavic Americans?,” rhetorically asked Professor James Pula. Professor Thaddeus Radzilowski concluded, “The CIO victory is one of the major Polish American contributions to American history.”
Brophy, Lewis’s assistant, wrote to Hillman during the rubber strike, “desperate for help in a situation he described as ‘very tense,’ asking him to send Leo Krzycki, ACW Midwest organizer. They had a decisive part in the conduct of the great rubber strikes in Akron.” The national director of the CIO, Brophy, sent an urgent telegram to Hillman in March 1936, “Situation at Akron very tense. Necessary to strengthen field force. Can you send Krzychi (sic) there immediately?”
No more fitting testimony to Krzycki’s organizing ability can be adduced. In critical times, only experienced leaders could guide the rank and filers from the trenches. Like any fire fighter, the Milwaukee vice president was sent in to put out the labor fires and settle the burning issues. Labor activist Mary Heaton Vorse (1874-1966) alluded to her discussions with him.
“The sit-down strikes came from the people, not from the leaders,” became a favorite statement from Krzycki. “I was a leader and I know.”
After the successful strike, he was singularly recognized by the rubber workers. “We feel grateful for your splendid cooperation in assigning Brother Leo Krzycki to aid and assist us in our great undertaking. His advice and counsel was accepted wholeheartedly, and will assure you that he gave of his time unsparingly to aid and assist us in every way. His good work will not only be remembered by the Officers of the United Rubber Workers of America, but will be long remembered by the officials and members of all the Local Unions in this district. We are of great hopes that Brother Krzycki will be permitted to visit our city again at some future date.” President Sherman Dalrymple reiterated his comments before the 1936 and the 1940 ACWA Conventions.
Forced by Hillman to support the re-election of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, Krzycki resigned from the Socialist Party and became active in the non-partisan labor committee and then the PAC-CIO.
Krzycki joined the original Steel Workers Operating Committee and it's almost impossible to read about the Steel union without references to Krzycki, especially in most secondary sources.
Arrested on the charge of “conspiracy” at the Memorial Day Massacre involving the steel workers in North Chicago, Krzycki was released on $2,000.00 bail. Filmed in action giving labor’s side of the sit-down strike, he appeared in a current news picture in Milwaukee’s Palace theater.
“Yes, I knew Leo Krzycki since we were both one time in the Socialist Party, myself from late 1932,” stated Woodcock (president of the UAW after Reuther’s death), “I met him frequently in 1936 when he came to Detroit on behalf of the National CIO to assist the embryonic union movement in auto.”
In early 1936, UAW President Homer Martin wrote to Hillman, “When I was in New York, …I spoke to you about sending us some organizers. I believe that you said that it might be possible for you to send Bro. Leo Krzycki to the Detroit area. We are in grave need of men who understand the movement and who have the vision.” Hillman sent Krzycki to Detroit pursuant to the request.
Invited by president Martin to speak at a Polish picnic, Krzycki attended but he must have brought an old union friend from Chicago. At a Polish picnic in 1936, Mrs. Margaret Nowak recounted:
“Stanley introduced me to Martin, and to Krzycki. He praised Stanley extravagantly. ... There Krzycki raised the question of organizing the Poles and other foreign-born workers. He pointed out that Poles constituted a large segment of the autoworkers; and unless they and other foreign-born groups were brought into the union, it could not be successfully organized. Their limited knowledge of the English language made it necessary to approach them in their own tongue. Krzycki urged Martin to assign Stanley to head the organizing drive among such groups and outlined Stanley’s experience in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers.”
The first meeting of the Polish Trade Union Committee (PTUC) was at the east side Dom Polski. Invited by the PTUC, Krzycki spoke, “to the Polish community via the radio on July 16, 1936. He explained the purpose of the union movement and called on the community to back the actions and join the ranks of the UAW.”
Dorothy Bellanca, ACWA’s secretary, complimented Krzycki, “I think you have already done a splendid job. ... the great campaign carried on under your good leadership for the organization of steel workers. I was thrilled with the telegram you sent to Hillman about the Chrysler Corp. in Detroit.”
“The Glos Ludowy,” recalled Wladyslaw Kucharski, “grew to become a big daily in years 1936-1938, in the years of the great sit-down strikes. At that time we printed seven issues a week, with a special edition for workers in Ford’s and other automobile plants. When the mentioned strike broke out, even Walter Reuther alone, the one who is now the vice-president of the AFL-CIO, distributed our paper flinging it out to workers’ homes through windows shouting: ‘Read that paper!’
“We played a considerable part then,” continued Kucharski. “We, that means the entire progressive Polonia. Not only because we roused people in columns of our paper to persevere striking, and also because we agitated in Polish circles by word of mouth,” related Kucharski.
Polish American women, wives of the workers, listened to the Women’s Emergency Brigade of Flint explain how to organize as reported by Mary Heaton Vorse.
The agreement to negotiate was declared by Krzycki to constitute the “greatest victory” won thus far by the auto workers and by the CIO in its campaign to organize the mass production industries. “The consent to meet and bargain collectively with the representatives of the UAW on a national scale is recognition of a legitimate bona fide union for the first time in the company’s history,” Krzycki said.
A few days before the end of the GM strike on February 8, 1937 John L. Lewis addressed the Polish community: “I’m pleased to address the Polish workers in the name of the CIO and state that I’m well aware of the input that the Polish community has had in organizing the UAW. I have known for many years the Polish workers in the Miner’s Union and of their loyalty to the cause and I’m certain that the workers united in the UAW will show the same loyalty in expanding this union. The Polish workers are especially interested in the philosophy of the UAW due to the fact that most of them are employed in the automotive, steel, and other industries where the UAW is trying to organize the workers.” Vice President Wyndham Mortimer joined in the tribute.
“Krzycki Leaves to Take Part in Action on G.M. Agreement” ran the headline of the Milwaukee Leader. The paper related that Krzycki “has taken a leading part in all of the organizations big midwestern campaign but left for Cleveland. “He is to sit in on a meeting of the general executive board of the United Automobile Workers while the board gives it formal approval to the settlement announced yesterday with the General Motors Co.”
At a mass rally, 120,000 to 150,000 workers, the largest in Detroit history, gathered at the end of March 1937 at Cadillac Square. “Speaker Leo Krzycki, CIO representative, struck the keynote.” Doug Fraser, former UAW president, was spell bound at his first encounter with the Polish orator.
From the 1937 Cleveland Polish paper, “warrants had been issued for the arrest of John L. Lewis and Leo Krzycki, socialist leader and Lewis’ right hand man for having urged strikers to occupy factories. Today the arrest of the labor leaders brings him more sympathizers, before he does not mind being arrested.” A month later while in Boston, Bellanca wrote, “I hope you are making as much progress in the textile organizing campaign as you have made with the automobile workers.”
Krzycki spoke at the UAW Convention, “I first participated in South Bend in the Bendix situation ... You remember Studebaker and Bendix. ... How well I remember Chevrolet No. 4. And so the records today show that you have accomplished in ten months ... South Chicago, where on Memorial Day ...... For the first time in history labor succeeded in getting an agreement with the United States Steel Corporation. You know the history of Chrysler and General Motors. I need not refer to that. The rubber workers, for the first time, have reached the highest peak in their whole history - 77,000 dues paying rubber workers.”
Twenty-nine year old Walter Reuther later stated, “I can have the job if I want it but now that I am an executive board member I have been told by Leo Krzycki and others that I belong in the field doing organizational work.” He further defended his actions in the SP “… I put my case before Leo Krzycki, Powers Hapgood, Paul Porter, and other party members at the convention at South Bend.” Again, fifty-five year old Krzycki had 38 years of union experience under his belt.
Traveling in and out of Detroit, Krzycki wrote of his planned meetings concluding, “I am making arrangements with auto workers to include us on their radio program.”
Later, the man synonymous with the UAW praised Krzycki for the 1939 work on behalf of the UAW. Reuther wrote,“Now that the GM tool and die strike is settled, …I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your splendid cooperation during the GM strike. Your help in securing brother Krzycki for our meetings in Detroit, Flint, Pontiac and Cleveland was indeed a factor in making a successful settlement possible, as was his presence here.”
In 1940, R. J. Thomas, then the second UAW President, singled out Krzycki before the ACWA Convention. Complimenting him, Thomas emphasized, “a great share of the burden of campaigning was carried by Leo Krzycki, a vice president of the Amalgamated …” Professor Leo Miller stated that “Thomas went on to echo the plaudits of the early thirties, telling the delegates that Krzycki symbolized the Amalgamated to the Auto Workers and that ‘whenever we had a hot fight on our hands, we burn up the wires to the office of the Amalgamated … ‘send us Leo Krzycki,’ the wire says.”
Before the ACWA Convention, Thomas proudly praised Krzycki, “During the recent General Motors elections, Brother Krzycki visited every G.M. center, traveling more than 10,000 miles by train and plane. All we have to do is to announce Leo Krzycki was one of the speakers. From then on we don’t have to worry about the success of the meeting or the outcome of the labor board election. Brother Krzycki’s record of service to the auto workers goes back to 1936 and if there is any man who holds the love and affection of auto workers, that man is Leo Krzycki, labor orator extraordinary.”
UAW President Thomas said that Krzycki was “a man who I think has done more than anyone else to help us with the General Motors election.”
Workers continued to organize until the start of World War II. As soon as the Polish Government-in-Exile established itself in London after the Nazi conquest of Poland, various representatives came to America for assistance in a variety of ways. To portray the plight of the Polish workers a pamphlet Krzycki published A Working Day in the Life of a Polish Worker in Occupied Warsaw. He accompanied Premier Wladyslaw Sikorski to Chicago or made his way separately. Krzycki went to Detroit with Sikorski as he had a meeting with the General there with other union leaders.”
American labor took a no-strike pledge and wages were relatively frozen so that there was little work for an organizer after the U.S. became part of the Allied opposition to Hitler. As revealed by declassified OSS records, the U.S. government aided in the formation of the American Slav Congress (ASC), “which supported Roosevelt’s wartime alliance with the Soviet Union.” With support from Hillman, Krzycki became president of the American Slav Congress (ASC), an organization designed to aid the war effort by mobilizing the Slavs, the backbone of America’s hard industry.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a telegram to the Slav Congress on April 25, 1942 at its founding. Krzycki continued as its president for eight years.
Retired U.S. Senator Cranston explained, “The OWI (Office of War Information), in which I was chief of the Foreign Language Division worked with nationality groups and their media, seeking to develop support for the war effort. OWI may have been the only ‘official quarters’ that supported the ASC, but Paul McNutt, head of the War Manpower Administration, addressed the convention of the ASC. The ASC endeavored to embrace all factions, right and left, a policy that was consistent with the U.S. alliances overseas. We were, of course, allied with the Soviet Union right to the end of the war. I know of no un-American activities engaged in by the ASC.”
Later, he added, “The US Government did help in the creation of the Congress or in its early stages. I think its actual creation simply began in the U.S. Slav community.”
During WW II Krzycki made several speeches for the OWI to be broadcast all over the world.
In 1944, to aid in the re-election of President Roosevelt, Krzycki led the American-Polish Labor Council, known as the Polish arm of the CIO-PAC. He had served with the National Citizens Political Action Committee and later became a member of the executive board of the PAC-CIO.
After WW II, Krzycki followed Hillman’s lead as a delegate to the World Federation of Trade Unions in 1946. “Our Sidney Hillman emerged during these debates as a world figure,” wrote Krzycki. “His diplomatic finesse and statesmanship proved the decisive factor in achieving harmony and unity between the two opposing groups, the British, Dutch, Belgian, Swedish and some French unions, led by Sir Walter Citrie, one the on side and the Slavic groups, led by V. Kuznetsov, and others.
Becoming a fellow traveler between 1947 to his retirement in 1950, Krzycki served as the chairman of Nationalities Division of the Progressive Party during its ill-fated election of 1948.
In 1952 the UAW invited Krzycki to return to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the Flint Sit Downs. A photograph commemorated the historic Flint sit-down. Six months after the Korean War, the old warrior retired from the Slav Congress and from politics. Finally, he was able to spend time with his forsaken wife and family.
“I fully believe that Dad’s retirement years were relaxing, rewarding and satisfying, it became the years of Leo and Anna…husband and wife. Who can add to that? You [the author] ask about Stalin, Khruschev, the Korean War and the Cold War. I have nothing that I can contribute to you in these areas,” wrote Victor Krzycki.
In many respects, Poland has remembered Krzycki more fondly than his native America. With the unbelievable drop in union membership to 15% of America’s workers and the continual anti-union propaganda for decades, leaders like Krzycki have practically been forgotten. Unions, like other organizations, have not placed much priority on their history. Gebert deserves much credit for memorializing Krzycki with his biography for the prestigious Polski Slownik Biograficzny (The Polish Biographical Dictionary) and the 1992 Polish Biographical Dictionary of Activists in the Polish Worker’s Movement.
As a representative of the rank and file, Krzycki was not eulogized by the powerful and famous as in the case of Vice President Wallace but many of the same words apply with equal vigor. Krzycki earned the satisfaction that he helped his fellow man achieve social justice.
Early UAW organizer Stanley Nowak concluded, “Even though the Polish workmen were the motivating force in the 1930s who made it possible for the UAW to make inroads and establish itself in the automotive, steel, and other heavy industries to this day the UAW has not acknowledged this fact. It is time that justice be done and that the Polish community receive the recognition it so rightly deserves.” Polonia remains waiting.
Krzycki has been memorialized in the following:
American Labor Who's Who, 1925, p. 185; Rev. Francis Bolek, Who’s Who in Polish America (New York: Harbinger House, 1943), p. 242; Who’s Who in Labor, 1946, p. 198; Who’s Who in Labor (New York: Arno Press, 1976). Gary Fink, Ed., Biographical Dictionary of American Labor, 1984, p. 341; Bernard Johnpoll & Harvey Klehr, Eds., Biographical Dictionary of American Left (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1986), p. 235. Polski Slownik Biograficzny (Polish Biographical Dictionary), Vol 15, 1970, pp. 550-51; Kwartalnik Historii Ruchu Zawodowego, Vol II, 1972, no. 2, pp. 121-22; Encyklopedia Popularna PWN (Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1982), p. 384. Slownik Biograficzny Dzialaczy Polskiego Ruchu Robotniczego ((The Biographical Dictionary of Activists in the Polish Worker’s Movement), 1992, Vol 3, pp. 489-90; American Biographical Index, vol 4 (London: K. G. Saur, 1993), p. 1659.
Author, The Unions and the Socialists, 1933; Introduction to A Working Day in the Life of a Polish Worker in Occupied Warsaw, 1942; We Will Join Hands with Russia, 1943; “Foreword” to Oscar Lange’s Poland and the United Nations, 1944. “Introduction” to Josephine Nordstrand, We’ve Come a Long Way with Roosevelt, 1944. “Foreword,” I. Zlotowski, What is Happening in Poland?, 1945. Ed, The Outlook of the Polish Labor Council, 1945. A New Democratic Poland Rises; Polacy w rucu unijnym (Poles in the Union Movement),” Polonia Almanach i Zbior Faktow [Polish American Almanac and Book of Facts], 1945, pp. 17-24. What I Saw in the Slavic Countries, 1946. My Peace Mission to Europe, 1949.
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