Mobsters – James Farley – "king of strikebreakers"
He started out as a simple altar boy in upstate New York, but during his fast and furious life, James Farley became known as “The King of the Strikebreakers.”
James Farley was born in 1874, in the sleepy town of Malone, New York, a few miles from the Canadian border. Though he became an altar boy at a Catholic church in Malone, Farley was a rude and rebellious kid, always looking for trouble and mostly finding it.
When he was 15 years old, Farley ran away from home and headed to downstate New York. In 1889, Farley took a job with Frank Robinson’s circus. The circus ran its course in Middletown, New York, so Farley traveled to nearby Monticello, where he found employment at Madison House. There he worked as a billiard room attendant, a clerk, and later a bartender. His bosses liked Farley’s intelligence and toughness, and he was soon appointed manager of Madison House.
One day, Farley needed to have some dental work done. While sitting in the dentist’s chair, Farley accidentally swallowed a huge chunk of cocaine, which was later used as a pain reliever. Farley freaked out completely and instead of completing his dental work, he bolted out of the dentist’s chair, ran like a madman out of the dentist’s office, and disappeared into the nearby woods. For weeks, Farley lived like an animal in the woods, while the local police sent a search party to look for him.
With the effects of the cocaine overdose finally wearing off, and Farley knowing that his management position at Madison House was toast, he headed further south, eventually reaching Brooklyn, New York. Farley’s first job in Brooklyn was as a rail guard for the Revenue Service, but Farley soon transferred to the Brooklyn City Railroad Company, where he campaigned at the power plant, primarily shoveling coal.
By 1895, relations between the railroad workers’ union (Gentlemen of Labor’s 75th District Assembly) and the Brooklyn City Railroad Company had soured to the point where a strike was inevitable. Since 1886 there was a collective labor contract, which was renewed annually. However, this time the owners insisted on bringing in non-union workers, who would work cheaper. The union would not accept any of that. So the owners used “strikebreakers” to convince the workers, mostly by force, that the owner’s way was the right one.
Farley for some reason quit his union and started fighting for his bosses. During riots between union workers and strikebreakers, by various accounts, Farley was shot, stabbed, beaten with bricks, clubs, and baseball bats. And he had the scars to prove it. In the end, the owners won the battle and the union was sidelined.
A local newspaper reported on the Brooklyn City Railroad Company: “Strikebreakers arrived from all parts of the country, and as a result, the railroad companies were able to completely reorganize their work staff. When the strikers tried to interfere with operations, 7,500 state troops were sent in. “. to the city at the request of the mayor. The cars began operating under military protection on January 22. Two soldiers traveled in each car. In one encounter there was an exchange of shots between strikers, strikebreakers and troops; one man was killed and several injured. .”
With the strikebreaker working on the owner’s behalf, they looked kindly on Farley for the work he had done on their behalf. As a reward for his loyal service, the Brooklyn City Railroad Company placed Farley in charge of fifteen special officers. And that was how Farley’s strike-breaking career began.
For the next seven years, Farley dedicated himself to breaking strikes across the country, almost all of them related to the railroad industry. He hired rough, tough men, and some of them carried weapons, which they weren’t afraid to use. Farley paid them more than other agencies for their strike-breaking activities, and this earned Farley great loyalty.
Farley himself cut an imposing figure, with a Colt .38 revolver in a holster slung from his right hip, as if ready for a fight at the OK Corral. Farley smoked cigars like it was a fireplace. Rumor had it that he smoked 50 cigars a day, usually thick maduro coronas from Havana, Cuba.
According to an article in the United Mine Workers Journal, Farley “stood before his mercenaries, mostly tough lumpenproletarians from the slums of big cities, ‘with the air of a potentate,’ dressed in a long cassock coat. And The men gaped at him.” mouths”.
In 1902, Farley, who had already broken many strikes, opened his own detective agency, which opposed the more famous Pinkerton Detective Agency for strikebreaking jobs. However, the Pinkertons were more diversified, while Farley stuck strictly to strike breaking.
In 1905, just after the construction of the IRT subway system in New York City, workers went on strike. The owner of the IRT was August Belmont, one of the richest men in the United States. Belmont hired Farley to break the strike, and Farley and his men immediately went to work.
As tension between Farley’s men and the strikers escalated, a reporter tried to interview one of the strikebreakers about Belmont’s strategies to end the strike. The strikebreaker yelled at the reporter, “Who the hell is Belmont? Farley’s in charge.”
Upon the successful conclusion of Farley’s job for Belmont, Farley was reportedly paid the actual sum of $300,000.
Farley’s biggest strikebreaking coup did not take place in New York City, but more than 3,000 miles away in San Francisco, California. Patrick Calhoun, an official with the United Railroad of San Francisco, contacted Farley in New York and implored Farley to go west to handle the Carmen’s Union streetcar insurgency. On May 5, 1907, after the United Railroad of San Francisco rejected their demands for an 8-hour workday and $3-a-day wage, the Carmen’s Union went on strike.
On the morning of Tuesday, May 7, dubbed “Bloody Tuesday,” strikebreakers and strikers finally came face to face. A brigade of Farley’s men were locked up and loaded, and looking for trouble, as they stood inside six rail cars that had just left the Turk & Fillmore car stable. The six cars were immediately riddled with bricks and stones thrown by the strikers. Rather than jump out of the cars and engage in hand-to-hand combat, Farley’s men opened fire on the crowd, estimated at 300 people.
A witness said that the strikers “had been shot like dogs”.
The police entered to put down the riot and were caught in the crossfire. When the dust cleared, three strikers had been shot dead and a dozen others wounded. Two police officers were also shot but survived. As a result, police arrested twelve of Farley’s strikebreakers and charged them with murder or attempted murder.
Farley and the United Railroad of San Francisco turned out to be the big winners, when the next day the union called off the strike and ordered its men back to work.
You would have thought that because of the harsh and sometimes deadly tactics that Farley employed, he would have been portrayed in the press as a thug and a gangster. However, he was not always like this. After the San Francisco railroad strike of 1907, the San Francisco Chronicle spoke of Farley in a suave tone as “a man who preferred warm blood to water for drink.” Newspapers across the country sided with Farley, portraying him as a noble figure, protecting businesses against “communist rioters” and “bomb-throwing foreign activists.”
Farley himself hid behind the cloak of decency, saying that although he had broken 50 consecutive strikes across the United States, he never stood up for businesses he thought were wrong. Farley stated that, if after examining the circumstances and determining that the worker was correct in his actions, he would refuse the strikebreaking job.
However, Jack London, the most prominent journalist of the day, did not think so highly of Farley. In London’s novel The Iron Heel, London even mentioned Farley by name. London, a left-wing union sympathizer, wrote that Farley “was an example of a pernicious tendency, men who were ‘private soldiers’ of the capitalist…fully organized and well armed…ready to be thrown onto special trains at any part of the country where workers went on strike or were fired by employers. The strikebreakers were an ominous sign of bad times to come.”
No matter how you feel about Farley, one thing was certain. The railroad companies paid him millions, and despite the brutal tactics Farley used, he did his job well.
However, Farley did not live long enough to enjoy all his money. Since his days in the circus, Farley had a fondness for horses. He invested large sums of money in the purchase of horses, both trotters and racers. He kept them on a huge farm he had purchased in Plattsburgh, New York.
In 1913, Farley contracted a fatal case of tuberculosis. Farley knew he didn’t have long to live. Against his doctor’s orders, Farley had a bunk set up on the grass at Yonkers Race Course so she could watch his horses compete.
Farley said, “My horses are all I have to live on now.”
On September 11, 1913, a New York Times article stated: “James Farley, the celebrated strikebreaker and horseman, died this morning at 12:10 a.m. at his home in Plattsburgh, New York.”
Farley was 39 years old at the time of his passing.