Labor Insurgence in the Deep South:

Labor Insurgence in the Deep South:

The 1912 Railway Strike in Jacksonville , Florida

Ric A. Kabat

Gainesville College

On October 28, 1912, most of the 226 streetcar operators employed by the Jacksonville Traction Company did not show up for work. Their decision to remain idle plunged the city into chaos. Out of the regular 52 cars that operated daily, only five made their scheduled runs. That afternoon Mayor William S. Jordan, Chief of Police W.D. Vinzant, Chairman W.M. Bostwick of the Board of Bond Trustees, and other Jacksonville officials met at Bostwick's downtown office to discuss the crisis. The city leaders confidently predicted a peaceful and rapid resolution to the strike.[1]

By the next day, the city officials' early optimism had faded. That morning over 200 strikebreakers arrived in Jacksonville from New York City on the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. Hired by the Traction Company, the imported workers' "services will be immediately called into play" reported the Jacksonville Florida Times-Union. Mayor Jordan, alarmed by the sudden turn of events, warned the strikers that the city would protect the company's right to operate the cars and that no violence would be tolerated. "The Jacksonville Traction Company," announced Jordan, "had a large investment in this city and . . . was entitled to full and complete protection."[2]

W.E. Terry, an organizer for the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees of America, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), instigated the walkout. Sent to Jacksonville by the national union in Detroit, Michigan, in September, he rapidly built a local organization for the trainmen. Local drivers T.W. Kirby served as President and G.I. Ellis was elected Secretary of the Jacksonville Local 608. "With [Terry's] assistance," reported the union's national publication The Motorman and Conductor, "the local prepared and submitted a proposition for an increase in wages." When the strike began, Terry conferred with city officials and pledged to help preserve order. Nevertheless, with passions inflamed, peace proved difficult to

maintain. When the strike ended 22 days later, almost all of Florida's militia units had been ordered to Jacksonville, and one soldier lay dead. By November 19, the streetcar workers' fledgling union was shattered.[3]

Prior to 1912, Jacksonville had remained largely unscathed by labor problems. The political leaders promoted business investment and development and continually proclaimed Jacksonville a growing commercial center of the New South. The city's population increased by over 60,000 persons in the first two decades of the new century, and suburbs sprang up around the downtown area. Residential communities such as Murray Hill, Riverside, Springfield, and South Jacksonville were connected by an expanding web of railway lines. The trains allowed many people to commute to the central city during the work day, but escape from the urban sector at night and on weekends. Therefore, the city's streetcars formed the lifeline of Jacksonville's commercial expansion.[4]

Jacksonville's railway network, like many of the city's other businesses, was owned by a northern corporation. The Stone & Webster Company based in Boston, Massachusetts, owned the Jacksonville Traction Company, a circumstance that put the city's politicians and businessmen in a precarious position. If they supported the demands of the strikers (who were paid $1.70 a day) for higher pay and shorter hours, they could jeopardize future northern capital investments. Yet, if they backed the company, they might alienate Jacksonville's large working class. In 1912, there were approximately 22 white unions in Jacksonville represented by the Central Trade and Labor Council.[5]

To further complicate matters, the strikers demanded that the company acknowledge their union as their sole representative. As W.E. Terry flatly stated, "our local union has resolved to conduct an open fight for recognition."[6] Such rhetoric intensified the dilemma facing Jacksonville's businessmen, and the situation was similar to other labor problems that had confronted New South promoters and politicians. Desperately seeking a compromise, Jacksonville officials faced a predicament in which the two antagonists refused to compromise.[7]

The transportation crisis had been developing for about two weeks before the strike began. According to the local newspaper, in October "numerous meetings held by the leaders and members of the local union" indicated that a strike or lockout was imminent. On October 28, in the early morning hours, a large group of men gathered at the intersection of Riverside Avenue and Stonewall Street and "accosted trainmen who were on their way to work." Threatened with violence, most of the workers joined the instigators. About 100 men claimed loyalty to the company and sought refuge at the company's car barn. But they refused to work because they feared physical harm. Local newspaper coverage of the walkout reflected the befuddlement of municipal officials. "Just why the men have been threatened with injury, if such is the case," proclaimed the Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, "and why they have been urged not to resume their daily runs, appears to be somewhat of a mystery."[8]

Why the journalist thought the strike puzzling was the real enigma. Both sides had stated their positions clearly. The company's manager, Hardy Croom, declared that the "entire situation [was] … the result of pressure brought to bear by men not employed by the company." Not surprisingly, the workers told a different story. "The officials of the company, in their opposition to the movement," claimed a union circular, "have discharged several of the oldest men in their employment without any reason other than their activity in aiding in the organization." The union leaders hoped that the "differences [could] be settled by arbitration to the benefit of all concerned."[9]

Evidently, the company had fired 19 men in the days before the strike and planned to dismiss 37 more employees on October 29. The strikers argued that the men had been fired because of their union activities and that lockout conditions existed. "Men struck," announced a union flyer, "because [the] company discharged nineteen men for 'organizing a union.'"[10] Hardy Croom countered the workers' claim by stating that the men were dismissed "for good and sufficient reasons."[11] At any rate, a majority of the streetcar workers perceived their livelihood as subject to the arbitrary actions of the Traction Company and began acting collectively to assure job security.

The arrival of 200 Yankee strikebreakers or "scabs" the next day indicated the Traction Company's unwillingness to negotiate. Company managers realized that public opinion would soon favor an end to the strike because: 1) thousands of distressed commuters would lose their patience, 2) citizens no less than government officials knew that violent disorder would damage the city's reputation. By importing strikebreakers, the company forced the issue. On Wednesday, October 30, the strikebreakers began running the cars with a full service schedule. During the early morning hours crowds gathered on the streets and hurled a "few harmless missiles" at the drivers. The situation remained peaceful until 11:00 a.m. when an automobile owned by Allen Drawdy was demolished by a streetcar on Main Street. The police arrested the conductor and charged him with careless driving, but the anger of the crowd was not appeased. Soon there was a "seething mass [of] men, women, and children cheering, hooting, and raising a general disturbance." The crowd fanned out into the downtown area and began "pulling the strikebreakers from the cars and beating them severely." One conductor, Thomas Nugen, was attacked by a group of knife wielding assailants who "badly cut [him]" before he could be rescued by the police.[12]

W.E. Terry wasted no time in distancing his union from the melee. "We were in no way responsible for the disorder that took place on the streets of Jacksonville yesterday morning," announced the union leader. "My instructions to the boys," he said, "was to keep off the streets and by no means to do or to say anything that might cause disorder." According to The Motorman and Conductor, based on Terry's reports, "The management of the company was evidently not slow in provoking a condition that would provide an excuse for calling in the militia, and Jacksonville is practically under martial rule." If the union's former accusation was difficult to prove, its latter observation was correct.[13]

Confronted with a city on the verge of anarchy, Mayor Jordan sent a telegram to Governor Albert W. Gilchrist requesting help from the state militia:

Jacksonville now in hands of mob. Serious acts of violence occurring wherever street cars are attempting to run. City authorities cannot control situation. Have asked sheriff to take charge. Sheriff needs aid of militia. We ask that you place the militia of the city subject to his order immediately. Also send all available militia from other cities to reach here tonight and tomorrow. Situation very serious and needs immediate action.[14]

The president of the Traction Company, George J. Baldwin, echoed the city officials' sentiments in a similar telegram to Gilchrist: "Howling mobs of violent persons attacked [the company's] cars and employees and committed all kinds of violence."[15] Baldwin implored the governor to send the troops.

Gilchrist quickly responded to both pleas.By November 2, "twenty-one companies constituting two regiments of infantry and one company of coast guard" were in Jacksonville.[16] Virtually the entire state's military forces converged on the city. Gilchrist appointed General J.C.R. Foster as his personal representative and advised him to "confer with [the] Traction Company and labor people and endeavor to reconcile their differences." Foster sent letters to W.E. Terry, Hardy Croom, and George J. Baldwin inviting them to a mediation conference.[17]

That same day Stone & Webster vice-presidents H.H. Hunt of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and F.J. Hovey of Boston arrived in Jacksonville. They were "lending their efforts," announced the Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, "toward improving the situation." The company managers soon got their chance. George L. Drew, president of the city's Board of Trade, sent them a letter asking them to meet with the workers and negotiate a settlement. Drew was responding to requests made by local unionists to pressure the Traction Company into meeting with the striking employees. The company refused. Our company "will not depart from its rule of individual employment and surrender the conduct of its operation to any organization," responded Baldwin, "or make membership in same a condition of employment."[18] The Traction Company had unceremoniously rejected recognition of the union and demanded a return to the status quo.

Local businessmen, panicked by the violent confrontations, met at the Prince Theater to discuss methods of preserving order and ending the strike. Chaired by local politician and journalist Claude L'Engle, the meeting was dominated by W.E. Terry's summation of the situation. According to Terry, the strikers wanted a raise in their hourly wage from 17 cents to 22 cents for a 10-hour day with 27 cents for overtime. The businessmen in attendance agreed that the demands were reasonable and voted "unanimously in favor of arbitration." Concerned about preserving the city's law and order image, the businessmen wanted the state troops withdrawn, "there not being sufficient reason for their presence." The men created a Citizen's Committee consisting of prominent residents─United States Senators Duncan U. Fletcher and Nathan P. Bryan, Claude L'Engle, John N.C. Stockton, W.H. Dowling, E.C. Broward, John W. Rust, J.T. Prichard, and Frank Brown. The Committee hoped to bring an end to the conflict because it was "somewhat of a detriment to their ordinary daily business."[19]

Committee member John N.C. Stockton took the lead in pressing Gilchrist to remove the troops. He fired off an indignant letter criticizing the governor's action. "There is nothing in the situation," wrote Stockton, "to demand the presence of soldiers." Stockton had challenged Gilchrist for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1908, and his opposition to the governor's decision was probably politically motivated. Gilchrist had responded to "partisan county and city officials," argued Stockton, who wanted to "humiliate our people by sending troops here." These (unidentified) partisan officials intended to "coerce our young men in becoming slaves to corporation greed." As the violence failed to abate, Stockton's position became increasingly out of harmony with the sentiments of the larger community. His rhetoric was greeted with little public approval.[20]

Gilchrist responded to Stockton's criticism by noting that he was simply following established law. Because Mayor Jordan and Sheriff R.E. Bowden asked for assistance, he was legally bound to provide it. His actions were the "plain mandatory duty imposed on [him] by law." Stockton remained unconvinced. "You are absolutely wrong," he wrote. Only when the civil authorities were completely unable to suppress disorder, argued the disgruntled Stockton, could the governor call out the troops. Faced with a crisis situation, most city and state officials ignored Stockton's inflammatory remarks. The main concern for city businessmen and politicians was to reestablish order and enable the city to maintain its commercial appeal to outside investors. As Mayor Jordan put it in his letter to Gilchrist, "our merchants and other citizens have made investments upon the faith and promise of [the autumn] trade and the accompanying prosperity must be realized upon during the remaining months of the year or a great loss will certainly ensue."[21] For the mayor and many other Jacksonville citizens, petty political squabbling was counterproductive to resolving the strike.

While Jacksonville officials and businessmen debated the merits of bringing in troops and desperately sought a solution, the strikers tried to capitalize on the general unpopularity of the Traction Company's importation of strikebreakers. The company's insistence on running the cars with imported drivers, argued the strikers, had caused the militia to be activated. Angry but confident, the union printed a circular:

During last five years National Guard has been called

out twice. Both times called out because Rockefeller,

Morgan et al, largest combination of capital on earth,

[had] brought thugs and bums into the state and caused

trouble, in attempts to break up the organization of

white natives. WHO OWNS THE STATE?[22]

Aware of the pro-business sentiment among many prominent citizens, the strikers attempted to appeal to local pride. In effect, the workers tried to demonstrate to local government officials and businessmen that outside investment had costs as well as benefits. While a northern-owned railway company bolstered development of the city, the company exploited the local labor supply by paying such low wages. Commercial expansion in Florida's New South metropolis did not necessarily trickle down to its large working class.[23]

Concerned with the explosive situation in Jacksonville, Governor Gilchrist decided to visit and help resolve the crisis. He arrived on November 1, and took up residence at the Aragon Hotel. The next day Gilchrist participated in a Joint Committee conference with members of the local Board of Trade, municipal officials, and Traction Company managers. Evidently, company leaders had reconsidered their previous hostility to Drew's offer to participate in a mediation conference. The company representatives ignored the advice of the Citizen's Committee and claimed that they would "confer with [the official Joint Committee] solely upon the situation." Although the company agreed to negotiate, it refused to concede anything. The Traction Company negotiators declared their business an open shop, and refused to rehire fired men. The company declared it would carry out a previous plan: install a higher wage scale on January 1, 1913. Gilchrist and city representatives relayed the proposal to W.E. Terry who asked for 24 hours to consider it.[24]

Terry submitted a counter proposal the next day. The workers, claimed Terry, demanded that the new wage scale be implemented immediately and that employees dismissed for participating in union activities be reinstated. "After consideration of the points involved," noted the local newspaper, "the company agreed to both propositions." But the company refused to accept the third and most important demand─union recognition. As a result, the strike continued and the Joint Committee resumed its deliberations.[25]

Meanwhile, angry mobs were wreaking havoc throughout the city. On Saturday, November 2, "some of the cars were stoned," reported the Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, "and the motormen and conductors attacked." Across the city, men used automobiles to chase after the trolley cars and assault the drivers. As the police and militia continued to make arrests, the newspaper ran daily accounts of "The Day's Assaults."[26]

Even so, for Jacksonville citizens, the aberrant event failed to fade away. On November 3, Gilchrist invited members of the City Council, Board of Bond Trustees, the mayor, and various other municipal officials to the Aragon Hotel to discuss methods of suppressing the violence. The governor's solution centered around a continued augmenting of the city's police force with state soldiers, but he notified his guests that the militia could not remain indefinitely. While Gilchrist and city leaders were meeting at the Aragon, the Joint Committee continued its negotiations with the union representatives and the Traction Company managers. Unwilling to concede recognition of the union, the company negotiators assured continuation of the strike.[27]

The violence increased as the strike wore on. On November 5, roving bands of labor sympathizers attacked cars throughout the city. They demolished windows and assaulted drivers. After one week "about fifteen strikebreakers," reported the Florida Times-Union, were "incapacitated … as a result of wounds they [had] received." In addition, shooting into trains became almost daily occurrences.[28]

Unable to shake the intransigence of the Traction Company arbitrators, the Joint Committee halted its meetings on November 5. Gilchrist had already returned to Tallahassee, and the Citizen's Committee remained ineffective. The strike turned into an endurance contest. Because so many Jacksonville residents depended on the streetcars for transportation, the strikers began to lose public support. Pro-union "sentiment," General J.C.R. Foster informed the local police, "is apparently changing very rapidly."[29]

Four days later local journalists reported that the "backbone of the strike is broken and that conditions will shortly become normal again." In reaction to the rampant violence, the statement reflected the wishful thinking of Jacksonville's professional elite. Weary of the seemingly unending chaos, local officials and opinion shapers underwent a subtle transformation in their perceptions of whom to blame. Because the company agreed to increase the workers' wages and institute overtime pay, reporters began to suggest that the union was delaying a resolution of the strike. They failed to acknowledge that by refusing to employ workers associated with the union, the Traction Company was in effect negating the purpose of the walkout. Yet, for anxious citizens, a consensus emerged that the strike "hinged on union."[30]

On November 10, the strike registered its only fatality. Alva M. Roberts and Thomas Sebastian, both members of Company F, First Infantry, National Guard of Florida (widely known as the Jacksonville Rifles) "were talking in a jocular manner" and pointing their guns at one another when the latter's weapon discharged.[31] The bullet severed Roberts's aorta, killing him instantly. Investigations conducted by Sheriff Bowden and the Florida National Guard cleared Sebastian of any intentional wrongdoing. In the company's muster report, Captain G.J. Garcia noted that "the men were best of friends and the shooting was purely accidental."[32] Although unintentional, Roberts's death exemplified for many people the anarchic conditions produced by the strike.

To counter the shift in public opinion away from support of the strikers, Jacksonville's Central Trades and Labor Council representing 22 white unions met at its labor hall on the night of Roberts's death and voted in favor of a sympathy strike to support the railway workers. Representatives of Jacksonville's black unions also attended the meeting and supported the action. The Council declared that if "nothing [was] done within the next five days then we recommend that every union man and every other workingman quit his work until such time as the street car men are granted their just demands."[33]

The Council did not get the chance to act on its pronouncement. Over the next several days, Jacksonville's streets grew calmer and troops from out of town returned home. On November 17, the Traction Company rehired 50 of the economically strapped workers. "The men reinstated could rest assured," said Hardy Croom, "that their participation in the strike would not weigh against them." In response to a request made by the strikers, the Council abandoned its sympathetic strike on November 15. The striking union asked the Council to provide financial support rather than join the walkout. The strikers' plea reflected their desperate financial status. Pleased with the situation, the Jacksonville Florida Times-Union reported that the "city may perhaps breathe easier."[34]

Following the Council's decision, the strike rapidly fell apart. Virtually all of the trains were making their ordinary scheduled runs. By November 18, the Traction Company had reinstated many of the strikers. With the cause obviously lost, the remaining union members decided to dissolve their organization the next day. "By a vote of 58 to 26," noted a local reporter, the men "renounced the union and agreed to apply for their old jobs back again." Demoralized and embittered, the trainmen issued a statement explaining and defending their struggle of nearly three weeks. Their demands were "right and just," they claimed, and may have succeeded if the Traction Company had not instigated the disorder by importing strikebreakers. The company's actions created an unnecessary expense on the city and state," argued the defeated unionists, "to protect the Rockefeller and Morgan millions against our little band of 226 Florida Crackers."[35]

Over the next several days the Traction Company rehired virtually all of the strikers. They were reinstated at their previous wages. The company agreed to install a pay hike conforming to the union demand on January 1, 1913. This was "met in an excellent spirit by the trainmen," reported the local newspaper.[36] Even so, the workers' goal of creating a viable and recognized independent trade union was crushed.The strikebreakers quickly left town, and conditions throughout the city returned to normal.

If the Traction Company emerged victorious from the battle, the city's politicians and businessmen also benefited. The short-lived strike did not mar Jacksonville's reputation as a stable and prosperous New South City. A cheap and docile labor force served as prime motivation for northern investment in southern cities, and public opinion in Jacksonville assured potential investors that their capital was safe. As the Florida Times-Union made clear, "Jacksonville's prosperity will gain new momentum, [now] that the strike is off."[37]

Although the strikers (and to an extent the Citizen's Committee) tried to appeal to residents' local pride, they could not convince their neighbors that the Stone & Webster Company exploited its employees. Many citizens depended on the trains for transportation, and were indifferent to the union's pleas. In addition, local elites, as reflected in newspaper accounts, failed to press the Traction Company to formally recognize the union. According to W.E. Terry, the strike "exposed the political methods of the company and brought to light the corporate servitude of many an officeholder who, when called upon to do so, cheerfully served his master." Nevertheless, faced with an unreliable transportation network, violence in the streets, and damage to the city's reputation, many Jacksonville residents welcomed the end of the strike.[38]

Obvious exceptions were the strikers who failed to get union recognition. Nevertheless, the national union tried to make the best of the failure. "Strikes such as that which the Association has just passed through in Jacksonville, Fla.," explained a writer for The Motorman and Conductor, "even in the face of temporary defeat, are a healthy experience." Only after "a community can be impressed that men who are rendering service as motormen and conductors are of a skill that makes them indispensable, makes them especially desirous to the community," noted the union's advocate, "there will be no end to the hope for better wages and better working conditions." Even so, all of this was small consolation for the men who had hoped to create a permanent union.[39]

[1] Jacksonville, Florida Times-Union, 29 October, 1912. Brief published accounts of the strike are in T. Frederick Davis, History of Jacksonville, Florida and Vicinity, 1513 to 1924 (St. Augustine: Press of the Record Company, 1925), 242-243; and James B. Crooks, Jacksonville after the Fire, 1901-1919: A New South City (Jacksonville: University of North Florida Press, 1991), 32.

[2] Jacksonville, Florida Times-Union, 30 October, 1912.

[Selected Annual Proceedings of the Florida Conference of Historians, Annual Meeting, 2004,]

[3] The Motorman and Conductor 21 (December, 1912): 18, Walter P. Ruether Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. For the national union's perception of the strike see The Motorman and Conductor 20 (November, 1912): 13; 21 (December, 1912): 11, 13, 18-19; 21 (January, 1913): 19; 21 (April, 1913): 29 (Detroit, 1912-1913). Jacksonville, Florida Times-Union, 20 November, 1912.

[4] James B. Crooks, "Jacksonville in the Progressive Era: Responses to Urban Growth," Florida Historical Quarterly 65 (1986), 52-53. See also Crooks, Jacksonville after the Fire, 1-118. For labor relations in the South see F. Ray Marshall, Labor in the South (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1967), 22. See also James C. Cobb, Industrialization and Southern Society: 1877-1984 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984), 87-89. For information about the Knights of Labor see Melton A. McLaurin, The Knights of Labor in the South (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978). For labor conflicts in Florida see Robert P. Ingalls, Urban Vigilantes in the New South: Tampa, 1882-1936 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988), 57-61, 72-81, 95-112, 121-122. Ingalls describes how Tampa's business leaders formed citizen's committees to violently crush labor strikes staged by the city's Latin cigarmakers. In contrast to the brutality of Tampa's elite, Jacksonville businessmen were much more accommodating in dealing with the demands of their town's working class. For more information concerning labor problems in Tampa see Durward Long, "Labor Relations in the Tampa Cigar Industry, 1885-1911," Labor History 12 (Fall, 1971): 551-559. The development of Tampa's Latin Quarter is discussed in Gary R. Mormino and George E. Pozzetta, The Immigrant World of Ybor City: Italians and Their Latin Neighbors in Tampa, 1885-1985 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987). See also Wayne Flynt, "Pensacola Labor Problems and Political Radicalism, 1908," Florida Historical Quarterly 43 (1965), 315-332.

[5]Jacksonville, Florida Times-Union, 1 November, 1912. There are references to specific unions in Jacksonville scattered throughout the Florida Times-Union during the early twentieth century.

[6] Ibid., 29 October, 1912. See also The Motorman and Conductor 20 (November, 1912), 13.

[7] Jacksonville, Florida Times-Union, 29 October, 1912. For an analysis of social institutions in Jacksonville, see: James B. Crooks, "Changing Face of Jacksonville, Florida: 1900-1910," Florida Historical Quarterly 62 (1984), 439-463; and Crooks, Jacksonville after the Fire, 1-118. Working class southerners repeatedly confronted conservative businessmen, politicians, and professionals who advocated the New South doctrines of industrialization and commercial development based on northern investment and cheap labor. See C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South: 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951), 228-234; Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 104-131; Gavin Wright, Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 64-70, 156-177; and Cobb, Industrialization and Southern Society, 5-32. Jacksonville's complex political milieu of the 1890s is analyzed in Wayne Flynt, Duncan Upshaw Fletcher: Dixie's Reluctant Progressive (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1971), 15-17. See also Wayne Flynt, "Florida Labor and Political 'Radicalism,' 1919-1920," Labor History 9 (1968), 73.

[8] Jacksonville, Florida Times-Union, 29 October, 1912.

[9] Ibid. See also The Motorman and Conductor 20 (November, 1912), 13.

[10] Union circular, n.d., Albert W. Gilchrist Papers, Gubernatorial Folder, Strozier Library, Florida State University, Tallahassee.

[11] Jacksonville, Florida Times-Union, 29 October, 1912.

[12] Ibid., 31 October, 1912.

[13] The Motorman and Conductor 20 (November, 1912), 13.

[14] Gilchrist to "Editor Pensacola Journal," 25 November, 1912, Gilchrist Papers, Gubernatorial Folder.

[15] Jacksonville, Florida Times-Union, 1 November, 1912.

[16] Ibid., 2 November, 1912.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid., 1 November, 1912.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid. Stockton had long been associated with the "straightout" faction of Florida's Democratic Party. Consisting of politicians from Jacksonville, the "straightouts" trumpeted the rhetoric of the long defunct Populist Party. They condemned “corporate domination" and excessive northern investment in Florida railroads and industry. Best represented by the late reform Governor Napoleon B. Broward (1905-1909), the "straightouts" attacked mainstream Florida Democrats largely for political advantage. See Flynt, Duncan Upshaw Fletcher, 23-25.

[21] Jacksonville, Florida Times-Union, 1 November, 1912.

[22] Union circular, n.d., Gilchrist Papers, Gubernatorial Folder.

[23] For the national union's analysis of this issue see The Motorman and Conductor 21 (December, 1912), 11. See also: Wright, Old South, New South, 203-204; Woodward, Origins of the New South, 291-320; Wayne Flynt, Cracker Messiah: Governor Sydney J. Catts of Florida (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 251-253.

[24] Jacksonville, Florida Times-Union, 2 November, 1912.

[25] Ibid., 3 November, 1912.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Jacksonville, Florida times-Union, 4 November, 1912.

[28] Ibid., 5 November, 1912; 7 November , 1912.

[29]Ibid., 6 November, 1912.

[30]Ibid., 9 November, 1912; 10 November, 1912.

[31]Ibid., 11 November, 1912.

[32]Muster Rolls and Supporting Documents, 1826-1918, Series 1146E, Box 9, Folder 10, Department of Military Affairs, Florida State Archives, R.A. Gray Building, Tallahassee, Florida.

[33]Jacksonville, Florida Times-Union, 12 November, 1912.

[34] Ibid., 16 November, 1912.

[35] Ibid., 20 November, 1912.

[36] Ibid., 21 November, 1912.

[37]Ibid., 15 November, 1912.

[38] The Motorman and Conductor 21 (December, 1912), 18.

[39] Ibid., 11.