Hoover’s Immigration Battlegrounds: Alien Radicals, Intellectuals, and Provocateurs in the Labor Movement

Abstract

James Larkin (1874–1947), a man whom George Bernard Shaw called “the greatest Irishman since Parnell” was, with his comrade James Connolly, one of the most celebrated labor leaders of the twentieth century. He had successfully organized thousands of Irish workers into his Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) in January 1909, and with Connolly had directed thousands more during the workers’ struggle against the Employers’ Federation in the infamous 1913 Dublin Lock-out.1 Disheartened by the failure of 1913, Larkin abandoned Ireland later that year and sailed for the United States on the St. Louis, hoping to rally support for his Irish workers and to raise funds to resurrect the ITGWU. Even before his arrival in the United States, Jim Larkin was a name recognized by radical Americans. In fact, an article on “Larkinism” had been published in a January number of the radical newspaper the Masses that year. Larkin remained for a decade in the United States, where he continued his work as a labor organizer and quickly earned a reputation for stirring up and organizing underpaid, overworked, and half-starved workers in American cities as diverse as New York, Butte, Oakland, and Chicago.