The American Alliance for Labor and Democracy was an American political organization established in September 1917 through the initiative of the American Federation of Labor and making use of the resources of the United States government's Committee on Public Information. The group was dedicated to building support among American workers for that nation's participation in World War I in Europe. Following the victory of the Entente powers over the empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary the organization lost its raison d'être. It was finally terminated in November 1919 due to a lack of funding.
Organizational history
Establishment
According to long-time President of the American Federation of Labor Samuel Gompers, the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy began as a reaction to the 1917 Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party of America held in St. Louis, Missouri. At this gathering a convincing majority of the party's 200 assembled delegates voted in favor of a manifesto known to posterity as the St. Louis Resolution which branded President Woodrow Wilson's decision to enter World War I as "a crime against the people of the United States and against the nations of the world" and called for "continuous, active, and public opposition to the war" and "vigorous resistance to all reactionary measures."
Gompers was incensed at the Socialists' "declaration in support of internationalism and pacifism," which he regarded as "tantamount to avowed hostility to the cause of the Allies" and set about establishing a new organization to provide "intellectual guidance" to thousands of working class Americans disaffected by the Socialists' anti-militarist orientation.
Gompers later recalled:
"We developed a plan for bringing together in one organization representatives of the American trade union movement and representatives of what were known as radical organizations. Members of this organization agreed to lay aside for the period of the War whatever differences they might have upon procedure and to rally in defense of the fundamental principles for which our government stood. This organization we called the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy."
Gompers submitted his proposal to the Wilson administration for approval, getting the green light from the Council of National Defense and from the Committee on Public Information headed by George Creel. The latter organization was so taken by the idea that it came to make the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy one of the primary unofficial agencies through which the Committee on Public Information operated.
Preliminary organization of the AALD took place at a meeting held on July 28, 1917, at the Continental Hotel in New York City attended by prominent pro-war socialists John Spargo, Robert Maisel, and J. Graham Phelps Stokes. At this meeting Gompers was named the president of the AALD and Maisel its director.
Development
One of the left wing pacifist organizations to which Gompers and his associates were particularly opposed was the People's Council of America for Democracy and Peace, a national organization established at a mass meeting of 20,000 people held at Madison Square Garden in May 1917. The People's Council maintained a New York City branch called the Workingmen's Council which announced its intention to militantly defend the wages and interests of the working class during the war, which was interpreted by Gompers as a direct challenge to his and the AF of L's decision to collaborate and cooperate with the government during wartime.
When Gompers learned that the People's Council planned a national conference of the organization to be held in St. Paul, Minnesota, in September 1917 which was to be "truly representative of labor," Gompers responded by launching a counter-convention of his own, calling for a national conference of the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy to be held in the same city at the same time. George Creel of the Committee on Public Information set to work stifling the ability of the People's Council to hold a convention anywhere, writing to one Minnesota correspondent that the anti-militarist organization was composed of "traitors and fools" and encouraging him to mobilize conservative civic organizations to pass resolutions against the People's Council and to directly meet with newspaper editors on the matter.