Herbert Mahler

Background

Herbert Mahler was born on November 6, 1890, in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, where he was raised and educated.

Career

Mahler left home in 1910 to find work in the Canadian West. Until 1915, he worked in British Columbia as a riverboat pilot and a logger. He then moved to the United States, where in the state of Washington, in July 1915, he joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and promptly became involved in strikes on the West Coast.

In 1916 and 1917, Mahler served as secretary and organizer for several IWW locals in the Seattle area and was especially active in trying to organize longshoremen and lumber workers. After the Everett, Washington, "massacre" of November 1916, when state authorities arrested a large group of "Wobblies" and tried them on murder charges, Mahler was secretary-treasurer of the IWW's Everett Defense Committee.

Under his direction, the committee raised funds, generated publicity, and elicited sympathy for the defendants, all of whom were acquitted in May 1917. While he asserted the innocence of the Everett prisoners, Mahler also threatened the use of sabotage.

After the United States entered World War I, Mahler participated in IWW lumber and copper strikes that tied up the production of vital war supplies in Montana, Idaho, and Washington. He also tried to devise an effective, yet legal, antiwar strategy for the "Wobblies. "

As war hysteria and patriotism swept the United States, Mahler continued to advise caution, informing William D. ("Big Bill") Haywood, the IWW leader, in June and again in August 1917, that "all we can do now is to make the best of a bad situation. " But caution did not save Mahler from arrest in September 1917.

The federal government indicted him, along with 100 other IWW leaders, in Chicago. He was convicted of three counts of espionage and sedition and was sentenced in August 1918 to twelve years in prison and a $20, 000 fine. He began his sentence at Leavenworth Federal Pententiary on September 7, 1918.

Although eligible for parole as early as May 1920, Mahler declined to file for it. He remained in prison until December 1923, when President Calvin Coolidge commuted the sentences of all the Chicago IWW inmates still incarcerated to time served. After his release, Mahler resumed work in the IWW. He functioned through Chicago Branch number 1, and by the end of the 1920's had again become a national leader.

He served as secretary of the organization's General Defense Committee, and on March 1, 1931, became general secretary-treasurer, the IWW's highest office. But on November 25, 1932, during the IWW's twentieth national convention, Mahler resigned from the post because of the convention's refusal to support him on two policy issues. He made his last official appearance within the organization at its 1934 convention, as a delegate from the General Recruiting Union and an unsuccessful nominee for general secretary-treasurer.

Sometime later, Mahler moved to New York City, where in 1937, he organized the Kentucky Miners Defense Committee on behalf of four union coal miners serving life sentences for murder as a result of the bloody 1931 Harlan County strike. But generally, he remained organizationally inactive until 1948, when he appeared with a small group of IWW pickets at the New York office of the New Republic to protest the publication in that magazine of an article that accused the IWW martyr, Joe Hill, of being a common criminal.

Mahler died in New York City.

Achievements

• Named secretary of the IWW's General Defense Committee after his release, Mahler became general secretary-treasurer (1931), but resigned (1932) over disputes concerning IWW direction. He continued organizing work outside of IWW auspices, moving to New York, and then organizing the Kentucky Miners Defense Committee (1937). His last public appearance was picketing the New Republic (1948) to protest an unsympathetic portrayal of Joe Hill.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Symphonic Repertoire for Timpani - Mahler Symphonies 1-3 by David Herbert (2013-12-01)
  • Waldmärchen. A Forest Legend ... Text: Gustav Mahler. English translation by Basil Swift. Piano reduction by Herbert Haufrecht. Klavierauszug. Die erste Druck, etc. Ger. & Eng

Views

Although Mahler opposed militarism and war as well as conscription, Mahler believed that the IWW could accomplish more through organization of workers and industrial action than through antiwar propaganda and unwise antigovernment activities.

Quotations: "It takes money to feed the cats and it will be them that play the leading role, too. "

Connections

Mahler was married to Bessie Freiberg.

References

• We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World
• The Wobblies: The Story of the IWW and Syndicalism in the United States
• Bill Haywood's Book: The Autobiography William D. Haywood