Utopian Horizons of Solidarity and Community Building in William E. Trautmann's Novel Riot

William E. Trautmann’s novel Riot (1922) is based on the Pressed Steel Car Company strike in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania—a steel mill in the novel—which lasted for three months from July 13 through September, 1909.  Trautmann was a founder (with Haywood, “Mother” Jones, etc.) and General Organizer of the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).  In this latter capacity he coordinated the strike in McKees Rocks (a.k.a. Preston Valley).  His role gives credibility to the novel’s quasi-factual rendering of one of the most important labor actions in the pre-World War I period.

                                    I argue that Trautmann as a syndicalist has identified labor’s hopes of a workers-controlled society – hopes that came to life for a long moment at Preston Valley.  Leaders of the strike build their strategy on small work collectives within the factory, which are the strongest and most spontaneous source of bonding among workers.  Embodied in them is the direct actionist approach of exercising continuous control in the workplace.  Direct representatives of these well-organized groups call for the formation of soviets that will represent labor at the point of production.

                                    Communities can organize horizontally, Trautmann understands, in contradistinction to (in this case) strikers’ vertical, army-like system of command and control which recalls the industrial army visions of Fourier, Bellamy, and DeLeon.  Community members hold mass rallies at a meeting place called Indian Grave (!) where Debs and other visitors foment communal cohesion.  In the wake of victory, as the multitude hear workers led by the community’s multi-ethnic choir sing the Internationale, “jubilation” rings through the Valley and hope flies high that “prosperity and love” will come to the community.