The nucleus of our Brotherhood formed in 1890. An exposition was held in St. Louis that year featuring ``a glorious display of electrical wonders." Wiremen and linemen from all over the United States flocked to Missouri's queen city to wire the buildings and erect the exhibits which were the ``spectaculars" of their era.

    The men got together at the end of each long workday and talked about the toil and conditions for workers in the electrical industry. The story was the same everywhere. The work was hard; the hours long; the pay small. It was common for a lineman to risk his life on the high lines 12 hours a day in any kind of weather, seven days a week, for the meager sum of 15 to 20 cents an hour. Two dollars and 50 cents a day was considered an excellent wage for wiremen, and many men were forced to accept work for $8.00 a week.

    There was no apprenticeship training, and safety standards were nonexistent. In some areas the death rate for linemen was one out of every two hired, and nationally the death rate for electrical workers was twice that of the national average for all other industries.

    No wonder electrical workers of the Gay '90s sought some recourse for their troubles. A union was the logical answer; so this small group, meeting in St. Louis, sought help from the American Federation of Labor (AFL). An organizer named Charles Cassel was assigned to help them and chartered the group as the Electrical Wiremen and Linemen's Union, No. 5221, of the AFL.

    A St. Louis lineman, Henry Miller, was elected president of that union. I.O. Archives photos show him to be a tall, handsome man with broad, powerful shoulders; keen blue eyes; and reddish-brown hair. To him and the other workers at that St. Louis exposition, it was apparent their small union was only a starting point. Isolated locals could accomplish little as bargaining agencies. Only a national organization of electrical workers with jurisdiction covering the entire industry could win better treatment from the corporate empires engaged in telephone, telegraph, electric power, electrical contracting and electrical-equipment manufacturing.

Early Leaders Set Pace

    Henry Miller was a man of remarkable courage and energy. The first Secretary of our Brotherhood, J. T. Kelly, said of him, "No man could have done more for our union in its first years than he did." Miller packed his tools and traveled to many cities of the United States to work at the trade. Everywhere he went, he organized the electrical workers he met and worked with into local unions.

    Although the going was rough in those early days, Miller seemed impervious to personal discomforts and endowed with boundless energy. He "rode the rails" with his tools and an extra shirt in an old carpetbag. Many times the receiving committee on his arrival in a city was a "railroad bull" a policeman who chased him and tried to put him in jail for his unauthorized mode of travel.

    Nevertheless, a great deal was accomplished in that first year. Locals chartered by the AFL and other electrical unions were organized in Chicago, Milwaukee, Evansville, Louisville, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Toledo, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Duluth, Philadelphia, New York and other cities.

    A first convention was called in St. Louis on November 21, 1891. Ten delegates attended, representing 286 members. The 10 men to whom our Brotherhood owes its life and the cities they represented are:

1. Henry Miller, St. Louis, Missouri

2. J. T. Kelly, St. Louis, Missouri

3. W. Hedden, St. Louis, Missouri

4. C. J. Sutter, Duluth, Minnesota

5. M. Dorsey, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

6. T. J. Finnell, Chicago, Illinois

7. E. Hartung, Indianapolis, Indiana

8. F. Heizleman, Toledo, Ohio

9. Joseph Berlowitz, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

10. H. Fisher, Evansville, Indiana

    The founders of our union met in a small room above Stolley's Dance Hall in a poor section of St. Louis. It was a humble beginning. The handwritten report of that First Convention in our Archives records Henry Miller's thoughts:

   "At such a diminutive showing, there naturally existed a feeling of almost despair. Those who attended the Convention will well remember the time we had hiding from the reporters and trying to make it appear that we had a great delegation."

    The name adopted for the organization was National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The delegates to that First Convention worked night and day for seven days drafting our first Constitution, general laws, ritual and emblem the well-known fist grasping lightning bolts. The Convention elected Henry Miller as first Grand President and J. T. Kelly as Grand Secretary-Treasurer.

The First Constitution

    The Preamble to the first Constitution included the goals which motivated our founders and the far-reaching, sensible, unselfish Objects which have been retained, except for slight changes in language, by every Convention of the IBEW:

  "The objects of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers are: to organize all workers in the entire electrical industry in the United States and Canada, including all those in public utilities and electrical manufacturing, into local unions; to promote reasonable methods of work; to cultivate feelings of friendship among those of our industry; to settle all disputes between employers and employees by arbitration (if possible); to assist each other in sickness or distress; to secure employment; to reduce the hours of daily labor; to secure adequate pay for our work; to seek a higher and higher standard of living; to seek security for the individual; and by legal and proper means to elevate the moral, intellectual and social conditions of our members, their families and dependents, in the interest of a higher standard of citizenship."

    The new national union was penniless and had to be financed with a $100 loan from the St. Louis local. "This was the time and manner in which the Brotherhood was born," wrote Charles P. Ford, a longtime International Secretary of the IBEW, commenting on the birth of our union.  "There was little to encourage this small group of dedicated and determined men. The opposition to unions at that time was active and bitter. The obstacles seemed insurmountable. Hearts less courageous would have given up in despair." A motion to affiliate with the AFL passed at the First Convention. The AFL granted a charter on December 7, 1891, which gave the NBEW sweeping jurisdiction over electrical workers in every branch of the trade and industry.

A Determined Group

    The handicaps suffered by the new union no money, bitter resistance by employers to organizing were counterbalanced by the vigor and determination of the members. Henry Miller was tireless in his efforts. In the first year of the Brotherhood's existence, he is said to have visited every major city in the East, from New Orleans to Boston. Other officers of the union organized in the same way, spending their own time and funds. Their only rewards: the satisfaction of enlarging the organization and the knowledge they were working toward wiping out injustice and creating a better life for all who sought a living from electricity.

    When the Second Convention met in Chicago in 1892, the Brotherhood had 43 locals chartered; nearly 2,000 members; and $646.10 in the treasury. Henry Miller and J. T. Kelly were reelected Grand President and Grand Secretary-Treasurer.

Unity Despite Difficulty

    The new union was destined for setbacks, however. Of course, our inexperienced pioneers made mistakes in those early days. The men who attended our first Conventions had a dream of brotherhood. They were idealists, and from the very beginning they believed that benefits and brotherhood went hand in hand. They set the per capita to be paid to the "Grand Office" low only 10 cents a month per member. They assumed this small sum would cover all their obligations and expenses. Then they established not only a $50 funeral benefit payment for members, but also a $25 funeral benefit for wives of members.

    All obligations of those first years were met. Secretary Kelly's accounts are specific; his ledger, written in longhand, is practically the sole record of the early years in the history of the IBEW. Many electrical workers died in those early days, but the widow of every man in good standing received a death benefit. Thus, the Brotherhood headed down the road to bankruptcy.

    The mistakes were overshadowed by two important innovations. At the 1892 Convention women who were employed as telephone operators became members of the union. Four years later, when only one organizer was on our payroll, a second, Mrs. Mary Honzik of St. Louis, was added. Our Brotherhood was the first union to have a woman organizer on its staff. The Second Convention also authorized publication of our Journal. The first Journal, called The Electrical Worker, was issued on January 15, 1893. The magazine has been published continuously ever since.

    From the earliest days our Brotherhood recognized the importance of communication within the union. In an early convention report, J. T. Kelly, appealing for financial support for the Journal, said, "We could not have managed to keep our Brotherhood intact through these early years if it were not for our magazine."