The Federated Trades Council was founded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on February 20, 1887, for the purpose of organizing the craft unions in the city. The agitation to organize was a direct result of the schism between the Knights of Labor and the rising craft unions. Led by its founder, Frank J. Weber, the Federated Trades Council played a prominent part in the labor history of Milwaukee. Its influence has been somewhat superseded by the more important Wisconsin State Federation of Labor, also founded by Weber in 1893, the state agent of the American Federation of Labor. However, throughout the years, both organizations worked closely together; it was not infrequent that the top officer of one organization also held the top office in the other.
Biographical Sketch of Frank J. Weber (based upon the obituary of Frank J. Weber in Wisconsin Necrology, Vol. 48, p. 187, and Wisconsin Labor, Milwaukee, 1950, the official publication of the Wisconsin State Federation of Labor:
Frank J. Weber was born August 7, 1849 in the outskirts of Milwaukee. His grandfather was a German who emigrated from upper Austria and became one of Milwaukee's leading butter and cheese makers. Weber, a carpenter by trade, went to sea in 1869. He sailed the old windjammers of Lake Michigan and circumnavigated the globe three times before he left “a sailor's life.”
In 1886 he was initiated into a seaman's union at the seaman's boarding house back of the Live Oaks Saloon on Broadway, then called Main Street. He retired from the sea in 1902.
He organized the Federated Trades Council on February 20, 1887, and was its secretary until he retired in 1934. He founded the Wisconsin State Federation of Labor in June, 1893, and was its president until he retired from that task in 1917.
Weber was quite prominent in organizing unions. He organized the lumber handlers into what eventually became the American Federation of Labor Longshoremen's unions. He organized seamen's unions for the old Knights of Labor, and he unionized the brewery workers in Milwaukee in 1891. He was called to West Virginia in 1897 to help form the United Mine Workers. During World War I, he was a member of the Wisconsin War Labor Board.
His intimate friends included Samuel Gompers and novelist Jack London.
He was a pioneer member of the Socialist Party, served eight years in the Legislature, and was the party's candidate for higher offices. He was a leading figure in the fight for the Workmen's Compensation Act, for old age pensions, and other social legislation.
His wife, Augusta, died March 6, 1942. He had two sons, Charles, New York City, and Orlando, Kisco, New York, multimillionaire and retired president of Allied Chemical & Dye Co. Weber died in 1943 at the age of 93.
