Early in 1919, the postwar "Red Scare" in which the pre-war socialism was now Bolshevism or Communism, and labor unrest was considered radical. American businessmen seized the opportunity to stretch the belief that the struggle of laboring union men for better wages was the beginning of an armed rebellion directed by Lenin and Trotsky to do away with 100 percent Americanism and the welfare of God's Own Country and Loyalty to the Teachings of the Founding Fathers and implied the right of businessmen to kick the union organizer out of his workshop.

Local 103 was to bear the brunt of this anti-union deluge. Postwar depression and uncertain prosperity during the ensuing three Republican administrations, (Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover), placed a great strain on the IBEW In an attempt to destroy the union movement, restrictive laws were passed, court injunctions enforced, companies used strike breakers, spy agencies, bombings and beatings. Aided by unemployment, the IBEW membership dropped to 56,349 in 1925, down from 148,072 in 1919.

In November 1920, the Republican Harding beats the Democrat 16 million votes to 9 million, with the Socialist Debs, running from jail, getting less than 1 million. The Red Scare has the country in panic. Sacco and Vanzetti are found guilty in Boston, mostly because they are foreigners who embrace socialist ideas.