The Roosevelt Era: From the New Deal to D-Day

Recovery Strategies ◽

New Social Movement ◽

Work Relief ◽

The New Deal ◽

Rules Of The Game ◽

The U.S

This chapter looks at the progressive forces in the U.S. In the U.S., Franklin Roosevelt's presidency became the prime force for progressive gains. In the New Deal's ascendant phase from 1932 to 1936, the agricultural and industrial recovery strategies of the “Hundred Days” came first and foundered. Later, Roosevelt's administration enacted social security, inventive new programs for work relief, and the Wagner labor relations act that changed the rules of the game for trade unions. Once the European war began in 1939, the U.S. gradually became “the arsenal of democracy.” However, only on a fraught and twisting path did Roosevelt finally lead America into the crucible of World War II. Meanwhile, a new social movement reinforced the progressive thrust of Roosevelt's presidency—the rise of new trade unions in the mass production industries impelled by the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations), a new labor federation.

Silver Lining

Two Faces of Exclusion ◽

10.5149/northcarolina/9781469629438.003.0007 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Lon Kurashige

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Labor Union ◽

The Philippines ◽

Transitional Period ◽

Asian Immigration ◽

Institute Of Pacific Relations ◽

Silver Lining ◽

The U.S

This chapter focuses on the debate over Asian immigration exclusion between the enactment of Japanese exclusion and World War II. During this time, prominent opponents of Japanese exclusion shifted tactics to clear up racial and international misunderstanding through scholarly research, educational initiatives, and campaigns to repeal Japanese exclusion. They did this mainly through the establishment of two institutions: Survey of Race Relations at Stanford University and the Institute of Pacific Relations, initially based in Hawaii. At the same time, proponents of Japanese exclusion moved on to push for the exclusion of Filipino immigrants and the repatriation of those already in the U.S. This was achieved, but only by Congress granting independence to the U.S. colony of the Philippines. Egalitarian views of Filipinos, Japanese, and other Asian immigrant groups gained support within a new and powerful national labor union, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Despite the continuation of Asian exclusion, the 1930s was a transitional period in which new opportunities and institutions emerged to combat it.

New Deals

David Foster Wallace's Balancing Books ◽

10.7312/columbia/9780231179447.003.0003 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 62-87

Author(s):

Jeffrey Severs

Keyword(s):

Economic Policy ◽

Short Stories ◽

World War Ii ◽

Gold Standard ◽

Social Insurance ◽

Great Society ◽

World War ◽

The Great Depression ◽

The New Deal ◽

The U.S

This chapter demonstrates the deep importance of Wallace’s collegiate study of U.S. economic policy, especially in the Great Depression, to his early short stories. What if, I ask, we locate Wallace’s “origins” not in the post-World War II moment or 1960s ironic postmodernism, but instead in the crash of 1929, a less predictable moment of cultural crisis in which he took a quieter but subsuming interest? Key elements that emerge in this chapter are the U.S. Treasury (surreally portrayed as the issuer of a post-gold-standard currency – and post-metaphysical meaning – in the uncollected gem “Crash of 69”) and, in “Westward,” the governmental remedies of social insurance and economic reconstruction in the New Deal. While attending more briefly to other stories in Girl With Curious Hair, this chapter also provides sustained readings of Dust-Bowl metaphysics in “John Billy” and Johnson’s Great Society in “Lyndon.”

The Knights of Labor

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.474 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Matthew Hild

Keyword(s):

Trade Unions ◽

The United States ◽

Industrial Workers ◽

Skilled Workers ◽

Knights Of Labor ◽

American Federation ◽

American Capitalism ◽

Railway System

Founded in Philadelphia in 1869, the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor became the largest and most powerful labor organization that had ever existed in the United States by the mid-1880s. Recruiting men and women of nearly all occupations and all races (except Chinese), the Knights tried to reform American capitalism and politics in ways that would curb the growing economic and political abuses and excesses of the Gilded Age. Leaders of the organization viewed strikes as harmful to workers and employers alike, especially after the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, but a series of railroad strikes in 1884 and 1885 caused the Knights’ membership rolls to reach a peak of at least 700,000 in 1886. The heyday of the Knights of Labor proved brief though. Two major events in May 1886, the Haymarket riot in Chicago and the failure of a strike against Jay Gould’s Southwestern Railway system, began a series of setbacks that caused the organization to decline about as rapidly as it had arisen. By 1893, membership dropped below 100,000, and the Knights’ leaders aligned the organization with the farmers’ movement and the Populist Party. The Knights increasingly became a rural organization, as urban skilled and semi-skilled workers joined trade unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The AFL, however, proved less inclusive and egalitarian than the Knights of Labor, although some of the latter’s ideals would be carried on by later organizations such as the Industrial Workers of the World and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

As Furious as the Last Horseman of a Legion of the Bitter-End

Discovering the South ◽

10.5149/northcarolina/9781469630946.003.0009 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Jennifer Ritterhouse

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Republican Party ◽

Iron And Steel ◽

Racial Change ◽

White Southerners ◽

United Mine Workers ◽

Interracial Unionism ◽

United Mine

This chapter centers on Daniels's interviews with Birmingham industrialist Charles F. DeBardeleben and labor organizer William Mitch of the United Mine Workers (UMW) and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). DeBardeleben's biography begins with his grandfather, Daniel Pratt, and his father, Henry Fairchild DeBardeleben. Both were industrialists whose investments in coal, iron, and steel contributed to the development of Birmingham. Charles F. DeBardeleben followed in his father's footsteps as a staunch antiunionist. He claimed to be a paternalist yet used fences and armed guards to isolate his workers, resulting in a deadly shooting at the Acmar mine of his Alabama Fuel and Iron Company in 1935. Meanwhile, the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) in 1933 facilitated the growth of the CIO, and William Mitch's efforts to cultivate interracial unionism in Birmingham in the 1930s were largely successful. The chapter concludes by noting that DeBardeleben's alleged fascist ties are difficult to document and seem less significant than his anticommunist rhetoric and switch to the Republican Party, both of which provide an early glimpse of tactics recalcitrant white southerners would employ to prevent social and racial change in the post-World War II years.

Reconversion and the Origin of Bargained Plans

Dismantling Solidarity ◽

10.7591/cornell/9780801454226.003.0003 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Michael A. McCarthy

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Pension Plans ◽

Occupational Pension ◽

Labor Management ◽

Private Pensions ◽

Policy Interventions ◽

The Social ◽

Pension Benefits

This chapter offers a explanation of the proliferation of occupational pension plans after World War II. Principally, it shows that private pension development was neither the result of policy interventions before the end of the war nor the simple result of union strength in postwar collective bargaining disputes. Instead, the turn to occupational pensions was caused by policymakers intervening in labor-management disputes—not principally to compel businesses to adopt occupational pension plans, but rather to establish labor peace in order to capture capitalist growth opportunities abroad. The chapter begins by considering why the Congress of Industrial Organizations was unable to expand the pension benefits offered by the Social Security program after the New Deal, roughly between 1939 and 1968, before turning to the expansion of private pensions.

Back to Work

Poor Man's Fortune ◽

10.5149/northcarolina/9781469656298.003.0008 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 200-242

Author(s):

Jarod Roll

Keyword(s):

New Deal ◽

Mining Industry ◽

White Men ◽

The Great Depression ◽

Company Union ◽

A Company ◽

The New Deal ◽

Back To Work

As the Great Depression crushed the mining industry, Tri-State miners looked for ways to restore their standing as hard-working-white men and their faith in capitalism. The New Deal offered hope but brought labor unions back into the district. Some miners, but not a majority, looked to organized labor as the best way to roll back the power of the companies. This chapter explores their 1935 strike to regain what they had lost and the ways the New Deal labor regime was too weak to protect them. While strikers waited for allies in the nascent Congress of Industrial Organizations, the mining companies organized the majority of the district’s nonunion miners into a back-to-work movement that became a company union. This group rallied around old promises of racial superiority and high pay for loyal, hard-working white men who were willing to destroy the CIO union. The CIO, with the help of New Deal officials, eventually won this dispute in court, but it could not overrule the reactionary commitments in the hearts of the majority of Tri-State miners as a new world war brought the mining economy to life again.

Liberalism Transformed

Racial Realignment ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691153872.003.0004 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Eric Schickler

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

World War Ii ◽

Civil Rights ◽

Political Agenda ◽

The Political ◽

Political Work ◽

Fair Employment ◽

The Military

This chapter explores the deepening and consolidation of ideological changes as support for civil rights became a defining commitment of a more robust liberal coalition in the 1940s. African American movement activists capitalized on the World War II crisis to force new civil rights issues onto the political agenda—such as fair employment practices and discrimination in the military—and to forge a much broader civil rights coalition. After the war, continued movement activism laid the groundwork for the dramatic fight over the Democratic platform at the convention in 1948. Ultimately, the political work by African American groups, in cooperation with the Congress of Industrial Organizations and other urban liberals, fostered a new understanding of “liberalism” in which support for civil rights was a key marker of one's identity as a liberal.

Educating Citizen-Soldiers in World War II

Between Citizens and the State ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691148274.003.0004 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

Christopher P. Loss

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Psychological Research ◽

Educational Services ◽

Transformative Power ◽

Chief Of Staff ◽

Military Commanders ◽

Citizen Soldiers ◽

The Common ◽

The New Deal ◽

The U.S

This chapter moves the story from the New Deal to the U.S. Army. As the state's main wartime hub for psychological research, the Army Research Branch, headed by University of Chicago sociologist Samuel A. Stouffer, presented evidence to military commanders that better-educated soldiers were more efficient, exhibited higher morale, and were less likely to desert or suffer a psychoneurotic breakdown than their educationally deprived peers. Military and educational policymakers were galvanized by this finding and joined forces to create the Army Information and Education Division—the education clearinghouse for the common soldier. With the steady support of General George C. Marshall, the chief of staff of the army, who believed wholeheartedly in the transformative power of education, millions of G.I.s made use of the educational services provided to them.

Communism and the Labor Movement

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.784 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Randi Storch

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Labor Movement ◽

Trade Unions ◽

Local Level ◽

The Great Depression ◽

Union Movement ◽

And Gender ◽

The Cold War ◽

American Trade

Communist activists took a strong interest in American trade unions from the 1920s through the 1950s and played an important role in shaping the nature of the American union movement. Initial communist trade union activism drew upon radical labor traditions that preceded the formation of the American Communist Party (CPUSA). Early communist trade unionists experimented with different types of structures to organize unorganized workers. They also struggled with international communist factionalism. Communist trade unionists were most effective during the Great Depression and World War II. In those years, communist activists helped build the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and bring industrial unionism to previously unorganized workers. Throughout the history of communist involvement in the US labor movement, international communist policy guided general organizing strategies. Shifts in international policy, such as the announcement of a Soviet non-aggression pact with Germany, proved politically difficult to navigate on the local level. Yet, Left-led unions proved to be more democratically run and focused on racial and gender equality than many of those without communist influence. Their leadership supported social justice and militant action. The Cold War years witnessed CIO purges of Left-led unions and federal investigations and arrests of communist trade unionists. Repression from both within and without the labor movement as well as the CPUSA’s own internal policy battles ultimately ended communist trade unionists’ widespread influence on American trade unions.

Silk Stockings and Socialism

10.5149/northcarolina/9781469632957.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Sharon McConnell-Sidorick

Keyword(s):

Labor Movement ◽

Radical Politics ◽

Government Programs ◽

Jazz Age ◽

American Federation ◽

Union Leaders ◽

History Of ◽

The New Deal

The 1920s Jazz Age is remembered for flappers and speakeasies, not for the success of a declining labor movement. A more complex story was unfolding among the young women and men in the hosiery mills of Kensington, the working-class heart of Philadelphia. Their product was silk stockings, the iconic fashion item of the flapper culture then sweeping America and the world. Although the young people who flooded into this booming industry were avid participants in Jazz Age culture, they also embraced a surprising, rights-based labor movement, headed by the socialist-led American Federation of Full-Fashioned Hosiery Workers (AFFFHW). In this first history of this remarkable union, Sharon McConnell-Sidorick reveals how activists ingeniously fused youth culture and radical politics to build a subculture that included dances and parties as well as picket lines and sit-down strikes, while forging a vision for social change. In documenting AFFFHW members and the Kensington community, McConnell-Sidorick shows how labor federations like the Congress of Industrial Organizations and government programs like the New Deal did not spring from the heads of union leaders or policy experts but were instead nurtured by grassroots social movements across America.