If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.
If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.
The early 20th century was an era of business expansion and progressive reform in the United States. The progressives, as they called themselves, worked to make American society a better and safer place in which to live. They tried to make big business more responsible through regulations of various kinds. They worked to clean up corrupt city governments, to improve working conditions in factories, and to better living conditions for those who lived in slum areas, a large number of whom were recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Many progressives were also concerned with the environment and conservation of resources.
This generation of Americans also hoped to make the world a more democratic place. At home, this meant expanding the right to vote to women and a number of election reforms such as the recall, referendum, and direct election of Senators. Abroad, it meant trying to make the world safe for democracy. In 1917, the United States joined Great Britain and France--two democratic nations--in their war against autocratic Germany and Austria-Hungary. Soon after the Great War, the majority of Americans turned away from concern about foreign affairs, adopting an attitude of live and let live.
The 1920s, also known as the "roaring twenties" and as "the new era," were similar to the Progressive Era in that America continued its economic growth and prosperity. The incomes of working people increased along with those of middle class and wealthier Americans. The major growth industry was automobile manufacturing. Americans fell in love with the automobile, which radically changed their way of life. On the other hand, the 1920s saw the decline of many reform activities that had been so widespread after 1900.
This chapter assesses the broader validity of the book's theoretical argument by analyzing the massive reverse wave of the interwar years and four processes of authoritarian hardening across history. In all of these episodes in which liberal democracy fell to autocracy, or in which existing autocratic regimes turned more repressive and "closed," revolutionary challenges prompted these political regressions. The advance of authoritarianism and fascism during the 1920s and 1930s constituted a widespread reactionary backlash to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In a similar vein, the French Revolution of 1789 set in motion a repressive turn in Europe, and the Revolutions of 1848 provoked a wave of counterrevolution. The Iranian Revolution of 1978/79 had a similarly regressive effect across the Middle East, even years after the triggering events. And the color revolutions in the post-Communist world prompted the hardening of autocracy in Putin's Russia and in other Eurasian countries.
Which of the following helped drive the reactionary conservatism of the 1920s?
A) a rise in anti-discrimination policies and the number of voting African Americans due to the end of the Jim Crow laws
B) the growth of the progressive political coalition that had reelected Wilson and the economic hardship the country faced for much of the decade
C) the ongoing war effort during the 1920s that led to widespread rationing and urgent, rapid industrialization across the country
D) prejudice toward immigrants from outside western Europe and a strong Protestant movement for a return to the primacy of traditional Christian morality
E) the sense of safety that most Americans felt domestically and abroad since relations with other countries had drastically improved since the Great War
Great changes were taking place, yet Americans generally believed that even more change was needed if the republic were to survive and thrive in the industrial era. In the workplace as much as in surrounding communities, Americans feared the implications of this new era of global economic expansion. Political and ideological violence may have been rare, but when violence broke out, it both stigmatized and divided labor groups, even as it brought swift reactions from local police, private detective firms, and state and federal officials. More broadly, a general fear of the revolutionary changes taking shape in everyday life inspired both a broad-based progressive reform impulse, shared by many American workers, and a renewed American radicalism, as well as the forces of reactionary repression and business conservatism that sought to stamp out what many saw as the real possibility of mob action and socialist insurgency.
These top-down reform efforts—efforts that emphasized the need for greater efficiency and order in the economy and at the workplace—would be deeply ambiguous for workers. But they reflected an important move away from the commitments to Social Darwinism and laissez-faire principles that had defined the Gilded Age. Progressive reform itself could become a form of social control. Workers were subjected to intense moral campaigns, the Americanization efforts of both well-intentioned settlement house workers and less salutary anti-immigrant vigilantes, and the institution of “scientific management” regimes fostered by Frederick Winslow Taylor, Elton Mayo, and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. One reformer’s vision of order and efficiency often became a reality of social control for workers.
Despite their shared circumstances and some success in building a diverse labor movement in the early part of the century, American workers entered World War I perhaps more divided among themselves than at any other point in the nation’s history. Nativism was on the rise, and workers were divided by skill, craft, race, gender, and region. Industrial employers took advantage of workers’ fears and their internal divisions. On one hand, some corporate leaders developed systems of “welfare capitalism,” voluntarily providing marginal benefits to workers in order to stifle their dissatisfaction at work. On the other hand, business leaders and their allies in politics and the press played workers of different backgrounds against one another in order to undercut the possibility of shared militancy. It would be difficult, even for the most privileged workers, to fight for a place in the system.
Fighting for a Place in the System
Figure 1. “Slain Miner and One of His Fighting Comrades.”
Radical Alternatives in the Progressive Era
Workers frustrated with the exclusionary practices and political moderation of the AFL could turn to an embattled world of labor radicalism which was going through something of a renaissance after the defeats of the 1880s and 1890s. American radicals—led by the socialist Eugene V. Debs and an eclectic band of militants that included Mother Jones (Figure ), Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, “Big Bill” Haywood, and Lucy Parsons, among others—pushed for more radical and immediate change through the Socialist Party, insurgent industrial unions in mining and textiles, and through the Industrial Workers of the World.
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, digital ID: LC-DIG-ds-07713.
In the 1910s, garment workers in New York City and Chicago organized unions in the industry for which the term “sweatshop” was coined. Although workers suffered oppressive conditions in sweatshops, they were isolated from the rest of the workforce, and they could not take action directly against the manufacturers. But as manufacturers moved production to larger factories in order to produce standardized clothing and to distance themselves from the increasingly negative reputation of sweatshops—spread by Progressive reformers—the larger shops also brought unskilled workers out of their relative isolation. Working conditions did not necessarily improve in larger shops, but opportunities to build worker solidarity presented themselves. Employers attempted to maintain divisions among workers, separating them by ethnicity and gender, and by offering “bonus pay” to the most productive workers.
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (LC-B2-3017-30), digital ID: LC-DIG-ggbain-15713.
Obstacles to Organizing in the Progressive Era
During the Progressive Era, the American Federation of Labor claimed to speak for all American workers. Still, with few exceptions, the AFL consisted largely of skilled, white, male workers, and focused its strikes, lawsuits, and limited political activity on maintaining those workers’ craft privileges. Its leaders also discouraged any organizing efforts not under the banner of the AFL, treating them as “dual unions,” or as enemies seeking to undermine the AFL. Furthermore, the federation’s leaders refused to engage in the broad political work that would have allowed them to challenge the anti-labor decisions of the courts or the narrowness of Progressive Era reforms. Such a closed, jealous, and litigious world of labor was hardly a beacon for the growing ranks of new immigrant and American migrant workers entering the deskilled factories of the North.
The IWW—in part because the Wobblies had some success, and in part because they sustained an unflagging rhetorical radicalism—also became the target of government and vigilante repression. Wobbly activists leading “free speech campaigns” faced club-wielding police officers and were whipped and even tarred and feathered by vigilantes throughout the West. During World War I, 1,200 miners suspected of being aligned with the IWW in Bisbee, Arizona, were rounded up, forced onto a freight train at gunpoint, and abandoned in the desert without food or water for a day and half before a nearby military commander arranged for their extradition to New Mexico. At the same time, the federal government raided IWW offices across the country and convicted hundreds of Wobblies for antiwar speech. In the end, the IWW became one of the driving forces behind the rise of the American Civil Liberties Union and the push for protections of free speech during and after World War I, but the Wobblies could not save themselves from this repression. By the end of the war, with many of its leaders imprisoned, deported, or having fled the country, the IWW was unable to sustain itself as an institution.
Still more obstacles stood in the way of mass labor organizing in the first decades of the 20th century. Chief among them were the racial and ethnic divisions that ran through the shop floors of American industry. Historians have examined in great detail the intraclass racism that blocked white workers from acting in ways that would have been truly class-conscious. Between the late 19th century and World War I, tens of thousands of black workers gained access to unions, some all-black but some biracial in organization. Yet unions often acted as agents of division; some included racial exclusion clauses in their constitutions, while others gave lip service to solidarity while declaring that, in practice, black workers would undercut the wages and opportunities of white workers. For their part, recent black migrants from the South, the majority of black workers in the factories, alternately feared or despised the “white man’s union.”
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (LC-B2-3361-1).
World War I and the Hope for Industrial Democracy
World War I provided an unprecedented opening for unions to make gains and for workers who had traditionally been excluded from industrial work to enter the nation’s factories. The federal government spurred a national mobilization of the workforce and economic resources, while coordinating industrial planning. Although the government went so far as to take over the railroads, the federal intervention in the economy hardly represented wartime socialism. Instead, the government relied on industry leaders who acted as “dollar-a-year” men, voluntarily aiding in the planning of the wartime economy, and it ensured profits for industry with cost-plus contracts. In essence, the federal government forged a larger role in managing the economy with the primary goal of efficient war-related production. This managed economy also facilitated the private accumulation of capital for employers and benefited masses of workers.
Why was this a boon for unions and workers? In the first place, the wartime economy required labor peace. Therefore, the federal government facilitated the formation and growth of unions. At the same time, the wartime economic boom required many new workers. With the end of European immigration and the draft of white men into the military, women and African Americans found new opportunities. The long-term consequences of the war differed sharply for women and men. Women’s industrial experiences proved to be a largely temporary phenomenon. The war did help to provide the necessary impetus to pass the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote. But the war did not lead to major changes in gender roles; gender lines in the workforce reemerged after the war, and the popular image of the liberated “flapper” in the Roaring Twenties remained a decidedly minority experience.
The Business Decade
Unions declined sharply in the 1920s under pressure from a conservative attack. Employers promoted an “American Plan” that celebrated the democracy of the open shop and that associated organized labor with un-American economic systems. Companies also promoted “welfare capitalism,” providing workers with benefits such as home loans, group insurance policies, stock options, and regular sponsorship of sports teams all in the name of reducing costly labor turnover and improving industrial harmony. Perhaps most importantly, some four hundred firms created Employee Representation Plans, or company unions, which sought to promote worker allegiance to the company and to provide a kind of pressure release for workers thinking about organizing in their own interests. Welfare capitalists sought to prevent unions from ever rising again, and for a time they succeeded. The number of strikes receded dramatically, and union membership declined. The success of unregulated markets and welfare capitalism, however, was short-lived, and the mass unemployment, poverty, and insecurity of the 1930s would help spark the greatest surge in union members in U.S. history.
The Crash and Its Immediate Aftermath
President Hoover’s limited, top-down response to the crisis aggravated widespread anxieties and led to a new level of popular unrest. Destitute Americans living in shantytowns (Figure ), popularly known as “Hoovervilles,” clearly blamed the president for their condition. Thousands of Americans joined in organizing for relief from the federal government. In unemployed organizations, spearheaded by socialist and communist organizers, Americans demanded monetary relief and reinstalled tenants in their apartments when they were evicted. The most important protests and strikes of the 1930s were still years away, but the unemployed organizing of the early 1930s played an important role in increasing popular militancy.
Figure 7. “William A. Swift, Once a Farmer, Now a Resident of Circleville’s ‘Hooverville.’ When he Returned from the War He Went West. “Made awful good money jobbin’ around.’”
Workers and the Changing State during the New Deal
President Roosevelt immediately took steps to address the national crisis. He initiated important banking reforms, rationalizing and regulating the banking system and providing deposit insurance. Together, these reforms arguably created the conditions for relative financial stability that helped make possible the growth of a mass middle class after World War II. Roosevelt and his allies also ended the alcohol ban of Prohibition, eliminating one cause of suffering and chaos in working-class communities. He also expanded direct relief to the poor and enlarged public works projects significantly.
Yet the NIRA had two longer-lasting and largely unforeseen consequences. First, it reinforced the federal commitment to public works programs as part of the solution to the national crisis. Second, the NIRA stipulated that “employees shall have the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing,” which marked the first time the federal government legally recognized workers’ right to union representation. Although NIRA, and its Section 7a, were quickly found unconstitutional, the support of the federal government for labor organizing helped strengthen an already growing surge in rank-and-file labor organizing.
The New Industrial Union Movement
Figure 8. “Striker and His Fiancée (Sitdown Strike Romance) in the Women’s Auxiliary Room in Pengally Hall.”
African Americans’ relationship to labor changed dramatically in the 1930s. During the first years of the decade, the CPUSA emerged as an ally for black workers and for the cause of civil rights. Communist Party organizers, for example, led many of the unemployed organizations, fighting to bring government resources to black neighborhoods and to prevent the eviction of black tenants. The party’s legal arm, the International Labor Defense Fund, came to the assistance of the “Scottsboro Boys,” nine African American teenagers falsely accused of raping a white woman on a train and wrongly convicted in Scottsboro, Alabama. Black Americans pragmatically took advantage of such alliances. They were never members of the Communist Party in large numbers, but some black organizers and radicals joined the party at least for a short time, and many were generally willing to work with it to fight racial inequality through the labor movement. Party organizers energized the CIO’s efforts to organize interracial unions. CIO leaders, including the important group of left-wing organizers, understood that for practical or idealistic reasons, or both, the new industrial unions could challenge the AFL and their employers only if they built a culture of interracialism. Nonetheless, as the CIO grew, according to the historian Bruce Nelson, “it was constrained by a membership majority that had little or no commitment to a broad-gauged social-democratic agenda.” Racial discrimination in unions and working-class racial tensions remained key factors in American workplaces, and, indeed, have yet to be fully resolved.
Workers and World War II
Labor, including the CIO, solidified its place in the nation’s economy during the war. Though labor conflict continued as many workers fought for higher wartime wages, often in wildcat strikes, labor leaders gained standing by signing on to a no-strike pledge with the federal government’s labor mediation agency, the National War Labor Board. Labor unions also gained thousands of new members as they convinced the NWLB to refuse employers’ demands for an “open shop” in wartime industries, and they secured “maintenance of membership clauses” stipulating that workers who became union members during the war would remain members for the length of the contract.
As white men were drafted into the military by the tens of thousands, industries began to recruit white women to fill their spots. The famous images of “Rosie the Riveter” perhaps romanticize women’s experiences in the workforce, but women at the time did speak to the excitement and freedom they found in working outside the home and earning their own wages. The war did not usher in a rapid change in gender norms, at least not in majority public opinion. After the war, women were expected to leave the workforce, to allow returning veterans to take their jobs back, and to return to their “rightful” duties in the home. Yet women’s wartime experiences created changes that would eventually help create the modern feminist movements. First, although many women were ushered out of sectors of the workforce, women actually stayed in the labor force at higher numbers than ever before; married women, especially, worked in greater numbers than in any previous era of American history. Moreover, many women never forgot their experiences in the workforce, and their expectations for opportunities that the next generation of women should have were forever changed. Women in the labor movement who joined unions during the war also became leaders for a new labor-based feminism.
Black men and women were also hired into industrial work by the tens or hundreds of thousands, but only after employers found they could not fill the jobs with white women. Mexican workers also found jobs during World War II, most notably through the federal government’s Bracero Program, a guest worker program that brought tens of thousands of Mexican workers into the United States to fill labor shortages in agriculture. Although opportunity came for black workers and women later than it did for white male workers, the war brought a radical improvement in economic conditions and raised expectations for all Americans. That the raised expectations of women and racial minorities were not fulfilled after the war meant that the increased opportunity of wartime actually helped sow the seeds for the civil rights movement and other social movements to follow.
Discussion of the Literature
The historiography of labor and working-class life and struggles in the United States originated in the labor economics movement of Progressive Era intellectuals. This was the stuff of big institutions. John R. Commons at the University of Wisconsin built on the work of earlier labor economists, including Richard T. Ely. Together, Commons and students like Selig Perlman developed a new field of institutional labor history. Taking for granted the growth of industrial production and market relations, they rather optimistically sought to understand the role that workers’ self-organization had played in the rise of labor in a U.S. context defined by American workers who were generally narrowly “job-conscious” rather than broadly “class-conscious” in their engagement with the state and industrial corporations. Emphasizing the significance of organized labor, and of trade unionism more specifically, as the key expression of American workers’ economic consciousness, the Commons School of labor history necessarily underestimated the importance of the vast majority of workers who were unorganized, and particularly missed the significance of women and racial minorities in the workforce.
Since the 1980s, there has been a persistent sense that the field of labor history has been in a crisis, even as the production of labor and working-class scholarship has hardly slowed. With the cast of characters growing and local case studies multiplying every year, some observers wondered if a synthesis of the literature was possible. Was there ever such a thing that could be defined as the American labor and working-class history? Moreover, poststructuralism and postmodern cultural criticism called into question whether “class” could serve as a unifying concept. As Joan Wallach Scott would explain, it was not enough just to add women (or black workers, or immigrant workers, etc.) to the stage of history. It was not even enough to recover the experiences of previously underrepresented workers as some sort of objective evidence for what it meant to be different kinds of working-class people. Historians had to give up the notion that any social category—race, class, gender, sexuality—had any content outside of its historical context in that moment. They had to focus on the ways that people constantly create and re-create their identities; it was argued that it may be all one can do to explain that process of conscious and unconscious creation of self in a world that cannot be known as a whole.
To make matters more difficult for labor historians, as poststructuralism questioned the very categories historians had used to make sense of the past, beginning in the 1980s the political world around them was destroying the very institutions—labor unions—that had given the field coherence. Given the near decimation of organized labor, the decline of manufacturing jobs, and the diversification of the politics and social positions of working-class people, historians have had to rethink the assumptions of the field. No longer could it be taken for granted that a kind of interest-group politics and “business unionism” would be part of the American political economy.
As the implications of Reaganism and Thatcherism, as well as the triangulating centrism of the “New Democrats,” became clearer, historians began to explore labor and working-class history in a kind of blue mood. Some have pushed to “bring the state back in” to the story of working-class history in order to highlight the persistent dominance of anti-labor law and government subsidization of finance and manufacturing, as well as the concomitant weakness of workers in the capitalist system. Others have focused on why American workers have built a mode of labor so deeply intertwined with the ideologies and institutions of private property, empire, and racial and gender exclusion. For many, the watchwords became hegemony, agency, infrapolitics, resistance, identity, and culture, as they sought to shed light on the power of the state, corporate leaders, and employers to bring about workers’ accommodation to regimes of inequity or, alternatively, how even the most subordinated workers had managed to make their own history. This latter work, which had been initiated earlier by feminist and black historians, reshaped the investigations of all workers, bringing questions of whiteness, gender identity, and sexuality to the fore.
The nearly complete triumph of anti-union politics, together with the global resurgence of economic inequality, has been so dramatic that historians have become skeptical of the value of recovering histories of workers’ agency. To be sure, with the ripples of mass militancy in the early 21st century there has been some effort to recover lost traditions of radicalism. But, generally speaking, the current conditions have become so reminiscent of the turn of the 20th century that historians have come to look for continuities not just of radicalism, but also of the connections among American imperialism, economic growth, and workers’ positions in a persistently unequal global economy. The historian Leon Fink, for instance, has joined a growing group of scholars in arguing that the history of American workers must be understood in light of transnational economic and political dynamics, and the evolution of global capitalism. In part, these histories counter notions that we live in a postracial, classless society where inequality is a sign of a healthy economy. But they are also attempts to make a clear-eyed assessment of the continuities in combined corporate and state power, whether one looks, for example, at the control of workers in the Panama Canal Zone or at the place of “unskilled” workers in a globalizing economy in the “Long Gilded Age.”