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VII. BREAKTHROUGH OF<br />
THE C.I.O.<br />
It is a revealing comparison that during the 1930s<br />
the European imperialists could only resolve the social<br />
crisis in Italy, Germany, Spain, Poland, Finland,<br />
Rumania, and so on, by introducing fascism, while in the<br />
U.S. the imperialists resolved the social crisis with the New<br />
Deal. In Germany the workers were hit with the Gestapo,<br />
while in Amerika they got the C.I.O. industrial unions.<br />
In that decade the white industrial proletariat<br />
unified itself, pushed aside the dead hand of the old<br />
A.F.L. labor aristocracy, and in a crushing series of sitdown<br />
strikes won tremendous increases in wages and<br />
working conditions. For the first time the new white industrial<br />
proletariat forced the corporations to surrender<br />
their despotic control over industrial life.<br />
The Eastern and Southern European immigrant<br />
national minorities won the "better life" that<br />
Americanization promised them. They became full citizens<br />
of the U.S. emtire. and, with the rest of the white industrial<br />
proletariat, won rights and privileges both inside<br />
and outside the factories. In return, as U.S. imperialism<br />
launched its drive for world hegemony, it could depend<br />
upon the armies of solidly united settlers serving imperialism<br />
at home and on the battlefield. To insure socia!<br />
stability, the new government-sponsored unions of the<br />
C. I .O. absorbed the industrial struggle and helped<br />
discipline class relations.<br />
1. Unification of the White Workers<br />
The working class upsurge of the 1930s was not ac- Iron and Steel Workers, whose 24,000 members in 1891 accumulated<br />
discontents. This is the common, but shallow, counted for 2/3rds of all craftsmen in the industry, had<br />
view of mass outbreaks. What is true is that material con- dwindled to only 6,500 members by 1914. (4)<br />
ditions, including the relation to production, shape and<br />
reshape all classes and strata. These classes and strata then<br />
Mechanization also wiped out whole sections of<br />
express characteristic political consciousness, the very bottom factory laborers, replacing shovels with<br />
characteristic roles in the class struggle.<br />
mechanical scoo~s. wheelbarrows with electric trollevs and<br />
cranes. Both top and bottom layers of the &ctory<br />
workforce were increasingly pulled into the growing middle<br />
stratum of semi-skilled, production line assemblers and<br />
machine operators. In the modern auto plants of the 1920s<br />
some 70% were semi-skilled production workers, while only<br />
10% were skilled craftsmen and 15% laborers.(5) The<br />
political unification of the white workers thus had its<br />
material roots in the enforced unification of labor in the<br />
modern factory.<br />
The unification of the white industrial workforce<br />
was the result of immense pressures. Its long-range<br />
material basis was the mechanization and imperialist<br />
reorganization of production. In the late 19th century it<br />
was still true that in many industries the skilled craftsmen<br />
literally ran production. They - not the company -<br />
would decide how the work was done. Combining the<br />
functions of artisan, foreman, and personnel office, these<br />
skilled craftsmen would directly hire and boss their entire<br />
work crew of laborers, paying them out of a set fee paid by<br />
the capitalist per ton or piece produced (the balance being<br />
their wage-profit).<br />
The master roller in the sheet metal rolling mill,<br />
the puddler in the iron mill, the buttie in the coal mine, the<br />
carriage builder in the early auto plant all exemplified this<br />
stage of production. The same craft system applied to gun<br />
factories, carpet mills, stone quarries etc. etc. (1) It was<br />
these highly privileged settler craftsmen who were the base<br />
of the old A.F.L. unions. Their income reflected their lofty<br />
positions above the laboring masses. In 1884, for example,<br />
master rollers in East St. Louis earned $42 per week (a then<br />
very considerable wage), over four times more than<br />
laborers they bossed.(2)<br />
This petit-bourgeois income and role gradually<br />
crumbled as capitalists reorganized and seized ever tighter<br />
control over production. A survey by the U.S. Bureau of<br />
Labor found that the number of skilled steel workers earning<br />
606 an hour fell by 20% between 1900-1910.(3)<br />
Mechanization cut the ranks of craftsmen, and, even<br />
where they remained, their once-powerful role in production<br />
had shrunk. The A.F.L. Amalgamated Association of<br />
The 1929 depression was also a great equalizer and<br />
a sharp blow to many settlers, knocking them off their<br />
conservative bias. During the 1930s roughly 25% of the<br />
U.S. Empire was unemployed. Office clerks, craftsmen,<br />
and college students rubbed shoulders with laborers and<br />
farmers in the relief lines. Many divisions broke down, as<br />
midwestern and Southern rural whites migrated to the industrial<br />
cities in search of jobs or relief. In 1929 it was<br />
estimated that in Detroit alone there were some 75,000<br />
young men (the "Suitcase Brigade") who had come from<br />
the countryside to find jobs in the auto plants. (6)<br />
The depression not only helped unite the settler<br />
workers, but the social catastrophe pushed large sections<br />
of other settler classes towards more sympathy with social<br />
reform. Small farmers were being forced wholesale into<br />
bankruptcy and were conducting militant struggles of their<br />
own. Professionals, intellectuals, and even many small<br />
businessmen, felt victimized by corporate domination of<br />
the economy. Militancy and radicalism became teinporarily<br />
respectable. When white labor started punching out it<br />
would not only be stronger than before, but much of set-<br />
76 tler society would be sympathetic to it.