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himself as dictator; the DuPonts, whose dollars were earned<br />
with the blood of American soldiers; Morgan, financier<br />
of war."<br />
Thousands of boos followed each name. Then,<br />
with the crowds worked up against their hated exploiters,<br />
the Presidential motorcade drove into the stadium to frenzied<br />
cheering. The observer wrote of Roosevelt's entry:<br />
"'He entered in an open car. It might have been the chariot<br />
of a Roman Emperor. " (17)<br />
So it was not just the social concessions that the<br />
government made; the deep allegiance of the Euro-<br />
Arnerikan workers to this new Leader and his New Deal<br />
movement was born in the feeling that he truly spoke for<br />
their class interests. This was no accident. Nations and<br />
classes in the long run get the leadership they deserve.<br />
mm<br />
WORK<br />
In order to end the company-town feudalism of<br />
their communities, the CIO unionists took their new-found<br />
strength into the bourgeois political arena. The massed<br />
voting base of the new unions was the bedrock of the New<br />
Deal in the industrial states. The union activists themselves<br />
merged into and became part of the imperialist New Deal.<br />
Bob Travis, the Communist Party militant who was the<br />
organizer of the Flint Sit-Down, proudly told the 1937<br />
UAW Convention:<br />
"We have also not remained blind to utilizing the<br />
city's political situation to the union's advantage,<br />
whenever possible. In this way, for five months after the<br />
strike, we were able to consolidate a 5-4 pro-labor majority<br />
bloc in the city commission, get a pro-labor city manager<br />
appointed, and bring about the dismissal of a vicious<br />
police chief, notorious as a strike-breaker."<br />
By 1958, Robert Carter, the UAW Regional Director<br />
for Flint-Lansing, could resign to become Flint City<br />
Manager. Things had come full circle. Once outsiders<br />
challenging the local establishment, then angry reformers,<br />
the union was now part of the local bourgeois political<br />
structure.<br />
Nor was this limited to Euro-Amerikans. Coleman<br />
Young (Mayor of Detroit), John Conyers (U.S. Congressman),<br />
and many other Afrikan politicians got their<br />
start as young CIO staff members. In Hawaii, the<br />
Japanese workers in the CIO International<br />
Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union became the<br />
active base of the Democratic Party's takeover of<br />
Hawaiian bourgeois politics after the war. The CIO unions<br />
became an essential gear in the liberal reform machine of<br />
the Democratic Party. (1 8).<br />
A significant factor in the success of the 1930s<br />
union organizing drives was the U.S. Government's refusal<br />
to use armed repression against it. No U.S. armed repression<br />
against Euro-Amerikan workers took place from<br />
January, 1933 (when Roosevelt took office) until the June,<br />
1941 North American Aviation strike in California. The<br />
U.S. Government understood that the masses of Euro-<br />
Amerikan industrial workers were still loyal settlers, committed<br />
to U.S. Imperialism. To overreact to their economic<br />
struggles would only further radicalize them. Besides, why<br />
should President Roosevelt have ordered out the FBI or<br />
U.S. Army to break up the admiring supporters of his own<br />
Democratic Party?<br />
Attempts by the reactionary wing of the<br />
bourgeoisie to return to the non-union past by wholesale<br />
repression were opposed by the New Deal. In the 1934<br />
West Coast longshore strike (which in San Francisco<br />
became a general strike after the police killed two strikers),<br />
President Roosevelt refused to militarily intervene, despite<br />
the fact that the governors of Oregon and Washington requested<br />
that he do so.<br />
In speaking for the shipping companies and<br />
business interests on the Coast, Oregon Gov. Meier<br />
telegraphed Roosevelt that troops were needed because:<br />
"We are now in a state of armed hostilities. The situation<br />
is complicated by communistic interference. It is now<br />
beyond the reach of State authorities.. .insurrection which<br />
if not checked will develop into civil war." Roosevelt<br />
publicly scorned this demand. It is telling that at the most<br />
violent period of the strike a picture of President Roosevelt<br />
hung in the longshoremen's union office in San Francisco.<br />
This was the universal pattern in the industrial<br />
areas. In Anderson, Indiana, the auto workers at GM<br />
Guide Lamp took over the plant in a 1937 Sit-Down. By<br />
1942, strike leader Riley Etchison was a member of the<br />
local draft board. Another Sit-Downer was the new<br />
sheriff. John Mullen, the Steelworkers union leader at<br />
U.S. Steel's Clairton, Pa. works, went on to become the<br />
Mayor, as did Steelworkers local leader Elmer Maloy in<br />
DuQuesne, Pa. Everywhere the young CIO activists integrated<br />
into the local Democratic Party as a force for<br />
patriotic reform.