title

:

Solidarity & Survival : An Oral History of Iowa Labor in the Twentieth Century

author

:

Stromquist, Shelton.

publisher

:

University of Iowa Press

isbn10 | asin

:

0877454310

print isbn13

:

9780877454311

ebook isbn13

:

9781587292293

language

:

English

subject

Labor movement--Iowa--History--20th century, Labor unions--Iowa--History--20th century.

publication date

:

1993

lcc

:

HD8083.I8S77 1993eb

ddc

:

331.8/09777

subject

:

Labor movement--Iowa--History--20th century, Labor unions--Iowa--History--20th century.

Page i

Solidarity & Survival

Page ii

Page iii

Solidarity & Survival

An Oral History of Iowa Labor in the Twentieth Century

Shelton Stromquist

University of Iowa Press Iowa City

Page iv

University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242

Copyright © 1993 by the University of Iowa Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

Design by Richard Hendel

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed on acid-free paper

FRONTISPIECE

Iowa CIO convention, Cedar Rapids, August 20-22, 1942. State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stromquist, Shelton, 1943

Solidarity and survival: an oral history of Iowa labor in the twentieth century / Shelton Stromquist.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-87745-430-2, ISBN 0-87745-431-0 (paper)

1. Labor movement Iowa History

20th century. 2. Trade-unions Iowa

History 20th century. I. Title.

HD8083.18S77 1993

331.8'09777 dc20                       93-13805

CIP

Rev.

97 96 95 94 93 C 5 4 3 2 1

97 96 95 94 93 P 5 4 3 2 1

Page v

FOR

MARJORIE

WILSON

STROMQUIST,

who taught me

love and justice

Page vii

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

1

1. Origins and Traditions: The Making of an Iowa Labor Movement

19

From Old World to New: Immigrant Origins of Iowa Workers

21

Off the Farm: Rural Recruits for Iowa's Working Class

25

Out of the Mines: Life in Iowa's Coal Camps

28

In the Harvest Fields: Wobblies and the Lessons of Solidarity

37

Union Traditions: The Power of Solidarity

42

2. Conditions of Work Before the Union

51

The Chasm of Class

53

"I Could Not Believe Such a Place Existed": Working Conditions Before the Union

56

"It Was a Madhouse": Management Authority and Workers' Rights

61

The Wolf at the Door: Unemployment and the Search for Work

69

Nothing to Lose: Surviving Hard Times

73

3. Rebuilding the House of Labor in the 1930s

79

Iowa Coal Miners and the Rebirth of Unionism

82

Divided We Fail: The Barriers of Race and Ethnicity

84

"The President Wants You to Join a Union": Organizing under the NRA

90

The Inner Struggle: Company Unions and Industrial Unions

95

Building from the Bottom: Organizing on the Shopfloor

98

From Organizing Committee to International Union: The PWOC

111

4. Work and War: Securing the Union

123

Opening Doors: Women and War Work

126

Challenging Barriers: Black Workers and the War

134

Union Building in Wartime: Security and Restraint

139

Page viii

5. Promise and Perils of the Postwar Era

149

Coming Home: "It Was a Different Place to Work In"

151

Shifting Tides of Postwar Politics: Taft-Hartley and the Right to Work

156

Divisions in the Ranks: The Uses of Anticommunism

161

The Fight over Farm Equipment: UAW vs. FE

168

The Packinghouse Workers' "Waterloo": The 1948 Strike

175

6. The World of the Shopfloor in the 1950s

187

Danger Zone: Postwar Conflict over Speed and Safety

189

"Blood Money": The Struggle for Control of Incentives

191

Striking Back: Wildcats and Union Power in the 1950s

200

A Whirlwind of Bitterness: The John Deere Strike of 1950

208

7. Coming to Terms: Gender, Race, and the New Solidarity

215

Shifting Boundaries: Women Working in a "Man's World"

218

Equal Rights and Seniority: Packinghouse Women Fight for Their Jobs

224

Remaking Solidarity: From Union Maids to Union Sisters

234

The Legacy of Jim Crow: Unions and the Fight for Racial Equality

243

8. Politics and the Renewal of the Labor Movement

261

Practical Solidarity: Union Mergers in the Corporate Age

263

With Their Own Hands: Rebuilding Unions from Below

272

Coming of Age: The New Politics of Labor

282

Reshaping Communities: The Politics of Community Service

294

Epilogue

301

Appendix: Interviewees in the Iowa Labor History Oral Project

311

Index

337

Page ix

Acknowledgments

More than most books, an oral history by its very nature is a collaborative project. And more than most oral histories, this book is the work of many hands and voices. When this project was launched, I had little idea how true this would prove to be.

The project, as I first conceived it, was only possible because of the commitment of the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, to collect oral histories of its members on a scale not previously undertaken by any state labor movement. Under president Hugh Clark and secretary-treasurer Jim Wengert, the Iowa Federation of Labor undertook a project to document the history of Iowa labor. Begun with voluntary contributions from affiliated unions, the Iowa Labor History Oral Project (ILHOP) was granted a one cent per capita tax of all members in affiliated unions at the 1975 convention. Those dues supplemented by contributions from the United Auto Workers and the Teamsters made it possible to carry out the work of the project. Since that time, four different interviewers have traveled throughout the state to collect the stories of rank-and-file workers, local trade union activists, and statewide leaders. They interviewed roughly a thousand workers representing a cross section of trades, unions, and communities in the state. The Federation had the tape-recorded interviews transcribed and deposited for safekeeping with the State Historical Society of Iowa (Iowa City branch). Wengert, president of the Federation after 1979, and Mark Smith, secretary-treasurer, put together an advisory board of historians, educators, and trade unionists to supervise the project. The board has served with no pay but with great distinction.

The Iowa Labor History Oral Project constitutes one of the most impressive collections of interviews with workers in the country. Without it, this book would not exist. Through prosperous and lean times, the Federation and its leadership remained dedicated to the project they had begun. They believed, as Mark Smith put it, that "we can't afford to lose the history that is out there." The interviewersPaul Kelso, Gregory Zieren, Merle Davis, and Dan Holubbrought a special dedication and their own interests in labor history to bear on the work. Greg Zieren discussed his interviewing experiences with me on numerous occasions, read a large portion of the manuscript, and offered useful advice on the organization of the book. Merle Davis was an invaluable resource. He generously shared with me his encyclopedic knowledge of the state's labor movement and the oral history

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collection. He pointed out jewels in the vast collection that I might easily have missed and read the entire manuscript with a painstaking attention to detail that has saved me from many errors. The interviews were transcribed with great care by Mona Lepic and Janet Clements.

The Special Collections staff of the State Historical Society in Iowa City have been dedicated stewards of the collection. Early on Joyce Giaquinta recognized the collection's importance. Mary Bennett oversaw its initial processing and organization and facilitated my use of it in more ways than I can begin to enumerate. She provided great assistance in locating and selecting the photographs. David Kinnett and Eric Austin were most accommodating to my episodic, last-minute requests.

I have been the beneficiary of the skills of graduate research assistants from the University of Iowa History Department. Dan Swinarski helped locate the interviews that formed the initial core of material with which I worked. Matt Boyle, Paul Young, Mark Stemen, George Patterson, Patricia Reid, and my undergraduate assistant Sara Wilk helped carry the project along at different stages. I am grateful to Marilyn Kirkpatrick and P. Michael Conn of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Iowa for permitting me to use the college's optical scanner. It saved me more hours than I can calculate. In the final stages of the manuscript's preparation, I was the beneficiary of a semester's developmental assignment at the University of Iowa's Center for Advanced Study. I am especially grateful for the congenial and productive time there that Jay Semel and Lorna Olson helped make possible.

As the book neared completion, I had the good advice of colleagues and fellow historians who were willing to plow through rough drafts. Mark Smith and Roberta Till-Retz, in addition to Merle Davis and Greg Zieren, read the entire manuscript and made innumerable helpful suggestions for its improvement. Peter Rachleff gave a longer version of this book an astute and thoughtful reading. His suggestions helped focus and trim the text in useful ways. Ellis Hawley, Fred Adams, and Ralph Scharnau, all members of the advisory board of ILHOP, took the time to read and give me the benefit of their insights into specific chapters. None is, of course, responsible for how successfully I followed their advice.

My interest in labor history was first stirred by my mother's trade union activism in the 1950s. Marjorie Stromquist watched with great interest as this project unfolded and urged me to keep at it. She died just a few months before its completion, but it bears the marks of her principles and her spirit. The daily bonds of love and joy I share with Ann Mullin Stromquist and Chris, Matt, and Elizabeth made this book and so much else possible.

Page xi

I came to this project a neophyte in Iowa labor history. More than anyone else, the union workers who were interviewed taught me what to look for. It is to them that I owe the greatest debt.

A Note on Method

The interview material in this book is drawn from a vast collectionalmost a thousand interviews and perhaps as many as fifty thousand pages of transcript. (A list of all persons interviewed is in the appendix.) With only a couple of exceptions, I worked exclusively with the transcripts. While I reviewed a very substantial segment of the collection directly, I inevitably had to depend on topic summary sheets prepared by the interviewers and on the very good memories of Gregory Zieren and Merle Davis to help find my way through the collection.

I did the editing in stages. At each step in the process I made a conscientious effort to preserve the meaning and language of the person interviewed. Quite obviously, I eliminated the interviewers' questions from the text. In the interests of clarity and readability, I combined portions of answers to different questions where the relationship was clear and eliminated repetition or colloquialisms that did not affect the meaning. I chose not to use ellipses to indicate the resulting breaks in the original text because to include them would have made the story harder to follow.

I did not tamper with the language of the interviewees. None of us speaks ''perfect'' English, and any text of spoken prose must take certain grammatical liberties if it is to be authentic. I wanted the text to convey the rhythm, phrasing, and individuality of the person telling the story.

This is an oral history. It was not my intention to write a book in which oral "evidence" would be measured against other kinds of evidence to arrive at a fully elaborated analytical account. This is history as it was experienced and remembered and interpreted by the participants. Errors of fact are almost certainly present, at least as those "facts" might be understood by someone else. I have selected interviews with an eye to presenting a reasonably comprehensive and complex story. It is not complete. It is constructed around insightful and compelling stories told from the perspective of individuals, with all of the biases and limitations that others might find in them. Certain individuals, trades, and communities may be overrepresented. In selecting material I have consistently tried to reflect the complexity of the history and a diversity of voices and perspectives, while making space for stories that are well told.

Page xii

I am not, however, a mere conduit for these stories. In selecting and editing them, I have inevitably privileged certain themes and found certain accounts persuasive. In some cases stories were simply so well told that I could not resist including them. In others I saw a theme in the fragments of a number of stories that I believed simply had to be incorporated. In these respects my intervention is not much different from that of any historian working with a body of evidence. The main difference is that in this book, more than in many histories, the evidence, for the most part, speaks for itself.

Page 1

Introduction

Official seal, Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL, 1927. A variation on the official

seal of the state of Iowa. State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

Page 2

In the lives of Iowa workers is etched the history of the labor movement they built. The imprint of their stories constitutes a record that is rich and deep. Those stories give human measure to the changes that swept across the economic landscape of Iowa and the nation in the twentieth century. They tell of workers as agents of their own lives and communities.

The stories told in these pages span the experiences of at least three generations of workers. In the early years of the century a generation came of age and entered the mines and factories of the state. They carried with them the union traditions of their nineteenth-century forebears, but except in the mines, on the rails, and among some crafts, most worked without the protection of unions. Their efforts to organize lay a foundation for the unprecedented union edifice that would rise in the 1930s.

A generation of union-builders followed in their footsteps. To them came the heroic tasks of the 1930s and 1940s, years of depression and war that transformed industrial life in America. Their imaginations were fired by a vision of America as a land of promise for workers and their families.

A third generation inherited the unions constructed by their predecessors. In the rapidly changing postwar economy they sought both to preserve and perfect their inheritance. Postwar conditions exacerbated internal divisions within American unions but also ignited forces for democratic reform that eventually swung open union doors to fuller participation by women and minority workers. Even as the percentage of organized workers declined after the mid-1950s, diversity within the labor movement grew. New and more profound crises loomed for the generation that would inherit Iowa unions in the 1970s and 1980s.

Iowa Profiles

The lives of three Iowa workers, Harry Booth, Don Harris, and Ethel Jerred, embody, at least in part, the work of their respective generations. Harry Booth was just a child when the new century dawned. His world did not reach much beyond the little mining village of Lost Creek in Mahaska County, Iowa. But he was old enough to remember talk of the Commonwealers who had made their way across the state just a few years before, taking their "petition in boots" for unemployed relief to Washington, D.C. In 1902, as an eight-year-old boy, he watched from his porch as his father and other miners hauled badly burned bodies from the Lost Creek mine after disaster struck. He saw mothers and sisters working frantically to cover the burned flesh of those still alive with a salve of goose grease.

Page 3

After World War I, like many others of his generation, Booth exchanged work in the mines for that of the factory. At Ford in Des Moines, he found a world that made no sense. Arbitrary and constantly changing rules governed his life at work, and suffocating supervision, which extended to his life outside the plant, led him and others to seek the protection of a union. His background in the mines came in handy.

Don Harris's family moved off a farm in central Iowa during the agricultural depression of the 1920s. They brought their pride with them to Des Moines. Harris's grandfather had fought to free the slaves in the Civil War, and as depression settled over the rest of the country after 1929, conditions seemed to him to demand a new fight against "wage-slavery." In 1933, as workers began to lift their heads and believe they could do something about their condition, Harris joined others at Rollins Hosiery to organize a fledgling union. The youthful Rollins workers threw their energies into organizing drives across the city. For a time it seemed they hardly slept. Harris's talents were recognized by others. Appointed state director of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), he helped form an organizing committee among packinghouse workers and was named national director of organization for the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC).

Harris's left-wing sympathies and finely honed class consciousness made him a particularly dedicated organizer. As the CIO took shape out of constellations of local independent unions, he was caught in a matrix of internal political conflict and red-baiting and resigned. He eventually found a congenial home as an organizer for the Farm Equipment Workers (FE), one of many CIO unions mercilessly attacked for being "Communist dominated" during the McCarthy era. Harris, the radical pragmatist, became an architect of the agreement with the United Auto Workers (UAW) that brought an end to membership raiding in the farm equipment industry. He spent his last working years on the staff of the UAW.

Ethel Jerred grew up in Ottumwa during the Great Depression. Unions were not part of her background. Just after the outbreak of World War II she married, but her new husband was soon called to the service. Working as a servant in the home of a local businessman, she seized the chance to become a wartime packinghouse worker. War work meant higher income, new opportunities in formerly "male" departments in the packinghouse, and the satisfaction of building a strong union in a bitterly antiunion industry. But at the war's end, she went back to "female" work in the sliced bacon department. She accepted the new terms of employment; the company and the union defined it as her patriotic: duty. But it made her uneasy.

Over the next two decades, company incentive pay and work rationali-

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zation schemes brought technological changes and the loss of jobs. Most of the losers were in "women's" departments. Despite greater seniority, women found they had no claim on the "men's" jobs they had done during the war. With the company and the union ignoring their concerns, Ethel Jerred and other women turned to the new civil rights legislation of the 1960s and to their collective strength as women and union members to remedy their situation. In the process they forged a new solidarity in the labor movement. Like Harry Booth and Don Harris, Ethel Jerred's story reshapes our understanding of the labor movement that generations of workers in this century built.

Nineteenth-Century Origins

Iowa proved to be fertile soil for the development of a vigorous and progressive twentieth-century labor movement, despite the state's early specialization in agriculture. Located in the country's midsection between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, crosscut by numerous rail lines that linked its producers and consumers to distant markets, Iowa's economic identity was defined by a logic of natural advantages and regional specialization that emphasized agriculture. But the story is more complex.

From its settlement in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Iowa's agricultural economy required an industrial infrastructure. Transcontinental rail traffic needed a small army of railroad workers stationed at regular intervals and plentiful supplies of coal. Railroad towns and mining villages in the interior counties sprang into existence to meet that demand. Commercially oriented farmers demanded equipment manufactured to meet the local requirements of a technologically innovative farm sector. Despite the logic of corporate consolidation after 1880 and the availability of refrigerated transportation, meat-packing and grain-milling enjoyed certain local efficiencies. As these industries thrived in small and medium-sized cities, they spawned building construction, consumer goods manufacturing, service sector employment, and a capital goods industry, all of which diversified the state's economic profile. With increasing diversification, Iowa's working class came to look more and more like that of the country as a whole.

In the nineteenth century Iowa workers were drawn from many sources. German, British, Irish, Dutch, and Scandinavian immigrants joined Yankee and upper South migrants to settle the state. In growing towns and cities,

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immigrants mingled with the first generations of dispossessed farmers driven from the land by the rising costs of farming and falling crop prices during the 1880s and 1890s. Mining villages in the central and south-central counties attracted experienced Welsh, English, Irish, and Belgian miners along with infusions late in the century of southern blacks, Swedes, Italians, and Slavs.

Iowa lay in the heartland of midwestern producerism. Its farmers and workers adopted organizations such as the Grange, the Farmers' Alliance, and the Knights of Labor that articulated an ideology hostile to the new constellations of economic power that denied the "producing classes" the fruits of their labor. Antimonopoly sentiment made the state a center of progressive economic and social reform between 1890 and 1914. Reform politics reshaped party competition. Although Iowa was dominated at the state level by a deeply factionalized Republican party, many cities produced strong Democratic majorities, and on occasion working class voters enlisted in the ranks of third partiesUnion Labor, Socialist, or Progressive.

Forging a Labor Movement

With the return of prosperity at the end of the century, after nearly three decades of economic depression, the Iowa labor movement looked very much like its national counterpart. The strongest union in the state, as in the nation, was the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Iowa's District 13 of the UMWA was a center of progressive industrial unionism in a state labor movement dominated by craft workersmachinists, printers, building tradesmen, railroad operating employees. Organized in 1893, the Iowa Federation of Labor spoke for a growing but still narrow stratum of the state's working class. The vast majority of mass production workers lay outside the ranks of organized labor. Bitter strikes erupted occasionally among the less-skilledtelephone workers in Des Moines in 1902, street car employees in Dubuque in 1903, button workers in Muscatine in 1911but until World War I most workers were without the protection of unions.

Iowa's highly productive countryside was honeycombed with small towns and industrial cities that serviced agriculture and processed and transported its commodities. Large concentrations of railroad workers lived in dozens of division towns like Creston, Boone, Belle Plaine, and Oelwein. Coal min-

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Industrial towns and citiesa in Iowa and adjacent states. Mining areas are shaded.

Map by Pat Conrad.

(image continued on next page)

Page 7

(image continued from previous page)

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ers by the hundreds resided in small mining villagesMystic, Hocking, Brazil, Buxton, Hiteman. The older river towns of the Mississippi and Missouri valleys had established regional dominance in the mid-nineteenth century. Even before the turn of the century, Dubuque, Clinton, Davenport, Muscatine, Burlington, and Keokuk on the Mississippi and Sioux City and Council Bluffs on the Missouri used their locational advantages in the transportation network to attract a substantial manufacturing base.

Two key manufacturing sectorsmeat-packing and farm equipmentlay at the heart of Iowa's industrial development in the twentieth century. Although meat-packing had become a trustified industry dominated by Chicago's "Big Four" (Wilson, Armour, Cudahy, Swift), smaller packers close to the supply of livestock survived industrial consolidation and flourished. For independent packers in towns like Mason City, Ottumwa, Waterloo, Sioux City, and Cedar Rapids, the development of truck transportation in the 1920s secured their competitiveness but also paved the way for new rounds of consolidation in the Great Depression and after.

Farm equipment manufacturing was dispersed and highly competitive. Small and medium-sized independents vied with branch plants of larger firms in the Tri-Cities (later Quad Cities), Waterloo, Charles City, Des Moines, and Dubuque to meet the rapidly changing technological needs of farmers in the twentieth century. Despite depressed agricultural prices, the increased use of tractors in the 1920s and 1930s brought expansion in the farm equipment sector.

In both meat-packing and farm equipment a fierce anti-union spirit among employers succeeded in stifling the spread of industrial unionism before the 1930s. Only small craft unions of skilled butchers and machinists successfully organized within these vast factory complexes. Large numbers of less-skilled workers, drawn from the countryside or from the immigrant and black enclaves in the larger towns, remained unorganized. Many of these workers had no previous experience with unions, but some did.

As Iowa's coal mines began shutting down in the 1920s, miners and their families abandoned the mining villages and found employment in the expanding meat-packing and farm equipment factories of the larger towns. In one sense they were a bounty for employers; they were seasoned workers accustomed to the discipline of wage work in an industrial environment. But they also proved to be a liability for antiunion employers. From their work in the mines, they brought a rich tradition of labor organization and a spirit of autonomy. They formed the core of the industrial unions that began organizing in the depths of the depression.

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A New Era: The Making of Industrial Unions

The stories that Iowa workers tell of their efforts to bring unions into their workplaces and their communities are dominated by several themes. A generational gulf separated the young workers of the depression era from their parents. They witnessed the personal toll that defeat in packinghouses in 1921 and in the railroad shops in 1922 took on their elders, and they imbibed the harsh lessons of those defeats. They were members of a new working classmore Americanized and more intolerant of class divisions. Depression conditions sent thousands migrating across the country in search of employment. Encounters with remnants of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) fired the imaginations of some and stirred their anger at the conditions of work in the communities to which they returned.

Iowa workers describe in poignant detail the process by which industrial unions were constructed on new foundations. They convey the exhilaration that identification with the letters C I O brought to their local efforts, and they recount the spontaneous solidarity of carloads of young men and women racing from one picket line to another. Infused with a new and deeply felt solidarity, they faced formidable opposition.

No union campaign was ever complete and no victory secure until the Second World War altered the field. of industrial battle in permanent ways. Iowa workers gained new power in the context of the feverish war economy. Antiunion employers broke rank to accept under government auspices a new world of collective bargaining.

Wartime gains brought institutional security of a sort the labor movement had never seen before. That security was not without its cost. New bureaucratic proceduresmaintenance of membership and dues checkoffcreated some distance between union leaders and the rank and file. No-strike pledges stifled but did not eliminate shopfloor grievances.

The entry of unprecedented numbers of women and black workers into the mass production industries permanently changed the ranks of the working class. Men who went off to war spoke of the new world of work they encountered on their return. Unions were more secure and powerful than they had imagined was possible. Traditional workplace boundaries that separated men and women, white and black, were dissolving. Everything was changed.

The most dramatic change was in the balance of power on the shopfloor. Job improvements had been guaranteed by a federal government desirous of uninterrupted production during the war. With a new assertiveness workers

Page 10

defended and augmented those gains. Emboldened by victories on other battlefields, returning war veterans were unwilling to tolerate the petty shopfloor tyrannies that had been commonplace only a few years before. What the interviews describe most tellingly is an ongoing struggle between managers and workers for control of the shopfloor. Although the struggle continued into the 1950s and beyond, some unions conceded certain ''rights'' to management in return for a wider range of benefits and a measure of income security.

Companies deployed a variety of weapons in this battle for control. New incentive pay plans pitted one worker against another; time-study schemes were used to measure and redefine jobs; and rapidly changing technologies disrupted seniority systems and spread discord between men and women, blacks and whites, and young and old.

Crisis and Conflict in the Postwar Era

Histories of post-World War II labor have been dominated by accounts of the divisive effects of the Taft-Hartley Act passed in 1947 and the spreading virus of anticommunism that infected one CIO union after another. These themes are part of the Iowa story as well. Tens of thousands of Iowa workers took a "holiday" from work in 1947 to descend on the state capitol and protest the passage of a state right-to-work law, a byproduct of Taft-Hartley. One of the strongest and most militant industrial unions in the state, the Farm Equipment Workers (FE), became the object of merciless raiding by rival unions when its officers refused to sign the Taft-Hartley non-Communist affidavits and thereby lost collective bargaining rights under the National Labor Relations Act.

Despite the adversity brought on by Taft-Hartley and the spreading antiunion sentiment of the immediate postwar years, the generation of workers that came of age in the war and its immediate aftermath weathered these difficulties and rebuilt their unions in the 1950s and 1960s. Some unions never lost their position of strength on the shopfloor. Numerous workers describe finely tuned wildcat strikes, even in the face of Taft-Hartley prohibitions, in which workers protected their health and safety and defended their solidarity against divisive incentive pay systems. Major strike defeats in the packinghouses (1948) and farm equipment plants (John Deere, 1950) spurred the members of these unions to adopt more creative and aggressive organizing strategies to rebuild their strength. The activism of larger numbers of women and black workers renewed the

Page 11

spirit of union democracy, enlarged participation, brought in new leaders, and revitalized the organizations. "Social unionists" expanded the influence of their unions into the community and carried out a broader campaign of social reform.

Political power had generally eluded workers in a state dominated by the Republican party. But labor's economic victories brought increased political influence in their wake. Slowly, painstakingly, through the efforts of city federations and the Iowa Federation of Labor, a new political age for workers dawned. The merger of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the CIO in 1955 and the Amalgamated Meatcutters and the United Packing-house Workers in 1968 strengthened that political base. Increasing numbers of legislators were elected with labor backing. They built coalitions that secured passage of liberalized unemployment and workmen's compensation legislation, and repeal of the state's right-to-work law came within one vote of succeeding. In the early 1970s, reapportionment based on "people not acres" secured a more competitive party system than the state had seen since the late nineteenth century.

Solidarity and Survival

Political victories mounted even as the labor movement in Iowa and the rest of the country faced a deepening crisis. Structural changes in the economy, deindustrialization, runaway shops, and renewed antiunionism among employers weakened and demoralized the ranks of the labor movement. Union leaders found themselves preoccupied with repairing the social damage left in the wake of plant closings and defending their legislative accomplishments as the state and the nation swung suddenly rightward in the uncertain economic climate of the 1970s and 1980s.

Despite recent hard times for the labor movement, one worker after another speaks of the "undreamed of" changes in their lives and the lives of their families that have occurred within a generation. These workers talk with pride not of their personal accomplishments but of their collective efforts. They cite a new, intangible dignity at work, the ability to educate their children, and security in their old age. They are frustrated with the low levels of participation by younger workers. They see a new era of union-busting that is devastating the dreams of workers who thought themselves secure. But their anger is tempered by an understanding of their own history. Their stories capture the precious solidarity they built into the fiber of their unions and their determination to see those unions survive and flourish.

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Sources

Iowa labor history is a rich but largely untapped vein. The Iowa Labor History Oral Project (ILHOP) collection and other labor history manuscripts at the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI) in Iowa City are the essential starting points for research on the twentieth century. The collection of almost a thousand interviews covers all industrial cities in the state and the entire breadth of unionized trades and industries. Complementing the oral histories is a fine manuscript collection of trade union records, including the records of United Mine Workers of America District 13, records of local packinghouse unions in Ottumwa, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, and Fort Dodge, Farm Equipment Workers records from the Quad Cities, International Association of Machinists records from Des Moines and Sioux City, and numerous other trade union records.

Late Nineteenth Century

On the late nineteenth-century labor movement in Iowa historians should begin with the recent work on the Knights of Labor. Ralph Scharnau has two important essays, "Workers and Politics: The Knights of Labor in Dubuque, Iowa, 18851890," Annals of Iowa 48 (Winter/Spring 1987): 353377 and "The Knights of Labor in Iowa," Annals of Iowa 50 (Spring 1991): 861891. Iowa miners carried out the proposed national general strike of miners for the eight-hour day in 1891; that story is effectively told in Bill Douglas, '''Fighting against Hope': Iowa Coal Miners and the 1891 Strike for the Eight-Hour Day,'' (ms., 1980). For an account of the march of Kelly's army across Iowa in 1894, see Carlos Schwantes, "Soldiers of Misfortune, Part I: Iowa's Railroads versus Kelly's Army of Unemployed, 1894," Annals of Iowa 46 (1983): 487509, and "Soldiers of Misfortune, Part II: Jack London, Kelly's Army, and the Struggle for Survival in Iowa," Annals of Iowa 46 (1983): 567592. The early history of the Iowa Federation of Labor is documented in Lorin Stuckey, The Iowa Federation of Labor (Iowa City, 1915). For a general account of the industrial history of Iowa, Keach Johnson, "Iowa's Industrial Roots: Some Social and Political Problems," Annals of Iowa 44 (1978): 247277, should be consulted; also Bernard Mergen, "A Quantitative Study of Wage Workers in Iowa, 1894," Annals of Iowa 41 (1972): 11141127. Two recent studies of nineteenth-century agricultural workers are Terry Ofner, "The 19th-Century Harvest Hand," and Merle Davis, "'You Were Just One of the Unfortunate Ones,'" both in the Palimpsest 70 (Summer 1989): 7086 and 96102. On the

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history of farmer and labor political activity in nineteenth-century Iowa, see Fred Haynes, Third Party Movements since the Civil War, with Special Reference to Iowa (Iowa City, 1916).

The most important scholarship on the development of the late nineteenth-century labor movement nationally includes three older studies: Selig Perlman, "Upheaval and Reorganization," in John R. Commons, ed., History of Labor in the United States, vol. 2 (New York, 19181935), Norman Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 18601895 (New York, 1929), and Philip Foner, A History of the Labor Movement in the United States, vol. 2 (New York, 1955). More recent work includes Herbert Gutman, Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America (New York, 1976), David Montgomery, Workers' Control in America (Cambridge, 1979), Leon Fink, Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana, 1983), and Richard Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation: Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit, 18751900 (Urbana, 1986). Shelton Stromquist, A Generation of Boomers: The Pattern of Railroad Labor Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Urbana, 1987) includes analysis of economic development and labor conflict in nineteenth-century Iowa. The most important synthetic treatment of labor in this period and the early twentieth century is David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 18651925 (New York, 1987).

19001920

Varied aspects of the history of the Iowa working class in the early twentieth century are examined in recent studies. Merle Davis provides an account of an important mining disaster in "Horror at Lost Creek: A 1902 Coal Mine Disaster," Palimpsest 71 (Fall 1990); Dorothy Schwieder has two important studies of Iowa coal miners, Black Diamonds: Life and Work in Iowa's Coal Mining Communities, 18951925 (Ames, 1983) and Schwieder et al., Buxton: Work and Racial Equality in a Coal Mining Community (Ames, 1987). The historical experience of working women is examined in Mary Allison Farley, "Iowa Women in the Workplace," Palimpsest 67 (Jan./Feb. 1986) and "Wage-earning Women in Dubuque, Iowa, 19101917: Their Position in the Labor Force and How They Remember That Experience" (Master's thesis, University of Iowa, 1985). Accounts of two important strikes before World War I are Ralph Scharnau, ''The Dubuque Streetcar Strike, 1903" (forthcoming in Labor's Heritage), and Kate Rousmaniere, "The Muscatine Button Workers' Strike, 191112: An Iowa

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Community in Conflict," Annals of Iowa 46 (1982): 243262. Two useful older studies are Ezekiel H. Downey, History of Labor Legislation in Iowa (Iowa City, 1910), and A. M. Jarvis, "Unionism in Iowa before 1914" (Master's thesis, University of Iowa, 1928). For particular cities, see Margaret Helen Knuth, "Interest and Activities of Dubuque Labor, September, 1906September, 1911, as Reported in the Dubuque Labor Herald" (Master's thesis, University of Iowa, 1941); on Davenport, Mark Friedberger, "Cornbelt and River City: Social Change in a Midwest Community, 18851930" (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1973); and on Ottumwa, Wilson J. Warren, "Workers and Labor Organizing at Morrell: A Quantitative Study of the Packing House Community of Ottumwa, Iowa, 18801915'' (ms., 1984). The history of Socialist party activities in Iowa is examined in three articles by William Cumberland, ''The Red Flag Comes to Iowa," Annals of Iowa 39 (1968): 441454, "John M. Work: Iowa Socialist," Palimpsest 64 (1983): 140148, and "The Davenport Socialists of 1920," Annals of Iowa 47 (1984): 451474; see also Dennis Deslippe, "'The Old Parties Stood No Show': Socialism in Hiteman, Iowa, 19001920" (unpublished seminar paper, University of Iowa, 1988).

Historical studies of the U.S. working class in the early twentieth century have been particularly rich in the very recent past. Noteworthy older studies include David Brody, Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era (New York, 1960), George E. Barnett, Chapters on Machinery and Industry (Cambridge, 1926), biographies of Samuel Gompers, William D. Haywood, and others in Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, eds., Labor Leaders in America (Urbana, 1987), Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: The History of Wage-earning Women in the United States (New York, 1982), and Stephen Meyer, Five Dollars a Day (Albany, 1982). A number of recent studies have explored particular industries and communities. Especially noteworthy are James Barrett, Work and Community in the 'Jungle': Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 18941922 (Urbana, 1987), Patricia Cooper, Once a Cigar Maker: Men, Women, and Work Culture in American Cigar Factories, 19001922 (Urbana, 1987), Ilene DeVault, Sons and Daughters of Labor: Class and Clerical Work in Turn-of-the-Century Pittsburgh (Cornell, 1990), and Michael Kazin, Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era (Urbana, 1987). Eric Arneson, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics, 18631923 (New York, 1991), and Ronald Lewis, Black Coal Miners in America (Lexington, 1987), are two important studies that focus on issues of race and class in specific sectors. Two quite different autobio-

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graphical accounts of the period are Samuel Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor (Ithaca, 1984), and Anton Johannsen's life in Hutchins Hapgood, The Spirit of Labor (New York, 1907). On the Industrial Workers of the World, see Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All (New York, 1969), and for an account of the Socialist party's heroic years, see Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs, Citizen and Socialist (Urbana, 1982).

19201940

Historical scholarship on the Iowa labor movement in the 1920s and 1930s has begun to expand in recent years, in part as a result of the availability of oral history evidence. See, for instance, Wilson J. Warren, "Welfare Capitalism of John Morrell and Company, 19221937," Annals of Iowa 47 (Fall 1984): 497517; also useful for understanding Iowa in the 1920s is Dorothy Schwieder, "Rural Iowa in the 1920s: Conflict and Continuity," Annals of Iowa 47 (Fall 1983): 104115. A number of studies explore the development of industrial unionism in Iowa in the 1930s. See, for instance, Roger Horowitz, '''It Wasn't a Time to Compromise': The Unionization of Sioux City's Packinghouses, 19371942," Annals of Iowa 50 (Fall 1989/Winter 1990): 241268, and in the same issue of the Annals, Erling N. Sannes, '''Make Sioux City a Good Place to Live': Organizing Teamsters in Sioux City, 19331938" (214240). A number of unpublished works should be consulted: Scott Alan Sorenson, "Law Enforcement during the 1930s in Sioux City, Iowa" (Master's thesis, University of South Dakota, 1976), Gregory Zieren, "A Conservative Pattern of 1930s Union Organizing: The Packinghouse Workers of Cedar Rapids" (ms., 1986), Wilson J. Warren, "Unionization and. Worker Militancy at John Morrell and Company, 19371943" (ms., 1985), John Marie Daly, "History of Unionization, Waterloo, Iowa" (Master's thesis, Creighton University, 1962), Roger W. Ratliff, "An Inquiry into the 1938 Strike at the Maytag Company, Newton, Iowa" (Master's thesis, Drake University, 1964), Arthur M. Rollefson, "A Study of Strikes and Lockouts in Iowa with Special Reference to the Period 19251940" (Master's thesis, University of Iowa, 1940), and James Edward Foley, "Labor Union Jurisdictional Disputes in the Quad-Cities Farm Equipment Industry, 19491955" (Master's thesis, University of Iowa, 1965). See also a curriculum for high school students based on the ILHOP interviews, Mark Smith el. al., The History of Labor in the United States, Focus: The Iowa Experience (Des Moines, 1991). Important to the history of packinghouse organizing in Iowa is the work of Peter Rachleff on

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Austin, Minnesota, "The Role of Radicals in the Independent Union of All Workers," a paper presented at the First Annual Wisconsin Labor History Conference, Madison, March 1990.

The 1920s and 1930s have become fertile ground for historians of labor in the past two decades. Older studies include Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Workers, 19201933 (Boston, 1960) and The Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 19331941 (Boston, 1970), James Green, The World of the Worker: Labor in Twentieth-Century America (New York, 1980), Robert Zieger, Republicans and Labor (Lexington, 1969), Staughton Lynd and Alice Lynd, Rank and File: Personal Histories of Working-Class Organizers (Boston, 1973), Peter Friedlander, The Emergence of a UAW Local, 19361939 (Pittsburgh, 1975), and Sidney Fine, Sitdown: The General Motors Strike of 193637 (New York, 1969); the essays by David Brody in Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the Twentieth Century Struggle (New York, 1980) should also be consulted. A surge of recent scholarship has enriched our understanding of developments in this period in a variety of industrial and urban settings. Ronald Schatz, The Electrical Workers: A History of Labor at General Electric and Westinghouse, 19231960 (Urbana, 1983), Gary Gerstle, Working-Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 19141960 (New York, 1989), Lizbeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 19191939 (Cambridge, 1990), Bruce Nelson, Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s (Urbana, 1988), Elizabeth Faue, Community of Suffering & Struggle: Men, Women and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 19151945 (Chapel Hill, 1991), Dana Frank, At the Point of Consumption: Seattle Labor and the Politics of Consumption, 19191927 (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press), Daniel Nelson, American Rubber Workers and Organized Labor, 19001941 (Princeton, 1988), and Joe Trotter, Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 191545 (Urbana, 1985), are all deserving of careful attention. Two biographies of important figures in the national labor movement are Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, John L. Lewis: A Biography (Chicago, 1977), and Steve Fraser, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (New York, 1991).

On the relationship of labor and the Left, see Theodore Draper, The Roots of American Communism (New York, 1960), James Weinstein, Ambiguous Legacy (New York, 1975), Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem during the Depression (Urbana, 1989), Fraser M. Ottanelli, The Communist Party of the United States, from the Depression to World War II (New Brunswick, 1991), and Steven Rosswurm, ed., The CIO's Left-Led Unions

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(New Brunswick, 1992). Biographies/autobiographies of note are James R. Barrett, William Z. Foster (forthcoming), Peggy Dennis, The Autobiography of an American Communist (Westport, Conn., 1977), and Dorothy Healey, Dorothy Healey Remembers: A Life in the Communist Party (New York, 1990).

1940Present

Iowa labor in the World War II and postwar eras has yet to receive the attention that it deserves. Worthy of note are Wilson J. Warren, "The Heyday of the CIO in Iowa: Ottumwa's Meatpacking Workers, 19371945," Annals of Iowa 51 (Spring 1992): 337362, Dennis Deslippe, "Divided Loyalties: Gender Conflicts in Iowa's UPWA, 19451973" (forthcoming, Journal of Women's History), Bruce Fehn, "Striking Women: Gender, Race and Class in the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA), 19381968" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1991), Paul Young, '''There Are Principled Positions': The Evolution of the Anti-Discrimination Policy of Local 46 of the United Packinghouse Workers of America, 19371960" (Master's essay, University of Iowa, 1991), and Mary Beth Eldridge, The Rath Packing Company Strike of 1948 (Waterloo, 1990). Two dissertations on the UPWA are particularly useful for Iowa, Roger Horowitz, "The Path Not Taken: A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking'' (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1990), and Eric Brian Halperin, "'Black and White Unite and Fight': Race and Labor in Meatpacking, 19041948" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1989). On the postwar history of the Iowa Federation of Labor, see Robert D. Winn, "The Functions of the Iowa Federation of Labor, 18931964" (Master's thesis, University of Iowa, 1966). Postwar industrial relations are examined in Donald T. Butler, "Factors Affecting Trade Union Organizing of Manufacturing Firms in Iowa, 19461957" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1959), and DeWayne A. Stonebarger, "A Study of Unionism among Municipal Employees of the State of Iowa" (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1955). Accounts of the 1979 Clinton Corn Processing Company strike may be found in An Injury to One Is an Injury to All: One Year of Our LivesThe Clinton Corn Strike, 197980 (Clinton, 1980) and Rick Fantasia, The Culture of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action, and Contemporary American Workers (Berkeley, 1988). A second volume of the curriculum for high school students based on the ILHOP interviews is Merle Davis, "Iowa Labor on the March: Iowa Workers and Their Unions since 1955" (ms., n.d.). A study of the Democratic rebirth in Iowa that under-

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states the role of labor is James C. Larew, A Party Reborn: The Democrats of Iowa, 19501974 (Iowa City, 1980).

For the changing character and structure of the labor movement after 1940 see in particular Nelson Lichtenstein, Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II (Cambridge, 1982), Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during World War II (Urbana, 1987), Nancy Gabin, Feminism in the Labor Movement: Women and the United Auto Workers, 19351975 (Ithaca, 1990), David Brody, The Butcher Workmen: A Study of Unionization (Cambridge, 1964), Stanley Aronowitz, False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness (New York, 1973), Staughton Lynd, The Fight against Shutdowns: Youngstown's Steel Mill Closings (San Pedro, 1982), Kim Moody, An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism (London, 1988), Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York, 1982), and Richard Freeman and Hans Medoff, What Do Unions Do? (New York, 1984).

Histories of working people's lives that extensively utilize oral testimony have grown more numerous. In addition to the exemplary work of Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (New York, 1970), Working (New York, 1974), and The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two (New York, 1984), see also Paul Buhle, Working Lives: An Oral History of Rhode Island Labor (Providence, 1987), Mary Blewett, The Last Generation: Work and Life in the Textile Mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, 19101960 (Amherst, 1990), Sherna Gluck, Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, the War and Social Change (New York, 1988), Jeremy Brecher, Brass Valley: The Story of Working People's Lives and Struggles in an American Industrial Region (Philadelphia, 1982), Tamara Hareven, Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-City (New York, 1978), and Jacquelyn Dowd Hall et al., Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (Chapel Hill, 1987).

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Mike and Eva Katnik and their children: George, Margaret, Mary,

and Julie (Fritz), Fort Dodge, ca. 1926. Mike and Eva Katnik emigrated from

Slovakia in 1910 and 1915, respectively. Mary (Katnik) St. John.

1

Origins and Traditions: The Making of an Iowa Labor Movement

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Each generation of workers carries with it a unique set of traditions and experiences. The generation of Iowa workers that came of age in the 1920s and 1930s was too young to remember the vigorous Knights of Labor culture and labor politics of the late nineteenth century. But from miners and railroad workers they inherited strong trade union consciousness. In the bitter post-World War I strikes they witnessed the perils of craft isolation and government betrayal. They learned to recognize the divisions in their communities that separated scabs and strikers long after industrial battles subsided. Even as union membership declined in the 1920s, immigrant traditions of solidarity mingled with the pride of dispossessed farmers to produce a spirit of resistance that would revive unions across the face of Iowa.

Traditions of labor organization were firmly rooted in Iowa soil during the late nineteenth century. The Knights of Labor organized extensively among the state's manufacturing, mining, and transportation workers during the 1880s. They left a legacy of classwide organization whose spirit was captured in their cardinal principle, "an injury to one is the concern of all." At the turn of the century, as the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) broke the back of operator resistance in the bituminous coalfields throughout the North, Iowa miners organized the state's mines under District 13. They constructed a culture of solidarity that permeated the coal camps of central and south-central Iowa. When the mines shut down in the 1920s, most of them for good, they and their children carried that tradition into the state's manufacturing industries.

Immigrants came to the state from diverse countries of origin. While many had never encountered unions, others brought strong traditions of Old World collective action and craft pride. As they established themselves in Iowa towns, they formed networks of mutual aid to find work, cope with hard times, and resist the capricious authority of their employers.

The end of the First World War brought crises to the Iowa economy. Industries that had proved susceptible to trade union organization under wartime conditions sought to turn back the clock. Bitter strikes erupted across the state and nation in mining, meat-packing, and the railroad shops. Workers found themselves blacklisted, their unions crushed, and their jobs taken by scabs.

Postwar crises also beset the agricultural economy. The loss of farms, the breakup of families, the extreme poverty, and the struggle for subsistence that became commonplace in rural Iowa in the 1920s caused many from farm backgrounds to seek refuge in wage work. While family farming might not have been the most obvious preparation for trade union activism, they

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drew from that experience a sense of dignity and independence of mind that led them to resist the autocratic ways of their employers. The experience of destitution gave them a particular sensitivity to the condition of their fellow workers.

Depression on the farms and in the factories loosened many young workers from the bonds that tied them to their homes. Out of desperation or in search of a better life, young people in the 1920s and 1930s hit the road or, more commonly, the rails. "Booming" from agricultural harvests to hard-rock mining to major construction projects in the West, they encountered remnants of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The IWW's gospel of revolutionary syndicalism acquired new force as times turned bad. Its commitment to organization of the unorganized ignited among a new generation of workers a spirit of solidarity that would be carried back into the mass production industries when employment opened up later in the decade.

From Old World to New: Immigrant Origins of Iowa Workers

British, German, Scandinavian, Bohemian, and Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century settled Iowa's countryside and its developing industrial towns. But by the turn of the century new immigrants were appearing, as they were in other parts of the country, to fill the demand for unskilled laborers in the mass production industries. The packinghouses of Sioux City, Mason City, and Cedar Rapids, the farm equipment plants of the Tri-Cities, the gypsum mills of Fort Dodge, the coal mines around Albia, Mystic, and Hiteman, and the building sites in Des Moines all attracted growing numbers of eastern and southern European immigrantsCroatians, Slovaks, Poles, Italians, and Hungarians.

Immigrants formed close-knit communities of mutual support in an economic environment that was filled with uncertainty. Established households took in more recent arrivals as boarders. Those already here welcomed relatives and found them employment. Families sent children into the fields, factories, or mines at an early age to make needed contributions to family income. To many native-born workers the new immigrants appeared conservative and clannish in their behavior. But the group consciousness and mutuality of immigrant communities could support determined resistance. Their children, who came of age and went to work in the 1920s and 1930s, found themselves to be members of a heterogeneous, multi-ethnic working

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class determined to achieve through collective action the better life that had been promised but denied their parents.

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Immigrant communities grew gradually through family and kin ties. Working as they often did in low-paying, unskilled jobs, immigrants had only the security they could provide for each other in the face of unemployment and injury on the job. Newcomers boarded with established families that helped them get their bearings in this culture. Julie Fritz grew up in the community of Slovak immigrants in Fort Dodge.

We were Slovak. Our maiden name was Katnik and really that was Americanized. It was Katuninec when they came over. My father had a brother here that had changed his name to Katnik. He had married an Americannot an American, she was a Bohemian, but she was born here. So they decided to change their name to Katnik. My dad said, "We'll change our family name to Katnik. It's so much easier for anybody to spell." So they didn't do it legally. They just did it, and it was accepted until he wanted his citizenship papers in the late thirties. And then he had problems!

My dad came over first in about 1910. He was working in Pennsylvania at the time in the steel mills. It was seasonal and not very much work. His brother, Joe Katnik, was living in Fort Dodge. So he wrote to his brother Joe and said, "You just got to send me some money. I've been out of work for so long. The fellows are dying right and left around here. They're just dying from hunger and starvation and health problems. If I don't get out of here, I'm going to die."

It was just seasonal. These were foreigners. If they wanted you, you worked. If they didn't feel like they had work for you, you were out. So each day you didn't know whether you were coming to a job or not. He was off of work for so long. The way they lived, he said, a bunch of them from their country would live together in some shack or something. They pooled their money. Well, when none of them were working there was no aid, there was no nothing. The friends had nothing. His brother was working in the Clay Products in Fort Dodge. He sent him some money, and my dad came to Fort Dodge.

In the Old Country different ones that migrated to the United States, they'd come back and say, "Oh, that's a great . . ." See, my folks were more or less peasants in Czechoslovakia. It was a very poor country. Usually the older son would leave home and go to the United States and work and send money back to their family. That was why my dad and his brother both came here together. But the brother went on to Fort Dodge with friends, while my dad stayed in Pennsylvania.

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My dad met my mother, they were neighbors there in Czechoslovakia, so when he went back once, they married, and then he came back alone. My mother came in 1915. My dad was in Fort Dodge at: that time. It was very hard in those days. He got this job in the Clay Products, and they were paying him fifteen cents an hour. He worked there for a few years until 1920, and then he heard that U.S. Gypsum was hiring for twenty cents an hour. Then he went over and worked for the U.S.G.

We lived out in the east end. About everybody that worked in these mills were either Italian or Slovak. That was the makeup of that area, and they were all immigrants. They were fearful of their jobs, and they worked real hard to be in good graces so they wouldn't get laid off. They also had a place, they called it Mineral City, Hunky Row, right there alongside the U.S.G., where they built all these company houses. Many of my mother's friends lived in these company houses. It was practically in the backyard of U.S.G. They were just shells of houses. Just kind of shacky. The bare necessities. Just like any company town you would see pictures of seventy-five years ago. There was nothing there but a roof over their head and a few rooms.

I can remember when we were kids we had a four-room house. Many of the friends of my dad's that would come over from the Old Country looking for work, they would board with families. I can remember every room in our house was a bedroom, except the kitchen. We had as many as four or five boarders at a time. That was the only way that you could really survive, getting a little bit of weekly help from these boarders. And that was the only way they could survive, because they couldn't branch out into an apartment. They had to live with people they knew. Almost every family had two or three or more boarders. It brought a little income into the family and it helped the boarder. And it was that togetherness, I think.

Survival in America for many immigrant families meant careful husbanding of all resources they could lay claim to. They formed inward-looking communities that were fundamentally conservative but that could vehemently defend their rights against employers. Earl Smith knew the immigrant communities in coal camps around Albia firsthand.

They had all kinds. It seemed like they was still in the Old Country. They was conservative. Some called them greedy, but I would call them sensible. They saved their money. Their boys would work in the mine, and they would even take their boys' money until they got married maybe or until another boy grew up. And some of them sent the whole family through high school and

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some to college. And I call that a pretty good citizen. But the old American stock and the Irish and the English and the Welsh, they didn't gather much money or much land. They just threw it away for another job. Today the ones who own the land around the old coal camps near Albia are Croatians and Italians and Hungarians.

But the coal camps was made up of very many parts. Hocking had its Beacon-town and the Lonetown and Society Hill and Front Street and Rocky Mountain Hill. That's where they lived. And New Patch. Where the newer houses were, they'd always call that New Patch. Called it living in the Patch. They should've said living in the Camp, but they said living out in the Patch.

Immigrant laborers found their way not only into the steel mills, packinghouses, and coal mines but into small towns and farms as well. Some former peasants simply exchanged one form of agricultural dependence for another. Mary Ashlock's family worked hard as farm laborers in southern Minnesota not far from Mason City, Iowa. With the seasons they moved back and forth between farm and factory labor.

My parents were Germans born in Russia. There were quite a few in the area. Cousins and a real good friend of my mother's and dad's come over, too. My folks, from the minute they came over in 1912, they was in the beet fields.

My father, golly, he was a cripple. We was migrant workers really. My whole family. We worked in the beet fields and onion fields. It was rough. Twelve, fourteen hours a day. I started when I was seven years old, at least. All of us worked in the fields. Three brothers and two sisters.

So much an acre was what we got paid, but what it was I forget. First of all, we had to thin them. After they got growed up quite a ways we had to use the hoe and cut the weeds out. Then in the fall we topped them.

When we worked beets in the field, the farmer provided the shack we lived in. It was just one great big room like a granary bin. We lived, the whole mess, four beds in one room, the stove and a kitchen table and everything. One room.

In the winter we came to town, and Mother would go to work at Decker's packinghouse. She worked at Decker's a couple years. Maybe we'd get a slice of bread every now and then from the county.

We didn't get to go to school until about the last part of October or the first of November and had to quit school early in the spring to go out. Must've been around the latter part of April when we went out in the fields.

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I worked there until I turned sixteen and then went to work down at Decker's, too.

Off the Farm: Rural Recruits for Iowa's Working Class

Iowa workers came from fields as well as factories. They included children of immigrants as well as native-born farmers whose roots lay deep in the soil. These were not all yeomen farmers of the Jeffersonian ideal. Their preparation for industrial life was often as rural laborers who had begun work early in life. The vagaries of farm depression, seasonal employment, and broken families produced a drift cityward that at times reached full tide.

Agriculture in Iowa, as elsewhere in the Midwest, experienced a long-term transformation. Farm consolidation was closely associated with bouts of agricultural depression that drove marginal farmers to the brink. Caught in the squeeze between falling prices and debts undertaken in more prosperous times, these farmers or their children sought economic refuge in the factory towns. The agricultural depression after World War I sent a new legion of rural recruits into the factories. Some moved by stages, staying on the farm while doing wage work in the off-season, then moving to a nearby town to find more permanent work, and eventually migrating to a larger city. Somewhere along the way, many discovered unions and found in their collective strength a means of reasserting the dignity and independence of the rural ideal, long since left behind on the farm as well as factory.

The countryside also harbored its own laboring class, largely invisible but numerous. At the turn of the century, roughly 35 percent of the farm population was composed of tenants or wage laborers. Producers of sugar beets, onions, and tomatoes used the stooped labor of large numbers of rural workers. Children in state orphanages or other institutions were "farmed out" as an economy measure. Young people living with single parents in towns could find work below legal age on the farms just at the town limits.

The boundary between rural and town laborers was not sharply drawn. They moved easily from one world to another and back again. Farmers who lost their farms might harbor prejudices toward "pampered and overpaid" labor in the cities. But in the regimented and dangerous world of the factory, many came to see more clearly the "privileges" of farm life.

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Children in rural areas were introduced to work early. Among farm laborers, work alongside other family members often interfered with school. But children who became wards of the state were also "farmed out" on a contract basis to work on nearby farms. Jack Whitaker spent part of his youth as a farm laborer first in the Muscatine area and later near Anamosa. As an orphan and a minor, he was unable to control his own labor.

I was placed on a farm at about thirteen years of age, doing a man's work. Talk about child labor. I was a state charge, and the state was putting us out to work with these farmers for room and board. Thirteen years of age. I stayed there a couple of years. I'd finished grade school and been out a year. I wanted to go back to high school, so they did take me back to the orphan home and sent me to high school for a year. Then they placed me out again on a farm near Anamosa, Iowa. I worked there for five years. The first two or three years I got fifteen dollars a month during the summer months, and four months in the winter I got a dollar a week, plus room and board. I did that for almost five years.

My twenty-first birthday was not due for five months. We were under contract. Every year the state signed a new contract for us. At the end of the contract term in January, when I was twenty, I said, "I refuse to sign any contract that extends over into my twenty-first birthday." So they released me.

Some working-class families in manufacturing towns like Mason City turned to farm work in times of need or as a way of getting employment for children whose income was required to support the family. Clarence Ramsey started his work life that way, but as soon as possible he left the farm and found work in the packinghouse.

I was born in Mason City in 1913, was raised in Mason City and lived here all my life except two years. I was one of six children. My father got killed when I wasn't quite eight years old. My mother raised six of us taking in washing and ironing, doing housework. I went through the eighth grade, and I worked on the farm from the time I was twelve until I was fifteen. When I was fifteen I quit the farm and come to town to find a job. The first place I went was to the packinghouse. I went to work there in 1929 when I was fifteen years old. Starting at fifteen cents an hour. I worked two months. Because I was a big boy and talked to the foreman, he went to the upper people and got me a raise of a nickel after two months. I thought that worked pretty good, so I worked another two months and asked for another nickel raise. He says, "You're out of your mind." But I kept after him and told him I couldn't pay board and room. My mother had to have the money to support the rest of my younger brothers and sisters. He

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went to them, and he got me another nickel raise. So I was big money then. I was getting twenty-five cents an hour, working six days a week, twelve hours a day.

Many Iowa workers in the 1920s and 1930s were the first generation off of the farm. The agricultural depression that followed World War I and lasted most of the next two decades foreclosed their farms and their dreams. They sought a living where they couldin the industries of Iowa's cities. Don Harris was born on the North Dakota farming frontier but returned with his family to their Iowa roots as the farm depression took its toll.

My father was born up here at Perry, Iowa. So was my mother. They're buried there, too. My dad went to North Dakota in 1900 and homesteaded. I was born in a sod shack out on the prairie. He did quite well until the end of the First World War when the price of wheat collapsed. We moved to Minnesota for a couple of years, had a crop failure one year and a price failure the next year. Then in 1923 we came to Des Moines. My dad resumed the carpenter trade, which he'd done a little in his youth. My mother worked all her life in Des Moines as a bushelman, and she later became a member of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. A bushelman in the tailor trade was one who sews with the hands and makes buttonholes, stitches, and what have you.

Many farmers driven off the land by farm consolidation and increasing capitalization took with them antiunion attitudes that were challenged by the laboring situations they found themselves in. Wallace Taylor went to work in the packinghouse in Storm Lake. He came to resent the prejudices toward unions that his farmer-friends harbored.

After high school I was in the navy for four years. I came out and farmed with my dad for two years. Then, like everything else, farming begin to get bigger, and I was one of the losers. I didn't quit farming voluntarily. I was forced off of the farm, but I didn't leave destitute. I had money in my pocket when I left. I begin to look for employment. Back then I thought that fifty dollars a week would be fair pay, and I was willing to work for it. But would-be employers laughed in my face and said, ''If you can make that kind of money then just stay farming.'' But I did make that kind of money when I farmed, and, what's more, I didn't pay taxes on living like I did later on when I became a laboring man. I know that I feel a little hostility. I did find a job that eventually become a good-paying job, and all my farmer-friends bitched and bellyached about me being overpaid and thought nothing about them accumulating millions of dollars worth of land, thinking that was their just deserts. And I knew that they worked no harder, because I'd been

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there myself. Of course, I can understand their feeling, because I was an antilabor man when I was a farmer. That's all you ever heard, how much you had to pay for labor in everything that you bought. You didn't begrudge the businessman to make as much on a sale as all the other people combined. I guess it's greed.

The packinghouse was the only job available. It was the path of least resistance. I didn't feel I had any training for anything but manual labor. The first job that I had was in the cure. It was a cold, wet, miserable place to work, but I was young, and it was like working outside on the farm in the wintertime if you have livestock to take care of.

Out of the Mines: Life in Iowa's Coal Camps

Coal mining in Iowa's central and south-central counties originated in the nineteenth-century railroad boom. The iron horse's appetite for coal made these mine fields strategically placed to serve the transcontinental lines that traversed the state after 1870. The railroads themselves owned some of the largest mines.

The mines drew a largely immigrant working population, initially from the British Isles but also France, Belgium, and eventually from southern and eastern Europe. The skilled British, Belgian, and French miners brought with them years and sometimes generations of experience. They also brought traditions of labor organization. By the 1880s Iowa miners were joining the Knights of Labor in droves. In 1891 they followed the call of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) out of the mines in what was planned to be a national general strike of miners for the eight-hour day. With its ranks decimated by the loss of the strike and the depression of the 1890s, the UMWA gradually rebuilt its strength and after 1898 won contracts covering most of the bituminous mine fields of the North.

Life in the mining village was hard. The housing, often company owned, was poorly constructed, the hours of work long, and the seasonal bouts of unemployment, typically lasting several months in the spring and summer, produced real hardship. Nevertheless, miners and their families from one camp to another created a sense of community and a vibrant culture that nourished a powerful solidarity. With unions at the core of that culture, mining camps had halls, bands, lectures, and recitals. They shared food and solace. Diverse ethnic groups mixed socially, but rarely did first-generation immigrants lose the sense of cultural difference that was sometimes reinforced by residential separation.

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Miners at mine elevator, near Albia, ca. 1905. State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

The generation that left the mines in the 1920s and 1930s carried with it a pride and strength grounded in the traditions of the mining villages.

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Harry Booth, a longtime activist in the UMWA, the United Rubber Workers, and the United Auto Workers (UAW), was born in a mining town near Fort Smith, Arkansas. When he was very young his parents returned to the coal-mining villages around Mystic, Iowa.

I was born in 1892. My first memories were from about five years later. I remember us moving and then that we didn't see my dad. He worked such long hours that he'd be gone before daylight, and he'd come home after dark. I could look out the window and see the pit lamps coming from the mines, like walking lights.

My father and mother both came from England. He came from one part and she from another. My dad come to Youngstown, Ohio, and he worked where they picked dirt out of the coal in the chutes at the coal mine in Youngstown. When they got married they were just practically young kids. They wasn't of age really.

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From England they were all miners. My parents clear back as far as anybody I know, they always worked in the mines. My grandparents and theirs and the whole country. My granddad got killed in an explosion in England. My mother's dad got blowed up. They come from these countries kind of like in waves. At first the English and the Irish, the Scotch, and most of them were miners to begin with. But the ones who come later on, the Croatians and the Hungarians and that, seemed to never have been in a mine in their life. They'd get here, and that's where they'd go, to some mining camp. Later on, then, come the Swedes. The joke around Albia was that where they landed in New York City, over by the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, if the guy would be a Swede he'd say, "He's going to Hocking." Just let him go, don't bother with him. He already had a job in Hocking if he come from Sweden. So they'd boot him right through Ellis Island.

It wasn't all a dreary situation in that village. When they built this hall I'd say at least once or twice a month they'd have a dance. There'd be a drummer and a violinist or something for the music, and they'd have these square dances. You couldn't buy ice cream in that town, but you could buy beer. When they had a dance, they would get a great big freezer full of ice cream from Eddyville or some of those smaller little country towns, and they would sell ice cream or maybe sandwiches and stuff. Celebrate the holidays. Had a baseball team. And the company was real liberal. They bought the uniforms for the ball team. I was mascot for the ball team. They'd get like a bus, pulled by horses, and we'd go. They'd have teams in Avery and Lockman and Coalfield and Springfield up by Oskaloosaanother coal-mining townand Pekay'd have a ball team. They'd have ball games on Sunday. Sometimes even at Pekay they had a band. We had a literary deal going where we'd have performances on the stage. They'd act things out. The school kids would have programs and get up on the stage and recite poetry. My mother and father sang at programs. The community was pretty active.

Robert A. Jackson, Sr., a leader in the Laborers' Union in Des Moines, was raised in a Missouri coal-mining community.

I was born in Lexington, Missouri, July 20, 1917. I was one of five children. My father was a coal miner. Mother, housewife. My family went back to slavery in Missouri.

The center of the community was partially the churches. The reason why I'm saying that is, most of the ladies belonged to the church and the men belonged to the bootlegging joints. The center of the community would have been, and was, the union hall. It was where the dances was carried on, where the union

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meetings was held. In that vicinity we had a dance hall, and we had three to four what we'd call nightclubs or joints, because the coal-mining town was a town.

I like to recall it, and I like to talk about it. I would've preferred to continue in the coal mines, because you could do what you wanted to do when you wanted to do it.

Marcel Gerard was born in 1900 in the coal-mining district of northern France, near the Belgian bordera town named Drocourt. He came to the United States with his family in 1903 and grew up in the coal camps of south-central Iowa.

Over there, they were miners, see. They heard about America, that the rose bushes was full of dollars. When they came over here they found out they was full of thorns, but they were here and there wasn't much they could do. They couldn't save enough to try to go back.

There must've been probably twenty-five or thirty families, at least, of mixed French and Belgian in Mystic at that time. Whenever I would meet one of them, the American language would just vanish away from me. In them early times, there used to be some that they would call you smart aleck if you wouldn't speak the language.

There were Croatians, Italians, and, well, Polish people. They called them Polacks. All mixed breeds. Now, their kids have been Americanized and they have married.

We first went to Brazil, Iowa. Brazil was on the CB&Q tracks, and there was drift mines all through there. Each mine had its own camp. There was the Oriental, the Peacock. If you went to work in another mine, you knew you had to get out of their company house. Maybe you were thinking you were going to do better there, or maybe you had a bad place. You just up and quit and took your tools. Next morning you started some place else. In them days, you could just go from one mine to the other. But towards the end when you had a job you kept your mouth shut and you stayed there.

In these camps, the houses was about three rooms. A lot of them only had two rooms. You didn't have no furniture. You had a cookstove, a table, and chairs and a bed. Floors was bare. You whitewashed the walls. That's one thing my mother hated. They was wooden frame and plaster, with just one outer board. When my brother was born there in the coal camp it was twenty below. My golly, you know, they thought he was a colored child, it got so cold. But he wasn't.

Oh, my goodness. You had that cookstove. You had to adjust yourself to what condition it was. Wasn't many people had heating stoves. Had to keep the cook-

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stove red hot and going. "It's cold," they would say. "Well, tomorrow's going to be better." But then, maybe it wasn't.

In the Diamond coal camp, they had a company store. You're supposed to buy everything there. But in the spring of the year, when the coal orders slackened up, they couldn't keep fresh meat too long and the company store thought, well, my goodness, that meat ain't going to sell. So they'd blow the whistle. If the miners hadn't worked that day, along about four o'clock every miner would be listening. If they blow it three times that meant there was going to be work tomorrow. So, two, three times, you know, work. Okay. All the women run to the store. They had fresh meat there. Pork chops. When you work hard you got to have something in you. So the store would clear up the meat business. Along about seven o'clock at night they'd blow one whistleno work tomorrow! But they got rid of the meat. Them's the tricks they played.

Earl Smith was born in 1902 in Albia, Iowa. His father worked in the mines, farmed, and bought cattle. He had moved to Albia in 1894 and farmed until 1901.

Hocking was an awful hilly town. They had a large company storetwo stories. Women's ready-to-wear and millinery, calico and gingham on the top floor. On the ground floor it had groceries and a meat marketa general grocery store. You could buy most anything there in the hardware line, too. They said you could buy things from the cradle to the grave there, including the casket. It was tore down in 1930, after the mines closed up.

The houses weren't built of ship lath and weather boarding, lap siding. They were built out of what's known as drop siding. It's grooved and fit together, but there wasn't any sheathing. There was building paper and then just plaster and laths and wallpaper. They used to say that the only way you could get warm in one of them was to get up early in the morning and start a fire in the heater, get it red hot, and then start the range in the kitchen, and then go up and stand on the south side of the house and get warm in the sunshine!

In the summertime, when the mines wouldn't work, the miners went around to the farmers with beggars' wagons and an old borrowed horse or mule. One farmer would give them cabbage, another one potatoes, and some honey. They come in at night with everything in the wagon and divide it up. They would make it through the summer and then go back and had to start paying on their store bills. Some of those merchants went broke through credit, although most of the miners were honest. Probably 80 percent paid their bills. But they had to pay the other man's, too. And that's the way that went.

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A miner's home, Brazil, 1890s. The Ducey family.

State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

John and Jennie Ducey grew up in the mining communities of Iowa. She was born in Mystic in 1911, he in Brazil in 1907. Both of their fathers were miners. Jennie's was from England. She came from a family of five children and left school after the eleventh grade. John came from a family of nine children and left school after the eighth grade.

John Ducey: I went in the coal mines part of the day with my father. I went to school just a half a day. I passed part of my tests in eighth grade. I was thirteen years old then, the oldest boy in the family, and they needed me because the mine didn't work steady back in them days. When they did work, they needed to make enough money so we could all live and enjoy life. So I just worked in the mines early and stayed there.

Over in Brazil, the mines shut down practically in April, and they'd start up in September. They just didn't work in the summertime. There was no demand for coal.

Jennie Ducey: Big gardens were a must. There aren't any orchards here anymore. My parents had cherry trees, apple trees, strawberry patch, currant bushes. You went barefooted. You got by.

John: Just wherever you could make a dollar you tried to make a dollar. We tried to buy up enough stuff in the spring to stock ahead.

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Jennie: Flour. We bought sacks of flour, and a hundred pounds of sugar, because they did a lot of canning. They got by.

John: Yeah. I can remember my mom baked bread six days a week. It was a big family. Only day she didn't bake bread was on Sunday. My dad would get twenty sacks of that flour, you know, along about the last of March or April, when you'd have a pretty good paycheck. He had strawberries and he sold a few, but he mostly give them all away. The first turkey that I ever eat, a neighbor woman won it at a dance on Halloween, and she cooked it and brought half of it over to my dad's family. In the summertime he'd always hand six or eight boxes of strawberries over to them people. He wouldn't take no money for it. They was neighbors back in them days. You helped one another.

Jennie: We had no refrigeration, just a cave to keep things in, and oftentimes in the summer the electricity had to be turned off, and we'd go back to the kerosene lamps for two or three months until Dad went back to work. Mystic was a conglomeration of people from almost everywhere.

John: Swedes, Irish, English, Italians, Croatians.

Jennie: The Italians seemed to drift into their own area, if they could find homes. There was a scattering of Italians here, but most Italians lived in the southeast part of Centerville and around the coal camps over there. Very good workers. Very good wine makers.

There was very little intermarriage in the group in our time. The Catholics just didn't marry into the Protestants then. Since then we've seen our children intermarry and think nothing of it.

Single coal miners used to migrate a lot. Just pick up their tools and go to the next town. The railroads took them a lot of places, because wherever there was a lot of coal the railroad would be there to take it away. My father worked in Kentucky, in Tennessee. He'd been in Alabama. He worked in the Coal Valley area, right near the Quad Cities in Illinois. Then he came to this area.

Before the union, the pay was different every place you went. If they needed men, they would offer a little more money. So that's why some of the single men migrated around the country. My father never married until I think he was twenty-nine years old. So he wandered all over. Usually, if they settled down with a family, they couldn't do that.

Iowa coal miners built powerful locals of the UMWA after the hard times of the 1890s. Those local unions were central to the life of their communities, in good times and bad. Harry Booth's father had a long-standing commitment to the union.

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As the population increased, they began to see the light. They joined the unions and joined the movement itself. That was the original movement. My dad belonged to some outfit they called the Commonwealers. Supposed to have made a march on Washington. He joined the first thing that looked like a union.

We were in a depression. I think it would be probably 1894. It was a terrible depression, and there was no government help for anybody that I know of. It was terrific. It was nothing like the one in 1929 and the thirties, where we had people like Roosevelt setting up workshops and there was recognition that something could be done about it. It seems to me like everything was just left to each individual to get by on his own. They'd go out and pick coal. [My wife's] dad got his fingers cut off monkeying around in the coal. They talked about that depression like we talk about the one in 1929, and 1930 now, setting around telling each other about all the hard times they went through. I don't remember ever being hungry. We never starved, as I know of. They made things comfortable, whatever it was.

But I do remember when our furniture, the cupboards and that, was made out of store boxes. Everything was kind of a homemade deal. We didn't have furniture like we've had in later years. This was all before the unions.

It was around 1899 or 1900 that I think the movement began to pick up in this area. The first I can remember the union would be just before 1899. That's when they used to have to sneak out to go to the union meetings. We moved over to Pekay, another coal mine camp.

I was shining shoes for a few years in barbershops in Albia, but I found that pretty confining. When the kids from Hocking would come up, they had a lot more money than I had to spend and a lot more time to play around. I worked Saturday and Sunday. Had to go to school and everything. I thought these kids was having more fun than I was really. I suggested it and my dad accepted that I would go into the mine then at Hocking. I went to work at the mine when I was about sixteen.

Automatically I went into the union. You had to have a password to get in the union hall. They'd come around and whisper in your ear and tell you what the password was. After while, if you was new, a sergeant at arms would go around and ask everybody to whisper to him and tell him what the password was. I remember the time when I joined it was "caution." If they come and asked you, you'd say, "caution," then you was all right to stay there and vote.

It was a union shop. In other words, the miners wouldn't let a guy go in the mine. He had to join the union after we was organized.

Disasters punctuated the life of mining communities. They brought people together to support those who lost family members. They became part of

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the collective memory of the community, part of what bound miners, their families, and their unions together. Harry Booth witnessed the effect of the Lost Creek Mine Disaster, January 24, 1902, on his family and the community. He was ten years old at the time.

Dust explosionthey had a name for it. They called it a squealer. It would blow out a place three or four inches wide. Right in between it wouldn't bring no coal out at all. That would create a hot wind, and it would raise the dust in the mine. Then that dust exploded. The mine cage couldn't go up and down. Of course the fan was blowed out, couldn't operate. So most of these guys smothered. They died of afterdamp, they called it. A light couldn't even burn in it. There was no oxygen there.

Now the guys on the bottom that my brother was with used to come up for their lunch. This mine wasn't very deep. They'd come up for lunch, and they'd eat on top and go back down again. But they hadn't got up. They was waiting for the cage to bring them up. They got all burned, and they had to light matches and feel or find their way to this main shaft that went up through the air shaft and then come out. They was all burned. I didn't even know my neighbor when he stopped at the gate with my brother.

My dad went down, along with so many other guys, hunting these guys up after the explosion. He found where a father had his arm around his son's neck and his coat around him, and all bundled up both of them. Then they found some of them setting against what they called a rivet in the mine. They'd be setting there with bread in their hands, and it was toasted. They was eating their lunch. They was the ones that got the blaze part of it. There was other guys that wasn't burned at all.

The mine engineer blew the whistle that there was something wrong. He just kept blowing. They hauled them bodies out. People didn't have phones, but as soon as that word spread, miners come from all over. Our house was full. Our barn was full. The yard was full during all this excitement. My brother was in there, and they was putting goose grease on his arms. There was women there helping us with him when they was notified that both their husband and their son was killed.

Most of them were buried in the cemetery at Eddyville. Their graves are marked. After that the union used to hold a memorial service. They clashed a little bit with the local GAR peoplethe old Civil War soldiers. They had their memorial services, and one time they didn't want the miners to march with them. It was a little bit degrading for them. There was quite a clash over it in Eddyville, but the miners got their own band together. I don't think any of these people ever got a nickel because this mine blowed up and killed anybody, like they would

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today. It was just the other minersthe fact that they had a miners' union that these people got all this help. You could find miners all over the state for years and years afterwards that had come right over there. They just left home and came over there. They would sleep, eat, anyplace that would take them in. Everybody was helping. But it was all voluntary. Our house was full. I remember watching the funeral go by. I didn't get to go to the funeral, but I remember standing and looking. It got so cold in January that your breath would freeze on the window.

In the Harvest Fields: Wobblies and the Lessons of Solidarity

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was formed in 1905 as a revolutionary industrial union that aspired to organize all workers regardless of skill. In a series of spectacular strikes between 1909 and 1914, immigrant industrial workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Paterson, New Jersey, Akron, Ohio, and McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, led by the Wobblies (as they came to be called), captured the imagination of large groups of American workers. But it was their work among the itinerant workers of the Westhard-rock miners, harvest hands, timber and dock workersthat indelibly stamped the IWW as an organization of the dispossessed. Bitterly repressed by employer and vigilante groups and state and federal authorities because of their outspoken opposition to World War I (a war, they argued, in which capitalists of the world sent workers to fight each other), the IWW never recovered the strength it had. enjoyed in the prewar period.

The IWW was never a major force in Iowa's industrial communities, with the exception perhaps of Sioux City. But Iowa workers who went west during the 1920s or 1930s in search of work tell of encountering pockets of IWW strength in the West. These Wobblies preached a trade union philosophy that combined tough negotiation for immediate demands with an unbounded commitment to the solidarity of all workers. They had an impact out of all proportion to their numbers. In the hobo jungles, on the freights, and in the fields and mines, these itinerant organizers introduced a new generation to the principles of class solidarity.

During the 1920s, some of this new generation of IWW activists settled in industrial communities throughout the Midwest, and as the opportunities for renewed organization ripened in the early 1930s, they offered their experience and leadership to the fledgling industrial unions.

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''Now For the Eastern Invasion!'' The Industrial Workers of the World

spread the gospel of solidarity among itinerant agricultural workers

in the West. Solidarity, October 14, 1916.

Bruce Nolan of Sioux City worked the Great Plains harvests in the 1920s. The presence of the IWW, its efforts to organize harvest hands for higher wages, and its message that all workers should unite impressed him.

I had some experience with the IWW in the Kansas harvest at different times. The main operation that they conducted was trying to get the people not to go out to the farms unless they could get a guaranteed salary. Of course, in that day we were talking about two bucks a day. Three would be tops. The first year I was out there I was what they called a water monkey. The next year I was about 170 pounds, and most people didn't like to stack the grain, so I got to helping down the middle of the stacks of the heavy grain. So, by the third year, I was stacking grain on my own and on a top-paying job making the harvest in that part of the country.

The IWW did have the effect of making the people conscious that they should at least bargain for what they was going to get paid. Outside of that, they wasn't

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organized tight enough to have enough membership. The best I remember this group, once you was a member you was supposed to go where you was needed. Harvest, fruit picking, and all this type of work. The people that came into Kansas, Clyde and a bunch of the fellows from Washington State, told how they had been able to organize the apple knockers in Washington.

Between threshing and picking potatoes in Minnesota or Idaho, knocking apples in Washington, I worked in the harvests a period of about six years.

I remember they had one slogan, "Workers of the world unite." They would try to get us guys that was floating to talk to the people as we made the harvest up to the Dakotas. There would be people contacting us all the way. Clear across the harvest fields. The membership fee was twenty-five cents to join. Then you was supposed to donate whenever you could. This was to help the organizers follow the harvest.

The Great Depression sent young workers on the road to find employment and sustenance. These travels opened new worlds of experience. In the West, a surprisingly large number encountered the IWW. For some like Barney Hassel, who had been born on a farm, it was their first encounter with unions.

When the depression hit, I went on the bum. Like thousands and thousands of others. There was no work. We just bummed together, that's all. Everybody was on the bum at that time. There was no money. There was nothing. Finally, I got into Montana, and there I went to Fort Peck. I heard they were hiring so I went down there. They didn't even want to take me. Finally, I got on the bus, and I went down into the tunnels. They were water tunnels. The boss said, "You must really want a job bad enough to come down here and see me." I had to go down in the hole to see him, see. He says, "I'll hire you." So I went to work in the tunnels. They hired nothing but tramps. That's all they would hire, because they were killing them off just like flies. That's where I joined the Industrial Workers of the World. My first knowledge of unions was them.

They was putting this big dam in therethe Fort Peck Dam. It was just like a boomtown, shot up overnight. I worked there a couple of years on this dam.

You either join or else. You either join or get worked over, one or the other. You can take your choice. I didn't know too much about unions at that time, but I talked to this buddy of mine. We worked together, and he told me, he said, "Well, look, you can't lose anything." So we joined it. We went right with them. They were tough, I want to tell you. They were tough. Those old IWWs, where a grievance started they got right around the boss, and that's where it was ended, right there.

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When we were working in the tunnels, two guys would drill her, and then we'd shoot a round. Then we'd load the muck cars. The IWW organizers would come around and collect the dues usually on payday. But the head office was in Chicago.

They just stuck up for what was right, that's all. The only way we had to settle the grievances was right there. You couldn't take a grievance to the office. It was just that a worker wanted his rights. That's the only way we got it. It was all new to me as a farm boy.

You met guys with real good educations. I wasn't the only one on the bum. Thousands and thousands. A train would probably have a hundred on it. You were just one of the unfortunate ones, like everybody else.

While pockets of IWW strength survived in the West, some Wobbly veterans found their way into industrial work in midwestern communities. They carried with them a particularly developed class consciousness and unique life-style. Ralph Helstein, later president of the United Packinghouse Workers of America, encountered Wobblies in the labor movement of the 1930s.

There were Wobblies all through this part. The timber workers up in northern Minnesota, even many of the steelworkers, or the guys who were mining iron ore. Many of them had strong Wobbly ties. I used to find myself, when I started to get into the labor movement, sitting down and talking to a guy who for all I knew had been a Wobbly all his life. He'd tell me some of their stories.

The vice president of the Packinghouse Workers union, when it was first established, a guy by the name of Frank Ellis, was himself a Wobbly and had gone through the free speech fights out in Everett, Washington, and all through the country. He'd tell stories about how a group of them would walk into a restaurant while they were on the free speech crusade. The Wobblies would go from town to town and carry on their agitation. They'd walk into a restaurant and order themselves a meal for about six or seven, and then they'd walk out and sign the mayor's name to the check and give it to the cashier and tell him to go collect it from him. They'd get thrown in the can, but as Ellis used to say in his speeches, "People are afraid of jails. I don't understand why they should be so afraid of them. Jails are built and paid for by the people, and the people ought to use them."

When I started going to Austin, Minnesota, to negotiate the contract with Hormel, Ellis was president of the Austin local. So I spent a lot of time with him. He'd also been a boomer butcher, and he used to tell me about how he'd ride the cowcatchers of the trains going from one town to another, looking for a job. All the way from St. Joe through Iowa and Kansas. He said that in the winter the

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only way you could keep alive was to drink sterno. I couldn't believe it. Coming out of my background, drinking sterno. I could understand drinking alcohol because we used to spike beer with alcohol. But sterno, my God. He said, "Well, it was hard to take, but I'll tell you, it kept you warm. And it was awful cold out on those cowcatchers." And, you know, he lived to be almost eighty. As a matter of fact, he had a very rough life.

One time in the early days of the Packinghouse Workers, before I was president, they had a big meeting, an organizational meeting in Winnipeg, Canada. It was one of the more important unions there. Frank went up to speak at the meeting as an agitational kind of speaker. He went up to represent the union. They'd start their meetings with a benediction given by a minister. Frank had been up there, and he fixed himself a glass of water, or at least it looked like water. The minister started the benediction and got himself carried away a little bit, so he stopped to take a drink. As he did, Frank almost jumped out of his shoes trying to get to that table. He kept saying, "No, no, no." The guy takes a drink and, God, he goes straight up in the air. It was pure gin. But Ellis said, "What the hell? I speak, you know, and I get myself all wound up, and I keep going, and I need a little stimulants every once in a while. It looks like water. Nobody's going to ask me nothing."

Pat O'Leary left the lumber camps of northern Michigan with his family in the late 1920s. The death of his father and the onset of the depression put him on the road. For nearly twelve years he boomed about the country from one job to another. In the West he encountered the Wobblies in some of their last strongholds and imbibed the union tradition they represented.

I moved for about twelve years. I rode the freights all over the United States. I made the harvest in the Dakotas and the apple orchards in Washington and the hops in Oregon. But you couldn't call me a fruit picker or anything like that. I drove a truck. I very seldom worked in the fields.

Then I got into mining. I worked in the mine with the highest elevation located in the United States. It was the U.S. Vanadium Company at Bishop, California, in a shaft that was eight thousand feet. That was a tungsten mine. I worked in several mines around Butte. And then I worked in coal mines. The last was Colorado-Utah Iron and Coal Company at Mt. Harris, Colorado. I drove a truck for a circus. I worked at Fort Leonard Wood when they built that. Worked on the Green River Dam in Colorado and the Coulee Dam in Washington State. Well, I did a little bit of everything over all those years. Went back and worked in the lumber camps a while up in northern Michigan. When the war broke out I was working

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out in the Mojave Desert in California for the American Potash and Chemical Company.

Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers were at Corona, but the union up at Bishop was the IWW, Industrial Workers of the World.

I guess that was about their last stronghold, but holy cow, you had clean sheets on the bed. Living conditions were a big thing with the Wobblies. Hell, they served steaks like pancakes!

The Wobblies went into the lumber camps and the wheat fields and the mines, and they organized the people. But there was a strong sense of comradeship amongst them. You didn't have to have a Wobblie card to ride the boxcars. The Wobblies didn't operate that way.

They were really the first what you might call an international union. The rest of the unions at that time were little closet affairs. The IWW dealt with boomers and miners and lumberjacks and grain harvest workers.

We'd see people with lunch buckets when the freight would stop in their town, going to work and all in the factories. We thought, boy, they must be awful dumb. Raising kids and paying insurance and buying milk and paying for a house and all this. It was kind of a no-no that you didn't have to take on that kind of responsibility. Of course, all these places I worked, they were all union. I spent very little time ever working non-union.

Union Traditions: The Power of Solidarity

Union traditions developed over several decades in which movements and organizations ebbed and flowed. In the 1880s under the banner "an injury to one is the concern of all," the Knights of Labor fashioned a cooperative culture and an effective working-class political presence. By the turn of the century many cities had strong central labor unions of organized trades, and in the mine fields the United Mine Workers of America had created a strong presence through District 13. But many workers remained on the margins.

The World War I era was a roller coaster for workers and their unions. Labor scarcity and government mediation created an environment that fostered the formation of unions. As organizing campaigns and strikes spread during the war, workers saw their wages rise, and for the first time many enjoyed the eight-hour day. These gains proved to be fleeting. As the war came to an end, the demobilization of troops, the contraction of the economy, and the withdrawal of government from its role as mediator be-

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tween labor and capital produced a wave of strikes between 1919 and 1922. By 1922, the labor movement had lost virtually all of the members it gained during the war and was reeling from a series of strike defeats.

In Iowa these defeats were particularly disastrous in the state's three dominant industriesmeat-packing, railroads, and mining. In 1921 the nationwide strike among packinghouse workers swept the Amalgamated Meat Cutters from the major packinghouses where it had gained a foothold during the war. In 1919 and 1922 bituminous coal miners struck and were defeated. Beset by excess capacity, the industry was in the process of weeding out less-competitive mines. This process, already under way in Iowa before the war, had only been delayed by the wartime demand for coal. Now it proceeded with a vengeance. Miners in droves left the coal villages for industrial towns. The largely immigrant work force at the gypsum mills at Fort Dodge struck in 1921 and held out most of the summer. Some returned to work under nonunion conditions, but many were permanently blacklisted.

Finally, in 1922 shop workers in many Iowa rail centers joined the national walkout only to experience bitter defeat. In an industry that had become the most thoroughly organized in the country and that set the standard for wages and hours to which other workers aspired, the defeat was particularly bitter.

The postwar defeats left deep scars and long memories in many working-class families. Young people growing up in those years remembered their parents' hatred of scabs and the tales of sacrifices during these struggles. Others remembered parents who turned bitterly antiunion or deeply cautious.

In some crafts workers held onto their unions through determined efforts. Many young workers grew up in households where unionism was an article of faith, and a sense of union traditions, even in hard times, was passed on to the next generation.

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Many workers who became active in the labor movement in Iowa during the 1930s and 1940s recall growing up in families where unions were an integral part of their lives. Their parents and other families turned to unions for protection and a measure of security. Betty Talkington recalls her parents' difficult work lives and the unions to which they belonged, wherever they worked, as well as her own role as a child in an organizing drive at a button factory in Muscatine.

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My own father disappeared when I was six weeks old, and I don't know anything about him except his name. My stepfather, whom my mother married about the time I was two, adopted me, and I carried his name all through high school till I was married. He was various things, but about the time I began to notice what was going on in the financial part of it he became an ironworker and helped to build the Dam and Lock No. 16 out in front of Muscatine in the Mississippi River. First he started out as a laborer on the job, and he was a good worker. The general foreman asked him if he'd like to tie rods. They didn't have enough ironworkers, and he taught him himself how to do this craft. Years later he died and still had his card with the Iron Workers local out of the Quad Cities.

The main thing I did, as far as unions was concerned, was attend the union meetings with my father. We used to drive to Rock Island, to the old Labor Temple. The family would sit in the car and wait for Daddy to pay his dues and go to his meeting. Sometimes he would take one or the other of us up to the meeting. My mother had a lot of jobs. One of the first things I remember she was a laundry worker, and that was a terrible job in the days before air conditioning. Hot and dirty and long, long hours. She belonged to a union. It never did very much for them, I'm sorry to say. Evidently, it was in its early stages, and they had a real blackhearted employer. They lost their union shortly after it was organized.

The first thing I ever did in my life with unions was in Muscatine when I was a little kid. My father was approached because of where we lived, at the last turning point before you went down this dead-end street to Weber's Button Factory. The unions were trying to organize Weber's. In Muscatine so many of the jobs at that time were involved in the button companies. There were many of them, but they had a blacklist that they kept. Everybody was afraid to hand out union literature.

So they were trying to find somebody who was brave enough to be out on the corner in the morning to hand out the organizing literature, and it was decided that one of the safest ways would be to have the children hand it out because we kids always played on that corner, and all those women that went by knew us and called us by name. Normally we were out in the afternoon as they went home, but this one morning my brother, who was a small child in a red wagon, and I were out playing on the corner. I was maybe nine or ten, and my brother was two. Our wagon contained the literature, and I would run up to the ladies and hand them each a piece of this literature, and because they trusted me they took it. I was known to them, and they weren't afraid of me. So that's what we did in that particular organizing drive, which incidentally was not successful. The button factories really had a hold on the labor market in Muscatine at that time.

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The loss of a strike before the 1930s often meant the destruction of the union. The union defeats at the end of World War I left a residue of bitterness and union consciousness in many communities that played a role in the union campaigns of the 1930s. Julie Fritz recalls the strike of largely immigrant workers against the gypsum mills in Fort Dodge in 1921.

I can remember my mother talking about the big strike. I think it was in 1921 that they tried to form a union at the U.S. Gypsum. The fellows went out. They were very hard up because they always worked for a cheap wage. My mother said that during the strike many of them went to work sugar beets and things like that. Any job they could get. Sugar beets was quite a prevalent agricultural thing that you could go into and work part-time. She said that my dad's brother was farming near Moorland, which is about six miles from here. So he spent his summer working with his brother on the farm, just working produce for something to eat. Then Mom said that when the summer was over, they broke the strike. The men just had to go back. There was nothing for them to do. They couldn't survive it. U.S.G. was one of the last ones to be unionized in this area.

Some craft unions had well-established rules regulating entry to the trade. They were rooted in a strong union culture, in some cases imported by immigrant craftsmen. Svend Andersen remembers his fight to get hired as an apprentice bricklayer (his father was a union carpenter) and his duties as an apprentice. He learned the trade and the principles of union solidarity at the same time.

When I went back to high school, I was older than most kids. So I said I didn't want to go to school, and my dad said, "Well, you're going to learn a trade of some kind." He knew I didn't care about carpenter work, because I'd been around him. I started to be a plasterer but didn't care much for that. So I thought about bricklaying. I was the first bricklayer that wasn't the son of a bricklayer to start in this trade in Des Moines. Years ago you had to be the son of a bricklayer before you could even get in as an apprentice.

My dad was a carpenter, but he happened to have two good friends that was bricklayers. You ought to have heard the meetings we had. Some of them old guys would get up and raise cain! But I finally made it. Boy, we had a battle.

At first you had to be kind of a laborer, mix mortar and all that stuff. But the Hod Carriers Union or Laborers Union, they said no more of that. They didn't want the apprentice boys doing their work. The bricklayers used to take care of the apprentices. One of them says to me, "I'm taking some lime home. I want

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you to come out to my house Saturday morning. I want you to calcimine my chicken house." I had to go out there and do that for nothing. He was just a bricklayer. He was an officer in the union, but that didn't make any difference. But that's what they used to make apprentice boys do.

Back in them days, bricklayers was pretty heavy drinkers, and I used to go on the streetcar twice a day after somewhat'd they call that drink? It had a lot of alcohol in it. I used to go to the drugstore and get that. I had to make that trip at least twice a day!

The local was started back years ago before my time. It was a bunch of them good union bricklayers from England. They was union men when they come here. It was a good organization.

I became a journeyman and was initiated in St. Louis in 1927. I floated all over this United States. But it's gone, past. Not very many do it anymore. See, I used to work here, and I'd tell them contractors, "Now, my last paycheck will be the first week in October, and then I go south." Most places you have to have a permit, but our card's international. It's just as good in Canada as it is in Des Moines.

When you was on the bum, if a guy didn't want to give you a job, some bricklayer would come and go to the foreman and say, "Listen, let that kid work a day." That'd give me some money. They'd volunteer to let me work in their place, which has happened to me several times. I could of went to work on several nonunion jobs, but I wouldn't do it. Didn't believe in it.

Craft unions forged a sense of union solidarity that bound members together. But that solidarity could also be a means of excluding racial minorities, women, and other "outsiders" from the trade. Oma Ferguson witnessed the experience of his father, a skilled black electrician, who was fired at the insistence of the union when Bell Telephone unionized. Ferguson had to overcome the bitterness he felt over the treatment of his father when, as a molder, he confronted the prospect of joining the union.

My father was a free-lance electrician, but at the time of his passing he worked for Bell Telephone Company. There's quite a story behind that, too.

Being a black man, he could not belong to the electrical union, so he was free lance. He would wire people's houses. He even wired churches and so forth. Of course, my job was going around after school trying to collect the money from the people that owed him. But he got a job at the Bell Telephone Company. They were not organized when he got the job. Eventually they did organize in the thirties, but a black man was not allowed to belong to the Bell Telephone union.

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Consequently, my dad and my unclehe worked there, toothey lost their jobs. After it was organized, they could not belong.

I've seen some strides in union activities from the time I was a child up until the present time, because I was president of Local 459 for fourteen years.

I came straight to the foundry. I was a furnace tender's helper for, oh, I suppose, eighteen or nineteen years. And then they moved me up to lead man. I've been lead man ever since.

I wanted to find out how the union worked, because it was still in my craw how they had treated my dad down in Missouri. Okay, I got the contract book. "Check this out, Ferg." And they asked me a simple question. They said, "Now, do you think the company would just haul off and automatically give all of the employees this? Or do you think we have to negotiate and bargain with them for it?" I said, ''Ain't no company just automatically every so often come up and give all the employees x amount of money raise, you know." I said, ''Okay, I'll go along with it."

Gaylord Larson was born in 1919 in Fort Dodge. Both of his parents lived most of their lives in that vicinity. Hits father worked on the railroad.

My father was a railroad man. He worked all his life as a fireman and engineer. He always belonged to the Firemen's union, and although he got promoted to engineer he still maintained his membership in the Firemen. The M&StL. It had a couple of different names to it, too. The Misery and Short Life and the Midnight and Sometimes Later!

I was introduced to unions through my father. He'd always been a union man. They'd had a strike back right after the First World War. He taught me the concept of "once a scab, always a scab," and he still held hard feelings with some of the people that he had to work with. And I always thought that'd be difficult to work with somebody and really feel that way about them.

Militant commitment to union principles is often passed from one family member to another. The shared experience of suffering or the sacrifices made to build and defend a union act as a powerful force in shaping the lives of other family members. Dick Sturgeon's uncle was a very visible prounion public official in Sioux City during the 1930s. As an adolescent, Sturgeon walked picket lines and participated in demonstrations.

I had an uncle, Harold Sturgeon, who probably could've been a governor of the state of Iowa or even higher if he had watched his p's and q's. He was a labor organizer and a newspaper editor. He edited the labor paper back in those days.

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He was elected to the school board, and from there he ran for and was elected to the position of commissioner of Public Safety.

Very brilliant man. He had the support of all kinds of people. The Public Safety commissioner's job is a dead-end job. Anybody that gets in that job usually ends up either resigning or getting kicked out because of accusations of wrongdoing or graft.

He played a very important part in that packinghouse strike in 1939. There was a report that they were shipping scabs in from Omaha in boxcars, and so he called the sheriff who happened to be a Democrat at the time, and him and the sheriff and the sheriff's deputies and the Sioux City policemen met the train on the outskirts of Sioux City, threw some seals on the door, and told the engineer to put the train in reverse and take it back to Omaha and that he didn't want those seals broke open until the train got to Omaha. He notified the law enforcement agencies in Omaha to check and make sure that the seals hadn't been broken.

He got the report that the company had massed the scabs up on top of the hill on Leech Street, which is about five, six blocks from the Swift plant, and were preparing to march to the plant, and that the union folks had all gathered down at the plant and they were prepared to resist that march. My uncle once again tried to get hold of the sheriff to get his folks together and they'd go down there together, and he found out the sheriff had conveniently left town! So him and a few of his officers went down and interceded in the march and headed it off and prevented some bloodshed at the time.

But both my dad and my uncle came from a very large family that was poor as a church mouse. My grandfather worked at Cudahy packing plant, lost his rights in the first packinghouse strike, was very antiunion, very much Republican, and how he ever fathered two very militant liberal labor Democrats I don't know, but he certainly did.

One of my first recollections was walking the picket line with my dad in front of the Armour plant. Both my mother and dad worked at the Armour plant, and my dad was steward, union official there, for years. When I was about thirteen or fourteen I was in a mass demonstration, and it turned into a riot at Sioux City Dressed Beef.

Merlyn Wee was born in 1922 and raised in Estherville. He came from a very strong railroad union family.

When my father was sixteen years old he went to work for the railroad as a section hand, the Rock Island. He went into train service at eighteen, and he was in the train service until he retired when he was sixty-seven.

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He was a strong union man. He ate, breathed, and lived union. I can remember even when I was going to grade school, Dad would come in off the railroad maybe in the late afternoon and sit down at the typewriter. He could only use two fingers, the old hunt-and-peck system. He would type volumes of letters. Later on when I was in high school and I was doing a little carousing around at night, I'd come home at maybe one o'clock in the morning, and there he'd still be pecking with two fingers, trying to get a letter. Probably took him two hours to type a one-page letter. But he was so dedicated to that, and volumes and volumes of typewritten stuff he would do with those two fingers. When I'd get up to go to school the next day, he'd be gone to work already. I don't know when he slept or if he slept. I'm sure that my dad never slept over four or five hours in one night in his life. For twenty-seven years he was the local chairman of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen here, and then later on he became general chairman.

My union background goes back further than that. My dad's father was a union member, and he was section foreman down here at the Rock Island, and my grandfather on my mother's side, George Meisner, was a railroad conductor and was killed up at Ocheyedan by a passenger train. He was conductor on a passenger train, and he stepped off in front of a switch engine and was killed. I knew many of the old-timers when I was younger. They would say, "Yeah, I remember your Grandpa George." Of course, I never knew him. He got killed when my mother was only a small baby. It goes back even further than that. My great grandfather, James Anderson, who would be my mother's grandfather, he was a section foreman at Wallingford, Iowa. Back in 1897 he was a union delegate to a convention. I've got his convention badge at home. So we go back a long way! My Uncle Odie, after my dad retired, took over the reins and then run the show on the local level here. So it's been kind of a family operation. Union isn't new to me!

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Button cutters, Muscatine, 1907. Grossheim Collection,

Musser Public Library, Muscatine.

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Conditions of Work Before the Union

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Whether their backgrounds were in mining or farming, whether they hailed from the state's interior or its older river towns, a new generation of Iowa workers born in the twentieth century encountered conditions in their communities and at work that stirred sentiment for organization. The industrial economy of the state was intimately tied to agriculture. When farm prices began their precipitous fall in 1920 and foreclosure stalked the countryside, urban workers in meat-packing and farm equipment manufacturing felt the reverberations. Survival skills that had been developed to meet the everyday uncertainties of life in working-class communities were honed to fine tolerances as workers struggled to cope with deepening depression.

Although the depression began for many workers before the crash in 1929, it grew worse for nearly all of them afterward. Their stories tell of young men and women cut loose from their families to fend for themselves, of families in crisis, of desperate searches for employment that carried them from city to city and plant to plant. Many stood vigilantly for months every morning outside of plant gates as supervisors handpicked the strongest or most pliant work force from the army of unemployed.

The depression may have eroded the legitimacy of capitalism in the eyes of some workers, but for others it was the daily brush with the arbitrary authority of employers, which antedated the hard times, that prepared them for the idea of unionism. When conditions ripened, they were ready to organize.

Industrial work entailed the risk of life and health. Although some workers accepted the employer's terms, whatever the risk, especially when work was scarce and the hungry numerous, others never did. Unions that came to represent workers in basic industry managed to eliminate some of the worst safety abuses, but the victories were rarely final or complete. Unless continuously checked by strong unions and effective legislation, health and safety conditions in the workplace could quickly deteriorate.

Even in an era of mass production, craft traditions survived on building sites, in small shops, and in large manufacturing plants. Skilled workers remained crucial to the organization of unions. They conveyed their sense of dignity and craft pride to less-skilled workers who through collective organization came to enjoy unprecedented power over the conditions under which they worked.

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The Chasm of Class

The industrial towns that dotted the landscape of Iowa in the twentieth century may have been smaller and culturally more homogeneous than larger manufacturing centers in the East, but they were no less class divided.

Nineteenth-century railroad shop towns and coal-mining villages were among the earliest urban places in which workers were numerically dominant. Those towns were joined by more diversified manufacturing centers that employed a wide range of skilled tradesmen and less-skilled workers. Some worked in industries such as packinghouses or grain mills that were directly tied to the agricultural economy. Others extracted gypsum or soft coal from beneath the state's rich topsoil. Still others manufactured goods that fed an expanding and diverse consumer market for clothing, rubber, machinery, and beer.

Relations between classes in these industrial towns were not stamped from a single mold. Some employers, whether from idealistic or self-serving motivations, cultivated close and paternal ties with their workers. Others ruled their corporate domains with harsher methods. Inevitably such differences in industrial relations colored community life outside the factory. However, from company towns like Newton, to more diversified manufacturing towns like Ottumwa or Fort Dodge, to older and larger cities like Dubuque or Davenport, class boundaries were an irreducible fact of social life.

During the Great Depression economic insecurity and the stigma of unemployment deepened class divisions. Disparities in income and consumption increased. The imperative that many working-class children felt to leave school to support their families separated them from their more affluent classmates. Conflicts that surrounded the formation of unions sharpened class divisions as community members organized to defend their interests.

The social position of black workers in Iowa communities, as elsewhere, was governed not only by the hierarchy of class but of race. Socially segregated and occupationally consigned to the lowest rung, their struggles as workers and as blacks for dignity and a better life were inseparable.

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Class divisions were deeply etched in people's lives. Unemployment became a stigma for young people growing up in the harsh conditions of the 1930s. Her father's unemployment embarrassed Julie Fritz of Fort Dodge, and she feared it would be discovered by her classmates in high school.

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We felt very clannish, and in high school, especially, I developed a terrible inferiority complex. I knew I came from the foreign element. We had a very distinct social barrier. If you came from the east end or south of town, they kind of looked down on you. Each year you enrolled they had a card on you, and you had to fill it out as to your name and address, and your parents' name and address, and where your father worked. My dad, of course, was laid off from U.S.G. in the early thirties when I was going to high school. Oh, I just couldn't bring myself to say "unemployed," because anybody could go through those files. But I put down "U.S.G." I just didn't want to put down "unemployed."

And there was a fellow there at school that I was kind of fond of, and I guess he was kind of fond of me. I really didn't date him, but I did talk to him, and I did feel very self-conscious, because he lived on the other side of the tracks. He says, "I notice your dad works at the U.S.G. What is he? A foreman?" And I looked at him and I says, "Uh, not really." And I didn't say any more. I didn't want him to pursue it. There was a terrible social consciousness in this town, in the schools, especially. Everybody was just with their own group, and they did look down on us if we lived down in the east end, because we were all more or less of foreign descent, in the poor section.

In smaller industrial towns, like Ottumwa, the life-style of the major employers was on display for all to see. Their extravagence, in the context of the depression, sharpened the sense of class division in the community. Many workers viewed these owners as outsiders, whose "snobbery," according to Jack McCoy, was an affront to the community.

The poor labor relations at Morrell's stemmed in part from the whole dominant attitude of the Foster family in Ottumwa. As I was growing up in the thirties, I recall the mansion being built at Pike Road and Elm Street. I couldn't have been more than two or three years old, just barely remember the attitude of my folks. We lived behind there about the equivalent of two blocks in the house that my grandfather on my mother's side had built.

Bob Foster married, I think, a Pepper. Bob was T. Henry's son, and, dammit, during the thirties when people were really desperate for food, the parties out there were in about ten acres of rose garden. Us kids would sit there on the front porch hungry. The parties out there had maybe five hundred or six hundred guests, and they'd ceremoniously break open the beer kegs with a sledge and put a dipper in the kegs. The food would get throwed out, and us kids would sneak up there and go through the damn garbage cans.

The Foster family had a down-the-nose attitude toward the people of Ottumwa. I guess we had a down-the-nose attitude toward them. We looked upon

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them as the foreigners who'd come in and established the Morrell Company. They were kind of the snobs of the town. That does not mean that we didn't have a certain amount of affection. Old T. Henry used to stop his Chrysler coupé and pick us kids up occasionally when it was raining and take us to school. He was, I think, a much more gentlemanly figure than Bob was. But most of themit was a snobbery toward us, toward the whole town.

Black workers who migrated from the coalfields to Iowa cities in the 1930s encountered a society deeply divided along racial lines. In Des Moines, Robert A. Jackson, Sr., found rigid occupational and social segregation that confined his aspirations. The contrast with the coal-mining village in Missouri from whence he had come was striking.

When I came to Des Moines in the thirties my father could not read and write. My mother could. He said, "All of my children will have a high school education." And with my auntie in Des Moines, they sent me here to get my high school education. Regardless of what they said about Missouri, at that time it was more integrated than Iowa was, especially Des Moines.

Where I came from the only thing that I knew was two types of workthe coal mines or working in the stores around there or the academy. And that employment was always readily available to any of usblack, white, Italian, or whatever. When I got here the only type of job that was open was the maid in the hotel or the janitor or cleaning up one of the theaters. Now and then some of them were working at the Register and the Tribune, but they'd worked hard to get there, and they was janitors. So the job discrimination was quite a bit more than it was in the town in Missouri I was from. At that time it was just a part of life. We didn't start thinking about that till sometime in the forties. The older people accepted the circumstances that they had lived in, but they taught you how to step over certain stumbling blocks.

Some small industrial towns were so dominated by a single employer that they took on the character of a company town. In housing, consumption, and politics, companies like Maytag in Newton enjoyed direct control over their employees' lives. Edris "Soapy" Owens went to work in Newton in the 1930s before the union began organizing.

Newton was a company town. In fact, I've often wondered how I got hired, being from Colfax. You had to move to Newton and buy one of the Maytag homes or buy a Pontiac car off a guy here in Newton by the name of Longworth. You had to almost do that in order to keep your job at Maytag's. But at this

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particular time that I got hired evidently they had quite a rush on orders, because they put three shifts on practically throughout the plant. They probably knew that it was just a temporary stint, so they relaxed their regulations.

The Maytag Company owned fifty to seventy-five homes. They rented them, and when the people moved out or they moved the people out, they would force the employees to buy those homes. Maytag had a deal with the Pontiac garage here, and there was more Pontiacs sold in the city of Newton than in any city twice its size in the whole United States.

The town was dominated by the Maytag family. Even though most of the Maytag family isn't here anymore, the town is stillI'm not going to say dominated to the same degree, but you look on every commission, every committee, every agency in this town, and you'll find that Maytag has some of their top guys. School board or whatever it might be. I will say that after we went into the UAW, Maytag's were a different group of people to work with than they were before. By that I mean I think they finally accepted the fact that this union was here to stay and the way to deal with it was in a businesslike manner, which they did not do when we were in the UE.

"I Could Not Believe Such a Place Existed": Working Conditions Before the Union

The dangers of industrial work were a primal source of discontent for many workers. Unprotected from the machinery, amidst the bedlam of the factory, breathing foul and filthy air, and subjected to extreme changes in temperature, workers searched for the means to protect their lives and their health.

Not only were such workplaces, from the worker's point of view, irrational and wasteful environments, they also symbolized the low regard in which employees were held by their employers. Workers were expendable, unworthy of the investment that cleaner and safer workplaces would require.

Early in the twentieth century Iowa workers and their Progressive Era allies had fought for and won workers' compensation legislation, which provided some minimal protection to workers or their families after the fact of injury or death. But apart from limited initiatives in the area of coal mine safety following the major mine disasters, little progress was made regulating industrial workplaces. In a labor market periodically saturated with new immigrant recruits or, after 1920, with refugees from the depressed agricultural hinterland, workers enjoyed little leverage in demanding changes in the workplace. Company-sponsored health inspectors or physicians often

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Foundry workers on the die cast line, Maytag Washing Machine Company,

Newton, ca. 1930. State Historical Society of Iowa, Des Moines.

ignored the dangers of the workplace. Improvements would only come as workers in the mass production industries organized and negotiated over working conditions or through collective action simply refused to put up with unsafe conditions.

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Work in packinghouses was dangerous, and the dangers were compounded by the shifting of workers between jobs in hot and cold environments in the plant. Richard Lowry worked at Tobin Packing Company in Fort Dodge. Workers in the shipping department were moved routinely from the coolers to the steamy killing floor during the middle of the day. Without a union, they had no control over such assignments.

I started in the shipping department, actually shipping and kill. That was a bad combination. You'd go in in the morning and break the hogs that were killed the day before. Then, when you got done breaking them down and packing them, you went to the kill floor. So you'd be in this cold room and work until ten, eleven o'clock in the morning, or maybe noon, however many hogs they had to work on, and then you would hurry up to the locker room and shuck off your clothes and get into something as little as possible and run out on that steamy hot kill floor and work the rest of the day. You maybe would come in one day for four or five hours, and the next day you'd come in for ten or twelve hours. And then maybe you'd have a dark day Thursday and you'd have to work Saturday.

Part of the day we were near the ceiling with the scalding tub right there. You couldn't hardly breathe. We'd have to squirt the hoses to be able to stay there. Then they started experimenting with this rosin for dehairing, and they moved these rosin kettles right up alongside of a guy. Put a plumber's blowtorch under them to keep them hot, a five-gallon pail, real backwoodsy way just to experiment. They'd put a guy with a wide calcimine brush right alongside. He'd slop that rosin on you. I've got scars on my arms yet from the stuff. They would scrape that hair, and you had to turn the hog over and dig the scurf out of the ears, pull the rings off the nose, pull the toenails off. My fingernails would fall off. You'd dig your fingers in those hot ears, and after a week or so you didn't have no fingernails.

Packinghouse workers learned the hazards of knife work on the job. Before unions, what protections they had came slowly. Eddie Newman and Clarence Ramsey, who worked for many years at Jacob E. Decker and Sons in Mason City, knew the dangers of the cut and the crippling effects that workers carried with them.

Eddie Newman: At that time they didn't have any of these mesh guards. You figured you'd cut yourself at least a hundred times before you got good enough to work without cutting yourself all the time. There wasn't any protection that

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The cutting floor at Rath Packing Company in the 1930s, Waterloo.

State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

I know of. Later they developed a mesh guard to put on your hand, and they put guards on your knives so that when you stubbed it, it wouldn't slide through your hand. They fixed us up with a piece of belting to put around our stomachs so you didn't cut your stomach. That's as the years went on. And they kept improving it. The only reason was that it made their insurance less. It wasn't to protect the workers.

Clarence Ramsey: There's the scar I got before they had the mesh guard. I was working on the cutting floor, and I was raising short ribs. I didn't move my hand right, and I got this cut across there. They wouldn't let me go home. They took me down and sewed it up, but because they had a big safety campaign going on at the time, so many days with no lost-time to accidents, they made me go up and drive hogs on the killing floor. I didn't need that one hand. I could use one hand and my voice to drive hogs with.

Eddie Newman and I both worked with a group of anywhere from ten to twenty-five boners at a time, and I would say a good third of them had crippling effects on their hands and arms. One was Eddie Flavin. He had to close his fist around his thumb in order to hold the meat between his thumb and fingers. And then there was Harold Hansen. He cut himself about nine o'clock

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in the morning and due to infection at one o'clock that afternoon seen this red strip running up his arm. He went down, and they took his finger off at the second joint.

Newman: When they were taking our fingerprints in World War IIthey took everybody's fingerprints when that startedthe guy taking the prints checked my hand, and he said, ''You've got the best pair of hands that come through here yet.'' They weren't crippled up.

Button manufacturing boomed in Muscatine toward the end of the nineteenth century. The industry fiercely resisted unionization, and the conditions of work reflected its unregulated character. The work of sorting buttons was done under crowded conditions in old factories. Cutting buttons from Mississippi River mussel shells produced a fine white dust that settled on everything. As a child growing up in Muscatine, Betty Talkington helped button workers and later went to work in the factories herself.

I can remember my aunt doing what they called sorting. They sat at little tables in very small aisles and looked at the finished buttons. How they could've gotten out if there was a fire heaven only knows. The buildings were wooden with rats running around on the floor, so that you were scared to death. It really was bad.

Another part of it that was terrible was putting the buttons on cards for sale. That was a cottage industry type thing. You had to go down to pick up your buttons, and then you had to have them back in so many hours. My mother never did do that, but several of the neighbors did, and I sat and helped, just because I thought it was fun. I'm sure it wasn't. As an adult it would be terribly tedious. You actually literally sewed them on with a needle and thread. And they played favorites when they handed out the stuff. If you were a good worker or if you were a little less than what you should be as far as your morals were concerned, the guy who handed the buttons out might give you the best or the worst, depending on several conditions.

Afterward I worked in a button factory, and the button dust was just everywhere. We'd line up at the time clockI wore glasses in those daysand someone would turn around and for fun put their finger on your glasses and wipe down. Then you were blind because you'd been able to see through it, but once one place was clean you couldn't see.

When my grandfather cut blanks they did it in a plant. They went to a subcontractor of the big companies, who would have a small plant the size of a three-or four-car garage, and the men would work there. The wheels had to have water

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on them to keep them from burning up. When they got better Carborundum wheels and the diamond wheels, it made a difference. Everything was covered with white. Just unbelievable.

"It Was a Madhouse": Management Authority and Workers' Rights

Traditionally, managers' authority over their employees was never unqualified. Complex webs of interdependence tied together skilled workers and their helpers, foremen and those they supervised, managers and their foremen, and owners and those they employed. Factories were hardly democratic, but the arbitrary authority of management was checked by the formal and informal ties that bound workers together.

The increasing scale and competitiveness of manufacturing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries altered the social fabric of business in crucial ways. The central role that many skilled workers played in regulating the process of production diminished. The "rationalization" of production through increased division of labor broke down the ties that bound the work of skilled and unskilled laborers to each other. Legions of specialized machine-tenders replaced all-round craftsmen. The authority of the foreman was hedged by the introduction of new, specialized managerial personnel (time-study men) who lacked any ties to the men and women in production. And the sheer scale of production removed managers further from the domain of the shopfloor.

These and other developments centralized the authority of management and made it more arbitrary by shattering the countervailing social relations of production. As a consequence, workers in the 1920s and 1930s found themselves increasingly alienated from the managerial authority that governed their worklives. In virtually every domain of work, from hiring and firing to the determination of pay and the organization of the work process, workers were confronted by favoritism and arbitrariness that violated their dignity and their own standards of rationality.

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Before they built unions in the mass production industries, individual workers were on their own to protect their interests as best they could. The virus of favoritism was rampant and uncontrolled. Layoffs, job assignments, and pay rates were governed by the whim and caprice of foremen. Such a system

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Tire builders and their foreman at Blackhawk Rubber Company

(later Armstrong Tires), Des Moines, ca. 1922. State Historical Society of Iowa,

Iowa City.

promoted waste and inefficiency as well as injustice. Carl Dahl worked under these conditions in the mid- to late-thirties at John Deere in Waterloo.

Before the union if you wanted to challenge the company on something they'd tell you if you don't like it there's somebody at the gate that'll gladly take your damn job, so you ought to be satisfied and tickled to death you got a job. They probably wouldn't fire a man on the spot, but it'd get written down in the little black book. When they had a layoff they'd have a culling procedure. The guy is kind of a troublemaker, so we'll replace him because we can get somebody else in.

They had a yellow-dog contract that you signed every year. You signed this book, this little yellow-dog, that you agreed to work for this rate and that you would not join a union.

Seniority was based on so many things before they'd use the length of service. Let me read part of the rules: "When it becomes necessary to reduce the force, consideration be given to training, versatility, skill, efficiency, physical fitness, personal habits, safety practices, family status, married, single, and depen-

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dents, honesty, dependability, cooperation with supervisors and fellow employees, place of residence in or out of city, length of service. All things being equal, length of service will govern the order to lay off within departments." I'm telling you, by the time you fulfilled all them, buddy, you can forget about your length of service.

I had a personal incident happen to me back in the late thirties. We had a layoff in the test room. Every summer we'd get laid off. This particular summer there was an older guy by the name of Doc Cook. He was fifteen, twenty years older than I, and he had a family of four children. Another guy by the name of George Dietert was about my age, but he was very conservative. He had the first dollar he ever earned. He was from a German family up by Strawberry Point, from the old school, you know, you save that old dollar. So they had a layoff, and they both had more seniority than I did, and they were both good workmen. There was no question about their work, except old Doc Cook, he had a gimpy foot and he limped around a little. So they laid them two guys off and kept me. Of course, naturally, these guys looked at me and says, "You get laid off, Carl?" I said, "No, and I can't figure out why." "Well," they said, "you must've had pull or something." ''No," I said, ''I can't figure out why. But I'm going to find out." So I went to the foreman and asked him, "Am I getting laid off?" He said, "No, you're not getting laid off." I said, "How come you're laying these two guys off?" "Well," he said, "old Doc, he jumps around here, and a little layoff wouldn't hurt him any." I said, "Who's going to feed his kids?" "Well," he says, "that isn't my worry." I said, "How about this other guy?" "Oh," he said, "he's so goddamn tight, he's got the first dollar he ever earned. He can afford to get laid off." I said, "Look, I don't buy this. These two guys are friends of mine, and they're looking at me like, 'What kind of a character are you?' I think that this is wrong." "Well," he said, "who do you think should get laid off?" I says, "George," the younger guy, "and myself, because old Doc, he's got the seniority on both of us." "Well," he said, "have it your way, but someday you'll get smart and learn. Don't be worried about the other guy." "Well," I said, "look, I value my friendship with these people. That's worth a lot, too." And these guys, you know, they come over and they slapped me on the back and said, "Carl, we sure appreciate it." And George did, too, even though he was getting laid off, because that's the right way to do it. But we seen a lot of that. These are some of the things that really irked me.

I seen so much of this favoritism by the foremen. Oh, they'd bring him a bottle of whiskey, or they'd be going out this weekend, you'd hear them talking, to paint the boss's house. And some of these farmers would bring him in produce from the farm. The boss, he had quite a thing going there. The sad part of it was, some of these guys weren't worth a damn as workmen. I had an industrial rela-

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tions director tell me, "Since the union got in here, we done away with a lot of deadbeats, favoritism. We stopped that for damn sure."

Favoritism was all over. It even went as far as religion. You'd find pockets of this and that. Whether you were Protestant or Catholic, or whether you were a Mason. They padded the time slips, especially in piecework. A guy could go up and get a couple hours of day rate because he said he wasn't making enough. The foreman said, "We'll put it on trucking." They'd cover up a bad job and then transfer it over onto somebody else.

There was guys that got favored when they were timing a job. If they had the right connection, the foreman said to the time-study guy, "Hey, this is a pretty good Joe. Give him a break on this time study." You seen that kind of crap go on. Then they'd use these same time-study characters to cut jobs to hurt somebody else. They'd time it to get a low price on it, or they'd transfer the job over to somebody else if it wasn't any good. The top management of your company didn't believe in this kind of stuff, but when you get a big plant and all that kind of supervision, they don't know what is going on.

"It was a madhouse." That was how Harry Booth viewed his experience working for the Ford Motor Company assembly plant in Des Moines. He had left the Iowa coalfields in 1920, and for nearly twenty years he watched the effects of an arbitrary and paternalistic management. Rules were constantly changing; demands were suddenly imposed on workers' private lives beyond the plant; "home office men" perpetually overruled local supervisers. Everyone was afraid. Order and rationality came only with recognition of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and serious bargaining over working conditions and work rules.

August 3, 1920, I went down to Ford Motor Company and started to work. They was hiring people all the time. They'd hire twenty people down there in one day, and they'd let ten of them go and hire ten more the next. They'd be trying them out.

A good many of the guys that were there, including foremen of the departments and even the superintendent of the plant, were local people. Some of them were guys I worked with when they was working with their dads and I was working with my dad in the coal mines. We come from that kind of a background. And then there was a lot of other local people in there that was what coal miners used to call "cracker feds" when they was talking about people living in town rather than in a coal camp. But the orders and supervision and the control that come from the home officewe referred to it as home officeDetroit, was

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just inhuman in many cases. The foremen themselves agreed usually with us, and they would be scared to death when these home office men would come in.

Well, number one, when you hired out there, they become a father-and-mother-like deal over you. In other words, your house became the subject of them sending out inspectors to see how you lived, how you operated, how much money you spent, whether you owned or rented, and you was advised whether or not you could keep boarders. At the time I went there, if you had a brother working there they wouldn't hire you. They never wanted to get relatives in there together.

They would call meetings to put out the policies. They'd call them anytime, sometimes after work. You had to stay and attend that meeting. In other words, you was a captive audience at all times. When they'd start to promote ideas, programs in production or whatever, they'd hold a meeting maybe at night, and they'd tell you to bring your wife. You was checked at the door. If you didn't show up down there, it was inferred that you just wouldn't need to come to work anymore. When the welfare drives went on, like United Way that we have now, the Welfare Department would announce to you that everybody come down to work with a certain specified amount of money the next morning. And if you didn't have it, don't show up. You'd just get your check and that would be it. You'd go down Grand Avenue talking to yourself.

You no longer had any control of yourself. They could promote you, demote you, fire you, and you had no grievances, no place to go. Your security was the boss, and if the boss got so he didn't like you, you was gone. If anything happened to him and you got a new boss, you had a new bunch of guys with all the favors, and the other guys didn't have. That was the only security you had, and it could go out overnight. The guy could drop dead. You was out. Those were the kinds of conditions you worked under. They even told you how you should dress. If you was looking kind of ragged or shaggy, they'd come up to you and tell you you better get some new clothes on or don't show up here in the morning. When you went in the door there, you was strictly under that kind of supervision.

I've seen times when they'd get a wire and shut the whole plant down. Ten minutes everything would be going. The next ten minutes it would be all different. Maybe they'd lay you off in one department. You go to the foreman, and he'd put you on over on his side. You didn't seem to know where you was. It was a madhouse. I really think the Ford Motor Company itself found out before it was organized in the union that they didn't themselves know what was going on.

To give you an example, we were shipping parts out. The guys had recently been told just how to pack them. They was trying to pack them very carefully to

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protect the parts. Used lots of paper wrapping them up. The new home office guy would come though maybe six weeks later. In order to speed up production, or whatever he was doing, he would have a whole different idea. He'd go make them tear the lid off a box. "What the hell!" he'd say and tear the papers, the packing, all out. "Put that stuff in there. This guy ain't buying paper. He's buying parts. Do that all over again, and from now on leave that packing stuff over there. Put parts in there." That'd go on for a while. Maybe six weeks later there'd be another guy come back, and he'd chew everybody up because they didn't have enough packing in there. Now that's the way they operated.

Before the union, they held a meeting, a command meeting. You got to go back after supper. They made a lot of lectures that everybody had to have a garden. Everybody. They rented acreages out at the edge of town, and they put guys in charge of that whole acreage like the overseer of the cotton pickers down South. They'd assign you so much, and you had to go over and plant a garden. Not only that, you was told how your wife would get this stuff that you raised and put it in bottles and cans and you'd bring that down, and they'd judge who did the best job and had the most of it. Examiners would come out to examine your garden from time to time and tell you what you was doing wrong or right.

Some people don't believe that today, that those were the kind of conditions you worked under. They could come out to your house and tell you they didn't like where you moved. They'd say you was living in the slummy part of town and you just had a shack. If your brother-in-law come there to live with you, they'd say whether you should let him stay there or not.

You was really one of the children of the Ford Motor Company. Everything was always subject to change. These rules was never permanent. They were never published. It was just whenever they'd take a notion to do anything. One Christmastime I donated for some traveling bags for Henry Ford. Can you imagine? A bunch of guys working in a plant way out here in Iowa buying Henry Ford a bunch of suitcases. That was Grandpa Ford, the old man. He had everything.

In my opinion, after my experience all those years, if you were going to go out and tell Henry Ford II that they're going to eliminate the UAW in the morning he'd be awfully worried. I don't think he'd want it, because it would be like playing ball without an umpire. It's a mess to try to run a company that big with all the thousands of employees they had and everybody making up rules and regulations.

Conditions for workers could change abruptly with changes in ownership. New management, lacking any traditional ties to their employees, often instituted procedures and rules that offended workers and intensified senti-

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ment in support of union organization. This occurred at Sinclair Packing Company in Cedar Rapids when Wilson's took over in 1929. But the obstacles to organizing a multiethnic work force could be formidable, as Milo Barta recalls. Language, custom, and company efforts to cultivate divisions among its workers made the task difficult.

Sinclair's didn't fight the union too much, that is, in the open. But in 1929 Wilson and Company took controlling interest in Sinclair's, and from then on there was a difference in the operational policy of the company. They sent people in here from different parts. There was a man come in from Albert Lea, Minnesota. He ran through the departments saying, "You've got too many men. Lay 'em off." Lay this off, lay that off, and things started to get tough. They raised work standards. To my way of thinking, they helped organize these people.

Sinclair didn't want to recognize a union either, but Wilson's attitude made the union stronger. The more fight that: Wilson's put out the stronger the people got. They was getting bolder about their grievances. Wilson's had what I would call a consultant president, Judge Cooney. He used to come down here and bargain with these people, but it was all his way. He'd say, "I'm doing the talking here. You do the listening, because you're getting paid while you're sitting here in this conference room." That's as far as he'd bargain.

At that time there was a lot of packinghouse people from all nationalities and walks of life. There was Bohemian Czechs and Germans. When you had a mixture of people like that, it was hard to get them organized. Some of them didn't understand when you were talking to them in American. You'd almost have to get an interpreter that spoke the Czech language. There was a lot of Czechs in this flat that was born and raised in this little community. But we got a fellow by the name of Ted Lubacek that ran a Czech newspaper here, and he used to talk to them for us.

So we finally got these people to understand that we were trying to build a labor organization. But in the meantime, the packers were trying to set up company unions. In the plant the company used to bring their head men around. They'd stop at a department and tell them why it was wrong to be thinking about a labor organization when you're being treated so well. Those were difficult times, because we couldn't get a labor organizer inside the plant. They had to go from one house to another at night.

Working conditions at the stockyards at Sioux City were miserable, according to Clarence McCuen, who went to work there in about 1923. Compounding the conditions themselves was a rigid attitude on the part of man-

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agement, an unwillingness to address the needs of workers. When these conditions reached the breaking point, the packinghouses and the stockyards brought to bear even harsher discipline and the threat of violence in order to prevent unionization.

We unloaded stock trucks and railroad cars of hogs and cattle and sorted and penned them. The buyers would come up from Swift's or Armour's or Cudahy's, and we'd be notified what they bought. They'd be penned. And when the packinghouse would call for the stock, we drove them down a tunnel to the holding pens of those individual packinghouses. That's approximately three blocks.

Good job? I went to work at four o'clock in the afternoon and worked till midnight for eighteen cents an hour, seven days a week. There was a big boiler room they used to heat the stock exchange building there in Sioux City. But the Stock Exchange Commission wouldn't allow us to even put our lunch buckets in the furnace room. When we'd go to work, we'd set our lunch buckets up on a bale of hay back out where the cattle were. This is right on the Missouri River, and it got pretty cold. A lot of times our lunch froze so hard you couldn't eat it. We couldn't even go inside and eat. If we ate, we ate out with the stock.

When we were only working eight hours, we got off at midnight, and the last streetcar left the packinghouse at twelve o'clock. We tried to get the company to let us go to work at five minutes to four and get off at five minutes to twelve. We had no place to change clothes. We was in cow shit to our knees. That's the way we went home. We tried to get the streetcar company to wait so people could get on the streetcar. This was the last streetcar. It left there at twelve o'clock, and I mean it left at twelve. So we'd walk home. When we complained, they started in all kinds of threats. Said, "Now, if we get any more complaints, we're going to send you home." Or, "We're going to start docking you so much time per day for can time, because we know you go to the can." We went to the can with the cows and the hogs.

A guy by the name of Tony Stevens worked at Armour's. Finally he and a lot of the rest of the people there decided that it was time for some organization. And we did in 1934.

If the company saw three of us or more standing and talking, they'd make some kind of arrangements to discipline us. Send us home early or suspend us for a day or two. We was always short of help anyway. It was getting to where the guys were getting arrested for this illegal assembly thing. So we used to take up a collection every week through the stockyards and the three packinghouses. We'd all give a nickel to help pay the fines every week. Tony Stevens was probably in jail forty times at least.

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Frank Santi felt the effects of company policy early in life. Because his father was injured in the packinghouse and then denied his pension, Santi was forced to leave school and go to work to support a large family. His own work experience, for a trucking company in Sioux City, reinforced his determination to do something about the conditions he faced.

I quit school in the eighth grade. I had a father that worked in the packinghouse. He came from the Old Country. There was ten kids in our family, and he was the sole means of support. He was a foreman at the Cudahy Packing Company in the tank room for a period of about eighteen years. He fell down there in line of duty and was off for a period of about a year and a half with his back. They told him that he could go back and go to work on a different job but that he'd have to start out as a new employee. The packinghouse at the time had a pension plan in effect where you had to work continuously for the company for twenty years. They disqualified him for his pension on account of an injury sustained on the job. The result was that my dad wound up being a cripple for the rest of his life. I quit school in the eighth grade to go to work to help support my family.

I worked for the Dougherty Van and Storage Company from when I was seventeen years old until about twenty-three or twenty-four, and my wages were eighteen dollars a week. I was working seventy, seventy-five hours including Sunday. If a holiday fell within that week, you lost one-sixth of your pay. It was computed on a six-day basis, but they worked you seven. You worked Sunday, and you didn't get no pay for it whatsoever. The reason you worked Sunday was there was trucks to be broken down coming from Minneapolis. Part of the crew worked on Sunday in order to get the merchandise that had come in loaded onto the trucks so that they could be dispatched Sunday night and be in Omaha, Kansas City, or Minneapolis Monday morning. My philosophy about being a union representative came from these experiences. I just felt that I should do anything I could do to help the workers or anyone that needed help.

The Wolf at the Door: Unemployment and the Search for Work

Unemployment was nothing new to American workers in the late 1920s. In the construction trades and coal mining, for instance, seasonal unemployment was customary. Workers and their families devised strategies for coping with these predictable if still painful episodes. Other family members

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worked, consumption was restricted, savings were scraped together. But every generation, and in some periods more frequently, a catastrophic depression hit. Unemployment became a matter of years, not months. The carefully fabricated strategies for coping with periodic unemployment collapsed. And the enduring scars of the prolonged hardship that resulted marked the generation for years to come.

Nationally, unemployment rose suddenly in 1930 after nearly a decade of comparative full employment. By the fall of that year it stood at 12 percent. It peaked in 1933 at 25 percent, fell to 14 percent in 1937, and then began another, seemingly inexorable rise. For every worker who was without employment, another was employed less than full-time.

Thrown out of work, men and women desperately made the rounds to a widening circle of employers. Some hit the rails in the hope of finding work in a distant spot that the depression miraculously might have missed. Others simply stood and waited in large crowds outside of plants for days, weeks, even months.

The search for work reinforced the arbitrariness of the economic world these men and women lived in. Who could predict what worker a foreman might pick from the crowd? Who could anticipate what minor infraction, real or perceived, might suddenly consign an employed worker to the crowds of unemployed?

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The cycle of unemployment in the 1930s seemed for many workers without end. Some, like Richard Lindner in Fort Dodge, could only stand and wait in the crowds outside the plants in the hopes that they might get picked for the occasional opening that came up. For a few, the strategy worked.

My folks lived in Fort Dodge, and I was looking for jobs around there. I went to the mills a few times. Every morning at seven o'clock I'd be standing down on the steps where you go in the plant. Just standing there. They wouldn't let us go in. It was colder than hell out there, too! I just kept hounding them. Every day I'd be there, and they'd come out and tell me, "Nothing today." I'd hang around a few minutes after they told me that, and then I'd go on home. Next morning I'd be right back there. There was probably forty, fifty of them waiting. But I got down there early, probably a quarter of six. Usually I was the first one, standing right next to the door. One morning Joe Kelley came out and told us, "There's nothing today for any of you guys. You might as well get the hell out of here and go on home." So the rest of them all kind of disappeared. And I stood there a little while. It was cold. Snowing like hell. Pretty soon he come out the door

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again. He said, "What the hell am I going to have to do to keep you out of here?" And I said, "Well, put me to work in there." He said, ''Well, come on." Took me in to first aid. They got my history and everything. Finally the old doctor come down and gave me a physical. They told me to go on home and be in there at seven o'clock the next morning. That was on the fifth, and I started working on the sixth.

Accident and cleverness played a role in the search for work during the depression. Stretching a little experience of butchering on the farm might make the difference, as it did for Bruce Nolan at the Cudahy plant in Sioux City.

After I left the threshers, I got married and went to South Dakota. This was actually in 1929. That year we hit the drought, and it dried out so much that I had to feed the cows thistles and decided to move to Iowa. With my father-in-law and my wife, we came to a farm seven miles east of Sioux City in Iowa. Our luck wasn't much better because the Lawton bank closed and what little money we had went down the drain. We were milking cows, and at that time they wasn't paying anything for milk. We decided we was going to dump it, but instead we brought it to town and give it to the people.

By the following winter I was looking for a job along with about three hundred other people, sitting on the railroad tracks in front of the packing plant. This hiring boss by the name of Cook would come out and say, "We need a meatcutter" or "We need a cow skinner," whatever job was available that day. After about three days of that zero weather on the railroad track, I decided the next time he come out and said what he needed a man for, I was going to be it. So he come out and asked for a hog splitter. Well, all the hogs I'd split had been on the farm. During the harvest up in Dakota I was pretty handy at that kind of thing. I got a little spell time butchering hogs for the next guy up the road where the threshing crew was cutting. I thought I'd give it a try. So I ended up on one of the most skilled jobs on the hog kill, knowing nothing really about it.

I come up on a platform, and at that time there was another fellow on the job by the name of Fox Laddinger, a pretty good Joe. He says, "Have you ever split hogs before?" And I said, "Nope. Only standing still. Never moving this way." "Well," he says, "they're going eight hundred an hour. What you've got to do instead of sticking that cleaver is pull it down." So with a little coaching from him I was getting along real well until the foreman come by. He tapped me on the leg, and when he did I left two shoulders on the hog. So I thought it was my job anyway, and I cussed him out a little for bothering me and went back to splitting hogs. As it happened, the fellow that was supposed to be there that morning

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showed up, so he said, "Well, can you keep a knife sharp?" I said, "I think so. Yes." And he put me back shaving hogs.

There's about six people trying to shave these eight hundred hogs as they're coming out of the scraper. You either shaved the jowls or the shoulders or the lips or the sides. So I survived that first day on the hog kill. That was my first day in the packinghouse.

Being willing to work and having children to support, I got on what was called the floating squad. In other words, if I'd come down to the gate in the morning I'd never know what department I was going to, so consequently, with the exception of the engine room or mechanical gang, I worked in every department in the packinghouse, from the hide cellar, glue plant, rendering, beef kill, hog kill. And this went on for a period of about four years, but I never knew from day to day whether I had a job.

Finding secure employment in the depths of the depression was a project that for many young people extended over months and years. Charles Weed went into the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a federal youth employment program, for two years, then stood in lines for months at John Deere in Waterloo before the appeals of his brothers to the employment manager paid off. The work he secured was dirty, and the chances to move to better-paying and more rewarding work were remote.

So I graduated, and then I went into the Civilian Conservation Corps for two years. Out in the Colorado mountains. Our job primarily was fighting forest fires. After I got out of the CCC camp, I had two brothers working at John Deere's in Waterloo, Iowa. They said if I'd come back there they thought they could get me a job. So I come back to Waterloo, but right at that time they weren't hiring. I stood in line for three months every morning from around five-thirty to twelve, one o'clock in the afternoon. I did that for three months. In the meantime, I was working at a bakery from six o'clock at night until possibly five o'clock in the morning. I'd get off there and go out to John Deere's and stand in line. That was in 1939.

We'd stand there and pass through the employment office. Out of a couple hundred they might pick one or two, or they might not pick anybody. After approximately three months, one of my brothers went down and told him, "You know, he's been coming out here every day for three months now. I think you should hire him." The next day I got hired.

At that same time they hired probably twenty of us. In them days they stacked all of their tractor rims outside. They had some that had been stacked out there

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for two or three years, and they had about a half an inch of rust on them. We'd bring them rims in and with a steel brush and an electric motor we'd have to brush the rust off. At night you couldn't tell what color we was. Come Saturday night you could stand under the shower for two hours and put a white shirt on, and the minute you sweat it'd just turn yellow.

Nothing to Lose: Surviving Hard Times

The catastrophic conditions that the Great Depression brought to the doorstep of workers caused them to devise strategies of survival that were both desperate and imaginative. In some communities workers organized to stop evictions or demand a moratorium on local taxes. In others, they petitioned local relief offices for more generous assistance and organized community gardens and other self-help projects. But for many workers the most immediate and most important resource was their family. Through family networks food and savings were shared. Some worked to support others. All contributed in whatever ways they could.

Beyond the family were neighbors or members of one's ethnic group. Credit at a local grocery store or free clothes from a church or a former employer might make an enormous difference in the struggle to survive.

Eventually, as New Deal relief programs took the burden off of hardpressed cities and counties, young men and women were put to productive work (often their first) through the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) or the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Though these agencies offered barely a living wage, they were a lifeline for many workers.

The paradox was that such hardship and desperation did not lead to quiescence and dependence but rather to an assertive drive to organize once workers got back into the labor force. Part of the explanation lay with the experience of collective self-help in the depths of the depression itself, but part also lay with the recognition, as Virgil Bankson put it, that ''I have got nothing to lose because I haven't got anything." Having survived on "nothing," they were prepared to fight for something.

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Surviving long periods of unemployment in the depression called on all of the skills a family could muster. Julie Fritz witnessed the importance of family and neighborhood networks in the Slovak community of Fort Dodge and the benefits of her own work as a domestic servant while still in school.

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We had boarders up until the depression days in our home. Then, when the depression came, the different ones went back to the Old Country, or they went to the eastern states to find work. Iowa wasn't offering them anything. It didn't have that much industry. My dad was laid off in 1930, and U.S.G. didn't hire him back until 1936 or 1937. He had to go on WPA.

Until they worked on WPA, all they were entitled to was just a sackful of groceries at one of those there county distribution centers, which didn't do too well. But my folks had lived in this neighborhood for years, and in those days your groceries were seldom bought with cash. It was always a grocery bill. So what they couldn't produce, or what they didn't get from the county, they had to charge. Well, they didn't quite know how they were going to pay for it, but my mother always thought that with us kids we would always get a job, and we would be able to help them. I think that was the foreign outlook on things. Of course, I was a teenager then and in school, doing housework and things like that. So they managed to get a little bit of money, and they carried these grocery bills over a period of years. Often my mother would bring in garden produce to the store to help pay for the grocery bill. That was the way much of it was taken care of. I can remember when my dad was called back to work in 1936 or 1937 at the mill, they had at that time what appeared like a pretty large grocery bill that they had to take care of.

The county would give them the beans and the rice and the lard. No butter. Of course, my folks had a garden, so they had their potatoes. We were great sauerkraut eaters, great potato eaters. My uncle had the farm, and every winter my folks would butcher a hog. He would write down on a pad how much they owed him, just for record purposes. They wouldn't butcher until it got good and cold, because there was no refrigeration. And then they would hang it in the back pantry porch, and it would last through the winter. They'd make sausage, and that was their existence in those days. And we were a little bit luckier than some in that respect.

One family always had some money. They lived out in the east end, and they were Slovaks. Many of the Slovaks in the neighborhood, if they couldn't make ends meet they'd go over to the Gabrishes and ask them if they would loan them money. My mother had to go once to get tax money from them. I don't know what rate of interest they charged, but they were very close friends because they came from the same little village in Czechoslovakia.

Hardship was not confined to those who experienced long stretches of unemployment during the depression. Even many of those at work, like Virgil Bankson in Ottumwa, could not make enough to provide adequate shelter and avoid indebtedness. Through his "homemade" efforts, he sheltered his

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family after he could not pay his rent in 1932. He had "nothing to lose" in taking the risks that union organization entailed.

In 1932 I borrowed two hundred dollars, and I went to the lumberyard. First I had to pay a hundred dollars of it for a lot to put a house on. Then I got enough lumber for less than a hundred dollars to put up a one-room shack. And that's all it was. It never had no lining whatsoever on the inside. My wife and I lived in that for two years without even putting a ceiling in it. Didn't have the money to do it. Had a great big old heating stove in that house. It could be red hot all over, and you'd see your breath. And we had a little boy. I'll tell you I don't know how we kept from freezing in the wintertime. We had an old pitcher pump and a toilet out on the alley. We lived that way a long time. Finally, I got to making a little more money, and I finally got to expanding on the house a little bit. It was twelve by twenty when we moved in it. Finally made three rooms out of it. Then we got to the point where they put in sewer and water down our street, and then I put in a toilet and a bath.

It was my feeling that I have got nothing to lose, because I haven't got anything. That's how I felt. That's why I did the things I did to organize the union. What have I got to lose? Haven't got nothing.

For most families that found themselves in desperate straits during the depression, needing relief was a new experience. They were embarrassed to approach public authorities for help. For Richard Lowry and John Maddox of Fort Dodge, it was a shock to see the treatment given to poor people under these circumstances.

Richard Lowry: The family broke up. My mother and dad separated. That made it harder than ever, especially in the depression. A woman couldn't go out and get welfare like they do now. She had to shift for herself when she was left alone.

John Maddox: I got married when I was just about nineteen, and I didn't have no job. Everything went pretty good for a while. I was staying at Dad and Mother's place. They got to where they was getting desperate. So I had to get out. It was getting where they was going to have to go on relief. So I called Ed Breem. He was the county attorney and a good old Democrat. I'd went three days without anything to eat. I called Ed Breem, and I said, "Ed, I've never been arrested. I've never been in jail. I've never been on welfare." They had told me that as long as your mother and dad was keeping you you couldn't get no relief. It had to be 1931 or 1932. They give me clothing. They give me anything I

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wanted. I even offered to pay him. I says, "I don't want to go on welfare. I'll take any job that you've got. I'll work for grocery money."

Lowry: When I was sitting in the relief office, I felt so sorry for those old people. I was able-bodied. I felt kind of ashamed really to be there, but here was these poor old people. They would sit there and beg. And he would say, "Well, your coal allotment shouldn't be out until tomorrow or until the next day." Well, they were out. What the hell. What are you going to do? Set by a cold stove because they burned up the coal allotment? And that's the way they treated those people. I saw it right there, firsthand.

Before the New Deal relief and employment programs, most of the needy turned to sources closer to home for the help they needed. City governments were inevitably called upon to respond with whatever resources they had. Some, like Buck Manning's administration in Ottumwa, mobilized grocery orders, surplus coal, and donated clothing to meet the most pressing needs. George Krafka, who as a young man worked for the city sanitation department, observed these efforts at close hand.

The city was about like all the rest of the cities. Destitute in those days. Nobody had any money to pay for anything, but the mayor, Buck Manning, did everything that was possible. He put out grocery orders. He went around to all the stores in town and asked them how many hundreds of grocery orders they could stand until the city got back on its feet and then they'd pay them back and pay them a little interest.

So he issued these grocery orders, and they'd have a lineup at city hall every morning. They'd give them two days' work out of every three weeks, and they'd get a five dollar grocery order. There wasn't no money changed hands. Just you put in two days' work and they'd give you a grocery order on a store in your neighborhood. You'd go there and get five dollars worth of groceries, which would buy quite a few groceries in those days. Then they'd have to wait three weeks before they got another couple days' work. City work.

I was on the sanitary truck at the time. He used to call down there once in a while and ask me how much coal we had down there at the incinerator. We burned the garbage down in those days and bought coal by big truckloads. He'd have me to deliver a bushel or two of coal over to one of the neighbors down there in the slum area so that they wouldn't freeze to death.

If a person never been through a depression, they don't know. Everybody started planting gardens. What we call Central Addition was all community gardens. They'd give a person a plot of ground over there, and they'd raise everything they could all summer and can everything they could to run them through

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the winter. The government also had a canning factory set up over in a building on West Main Street where people could get their garden stuff canned in tin cans. I think the government furnished each family so many cans.

People couldn't afford meat in them days. So the mayor set up a fishing program. It was seining fish out of the river. He had some fellows that lived on the river and made fishing their livelihood seine tons of carp out of the river. It was supervised by the game warden. Just took the rough fish out, and they'd haul them up to the city hall, ice them down, and there'd be a notice put up that people could come up there the next day and pick up so many fish according to how many people was in the family. People just lined up there for them big old carp. There was truckloads of them.

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End of an eight-week sit-down strike at United Laundry & Dry Cleaners,

Des Moines, June 2, 1937. Des Moines Register.

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Rebuilding the House of Labor in the 1930s

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Organizing momentum gathered slowly across Iowa in the early years of the Great Depression. The harsh lessons of 192122, lingered in the memories of older workers in the packinghouses and on the rails. Initially, at least, the depression intensified their feelings of uncertainty. As they looked around, they saw very few vigorous unions. Central labor unions in Iowa cities were dominated by small craft unions and the building trades. Some had not met for years. The Amalgamated Meat Cutters had been driven ignominiously from most packinghouses in 1921. Where locals survived, mostly skilled workers were found in their ranks. Some firms during the prosperous years of the 1920s introduced company unions that confused and diverted the attention of workers.

The most important inspiration for Iowa workers who sought to rebuild the labor movement was the strong union tradition that coal miners and their children brought with them out of the declining coalfields and into the river towns and manufacturing centers. They came in growing numbers as the mines in southern and central Iowa shut down. Some children had grown up in the mines working alongside their fathers; others simply knew from the telling what that union tradition meant.

Depression heightened the arbitrariness of employers and the favoritism they dispensed. With hundreds at the gate begging for jobs, managers could select whom to employ as their whims or prejudices dictated. Cut loose from traditional community ties, many younger workers drifted about the country seeking employment. Through contacts with miners, harvest hands, and itinerant radicals and through short stints in varied jobs, their horizons broadened. Youthful pride and confidence, even in grim circumstances, mingled with the experience and solidarity of older workers to produce a potent brew of discontent, seasoned with new grievances and new hardships.

The catalyst for many workers was Franklin Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), promulgated in the spring of 1933 during the first hundred days of his administration. John L. Lewis liberally interpreted the act as conveying a simple message, "The president wants you to join a union." The act encouraged the drafting of industrial codes that included a provision for union recognition. But what constituted a union was very much in dispute. With tacit support of the federal government, labor organizing sprang to life in the industrial communities of Iowa as it did elsewhere. In the brief two years before the NIRA was declared unconstitutional, workers in some key plants won victories that enabled them to assist others who were groping more slowly toward unions of their

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own. Illustrative of this new spirit of mutual aid were the organizing efforts of the young men and women of the Rollins Hosiery Mill in Des Moines and the role that the Independent Union of All Workers (IUAW) from Austin, Minnesota, played in spreading organization to other midwestern communities.

Companies responded quickly to these new challenges. Some simply defied the authority of the federal government and denied recognition to the fledgling unions, fired their leaders, and went about business as usual. Others stalled until the anticipated court challenges could run their course. Still others moved to install or refurbish employee representation plans (company unions) that could cut the ground from under the new unions. Because company unions enjoyed a privileged relationship with their employers and because they frequently played on internal divisions of skill, race, or ethnicity among workers, they gained a foothold that temporarily, at least, inhibited successful organization. In some plants they were quickly taken over by unionists and either dismantled or transformed into more aggressive and independent organizations.

The passage of the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) in 1935 promised stronger legal guarantees that workers would have the right to form unions of their choice. Under the Wagner Act, companies were prohibited from engaging in "unfair labor practices" that interfered with workers' rights to organize. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) oversaw the carrying out of fair representation elections. But until it was constitutionally tested, the Wagner Act provided little more than moral support.

The key to successful organizing came from the direct actions of workers themselves. Through sit-downs and other work stoppages, workers constructed the solid foundations of industrial unions. Union activists were often a small minority, but they created situations that drew in new and peripheral workers. They demonstrated determination and courage but also the power that workers possessed even in the absence of formal employer recognition or the protection of the federal government. They built networks of mutual aid within their communities and between plants within the same industry. National unions in the mass production industries took shape through those networks. When employers conceded recognition but refused to bargain in good faith, workers returned to direct action to advance the negotiations. They codified a set of rights that they defended by shopfloor actions and spun a web of solidarity that embraced more and more workers regardless of skill or race.

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Iowa Coal Miners and the Rebirth of Unionism

Coal mining had been a major industry in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iowa. At the industry's peak in the early twentieth century, miners took vast quantities of coal from the ground in south-central and central Iowa. But by the mid-1920s the number of miners was falling rapidly. Iowa miners and their children in increasing numbers looked elsewhere for employment. Above all they looked to the industrial towns of the region and the farm equipment factories and packinghouses that were growing rapidly before the depression.

Miners brought with them not only a reputation for hard work but also a finely developed union consciousness, nurtured over decades in mining towns and villages where the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) played a central role in their lives. In such communities solidarity was a life-and-death matter, and union loyalty lay at the core of the miners' values. Industrial employers may have been hiring hard workers, but they were also getting employees whose faith in the power of unions was unshakeable.

Historians have often attributed the revival of industrial unionism in the 1930s to the important role that John L. Lewis and the UMWA played. Lewis, born and reared in the Iowa coalfields, seized the opportunities that opened early in Franklin Roosevelt's presidency to encourage organizing in the mass production industries. Even as the UMWA revived itself from the crises of the 1920s by actively rebuilding its membership in the eastern coal-fields, so did it pour money and organizers into the support of campaigns in other industries. What is not well known and what the following interviews demonstrate is how important were the miners themselves who moved into manufacturing employment. They built miners' traditions into the fiber of the new industrial unions.

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Don Harris, who played a crucial role in the development of the CIO in Iowa, saw firsthand the influence ex-miners had on the growth of industrial unions during the 1930s.

During that period of the thirties, the dominant union was the United Mine Workers, District 13. They had about seventeen or eighteen thousand members. Of all unions, they had more influence on the organization of the labor movement in Iowa than anybody else. As the mines closed down and the locals were closed down, the miners went to work in other places such as Maytag at Newton. And

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it was the mine workers in Maytag that were the instruments, the organizing committee, that organized that plant. This happened time after time, in packing plants, in all kinds of plants all over Iowa. It was old United Mine Workers, or it was their kids whom they had brought up in a union family and taught the value of trade unionism and had imbedded it in their minds and souls, if you will. When they got a chance to organize their plant, they jumped in and helped them, I suppose with the encouragement of their parents.

Jack McCoy was born in Ottumwa in 1929. His father ran filling stations after the mid-thirties. Previously, he had been ''largely unemployed." Before going into the military service, McCoy worked during summer vacations in the John Morrell packinghouse. Miners played a central role in the union. They brought their traditions with them out of the mine fields.

The whole history of southeastern Iowa is one of mining, miners migrating in, knowing really no other craft or other skill, getting involved in the UMW. Strikes were called, going back to the very early days. Even prior to John L.'s day, his father was blacklisted as a striking miner. When strikes were called off or broken, blacklists were formed. People's names were circulated among the other mining camps, and they couldn't find a job in mining. They'd migrate to Ottumwa looking for jobs. So what Ottumwa inherited was blacklisted miners, guys who couldn't find employment in mining any longer, and the line is long. Part of it was political, and most of it was economic militancy. In some cases it was the second generation of miners that ulimately got in the local union leadership. But they inherited that militancy from their fathers.

Edris "Soapy" Owens was a United Electrical Workers (UE) shop steward at Maytag in Newton after World War II. He had begun work in the thirties and participated in the initial organizing drive. In Newton, as in so many other industrial towns, ex-miners or sons of miners, like him, were the backbone of the union movement.

When the mines started to fold up in Colfax in the late twenties, many of those guys come over here. You know that a coal miner is a pretty damn good worker. At that time, at least around here, the companies were not fearful of unions. I mean, the industrial unions hadn't made their big drives, so they were anxious to put coal miners on their payroll because they knew they would get a day's work

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out of them. That was probably also true down in the Quad Cities area, where I know a lot of miners were working.

I always said that, before I left home, if things ever got dull, all I would say is that John L. Lewis is no good, and there would be a lot of conversation in my house.

Divided We Fail: The Barriers of Race and Ethnicity

A variety of historical factors determined the composition of Iowa's working class. Pockets of immigrant settlementsBritish, Germans, Bohemians, Swedes, Italians, Irish, and Polesin the industrial towns of the state provided a primary reservoir of labor. Many settlements were established in the nineteenth century and by the 1920s had deep roots in their communities. Agricultural depression hit the state with a vengeance in 1921 and abated only briefly late in the decade. A whole generation of farm youth migrated into cities and towns to search for employment. They brought with them a sense of independence and pride that did not easily adapt to ''being told what to do and how to do it." Others stayed on the farm but worked in a factory. They proved harder to organize.

In the packinghouses and the railroad shops a small core of unionists survived the disastrous strikes of 192122. Some were bitter and disillusioned; others had ingratiated themselves with their employers. These veteran workers, now middle-aged, were reluctant to open old wounds or again take the risks that an organizing campaign would bring.

In some areas of the state black workers were recruited into the industrial labor force, usually in the lowest, unskilled ranks. Some were former coal miners from places like Buxton, some had migrated from the Deep South with their families during or after World War I, and a handful, like Henry Simmons, were highly skilled butchers recruited out of the larger packing centers in Chicago, Omaha, or Kansas City to open new plants and train local workers. They brought not only the culture of skilled butcher workers but the experiences of an urban black metropolis that were very much alien to the world of rural and small town Iowa from which so many of their co-workers came.

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Bruce Nolan, who had worked as a "harvest stiff" across the Great Plains, went to work in a packinghouse at Sioux City. As a young worker in the

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early 1930s he encountered the bitter legacy of the 1921 packinghouse strike and a labor force that was internally divided.

There had been a union in this plant back in 1921. My information on the 1921 strike came when I was trying to organize the older fellows that had went through the 1921 strike and suffered quite a severe defeat. One of the few locals that survived was the Morrell local at Sioux Falls. That was a little bit of help when you tried to convince them. "Look, maybe if you guys had stuck together a little better you wouldn't have went through all these years without a union." I had no firsthand experience. I was too young to start with, and, second, it was all hearsay from the old-timers. There were at least a hundred of them left in the plant that had went through that. The company used some of these people as the rumble of unions started. Some of them would do this because they had had to beg their jobs back and promise to be good from there on.

The company had very shrewdly separated departments on the basis of nationality, religion, and had held open the kill and the cutmostly on the hog side. Those departments that was pretty stable or established were the Polish and Lithuanian people. In many cases, two and three out of the family worked. This was all done for a purpose. Back in those days that many working made a pretty good income for that family and made most of these people hard to approach when it come to quarreling with the boss.

The work that was more seasonal was done through the fall and winter months, so consequently, they used the farmers to a great extent as part-time through the peak seasons. That way they always had a cushion of labor to carry them through. That's what I meant by your killing departments and your cutting departments wasn't set up so much on a racial basis. But in our particular plant, for instance, there was very few black people in the hog cut. They had concentrated them all over on the beef side and the hide cellar, the beef casing, and beef kill. So many a time I've heard people say in these bigger departments, "Well, what do we care about them damn so-and-so's over there?" Consequently, when it come time that trouble developed on the other side, "What do we want anything to do with those honkies over there?"

It was awful hard to get anyone interested in helping anybody else out. Now, I know a lot of people quarrel with this, but the facts were that the whole mechanical department almost without exception was Catholics. You would get into other departments, and you'd find that they were pretty much all Lutheran. You couldn't work in the branch house, for instance, at one time unless you could show your penny, you know, was a member of the Masons. Through this whole thing, when you started to talk to people it was hard to strike a common ground where you could deal.

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And what made some of us the bitterest, we found out they had parolees from the state prison when we started to organize. They used to have fire stations, and these parolees was on the premises pretty much twenty-four hours a day with really preferable jobs. The fire station was a separate building, up above the office, where for insurance purposes they had to keep around the clock a regular fire department. These men was classified as firemen. They ate right on the premises and slept right on the premises. And of course they was at the mercy of the superintendent. Anyone heard talking about union or not liking what was going on, they reported it.

During this whole period of time the company had more and more picked up young people off the farms. In those days the banks were closing. It was the first big movement off the farm of people looking for jobs in the cities. And when they got these people in they kind of broke up the status quo all over the plant that the company had been able to keep on the race issue, religion, or what have you. Plus people like myself with a farm background was not used to being told what to do and how to do it. So the real nucleus of our success in organizing in this plantand the plant had fourteen hundred employeeswas the fellows you could talk to that had come in the plant through this period of time. Still, the old-timers or those groups where there was quite a few in the family working you couldn't touch.

In addition to that, I think there was one other factor. As the pressure of the sit-down strikes came the company went to pushing people harder. I know it was very simple for me to make up my mind.

In many packinghouses the remnants of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America represented only a small fraction of the workers. Virgil Bankson from Ottumwa watched as sentiment for industrial unionism grew outside the ranks of the Amalgamated.

I worked down there in the hide cellar. The divisional superintendent knew me. He come down there one day. We was putting out a thousand hides a day. He stood thereI never will forget it. He was a big old man. He always wore a black derby hat. I never seen him without it. He stood there. He didn't say nothing to me. Just pointed his finger and wanted me to come over where he was at. "Hey, boy," he sayseverybody was boy then, even if you was married, it didn't make no difference. You was still boy, you know, if a guy had any age on him. He says, "Hey, boy. I think we got a better job for you." And I went to the beef kill. I started in as common labor up there, and that was back in the early thirties.

I wasn't a butcher. But it wasn't very long until I was a butcher. They didn't

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train you. You had to train yourself at that time. So what I did, I would go to lunch. I'd grab me a sandwich and eat it, and I'd get right back down to the killing floor. I'd drop a beef down on the floor, and I'd start skinning him. And the boss would come back, and he'd just give me the devil for coming back skinning the cattle, until the superintendent got on him and told him to leave me alone.

Amalgamated Meat Cutters was what the union was, and I belonged to it. I joined it back in about 1931. They had a little drive on, and I got in. Now, I think the most people that we ever had back in the early thirties in the plant was between two and three hundred members out of approximately twenty-five hundred people.

As time went on, along in about 1932, 1933, the older guys began to talk about getting a union. Of course, I didn't know what they were talking about, but I soon found out. I'm talking about middle-age guys. These were guys that weren't in the Amalgamated, see. They was talking about getting a union, and this was when John L. Lewis come along.

Earl Dupey lost his mother and father at a young age. From Fort Dodge, he landed in Waterloo with ten cents in his pocket. Only sixteen years old, he got his first job at Rath Packing Company in 1928. There, in what he called "the sweathouse," he saw the effects of racial discrimination.

Being a sweathouse, they just work you until you couldn't even stand up hardly. You couldn't even talk back. And discrimination. We saw so much of it. They didn't call them blacks at that time. Negro, and they didn't even use that term. They figured he can take it. You shove it to him, you know. He didn't have a chance. We also had Mexican workers and we had Syrian workers, and they were just shoved on. Things that we didn't feel like we wanted to have to do, they would force them to do it. Rather than let that happen, then we would do it, too, until we just stood all we could stand, and that was it.

Black people didn't have a chance really. They would accept it because they felt they had to accept it. They couldn't very well refuse it. They felt, "If I do, nobody's going to back me up." So they took it. It was easy for the company to say, "Here you, boy, you do this, and you do that."

Their wages were way below the white. There was just so much difference in their locker rooms and so forth, and everything was different. They tried to divide us and tried to get the hatred. We just took all we could take and that was it.

When the Tobin Packing Company in Fort Dodge prepared to open for business in the depths of the depression, a small cadre of skilled butchers

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was needed to operate the kill and cut. Tobin turned to other packinghouse centers. From Packingtown in Chicago they recruited seven skilled menfour black and three white. These new workers brought their own traditions and culture into a largely novice labor force. Henry Simmons was one of the black butchers who came out to Fort Dodge.

Where I was working at Brennan in Chicago, they paid more than any packinghouse there. We didn't work but forty hours a week. They paid seventy-three cents an hour. Until he closed down. That was good money during the depression. We were the only ones that was getting paid that kind of money. Mr. Brennan said, "If a man ain't worth that kind of money, he ain't coming in the packinghouse."

The superintendent at Brennan's, he came out here and got a job. His name was Busby. And so he called usfour colored and three whitewe were experienced meatcutters. They hired us out of Chicago to open it up. We came three days 'fore it opened on the nineteenth of December, I think it was, 1934. Everything was new, including the damn building.

See you got to have experienced men on some of them jobs. They didn't know what a packinghouse was, nothing out here. We had a time teaching them. Like heading hogs, opening hogs, sticking hogsthem jobs you got to have experience. You don't learn it overnight. I had to teach those fellows how to use knives, sharpen knives. I know they had never seen no packinghouse or know how it was.

Wasn't nothing here to do. Times was really hard when we came here in 1934. I knew fellows there whose wives were working for board, they didn't get no money. They work for somethin' to eat. Just to stay alive. I came out here and they didn't have no coal. They had to burn corn for fuel.

We had a pretty hard time at first. Coming from a big town to a small town. Wasn't very many black people. Maybe about two hundred in Fort Dodge. Funny things happen. We come out of Chicago, you know, a big town, you dress like you going to church, going to the packinghouse just like you going to church. But we had to stop. They asked us to quit. Said the fellows didn't want to work with us because we was goin' in there dressed up. What they be coming down there dressed up for? We wore suits down there and then change over. They didn't like that. We had to quit dressing up. In the big city, you go on the streetcar and you have to be neat. We was doing the same thing here. It's silly to talk about it, but that's the way it was. The superintendent he come to each one of the black boy's houses and told them.

Think about it. You come out of the second largest town in the world, you come out hereit's something different. We said okay. See by my being around to different packinghouses, I know how it was. Everywhere you go it's different.

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A skilled African-American butcher on the cutting floor,

Tobin Packing Company, Fort Dodge, ca. 1935.

State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

Busby promised us when we left Chicago that he'd give us our same wages. We brought it out here, and then he says he can't pay us seventy-three cents an hour because they don't have that out here. I said, "Well, that ain't what you told us. You told us you were going to give us our same rate, seventy-three cents an hour. If you ain't going to do that we'll catch the train and go back home. That's it." He said, "Well, I'll give you that, but they going to have to pay these other fellows sixty-five cents an hour."

You know how they feel. The man working 'side me; I'm getting seventy-three cents an hour and he getting sixty-five. Same work. But there was no union here. So that's where the trouble come in. I said, "Well, we get a union here and maybe everybody get paid the same thing." That's when we got Bill Tate, an organizer from Chicago in here. Myself and another fellow named Joe Bell Shadows started the talk about unions, and Frank Tate and Charlie Rudd. They got a company union in here. We whupped the company union, and they wanted to run us out of town. But we didn't go. There was thirty-two of us that stuck together. Finally we won out. The company union just died down. When the CIO got together, we all come in and joined the CIO.

Only union there ever been here has been the CIO. They told me to my face, said there never been no union here and there never will one be here. That's

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what them businessmen told me uptown, not one time, all the time. I said, "Well, you got one now."

"The President Wants You to Join a Union": Organizing under the NRA

In the first few months of Franklin Roosevelt's administration Congress passed a package of economic recovery legislation that created, among other things, the National Recovery Administration (NRA). For Iowa workers as for others around the country, the message seemed clear. The federal government, under the provisions of Section 7a of the act, was prepared to guarantee to workers the right to be represented by a union of their choice. A wave of organizing enthusiasm spread quickly in the mass production sectors of the economy.

Early victories in a few places, like Rollins Hosiery in Des Moines, provided beachheads from which workers assisted campaigns in other plants. Young men and women, fired with enthusiasm, joined picket lines, contributed money, and threw themselves into one campaign after another.

In other plants workers faced difficult obstacles. Employers found ways to circumvent the requirements of Section 7a by refusing recognition or by organizing company unions. Some simply locked out their workers. The NRA provided diminishing protection to workers as employers spurned its emblem, the Blue Eagle, and waited for the courts to dismantle its provisions. When newly organizing workers turned to established craft unions, they often found such organizations ill equipped or unwilling to accept them and their demands.

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Don Harris dropped out of high school because his family did not have much money. After traveling around the country on the bum, he returned to Des Moines and worked nights at Rollins Hosiery while finishing school during the days. He was swept up in the enthusiasm for union organizing that Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act generated among rank-and-file workers.

We had tried to organize the plant in 1930 to 1931, and it failed. In 1934 right after Roosevelt was elected, we were sort of inspired by his election to change from Hooverism. We made another attempt to organize the plant into the

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American Federation of Hosiery Workers. We succeeded and had a strike in which we won recognition for our members only. A year or so later, in a subsequent contract, we got recognized for all the workers. This was without the help of the National Labor Relations Act. So you had to go through the process of gaining recognition by the strength of your union.

It essentially was organized by the workers inside the plant. Hell, it was a two-year campaign. Things were pretty tough then. The company could fire you or lay you off, do anything they wanted to with impunity. I was maybe nineteen years old, twenty. Our local, which was Branch No. 50 of the American Federation of Hosiery Workers, was the biggest local union in Des Moines, the biggest local in Iowa until maybe the Wilson local in Cedar Rapids, and we had a lot of power. We were young gals and young guys, and we was in everything. There never was a picket line or another organizing campaign went on that we weren't involved in, and there never was a strike that we didn't put on a dollar assessment and give them money.

Anybody needed any help, we had plenty of volunteers. Because the people had a tremendous devotion. If you was going to organize a plant such as Hawkeye Portland Cement or Woods Brothers thrashing machines or something in Des Moines or elsewhere, you didn't have enough money to put out a leaflet. You'd take up a collection at the union meeting, get enough money to buy a ream of paper and a stencil. And somebody'd beat it out. Now, it didn't look very good, but it conveyed a message. And that's all we needed was this little spark that says there's hope. If you join up there's hope.

We had to take the message to the people in the plant on an absolute secretive basis. We literally met in basements because the company was seeking some stool pigeon. They would send people to the meetings in order to find out who was there so they could fire them the next day. We organized underground, no doubt about it.

Iowa Power and Light Company, for instance, had a little local there with a few secret members, but they were inspired by the organization of the hosiery mill and Penn Electric Switch and by the Iowa Packing Company. So these guys asked us for help specifically because we could turn out two or three hundred pickets. Nobody else could turn out more than a handfulthe printers and electricians. But we could turn out two or three hundred young guys and gals. And let me impress upon you the gals. We had about three-fourths of our membership that was women at the hosiery mill. We all got together, and we went down and put up a mass picket line around the old power plant down on Grand Avenue and the river. We were threatened with the police, naturally, and the sheriff, but that didn't faze anybody. Finally, the company, being a utility, agreed to recognize the

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local. And the local in the subsequent years was able to consolidate itself and became a very fine local union.

We joined the Des Moines Trades and Labor Assembly, which was essentially some building trades unions and three or four locals of the United Mine Workers. We were very active in that, and then later onmaybe 1935we joined the Iowa Federation of Labor. I become pretty close to John C. Lewis, "Shady" Lewis, who was president at the time. He was the only full-time officer.

He was a Welshman, and his name was the same as John L.'s. John C. But nobody ever called him John C. It was always Shady. He got this namehe told me this personallythey played baseball down around Albia, and one day some visiting team said, "Who's that shady looking guy over there?" And that name stuck to Shady Lewis the rest of his life. He was a Welshman, and he was dark-complected. His skin was dark. If you didn't know it you'd think he had a perpetual tan, he was that dark. He came from the biggest union. District 13, UMWA, had eighteen thousand members in the state of Iowa, which was a big union.

When the CIO was formed in 1936, the United Mine Workers were the bulwark of the CIO, and the American Federation of Hosiery Workers, which was a part of the Textile Workers Union, was also one of the original ten unions. So we were the CIO in Iowa. The Coal Miners and the Hosiery Workers.

We were imbued with the Roosevelt program. All he stood for. In our judgment at the time, he saved the country from revolution. We were aware of what was going on about us. The farmers resisting the sheriff sales on their farms. Around Des Moines we went out and joined with the farmers. They had a picket line around Des Moines. Prices were so low they had a picket line to keep any hogs or poultry out. That's why I think I developed a lifelong interest in this coalition with the farmers.

John Jordan went to work for the Morrell packinghouse in Ottumwa just in time for the 1918 strike. He moved from Ottumwa to Des Moines in 1930, where he worked for the Swift-owned Iowa Packing Company and participated in the first efforts to revive the Amalgamated during the NRA period.

The Amalgamated started to make a comeback in the plant. See, most all the plants had left the organization. There were only about three that stayed in. I think Waterloo was one of those. Cedar Rapids was, I know. And one over in Minnesota.

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They didn't make much of an organization drive. We did it mostly ourselves, and a pretty militant bunch. In fact, we helped everybody else organize.

At one time we had everybody in the plant but two people who were eligible to belong to the union. We all went out but those two in 1935 because they were starting to lay off women that were married. That's the only thing they did, they got married. Some of them years before. So we told them to put these women back to work or we were going out at nine o'clock. They said, ''You can go ahead and go out." They didn't think we'd go, and everybody went. Everybody but those two.

Then the company calls the union in Chicago, the international. So they send a guy out. I happened to be on the gate when he came. I was supposed to stop everybody going in the gate to find out what they were going in there for. He said, "Where are your officers?" He told me who he was, and I had somebody else take my place there at the gate while I took him over where the president was. He said, "What seems to be the trouble?" They told him what the deal was, that these women were union members and we thought it was our duty to protect them. They hadn't done anything wrong. The guy said, "I'll go in and talk to them." That's the way they did business. They leave the president, the business agent, everybody else out. They go talk. We never did that in the CIO. Anyway, this is the Amalgamated.

He was in there about ten minutes I guess. He came out, and they were all waiting to see what he had to say. He said, "Best thing you guys can do is get your fannies back in there." Oh boy, it made everybody mad! The president said, "Who sent for you? We didn't call you out here." "No," he said, "the company called in there and said you guys were out on a wildcat strike and wanted us to come out and see if we couldn't get things straightened out." So we said, ''Did you understand what we said happened? What's going to happen now to these women that are fired because they're married?" "I don't know a thing about that." The president said, "You don't know much about anything, do you? Only the company wants us back to work, so you're telling us to go back. So you go tell the company we're not coming back until they put these women to work." So he got a taxi there in the front of the building, and just about the time it'd take him to get downtown the company came out and asked for the president to bring the executive board in. So this guy had told them that we wouldn't come back.

And the company said, "We'll have an executive board meeting in the morning." So the officers asked, "What time do you want to have it?" They said, "What time do you want to have it?" The officers said, "Well, people aren't going to work until after we get this thing settled, so it's up to you." They said, "We'll have it at seven o'clock." They said, "Fine." But then the company got to thinking,

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we're still going to lose an hour or two. So they called them back and said, "We'll put the women back to work. Have them come in at seven o clock." So we did it ourselves again, like we always had to.

After returning from Montana as an unemployed teacher, George Weiny went to work at Hubinger's corn milling plant in Keokuk. Under the influence of "Roosevelt's edict," as Weiny called it, Hubinger's workers became the stimulus for reviving a dormant local labor movement.

There was a cornstarch plant at Pekin, Illinois, the Corn Products Refining Company. They had a union over there. These were federal labor unions in those days. Under the AFL. They were interested in trying to get unions started in other cornstarch processing plants. Four or five employees dropped into town and contacted some people, and through this we found out there was such a thing for employees of our status. This was when it started. It would be in the winter of 1933, 1934, and it just gradually picked up like a snowball.

The Chicago office of the AFL advised us that we were to affiliate with the Trades and Labor Assembly and the State Federation. There was a city Trades and Labor Assembly here, but they told us they hadn't had a meeting for four years and met in a couple of rooms up over Maas's shoestore. Couple of rooms wasn't much bigger than this front room of mine. And there were only about six or seven unions, the Carpenters, the Painters, the Railway Clerks, Typographical union, Pressmen's union, I believe the Tailors union. That was the extent of it. The Trades and Labor Assembly hadn't had a meeting for four years, but they had paid the per capita tax and were in good standing with the AFL and the State Federation of Labor.

Keokuk used to be quite a center for the manufacturing of stoves and stove mountings. Consequently, back in those days there were the Molders and Foundries unions in here. And this was quite a center for cigar making. There were several small cigar factories here, and the cigar union was a real strong union. They used to have their blue-labeled ball and all those things back in those days. But as the stove industry went out and the manufacture of cigars by hand went out of business, those people were unemployed and got other employment.

Well, I got active because I did know a little about unions. We went to some of the officers of the Trades and Labor Assembly here, and they said, well, they didn't want to get involved. They'd tried to organize this plant before, and the people wouldn't stick together. "You go down there you're going to get fired." However, we told them that we knew different because of this edict of President Roosevelt's, and we finally convinced them. Through that the Trades and Labor Assembly got to have a meeting. They soon had

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another place to meet. Then the whole town got worked up. But the Hubinger plant was the first one to go through to a contract.

The Inner Struggle: Company Unions and Industrial Unions

Since the end of the First World War, industrial employers had experimented with employee representation plans (ERPs), more commonly known as company unions. In some firms, such as the John Morrell Company in Ottumwa, company unions had great longevity, operating continuously through the 1920s and into the mid-1930s. In others, they came and went as the threat of unionism rose or subsided. Such organizations typically allowed for some shopfloor representation but were dominated by supervisory and managerial personnel. They dealt with minor issues and grievances but were prohibited from negotiating over serious matters of wages, hours, or work rules. They lavished much attention on the provision of pop machines and the organization of baseball teams.

The creation of the NRA brought a new round of employer efforts to organize competing company unions. Such organizations typically played on internal divisions within the labor force. At the Tobin Packing Company in Fort Dodge, company officials preached about the different interests of "local boys" and the "boomer" butchers brought in from other packing centers when the plant opened in 1934. The boomers had become the activists in the union organizing drive.

Some union activists found that their most effective strategy was to join the company union, gradually expose its ineffectiveness, and in a crisis take it over and transform it into a bona fide union. Until the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935 and the Supreme Court's affirmation of its constitutionality in 1937, workers in many plants had to contend with competing company unions. In firms like Tobin's, after the spring of 1937 the employers' advantages in keeping alive company unions were gradually undermined by the new representation procedures enforced by the National Labor Relations Board.

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After the brief sit-down strike and lockout at Tobin's in 1937, a back-to-work movement developed into a company union. Thirty-two activists were initially excluded and only reemployed when the company had to have their skills. Richard Lowry and John Maddox, who were among the thirty-two,

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saw the divisiveness of the company union and the yellow-dog contracts the company tried to get the activists to sign.

Richard Lowry: The Twilight Ballroom at one time was the property of the Chamber of Commerce. It was the old armory building. The National Guard used to train in there. They owned the building, and when this back-to-work movement started they offered this building to the back-to-work movement, Employees' Benefit Association, and they said, "You come in here and we'll teach you the Robert's Rules of Order and set you up and show you just how. No rent involved. You can have it rent-free. And any legal advice you need." That's how much they wanted to see the failure of the bona fide union. They showed them just how to conduct a bona fide meeting, as bona fide as the Employees' Benefit Association could be.

So then we had to sit back with two unions for quite a long while, which wasn't worth a darn for either one. Couldn't do anything. And the company was just having a heyday.

John Maddox: Every one of them that went back to work had to sign a yellow-dog contract.

Lowry: And they'd come to our house. They'd come with this contract. "Hey, Red, look here now. We got Floyd Huddleston, we got John Maddox on here. You better get on here or you're going to be sitting out there on the fence." I was one of the home guards. Fort Dodge-born boys, you know. "You're going to be winding up with all these Communists from out of town." These key guys that Tobin brought in. ''You're going to be with them and out of a job. You won't be worth a damn in Fort Dodge or the state of Iowa. You better sign that thing." So that was the reason we met every day. Because I'd tell them, ''No, I can't believe that." And so we'd meet. We'd go over to Rog Thompson's house and meet and, "Hey, Floyd!" or "Hey, John, I seen your name on the yellow-dog list." "Well, I seen yours," they'd say. "I seen your name on there." So that's what they was pulling, see. They'd forge our names on this thing and try to scare us in that way, and nothing worked. We really had camaraderie, how do you say it? We were really close knit.

Julie Fritz's husband, George, and other "local boys" from Fort Dodge were persuaded by the Tobin Packing Company to join the Employees' Benefit Association (EBA) as an alternative to the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC) that was dominated by "outsiders."

My husband, George Fritz, was one of the local guys that had worked at the packinghouse. Got a job, you know, on his own, and he was splitting hogs. He

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was splitting four hundred to five hundred hogs an hour without being scribed. He worked with a colored fellow from Chicago, Frank Tate, who had done this in Chicago. He taught George how to keep a real sharp cleaver. You had to have a real heavy cleaver. He was hog splitting. That was the first job he got.

When these guys from outside Fort Dodge started the union in 1937 the local boys were a little bit skeptical. They hadn't made such great friendship with the newcomers, you know, that came in from Chicago and Milwaukee and these other cities to work. They were told by the company that these guys were nothing but rabble-rousers and that they were going to cause them to lose their jobs, and they were nothing but troublemakers, and don't listen to them.

These "newcomers" started the union because they had gone through it, and they were familiar with union activities. See, the Wagner Act was really what made the union safe. Well, the company made the local guys feel like, well, they're causing all this trouble and then they're going to take off and go. They're drifters. You guys that were born and raised in Fort Dodge, you're going to have to stay here, but you're not going to have a job because of all this trouble we're having. It's going to be awfully hard for you to keep your job and your living conditions. So that's why they started the EBA. A company union, that's what it was.

Richard Lindner went to work scraping hogs at the newly opened Tobin packing plant in Fort Dodge during the depths of the depression. He watched as the CIO organizing effort got under way and the company responded by promoting an "independent" union.

Then they formed a union which they called the EBA. Twenty-five cents a month was the dues. And George Fritz was president of that union. All the parents and everybody we knew told us. Don't ever belong to the CIO because it's Communist. Maybe they thought so because there was a C on it, I don't know. But George Fritz organized this EBA and he signed me up in it, and I only belonged to it about two and a half months. Anyhow, there was a conflict, two unions in there. The CIO was trying to get built up where they could petition for an election, after they got locked out in 1937.

All us Fort Dodgers didn't know a damn thing about unions, and they didn't make enough effort to educate us in the right way, you know. I joined the EBA just right after I got to the plant.

When I worked on the kill we'd work eight, ten, sometimes, eleven hours. You stand up there on that chain, you know, with the hogs going by, and you stand there three or four hours and have to go to the toilet. The one thing I distinctly remember was I asked our foreman for relief to go to the toilet. And

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he asked me what I done when I was a baby. They made a union man out of me by pulling those kind of things.

Just a little while after this, the union guys caught me in the locker room one day. They come over and sat down beside me and asked me if I wouldn't join their union. Russ Bull said, "We want to get enough people so we can get the bargaining rights. We have to have over 50 percent. If we do, we're going to get a little bit better contract." So I said, "Well, hell, I'll sign." I didn't think the EBA was too damn much anyhow because I thought it was a company outfit, and I couldn't see where a company union would do anything for the people. It would do for the company first and then for the people. So I joined the union.

Building from the Bottom: Organizing on the Shopfloor

Unions came to the mass production industries primarily through the concerted actions of workers on the shopfloor. Even before major organizing drives had begun, before the Wagner Act and the formation of the CIO, even in some cases before the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act, small groups of workers determined that they would no longer accept arbitrary treatment. They shut down operations, confronted management, and persuaded others to join them in acts of resistance. Without the protection of the law or strong unions, they often lost the initial rounds. But they nurtured a spirit of resistance that would flair again under more auspicious circumstances.

Such actions became more common in the NRA period and again after the passage of the Wagner Act. In a few scattered plantsHormel in Austin, Minnesota, for instancevery early sit-down strikes were successful, and unions in these plants became the seedbed for organizing efforts throughout the region.

By 1937 a virtual epidemic of sit-downs was under way. Workers read ill the newspapers of the efforts by workers elsewhere. They took the bull by the horns. Employing short, "quickie" stoppages or more determined plant occupations, they challenged management and demanded recognition. In so doing they won the admiration and support of workers sitting on the fence.

Even after representation elections were won, employers resisted. They refused to bargain in good faith, punished workers for wearing union buttons, and encouraged individuals to refuse to join or pay dues. In response, union activists used the most effective weapons they had. They pulled people off work in sudden and often crippling strikes. As they did so they

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strengthened their claim to a share of authority on the shopfloor, and they reinforced a tradition of direct action that defined for many workers what trade unionism meant.

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Bruce Nolan and his co-workers at the Cudahy plant in Sioux City were aware of the developing national drive to organize the packing industry. But like many, they simply took the initiative where their power was greatest, on the shopfloor.

So all that we knowed about organizing the union was pretty much what we read about what was going on in the newspaper. And at that time the Congress of Industrial Organizations was putting on a big drive in packing to try to get the Armour chain organized. They had sent a fellow from the Mine Workers to town. We had some advice from him, but his efforts was pretty much on the Armour plant. So on our own, there was thirty-four of us that got together and decided that we was going to organize the plant. As times got rougher and we read the newspapers a little more, we decided, well, we got to do something. We're not moving. So thirty-four of us stopped that plant of fourteen hundred workers. We done it on the theory that everybody was accusing everybody of belonging to the union anyway, so we said this was it. A couple accidents happened, and all at once the kill stopped.

We had an agreement that after ten minutes we'd go back to work. By that time we'd established the fact that it could be done. The company wasn't on it enough to know what to do. Within the next few days we had begun to sign membership cards all over the plant. Before we had the plant completely organized we had had thirty-four stoppages until we was able to get the company to agree to sit down and talk to us.

Through this whole period of time they was looking for the guy calling the stoppages. So we went up to the dime store and bought five hundred little tin whistles, and we had three black whistles. When I wanted a stoppage I'd go out on the railroad track and blow the black whistle. Then everybody in the plant would start blowing whistles. We got to the point where they saw they wasn't going to be able to intimidate anyone. They finally agreed to meet.

We went up to what was called the conference room and everybody was worried about what we was going to ask for. But we had the advice of some of the old employees in the plant who had belonged to the union back in the old days. They had firmly convinced me that the only thing that was going to sell the people was seniority, that we had to have job security. So consequently, in our first meeting, this was our only demand. And it was through the help of these old

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experienced guys that us younger guys got the kind of advice that kept us from getting into the trouble that a lot of other plants did. We'd already signed UPWA cards. That was our organization right from the word go.

Before the new CIO unions won recognition or bargaining rights under the Wagner Act, they often secured concessions on shopfloor issues and in the process built a determined and loyal following. Companies came to recognize they were dealing with workers who enjoyed real power. For Virgil Bankson, one episode stood out as the union was taking shape at the Morrell plant in Ottumwa.

We had a lot of stoppages, and we finally forced the company into an agreement on the amount of cattle we'd get an hour. This was done by the floorsmanI wasn't a floorsman at that time. It was right after we started organizing. We were getting rougher and rougher as the time went on. We took all kinds of chances of getting fired. It was before the Wagner Act.

I remember one morning we went into work. The floorsmen had already agreed they was going to stick together. The boss always run the hoist, and he whistled all day long to keep the gang a-running and going as hard as they could go. We started at seven o'clock, and it was about five, ten minutes to eight. Clarence Poncey had his sixteen cattle skinned, and he went up to the end of the beds. He got a bucket, and he set down on it. The rest of the cattle were skinned out. The boss come over to him and says, "What's the matter, Clarence?" He says, "When that hand gets around to eight o'clock, I'll start skinning that beef." He said, ''What are you talking about?" "That's just what I mean. The drive is over." He says, "You can't do that. You're fired.'' "Fine." The other four floorsmen quit, and, boy, it just shook that boss to pieces. He says, "Wait a minute. Don't you leave." He goes and gets the superintendent. The superintendent come up there, and he says, "What's your problem?" "We are not going to be drove no more." "Well," he says, "I'd like to talk to you about this." "Okay." He says, "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll go back to work. We'll meet you in the dining hall after work." He agreed to that. So when the day was over, the superintendent thought just these four floorsmen was going to come down and talk to him. The whole gang went down. You never heard a meeting like that one. But I'll tell you, we ended up with sixty-four cattle an hour from then on until way long time after we got the union. That superintendent says, "You'll never get into me like that no more." And we didn't. But that was the first time I ever got into a meeting, really, when there was any action taken. From then on that give us younger guys a lot of spunk, you know.

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In the heady atmosphere of 1937 "everyone was sitting down." Some workers undertook job actions without necessary preparation or against employers who were still determined to hold out, only to find themselves fired. Richard Lowry joined in the sitdown at Tobin's in Fort Dodge that led to the firing of the "thirty-two."

In 1937 the sit-down strike was the vogue, you know. Everybody was sitting down. So we had to have a sit-down strike. They was bargaining, and things came to kind of a halt. So the leadership come around to the various departments, says, "Everybody sit down. We're not going to move another hog until the company wants to bargain in good faith." Okay, everybody sat down. So then the company said, "Hey, you guys, we got to get these hogs off the rail because the government is going to condemn them. If you get them off the rail then we'll talk." "Okay, we'll take them off the rail.'' So we got the hogs off the rail. That must have been either a Friday or a Saturday. Monday we come down and the gate was locked. So we went from a sit-down to a lockout.

The company just shut 'er down. They knew, I suppose, that they would have a back-to-work movement in those times. People were hungry. So sure enough, they did. We went to Estherville, and while we were there this back-to-work movement really took off and wound up with thirty-two of us that were out.

We thought that if we got Estherville behind us we would be stronger. Same people ran both plants. That was a brand new plant up there, too. We left here in the wee hours of the morning, and we got up there really early yet, and the town was alive, so we knew that we were going to meet a pretty bad reception. These guys that were already thinking about a back-to-work movement knew what was going on. There was a lot of spy work, and they told them to watch out for us up there. They were really waiting for us. The fire trucks were at the plant gate, and the whole work force came out to meet us, with the foreman or the superintendent in the lead. He was the spokesman. A lot of them probably didn't feel as he did, but they didn't dare do anything about it. They tried to run us out of town, and we didn't run. We stayed. Didn't do any good, but we stayed. If it hadn't been for those four WPA people up therethey were not afraid of the big shots of Estherville. They sympathized with us and took us in, and we were able to stay and make a nuisance of ourselves for a few days. All we wanted to do was pass out handbills. We had the cars full of handbills. But they weren't hungry for handbills. The superintendent of the plant said, "Maybe you guys from Fort Dodge can eat snowballs, but we can't."

This is when Charlie Rudd and Henry Simmons got the car beat up. They were black men. Nobody had seen one before. Estherville wasn't ready for black union men.

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Veterans of the 1937 organizing drive at Jacob Decker and Sons Packing Company,

Mason City, on the tenth anniversary of their success. George and Mary Ashlock

are third from right, Allen Bull, fourth from right. George and Mary Ashlock.

Packinghouse workers at Jacob E. Decker and Sons in Mason City had organized under the Amalgamated in 1933 and struck in 1934, but in spite of having the support of a large proportion of the workers in the plant, they lost. Then in 1937 the Independent Union of All Workers from Austin sent in a couple of key organizers to assist in a new organizing campaign. At a critical point in the campaign, according to George and Mary Ashlock, the stewards in the different departments walked into the plant wearing their big red buttons.

George Ashlock: Frank Ellis and Jim Dahl rented a little place in back of the filling station on Fifteenth Street and Federal Avenue. When Frank come down they'd already joined with the CIO up in Austin. So Frank and them talked to us. We got ahold of different people. I think there was eighteen of us. We went underground. We couldn't go out because we was afraid we'd get fired at the packinghouse. We worked all that summer trying to organize Decker's. In August of 1937 we had a meeting. We elected Allan Bull president of the thing. We met and decided, let's put our badges on and go in and organize the plant.

The steward badges was what they was. Had steward on them, red color. This was what we pinned on. My wife, she pinned on one and went in the

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canned meats. We instructed all our people that was organizing not to say a word on the job. Catch them during dinner hour, lunch period, or if it happened to be in the restrooms at what they called at that time "gang-out period," they could talk about it. The company couldn't do anything.

Mary Ashlock: Well, I walked in. Of course, my girlfriend knew about it. She was leery. I was leery, too, you know. The boss come over, and he looked at me three or four times. So I didn't say a word, just kept right on working. They sent word down that at three o'clock everybody's supposed to leave the job and go on out, up on the hill. And I looked out of the window, and I could see them already walking the tracks up there. Oh, I was leery about going. They said to just leave everything lay, just as it is, and go out, because they weren't getting no satisfaction nowhere. Well, my boss come over and said, "Mary, I know you're a steward, but if you walk off this job you're fired."

George: That was before closing time, but the departments where there was perishable goods was cleaned up before. We seen that we wasn't getting behind the eight ball or against the law. We had everything that was perishable cleaned up and in the cooler.

We had a meeting right out in the open. The fellow that was in charge was Allan Bull, and he give a talk about how we was going to organize the plant, and he explained to them why. At that time we had approximately 51 percent of the plant covered.

Mary: The women were not as much involved. Not to begin with. They were just leery. If their husbands were involved, then they kind of set back, you know. They didn't hamper it, no, but they were leery. I was leery, to be truthful about it!

George: At the meeting on the hill we told the people what we was out to do, what we were trying to get for them. They went back into the plant the next morning. Nobody was fired. The company didn't fire none of us or anything. We went back into the plant. We started signing up, and one foreman, he says, "If you guys are going to organize, then damn you, all of you get into it, not just a few." And if the thing was known, he even signed up a lot of them himself!

A few of the old ones we had a little trouble with, because they were a German class of people that had migrated over here, and they didn't want to lose a job. It was during depression times. I couldn't blame them. I talked to a lot of them, even visited them at night and talked to them. But finally, after once you got them convinced that you was going to protect them, you had no trouble with them.

We petitioned for an election in November 1937. The National Labor Board set up an election. The company union tried to fight it. They had their men out

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on the hill when the people was going up, telling them not to vote for the CIO. But with the results of the election, they certified us.

At the John Deere plant in Moline, Illinois, workers sought the aid of the Farm Equipment Workers (FE) organizers from Chicago. Even after they had won a representation election, G. Wayne "Banjo" Smith and his co-workers had to defend their union presence on the shopfloor.

We didn't like this bit of being sent home at any whims and fashions. We didn't like to be working on a machine and him come along and say, "Hey. I want you over here. I'm going to put this guy here. This doesn't take so much for a newer guy to learn," and give you some job that you couldn't make anything on. All of these conditionsno job security whatsoever. Every summer, as regular as the summers came around, when school was over they would tap you on the shoulder and say, "You don't have to come back until we notify you. We're going to put a schoolteacher on your job." Any school employee would take over these jobs. Now, we resented that.

Anyway, I didn't like being shuffled around, and I got together with the guys one time, and I told them I heard about in Chicago there was some guy with a Pullman local that was quite active. That's about all you could read about was a Pullman local up there. So two carloads of us went up there and met with these guys. We slept in the parks, slept in some of their homes, met with them. And this was all foreign to us. We only knew what we wanted. We thought this was the move of the world as to what you had to go through in order to get some of these conditions changed. Every time we had a problem we'd come back, and finally we pitched together and got the cards. By that time Farm Equipment was chartered. They sent Bob Johnson down, and he was to help us.

One by one, some of these guys that had less important jobs in the shop that could be easily filled by somebody else was discharged because of union activity. As a beam roller, I happened to be one that they didn't monkey around much with, because them guys wasn't exactly a dime a dozen. We pulled a few tricks about getting cards signed inside of the shop. You know, sticking signs up in the toilet that said, "You haven't yet signed the card, check with the representative in your department. Every department's got a representative, and we've got almost enough cards." Some of them squawked to the boss, and the boss went out and told the company. The company put up stuff that said, "Anybody caught in union activity, distributing literature inside the plant, will be discharged immediately." This was just prior to the election. After the election was over, I confronted the foreman, told him, "Remember those signs that was hung around the toilets and the drinking fountains?" He said, "Yes.'' I said, "I was the guy that hung

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them up. You was the only guy that was dumb enough to give us any advertising. We couldn't get enough men."

You had to be forceful. You had to be rough. We used to take it right and left, see. The next day after we won the election, we had a little party. We had these big buttons made. They were bigred, white, and blue. I took one of these, and I was the only guy in the plant that put one on. I stuck one on my sweatshirt and walked out in the shop. I seen Frizzell, the foreman, going down the aisle. Pretty soon he come back with the superintendent. He said, "You're fired." I said, "Fine." So I just took a keg and set in the aisle. I set in the aisle for six hours. They'd sent out for me to come in there to a meeting. I said, "Talk among yourselves. I'm not going to go in." I made the company recognize some people that was chosen to be interim officers until such time as we was certified by the NLRB and given a contract. The company had to talk with these people about my discharge. So finally they come out, and they said, ''Well, now, you come on back to work tomorrow. Everything's okay. We've ironed it all out." I said, "Wait a minute. How about the pay?'' "Oh, well, we never talked about that." "Then you've got a job to finish." I set on the keg. So they had to go out there and take it on again, get these same people back in there again. I wouldn't accept day rate, occupational rate. I took my two weeks' average. I got the first case of average earnings ever given at a John Deere works.

I would say, down at the Plow we first started talking about unions between 1937 and 1938. We thought about it before, but we didn't know what to do about it. We didn't get a contract with this company until 1945.

Even after the union had established a foothold at Wilson's packing plant in Cedar Rapids, John Wolfe and others in his department found it necessary to pressure workers to join the campaign in order to present the company with a united front.

Well, when they come in there we just told them to join the union. If they didn't join the union, well, they didn't work very long. Some fellows would come in, and they'd want to bone hams, and they wouldn't want to join the union. But they'd go on relief, and their knives would never cut when they come back. Or else maybe the knife disappeared or maybe fell on the floor and the blade was busted off of it. Maybe their apronsat that time you had to buy themmaybe they were stapled to the post. You know, there's a lot of different ways. Of course, some would run to the foreman. The foreman, he says, "I didn't see nothing going on. So don't come to me."

In the early days of the union, dues collection occurred on the shopfloor. For Virgil Bankson at Morrell's in Ottumwa, collecting dues, like so many

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other matters, became an issue of whether labor or management had ultimate control.

When we first started our union out the dues was supposed to be a dollar a month. We didn't have no checkoff. So you had to collect the dues. That was part of my duties, to collect the dues on the killing floor. A guy'd get mad at you, and he'd say, "I ain't going to pay no dues no more." And you'd beg him, and maybe he'd pay it and maybe he wouldn't.

We had several guys that hadn't paid their dues, and I'll never forget it. We went up to the work line in the morning, me and another guy. We was supposed to be the stewards up there. We says, "Ain't going to be no work this morning until we collect the dues." Right on the killing floor. We just started around for our dollar. And we got some support from some of the guys that was paying. We went around and was collecting dues that morning. Some would promise to pay us payday. We already had some cattle killed, see, and we was just setting there. Here come the divisional superintendent. We got a commitment from all of them but one guy. We wouldn't go to work. This one guy was standing over in the corner when the plant superintendent come up there. He come walking over to the plant superintendent, and he said to him, "Mr. Manns, do I have to belong to this union to work for you?" He said, ''No, you don't have to belong to this union to work for me, but you're keeping the rest of them from working." So he goes back to his corner. Manns says, ''Why don't you go on back to work, and I'll meet with you tonight." So we finally went back to work. That one guy didn't pay his dues. Didn't make no commitment.

That night they had notified Bill Fletcher and myself they wanted to see us in the office after work. So we goes down there, we're setting there. The main superintendent of the plant, he's there. Divisional superintendent's there. The foreman was there. Just the two of us was setting there. And that superintendent setting behind the desk, I'll never forget him. He's thumping his fingers on the desk. He says, "You guys don't have no control over your people at all." Bill says, "Looks like we was doing a pretty good job." He says, "You couldn't control them." Bill said to the superintendent, "We're the ones that got them to go to work. You didn't." Oh, it made him mad. He wanted to fire us both, but he didn't dare fire us, because we had the support.

Workers took job actions not only to win recognition or defend their rights on the shopfloor but also to improve their bargaining position once recognition had been won. The Wagner Act created orderly procedures for unions to win recognition, but it was silent on the process of negotiation. Many

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unions in the late thirties found employers unwilling to bargain seriously with their employees' unions. The packinghouse workers at Tobin's in Fort Dodge promoted more serious bargaining through a show of force, according to Richard Lindner.

We had this meeting scheduled for ten o'clock, and we'd been trying and trying and trying to get them off of their butts, and they just would not budge a nickel. They'd just say, "We would do it if we could, but we just can't do it."

We had it scheduled ahead of time with the bargaining committee and with the all-steward body and everybody that had any activity in the union. Each one of us had a department to go to. If we came in the department and waved, they shut it off and everybody'd go outside.

So we went into the bargaining session and sat down. They let us sit there a little while, about a half an hour or so, and stew. They didn't know what we were doing while we were waiting, but we had this thing all fixed up and were talking about which department anyone would go in and where we were supposed to go. They came in and sat down, and we was asking them if they'd changed their minds on any of the things we were talking about. "No, we're sorry. We just can't budge on anything. You'll just have to accept it." So I reached over and put my arm around George Fritz's shoulder, and I never said a damn word, but it looked like I was trying to whisper something in his ear. And George says, "We call a recess for a few minutes." So we took off, everybody on a run to the different departments. In a minute and a half we had everything shut off and every person in that plant out in front. I stuck my head in the door and I said, "Fred, come on out here and tell these people that you can't do anything for them now.'' And you ought to've seen his chin drop! He come out there, and they got him up on the steps in front of the office. And they started hollering at him and booing him and, Christ, they drove him crazy. Finally he said, "For Christ sake, get them people back in the plant." The scalding tub had about 120 hogs, laying up there cooking. If the inspectors would've came from the government they would've tagged every one of them. "Get them goddamn people back in there working before we lose a hundred thousand dollars in product.'' We said, "Well, do you think you want to talk to us?" "I'll talk. I'll talk." We went back in.

Tobin came in that afternoon. He was in Chicago, but he flew in. He got in there, and we got the contract settled. We negotiated all day until two o'clock in the morning, but we got a good settlement. And when we finally signed the contract he reached in the cupboard that they had in that little room there, and he brought out four fifths of whiskey and set it on the table and said, "Here, you might as well drink my booze. You asked me for my asshole and told me to shit

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through my ribs!" Them were the days. Old George Fritz grabbed two of them jugs, and somebody grabbed the other two and said thanks, and he never seen his whiskey again!

Newton, Iowa, the home of the Maytag Company, had the reputation of being a town closed to unions. And that was the case until early 1937, when persistent organizing by the United Electrical Workers (UE) secured recognition and a one-year contract. This quick victory proved but a lull before the storm. Ezra Cooper and Virgil Martin went through the bitter strike in 1938 that caught the nation's attention and nearly destroyed their fledgling union. Another contract was not seen until after the United States entered World War II.

Ezra Cooper: You could be fired from Maytag's for a lot of things. At one time they was in everything. Out in the northeast part of town the Maytag Company built houses and sold them to the people. Because of the interest rate, some never got them paid for. Down at Maytag's, when you got off work you'd go upstairs, and it was like a department store. They had a service station out by the side of the plant. The greatest pressure come by calling us in the office and saying, "Here, we want you to join the Y." They was in everything. I don't know of a thing that they missed.

In the depression, Maytag's paid us off every two weeks. They give us some cash and then small denominations of scrip. The Chamber of Commerce had come out with the scrip money. On the scrip it read: "This certifies that there is in the treasury of the Newton Unemployment Commission of Newton, Iowa, one dollar legal tender, payable on demand at Jasper County Savings Bank, when this scrip bears twenty signators on the reverse side as evidence of twenty transfers in exchange for goods or credit." If you went in the store and you had a five-dollar bill, I don't care what you bought, they didn't give you back four ones. They gave you back four of these.

The company was opposed to organized labor. That was the basis of the strike in 1938. The only thing they could do was try to break that union. And they done an awful good job of trying, too.

In 1938 I went in with some other guys and took over the plant for eight days. Wouldn't let nobody in, not even the law. But when that militia come in here, we moved out of the plant. Our union leaders sent the message to get out. It wasn't very nice to come out of that plant. There stood a man in uniform with a bayonet on the end of his rifle telling you which direction to go. While the martial law was in force, they would not allow more than two to stand on

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the sidewalk and have a dialogue. There was a lot of fellows arrested that were absolutely innocent. Older men that hadn't done anything other than just walk the picket line. I don't recall what all they were charged with, but I do remember the charges brought against Bill Sentner, the UE organizer. They hunted up an old criminal syndicalism law from World War I.

We had a meeting up at the schoolhouse while the martial law was in effect. Bill Sentner just got up there and tore into Newton. He turned Newton every way but loose. Maytag. The merchants. The businessmen. All of them. And he said, "Now, when I get through speaking, that man over there in that uniform is going to take me to jail." And that's just exactly what happened. When Bill Sentner stepped off the rostrum that night, the guard took him to jail.

Virgil Martin: We had got our first contract in 1937. We struck four days. It didn't amount to a hell of a lot. We got a little raise maybe, set up a steward system but didn't have much seniority. Then in 1938 the contract had expired, and they announced a 10 percent wage cut. That's when we set down. We also had some 360 complaints before the Labor Board. They built up before the strike, and that was one of the bigger things, too, that led to the strike, besides the 10 percent cut.

After the guard was here and we had a final decision of the National Labor Relations Board, the next move we had and the only one was the Supreme Court of the United States. Bill Sentner spent about four hours on the podium trying to get these people to accept the agreement. We finally voted to go back to work under protest. When we went back we had only 150 paid-up members. We had lost 1,650 guys. A whole bunch of them was laid off. But we kept our steward system together and our officers. We still had the bargaining rights. We decided we'd put on a membership drive. We spent six weeks and come up with 750 members. But we didn't sign a contract after 1938 until the war; it was 1941 or 1942. They negotiated in the contract that they'd bring back the 13 men that had been fired for strike activity. I don't give a damn what the guy does, if he's a member of your union you're responsible for him just like you are for your own son. He's one of you. It made the union stronger, just to show the people that we did get them all reinstated, although it took quite a while.

Between the time of recognition and the signing of a contract, the new unions and their employers tested each other's power and resolve. Workers used direct action to prohibit certain management practices that encroached on their shopfloor rights. Carl Dahl, who worked after 1935 for John Deere in Waterloo, saw this as a period of testing and uncertainty, during which the union strengthened its base of support.

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Strikers picket (above) and strikebreakers enter the plant (below) under the

protection of the National Guard at Maytag Washing Machine Company,

Newton, 1938. State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

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Between the time Local 838 UAW was chartered in 1941 and when the first contract was signed in September 1943, it was tough. It was damn tough. We had a big committee, and they had a long battle to get that first contract negotiated. It wasn't very thick. It was quite small, but it was no easy task. During this process we had a lot of hell-raising in the plant. Certain guys stuck their neck out. They'd get in an argument with the foreman and shoot out some sit-downs and slowdownsnot really slowdowns, we'd just have prime quality work. You know, we'd run real slow so it's real good work. Just quality work. We'd just barely make the rate. The company's geared for you to make 130 percent, and when you start making 100 percent they can't fire you because you're making 100 percent, but it sure screws up their whole schedule. Because they got to put a lot more men in there, and where the hell they going to put them?

It's a miracle we didn't have more guys fired than we did. I remember one caseand this was after the union was in therewhere the department next to mine, they brought a time-study man down and put him on the machine to run it and then had a company time-study man time him. They called me (I was out), and they said, "Hey, they're timing a time-study man." I said, "The hell with that. Now, look, all you guys just fold your arms and stop working. The most important thing is, if they ask you who told you to do this, tell them it was my idea. They can't hurt me because I'm out of here." I talked to the steward, and I says, ''if they ask why you're doing it, say it's because you don't believe in the company using a time-study man to time study the time-study man." And, by God, the company just suspended the whole department and called them all over to a hearing. They was looking for somebody to nail. But we got to enough, so when they asked them, "Who told you to do this?" they said, ''Nobody. Just common sense said that you can't do that. I decided myself to stop work." And we beat em on it. I had two guys in there I was scared to death of. They were, you know, kind of soft guys. I set there as a witness while they were interviewing all these guys. Everybody that'd come in I'd look at him, and I'd give him the old eye, you know, just to say, "Now, look, hang tight." Finally, old Al Slade says, "We're just wasting our goddamn time. They got their act together."

From Organizing Committee to International Union: The PWOC

Industrial unions took shape in dozens of local communities throughout the state during the 1930s. Some succeeded almost immediately, others faced years of struggle with recalcitrant employers.

In Iowa and Minnesota, workers in a few packinghouses organized them-

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selves and then began to promote broader organization by sending organizers into other communities. Organizers from Austin, Minnesota, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who went to other packing centersMason City, Fort Dodge, Ottumwa, Des Moines, Sioux Cityrepresented very different philosophies and styles of organization. Austin's lineage lay with the "old IWW." Frank Ellis, the president of the Independent Union of All Workers (IUAW), preached a militant strategy of general unionism modeled on what had been accomplished in Austin and at Hormel. In Cedar Rapids, leadership gravitated toward Lewis Clark, president of a local of packinghouse workers at Wilson's. Calling themselves the Midwest Union of Packinghouse Workers, Clark and his associates had in mind a statewide organization of packinghouse workers. As efforts to organize nationally took shape, Clark realized the benefits to him and others and moved quickly to affiliate. He later became international president of the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA).

When John L. Lewis and the leaders of ten unions affiliated with the AFL formed the Committee for Industrial Organization in 1935later reorganized as the Congress of Industrial Organization and both known as CIOthey found themselves on a road that led to expulsion from the AFL. Lewis appointed regional directors for the CIO who would serve as liaisons with the local organizations that were already developing along industrial lines in the mass production industries. In Iowa, Lewis chose Don Harris, leader of the Rollins Hosiery campaign, to serve as CIO director.

Less than a year after its birth, the CIO began to form organizing committees for specific industrial unions that would eventually be constituted. John L. Lewis initiated that drive in the packinghouses of the Midwest with a mass meeting in Chicago in 1937 that drew workers from a wide area. He also appointed Don Harris director of the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC), with particular responsibility for the effort in Iowa and adjacent states.

All of the local industrial unions were not persuaded as easily as those in Cedar Rapids to join the PWOC effort. In Austin, Harris confronted skepticism about the new strategy, and only considerable persuasion brought the IUAW into the ranks of the PWOC. The pace of organization in other places varied with the resistance that companies put up. In Waterloo, an early effort supported by the IUAW was defeated, and only in the early 1940s did PWOC organizers, some of them veterans of the earlier struggle, succeed in organizing Rath Packing. At Tobin's in Fort Dodge, a bitter struggle with the company union did not result in victory until late in 1937, only after an independent union was locked out, the PWOC lost an election, and the

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organization was rebuilt through the combined efforts of previous company union and PWOC supporters. Through the years of struggle from 1935 to 1941, the CIO became a unique symbol for the aspirations of industrial workers.

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

Don Harris became national director of organization for the PWOC when it was formed in 1937. One of his first tasks was to persuade the independent unions that had organized or were being organized in places like Austin, Cedar Rapids, and Ottumwa to affiliate with the PWOC. In the case of Austin, it took some persuasion.

I was appointed regional director of the CIO for Iowa in 1936. There were ten unions, and, incidentally, about this period, before I was appointed regional director, the Des Moines Trades and Labor Assembly and the Iowa Federation of Labor kicked us out on orders from William Green. Well, we were organizing so fast that it was within the year we had organized the Des Moines Industrial Union Council.

About a year later, in 1937, we set up the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee at a big conference in Chicago. I was appointed the national director, much to my dismay. But like a young fool, I took it. This expanded my activities all over the United States. I must have been about twenty-five years old. Full of p. and v. and not too many brains but a lot of energy and a great devotion to organizing the unorganized and the New Deal. I became an ardent Democrat and have been most of the rest of my life.

Cedar Rapids, the Wilson plant, was organized into an independent union. Austin was organized into this Independent Union of All Workers, and Frank Ellis was the president. So, as national director of the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee, I went up there, and I had a long session with the executive board. My line was, "You guys belong in the CIO. I'd like to have you affiliate your whole local and help organize the plants up in South St. Paul and Albert Lea and some other places up there."

A unique and impressive style of unionism emerged in Austin. From Don Harris's point of viewthat of an organizer who committed himself early to the CIO and to the formation of a national industrial union of packinghouse workersthe influence of the Austin movement was limited. Others recall that it played a more significant role in fostering independent organization in the smaller packing towns in Iowa and Minnesota.

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The Independent Union of All Workers out of Austin, Minnesota,

exercised an enormous influence over packinghouse organizing in Iowa.

It drew on the "one big union" tradition of the Industrial Workers

of the World.  Peter Rachleff and One Big Union Monthly, July 1920.

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A striker, thought to be Frank Ellis (third from left), chats with a policeman during

the Hormel strike in Austin, Minnesota, 1933. Ellis, a former member of the IWW,

was a principal organizer of the Independent Union of All Workers in Austin,

the predecessor to Local 9 of the United Packinghouse Workers of America.

Minnesota Historical Society.

There was activity in Cedar Rapids and at Morrell's in Ottumwa. But the real activity and the basic trade unionism was Hormel in Austin, where they had a unionthe Independent Union of All Workers. It was the old Wobbly, the old IWW's local. That was the name of it. Independent Union of All Workers. And they not only had Hormel organized, they had everything else in town, including the policemen.

They established a real good union. They used to come down into Iowa. Sent organizers as far south as Ottumwa trying to organize the plants down there. They had very little success, and I used to have a lot of arguments with them when I run into them. I said, "What you guys should do is join up with the CIO. This is the coming thing." Finally I convinced them. I even convinced that local in Austin to become affiliated with the PWOC. We didn't organize it. That was organized. A real good union. In fact, I even took two or three guysErnie Jacobs is oneup there and put them on the stand for the Packinghouse Work-

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ers. I took Lewis Clark from Cedar Rapids. Well, they finally had a meeting, and they allowed me to speak at the membership meeting. The membership voted to affiliate, and they became Local 9.

But the main language I learned to speak was, "Join the CIO," or later on, "Join the PWOC. This is the way we're going to be able to negotiate contracts, establish a union, a grievance procedure, give you some protection."

One of the key events in the formation of the PWOC was a mass meeting in Chicago in 1937 that was attended by packinghouse workers from throughout the Midwest. Ralph Helstein, later the president of the UPWA, witnessed John L. Lewis's speech to the convention, where he urged the formation of an industrial union.

Back in 1937, before PWOC was set up, John Lewis came to Chicago. There was a big meeting at the International Amphitheatre at which Bishop Sheen and John Lewis both spoke. This created a tremendous momentum. People from all over Iowa and Nebraska, Kansas, the Dakotas, Minnesota just flooded Chicago. From packinghouses in response to this call. From then on, there were certain local unions who had been very active in pledging their support, and it could be that Ottumwa was one of the early ones. I don't know that that was so, because my impression is that it was organized some time after some of the others. Cedar Rapids, for example, I think was organized in the old AFL. I don't think Ottumwa ever would have anything to do with the AFL. Cedar Rapids did have until they got fed up with them and threw them out. I mean, Pat Gorman, for instance, wouldn't dare go to Cedar Rapids because they had threatened to throw him in the river. Cedar Rapids was Local 3.

Although the main stronghold of UPWA and PWOC was in the Big Four, there were obviously many other plants and companies under contract. Many of these companies had more than one plant, in which case they would have a master agreement. There were many single plant agreements.

Waterloo

Earl Dupey, who went to work in 1928 as a sixteen-year-old at Rath Packing Company, helped bring organizers from the Independent Union of All Workers in Austin, Minnesota, into Waterloo. He later moved to Fort Dodge.

There was a union from Austin, Minnesota, headed by Frank Ellis. He tried to organize us under this independent union at Austin, Minnesota. It was an indepen-

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dent, completely independent, but a very, very strong union. They just couldn't be beat, we thought. We asked Frank Ellis to come in, some of us, on our own. He wasn't there too much, because they tried to run the guy out of town. They wanted no part of him. They called him, I guess, a soapbox organizer. It was something similar, people thought, to the old IWW that went on for years. I took an active part in the union at the time. We never even got a chance to elect officers. The Amalgamated was also trying to get in, so it became more or less a struggle between two unions, and it ended up that us fellows working with the Austin local got let out. That would be 1934. The company blackballed us. I couldn't get on the property for quite a few years.

I told the one superintendent that probably the next time I came back I would be on the property, because I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't help successfully organize Rath's. And that I did.

It was in the forties, the real early forties. A. T. Stevens, district director under the PWOC, asked if I would come back and help organize. He said, "You know a lot of people in there. Maybe we can get a foothold and get them organized." I said, "I would be delighted to do it." I spent about six months, then, with the PWOC. So I went down with Russ Bull, and we just said, "We're going to get the thing organized." We worked day and night. It was nothing to work three days and maybe get two nights' sleep out of it, maybe one until we put the drive on. And we successfully organized it, with the help, of course, of the leads that we had in the plant. We didn't do this alone, but we spearheaded it.

The company tried to remove me, but not very successfully. I could stand there and handbill, and they couldn't stop it. I was handbilling familiar faces. They saw me and figured that it more or less was on the up-and-up. So then we began to sign up membership. We stayed there and helped organize the John Deere plant also, handbilling and stuff. We had no connection, but we stayed and helped. Then we went from there to the Swift local in Des Moines. We didn't get much sleep. We got no expense money either, but it was in our hearts. We felt that strong toward the union.

Cedar Rapids

Organizing among packinghouse workers erupted in a number of places on an independent basis. Efforts were made to link these organizations by the Independent Union of All Workers from Austin and by the Midwest Union of Packinghouse Workers operating out of Cedar Rapids. These organizations helped form the base of the PWOC, but they offered quite contrasting styles of unionism. Milo Barta was part of the effort in Cedar Rapids.

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In the beginning we were in the Midwest Union. That was an independent organization. After we run all over the country and got all these packinghouse people together, it later became an organization by the name of the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee. From the PWOC we finally got into the CIO, after using a lot of pressure. We had a consultant by the name of Lewis Clark that was doing all of our work here in Cedar Rapids. He was being paid by the people that belonged to the organization at the time for him to travel with us in order to get these people put together as a unit here in Iowa. We had to guarantee the CIO so many people before they'd even think about fooling with us. In other words, we had to have a group put together. There was a little nucleus here and in Ottumwa. There was a nucleus in Waterloo. There was a nucleus in Des Moines. There was a nucleus up at Albert Lea, Minnesota. We was at it for a long, long time, having a group of meetings from one place to another. And then, after we got it all grouped up, well then, finally, we got the CIO to come in here to take us over. We had an organization that was finally organized and made into an international union in Chicago.

Lewis Clark's efforts to spread the Midwest Union of Packinghouse Workers got mixed results. Don Harris was asked to sit in on a meeting at Iowa Pack in Des Moines by some of the activists in that plant. He and many workers there were suspicious of Clark's methods and motives.

I remember the first time I ever met Clark was a couple years before the CIO was formed. They were up here trying to get this local at Iowa Pack. They were trying to get them to join this independent union. And they had this slick lawyer with them. The meeting was over in our local union hall, because it was one of the few local union halls in the city. I don't know where in hell the lawyer come from, but they had a format for an independent union, of which Clark was going to be president. This lawyer was going to be legal counsel, and they was going to charge so much dues and all this kind of business.

I just sat there listening, because I was an invited guest by Johnny Jordan and these other guys. I was their advisor. We talked later, after they left. There was a strong possibility that this was inspired by either the Meat Cutters or Wilson and Company or just a desire to have some kind of a phony-type labor setup. But it never got anywhere down here, and to the best of my knowledge it never got anywhere anywhere else except Cedar Rapids.

They sent out guys all over, but they never got anywhere. As soon as I was appointed regional director of the CIO, since I already knew Clark and these guys from their visits up here, I went to Cedar Rapids. And I spent a couple days around there. I said, "Look, here's the coming thing of the future. The CIO." And

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I was really proselytizing then. I told Clark, I said, "Listen, you affiliate with the CIO now." This was before the PWOC was set up. "You affiliate with the CIO, and I'm going to put you on the staff of the CIO and get you an office, and you can start organizing Cherry-Burrell, Link-Belt Speeder, LaPlante-Choate, Quaker Oats." Hell, that was a real industrial town then, see. Barta and these guys, and others, saw that this was a real possibility. The CIO was the thing that could organize all the Wilson plants and all the packing plants. And could organize all the other workers, too, in Cedar Rapids. So they urged him to go ahead, and that's what happened. That local affiliated. It became Local 3 of the United Packinghouse Workers. I got that one in very quickly. I got Austin in, too. I spent a lot of time when I was first appointed as director getting these organized independent unions, holding them together. I also tried to get some AFL ones to join.

Mason City

Eddie Newman was orphaned as a child, and, after working as a farmhand from age fifteen to eighteen, he went to work at Decker's packing-house in Mason City, where he retired nearly fifty years later. He, along with others like Clarence Ramsey, was one of the key workers in the beef house who worked with Austin and later CIO organizers in a succession of drives to unionize the plant during the 1930s.

Eddie Newman: You understand people like us wanted to form a union and fight the company. You would hear somebody say, "No blankety-blank union's going to tell me what to do!" The foreman could kick him around like a dog all week and then pat him on the head and he'd wag his tail, see. That's just the way they were.

Well, I was president of the beef house union, the one connected with Austin. Then, when the CIO started, they always picked some dumb guy because the smart guys set back, see. The other guys would say, "I ain't sticking my neck out. I ain't sticking my neck out." Smart guys sit back and let some dumb guy like me get elected. And every time I got called to the superintendent's office they'd say, "That's the last day for him. That'll be all for him." Well, the superintendent just wanted to discuss something in the plant, see. They were scared to death. Just scared to death. You bet the company kept the atmosphere alive. They put the pressure on everybody that they thought was going to take the lead. Eddie Hyde was the first president of the AFL. He was a guy that wasn't much bigger than I am. They put him over lugging beef, to break him down, see.

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Clarence Ramsey: We was naughty boys for wanting to get organized.

Newman: In 1938 and 1939, the CIO come in once, but it didn't make it. It just didn't gel. And then it was maybe six months or a year when they come back in, when John L. Lewis put up this money and really got some hot organizers like Don Harris. Don was good, and you could listen to him.

Well, they come inDon Harris and Hank Johnsonand they called some meetings. We'd meet in some old room, and we'd put planks on beer cases for seats, and we would listen to them. Finally, some of us said, "That sounds pretty good." When we started it I think there was about sixty of us. They said, "Well, we got to elect officers. Who'll take it?" Nobody wanted it. Walter says, "I'm going to nominate you." I said, "To hell with you, you bastard, you take it.'' Nobody would take it. So I says, "Okay. Nobody else will take it, I'll take it." We started out with about sixty men, and we started calling grievance meetings, you know, just sixty of us. We called grievance meetings. Then we had the Wagner Act behind us, see. We were a little bit safer, and we signed people up on the job.

Fort Dodge

Women could play a crucial role in support of their husbands' strikes, but initially they did not always feel a direct connection to the union movement that was developing on the shopfloor. Julie Fritz of Fort Dodge saw how valuable the women's auxiliary could be in bridging that gap and building a solid foundation for the union in the lives of its members.

The men were kind of on the fence until they got in the plant and they listened and they observed, and they knew that the company was taking advantage of them with the working conditions and that. So they joined the union, but at home, when there was the threat of going on strike and not bringing home any money, the wives had a lot of persuasive powers to make the husbands feel like, "Well, maybe the union isn't that good. I'm getting no wages. I'm going on strike." We set up an auxiliary more or less to educate, bring the wives in and talk to them, talk union to them, tell them what the future held for them as a union, and that they should stand behind their husbands, you know, for the wellbeing of their husbands and the financial and physical well-being, because they were really working them hard.

The company were the ones that were trying to get the women to not go along with the union in a sort of subtle kind of way. Kind of disagreeing with a lot of things that we were encouraging the wives to do. But they were in such a minority that it just wasn't very effective. We would go to places of business,

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grocery stores and bread places, and ask for donations for our picket line, telling them that we were their customers, past and future. If they would help us it would work to their good. We did accumulate canned goods and things like that, and in the union hall we set up the kitchen. When the guys would get off their shift they would come up there and have coffee and sandwiches and rolls. Then they would go back. By involving the women it helped. Without the auxiliary I'm sure that the strike would never have survived. Because it was through our efforts of making the wives understand that it was important for them to stand behind their husbands that made their husbands feel like they were doing the right thing. You know yourself if your wife was nagging you for something you'd kind of like to keep peace in the family, and you'd probably go along with her suggestions to a point. It was the auxiliary, and I always said that it was the woman behind the man that made the union as strong as it was. The man didn't make it alone.

It then became a social-type thing, where we all had a lot of togetherness, which made the union pretty strong. Because everybody felt like they were everybody else's brother. And we had our parties and our dances and our picnics. It helped weld the union, because you felt so much togetherness that you didn't dare stray. They were all your friends. You became close friends because of the union, so there was never any idea of straying from the union and going by yourself, because you'd find yourself very, very much alone. In fact, those were the days that we really had union togetherness, and it was after the war that the auxiliary started falling apart and everybody went on their own.

As regional director of the CIO in 1937, Don Harris witnessed the surging enthusiasm for organizing in a wide range of plants. With a little assistance and encouragement, the workers simply organized themselves.

You see, I was getting a lot of publicity as regional director in the Des Moines Register, pictures and every once in a while they'd put the address. I'd get letters addressed to the CIO in Des Moines, Iowa. Or maybe somebody coming in my office. If they come into my office down in Des Moines, I'd say, ''How many workers in your plant?" "A hundred and fifty." And I'd ask this gal I had working for me, ''Count out 150 cards." And I'd give them 150 cards, and I'd say, "See this card? You sit down and fill it out." So all he had to do was put his name and address and the name of the plant, and he'd sign it. I'd say, "Okay, you take them cards back." And I'd give him some caution about, "Don't do this while you're working, working hours. On your relief time, your breaks, your noon, before work and after work, you have a right and you're protected by the law." I'd read him the law a little bit. So I'd say, "Now, when you get those cards signed up, you come on back and see me." And I would give him a little bit about what the

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next stage was. Maybe not. Well, sometimes that night the guy'd come back. He got this whole bunch of goddamn dirty cards, see. Or maybe he'd be two or three days or a week, but he'd come back. I'd take it from there. I'd write a letter to the company and say, "We've got your employees organized, and I officially request that you recognize that they are. If you refuse, I'll file a petition with the National Labor Relations Board." So it was just like that. There were literally dozens of plants that was organized in the matter of a few days or a few weeks at the most.

Ralph Helstein was a young attorney in Minneapolis as the CIO was getting off the ground. He found himself suddenly recruited to help the movement, and as he said, "My life changed completely." The CIO took on a special meaning for workers who now sought to organize.

One day, it would've been early fall or late summer of 1937, a group of guys walked into my office, said they had organized a CIO operation in Minnesota and they needed a lawyer. They'd been referred to me, and would I be willing to handle their legal work? Well, I not only was willing, I was anxious. I became the attorney for the CIO, representing all these unions, and my life changed completely.

This was totally freewheeling, you know. They had nothing to lose in the CIO in those early years. I'd go out night after night organizing, calling on people in their homes, visiting with them and getting a feel of what their problems were, what went on in the plants, getting an understanding. And I was working at every kind of plant from foundries up to stores. I remember after Ford capitulated in Detroit, we went over to organize the UAW plant in St. Paul. My God, there must've been a thousand people there, and all they wanted was cards. Nobody wanted to join a union. They wanted to join the CIO. When you'd say to workers, "Well, you ought to be in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers" or some other union, "Oh, no, no, no, we want the CIO." And then you'd have to very patiently explain to them, "Well, this is the CIO, but its particular jurisdiction in which you're involved."

As a matter of fact, the old buttons we had, the PWOC buttons, were CIO. It had a PWOC around the edge, but the big thing in the middle was CIO.

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"Engine Wipes." Women engine wipers employed by the Chicago and

North Western Railroad in Clinton to replace men during World War II.

State Historical Society of Iowa, Des Moines.

4

Work and War: Securing the Union

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In 1939 the battle line for industrial unionism ran through the packinghouses and farm equipment plants of Iowa. Successful skirmishes, at the Tobin Packing Company in Fort Dodge, for instance, were more than matched by continuing struggles at othersMorrell's in Ottumwa, Rath's in Waterloo, and Wilson's in Cedar Rapids. In farm equipment, John Deere stood squarely in the way of the forward march of the Farm Equipment Workers (FE). A bitter organizing strike by the United Electrical Workers (UE) at Maytag in Newton in 1938 left that important symbol of antiunionism still outside the fold.

To make matters worse, few workers could be confident that the end of the depression, now more than a decade old, was in sight. Unemployment in the country still stood at 17.2 percent. For all of the optimism with which the New Deal's recovery and social programs had been ushered in, they seemed to have produced little lasting recovery and even less social security. For workers still standing in unemployment lines or gathering at plant gates in hopes of finding work, insecurity deepened.

Determined organizing and labor's new political strength had produced spectacular victories in key industries, notably General Motors and U.S. Steel. But "little steel" and Ford Motor Company violently resisted the union tide and in so doing demonstrated the limits of labor's political influence. In the midst of the Republic Steel strike Franklin Roosevelt had declared "a plague on both your houses." CIO organizing committees were beset by internal divisions, differences over strategy, and a wave of anticommunist hysteria.

By 1939 workers, along with other Americans, watched the gathering war clouds in Europe and Asia. Although popular sentiment supported nonintervention, Hitler's seizure of Czechoslovakia in March and invasion of Poland in September, followed immediately by British and French declarations of war, started an inexorable march toward world war, the second in less than a generation. Revised "neutrality" legislation in the United States permitted arms sales to the allied belligerents. Ties to the allied war effort were deepened through loans and military cooperation.

The economic effects of the American mobilization on behalf of Britain and France were felt by late 1939. As war spread in the early months of 1940, the American economy showed clear signs of pulling out of the long depression. The debate over American involvement was hardly settled, but leaders in the CIO threw their support to the mobilization effort, while seeking to enhance labor's influence and promote its social-democratic agenda. Not the least of the labor movement's concerns was to create a climate that would bring organizing success where it had not been achieved. Philip Mur-

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ray, who by 1940 was head of the CIO, called for tripartite industrial councils to manage key sectors of the economy. Walter Reuther boldly proclaimed a goal of "five hundred planes a day" and declared that "we can run it better."

Two important ingredients reshaped the world of labor as neutrality gave way to outright belligerency in 1941. First, unemployment was replaced by labor scarcity, and in early 1942 that scarcity became critical as large numbers of men enlisted or were drafted into the service. Employers eager to take advantage of profitable opportunities in a war-stimulated economy were prepared to concede their employees some of the things they demanded. Second, the federal government, desperate to maintain uninterrupted war production, expanded the machinery for government intervention in labor relations. Through the National Defense Mediation Board and later the National War Labor Board, the government established and enforced precedent-setting principles in the areas of wages and union security. While wages were fixed to a "little steel formula" as an anti-inflation measure, the door was opened for other gainsfringe benefits, pensions, vacations, clothes-changing timethat set new precedents. And the War Labor Board, through a "maintenance of membership" ruling, insured that unions could protect their membership gains even if they gave up the right to strike for the duration of the conflict.

Wartime developments also pushed the labor movement in a more centralized and bureaucratic direction. The no-strike pledge, although ignored by rank-and-file workers in some industries, removed a primary instrument for redressing grievances. As grievances mounted and with wages but not prices effectively frozen, union leaders were caught between the defense of new bureaucratic procedures, enforced by the government, that guaranteed the existence of their organizations and an increasingly restive membership.

Over the course of the war the barriers unions had faced fell. The percentage of the labor force that was unionized grew steadily. Entrenched antiunion employers caved in to the combined economic and political pressures. Union members expanded their base, grew more assertive, and laid the institutional foundation for a durable labor movement in the mass production industries which had taken generations of struggle and sacrifice to organize. In the process, new international unions were forced to confront their own racial and sexual biases as large numbers of women and black workers entered the workplace and demanded for themselves equal rights.

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Opening Doors: Women and War Work

During the Great Depression women's employment grew modestly as families struggled to survive the hard times. But the onset of war brought dramatic changes. The demand for women workers was unprecedented, and they moved in large numbers into worlds of work that previously had been exclusively male domains.

World War II was not the first war in which women's employment expanded. Indeed, changes in women's work patterns are punctuated by the gains made during wartime, from the Civil War on. But some things were different about World War II. The proportion of married women working outside the home rose sharply. For the first time married women outnumbered unmarried women in the work force. The numbers of women in manufacturing work increased by 140 percent, and they broke through the sex-segregated labor market as never before. Finally, a large proportion of women entered workplaces where unions were a factor. Organized workers had a direct interest in making these women members. Out of self-protection they fought for equal pay for equal work.

Women brought to the workplace their own culture of work. They constructed networks of mutual aid and often demonstrated a degree of solidarity that male unionists found impressive. The wartime propaganda associated with "Rosie the Riveter" gave women a new legitimacy in traditional male domains. Some defined their work in temporary terms, as substitutes for men who would eventually return to reclaim their old jobs. Others saw themselves as permanently entering nontraditional work and were determined to stay after the war emergency had passed.

The resistance to women in the labor force was nevertheless formidable. In many workplaces they continued to experience daily hostility from male workers whose world they had "Invaded." Their opportunities for promotion and for training in skills that might have expanded their options were limited. As the war wound down, women saw the world contracting around them. It was expected in many plants that they would voluntarily relinquish their jobs and accept positions in "women's" departments. The tide of propaganda began to reverse, emphasizing women's paramount domestic interests. Although women's rate of participation in the labor force fell from 37 percent to 31 percent, more women in 1950 were working for wages than even at the wartime peak. Their world of work, however, was now more segregated and their pay lower.

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World War II suddenly altered women's expectations about what work they might do. Not only were plants hiring more women, they were placing them in jobs traditionally reserved for men. Ethel Jerred went to work on the kill and cut at John Morrell's in Ottumwa. The whole environment was initially intimidating. But gradually, she and the other women adjusted to their new surroundings. And so did the men.

My husband was in the service. We were just married three weeks when the war broke out. I was working in the home of the man who was head of John Deere at that time. His wife had died, and he had a boy. Of course, when he did entertaining, I'd watch the boy. He would bring his group there, and I'd cook for them. I knew that there was better wages. We'd just bought a home, and I wanted to have it paid off by the time my husband got back out of the service. So I put my application in for Morrell's on a Wednesday, never thinking I'd ever get called, because I had done this before. They called me Friday night and wanted me to work on Saturday morning of the same week. I had no idea where I was going. I believe there was eighteen of us women who were hired into the men's departments, that's offal, kill and cut, fresh meat packing floor, and fresh meat wrapping. This was where we ended up at.

We were the first ones. They had interviewed other girls to go into predominantly women's departments and then they told us that this was all they had to offer and were we still interested. Well, you know, fifty-nine cents an hour for women in the women's departments and seventy-two or more for the men's jobs. That looked good. My first check was sixty-two dollars, and I thought I was wealthy. That was the most money that I'd ever made in one week.

First they took us to the storeroom. They told us to either wear a hat or wrap our hair up. I can't remember how many women went into the packing floor. I don't think there could've been much over four or five, and there must've been fifty to seventy-five jobs in there. You can imagine how scared you are when you walk into this big place with freezer pipes running down both sides. They took me over to this skid, and in this big gondola were these great big livers. I never saw livers like that. I always thought they were sliced, you know, like when you bought them in a store. And they must've weighed pretty close to five pounds. You used a pitchfork, and they said, "Now you're to fill this box. When you get it full, you shove it down onto the skid for them to take off and put on a platform." I don't think I weighed much over 118 pounds then. By the end of the day I don't think I could even lift my fork to feed myself. When I walked in the door I thought I was the most abused person in the whole world, and I just knew I was never going back to that job again. I was dirty, blood all over me. I'd never been that dirty before. But you learn to swallow your pride. When you look at that

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big paycheck, you swallow your pride. But there was another job I had my eye on. I made up my mind I wasn't going to shovel livers all my life. So I bid on this job making wooden boxes. I worked with an elderly gentleman back there. You made them and they put loins in them, a hundred pounds of loin.

All these was still men's jobs, because they opened up as the men got called into the service. The longer we were in there the less and less men there were, only the ones that were physically not able to go into the service or older men. But as these jobs opened up we women would bid on them.

When we first started, Morrell's had went up there in these departments and told their intentions, that these jobs had to be filled if they stayed in business, and the only working power that they had was the women. That's when this thing was starting across the country, women going into shipyards and all this. Some men were bitter. Some men weren't. I think they had an idea that the women coming in there were probably women of bad character. So it was up to we women to prove to the men we could be just as respectable as the wives that was at home. We were down there working for a living. Our husbands was in the service, and all we wanted was our wages for a good day's work. I think that they got the message, and they kept their place. I would say that the men were very decent about all of this.

The bigger-framed women, the ones that weighed a little bit more, went up on the kill and the cut, the offal, trimming room. You'd see women pushing big trucks loaded with meat up to offal or down to the packing floor, before they got the chutes. We did have some smaller women that would be up on the killing floor putting the government stamp on the hogs. These women increased up there as the men were called into the service.

We had the understanding that when the war was over and the men come back we would step back from these jobs, and the company would make jobs for us in the predominantly female departments. They would not just say, "You're done and that's it." Rather than to hire new people, they would make a place for us. There wasn't that many. There wasn't like three or four hundred women working up in those areas. So this was why, when the men come home from the service, we left those departments. We felt like these were their jobs when they left and they should have the right to have the jobs when they come back, as long as they were not hiring new people. These men had seniority, and they had the right to these jobs.

There was a little bitterness from some of the women at the end of the war as we came into these departments. They felt they had worked all these years for fifty-nine or sixty cents. And we who were on those men's jobs made a lot more. Oh, I know the day that I got eighty-eight and a half cents an hour for a

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knife job, I thought that was just terrific. I used a knife in the fresh meat packing floor during the war.

I was a person who knew nothing about unions. I'd always worked where the boss told me what wages I would draw and what hours I would work. I don't think there was over five women on the packing floor, and Ed Filliman, who was president of the union, come up to me. He was the chief steward in that department, and he said, "Would you like to join the union?" Well, to me it was just like he was asking me, "Would you like to join a sewing circle?" or a club or something. And I said, "Well, what will it cost?" And he said, "It'll cost you fifty cents to join and fifty cents a month.'' Well, that was a lot of money then, and I said, "Well, what will I get out of it?'' because I'm Swede and I'm a little tight, and I want to know what I'm going to get out of my money. And he started to tell me about job security and all of this. And I let him go on and on. I got to thinking about the fifty cents, and I said, "No, I just don't believe I want to. I think I can find someplace else to put my fifty cents." And he said, "Well, sister, I'll tell you one thing. If you want us to cooperate with you, you better cooperate with us." And so, I figured, well, I'll give it a try. I said, "Okay, I'll sign up." He was the greatest inspiration to we women, because after the five of us women had signed up, he said, "All right. We have a steward for men in here. I think you women ought to elect a woman to be your spokesman." A woman is a little reluctant to go to a man, at that point, because things were still a little fuzzy about women working in these areas. "Then, if anything, any problems come up, when we go out to meet with the company your person that you've elected to be your spokesperson will go out with us." And guess who was elected. I was quiet. I didn't know very much then, but I was willing to learn, and I learned a lot from this man.

Some men who were active in the union found that the new women in the plants were easier to organize than the men. Women had a network of mutual support that spread the union sentiment quickly. Earl Riley, a steward at John Deere in Waterloo, found them to be "wonderful people to sign up."

During the war I was the divisional steward over a lot of ladies. You get one lady that's abused, that's not treated right, and these other ladies see it, and you have no trouble signing them up. I've signed up as high as forty-five women in one night, because you'll get them into a meeting and they understand. A woman is pretty easy to get to. They're no dummies, you know, when it comes to talking, especially where they're working. You get to talking to these ladies and tell them

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Two women install a divider on a combine at J. I. Case Company in Bettendorf

during World War II. State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

we're going to correct this. You'll sign them up. They're wonderful people to sign up, better than a man, for that matter. Oh, we had a strong shop over there.

This was a spare parts plant, where they worked. The parts were all packed in boxes, waterproof. These were spare parts that was going overseas, for tanks.

After the war some of them went over to the other plantthe tractor worksand a lot of them went out. They had their choice. They could have come in and took the jobs in the line of seniority, but a lot of them didn't want to go into the plant. They was afraid of it. Some did go in, as clerks and such. We had three women went in as core makers, and we had five core assemblers.

Many women entering the war plants came from union backgrounds and brought to the work a sense of skill and pride. Fern McCarthy went to work with her mother in the ordnance plant in Burlington. She found constant danger, injuries, and pressures that were brought to bear to produce more.

In 1941 the war broke out, and Mother went to the ordnance plant. They opened it in 1942. Thirty-three acres is what it took up. They took all the old

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farmhouses and they put them in a community. They rented them to the big shots so that they were within the area. Then they built barracks for individuals and apartments for those who needed them, and, oh God, they needed them. They tried to rent me a chicken house for a place to live! Housing was very, very scarce.

I went to work in the ordnance plant, too. Mother worked one shift and I worked another, but we were very fortunate when they finally froze shifts. You froze the shift you were on. I had a younger sister, ten years younger, who we had to take care of.

Mother had very strong feelings about unions. It's just the way she felt. Back in the thirties, when a strike took place, my father was uptown about a week later, and he came home and said to my mother, "Edith, I have a chance to go to work for the railroad full time. It's a lifetime job if I want to take it." And she just looked at him and said, "Well, Roy, I didn't marry a scab to begin with, and I hope I'm not married to one now." And he said, "I'm glad to hear that's how you feel because you didn't marry one!''

I was only there two weeks when I said, "Who's the steward?" and they told me who it was. So I looked her up and said, "I want to join the union." And I did.

They kept a steady go. On some of the lines they had bells. You went as fast at four o'clock as you did at eight o'clock in the morning. I saw a woman run a punch through her hand one day. She went to clean her press, and they always said when you clean a press the first thing you do is put your foot under the pedal so you don't accidentally step on it. And she didn't do it. She went to move and the press came down. The punch went through her hand. She used to be so much fun before it happened. She was such a lighthearted person. I liked her so much, and after that she never laughed. It took all the fun out of her. My mother, the first six weeks I worked there she said every night she looked to see if I had my hand bandaged because she was so afraid something might happen to me.

The war also affected industries in which women had traditionally predominated, such as the telephone company. Young women like Florine Koole of Davenport, who came to work in a "vital" war industry represented a new generation and were less inclined to go along with the strict discipline the companies had traditionally imposed on operators. They found all kinds of informal ways to circumvent the discipline. But they also saw their wages lag perpetually behind other industries under War Labor Board rulings.

My mother started nagging me in 1941 to go apply for a job at the telephone company. My father had three cousins who had worked as operators, and they

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Women inspect 50-caliber bullets at the Des Moines Ordnance Plant,

formerly U.S. Rubber, August 1945. State Historical Society of Iowa, Des Moines.

were always held up as shining examples of what women ought to do. The company was very choosey about who they hired, but I did take time off one day and went up to apply for a job. It was the custom then for the employment office at the telephone company to make you come back every week. Some of the people I went to school with did that for a year. I told them I couldn't, that I had another job, and that I had taken time off to apply. Well, apparently that approach must have been a unique one, because two days later I got a call asking me to come to work.

When I went to work Northwestern Bell had a "married woman policy," which meant that you could not work at the telephone company if you were married. If you got married, you could continue working for three months, but at the end of three months you had to resign. I worked with a young woman whom I had gone to high school with, who was married and divorced within that three-month period, and she still had to resign. When they changed the policy in early 1942, it was amazing how many women announced that they had been married, some as long as ten, fifteen years.

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The younger people referred to the company as the Northwestern Bell Penitentiary. They were terribly strict. When I started in 1941, I was one of the kids, because there was a long period of time during the depression they didn't hire anybody. They first started hiring, just a very few in 1939, a few more in 1940, and more in 1941. So there was an age gap of seventeen, twenty years between the most junior women who had worked for the company prior to 1939. Then, all of a sudden, here comes these kids fresh out of high school. So you really had a generation gap. And those older women really didn't appreciate having these kids around.

Soon after the war started the telephone industry became a vital industry, and the only way you could accept another job was to either be fired or to have some medical reason for getting a release from the company. Otherwise, you could not work for three months, and very few people could afford to be unemployed for three months. So we were locked into it. We grumbled a lot about the low wages in comparison to the wages they paid at the Des Moines ordnance plant and other places. But there was really no way out, unless you could afford to be unemployed for three months.

We tried to find ways to outfox the management. I guess it was a way of venting frustration. On information or directory assistance, as it's known today, we only had a supervisor on duty till nine o'clock at night. After she left, we did all kinds of things. We used to get reported all the time by the supervisors on long distance. It caused the evening chief operator, who got off at nine, to pretend like she was leaving and sneak back through another door to catch us.

One time, the Shriners had a national convention in town, and they had a torchlight parade. We took turns going to the window to watch the parade. Another time there was an eclipse, and we took turns looking at the eclipse. So we just found ways to outfox them. We'd find ways to communicate with each other, even though you weren't supposed to talk at the board. The positions were staggered. You learned to be able to write upside down on your scratch pad so the operator across from you could communicate with you.

When the National Federation of Telephone Workers came along, they really had to start from scratch. The first agreement more or less laid down working conditions, not even money. When we did get to the point of negotiating for money, the War Labor Board was in operation, and all of our wage increases had to be approved by them. I think the first one took twelve or fourteen months to be approved, and the second one was already due and that took another ten or eleven months. So that's really why telephone wages lagged behind, because we were held up for so long during the war by the War Labor Board. We started lower, and it took us so long to recover after the war.

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Challenging Barriers: Black Workers and the War

Wartime labor scarcity and the growth of industrial unions changed the conditions of employment for black workers as well as for women. Employers had turned to the South in World War I and to established black communities in the North for workers to meet their needs. They did so again in World War II.

The World War I experience had been mixed for black workers themselves. They had breached the walls of segregation that had kept them largely outside the mass production industries, only to discover other, even more formidable boundaries within the plants. They were consigned to the most poorly paid and filthiest jobs, with little opportunity for movement. And what jobs they secured proved remarkably insecure as the war ended and they were pushed out the factory door, often with the complicity of the unions.

Northern black communities continued to grow between the wars. But employment gains in jobs that were not traditionally reserved for blacks were few. The depression hit black workers even harder than whites. The first to be fired, they survived only through sheer determination, the continuing access of black women to low-paying domestic work, and mutual aid within the black community.

The outbreak of World War II brought both a repetition of the previous war's experience and circumstances that were new. Gradually, painstakingly, black workers had made their way back into the mass production industries even if still largely in the lowest-paying jobs. Industrial unions of varying strength had, with government support, begun to win collective bargaining rights. These unions, while often carrying the baggage of racial prejudice, were committed in principle and practice to thorough organization of their industries, from the lowest to the highest paid workers. They were committed in principle, if not always in practice, to an equality that must logically extend to black workers. Making reality of such a principle was not accomplished without serious struggleswith employers, with fellow union members, and within communities where racial segregation was unquestioned. Nonetheless, the CIO industrial unions in general achieved a better record on race issues than trade unions before them.

Black workers were key actors in these struggles. Franklin Roosevelt's Democratic party had overcome nearly seventy-five years of black allegiance to the Republican party, and black voters in increasing numbers aligned themselves in support of New Deal social programs. When the war broke

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out and black workers found the barriers to employment and job mobility in the burgeoning war industries still in place, they and their community leaders organized pressure on the federal government to intervene. A threatened mass march on Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1941 led the Roosevelt administration to issue Executive Order 8802, which created the Fair Employment Practices Commission to investigate and take action against federal contractors that practiced discrimination.

Industrial unions moved more forcefully to challenge both employers and their own members to break down the barriers that black workers faced. As many as one million black workers moved into the industrial labor force during the war, largely out of agriculture and domestic service. Sixty percent were women, two-thirds of whom had been domestic servants. Black median income as a percent of white income rose from 41 percent in 1939 to 60 percent in 1950. A huge gap remained, and segregation was still deeply etched in both southern and northern communities. But the war brought profound changes in race relations that would lay the basis for civil rights challenges in the years to come.

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By 1943 workers in the packinghouses were impatient to see their CIO organizing committeethe Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC)transformed into an international union. As they turned to drafting a constitution, key activists in the union sought to capture in language a principle of solidarity that would overcome the heritage of racial and ethnic division that had hampered organizing in the past. Ralph Helstein, then the attorney for the PWOC, was designated to put on paper the principle that rank-and-file leaders of the union articulated.

Increasing numbers of people had decided that the time had come when the packinghouse workers ought to elect their own representatives. The organizing committee had been set up in 1937. This was 1943. It was a matter of six years. We already had a very substantial portion of the major firms in the industry organizedArmour, Swift, Wilson, Cudahy. We represented the bulk of the people there, and the rest you would pick up. So when we had that February meeting about a War Labor Board decision, representatives of the various districts met with Allen Heywood of the CIO and exacted a promise from him that we'd set up a committee to draft a constitution.

When we drafted a constitution, I was particularly impressed with the importance of the preamble to the constitution. We had a black guy out of Milwaukee

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on the committee by the name of Roy Johnson. Roy had lived a very difficult, miserable life. He'd done everything there was to do. He'd sailed. He'd been a fireman on a railroad train. He'd gone around the country living in very difficult circumstances. And he was also a very skilled butcher. In an arbitration hearing one time he described the process of putting an edge on a knife blade, and I tell you, that was an artistic achievement. You could just feel what a knife with that kind of edge meant to the person who was using it. Never have I thought of an inanimate object as taking on life the way he gave it.

He was picked as one of the members of this committee, and he said to me, "You know, Ralph, somehow or other we got to say in this constitution that the packinghouse workers have never been able to really get organized because of all kinds of divisive influences from the outside. Race, color, politics, religion, language, all kinds of them." And you know, in Chicago it was really a Tower of Babel, with Polish, Slovakian, Serbian, God knows how many. Roy said this, and it impressed me. The preamble provides the foundation on which the rest of the constitution is drafted. And so I found language. Over the years, particularly on the issue of civil rights, this became extremely important, because we were always able to point out that this is the law of the union. If you don't like it, then you got to get out.

I invited a whole local union in Fort Worth, Texas, one time to just walk. Leave. Get the hell out of here. This is the law of the union. You either accept it or get out. They were mad because we were eliminating segregated eating facilities. They didn't like it, this group of whites. So they marched on the union hall and threatened to organize. Called an officer on the phone, and he had laryngitis all of a sudden. He was so scared he could hardly talk. But the wall came down, and they stayed in the union.

CIO unions took initiatives in the area of race relations that often challenged local customs. Some local leaders might argue simply that it was the rules of the international that dictated such policies, but many, like John Jordan at Iowa Pack in Des Moines, also used the opportunity to build deeper bonds of solidarity so essential to an effective industrial union.

We won the election in December 1942, and we were certified as the bargaining agent in 1943. The first thing I did was I went to the company and told them they were going to have to start hiring black women. We had a lot of black guys that were members, and our national union had a rule on no discrimination in hiring. Iowa Pack was hiring a lot of people during the war. I told the superintendent, "You'll have to start hiring black women." I thought he'd go up in the air,

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but he didn't. He said, "Well, how about the white women that are there now?" I said, "You hire the people. I'll take care of that."

I wasn't sure there wouldn't be some problem, but I knew we'd surmount it. So he said, "All right, I'll give an order for two tomorrow. We'll go from there and see what happens." So I called two of the black guys that I worked closest with. I said, "Look. I know you don't like this, but I'm going to have to ask you to get the best girls you can get that's going to get along with people and get them down here to be hired." They did a good job. The word got out before I got out of the superintendent's office. So I go back to my job, and I've got a telephone call to go to the bacon room. I was chief steward, so I picked up the president and we went down.

I told him what was happening. "What's this about niggers going to work in here?" those girls said. "I'm not going to work with them." I said, "Well, nice knowing you." Somebody else said, ''Well, I won't work with them.'' And I said, "It looks like we're going to have to hire all black girls in here if all of you are going to quit." They started toning down a little bit then, but they were still mad. So I said, "They're going to work here because that's the rules of this union." I'd rather bit my tongue off than say that, because these were nice girls and good union people. But rules are rules. Next morning they hired these two girls, one for the sweet pickle and one for the bacon room. When they went out on break they were all together, a black girl and the white girls. You could never tell there was any difference. In the afternoon when they went out on break, they had their arms around each other. They were scared of something, but they didn't know what.

And there was another thing that I brought up at the first chain meeting of all the Swift plants that belonged to the CIO. It was to give you rights to transfer to another department before they hired a person for that department. We got it in the contract.

That was done because there were only about four places that black men could work in the plant. We got them all to put in requests for departments where they couldn't work before.

Before that everybody knew they got hired for the hide cellar or the shackling pen, the rendering house and so forth. Stinkin' jobs. So didn't take long until they infiltrated the whole plant.

As the labor shortage grew severe during the early stages of World War II, employers looked southward, as they had during the First World War, for a supply of black workers. Cleio Stringer watched the Kalo Brick and Tile Company of Fort Dodge set up its own recruitment effort, fabricating "little

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houses" on newly filled sites and scouring the community for bare housekeeping essentials. The war softened some racial attitudes but reinforced others.

When the war was on it was hard to get guys to work down at Kalo Brick and Tile. Gibb went down to Mississippi, I don't know how many different times, and he hauled back a bunch of colored guys and put them to work here. After they worked here a while they brought their families up. He had a big Cadillac. He'd bring back a carload at a time. I remember about two or three trips that they went because they couldn't get guys to work there.

They moved all them little houses in there for the colored people. Right along the river. That was all low ground, so we hauled over stuff from the pit with trucks and leveled it up where them houses sit.

I remember taking trucks and going around to anybody that had anything to donate, an old stove or table or chair, frying pan or dishpan. We hauled it in there and give it to the colored people. Some of those colored people were nice people, and there were some awful good workers. Some of them could outdo some of us white guys when it come down to work power.

Along towards the last, there'd be a job that was real hot, real dirty, or real bad. They'd want some of the younger guys, the college kids who'd come to town, to go in there and do it. Some of them was young married guys, and they didn't want some dirty job. "Get one of them colored guys. That's a nigger job." That's the way they would talk about it. I heard them say that lots of times. But I never really felt that way. I always felt that if I had a job to do, if I couldn't do it, if I wasn't man enough to do it, I wouldn't ask somebody else to do it.

Under wartime conditions of labor scarcity racial boundaries in factories began to fall, but not without some resistance. Principles of class solidarity reinforced by patriotic duty on occasion broke down barriers that had been seemingly unbreachable. Floyd Piper of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers was called upon to intervene in a potentially volatile situation in Keokuk where black workers were about to be hired.

During the war the government said that employers had to give equal opportunity to everybody because they was needing help. The company that wasn't hiring blacks would have to hire blacks. I remember one real good union officer calling me one night, "We're having a hell of a lot of trouble. The company has said that they're going to hire some black guys to come to work next Monday morning. Our guys want to know if they got to work with them."

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I said, "Sure they got to work with them. Why don't they want to work with them?" "Well, just because they're black." The funny part of this was this company had a black man that was custodian for the office. He done some cleaning around the washrooms and whatnot in the shop, and every employeeI don't think there was any exceptionsthought this fellow was a fine old man. Nobody even seemed to give it a thought that he was black. This wasn't a big plant, 150 or 200, Midwest Carbide in Keokuk.

But when they was going to hire black people, the office started to get quite a few complaints from the people. So finally I said, "Do you think it would help any if I try to come down?" He said, "Oh, boy, would it ever." I went in, and I remember the president of the local getting up and opening the meeting. "Well, you know what this meeting is for.'' It was a special meeting, and I think everybody from the plant was there. I started asking questions, "What you got on your minds, boys?'' Nobody said anything. Nobody could get up courage enough to ask the real question. Finally a fellow that was on the committee, and a real good guy, gets up, and he says, "Well, nobody else is going to ask. I'll ask. Do we have to work with these goddamn niggers?" And everything got just quiet as could be. I didn't answer and just stood there grinning like a chessy cat. So he stood there, and two guys started to giggle a little bit. I said, "No, by God, you can quit." Well, it just struck everybody funny, and everybody started laughing. He said, "Well, I guess the answer is clear," and sat down, and that's all the conversation we had about it. So I went ahead finally and told them, "I'd like for all you guys to look at your constitution, page so-and-so, and read it. You're supposed to be good union men, and if you haven't read it, it's time you did. There'll be no discrimination because of race, creed, or color." And that was the end of it. Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers had one of the best constitutions that I ever read, as far as that's concerned.

About the middle of the following week, I called the recording secretary, the one that had talked to me before. I said, "How you getting along, Bob?" He said, "Hell's fire, they're all eating out of the same dinner bucket."

Union Building in Wartime: Security and Restraint

Labor conflict took on new meaning in the context of war. Workers and their employers were not at liberty, in the federal government's view, to disrupt essential war production by continuing their own domestic war of attrition. Unions had achieved a measure of legitimacy under the Wagner Act and through their power in the Democratic party. Nevertheless, under

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peacetime conditions the federal government was reluctant to step beyond its new role of guaranteeing the right of workers to collective representation. Before the outbreak of war, workers found such rights were little guarantee to effective collective bargaining.

Although the government had assumed unprecedented powers to intervene in labor-management relations during World War I, that intervention had not prevented widespread strike activity and serious disruptions of wartime production. The Roosevelt administration was determined not to repeat that experience.

As early as May 1940, with the formation of the National Defense Advisory Committee and in December with the creation of the Office of Production Management, the administration sought to enlist labor and management in the cooperative task of coordinating a war economy and maintaining labor peace. In March 1941, Roosevelt, at the urging of labor leader Sidney Hillman, appointed a National Defense Mediation Board that proclaimed a de facto no-strike policy as an emergency measure. Finally, just weeks after Pearl Harbor, the National War Labor Board was created to settle disputes and develop a set of wartime labor policies.

From the early months of 1942 until the end of the war in 1945, the War Labor Board played an increasingly active role in shaping the development of unions in basic industry and setting policy with respect to wages, hours, fringe benefits, and working conditions. These policies determined to a large extent what unions could do for their members.

The adoption of a no-strike pledge by virtually all unions did not stop shopfloor struggles. But workers and their leaders inevitably became more circumspect in the actions they undertook. Some leaders welcomed the new role of the government as a partner in collective bargaining. Gains in benefits, if not wages, were made that would have been unimaginable in the prewar setting. The work of representing workers became more routinized and accepted, even by some employers that had been adamantly antiunion. At the same time, workers lost some freedom of action. Civilian and military government administrators became senior partners, so to speak, in the world of labor relations. Their intervention was on occasion essential to coerce recalcitrant employers. But they also policed the actions of union leaders who sought to respond to the continuing stream of grievances that flowed from the shopfloor.

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The war gave workers a sense of independence and security they had not had during the previous decade of depression. But it did not remove em-

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Leaders of the United Packinghouse Workers of America during wartime.

Left to right: Ralph Helstein, president; Lewis J. Clark, secretary-treasurer;

A. T. Stevens,  District 3 director; Russell Bull, District 3 assistant director;

Sven Godfriedson, editor, 1944. State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

ployer resistance or penetrate all segments of the labor force equally. Ernest Sammons remembers the struggle to make something out of the contract with the packinghouses in Sioux City during the war.

I'll tell you what helped us after the war started. The men got to where they knew they could go to work anyplace. There was a lot of work. They could even go to the shipyards. They got independent then. They would sass back to the foreman or do anything. That's really what built the union up to where you had some strength. From then on we went along very good. I don't mean peacefully. I mean we was getting what we wanted. There as no such thing at that time as a union in a packinghouse getting anything without a fight. Somebody had to be hurt to gain anything worth gaining. I don't care what it was.

We had a contract during the war, but that's all it was was a contract. Your contract with that company didn't mean one damn thing. It was just like you had somebody in your house and you wanted to scare him. You had an old skeleton hanging in the closet, you'd shake it in front of him. That's what it amounted to, because the company absolutely would just ignore us, grievance after grievance. So finally we had to set out a policy of our own. We knew it was hard. You had weak departments and you had strong departments. So we figured it out. We'll make the hog kill and the loading dock as strong as we can get them. Then, when we have a walkout, they shut the whole plant down because nothing can move. We had weak departments. Didn't believe in no militant action or nothing. But

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once the kill would go out, then they have to believe it. They've got to come up to that hall and hear the story.

Unions were so new in many plants during the war that neither the union members nor their employers were very experienced with negotiating. Union leaders, like Bernard Rankin at Collins Radio in Cedar Rapids, needed some success to demonstrate to those who had voted for certification that they should become members. Company officials were uncertain how much they might have to concede under wartime conditions, where the intervention of federal authorities was always a possibility.

When I went to work at Collins the starting rate for men was sixty and for women was forty. I think that was part of the women's reasons for supporting the union. It was the women's vote that put the union in the plant. There's no question about that. I think they figured that they had more to gain than the men.

Once we won the election then their enthusiasm as far as becoming members all of a sudden cooled, until we showed some results. I'll never forget, we went in to negotiate our first contract. Most of us had no previous union experience. We didn't even know what negotiating a contract was. We just thought we'd go in and demand certain things. The company'd say okay, and that was it. That's where I learned the meaning of collective bargaining.

When we signed our charter we had sixty-three signers. Apparently that word got back to the company. At our first negotiating session, Mr. Morgan Kraft, the executive vice president of the company, was there. I was talking, and I said, "We're going to get so and so, or else." Morgan Kraft looks at me and says, "Or else what?" ''Or else we go out on strike." And he kind of grinned and said, ''What? All sixty-three of you?" And that was the perfect squelch as far as I was concerned. It makes you realize that in a position like that you don't have much backing. If sixty-three of you went out and the other three thousand went on working, it wouldn't make great big waves.

This was very frustrating. After you've worked that hard and got all these people signed up, and they go ahead and vote yes, and then it comes along time to put your name on the line to become a member, "Well, let's see what you're going to come up with on this contract first." There was a lot of dissatisfaction, but they gradually started to come in.

Collins was almost 100 percent involved in war work. We had a case where a man had been suspended for hitting a foreman. The company wanted to discharge him, and the unioneven though I think he was in the wronghad to go to bat for him. We just came to an impasse. The business agent of the union and I went into Chicago to see Commander William Nunn, who was labor relations director

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for the naval district that Collins came under. He came to Cedar Rapids the following week, sitting in as an impartial judge. We weren't making much progress, and it came along about six o'clock in the evening. Mr. Kraft looked at his watch and said, "Well, I got to go." He started for the door, and Commander Nunn said, "Sit down, Mr. Kraft." Mr. Kraft said, "Well, I have to go. I told my wife I'd meet her at 6:15." He said, "I said sit down Mr. Kraft. You will leave here when I say so.'' And I think this went on until about nine o'clock that night until we came to an agreement.

The company was to the point that they wanted things settled. Their thought was let's get this contract drawn up with somebody and get on with the war work.

The changing economic conditions brought on by the war in Europe weakened the antiunion position of employers, even those whose paternalism had made organizing especially difficult. Representation elections in such situations often brought to the surface discontents that many employers were unaware of. Some companies, like John Deere in the Quad Cities, responded quickly to solve safety problems they were confronted with, according to Sam Grogg.

The elections in the plant wasn't until about 1941, and I think we signed our first contracts the next year, 1942.

Deere and Company was never a bad company, but they were a paternalistic outfit. They thought they knew what you needed, like a father would with his children. "I know better. I know what you need, and I'll give it to you when the time comes." But that just don't work with guys. When we had our election, I know in my plant, the superintendent come in there and set down on the table as we was counting these votes. The Labor Board handled it all. It was under their jurisdiction. They was counting them outyes, no, yes, yes, yes, no, a great big pile of yeses and little bit of a pile of nos, for no union. After a while he just got up and walked out. He told me afterwards, he says, "Sam, I just couldn't believe it that these people would vote against us like that." I said, "Well, you see the evidence. If you'd straightened up things, probably they wouldn't have, but you just didn't do these things that they wanted." Our first demand was to take care of safety. They agreed that they would do something about that, and they put me on full time, paid me my wages just to go through that plant and write up all the safety hazards that I thought needed to be corrected. I did, and I turned in a list of thirteen hundred safety hazards. Everywhere from uncovered belts to stairs with no rails on. Oh Christ, just everything.

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A no-strike pledge did not put an end to shopfloor conflict during World War II. Workers and their employers found "loopholes," as Gus Morkel, who worked at Chamberlin's in Waterloo, described them. Workers used "catwalks" and restriction of production to protect their members and increase their piece rates. At times these were the only ways to get management's attention.

We had a no-strike pledge in the contract. But there was loopholes for the company, and there was loopholes for us. If we had a good cause, we definitely went out on strike. We had several catwalks.

For instance, a guy got fired for no reason, and the company just would not hire the guy back. We figured we was in the right and they was in the wrong. So twice I just says, "Hey, are you people going to back this guy up or aren't you?" "Well, yeah." "All right, the company ain't gonna go along with it. They're not going to bring him back. Let's walk out." And I told different departments, "Now, look, when I reach up and turn one light on and you guys can all see it, you just automatically shut your machines off and we'll just walk out.'' We done this several times. There was nothing they could do.

The last wildcat strike we had, they had fired a guy. They said this guy is fired. He is not coming in. A couple of us was the first two guys to walk through the door when they told us that. I looked at Lornie and I said, "Hey, if he doesn't come in, we don't come in." So we just turned around and walked out. About an hour after that they called us back in. They said, "Okay, we'll hire him back." Then we went back to work.

I'll tell you, during the war we had so many people working up there they was stumbling over each other. The reason, it seems, was all cost-plus. They was making shells and bombs, and the more people they could get in there the more money they made. When they paid you 85 cents an hour, they was probably getting $1.65 off the government, because everything was cost-plus. We had guys laying on the floor sleeping. You could stay up there twenty-four hours and get paid twenty-four hours. You could sleep eight hours and work sixteen, because they was making all kinds of money off you.

Wartime conditions encouraged the adoption of procedures, like the no-strike pledge, which had long-term influences on the behavior of some unions. The United Auto Workers developed strict rules regarding the procedures for calling strikes that required the involvement of the international. But even within such rules, local leaders, like Glen Messner of Cedar Rapids, found ways to support, if not encourage, unauthorized walkouts.

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We had the standard no-strike clause that the government insisted on in our working agreement. The only time we had a right to strike was if the company violated the agreement. Even then we had a pretty complicated strike procedure. In the UAW it's probably harder to go on strike than any other union anyway. The minute you start talking about taking a strike vote you have to start working through the international union. You can't even take a strike vote in the local on your own. You have to have their permission.

It's stated in the contract that there won't be any wildcats. Even today there's a clause against that sort of thing. It kind of depended on the issue, you know. Sometimes the union committee would sympathize with the people because it's an important issue. Other times they'd go stand by the door and tell the people, "Please don't go out," and push them on out. Then, of course, there was a few times when you just have to bear down on them and say, "Get back to work or else."

By the early 1940s, many unions had won collective bargaining rights under the National Labor Relations Act, but they still lacked effective contracts or master agreements for all of the plants of a single firm. Companies simply resisted every step of the way, some more than others. This was a serious problem throughout the meat-packing industry. Through the intervention of the War Labor Board, Ralph Helstein saw the United Packinghouse Workers union win master agreements with the Big Four and basic agreements with some of the independents, like Morrell's in Ottumwa, that were accustomed to running their firms with the iron-fisted methods of the nineteenth century.

We had practically a clear understanding that there would be pattern bargaining, but it was not in writing. We normally negotiated the original contract with either Swift or Armour, and whatever came out of that we then spread to almost all the other companies. But there was never a single contract with all the companies. Each one was a separate master agreement.

Before that time the union would negotiate contracts on a plant-by-plant basis, and they just never got anywhere. They'd go to one plant, and the manager would give you the same answers that you got from the manager of another plant. None of them had authority to do anything on all kinds of subjects. And they'd go from city to city to city until they had a pretty devastating record. The union asked the War Labor Board to consolidate all these cases, and they did that. My impression is that Swift saw the handwriting on the wall and indicated a willingness to sign a master agreement. The War Labor Board filled in all the spaces with these others. They approved this master agreement principle in February 1943.

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They did this for each of the other companies except for Wilson. Because Wilson was so intransigent, the board had to write the whole contract. We couldn't agree with Wilson on a single item, including a grievance procedure.

Having gotten master agreements in 1943 with the Big FourCudahy, Armour, Swift, and Wilsonwe spread it to the others. We had a great deal of trouble with Morrell. At Morrell, the problem was not a master agreement. It was just negotiating a contract. They were literally, in labor relations terms at least, primitive. One got the sense of a century gap. I say that deliberately because it was much more than generational. It took us quite a while to work out a contract. Preventing a strike there took about all the energy one could command, because you were dealing with a pretty tough bunch of guys in the plant, and this company, it just was blind.

The family lived overlooking the town, all the Fosters and the executives. The Fosters used to have a dead hand on that whole town. They were thoroughly disliked. The school systems were bad. Buildings downtown were terrible. The union finally put up its own hall once it got to the point where it could afford it.

Year after year there was a flood, and the reason for the flood, I was told by people from one end of the town to the other, was that the company had constructed the plant in such a way that the flooding would always miss the plant and just wash out people's homes. It was almost an annual event. People lost everything where many of them had to live. People used to plead with them. I finally threatened to make it a negotiated issue, I said that "one of the issues in our contract negotiations next year, if we continue to have floods here, is going to be eliminating this flooding condition. And I don't care whether it's the company's responsibility or not, we're going to insist that you take it as your responsibility. Now, you can go to the board or anyplace you want to go and have them declare that our demand is illegal. That's not going to help you any. I'm just warning you we'll find other ways of doing it." By this time they knew that it was not a healthy thing for us to look for other ways, because we had developed a hit-and-run strike and all kinds of different techniques that we used in these situations when we had an intransigent company on an issue that we regarded as an important social issue.

With Morrell we had a very tough time getting that first contract. That isn't to say that we didn't with other companies, too. But there was a certain quality about the difficulty with Morrell. You felt that it was around the turn of the century and you were dealing with a real rugged individualism of a Diamond Jim Brady or the robber barons. I one day sent Morrell a copy of Dreiser's The Titan. I said I thought it would be good for his soul, even if not for his intellect. That infuriated him.

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For many of the workers in the independent packinghouses, decent contracts came only with industry-wide bargaining under the auspices of the War Labor Board in 1943. Wages were frozen under the "little steel" formula. Don Jones, who worked for Morrell's in Ottumwa, was elected the delegate for the independents. He witnessed the United Packinghouse Workers of America win concessions on other nonwage issues throughout the industry, but not without some hard bargaining in wartime Washington, D.C.

We actually never got what I call a good contract until the 1943 contract. They called a one-day meeting over in Chicago, and we didn't know what it was about. When we got over there the War Labor Board had been working on the contract, and the international wasn't getting no place. So they said, "What we want to do is get a delegate from each of the Big Fourthat's Swift, Armour, Cudahy, and Wilsonand then a delegate for the independents, like Morrell's, Rath's. So they elected them delegates, and I got elected delegate for the independents. I had the clothes I had on my back. We left right from there to Washington, and we was over there about two weeks. I had to buy shirts and everything. You couldn't hardly get a hotel. We got one room in Washington for the five delegates. They put cots in it. Then we would meet with different companies. Every day there'd be a different one.

The head of the War Labor Board was from Boston and talked just about like the Kennedys. He was smart. That's when we got paid for clothes-changing time. Mostly we had to take fringe benefits, because wages was frozen. But we did get seniority. We got our checkoff system, where they check the dues off and you don't have to collect them. It was really rough for a while, because them companies was hanging tough, but they found out that they was going to have to either give in or face a strike. They started giving in, and we got a pretty good contract.

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Members of the United Packinghouse Workers of America striking

against Jacob Decker and Sons Packing Company, Mason City, 1948.

State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

5

Promise and Perils of the Postwar Era

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The promises of peace seemed rich indeed to returning veterans in late 1945. They had lives to rebuild and families to nurture. The blight of depression had lifted from their communities for the price of a war. Costly though the conflict had been in lives, it had brought prosperity and had altered the balance of power in workplaces and communities in ways that workers now sought to defend and expand.

The workplaces seemed changed beyond recognition. Unions had secured a place for themselves and a voice in matters that had been far beyond their reach only a few years before. Seniority, grievance procedures, and dues checkoff were now taken for granted. Shop stewards were accorded a measure of deference, if not respect, by managers. In many plants the world seemed turned upside down.

But the promises brought with them new perils. The political ground was shifting in ways that seemed to threaten the fragile edifice of federally regulated labor relations. Roosevelt and his New Deal were gone, and a tidal wave of Republican reaction swept through Congress in 1946, leaving all too few friends of labor. Hysteria was gathering in the land as war took on a colder form. Communism "on the march" in eastern Europe and Asia called forth old fears of a left-wing menace to republican institutions that had so effectively shattered a gathering labor movement during the "Red Scare" at the end of World War I.

The months after the Japanese surrender were for the labor movement a time to flex its new muscle, to recover wages lost in the galloping inflation, and to define the terms of postwar labor relations. The United Auto Workers led the way with a demand for a wage increase with no price increases. The demand was a signal, as Walter Reuther put it, "that we are not going to operate as a narrow economic pressure group. . . . We want to make progress with the community and not at the expense of the community." To business, the demand attacked the very foundation of management's right to manage. As workers in other industriessteel, meat-packing, electricaljoined auto workers on strike for increased wages in early 1946, a labor crisis of major proportions was at hand.

The number of days idle due to strikes rose to nineteen million in January 1946 and twenty-three million in February compared to only two million per month preceding V-J day. But this wave of strikes differed in many ways from previous work stoppages. The walkouts were peaceful and orderly, largely because the firms made no significant attempt to reopen operations. The right of unions to represent their members was never in question. Unions had achieved unprecedented legitimacy. Workers won substantial wage increases, on the order of eighteen or nineteen cents per hour, but

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business was left free to raise prices. These settlements lay the basis for a period of wage-price instability that refocused labor's demands more strictly on economic concernswages and a host of new fringe benefits. Such demands brought significant improvements in workers' standard of living.

As the march of labor slowed and the political tide shifted, the movement turned on itself. The passage of the Taft-Hartley Act removed key tools from the hands of labor that had made expanded organizing successful. The requirement that union officers must publicly declare themselves to have no affiliation with the Communist party raised questions of principle that divided workers. Failure to comply with the new law of the land gave legitimacy to union raiders whose organizing campaigns shifted from the unorganized to the already organized.

As the labor movement consumed its new strength in internecine warfare, management stiffened and sought to reclaim lost territory on the shopfloor. The packinghouse strike of 1948, which was nominally over wages, signalled a new battle line drawn across the shopfloor. "When we went back," a woman packinghouse worker remembered, "the company was in the driver's seat."

Coming Home: "It Was a Different Place to Work In"

After the spring of 1945 and V-E day in Europe, young American war veterans began the return home in growing numbers. By late summer and fall, their numbers reached flood tide. Many had barely entered the labor force before their departure for the war. Others had participated in the struggles to organize their plants but had left before unions were securely established. What they found on their return was in many cases a profoundly changed world where, according to one veteran, "the union was running the place."

The returning veterans brought their own sense of solidarity, bred under wartime hardships, into the plants. They balked at arbitrary assertions of managerial authority. They demanded equity in wages. As they strove to rebuild their lives and families, they eagerly embraced the unions' demands for improvements in income and working conditions.

Union membership swelled to nearly five times the level it had been in 1933. In the mass production industriessuch as auto, steel, meat-packing, electrical manufacturing, rubber, and farm equipmentindustrial

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unions had won nearly complete representation. But wartime restrictions on wage increases left workers anxious to demand compensation that would catch up with surging prices. By January 1946, major strikes were under way in steel, the electrical industry, and meat-packing. In each strike the inclusion of demands that companies not increase prices demonstrated the assertiveness of the labor movement. The United Auto Workers demanded that General Motors "open the books" to prove that it was not able to meet the wage increase they sought. The packinghouse strike brought speedy intervention in the form of temporary government operation of this vital industry.

As veterans returned to their former places of employment, often after a brief stint at another job, they found a different world of work. In most cases they returned with seniority rights that were unbroken by wartime service. New contractual language limited the authority of foremen and gave the union a voice in a whole range of personnel issues involving hiring, firing, job assignments, and disciplinary proceedings. Shop stewards enjoyed new authority. Rank-and-file militancy that had built up during the war under conditions of labor scarcity now promised to expand the union's voice into a whole range of other issues that management regarded as its prerogatives. Faced with increasing wildcat strikes, many managers were prepared to expand contractual rights if this would bring some measure of control to the shopfloor.

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Returning veterans carried their camaraderie and youthful audacity back into the factories at the end of the war. In their workplace play and in their enforcement of the union shop, they strengthened unions that had finally gained a foothold under wartime conditions. Charles Weed witnessed such a situation at John Deere in Waterloo.

In them days we had a lot of horseplaying in the departments. Every once in a while, maybe late in the evening just before we changed shifts, we'd take oil and squirt it on these cutters, and that whole department would just turn blue with smoke. We thought it was fun, you know! Sometimes on a Friday we had a slogan that nobody got to the locker room with his shirt on. We'd tear the shirt off of everybody. You could buy a shirt for twenty-five to forty cents in them days.

Ninety percent of them was young guys just out of the service. It was our slogan, that everybody coming in that department belonged to the union. If they wanted to come in there and said they weren't going to belong to the union, they stayed in the department two days. We made life so miserable for them that

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they either joined the union or they got out. About the last guy that I signed up, just prior to going on the staff, was one of the guys that they had pegged as a scab. At that time they had lunch tables. He was sitting right in the middle of them. So they just walked over and picked his dinner bucket up and threw his whole dinner bucket, thermos bottle and everything, over in the corner, and I said, ''The rats eat over there." So he got up, and when I left he was over gathering up his lunch pail and broken thermos bottle. It just happened that I had to go back up there the next day at noon, and he was sitting in the same place. Before I got within twenty feet of him he jumped up and said, "Here's my card. I'm a union man!"

In them days we would take and bolt guys' shoes to the locker room floor or fill them full of cement. We used some rough tactics, but they joined the union. We would cut the legs out of their pants and make shorts out of them. We just felt real strong that if they were getting a part of what we were working for, they were going to belong to the union.

The right-to-work law didn't hurt me a bit. It was through action that you got people more active, closer together. Every so often, especially on second shift, we'd get a lot of new people in there that didn't belong to the union. So we'd announce in our union paper that on such-and-such a night no one was going to get in that plant unless they had their union card. We would have probably forty, fifty people down there. If you didn't show a union card, you couldn't get in that plant. In them days, we didn't have to worry about the police or anything. In fact, a lot of the superintendents would stand out there and watch us turn the people away. We never did abuse anyone, but when we'd get someone that didn't have a card, seven or eight others would get in front of him, and he just didn't go in the plant. We signed up hundreds and hundreds of people.

At the end of the war unions enjoyed unprecedented power and new levels of security. Pressures were building for postwar labor adjustments in the mass production industries. Wages under the "little steel" formula had fallen behind inflated prices. Shopfloor conditions had deteriorated under the no-strike pledge. Unions were anxious to assert some control over the conditions under which their members worked. Barney Hassel and the workers at Tobin's in Estherville did not wait for the rest of the industry to move in the winter of 1946.

In 1946, you betcha it was twenty below zero, a foot of snow, and I took 'em out on strike. We was out two weeks, and finally Tobin come and said, "Why don't you guys settle this strike?" In fact, we had a big tent set up down there. I told the guysI was taking telephone callsdon't let nobody through that gate.

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Tobin come and he was going to go in. They didn't let him. They said, "No, you ain't going in." "By God," he said, "I own this plant.'' "Don't make no difference. They told us not to let nobody through. You ain't going through until you talk to the president of the union." He said, "Where in the hell is he?'' "Right in there." "What are you doing here?" I says, "We're on strike." So we let him into the plant. They got him through, into his plant. He called me in. He said, "I'll tell you what I'll do." And I said, "If you're bargaining with me, you better get the bargaining committee. Don't bargain with me." He said, "If you can convince them to come in to work, I'll pay you for the two weeks you've lost out here on the picket line." So we had a meeting with him, and we got things worked out. We got a raise, working conditions. He paid us for the two weeks we were off.

Back in those days you had to be a radical. We had a slowdown once, see. So he called me at the hotel. Accused me of this, accused me of that. I says, "You quit your kidding me. You know what I'll do? I'll take the telephone and in three minutes there won't be a man working down there." He said, "You got them guys under your thumb. All you do is use hand signals. You don't even have to talk to them. They mind you. If you want a plant, why don't you go buy one?"

Tobin, oh, he was real good. He could get nasty, but you get him right down to the work, see, he was willing to bargain. He was willing to bargain.

The tire plants were a hotbed of wildcat strike activity at the end of the war. Poor working conditions and autocratic management methods were the primary sources of friction. As Mary Speer of Des Moines saw it, the rubber workers "could have cared less" about the Taft-Hartley restrictions on wildcat strike activity.

One of the first, biggest wildcats we ever had was shortly after the war, because they told us we couldn't have fans. We wanted fans to circulate the air. No way. No way could we have fans. The word that the industrial relations man told us was that the fans would blow dust and lint and jeopardize the quality of the stock.

We girls in the waste department sat down one day. It was so hot you couldn't hardly work, and we wanted fans. We just got together and decided we'd sit down. It wasn't very long until we got the fans.

Under Taft-Hartley you had to go into the legal aspects of it. But on our wildcats we could have cared less about Taft or Hartley, either one. We just went on and walked out. Many times the union did look away while this was going on. We'd go to the union hall, and they'd say, "You're on a wildcat. We can't do nothing about it." When we got ready to go back to work, we went back to work.

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Workers returning from the war were often struck by the new roles the unions had assumed. Eugene Weems, who had begun work at Rath's in Waterloo just months before going in the service, was especially impressed with how effective the union had become in defending the rights of black as well as white workers.

I started work at Rath's on September 28, 1942, and I went in the service in January 1943. I spent three years in the service. There was a lot of changes and maneuvering and contracts that the union had done, because when I come back from the service Rath's was a different place to work in. It was a place, after the union was there, that I think everybody, regardless of race, creed, or color, was proud to work, because we all become one. And it has been that way practically ever since. Before then, regardless of who you was, it depended on the foreman, how he felt about you.

When you got out of the service, the union had it set up so that you had a certain amount of time to come back to work after you was honorably discharged. Also they give us our seniority rights straight through, as if we'd worked at Rath's.

To be truthful, I think the local union has done as much for poor people, all races of people, in this country as any other organization that you could mention. We fought discrimination in the local union and the plant and in the community. And the international and the local union itself all supported it. Our local union has always made me feel that we are sisters and brothers, regardless of race, creed, or color. We walked out over black people being misused. We walked out over whites. You name it.

When John Deere opened its Dubuque plant in 1946, it did not take long for the Farm Equipment Workers (FE) to get it organized. The FE encouraged a shopfloor militancy that tapped the assertiveness of young veterans, like Donald Grimes, who, after returning from the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific, would not be pushed around by management.

We had more strikesI thought for a while that that was the name of the game. You struck. You didn't work, you struck. I worked nights out there, and every time something would go wrong you'd have someone come out and say, "Hey, we're going on strike." You'd drop everything and away you'd go. Maybe you'd be on strike for one, two shifts.

The first year I would say we had five or six. They wasn't long durations. Maybe one or two shifts and then you'd go back to work. But at one time we kept the

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entire office staff out. Made them get passes before we let them back in the office. We were a bunch of kooks at the time.

If you went out, of course, you put up picket signs. Then the midnight shift, they'd come in and, hey, they'd stand there with you. Day'd come in and you had your pickets. They didn't go to work. It was mostly up to the machine shop. And everybody followed. It seemed to be a spontaneous thing. Sometimes it didn't take too much to set us off, because you're talking about a lot of veterans. We took enough crap when we was in service, and we was bound and determined we wasn't going to take any more.

They had a bunch of older guys in their forties and fifties. I was just a punkinhead kid twenty-six years old, fresh out of service, going to set the world on fire, and I don't think we even lit a match. But you had talk about setting the world on fire.

Shifting Tides of Postwar Politics: Taft-Hartley and the Right to Work

Almost from the moment the Wagner Act was declared constitutional in the spring of 1937, business leaders had sought its repeal or amendment. But not until the end of the war did political conditions seem to favor such legislation. President Truman brought neither the commitment nor the commanding political presence of Roosevelt to the defense of labor's rights as codified in the National Labor Relations Act. Symptomatic of the political shifts afoot was the Republican party's capture of control of both houses of Congress in the 1946 election.

The Eightieth Congress convened in early 1947, after a year of the most massive, if largely peaceful, strikes in American history. Its major preoccupation was labor legislation, which Republicans in both houses sought to promote. Two bills that emerged from the Senate and the House were reconciled in conference committee by early June. The compromise version, the Taft-Hartley Act, named after its sponsors in the respective houses, contained all of the essential revisions business had sought, while leaving the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) framework in place.

The act enumerated and prohibited a series of "unfair labor practices" that restricted union power in the workplace. Prohibited were the closed shop, involuntary checkoffs, secondary boycotts, wildcat strikes, and political contributions by unions. Taft-Hartley denied collective bargaining rights under the NLRB to unions whose officers refused to sign affidavits that they

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were not members of the Communist party. It permitted states to pass so-called right-to-work laws that made the union shop illegal.

For unions, the effects of the legislation were immediate and devastating. Organizing drives, particularly in the still largely unorganized South, were hampered. Political divisions within the CIO unions were exacerbated by the affidavits and the invitation they offered to interunion raiding. Many states in the Midwest and the South moved quickly to pass right-to-work legislation. The effect of all of these developments was to limit the expansion of industrial unionism to the areas already successfully organized.

At the state level, the primary fight revolved around the attempts to pass right-to-work laws. In Iowa, the state's industrial unions called a one-day general strike, and thousands of workers from the major industrial centers descended on Des Moines to protest the legislation. Rebuffed by Republican Governor Robert Blue, the labor movement determined to unseat him in the next election. Doing so required a novel political strategy, which although it succeeded, ended up producing what some labor activists believed were harmful political effects in the long run.

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The passage of the Taft-Hartley Act set in motion changes that undermined the strength unions had achieved under the Wagner Act. Two critical provisions were the authorization of state right-to-work laws and restrictions on secondary boycotts. Frank Santi, an active teamster from Sioux City, watched their impact on the labor movement in Iowa.

In our local union prior to the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, we pursued a policy of not signing a contract with any employer without a union shop provision in the contract. As a condition of employment the employee had to become, within a certain period of time, a member of the union and retain membership during the life of the agreement.

The changes in the Wagner Act that were made by the Taft-Hartley Act did have serious effects on the ability of the union to continue to organize workers. It gives the employer the right to consider when he's hiring a person whether that person may become a member of the union or not. Over a period of time as people leave, quit, or are discharged, it results in the employer building up a group that are refusing to become members of the union. It will simply be a matter of time until the union is weakened to the point where the company could get decertification, and that is exactly what is happening.

The states of South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota all imme-

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diately went right-to-work. The states bordering these, like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, were all industrial states, and labor had enough prestige to keep those laws from being passed.

The right-to-work and the secondary boycott provisions are two sections of the law that have curtailed the unions' effectiveness in organizing the unorganized. It used to be if we had a strike against a bakery and they were delivering to a grocery store, we could put a banner in front of the store saying, "This store is handling x bakery company products," not telling anybody not to patronize it but to let any labor person know that that store was handling an unfair product to organized labor. And because of the support that that gave labor in any dispute, it did result in employers wanting to reach a settlement with the union to avoid the possibility of these storekeepers not handling his products until a settlement was reached.

Workers across the state simply declared a holiday and descended on Des Moines to demonstrate their opposition to the new right-to-work legislation. George Ashlock joined hundreds of workers from Mason City in that trek to Des Moines.

When this right-to-work law come up in the Senate down in Des Moines, we got word of it from our State Federation. They notified us up here when it was coming on the floor. We called a holiday at the packinghouse. We met with the superintendent and told him we wanted a holiday. We was going down to protest this right-to-work law. There was no argument, because under our contract we had a right to do that. Any time we felt that we needed a holiday for any labor thing, all we had to do was notify twenty-four hours in advance so they could arrange their work schedule.

We loaded five buses besides the cars that went by themselves. And we paraded down there. Every packinghouse union that I know of in the state of Iowa met in Des Moines. We tried to get ahold of our district representatives and senators. They tried to sneak out the back door, but we caught them. We had some of our own Mason City people at the back door, and they caught them at dinnertime. They wouldn't talk to us. One of them got caught by a woman, and she screamed bloody murder till we all got around the building! My wife and I and a few more was near the back door, having our picnic lunch in the shade when he come out. He couldn't do nothing. He had to stop and listen to us. That was what they wanted. The legislators didn't want to listen to what the people was protesting about.

Governor Blue come out on the front steps of the state capitol, tried to give a talk. But he was against labor. You couldn't talk to him or anything.

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An estimated 50,000 Iowa union members take a holiday to protest the

right-to-work law under consideration in the state legislature,

Des Moines, April 1947. State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

Angered at the role that Governor Robert Blue played in the passage of right-to-work legislation, the labor movement in the state organized to defeat him in the Republican primary. In the short run the strategy was a successBlue was defeated. But, in the view of James Sappenfield of Des Moines, it backfired in the long run.

At the rally in Des Moines, Governor Blue came out and said, "Great as this throng is today, it is only an infinitesimal portion of the people of Iowa." You don't talk to union people that way unless you want trouble. So we went out in Polk County, and I think labor did the same thing all over the state. We got our people to change their registration to Republican so they could vote in the primary. Instead of Blue, we nominated a druggist from New Virginia. Beardsley gave lip service to the cause and said that he would attempt to have the right-to-work law repealed, and he was elected. The law wasn't repealed, and he never spoke about it at all for that term. So it looked like our work didn't pay off too much. It's always been my opinion that it was the biggest mistake we ever made

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when we got our people to register Republican, because to this day I know some of them are still registered as Republicans.

We followed that strategy because the Democratic party hasn't been too successful in this state. There are only about three candidates for governor over the years that the Democratic party has ever dug up that most people could vote for. It's party politics mostly. Representatives that are responsible for the nomination of candidates don't necessarily represent the people. And there's good reason for that, because people don't participate like they should in politics.

A major shift in industrial relations occurred in the postwar years. Under the severe penalties imposed by Taft-Hartley, unions became more circumspect in their use of wildcat strikes to solve shopfloor problems. The war had also fostered the adoption by labor and management of more formal procedures for resolving disputes. The role of the shop steward in the settlement of grievances expanded, as more workers gained experience and enjoyed the confidence of strong unions behind them. Anthony "Tony" Fetter, who first entered the packinghouse labor force of Wilson's in Cedar Rapids after the war, saw this transition.

In the old days instead of arguing a grievance they'd just say, "Okay, we'll shut 'er down." I'm not saying it was all wrong during that period of time. Many things were accomplished by the shutdowns. Knife-sharpening time was not done by negotiations. It was done by people taking their knives and slamming them on the steel tables, saying, "We got to have knife-sharpening time." There wasn't any going in and reasoning with management.

What sticks out in my mind the most would be those grievances involving job loads. The union saying that we need x number of people on a job or the chain at a certain speed. The company, by virtue of their industrial engineers, were arriving at job loads by using time-study, a sophisticated procedure. We opposed those. We'd say, "Ain't no goddamn time-study on this plant. How can a guy with a stopwatch determine what a job load is? We're the ones who are the best equipped to do that. We're on the job. We know when we're performing to our physical capacity. There's no guy with a stopwatch going to stand there and tell us how hard to work." So job loads were probably the main reason for stoppages, but, of course, you always had discharge cases on occasion triggering work stoppages.

The wildcat strikes used to be taken for granted. You could shut the plant down or shut the department down. Then we began to get sued under Taft-Hartley; it began a whole new ball game. You couldn't get away with it no more.

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If you pulled a wildcat or a stoppage in a department, the company would say, "Okay, you steward and you, you're fired. You're violating the law. Wildcats are no longer legal." There came a whole new complexion as to the approach management had to take.

We used to wildcat. But the day of the wildcat was over. Couldn't settle problems with management by force like you could in the early thirties and in the forties. The war did a lot of stuff.

Divisions in the Ranks: The Uses of Anticommunism

Empowered though unions were at the end of World War II, they faced a political situation that was perilous. The momentum of New Deal domestic reforms was gone. Business, festering under the labor relations system created by the Wagner Act, was determined to push Congress to restrict the rights of unions. War had produced a Europe divided between erstwhile east/west allies. As revolutionary movements gathered strength in the former colonial territories of the war-exhausted European powers, fear of communism swept through the United States.

The CIO unions had been born in a period of depression and political ferment. Drawing on skilled organizers from within the ranks of the labor movement and fired by a social vision of industrial democracy, many of these new unions had close and fraternal relations with the political left. After 1935 the American Communist party had followed a political line that prescribed work within the emerging industrial unions and close cooperation in united front organizations that supported Roosevelt's New Deal. During the war itself, at least after Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, the Communist party had enthusiastically supported the American war effort and had discouraged rank-and-file actions that violated the no-strike pledge of their unions.

But the political atmosphere at the end of the war changed all of that. The labor movement's left wing suddenly found itself on the defensive. As it fought to recover the reform momentum of the prewar years, its isolation deepened. In many industrial unions, left-wing leaders were challenged by centrist or right-wing opponents. Unions like the United Electrical Workers (UE) and the Farm Equipment Workers (FE) sought to rally the labor movement to refuse cooperation with the Taft-Hartley Act's provisions that required union leaders to sign the so-called non-Communist affidavits. Ini-

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tially, such unions were supported on civil liberties grounds by Philip Murray and other key leaders of the CIO. But by mid-1949 the leadership had capitulated.

As the Cold War intensified, unions whose postwar organizing campaigns had stalled turned to raiding the membership of others. Eleven unions, among them the UE and the FE, were expelled from the CIO for refusing to abide by the requirements of Taft-Hartley. Lacking the protection of the National Labor Relations Board, these unions fought one local battle after another to retain their membership. The press and pulpits in many communities eagerly accused union activists of Communist sympathies.

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The war strengthened unions, but it also produced divisions in their ranks. In some plants, younger workers resented the dominant position of an older leadership. Political differences were also sharpened by the war and the Cold War that followed. And companies like Maytag in Newton, according to Edris "Soapy" Owens, played on the divisions that opened up in this postwar environment.

I got out of the service in November 1945 and went back to work at Maytag and immediately got active in the union. Started out as a line steward, and I worked myself up to department steward, chief steward. After the war they put me right back where I was in 1933 because I was big and strong and ugly. They put me back on the tub line; the piecework system came in 1947. And even though it was a hard job, it was a good-paying job. If you got a bunch of good guys in the group, all working together, we could make our money, good money, and do it with comparative ease.

The international rep in the old UE was a fellow by the name of Bill Sentner. In my opinion he was probably about as qualified a labor representative as I ever talked to in my life, but he was also a self-admitted, avowed Communist. Whenever he would come into this town, with the small antiunion newspaper we got here, his name would be on the front page. "Communist comes to town to help local union." That, plus the fact we were not getting the benefits we deserved after the war, and that Billand I hate to admit thiswas really holding us back because of his leaning toward the Communist party, made some of our own members get a little disgruntled. The Maytag Company knew that we weren't happy.

Prior to me becoming the chief steward in the plant, our union had been dominated by old-time, high-seniority people, who had formed an allegiance, and

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Bill Sentner, leader of District 8, United Electrical Workers, and Communist

trade unionist, was jailed on charges of "criminal syndicalism" in the

1938 Maytag strike and in 1954 was prosecuted under the Smith Act,

February 1953. State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

I can understand that. But we were digging ourselves a bigger hole by continuing to do what we'd done. From the time that I came back here after the war until we went into the UAW I cannot recall one wildcat strike we had. I think our leaders were good guys, but they were patsies. I'm sure I had a little more spunk and fight in me then than I do now. But we just weren't satisfied with what was going on. Things were going from what a lot of us considered bad to worse. No organized resistance. You'd go to a union meeting, a local union with sixteen hundred, seventeen hundred people, and, hell, if you had four or five people other than the officers there it was a big deal.

I'll tell you when it really started. There was resentment against the UE among some of the newer people, some of the veterans, because in 1949 the UE was

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kicked out of the CIO for being Communist dominated. That starts in a little circle, and pretty soon it spreads and spreads and spreads. And then when we entered the Korean War, and they took the position that we were all wrong and they were all right, it started to bring this thing to a head. I was chief steward, and it was very damn evident to me that we had to do something. I didn't know what it was going to beto stay in the UE or make our move to get out. At about the same time, the UAW had just concluded a big strike in the John Deere plant in Des Moines over incentive grievances. Even the paper admitted that the union had done a tremendous job in winning the strike. So I, along with three or four other officers, decided that we'd take a stab at it. We got some resentment from old-time, long-time UE members, but it was a thing we had to do, and we done it. We didn't take very long.

The vote was very top-heavy. I would say between 90 and 95 percent UAW. When we decided to go we knew that we had to organize it, so we got the right guys on our side. We held meetings continually. The UAW sent us all kinds of literature. We were impressed with their education program. We were impressed with the negotiated contracts that they sent in here. We had guys from the John Deere plant come down and talk to us, not only from Des Moines but from Waterloo and Ottumwa. We done as good a job as we could of selling it.

After we went into the UAW the Maytags were a different group of people to work with than they were before. I think they finally accepted the fact that this union was here to stay and the way to deal with it was in a businesslike manner, which they did not do when we were in the UE.

To many local trade union leaders, the UE was a strong union, dedicated to local autonomy and staffed by skilled and competent organizers. When the red-baiting began in the late 1940s, they resisted the pressures from the community, the churches, and from within their own ranks. Ultimately, for some, like Carroll Wright, it was the isolation from the rest of the labor movement that hurt the most. Even so, at the Herman Nelson factory in the Quad Cities, they negotiated a merger with the International Association of Machinists that would protect the autonomy that the UE had nurtured.

My first UE convention was in New York in 1951. That was about the time of this hysteria, this red-baiting thing, and you would hear that the union is communistically dominated. It was real interesting because all the organizers seemed to be concerned about was trying to help us better our conditions. When we went to the convention in New York, it was strictly a working convention. UE at that time had a lot of membership in large electrical plants. Naturally we all

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got involved in their problems and everything. We were concerned about our working conditions, and that's all we talked about.

Bill Sentner came in to help us on negotiations at Eagle Signal. I went out to drink with the guy. I met his family when I was in St. Louis. One of the nicest guys I ever met and a sincerely dedicated union person. Now, he was an avowed socialist. He didn't attempt at any time to convert us. His ideas were socialistic, there's no question. But as far as the Communist part of it, he would never mention it.

He was actually one of the most competent all-around men I have ever been involved with in the labor movement. His knowledge was unbelievable. He'd go into negotiations. They would have their space lists on the company side. He was our space list, and he was good.

I knew Bill, and I respected the guy. I thought a hell of a lot of him. His wife had come over to this country when she was four or five years old, and she didn't have the proper papers at that time. They dug back into it. There was some problem with the Smith Act, some violation. He was told that if he'd get out of union work he wouldn't have any problem. When this happened I went down to see him as soon as I heard about it. He said, ''Carroll, I don't know what to do. I know what I got to do. They're threatening to go back under Smith-McCarran and deport Tony.'' You know, they get the family, they get the kids. They just told him if you don't get out your wife's going back. There'll be charges filed as far as you're concerned. So he was taken off the staff. He died in about six months.

The real thing was apparent to me. It was very apparent that the people that were creating this situation were not concerned about the idea of communism. They were concerned about a guy that was doing a very effective job for the people that he was representing. This is the whole story of the McCarthy deal.

At that time things didn't seem funny, because it was too much of a pattern. We had had the support of the churches. Later on the churches even were talking anti-UE. It was in the papers. If they come up and say for instance, "Well, you're a damn Communist, aren't you?" What are you going to do? How do you prove you're not? What can you do other than say, "Look . . ." This is what happened then. It was a type of hysteria that took the country.

The morning of the Farmall election the priest said, "You have a chance to get rid of a Communist-dominated union." And still they just won by a few votes. It's a very powerful thing for people that are not involved. They don't go to the union meetings, the average ones. They don't really see what's happening. So it sounded to them like the devil.

In the UE, actually we had full autonomy. The only time that we had a person from the international come in was when we called for them. And it was this way with FE. The guys had full autonomy. They decided. It wasn't like it is today in

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the farm equipment plants. They made the decision about what they was going to arbitrate, what grievance they was going to process, what they were going to do. Now it's made for them.

We met with both the UAW and the Machinists, and we felt that we had more of a chance of maintaining our autonomy, making our own decisions with the Machinists.

You had a fair feeling of isolation, no question. That's why, frankly, we took a position in District 8 here, probably the first UE group that did it, that as far as we were concerned we were going to be in the combined labor movement as of 1956, whether the UE got in or whether they didn't. They didn't, and we went.

We decided that with the AFL-CIO getting together, it is just stupid not to be part of the overall thing. I don't think too many of us had any illusions about it, but we had gotten tired. We took this abuse. You had it for a number of years. You get tired of it. You know, you get tired even though you recognize it for what it is. You welcome an opportunity that's legitimate to get away from it.

With anticommunism in the air, workers had to test their own experiences against what they were led to believe about the leadership of their unions. Gene Condon had no prior union experience until he went to work at John Deere in Waterloo after leaving the navy in 1948.

I came out of the navy in April of 1948 and then went to work at Deere's in August. The headlines in every paper you'd pick up would be talking about communism within the CIO. I'd never worked where there was a union prior to that time, and when I started at the plant the departmental steward talked to me every day and tried to get me to join the union. And I says, "I wouldn't have any part of the communistic rats," and just didn't want any part of it. I was fresh out of service. He talked to me every day, and three weeks later I finally joined the union. I told him, "I'm going to every single union meeting, and I'm going to be looking for Communists." And, you know, after thirty-three years of being active in the local and attending every meeting and attending meetings all over the country, I've yet to see my first Communist.

Veterans of the CIO watched in dismay as the labor movement was rent asunder, divided over the communism issue and by the eagerness of one international union to prey on the misfortunes of another. Don Harris, who had entered the labor movement in 1933 with the organizing drive at Rollins Hosiery in Des Moines, worked at various times for the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee and as regional director of the CIO. By

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1948 he found himself in the midst of the turmoil that swept through the ranks of the CIO.

In 1948 there was a split in the labor movement developing, and we was fighting among ourselves most of the time instead of organizing the unorganized. The New Deal had lost most of its luster.

I went to work for the Farm Equipment Workers in Chicago. They merged with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers in 1950. And I became the president of District 8 of the UE, which included Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Iowa. So in 1950 I was on the UE executive board, and I was one of those that wanted the UE to become a part of the CIO, but they wouldn't. We were expelled, along with a number of other unions, allegedly for Communist domination. Now, the Fur and Leather Workers might have been dominated by the Communists, and maybe Harry Bridges, the president of the Longshoremen, Warehousemen Union. He didn't brag about it, but he didn't deny that he was a Communist. But as far as the other unions being dominated, that's a figment of someone's imagination. There was never any Communist domination to the best of my knowledge, and I'm not a dummy. I was around the labor movement long enough, and I was on the national CIO executive board years enough. I remember the time when the whole CIO was called Communist. I'd been in the thing long enough to know that if you don't want to face up to the issues you've got to divert attention some damn way. If you want to defeat your enemies, the best thing to do is to get him to fight some fictitious shadow or something that don't exist.

I've seen how the labor movement can dissipate damn near all of its energy, and the only one that gains from that is the employer. You're so busy fighting each other you don't have any time to fight the employer. You've lost the main objective of the labor movement. It's a sick, sad thing. That's why in 1955, I was so much in favor of the labor movement being reunited.

Soapbox radicals were not unknown in Iowa communities during the depression. Their message that people could do something about their hardship struck a responsive cord among some of those who heard them, like Harry Branscomb of Des Moines. He also saw the hatred of Communists that was fueled by the newspapers and their deliberate effort to associate all union activity with the "Communist conspiracy." In the postwar period, that fear became epidemic, out of all proportion to the actual presence of Communists in the labor movement.

I can remember as a kid when I was still in school, we'd go downtown. There was always a guy down by the river, on a box, giving a speech. I remember my

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parents saying that he was a Commie. But he always drew a crowd. The reason was because he was the only person in the country that was really promising anybody anything. Everybody else was saying there was nothing they could do. These people sprung up all over town. They used to be downtown on the streets, down by the bridge, down by the library. Every weekend there was somebody coming in.

During one strike at the hosiery mill, the newspapers were very critical of the union. You could just about bet that if there was an article on the strike, it would be in a column either next to some Communist subject in the paper or some murder or some disaster. You could never get anything on a union next to the good housekeeping section. You were always associated. It worked. There were a lot of items in the paper regarding the Communists. Invariably, if there was a union problem, it was put on the same page. My mother said that the unions were nothing but a communistic conspiracy. I suppose she read that in the paper.

There's no doubt that there were some men in our unions who were probably card-carrying people at that time. But it was the only thing that the working man had to look forward to. The wealthy people had their country club and other things to join. The poor man didn't have anything. For years I lived right next door to Grandview Golf Course and never walked on the place.

Yeah, there were card carriers. There were radicals. But if you compared them to today, they would be conservative. All they were asking was for a job and a decent rate of pay.

The Fight over Farm Equipment: UAW vs. FE

A bitter battle within the labor movement at the end of World War II pitted two unions with contrasting organizational styles against each other. Both claimed jurisdiction in the farm equipment industry, whose plants were spread across the states of the Midwest. The Farm Equipment Workers (FE) had successfully organized most of International Harvester and Oliver, some Caterpillar plants, and a few plants of the militantly antiunion John Deere & Company. The United Auto Workers (UAW) had expanded its jurisdictional claim from auto to farm equipment and organized Allis-Chalmers and a few scattered plants in other chains.

In late 1945 the UAW negotiations with General Motors captured the attention of the country. Walter Reuther's "social unionism" not only challenged traditional managerial prerogatives, it embodied a vision of unions as defenders of a broader public interest. The 1946 auto settlement lay the groundwork for union demands that would eventually push back the fron-

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tiers of collective bargaining through large wage increases, cost-of-living escalators, pensions, a guaranteed annual wage, and an array of fringe benefits. In return the union agreed to longer contracts and conceded management's right to manage the shopfloor. The new UAW leadership, under Reuther, effectively used the Cold War political climate to isolate its left-wing opposition and expand the union's base at the expense of other vulnerable CIO unions, like the FE.

The FE had cut its teeth in the bitterly antiunion farm equipment industry before the war. Only under wartime conditions did it achieve some measure of security. Having depended on an unflinching spirit of solidarity among its rank and file during organizing drives, the FE carried that militancy onto the shopfloor and into collective bargaining. Even opponents testified to the extraordinary competence and dedication of its organizers and to their left-wing sympathies and abiding hostility toward management. Despite the fact that some locals advocated a more pragmatic attitude toward Taft-Hartley, the national leaders of the FE were steadfast in their principled refusal to sign non-Communist affidavits. Suspicious of the kind of unionism the UAW represented, the FE stuck by its tradition of short contracts enforced by shopfloor actions, even as its strength was sapped by the raids of the UAW and others.

The fight in farm equipment is one of the sorrier episodes in the labor movement's postwar history. But it was symptomatic of the deep divisions that were erupting in labor's ranks.

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Once anticommunism was stirred up in the labor movement, few could keep a dispassionate view of the subject. Communists had played critical roles in the development of the labor movement in Iowa and elsewhere. They may have had "screwball ideas" in the eyes of some workers, but they were also good trade unionists, according to Burton Foster who worked for International Harvester in the Quad Cities. Some unions, like the FE, refused on principle to sign the Taft-Hartley non-Communist affidavits. In so doing, they opened the doors to union raiders.

It's probably true that there were a lot of leaders in the Farm Equipment Workers who were Communists. That is also true of a lot of leaders in the Auto Workers and Rubber Workers and Steel Workers. People may not like to hear it, but I don't think they would have had a CIO at that time if it had not been for the Communists. The Communists may have some screwball ideas, but as far as the everyday life of the Communistalthough you might disagree with himhe

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was a pretty good citizen, except that he espoused a viewpoint that people didn't like. He was the kind of a guy who would donate his lunch at the picket line for somebody to eat and probably would shovel the sidewalk for the next-door neighbor but probably didn't go to church on Sunday. He was a pretty law-abiding guy. The Communist party was a little bit selective in whom they took in. I don't think any nut could get in the Communist party. The main thing that concerned the people was whether or not the union leaders delivered at the bargaining table and whether they got grievances settled.

In 1949, the time when the question of the Taft-Hartley non-Communist affidavits came up, there was an FE convention held in Chicago at which I was a delegate and also a member of the resolutions committee. I introduced a minority report in favor of signing the affidavits. Our position was that we didn't agree with the Taft-Hartley law, didn't like the Taft-Hartley law, didn't think that people should have to sign non-Communist affidavits, but we had reached the point that in order to survive we should comply and sign. We couldn't be on the ballot in an NLRB election for union representation if we didn't comply. We couldn't win an election unless we were on the ballot. The minority report remained a minority report. It was not adopted by the convention.

Farm Equipment Workers was a struggling union. Every time we got into negotiations we were faced with a raid by the UAW. We spent all of our time fighting off the other union and getting in negotiations. The lifeblood of the FE was the Caterpillar plant in Peoria. It was the largest plant in Illinoissixteen, seventeen thousand people in that plant. An election was coming up in Peoria at Caterpillar with the UAW, and we couldn't win the election against the UAW unless we were on the ballot. The local ended up going UAW, and this was a death blow to the Farm Equipment Workers.

The FE was committed to organizing the unorganized, and as new plants opened in the immediate postwar years, the FE moved quickly to organize them. They brought their own brand of industrial union militancy, as Donald Grimes witnessed, even to such traditional AFL strongholds as Dubuque.

The opening of John Deere in 1946 changed everything in Dubuque. The city primarily was an AFL town. You had the finger factories here and Dubuque pack. They called them finger factories because most of the guys lost fingers in them. They were all low-paying jobs. Places like Carr's, which would be the sash-and-door, and Farley & Loetscher, which was a sash-and-door, A.Y. McDonald, which was a plumbing supply house. They were really home-owned businesses, and they really had this town locked up. They didn't want a business to come in here with

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high wages. That's always been part of the problem with Dubuque. When John Deere wanted to come to town, the city fathers didn't want them, so they just went outside of town and built a plant. I heard rumors at one time that Ford wanted to come in at the Brunswick plant. They didn't want Ford to come in. Ford supposedly made the statement that if he wanted to come into Dubuque bad enough he'd buy the whole damn town, and I think Ford could've done it.

It was 1947 when they started organizing John Deere. The Machinists were in. FE had come in. The UAW had not made any inroads. Later on, after the drive got under way, they did have some people in, but by that time it was too late. I had thought that we ought to get the CIO in here; the FE was a part of the CIO. I happened to think that Lewis done something with the Coal Miners, and I thought if he could do that for the Coal Miners he could do a hell of a lot for us.

The foremen at Deere didn't want the CIO in. They wanted Machinists or someone else, and they'd always try to talk you out of it. I had my foreman say, "I thought you were one of my boys." And I says, "Hey, the only boy I belong to is my dad. He's the only one that can call me boy. No one else. I'm not your boy."

Morris Field was the FE organizer who negotiated the first contract. He had a habit of calling people a son of a bitch, and the company got quite perturbed with him during negotiations. They called his office and raised hell that he was calling them a son of a bitch. Morris's office says to him over the phone that he shouldn't be doing that any more because it was creating hard feelings. In fact, the plant manager at the time didn't want him in the negotiations any more. But he went back in the afternoon. He says, "Gentlemen, I've been told by my office that I should no longer call you people a son of a bitch. So from now on I will be calling you gentlemen, but so you know what I mean, every time I call you gentlemen I mean son of a bitch."

I agree the FE was communistic dominated in the higher echelons. It sure wasn't on the local level.

The basic cause behind the switch to the UAW was we were dissatisfied with the way the FE was handling the whole labor movement out here. Most of the plants in Deere at the time were UAW, and, hell, if you're going to get a master contract you weren't going to get it with an FE.

The struggle between the FE and the UAW was fought in many locals as the effects of Taft-Hartley swept through the farm equipment industry. G. Wayne "Banjo" Smith participated in the events that transpired in the Quad Cities and imbibed a deep hostility toward the UAW.

The UAW, several years after they became CIO, put Farm Equipment letters behind their original charter. And then, at the CIO convention in 1949, eleven

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Workers at the International Harvester Farmall plant in Moline, Illinois,

celebrate the victory of the FE-UE in the April 1953 representation election.

The UAW had withdrawn from the ballot. State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

international unions were expelled from the CIO. The FE was one of them. The UAW thought that they could just walk in and take over these local unions. These were all established local unions who had contracts that were superior to theirs by far.

Then it was open warfare. They used the red herring. Everything was red. The FE was expelled from the CIO because the officers refused to sign the non-Communist affidavit in a section of Taft-Hartley. They said we had to be reds because we wouldn't sign a non-Communist affidavit.

The UAW used the affidavits as an excuse to get as many of the workers to come over to the UAW. They used it as a gimmick. "All right. We have signed the affidavit. We're clean as a whistle, so come over with us." It worked sometimes, and sometimes it didn't.

I had it burned into my heart that I wanted no part of the UAW, but I couldn't figure out how we was going to keep out of them. It seemed as though everybody had decided that, well, boy, we hung on as long as we could. There's no place to go.

On the day that the FE had to quit, it just broke their hearts. They had to go out of Farm Equipment. I was one of them. We went to the UE, and we had real good relations with the UE. The UE was a rough, bread-and-butter union.

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Eventually, we went into the International Association of Machinists because, again, all the UE plants folded. That's when the others went into the UAW. When they folded, we did not fold with them.

The UAW used to just tell me all the time, "Banjo, why don't you pull your horns in, recognize that you're ruining yourself with the association of Communists? Why don't you come with us? Boy, the sky's the limit for the guys who got the ability that you've got." I used to just laugh them off and tell them, "Well, thanks a lot, but I'm pretty well satisfied right where I'm at."

There wasn't anybody who belonged to a Farm Equipment local that wanted to see Farm Equipment go under. We had the same goal under the UE as we had in the Farm Equipment, but we had to look forward to raids. Every contract all over the place we had a raid from the UAW. They could not compare to us in contracts. We used to ask them why they wanted to go for all this other supplement stuff instead of basics.

They took away the grass-roots unionism. I felt that if we had something to sell to the employee, our union, and hoped that he would participate in it, the best way to get that guy is to sell him a union.

At the heart of disputes between CIO unions, in the view of some workers, were radically different union philosophies. These differences were clearest between the FE/UE and the UAW. But, as Don Harris discovered, the commitment of the FE/UE to shopfloor militancy occasionally led to problems. One such incident was the infamous "panther hunt" at the Oliver plant in Charles City.

We were in favor of job action in order to get something done. We preached militancy. The contract was short-term then, never more than a year. There was even some locals around the country that never did have a contract. The best arrangement is what the building trades used to have. They had wages and they had working conditions and they had things that was in the agreement. By God, the employer lived up to them or they didn't lift a hammer to pound a nail. That's the best kind of an arrangement.

Actually, the UE and the FE had better contracts than the UAW had. We didn't go for this long-term, five-year cost-of-living business, improvement factor increase. We went for shorter terms. We was a more militant union in the departments. We had a more active steward body. The union was visible more so than today. We had a lot of job actions, sometimes so many that it got obnoxious, even to the members. You could overdo it.

Charlie Hobbie was the guy that instigated the "panther hunt" at the Oliver

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plant in Charles City, and it was a clever thing at the time, except that it back-fired. It arose out of a wildcat strike. But on this occasion the company was waiting for the union and filed this first Taft-Hartley lawsuit and succeeded in getting a judgment. All the panther hunt was was a wildcat strike, and the excuse given to the press was that they were hunting for this black panther which was loose in northeast Iowa. It was an excuse, a ruse, for doing it. It was kind of a joke, of which the company took advantage. They outsmarted the union and succeeded in using the courts to set the union back a great number of years. At any rate, it cost the union a lot. I'd say the union was caught up in its irresponsibility.

Boy, it shook the Iowa labor movement up when that judgment came down, because that was the first one under the Taft-Hartley Act in which the union was successfully sued for this enormous sum of money. It was almost a million dollars. I was vice president of the UE at the time, and, boy, it shook the UE up. They only had about a million dollars in the treasury.

We devised a strategy with the lawyers and the top officers in New York City where the headquarters was. I would go up to Charles City and arrange an innocuous meeting with George Bird, the plant manager, maybe in conjunction with a third step grievance or something like that. And I'd bring this up. I was to approach George on a settlement. It had to be very delicate. I was supposed to tell him that the local would have to pay the fine. This would be a fine against his employees. He would be extracting the blood of his workers. We were willing to acknowledge that we had made a mistake, and we were willing to pay, but we weren't willing to pay this whole sum. I was supposed to suggest a 25 percent settlement. Well, it all come off. I suggested this, and then I said, "Far be it from me to sit here and threaten you, but if you'd reject this honest, sincere offer I'm making, I can't guarantee you what's going to happen. I can't guarantee that plant isn't going to be shut down and kept shut down. I came in here on my knees, pleading." I think I had tears in my eyes. Well, he come back in about a half hour or so and accepted it. We had a 25 percent settlement. And for a year or two or three, until we got his back over the barrel, they took out 25 percent of the dues. Of course, the international union refunded it to the local, so it didn't cost the local anything. Finally, we got a contract expiring, and we was in negotiations. I figured we had the old boy over a barrel, and we was just on the verge of striking over about ten issues, and one of them was that the company drop the balance. We was shutting the plant down. We even had the foundry shut down and the assembly line. They'd walked out. I told him, I says, "If we don't reach an agreement, the whole goddamn plant's going to be shut down." He finally agreed to drop the rest of it.

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Tension between the FE and the UAW grew steadily after 1948. Carl Dahl, a UAW leader from Waterloo, respected the quality of leadership in the FE and acknowledged that his union was actively engaged in raiding FE locals, but he felt that in its weakened condition the FE was in no position to bargain effectively for its members. Merger with a viable industrial union like the UAW was, he believed, the only route open.

I'll tell you one thing about the Farm Equipment. They had the most unified, solid local leadership in these locals you could ever believe. I'm telling you, they were united. We always argued with the FE that we were rescuing them! Because they were hurting us. We had farm equipment plants, and they got to the point where they lost all their strength and they got to signing inferior contracts. International Harvester showed up worst because they had more International Harvester plants. We had most of the Deere plants. The companies'd say, ''Well, look, FE is settling for this and be goddamned if we're going to give you any more than that.'' So we said something's got to be done. We're sick of this old crap.

The FE wanted to fight for more, but they didn't have no means to fight for it. They didn't have a strike fund like we did because we had the benefit of the big auto industry, where we had a big strike fund. We could take these outfits on, and they knew it. We could get stuff, where Farm Equipment were just about helpless. All they could do was talk. And then they had the public sentiment, "You're a bunch of damn Communists."

We were raiding. We were actually raiding. I gotta be honest about it. But we had a lot of people come to us and wanted to switch over. They said, "We're not getting any place." The leadership wanted to do something. But they wasn't going to give us the plant unless we kept them on the staff. And this was where the shoe pinched.

We got quite a few agricultural implement plants, and we got a lot of staff guys. Don Harris. D. Gilpin. Our present regional director is a former FE guy. Jimmy Wright. Some of these guys were qualified people.

The Packinghouse Workers' "Waterloo": The 1948 Strike

By the end of World War II, organization of the packinghouse industry was essentially complete. Like workers in other mass production indus-

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tries, packinghouse workers sought to assert their new strength and redress the wage-price imbalance that wartime inflation had produced. A brief industrywide strike in January 1946 was cut short when the federal government moved temporarily to take over what was deemed to be a vital industry. The wage settlement in steel came by default to the packing industry as well.

But labor relations in the industry remained unsettled. Pressure mounted from rank-and-file workers for further wage increases. Faced with a rein-vigorated AFL unionthe Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmenon its flank, the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) reopened the issue of wages with the packers in 1948.

When, in the middle of negotiations, the UPWA received word that the Amalgamated had reached a settlement in its plants for a lower increase than what the UPWA was seeking, the frustrations of the rank and file crystallized into sentiment for an industrywide strike. Against the pleadings of the national leadership the members voted to strike.

In many ways the strike was ill-timed. It was the slack season. The labor movement was reeling from the effects of Taft-Hartley and its own internal divisions. Contrary to the hopes of some workers, the federal government could not be counted on to intervene and impose a settlement as it had in the fragile conditions of early 1946. Even so, many rank-and-file workers understood from their daily experiences that the companies were determined to dismantle the position of strength the unions had achieved on the shopfloor and that a showdown was inevitable.

The strike proved to be a lengthy and bitter one, especially in some Iowa communities where the packers, midway in the strike, reopened operations and began recruiting strikebreakers. Picket line violence escalated as the weeks rolled by. The companies, sensing the union's vulnerability, fed more and more scabs into their operations. Faced with mounting debts and the sudden reversal of their union's fortunes, workers angrily confronted those who crossed picket lines to take their jobs. The most serious incident occurred in Waterloo, where a picket line confrontation led to the shooting death of a striker and a riot that brought occupation of the city by the National Guard.

When the strike was finally called off after eleven weeks, workers returned for the nine cents an hour that had been on the table when they went out. More frustrating was the continued presence in the plants of scabs who possessed superseniority and rights to the jobs strikers had left. The angry confrontations of the picket line fed bitter shopfloor relations during the

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years, even decades, to come. As one worker remembered, "the union came back under very strict company rules," and another recalled that 1948 was "when the speedup really started."

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The packinghouse strike of 1948 brought to the surface simmering divisions within the UPWA. Frustrated by the unwillingness of the packers to concede wage increases that would have brought the industry in line with auto and steel, one segment of the union was eager for an industrywide confrontation. Ralph Helstein, president of the union, had serious reservations about the timing and the scope of the strike.

The strike came along in 1948. There was tremendous division over whether or not we actually should strike. We were in the midst of negotiations. We had an agreement with the Meat Cutters that they wouldn't conclude a contract without clearing it with us. We were either in a board meeting or negotiating with the company when we get a call from the press saying the Meat Cutters have announced a settlement for nine cents an hour. All hell broke loose.

The question was, what do we do? We had people that said the tail can't wag the dog. As far as the Big Four was concerned, the Meat Cutters were just the tail and we were the dog, and if we ever settled on this basis it would be the tail wagging the dog. I had grave misgivings about this strike because I felt that nine cents would start looking bigger all the time.

I advocated a policy that no one would even listen to, strangely enough, and that was that we not strike the whole industry. That we pick one company, strike them, and see if we can break through this barrier. But many of our people, especially the Iowa group, had been sold on this John Lewis notion of industry-wide strikes. This wasn't true of Cedar Rapids, but it was certainly true of Ottumwa and the majority of the Iowa group. No contract, no work. No strike unless the whole industry shut down. I simply couldn't break them loose of that. They voted the strike. It was a bitter, nasty strike.

The contract provided for increases at the beginning of the contract and then it had so-called wage reopeners every six months. This strike occurred around that kind of a reopener. The whole contract was not opened, just the wage part, which was one of the few consolations I had, because I felt that we would still have a contract in effect.

As a result of that strike, we ended up broke. First of all, our staff people went off the payroll during the strike, which is a tradition of ours. And all the officers. Nobody got paid during the strike. But even after it was over I think we had to

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United Packinghouse Workers of America members from Wilson & Company

in Cedar Rapids await the strike deadline in the Czecho-Slovakian Protective

Society Hall, just before midnight, March 15, 1948.

State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

stay off for several weeks. We had five hundred people fired around the country. The Meat Cutters were raiding us. We went through fourteen elections in a period of just months. We had lawsuits all over the place. It was just a very rough situation, but we finally had to accept the nine cents and go back to work.

The Strike in Waterloo

The packinghouse strike in 1948 engulfed the independents as well as the Big Four. About six weeks into the strike, Rath Packing Company in Waterloo started bringing strikebreakers through the picket line. At this point the strike took a nasty turn. Russ Edsill found himself at the center of events that eventually captured national attention.

In 1948 Rath's told us that they would go along with the national trend. The UPWA was meeting with Wilson's and Cudahy's and Armour's, but they wouldn't pay what was asked, so they called Armour's and Swift's out first. They was out two weeks when the strike went national. Rath's said they would pay us whatever

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the national settlement was if we'd come to work. But we couldn't break off from the national CIO then.

The strike lasted two or three months, but the company opened their doors about six weeks after the strike started. Anybody that wanted to go work could go to work. They brought in a lot of people that we didn't even know. Some of them come out of Omaha and Sioux City. None of our union members went in at first. But after a month we had a few people go back in. There was only one colored person that went in. The colored people didn't go in. I'll always give them credit for that.

We had a loudspeaker down at the picket line. For days and days and days I was on that loudspeaker, and we talked to the scabs that went in. We repeated that definition of a scab by Jack London day after day, telling them what rotten guys they were, lower than a rattlesnake. They crawled on their belly. We had a guy and his wife who were scabs, and they rode down on a motorcycle every day. They'd get out in front of the plant and stand and make fun of us. There were thousands of people out in front of the plant on the day of the riot. We had an injunction against us and were only allowed five pickets to a post. This fellow rode down on the motorcycle on the morning of the riot and stood out in front, aggravating the people that was standing on picket posts. Willy Warren was on the post and walked over and dropped him. The cops grabbed Willy and took him in the car. They was talking to him in the car. By that time the people all rushed across the street and told them that they were not arresting Willy for that. The police let him go at that time.

A couple of hours after that a colored person was going into the plant as a scab. There was such confusion around there. The pickets stopped his car and were rocking it. He pulled out a .45 and shot Chuck Farrell in the head. Another woman was shot across the street by Johnson's café. He turned the car around, and the cops caught him over there. They took him out of the city. They were afraid the people would come down to the jail and demand to have him.

Then the riot started. They broke the fences down in the parking lot and upset the cars. They went in back of the plant, and they turned the fire hoses on the superintendents. It was a general riot then. The people were mad over the shooting. There was fifteen or twenty cars upset. They went back of the plant and stopped the railroad trains from going in. We didn't have no control. The shooting is what set them off more than anything. When they seen Chuck Farrell laying there and the blood running out of his head.

After a certain length of time, the union did get control of it. We got on the loudspeaker and told the people to get back across the street and quit the riot. It's going to cause us trouble.

The next two days they brought in the National Guard. Robert Buckmaster

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Crowds of strikers gather in front of the union hall across from Rath Packing

Company as union leaders try to restore calm after the shooting death

of a picketer,  Waterloo, 1948. State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

was appointed prosecutor by the attorney general. They come down and had warrants for a bunch of us. Eight of us was served papers for conspiracy and inciting to riot. They claimed in the trial that the loudspeaker was what incited the people to riot, what we said over the loudspeaker every day. Everett Hopper was the first one that was on trial. He wasn't convicted. Then Woody Warren was next, and they convicted him. And I was next and was convicted. My brother was supposed to be next, but they worked out a deal that if he pleaded guilty they'd let him go.

I was sent to Fort Madison; it's a hellhole. When you go in prison, you're thirty days in confinement. You don't get out of there, only just enough to take a bath and right back in the cell. The prisonersI don't even know themsent me sandwiches and stuff. I was treated like a prince. They knew that I was sent down there on account of a union, and they treated me just perfect. But it's still a hellhole!

There was an awful uproar in Waterloo. I belonged to the Catholic church, and I don't know how many letters I got from Holy Name and all that. People wished me luck, people from the community that I didn't even know.

Beardsley was governor then. Russell Bull and Russell Lasley went to the gov-

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ernor, and he said that if we went to prison we'd only be in there a short time. I was in prison sixty days.

The packing industry settled the strike. It went on so long that they settled. The strike pretty near broke the international, so they settled it. If we had won, we wouldn't have had the scabs in there. The international paid me my wages during the time I was in prison, and they told Rath Packing Company that they wouldn't settle unless I went back to work. I had worked for the union ever since the union had been started, and I had a following of people. The company thoughtnot that I'm braggingthat if they fired me they'd have more trouble than to give me back my job.

When I went back to work, some of the management guys hated my guts, and some of them was pretty friendly toward me. Some of them believed in unions, but they couldn't express it to the management itself. I was a divisional steward and was still a steward when I retired.

The riot outside the gates of Rath Packing Company in Waterloo was engraved on the minds of workers who witnessed it. The shooting of striker Charles "Chuck" Farrell was the precipitant. But for James Hamlyn, the atmosphere that morning "was just like before an electrical storm." The riot was an expression of all of the frustration that had been building for several weeks, of strikers seeing scabs taking their jobs, of growing hungry, and of not being able to pay their bills. Their bitterness survived the strike.

The 1948 strike was a bad deal, because the company was out to break the union. They probably come just about as close to breaking it as they ever could.

The thing that sticks in my mind most about the 1948 strike was the riot. I had come down here with my wife and my sister-in-law. My wife had my son, who was just a baby, and my sister-in-law had her baby, and they were sitting out in front.

There was tension in the air. You could feel it. It was the funniest thing. It was just like before an electrical storm. You could just feel something in the air, and you didn't know what it was. When things went it was just like somebody lighting a stick of dynamite. It just exploded, and what it took for the explosion was the man that shot Farrell. Because that's when everything blowed up.

This black man was driving a Model A, and he come up to the gate over here across the street. We was rocking his car. I was standing beside his car, not the driver's side, on the opposite side. He had an army .45. He stuck it out our side of the car first, and we backed off. Chuck Farrell had jumped on the running board of the car on the other side, and he shot him in the head. I think he was dead

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Overturned cars of nonstriking workers at Rath Packing Company after

the picket line shooting and the riot that followed, Waterloo, 1948.

State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

before he hit the ground. My wife and my sister-in-law seen this. I was dressed in clothing the same color as Chuck Farrell had on, and they thought it was me that got shot. There was a policeman jumped on the running board of the car, and they told this guy to get out of there or else he would be dead. People started chasing the car down the street. I run over to my car, and my wife and my sister-in-law was both in hysterics. I thought I was going to have to take them to the hospital. I finally got them home and got them calmed down.

The people were just like a bunch of mad cattle. They just stampeded. They went through the fence out here, and they tipped twenty-one cars over in the parking lot. They smashed windows. They just went completely out of their heads. I don't think some of them even knew what they was doing at all. They was going to set them all on fire that night. They was getting organized. They had organized gangs that was going out there to set them all on fire, but they got the National Guard in here before they could. Everybody was mad. They wanted to get back to work. They was getting hungry. We'd been out on strike for a long time. They couldn't pay their bills, and they was losing things. The scabs that went in took their jobs. So they just got mad and figured that they was going to have to retaliate one way or another.

The National Guard had half-tracks and jeeps that was running up and down the street out here with machine guns on them, but no bullets. They set sandbag emplacements up on the roof of the packinghouse and set machine guns up there.

We finally decided to go back to work. As far as we was concerned, it was a lost cause. We really lost. We went back in to work, and they give all the scabs that was in there superseniority.

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There was a lot of ill feeling in the plant. I know we had two sisters that used to work right across the table from each other, and one went in and scabbed and the other one stayed out. They wouldn't even speak to each other. We had two brothers that worked right across the conveyor from each other, and as far as I know to the day they died neither one of them spoke to each other. One was a scab and one stayed out. It divided families. It broke up a lot of good friendships.

It was sometime later that we began to have a lot of work stoppages. We had a lot of supervision in there. They figured after we come back to work they was going to lower the boom on us, that we was going to do things their way whether it was right or wrong. Things would just get out of hand, and we'd just shut 'er down. They'd fire somebody that we figured shouldn't have been fired, and you couldn't talk to them, so we just shut 'er down and walk out.

The 1948 strike produced deep divisions within the UPWA and among members of local unions. Some locals, like Rath's in Waterloo, lost their checkoff, and after workers returned to the plant, dues payments fell off. Workers had to contend with scabs in the plant, who through superseniority now held the preferred jobs. Only gradually, as Chuck Mueller recalls, did the union rebuild its strength and begin to challenge the new order of things.

If I had a job when I went on strike and there was a scab on it when I got back, I couldn't have that job anymore until the scab left it. He would have super department seniority, job rights over the regular workers, and if you called him a scab they could fire you for it. They were very protective of them. Over the years, if a guy made it from the gang to foreman, it was usually one of those '48 scabs.

There was no checkoff, and very few people were paying dues at that time, even strikers that came back. We had to go around and collect the dues from the guys.

People felt we never should've gone out in the first place, and they were mad because we lost. They were mad at the company, and they were mad at the union. The dues wasn't automatically deducted, so they just used that money for catchup and to show their anger. We were really at a low ebb for a long time, and then it started to come back again.

The speedup came in 1948. Right after the strike they put in the incentive program. That's when the speedup really started.

The 1948 Strike in Other Packinghouse Centers

One of the major strike centers in the Midwest was South Omaha, where all of the Big FourWilson, Armour, Cudahy, and Swifthad plants.

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Workers in many locals, like Nels Petersen, believed the timing of the strike was wrong, but once it began they wanted it fought to the finish. Even the loss of the strike did not break the back of union militancy.

We met in Chicago before we went out in 1948. The Amalgamated had already signed their contract and accepted a nine cent raise or whatever the hell it was. We argued, when we went into ChicagoCedar Rapids, Omaha, Kansas City, some of the othersthat we should accept the nine cents or else wait until the fall of the year because that's when stock came in. In the spring of the year nothing comes in. We said wait until the fall of the year. We'll go out on strike then, and we'll whip 'em. Well, they told us that we was yellow, didn't have no guts, and the strike was called. We went out.

The 1948 strike was a bitter strike. We had people who were shot in front of the Armour plant. We had a judge who drawed a line down the middle of the sidewalk. We could stand on one side and couldn't block the other side.

I was picket captain for all the pickets in South OmahaSwift, Wilson, Armour, and Cudahy plants. We were picketing down on the railroad tracks, stopping the trains from going in. They came down and told us we had to get off, and we wouldn't. There must've been forty or fifty of us, and this was by the stockyards about seven or eight blocks from the police station. They was going to go up and get the paddy wagons. I told them, "Hell, you don't have to get the paddy wagons. We'll march up there." All of us had just got back from the service. So we lined up four abreast, and we marched to the police station.

We had some word that scabs was coming in one night. I had a fellow from the Cudahy local with me and two other guys. We seen the scabs, and we started to walk across the bridge behind them. In front of one of our picket places we grabbed them and was going to put them in a car and take them out in the country. One guy turned around, and he had a pipe in his hand. He cut the fellow from Cudahy all the way across his face. He didn't get his jugular vein, but he cut the hell out of his face.

When we got the results of the vote on ending the strike, we was told we had to go back to work. We called every Armour plant throughout the country and asked them what the hell was wrong. We wanted to stay out. We'd been out that long, we wanted to stay.

We went back with not a cent more, but it made our union because the company found out that they couldn't lick the spirit of the people. Armour especially found out that with all their scabs and everything that they'd done, we still had our union, and we were just as strong. Hell, we wasn't back to work a week or ten days in the Armour plant and our beef kill walked out. We left all the beef hanging on the rail. We must've had about ten, fifteen guys fired over that. Took

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us a year to get them guys back to work. They was really going to crack down. They found out that the people wasn't going to take it.

The strike divided whole communities. While the Chambers of Commerce railed against the strikers and the ruin they were bringing to their communities, the ''corner grocery guys'' in Sioux City's South Bottoms, where John Sheehan lived, extended credit on their limited resources to the strikers and their families.

It was a very bitter strike. There was a lot of community resentment against us. The Chamber of Commerce was pumping out a lot of crap about the packing-house workers trying to ruin the whole town. Armour's and Cudahy's was effectively shut down, but Swift's did run during the strike. They had enough scabs in there.

It hit hard. I had three brothers working at the packinghouse at the time. It hit real hard. My father worked at the stockyards, and, of course, no slaughtering was going on in Sioux City, so it naturally affected him. We was all involved in the packinghouse neighborhood I come from. There was "don't buy" campaigns going on. In them days there was corner grocery stores on every corner. In the neighborhood I was from you didn't dare sell no Cudahy, Armour, or Swift meat.

Everybody got credit. The South Bottoms where I lived it was all hard times, including the guy in the corner grocery store. Hell, he made his living from the people in the neighborhood. Everybody knew everybody, so naturally there was credit extended. The little corner grocery store guy didn't have a damn thing to say about what happened in Sioux City. He was at the mercy of the Chamber of Commerce. He paid his dues just to have a sign in the window, but, hell, he didn't count. It was the packinghouses, the car dealerships, and the big department stores, that was it. Behind the scenes, they dominated the politics of the town.

For many workers who entered the labor force during or shortly after World War II, the 1948 packinghouse strike was their first experience in a major strike. Ethel Jerred participated in a picket line confrontation in Ottumwa that demonstrated the responsiveness of local political officials. But she also witnessed the acrimony and bitterness toward scabs that followed the strike.

By that time I knew the importance of not crossing a picket line. One time we were at the front gate, here come the boxcar loaded with meat. There was a good three to four hundred of us there, blocking the railroad so that it couldn't come out. The company had called the sheriff to come down and the Fire Department to turn the fire hose on us, and, God bless him, Everett Orman was the

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Wapello County Sheriff. The funniest thing about it, we have always been more on the Democratic side, and this sheriff, he was a Republican. But he refused to come down and turn that fire hose on us. He said, "These are human beings," and the union backed him 100 percent when he run for office again.

When you take on a strike you never know whether you're going to win or lose, but you have your inner commitment. We had a number of people that crossed the picket line. You just don't open your arms up for somebody who's taken your job for eleven weeks and your paycheck. As the years went by they never forgot that they were scabs. Even right to this day. If that woman should pass away, I doubt very much whether they would ever say, "Sweet little Helen." They'd probably say, "Helen, the scab," because that's the title she's got. That label stays with you till the day you die. You say, oh, so-and-so is sick. Well, who? Oh, you mean the one who scabbed up in canning. You never are ever able to shed this label that's put on you.

The struggle for control after the 1948 strike sometimes took the form of conflict over language and over the use of one word in particular, scab. Workers used their shopfloor power not only to isolate and humiliate those who had scabbed but to insist on their rights to the use of the term on the companies' premises. Clarence Ramsey was at the center of one such confrontation at Decker's in Mason City.

When we went back to work the company wanted included in the negotiations that we would not use the word scab. I got in a little bit of trouble over that word, scab. If I had a scab on me, I talked about it all I wanted to. Finally, the foreman jumped me. I told him I was going to talk about it all I wanted to. He brought the department superintendent in and the assistant superintendent. I told them the same thing. This assistant superintendent started jumping all over me right out on the floor, which is against the rules. I told him, "You want to talk to me, Mr. Winter, you take me in the office and talk to me. You don't bawl me out on the floor. If you don't understand the contract, you better have somebody read it to you so you can understand it." So we went into the office, and he was still ticked off. Then I decided it went far enough, so I asked the department foreman to use his phone. I said, "This is union business." I called the superintendent and wanted to come up and see him. I got ahold of Mr. Eddie Newman, and we went up to the superintendent's office. I told Chuck Clausen what was going on. I says, ''I'm getting tired of everybody jumping me about this word scab." And I told him the same thing. If I had a scab, that's what I'm talking about. So Mr. Clausen says, "Well, I'll talk to those people down there. Clarence, do me a favor. Don't use the word scab any more than you have to."

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Skilled butchers on the kill and cut remained crucial to the work process in

packinghouses in the 1950s. Library of Congress.

6

The World of the Shopfloor in the 1950s

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Union power has been anchored historically in the ability of workers to exercise some degree of control in the workplace. In the nineteenth century, skilled workers' knowledge of how to produce specific commodities gave them a powerful voice in determining how production was organized and at what pace it proceeded. The nature of their work, their privileged knowledge, and their sense of pride forged an impressive work culture and strong bonds of craft solidarity. These bonds posed a challenge to employers' ability to revolutionize production and increase profitability.

By the end of World War II the shopfloor and the production process had been radically transformed. A complex of changeswhat some historians have called "the second industrial revolution"had gradually made manufacturing more capital intensive, highly mechanized, and less dependent on skilled labor, and labor more subject to management control. Using techniques associated with Frederick Winslow Taylor's system of "scientific management," employers had reorganized the production process to break the control of skilled workers, standardize products, and introduce large numbers of less-skilled workers, interchangeable like the products they created. Although these changes were the subject of intense labor-management conflict in the first two decades of the twentieth century, they were by the 1940s the norm in basic manufacturing.

While craft production gave way to mass production, the industrial unions organized in the 1930s inherited skilled workers' traditions of control and dignity, and those traditions continued to shape labor-management struggles into the 1950s and beyond. Some skilled workers remained in many industriesmeat-packing, farm equipment, electrical manufacturing, rubber, steeland they played a direct role in the organization of industrial unions. Intense and protracted organizing campaigns in these industries created plantwide solidarity that translated into potentially greater control than the craft solidarity of skilled workers.

High on the corporate agenda at the end of the war was a restoration of "management's right to manage." While many union leaders spoke of future industrial councils and the right of unions "to bargain respecting all functions of management," employers called for a defense of what Charles Wilson, president of General Motors, termed "our American system. Collective bargaining, now conceded as an unpleasant necessity, must be kept, he said, within "its proper sphere." Another auto executive put it simply, ''Give the union the money, the least possible, but give them what it takes. But don't let them take the business away from us."

Most workers may not have wanted to "take the business" from their employers, but they did want to protect themselves from the dangers of the

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workplace and the debilitating speedup. A new generation inherited unions that had been forged in the shopfloor struggles of the 1930s. They now found themselves in a web of government-regulated collective bargaining created to meet the needs of wartime that was both empowering and enervating. They faced pressures to concede control of the workplace in return for the stability of longer contracts and high wage and benefit packages. But with the confidence of victors, both on the battlefields and in the shops, they asserted their rights, as they defined them, through the collective bargaining process and in direct action on the shopfloor. For all of the political divisions that surfaced in their unions at the end of the war and for all of the adversity that the Taft-Hartley Act imposed on them, industrial workers continued to exercise considerable control in the shops as they confronted the challenges of incentive pay and management attempts to reorganize production.

Danger Zone: Postwar Conflict over Speed and Safety

World War II brought vast economic changes. But the work environment to which veterans returned seemed in many ways hardly changed at all. In fact, the demands of wartime production had brought previously underutilized capacity into full use. For workers this often meant the use of old and antiquated machinery and an unsafe physical plant. In one sense, the notion that industrial work was inherently unsafe was customary; in another sense, workers had never accepted the fact that high rates of injury and death on the job came with the territory.

With the new power of CIO unions at the war's end, workers believed they could do something about the unsafe environment in which they worked. Seasoned by the shopfloor conflicts of the war period, when official strikes were banned, the unions became the vehicle for workers to act directly and immediately to correct conditions that endangered their health and safety. Invigorated by the young veterans who returned to the plants less inclined to put up with conditions as they had been, union members used wildcat strikes to improve the work environment.

Shopfloor conflict intensified as companies sought to raise productivity by increasing the pace of work. In the packinghouses, the speed of the chain was crucial. In many manufacturing plants, incentive schemes were introduced that increased the intensity and the danger at work.

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The drive for increased productivity in the postwar era took many forms. In the packinghouses, the speed of the chain on the kill and cut was the key. As a packinghouse worker in Storm Lake, Wallace Taylor felt the effects of a fourfold increase in the speed of the chain. New technologies actually led to the elimination of workers on the line.

When I started it was in the neighborhood of two hundred hogs an hour that they killed and cut. When I left they had a nine hundred an hour standard, and they had not increased the line four and a half times. I'm talking about the men that shackled the hogs and stuck them, shaved them, and all down the line, while they were hanging on the chain. On the shaving end they had singers that was way hotter than the old-time deal. They had polishers that took the majority of the hair off. So they had eliminated by the machinery I suppose a third of the men running the shaving part. On the front feet there was a clipper, a big scissors, that cut them off. And for dropping heads, they had another big scissors that went in there and busted the bone. Then they had high-speed saws. The saws got faster and faster for splitting and opening. Earlier when you opened a brisket you had a hammer and a knife. When you split the carcass you had a cleaver. After we got up to the nine hundred we done it with saws, about four men in that position.

Safety issues remained a central concern of workers after the war. Wartime conditions and the demand for increased productivity had worsened health and safety conditions for many. James Steinbach saw John Deere bring antiquated machinery into its new Des Moines plant in 1946. Such conditions fueled shopfloor action.

When the plant first started they moved some of their old equipment in from the other John Deere factories. We got all those old, antiquated machines, you know. We said they got them from Abe Lincoln days. There was no guarding on the machines. The guys were just getting hurt. We've had guys come out of that punch press department with nine fingers gone. Hell, Red King, nineteen years old, I remember the day he lost his eye. I remember the day the guy got his arm in the corn picker, in the snapping rolls, and just run it right up and chewed it off. Old Lyle McWilliams, we called him Hammer, that poor son of a bitch, he had nine fingers gone by the time he got out of the punch press area.

That was one of the main issues. The right to strike on safety, so that by God maybe we could use some pressure so the company would take care of the safety problem. We got the right to strike.

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The rubber plants held numerous dangers for workers. Not until after the war were the unions in a position to change some of these conditions. Richard Dawson knew what tire builders and workers in the mill rooms and curing rooms faced at Armstrong's in Des Moines before these abuses were corrected.

You had to be careful. You could lose a finger, just a slip of the finger it was gone. These drums had sharp edges, and they shut and opened all the time. Sometimes when you completed the tire you'd been building something happened and the drum would break down. If you had your hand in the wrong place, a finger was gone. A lot of people running around with fingers off back in those days. It used to be kind of a joke. You'd go to conventions and stuff. You'd look around, and you could tell tire builders because they'd have a thumb or a finger or something gone. It was very dangerous on your hands.

The mill room was where they first bring the rubber from outside in big chunks. They grind it up, run it through mills, and cook it. When I went to work at the plant I remember going down there a few times. You'd have a best friend working there. You'd walk by him and wouldn't recognize him. I mean, if there was a colored guy and a white guy there, you couldn't tell the difference. That's how black they got every day. I never wanted to work down there. It was dirty. Really bad. Carbon black they called it, an oily powder. It just stuck to you. I know guys that would take a shower when they got off work and go to bed and sleep, and they could see right on the bed where he slept, because it just sweated out.

The curing room, that was just ungodly hot. That's where they put the tire in and cured it out. They just plain cook it and put the tread design and everything in it. And I mean I've seen people working in there in the summertime, and the thermometer would register 140, and it'd just stop there. They'd go in there and work. Originally they only worked six hours a day because it was just so hot. The guys would go work for a half an hour and run the press, take tires out of the presses, and then just go over and lay down in front of fans and try to cool off a little.

"Blood Money": The Struggle for Control of Incentives

Consumer demand soared in the postwar years, fueled by the public's deferred appetite from years of depression and war. Employers recognized an opportunity to increase production and profits. But workers and their unions were now in a position to demand that they share in the fruits of this

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increased productivity. And they wanted a voice in determining how it was to be achieved. Companies turned with increasing frequency to the old principles of scientific management, first codified by Frederick Winslow Taylor around the turn of the century.

Taylor advocated studies of time and motion, "scientifically" undertaken to determine how much workers could produce if properly directed in their tasks. Once the rates had been set it was simply a matter of persuading workers to work at that pace. Here, "incentives" became criticalincreased pay for increased output. Taylor sought to enlist what he saw as workers' selfish appetites in the service of their companies' enhanced profitability.

The young veterans returning to the plants after the war seemed ideal material for such Taylorist schemes. They were anxious to start families, rebuild their lives, and improve their lot. They were young, vigorous, and eager to demonstrate their "manliness."

As incentives became the rage in the late 1940s and 1950s, workers discovered the other side of such productivity increases. A variety of schemes proliferated which enlisted workers in undermining their own traditions of control. Incentives threatened to shatter the solidarity of workers, particularly between young and old, as they raced headlong to make and beat their rates. As machines drove the pace and workers rushed to meet their incentives, they saw the joy and camaraderie in the work disappear and the quality of their product deteriorate. In many plants they devised new, collective means to fight the destructive effects of incentives and maintain their control of the shopfloor.

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Incentive systems took many forms. One of the most vicious from the point of view of union activists like Merlyn Wee, who worked in the John Morrell plant in Estherville, was gain time. It set young against old as the line speed was increased and workers gained more "sitting on your butt time."

I can't really recall what the speed was when I went to work in that pork plant, but it seems to me it was around 150 hogs an hour. They were up around 700 when they finally shut the door. A lot of that came from automated equipment. We thought that a lot of us was going to lose our jobs, but automation eventually created jobs.

I used to say, "Well, they can't go any faster," but they did. Then you'd say, "Well, by God, we're at the maximum now. There's no way they can go any faster." Two years later they'd speed the chain up.

The company at one point put a padlock on our kill floor chain. Our own

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people would sneak up there, and they had a way of getting around that, and then the divisional steward would go out there with his stopwatch, and he'd say, "What the hell happened to this chain? Hell, you're going fifteen hogs an hour faster than what you're supposed to be." We actually found the people that were doing it.

It was that infamous goddamn thing called gain time. It's the worst incentive program that was ever designed for any man, woman, or child. It's just a procedure where you've got a schedule to meet, and if you can beat that schedule then you go home early. If you get eight hours' hogs done in seven hours and fifteen minutes, you get forty-five minutes of going home and sitting on your butt time. Dave Hart, who was our district director at that time, said, "That's the most vicious type of incentive there is. Before that's over you'll have father and son fighting, brothers fighting." And that's exactly what it does, because some people put more value on a half an hour of time than they would on an hour's pay. If Dad has had his better day, and he can't keep up, and he's holding up the line because he can't go as fast as the two young bucks on either side of him, then, "Hey, Dad, why in the hell don't you find a job you can handle and let us get out of here." And the only thing is it doesn't put any more groceries on the table. It doesn't put any more money in the bank. All it does is give you some more time to sit in the beer parlor and drink an extra beer, and at the same time you're killing the older employee because he can't physically keep up with you.

Have you ever had a good dog that got his mouth full of sheep wool? Well, that ruins the dog. You can just as well shoot the dog. And that's just the way your employees are down there. Once they get their mouth full of gain time, you can't make them listen to you. There's no sense even talking. They might be a good union member, but, by God, don't try to take away my gain time. Really, it's just ironic.

Well, the older employees would actually look for other jobs. They would say, "Well, I hope the janitor's job comes open pretty soon because that's where I want to go." Despite the severe wage cut they would take they started looking for jobs that they could handle, where they weren't pressured by the chain speeds. There was no question that if a man was in his late forties, he wasn't going to be looking for a job on that line. That was too late in the ball game to be getting up there.

Time-study is an educated process of guesstimatics. There's no way that they can tell you or me how fast we can go. Time study is like saying I could run a hundred yard dash as fast as old Jesse Owens could in his prime. Just because one man can do it doesn't mean that every man can do it. The company always likes to time study between ten and two, the prime hours. They never like to study you when you're getting into the swing of things in the morning or later in the

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Women on the Rath Packing Company wiener line in the 1950s, Waterloo.

State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

afternoon when you're getting a little petered out. They don't want to time study then. So every time-study man I've ever seen uses the prime hours and then tries to suggest to you that that's the speed you should be able to do constantly all day long.

Gain time also divided men and women, women and other women, and leadership and rank and file in the plants where it was introduced. Ethel Jerred and others fought against it at Morrell's in Ottumwa.

I was one of the people who preached the hardest against what they called gain time or incentive time. The company had sent their time-study men in and set your time for getting so much production out. This is what helped eliminate a lot of the jobs in the women's departments. You couldn't hardly do this up on the kill and the cut. But the meat departments where the machinery was, they would set your standard at a certain number of pounds to get out in an hour.

I was asking people in my department, "How are you able to get eight hours work out in four and five hours?" Well, they cut a few corners here and a few corners there. They couldn't ring out, but they'd go uptown and walk around and come back and ring out.

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There's always somebody that'll feed this information to the company. So the next time they were time-studied, this was either eliminated or added on somebody else's job. So somebody else's job went by the wayside. Once it started it was just like a fever. At the time these women couldn't see it. A job was chopped off here. They didn't care. They had seniority. It didn't bother them. It wasn't their job. They were showing the company how people's jobs could be eliminated. The union argued and argued against it. It's just like giving somebody a cookie, and that cookie tastes so doggone good they want another one, even though they know they shouldn't have it they're going to take it. It started off down in ham boning and smoked meat. And then it went up to the canning room. Sliced bacon was probably the last one that got it.

It would have to be a whole line. All the way from the man on the slicer on down. And, boy, he got to where he kind of liked to get out in the locker room and sit for an hour before they'd ring out. Some fellows even was holding down another job. Would get off at noon and go hold down another job. The union did not condone it. They fought it. But there was no way they could stop it.

The products were not as good. When you're cutting corners doing any job, it's not going to be. I had opposed it. I had people who wouldn't even speak to me in the locker room. You do it because you feel like it is the thing to do. If you're a strong union member, you believe in what you're representing. Many a time I would go out of there so empty and feeling like, why am I doing this? Why don't I just say okay, to heck with you? But there's something inside you that fires you up, and it's something that'll stay with you all your life.

Under some incentive plans, work was organized on a group basis and workers achieved their rates as a team. According to Dick Sturgeon, such a system at Sioux Tools in Sioux City encouraged cooperation among workers to achieve their rates. But incentive plans also eroded the sense of craftsmanship and pride that workers brought to their tasks. The conflicts between pressures to produce quality work and to meet their rates could have devastating consequences.

The incentive pay at this plant was such a crucial part of people's pay. They depended upon at least an extra paycheck a month from incentive.

We had a group incentive plan. All of our time went into one pot, and then it was divided up amongst everybody. Everybody tried to hit for 25 percent, realizing that some people were going to have real easy jobs and make more and other people were going to have tough jobs and would make less. Since it was a group incentive, those who were making more would help out those making less. I was good at my job, and I could produce 145 percent without too much effort.

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I smoked every hour on the hour. I had my coffee every hour on the hour. And I still produced 145 percent good pieces. There was other machines in that department that you just really had to work at to even make 110 percent.

It created teamwork. One person would get done with his job for that day and thought he'd made a sufficient amount. He'd go over to the other person's machine and see if there was some way to help him get done, and then they'd go over and help somebody else get done. I see individual incentives where the attitude is to hell with my neighbor, I'm thinking just of myself.

I don't like incentives at all. I'd rather we would be craftsmen and be allowed to make our pieces and parts and make good pieces and parts and not have to worry about the clock.

I don't think a person ought to be battling that clock. I've seen people have nervous breakdowns. We had one of the best turret lathe operators that ever worked in any plant that ended up on the mental ward of the hospital as a ball of nerves because of the incentive. They just tightened the rates on him so much, and he was fighting that clock all day long, trying to do good pieces but yet trying to make the number required, and he just finally snapped.

We had pride in our workmanship, and there was a conflict there continuously, where people would be running the machine and the parts wouldn't be coming off just quite right. We would recommend a slowing down of the speed or maybe the cutting back of a feed which would cause fewer pieces being put out, but they would be better pieces. Tools were being destroyed by running too fast or too hot, and the industrial engineers and the management people would say, ''No, we got to get the pieces out." We find even today cases where the worker will say, "This is not a good part. It's not according to specifications. I'm just not happy with it." And management will say, "Go ahead and run it that way. We need them real bad. Go ahead and run it that way.'' The workers themselves see the cheapening of the product that they're making, and it just tears hell out of them.

Wallace Taylor of Storm Lake believed that incentives and time-study drove some packinghouse workers to an early grave. The unwillingness of time-study men to take proper account of all the factors that contributed to fatigue and the desire of workers to make 100 percent drove the work. "It was blood money."

Time-study was not a big problem until we got our last industrial engineer in there, and he begin to cut things to ribbons. He begin to change this or that, and we begin to have a lot of hassle. This guy knew enough to become an industrial engineer. He used to cut meat, but he knew he didn't want to do that. He'd rather watch somebody else cut it and time-study that.

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I know doggone well that they never took into consideration the prolonged period of time that a person was in an abnormal position. When you're half bent over for prolonged periods of time there's no way that anybody can say what fatigue that is. But they pull out of the air some kind of an arbitrary figure. When you bent or you reached, it was guesswork on his part. If they couldn't resolve the dispute you would have your wildcat strikes. Hell's bells, a man knows when he's working too damn hard, and when you get to the point where you work so doggone hard that it ain't worth it, you might as well walk out. But there ain't no place for you to go, so you've got to fight for this job. Hell's bells, you're entitled to have that job just as well as somebody else who's got a piece of land. This is my land!

The more benefits that you accumulated, the more torture you put your body through so that you didn't lose these doggone benefits. This damn incentive ain't a blessing. It was blood money. I know damn well that there was men that didn't feel good. They should not have been driving theirselves beyond 100 percent. These men are dead today, and they're dead at an early age. Maybe I am guilty of putting them there because I drove. I felt sorry for them. A man would stand there, and he was purple in the face. He was doing his level best. Maybe he should be doing something else, yet he wanted his 100 percent in the pot, and he couldn't put it there. Well, a man goes out and dies before he's forty-five or fifty years old, and you look back and see how he worked, it makes you have a guilty conscience that you wasn't man enough to stand up and say, "Go to hell. Take that goddamn incentive and stick it up your ass. We don't want no more of it." And that's exactly what a man should have done. The incentive drove us. The incentive killed us. Because I was young, like when I come out of the doggone service, I believed with my hands and my hands alone I would make a bundle. I didn't realize that I had to live off of somebody else and let a lot of hands kick in my pocket.

Incentives came to some plants in stages. Rachel Maerschalk saw the new pay system eat away at the work culture of women in the sliced bacon department at Dubuque Pack. Their appetite for increased income and the speedup that inevitably came on its heels left little time for singing and joke-telling.

Incentive pay came in the middle fifties. Bacon was one of the first departments. I really thought I was working hard before incentive came in. We really got hooked onto that incentive game. The company said you do x number of pounds per hour, and after you get that many done for however many hours you were scheduled to work, you would be able to just rest until punch-out time. So

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we started to work that way. They even gave us the additional incentive that after you got your pounds of production finished, you could go home. Then that really increased how fast we worked. Because we all wanted to get out of there. We didn't realize what we were doing. Then they told us, "Well, you're doing this now. If you would want to make some extra money and produce over and above, then stay until checkout time, we will pay you for the additional amount of work that you do." That was their beginning.

Before that, everyone was happy. We'd sing at our work. We would visit. After we began to work incentive and got a few of those paychecks with the extra dollars in them, there was just no time anymore for singing or for joke-telling.

We worked group incentive. Practically all of the bacon department was set up under standards. The groups would range from eight to thirteen people. We still had a pretty comfortable work schedule. The standards that we had were in the neighborhood of 130 percent. And we still didn't have to push every minute. It wasn't taking every drop of energy. Then changes were made within the department. New machinery was brought in, groups were reduced from thirteen to eight, the work loads became heavier, and the standards that we got were so bad that even working just as hard as we possibly could we couldn't make over 115, 118 percent. And I said, "There has got to be something we can do." So that was when I finally realized that there was a union out there. I became a steward in 1962.

In some industries incentive rates were tightly regulated by the workers themselves. Tire builders like Richard Dawson used direct methods to control production under incentive rates at the Des Moines Armstrong tire plant. By such methods workers guaranteed a reasonable income and protected themselves against the hazards of speedup and changing rates.

The base rate was fifty tires, and every tire you build over that you get so much extra. If you built seventy and they paid you a quarter a tire you would pick up some pretty good money. Tire builders was a little bit ahead of everybody else, because they did make quite a bit over their base rate all the time.

The union told you, "We want seventy tires to be top, and that's it," and you stayed at seventy tires. If you didn't, you would probably get about thirty the next night, because everybody helped you out. Helped you out to get nothing done!

And a lot of times the penalties were decided right at the break table or at lunchtime. Everybody'd go in. We had a young kid come in one time on eleven to seven, and he decided he wasn't going to join the union. He was just out of school. He didn't know union or nothing. And so within about two weeks time

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he was begging to join the union because he didn't have very many good meals to eat. The women in the cafeteria, they'd help us out. That was one of our strongest things back when we had the cafeteria. They served us lunch. We'd go in and say, "Hey, so-and-so built too many tires yesterday." You'd watch him when he ate his dinner. He'd have a pretty salty or pretty hot dinner, and he didn't eat much of it! Or he'd have a lot of trouble with his material. It wasn't long until he got around to asking to join the union. Usually it'd take a couple weeks before we'd let them join. Just let them go on for a while so they wouldn't forget!

We'd set a figure moneywise. We'd make thirty-two dollars a day, say, and that was all you better make was thirty-two bucks a day. All the departments worked pretty well the same. They set their own goals. Everybody made about the same amount of money. Sometimes you'd have a bad day and you made less, but you didn't make more. Very seldom. But once you made your quota, what everybody was making, you could go to the break area and set at the table, sleep, or play cards. You could do what you wanted to do. For years and years. I was a young kid and ambitious. I worked the eleven to seven shift for twelve years, and I just kind of made a habit at five o'clock in the morning, I never built no more tires. I wanted to have my quota done at five o'clock, and then at six, six-thirty I'd go loaf around, go take a shower and get ready to go home at seven. The years go by, you get older, you don't keep up with things like that!

All that was in the contract was how much you got paid per tire after so many tires, and we just controlled it ourselves. We were sure that if the guys started building too many over, then they'd try to figure out some way to cut that down so it didn't pay so much. So we just pretty well controlled it ourselves.

Until the rate was set, you didn't work as hard. When they time-study, you don't go wide open. You go at a normal pace, and they set the rate. Once the rate's set, it was froze, and they couldn't change unless they changed the way to build the tire.

We used to get in slowdown situations once in a while, when we'd get unhappy with something. Instead of building seventy tires a day, some days every guy would build three or four tires. You had to stay at that machine, because if you didn't you was in trouble. You tried to stretch five tires into all night instead of seventy. It was long nights! The foremen would be around every once in a while wanting to know what you were doing. "Just hard at it." "Keep at it."

Back then you'd run the machine. It was all manual. Today, all the machines are controlled, and there ain't many ways you can beat the machine. Today the machine runs you, so you don't have as much getting done early. New machinery came in that was more restrictive in the late fifties and early sixties. Automation tied you to the machine, really.

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Striking Back: Wildcats and Union Power in the 1950s

The drive for increased productivity in the postwar period met determined resistance on the shopfloor. Workers perceived a threat to their rights and feared further deterioration of working conditions. As collective bargaining agreements were extended to a larger number of American workers than ever before, companies and unions settled on wage and fringe benefit packages that raised earnings to unprecedented levels but also imposed restrictions on shopfloor actions. Despite these restrictions, workers turned to wildcat strikes to defend their interests and create greater leverage in contract negotiations.

Traditions of shopfloor control were deeply embedded in the work culture of many skilled trades. But in the huge, integrated, mass production plants of the packinghouse, rubber, and farm equipment industries, work stoppages by even a handful of strategically placed production workers could bring the work to a halt. Codes of conduct in such strikes were well defined"the shift that takes you out is the shift that takes you back," for instance. Bonds of loyalty extended from a department to an entire shift to the whole plant. That loyalty, cemented by wartime ties of veterans and the spirit of union solidarity built in bitter organizing campaigns, made the strikes enormously effective and left managers with little recourse but to settle quickly on the workers' terms.

With the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, managers hoped to have a tool for curtailing wildcat strikes. The law prohibited strikes during the term of a contract and permitted employers to sue unions for breach of contract when work stoppages occurred. But enforcement was another matter. For a number of years, the constitutionality of the law remained in question. But even after it was enforceable, employers had to show union culpability. Union leaders became adept at distancing themselves from direct involvement in wildcats, while subtly supporting members in their actions. Many employers also realized that suing unions could be counterproductive; industrial relations could become wholly chaotic in the poisoned aftermath of a suit or in the absence of a union. Even in the changing legal environment of the 1950s, workers enjoyed considerable power rooted in their solidarity and their capacity to act forcefully.

Some union leaders found the shopfloor militancy excessive, while others recognized it as an essential tool in the collective bargaining process. Gradually, through concerted company pressure, the moderating influence of some union leaders, and a decline in the postwar culture of solidarity, the wildcat

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was tamed. Nevertheless, workers continued to turn to shopfloor actions under extreme conditions where all other options had failed or in circumstances where such actions could be deployed in a disciplined, graduated fashion.

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Direct action by workers to solve problems in the workplace took a variety of forms. Telephone workers utilized their knowledge of the production process to impede the work when the company proved intransigent. Erma Wiszmann and other members of the Communication Workers of America (CWA) in Davenport called on supporters in the labor movement to exert financial pressure on the company by withholding payment of bills. Some tactics were simply designed to embarrass the company in front of their management peers.

Now, the one thing that national CWA always preached is not to be doing vandalism that breaks something down and costs whole bunches of money. But the kinds of sabotage that we used involved blocking number banks at certain times of the day when heavy calling occurs. Then a lot of the big heavy users couldn't get through, and they've got big business hanging by a phone call. By blocking those numbers we would cause them to call the Bell management and say, "You get that problem settled over there, because we're losing dollars over here."

Only ten customers at a time could have dial tones in any hundred-number banks. Like, say, 234-7300. Out of that 300 bank only ten customers could call at a time. You get your people to call those numbers during that time, then somebody else isn't going to get a dial tone and won't be able to call in or out, so that it is blocked out. You get forty or fifty members to do that at a certain time. It doesn't break the system down. It just blocks it for a while and irritates enough people that they call in.

Other things, of course, that we did wasn't real sabotage, but it was an irritant to the company, and it cost them money. We would just tell people not to pay their phone bills. You go around to all the unions in the area and say, "Everybody, don't pay your phone bill till this thing is settled." I don't know how many million dollars those phone bills come to, but that's not sitting in the bank collecting interest. Bell's losing money.

One of the fun things we did was we made a CWA flag out of an old bed sheet and ran it up a flagpole. Bell didn't like that at all. On Bell property. That didn't please them in the least, because somebody's going to call them and ha! ha! ha! Look what happened to you. It was very embarrassing to them.

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Slowdowns were among the most effective weapons workers had. Although they reduced workers' income, they also cut directly into the highly profitable incentive production that companies had come to rely on. Dick Sturgeon was at the center of the first slowdown at Sioux Tools in Sioux City and saw impact that it had in building solidarity throughout the shop.

We had the first ever slowdown. It was in my department, and it was over me. I had an eight-spindle drill press, and the job that I was running had seven spindles in it. The company come along and added a tool to the eighth spindle and said that they were going to come down and retime me on the added work. My foreman was one hell of a man and knew that I was going to have problems because I had learned on this machine how to really make every movement count. I was a high producer, and he knew it was going to be terribly hard for me to give a good study on that job. After the man come down and time-studied me, they raised the rate. They added work but they raised the rate, and the people in the department was just furious. I made the statement that if that's the way they're going to do their studies, as far as I was concerned 100 percent was considered to be a day's work and that was all they were going to get out of me. No more 45 percent extra. I was going to do a good day's work and I was going to go home. So everybody else adopted that, too.

One of the things about a slowdown like that is that it don't do a damn bit of good unless the company knows about it. So we had to get word to the office that we were doing it. Otherwise it would take two or three days for them to see the cards, and it'd be two or three days wasted. So we got word in to them by telling the right people in the plant. The time-study man come out and started pulling our incentive cards out of the rack and checking our production, and, by God, he seen that we were all down to standard, 100 percent. We were warned. We were told that if we didn't stop it and if they found out that it was organized and concerted we could be fired. People were threatened. I'm really proud of the guys because they really stuck to it, even with the danger of being fired. The business agent called and warned me, "You could be getting these guys fired if they find out that you got together on this." I was president of the lodge at the time, and I had to go to a staff conference meeting in Chicago. I really hated to leave because I just felt if I left the place was going to fall apart. I was gone for two days. When I come back I found out that they had taken each and every person in the office and talked to them and told them how foolish they were and that they should go back up and make incentive, and each of them stuck with it.

We just talked amongst ourselves. It wasn't any big rah rah rally type thing. We just talked individually amongst ourselves. Everyone was agreed that it had

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to be stopped because if they went on there was no sense in producing incentive. They'd take it all away from you.

We went for about three and a half weeks, and one day we got a message that we were wanted in the vice president's office. So I got the rest of the committee, and we went in there. He told us that they'd been looking at this rate and that our slowdown had nothing to do with this. They have an audit of all rates anyhow. They were looking at this rate, and they seen that possibly there could have been an error made, that they should've just looked at the time it took to do this extra work. They seen they had screwed up, so they were putting the rate back to the way it was before the change, but that our slowdown had absolutely nothing to do with that. He wanted us to understand that. It was very foolish, and we lost a lot of money. On the way out he said to meI was one of the last ones walking out the door"Get those assholes back to work." So I delivered the message back out to the department that the rate had been corrected and that the vice president wanted you assholes to get back to work! So we did. It added some fire to that plant. A lot of the old-timers started to become believers.

The slowdown is one of the most effective weapons, but it's one of the most dangerous ones, too. Number one, it's illegal. It's not protected concerted activity. A strike is protected concerted activity. A slowdown is not. You get your paycheck every week. You get your fringe benefits, your insurance every week. The companies make a lot of money off of incentive. In your cost of production you have your labor, you have your cost of parts, you have the overhead. For eight hours you figure in all three. But for incentive purposes, if you're making 25 percent more you're giving them two extra hours, and all they're paying for those two extra hours is the labor and the parts. No overhead whatsoever. Those two hours are pretty damn cheap for that company, and when you cut back from 125 percent to 100 percent you're depriving them of those two hours' production. You're also losing 25 percent of your salary, but you still get your regular paycheck every week.

Wildcats in some factories were born of a fighting spirit that a new generation of young veterans brought back into the plants at the end of the war. In the rubber plants of Des Moines, according to Lawrence Russell, the art of strategic work stoppages achieved a sublime form. With surging wages and high levels of employment, union leaders were strengthened in their collective bargaining by the shopfloor militancy that swept, at times almost out of control, around them.

When they opened the plant in 1945, the people they hired were too old to be in World War II. Those of us they hired in the early fifties had been in Iwo

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Jima or Okinawa in 1945. We came back after the war. We did whatever we had to do. We had other jobs. Finally, Firestone announced that they were going to open up a passenger side, and, heck, they hired eight hundred people at that time. So the whole bunch of us were of that age group. They wouldn't hire guys that had not served in the military. You had to be a veteran, so they were catching between 1949 to 1954 all veterans of World War II. That would've made our age at that time around thirty. We had a lot of fight in us. You know, you can't scare me. The attitude was, you cross my buddy up and I'll show you. I'll shut this place down. And we had all kinds of wildcat strikes for all kinds of dumb reasons.

We had a rule back in those days that the shift that takes you out is the shift that takes you back. If I'm on the day shift today and we walk out of that place, the afternoon shift and the night shift would not come in. If we came back tomorrow, then they would come in. No shift other than the one that took it out could start it back up. That was between us girls!

Back in those days people would follow. If they were screwing around with somebody up in one end of the plant, they were screwing around with me. The cohesion between union members was much, much closer. Today, rightly or wrongly, they want to know all the facts, and they want to stand in judgment. I do not think the company destroyed the wildcat strike. The people did themselves because they started judging the other guy's action. Thirty years ago we didn't do that. Whatever his reasons, that's good enough for me.

I cranked a wildcat strike up one time and forgot to have a reason. All of a sudden somebody wanted to know why we was on a wildcat strike, and then I had to come up with a reason. That was really embarrassing because I really hadn't thought about why we were doing it. The idea was to get out of the plant for a couple of days. We wanted a couple of days off. In those days, six and seven days was the rule, not the exception. There was all the overtime that you wanted. When we had a wildcat strike nobody really got hurt, because you'd come right back in and make it all up.

A slowdown is a slowdown, regardless of what the cause is. It would go all the way from playing games with the machinery to just plain not working. We would sometimes call it a quality pickup. We decided that we were going to put out 100 percent perfect work, and so it takes twice as long to build a tire. We might have a piece of machinery that wasn't working exactly right, so we'd pull the safety line, shut it down, and insist that the mechanic fix it right. We would follow the book right to the letter, and as with anything else, if you follow everything right to the letter this thing don't work. We refused to work any overtime. We could rotate this thing around, if you had it really organized, and we had it in years gone by. The company, as we visualized it, never got away suspending any-

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body without it costing them a helluva lot of money, because we wanted to make it just as expensive for them as we could.

It did a lot of things for the union, too. There's an awful lot of things in our collective bargaining agreements that we wouldn't have had if it hadn't been for the wildcat strikes. The company always believed that they were really putting the bee on the union officials with a wildcat strike. The truth of the matter was it gave credibility to the union official when he would walk in and say, "Now, lookee, I've got a problem out here on the floor, and I've got to have this or we're going to have some problems that we just don't know how to handle." If we hadn't had wildcats we'd have been far worse off than we are today.

I look back at the wildcats now with really mixed emotions. As a rank-and-file member, it was a lot of fun. It was a real carnival. If you was going to have a wildcat strike on the midnight shift, you wanted to get it done before the taverns closed. So then you could all go down and have a hell of a party. As a union official, they caused a lot of problems and a lot of grief because you had to be so awful careful. It was kind of a challenge to be able to keep the plant down for several days and make all the cosmetic dressings that we were trying desperately to get them back to work. It was a contest between the leadership here and the industrial relations manager across the street.

We had two legal strikes in 1954 and fifty-three illegal ones. The Taft-Hartley law was passed in 1948. It had certain restrictions about these things, but nobody exactly knew what the law meant. Arbitrators had not faced the questions of illegal strikes. The National Labor Relations Board had not really addressed these questions. There were cases in the Supreme Court. You pass a federal law like that in 1948, and it was probably six or seven years before anybody really knew what the impact of it was. So we were pretty much free to deal as we wanted to without fear of anything happening to us.

As a union leader my job is to direct and guide and lead the radicalism of the members, but it'd be far from me to ever say or do anything to temper that radicalism! In fact, I think it's great. As I now fade into the middle of the road, I know that the middle of the road has never brought about any changes. It's been the extremes and the radicals. That's where the idea to make this a nation came from.

A tradition of wildcat striking was well established at Armstrong Rubber in Des Moines during the 1950s. Not until the mid-seventies did Richard Dawson see that tradition begin to break down under strong pressure from the courts and the company. Even then, workers used brief in-plant work stoppages, where everyone went to the break area to settle disputes.

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Wildcats back in them days were just a way of life. The company came in one time, must've been about 1958, and fired every tire builder. Fired every one of us for a slowdown. As soon as we was fired, then naturally everybody else went out. They had a wildcat. That went on for about a week or so.

I remember one night we was all working eleven to seven on passenger tires. Somebody come around and said that the truck tires walked out. We all just said, ''Well, if they're out, we're going.'' So we all packed up our tools and out the door we went. When we got out in the parking lot there wasn't nobody out there. So we messed around a while and thought, well, we better get back to work. So we went back to work, and in the meantime the truck tire had heard that we was out, so they went out. We looked out and saw them, so we decided we'd go back again. By the time we got back out there, the truck tire decided we wasn't coming, and they went back in. That night we ended up with three walkouts before they ever got together in the street!

Back in them days very few months went by you didn't have one or two. At times they had reason to go. It might be too hot, or the foreman would get on somebody. They had most of the problems with walkouts from eleven to seven and three to eleven. We was all young kids in there, and it'd get up to a hundred degrees outside and somebody'd say, "Man, it's too hot to work. Let's go drink beer," and that's about all it took. We would take a day or two off!

Everybody stuck together, and the company knew they couldn't do things. They better not do it or we'd be in the street. So they were very cautious in what they did.

Very seldom anybody got fired for it. You didn't hear of the company suing the union then, because if they did they wouldn't have got no work. We would've just shut them down. The laws wasn't like they are today. Just different times.

Postwar adjustments in production and company efforts to increase productivity fueled the fires of shopfloor conflict. In some plants, like John Morrell in Ottumwa, a militant union tradition set limits on how far the company could go. From a position of power and stirred by decades of enmity toward an autocratic management, the union leadership used wildcats regularly "to whack 'em" and let them know that "you're running the show." Jack McCoy represented a faction within the union that grew restive with the warfare on the shopfloor.

The Filliman forces had control of the local through the war. There was a scattering of Filliman followers in damn near every department. To characterize them as the left wing of the local is erroneous. Even those who were certainly not left wing politically followed them. That lasted until the year 1950. Even

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though Ed was gone on the international staff, he was still in there every week servicing the local, part of which was clandestine meetings at Champ's joint or Walker's. I guess Ed thought he was a junior-size John L. You whack 'em as often as you need to to teach the company that you're running the show.

Some of the wildcats were spontaneous. Some of them Ed agitated from the joint. Sometimes guys would go out for a beer, a sandwich at Walker's on break, and Ed would be out there stirring and the goddamn thing would break open as soon as the guys got back in there fifteen minutes later. I think in some cases Ed planned them as retaliation against a supervisor or against maybe a grievance lost, but oftentimes they were just called on the goddamn floor by a steward. We had no way of spanking this steward to prevent it from happening again. It became anarchy there. That's what ultimately led to the trusteeship. The idea was to hurt them. You don't hurt them by necessarily taking care of their product. The chains would continue, and the foremen would put it in the freezers.

The whole trend towards suing unions for these sorts of things really occurred after that, in the very early fifties. We had built-in militancythey weren't going to take us on in a life-and-death struggle as long as they wanted to keep that plant in operation. If they had filed a lawsuit against us, criminy, that would've compounded their problems. Their labor relations was lousy enough as it was.

In 1949 and 1950, you're talking about guys who've come back from the service. They were union members prior to going into the service, many of them. They were not timid guys, but they had started raising their families, and they needed a more stable income. They couldn't afford to lose three and four days a week. And after a few weeks, a few months, a year or so, they began to ask questions about the necessity for this. And they began to grumble and gripe in the locker rooms and cans.

People in the plant were getting tired of it. They were very loyal to a walkout. If a walkout started the place would clean out. But they were disgruntled and mad, angry that it was being called so often, sometimes as often as twice a week. It was in this atmosphere that I entered into the politics of the local in the year 1950.

The stewards were aggressive. I like to think that those of us who were on the executive board were a little more aggressive at times. It wasn't always true. We had a handle on it part of the time, other times we didn't have a handle on it. We tried very hard to sort out those walkouts that we thought were legit from those that we thought were just a game plan.

The packinghouse strike of 1948 ended in defeat and generated acrimony within the union. But it also reignited the shopfloor militancy of packinghouse workers. According to Ralph Helstein, by adopting hit-and-run

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strikes to resolve shopfloor grievances, the union became a very "hard nut" for the companies to crack.

After the '48 strike, we had some success in 1949 in contract negotiation and getting people back to work. This did make the union. We became an extremely hard nut for these companies to deal with. First of all, we developed new tactics, and we constantly switched them. We discovered, for example, that if you had four people working in a box shop in a mass production industry like meat-packing and they stopped working, they couldn't make boxes. If the company couldn't get boxes, they couldn't ship bellies. If they couldn't ship bellies, the coolers would get overloaded, and if the coolers got overloaded, you couldn't kill hogs and cut hogs because there was no place to put the bellies, and that was an important slice of dough. So with four people we'd close the whole plant in less than a week.

These companies came to know what this meant whenever we started it. It was amazing the stuff we got by with. The papers began to write editorials condemning this hit-and-run tactic. They're the ones that gave it the name. Hit-and-run strikes. I simply used to say, "Look, are you going to tell us when we can strike? We got a right to strike anytime we want. Are you going to tell us how long we have to strike for? Are you going to tell us what part of the plant we got to strike?" They didn't know what to say.

A Whirlwind of Bitterness: The John Deere Strike of 1950

The turmoil of postwar industrial relationsthe struggle for control over the shopfloor and for the fruits of increasing productivityproduced a series of bitter strikes that punctuated the changing relations of labor and capital. They were tests of power in a new and uncertain environment. The 1948 packinghouse strike was one such test. The John Deere strike of 1950 was another. Both precipitated serious crises for their respective unions, and each produced bitter shopfloor relations between management, union loyalists, and scabs that lasted for years.

Normalcy came to the industrial relations of some firms more slowly than it did others. At John Deere, while the union had been recognized during the early war years, the company never fully accepted it. As one local leader put it, "They didn't really recognize us. They tolerated us from the time we organized till 1950. . . . And they damn near broke us in that one."

The strike was companywide and occurred over the failure to reach agree-

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"Don't Scab on My Dad." Wives and children of UAW members took over

picket line duties on the morning John Deere & Company obtained an injunction

limiting picketing, Des Moines, 1950. State Historical Society of Iowa, Des Moines.

ment on a new contract. However, local grievances over incentives and working conditions precipitated wildcats that preceded the general walkout. Some plants, like the one in Des Moines, had opened after the war. Most of the workers were new, and as one put it, the work force "wasn't a family yet."

The key event in the strike was the opening of the plant gates to scabs. In Des Moines and Waterloo unprecedented violence between workers and scabs followed and spilled over into the communities. The hardships of the strike and the actions of a few union leaders produced internal divisions in the union that further hobbled the strike in some communities.

When the strike was settled after three and a half months of exhausting battle, the workers reentered the plant to resume their jobs, only to find themselves working alongside former union members now marked as traitors. Over the next five years, in the face of continuing hostility toward the scabs, union leaders preached reconciliation in the interest of rebuilding a strong union. Slowly, incrementally, that reconciliation was effected and the

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union rebuilt. For some, however, the bitterness was never extinguished. The 1950 strike fundamentally changed the company's attitude toward the union. A new relationship was crafted that guaranteed the union a measure of recognition in return for relative labor peace. To insure their peacefulness, future strikes occurred under conditions that were carefully negotiated beforehand.

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In Des Moines, the John Deere strike of 1950 took a nasty turn when, early in the strike, the company began recruiting scabs. The plant had only been open for a year or so, and, according to James Steinbach, the union had not yet had a chance to build a sense of family among the younger workers recruited to work there. That came with the struggles and hardships of the strike, but so did enmity toward those who scabbed. Gradually, over the years, many of the scabs rejoined the family, and some even achieved positions of leadership.

We struck for three and a half months, and that was a bitter strike, boy. We had shotgun battles. We had everything. My wife and I lived over at 1432 East Court, and we had our only son at that time, Jimmy. One night, during the middle of the night, those scabs came to my house. They tore the screen door clear off the hinges, and they were going to get me and my family. So I told Helen to call the law. I said, "There's one of those guys, I recognize his voice. If they get in this house we got problems." Now this was scabs. Just as they were getting the other door open the law came around. But they got away. From that day on I carried a .38 Beretta and didn't make no bones about it. That's how tough that strike was. Them scabs had their cars full of guns.

One day we were coming from the picket line. I'll never forget it. Harold Rouse was the union time-study guy. He had a 1949 Mercury. I can't remember who was riding in the front seat, but I was riding in the backseat. We was coming from the picket line on the west side of the plant. We got down in front of a farmhouse. And somebody turned loose with a 30.06, a high-powered rifle. And that old bullet just whizzed by my ear, you know. That's the way it was for three and a half months, I'll tell you. It was a terrible situation.

This was a companywide strike, but the company picked out what they thought was the weakest plant, and our plant was the newest. They figured being new, being all them young guys, just a variety of everybody, especially around a big city like Des Moines, which really isn't a union town, that they stood a chance of breaking the strike and breaking the union, like the plant manager said. So they swung the gates open, and I'll tell you, from that time on, we really had a donny-

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brook. No matter where you went. You go in a bar, buddy, just be prepared, because somebody will get the shit knocked out of him.

In Des Moines they thought they could get away with opening the gates. They thought that they were going to break this union up, and they were bound and determined to do it. They would get their supervisors and have them call their employees in certain departments and areas. In Des Moines and Ankeny, Madrid and Boone, they'd contact the guys personally at their house. Or go to the bars and try to talk them into coming back to work. They done that for a long, long time.

The union had informational meetings. We were down in the old CIO hall on East Sixth and Locust. We had what we called the grocery store on the second floor. We had our little get-togethers. Little rallies. We'd go out and mooch food. We were big moochers in them days, because we'd mooched all our lives. We knew how to do it.

The Packinghouse guys were very good. The Ford local over here, 991, they would take up gate collections. Rubber Workers done the same thing. We were all young. Hell, most of us were in our early twenties. The older guys really helped us out. Jim McDonnal, Harry Booth. Mike Cole, George Palmer. If it wasn't for George Palmer I may have been dead three or four times. He protected me a hell of a lot, because those scabs were after my ass, ain't no question about it. They were waiting for me wherever I went.

During the strike I was very bitter, and after the strike you still have them no-good scabs. But some of the guys come to the union meeting. They paid their dues, and they stood up at the meetings and explained themselves, "Look, we didn't know what the hell was going, on. The foremen would entice us. They would come to our house. They would call us on the phone, you know, 'You got to come back or you ain't got no job no more.'" All those kind of damn things. And the guys were young, eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old. They didn't understand what the situation was. They begged forgiveness. Some of them are in the plant today, union officials, and good ones. In fact, I personally have helped one of them get elected three or four times, because he's a good guy. He was eighteen at the time. I worked with the guy. When I went back to work, we really had our differences. But I'm a forgiving guy. I stuck up for the guys. Still, there was a handful of them scabs that never did join the union again. Never did.

There is still a feeling in that plant today. I can walk through that factory right now. Some of the old guys will say, "Remember the old scab over there?" Right today, thirty years later. There's still a hell of a lot of bitterness with some of the guys, but there isn't with me. They have paid a lifetime. Because the guys that work with them just don't forget it. No matter how hard they beg forgiveness, guys don't forget.

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Being a good union man was born and bred in me, and you never think about crossing a picket line. You don't even give a damn whether you lose your job. Never thought once we'd ever lose. I was bound and determined, by God, we wasn't going to. And all the union guys felt the same damn way. Hey, they were go-getters. We were fighting for our jobs and for our union, and we put up a hell of a fight, and we won, too. And the company knew that. They still make comments about that. "We know we can't beat you, so we don't try anymore." So what we do now when we go on strike, we sit down with management. We set down ground rules, say, "This is the way it's going to be. This is who we'll let in the factory and who we won't let in the factory." We know before we go into it, and the company is very cooperative.

By the time the 1950 John Deere strike had ended the union had seen nearly half of its members cross the picket line. Though union loyalists, like Gene Condon, were angry at the scabs, they recognized that the union's survival depended on bringing them back into the union. In Waterloo, it was a difficult process that took nearly five years to complete.

We went on strike August the 8th, 1950, and I didn't return until January 2nd of 1951. The strike was over incentive grievances and working conditions. We had over eighteen hundred people, almost half our members, cross the picket line. Our job then was to rebuild this local and get the people back in who had scabbed on us during that long strike.

After the strike the company put out the word that the foremen were to hold meetings with all their employees and the future use of the word scab was to be prohibited. Of course, it never was.

We tried different things to get them back in the union. In fact, we started holding meetings just for scabs, or for the free riders. We'd hold departmental meetings. We'd hold area meetings. We'd hold plantwide meetings of the free riders that were left. And the word got out that we didn't abuse them. We asked honest questions. We asked them to stand up and say what they had against the union. And we took some heat from them, and they, of course, took some from us. But we tried to be diplomatic about it.

By 1955 we had the vast majority of them back into the union. In fact, we had another strike. This time those men who scabbed in 1950 spent more time on the picket line so that everybody could see them to prove that, by golly, they were back in the good graces of the union. The strike only lasted a week, primarily because the company saw those people who crossed the picket line before out there manning those picket gates. It had a hell of a psychological effect on them.

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The personal hardships of a long strike deepened the bitterness union members felt toward those who had scabbed at John Deere in Waterloo. For Mike Adams, the timely help that union members provided his family gave renewed meaning to the principle of union solidarity.

The day before the strike I busted a gourd. My appendix burst, and I was rushed to the hospital. I spent thirty-one days in the hospital and then two months on medical, recuperating. The company paid my medical bills, but there was no sick benefit at that time. It made me a stronger union man. I laid out in the hospital for about four days, not knowing anybody. Real ill. Five children at home. No money. Nobody had ever saved any money in those days, with five kids particularly. My wife came out to see me when I first started recuperating. She was crying. She come in the room. She was real sad and disconsolate. She didn't know how she was going to make ends meet, pay the house payment. She said, "Dad, you wouldn't believe it. An officer of the union came out today, knocked on the door and gave us a check for nineteen dollars, told us that it'd be nineteen dollars a week at our door" until I got back on my feet again so I could function properly. It doesn't sound like much, but nineteen dollars a week kept us in food and clothes for those kids. You never forget a group of people like that.

Things was rough. After 109 days, it was getting bad. People had kids, and they had to have money for groceries. School shoes and clothes. The union bought a lot of clothes and a lot of overshoes for these kids.

And probably the most important of all was Christmas was rolling around, and we didn't have any money. The UAW came into town and set up a program where you could go to Montgomery Ward's and buy Christmas presents for your kids up to a certain amount. Mostly overshoes and warm clothing. They made the down payment and agreed that they would keep up the payments until the strike was over. That was a big deal for us people, because we were sitting there with nothing for Christmas. My kids had a good Christmas that year. They all got new pajamas, they got overshoes, and they got a new shirt or a blouse. My parents took care of the few toys that they got.

After the strike the membership was down, but not too bad. They're quite a breed of cats in these factories. Let's face it. When you go through a strike like we went through you get together pretty well.

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The first women hired in the sausage-making department at Tobin Packing

Company, Fort Dodge, 1939. Left to right: Bessie Rubos, Mary Katnik,

Ronnie Cornwell, Charlotte Kulild, Regina Hruska. Mary (Katnik) St. John.

7

Coming to Terms: Gender, Race, and the New Solidarity

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An era of depression and war had seen the tables turn for workers in Iowa and throughout the country. The generation that came of age in the 1920s and 1930s brought closer to realization a new order of equity in the workplace than had any previous generation of workers. By the war's end employers begrudgingly accepted, at least for the time being, the fact of unions representing their employees.

But the war had reordered the workplace in other ways as well. Women, African-American, and Hispanic workers broke through the walls of discrimination that had for generations consigned them to low-paying, dead-end, and often dangerous work. An invigorated labor movement had gradually come to see that its interest lay in defending these gains and preventing employers from using low-wage workers to undermine labor's new status.

But peacetime also meant coming to terms with the historical social and cultural divisions among workers that undermined the solidarity of the labor movement. Were the gains made by women and minority workers during the war to be temporary, or did they represent a fundamental break with the social patterns of the past? From the union-building experiences of the depression and war, could workers construct a new solidarity that would overcome the historical divisions that had hobbled the labor movement at moments of its greatest promise?

Women had been familiar with the domain of wage work even in the earliest phases of the industrial revolution. As home-based outworkers in the shoemaking and garment industries, as factory workers in Lowell, Massachusetts, and other New England textile towns, and as domestic servants in elite households throughout the land, women played a central role in the social transformation of America that accompanied industrialization. For most women, wage work mingled with housework and childbearing over the course of a lifetime. The patterns held with remarkable consistency across time and region, even as the numbers of wage workers grew. Although a very large proportion of young single women went out to work in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and married women managed the diverse and arduous tasks of a household economy to supplement the meager earnings of male breadwinners, women's economic status continued to be defined as secondary and supplementary to that of males.

Women's economic role was particularly critical in the depression of the 1930s, as it had been in previous depressions. But employers, government officials, and unions continued to affirm the "family wage" as a normative principle in the labor market, with the effect that women's work was marginalized and defined as temporary. Despite suffrage and the fact that a

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growing proportion of women had essentially become breadwinners for life, their status as wage workers was precarious.

For most African-American men and women, the transition from slavery to freedom had brought the construction of new forms of dependency that shackled their lives to a backward system of agriculture. Over the decades, large numbers left sharecropping and drifted cityward into the lowest rungs of the wage economy. Periodically, as during World War I, the tide of migration from the land swelled dramatically. Despite their entry into the mass production industriessuch as meat-packing, steel, auto, and coalunder conditions of extraordinary demand, they had little success in breaking out of the lowest paying, dirtiest departments that came to be racially defined. African-American women, vastly overrepresented as domestic workers in both the South and the North, occupied a different sort of economic ghetto.

Depression only accentuated racial divisions within the working class. Although economic hardship cut across the color line, the condition of black workers was more precarious than that of whites. Mexican-Americans worked almost exclusively in railroad section gangs and as agricultural laborers. Family support and return migration to Mexico were primary strategies for coping with the hardships of the depression.

The trade union movement had occasionally constructed bridges of solidarity that crossed the racial divide. A deeply rooted culture of racism within the white working class and the festering effects of job competition, however, kept racial divisions well defined. The heroic efforts of the Knights of Labor in the 1880s, longshoremen's unions and the United Mine Workers in the decades around the turn of the century, and steelworkers and packinghouse workers at the end of World War I could not permanently root out those divisions.

The CIO unions stood at a crossroad in 1945. Their organizing success in the last years of the 1930s was in no small measure due to their capacity to mobilize workers without regard to gender or race behind the task of building new unions that would defend the interests of all workers. To organize successfully ''from cellar to roof'' meant to challenge the structure of racial and sexual division in the workplace and the community. The new unions became, by dint of their commitment to principle and pragmatic self-interest, institutions that represented all workers.

Peacetime would show that industrial unionism had submerged but not destroyed racial and sexual divisions. In varied ways those divisions resurfaced. In some cases, like the explosive killing of a white striker by an African-American scab in the 1948 packinghouse strike at Waterloo, a local

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union's commitment to interracial organization would hold and diffuse racial polarization. In other situations, like the bitter fight over the seniority rights of women in the packinghouses, tensions simmered for years and then exploded with hostility and legal recrimination in the 1960s. Women, African-American, and Hispanic workers would on occasion have to organize to demand their rights within the labor movement as they would simultaneously challenge discriminatory practices within their communities. In the process they constructed the foundations of a new and more powerful labor solidarity.

Shifting Boundaries: Women Working in a "Man's World"

Wartime labor shortages set in motion changes in "men's" and "women's" work that proved irreversible. Women war workers discovered, as did their employers, that they could do "men's" work. Despite a tacit understanding that their claims to these jobs were for the duration of the war emergency and that they would return to their traditional domains once the GIs returned, many women found the new status, the additional income, and the work itself to be attractive.

Women's employment fell sharply at the end of the war but did not go down to prewar levels. By 1950 more women than ever were in the labor force. What reappeared after the war was a more clearly delineated boundary separating "men's" and "women's" work. Women who remained in the labor force or who were hired after the war found themselves concentrated in "women's" departments. Men reclaimed their jobs in other departments.

The boundaries between "men's" and "women's" work were rationalized by a set of assumptions about the different physical capabilities of men and women. While biological differences had long been the basis for justifying separate spheres of men's and women's activities, these arguments were made with new conviction. Men, and many women, accepted these norms as natural and immutable.

Male trade unionists often found themselves in a bind. As men they were inclined to accept the norms of a patriarchal society, but as trade unionists they embraced the principles of solidarity. As committed trade unionists they were prepared to defend the rights of their union sisters to representation, but as men they were often blind to inequities of pay, sexual harassment, and discrimination in seniority and promotion.

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Structural changes in the economy and the continuing technological revolution in American industry undermined the sexual division of labor. As workers were displaced in certain departments, they sought to claim their seniority rights to continued employment. If those departments were made up predominantly of male or female workers, they were forced by economic necessity to question the legitimacy of the boundaries that divided "men's" and "women's" work. With some men and women doing the same work, the "natural" inequities of pay were called into question. Conflicts erupted within the workplace and in the ranks of unions as the boundaries that divided men and women gradually dissolved.

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New technologies and the breakdown of traditional domains of women's work meant that workers regardless of sex had opportunities to choose employment within a plant based on their seniority rights. But Betty Noe, a rubber union official from Keokuk, was uneasy about the prospects for both men and women as they transferred into less-familiar work for which, in many cases, they were less suited.

When they replaced the big steam molds with the big hydraulic molds which we have, the women started transferring to those jobs. It was more or less a peaceful transition, although I wasn't very happy about some of those women taking those mold jobs, because I knew from experience that eventually it was going to hurt them. As a union officer it was not my right to stop these employees if they wanted to do that. I was representing them. I tried to explain to them what could happen, but you do not explain to young people what the consequences can be ten or fifteen years from now. So they wanted the jobs, mainly because there was a lot of money to be made there.

Some of the jobs, sure, they were a picnic for a woman to do, if she was dexterous enough to do it. In fact, women are better at some jobs than men are, when it comes right down to using their hands. There were also jobs that it was not physically possible for a woman to do, but you didn't have any choice. When you once got into that category of doing a man's job, then it took up all the jobs. You just couldn't say, "Well, now, that's a job I can do," or this one. In other words, when the women started moving across that line into that category of men's jobs, you took your best hold, because if a supervisor said, "This is the job you're going to do," and you said, "Well, I can't do that." "Sorry about that. You wanted these jobs. Now you're going to have to do them or else."

And men, too. There was men who absolutely were embarrassed at times when there'd start to be a downgrading of people for a layoff. These men would

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go into trimming. Now, some men can do it, but not all men can work with a pair of scissors.

I'm not saying there should be a divine line between men's and women's jobs. I'm saying there are some jobs that a woman is not physically able to do. There's just nothing to do about that. But then there's other jobs that, as long as they're qualified and sure they can do the job, I see no reason why they can't.

Some of these parts that these women trim have so many angles in them that you must have the dexterity to be able to use a pair of sewing scissors, and that is almost duck soup for a woman to do. For a man it's not as easy. Men found out that, well, it was just not their cup of tea, because a man is more active physically than a woman is. A woman can sit and sew by the hour, where a man it would drive him finally crazy, unless they were trained as a tailor.

Cutbacks in jobs that had traditionally been women's led to increasing demands by displaced women for access to some of the work that had traditionally been in men's domain. As Julia Naylor discovered, those demands brought active resistance and hostility from many men in the packinghouses, especially on the kill and cut at Tobin's in Fort Dodge.

In 1950 when I started down at Tobin's, women weren't working on the cut and kill. They were working in sliced bacon. They worked in sausage and smoked meat and down in the gut shanty. There wasn't really a push to get on the cut and kill until they started phasing out the bacon. They cut out night slice. Then they cut the day down, and you had these women that had to have jobs. The personnel manager knew there was jobs up there that women could do. They just never had let them. Like making boxes and scaling some of the lighter stuff. So, as I remember, he just sort of did it. Then they got into it. When you start doing jobs that men were doing you wanted that pay, too. There was a great big deal about that. When we first went there you didn't have anything to do with the knives or anything. But the more you kept going the more you learned how to do, till eventually the job classifications was just gone.

The men didn't like it. They really didn't. They figured that women were trying to take jobs away from them. There were some arguments because you figure if I have to do this job I want the same amount of pay. It took a while for them to get used to the idea, that after all, the women were going to do it so they might as well make up their minds to go on because they're going to have to work with them anyway. At first they didn't want to help you. You wanted it, you got it, now you do it the best way you can. They weren't used to women in these departments doing these jobs, because these were all men's jobs, and they just didn't like it. Period. That's all there was to it.

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Sexual harassment was ever-present for women workers. The unchecked authority of supervisors, before unions gained recognition and seniority rights, meant that women could be assigned to jobs based on their youthfulness, attractiveness, or willingness to abide the attentions of their male supervisors. Velma Otterman encountered a department superintendent at Rath's in Waterloo who harassed women working under his direction.

We had a department superintendent, if he got his eye on you that he wanted to go out with you, you either went or you got the dirty jobs around there, like slicing liver or cleaning out braunschweiger that had broke, and you'd have to dig down and get that zisking out of there. Or peeling onions. No matter how long you had worked there, if you didn't want to go out with him, those were the jobs you got the next day. That's one of the reasons I got active in the union, because I didn't want to go out with him.

One day I was cutting casings, and he come in and jumped all over me because the night before he had asked me to meet him, and I didn't meet him. I had a knife that cut strings, and I started after him with that knife. Then I thought, oh no, this is no good. Well, a supervisor over him took my card so he could not get it. I was quitting. But the supervisor told me to come back. He said, "You don't want to give up your job." I said, "Well, I can't work with him." So I took a transfer to another department.

I was eighteen about that time. He was an old man. He must've been sixty-five. There for a while he liked my girlfriend. Her husband was in the war in the navy. He wanted me to get him a date with her. And I said, "She won't go with you. She's got a husband and a family." He says, "I said get her over there," to his tavern. So I told her what kind of a fix I was in. She said, "Well, we'll go." We went over, but we took four other girls with us, so there was no room for him in that booth. "Well," I said, "I did what I was told. I got her over there. You said you'd take care of it.'' So that kind of let me off the hook for a while, but then that's when he turned on me because I didn't make her understand that she had to go with him. Things like that went on.

You could always tell which ones he liked, because they got the best jobs. There was one old woman there. I felt so sorry for her. She had been there before I, and she was tying ring liver. And she liked her job. When there was going to be a layoff, the two bosses, superintendent and the boss, would walk up and down the aisle, and these older women would put their heads down and just work like the devil. The bosses would point at one and talk to each other about it. Then they'd go down and look at the other tables and point at somebody. That was mental cruelty, because these old ladies had to have a job. Jobs weren't plentiful then. And first thing you knew, these older ones was the ones that got

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laid off, instead of taking the younger ones. Instead of saying, "You go because you're younger," they'd pick the older women, and they'd have to be laid off. And they'd be mad not at them but at us. You couldn't go up and say, "You leave that woman stay and I'll go." It sure made enemies.

Women struggled daily with all kinds of discrimination and harassment on the shopfloor. Doris Peick of Cedar Rapids found her advancement blocked by the favoritism shown the "old boys" at Collins Radio. Only by taking initiatives on behalf of women and assuming positions of leadership, despite male opposition, were she and others able to claim their rights, assisted by the new civil rights legislation of the 1960s.

I worked in deburring, among other places, during cutbacks and bumps, removing the sharp edges from punch press parts or machine shop parts. I used to train men who got paid more salary than what we women did on how to do deburring, handling air blowers, air deburrers, and files. They would be making more money than what we women were, and they'd say, "Oh, you women can't handle those jobs." And, hell, we'd been doing it.

I will never forget when I took my first B-line test. It was a mechanical test for jobs that paid a lot of money. Men held all those jobs, and I used to see them standing in the corners talking fishing and fooling, and I resented it so badly because we old girls were sitting in there in receiving and inspection or in deburring or the paint shop, just working our buns off for a lot less money. So I went up to the test office. The man running the test office said, "Hey, you don't want this job. It's a terrible job. They grease up the handle. They talk dirty. You'd be on your feet all day long." And I thought, yeah, what do you think you do at home? I said, "What do you mean I don't want this job? The hell I don't. Give me the test." So I took the test and, of course, I didn't make it. But I didn't let it deter me. I didn't let them put the fire out. So I tried the machine shop test instead of the sheet metal, and I thought, to hell with you old boy, I'm going to try another side of the test. I had not had physics in high school, but mechanically I could take a Model A apart and put it back together on the farm, and I never had a problem with screws, bolts, nuts, or whatever. I could read a blueprint frontwards and backwards. So the good old boy in that test office said, "Doris, have you ever had any physics?" I said, ''No." "Go down to the library. Get some basic physics books." The next day as soon as the library opened I trotted down there, and I brought home a stack about three feet tall of physics books.

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Women assemblers at Collins Radio, Cedar Rapids, ca. 1960.

State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

I was the first woman to pass that test in the machine shop legally, without help from the good old boys. They would give the boys the answers, and they would pass the test. But the good old girls weren't even allowed to come close. My second husband said to me, "What do you want to work at that job for?" I said, "Because I want the money. I'm working. I might as well get as much money as I can. I'm qualified." I had that problem even in my own marriage. The men cornered him and said, "Hey, you're not going to help your wife pass that test are you?" I cornered him at the kitchen table, and I said, "You help me with trig, because I haven't had that since high school.'' By golly, I passed that test, and I got it. I was the first woman in the machine shop on engine lathes.

You didn't have to have physics and trig; you had engineers to help you. Finally the unionGod love themfought to get rid of that idiot's test. Most women have not had physics in high school. I had a lot of math and chemistry, but most women don't go for those things like I did.

There was also discrimination in overtime practices. That was one of the reasons I became a union steward because I thought, I'm going to watch the overtime

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books. A union steward audits the overtime books in our plant. If you didn't watch the books, the good old boy supervisors would take care of their friends, and you get bypassed on overtime.

At Collins we've always had more women than men employed. But because we live in this geographical district there's a lot of people who come in from the rural area, and a lot of women in the rural area are entrenched in the attitude that, hey, a woman's place is in the house, and it's not the House of Representatives, it's in their home. And they come in to help buy the farm or buy a load of cattle or feed. But they have not learned that they've come a long way. Women had been driving tractors. My God, I drove a car when I was ten years old. During the wartime you had to do your own thing, so I learned a lot about mechanics on the farm. You knew what a pipe wrench was. We knew where the grease guns were. So Iowa women are really very mechanically inclined, and for the most part all of us are just one or two generations off the farm. You have that background where you are out driving tractor with a pitchfork at hay time, or you're driving into town, or you're good enough to go out and haul the food and water to the men at haying time, but, boy, you're not good enough to drive a lift truck in the plant. Bullroar.

When I organized a women's committee, at the suggestion of Betty Talkington, oh, my God, it was a threat to the men. Oh, my God. Business agents used to peek around the corners. "We don't want this to get too far away, because the women are going to take over the union." "Oh," I said, "look, all I want to do is educate some women. Now, leave me alone. I don't give a damn about what you do in that union hall, but let me educate the women.'' So this women's committee was formed despite the male chauvinist attitude at that time in the leadership. Doris Peick was a very dominant, aggressive, straight-out, hardworking type of person, and I was always a threat to a lot of male egos. I learned to live with it at a very early age. It does not bother me now. You know, come on world, I'll take you on.

Equal Rights and Seniority: Packinghouse Women Fight for Their Jobs

Seniority rights represented a hard-fought victory for unions in the 1930s and 1940s. They offered protection against arbitrary and discriminatory behavior by management in the promotion and layoff of workers. But the system of dual seniority for men and women produced its own pattern of discrimination in the packinghouses. Mechanization and speedup dispro-

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portionately eliminated jobs in the "women's" departmentssliced bacon, sausage-making, canning. Dual seniority meant separate seniority lists for men's and women's jobs. Cutbacks might reach deep into the women's seniority list, affecting some who by the late 1950s or early 1960s had been in the plant for fifteen or twenty years. Those women were not permitted to cross the boundary into "men's" departments and bump men with less seniority.

The problem reached crisis proportions in some plants by the early 1960s. The 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of race or sex created an opening for women to challenge the sexual division of labor in the packinghouses. Iowa women, particularly at Rath Packing in Waterloo and John Morrell in Ottumwa, were at the forefront of those challenges.

The Ottumwa case reveals the tensions that erupted between men and women in locals of the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA). The local had a proud tradition of union militancy. Steeled in struggles with a bitterly antiunion firm in a deeply class-divided town, the male leadership was committed to traditional notions of male-female spheres. Women had been accepted during the war in nontraditional work, but union activists were committed at the war's end to the exclusion of women from "men's" work. Dual seniority served to codify that division while protecting the rights of women within their sphere.

By the 1960s, with jobs fast disappearing in traditionally "women's" departments, a core of female union activists sought to remedy the situation. They were encouraged by the new civil rights legislation. In Ottumwa a group of women packinghouse workers filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charging the company and the union with employment discrimination. The complaint produced negotiations between the company, the union, and the aggrieved women. The leaders of the international suggested a modified seniority system, the ABC system, that reclassified all jobs within the plant into men's, women's, or open categories. But the agreement on these principles produced bitter reaction from men in the plant who systematically moved to control all C jobs or with company cooperation to make them unattractive to women. When conciliation efforts failed, twenty-one women brought suit against the company and the union under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The case was eventually thrown out of court on a technicality.

Not all packinghouse women supported these challenges to sexual discrimination, and not all locals were so resistant to the fair implementation

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of the ABC system. Gradually, in many locals, tensions abated. Women moved into a wider range of jobs and began to assume a more significant role in the leadership of their locals.

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After the war many women in the packinghouses moved into departments that predominantly employed females. Mechanization and declining production took a particularly heavy toll in these departments. But as these women sought to claim their seniority rights to other jobs in the plant, they faced adamant resistance from male workers. In 1966 a group of women from Local 1 of the UPWA sued the John Morrell Company and the union under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 over sexual discrimination in the elimination of jobs at the Morrell plant in Ottumwa. Ethel Jerred became a spokesperson for the "twenty-one."

The plant wasn't actually slowing down. It was just in the manufacturing area, the female departments, canning and sliced bacon, and gain time was one of the things that helped create this. Whenever they cut a department back, the one with the least amount of seniority was the one that was getting laid off. The only way that they could come back into the plant was that they'd have to bump into a department where they had seniority, a woman's department, and all of those departments were down. But they could not go over into the men's areas in the pork division, like the kill and the cut and the offal, trimming room, or the beef house.

Now, there was some men caught in this as well, but they didn't have the seniority that some of the women had. When they would call back, the men would get called back who had less plant seniority. They were hiring brand new men back in the plant. They'd go down to the college in Fairfield and all around. People who hadn't been in the plant. They'd take them up on the kill and the cut and these places. But the company should've at least given the women an opportunity to go into these areas, and maybe there were jobs that they could do. They were women who had been with the plant clear back in the war. Some of them had as high as twenty-two, twenty-eight years' rights. The company said, "No." This is when we began to realize that maybe we did the wrong thing. We didn't cover ourselves well enough when we left those jobs at the end of the war.

They were bringing in brand new people, and here we had people with twenty-eight years' seniority. The company would say, "Well, we don't want to hire them back because our sick leave for maternity is so high." All you had to do was look over the women's age group to find out that these women were past the reproductive age to begin with. Four had hysterectomies. Then they started pressing

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the union because the union said, ''As a union member, you are entitled to a job with your seniority. You're paying union dues." And that was their argument. But we had some in the union that would do nothing, nothing at all. They fought the women harder. Not on a state level. Not on an international level. On the local level.

We tried to get women to run for offices when we had our election once a year. You didn't stand a chance. Oh, we finally got a woman in there as a recording secretary, which isn't nothing. You don't hardly have a voice, let alone anything else. Never a woman as chief steward or president. I've come back from conventions where they would say, "Well, you women get out. Run for office." You're dead before you start. All you got to do is put your name up for nomination, right away they're starting things against you. Oh, she could run for woman's activity, which later on we changed to activity committee. With women's lib, they thought it just didn't look good to call it women's activity. We had one or two men that came in on that committee, and the guys heckled them so bad they dropped off.

In the midst of this seniority problem, we met at the Holiday Inn with the company. We tried to work out a new system. This was where the ABC system came up. The A work was too heavy for a woman to handle. That was strictly a man. The B was more or less classified as female. C was, I think, either one. And the men, in due respect, didn't cross over that line. These jobs were going to be set aside. They were the lower paying. We had a blackboard, and we'd try all kinds of different combinations to come up with something that maybe would be accepted by the company and the union and the membership.

We went over department by department, job by job, to see whether that would fit into category A, B, or C. We did this for approximately four weeks. Every job in the plant. Then we went back to our jobs, and the union officials went over these jobs. They were pretty much agreed on by the company at that time, and the union kind of went along. But then all this rumble started in the plant. You know, the men said, "Oh, the women are going to come up and grab our jobs." The comment was made to me, "Well, we'll call these women back, but by seven o'clock they'll be back on the street." And the company kind of went along with some of these tactics. Maybe a job would be making boxes or stamping hogs, and then she'd have to go over and maybe lift a big platform and pull it out at the end of a skid, which was never done before.

When the women got in there, the jobs had been manipulated. And the men would not do anything to help them at all. None whatsoever. If you couldn't handle a job, then you had to voluntarily disqualify yourself for that job. Once you disqualified yourself for that job, or that department, you could never go back in there again. And the only job that would ever come open again in that depart-

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ment would be that job. So you were a loser whichever way you went. And then you didn't have the union going back in there, arguing, "Say, look, this isn't the way this job was presented to us when we went over it. This is not the job description." Or try to have a meeting and say to the men, "Okay, let's try this. These are union members the same as you are. Let's try and see if we can't make this work." No. It was always a little bit more salt added on.

By nine o'clock, I think, all the women were back out again. I was threatened that if these women went back on the job they would wait for me. They'd wait in the alley. And then I got a call. My little girl was in school, and she couldn't have been over six then. They threatened me with her. We'd built a new home out in the country. We lived way out on a dead-end road. And they'd taken paintI don't have any idea who did itbut paint was all over the new carpeting in the living room. Had ripped the drapes off of the living room. I never did ever tell anybody how much damage was done to the home, because my pride wouldn't let me. I wasn't about to let anybody know they were going to get me down.

We had a meeting at the Coliseum, and the women said, "All right, we're going back, and this is the way it is." That's when I got up. I told them just exactly what had happened. I hadn't gone home. I went to the school and got my little girl and took her down to my mother's, and I told them I was not going to stop fighting, that this was the way it was. I wanted to get all my eggs in one basket, I said, then you'll all know just exactly what I'm going to do. That's when I made up my mind that we'd paid dues all these years, we were union members, we were entitled to just as much as any male that walked through that door. Because that's what the union stands for.

Some of the women couldn't take the pressure, but the twenty-one women hung on. They called back all the women who had been out. There was more than twenty-one. And the boss'd say, "Well, there's nothing else I can do. You'll have to disqualify yourself." When we came back out, that's when the suit came about. They'd got a lawyer out of Waterloo. They were working with some women from Waterloo, too, at that time.

We had some union officials that would not budge an inch on this ABC. Because that was votes, boy. That was votes that got them back in on them easy jobs, that they could sit out there in the union hall. I think if the international had come in here and put in an administratorwe had one at one timemaybe some of this would've been curtailed.

I was an alternate to go down to an international meeting in Kansas City. The fellow that I was an alternate for backed away so I could go. The local leaders didn't want me to get down there where Ed Filliman and the top people were to tell them exactly what was taking place in this plant. They had told me late

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Friday night, "Well, you've got two little kids. You can't make it," and all of this. I went home to my husband, and I said, "I've got to be there. I've just got to go." I called my mother, and she said, "You bring the kids in here. I'll take care of them." My husband said, "Well, we'll drive down.'' You can imagine the shock on their faces when I walked in the lobby. Ed Filliman saw me. I said, "Ed, I got to talk to you.'' And he said, "What's wrong?" I said, "The women are back out on the street. Now, where do we go from here?" When I come back from that meeting with the international, they knew, and I never could understand why something was not done.

When I came back to Ottumwa, I had a meeting with the girls. I had the address of the man in Washington, D.C., to contact on equal opportunity. We wrote up a discrimination. I did not have to sign my name to it because I wasn't the one who was being discriminated against. They were. We had proof that the younger men that went in the plant got the jobs. Grievances had been written on discrimination. They were throwed in the wastepaper basket. A union official, who was a secretary in the union, told me that when I'd walk out the door they was torn up and throwed in a wastepaper basket.

If the women hadn't pushed this, you would've been lucky to have found a hundred women in that plant when it closed. All you've got to do is go back over how fast the women were being eliminated. There was new employees in there. The company had their mind made up that they were going to get rid of the women. And everything was fine.

The company knew who they could use in the union to help better their cause to eliminate the women. So this is where the lawsuit came up. It was against both union and company, more or less to force them to recognize the women's rights as union members and as company employees. I always said, "What am I taking all my time for things like this?" I had plenty of seniority. I didn't have to worry. This was never going to benefit me. But before the plant closed, sliced bacon got down to one line. I had to go out in that plant and find me a job in the C group. As a spokesman and a leader for the ABC group, I knew I had to go out there. I could not take the layoff and go home, even though I could've. But I knew that I could not say to these women, "Well, now, this is good enough for you, but it's not good enough for me." So when I left sliced bacon I went up on the cutting floor. I could feel this tension from the men up there, because they knew I was outspoken. I didn't go up there looking for trouble. I went up there looking for work. These were jobs that was in this C category. On the day that the plant closed I was on a job splitting hog backs. I was using a knife.

At first, no, the men would not sharpen Ethel Jerred's knife. Maybe everybody else's, but not Ethel Jerred's. And you could've heard a pin drop the morning I walked in there. I knew the jobs up there, so I knew what job I was going for. My

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Members of the election committee tallying roll call votes at the District 3

convention, Unite Packinghouse Workers of America, Waterloo, March 1967.

Left to right: Lucious Webb, Local 8; Leonard Sipe, Local 3; Ethel Jerred, Local I.

UPWA District 3 Blade, State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

first job was trimming neck bones. These were the jobs the women were on. Then I spotted another job that a man had been on, but I knew I had more seniority than him, and I thought, well, I can handle that. It was a knife job. No, the men wouldn't sharpen my knife, but I didn't care because I had a husband who was a trimmer, and he taught me how to keep my knife sharp. In the long run, before it was over, I think the women had proven to the men that we came up there as ladies. When we run that clock at night we were going to be ladies. There was more women on the cut and the kill and down through there, and they were holding their own. We proved to the company and the union that the women could go up there and do this, but it was too late then.

I feel down deep inside that the international let us down. No house can ever stand with a lot of trouble inside of it. And this is exactly what we were having. We needed a complete overhaul job, even if it meant stepping on some toes, my toes if necessary. But this is what we needed. We had some hotheads for foremen and supervisors, and I think probably both sides needed to do a little fence fixing. I don't feel like I ever done anything to hurt anybody. A lot of the men will tell you the same thing. I wrote grievances for them, went in and argued just as hard for them as I would for any woman.

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The war had intensified job competition between men and women in the packinghouses. And postwar attempts to resolve the problem only deferred it. As the industry cut back in the 1961s, tensions between union men and women boiled to the surface. Empowered by the new civil rights legislation, women pushed for a system that would give them fair access to jobs. Men in the traditionally "male" departments, often supported by the company, used bidding rights and seniority to exclude women. Virgil Bankson of Ottumwa was adamant on these issues and skeptical of the international's efforts to reach a compromise.

Back in the early days women had women's jobs and men had men's jobs. Then here we come along in the forties and got in a war, and women started being put on the jobs of men that had gone to the army. I was on the bargaining committee at the time, and the chief steward and I got into one big argument over it. I said, "Look, we can't give these women seniority." He said, "What do you mean we can't give them seniority?" I said, "Okay, you give them seniority, and then the war's over. Here's guys coming back to work, walking the street, and these women's working?'' "Well," he said, "you can't do away with seniority.'' And him and I, we got into being bitter enemies over that, because I didn't agree with him. I said they should be set aside, and when these men came back they should be laid off. But he didn't agree with me.

They got seniority and that created problems. There's more divorces over women taking men's jobs than anything else. I've heard women say that when they got jobs in the packinghouse they got to running around. You say, "Ain't you worried about the old man leaving you or something?" "Oh, no, he ain't going to leave me. I'm a five thousand dollar asset to him." I heard a woman say that one time, and she got very independent and bitter. Of course, she thought she was a wheel, and she was trying to climb the ladder and get control of the union.

The biggest trouble about the women was not really during the war. The biggest problem was after the civil rights law was signed. That's when we had trouble with women. I don't know who set it up, but they had a formula set up, A, B, and C. A jobs was supposed to be men's jobs. B jobs was supposed to be women's jobs. C jobs was supposed to be either men's or women's jobs. This all come about right after the civil rights law. There's a lot of men that were bitter towards women coming in their departments and taking jobs anyway, so the men would bid in on the B jobs, which were women's. Of course, this created problems. The men would also bid on the C jobs, especially on the killing floors, and this would throw nothing but A jobs open, and they wasn't able to do them. This jockeyed back and forth until it just got real bad.

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Ralph Helstein sent Ed Filliman, who was a field rep working out of the Chicago office, in to work the agreement out. I told Ed when he come in, "It won't work. You can't keep them from bidding. They got seniority." "Yeah, but," he says, "you got to protect these women." He thought he had it all worked out. He was there a week. He told Ralph, "Everything's worked out.'' Very next day she blowed, right on the hog kill. The men bid all the C jobs, and there wasn't no B jobs. There wasn't nothing left but A jobs, and everytime a woman would try to take a job some bunch of guys would talk an older guy into bumping her out, and the first thing you know they're all out on the street again. There ain't no jobs for them. It was shortly after that Ed Filliman died of a heart attack. He had come out of the Ottumwa plant, and he had a lot to do with the company hiring all of them people during the war. He just kept putting pressure on them. Got to have more people. He had so many people in the fresh meat department after the war was over that he had trouble because the company started getting rid of them. Ain't no jobs there. The company said, "We don't need these people.''

The company started combining jobs until women weren't able to do it. Not only that, the men started bidding on them, too, because there was a lot of bitterness between the men and the women. There was a hundred men that was younger in seniority than the women, and the women was out on the street. Waterloo was the first one to hire an attorney over the civil rights law on the women. So the women in Ottumwa found out about Waterloo and got the lawyer out of Waterloo to go to bat for them. I can still see it going on! Ralph Helstein and Jesse Prosten, Gene Cotton, and this attorney from Waterloo, all come to Ottumwa, and these women had notified him they wanted to meet him. I was notified to be in that meeting in the basement of the Holiday Inn. Most of these women never showed up. They wouldn't stick their necks out, but a few of them did. They had a couple of women that were older in seniority that wasn't having no trouble, but they were going to bat for them. They were going to be the attorney for the other women. So we're lined up along the wall. Women lined up over here. Ralph and Jesse and the lawyers down at the end! So this one woman over here, she thought she was really cute. She pointed her finger at me, and she said, "That guy there wants us to go down and drive hogs and cattle." I said, "You don't have no trouble doing it out on your farm, do you?" Cut her feet right out from under her! "Yeah," I said, "you ain't no different than a man. You want a man's job, don't you? What's the matter with that?" And that started it off. I shut her up, oh, I was cutting up.

The packinghouse women's civil rights suit elicited some support from men, particularly men whose commitment to union solidarity was rooted in a conception that all persons are equal. Jesse Merrill of Ottumwa noted that

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"we was all guilty" and came around to seeing the issue from the women's point of view.

Basically I've always been a believer that if the man's head of the house he should have the job. I thought I had more education than my dad, but he'd always been active in the Auto Workers union as some kind of an officer. I'll never forget, when this suit by the twenty-one women happened in 1964 he said, "Don't they pay dues? You take their dues?" I said, "Yeah, they do when they're working." He said, "They're just as good a member as a man. If you're going to take their dues you got to treat them equal.'' Sometimes it takes a person who never had much book learning to get you to think what's fair and just. But I got to thinking about that. The company had younger people working in the plant, which happened to be men.

Some of these women had a lot of years seniority, but they'd do away with the women's jobs, she's laid off, and here's a guy that maybe come in off the street working. The union had never done anything about this in the past. We was all guilty. We should've sat down and worked something out. They did sue, and they would've won their suit had it worked through the court. We met with the EEOC representatives, but looking back, the union should've been on their toes and done something about it.

The UPWA fought to eliminate wage differentials based on sex and succeeded in doing so in the 1950s. One effect of that victory was to increase pressure to eliminate the dual seniority system. The union, faced with sharp internal divisions and conflict over job protection, constructed a compromise on the seniority issue that classified jobs according to the preferred sex, the ABC system. But, as Ralph Helstein noted, the compromise ultimately depended on the willingness of workers to accept those divisions.

Of course, the whole seniority thing was a real headache to us. We'd always had women's jobs because of the nature of the work in meat-packing. When it came to lugging part of a carcass around on your back a woman wasn't able to do that, except one woman that I knew in Grand Forks, North Dakota, who was about five-by-five. Christ, she could throw those carcasses around better than most men. But for the most part that: was not true.

I always had a feeling that we did a pretty good job in this area. We did succeed in eliminating that wage differential. We succeeded in keeping many women on their jobs who would not have been there if we had not worked out these compromises on the seniority issue. Once the nondiscrimination provision was passed, there was the whole question of whether you could have jobs that were

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called women's jobs. So what we did was set up what we called ABC jobs, three kinds of jobs. If someone told us to go to hell, there was nothing we could do about it, but we would try to get people to bid according to their sex on the two jobs that were attuned to them, but if somebody said they wanted job A, even if it was in the male category, if she fit on it the woman was entitled to it. If she had the seniority she got it.

In any event, women became a very vital and important part of our union. One thing we never did succeed in doing, which we always regretted, was getting a woman on our executive board before we merged with the Meat Cutters.

Remaking Solidarity: From Union Maids to Union Sisters

The war left a residue of uncertainty in the relations between union men and women. Many women had come to work and intended to stay. They joined the union and got the benefits of its protection in a war-swollen economy. But with demobilization, old inequities in the workplace resurfaced. Unequal pay, job segregation, and dual seniority were the order of the day. "Life is this way," women were told.

Many unions, although continuing to represent their women members, failed to open the ranks of leadership. As women pushed for a voice commensurate with their numbers, tensions developed within the unions. For some women the path to leadership was circuitous. It led through long hours of service to the union doing the things women had always donedishes and clerical work. Or it came by the route of "women's activities committees" that tended to the concerns that union leaders believed were distinctively women's. Gradually, by serving as effective stewards in "women's" departments or through militant picket line activity, women won the respect and support of many male union leaders.

These breakthroughs came largely at the local level. When women who were active in local unions and state federations pressed their case within their internationals or the AFL-CIO, they found that the doors opened more slowly. Across the country, through participation in the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) and the Commissions on the Status of Women, trade union women increased their influence. They were a decisive but little remembered factor in the formation of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

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UE-FE women at the Farmall plant in Moline, Illinois, January 1953 (above) and the UE

Women's Auxiliary, Farmall, Moline (below). State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

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Oma Ferguson knew how difficult it could be to build and sustain labor solidarity. He had seen his own father, a skilled black electrician, excluded by white unions. When he became active in the International Molders and Allied Workers Union in Cedar Falls, he worked to foster the solidarity that his father had been denied. Nowhere did he see a stronger response than among women workers at a plant in Grundy Center that was affiliated with the Molders.

The longest strike we've had was at Plastronics down in Grundy Center. It's about twenty miles from here, maybe a little further. They were on strike thirteen weeks. It went on down through that winter. Thirteen weeks, twenty below zero. And bear in mind this plant we have down at Grundy Center is 95 percent women.

Working with a bunch of women is a lot of fun after you get used to it. They'll give you a lot of static at first, but that's the best group of people in the world to have on a picket line, I'll tell anybody. Give me a bunch of women. They'll hang in there. I'll take these woman every trip of the train. They're good.

I say I'm glad I had women down there. Nothing too violent, but they can talk rougher than some men! I was down there two or three times a week, even after work at night. I'd leave here sometimes at 7:30, 8:00, and go down there in twenty-below-zero weather. The women were hanging right in there. It was beautiful. And we won. We won.

Women in some strikes provided a backbone of militancy that sprang from their own grievances. Donald Diskey participated in a strike in 1959 that was crucial to the process of union-building at Zenith in Sioux City. Women's anger over their treatment by the company and their aggressive actions on the picket line were decisive.

We figured that going on strike was the only way that we was ever going to show the company that we did have a union down there and show people that we wasn't afraid to take the company on. I believe we got our biggest support from the women in the radio room. They were getting a bad time with their incentive deal and their working conditions. In fact, shortly before the strike they were complaining about the lights not being correct. They couldn't see their work. I went into the office and asked them to correct the lighting. I was told that if they couldn't see what they was doing the company would just go hire people that could. Put glasses on. And then during one of our negotiation sessions the controller made a statement that he could go out on the street and get these women for a dime a dozen. When that fact was brought up at our union meeting

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the women started getting red behind the ears, and this changed the whole ball game. I don't think they would have went back to work the next day for a dollar an hour increase. But it was a multitude of things. They proposed to tell Jane what time of day she would have to go to the biffy. It is impossible when you get thirty two women on a line, that someone down there in the office can say Jane or Donna or Margaret is going to have to go to the potty at ten o'clock. I nearly got fired over the situation, but they never did put it into effect. Everything just kept building up and building up.

Once the strike was under way, the women were real faithful to the picket line, I'll tell you. Actually, when the strike first started we jammed the gates and nobody could come in. Then the assistant chief of police called me in, being the chairman of the strike committee, and John O'Connor, the business representative. He said they've got a right to work under the right-to-work law and that he was going to club us if we blocked the gate. John O'Connor and I met that night in the local pub. "Now what are we going to do?" So we decided we would start calling women. They're not going to club women. It was kind of comical. The next morning we was out there. We had the gate all plugged up with women, and they were going around in a circle, saying, "We shall not be moved. We shall overcome," at the tops of their voices. A lot of screaming and hollering. This one overzealous policeman, he was grabbing them and pulling them out. He'd pull one out, and there'd be two trying to get in her place. There was one particular woman that had a pretty good-sized bosom. She was kind of an elderly lady. This cop got ahold of her, and she hollered, "Get your hands off my tits, you son of a bitch!'' You could hear this above all of the rest of the hollering and going on! And so this cop, he just throwed up his hands and took off.

Stewards are the first line of workers' defense on the shopfloor. They must inevitably confront foremen and superintendents in the name of the union on behalf of aggrieved workers. Many women, like Susan Rhum, who were new to this role found management particularly hostile to their interventions. She processed her first grievance at a munitions plant in Burlington.

I always felt that if I was going to be part of an organization I was going to really take part. I wasn't going to be just a card carrier. I was always curious, if nothing else, and the only way to satisfy my curiosity was to go down there and find out what was going on. One of my co-workers had been a steward. She's a nice person, one of my best friends probably. But she was rather shy about asking questions or talking to strangers. As soon as I joined the union, when she had a question she would ask me to call the chief steward and ask what was going on. Finally he said to me, after a few months, "Wouldn't you like to be a steward?" I

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said, "Well, you know, she's already steward." He said, "Well, first of all, you can have more than one. There's enough people there to justify it." So I thought, I'll try anything once.

Just prior to my becoming a steward, a girl had written a grievance. This was the first grievance that had been written on the component line since it reopened. The line superintendent became so angry at her that he forbid anyone to speak to her during working hours, and she pushed a broom for eight hours a day. And the girls all said to me when I wrote my first grievance, "Well, you know what you're going to be doing." And I said, "I bet I won't." I don't know what the difference was, whether it was my attitude towards him or what, but I didn't have to push the broom and no one was forbidden to talk to me. He became a little angry and said, "I'm going to determine how things are done here.'' I just had the contract book in my hand, and I said, ''I'm sorry. This little book is going to tell you how things are going to be done here." Oh, we had our differences, but I think we had mutual respect for one another after that. We understood our positions.

Women began to move into leadership positions in some local unions during the 1950s. This was especially true where women dominated certain departments within a workplace. But even when female telephone workers in Davenport began "taking more leadership roles," the barriers remained in the national organization, and "the old macho image," as Erma Wiszmann termed it, hung on with some men in the local.

It's true that our membership has grown and that more women have joined, and it's true that they're taking more leadership roles. Yet when you look at the national executive boardtwenty membersthere's not a woman. In the staffwe don't have business agents in our union, we have representativesthere is something like 180 of them, and 30-some are women. So they're not making any great inroads into leadership.

In our local we just happen to be unique since 1964 when I became president of the local. I was president for three years, and I lost a two-year term, and then I've been back as president since. We have currently an eight-member executive board, six of which are women. So in our local we've got good strong leadership, and most of them are women.

Back in 1957 I became chief steward because the operators were the largest department. The president of the union recommended to the membership that we create a second vice president position and that I could get time to run for it. What he wanted to do was to give the operators a representative on the executive board. He was looking for the loyalty to himself and the executive board. It

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was a power group, not because we were women. But it worked out. I held that office from 1957 through 1961 or 1962, and then I became first vice president. And in 1964 I ran for the presidency because our then-president went into union staff work.

Well, today the chief steward in the traffic department, which is predominantly women, is a woman. The business office chief steward is a woman. So it is still because they've been coming from women's jobs, and therefore they end up on the executive board.

The informed males aren't resentful. They don't see it as a threat. It's the ones that cling to the old macho image, that women can't represent men; women have no power and authority, and it takes a man to go in and say, "By God," you know.

One of the "facts" of life for women in factories was that they did not get equal pay for equal work. When they questioned it, as Betty Talkington did at Collins Radio in Cedar Rapids, they were told simply, "Life is this way."

Women did the same jobs, but they just didn't call them the same thing. That's always the problem. In the packinghouses, in the IBEW plants, in anything other than maybe with telephone or clothing workers, there were always more men in the plant than there were women. So the men would outvote the women. The men were there first and stayed longer because the women dropped out during their childbearing years. The women were perceived as being only in the work force for a short time. And therefore, they weren't a very potent force.

The view was, "Life is this way." If you asked about something like that, "Well, gee, that's the way it's always been, and we're not going to change it for you. You are the one that needs to change." I was told that many a time when I said, "Why does he, who does the same thing I do, make ten cents or fifteen cents or twenty-five cents an hour more?" If they brought a new man in and put him on the job, he would've made more than I did. If you don't work in the plant, it's kind of hard to understand because everybody thinks equal rights is here. I hate to say this, but it isn't here.

By the 1960s a few women were moving into positions of statewide leadership in the labor movement, though typically in positions that pertained directly to "women's" matters. Betty Talkington was appointed women's activities director with the Iowa Federation of Labor, but the struggles to win acceptance of women in nontraditional roles continued at all levels.

In the 1960 election, I was at Collins working and I was also secretary of the Democratic Central Committee for Linn County. I was going in at six o'clock in

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Betty Talkington, Women's Activity Director, Iowa Federation of Labor,

AFL-CIO, delivers the COPE report at the IFL annual convention, ca. 1972.

Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO.

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the morning and setting up the office for the little hired secretary that we had to work all day, and then I went there from work at three-thirty, four o'clock and worked until nine or ten. Some of them would go out and get my children and bring them down, and we'd have supper at my desk. The kids had their sleeping bags, and they rolled up in them and went to sleep.

"Soap" Owens was the UAW political officer at the time. He was pleased to know that there was somebody there at Democratic headquarters. We were working very hard together, the labor movement and the Democrats. Some people saw my work and realized that I believed in what I was doing, and so they were interested. Mr. Owens, with some other people, asked me if I thought I'd like to have the job of women's activities director with the State Federation of Labor. I thought that would be marvelous, to do my hobby and get paid for it. So he backed me, and he was influential in getting me introduced at the 1961 convention to the new board members.

Let me just say this. There were three elected officers full-time, and, basically, I did what they didn't want to do. If it was speak to a small local union, that was fine. If it was to do dishes for a dinner for two hundred, I helped with that, too. I didn't do them by myself, but I helped. That was one of the fun things about the jobthat you never knew for sure on Monday morning what you'd be doing by Friday, because it was so varied.

Because the national AFL-CIO put about half the money into the Iowa Fed to help with this program, they had a list of things that I had to do. I had to go to central body meetings, and I had to be involved in the political activities. For instance, when we were fighting for reapportionment. I visited many, many local unions with the literature and explained why we wanted to count people for the legislature, not acres or cows, and we got it reapportioned.

When the governor's office called Vern Davis, the IFL president, and asked, "Who do you want us to appoint?" to the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women, no man volunteered, and there were men on the commission. When it was time for somebody to work in the consumer movement, they'd say, "Oh, I'm not interested. I don't think that's part of what I should be doing. You know, I have other things to do. Betty, you do that." Because I was interested in it, it was fine. The national leadership of the AFL-CIO was not terribly happy when CLUW, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, was formed. A lot of the women got involved. A lot of my counterparts in other states. Mr. Meany and some of the powers that be in the national AFL-CIO building didn't think that that was appropriate. They still didn't believe that women should be equal, and they weren't sure that the Coalition of Labor Union Women was a good idea. Incidentally, CLUW consisted of members from the Teamsters, the Auto Workers, and the AFL-CIO, at a time when the men in those three organizations could not

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agree. The women got together, with a great deal of work in advance, put in three days, came up with a statement of purpose, a constitution, and bylaws. The CLUW chapter in Washington, D.C., was refused the right to meet in the national headquarters.

We were working for men and women. Whenever you better conditions for one sex, especially if you're working for the women, you automatically get it for men, too. If you can send a man to the moon, you don't have to lift a hundred pounds. There are machines that can be made to do that, and no man should have to have a hernia because he has to lift a hundred pounds. Don't protect the woman. Protect both sexes. It's ridiculous to say a woman can't carry twenty-five or thirty or fifty pounds when she picks up her child and carries it. I've seen women's purses that weighed that much.

Through the commission, we got some women into some training programs, some apprenticeship programs, and we had some liberal building tradesmen leadership say in our conferences, "We need this." We also had some stinkers who gave us all fits. I remember one guy from the Master Builders who, after cochairing a meeting with me, said, "Betty, I just want to know something. You and a man work for me, and I have in my office a 100-pound bag of shit and a 5-pound bag of shit. I call you two in, and I want them moved. How would you do that?" I looked at him and said, "My, such a nice gentleman to have 105 pounds of shit in your office. I'll tell you how I'd do it. I'd look at my buddy, and I'd say, 'Let's each one grab one end of this 100-pound bag, and then one of us can run back for the 5-pound.'" I think that that exemplifies what women should do in order to carry their fair share. Now, I don't think every woman should have to carry 50 pounds. I don't think every woman should have to carry more than she can comfortably lift, but I do think it's important that if that is your job and you want the pay you do your 50 pounds.

Let me just tell you this story about a certain fellow, because it really typifies an attitude. When the blacks came to workhe's an ironworker just like my father washe said to me, "What are you doing to us?" "You" being the unions. He's a good union man, but that was his attitude. And I said, "What do you mean?" ''Well, they stink. They're lazy." And I said, ''Just let me tell you something. Work this season. See how it goes." "Oh, I just can't stand it. I'm a boss. I'm not going to have one on my crew." I said, "Well, you better get yourself a lawyer, Buster, because if you refuse one you're going to be in trouble." So at Christmastime when I saw him he said to me, "You know, they really do work hard, and they don't sweat any different than we do."

And then it came to the women. "You're going to kill us all. You're going to kill us all. They're going to stand there and put on their lipstick while the guys do the work." And I said, "Look, we've gone through this before. I hope that attor-

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ney's still around. Talk to me at Christmastime." He says, "You know, I got two women on my crew, and they really were good. The master plumber that was on the job wished to God he could've had one of them because he would've gotten something done."

The Legacy of Jim Crow: Unions and the Fight for Racial Equality

African-American workers gained entry to America's mass production industries slowly and by stages. The world wars set in motion profound changes in the racial geography of the American working class. Pockets of black industrial workers survived the dark decades of racial exclusion from the mid-1870s to the outset of World War I, but most black nonagricultural workers were in low-paying service-sector jobsjanitors, domestic servants, barbers, restaurant workers. Some operated marginal small businesses that served urban black communities.

World War I brought the northward migration of large numbers of black workers, recruited to fill the lower ranks of industrial employment. In Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh, but also in Waterloo, Des Moines, and the Quad Cities, black workers established themselves at the bottom of the job hierarchy in manufacturing. With the end of the war came severe racial tension, job competition, and retrenchment. Blacks lost much of what they had gained in wartime but retained a foothold in some manufacturing firms.

Small enclaves of Mexican-Americans recruited to work as railroad section hands settled in several Iowa towns on the Mississippi River during the first decades of the twentieth century. Prevented by discriminatory practices from movement up the occupational hierarchy on the railroads and segregated within the communities, they formed closeknit networks for mutual support.

By the outbreak of World War II, the numbers of black industrial workers had increased, but the depression years had taken a severe toll. Wartime labor scarcity again brought new employment opportunities, but job segregation remained formidable. In Iowa's packinghouses and farm equipment plants, black workers were consigned to the dirtiest, lowest-skilled jobs. They joined the new industrial unions, but they remained largely locked out of the benefits of promotion and free movement between jobs based on the seniority that unions had won for their members. For Hispanic workers, the war began the erosion of the rigid pattern of exclusion that had defined the boundaries of their communities in Iowa.

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The fight to break down segregation within the workplace was protracted. Companies benefited from a pool of cheap, unskilled black labor, and white workers fought to protect their own access to the better-paying, cleaner jobs. In the face of union complicity, many black workers continued to regard the labor movement with suspicion. Divisions along racial lines belied the solidarity that industrial unions sought to promote.

For both practical and principled reasons, industrial unions affiliated with the CIO gradually challenged the Jim Crow organization of work. Racial divisions threatened the solidarity that gave industrial unions their strength. Segregation undermined their effectiveness. Many leaders of the fight for industrial organization believed deeply in the principle of equality and sought to build that principle into the very fiber of the unions they constructed.

In practice, the commitment of unions like the United Packinghouse Workers to racial equality posed a direct challenge to their employers and to some of their own local unions. Rank-and-file activists, both black and white, used the commitment of their international unions to racial equality as a tool for battering down the invisible barriers that confined black workers to the worst jobs.

The struggle for equality could not be confined to the shopfloor. Segregation outside the workplace undermined the solidarity unions fostered at work. A second generation of Mexican-American workers became "a little more aggressive," as Fidel Lopez of Fort Madison said, using the strength of their communities to challenge the continuing inequities they faced. In many communities industrial unionists took the lead in challenging segregated bars, restaurants, public facilities, schools, and housing. Their unions were key supporters of the civil rights activism of the 1950s and 1960s.

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The color line usually fell between clean and dirty work or between skilled workers and their helpers. In some firms like John Deere in Waterloo, as Cuba Tredwell found, it was the company that resisted the union's efforts to break down the color barrier. But for his brother Benjamin, who was a mechanic's helper on the Illinois Central Railroad, it was the rail unions that were instrumental in blocking his progress.

Cuba Tredwell: If it hadn't been for the union I never would have got into the shop. It was the way you could get out of that dirt. The company fought me for three months. You see they had to put jobs up for bid. I bid on a job in the shop, and they told me that a black man could never run a machine for John

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Cuba Estell Tredwell broke the racial barriers that before 1952 had kept

black workers out of the machine shop at John Deere & Company,

in Waterloo, 1970. Ada Tredwell.

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Deere. They didn't let them work no place but the foundry, mill room, and core room, and very few in the core room. In the foundry and the mill room you had white foremen. They were supervisors. But we done all the dirty work mostly. Very few that didn't.

It had to go to arbitration. He ruled that they had to give me the job. In the meantime I had taken a machinist course at East High School, learned how to run the machine, read blueprints, and things like that. Then I bid on this job. They told me a black man couldn't run a machine. Said they didn't have enough education.

My brother was a mechanic's helper on the Illinois Central for years. He done mechanic's work for twenty-five years before they would ever set him up for a mechanic. I talked to some guy that knew him, used to work up there years ago. He said, "Your brother should have been master mechanic, what he knows about locomotives." They done the same thing out at Deere. They brought in a lot of new guys in the mill and tried to put them over us, and we wouldn't show them nothing!

Benjamin Tredwell: I done the same things with the railroad when I was helping as I did as a machinist. I was doing so many different jobs. Had a man working as a machinist. I was doing the work, and he was getting the better pay. The union didn't try to help. For a long time they didn't want me to get up in the union, because I'd get too much money. Some of the guys in the union, I don't know what it is, didn't like a little man to be getting stuff, or they wanted it all to themselves. The master mechanics and the general foreman wanted to give it to me, but the union wouldn't let them.

Among white workers, the foundry was to be avoided at all cost. Gene Condon, who was hired by John Deere at the end of the war, made sure he didn't get in the foundry. Most black workers had no such luck or opportunity. Condon remembers the courage of Cuba Tredwell, who challenged the racial barrier by bidding out of the foundry. With the support of the union but against the wishes of some men in the machine shop, he made it out and within a year was elected shop steward. Other black workers followed.

After the war they needed men real bad. In fact, I was hired I think four times in a matter of three weeks. I had friends who worked at the plant, and they told me if they started taking you straight back from the main clock house that meant that you were going to work in the foundry area. So they says, "Turn around and

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go right back out." I did it three times, and finally the fourth time I was hired in the main stockroom.

The foundry was dangerous, smoky, dirty. Deere & Company wouldn't have enough money to hire me to work there an hour. We didn't have minority race members in the machine shop at all until 1952. So all minorities went to the foundry. Mostly blacks.

We had a bidding procedure on different jobs that came up in the shop, and finally one black by the name of Cuba Tredwell had the courage, and he bid on a job. The union put up a fight for him, and he was accepted. The men in the machine shop at that time said, "What the hell's a nigger trying to do a white man's job for? He belongs in the foundry." And he had more discrimination from his fellow employees than he did from management. A year later he was elected steward of the department. He was such a likable guy, and everybody respected him for having the courage that he had. He just died in the last year, and I made note at the union meeting after his funeral that he was one of the unsung heroes of this local. Everybody rose for a moment of silent prayer to recognize him for what he had done for his race. This was before the 1964 civil rights action. So he really went through hell.

Shortly after that, then, more and more blacks came out of the foundry, but he was the first guy that had the courage to do it. In a matter of two or three years maybe we had a dozen blacks in the machine shop. Then it just grew and grew and grew. About that time the company started hiring blacks into the machine shop rather than strictly to the foundry.

About 1955 our employment was around five thousand, and I think we had 480 blacks in the plant at that time.

Union members, at times, challenged the color bar that pervaded communities and public facilities in the late forties and early fifties. Edwin Hollins had worked in the John Deere foundry at Waterloo and did some trucking on the side. But because of conditions in the foundry and restrictions on belonging to two unions, he decided to make his living as a teamster. Over the road, he found out what union solidarity could mean.

The story came out that you couldn't belong to two crafts. So I had a better deal with the Teamsters and working with freight than I had in the foundry at John Deere. It took twenty-two men to run this unit in John Deere's foundry. There's only me and one other guy still alive. The life of a foundry man was shorter than short. You are subjected to unclean air, different fumes from the

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iron, and breathing that constantly. When I was completely done at John Deere, for two years after I was spitting up black. The humidity along with the fumes was so thick you could cut it with a knife. When they come out of there they all look the same. You couldn't tell if it was a black or white unless they had blue eyes. Cakes of black just marinated all over your clothingsweat, white salt streaks.

When I started driving in 1950, there was only one other black driver. I remember one place we used to stop in Savanna, Illinois. Five of us, we all got out of our trucks and went in. This was the first trip for me. The waitress, she got all keyed up. She went and told the boss that that Iowa outfit from Waterloo had got a black driver on today. "How are we going to do with that?" "Well, fix him something and he can go outside and eat in the truck." They didn't really refuse to give me food, but I could tell the way it went that he thought that he was going to have a little trouble with the local yokels. What the hell. A guy come out, and he had mine all fixed up. Takeaway. So Bobby Rose says, "Where in the hell are you going?'' I said, ''I'm going out and have some lunch." He said, "You're not going to sit down with us?" I said, "Well, no. It's kind of against the local policy to have me eating in here." And man, them guys got up, said, "You eat in here or won't no goddamn body ever eat in here again." These are the guys I work with, run with, hell, slept with in Chicago when we had our own place. So the manager come out and said, "Well, it just hasn't been past practice." And Bob Rose told him, "Goddamn it, it is today. How would you like to have six of these son of a bitches drive right into this place with you in here?" The guy says, "I don't think we'd appreciate it." He said, "Well, goddamnit, we don't appreciate this shit you're doing to him either." That guy took that back, and he put it on a plate and come back and set it down. So me and the boys set there and had our lunch. I thanked them. That waitress, she was still worrying about it. Black man sitting there eating with white people! She was shaking in her boots. She didn't know if the local yokels were going to react. So that passed. We was back there again about the middle of the month. No problem. Not a goddamn word. I was back there again and again, a number of times alone.

The unions did a lot in the area of racial discrimination. There's people that's going to hate you for being a Catholic or for being a Jew. They're going to hate you for being a black. Our unions on the whole did a lot in breaking that down.

Work in Des Moines war plants gave some black workers higher income and led them to challenge the traditions of segregation in the community. At the war's end Robert A. Jackson, Sr., found work in construction as a laborer. But even there, wage improvements meant greater competition with

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whites and a growing pattern of exclusion. In Des Moines, Jackson fought to win and hold the office of business agent in the International Hod Carriers, Building and Common Laborers Union of North America.

During the war people had been out in the ordnance plant, and they'd been making good money. They managed to save some. They worked into some good jobs. So the first thing they wanted to do when they were working downtown was sit down and eat. And they wouldn't let you eat at the lunch counters. Yes, right here. Katz was the first one we tackled after the war, right at Seventh and Locust in 1949, maybe 1950. We had a sit-in, and a lady called Edna Griffinhusband's a doctorstarted that at Katz.

I started in Laborers Local 177 in the fall of 1946. The Laborers didn't have apprenticeship. That's the reason why all of the black people were in the Laborers. The percentage of the union at the end of the war was about 65 percent white and about 30 percent black.

I don't imagine you got 20 percent blacks in the Laborers union now. Maybe you don't have no more than 10 percent because the wage scale is too good. When the wage scale changed, then the composition of the ethnic groups changed. The city is the same way. Most all the people that used to work on the city streets, for the Street Department, was black. But soon as that wage scale started moving up the blacks started moving down, down, down. A whole lot of them retired as foremen and things, but when they left you don't see blacks anymore. They're just out. It's that type of situation. Long as you got a job where the pay scale is minimal, you see black people on it. But when the pay scale begins to get too good, then you don't see near as many blacks. You try that sometime.

The business agent for the Laborers died in August 1954. So they set up that they was going to have an election. I didn't say nothing to nobody, but I made up my mind that I was going to run for this office. I would get all of my people there to elect me at the particular time. When he called for the election I had enough votes to win, and they couldn't overcome it in no kind of way.

Now, I worked, and in the next election they set up the ballot boxes and everything. Just before we let them open the door for the election, I had a committee go and confiscate the ballot boxes. We opened the ballot boxes, and they had forty votes already in there for the other person. So we took those votes out. Nobody knew how they got there or anything. When we locked the ballot boxes we put our observers right there. We had a list and checked everybody that came through. I was elected. Duly elected then.

I know how I have to accomplish things, and I just take it as a fact of life, and that's the way I go. I know I'm not going to be treated the same as you. Regard-

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less of what they say, I know I'm not going to be. I have to expect that, and then that gives me more confidence within myself to accomplish what I have to try and accomplish. It's not saying maybe. I just know that, because all evidence points to it.

None of my kids realize this. We had to go upstairs in the balconies and then one section in the balconies. In the bowling alleys it was one bowling alley that we could bowl and that was on Saturday afternoons over in the Teachout Building. All the rest of them wouldn't allow us in there. All those things you had to overcome.

Many black workers regarded unions with suspicion. They had been excluded from factory work and had encountered prejudice among both companies and the unions. Billye Smith Williams began working in Burlington and gradually overcame her hostility toward unions.

I worked constantly since I was twelve years old. That's hard to believe, but I started working in the St. Francis Hospital when I was twelve as a floor girl, picking up trays and washing dishes. They only hired me then because the war was going on and they couldn't get grown-up people in those kind of jobs. I worked there after school and in the summers and on the weekends for years until I married in my junior year.

In those days blacks worked doing service work mostly, like bellhops, shoe shining, stuff like that. Daddy was a cook, but he wasn't what you'd call a main cook. It was a weird situation. I look back at those days and wonder how on earth they got away with all that. But that's what people did. Blacks were chauffeurs, maids. I was fortunate because my great aunt raised me, and she had a nice large home on Central Avenue. Her husband was an engineer in a pickle factory. He was lucky enough to have a fairly decent job. She also worked in the linen room at the Hotel Burlington laundry. That's where most of the black people I knew worked.

We couldn't get in any factories. You'd go over to Champion Sparkplug and ask for an application, and the personnel manager or girl would blatantly tell you, "It won't do any good. You can fill it out, and when you're gone I'll tear it up and throw it in the wastepaper basket."

I was the first black production worker in the International Resistor Company when I was hired in 1958. They had a black maid before then. The employment office manager knew me from coming in Schramm's clothing store with his wife. I loved that place. Everybody was like a family there. They was really close, and everybody looked out for everybody. I didn't feel ridiculous being the only black

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because I had been that so many times. I went to school where I became the only black. My sister died, and my brother moved away. So I was by myself, black.

When the Machinists union started organizing I had been invited to join, but I didn't have no desire. I was so against the union that I didn't even want to hear what they had to say. It's really sad! It was sheer ignorance on their part to be prejudiced, because they put black people in a position where they were nothing but strikebreakers for so many years. Then it was ignorance on our part for not really reasoning with those people. Like the NAACP not getting with them a lot earlier. I think about A. Philip Randolph. His determination was the prime factor in trade unions accepting the minority and teaching the minority to accept and want the unions, too.

I eventually joined the union after it was recognized, but I never went to a meeting or anything. The strike in 1974 was what sparked my interest. I saw just how dirty the company can be. Always before I kind of leaned toward management, even though I was a trade unionist.

The racial geography of a packing plant was well defined. In certain departments like beef boning, according to Harry Hunter, who worked at Cudahy's in Sioux City, blacks could not be found. But in others, like the hog kill and the hide cellar, they were numerous. Industrial unions, such as the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA), broke down barriers not only in the plant but outside as well. Workers discovered that "you're the same as I am."

When I was hired you found black workers in certain departments of the packinghouse. They had one on the loading dock. They used them on the hog kill and the hog cut. Wasn't no beef boners. They used them on the beef kill and the sheep kill. But you couldn't get in the beef boning department. It seemed like they didn't make any black boners in them days. We had one in the oleo department. My uncle was in the cooper department. He washed the barrels for the coopers to work on. There was a certain concentration in the hide cellar and the hogs for a while. In later years the beef kill almost got black because the guys would stay and other guys would quit. Look like it was discrimination in reverse. You look around you, all you could see was black and a white now and then.

Before the UPWA, when you went to the packinghouse, you know how it is, as soon as you went out the gate you went one way and they go the other way. You wouldn't see each other until the next day, and you just say, "Hi." That's all. Now, when we got the CIO, the packinghouse workers got their own bar, and people started to come in. You know a drink or two will loosen anybody's

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The killing floor, Rath Packing Company, Waterloo, 1948.

State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

tongue. They start social, they come and say, "Hey, man, you're the same as I am." They socialize. I got so I couldn't even pass the place.

Communities of Mexican-American workers trace their roots in Iowa's river towns to the early twentieth century. The men came to Iowa first to work on the railroad section gangs and later, as railroads cut back, found other employment. Mexican-American communities, like those in Fort Madison, were shaped by traditions Mexican people brought with them but also by the rigid walls of discrimination that Anglos constructed, as Sebastian Lopez and Fidel Lopez discovered. World War II brought some changes; CIO unions were also agents of improvement. But to a large degree, it was from within the communities themselves and their steadfastness in the face of discrimination that changes emanated.

Sebastian Lopez: I came here when I was a young boy. And I lived in the Mexican community by the railroad tracks, right across from the car yards. Mexicans first came here around 1906 or before when the railroads started raising up the tracks close to the station. They were about all from the same state of Guanajuato. The people from that state are good workers; they're painters, artists, textile workers, jewel makers. In 1922 or 23 there were probably two thousand Mexican people here. The main people that came here did not come to pick potatoes or tomatoes, they came to work on the railroad.

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We lived in an area they called El Cometa, right there on the Santa Fe property. The name probably came from the comet in the sky in 1910. The railroad put boxcars there for the people as they were coming in. Our boxcar was one of the first ones. They used to call it El Carro Blancothe white car. It was an old refrigerator car, made out of wood, and my brothers put in windows and screens and made a porch in the front. Our facilities were very poor. My mother cooked on a coal stove, and our heating was a coal burner. We didn't have no running water, so they dug a hole in the ground. We had to build a toilet on the outside.

People did not get no advancement working for the railroad. The management kinda ignored the people that were apt and mechanically inclined. They did not give 'em the jobs that they deserved. That was the railroad's fault.

On a section they might all be Mexican people. You couldn't see a white guy hardly. Maybe the foreman was white. They brought black guys from Missouri and put 'em unloading ties. They were a separate bunch. I remember seeing them poor guys. They put a damp rag or towel to protect their necks from the tar. We done that, too, but later on. They would unload carloads and carloads of ties and then move on to the east, the Illinois divisions or Chicago. So there was a separation of workers.

I wanted to be an engineer on the railroad. I knew I could have been 'cause when I went to school I got good grades. The Anglos that were a lot dumber than me in school, they got the jobs. An engineer or a brakeman, no we couldn't even touch them. The only thing you could do was work on the section. We were plum locked out. They threw away the key until after the Second World War. Then it started getting a little better.

I worked for the railroad here, then finally became a carman on the labor gang, in the roundhouse, before I went into the army. I was in combat infantry and landed at Omaha beach. From France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Germany, I fought all the way. Finally, I froze my feet in Germany and got evacuated back to San Antonio. I got my discharge, and I still held my job on the railroad. But before too long the railroad jobs at the roundhouse was folding up. The steam engines were going out.

Actually, I think that the Anglos wanted to get rid of us. They wanted to get rid of all the Mexican people. It was during the crisis, there was no work, and they felt, if we can get the Mexican people to go back to Mexico, they'll leave some vacancies on the railroad and we'll take 'em. The Mexican people defied 'em, saying, "if you're doing that to me, I'll just stay. I don't care how you treat me."

So my story is that I'm happy to be here, and I want to thank you people for inviting me to serve in your wars.

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When I worked on the section I joined the CIO, and that was the first union I think that went and asked us Mexican people to join. Later on when I became an employee of the mechanical department I joined the carmen's union. So I knew what the union was, and from then on I didn't have no problem when I was a union man.

Let me tell you, before we were discriminated on the jobs. And here in Fort Madison, we were discriminated in the barbershops, in the taverns, in the theaters, anywhere. Until after the Second World War, then we were given rights as a first-class citizen. The only place I can say for sure, for myself, I never was discriminated against was in school.

They discriminated in church, Sacred Heart, that's our parish. They had two or three pews in the back for the Mexican people. You had to sit in the back no matter how many seats there were. If they were occupied, you had to go out or stand in the back. I went through the eighth grade attending Catholic school. The nuns were Belgian or Germans. I mean they were rough. They'd call us dirty Mexicans, you dumb this and that, and they'd grab us by the hair and pull us off the chair. That's where I guess I began to become a little rebellious.

Fidel Lopez: Growing up as a second generation Mexican-American was rather confused. On the one hand you're told that you're a Mexican, on the other hand you're told that you're an American, and not being treated by the whole society as either one sometimes. I grew up rather confused, not knowing really who I was. At times I wanted to be something other than what I really was.

My world growing up was strictly between Thirty-first Street to Thirty-eighth Street and south of Avenue L. If I ever strayed from that, the authorities would stop and ask me where I was going.

When I entered high school one of the guidance counsellors said to me, "No use in even talking to you because I know what you're gonna be doing, you're gonna be working for the railroad. All you people will end up working in the railroad." I just walked out of there rather frustrated. I dropped out of school because I didn't see any real future in there. Everybody seemed to want to put you in a classification that I didn't agree with. I joined the air force in 1955.

The second generation Mexican-Americans began to become a little more aggressive. They made more demands, especially those coming back from the war. They felt they had a right. Like my uncle coming back, he began to ask questions"Why can't I participate in the system like everyone else?"

There was a good deal of discrimination, and it continues. It's kinda gone underground. My children experience it still. In the schools they're not given the same equal right that everyone is entitled to. You hear about the lawyer's boy or daughter going on to college and securing scholarships that probably

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should go to the less fortunate. It is not strictly races but classes. You've got your poor white not having the same equal right. The lower class is having to work toward an education much harder than the rich doctor's son.

Sebastian: Our main roots in Fort Madison go back to those that came here in the early 1900s. There's only about six or eight of us left that came from Mexico in those early days. This next generation were all born here, they're all American citizens, which I am, too.

This community of Mexicans had the first celebration in the state of Mexico's independence. We started in about 1906, and in 1922 they really got organized, with officers and so forth. They brought bands in from Elgin. It was a way the Mexican people created some kinds of enjoyment for themselves, although they were deprived of a lot of other enjoyments. And that's what made everything look real rosy for our people.

Fidel: We were deprived of a lot of activities in the larger community, but I found a lot of warmth and love within our community. There was nothing I was deprived of from them. It was a large extended family as far as I was concerned because I knew everyone, everyone knew me. I was someone to someone in our community. We held our own little dances, we had our baptisms among ourselves, we provided for each other if there was ever a need. If someone was ill, one of our grandmothers was a winandetta who found their own herbs and offered medication. We didn't have to go to doctors. We had people who provided these services within our own community. That was my world. It was nice in a way, but we had adapted to living in that environment, one little segregated community.

Sebastian: We were in our own world. We made decisions, we had one of the best bands in the state. We had the best baseball team in the state. We had everything, so we actually didn't give a darn. We defied 'em. We made our own way, after all the deceptions we had with our community of Anglos. That's how come our community held together.

The long history of racial discrimination in unions was challenged by the CIO's commitment to equality. The UPWA took up the challenge to organize black workers and insisted on a provision in its collective bargaining agreements that required nondiscrimination toward applicants as well as employees. In line with the UPWA's social unionism, locals were encouraged, according to Ralph Helstein, to carry their fight for racial equality out into the community.

When the CIO was originally established one of its main propositions was that all workers would be accepted into the unions without discrimination. In the old

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federation it was not at all unusual for many international unions to have what was known as Jim Crow locals. In a given plant not only would you have the breakdown on a craft basis but also on a racial basis; you would have separate locals, blacks and whites. The CIO changed that with the flat declaration that all people would be accepted without regard to race, creed, or color.

In some places you had relatively substantial black employment. For example, Chicago had as much as 30 percent. During the war it might've gotten as high as 60, but I don't think it was ever more than that. Other urban areas, like St. Louis, Omaha, Kansas City, there were relatively large segments that were black. That was less true in places like Iowa. Sioux City, I suppose, had as many blacks as any other Iowa city in the beginning, and you could almost count them on the fingers of two hands and your toes.

So we began with the CIO position on acceptance of all groups and with an understanding of the fact that race had been a divisive factor. It wasn't just enough to accept the shibboleth that everybody could come in as long as they paid their dues. It is not just enough to eliminate discriminatory practices in the plant, but we also have to do it in the community, because you can't work with a man all day long, get along with him, and you go one way and he goes another, and then pick up where you left off the next day. Sooner or later this was going to create schisms, misunderstandings, and problems, so that it was essential to carry on this kind of activity in the communities in which you lived as well as in the plant. I suppose in an important sense this reflected the age-old fight within the American labor movement that went way back to the days of the Knights of Labor, and that is the conflict between social unionism on the one hand and business unionism on the other. We felt that the union was something more than just an economic instrument. If it was going to fulfill its function as an economic instrument, it also had to be a social instrument to bring about change and progress. Very early, then, this whole question of the importance of no discrimination became part of the union's philosophy.

When I became president of the union, one of the first things I insisted on was that we translate into the terms of our collective bargaining agreements provisions that there would be no discrimination against an employee or against an applicant because of race, creed, or color. Now, adding the term "or an applicant" represented a very major breakthrough.

I remember down in Alabama, in the forties, we had a strike that went on for seven months, and the companya pickle companyfinally closed the plant. They were willing to agree that they wouldn't discriminate against employees, but, by God, no one was going to tell them who they could hire. We said, "We don't want to tell you who to hire. We just want to tell you who you cannot refuse to hire." They finally closed up. But the interesting thing is that white

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United Packinghouse Workers of America convention, Cincinnati, Ohio,

1956. State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

workers were in a majority in the plant, and they supported that strike all the way through. This clause had a very important impact, not just on our union but throughout the country. It was one of the things that identified us very early on as a left-wing union. People were saying to me, "Only the Communists do things like that," and I kept saying, "But it's right. Why do I have to agree that they're the only ones that can do things right? I'm not willing to yield all this ground to them. I think that it is right to provide that the union have a voice in this question."

The UPWA wove the fight for racial equality into the very fabric of the union. Ralph Helstein believed that commitment made the union more ef-

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fective, more unified, and more capable of defending itself against management attacks. The packinghouse workers' principled defense of equality and their support for the early civil rights movement also made their union a model for others in the labor movement.

We had troubles over the years getting blacks into certain departments. For example, the sliced bacon department, which was practically all female, was one of the showplaces of the plant. They'd have these women dressed in white with white caps. For that day, it was a very efficient operation, highly mechanized. When they had tours going through the plant this was one of the key departments that they took people into. They never had a black woman in there. Getting blacks on the mechanical jobs used to be a major problem. So we insisted that seniority be applied as a basis for permitting people to transfer from one department to another. The companies understood. I made it very clear why we were doing this. We didn't trust their system of assigning people, and we wanted to break down these Jim Crow situations in the plants. One of the things the companies could never understand was how we got the support of our people. They knew who worked for them. They knew the majority was white, but they also knew that nobody was going to argue with us about this, that they would support us.

Whether they really wanted to or not didn't matter. The fact is the companies knew that they would do it, and they would do it with their feet if we told them to walk out. It took some months, but we got women in the sliced bacon. We got men into the mechanical departments. Black employment was spread all over the plant.

As a matter of fact, I can remember District 3that includes the states of Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, and eventually Kansas as well. In Estherville, Iowa, there was a guy by the name of Barney Hassel. Barney was about five feet two in all directions. I'll never forget his getting up on the floor of this convention. He was very close to tears. He says, ''Ralph, what are we supposed to do?'' I said, "What do you mean, what are you supposed to do?" And he said, "Well, we got no Negroes living in Estherville, and we can't find any. You know, we drove fifty miles away one night looking for somebody, to see if we could get them to come to work in the plant, and all we could find was a Mexican, and so we brought him. How are we going to have a civil rights program?" I said, "Well, Barney, you got the right intent. Just keep working at it. It'll take care of itself over a period of time. Do what you're doing." Really, the thing had become that much a part of our institutional setup and structure.

We wanted to deal with the broader aspects of civil rights as it affected our membership politically and as citizens of a community. It meant outreach into the

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communities themselves. We said, "You have to be worried about what goes on in your city as well as in the plant, because people are not just workers of a plant, they're citizens of a community. It's important that we deal with these issues of discrimination no matter where they're found." We knew that this required money, and so we set up in the early fifties what we called a Fund for Democracy. We raised from our local unions substantial sums of money, which meant that if an emergency would come up, for example, during the days of the Freedom Riders, a bunch of kids got thrown into jail in Macomb, Mississippi, I could send out a telegram saying we need six thousand, eight thousand dollars in bail money, and we had the money so we could send it down. We were never a rich union. We weren't interested in building up huge reserves, which I can't say about many other unions.

As the Montgomery bus boycott wore on, Martin Luther King began to talk in terms of getting the Southern Christian Leadership Conference organized, and, after a series of discussions with our people, we invited King to speak to a wage and policy conference that we had here in Chicago. At that conference we gave him eleven thousand dollars out of our Fund for Democracy, which became the seed money that was used for the establishment of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

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Don Harris, CIO/FE/UAW organizer (left), and Jimmy Porter, a United

Packinghouse Workers of America member and community activist,

picket Woolworth's in Waterloo, 1960. Paul Larsen.

8

Politics and the Renewal of the Labor Movement

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The postwar crisis of the labor movement led to a renewed commitment to the principles of labor solidarity. Nationally, the most visible signs of crisis were the weakened New Deal coalition, the passage of Taft-Hartley, and the wave of anti-Communist hysteria that swirled about some of the most militant CIO unions, isolating their effective left-wing leaders and critically disabling their organizing efforts. A case in point was the Farm Equipment Workers (FE). In Iowa the passage of a right-to-work law in 1947 and divisive strikes in the packinghouses and John Deere farm equipment plants signaled the limits of labor's new postwar strength.

Ominous though the immediate circumstances were, labor activists took comfort in the fact that unprecedented institutional security had been achieved. Strike defeats no longer meant the wholesale destruction of unions. The rank and file in many industrial unions retained potent shopfloor power even in the face of new restrictions on union activity. And buoyant postwar prosperity made possible rising real wages and new benefits.

The renewal of labor solidarity in a more hostile political environment came from a number of sources. Merger of the AFL and CIO in 1955 did not imply the harmonizing of the deep philosophical and organizational differences that had precipitated the rupture twenty years before. But it did signal the pragmatic recognition that a unified labor movement could be more effective against the corporate giants with which unions increasingly had to contend.

With the economic expansion induced by the Vietnam War, a new generation of young workers filled the ranks of the labor movement and grew impatient with the institutional rigidities and conservative style that an older generation of leaders had cultivated. Many of these young activists drew creatively on the organizational techniques of the civil rights and antiwar movements to push for reforms within the labor movement.

The most potent source of renewal came from the labor movement's commitment to political action on behalf of a broad social reform agenda. In Iowa this renewal through politics was particularly impressive. The Democratic party had failed to establish itself in the New Deal era as an effective contender for power. That task remained for the labor movement.

Workers had turned to politics in other times. In the late nineteenth century members of the Knights of Labor formed a Union Labor Party in Iowa and elsewhere to secure and extend their economic power. During the early twentieth century in many cities, the labor movement allied itself with socialists or with progressives in the Democratic or Republican parties to enact municipal or state reform programs. And while the Democratic party in the 1920s and 1930s became increasingly the party of labor, some unions

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continued to support independent, progressive, or farmer-labor political movements.

For Iowa workers, the political landscape after World War II was one-dimensional. That dimension was Republican. The bitter lessons of the fight over the right-to-work law in 1947 made crystal clear the need for political action if the labor movement was to maintain the strength it had achieved. The campaign for political renewal lasted nearly two decades, but in the end it transformed the politics of the state, created a competitive two-party system, and saw the enactment of some of the most progressive social legislation in the country. In the bargain, the labor movement itself was renewed.

Practical Solidarity: Union Mergers in the Corporate Age

Divisions between craft and industrial unions are deeply embedded in the history of the labor movement. But those divisions took on a new institutional form in the mid-1930s when John L. Lewis led the handful of unions affiliated with his Committee for Industrial Organization out of the American Federation of Labor. Organizing campaigns gave birth to new industrial unions and pitted them against older, established AFL organizations. While some rivals worked out truces that effectively divided jurisdictions, others continued, in the words of one activist, to "scratch each other's eyes out."

By the mid-1950s sentiment was growing for peace between the rival federations. Interest in interunion harmony was driven in part by a recognition that survival in corporate America, amidst the giant consolidated industries that dominated the economy, required that "union jurisdictions follow the patterns set by companies," as Ralph Helstein put it. But sentiment for merger was also fueled by local experience of labor solidarity in which workers forged ties through common struggles that bridged organizational boundaries. In some places, like Waterloo, Iowa, the merger on a voluntary basis of rival city central bodies was actually consummated several years before the CIO and AFL joined forces nationally.

Despite the merger, deep philosophical and practical differences still divided the unions of each federation. In Iowa such divisions within the newly unified Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, separated the building trades from the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA), the United Auto Workers (UAW), and the Communication Workers of America (CWA), and their industrial union allies. Eventually, new ruptures shattered their fragile solidarity.

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The spirit of merger captured the minds, if not the hearts, of workers within particular industries as well. Ralph Helstein and other leaders of the UPWA recognized that one big union of workers in meat processing was essential to the survival of their union. After more than a decade of negotiation, the UPWA joined forces with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters 1968. Union activists on both sides viewed the changes pragmatically. But some saw subtle changes in the style of unionism. Now, as one UPWA activist put it, "there was more briefcases and less T-shirts."

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The merger of AFL and CIO unions did not suddenly produce harmony within the labor movement, although some unions in both federations had worked together at a local level. The larger industrial unions felt they lacked adequate representation and fought for one person-one vote within the labor movement to replace the system of voting by councils of unions representing certain trades or jurisdictions. The social unionism of the industrial unions was also at odds with narrower conceptions of the labor movement held by the building trades. Bill Fenton of the International Association of Machinists played a part in the struggles to change the direction of the State Federation and the central bodies.

They didn't have one person-one vote in the Iowa Fed and the central bodies. You voted by councils, where each one had at least three votes. The building trades would always have so many councils. They have the Pipe Layers and the Pipe Fitters, and they have the Carpenters and the Millwrights. They just set so many councils with three votes that we couldn't overcome it. When we changed it to one person-one vote we began to progress. That would be 1966 or 1968.

We were fighting in the legislature about redistricting. We had supported the redistricting of the congressional districts, and we were tied in that so deep that we just spread it right over to the labor movement. Our opposition in the labor movement were so committed to the one person-one vote as far as equalizing the congressional districts that they couldn't get off on the other side and say it was not fair in the labor movement, too. So they got hooked, and they had to vote with us.

We changed it first in the central body in Des Moines, and then when we went to vote on it in the state AFL-CIO they called a person in from the national AFL-CIO to try to tell us we couldn't do it. We just literally told him to go to hell and went ahead and done it. First they wasn't going to okay it, but they did. Well, we had them locked in. It's been one of the best things ever happened in the labor movement. It's the rule of the majority.

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This central body in Polk County and the Des Moines area probably has been as active as any. I like to think one of the best in the nation because we've always been very active in politicsstatewide and locally and nationally. We've been active in people programs. Whether it be on the school board or for the park board, we were in there trying to promote things that were good for people. If it wasn't for us the Democratic party wouldn't have been successful at all in Polk County.

We've got a coalition of the Rubber Workers, AFSCME, Grain Millers and Machinists in the State Fed and the local central body. Also the Packinghouse Workers. We put it together originally because of necessity. We couldn't win elections without it. Matter of fact, up till Jim Wengert became president of the State Fed that officer had always come out of the construction trades or the Teamsters. We were paying the freight, and they had the president. The president was the one wheeling and dealing with the legislature. So we changed the voting and got a coalition together to make this work.

Our main thing with the building trades was that they were not fighting for people's programs. We got into a big argument when they started pulling out of the State Fed. One of them told us, "Well, all you care about for your people is food stamps and marijuana." We care about all people, whether it be food stamps or a program that feeds kids at school. They don't support those kind of issues and we do, and that become our big break. They're talking jobs for their people. They don't think of the community as a whole.

One big issue we get into is nuclear power plants. Those of us that are thinking about our grandkids and great grandkids don't see what they're going to do with the waste when it'll last as far as two hundred thousand years. They want it because it's jobs. Everytime we start fighting it they say, "You're taking away our livelihood." We don't take away their livelihood. We just say there's an alternative way to do things, the same thing we're saying in the Machinists. Don't build a goddamn MX missile. Why not build a train that will take people back and forth to work or across this country? Not the destruction of the world. We're just saying there's something better we can do with our tax dollars.

We worked on some issues together, labor issuesworkmen's comp, unemployment, and those kind of things. But once we got outside of those things and onto what they call welfare it's a different story. I call it welfare for the poor, because you got welfare for the rich. They will support the bill that Reagan passed in 1981 that if you buy the old depot downtown or the old warehouse, you can convert them and get up to 25 percent tax credit for the money you put in. To them that's jobs. Well, to me it's welfare for the rich. Their priorities are different than ours.

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Differences between the AFL and the CIO ran deep. The decision to merge in 1955 did not resolve those differences. In some ways, they were defined more sharply, as right and left wings of the labor movement. Edris "Soapy" Owens describes the continuing battles within the AFL-CIO that were rooted in very different philosophies. Despite those differences, the merger brought greater strength, just as, in his view, the withdrawal of the UAW from the AFL-CIO in the late 1960s weakened the movement.

Just a day or so before we had the merger convention, there was concern expressed in the CIO convention that the AFL was too conservative and that instead of us joining them and boosting them to become a more progressive organization, we would be swallowed up and become a more conservative organization. But Vernon Dale, president of the Iowa Industrial Union Council, told them, "If you want to be swallowed up and become more conservative, then that problem becomes the problem of you. It's your job, it's our job to see that that doesn't happen, and it's our job to move these guys farther along with what we want them to do." In the end I think that their conservativeness come off onto us more than our liberalism come off onto them.

I was executive vice president in charge of political action. The CIO had at least twenty-seven, twenty-eight thousand at that time, and the AFL probably had between fifty and sixty thousand. The AFL had a bigger clout in the legislature than I did, because they had bigger numbers and because they were more conservative. There was no doubt that as far as the merger, the AFL was getting their way at least in part. They were more interested strictly in bread-and-butter issues. But they were not successful to the point that you could write home about it.

It was the Packinghouse Workers, the UAW, and the CWA that provided a tremendous amount of leadership. They furnished people. I can remember more than once Lex Hawkins getting a bunch of laboring people together from these three unions on a Sunday, and we would walk the streets of Des Moines, uphill and downhill, dogs and everything else, knocking on doors to see if people were registered. If they weren't registered, they'd be taken to city hall and have them registered.

The split between the right and left was always there. Sometimes there were battles on the floor. The CWA and the Packinghouse Workers and the UAW were considered too far to the left for the other trade unions in the state. The Rubber Workers were mostly to the right of those three groups, although I've got a lot of respect for the Rubber Workers as a trade union.

One of the bitter fights was over the presidency of the State Federation in 1961 when Ray Mills retired. Charges and countercharges being thrown against

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one group by the other. I really thought we had the thing won, but we were beaten by seven votes, and that's the name of that game.

I didn't like the UAW pulling out of the Federation. I really didn't want to pull out, because I don't give a damn what our differences were, I knew that we had to be a stronger group together than we would be separately. I had been in a leadership position when we were separate before, and I knew we were more successful in our endeavors after we merged than we were before as two different groups. Of course, what the hell, I'm just a little leaf on the tree out here, after the things that have been done on the national level. But I didn't like to see it done.

The movement for merger of the AFL and CIO had actually begun in some localities well before it was achieved at national and state levels. Paul Larsen from the Plumbers Union saw Cooperation in Waterloo begin in 1950 through a voluntary coordinating council. Merger was already achieved, in one sense, long before it was formally declared in 1955 by the national leadership.

The merger of the former AFL and the former CIO took place in December of 1955. Waterloo, prior to that, had had what was called a coordinating council. This council was made up of volunteers from the AFL Central Labor Union and the CIO Industrial Union Council, and therefore Waterloo was able, because of this existing relationship, to effectuate its AFL-CIO merger before any other city in the nation. We were the very first to do this. Around 1950.

It was strictly a volunteer thing on a local basis. It was very unusual, very unique. But because of it a lot of the groundwork and the understanding that many people took years to develop was already there. A number of areas in the country didn't effectuate their formal mergers for several years thereafter. We were able to complete the merger very early in 1956. At the time the Black Hawk County Union Council was formed in 1956, they decided to hire a full-time representative. I went to work as executive secretary in April 1956.

There was some residue of animosity. A few of the building trades locals were a little hesitant at first. It didn't take too long, but there were a few problems. In a few instances industrial locals, like Machinists and Auto Workers, had been on ballots in opposition to each other. These left some memories which had to be taken care of. One of the benefits of the merger was that after that we were able, in most cases, to reach agreements so there'd be only one of the two groups on the ballot, giving us more of a chance to win the election.

The rival unions in meat-packing had a long history of jurisdictional conflict, a history that closely paralleled the divisions between AFL and

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CIO unions. Their different philosophies had produced radically different unions. According to Richard Edwards of the Quad Cities, the philosophical differences endured past the 1968 merger in meat-packing, and competitive organizing continued.

It was a difference of philosophy. I've always thought you catch more flies with sugar than you do with vinegar. The Amalgamated was always a union that believed in organizing. Our philosophy was if there's a ham boning operation off in Podunkville, go in and organize. And if they're making $3.50 and you get them a quarter raise, you did them a service. In each contract, you're going to get them more and more raises. We've organized ham boning operations in little towns far from the industry, far from any major packer, and taken them up like that and now have them at the full labor rate. Local 431 has received a vast amount of criticism. We've been called whores and everything else because we believe in organizing and helping the people that we can, while the UPWA locals would not organize something unless they could bring them up to the full rate. If they organized them and if the company couldn't pay the full rate based on their economic conditions, it was strike them. Put them out of business. Protect the rate. Well, I believe in protecting the rate, but I also believe in organizing and bringing people up gradually to where they can come on line.

Local 431 started off in 1935 when a guy named Jasper Rose took two days off, one day to get married and a day for a honeymoon. When he returned back to cutting meat in a retail store he got fired. He contacted the international, which was then located in Chicago, and started the union. It was a retail local at that time. This was in 1935, and he started picking up small units throughout Iowa and Illinois. By 1950 we had units located as far away as Ottumwa. We had units in Oskaloosa. By the time I came on board, our local ran from Des Moines south to Missouri and north to Minnesota. The eastern half of the state of Iowa and from Sterling, Illinois, down to Beardstown, Illinois. This was in 1968. In that thirty years we'd grown from twelve little butchers in the retail market up to about thirty-five hundred or four thousand people. Since 1968 we're now up to almost six thousand members. We've lost a lot of members, too.

While UPWA would give charters out to each individual plant, the philosophy of Amalgamated Local 431 was like the old carp fish. We just eat and swallow up as many as we can get and bring them right into the mother organization. We believe that we can give our membership better service with this philosophy than what the UPWA could. When you say, well, companies would come to the Amalgamated because we're the lesser of the two evils, I think that's true, too. We've had companies that have contacted us when they have heard that the UPWA was starting to organize them and allowed us to come right into the plant and maybe

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right into their lunchroom and hold a captive audience meeting with their employees. We've done that. Whether it's quite legal or not, I don't know. But we still think we're doing a job for our people. That's what we're concerned about.

While the Packinghouse Workers used to be much larger than the Amalgamated, they had gone down, and at the time we merged there was something like only seventy thousand.

We in 431 see differences between the old UPWA and the Amalgamated very strongly. We're not a well-liked local in the district amongst the United Packinghouse Workers, at least. But as we look at ourselves and shave in the morning, we feel we're doing right for the people.

Merger was viewed by some unions as an economic and political necessity. It was a defensive measure, a way of conserving and consolidating strength in a period of adversity. That certainly was the view of Ralph Helstein, president of the UPWA, when he argued for joining forces with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters. The changing structure of corporate America, plant closings, and automation necessitated, in his view, new thinking on the part of the labor movement.

I had come to feel that mergers were essential if you were going to be able to negotiate effectively. Corporate America had become larger and larger, and union jurisdictions essentially followed corporate patterns that were established by companies.

As a member of the executive council, I used to advocate the fact that we really shouldn't have over ten or fifteen international unions in America. I'd go around making speeches to this effect. I kept making them to our own membership. ''Look, the first step has to be a merger with the Meat Cutters, and we ought to undertake this seriously.'' And I kept talking about it even before the AFL and CIO merger.

Our people didn't want to even think about it, and so there was a very slow educational process. Finally, after the merger of the AFL-CIO occurred in 1955, we got together with the Meat Cutters at the merger convention and had a meeting of both our boards and sent Meany a telegram telling him that we were going to pursue it. We actually had a signed agreement with the Meat Cutters to have a merger convention in October of 1956.

But two days before the merger convention was to take place, Gorman called it off. He accused us of being a bunch of Communists, all of a sudden. He later claimed that somebody in Meany's office told him that it was a mistake to have a merger with us. I think that what happened was Gorman got scared.

Our representation in the Amalgamated would've been much more substantial

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than it finally turned out to be. Our membership was larger. But he blew it up, and we got into a nasty name-calling and raiding contest. Our people were just furious with him.

The plant closings started really in 1956. Wilson closed its big plant in Chicago, and that let loose a whole chain, and when 1959 came Armour began closing a lot of plants around the country. That's when we negotiated an automation agreement in Armour's. We set up an automation committee, which was designed to deal with problems of job loss, job displacement. This was when we first established that they couldn't close the plant without six months notice. We provided for interplant transfers. We already had separation pay, but we provided for protecting the separation pay if a guy took a transfer. We provided for early retirement at one-and-one-half the pension that they would get. We made all kinds of provisions for retraining. Actually, unions today are doing the things we did way back in 1959 and 1960. This represented no substantive dealing with the problem of job loss as the result of plant closure. What it represented was our cushioning the blow. We weren't creating jobs. Employment in the industry was going consistently down.

It became clear that these were the signs, and I began pushing much more seriously and intensively for merger. The Meat Cutters were, in a sense, fortified against the impact of these plant closings because they didn't have the big plants. They had some, but we had the big important plants. We did not have the retail meatcutters, which was really the base, the strength of the Meat Cutters union over the years. So I kept pressing, and finally it was in 1966 that we began very serious negotiations and finally reached an agreement in 1968.

Some good things can be said about the merger. My hunch is that there were probably more bad things. There literally was no alternative way to continue to keep an organization that was viable in the industry, and I happen to believe that the merger between the Meat Cutters and the UPWA was right. In long-range terms there was no other solution that was viable, and I think that historically it'll turn out. Sooner or later, these excesses of Reaganomics are going to force a reawakening of labor, just as they did after the American Plan in the early thirties or in the depression, and when that happens many of these unions are going to undergo serious changes. They're going to become more radical and more demanding. Instead of having concession bargaining with the blackmail of the plant closings being used against them, there's going to be more mergers.

Of course we had to sell it. We had to explain it. Everybody knew that it wasn't that we were happy about it. Our convention in Los Angeles was, in a sense, a wake. Everybody understood that they were going into a new period completely, a new climate, new philosophy, new conditions. I hung on because I'd

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become a figure, a symbol, at this point. So I stayed on for one term which was four years, and then I was already beginning to have some physical problems. I retired in 1972.

A different style of unionism came with the merger, at least in the eyes of some UPWA activists, like Merlyn Wee of Estherville. The old-time UPWA leaders never quite fit in. But they left a legacy of dedicated service to the union they had built.

I was at the merger convention. Everybody likes to have their own autonomy, but we just couldn't survive. We were getting down to the point of where we didn't have the strength in numbers, and it was a necessary evil.

After the merger it was more uptownish than the old UPWA. There was more briefcases and less T-shirts! It was quite conspicuous when you sat at the bargaining table. Dave Hart, for instance, never fit in with those company lawyers. He just stood out like a sore thumb when he sat down! But he could match wits with any of them. Biggest power of recall I ever seen. Late at night after a big poker game and a fifth of cheap booze, with his head nodding so that you'd wonder if he was going to make it to bed, you'd tell him something about something in your plant. The next day or six weeks later, that man can quote you verbatim.

An older generation of union activists in the Amalgamated and the UPWA had to leave behind decades of animosity in agreeing to the merger. Chester O'Hara of the Amalgamated in Council Bluffs believes that with time the old hatreds will pass and a more successful era in union organizing will dawn, where rival locals don't "scratch each other's eyes out."

I believe that the old animosity of the UPWA and the Amalgamated towards each other is gradually disappearing. As we go down from the fifties and forties, the people that was involved in the 1948 strike, the people that was involved in the 1956 merger, and the people that was involved in the 1968 merger are now in the minority, because many of us have retired.

Even though I believe in local autonomy, if you let two local unions scratch each other's eyes out in trying to organize a plant, even if you win it, you haven't got nothing. You've got a divided plant again. We've got to learn to live with each other. Whether we love each other or not, we've got to learn to respect each other.

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With Their Own Hands: Rebuilding Unions from Below

Unions in the postwar era faced circumstances that were without precedent. They no longer fought for their very existence. They won new levels of economic security and benefits for their members, administered increasingly complex contracts, and conducted their affairs with a degree of professionalism not seen before. While Taft-Hartley imposed real limits on their ability to organize and Cold War anti-Communist hysteria divided their ranks, unions' power and public influence were impressive.

New institutional pressures and the rise of a cadre of professional union leaders skilled in meeting the demands of the offices they held reinforced a tendency for the membership to withdraw from the active levels of participation that union-building had required. An aging leadership within some unions became less responsive to the discontent of younger workers hired in the expansion of the 1960s.

Because unions are fundamentally democratic institutions, they are susceptible to internal conflict and strife. But they are also capable of renewal from within. The pattern and timing of change varied from one organization to another.

A case in point is the International Association of Machinists (IAM). For the Machinists, the decade of the 1960s was a seedtime of change. Although the IAM had evolved into a full-fledged industrial union during and after World War II, it retained some of the philosophical vestiges of its conservative, craft union tradition. Dominated by an older generation of leaders, it was ripe for change as the Vietnam-era economic expansion hit the machine shops.

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Iowa Machinists and the New Unionism

By the 1960s some unions had become complacent. With recognition no longer in question and wage and benefit increases routinely granted, some leaders welcomed the routinization of collective bargaining, but that left new problems unattended. At plants like Chamberlin's in Waterloo, the escalation of the Vietnam War brought rapid expansion. Large numbers of young workers hired in the mid- to late-sixties found the deteriorating working conditions and the unequal treatment of women disturbing. Workers like Russell Woodrick organized within the IAM to do something about it. They had to learn from scratch how to rebuild a union.

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I planned on working there a year and earning some money and going back to school. The Vietnam War was going on, and Chamberlin's was manufacturing munitions, so the plant was expanding rapidly. I got a job on second shift. My department was all new people, with the exception of one, the setup man. So when I had my sixty days in, because I had some education behind me, the other members of the union encouraged me to become the steward. I came from a family that was strong union. My father was a carpenter. My mother helped found the nurses' association at Cook County Hospital, and she was a member of the strike committee when the nurses went on strike back in the early sixties. There was no question, if I was going to work where there was a union I'd join the union. It's just that simple.

When my probationary period was up I became a steward of my department. During the next year I had a grievance, and I was working with the chief steward on that shift. Because I had a college education he told me to write it up and process it. I processed it with him, and this was a whole new area. I wasn't too familiar with it, but he wanted me to do that, and then he encouraged me to run for chief steward on second shift, which I did that year. We had a contract come up, and I was very disappointed in the results. We went on a two-week strike and literally gained very little.

Because this plant had grown rapidly, over 50 percent of the people had less than two or three years seniority. A lot of the new people were very disgruntled, like I was, and so they dropped out of the union. My whole attitude was to drop in. I decided after that contract that if I was there for the next one I was going to be in on that bargaining committee. So that fall I ran for vice president, chief steward of the whole plant, and I won that office.

As chief steward, I came across many problems with piece rates, speedups, problems that different people were having, and I saw that I couldn't effectuate change by myself. I was one person.

Like any other plant, we had a bar that we went to after work. It was the 19th Hole, and we would talk about these union problems, problems that we felt we weren't getting proper representation on, and we did this for a number of years. By talking and meeting with people in the bar and at the plant you got to know who was interested and who really felt that there should be some changes made. There were natural leaders in the plant, people who were leading in their own departments.

We saw all kinds of different problems. The women at the plant had to work twice as long to get a promotion and never made it to the top in the labor grades. Safety really upset us. The plant grew so rapidlythis was before OSHAand we saw so many safety hazards and people being injured. A hot forge building that when you'd walk into it, you'd be walking into a cloud of smoke. We saw

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people catching their fingers in machines. So we would talk about these problems at the bar. When you work eight hours a day and you come from all over the communitywe draw from forty miles around, every direction, at that plantyou couldn't go to your neighbor's house because your neighbor didn't work there.

So we started putting together a ticket to run in the fall of 1968. I got with different people in each department, and we put together a slate of candidates to run for every office. We were electing some thirty-eight people. We felt that the union should be representative of all groups, so we sought out for the first time women to run on the ticket. We sought out blacks. We sought out old-timers. And we sought out younger people. We felt that the ticket should be balanced from all parts of the plant.

The plant at that time was at twelve hundred people. Our greatest support was on second and third shifts, and our weakest support was on first shift, which was mainly the old-timers. We knew the numbers. About two-thirds of the shop was new, under three years. We knew that if we could get out our second and third shifts we would sweep. We also knew that the company did not want us in office. When we'd try to go around the plant and talk, they'd send us back to our departments and threaten us.

The night before the election we bought five thousand handbills, and we literally plastered the plant with them. Each restroom door was plastered. Every urinal. All the jeeps in the plant were literally covered. Every machine had handbills pasted right on them. We knew what would happen in the morning. Once the supervisors, the top dogs, would come in they would see these and start tearing them down. That was one of our keys. We knew what the company would do, and they did it. They just tore them down, and a lot of the old-timers got hot, because they saw that as the company interfering with the union election. So we went into the election. We got our people out, and out of thirty-eight offices we took all but two. Well, that was the beginning.

One of the keys to rebuilding the union, Russell Woodrick learned, was to attack directly the sources of division between workers in the plant, to address the needs of women and minority workers. With broader participation and careful planning, the union was in a position to strike effectively for a whole range of demands that touched the festering problems in the plant. The strike galvanized a new spirit of solidarity.

We took office in January. Immediately in April the contract expired, and we were going right into negotiations. I got some books on collective bargaining at the University of Northern Iowa and started reading. I found that I could request

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information from the company, and so we did. We requested everything. And we started digging. We requested wages and seniority and sex of all the employees and set up standard deviation tests on wages, when people got their increases, and how they got them. In the inspection department we found glaring discrimination against women. When they would get their raises, it would take them twice to three times longer than a man, and to get a promotion, four or five times as long.

We held proposal meetings for each department. This was time-consuming, but we felt it was a necessity. We put together a bargaining book. This was unique, too. Before, the union would go in with one sheet of demands, and the company would have their demands, and they'd meet a couple times and leave. There was a tradition of a two-week strike. They'd go out for two weeks, and the company would then give an offer, and they'd go back to work. We went in with 120 pages of typewritten demands. I mean, we tore that contract apart. For everything we proposed we had our reasons behind it.

We took our strike vote, it was unanimous, and we went on strike. So two weeks after the strike got going the company got back together and offered us a few more cents. We knew what industries were paying at this time, and the company was trying to get away with paying half the amount that the going rates for settlements were. So we said, "No." The company then cut off our insurance, just abolished our Aetna coverage. We weren't even allowed to pay it ourselves. They just said, "That's it. While you're on strike you're not going to have insurance coverage."

I checked with the insurance companies, and none of them would provide me an insurance policy because we were not an incorporated entity, even though we would pay for it. But at this point I thought, well, what is insurance? It's a group going together to protect themselves. So we created our own insurance. We self-insured. We asked for fifty dollars for two months' insurance from each person on strike and set up our own insurance fund. We would pay out claims from it for the duration of the strike. Now, that was very dangerous, but, of course, in 1969 the prices weren't that high.

Everybody participated. Our strike lasted eight weeks. The company operated with their foremen. The office people had to go in, too. Because this was a defense factory, there was one entrance, and so supervisors and office people were harassed, as they had been in past strikes, when they were going in to work. We sat down and said, "This is bad." We talked about it. They have no choice. They are being ordered in. So we decided not to harass but to be halfway decent to these people, and we were. All of a sudden we found that they were our best sources of information. We had supervisors coming out, telling us everything that was happening, what they were being told. We had office people giving us infor-

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mation when the lawyer would come out. We knew more of what was happening in that plant than the company did. They forced the foremen to go on the production machines. A lot of these foremen came from our bargaining unit, promoted from within. Well, the foremen just told us that they might be put on the machine, but producing is quite another thing. They tried to operate, but they couldn't.

After the two weeks' strike, the company told us that they were very upset at how unpatriotic we were, striking a defense factory during the Vietnam War, and they implied that they were going to go public with this. I told them, "If you want, I'll put a goddamn flag out there on the picket line," and I did. "If you say we're unpatriotic, I'm going to talk about the obscene profits that you're making off this war." One of the things we had done in preparation was see that the company had the ability to pay. We got all their stockholder manuals from the last five years, and we saw the profits that this company made. We knew that they had the ability to pay, and so we held their feet to the fire. Interestingly enough, they never went to the papers about us being unpatriotic. I really think they were fearful because of the profits that they were making.

The company was a little upset because we were making so many demands in so many areas that they had never looked at. We wanted a safety committee with specific responsibilities. We wanted to approve our benefit levels on insurance. We wanted to improve the pension plan. We really delved into every area of the contract, even the recognition clause. We brought in new technology clauses that said if the company would get into new technology they would train from within. We really took each piece of the contract apart. We established employee rights. We also negotiated the rules and regulations governing the attendance policy. We found a lot of abuse in this area by supervision. We realized the company had to have rules and regulations, but we wanted to have progressive discipline and fair administration of it.

Six weeks into the strike we started meeting again, and I think the company was getting pressured by the Defense Department to get it settled. We were fully prepared for those negotiations. The company was not prepared. They thought it was going to be the old-fashioned type of negotiations. Because we were so fully prepared we got the whole contract changed, and I mean we changed everything.

We went back in, and things were very, very different. We had established a grievance procedure. We had job bidding in the departments. We had transfer rights. We told the company about the inequitable treatment of the women. We told them we could handle it two ways. We could either negotiate or we could turn it over to the EEOC, and they agreed that they would negotiate. So we got women in the craftsman area on inspection. We got women promoted.

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The strike helped us wonderfully. One of the items that we got in was that every new employee, as part of orientation, would be introduced to the chief steward or the president of the union. We were given time with the new employee. When we went back to work we had 99.9 percent of the bargaining unit that was union, and actively union.

Revitalization of the labor movement came from below. Even as some younger workers challenged their local leaders, they also breathed new life into the district or national organizations. Through expanded organizing campaigns, direct involvement in politics, the promotion of internal democracy, and sympathy boycotts and strike support, they created, in Russell Woodrick's view, a new, militant spirit within the labor movement.

I wasn't too happy with the business agent because he didn't aid us during our strike. So I felt that with his election coming up, he shouldn't run unopposed. I ran against him in November of 1969. Once again, we had our team working, and we analyzed out the district and the plants that were in the district, where his support was coming from and which units had many problems. We knew that Clay Equipment was having lots of problems. They had settled a contract in 1969, the year before we got thirty cents. Clay Equipment got a nickel in 1968, nothing in 1969, and they were going to get another nickel in 1970. So we knew they were very disgruntled.

I was elected by three votes out of sixteen hundred. The incumbent business agent wore beautiful suits and was gray-haired. I had hair down to my shoulders and didn't own a tie, but I beat him in the district.

The average age of the executive board of our district at that time was about fifty-five, and here I came in at the age of twenty-seven to be the business agent. I was the youngest business agent in the Machinists in the United States, newly elected, and I didn't have the clothes. I worked in a factory, and I had Levis and work shirts. One of the first problems that came up was that the board passed a dress code, that the business agent will wear slacks and shirts with ties. Now, here I am, fighting the plants against dress codes, and the executive board passes a dress code. Then they weren't happy that I wasn't in the office enough. Well, one of the things I believe in is getting out and going to the plants, attending the plant meetings. Well, you couldn't be at two places at once, and so I had problems with that. I had some support in the district from my own local. When we got a successful contract at Waterloo Industries, Local 1373, that allowed us to educate more people, bring more people into leadership positions. So by the end of the second year after I was business agent, officers in the district had gone from an average age of fifty-five down to an average, believe it or not, of twenty-two in

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Russell Woodrick, business agent, District 134, International Association

of Machinists, Waterloo, speaks at the 1979 convention of the Iowa Federation

of Labor, AFL-CIO. State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

literally two years, because officers at each of the locals changed. Now, with the average age dropping, I had a lot of interest in items like organizing, education, safety committees.

Well, a strange thing was happening at that time. We didn't realize it, but what was happening in our district was also happening in other districts around the state. A year before I was elected, Bob Runde in Dubuque was elected. I was twenty-seven and Bob was in his early thirties. And then the same year I was elected, we had Dick Sturgeon of Sioux City, District 102, elected. There were some changes down in Davenport around that time. And slowly after that there were changes in other parts.

The Machinists were one of the AFL-CIO unions. It was a very conservative union with very conservative leadership. But there was a whole changing of the membership. They were changing their views about the union, about what the union should be doing. A lot of younger people from the sixties were moving into the union. They couldn't find jobs in their chosen fields.

If there's anything that I feel that I really have nurtured in this district, it's labor democracy. In our district decisions are not made at the top and passed down. They are made by the groups that are affected, and there is complete input. We

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have dissidents that don't agree with us. We have people that don't particularly like our leadership. They are allowed full voice. And then finally it comes down to a vote.

We had had an old theory of unionism that was: we're organized, we have our contract; we don't have to worry about anybody else. We don't have to worry about blacks, women. We don't have to worry about the unorganized. It was a very ethnocentric type philosophy and a very exclusive philosophy, because these people didn't want new people into the organization in leadership roles.

We did clash with that old type of unionism, because we felt that the union should be open to everybody. Everybody should participate. When we went out to organize or to help other unions that were in trouble, we were helping ourselves.

Sharp improvements in the economy often foreshadowed the revitalization of unions. When the work force expanded, as it did at Sioux Tools in Sioux City in the early 1960s, new workers questioned established relationships and challenged old taboos. Economic growth fueled their expectations and gave them confidence. Dick Sturgeon witnessed these changes sweep through Machinists locals in particular, where older trade union habits had survived longer than in the newer industrial unions.

They didn't hire packinghouse people at Sioux Tools because packinghouse workers are very strong union folks. Sioux Tools at the time had a drinking society for a union. It wasn't strong. It was a Machinists union, but the leadership out there was very, very weak, and the company liked it that way and made certain they didn't put any militants on board.

Sioux Tools made electric and air drills primarily for the auto repair industry. They hadn't hired for quite a while, but starting in late 1959 through 1964 they were in a very large hiring program. They went to second and third shifts. They had very few people that didn't belong to the union, but I had to go ask to join. My father couldn't understand that. Nobody come around and asked me to join. Nobody wore union steward badges. I didn't even know who to go ask. If you had a grievance the leadership would try to talk you out of it, and if they couldn't then they'd take it, but you'd never hear any more about it. We'd go to union meetings, and as soon as you walked in the door somebody'd holler, ''Well, let's get this over so we can get to the bar.'' If you wanted to bring up a problem at a union meeting you usually were cut off and told to discuss it with your shop committee after the meeting. And your shop committee would dutifully listen to you and that would be the extent of it. There just was no strength whatsoever. There was so much fear out there. I would talk politics and they would say, "Oh,

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gee, don't you dare do that. The old man hear that and he'd have you fired." Or we had a centennial and I wanted to grow a beard, and they said, "Boy, don't do that. Anybody out here with a beard, boy, doesn't last very long." It was a terrible situation.

The union meeting was held at night, and it was a night off for the fellows. It was clear that their original purpose was to drain the swamp, and the swamp to be drained was the nearest bar. We had one right in the union hall. The attendance wasn't too bad. It was all the old-timers. There wasn't any new blood there. It wasn't long after being there that we seen something had to happen. They had hired a bunch of new people because they had gone into a new line real strong.

I was on the night shift, and I took in a petition to our business agent to ask him that the meeting be switched to Saturday so that we could attend. Poor old John was so thrilled that there was that many people that gave a damn when the meeting was going to be held! He was just elated. He couldn't believe it. Poor old John, you know, he hadn't had anybody had any drive at Sioux Tools for years, and that's the plant he came out of.

The very first election after I started to work there in 1963 we organized and tried to get a slate of officers elected. Oh, that disrupted everything. Nobody's ever done that. We came with a printed leaflet to pass out at the election place. It just was unheard of. It shocked the dickens out of the old-timers. The financial secretary came in the hall and wanted to punch whoever wrote it. You know, it just was never done.

The newly hired people at Sioux Tools were primarily young people. We just talked out at the plant. Most of the people that were on that slate were on the night shift. We had a lot of time to sit around and plan. But we succeeded in electing only one person.

After we got our meeting changed to Saturdays, things really turned around. The next election we ran a partial slate, and we elected the president of the union. I got elected as a member of the shop committee and negotiating committee.

We started getting shop committees that would process grievances, confront management over safety and health problems. That was never done before. The old-timers were really sure that us young folks were going to cause some bad problems because you just didn't rock the boat out there. I got elected shop chairman in 1964 or 1965. It was like somebody died. Management people and a lot of the old-timers walked around actually in mourning. But the plant superintendent come over and congratulated me. He says, "Everybody in the office is just sure that doomsday has happened, but I don't really think so. I think maybe

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Bill Fenton (second row, center), Grand Lodge Representative, International

Association of Machinists, Des Moines, demonstrates his solidarity  with the

strikers at Clinton Corn Processing in Clinton, 1980. State Historical Society

of Iowa,  Iowa City.

we can work together." We turned it into a good union that represented people and represented them well.

The new generation of union leaders sought to expand labor's demands in the area of fringe benefits. But to many old-time leaders, there were dangers in such a strategy. In their view, it undermined the autonomy and independence of unions, and as Bill Fenton, one of the younger leaders, noted, it left them vulnerable to plant closings and buyouts.

I looked up to two of my predecessors as business agents in the Machinists union because they had been around and were great labor leaders. I got elected as a business rep in November 1957. I started talking about fringes over the objections of some of the other people. I could see that if we didn't do that we were going to be setting back secondhand and falling behind. I started out on pensions, health and welfare, sick leave, and put those in the contracts. But my advice from the old leaders was to stay clear away from such things because it ties you too close to the employer.

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They used to give me the devil. Those old-timers' philosophy was, "The only thing you talk about is wages because whenever you start talking about vacation, fringes and all, you tie the employee too close to the employer. Whenever you say that you work for an employer so long and you get three weeks' vacation, you're tying him with that employer and giving him a reason he's got to stay there. And then you tie a pension in . . ." Their philosophy was you just talk about wages and that's it. Don't talk about anything that would have to do with length of service.

Sometimes now I wonder. These companies are diversifying or selling out; today you may work for company A, tomorrow it's AB, and the next day it's ABC company. I don't know. Maybe we should have got our money and forgot it. But I still think that I done right.

Coming of Age: The New Politics of Labor

Historically, the labor movement's attitude toward politics has been ambivalent. Many early affiliates of the AFL had a congenital distrust of the political process and sought to keep political matters separate from union business. However, in the context of depression during the 1930s, workers organizing on an industrial basis played a central role in consolidating the New Deal Democratic party coalition that legislatively transformed the role that government played in labor relations. The pattern of Democratic party strength varied across the country, even when the coalition was at its peak strength. Republican party successes in the immediate postwar years fractured the coalition. On the political defensive, the labor movement and its Democratic allies witnessed the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which undermined key pillars of the still-fragile labor relations framework established by the Wagner Act.

In Iowa the Democrats had never broken the longstanding pattern of Republican party hegemony that reached back into the political mists of the nineteenth century. Although the labor movement in the state had grown to sizeable proportions between 1933 and 1945, it could not prevent the Republican-dominated legislature, with the encouragement of Governor Robert Blue, from passing a right-to-work law in 1947.

Real changes in Iowa politics came slowly in the 1950s as the labor movement reunified and redirected some of its new strength into the political arena. Union activists rebuilt the party at the county level, recruited union candidates, and perfected techniques of political mobilization that began to show results. The Iowa Federation of Labor and the local central-body po-

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litical action committees, COPE (AFL-CIO) and CAP (UAW), worked with increasing effectiveness to marshall a labor vote.

A stronger labor movement seeking allies to bolster its political muscle turned inevitably to the state's farm sector. The appearance of a new, more militant national farm organization that spoke the language of collective bargaining quickly caught the attention of the state's labor activists. Unionists threw their organizational resources behind the National Farmers' Organization (NFO) and played a central role in building a base for it in the state. Although the farmer-labor alliance had some limited political success in Iowa, it never enjoyed the influence of its counterpart in Minnesota and North Dakota.

Despite some electoral victories, Democrats in the state legislature remained very much a minority party through the mid-1960s. Union legislators learned to work with considerable creativity just to get their prized pieces of legislation to the floor, let alone seriously considered. Their greatest triumph, but also defeat, was the effort to repeal the right-to-work law, which in 1965, during the governorship of Democrat Harold Hughes, fell just short of passage in the State Senate. By the end of the decade, however, labor support for a landmark reapportionment effort, changes in voter registration procedures, and a living wage for legislators helped create a legitimate two-party politics in the state. The legislative gates opened for a cascade of social and economic legislation that had been on labor's agenda for years.

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Politics became an integral part of union activity, especially after the 1930s. Political loyalties forged in the depression held firm in the postwar period. From Betty Talkington's perspective, it was the difference between "property" and "people."

I went to union meetings regularly. In those days women were tolerated. I was also involved in politics and knew a lot of union people. I was secretary of the Democratic Central Committee for many years and ran the headquarters.

I just felt that the Democratic party was the party of the people. When I was a kid, my mother needed help desperately one time. She went to the supervisor of the poor in the courthouse and was told that she was a very good-looking woman and he'd offer her two dollars right then. I understood what the words meant. He couldn't give her any help to feed her children, but that was the way she could make money. He was a Republican and a well-known one, and if anything would've driven me into the other party that would have.

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I can remember the end of the Roosevelt administration. He was always for people. In my estimation Hoover was not the same sort of person. I understand that he did marvelous things overseas with food aid. I've been to his library and looked at those things. But I don't think that he was interested in people. He was more interested in property as the leader of the Republican party, and I made my decision on that basis. I knew that I'd probably not ever own very much property, and I needed somebody that was interested in people.

Local politics in Iowa's industrial towns reflected the strength and unity of the local labor movement. In Ottumwa a strong labor movement in the 1940s enjoyed considerable political influence. But even there, Jack McCoy discovered that the influence could quickly erode, as it did in the aftermath of the 1948 strike.

In the middle forties there was a deliverable labor vote in the packinghouse that Ed Filliman and his crowd pretty well had. That was during the wartime years.

It was the old Ottumwa Labor Council or Industrial Union Council that was active in politics. Herschel Loveless had been a PWOC member there and then went to work for the railroad. In the 1947 flood he'd gained some notoriety as a relief director and become mayor. We were quite close to Herschel.

During Herschel Loveless's days as mayor, it wasn't a love feast constantly, but we always knew we could go to Herschel and get things squared off if they got out of hand. We never expected him to run our errands for us. When he'd get in trouble he'd come down to the packinghouse, and we'd do our damnedest to try to bail him out.

When I entered the scene we went through a series of defeats in the late forties because of bitching toward the local unions, primarily a result of the 1948 strike. It lasted through the first couple of years of the 1950s.

When the fight over going to a city manager form of government developed, Herschel Loveless came down and visited with Dave Hart and I. He didn't want to turn over the city government to the Chamber of Commerce crowd. We said we'd do our job at the plant. The damn election was held on a Saturday, and we assigned our stewards to different precincts. They worked hard to try to stop it. The newspaper had been building that up for a long while, and they beat us on it, in spite of the stewards doing a good job. We must've fielded between sixty and eighty stewards that Saturday in the precincts in Ottumwa. But we lost, and there was no point in crying over it. Herschel prepared to leave the mayor's job, which is full time. He had other political ambitions anyway. He ran for governor in 1952.

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Politically, the Iowa labor movement came of age in the early 1950s. Frustrated with their inability to stem the right-to-work steamroller, tired of seeing Democratic friends of labor in perpetual minority status in the legislature, and angry at the unfairly apportioned seats available to urban workers, the reunified labor movement went to work politically. Paul Larsen of Waterloo witnessed the change in climate that resulted.

After the merger the Black Hawk Labor Council had a very, very active COPE, Committee on Political Education. Now, it endorsed candidates. It supported them financially to a degree that had never been done with liberal candidates in this area before. And so, due a great deal to the council's efforts, they started to elect some people to the state legislature from this area for the first time in many, many, many years. In the state legislature the first friends that we had since the depression years was after the council became active politically. The Third District Committee on Political Education doesn't exist anymore, but it was very effective politically in endorsing and financially supporting candidates for the state legislative offices. And as a result of that, we were able to gain a great deal of influence that we had not had with members of the state legislature from rural areas.

Effective labor politics and community services were rooted in strong and fair-minded unions at the workplace. John Cooney, who worked at Titus Manufacturing in Waterloo, could feel the political momentum shift as a reunified labor movement expressed itself in politics.

We were firm with those who refused to join the union. "If you're going to work here with me, you're going to belong to the union." The answer I got is, "The law says that we don't have to." I says, "The hell with the law. Either you join me or you won't work here.'' So the boss called old Cap Wagner, the sheriff, down to the plant. He just looked up at me and said, "I can't see anything wrong with any man joining a union that bargains for him," and turned around and walked away. They all joined the union. Cap was probably one of the better sheriffs we ever had in this area.

In the mid-fifties the Democrats started to build. We started getting people coming out of the woodwork, people that had liberal ideas. We really started in 1955 when we merged the AFL and CIO. We were one of the first places in the country to get our charter. I was on the committee to help them pull the thing together in Black Hawk County. I was president of the Black Hawk County Labor Council from about 1957 to around 1965. We got our membership very active in politics. As far as I'm concerned, the Labor Council was the local Democratic

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United Packinghouse Workers of America activist Barney Hassel (left)

of Estherville ran for local political office in 1950 as part of labor's effort

to rebuild the Democratic party at the local level. Chuck and Jim Hassel.

party. Most of their funds come from the labor movementUAW Local 838, UPWA Local 46. We had good representation in this area. We encouraged a lot of knowledgeable people to get mixed into politics that had never thought of doing it.

When the younger generationthose kids that started to get into college about 1958, 1960come along, then we started to get good participation from the college. To keep step with the generation of the sixties, you had to have a liberal mind, and those that didn't fell by the wayside in the leadership of the labor movement. We also worked real hard with the Farmer-Labor Relations Committee and used it in politics. We met with people from the NFO and the Farmers' Union and had meetings all over northeast Iowa. We found out there was very little that we couldn't support that they were passing and vice versa. On the other side of the fence, the Farm Bureau fought us tooth and nail.

Iowa workers recognized the importance of farmer-labor cooperation to their own political program. Renewed depression in the farm economy stirred interest among farmers in a unified farmer-labor movement. What set this new initiative apart, according to Paul Larsen of Waterloo, was the common interest in collective bargaining.

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A "beanfield" full of unsold tractors during the recession of 1956. Gerald Fisher

(standing), president of UAW Local 1315 at the Oliver Tractor Works in

Charles City, and Virgil Ries (sitting on tractor) of the Floyd County NFO survey

the prospects for farmer-labor cooperation. State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

Farmer-labor cooperation started in 1956 when the farm situation and prices were very depressed. We formed what we called the Farm-Labor Association. It was union members and farmers of the whole area together in this organization. For a time, at least, they developed a very effective organization to bring the economic distress of both the workers and the farmers to the attention of the country.

We had meetings all over this section of the state, and thousands of farmers belonged to it at that time, together with many union members. We had meetings with five hundred to a thousand people showing up to hear speakers from labor, from the farm, and from the political arena.

When the NFO was starting to organize, they came to various elements of the labor movement wanting to know how to organize, wanting to work with and use the expertise of the labor movement. The Packinghouse Workers, because of the very nature of their business, their product, were very close to the farmers. Many of the first meetings were in the Packinghouse Workers' hall in Waterloo or Mason City or somewhere else. The farmers felt that the existing farm organizations were not helping them. That was when that they came up with the slogan, "collective bargaining in the marketplace." That was the first time that any farm organization had done anything toward the idea of bargaining for their

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prices rather than going in and taking what was being offered. It was a new and radical concept for them.

There has always been some mistrust on both sides, which has been exploited by the major farm organizations. That was the very reason for our farmers' organization, to try to do something about it, and we did. We did.

In the midst of its own internal reorganization during the mid-fifties, the labor movement sought to make inroads on the Republican political control of the state. One strategy, adopted by the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the Packinghouse Workers, was to build the base for a farmer-labor movement in Iowa by supporting the organizing efforts of the National Farmers' Organization (NFO). Edris "Soapy" Owens realized that initial success in the Sixth District did not transform Iowa politics overnight.

In early 1956, Gene Peterson, a representative of the Packinghouse Workers who lived in Estherville, and I got our local unions in the Sixth District to form farm-labor committees. The UAW had a couple smaller local unions in Boone, and we had two or three locals in Fort Dodge. The Packinghouse Workers went as far as Estherville. That was the old Sixth Congressional District that included Fort Dodge. They had a congressman named James I. Dolliver who had served for years and years and years.

Dolliver was challenged by Norman Coad in 1956. Coad was the regular speaker on this tour with Oren Lee Staley, myself, and Eugene Peterson. I really think that our support of the NFO and the work that our local farm-labor committees did were directly responsible for his upsetting James Dolliver in that election.

In 1956 that was the first Democrat we had. I had visions, believe me, of this thing leading to what they had in Minnesota. Hey, we've got something here. We can build another Minnesota base here. But we weren't successful. We tried it in another district, and it just didn't get off the ground like it did in that Sixth District. The liberal movement was just being swatted in this state at that time.

The labor movement revitalized the Democratic party in the state through the grass-roots activism of union members who threw themselves into the myriad tasks of local political work. Some, like Doris Peick, an electrical worker from Cedar Rapids, "just ate it up." A new world of activity opened up that brought some immediate successes. State and local politics in Iowa have never been the same.

Linn County has been pretty much Republican throughout the years. But I've worked like hell to see that it has become more Democratic. I register the kids

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at the 7-11's and the filling stations and at work. Postcard registration, absentee ballots, and notarization, these things came into being during my lifetime.

I got more and more educated. My apple was ready for plucking. I just ate it up. I loved the political end of the labor movement, but I didn't really care about running for office. It didn't bother me that the other business agent put me out to pasture because I had a whole new world open for me. I was so entrenched in my local I didn't stop and smell the roses on the outside.

I got involved in John Culver's campaign. Al Meier from the State Fed, said, ''You've been involved with the Democratic party, and you've been working with the leadership of labor. They are going to need some people in your district to work the polls on election day." So I worked the polls, and I had to hire a baby-sitter to do all this, plus maintain my own job and do the housework. But anyway, I did that and I loved it. I learned a little more about the political system at the grass-roots level. I door-knocked to get out the vote. Snow, rain, sleet, whatever, I did it. Flashlight in hand, worked all the people's houses. I went into the Linn County Democratic Women's Club. I was elected financial secretary. And I gathered up memberships out of my own local and other women in the community that I knew. And I just kept going and going and going.

Electing labor representatives to political office was an uphill struggle in Republican Iowa. The victories in the 1950s and early 1960s were few and far between. But in some localities the tide turned suddenly and then just as quickly reversed itself, as it did in Council Bluffs, according to International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers member Gil Klefstad and his wife, Judy, an active member of the Women's Auxiliary. Even if elected to the state legislature, labor representatives found the environment inhospitable, to say the least.

Gil Klefstad: I ran for president of my local in 1957, and they threw a third man in, which put the red flag in front of the bull. Since I lost that election, I determined, being a bullheaded Norwegian, I'd run for something else. I ran for state representative and won.

Judy Klefstad: We elected two state representatives that year. That was the first time we'd had two. Jack Rooney was a railroad man and Gil was an electrician, and they upset the Republican publisher. That really put the fear in the Republican party. We cleaned the courthouse out, elected two state representatives, and give the governor a majority. Also scared the pants off the congressman. Four women and Emil registered five thousand people that year. We found out where our vote was, and these are the people we concentrated on. We kind of seen to it that Republicans would have to go to the courthouse to register.

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Gil: The Iowa Federation of Labor, it all generated, orginated there. Martin Pardekooper deserves particular credit. The idea is organization, whether for coffee breaks, wages, or a political voice.

Judy: It worked real well, because we got people who were friendly to the labor movement elected. And we started getting some decent legislation. The labor support helped to pull the Democratic party out of the mud.

Gil: I lost in 1960 and was elected to the State Senate in 1964. When I was campaigning in 1960, I was invited to a school administrators' gathering out in Oakland, Iowa, which then and now is staunchly Republican. My opponent was Dick Turner, a former county attorney. Dick was introduced with a flowery speech, an alumnus of Iowa, the son of a former attorney, on and on and on. He got up and pounded the table. "My grandfather was a Republican. I am a Republican, and I want you to vote Republican." And he sat down. So the chairman introduced me. "This is Gil Klefstad, running for the same office." In just that manner. I thought, now what do I do to follow this act? So I got up and said, "Well, gentlemen, you don't know me too well I'm sure. The introduction was brief. I'm an electrician, a member of organized labor. By the way, I hope you don't see any horns. I want you to know that in comparison with the previous speaker's statement, my grandfather was a Republican and my father was a Republican, but I want you to know one thing. I'm a Democrat. Last, but not least, you're school administrators. I hope you got an open mind." I sat down. When I got outside, I had four flat tires on my car, an honest cost of campaigning. There were only two Democrats in that whole town. One runs the bar and the other the gas station.

When I was in the House the Democrats were badly outnumbered, four to one I would guess. I wasn't even seated on the Labor Committee. The representative from Pocahontas, a Methodist minister, saidI'll never forget this"Gil, you're more deserving to be on the Labor Committee than I." So we exchanged committees. All you could do was hang together and try to promote a common goal. We recognized we were a minority. We used some obstructionist tactics. But anything that wasn't originated by the Republican majority as a sponsor saw the wastebasket.

The two lobby groups that definitely controlled the legislature were the Iowa Farm Bureau and the Iowa Manufacturers Association. It was quite obvious to me that they had the vast majority of the Republicans in their hip pocket. Neither of them was talking to us. We were a minority to be contended with like a mosquito out in the woods. This was prior to reapportionment, which was the major gain by the working people of labor in two decades in Iowa. One man, one vote. Prior to that, there wasn't any justifiable reason for the

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average individual thinking that he had his share of representation. Conversely, the lobby groups did very well.

Labor representation in the Iowa legislature gradually increased in the 1960s as a result of the renewed political activity of the labor movement. The labor legislators were still a small minority. They had to find ways to get their initiatives before the House. A strengthened political base was laid in the state, largely through the coordination of the Iowa Federation of Labor, and gains came year by year on the legislative front. Fred Nolting, a member and officer in the United Packinghouse Workers union from Waterloo and a state representative and senator, was part of the legislative fight for labor's agenda.

Putting it in perspective, in 1968 there were eighty-six Republicans and thirty-eight Democrats in the Iowa House. I introduced bills to repeal the right-to-work law, to establish a state minimum wage, to improve unemployment compensation, to improve workmen's comp, and several others. The chairman of the Labor Industrial Relations Committee was a gentleman from the Fairfield area, and he simply didn't allow any of these bills out of his committee. Unless it comes out of the committee onto the floor, there isn't much you can do, unless you can find something appropriate to amend your issues onto.

I learned to work with the legislative process at that time because of the extreme minority that I was in. There were two of us in the House when I was there that were members of unions. The labor union people were not received well even by the Democrats in those days, let alone the Republicans. A lot of people would've been a little more comfortable if we hadn't been union members. There just never had been many union members in the Iowa General Assembly. We were perceived as being old roughnecks that buried people in cement and shipped them down the river.

Until 1968 we only had legislative sessions once every two years. An effective weapon for keeping the common people out of the legislature was that they paid one thousand dollars a year as your complete compensation. One of the things I really fought for, and the Republicans didn't want, was an annual salary. It had been approved in a constitutional amendment in 1968, but we put it into law. Starting in 1971 legislators received an annual salary, and that's helped a lot more working people and teachers become legislators.

I also fought for a right-to-serve bill which would have required that an employer allow any of his employees to serve in the General Assembly without breaking their service. At Rath's we got it in the contract that anyone appointed

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or elected to any office would receive time off as necessary without compensation. Every session of the legislature somebody loses their job. The fellow who sat right ahead of me in 1969 lost two jobs in two years because he'd been serving in the legislature. They said, "You can go and play or you can work. You can do it either way." People should have the right to serve, but we just couldn't quite get the votes for it. There's always people who say, "Well, now, employers should have no obligation. If you want to go play politics, go play politics. Don't expect to have a job when you come back." When I first came to the legislature 75 percent were professionalsdoctors, lawyers, real estate, stockbrokers, and farmers. I'd say now it's down to about half, which is still disproportional.

The Iowa Federation of Labor has been extremely effective in getting legislation shaped and very effective in getting it passed. It is the principal political arm of the AFL-CIO in the state of Iowa. They coordinate political activities. Through contributions of per capita tax they do mailings, information regarding candidates, and voting. They have extensive registration drives prior to elections and get-out-the-vote drives. They also serve as the lobbying arm of the AFL-CIO unions in the state.

Without the Iowa Federation of Labor we would have no public employees collective bargaining today. Unemployment and workers' comp laws would not be as good as they are. The Fed has been extremely effective in getting legislation shaped and very effective in getting it passed. In all the years I have worked in politics, and I'm going back to the very early fifties until 1979, our labor laws never got worse year by year. We always got some improvement or didn't lose anything, which is pretty remarkable in view of all the Republican legislatures. I think there's been rapport between the Iowa Federation of Labor and the leadership of the General Assembly and the governor. We've been reasonably effective as the political arm of the labor movement. We put more people out in the street on election day and tend to get our message to people. The Des Moines Register did a survey immediately after the last election, and the percentage of union people that they interviewed that had voted for the labor-endorsed candidates was extremely high, up in the 80 percent range. That is an indication of the way the Iowa Federation of Labor does the job of informing people of what the political needs of working people are.

In some communities the labor movement awoke to the necessity for political activism in the late forties and early fifties. Even in Democratic bastions like Dubuque, labor recognized after the passage of the state right-to-work law that legislation was "vital for us to survive," as Hugh Clark, plumber and former president of the Iowa Federation of Labor put it. Both the Iowa

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Federation of Labor and the revitalized Dubuque Federation of Labor served important roles in mobilizing the labor vote.

In the early days of Dubuque we really didn't know how to spell Republican. In the late forties it was still very much Democratic. There was no Republicans ever entered any race around here. I came up in the era where you never talked politics on the floor of the local union meetings. They didn't have to. But then all of a sudden you found out that we of organized labor better get active politically. Legislation became so vital for us to survive.

At the state level we felt in the early fifties that the number one issue was safety for our people working. Number two, we should have a collective bargaining law in the state where anyoneincluding state, county, and municipalthat wanted to join a local union should have the right to. Unemployment compensation stopped at the state of Iowa. Workers' comp stopped.

When I was president of the Iowa Federation of Labor I spent a lot of my time going around the state to seek out state candidates, to impress on the central bodies the necessity of picking out the right individuals, and to get our people out to vote. Your big job in the Iowa Federation of Labor is legislation and getting people out to vote and trying to endorse the right people that will try to take care of the working people of the state of Iowa.

Iowa really stretched forward in the late sixties and seventies through legislation that we were able to help pass, such as workmen's compensation, which is one of the best in the country, unemployment compensation, our OSHA law, and postcard registration. We had difficulty especially from the Republican party. They didn't want to make it too easy for the working people to be able to register.

The one thing labor worked for and didn't get passed was the repeal of the state right-to-work law under Governor Harold Hughes in 1965, 1966. It passed in the House very heavy due to the friendly people who were elected. But in the Senate we had problems. I felt if we could've had more clout coming from the Democratic governor and the leadership in the Senate, we could've got that passed. If I remember correctly we were one vote short in the Senate. But we worked hard. It's a dirty shame when you got such a lousy nonunion law on the books in a state as good as Iowa is.

Over the years the labor movement has worked closely with the Democratic party to achieve victories on what Mark Smith, secretary-treasurer of the Iowa Federation of Labor, calls "gut issues." But the labor movement's

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commitment to politics runs at a deeper level. It is a politics of the trade union kind.

If the labor movement's not active in the political process, to make sure, for example, that we've got workers' compensation that's decent, that takes care of a person both medically and for wage replacement when they get hurt on the job, then we don't have it. And so there's a direct link in terms of the politics. If a union sits down at the bargaining table and negotiates a wage for the members and then that wage is taken away by an unfair tax that penalizes people in a certain income group, then they lose part of that wage. What we're saying is we ought to work politically to maintain what you got at the bargaining table. The Reagan administration has turned the labor law in this country around. Had we been able to defeat Reagan, it would certainly be easier to organize people.

It's a matter of being involved in politics to have a structure that allows unions to flourish, number one, and two, to get legislation that will help all people, including our members.

Some people in the labor movement get confused and think they're Democrats first and labor people second and as a result feel real uncomfortable about being opposed to something the Democratic party does. I happen to be of the other school; I'm a trade unionist first, I'm a Democrat second. Even though we work with the Democratic party, we have plenty of disputes with them. We have a lot of input into the Democratic party in terms of platform. But clearly I'm a union person first.

Reshaping Communities: The Politics of Community Service

The growth of the labor movement in Iowa brought not only political renewal but a redefinition of the role that workers and their unions would play in their communities. The concept of unions as narrow interest groups never fit the reality of the labor movement very well. From their beginnings in the nineteenth century many unions sought to improve the lives of their members as part of broader changes in society that would guarantee fairness and equity for all people. And certainly, since the 1930s "social" unions have been in the forefront of the fight for benefits for the elderly, the poor, and the disabled. Those fights were not merely conducted in the political arena and in the halls of the statehouse. They erupted in many communities across the state where unions took initiatives to create from their own resources social services that were lacking or sought to win a voice in the

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administration of communitywide charitable activities. Although such an expanded role for labor was contested by local Chambers of Commerce and community leaders, unionists saw results in the form of free community blood banks, immunization clinics, recreational facilities and better access for people with disabilities, and increased representation in United Way.

The labor movement's concern with education extended at the state level to the support of labor education at the University of Iowa and to the preservation of its own history. Many of Iowa's labor activists recognized in the mid-1970s that the survival of a vigorous labor movement is tied to its historical memory. As one leader put it, ''Tough times have come and tough times have gone. We've survived."

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Paul Larsen saw labor's initiatives in the community of Waterloo contested by the "local power structure" at ever turn. Whether it was a free polio immunization campaign, the establishment of a blood bank, or representation in United Way, labor's actions brought other community leaders out of the woodwork. When local leaders wanted to take over the efforts, the labor movement said fine, as long as they were continued in the same spirit.

We remember all too well during the most bitter times of the polio epidemic the labor movement mounted a rather intense public information effort to get free immunization clinics for the children of the area. We were combated in this by the local medical association. They wanted nominal fees for immunizing children. I think it was four dollars a shot at that time. And anything that labor touched was taboo. We remained adamant on that one, and we went after it. We engaged the services of an osteopath from Des Moines who was friendly to our cause and set up clinics down there. That was the first time I ever saw the gun that they used to innoculate. It's a painless thing. The State Federation purchased the equipment and ran these clinics in a number of towns. So we set up to do it here, and as soon as the local power structure saw that the labor movement might get some credit for this, then all of a sudden the Jaycees said, "We'll do it. We'll set up and run the clinic." So we said, "Fine." We had accomplished what we wanted. We told them if they didn't do it we were going to do it. We feel very strongly that the original immunization clinics came about because of this, because of the labor movement forcing them to do something.

Social unionism in the 1950s and 1960s meant, among other things, that the labor movement had a direct interest in the way community services were managed. As workers and their unions grew more prosperous, they

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were in a position to exert greater influence in community affairs. Delno "Mike" Cole, a leader of the United Auto Workers in Des Moines, along with others in the labor movement, fought for influence over the administration of Blue Cross/Blue Shield and the community chest.

We used to get into it with Blue Cross and Blue Shield. We wanted Blue Cross and Blue Shield to form a grievance committee to hear complaints from people that wasn't being treated fairly on their insurance. We wanted to set it up so that we could have some public influence. We didn't ask for a union representative. We wanted a public member on their grievance committee. Instead of a doctor.

Why, they just blew their stack. Then they invited some of us leadership to a steak dinner that they put on over at a hotel. When I got up and started to question them on this thing, they got hot under the collar and said, "Don't you know you was invited here at our discretion for a steak dinner?" And I said, "You don't think you're going to buy me for a steak dinner, do you?" I said, "I didn't come down here to sell my soul and the people's for a steak dinner. I come down here to try to get something done for the people." We never did. We never did get a person on there.

Then we got to meeting with our old community chest. We got interested in it, and we sit down with them and talked about getting this thing set up on a different basis than the old community chest was. We had some good warm meetings. We come down and said, "Look, we're spending too much money and not helping anybody. We've got to move on it. Your community chest is spending about 85 percent of what they take in to administer, and this ain't right. So we want you to change it around. We in labor will encourage our people to give one time a year or sign a checkoff to collect for a fund that will be managed by a board in a way that it is not going to cost that much." Well, we got the organization. We got it set up down there now. That's the beginning of the United Way in the plants.

The labor movement in some communities fought for a labor liaison who would play a direct role in the administration of the United Way. John Cooney of Waterloo helped create a network of labor counselors that facilitated workers' access to the social services they needed and deserved.

Labor has done an awful lot for the community that people don't want to recognize. The Boy Scout camp up herelabor built that. Camp Sunnyside for crippled children in Des Moinesthey rebuilt that. The national CIO reached an agreement with the United Way that where labor was strong enough and where labor wanted it, and where labor was a majority of contributors, they could have

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a labor liaison to see that the funds were distributed to agencies that needed the money. It was also our job to help the United Way with their campaign and to help tell people about what it really was. This was opposed very, very much by management. They didn't like labor having any more say. The Junior Chamber wouldn't invite me. Neither would the Chamber. I don't go to their meetings; they don't come to ours. There has been a split there because their way of thinking is completely alien to mine.

As labor liaison I work with people in the labor movement that don't know about United Way or the agencies it funds. I train people as to what United Way does. Call them counselors. They work with stewards and with people in the plant. Might be an alcoholic, drug addict, kids that are in trouble, people that are getting duped on their Social Security, ain't getting food stamps, or old people that are scared to go out and ask for help. They sit there and half starve to death. Only way I know about it is somebody from the labor movement calls me. They call me any time of the night or day. We're starting to get a good Community Services Committee in all the locals now. My purpose is to make sure that the labor movement knows what the United Way is doing, not to control it. We just want to make sure they're doing the things that they should do.

The labor liaison with the United Way in a community facilitates labor's involvement in a range of community services. Whether it be training workers to act as counselors for their co-workers on the shopfloor or insuring that strikers get community services or encouraging union members to serve on community boards, Gene Redmon of Waterloo has seen the role become a crucial link between the labor movement and the community.

Organized labor has always maintained their part in the community. Our children are born and raised and go to school; we pay taxes, we should have a say-so in what goes on. And most every preamble to the constitution in any international or local union spells out that the membership and the officers should get involved in their community services.

When the AFL-CIO merged in 1955 they looked at United Way contributions and estimated that organized labor contributes anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of the total dollars collected in any given campaign. So the AFL-CIO said to national United Way of America, "It's our money, we need input, we need liaisons, we need labor folks on that United Way staff. If you're going to use labor's money, you're going to have labor's input." So that's how things have worked out. There's agreements around the country.

I look at the United Way board makeup. A couple of years ago there was thirty-six folks on there, and a third was labor members. As I ask around the

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country about the makeup of boards, it is no ways near a third. We've got good representation from good labor people. They sit around the table with those business folks who can see labor as making wise decisions. We're not there to tip the tables over and break out the windows.

It's not unusual for me to stop on a picket line to talk to the people on strike and see what the issues are, see if they have any needs that are not being met. A primary example would be the UAW 838 John Deere strike or lockout in 1986, going into '87. Six months before that strike I was meeting with the Community Service Committee at UAW 838 and the AFL-CIO, helping them set up their committees, making sure that they knew where the resources were for utility shutoffs, counseling if there's family problems, and such things. The day that the strike started everything was in place.

In the public arena, the labor movement has won recognition and services for its members. Through successful lobbying with the legislature, organized labor was able to get an agreement with the University of Iowa to create a labor education program in 1951 to prepare union activists for a more effective role in their local unions. Mark Smith, a former labor educator with the University of Iowa Labor Center and currently secretary-treasurer of the Iowa Federation of Labor, played a part in developing the educational role of the center and the creation of a unique oral history program the Federation has supported for nearly twenty years.

The Labor Center, unlike many other labor education centers around the country, had an extremely close relationship with the Iowa Federation of Labor, as well as a number of other unions. Essentially they did a series of on-campus and off-campus programs. The on-campus programs focused on things like how to prepare and present an arbitration case, collective bargaining, labor law, pensions, those kinds of things. In addition to that there were off-campus programs. A local union calls in and says, "We're having a problem, our stewards aren't writing up the grievances right, or we've got a bunch of new stewards, or we're going into bargaining and we've got a new committee. Could you come out and put a little program together that would help." It was a rigorous kind of thing, because we didn't have enough staff. So, for instance, I'd leave Iowa City on Monday, go to Des Moines for a couple of days, do an afternoon class and an evening class, go from Des Moines to Sioux City, do a morning and evening class there, then go to Fort Dodge on Wednesday, stop in Cedar Rapids and do a class, and then come on home on Thursday.

There is a kind of a symbiotic relationship between the Iowa Federation of Labor and the Labor Center. But it is not an officially mandated thing. If we've

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got a project, they're most willing to help, and we help them by recruiting, letting people know there's a school and encouraging them to attend. Two officers of the Federation sit on their advisory committee, along with twenty or twenty-five other union representatives from around the state. It's an important resource that I'm certain doesn't exist in some states.

The Management Center always generated a lot more money with a lot less programs. At the same time that we're charging $30 a day, the management people will be charging $100 or $120 a day. So they could do considerably less programming and generate considerably more money.

For most unions the real problem is the lost time. They have to pay the lost wages to the people that they send over so the people don't have to take a beating by going to school because they represent their union. Every now and then you get a university administrator who looks at how many people attend and they say, ''My goodness, if you could just get the tuition up $50, we could make this thing into a money-maker." Labor education ought to be inexpensive, because it's our members that are paying the taxes that even lets that university exist. And we don't ask for much back. The business community gets plenty. They get their accountants and their marketing people trained at considerable taxpayer expense. The business community, not only at the university but at Iowa State and Northern Iowa and the community colleges, gets all kinds of training. So we've kept all our eggs in one basket and said, "Enough is enough."

This oral history project, since 1974, has been directed by someone at the Labor Center. The project recognizes that some guy in Dubuque or Sioux City, Iowa, not George Meany or anybody, stuck with other people and said, "We're going to build a union. We don't have to take this bullshit from an employer." And their story gets told on tape. Those "nobodies" never expected to be asked about it. They didn't write it down, that's for certain. It represents a part of that whole labor movement of millions of American workers, men and women, black and white, who got together and said, "We don't have to put up with this anymore."

Tough times have come and tough times have gone. We've survived. We're not here for a week and gone. We're always here. But we're not only going to survive, we're going to come out of this whole thing stronger.

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Epilogue

The picket line in the Clinton Corn Processing strike, Clinton, 1980.

State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

By the 1980s the labor movement faced new challenges and new crises. The generation that won stunning organizational victories in the 1930s and 1940s had passed from the scene. Their successors who witnessed the divisive struggles of the postwar years and engineered a revival of the labor movement in the political arena now faced a more profound challenge. Renewal required overcoming the historic divisions that persisted in labor's ranksa structure of inequality that tore at the fabric of labor's solidarity. But renewal also required the labor movement to rekindle its fighting spirit in the face of employer and government hostility and to heal the wounds of past divisions left by the departure of the autoworkers from the AFL-CIO or the withdrawal of the building trades from the Iowa Federation of Labor.

Nationally, membership in the industrial unions was in steep decline, and conditions in Iowa's meat-packing and farm equipment sectors mirrored the national pattern. Technological change, corporate consolidation, runaway plants, and deindustrialization played havoc with the lives of workers in the

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heartland as in other parts of the "rust belt." Emboldened by a more conservative political climate, employers adopted aggressively antiunion tactics to nip organizing drives in the bud or demanded concessions that undermined the gains unions had made over the years. Unions saw their prominent role in the public life of their communities, a trademark of their postwar strength, erode.

But as workers took stock of their experiences in the years that followed World War II, the theme they recounted most consistently was the transforming influence of the unions they built on their own lives and communities. A level of economic well-being, unimaginable to previous generations, was secured. Despite recent reversals, they made the workplace less dangerous; they won new rights and a measure of dignity on the shopfloor; they earned a collective voice in the life and welfare of their communities. Frustrated though they might be with the poor attendance at union meetings or the ways in which younger members took these benefits for granted, they also made certain to pass on to their children the gospel of unionism as they had learned it.

In the face of renewed government and corporate hostility, the current generation of Iowa workers may need their history more than ever before. The voices of Harry Booth, Don Harris, Ethel Jerred, and countless others tell stories that both hearten and instruct. The lessons of solidarity, some of them painful and discomforting, may be the key to the labor movement's survival. Passed from one generation of workers to the next, they reignite the spirit that has joined the interests of one worker to another in past as in future struggles.

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Chris Lauritsen Packinghouse Worker, Spencer

July 22, 1987

Being a union person is in your heart, it's not in your head and it's not in your pocketbook. People will say, "Well, you'll never make up what you lost on strike." That's got nothing to do with it. People say things like, "Well, I'll lose my job." A job ain't a big deal. Kunta Kinte had a job, all the American slaves had jobs. Are we willing to go that far to keep our jobs? A lot of people don't understand that what we're being made is slaves, not only in the classic sense of wage slavery. Companies are hangin' this job over the workers' heads, that if you don't act in a certain way we'll move our factory somewhere else. That's slavery.

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Being a union person is not a selfish thing to do. We don't necessarily do it for our well-being, although that's part of it. But we do it so that we may have a better life as a group. It's not for me, it's for us. Eugene Debs said, and you gotta agree with him, that he had no desire to rise from the ranks of labor because when labor rose, he'd rise with it.

We don't have to be ashamed of the fact that we're workers. Everything is produced by workers, maybe now they're Japanese workers or Korean workers, but they're workers. They're part of the international working class. Nothing is produced in this world that we don't produce. No building is built, no automobile is built, no hole is dug. We make the schools and the factories, and then we run 'em after they're done. And all of the rest of the world that isn't involved in work are parasites off the wealth produced by workers. We have a right to be proud. We carry society on our back, not the other way around. And we have a right to feel that we're the most productive and the most contributing members of society. I include farmers as workers, too, because they're part of the working class. We're the ones that do all the producing, and we got a right to be proud. This stigmait's like for years you've heard people say to a woman, "What do you do?" "I'm just a housewife." There's a certain stigma on that. People say, "I'm just a packinghouse worker." Well, we're not just workers. It's a thing to be proud of, and we oughta wear it like a badge of honor. Because my work happens to be in packinghouses, I can say that I don't have ten close acquaintances or friends that aren't packinghouse workers. They're bright, they're stimulating, and we have talks about philosophy and religion and politics. I don't think you could get any more stimulation outta somebody who has a Ph.D. We're not ignorant, stupid people. We're just playing the hand that was dealt us, and the hand that was dealt us originally was to be a worker. And that's where we are, and for whatever reasons, either ambition or economic status or whatever, we didn't go on and get high-priced educations or high-sounding degrees. All we got was a chance to work for a living.

Betty Talkington Electrical Worker, Cedar Rapids

May 5, 1983

I don't mean to preach, but it is important that people understand that the labor movement is not one of those organizations that's strictly for themselves. We should not be classed as a special interest group, because our interest is not specialized. It is for everyone. We work on minimum wage in Iowa when there's not a prayer of a chance of passing it in the legislature. We work on workmen's comp and unemployment comp, but until just the last couple of years our con-

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tracts have taken care of us in most of those areas. We try to help everybody. But we know that if we get a floor under wages, our people are going to benefit from it, too.

This labor movement of ours is not going to die from a gunshot, although many of the previous labor movements we've had have died. If we die it's going to be from a series of knife wounds, such as making it impossible to charge nonmembers the cost for negotiating for all workers. That's not fair.

But, in fact, I'm not sure we're going to die. I think we're going to get well and be very vigorous again.

Mike Krajnovich Grain Miller, Clinton

June 22, 1982

We lost the decertification election at Clinton Corn. The votes were counted in the plant. The company did everything possible and the NLRB did everything possible to make it so easy for the scabs to vote. Basically those guys that voted while they were working got paid to vote.

The strike totally tore the community up. During the strike they had brother against brother. One instance, a fellow retiree who was one of the first organizers of the union, his son crossed the picket line and scabbed. Those problems you can still see in the community. A lot of them have been glossed over, but you still have brothers not talking to each other.

I feel real strongly about unions. I'm not one of those that believe that they served their use and now it's over with. I think that workers ought tosomeday hopefully they willrealize that they are a lower class of society, as far as this country's concerned, and that the upper class, the management people, the Kiwanis Club, the Chamber of Commerce, spend their time to keep workers in the lower class. I don't think you're ever going to be able to work hand in hand with that group of people and combine those classes. They don't want you. Once workers realize that and organize with that in mind, they'll make a great move forward.

Fred Nolting Packinghouse Worker, Waterloo

July 21, 1981

When somebody calls me a union man I'm pretty proud of that fact. The union is the only sure way I have of being able to get what I am entitled to out of my

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workbeing able to work at a job that I am good at, get the training, have the seniority, and be compensated adequately for me and my family. I've been able to raise two children, send them through college, pay for my house, and reach many of the goals in life that I really thought were out of sight when I first started in the packinghouse here thirty-one years ago. To get where I was able to get to in government. To sit on the Board of Regents. It's undreamed of. I think the labor movement has made this possible for me. It's made life in the packinghouse more than just bearable. It's really not a bad place to work. The pay is good. The hours are usually fairly good. Today I am an electrician. I've been able to go to school. I'm a lifetime student! Since we're putting in all this machinery now the company pays meI'm sure they wouldn't if we didn't have a union hereto go to school, so that I can become better qualified to maintain the equipment that our company is going to have here in the future. I'm proud to be a union man.

Jaqui Tolson and Nancy Dehm Nurses, Burlington

May 21, 1990

Jaqui Tolson: I joined after we got the union voted in because I really didn't want the union when it first came. I didn't believe a union belonged in nursing. I've since changed my mind drastically. I feel that nurses do need some representation when the administrative personnel do not listen to what the nurses are saying.

Nancy Dehm: I was involved in unions. I worked in a factory for a while, and it was unionized. When I came to the hospital as an aide they started organizing. The conditions were really bad. I remember my schedule being ten days on and two days off. They would just do anything they wanted to you. You never got a raise unless they liked you. When I became a nurse, I just automatically joined. I don't know exactly how I ended up president.

In 1989 we all knew we were going out on strike. All the other votes that I've ever been in on, people were very vocal, very emotional. This time there was silence. We read the proposals, and people were laughing and hissing, but nobody was arguing. You just knew, this ain't gonna fly.

I'm thinking, now what am I gonna do? How am I gonna feed my family? How am I gonna lead all these 150 people? I've never done this before. How did I ever talk myself into becoming union president?

We had a candlelight vigil the night that we went out on strike because we had people working three to eleven. So we stood in front of the hospital with candles, and a lot of people from the town were there, too.

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Tolson: Lots of town people came down to say, ''We support you." And I still have people come up to me in the grocery store downtown and say, "We're so proud of you girls, we were supporting you, we're glad you didn't give in."

Dehm: I don't think the hospital counted on that strong support from the community. The Burlington Medical Center had such a bad reputation in this town for buying up property, for treating their help bad, and for treating the people of Burlington bad. We just had tons of support. I didn't realize it till we went out.

We had a man that came every morning and brought a box of doughnuts to each picket station. He wouldn't tell us who he was, but every morning he would bring a box of doughnuts.

I even had people that had to go in for cancer treatments say, "Well, I've been in the UAW for years and years, and I want to know whether you think I should cross this picket line." I said, "Well, God, you've gotta get your treatment. It's more important that you get your treatment, and I know you would walk the picket with us if you could."

One night I had to have an emergency meeting with the membership. I called the president of the County Labor Council and told him, "Mr. Scott, I don't know what I'm gonna do about the picket line. I've gotta have this meeting." He says, "Don't worry about it. I'll get you a few people."

There was over two hundred people showed up to picket for us when we were at our meeting. I couldn't believe it. Just in four hours' time, he got that many people to come picket for us.

Tolson: The longer we stayed out, the stronger we got.

Dehm: We won, we got everything we asked for. Wages. Insurance for part-time people. We got time-and-a-half for Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year's. We got a patient care committee and some movement on vacations.

Maybe because it was a small community we got good support. But being in a small community you would think we were kind of isolated and it wouldn't have gone as well as it did, but it really did.

Dan Varner Packinghouse Worker and AFSCME Representative, Ottumwa

August 7, 1987

I think the most important thing is that the rank and file has to maintain control of their union. When the leadership of a union gets in the position to where they feel they know what's best for the members and when the members object to

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that and the leadership does everything in their power to reinforce that they know what's best for 'em, that's when it's wrong.

When everything is said and done the membership is a smart group. They should have control of their own destiny whether it be right or whether it be wrong. That's why they formed a union, that's what a union's all about. A person should not be intimidated. If they feel something's right, they should be able to voice that opinion.

When the leadership feels insecure, then they try to divide and conquer. It comes around to haunt 'em. Until they change their ways and get back to answer to the rank-and-file membership and be the leader that they were elected to be, it's gonna fall down around their ears. And it's bad for the labor movement; they can't do that in the labor movement. You've gotta be responsible to your membership. Your membership is what it's all about. The union is the membership, it's the rank and file, it's not the leadership. The leadership is a by-product of the membership. It's not the other way around.

Dick Sturgeon Machinist, Sioux City

March 29, 1983

When workers go to work in the morning they want to make good parts. I know very few people that would want to climb out of that bed at six o'clock in the morning, trudge to work, and spend eight hours making junk. They got to have some pride in what they're doing, because if they don't it would be a wicked existence. I've had workers call me here at the office and say, "My God, Dick, this company wants me to put one bad resistor in every tenth set. They got a bunch of bad resistors. They need these sets real bad. So they're telling me to use them up, put them in every tenth, and that set's going to fail out in the field." They're really upset about it. They're worried about the product that they make. They want it to be good.

Management believes that the worker is content to come to work and get a paycheck at the end of the week, buy his beer and have a good time. But it's got to be more than that. A person wants to feel in their gut that they're going to advance, that they're going to grow with that company. Standing there drilling, punching those same holes in that same metal for the next thirty-five years, that's what puts people in the emotional wards. He's got to have some hope that he's going to advance off of this punch press into something better. The goals of the American worker are, number one, to take care of his family, but also to take care of himself, and that means making himself feel that he is really worth something, that he is advancing in life. You sit down and talk to some worker in the

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plant who's been there for thirty-five years and ask him what he's done, and if he's not able to tell you, that means that he's feeling pretty bad about himself.

So many times we see in the plant where workers will have in their minds a way of producing that product, a good product, a lot easier, a lot quicker, and a lot cheaper. But they know from past experience that if they share that with the company, what's going to happen is that they're going to change the job around so that the worker is expected to work harder for the same or less money. Companies are very, very, very dumb when it comes to the fact that the worker out there knows the job better than anybody else.

I have some strong views about runaway plants. I think they owe a responsibility to the people they dump. My mother and dad both got dumped at Armour's. They give the best of their working years to that company, and to this day they're suffering from the arthritis and the other ailments that come along with those hard labors. Armour dumped them. This is similar to a man whose wife helps him get through college and once he has made it he just dumps her and goes. I've seen it happen too often. They just leave the people without anything, without any insurance coverage, without any future whatsoever.

I've had several plant closings, and each one of them is terrible. It's something that I just don't want to go through again. I've lost plants in Hampton, Iowa, and Onawa, Iowa, and here in Sioux City, the Cargill units, Dyna Technology, and the Zenith plant. Every one of them is a disaster, just total disaster. You have people who have their dreams shattered right in front of them, who felt that they'd be working for that company until retirement, and, boom, there's no more company.

We lost the Zenith plant in 1977. It was thirty-three hundred people in 1974. When it closed down, we were down to twelve hundred. It was just unexplainable. The day they announced it I stood right in that room and cried like a baby.

Are unions really necessary? Every time I go to a college management class that's the question I'm asked. The company town is no longer with us. The sweatshops are no longer around. Are unions really necessary? The answer to that is definitely yes. I think people need to be represented even more now than they did back then. People walk in this office that have been summarily discharged because the boss didn't like them.

The labor movement has to realize that the folks coming into the workplace do not have the same wants and desires that they did before. If you don't stay tuned, if you set in a plush Washington office and think things are the same as they were twenty years ago, you're going to be out of step, and you're going to fall.

We are changing with the times. We're negotiating new things in our contracts, which our grandfathers never would've thought of. Job enrichment, job bidding, procedures for advancement. So that it's not just the brownnoses that

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are going to get to be tool and die makers but the person that has actually been there the longest and has learned the most. We're fulfilling needs now that nobody ever addressed twenty or thirty years ago. Unions are needed more now.

Paul Larsen Plumber and AFL-CIO Representative, Waterloo

July 14, 1981

There's no easy organizing today. The labor movement is really at its most difficult stage, not only because of the economy but because of the advent of very skilled consultants that are highly sophisticated in how to twist the law to keep people from organizing. We have cases that kill us with time. You can win an election, but five years goes by. It's the time element; many unions simply can't afford it.

The company has the right to campaign, and that's where the consultants enter the picture and all the coercion happens. They flout the law. They interrogate people. Threaten them. Threaten to move the plant. Threaten that they'll lose their jobs. Threaten their benefits. Out and out fire them. Just finished a campaign, and two days before the election they laid off nine people that were all supporters of the union. We won the election in spite of it. But such things are not unusual at all. Even though it's been against the law since the original Wagner Act was passed in the 1930s, these people are absolutely unscrupulous.

It's been a privilege to be a representative of labor. I know if I'd stayed with my trade, I would have been much better off financially and certainly had a lot less difficulty. But you make those decisions, and it's been very rewarding.

I remember when we organized the Fisher governor plant in Marshalltown. I was down there working on that organizing campaign by myself, and it was late winter. The Marshalltown Police Department had been assigned to follow me on all my house calls. Every house I went to, the prowl car, with the very obvious insignia on it, parked right behind me, watching me everywhere I went. You were trying to convince the people you were calling on about your philosophy. That patrol car did detract a little bit from your ability. You were the type of individual that needed to be watched.

Well, we won that one, and ten years later, on the union's anniversary, they had a party. I was invited down there. This time they had a parade from the union hall to the coliseum downtown, where the party was. In the parade, I rode in the front vehicle with the president of the UAW, and in front of us was a police car leading the way of the parade. I said, "Well, there was one difference in ten years. Ten years ago that bastard was behind me!"

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Appendix

Interviewees in the Iowa Labor History Oral Project

The following lists all persons interviewed in the Iowa Labor History Oral Project between 1979 and 1992. Names are organized by place of residence at the time of the interview, and interviewees are identified by the primary trade or union with which they were or are associated; other information is indicated where appropriate. A key to union names is provided at the end of the list.

All of the interviews are in the archives of the Iowa City branch of the State Historical Society of Iowa. The vast majority (roughly 90%) are transcribed. All but 67 of the 939 interviewees have signed ''Interviewee Consent and Release" forms that permit research use and citation of the interview; an asterisk indicates that a release form has not been signed. Multiple interviews are indicated by the number in parentheses following the person's name.

Mary Bennett, audiovisual librarian at the State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City, compiled this list and the key to labor union names. For further information on union names, see Gary M. Fink, ed., Labor Unions (Westport, Ct., 1977).

ALBIA

Anderson, Herbert

UMWA

Blomgren, Loren

UMWA

Bodnar, Mike

UMWA

Haluska, Helen

UMWA

Mosley, Mike

UMWA

Peterson, Everett

UMWA

Rowley, Clarence (Pat)

UMWA

Ryan, Tom

UMWA

Smith, Earl

UMWA

Weatherstone, Walter

UMWA, Carpenters

BURLINGTON

Alliman, Letha

Machinists

Arledge, James G.

Teamsters

Beetner, John (Ray)

UAW

Bigger, Dixie

UAW

Brown, William

UAW

Carter, Carol

UAW

Cary, Duaine

Teamsters

Daly, James

Machinists

Day, Louis

AFSCME

Day, Norma Jean

Clothing Workers (ACWA)

Dehm, Nancy

CWA (Nurses)

Page 312

Eccles, Wayne

Iron Workers

Flaatten, George (Gerry)

UAW

Gerst, Marlene

UAW

Haynes, Wilma

Machinists

Hookom, Dewey

Iron Workers

Hoschek, Carl

Bricklayers, Mayor, Legislator

Hunt, Perry

UAW

Jackson, Alice D.

Machinists

Leedom, Michael B.

UAW

Luedeman, Henry

Teamsters

McCarthy, Fern

Machinists

Menke, Herbert

Machinists, UAW

Mott, Clifford

IBEW

Palmer, Richard

AFSCME

Popp, Joe*

Typographers

Rhum, Susan (2)

Machinists

Storks, Leonard B.

Operating Engineers

Sullivan, Richard

UAW

Sullivan, Robert

Iron Workers

Timmerman, Fritz

UAW

Tolson, Jaquelyn R.

CWA (Nurses)

Tweedell, Roy

Teamsters

Vaughn, Roy

UAW

White, DeEdwin

Letter Carriers

Williams, Billye Smith

Machinists

CEDAR RAPIDS

Adams, Huron (Cookie)

Service Employees

Akin, Ethan

Grain Millers

Andersen, Paul

IBEW

Andrew, Virgil

Machinists, CIO, Transit Workers

Arendt, Edith

IBEW

Barta, Milo

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, PWOC, UPWA)

Bavger, John

Plumbers

Billings, Harry

IBEW

Boyer, Charles*

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW)

Buscher, John

Retail Workers

Butz, Gary

IBEW

Callahan, Jim

FE, UAW

Carson, Robert (Bob) (3)

URW, AFT, Bartenders, Hawkeye Labor Council

Christensen, James

Carpenters

Clark, Connie (2)

AFSCME

Clark, Sam

Retail Workers

Clinton, Bev

Machinists

Coleman, Jim (2)

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Colvin, Dennis

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Page 313

Cortez, Juan

Letter Carriers

Dague, Everett

Teamsters

Day, Regis

Plumbers

Dergo, Andrew

Machinists

Doolin, Emmitt

Retail Workers

Dunn, Clarence F.

Machinists

Dvorak, George

Painters

Early, B. J.

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Evans, John W.

Laborers

Ewart, Will

Teamsters

Farley, Earl

Painters, Asbestos Workers

Ferguson, Earle

Machinists

Fetter, Anthony I. (Tony)

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Filling, George

Machinists

Finch, Lawrence (Mike)

Grain Millers

Freilinger, Lloyd

Grain Millers

French, Gilbert

IBEW

Frett, Raymond

CWA

Gordon, Jon

PATCO

Gosnell, Virgil

Painters

Hanson, Norman

AFT

Harris, Basil

UAW

Haymond, Jeannette

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

Heaverlo, Robert

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Howke, Paul

Pipefitters

Jones, David

Painters

Jones, Paul

AFT

Kacere, Mike*

Not a union member

Kamberling, Howard

Teamsters

Kennedy, Calvin

Carpenters

Ketchum, Gary

Retail Workers, AFL-CIO

Klaner, Marion Nadine

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Klepach, Bill

Machinists

Klopp, Fern

IBEW

Krahmer, Ed

IBEW

Kriz, Jerry

Laborers, Machinists, Sheet Metal Workers

Leiter, Florence*

AFT

Lemon, Don

Grain Millers

Lockhart, Mickey

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

McKnight, Howard

AFT

Manly, Cloyd (Doc)*

Typographers

Marshall, Pat (2)

IBEW

Melsha, Alvin (Jack)

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UPWA, UFCW)

Messner, Glen

FE, UAW

Miller, Harry*

Machinists

Page 314

Moss, Charles D.

Teamsters

Neff, Bill

IBEW

Novak, Charlie

Teamsters

Novak, Robert D.

IBEW

O'Connell, Joe

Grain Millers

O'Leary, Pat

Teamsters

Peick, Doris

IBEW

Perrin, Corbin

UMWA, Machinists

Pierce, Mary Lou

Retail Workers

Poole, June

Teamsters

Porter, Gene

CWA

Post, Wally

Retail Workers

Rankin, Bernard

IBEW

Remmen, Arley*

Machinists

Remmen, Jane

IBEW

Sagar, Ken

IBEW

St. Germaine, Ernest

Operating Engineers

St. Germaine, Raymond E.

Iron Workers, Operating Engineers

Sasek, Frank*

Grain Millers

Schorg, Robert (2)

Teamsters

Schrimper, Merlen

Machinists

Schuettpelz, Don

Iron Workers

Schuknecht, Lloyd*

IBEW

Scott, Clair

IBEW

Sedlacek, Joe

Laborers

Shields, Justin (2)

Retail Workers

Smith, Virgil

Retail Workers

Sommers, Royal

IBEW

Sproston, Ethan

IBEW, United Way

Stepan, Reuben

Retail Workers

Sterzenback, Norm

IBEW

Stroope, William E.

FE, UAW

Taken, Jesse

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Talkington, Betty

IBEW

Thompson, Slayton

Service Employees

Totander, Martin

Teamsters

Wetzel, Velma

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Wheatley, Jaroslava*

AFT

Wichmeyer, Harold

Machinists

Wolfe, John

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UPWA)

Young, Wayne

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW)

Zahorik, John

Iron Workers

CENTERVILLE

Buban, John

UMWA

Cortesio, Charles, Sr.

UMWA

Page 315

Fox, Charles

UMWA

Padavich, Joe

UMWA

CHARLES CITY

Hoeft, Clarence

FE, UE-FE, UAW

Kilby, Clement

UE-FE, UAW

Krinkie, Donald

FE, UAW

Stanbro, Charles

UE-FE, UAW

Vokes, Delbert

FE, UE-FE, UAW

CHEROKEE

Admire, Freda

Machinists

Bednarczyk, Jan

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Blankenbaker, Darrel

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Heinen, Ed

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Klinker, Arlene

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Klinker, Gaylen

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Lyman, Rita

AFSCME

Riedemann, Karen

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Thoma, Tom

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Helstein, Ralph

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

CLINTON

Bark, Jim

Millwright

Brown, Joseph

Operating Engineers

Bunn, Carl

Carpenters (Millworker)

Chadourne, Paul

Conductors, Railroad Trainmen

Clark, William (Red)

Grain Millers

Dawes, Gil

Methodist minister

Dillon, Mike

Railroad Trainmen

Donahue, Catherine

CWA

Fenn, Earl

Machinists

Giddings, Stan

GCIU

Hamill, Stephen

Letter Carriers

Jackson Joseph

Carpenters (Millworker)

Jones, Earl F.

Grain Millers

Judge, Gene

Carpenters

Juehring, Viola

Clothing Workers (ILGWU)

Krajnovich, Michael

Grain Millers

Markley, Ward

Bricklayers

Martin, Norma

GCIU

Napolitano, Bob

Grain Millers

Oltmanns, Alice

Clothing Workers (ILGWU)

Outzen, George

Carpenters

Proost, Harold

Iron Workers

Page 316

Rajcevich, Joe

Grain Millers

Rickerl, John

Carpenters (Millworker)

Smith, Charlie

IBEW

Soesbe, Robert (2)

CWA

Thompson, Al

UTU

Vaughn, Irene

Clothing Workers (ILGWU)

Walton, Joseph

Grain Millers

White, Samuel

Carpenters (Millworker)

Wiggens, Warren

Musicians

Willits, Vernon

Machinists

COUNCIL BLUFFS

Buttery, Howard (Curly)

Machinists, Teamsters, UAW, CIO

Bybee, Al

Service Employees

Cossano, Herbert

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

Crader, Lawrence

Railroad Trainmen, UTU

Croson, Earl

Pipefitters

Ewing, Harold

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Goeser, Gerry

Typographers

Gross, Clinton*

Postal Workers

Heck, Donald E.

Postal Workers

Klefstad, Gil

IBEW, Legislator

Klefstad, Judy

IBEW

Koole, Florine

CWA

Lairmore, Cecil

Teamsters, Pipefitters, Laborers

Lewis, Donald O.

Laborers

Mort, Floyd

NFTW, CWA

O'Hara, Chester (Chet)

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW)

O'Hara, Jack

Railway Carmen

Petersen, Nels

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

Poole, Thomas

Carpenters

Richardson, W. Frank

Machinists

Willey, Deane

Railway Clerks

DES MOINES

Ackerlund, Leonard

UMWA, UAW

Andersen, Svend Jack

Bricklayers

Armstrong, Orville

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UPWA), CIO

Baker, Harold*

IBEW

Balducchi, Louis

Bakers

Baum, Earl

Grain Millers, URW, Machinists, IFL

Beard, Howard

Typographers

Belken, Harold K.

CWA

Bennett, Curt

URW

Bennett, Vern

Teamsters

Bianchi, Renato (Reno)

UMWA

Bianchi, Robert (Bob)

URW

Page 317

Booth, Harry

UMWA, UAW, URW

Braddock, Tom

Machinists

Branscomb, Harry (2)

Pressmen, Hosiery Workers, IFL

Brown, Richard

URW

Brown, Thomas

Laborers

Burgess, Harry

FE, UAW

Carlson, Henry*

Bookbinders

Carter, Henry

Clothing Workers (ACWA), Machinists, IFL

Chapin, Perry

URW

Christiansen, William

Hoisery Workers, Machinists

Clark, Hugh

Electrotypers

Clarkson, Edwin (Curly)

Iron Workers

Cole, Delno (Mike) (2)

UMWA, URW, UE, FE, UAW

Cole, Jerry

URW

Connors, John

Fire Fighters

Cooper, John

Painters

Davies, Raymond

Iron Workers

Davis, Claude E.

Railroad Trainmen

Dawson, Richard

URW

Dellaca, Tony

Machinists

Drews, Alvin

Photoengravers

Eckert, Stan

URW

Evans, Margaret

CWA

Ewing, Opal

Office Workers

Fenton, Bill (2)

Machinists

Frazier, Jesse

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Freeman, Martha

Laundry Workers

Frost, Merrill

Machinists

Gifford, Charles (Chuck)

UAW

Grant, Frank, Jr.

URW

Greenwood, Dick

Machinists

Grove, E. Fred

Bricklayers

Hanbury, Ralph

Sheet Metal Workers

Hanrahan, Charles

UAW, URW

Harris, Don (2)

CIO, FE, UAW, Hosiery Workers

Hart, David*

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Hartzer, Edgar C.

Teamsters

Harvey, Charles

Carpenters, Laundry Workers

Holmes, Harold*

Stereotypers

Humphrey, Clifford W.

Photoengravers

Imgrund, Charles

URW

Jackson, Robert A.

Laborers, UMWA

Johnson, Chester

URW

Jones, Otto L.

Typographers, Transit Workers

Jordan, John

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UPWA)

Kautzky, Rudolph

Machinists

Page 318

Keast, William

Bakers

Keul, Joseph

Teamsters

Kirschbaum, Charles

Teamsters

Kleywegt, John (Dutch)

CWA

Knight, Esther

CWA

Lewis, A. Jack

Transit Workers, Postal Workers

Liddicoat, John

URW

Lindquist, Eric V.

Fire Fighters

Loehr, Stu

Iron Workers

Lynch, Frank A.

Pipefitters

McBride, Joe

URW

McDaniel, Guy*

URW

McDonnall, Jennie

URW

McKee, Don

AFSCME

McKenna, Charles

UAW

McKeone, Tony

Operating Engineers

McMahon, Tom

IWW, Railroad Trainmen, UTU

Mills, Orrie

Transit Workers, IWW

Mills, Ray*

Teamsters, IFL

Muffler, Ray

Painters

Nelson, Carl

FE, UAW

Neuwoehner, Vince

IBEW

Nisser, Ernie*

Bricklayers

Nixon, Ed

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Northway, Everett

UMWA

Oglevie, Harold

Hosiery Workers

Olls, Anthony

Transit Workers, Machinists

Parkins, Dale

UAW, Labor Commissioner

Peck, Pearl

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UPWA), CIO

Piper, Floyd

Teamsters; Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers

Piper, Odius (Odie) (2)

Laborers

Polson, Warren

Machinists

Pontious, Henry

UMWA, Teamsters, UAW

Pope, James

URW

Powell, William

Printers

Powers, Fred

IBEW, Railroad Laborers

Quinn, Eugene

Teamsters, URW, Bakers

Randels, H. W. (Herb)

CWA

Reed, Doran

URW

Reed, Merle

UAW

Reeves, Harold

Carpenters

Risser, John

NFTW, CWA

Roberts, Robert E.

UE-FE, UAW

Ross, Andy

URW

Rowen, Donald (2)

Lithographers, IFL

Russell, Lawrence (Larry)

URW

Page 319

Sample, Curt

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Sample, Gus

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Sappenfield, James

Machinists

Schutty, Harold

URW

Seymour, Earl

URW

Smith, Leonard

Machinists

Smith, Mark

IFL

Speer, Ivan

URW

Speer, Mary

URW

Stauffer, Dorothy*

UAW

Stauffer, Monnie

UAW

Steinbach, James

UAW

Stillwell, Max

Lithographers

Sullivan, Ray

Plumbers

Tantillo, Irene

URW

Terwilleger, James

Machinists

Turpen, Chester

URW

Usher, Wayne

Painters

Vignaroli, Richard

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW), IBEW

Vonderhaar, Clem

Elevator Constructors

Walter, Thomas

Bricklayers

Wavering, Bob

Electrotypers

Weems, Lloyd

Postal Workers

Wengert, Jim*

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA), IFL

Whipple, Alice

Social services

White, Bob W.

URW

Wiebold, Doris

CWA

Williams, Warren

IBEW

Zibert, Joe

IBEW, UMWA

DUBUQUE

Allendorf, Sheldon

Carpenters (Millworker)

Backes, Joe*

FE, UAW

Bennett, Floyd

UAW

Bennett, Ormal E. (Punk)

Teamsters, Machinists, Bartenders

Blakeman, Bill

Molders

Blaser, Joe

Typographers

Burrows, Joyce

Upholsterers

Byrne, Marge

Clothing Workers (ACWA), Metal Polishers

Callahan, Charlie*

Carpenters (Millworker)

Clark, Hugh (2)

Plumbers, IFL

Clark, Walter*

FE, UAW

Davis, Harry

Pipefitters

Delaney, William (Bill)

Teamsters

Dempsey, Charles

Molders

Dolter, Melvin

Upholsterers

Duggan, Ed

Plumbers

Page 320

Fagan, Carl

FE, UAW

Ferring, Al*

FE, UAW

Fluor, William

Machinists

Frommelt, Andy*

Battery Workers, Legislator

Gabel, Giles*

FE, UAW

Gardner, Al

Stagehands, Musicians

Gavin, Mark

Musicians

Giesler, Duane

Upholsterers, Steelworkers

Giunta, Francis

CWA

Grew, Gerry*

FE, UAW

Grimes, Donald

UAW

Grutz, Lawrence

Machinists, Battery Workers, Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW)

Gussman, Regina*

Clothing Workers (ACWA), Battery Workers

Haley, Mary

Upholsterers

Hammel, Clem

Upholsterers

Hammel, Dan

IBEW

Hanson, Adolph

Transit Workers

Harris, Lloyd (Bucky)

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW)

Heim, Wayne

IBEW

Herrig, William

Pipefitters

Heying, Cletus*

Carpenters (Millworker)

Howe, Al*

Metal Polishers

Jacobi, Pete

Bakers

Jestice, Vince*

FE, UAW

Kelly, Hugh

Transit Workers

Kieffer, Nick

Pressmen

Kisting, William*

Carpenters

Knobbe, Harry

Carpenters

Koch, William

IBEW

Koppes, Ronald

Machinists

Kritz, James

Carpenters

Kulow, John*

Machinists

McDermott, Howard

Barbers

McDonnell, Wayne

Operating Engineers

Maerschalk, Rachel

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

Meyer, James R.

Plasterers

Miller, William O.

Painters

Murphy, Larry

CWA

Noel, Louis

Upholsterers

Oglesby, William

Transit Workers

Opperman, Earl

IBEW

Peter, Donald

Lathers

Pfohl, Earl*

Teamsters

Ploessl, Emil

Battery Workers, FE, UAW

Riley, Owen

Teamsters

Page 321

Roboy, Carl

AFSCME

Roseliep, Donald

Teamsters, Bartenders

Runde, Robert (Bob) (2)

Machinists

Schadle, Clem

Pressmen

Scherrer, Gerry (Chick)

IBEW

Scheuller, Eugene

Bartenders

Schultz, Bud

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

Sherman, John

Teamsters

Stackis, Emil

Typographers

Sullivan, Richard*

Railroad Trainmen, Conductors, UTU

Thill, August (Bud)

Teamsters

Von Ah, Albert

Upholsterers

Vorwald, Elmer

Molders, Carpenters (Millworker), Machinists

Waller, Jim

UAW

Whitt, James

Teamsters

Williams, Charles

Machinists

Wirzbach, Herman

IBEW

Wolff, Mike

Typographers

Worsinger, Lavern*

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

Wright, Mary

CWA

Young, Herb*

Laborers

ESTHERVILLE

Booth, Irvin

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Buthmann, Donald

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Clabaugh, Roy

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Croft, Darlene

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Danielson, Carl

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Fox, Robert

Railway Clerks

Hanson, Dean

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Hassel, Barney

IWW, Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

Hiles, Jarvis

Railroad Trainmen

Jensen, Janit

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Jensen, Robert

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Keeler, Bohumir (Bum)

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Kultala, Edwin

Railway Clerks

Spillman, Gary

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Stearns, Willys

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Tuttle, Robert

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Wee, Merlyn

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Zinnel, Leo

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

FORT DODGE

Anderson, Gilbert

Cement & Gypsum Workers

Belmer, Winford G.

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Boyer, Theodore (Ted)

Teamsters

Burleson, Jane

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Page 322

Burton, George*

Pressmen

Butts, A. P.

Conductors

Byrne, Ila Jean

IUE

Dolan, Robert

Teamsters

DuPey, Earl

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

DuPey, Esther

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Feeley, Guy E.

Teamsters

Flaherty, Hugh

Letter Carriers

Fortune, Paul

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Fritz, Julie

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA Auxiliary)

Gulden, Jesse*

Carpenters

Harden, William

UMWA, OCAW

Huddleston, Dorothy M.

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW Auxiliary)

Jochimsen, Hans

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Johnson, Norman

Cement & Gypsum Workers

Jones, Florence

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Jones, Marshall E.

Iron Workers

Larson, Gaylord G.

Carpenters

Lindner, Richard

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Lowrey, Richard (Red)

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW)

McBride, Roy

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Maddox, John

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

Maguire, Eugene (Micky)

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Naylor, Julia

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Nelson, LeRoy

Cement & Gypsum Workers

Peart, Donald

UMWA, OCAW

Peed, Joe

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Peed, Margaret

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Peterson, Robert N.

Cement & Gypsum Workers

Rejsek, Joe (2)

Cement & Gypsum Workers

Ruby, Clinton

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

St. John, Mary

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Seaver, Robert

UMWA, OCAW

Simmons, Henry

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Stringer, Cleio (Jock)

UMWA; Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers

Stromberg, Einar

C. Pressmen

Sturdevant, James M.

UMWA, OCAW

Svaleson, Iver

Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers; UMWA, OCAW

Wells, Marshall

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

FORT MADISON

Alvarez, Fidel C.

Railroad worker

Alvarez, Sebastian

Railroad worker

Avery, Sandra

UAW

Cale, Tom

UAW, Machinists, Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Frost, Russell

Railway Carmen

Page 323

Hellige, Bernard

Carpenters

Mead, John

Barbers

Menke, Arletta (Rocky)*

UAW

Menke, Arnold

Machinists

Reyes, Frank

Railroad worker

Ried, Fred

Machinists

Ried, Ruby

UAW

Tanner, George

Railway Clerks

IOWA CITY

Amidon, Horace

Typographers

Breer, Laurence (Whitey)

Laborers

Brown, Marian*

CWA

Chalmers, William (Doc)

Letter Carriers

Coleman, Carroll

Typographers

Cordeman, Jan

AFSCME

Denneny, Thomas

Laborers

Dolezal, Donald

Fire Fighters

Drollinger, Lyle

Musicians

Fowler, Merle*

Barbers

Geringer, Lauren

Typographers

Goering, Harold

AFSCME

Grady, John*

Railroad Trainmen

Hall, James

AFSCME

Harbit, Daniel

AFSCME

Hathaway, Marty

AFSCME

Herdliska, Doug

AFSCME

Jensen, Helen

CWA

Kelley, James J.

Bricklayers

Kral, Evelyn

CWA

Langenberg, Joe

Musicians

McComas, Charles

IBEW

McDonell, Al

AFSCME

Milder, Bernard

Laborers

Orth, Milton J. (Chick)*

CWA

Palmer, Milo

AFSCME

Parks, George

AFSCME

Putman, Wilson

Carpenters

Ruppert, Charles

Carpenters

Smith, Melvin

Teamsters

Stager, Harold

AFSCME

Villhauer, Herman

Fire Fighters

West, Pearl

Musicians

KEOKUK

Azinger, Carrie

URW

Azinger, Leo (2)

Painters

Page 324

Benstein, William

Paper Workers

Bryant, Roger

Grain Millers

Cline, Wayne

URW

Folluo, Gary M.

Operating Engineers

Jump, Lester

Operating Engineers

Kearns, Jerry A. (2)

URW

Kelly, Walter

Operating Engineers

Long, John

URW

Noe, Betty

URW

Noe, Keith

OCAW

Rogers, Roscoe

OCAW

Ruark, Forrest (Dick)

URW

Schreiber, Ronald

Grain Millers

Seabold, Roy

Machinists

Seltzer, Robert

Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers; OCAW

Weiny, George (2)

Grain Millers

West, Lana

Operating Engineers

MASON CITY

Andon, John

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Ashlock, George

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Ashlock, Mary

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Barker, Kenny

Teamsters

Belseth, Gladys

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Belseth, Orlando

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Colloton, Harold

Machinists, Switchmen

Deertz, Harry

Railroad Trainmen, Brakemen

Flynn, Iva

CWA

Flynn, William

Railroad Trainmen

Garcia, Frank

Carpenters

Jarvill, Larry

Typographers

Jones, Edward C. (2)

Typographers

Kercheff, Jessie

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Kopps, Oswald

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Leake, James

Cement & Gypsum Workers

McClung, Charles

Laborers

Meacham, Abe

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Moore, Arthur (Duke)

Railroad Laborers

Mott, Clifford R.

IBEW

Newman, Edward

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

O'Banion, John

Teamsters

Pattschull, Earl

Typographers

Pavek, Anthony

Cement & Gypsum Workers

Perry, Omer

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Radcliff, George

Cement & Gypsum Workers

Ramsey, Clarence (2)

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA), Sheet Metal Workers

Page 325

Reynolds, Fred

Painters

Tiedeman, Victor

Grain Millers

Ward, Earnie

Cement & Gypsum Workers

Weida, G. G.

Switchmen

Wheaton, Millard

Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers

Wilson, Sidney

Teamsters

Wood, Donald

Cement & Gypsum Workers

Young, C. J.

Barbers

MUSCATINE

Brade, Carl

Pipefitters

Brewer, Velma

Clothing Workers (ACWA)

Conway, Walter

Carpenters, Railway Clerks, Mayor, Legislator

Everett, Edward

Painters

Grossklaus, Sam

Bricklayers

Hahn, Frank

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Litz, Roy

IBEW

Paul, Florence

Clothing Workers (ACWA)

Richardson, Glenn

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW-Cannery)

Stelzner, James

Carpenters

Stender, Joy

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW-Cannery)

Sturms, Melvin

Machinists

MYSTIC

Ducey, Jennie

UMWA, FE, UAW

Ducey, John

UMWA, FE, UAW

Gerard, Marcel

UMWA

Kuchan, John

UMWA

NEWTON

Cooper, Ezra

UE, UAW

Griffith, John

UMWA, UE, UAW

Lane, Kenny

UE, UAW

Martin, Virgil

UE, UAW

Owens, Edris (Soapy)

UE, UAW, CIO, IFL

OTTUMWA

Bankson, Virgil (2)

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, PWOC, UPWA, UFCW)

Bartholow, Ira J.

Laborers

Beall, John (Dan)

Carpenters

Bohaty, Violet

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Bonner, Virgil

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Bride, Dorven (Arky)

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Brinegar, Chester

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Clark, Frank

UMWA, FE, UAW

Cline, Elmer

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

Page 326

Cohagan, Tom

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, PWOC, UPWA)

Cottrell, Floyd

UMWA, Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Cross, Carmen*

Machinists

Cross, Walter

Machinists

Crow, Alfred (Pat)*

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, PWOC, UPWA)

Deevers, Edward

UAW

DeMoss, Lloyd

UMWA, UAW

Drake, Mary Belle

Clothing Workers (ACWA)

Ellis, Kenneth

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

Erzinger, Harriet

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Fisher, Pauline W.

Machinists

Frost, Dwight

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW), UAW

Gettings, Donald E.

UAW

Hagedon, Loren

UAW

Hall, Glenn

UAW

Headley, Orville

Teamsters

Jerred, Ethel

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Jones, Don

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

Jones, Gerald (Casey)

Carpenters

Kephart, Lloyd

Bricklayers

Kinion, Rex

Carpenters

Krafka, George

Fire Fighters

Lewis, Edward

Machinists

Loy, Lewis E. (Everett)

Machinists

McCoy, Jack

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Major, Albert

AFSCME

Major, Laura

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Merrill, Jesse

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Mincks, Jacob B. (Jake)

Teamsters, Steel Workers, UAW, Legislator

Morrow, Ruth

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Morrow, William

Letter Carriers

Price, Camille

UMWA, UAW

Provenzano, James

UMWA, UAW, Steel Workers

Root, Elmer (Ben)

AFSCME

Six, Walter

Bricklayers

Smith, Elizabeth (Sue)

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Stewart, Kenneth

Machinists

Turner, B. M.*

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Turner, Emma*

Cigarmakers

Varner, Danny

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Walden, D. H.

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UFCW)

Weatherstone, John

UMWA, UAW

Wemer, Norman

Carpenters

Page 327

Young, Clayton

Teamsters, Railway Postal Workers

Young, Raymond

Teamsters, AFSCME

QUAD CITIES

Bartosch, Ed

Plumbers

Birkhahn, Robert

Plumbers

Boden, Bob

Laborers, FE, Machinists

Boynton, John

FE, UAW

Brooks, Julia*

Machinists

Brown, Wray

Carpenters

Butler, Eugene

UAW

Carlsen, Ralph

UAW

Carlson, Einar*

Machinists, UE

Causemaker, Carl

Machinists

Cooksey, Ben

Machinists

Cross, Adrian

FE, UAW

Dau, Harry

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW)

Day, George (Mike)

Laborers

DeFrieze, Louis

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

DeFrieze, Sharon

Quad City Federation of Labor

Denekas, Emil

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

De Young, Rosa

Teamsters

Duncan, Joe

Bartenders

Edwards, Richard

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

Eley, James

Operating Engineers

Exline, Wilbert

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

Farrier, Clifford

Bakers

Fladlein, Carl

Pattern Makers

Folsom, John (2)

Bakers, Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

Foster, Burton C.

FE, UAW

Gerlach, Ray

Machinists

Grogg, Sam

UAW

Hall, Earl (Pappy)*

IBEW

Hank, Fred

Bakers

Hinrichs, Ruby

Laborers (office secretary)

Hopping, Everett

UAW

Horsey, Max

FE, Machinists

Hoskinson, Lawrence (Newt)

UMWA, UE, UAW

Houts, Ben

Aluminum Workers

Hudson, Vern*

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

Hughes, Elvin (Hawk)

Teamsters

Hutchison, William H.

Cement & Gypsum Workers

Jens, Wilfred

Cement & Gypsum Workers

John, Richard

Bricklayers

Johnson, Charlie

Bakers

Jones, Ray

FE, UAW

Page 328

Kelley, Junior

FE, UE-FE, Machinists

Lopez, John

UAW

Lovell, Charles E.

Machinists

McClaren, Frank

Teamsters

McDermott, Richard H. (Mac)

IBEW

Morrissey, Rita*

Teamsters

Munro, James

FE, UAW

Mustacchio, Tony

Cement Finishers

Myers, Lyle*

UAW

Nelson, Elsie*

Clothing Workers (ACWA)

O'Connor, William (Rev.)

Priest

Pannell, Lloyd (Doc)*

FE, UAW

Papenbrock, Fred*

Plumbers

Parmley, James

UE, Machinists

Pauwels, George

Sheet Metal Workers

Pavlat, Ed

Teamsters

Pope, Ed*

Machinists

Raymond, Earl

Millwright

Roe, Rueben

Cement & Gypsum Workers

Rose, Bob*

Aluminum Workers

Ruth, Leo

Aluminum Workers

Scherz, Louis

UE, Machinists

Schilling, Ralph

Plasterers

Schoo, Kenneth

Plumbers

Schumaker, Peter

Musicians

Serrano, John

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Shadle, Everett

Aluminum Workers

Simmons, Harold*

Typographers

Simmons, Robert (Bob)

Bakers

Skinner, Clarence

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

Smith, G. Wayne (Banjo)

FE, Machinists

Sodeman, Earl

Machinists

Steele, Florence

FE, UAW

Steinhoff, Vernon

Bakers

Stewart, Freel

Machinists

Stiles, Glen

CWA

Swafford, Ellsworth

FE, UAW

Taylor, Earl

Plumbers

Teel, Wilbur C. (Whitey)

Carpenters

Teigland, Don

FE, UAW

Thomas, Francis (Curly)*

UMWA, Carpenters

Timion, Wayne

Glaziers

Tucker, Wesley

Painters

Wagner, Art

Machinists

Walters, Ed

Barbers

Page 329

Welsh, James

Sheet Metal Workers

Whitaker, Jack

IBEW

White, Bruce*

FE, UAW

Wild, Willard*

IBEW

Winterbottom, John (2)

IBEW

Wiszmann, Erma

CWA

Wright, Carroll

UE, Machinists

York, Ruth

Bakers

SIOUX CITY

Andersen, Axel

Carpenters

Bass, C. O. (Curly)

Stagehands

Beck, Rockley

Musicians

Beckman, Millie

NFTW, CWA

Bernoski, Walt

IBEW

Butter, John S.

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Callendar, Loren

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA), City Council

Carmody, Tom

Operating Engineers

Caudill, Norman

Machinists

Chappelle, Clarence

Fire Fighters

Davis, Everett*

Asbestos Workers

Derochie, Ron (2)

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Diskey, Donald

Machinists

Duzik, George

NFTW, CWA

Edwards, Mary

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Engstrand, James

Cigarmakers

Fallon, Earl

Plasterers

Flanagan, Cecelia

Machinists

Furlich, Gladys

NFTW, CWA

Furlich, Mike

NFTW, CWA

Gray, Milford (Stub)

Locomotive Firemen, Railroad Trainmen, UTU

Hansen, Wesley

IBEW

Hartnett, William C.

Iron Workers

Heger, Joe

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Herman, James

Fire Fighters

Hilsinger, James

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

Hogan, Bill

Plumbers

Horsley, Viola

Clothing Workers (UGW)

Hunter, Harry (Buster)

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA), CWA

Johnson, Earl

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Lesline, Asa

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Lindquist, Harry

IBEW

McCarthy, John

Typographers

Maher, Joe

Railroad Trainmen, Conductors

Mandicino, Frank

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA), Letter Carriers

Mann, Louise

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Mann, Ray

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Page 330

Martin, Harold

IBEW

Mason, Gordon

Asbestos Workers

Michener, Gus

Laborers

Milner, Howard

Operating Engineers

Morrison, Mearle

Typographers

Moss, Don

Carpenters

Moss, Gordon

Carpenters

Mullen, A. W.

Plumbers

Nolan, Bruce

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

Oder, Bob

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Peters, Edith*

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Peters, George

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Revere, Harold

Bakers

Rice, Don

Machinists

Sammons, Ernest (Shorty)

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

Santi, Frank (2)

Teamsters

Schmitz, William (Bill) (2)

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Schwedler, Marie

Clothing Workers (UGW)

Sheehan, John

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Simmons, Eddie L.

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Smith, Harry (2)

Labor attorney

Stamoulis, Tony

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Strong, Betty

COPE

Strong, Darrell M.

Locomotive Firemen, Railroad Trainmen, UTU

Sturgeon, Ralph

Machinists

Sturgeon, Richard (Dick)

Machinists

Thompson, Donovan

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

Thomsen, Ray

Machinists

Trafton, Harold

Bricklayers

Will, Wayne

Teamsters

Winford, Willard

Typographers

SPENCER

Lauritsen, Chris

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

STORM LAKE

Bueb, John

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

Johnson, Carol

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

Robbins, Tom

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

Rupp, Donald

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

Taylor, Wallace

Packinghouse Workers (AMCBW, UFCW)

WATERLOO

Adams, Clare (Mike)

UAW

Adams, Leona

UAW Auxiliary

Albrecht, George*

UAW

Ames, Martha*

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

Page 331

Ames, Sylvester (Babe)

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

Anderson, Carroll

Barbers

Ayers, Lowell (Bud)

Teamsters

Bauman, Donald

Teamsters

Bean, Francis

Teamsters

Bleeker, Roger

UAW

Brackin, John

IBEW

Bremer, Lucille

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Burt, Percy

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Christensen, Charles (Chappy)

Plumbers

Christianson, Ilene

UAW

Clements, Archie

Machinists

Condon, Gene

UAW

Cooney, John

UAW

Dahl, Carl

UAW

Dietz, Murle

Machinists

Douglas, Maynard

Machinists

Edsill, Russell

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Engelhardt, Howard

Teamsters

Erdmann, Helen

Retail Workers

Fangman, Keith

IBEW

Ferguson, Omar

Molders

Fideler, L. E.

Machinists

Fortier, John

Railroad Trainmen, Conductors

Frost, Don

IBEW

Gillespie, E. G.

Teamsters

Gross, John

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Hamlyn, James

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Hamlyn, Luella

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Harshbarger, Chris

UAW

Hayes, Rosemary

Teamsters

Herr, Clifford

Locomotive Engineers, Locomotive Firemen

Holbach, Louis

Painters

Hollingsworth, John

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Hollins, Edwin

Teamsters

Horan, Cliff

Teamsters

Jennings, Albert (Barney)

Fire Fighters

Jennings, Nate

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Jensen, Melvin

Teamsters

Kremer, James

IBEW

Kruger, Marlene

Machinists

Larsen, Axel

UAW

Larsen, Paul M.

AFL-CIO, Pipefitters

Lindholm, Earl

Teamsters

Lubert, A. W. (Rusty)

UAW

Lubert, Ruth

UAW

Page 332

McCuen, Clarence H. (Mac)

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

Meyer, Werner

Barbers

Morkel, Gus

Machinists

Morrissey, Martin J. (Jack)

UAW

Mueller, Charles (2)

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Mueller, Otto

Bakers

Nolting, Fred

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Otterman, Velma

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Pederson, Fred M.

Carpenters

Peterson, Robert N.

Machinists

Pierce, Cecil

UAW

Pierce, Clifford (Frog)

IBEW

Price, Richard

Packinghouse Workers (PWOC, UPWA)

Redmon, Gene

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Riley, Earl C.

UAW

Riley, Wilma E.

UAW

Roloff, Dorothy

Bartenders

Saathoff, John

UAW, UE

Schuler, Theodore

Carpenters

Seeber, Jack

UAW

Semmert, Thomas

Machinists

Shea, Merle

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA)

Shinn, Jack

Teamsters

Smith, Albert

Machinists

Smith, William

Letter Carriers

Smuck, Richard

IBEW

Stacy, Clifford

Transit Workers

Stephens, Eugene

Locomotive Engineers, Locomotive Firemen

Stone, Robert (Rocky)

Barbers

Sullivan, John C.

Brakemen, Conductors

Taylor, Roosevelt

UAW

Thompson, Merle

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Tredwell, Benjamin

Railroad worker

Tredwell, Cuba E.

UAW

Tyson, Miriam

CWA

Wach, Leo

Barbers

Walker, Marion

Sheet Metal Workers

Walton, John

AFSCME

Weed, Charles

UAW

Weems, Eugene

Packinghouse Workers (UPWA, UFCW)

Welch, Richard (Dick)

Machinists

Williams, Luther

Packinghouse Workers (UFCW)

Woodrick, Russell (2)

Machinists

Zarifis, James P.

Barbers

Ziebell, William

Carpenters

Page 333

Key to Labor Union Names

AFL-CIO: American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations

AFSCME: American Federation of State, County, & Municipal Employees

AFT: American Federation of Teachers

Aluminum Workers: Aluminum Workers International Union (AWIU)

Asbestos Workers: International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Asbestos Workers

Bakers: Bakery and Confectionery Workers' International Union of America (BCWIUA)

Barbers: Journeymen Barbers, Hairdressers, Cosmetologists and Proprietors International Union of America (JBHCIU)

Bartenders: Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union (HREBIU)

Battery Workers: Federal Union (Battery Workers)

Bookbinders: International Brotherhood of Bookbinders

Brakemen: Order of Railway Conductors and Brakemen (ORC) [UTU, 1969]

Bricklayers: Bricklayers, Masons, and Plasterers' International Union of America (BMPIUA)

Carpenters: United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners of America

Cement & Gypsum Workers: United Cement, Lime & Gypsum Workers International Union (UCLGWIU)

Cement Finishers: Operative Plasterers & Cement Masons' International Association of the United States and Canada

Cigarmakers: Cigarmakers' International Union of America (CIU)

CIO: Committee of Industrial Organization [19351938]

Clothing Workers: Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA); International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU); United Garment Workers of America (UGW)

Conductors: Order of Railway Conductors and Brakemen (ORC) [UTU, 1969]

COPE: Committee on Political Education

CWA: Communication Workers of America

Electrotypers: International Stereotypers', Electrotypers', and Platemakers' Union of North America (ISE & PU)

Elevator Constructors: International Union of Elevator Constructors

FE: Farm Equipment and Metal Workers of America; United. See also UE

Fire Fighters: International Association of Fire Fighters

GCIU: Graphic Communications International Union

Glaziers: Glaziers, Architectural Metal, and Glass Workers

Grain Millers: American Federation of Grain Millers (AFGM)

Hosiery Workers: American Federation of Hosiery Workers (AFHW)

IBEW: International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers

IFL: Iowa Federation of Labor

Iron Workers: International Association of Bridge, Structural and Ornamental Iron Workers (IABSOIW)

Page 334

IUE: International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers

IWW: Industrial Workers of the World

Laborers: Laborers' International Union of North America (LIU)

Lathers: Lathers International Union; Wood, Wire and Metal (WWMLIU)

Laundry Workers: Laundry, Drycleaning and Dye House Workers' International Union

Letter Carriers: National Association of Letter Carriers of the United States of America (NALC)

Lithographers: Lithographers and Photoengravers International Union (LPIU) [after September 1964, merged with Amalgamated Lithographers of America (ALA)]

Locomotive Engineers: Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE)

Locomotive Firemen: Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen (BLFE)

Machinists: International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM)

Metal Polishers: Metal Polishers, Buffers, Platers and Allied Workers; International Union (MPBPAW)

Millwright: Millwright and Technical Engineers Union

Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers: International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW)

Molders: International Molders and Allied Workers Union (IMU)

Musicians: American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM)

NFTW: National Federation of Telephone Workers

OCAW: Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union

Office Workers: Office & Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU)

Operating Engineers: International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE)

Packinghouse Workers: Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America (AMCBW); Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC) [19371943]; United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA); United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW)

Painters: International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades of the United States and Canada (IBP & AT)

Paper Workers: International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers of the United States and Canada (IBPSPMW)

PATCO: Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization

Pattern Makers: Pattern Makers' League of North America (PMLNA)

Photoengravers: Photoengravers Union of North America; International. See also Lithographers

Pipefitters: United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the United States and Canada (UA)

Plasterers: Operative Plasterers' and Cement Masons' International Association of the United States and Canada (OP & CMIA)

Plumbers: United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the United States and Canada (UA)

Postal Workers: American Postal Workers Union (APWU)

Page 335

Pressmen: International Printing Pressmen and Assistants Union of North America (IPPAU)

Printers: Printing and Graphic Communications Union; International (IPGCU)

Railway Carmen: Brotherhood Railway Carmen of the United States and Canada (BRCA)

Railway Clerks: Brotherhood of Railway, Airline and Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express and Station Employees (BRAC)

Railroad Laborers: Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWE)

Railway Postal Workers. See Postal Workers

Railroad Trainmen: Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen (BRT) [UTU, 1969]

Retail Workers: Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU)

Service Employees: Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

Sheet Metal Workers: Sheet Metal Workers' International Association (SMWIA)

Stagehands: Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Machine Operators of the United States and Canada; International Alliance

Steelworkers: United Steelworkers of America (USWA)

Stereotypers: International Stereotypers', Electrotypers', and Platemakers' Union of North America (ISE & PU)

Switchmen: Switchmen's Union of North America (SUNA) [UTU, 1969]

Teamsters: International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America (IBT)

Transit Workers: Amalgamated Transit Union

Typographers: International Typographical Union (ITU)

UAW: United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America; International Union (UAW)

UE: United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE)

UE-FE: UE merged with FE in 1949 until demise of UE-FE in 1954. See also FE

UMWA: United Mine Workers of America

Upholsterers: Upholsterers' International Union of North America (UIU)

URW: United Rubber, Cork, Linoleum and Plastic Workers of America (URW)

UTU: United Transportation Union

Page 337

Index

A

Adams, Mike, 213

AFL-CIO:

early cooperation in Waterloo, 267;

in Iowa, 309;

1955 merger, 262-264, 266, 285

African-American workers. See Black workers

Agriculture:

antiunion attitudes, 27;

depression of the 1920s. 20, 25;

labor, 25, 26;

IWW organized, 38, 39;

migration of farmers to cities, 86;

recession of 1956, 286, 287

Albia, Iowa, 23, 24, 29, 30, 32, 35

Amalgamated Clothing Workers (ACW), 27

Amalgamated Meatcutters and Butcher Workmen, 86, 87, 92, 93, 185, 176, 177, 264, 268-270, 271;

merger with United Packinghouse Workers, 11

American Federation of Hosiery Workers, 91, 92

American Federation of Labor (AFL):

federal labor unions, 94;

merger with CIO, 11.

See also AFL-CIO

American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), 306, 307

Anamosa, Iowa, 26

Andersen, Svend, 45, 46

Anticommunism, 10, 161, 164-169, 262

Apprenticeship, 45

Armour & Company, 184, 185, 308

Armstrong Tire and Rubber Company, 62, 191, 198, 199, 205, 206

Ashlock, George, 102, 103, 158

Ashlock, Mary, 24, 25, 102, 103

Austin, Minnesota, 40, 81, 98, 112-116, 119

B

Bankson, Virgil, 73-75, 86, 87, 100, 105, 106, 231, 232

Barta, Milo, 67, 117, 118

Beardsley, William, 159, 180

Beardstown, Illinois, 268

Bell Telephone Company, 46

Bennett, Mary, 311

Bettendorf, Iowa, 130. See also Quad Cities

Bird, George, 174

Black Hawk County Labor Council, 285

Blacklist, 44, 83

Black workers:

discrimination against, 138;

during World War I. 134;

in Iowa towns, 8, 9, 30, 31, 46, 47, 53, 55;

migration of, 84, 138, 217, 243;

and occupational segregation, 217, 243, 244, 246, 247, 250, 256;

in the packinghouses, 85, 87, 88, 97, 101, 137;

packinghouse strike of 1948, 179;

postwar experience, 10, 155;

racial barriers, 139, 236, 248;

racial barriers in unions, 249, 251;

rising wartime income, 135;

and wartime labor scarcity, 138, 243

Blue Cross/Blue Shield: labor's grievances with, 296

Blue, Robert, 157, 158, 282;

defeat by labor, 159

Booth, Harry, 2, 3, 29, 30, 35-37, 64-66

Branscomb, Harry, 167, 168

Brazil, Iowa, 31, 33

Breen, Ed, 75

Bricklayers Union, 45, 46

Bridges, Harry, 167

Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, 47

Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, 49

Buckmaster, Robert, 179

Building trades, 265

Bull, Allen, 102, 103

Bull, Russell, 98, 117, 141, 180

Page 338

Burlington, Iowa, 130, 131, 237, 238, 250, 251, 305, 306

Burlington nurses strike of 1989: community support, 306

Button industry, 43, 44, 51;

working conditions, 60, 61

Buxton, Iowa, 84

C

Cargill, Inc., 308

Case, J. I. Company, 130

Caterpillar Tractor Company, 170

Cedar Falls, Iowa, 236

Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 67, 92, 105, 112, 115-119, 142-145, 160, 177, 178, 222-224, 239, 241, 303, 304

Chamberlin Corporation, 144, 272-277

Chambers of Commerce:

influence in local politics, 284;

opposition to labor, 295, 297, 304;

role in 1948 packinghouse strike, 185

Champion Sparkplug Company, 250

Charles City, Iowa, 173, 174, 287

Chicago & Northwestern Railroad: employment of women, 123

Chicago, 88, 89, 97, 116

Child labor, 26

Cigar Makers International Union, 94

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 72, 73

Civil rights activism: unions' support of, 259

Civil Rights Act of 1964, 225, 226, 231

Clark, Hugh, 292, 293

Clark, Lewis, 112, 116, 118, 141

Class relations: in Iowa towns, 53, 54, 304

Clausen, Chuck, 186

Clinton, Iowa, 123, 281, 301, 304

Clinton Corn Processing strike of 1980, 281, 301, 304

Coad, Norman, 288

Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), 234, 241, 242

Coal miners:

migration to industrial towns, 8, 82;

strikes of 1919 and 1921, 43;

union traditions, 82, 83.

See also United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)

Coal mining:

child labor, 33;

communities, 28-30, 34, 36, 37;

company stores, 32;

immigrants, 29-31, 34;

living conditions, 31-34

Cold War: impact on labor, 162

Cole, Delno ''Mike,'' 296

Colfax, Iowa, 83

Collins Radio Company, 142, 143, 222-224, 239

Commission on the Status of Women, 234, 241, 242

Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), 92, 112, 113;

formation of, 263.

See also Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)

Committee on Political Education (COPE-AFL-CIO), 283, 285

Commonwealers, 2, 35

Communications Workers of America (CWA), 201

Communist party, 162, 163, 170, 257;

united front strategy, 161

Community Action Program (CAP-UAW), 283

Community Chest. See United Way

Company towns, 55, 56

Company unions, 67, 81, 89, 95-98, 103

Condon, Gene, 166, 212, 246, 247

Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), 3, 9, 82, 89, 97, 99, 102, 115, 116, 118, 121;

challenge to racial barriers, 217, 244, 254;

early organizing, 122;

impact of Taft-Hartley, 157;

and race relations, 134;

red-baiting, 167;

role of the Left, 161.

See also Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO)

Cooney, John, 285, 296, 297

Cooper, Ezra, 108, 109

Council Bluffs, Iowa, 271, 289

Page 339

Cudahy Packing Company, 69, 71, 99, 185, 251

Culver, John, 289

D

Dahl, Carl, 62-64, 109, 111, 175

Dahl, Jim, 102

Dale, Vernon, 266

Davenport, Iowa, 131-133, 201, 238, 239. See also Quad Cities

Davis, Vern, 241

Dawson, Richard, 191, 198, 199, 205, 206

Debs, Eugene, 303

Decker, Jacob E. & Sons Packing Company, 24, 58-60, 102, 103, 119, 149, 186

Deere, John & Company, 62-64, 72, 73, 104, 105, 109, 111, 117, 143, 152, 155, 156, 166, 190, 244-247;

Dubuque plant, 170, 171;

during wartime, 129;

1950 strike, 10, 208-213

Dehm, Nancy, 305, 306

Democratic party:

labor support for, 239, 283-286, 294;

revival in Iowa, 11, 262, 265, 266, 282;

weakness in Iowa, 160

Depression of the 1890s, 35

Des Moines, Iowa, 27, 30, 55, 62, 64, 79, 81, 90-93, 121, 136, 137, 154, 158, 159, 167, 168, 190, 191, 198, 199, 203-206, 209-212, 249, 250, 264, 281, 282, 296

Des Moines Industrial Union Council, 113

Des Moines Ordnance Plant: women's wartime work, 132, 133

Des Moines Trades and Labor Assembly, 92, 113

Diskey, Donald, 236, 237

Dolliver, James I., 288

Dougherty Van and Storage Company, 69

Dubuque, Iowa, 155, 156, 170, 171, 197, 198, 278, 292, 293

Dubuque Packing Company, 197

Ducey, Jennie, 33, 34

Ducey, John, 33, 34

Dupey, Earl, 87, 116

Dyna Technology Company, 308

E

Eagle Signal Company, 165

Economic growth:

nineteenth-century, 4;

river towns, 8

Eddyville, Iowa, 36

Edsill, Russ, 178-181

Edwards, Richard, 268, 269

Electrical workers, 303, 304. See also International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)

Ellis, Frank, 40, 41, 102, 112, 113, 115-117

Employees' Benefit Association (EBA), 96, 97

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 225

Estherville, Iowa, 48, 49, 101, 153, 154, 192, 193, 258, 271, 286, 288

F

Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), 135

Farm equipment industry:

early development in Iowa, 8;

early organizing, 104, 105, 111;

racial discrimination, 247;

working conditions, 73, 190

Farm Equipment Workers (FE), 3, 10, 104, 155, 161, 165, 167, 168, 173, 262;

expelled from CIO, 172;

refusal to sign affidavits, 170;

shopfloor militancy, 169;

skilled trades, 104;

weakened by raiding, 171, 175

Farmer-Labor cooperation, 283, 286-288

Farm-Labor Association, 287

Farrell, Chuck, 179, 181

Fenton, Bill, 264, 265, 281, 282

Ferguson, Oma, 46, 47, 236

Fetter, Anthony "Tony," 160, 161

Field, Morris, 171

Page 340

Filliman, Ed, 206, 207, 228, 229, 232, 284

Fisher, Gerald, 287

Fisher Governor Company, 309

Ford, Henry, 66

Ford Motor Company, 3, 64, 65, 66

Fort Dodge, Iowa, 22, 23, 43, 45, 47, 53, 54, 58, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 87-89, 95-98, 101, 107, 112, 120, 121, 137, 138, 215, 220, 288

Fort Madison, Iowa, 144, 252-255

Fort Madison penitentiary, 180

Fort Worth, Texas: segregated UPWA local, 136

Foster, Bob, 54

Foster, Burton, 169, 170

Foster, T. Henry, 54, 55

Foster family: influence in Ottumwa, 146

Foundries: working conditions, 248

Fritz, George, 96, 97, 107, 108

Fritz, Julie, 22, 23, 45, 53, 54, 73, 74, 96, 97, 120, 121

Fur and Leather Workers Union, 167

G

General Motors strike of 1946: contract innovations, 168, 169

Gerard, Marcel, 31, 32

Gilpin, D., 175

Godfriedson, Sven, 141

Gorman, Pat, 116, 269

Grain milling industry:

Clinton Corn Processing strike of 1980, 281, 301, 304;

early organizing, 94

Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), 36

Great Depression of the 1930s, 52, 53, 80, 108;

effects on black employment, 134;

impact on women workers, 216;

relief, 75-77;

survival strategies, 73-75;

women's work, 126

Grimes, Donald, 155, 156, 170, 171

Grogg, Sam, 143

Grundy Center, Iowa, 236

Guanajuato, Mexico, 252

Gypsum workers strike of 1921, 43, 45

H

Hamlyn, James, 181-183

Hampton, Iowa, 308

Harris, Don, 2, 3, 27, 82, 90-92, 112, 113, 115, 116, 118, 120-122, 166, 167, 173-175, 261

Hart, Dave, 193, 271

Hassel, Barney, 39, 153, 154, 258, 286

Hawkins, Lex, 266

Helstein, Ralph, 40, 41, 116, 122, 135, 136, 141, 145, 146, 177, 178, 207, 108, 232-234, 255-259, 263, 264, 269, 270

Heywood, Allen, 135

Hillman, Sidney, 140

Hispanic workers. See Mexican-American workers

Hocking, Iowa, 32

Hollins, Edwin, 247, 248

Hoover, Herbert, 284

Hopper, Everett, 180

Hormel Meatpacking Company, 40, 98

Hubinger Corn Milling Company, 94

Hughes, Harold, 283, 293

Hunter, Harry, 251

I

Illinois Central Railroad, 244, 246

Immigrant labor, 4, 21;

in agriculture, 24;

coal mining camps, 5, 23, 24;

community life, 22, 23;

Germans, 103;

in industrial towns, 84;

Lithuanians, 85;

Mexicans, 87, 252-255;

packinghouses, 67;

Poles, 85;

Slovaks, 22, 73, 74;

Syrians, 87

Incentive pay, 191, 192;

divisions among workers, 193-195, 197;

gain time, 193-195, 197;

group cooperation, 196;

meat-packing industry, 198;

pressures on workers, 196;

rubber workers control, 198, 199

Independent Union of All Workers (IUAW), 81, 112-117

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), 9, 21, 37, 115, 117;

influence on IUAW, 114;

organizing tactics, 38-40, 42

Page 341

International Association of Machinists (IAM), 164, 166, 264, 272;

renewal from within, 273-282

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), 289

International Harvester Company, 169;

Moline plant, 172

International Resistor Company, 250

Iowa Board of Regents, 305

Iowa Farm Bureau: political influence of, 290

Iowa Federation of Labor, 5, 92, 113, 158, 239, 241

Iowa Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO), 240, 263-265, 281, 290-295, 297-299, 301

Iowa Labor History Oral Project (ILHOP), 299, 311

Iowa legislature:

changing composition of in 1970s, 292;

labor influence in, 283, 289-294, 303, 304

Iowa Manufacturers' Association: political influence of, 290

Iowa Packing Company, 91, 93, 118, 136, 137

Iowa Power and Light Company, 91

Iron Workers Union, 44

J

Jackson, Robert A., Sr., 30, 31, 55, 248-250

Jacobs, Ernie, 115

Jerred, Ethel, 2-4, 127-129, 185, 186, 194, 195, 226-230

Johnson, Hank, 120

Johnson, Roy, 136

Jones, Don, 147

Jordan, John, 92-94, 118, 136, 137

K

Kalo Brick and Tile Company, 137, 138

Katnik, Mary, 215

Katnik, Mike, 22

Keokuk, Iowa, 94, 138, 139, 219, 220

Keokuk Trades and Labor Assembly, 94

King, Martin Luther, Jr., 259

Klefstad, Gil, 289, 290

Klefstad, Judy, 289, 290

Knights of Labor, 20, 41, 256, 262;

in Iowa coal mines, 28

Koole, Florine, 131-133

Krafka, George, 76, 77

Krajnovich, Mike, 304

L

Labor education, 298, 299

Laborers Union, 45, 249

Labor holiday of 1947, 158, 159

Labor movement in Iowa:

achievements, 11, 302, 308, 309;

crises of the 1980s, 11, 301, 304, 308;

impact of Taft-Hartley, 157;

involvement in community service, 295-299;

labor holiday to protest right-to-work legislation, 158, 159;

lessons of solidarity, 302, 306;

organizing in the early 1930s, 91;

political activism, 5, 48, 262, 263, 265, 282, 288-290, 293, 294;

postwar strength, 151;

and racial segregation, 134, 139;

renewal from within, 272, 273

Larsen, Paul, 267, 285-288, 295, 309

Larson, Gaylord, 47

Lasley, Russell, 180

Lauritsen, Chris, 302, 303

Lewis, John C. "Shady," 92

Lewis, John L., 80, 82-84, 87, 112, 116, 171, 177, 263

Lexington, Missouri, 30

Lindner, Richard, 70, 71, 97, 98, 107

Lopez, Fidel, 244, 252, 254, 255

Lopez, Sebastian, 252-255

Lost Creek mine disaster, 2, 36, 37

Loveless, Herschel, 284

Lowry, Richard, 58, 75, 76, 95, 96, 101

Lubacek, Ted, 67

M

McCarthy, Fern, 130, 131

McCoy, Jack, 54, 55, 83, 206, 207, 284

McCuen, Clarence, 67, 68

Machinists, 307-309. See also International Association of Machinists (IAM)

Page 342

Maddox, John, 75, 76, 95, 96

Maerschalk, Rachel, 197, 198

Management:

antiunion tactics, 309;

authority of, 61, 65, 66;

prerogatives, 152, 188;

principles of scientific management, 192;

resistance to unionism, 124

Manning, Buck, 76, 77

Marshalltown, Iowa, 309

Martin, Virgil, 108, 109

Mason City, Iowa, 24, 26, 58, 59, 102, 103, 119, 149, 158, 186

Maytag strike of 1938, 108-110, 163

Maytag Washing Machine Company, 55-57, 82, 83, 108, 110, 162, 164

Meany, George, 241, 269

Meat-packing industry:

ABC seniority system, 225, 227-229, 231, 232, 234;

automation, 270;

dual seniority, 224-227;

early development in Iowa, 8;

impact of technological change on, 220, 226;

pace of work, 192;

plant closings, 270;

racial segregation in, 251, 258;

sexual division of labor, 225, 231;

shopfloor conflict, 206-208;

skilled labor, 187;

technological changes, 190;

time-study, 196, 197;

wartime master agreements, 145

Meat-packing unions:

jurisdictional competition, 267, 268, 271;

merger negotiations, 269, 270;

1968 merger, 270, 271

Meier, Al, 189

Merrill, Jesse, 232, 233

Messner, Glen, 144, 145

Metal mining: itinerant work in the West, 41

Mexican-Americans:

community life, 255;

discrimination in schools, 254;

experience in World War II, 253;

fight for racial equality, 253

Mexican-American workers:

fight for equality, 244;

patterns of employment in Iowa, 217, 243;

work on railroads, 252.

See also Immigrant labor

Midwest Carbide Company, 139

Midwest Union of Packinghouse Workers, 112, 117, 118

Mills, Ray, 266

Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers, 42, 138;

constitutional provisions on racial discrimination, 139

Minneapolis, 122

Molders Union, 47, 236

Moline, Illinois, 104, 105, 235. See also Quad Cities

Morkel, Gus, 144

Morrell, John & Company, 54, 83, 87, 92, 95, 100, 105, 106, 127, 145-147, 192-195, 206, 207, 226-231

Mueller, Chuck, 183

Murray, Philip, 124, 162

Muscatine, Iowa, 43, 44, 51, 60, 61

Mystic, Iowa, 29, 31, 33

N

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 251

National Farmers' Organization (NFO), 283, 286, 288;

packinghouse workers assist, 287

National Federation of Telephone Workers, 133

National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), 80

National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act), 81, 91

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), 103, 122, 156, 170, 304

National Recovery Administration (NRA), 90, 95, 98

National War Labor Board, 125, 131, 133, 140, 143, 145, 147

Naylor, Julia, 220

Nelson, Herman & Company, 164

Newman, Eddie, 58-60, 119, 120, 186

Newton, Iowa, 55-57, 82, 83, 108, 110, 162

Page 343

Noe, Betty, 219, 220

Nolan, Bruce, 38-40, 71, 72, 84-86, 99, 100

Nolting, Fred, 291, 292, 304, 305

Northwestern Bell Telephone Company: "married woman policy," 132

Nurses: unionization of, 305, 306

O

Oakland, Iowa, 290

O'Hara, Chester, 271

O'Leary, Pat, 41, 42

Oliver Tractor Company, 173, 287

Onawa, Iowa, 308

Ordnance industry, 237, 238;

women's wartime work, 130, 131;

working conditions, 131

Orman, Everett, 185

Oskaloosa, Iowa, 268

Otterman, Velma, 221

Ottumwa, Iowa, 3, 54, 55, 74, 75, 76, 77, 83, 86, 87, 95, 100, 105, 106, 115, 116, 127-129, 145-147, 177, 185, 186, 194, 195, 206, 207, 225-233, 268, 284, 306, 307

Owens, Edris "Soapy," 55, 56, 83, 162-164, 241, 266, 267, 288

P

Packinghouse industry, 117;

early organizing, 99, 100, 101, 105-107, 115, 116, 119, 120;

racial discrimination, 136, 137;

stockyards, 67, 68;

women's work in wartime, 127, 128;

women workers, 93, 103;

working conditions, 28, 58, 59, 68, 69;

work in the Great Depression, 71, 72;

World War II labor relations, 141

Packinghouse strike of 1921, 43, 85

Packinghouse strike of 1939, 48

Packinghouse strike of 1946, 152-154, 176

Packinghouse strike of 1948, 10, 149, 115, 175;

industrywide strategy, 177, 178;

local boycotts, 185;

picket line confrontations, 176, 179;

racial tensions, 217;

recruitment of scabs, 176;

treatment of scabs, 182, 183, 186;

Waterloo riot, 180-182

Packinghouse workers, 26, 97, 302-307;

boomers, 40;

involvement in local politics, 284, 286;

organizing, 41, 86;

skilled labor, 88;

skilled trades, 84, 100

Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC), 3, 96, 111-135, 115, 116, 118, 119, 122, 135

Panther hunt: wildcat strike, 173, 174

Peick, Doris, 222-224, 288, 289

Pekay, Iowa, 35

Perry, Iowa, 27

Petersen, Nels, 184

Peterson, Eugene, 288

Piper, Floyd, 138, 139

Plastronics Company, 236

Plumbers, 309

Poncey, Clarence, 100

Porter, Jimmy, 261

Q

Quad Cities, 143, 164-166, 169, 171-173, 268, 269. See also Bettendorf, Iowa; Davenport, Iowa; Moline, Illinois

R

Racial segregation:

in Iowa, 55;

in public facilities, 248-250, 254;

in unions, 46

Railroad industry:

employment of Mexican-Americans, 252, 253;

racial discrimination, 144, 246, 253

Railroad shopmen's strike of 1922, 43

Railroad unions: and racial discrimination, 246

Railroad workers, 47-49

Ramsey, Clarence, 26, 27, 58-60, 119, 120, 186

Randolph, A. Philip, 251

Rankin, Bernard, 142, 143

Rath Packing Company, 59, 87, 112, 116, 117, 155, 178-183, 194, 221, 252

Reagan administration, 294

Page 344

Reapportionment, 241, 283

Redmon, Gene, 297, 298

Republican party:

dominance in Eightieth Congress, 156;

dominance in Iowa politics, 11, 263, 282, 290, 291

Reuther, Walter, 125, 150, 168, 169

Rhum, Susan, 237, 238

Ries, Virgil, 287

Riley, Earl, 129

Rollins Hosiery Mill, 3, 81, 90

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 80, 82, 90, 92, 134, 140, 150, 284

Rose, Bobby, 248

Rose, Jasper, 268

Rubber industry:

automation, 199;

men's and women's work, 219, 220;

shopfloor conflict, 203-205;

working conditions, 154, 191, 206

Rudd, Charlie, 101

Runaway plants, 302, 308, 309

Runde, Bob, 278

Russell, Lawrence, 203-205

S

St. Francis Hospital, 250

Sammons, Ernest, 141

Santi, Frank, 69, 157

Sappenfield, James, 159, 160

Savanna, Illinois, 248

Seniority, 62-64, 99

Sentner, Bill, 109, 162, 163, 165

Sexual division of labor: impact of technological change on, 219

Sexual harassment: union protection against, 221

Sheehan, John, 185

Shopfloor conflict: after World War II, 9;

in the 1950s, 189, 200, 206

Simmons, Henry, 84, 88, 89, 101

Sinclair Packing Company, 67

Sioux City, Iowa, 38, 47, 48, 67-69, 71, 72, 84-86, 99, 100, 141, 157, 185, 195, 196, 202, 203, 236, 237, 251, 278, 280, 307-309

Sioux Tools Company, 195, 196, 202, 203, 279, 280

Sit-down strikes, 79, 81, 86, 98, 101, 108, 111

Slowdowns, 202-204, 206

Smith, Earl, 23, 24, 32

Smith, G. Wayne "Banjo," 104, 105, 171-173

Smith, Mark, 293, 294, 298, 299

Smith-McCarren Act, 165

Social unionism, 256, 264, 294-299

Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), 259

South Omaha, Nebraska, 183, 184

Speer, Mary, 154

Spencer, Iowa, 302

Staley, Oren Lee, 288

Steinbach, James, 190, 210-212

Sterling, Illinois, 268

Stevens, A. T., 68, 117, 141

Storm Lake, Iowa, 27, 190, 196, 197

Stringer, Cleio, 137, 138

Sturgeon, Dick, 47, 48, 195, 196, 202, 203, 278, 280, 307-309

Sturgeon, Harold, 47, 48

Swift & Company, 145, 185

T

Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, 10, 151, 154, 156, 262;

noncommunist affidavits, 157, 161, 169, 170, 172;

right-to-work laws, 157, 158, 282;

secondary boycotts, 158;

wildcat strikes, 160, 161, 174, 200, 205

Talkington, Betty, 43, 44, 60, 61, 224, 239-242, 283, 284, 303, 304

Tate, Bill, 89

Tate, Frank, 97

Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 188, 192

Taylor, Wallace, 27, 28, 190, 196, 197

Teamsters, 157, 247;

fight against racial discrimination, 248

Telephone industry:

shopfloor conflict, 201;

women's work, 131-133, 238, 239

Time-study, 64, 111, 160, 193, 194, 196, 202, 203

Titus Manufacturing Company, 285

Page 345

Tobin Packing Company, 58, 87, 89, 95-98, 101, 107, 112, 153, 154, 215, 220

Tolson, Jaqui, 305, 306

Tredwell, Benjamin, 244, 246

Tredwell, Cuba, 244-247

Trucking industry: working conditions, 69

Truman, Harry S., 156

U

Unemployment, 69;

in 1939, 124;

in the 1930s, 53, 54, 70, 71, 73

Union culture, 46, 121, 152, 153, 188, 204, 205, 212, 302, 303, 305, 308

Union democracy, 274-278, 280, 306, 307

Union radicalism, 205

United Auto Workers (UAW), 3, 56, 64, 66, 111, 122, 145, 163, 209, 213, 241, 287, 288, 301, 306, 309;

Cold War politics, 169;

long-term contracts, 173;

movement into farm equipment, 168;

open-the-books demand, 152;

postwar contract innovations, 150;

raiding FE, 170-172, 175;

raiding UE at Maytag, 164;

withdrawal from AFL-CIO, 267

United Electrical Workers (UE), 83, 108, 109, 161-163, 165;

aid to FE, 172, 174;

expelled from CIO, 167;

loss of Maytag, 164;

shopfloor militancy, 173;

weakened by red-baiting, 166

United Laundry & Dry Cleaners, 79

United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), 42, 82, 83, 92;

District 13, 5, 20;

in Iowa, 28, 35

United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA), 40, 112, 141, 149, 176-178, 183, 264, 268-271, 288;

fight for equal pay, 233;

fight for racial equality, 136, 244, 251, 255-258;

international's failure to end sex discrimination by locals, 229, 230, 233;

master agreements, 145-147;

sued for discrimination against women, 225, 228, 229;

support for Civil Rights movement, 259, 261

United Way: labor liaisons with, 296-298

University of Iowa Labor Center, 298, 299

U.S. Gypsum Company, 23, 45

V

Varner, Dan, 306, 307

Veterans:

postwar role in unions, 151, 152, 156, 207;

productive workers, 192;

role in packinghouse strike of 1948, 184;

seniority rights, 155;

shopfloor militancy, 189, 203, 204

Vietnam War: economic expansion, 262, 272, 273, 279

W

Wagner, Cap, 285

Wagner Act, 98, 120, 139;

revisions sought by business, 156.

See also National Labor Relations Act

Warren, Woody, 180

Waterloo, Iowa, 59, 62, 72, 73, 87, 92, 109, 111, 112, 116, 117, 129, 144, 152, 155, 166, 175, 176, 178-183, 209, 212, 217, 221, 225, 232, 244-248, 252, 261, 263, 267, 272, 273-278, 285-287, 291, 295-298, 304, 305, 309

Wee, Merlyn, 48, 49, 192-194, 271

Weed, Charles, 72, 73, 152

Weems, Eugene, 155

Weiny, George, 94

Wengert, Jim, 265

Whitaker, Jack, 26

Wildcat strikes, 93, 99, 107, 154, 155, 200;

after packinghouse strike of 1948, 184;

in the 1950s, 204-206;

role of union officials, 207

Williams, Billye Smith, 250, 251

Wilson, Charles, 188

Wilson & Company, 67, 105, 112, 118, 146, 160, 178

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