Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 19191939 [ペーパーバック]

Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 by Lizabeth Cohen. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (England); New York, 1990. Pp. xviii + 526; illustrations. $47.95, cloth; $17.95, paper. Making a New Deal describes the evolution of Chicago's unskilled and semi-skilled labor force during the inter-war years from individuals bonded in groups only by a common ethnicity or race into a cohesive, broad-based alliance responsible, along with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the federal government, for the success of the union movement during the darkest days of the nation's Great Depression. Cohen's concentration is focused on five of the city's industrial giants and the neighborhoods in which they were located, from which they garnered their workforce: the garment industry in the Old Immigrant Neighborhoods of the near west and southwest sides, International Harvester's McCormick Works and Western Electric's Hawthorne Works in the Southwest Corridor, Armour and Swift located in Packingtown, U.S. Steel and Wisconsin Steel of Southeast Chicago, and, with no industry of its own, the Black Belt. Cohen pursues an answer to the question: how it was possible for these industrial workers to become a cohesive force in national politics in the mid-1930's in light of their disunity entering the decade of the 1920's? During the Twenties, church and a myriad of other neighborhood institutions, mass marketing, government, union organizers, and employers all exerted forces on these laborers. Cohen concludes that the metamorphosis was caused by "the change in the workers' own orientation during the 1920s." It took nothing less than a shift in their very value systems, as old symbols of ethnic security began failing or vanished completely, e.g., national churches, enthic-based savings and loan associations and insurance companies, local stores and, eventually, the welfare capitalism practiced by their employers. These events, according to the author, along with the new experiences infused by the 1920's mass culture, left the workers ripe for cooperation, if not unification, in achieving a "new deal" with the willing forces of the CIO and government as the depression deepened. Cohen's research on attitudes and behavioral patterns of the industrial workers is, in some cases, drawn directly from her sources; in others, however, she interpolates, that is, conclusions about the workers are induced by analysis of changes through time and events in the institutions the workers patronized. What results is a seeming seeming defeat of some of the historical myths about the period. For example, installment buying by the industrial worker was assumed to be a universal truth by their contemporaries. Cohen demonstrates that workers in this class were, instead, savers, a habit instilled through their purchase of Liberty bonds during World War I and reinforced by the 1920-21 depression. Another is the historical axiom that Americans who experienced the depression "were ashamed to be on government relief." Letters written to the Roosevelt administration document a different attitude, one of entitlement, rationalized by the workers as due them because of loyalty to country during war and to party during the 1932 and 1936 elections. The author further suggests that mass culture, instead of engendering a common culture as was thought to be the case, turned workers into a political force by eliminating fragmentation along cultural and ethnic lines and permitted an integration of goals. A classless culture was anticipated; a working-class culture was produced. Thus, in counterpoint to labor historians who claim unionism is a credit of the "artisan worker," Cohen is able to comfortably conclude that it was the factory worker that made the CIO a powerful reality. Making a New Deal is a snapshot of America at a pivotal point in its history. It is a snapshot because Cohen advises the reader not to judge the workers' efforts based on subsequent events of the 40's with its growing, more-intrusive government and top-heavy, national CIO, but to view their accomplishments as events unto themselves, results born out of experiences shared during the 1920's; it is pivotal because of the turn America made, leaving welfare capitalism of the 1920's behind and committing itself to becoming a welfare state.

Cohen's work based on her Ph.D. Dissertation at UC-Berkeley proves to be a comprehensive, engaging, and insightful look into popular culture in 1920s and 1930s Chicago. She moves seamlessly from labor history to cultural history to ethnic history without losing the reader by including helpful charts, figures, and photographs. Her section on the nature of mass media and mass consumption undoubtedly provides evidence of her writing style in The American Pageant.

Cohen does not create a delineation between immigrants that came to the area and natives of the Chicago area, which goes a long way in terms of bias. She covers African-Americans, Polish, Italians, and Jews without being critical one way or the other. Each chapter seems to be able to live by itself, which gives the book a flavor of being a compendium of papers instead of a conjoined work. All in all, Cohen does a wonderful job examining Chicago and Chicagoans whatever their ethnicity may be.

Making a New Deal is an absolutely incredible look at workers during the Interwar period in Chicago. Cohen has crafted a monumental work that not only covers workers political and union organization but also covers the changes in their lives resulting from societal changes such as the advent of radio and the chain store.
What's particularly appealing and interesting about this book is also what it says about modern times. Cohen discusses that due to the advent of radio and national networks, fewer workers got their local and world news from ethnic newspapers or other papers in Chicago. As can be seen from this, the current lement concerning the consolidation of newspapers, TV and radio stations isn't new, it began even in the 1930s. Also interesting is how many immigrant parents worried about their children becoming influenced by American culture that they did not understand, particularly clubs, dance halls and radio music.
Cohen's work is profoundly important and most of the book is a great read.