A Tale of Two Strikes

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. This famous phrase, birthed in the opening sentence of Charles Dickens' cherished novel A Tale of Two Cities, serves not only as a symbol of Dickens' literary impact but also as a perfect summary of America's time amidst the Great Depression. It was certainly the worst of times. Overproduction in the agriculture sector spurred on by World War 1, a debt-based stock market, needless gluttony in industrial production, and increased interest rates had tossed the economy into its worst crisis ever, a fact intensified by the failure of the banking industry due to depositors' panicked riots and trade wars catalyzed by Herbert Hoover's staunch protectionism. The entire nation sat like Tantalus in his pool, presented with a cornucopia of foods, but unable to reach them and enjoy. But this situation was not the punishment handed down by a pantheon of mythical gods, as in Greek myth. It was, instead, the product of very real deflation and material financial shifts. It was a crisis that seemed too miserable to be real but that was completely factual. Yet, it also spurred wonderful economic reforms. The end of Prohibition, new jobs programs, federal mandates of honesty in the stock market, deposit insurance, increased trade, guaranteed unionization rights, social security, a ban on child labor, the 8-hour day, and the minimum wage were all spawned from the New Deal, the vast array of programs produced by Franklin D. Roosevelt to relieve Americans during the Great Depression. It was the best of times too!

However, the New Deal was never etched in an indestructible marble sheet revealing the inevitable course of the future. For the first 4 years of the Great Depression, the federal government attempted to mummify and preserve the lassies-faire traditions of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Herbert Hoover, the then-president, knew that federally-financed jobs programs and support for struggling industries were the pathway out of the depression, but he refused to enact or enforce them. Americans began to fantasize about political shifts rightfully dubbed nightmarish today. Some on the left hoped for the spirit of Vladimir Lenin to call home in the White House and produce a command economy modeled after the Soviet Union and puppet states of Moscow, such as Mongolia. Others, on the right, called for a fascist revolution taking inspiration from Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. It was a horrifying time to be an American. What the Founding Fathers had fought for could be eliminated in favor of authoritarianism. FDR, meanwhile, was willing to move beyond the nostalgia Americans held for the Roaring 20s and use social democracy as a means of reviving the economy. But even then, FDR began as somewhat moderate. He feared that federal aid and relief money could make Americans lazy and cut government employees' wages to fund the New Deal. The FDR who established social security and mandated the 8-hour workday was years away.

One way to illustrate this transition in FDR's policies is to describe the difference between his response to the 2 following strikes: The Textile Workers' Strike of 1934 and the Flint Sit-Down Strike. One reaction, while differing from the Calvin Coolidge school of angrily shutting down labor demonstrations in a fit of business-funded rage, still painted a picture of a wealthy man who didn't truly grasp the struggles of the working class. The other reaction, on the other hand, portrayed a man who studied the state of the pre-depression financial world and who listened to the warnings of his advisors; a man who felt true compassion for the sorrows of every man, woman, and child forced to endure dangerous working conditions, grueling hours, pitiful pay, and few benefits all to have a chance at affording a loaf of bread and some bottles of water and wine. Because it took place first chronologically and demonstrates FDR's initial centrism, I will cover the Textile Workers' Strike of 1934 first. After the Stock Market Crash of 1929 began the Great Depression, economic sorrow was dispensed across the entire Union. Some areas, particularly the south, felt it worse than others, with there being more impoverished stress centers to receive the signals of monetary death.

Members of the business class started exploiting this unevenness to boost their profits amidst the depression. This was especially true of the textile industry, where mills flocked to the south to take advantage of how desperate the residents were for financial recovery. Southerners, already poorer than the rest of the country before 1929, would never willingly give up their jobs, even if it meant they needed to endure massive amounts of suffering and torment. This spelled jackpot for the business class and textile industrialists. The higher-ups in the textile industry started engaging in a practice known as "stretch-outs". They would increase - or "stretch out" - the number of hours their employees had to work, all while slashing wages and reducing break time in order to maximize personal profits. Their workers were outraged by this but didn't express or act on that rage in order to keep their jobs. The final straw came after 1933. On June 16, 1933, as part of the New Deal, President Roosevelt established the National Recovery Administration. This was a government agency that advised companies on how they could best help grow the economy. Among other things, the NRA urged companies to treat their employees better by expanding benefits, improving workplace safety, reducing work hours, and boosting pay. Textile workers were now genuinely optimistic.

Unfortunately, though, the textile industry didn't want to follow the NRA's advice and so started engineering a strategy to flood the group with lawyers, businessmen, and other figures representing the interests of capital. In retaliation, the textile workers, already upset by the advent of stretch-out policies, began a strike on September 1, 1934. The Textile Workers' Strike of 1934 had begun! Over the next few days, the demonstration began inspiring textile workers across the entirety of the south, and even in other regions of the country too. Before long, 800,000 laborers were participating in the strike. The Textile Workers' Strike ended up being one of the largest labor disruptions in all of American history. FDR paid close attention to the strike as it unfolded, but simply could not understand why or how it was occurring. He had little interest in fashion or clothing and so had very little knowledge regarding the textile industry. He didn't know about stretch-outs and the ways the NRA was being manipulated by industrialists was too clandestine for Roosevelt to be aware of the plot. For these reasons, FDR requested that the workers end their strike. This was not out of malice, but rather true confusion. Still, the strike came to a tragic end on September 23, 1934, largely because of Roosevelt's opposition.

Soon after the Textile Workers' Strike ended, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that labeled the National Recovery Administration unconstitutional. As a result, the agency quickly had to disband and all of its new suggestions, regulations, and standards were rendered insolvent. The safer working conditions, new holidays and vacation time, increased benefits, shorter hours, and increased wages were now relics of the past. The working class was indignant and furious. Pressure started to mount on the Roosevelt White House. Furthermore, while the economy started to recover from the Great Depression in 1934, the country was still lost in the throes of financial pain and the New Deal was far from complete. FDR was scared that the country may slide back into its state during the Hoover days. So, he started looking to prevent businesses from treating their employees so bad that they would go on commerce-disrupting strikes. Ironically, the way Roosevelt sought to prevent strikes was by making it easier for workers to unionize. That way, the threat of a strike would be very real and so the employees would be treated better. So, on July 5, 1935, Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act. This law guaranteed workers the right to strike and founded the National Labor Relations Board to mediate labor disputes.

Now, unionization was an enumerated freedom of every single working-class American, sitting in US law alongside freedom of speech, gun rights, trial rights, protection from cruel and unusual punishment, privacy, and religious freedom. Using this fact to their advantage, employees at a General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan, established a union called the United Auto Workers in 1936. However, General Motors refused to recognize the legal authenticity and reality of the United Auto Workers, let alone negotiate with the group. In retaliation, the workers went on strike on December 30, 1936. The method used by these workers was somewhat unorthodox though. Taking inspiration from European labor leaders, the strikers in Flint did not organize a strike that could be mistaken for any other protest. Rather, this strike began when employees at the Flint General Motors plant simply stopped workers and sat down in their studio. For this reason, the strike has been dubbed by historians as "the Flint Sit-Down Strike".

The sit-down method was selected for 2 reasons. First of all, since the workers would still be inside the plant, it would be practically impossible for General Motors to call in replacement workers who would continue to carry out the company's functions until the strike ended of its own accord. Secondly, because the strike would be taking place within the walls of the car manufacturing factory, General Motors would be much more hesitant to call in forces that would break up the strike, as that would likely mean damaging company property. Instead of leaving the plant and staging a protest, General Motors workers essentially treated the factory as their home. They slept there, ate there, and bathed there. To pass the time, they spoke to each other, played card games, and read books. The most educated of these workers gave their fellow employees lessons on labor history. Plus, in order to sustain them in the factory during the strike, friends, family, and supporters of the strike sent food, water, clothing, and other necessities to those participating.

In order to break up the strike, on January 11, 1937, General Motors shut off the heat in their plant in order to force the workers out of the now-frigid and freezing facility. Fortunately, though, this did not cause the demonstration to cease. Instead, those same supporters and relatives who smuggled in food and water began sneaking blankets, pillows, mattresses, and coats into the plant to help the workers survive the extreme cold. To respond, General Motors called in police to dismiss the supporters of the strike. But in a heroic act of compassion, the crowd refused to leave. Instead, they tossed rocks, ice, snow, and even fire hydrants at the police there to dismiss them. This incident drew massive waves of national attention that surrounded the news regarding the Flint Sit-Down Strike. As a result, Frank Murphy, the governor of Michigan, contacted President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the pair started working with each other to help the striking workers. Later in January and the start of February 1937, Roosevelt, Murphy, and representatives of General Motors began negotiating a deal that would end the strike and benefit the employees of GM in Flint. Under the terms of the agreement, those employed at GM needed to resume working. But in exchange, General Motors had to recognize United Auto Workers and grant each of its employees the ability to request a new contract with higher wages, new benefits, and/or shorter working hours.

On February 11, 1937, the deal was signed, satisfying the workers and securing an end to the Flint Sit-Down Strike. The Textile Workers' Strike of 1934 and the Flint Sit-Down Strike are both extremely important events in the history of the United States as a whole, but especially the FDR era. In 1934, FDR still had the mind of a wealthy man generated within the gilded walls of the Roosevelt Dynasty and to whom moderate progressivism was gifted by an upbringing guided by Christianity and the loving activism of his wife. He had never spent 14 hours sewing together shirts and pants in a smoldering textile mill for miserable wages that could only afford a loaf of bread accompanied by water to sustain another sad day and poor wine sourced more likely from the local grape bush than from the experienced viticulturists of France to drown the melancholy. For this reason, he could not sympathize with a strike organized by those same workers. But by 1936 and 1937, a combination of his wife's increased radicalism, political pressure, and new information about the plight of the working class had made him one of the most left-leaning presidents in American history. He now was determined to support whatever strike he could.