American Rubber Workers and Organized Labor, 1900–1941 by Daniel Nelson

Abstract

164 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE would have been net losers if all other industries also had been prevented from mechanizing. Workers in a particular industry are quite likely to lose from mechanization and productivity growth in their own industry (American and European farmers are a striking example), but they still are likely to benefit from productivity growth in general. These benefits will certainly accrue to them as consumers and, quite possibly, also in the form of new and better employment opportunities. If these benefits of mechanization are ignored, there is very little industrial technological change indeed that will pass muster. The author’s more general ideological bent is well demonstrated by the following: “In hindsight, there is little doubt that the tremendous social costs of unemployment and excess capacity, which were un­ avoidable under the existing market conditions, could have been avoided with a modicum of central economic planning and coordina­ tion that the UMWA progressives proposed. Public ownership and democratic control might well have stabilized production, allowed the rational deployment of new machinery, and at the same time estab­ lished a decision-making system in which workers’jobs and job rights would have been secured” (p. 160). Frankly, I am flabbergasted by this assertion. I certainly find no convincing evidence for it in the book. Perhaps it is based on the author’s observations of the British experience with coal mine nationalization? In any case it is interesting to note that the author is sufficiently hostile to neoclassical economic analysis that he does not even bother to discuss seriously the obvious market failure in coal mining—the existence of local labor market monopsonies. So as not to end on a totally negative note, let me mention a few positive features of the book. In my view, the most useful sections are those that describe in praiseworthy detail and with admirable clarity the technical evolution of automatic loading machinery and the effect of the new machinery on the nature, organization, and supervision of the work. There is also a considerable amount of interesting material on the relationship between the United Mine Workers of America and the local unions, particularly with regard to the key question of mechanization. Lars G. Sandberg Dr. Sandberg is professor of economics at Ohio State University. His principal research interests deal with European economic history during the 18th and 19th centuries. He is currently engaged in work using data on human heights as a measure of net nutrition and per capita consumption levels. American Rubber Workers and Organized Labor, 1900-1941. By Daniel Nelson. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988. Pp. x + 339; illustrations, notes, index. $32.50. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 165 Daniel Nelson has produced an impressive work rooted in the tradition of the “new” labor history. The book’s central theme is the optimism, self-confidence, and independence of the tire-manu­ facturing labor force. The 1913 strike that engulfed Akron’s tire plants met defeat largely because organized labor was “oblivious to the rubber workers” (p. 76). When the United Rubber Workers (URW) was formed in September 1935, rubber workers rejected the American Federation of Labor (AFL) because of its “miscalculations and blunders” (p. 162). And, when the URW leaders attempted to moderate the sit-down strikes of 1936, the independence of the rubber workers again prevailed. The book brings together diverse strands of the new labor history. It delves into issues of community relationships, the policies of organized labor, and industry organiza­ tion and production techniques. Each of these elements intersected on the shop floor and produced a dynamic labor-managementrelations process. One of the major achievements of Nelson’s work is its challenge of the standard story of the sit-down strike. Although the 1936-37 sit-down at the General Motors Flint, Michigan, plant made the tactic a national phenomenon, it originated in the rubber tire plants of Akron. The first important sit-down strike occurred at General Tire in the summer of 1934. Nelson’s account of the sit-down movement provides little support for the conventional notion that workers have been singlemindedly fixated on obtaining union recognition and that sit-downs were directed by...