Catholics, Communists, and Conservatives: The Making of Cold War Democrats on the Pittsburgh Front

Abstract

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a center of industrial unions and an important component of the New Deal Democratic coalition, was an ideological battleground in the struggle among anti-communists, conservatives, and Catholic social reformers in the 1930s and 1940s. Such Pittsburgh Catholics as Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) leader Philip Murray, “labor priest” Charles Owen Rice, and Democratic machine boss David Lawrence, struggled to advance the New Deal, while contending with red-baiters and communists. Catholic activists sought to reform capitalism, counter anti-communists inside and outside the Catholic Church and the Democratic Party, and purge communists from the CIO and the New Deal. From the vantage point of the Pittsburgh front, it is possible to see the seamless evolution of New Deal Democrats into Cold War Democrats. Catholic reformers, inspired by the social encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI, built alliances across religious, racial, and ethnic lines. Without their efforts, it would have been far less likely that the cause of labor and political reform would have extended for a generation beyond the 1930s.