Race and Labor in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

I've read a thousand books and a million journal articles but I really learned American history from my father, and most of it before I was ten. I learned these things: Teddy Roosevelt was a Boy Scout, Gene Debs a saint, and Walter Reuther a mensch. Jefferson was to be admired, Washington respected, Lincoln revered. Captains of Industry were likely to become Robber Barons unless checked by the George Norrises, Bob La Follettes, and John L. Lewises. The New Deal stole the Socialist program. In my house, it was Robert Ingersoll si, Bishop Sheen no; Darrow over Bryan; the CIO, not the AFL. Indeed, when it came to labor, heroes and villains were vividly etched. None stood so starkly condemned as the injunction judges who crushed labor's hopes. Almost equally vile were their colleagues who struck down reform legislation. Employers who imposed contracts were as bad as slave mongers. And at the bottom of the pile, loathsome to all decent people, was the most degraded and pathetic creature of all, the job-stealing scab.1 With these early history lessons in mind, consider the message of David E. Bernstein's challenging new book, Only One Place of Redress. His account of the motivation for and impact of post-Reconstruction labor law turns the received wisdom on its head. Far from being powerless and victimized, earlytwentieth-century organized labor was a potent political force. Craft and railroad unions were especially successful in gaining passage of laws that benefited white workers and strengthened their grip on jobs. The jurists who issued injunctions and overturned protective legislation were benefactors of African American workers. The unions that injunctions crushed were racist organizations; their demise provided black workers with a foothold in industrial work. So-called yellow dog contracts stopped unions from interfering with the freedom of contract that alone offered minority workers industrial opportunity. African Americans who braved violent picket lines in an effort to provide for their families were risk-taking heroes.