The CIO at Bay: Labor Militancy and Politics in Akron, 1936-1938

Abstract

CIO buttons sprouted on overalls, shirtwaists, and workers' hats and caps ... badges of a new independence. Labor was on the march as it had never been before in the history of the Republic. Thus did Edward Levinson capture the excitement and potential of the union upsurge of the mid-1930s. Between 1936 and 1938 industrial unionism and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) became important innovative forces in American society. They transformed the labor movement and industrial relations, influenced the American political life, and raised hopes and fears of a unified working class. Yet Levinson emphasized only one side of the events of 1936-1938. At its height the industrial union movement revealed unexpected weaknesses. It lost organizing campaigns and strikes, suffered rebuffs, and failed to consolidate its power. By 1939-1940 Levinson's imagery was outdated if not inaccurate. Although the reasons for the reversal are as numerous and as imprecise as the membership of the CIO in the late 1930s, one conclusion seems inescapable: CIO men and women were neither so united nor so determined as Levinson's language suggested. The workers themselves bore much of the responsibility for the relative fall of the CIO.I The limits of labor power were nowhere more evident than in the 1937 CIO campaigns to extend the workers' influence from the union hall to city hall. In cities of all sizes, CIO leaders attempted to flex blue-collar muscles at the ballot box by electing local government officials. Their efforts, built on union