During the tumultuous era of World War I and the years immediately following, the leadership of the United States had shifted from Wilson to Harding and the mood of the nation from pro-labor to pro-business. Colin Davis introduces readers to the 400,000 railroad shopmen and their working world and to the national government's dynamic influence on labor from 1917 to 1922. Davis's study provides a much-needed synthesis of shifting power relations among labor, capital, and the state, as well as a cogent interpretation of union ...
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During the tumultuous era of World War I and the years immediately following, the leadership of the United States had shifted from Wilson to Harding and the mood of the nation from pro-labor to pro-business. Colin Davis introduces readers to the 400,000 railroad shopmen and their working world and to the national government's dynamic influence on labor from 1917 to 1922. Davis's study provides a much-needed synthesis of shifting power relations among labor, capital, and the state, as well as a cogent interpretation of union structural experimentation and failure. It will be of interest to social, political, business, legal, and labor historians.
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Add this copy of Power at Odds: the 1922 National Railroad Shopmen's to cart. $21.16, very good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Baltimore rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Halethorpe, MD, UNITED STATES, published 1997 by University of Illinois Press.
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Add this copy of Power at Odds: the 1922 National Railroad Shopmen's to cart. $54.81, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1997 by University of Illinois Press.
Although this book provides a useful overview of the 1922 shopmen?s strike supported by extensive scholarship, I found several errors with respect to the subject I know best:
1.) At 57, Davis states that the Erie Railroad?s contract to farm out the operation of its Hornell, N.Y. shop was one of the first of its kind nationwide but erroneously places it in 1921 rather than March 1920.
2.) At 58, he claims that the Erie shopmen struck at the end of March 1922. Not so; on March 15 workers at Dunmore walked out in opposition to a recent contract arrangement, and shopmen at Kent staged a sympathy strike the next day. These local actions were not authorized by the system federation. On March 18 over 5,000 shopmen systemwide voted on whether to strike over contracting. The outcome of the vote was kept secret; instead, labor leaders met in Meadville March 20. While they were there, a resolution calling for a systemwide strike was approved in Susquehanna, but shopmen said that no such resolution had been considered in Hornell. After three days in Meadville, labor leaders traveled to Dunmore to try to resolve local issues. News reports suggest that the March 18 vote may have favored a strike but that the Erie unions were unable to win the sanction of the national leadership, without which strike benefits would not be paid. The Dunmore conference ended March 26 without calling a strike, and a meeting was scheduled for March 28 with New York Region General Manager Robert S. Parsons.
3.) Having written a book around the theory that the strike was precipitated by the concerted efforts of management and government to rid the railroads of labor unions, Davis concludes that it was a ?humiliating defeat? for the shopmen and marked ?the demise of a vibrant labor movement.? This was not true in Hornell or elsewhere on the Erie; both labor and management claimed victory, but only labor improved its situation. See Davis, 167-172.
I read the book with a growing awareness of a subtle bias, which did not become truly apparent until the last paragraph of the concluding chapter. Therein, Davis lets loose with a rant attempting to draw a connection between the events of 1922 and labor policy as of the book?s 1997 publication date. American companies, he alleges, ?use replacement labor (or the threat thereof) to undercut wages and reorganize work rules.? And the federal government, led by a callous NLRB, encourages and helps them to do so by ?ignoring union pleas for help or by directly supporting the managerial attack.? Well. If that is what he believes about the situation today, then the bias that permeates the book becomes clearer. The 1922 strike was a devastating defeat because, failing to achieve true class consciousness, the strikers did not rise up and throw off their oppressors. Davis? argument ultimately is not with union leadership or tactics, but instead with the strikers' beliefs.
It is perhaps inevitable that labor historians are self-selected from among those who for one reason or another have an interest in the subject (let?s hope) and share the union viewpoint including the socialism that underlay it at some points in our history. I carry no brief for or against that point of view here, but instead merely wish the book had been more candid about its ideological underpinnings.
I happen to agree with Davis that some elements within the Erie Railroad?s management were intent upon using contracting-out to reduce union power, although employees in the contracted operations continued to enjoy union representation. But the Erie?s efforts in this regard were hamhanded and halting, constrained as they were by company's financial weakness and the effects of the coal strike that overlapped the early weeks of the shopmen?s strike. The railroad ran up a disastrous $3.1 million loss for 1922, which was attributed in part to the shopmen?s strike. This depressed its stock value and set it up for a takeover that got underway in late 1923 and 1924. In the latter year the Interstate Commerce Commission published the findings of its investigation into the Erie?s shop contracts. In scathing terms the ICC accused management of wasting more than $2 million in excessive costs to maintain equipment that could have been avoided by doing the work in-house. That year the Erie fell under the control of the Van Sweringen brothers of Cleveland, who in 1927 brought in new management that swept away many of the old issues and inaugurated a period of labor peace that extended through most of the Depression. Thus did the market punish the old management?s folly in 1922.