VLVL2 US labor history book reviewed

[pynchonoid]

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-USA at h-net.msu.edu (February 2004)

Robert Michael Smith. _From Blackjacks to Briefcases:
A History of
Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the
United
States_.  Foreword by Scott Molloy. Athens: Ohio
University Press,
2003. xviii + 179 pp. Index. $44.95 (cloth), ISBN
0-8241-1465-8;
$16.95 (paper), ISBN 0-8214-1466-6.

Reviewed for H-USA by Rachel M. Howse, School of
Archives,
Information and Library Science, University College
London

To anyone with an interest in the history of union
culture in the
United States, this slim book will be most welcome. 
It is a very
readable account of a neglected area of labor history
in the United
States:  strikebreaking and industrial espionage from
the Industrial
Age through to the present day.

The book is divided into four sections and an
epilogue: "The
Business Communities (The Era of Privately Paid
Police)," "Armies of
Strikebreakers for Hire," "Spies, Propagandists,
Missionaries, and
Hookers (The Era of Industrial Espionage)," and "The
Unionbusting
Industry since the Wagner Act."  Robert Michael Smith,
a professor
of history at Sinclair Community College in Dayton,
Ohio, begins by
taking a careful look at the men hired to maintain
productivity on
behalf of large companies when a crew walked
out--usually over
meager wages--because of conflicts with management.
Smith examines
the early "informal mechanisms" of strikebreaking that
were in place
to maintain law and order during the nineteenth
century (p. 3), and
their swift, incredibly profitable transition from
private policeman
to that of corporate mercenary.  Such men were not so
much hired to
encourage workers who had walked off to come back, but
more to show
them that the men could (and would) be replaced. The
men who took up
such work, Smith suggests, did so because they needed
jobs; as
strikes became more prevalent, the life of a
strikebreaker became
more exciting, particularly as tactics changed.  The
use of
firearms, explosives, and clubs added new violence,
while the use of
detective work added an air of danger and secrecy, and
began to push
the existing laws regarding commerce and labor
relations.  Reaction
to such men, Scott Molloy points out in an
introduction to the book,
was varied, as "some Americans regarded the armies of
guards who
surrounded strike-bound plants as remnants of a feudal
past," while
others saw them as representative of the working man's
right to
choose his employment (p. xv).

Smith moves from a social framework to anecdotal
descriptions of the
men involved in the origins of strikebreaking through
the likes of
the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (which began
in 1855), the
U.S.  Detective Agency, the Thiel Agency, the
Baldwin-Felts Agency,
and--perhaps most notoriously--James A. Farley, who
would become
known as the first "King of the Strikebreakers." 
Farley would be
replaced as "King" by Pearl Bergoff, after trying to
break the San
Francisco streetcar strike in 1906 that resulted in
"Bloody
Tuesday," though Farley's ten years in the business
would leave him
with over $10 million.

Smith carefully reconstructs the transition in
attitudes from a
belief in the individual man's right to choose his
work to a sense
of social responsibility.  The middle classes had for
the most part
supported excessive force in strikebreaking.  But, as
Smith points
out, "with bloodshed often the end result of their
introduction and
as concepts of a laissez-faire economy gave way to a
growing sense
of social responsibility, an examination of the roles
played in the
struggle between employer and employee became
inevitable" (p. 62).
This change in the value system of middle America, the
move from
outwardly condoning violence if it aided profit to
concern over the
ramifications of violence in strike situations, would
result in a
series of federal commissions investigating
strikebreaking and would
set the stage for President Roosevelt to push through
labor
legislation in 1936, prompting Bergoff to retire from
the
strikebreaking business just as industrial espionage
was becoming
the favored way of dealing with tensions between labor
and
management.

Smith sidesteps personal conjecture as he guides the
reader on an
engrossing tour of the quagmire that was the
anti-union industry,
especially as it involved politics.  The industry had
been forced to
become stealthier in order to survive, as violence and
mercenary-like armies of men utilized to break strikes
became passe.
In fact, the passage of the Byrd Act by Roosevelt in
1936 made the
transporting of anti-union forces across state lines
illegal.
However, "[f]ollowing the La Follette hearings and the
changes in
capital-labor relationship ushered in by the National
Labor
Relations/Wagner Act of 1935, a new breed of
anti-union
practitioners quickly responded to the changing needs
of the
business community" (p. 96).

By the beginning of the third section of the book, the
reader will
have been exposed to well-placed and relevant primary
documents,
first-person accounts of anti-union tactics, including
the use of
the term "hookers," a term not referring to
prostitutes but rather
to men who were lured into spying to glean information
about union
activities.  "While operatives directly in the employ
of these
agencies generated most undercover reports, some were
written by
workers who had been duped, or in the spy's parlance,
'hooked,' into
the sordid profession" (p. 86).  Smith's use of the
word "sordid" is
deliberate and loaded with imagery that clearly
illustrates how the
world was changing.  What had once been a professional
statement of
individualism and a way to make a living had become a
profession
defined by deceit and betrayal.

Smith's book concludes with an evaluation of
anti-union and
corporate espionage in contemporary society and
details how once
public opinion had slid away from support of unions,
politics would
do the same.  By the time of Ronald Reagan's second
election in
1984, "union-busters were in hog heaven" and it would
take no time
at all for "men little different from the thugs
employed by Bergoff
and Farley" to once again become _de rigueur_ (p.
117).  Companies
like Vance's Protection Asset Team, founded by Charles
Vance, a
former Secret Service agent and the ex-husband of
Gerald Ford's
daughter Susan, would introduce guerrilla warfare and
advanced
espionage tactics to union-busting, engaging sniper
and explosives
experts to increase and diversify the pressure that
could be put on
union organizers and labor activists.

Robert Michael Smith has provided those with an
interest in labor
history that which has been much-needed and lacking: 
an objective
look at the anti-union industry.  Though an academic
work, the book
will be easily digested by the intelligent lay-person
and will
encourage individuals on both sides of the labor union
debate to
examine the history and perhaps rethink their
positions.  Smith has
also provided insight into an area of American
socio-economics and
literature that complements the fiction of Dashiell
Hammett, tying
the mystery writer's work solidly to documented
history.


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