The Power of Americanism
How should we understand the labor movements of the mid-twentieth century? Were they ultimately radical or conservative in nature? In Working-Class Americanism, Gary Gerstle looks at how progressive working-class leaders in Woonsocket, Rhode Island were more pragmatic than radical while their traditionalist counterparts were more innovative than conservative.[1] By presenting a community study with a close analysis of political language, Gerstle illuminates the conception of Americanism, underscores the diversity in mid-twentieth century labor unions, and demonstrates the transformative ideological nature of the 1940s. In the end, Gerstle’s work raises significant questions about the construction of political language.
With a chronological framework, Gerstle first discusses how the two major working-class groups in the Woonsocket community (the traditionalist French Canadians and progressive Franco-Belgians) emerged from their insular ethnic worlds of the 1920s. Gerstle then calls attention to how these groups united to form the Independent Textile Union (ITU) in the 1930s. Finally, Gerstle explains that by the 1940s “working-class Americanism” had moved away from its initial goal of democratizing relations between capital and labor; to this end, working-class Americanism increasingly came to focus on the discrediting of communism and the elimination of racial and religious bigotry. Gerstle ultimately emphasizes how two groups of twentieth-century workers formed their class identity around progressive and traditional ideals.
At the heart of Gerstle’s study is the resilient and elastic notion of “Americanism.” For Gerstle, the language of Americanism is best understood in four overlapping dimensions: nationalist, democratic, progressive, and traditionalist. In Gerstle’s view, social groups need to channel the language of what it means to be an American in order to gain political and economic power. “The substance of American politics,” Gerstle contends, “changed dramatically over time as different groups gained and then loss control of the language of Americanism.”[2] In sum, Gerstle concludes that the malleability of Americanism enhances the ability to not only unite but also mobilize people across political, cultural, and moral divides. [3]
For Gerstle, the language of Americanism provided an “ideological and linguistic unity” for the working-class groups of Woonsocket.[4] As Gerstle explains, working-class leaders, like the Franco-Belgian radical Joseph Schmetz, rallied textile workers by urging them to claim their rights as American citizens, as the Founding Fathers had done before them.[5] As well, Gerstle shows how the ITU’s rise to power also relied upon the French-Canadian skilled workers (the mulespinners) who rallied support among the masses of French-Canadian textile workers by using Americanism to emphasize ethnic communalism.[6] Thus, radical leaders expressed their progressive views through a language of Americanism that also promoted traditional values. Overall, Gerstle argues that the language of Americanism united the pragmatic radicalism of the Franco-Belgians and the corporatist values of the French Canadians.
In Gerstle’s analysis, the dominant meaning behind Americanism alters from period to period. To this point, he contends that by the 1940s an ideological transformation had occurred that redefined the concept of Americanism. Previously, the language of Americanism facilitated the partnership between progressive and ethnic impulses by stressing the democratization of the workplace and the rights of all workers. During World War II, in contrast, political leaders refashioned the concept of Americanism in order to defeat progressive and ethnic impulses; as a result, they increasingly stressed the pluralistic nature of American culture and industry. This notion of Americanism—pluralism—recognized a diversity of legitimate interests in the world and, consequently, it displaced the conflict between labor and capital as a central issue by refocusing attention towards the evils of religious and racial bigotry.[7] Anticommunism also became central to Americanism at this time as working-class groups stressed cooperation, rather than class struggle as a central goal. [8]
Most importantly, Gerstle challenges a school of historical interpretation that became popular in the 1970s.[9] This earlier historical narrative maintains that uniform radical working-class groups created the new industrial unions of the 1930s. In contrast, Gerstle insists that the role of French-Canadian skilled workers in the ITU demonstrates a “stratum of workers with the ability and desire to forge links between constituencies that had little in common.”[10] In short, Gerstle underscores the diversity of the ITU to highlight the dual commitment to unionism and ethnic heritage that shaped the Depression-era labor movement.
Gerstle also rethinks the conventional periodization of the 1940s. Typically, historians understand the 1940s as a continuation of the New Deal reform impulse.[11] Yet, Gerstle disagrees with this assessment. For example, Gerstle arrests that “the union experience in 1940s Woonsocket was in several ways discontinuous with that of the 1930s.” [12] Most of all, Gerstle suggests that by the 1940s liberalism itself had changed in an essential way. Through an examination of government propaganda, Gerstle argues that the Roosevelt administration shifted the focus of Americanism from the rights of workers to eradicating religious and racial bigotry. Furthermore, as Gerstle concludes, this shift to pluralism signified an effort to capture the loyalty of ethnic and racial groups during World War II.[13]
Gerstle challenges classic historical interpretations while shedding light on the concept of Americanism and its ability to change over time. However, his study is not flawless. For instance, Gerstle suggests that the driving force behind the workers of Woonsocket is their French-Canadian or Franco-Belgian background. This reductionist method tends to overlook individual agency. In addition, while Gerstle utilizes a variety of sources (interviews with ITU members, ITU newsletters, and the union archive), his focus is on working-class leaders, such as Joseph Schmetz and Lawrence Spitz. Consequently, his study obscures the experiences of everyday workers.
Even so, Gerstle’s study presents an important analysis on the power of Americanism and it impact on the labor movements of the mid-twentieth century. Yet, the significance of Gerstle’s study stems from the implicit questions that he leaves unresolved: Is political language solely constructed by leaders and then passively received by followers? In other words, are the constructions of political conceptions trickle-down processes? Or, perhaps, political language is constructed simultaneously through a polymorphous structure of power relations that transcend bottom-up and top-down binaries.
—Rebecca DeWolf, Ph.D.
[1] Gary Gerstle, Working Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914-1960 (Cambridge University Press, 1989).
[2] Ibid., 9.
[3] Ibid., 194.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., 85.
[6] Ibid., 124.
[7] Ibid., 312-313.
[8] Ibid., 308.
[9] Gerstle cites the works of James Green, Staughton Lynd, and Jeremy Breecher as examples of this interpretations. Gerstle, 125n.
[10] Ibid., 125.
[11] Gerstle cites Eric F. Goldman’s The Crucial Decade- and After, 1945-1960 (New York, 1960), as an example of this interpretation. Gerstle, 263.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid., 313.