The Great Industrial War: Framing Class Conflict in the Media, 1865-1950

by Professor Troy Rondinone

The Great Industrial War, a comprehensive assessment of how class has been interpreted by the media in American history, documents the rise and fall of a frightening industrial war. Moving beyond the standard account of labor conflict as struggles between workers and management, Troy Rondinone asks why Americans viewed big strikes as "battles" in "irrepressible conflict" between the armies of capital and laborùa terrifying clash between workers, strikebreakers, police, and soldiers. Examining how the mainstream press along with the writings of a select group of influential reformers and politicians framed strike news, Rondinone argues that the Civil War, coming on the cusp of a revolution in industrial productivity, offered a gruesome, indelible model for national conflict. He follows the heated discourse on class war through the nineteenth century until its general dissipation in the mid-twentieth century. Incorporating labor history, cultural studies, linguistic anthropology, and sociology, The Great Industrial War explores the influence of historical experience on popular perceptions of social order and class conflict and provides a reinterpretation of the origins and meaning of the Taft-Hartley Act and the industrial relations regime it supported.

Genres: Nonfiction

260 pages, Hardcover

First published November 12, 2009

Reviews

[Peter Talbot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, well researched history of media approach to Unions and strikes in the USA. A non-standard approach to a difficult subject, but worthy. A bit too selective in its scope (short-shrifts race war as a subset, and racial segregation as a primary trade unionization agenda from Reconstruction through the Jim Crow era). An important addition to a US econ library.

There are three depressing omissions in this treatment.

1. The book is nearly (except for one footnote in the penultimate chapter) silent on the role of race in Union, syndicalist, Progressive and Democratic strategy and media treatment of industrial conflict (extending to the early Progressives, Wilson, FDR all the way through the positions of both the AFL and CIO). This omission greatly reduces the accuracy of conclusions reached regarding "warfare" language and metaphors in the 20th century. Frankly, the omission is troubling on many levels. Count this as a missing chapter at least. The truth is that the Progressive movement and trade Unions in the 1900's were subsumed with racist rhetoric, positions and "class" divisions.

2. By ending the examination with the after-effects of Taft Hartley in 1950, short shrift is given to the capitalist/management strategies of strike breaking through outsourcing and off-shoring. This is not so much critical to Rondinone's thesis as it is disappointing when trying to relate his findings to contemporary labor issues post 2016.

3. Failure to acknowledge the effect of strike activity against municipal governments and services starting during WW II (e.g.: the Philadelphia transit strike of 1944) leaves out the effect on the "public" of strikes increasingly called against government in its increased role as "management." A whole chapter would be needed to develop this that would extend the work through the inner city riots (which were in part labor strife) in the mid 1960's.

19th century US labor treatments are very worthy and illuminating.