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Cold War Americanism: Business, Pageantry, and Antiunionism in Weirton, West Virginia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Elizabeth Fones-Wolf  and
Ken Fones-Wolf
Elizabeth Fones-Wolf
Affiliation:
ELIZABETH FONES-WOLF are professors of history atWest Virginia University.
Ken Fones-Wolf
Affiliation:
ELIZABETH FONES-WOLF are professors of history atWest Virginia University. KEN FONES-WOLF are professors of history atWest Virginia University.
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Abstract

After World War II, Weirton Steel remained a critical barrier to the unionization of the steel industry. Weirton kept unions at bay through a plan of high wages, welfare, and company unionism, which it combined with an authoritarian style of management. Forbidden from using intimidation by the federal courts, Weirton substituted a celebration of Americanism that associated freedom with limited government and an absence of unionism. Foreseeing a union drive in 1950, Weirton staged a pageant to dramatize its version of patriotism. The steelworkers countered with a competing version that stressed trade unionism as a way to give workers a democratic voice. This article reveals how postwar patriotic pageantry was rooted in the struggle between labor and capital.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , Spring 2003 , pp. 61 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2003

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References

1 Weirton Steel Employees Bulletin (hereafter WSEB), August 1950: 21; Weirton Daily Times, June 1950; Weirton, West Virginia, Chamber of Commerce, How to Conduct an Americanism Week (pamphlet), 1951Google Scholar; West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University, Morgantown, W.Va. (hereafter WVRHC).

2 For just a few examples of patriotic exercises in various towns, consider the following: In September 1948, Kansas City led a “Democracy Beats Communism Week.” Two years later, Erie, Pennsylvania, sponsored a Loyalty Week, and Milwaukee sponsored a Freedom Week that celebrated the adoption of the Bill of Rights. Most interesting, perhaps, was the May Day 1950 event in Monsinee, Wisconsin, during which local citizens staged a mock communist coup as part of its patriotic celebration. For cold war patriotic celebrations, see Fried, Richard, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!: Pageantry and Patriotism in Cold-War America (New York, 1998)Google Scholar; Fried, Richard M., The McCarthy Era in Perspective: Nightmare in Red (New York, 1990), 98Google Scholar; and Little, Stuart J., “The Freedom Train: Citizenship and Postwar Political Culture, 1946–1949,” American Studies 34 (Spring 1993): 35–67Google Scholar.

3 On public ceremony and ritual in the United States, see among others: Newman, Simon P., Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davis, Susan, Parades and Power: Street Theater in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1986)Google Scholar; Glassberg, David, American Historical Pageantry: The Uses of Tradition in the Early Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill, 1990)Google Scholar.

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8 See, for instance, Hoerr, John, And The Wolf Finally Came (Pittsburgh, 1988)Google Scholar; and Serrin, William, Homestead: The Glory and Tragedy of an American Steel Town (New York, 1992)Google Scholar.

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11 Ernest T. Weir, “Present Relations of Business to Government,” Vital Speeches of the Day (22 Apr. 1935): 479; Ernest Tener Weir, “Industry and American Democracy,” Virginia Quarterly Review (3 Sept. 1940): 488; MacDonald, “Steelmasters,” 238; Weir, Ernest T., Progress Through Productivity (New York, 1952)Google Scholar; Weir, Ernest T., Where Does Steel Stand? (New York, 1938)Google Scholar.

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13 Kirby, 468; Weir, “I am What Mr. Roosevelt Calls an Economic Royalist,” 198; Weir, “Present Relations of Business to Government,” 480.

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16 MacDonald, “Steelmasters,” 238; Lizza, Richard Patrick, “Some Dimensions of the Immigrant Experience: Italians in Steubenville, Ohio and Weirton, West Virginia, 1900–1939” (Ph.D. diss., West Virginia University, 1984), 67–8Google Scholar; Weirton Daily Times, 14, 16 Sept. 1950; Ankney, Teresa Lynn, “The Pendulum of Control: The Evolution of the Weirton Steel Company, 1909–1951” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University, 1993), 54–7, 67–70Google Scholar; “Weirton Reaches a Milestone,” West Virginia Review (July 1947): 2; “Weirton's New Community Center,” American City (July 1950): 95.

17 In the forties, the company shifted management of its welfare programs to its company union, the Weirton Independent Union. Ankney, “The Pendulum of Control,” 52–7, 166, 1901; Weirton's original plan, providing for life and health insurance, was implemented in 1926. Crow, H. B., “New Joint Contributory Group Insurance Program for Weirton Steel,” Archives of Industrial Hygiene and Occupational Medicine, 2 (Sept. 1950): 264Google ScholarPubMed; Hartley W. Barclay, “The True Story of Weirton,” Mill and Factory (Oct. 1937), reprint in Box 2, Legal Department Correspondence, United Steelworkers of America Archives (hereafter USA Archives), Historical Collections and Labor Archives (hereafter HCLA), Patee Library, Pennsylvania State University; WSEB, June 1947: 8, Feb. 1949: 5, Dec. 1949: 12, Mar. 1950: 7; “$100 a Month Pay is Assured by Weirton's Retirement Program,” Iron Age, 20 Jan. 1949, 108.

18 New York Times, 8, 9 Oct. 1919.

19 Jacoby, Modern Manors, 157–8; Brody, Workers in Industrial America, 55–9; John Hennen, “Company Unions, E. T. Weir and Employee Representation Plans, 1933–37,” paper presented at the North American Labor History Conference, Wayne State University, Oct. 1997; Ankney, “The Pendulum of Control,” 83–9.

20 “Weirton and 7A,” New Republic, 27 Dec. 1933, 183–4; Weirton Fights,” Business Week, 23 Dec. 1933, 6–8; Lieber, James B., Friendly Takeover: How an Employee Buyout Saved a Steel Town (New York, 1995), 28–30Google Scholar.

21 NLRB in Matter of Weirton Steel Co. and SWOC, cases no. C-1184 and R 1229, entry 155, Box 2403, RG 25, National Labor Relations Board Records, National Archives, College Park, Md. (hereafter NLRB); “Labor and the N.R.A.,” New Republic, 14 Feb. 1934, 19; “Collective Bargaining Again, New Republic, 14 Feb. 1934, 6; “Weirton Warning,” Business Week, 2 March 2 1935, 14; “A Peace Chapter Ends,” Nation, 13 March 1935, 293–4; “Steel: Weir of Weirton, Once A Black Sheep, Now is a 'Star, “Newsweek, 4 Apr. 1936, 42; Ankney, “The Pendulum of Control,” 131–2.

22 Weirton Independent Union to W. Chapman Revercomb, Harley Kilgore, et al., 15 Aug. 1944, Box 2397, H. A, Millis to Howard W. Smith, 9 Sept. 1944, entry 155, Box 2397, NLRB; Barclay, “The True Story of Weirton”; Marland Heights Observer, 11 July 1940, 10 Apr. 1941; Greater Weirton Observer, 8 Aug., 26 Sept. 1940; 16 Jan., 10 Apr. 1941.

23 Steel Workers Organizing Committee, press release, 18 Oct. 1935, Clinton S. Golden to Stephen Raushenbush, 22 Oct. 1936, Box 2, USA Legal Department, USA Archives; Harold Ruttenberg to E. T. Weir, 7 Aug. 1936, Box 11, Ruttenberg Papers, HCLA; Steel Labor: 5 Dec. 1936, 1; 24 May, 26 Aug., 19 Nov., 13 Dec. 1937; 26 July 1940; John W. Porter to Charles Fahy, 21 Aug. 1937, “Interim Report on Compliance Investigation,” 7 June 1944, entry 155, Box 2397, NLRB; New York Times, 1 Aug. 1937, 2 Aug. 1950; “Steel: NLRB vs. Weir,” Newsweek, 28 Aug. 1937: 12–13; CIO News, 10 Apr. 1944, 29 Jan. 5 Feb. 1945; leaflets dated 30 Mar., 13 Apr., 23 May 1944, Box 164, David McDonald Papers, USA Archives.

24 “In the Matter of Weirton Steel Company and Steel Workers Organizing Committee,” cases nos. C-118 and R-1229-decided 25 June 1941, National Labor Relations Boards Decisions and Orders (Washington, D.C., 1942), vol. 32, 1145–1267Google Scholar; Steel Labor, 26 July 1940; “Weirton Refuses,” Business Week, 12 July 1941, 65–6; Steel Labor, Weirton Edition, 23 May, 31 Oct. 1941.

25 Steel Labor, Weirton Edition, 27 Feb. 1942; “Weirton at Grips,” Business Week, 26 Aug. 1944, 100; Ray Pasnick to Fred d'Avila, 20 Nov. 1944, Box 164, McDonald Papers, HCLA; “Weirton Hearing Set,” Business Week, 17 Mar. 1945, 108; Steel Labor, Apr. 1945, Mar. 1946, Sept. 1950; Ankney, “The Pendulum of Control,” 158–60, 170–2, 179–80; CIO News, 7 Aug. 1950.

26 Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise, 33–73; “Mr. Millsop Calls for Individual Americans to Fight Socialism,” WSEB, April–May 1950: 20.

27 “What the Factory Worker Really Thinks,” Factory Management and Maintenance 102 (Oct. 1944): 85Google Scholar; “The Fortune Survey,” Fortune, May 1947, 9–12.

28 “Weir Calls Plant City Symbol of Opportunity; Hits Federal Meddling,” Iron Age, 12 May 1949, 168; Weir, “Which Way American?”; E. T. Weir, “The College Graduate in the American Environment of 1950,” WSEB, Aug. 1950: 17–20; Ernest T. Weir, “Welfare State,” WSEB, Jan. 1950: 7–8.

29 Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise; Foner, Eric, The Story of American Freedom (New York, 1998), 256Google Scholar.

30 Bodnar, Remaking America, 88, 79–109; Fried, The Russians are Coming, 23–8; AllAmerican Conference to Combat Communism, A Program For ‘Know Your America’ Week, June 8–14, 1955 (All American Conference to Combat Communism, 1953); New York Times, 14 Aug. 1951; U.S. Congress, House Committee on the Judiciary, Loyalty Day, 84th Cong., 1st sess., 1955, House Report 199, 1–2.

31 Elmira Freedom Committee, news release, Sept. 1951, “Blueprint for Community-Wide Celebration of Constitution Sunday”; Norman J. Learned, “How One Community Observes Constitution Sunday,” Acc. 1411, Series 1, Box 2. National Association of Manufacturers Records, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Del.

32 On postwar welfare capitalism, see Sanford Jacoby, Modern Manors; and on the role of higher wages in subverting unionization in the southern textile industry, see Minchin, Timothy J., What Do We Need a Union For?: The TWUA in the South, 1945–1955 (Chapel Hill, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Neather, Andrew E., “Popular Republicanism, Americanism and the Roots of Anti-Communism, 1890–1925” (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1993), 488Google Scholar; Anthony Torchio interview, Weirton, W.Va., 17 Feb. 2002.

33 New York Times, 8 Sept. 1942; WSEB, 16 July 1937, 12 July 1940, Aug. 1948; Marland Heights Observer, 26 Sept. 1940; Javersak, History of Weirton, 107–8.

34 WSEB, June 1949: 22.

35 Javersak, History of Weirton, 114; Steel Labor, 26 July 1940; WSEB, Feb. 1947: 23, Aug. 1947: 9, Dec. 1948: 14–15, March 1949: 5, July 1949: 8, Apr.–May 1950: 12, 18–20. On the role of company magazines in economic education, see Street, Paul, “A Company Newspaper: The Swift Arrow and Welfare Capitalism in Chicago's Meatpacking Industry, 1917–1942,” Mid-America: An Historical Review 78 (Winter 1996): 31–60Google Scholar, and Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise, 80–1.

36 WSEB, Apr.–May 1950: 17–20.

37 Weirton Daily Times, 31 May, 16, 28 June 1950; Torchio interview; Weirton Chamber of Commerce, minutes of the meeting of the Board of Directors, 7 Apr., 5 May, 9 June 1950, Weirton Area Chamber of Commerce, 3200 Main Street, Weirton, W.Va.

38 Weirton Daily Times, 26 June 1950; Weirton Steel Employees Bulletin, June 1949: 22; July 1950: 3, 27; Aug. 1950: 1–13; How to Conduct an Americanism Week. The religious imagery reflects the surge in religiosity in cold-war America noted by Stephen Whitfield. He asserts that church membership and piety became ways of affirming the American way of life. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, 82–100.

39 Torchio interview; Weirton Daily Times, 9, 22, 26 June 1950; “New Catalog of Teaching Aids Spirals Demand for NAM Material,” NAM News, 14 Jan. 1950: 7; “Fight for Freedom,” NAM comic book, Box 13, Mark Starr Papers, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Walter Reuther Library, Wayne State University, Detroit, Mich.; How to Conduct an Americanism Week.

40 Weirton Daily Times, 22, 30 June 1950; WSEB, Aug. 1950: 11–12; Steubenville Herald-Star, 30 June 1950.

41 Weirton Daily Times, 30 June 1950; WSEB, Aug. 1950: 11–12; Leab, Daniel J., I Was a Communist for the FBI: The Unhappy Life and Times of Max Cvetic (University Park, Pa., 2000)Google Scholar.

42 Weirton Daily Times, 26, 30 June 1950; WSEB, July 1950: 3.

43 “How to Conduct an Americanism Week”; WSEB, Aug. 1950: 20, 22; Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, 69.

44 WSEB, Aug. 1950: 1, 22, 23; How to Conduct an Americanism Week. While Weirton Steel emphasized the unity of the community and the diversity of the workforce, many of the town's institutions, including its schools and churches, were segregated. African Americans participated with whites in most of the week's events, but they celebrated Americanism Sunday separately. That evening, members of the African American community attended a “Negro Americanism Rally” at the Dunbar Recreation Center. Speaker Malvin A. Goode of the Pittsburgh Courier, whom the Employees Bulletin, described as an “outstanding champion of the Negro race and proponent of the American Way,” stressed the dangers of socialism in his talk, “America's Road Tomorrow”; Betty Hill, interview, New Cumberland, W.Va., 17 Feb. 2002.

45 WSEB, July 1950: 3; Aug. 1950: 1, 2; Weirton Daily Times, 26 June, 5 July 1950.

46 How to Conduct an Americanism Week; WSEB, Aug. 1950: 2, 10.

47 Torchio interview; Paul Pugh interview, Weirton, W.Va., 26 Jan. 2002; Ronald Trolley interview, Follansbee, W.Va, 15 Feb. 2002.

48 CIO News, 7 Aug. 1950; United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Case No. 8019, National Labor Relations Board v. Weirton Steel Company, National Steel Corporation, et al., 28 July 1950, Box 29, District 23 Papers, USA Archives; New York Times, 2, 4 Aug. 1950; “Weirton Labor Harmony Stall USW Organizing,” Iron Age, 31 Aug. 1950; “Weirton: Round 3,” Business Week, 12 Aug. 1950, 92–3; Weirton Daily Times, 29 July 29, 4 Aug. 1950.

49 There is a large literature on the impact of anticommunism on the labor movement. See, among others: Zieger, Robert H., The CIO, 1935–1955 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995)Google Scholar; Rosswurm, Steve, ed., The CIO's Left-Led Unions (New Brunswick, N.J., 1992)Google Scholar; Filippelli, Ronald L. and McColloch, Mark D., Cold War in the Working Class: The Rise and Decline of the United Electrical Workers (Albany, 1995)Google Scholar; Schatz, Ronald, The Electrical Workers: A History of Labor at General Electric and Westinghouse, 1923–60 (Urbana, Ill., 1983), 167–245Google Scholar.

50 719 News, Jan. 1949; Steel Labor, Feb. 1950; Marie J. Reed to I. W. Abel, 5 Apr. 1948; I. W. Abel to Marie J. Reed, 12 Apr. 1948; I. W. Abel to Wm. Lavel, 12 Apr. 1948, Box 14, District 27 Papers, USA Archives.

51 Historians have shown how business and labor contested the meaning of Americanism in the twentieth century. See Gerstle, Working Class Americanism; Hennen, John C., The Americanization of West Virginia: Creating a Modern Industrial State, 1916–1925 (Lexington, Ky., 1996)Google Scholar; Neather, “Popular Republicanism, Americanism, and the Roots of Anti-Communism”; Boyle, Kevin, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945–1968 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995), 15, 73Google Scholar; USA press release, 6 Sept. 1948, Box 33, McDonald papers, USA Archives; 719 News, Jan. 1949; West Virginia Industrial Union Council, Proceedings, 13th Annual Convention, 28–30 Sept. 1950, 67.

52 Weirton Daily Times, 15, 16, 18, 22 Aug. 1950; Homer E. Bussa interview, Belmont, Oh., 16 Feb. 2002; Steubenville Herald-Star, 22 Oct. 1950.

53 Weirton Daily Times, 2 Sept. 1950.

54 New York Times, 4 Aug. 1950; Weirton Daily Times, 3 Aug. 1950.

55 In 1936, Remington Rand developed the Mohawk formula to “defeat organizational strikes with coordinated propaganda campaigns” aimed at the community and workers' families. In the late thirties, “Little Steel” companies also embraced this tactic. In the post—World War II era, General Electric developed a similar strategy in response to strikes. See Green, James, The World of the Worker: Labor in Twentieth-Century America (New York, 1980), 164, 197Google Scholar; Weirton Daily Times, 2, 4, 10 Aug. 1950; Steubenville Herald-Star, 8 Aug. 1950.

56 Weirton Daily Times, 7, 9, 10, 11 Aug. 1950; CIO News, 14 Aug. 1950; New York Times, 8 Aug. 1950; “Weirton: Round 3,” 92–3; Stuebenville Herald-Star, 10 Aug. 1950; Henry Shore to A. Norman Somers, 6 Sept. 1950, W. G. Stuart Sherman to Win Johns, 21 Dec. 1950, Winthrop A. Johns to W. G. Stuart Sherman, 8 Jan. 1951, Entry 155, Box 2400, NLRB.

57 Weirton Daily Times, 7, 14, 21 Aug., 6, 12 Sept., 18 Oct. 1950; Steubenville Herald-Star, 9 Aug. 1950.

58 Weirton Daily Times, 31 July, 8, 18, 19 Aug. 1950.

59 Weirton Daily Times, 16 Aug., 7, 9, 21 Sept., 20 Oct. 1950.

60 Weirton Daily Times, 28 Sept., 12 Oct., 5 Aug. 1950.

61 As the USA was preparing to launch its organizing drive, the Weirton City Council passed an ordinance requiring all communists and pro-communists to register with the police department and to file information concerning their activities. Steubenville Herald-Star, 8 Aug., 20 Oct. 1950; ISU Independent News, issues 1 & 2 (n. d.), 23 Oct. 1950; Weirton Daily Times, 17, 23 Oct.; Wall Street Journal, 24 Oct. 1950; Lieber, Friendly Takeover, 34.

62 Flyer, “Weirton CIO Victory Drive,” Box 4, West Virginia Industrial Union Council, A & M 1449, West Virginia Collection, West Virginia University, Morgantown, W.Va.; Wall Street Journal, 24 Oct. 1950; CIO News, 4 Sept. 1950; Steel Labor, Sept. 1950; Iron Age, 31 Aug. 1950; A. J. Rosenshine to Henry Shore, 13 May 1954, Box 29, District 23 Papers, USW; Weirton Daily Times, 5, 7, 12, 14, 19, 28, 29, 30 Sept. 1950, 3 Oct. 1950; Daily Herald (Wellsburg, W.Va.), 29 Aug., l, 7 Sept. 1950Google Scholar.

63 Weirton Daily Times, 18, 26 Aug., 12, 30 Sept., 23 Oct. 1950; “Resolution: Weirton CIO Victory Drive,” n.d., Box 4, A & M 1449, West Virginia Industrial Union Council Papers, WVRHC.

64 Weirton Daily Times, 4, 22 Aug., 15 Sept., 23, 25 Oct. 1950; Daily Herald, 15 Sept. 1950.

65 Wall Street Journal, 22, 26 Sept. 1950; Organizer's Report of New Local Union, Local 1612, Weirton, W.Va., 31 Oct. 1950, Philip M. Curran to Henry Shore, 1 Nov. 1950, Box 29, District 23 Records, USA Archives; CIO News, 4, 18 Sept. 1950; Steel Labor, Sept. 1950; West Virginia Industrial Union Council, Proceedings, 13th Annual Convention, 28–30 Sept. 1950, 66–7.

66 Ronald Trolley interview; Kathleen Tate interview, New Cumberland, W.Va., 15 Feb. 2002. Homer Bussa interview.

67 Andrew Karpiel (pseudonym) interview, Weirton, W.Va., 3 Feb. 2002; Lester Hill interview, New Cumberland, W.Va., 17 Feb. 2002; Paul Pugh interview; Anthony Torchio interview; Ronald Trolley interview; Edwin M. Sample interview, Weirton, W.Va., 10 June 2002.

68 Weirton Daily Times, 27 Oct. 1950.

69 Weirton Labor Harmony Stalls USW Organizing,” Iron Age, 31 Aug. 1950; Wall Street Journal, 26 Sept., 24, 28 Oct. 1950; Weirton Daily Times, 11 Aug. 1950; Homer Bussa interview.

70 “Crow, “New Joint Contributory Group Insurance Program;” ISU Independent News, vol. 1, nos. 1, 2, 3 (n.d.), 23 Oct. 1950; “Weirton Holds Out,” Business Week, 4 Nov. 1950, 126–7.

71 In 1982, Weirton employees bought Weirton Steel through an employee stock ownership plan. Iieber, Friendly Takeover; Weirton Steel Employees Bulletin, March 1951, 13–14; July 1951, 3; Stet, Jan. 1952, 7; Weirton–Where Freedom Rings (pamphlet), 1951Google Scholar, Box 141, AOF IV, Kheel Labor Management Documentation Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.