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A Response to Bartholomew Sparrow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Andrew A. Workman
Andrew A. Workman
Affiliation:
Mills College
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Extract

Bartholomew Sparrow takes exception to some aspects of my article on the origins of the National War Labor Board (NWLB). Although claiming “no great quarrel” with my argument, research, or the topic of my project, he raises two large points of criticism and follows with a number of minor objections. I'll address each in turn.

Type
Forum
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , April 2002 , pp. 204 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2002

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References

Notes

1. Sparrow, Bartholomew H., “The National War Labor Board and American State: A Response,” Journal of Policy History, this issue, above.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., 192.

3. Ibid., 191.

4. Workman, Andrew A., “Creating the National War Labor Board: Franklin Roosevelt and the Politics of State Building in the Early 1940s,” Journal of Policy History 12, no. 2 (2000): 235–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Sparrow, “The National War Labor Board,” 196.

6. Ibid., 193; Workman, “Creating the National War Labor Board,” 254.

7. Workman, “Creating the National War Labor Board,” 254–56.

8. Sparrow, “The National War Labor Board,” 194.

9. Ibid.

10. Workman, “Creating the National War Labor Board,” 251–53.

11. Sparrow, “The National War Labor Board,” 195.

12. Workman, “Creating the National War Labor Board,” 255.

13. Sparrow, “The National War Labor Board,” 195–96, 200–201.

14. Workman, “Creating the National War Labor Board,” 242–43. In labor policy, particularly the issue of union security where we do have documented evidence of widespread business opposition, my work suggests that unions were relatively better able to have their way than the feckless collection of businessmen who opposed them at the national level. I have argued elsewhere that an organizational change in the National Association of Manufacturers, one of the largest business organizations, did occur during the war, but that this did not bring returns until after the end of hostilities. See Workman, Andrew A., “Manufacturing Power: The Organizational Revival of the National Association of Manufacturers, 1941–1945,” Business History Review 72 (Summer 1998): 279–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. Workman, “Creating the National War Labor Board,” 246–47, 262.

16. Ibid., 235.

17. Sparrow, Bartholomew H., From the Outside In: World War II and the American State (Princeton, 1996), 68, 96 (emphasis mine).Google Scholar

18. For a review of the literature on the unions and the state, see Dubofsky's, Melvyn excellent The State and Labor in Modern America (Chapel Hill, 1994), 169–182.Google Scholar

19. Sparrow, From the Outside In, 67–96.

20. Sparrow, “The National War Labor Board,” 197.

21. Workman, “Creating the National War Labor Board,” 237–38; Zieger, Robert H., The CIO, 1935–1955 (Chapel Hill, 1995), 90–110, 189–90.Google Scholar

22. Andrew A. Workman, “Entangled in the State: The National War Labor Board and Industrial Relations Policy, 1941–1945,” chap. 4.

23. Ibid., chaps. 5–7.

24. Sparrow, From the Outside In, 96. On the history of the federal government and labor, see Dubofsky, The State and Labor in Modern America.

25. World War I saw similar state intervention that benefited the AFL, but these gains evaporated after the end of the war. The repression of radical unions that opposed the state during that war is instructive of the likely alternative state response to labor unrest during wartime. On World War I, see McCartin, Joseph, Labor's Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912–1921 (Chapel Hill, 1997)Google Scholar. See also Plotke, David, Building a Democratic Political Order: The Reshaping of American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s (New York, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a caution on assuming the likelihood of a progressive triumph in mid-century America.

26. Workman, “Creating the National War Labor Board,” 247, 253.

27. On Davis, , see “William Hammatt Davis,” Current Biography (1941), 209–210Google Scholar; Lichtenstein, Nelson, “William Hammatt Davis,” in Garraty, John, ed., Dictionary of American Biography, supp. VII (New York, 1972), 204–206Google Scholar. On Davis's industrial relations ideas, see William H. Davis, “Voluntary Agreements and Enforceable Trade Practices,” 18 June 1935, Entry 181, Box 3, National Recovery Administration Papers, RG 9, National Archives (hereafter NRA Papers); New York Times, 23 and 25 November 1934; William Davis, “Enforcing Codes of Fair Competition,” 19 November 1934, Entry 181, Box 1, NRA Papers; Chamberlain, James, “Will Davis of the War Labor Board,” Fortune 25 (03 1942), 70–71, 166–76Google Scholar; Davis, William H., “Speech to the Third Circuit Judicial Conference in Atlantic City, NJ,” 20 09 1941, Entry 32, Box 258, Papers of the National War Labor Board, RG 202, National Archives, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar See also Gordon, Colin, New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics in America, 1920–1935 (New York, 1994), 198–200.Google Scholar

28. Robert Zieger characterizes John L. Lewis's entire plan for reuniting the two labor organizations as a “preposterous” political move not seriously meant to bring about that aim (Zieger, The CIO, 137–39). Dubofsky, Melvyn and Van Tine, Warren, John L. Lewis: A Biography (Urbana, 1986), 294–296Google Scholar; Lichtenstein, Nelson, Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II (Cambridge, 1982), 76–77Google Scholar, and Alinsky, Saul, John L. Lewis: An Unauthorized Biography (New York, 1949), 249–255Google Scholar, argue that this plan was more serious and that Roosevelt opposed it. None even mentions the participation of Davis in this drama.

29. Workman, “Creating the National War Labor Board,” 237–47, 258–62.

30. On historical institutionalism, see ibid., 257–58 n. 4. See also Hay, Colin and Wincott, Daniel, “Structure, Agency, and Historical Institutionalism,” Political Studies 46, no. 5 (12 1998): 951–958CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Katznelson's, Ira “The State to the Rescue? Political Science and History Reconnect,” Social Research (Winter 1992): 719–737Google Scholar, and “The Doleful Dance of Politics and Policy: Can Historical Institutionalism Make a Difference?” American Political Science Review 92 (March 1998): 191–98.