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Final Hist
From the Readings (20 points)
BOTH of the following questions will appear on the exam, of which you will need to address ONE. Your response to the question you choose will be worth 20 points. You must reference (either by document name or authors name) and discuss at least two sources from your textbooks. Your response should be between 3/4s and 1 page single spaced.
1. How effective was the environmental “greening” movement under Nixon? How did the movement change under future presidents?
2. “America From Reconstruction to Rebellion” argues that President Reagan should not get credit for ending the Cold War. Do you agree that the Soviet Union dissolved due to internal pressures? Or was it because of Reagan’s “Star Wars” program?
Major Essay (50 points)
TWO of the following questions will appear on the exam. You will need to pick ONE and answer it thoroughly for a total of 50 points. Make sure you address ALL aspects of the question. Additionally, you need to write in essay form, with an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Do not write one long paragraph. This should be 1 ¼ of a page if single spaced.
1. What was the Iran-Contra Scandal, and what effect did it have on U.S. and Middle East relations?
2. What were Bill Clinton’s economic policies? Give at least four examples. Explain their difference, if any, from previous ruling U.S. economic theories. What effect did his policies have on the future?
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CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CONTENTS
T he Early 20th century 1 Agimtion-The Grearesr Factor for Progress Mother Jones 3 1906: Rumble over 'The Jungle' Jon Blackwell 7
Remember Ludlow! Julia May Courtney 13 Frederick Taylor-The Biggest Bascard Ever 17 Tbe War Prayer Mark Truain 25 The House-Grey Memorandum 29
World War I- New Deal Fioal Address in Support of the
League of Nations Wloodrow \Vilson
Buck Versus Bell Roosevelt's Nomination Address
The Negro and Social Change EleaMr Roosevelt War is a Racker Major General Smedley D. Bmler
World War II-Cold War
33 35
49
55 67 71
75 Radio Address Delivered b)• President Roosevelt 77 Attack on Pearl Harbor As Seen From 81
High on BarrJeship Pennsylvania ·s Mainmast The Great Arsenal of Democracy Franklin Delano Roosevelt 91 Lend Lease Act, I 94 1 10 I Lener from President RooSE"velt co Stalin on an 107
Accepcable Compromise Regarding rhe Composition of che Posrwar Polis.h Government
Scace of the Union .Message co Congress Franklin D. Roosevelt
What Does American Democracy Mean co Me? Maryi McLeod Bethune
Chief Clerk, Toolroom /,,ez Sauer The Adanric Chaner
111
121
125
129
iii
iv AMERICAN SOCIETY SINCE 19c:>o
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
The Cold War 133 Truman Announces Hiroshima Atomic Bombing 135 Excerpts from Telegraphic Message from 139
Moscow George Kennan Sraremeot by General Marsha.II 155 Excerprs From Acheson's Speech To The Narional Press Club 159 US, Deparrmenr of Srare, lnrelligence Reporr Prepared in rhe 161
Office of Intelligence Resear;ch, '"Agrarian Reform in Guatemala .. Radio and Television Address on Communism 173
in GuacemaJa John Foster DuJ/es CIA Reporr on Overrhrow of Mossadegh 1 n Memorandwn From the Chief of \VH/4/PM, Cencral 183
Jncelligence Agency (Hawkins) ,o the Chief of WH/4 of the Directorace for Plans (Esterline)
Cuban Missile Crisis Address co che Nation Jolm F. Kennedy 193
Civil Rights 201 Power Anywhere Where There's People Fred Hampton 203 The Civil Righcs Movement: Fraud, 213
Sham, and Hoax George C. \'Ila/lace loving ET UX. V. Virginia 229 Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports On Intelligence Activities 247
and The Righ1s of Americans
Movements Of The 60S lnrerview With Hugh Hefner Testimony Of Ahbie Hoffman. Yippie Workshop Speech Abbie Hoffma11 Address at cbe Public Memorial Service
for Roberr F. Kennedy Edward M. Kennedy FBI Files on Black Panrhers in Norrh Carolina Bob Dylan's Lener co the INS Defending
John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Sex, Women, And Family
251 253 261 289
295
299 311
313 Speech Before Congress Carrie Chapma11 Catt 315 Testimony of Professor Anita Hill Regarding Clarence 11,omas 321 The Hope Speech Harvey Milk 325 Paul Farmer oo Structural Violence, AIDS and Health Care 331 FBI File on Alfred Kinsey 347 Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Ace of 2010 355
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
Conte nts v
The Rise Of The Right: 80S-OO 359 The Meaning Of Communism 361
To Americans Vice--Presid,em Richard Ni:.:011 Ronald Reagan Address on Behalf of Senaror Barry Goldwarer 381
Renden•ous wich Desriny Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech Ricbard M. Nixon 393 Dictatorships & Double Standards Jeane]. Kirl'Patrick 405 Honduras: Dicracorships and !Double 409
Standards Revisited Daniel Lubau aud Jim Lobe The CIA's lmervemion in Afghaoisran 413
Sarah Palin Slams Obama Again on Ayers at 415 Florida Rally Transcript Lynn Sweet
9/11-Today Sraremenc of Principles
Narrative Niloofar Mina Transcript of Obama 's Speech Opposing the Iraq War Bush Makes Hisroric Speech Aboard Warship Summary of the Mueller Report on Obstruction of Justke
423 425 427 429 433 439
CHAPTER ONE
THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY
AGITATION- THE GREATEST FACTOR FOR PROGRESS
Mother Jones, (March 24, 1903)
One of l/Je most extraordinary organizers of the labor movement in the
early lluentieth teltlury was Mary Ha"is1 who took the name "Mother Jones . .. Born in Ireland, she beGt1me an .:,rganizer for the Uniud Mine
\Vorkers., and, iu her eighties, organized miners iu West Virginia and Qi/orado. fo 1905. sl,e helped form rl,e I\VW. Upton Si11dair was so
inspt'red by her that he used her as a model for one of his characu,s in his novel The Coal \Va,; wbith chronicled the Ludlow strike and massacre.
"''All over the «mntry she had roamed, and wherever she went, the flame
of protest had leaped up in the hearts of men; her story was a veritable
Odyssey of revolt.. "' Here is a selettion from an addre.ss Mother Jones gave to a mass audience i11 Toledo's Memorial Haft in 1903., as reported by the Toledo Bee. -huroduction from Zinn and Amove's Voices of a Peopltr's Hiswry of r/Je United Stares
"Mother" Jones, known throughout the country and in fact throughout the world as "The Miners' Angel," addressed a motley gathering of about 1,200 persons in Memorial hall Dast night. The lower hall was packed. The gallery was full to overflowing and some even crowded the steps leading to the building.
It was truly a motley gathering. The society woman, attracted by mere curiosity to sc-c and hear the woman who has won such fame as the guardian spirit of the miners; the factory girl, the wealthy man and his less fornmatc brothers, the black man and the white man, old and young, sat side by side and each came in for a share o f criticism.
3
4 TIIE EARLY 2. 0TH CENTURY
"Mother" Jones is an eloquent speaker. There is just enough of the down-cast accent to her words ro make it attractive and she has the fac- ulry of framing pathetic and beautiful word pictures. Despite her sixty years and hex gray hairs, she is hale and hcaxty; has a voice that reaches to the furthermost corner of almost any hall but it is nevertheless any· thing but harsh ....
"Fellow workers," she lx.-gan, "'tis wdl for us co be here. Over a hun· dred years ago men gathered to discuss the vital questions and later fought together for a principle that won for us our civil liberty. Forty years ago men gathered to discuss a growing evil under the old flag and lacer fought side by side until cbattd slavery was abolished. But, by the wiping out of this black stain upon our country another great crime-wage slavery- was fas- tened upon oux people. I stand o n this platform ashamed of the conditions existing in this country. I rdus<.'d to go to England and lecture only a few days ago Ix-cause I was ashamed, first of all, to make the conditions existing here known co the world and second, because my services were needed here. 1 have just come from a God-cursed country, known as West Virginia; from a state which has produced some of our best and brightest Statesmen; a state where conditions arc coo awful for your imagination.
" I shaU cell you some things tonight that axe awful to contemplate; but, perhaps, it is best that you to know of them. They may arouse you from your lethargy if there is any manhood, womanhood or love of country left in you. I have just come from a state which has an injunction on every other foot of ground. Some months ago the president of the United Mine Workers Uohn Mitchell] asked me co take a look into the condition of the men in the mines of West Virginia. I went. I would gee a gathering of miners in the darkness of the night up on the mountain side. Herc I would listen to cheix talc: of woe; here I would try to encourage them. I did not daxc to sleep in one of those miner's houses. If I did the poor man would be called co che office in the morning and would be discharged for sheltering old Mother Jones.
" I did my best to drive into the downtrodden men a littlt spirit, but it was a task. They had been driven so long chat they were afraid. I used co sit through the night by a stream of water. I could not go to the miners' hovels so in the morning I would call tbe ferryman and he would take me across the river to a hotel not owned by the mine operarors.
"The men in the antbracite district finally asked for more wages. They were refused. A strike was called. I stayed in West Virginia,' held meetings
4 TIIE EARLY 2. 0TH CENTURY
"Mother" Jones is an eloquent speaker. There is just enough of the down-cast accent to her words ro make it attractive and she has the fac- ulry of framing pathetic and beautiful word pictures. Despite her sixty years and hex gray hairs, she is hale and hcaxty; has a voice that reaches to the furthermost corner of almost any hall but it is nevertheless any· thing but harsh ....
"Fellow workers," she lx.-gan, "'tis wdl for us co be here. Over a hun· dred years ago men gathered to discuss the vital questions and later fought together for a principle that won for us our civil liberty. Forty years ago men gathered to discuss a growing evil under the old flag and lacer fought side by side until cbattd slavery was abolished. But, by the wiping out of this black stain upon our country another great crime-wage slavery- was fas- tened upon oux people. I stand o n this platform ashamed of the conditions existing in this country. I rdus<.'d to go to England and lecture only a few days ago Ix-cause I was ashamed, first of all, to make the conditions existing here known co the world and second, because my services were needed here. 1 have just come from a God-cursed country, known as West Virginia; from a state which has produced some of our best and brightest Statesmen; a state where conditions arc coo awful for your imagination.
" I shaU cell you some things tonight that axe awful to contemplate; but, perhaps, it is best that you to know of them. They may arouse you from your lethargy if there is any manhood, womanhood or love of country left in you. I have just come from a state which has an injunction on every other foot of ground. Some months ago the president of the United Mine Workers Uohn Mitchell] asked me co take a look into the condition of the men in the mines of West Virginia. I went. I would gee a gathering of miners in the darkness of the night up on the mountain side. Herc I would listen to cheix talc: of woe; here I would try to encourage them. I did not daxc to sleep in one of those miner's houses. If I did the poor man would be called co che office in the morning and would be discharged for sheltering old Mother Jones.
" I did my best to drive into the downtrodden men a littlt spirit, but it was a task. They had been driven so long chat they were afraid. I used co sit through the night by a stream of water. I could not go to the miners' hovels so in the morning I would call tbe ferryman and he would take me across the river to a hotel not owned by the mine operarors.
"The men in the antbracite district finally asked for more wages. They were refused. A strike was called. I stayed in West Virginia,' held meetings
6 TIIE EARL Y 2.0TH CENTURY
You'd all better put on petticoats. If you like those bullets vote to put them into your own b<)dics. Don't you think it's about rime you b,gan ro shot)t ballotS inst " I hate your political parties, you Republicans and Democrats. I want you to deny if you can what 1 am going to say. You want an office and must necessarily get into the ring. You musr do what that ring says and if you don't you won't be elected. There you arc. Each rime you do that you are voting for a capitalistic bullet and you get it. I want you ro know that this man [Samuel Milton) Jones who is running for mayor of your b Herc the Spt-a ker changed her attention to the society woman. " I sec a lot of society women in this audience, attracted here our of a mere curiosity ro sec that old Mother Jones.' I know you better than you do yourselves. I can walk down the: aisle and pick every one of you out. You probably think I am crazy bur I know you. And you society dudes-poor creatures. You wear high collars to support your jaw and keep your befuddled brains from oozing our of your mouths. While this commercial cannibalism is reaching into the cradle; pulling girls into the factory to be ruined; pulling children into the factory ro be destroyed; you, wht) arc doing all in the name of Christianity, you are at home nursing your poodle dogs. It's high time you got our and worked for humanity. Christianity will rake care of itself. I Started in a factory. I have traveled through milts and miles of factories and there is nor an inch o f ground under that flag that is not stained with the blood of children.• 1906: RUMBLE OVER 'THE JUNGLE' Jon Blackwell Upton Sinclair was a desperately p,o<>r, young s<>cialisthoping to remake the world when he settleddown in a tarpaper shack in Princeton Township and penned his Grca.t American Novel. He called it "The Jungle,• filled it with page after page of nauseating detail he had researched about the me-at-packing industry, and dropped it on an astonished narion in I 906. An instant best-seller, Sinclair's book reeked with the stink of the Chicago stockyards. He told how dead rats were shoveled into sausage- grinding machines; how bribed inspectors looked the other way when discascdcows were slaughtered for beef, and how filth and gurs were swept off the floor and packaged as "potted ham. • In short, "The Jungle" did as much as any animal-rights activist of today co turn Americans into vegetarians~ But it did more than thaL Within months, the aroused-and gagging- public demanded sweeping reforms inthc meat industry. President Theodore Roosevelt was sickened after reading an advance copy. He called upon Congress to pass a law establishing the Food and Drug Administration and, for the first time, setting up federal inspection Standards for meat. Sinclair, all of 28 years old, had gone overnight from literary failure to the man wh<) rook on the mighty "becftrust"- and won. Visions of ridding America of all its capitalist evils came floating into his head. Source: The Trenronian 7 8 TIIE EARLY 2.0TH CENTURY "It seemed to me that the walls of the mighty fortress of greed were on the p<)inc of cracking,• he later wrote. " le nt-edcd only one rush, and then another, and another.~ Reporters flocked to the author's farmhouse at Province Line Road t<) find out: who was this skinny, smiling young man with the pale face and intense eyes? Upton Beall Sinclair was, for all his socialise thought,the very model of the all-American kid. He grew up in New York City, the son of poor but proud parents. Barely inrohis teens, he b<.-camc a freelance~ writing boy's adventure talcs. He cvcmually pounded our 30,000 words of dime-novel drama every week, even while he attended City College of New York. Sinclair aspired co be a great writer of serious books,but he admit- ted that all his hack work l.ed him to use too many cliches and exaggerations. Even Sinclair's biographer, \Villiam Bloodwonh, said the overwrought Sinclair style can be too much to take. "'It's not what I would consider great literature," said Bloodworth, the prtsidcm of Augustil State University in Georgia. "There isn't much character devc1opmcnt in his works or subtlety. What he was good at was descriptions ... of turning real-life situations into fiction." Sinclair's first novel, "Springtime and Harvcsc,"publishcd in I 901, did not sell. Neither did his st-<:ond,third or fourth novels. Literary society ignored him. His only child, David,nearly died of pneumonia. He grew increasingly distant from his newlywed wife, Meta, and demanded that the two practice celibac.y. Frustrated, Sinclair wrote a "'letter co the world" with almost hysrerical self-pity: "You may sneer ... bur you will live to blush for that sneer.• The young writer needed something to give him hope. He found it in the revolutionary doc·t:rine of socialism. Sinclair wrote socialist propaganda and made socialist friends, among them writer Jack London and w~-althy eccentric George Herron. \Vi th the help of an a llowance from Herron, Sinclair went off to work on his latest project- a Civil War novel. "The place selected was Princeton," Sinclair wrote, "because that university possessed the s«ond-largcsrCivil War collection in the coun- try. So in J\'1ay 1903, the migration took place and for three years and a half Princeton was home." 1906: Rumble Over 'The Junglt! " 9 Sinclair never liked Princeton. He hated the cold and the mosquitoes and the " ignorance" of his farmer neighbors. "The families . .. contained drunkards, degenerates, mental or physical ddecrivcs, sc:mi-idiots, victims of tuberculosis or venereal disease and now and thrn a pctry criminal, n he later wrote. StiU, Sinclair was full of hope as he pitched a canvas tent on a farm on Ridge View Road and wrote his novel., "Manassas.• It was a modest success, enabling him to buy a 60-acte fa,rn of his own on Province Linc Road and move into an actual house with his wife and son. Sinclair then read of a meat-packing strike in Chicago, and knew he had a good plot for the first great socialist novel. For two months in 1904, Sinclair wandered the Chicago stockyards- a place he would write of as "Packingtown." He mingled with the foreign-born "wage slaves" in their tenements and heard how they'd been mistreated and ripped off. He saw for himself the sloppy practices in the packing houses and the mind-numbing, 12-hour-a-day schedule. Theo it was back to the quictwoods of Princeton to writt "The Jungle." Sinclair hunkered dc)wn in a hand-built, 18-by-16-foot cabin and rook pen ro papcr. "For three months I worked incessantly," Sinclair latcrsaid . "I wrote with tears and anguish, pouring into the pages all the pain that life had meant t() me. "' "The Jungle" was the story of Jurgis R.udkus, a Lithuanian immigrant working in Packingtown. Jurgis secs his American dream of a decent life dissolve into nightmare as his job hauling steer carcass<"S in the stockyards leaves him bone- weary and unable to support his family. He loses bis his job when he beats up his boss, furious at discovering the cad seduced his wife; then he loses the wife to disease and his son to drowning. But Jurgis finds rebirth upon joining che socialist movement, and the book closes with a socialist orator sh.outing: "Organize! Organize! Organize! ... CHICAGO WILL BE OURS!" It was stirring, melodramatic stuff, but five publishers found it too politically hot to handle and rumcd the novel down. Sinclair persisted and got Doubleday topublish it in February 1906. "The Jungle," in all its sordid dctai~ was soon acclaimed as the most revolutionary piece of fiction of the age. In London, future Prime Minister 10 THE EARLY 2.0TH CENTURY Winston Churchill said the book "pierces the thickest skull and most leathery heart." Mostly, however, the politicians ignored the anti-capitalist plot of the book and focused on cighr pages describing the sickening standards of meat packing. Roosevelt sent his own agents toChicago to investigate whether meat packing was as bad as Sinclair described. The conditions were actually a hundred times worse, the agents reported back. The president invited Sinclair to the White House and solicit Roosevelt was so rakcn with Sinclair that he coined the term "muck- rakers" to describe him and other reformist crusaders, even though the pr<-sidcnt's phrase was not meaar ro be wholly complimcnrary. Yer Sinclair considered his triumph empty. He complained thar the tragedy of industrial life and his socialist preaching were being lost in the meat controversy. "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hir it in the stomach," he said. Still, Sinclair was hardly done muckraking. He ran for Congress out of Mercer County on the socialist ticket that fall of 1906, finishing a distant third with 750 vorcs. He produced his own Stage version of "ThcJunglc," which premiered at Taylor Opera House in Trenton. In the winter of I 906-07, with $30,000 in book royalties, he founded a cooperative colony at Helicon Hall on the Jersey Palisades. It drew 40 fami lies, but rhe would-be Utopia burned down rhc follow- ing March. That was to be the panern for thercst of Sinclair's longlifc: success followed by failure. He divorced Meta and married rwice more. He wrote dozens of forgcnable novels but then won the Pulitzer Prize in I 945 for "Dragon's Teeth.• After moving to California, he waged one of the more remarkable cam- paigns in political history in 1934, running for governor on a revolutionary Dcmocraticplatform called "End Poverty in California" or EPIC. Derided as a crank and a mystic, he still nl-arly won. 1906: Rumble Over 'The Ju11g[e • 11 Sinclair lived co be 90. In the last year of his life, in 1968, he came full circle-moving back to New Jersey to be near his son's family in Bound Brook. Right up to his death, Sinclair would be taken in a wheelchair to talk about his life's struggles in high schools. At Bridgewater-Raritan High School, the original muckraker got one of his last tributes from a teen- aged girl. "You're cool, Mr. Sinclair," she told him. REMEMBER LUDLOW! Julia May Courmey, May 1914 "REl'.ffi"1BER LUDLOW" the battle cry of the crushed, downtrodden, despised miners stifled at Calumet, in \Vest Virginia, in Cripple Creek, has echoed from coal camp tO coal camp in southern Colorado, and has served again to notify the world that Labor will not down. Peaceful Colorado, slumbering in her eternal sunshine, has been rudely awakened. And her comfortable citizens, tremendously busy with their infinitely important little affairs, have been shocked into a mental state wavering between terror and hysteria. And the terrified and hys- terical community, like the individual, has grabbed for safety at the nearest straw. The federal troops are called ro the strike zone in the vain hope that their presence would intimidate the striking miners int<) sub- mission, and the first spasm of the acute attack has subsided_ But the end is nor ycr. In September the coal miners in the southern Colorado district went out on strike. Immediately the word went forth from No. 26 Broadway, the Rockefeller headquarters in New York City, and the thugs and gun- men of the Felts-Baldwin agency were shipped from the Virginia and Texas fields and sent by hundreds, inro the coal camps. With their wives and children the miners were evicted from their huts on the company's ground, and just as the heavy winter of the mountains settled down, the strikers put up their tents and prepared for the long siege. It was then that the puerile, weak-kneed Governor [Elias] Ammons, fawning on the representatives of the coal e<)mpanies, at ~he request of the Colorado Fuel and lzon Co., called our the militia co "keep order." And the climax came when the first spring winds blew over the hiUs and the snows melted from the mountain sides. On the 20th of April the 13 14 THE EARLY 2.0TH CENTURY cry was heard " Remember Ludlow!"- thc battle cry that every working- man in Colorado and in America will not forget. for on that day the men of the tent colony were shot in the back by soft-nosed bullets, and their women and children were offered in burning sacrifice on the field of Ludlow. The militia had trained the machine guns on the miners' tent colony. At a ball game on Sunday between two teams of strikers the militia inter- fered, preventing the game; the miners resented, and the militia- with a sneer and a laugh-fired the machine guns directly into the tents, knowing at the time that the strikers' wives and children were in them. Charging the camp, they fired the two largest buildings- the Strikers' stores-and going from tent to cent, poured oil on the flimsy structures, setting fu-e to them. From the blazing tentS rushed the women and children, only to be beaten back into the fire by the rain of bullets from the militia. The men rushed tO the assistance of thei, families; and as they did so, they were dropped as the whirring messengers of death sped surely to the mark. Louis Tikas, leader of the Greek colony, fell a victim tO the mine guards' fiendishness, being first clubbed, then shot in the back while he was their prisoner. Fifty-two bullctS ridd led his body. Into the cellars- the pits of hell under their blazing tcntS-cr Fifty-five women and child ren perished in the fire of the Ludlow tent colony. Relief parties carrying the Red Cross flag were driven back by the gunmen, and for twenty-four hours the b,)dies lay crisping in the ashes, while rnscuers vainly tried to cross the firing line. And the Militiamen and gunmen laughed when the miners petitioned "Czar Chase" [General John Chase] and Governor Ammons for the right to erect their homes and live in them .... [FJor the first time in the history of the labor war in America the people are with the strikers- they glory in their success. The trainmen Rem e mbe r L,,dl o w! 15 have refused to carry the militia--<:nurc companies of the National Guard have mutinied- nea rly every union in the State has offered funds and support of men a nd arms co the strikers- ,md the governor has asked for federal troops. The federal troops arc hcr<~the women who forced the governor to ask for them believe they have secured P(,acc-but it is a dead hope. for p,,..ce can never be built on the foundation of Greed and Oppression . And the federal troops cannot change the systcm~ nly the strikers can do that. And though they may lay down their arms for a time-they will "Remember Ludlow!" FREDERICK TAYLOR-THE BIGGEST BASTARD EVER A t the turn of the century many historians wrote cutesy fluff pieces in the media about who had been the most influential person of the 20th century. Many names were floated: Hider, Stalin, Churchill, Einstein, Ghandi, etc. One name that didn't appear on many lists was Frederick Tayloe While Taylor is a common name i0 labor history circles, his name is unfamiliar to most. Yet Taylor's impact on the 20th century was pro- found, so profound that his ideas continue to shape the day-to-day lived experience of mos t people today. Taylor was a management theorist a theorist of the labor process. In an era where the capitalist firm was Ix-coming larger and larger, employing more and more workers, a fw1damental problem was emerging: How do we get workers to work more? Of course ·this had always been a problem for capitalists. But the rapidly expanding size of the factory was demanding more nuanced control over workers ro ensure maximwn output. (When the length of the working day can' t be extended then one must turn ro the labor process itself. One must 6nd a way of increasing the intensity of labor so that it produces more per hour. Remember that the capitalist doesn't buy labor. He buys labor power the ability of the worker to labor. How long and hard those workers work is an issue to be Struggled OVCL) During the late 1 SOO's and the early I 900 's Frederick Taylor s tudied, experimented with, and wrote about the theory of work. His goal was to find ways of controlling the motions of workers so as to attain the highest possible output for every dollar spent on wages. His writ- ings are an incredibly lucid and frank distillation of the capitalist perspective on class struggle. Very rarely do we sec the capitalist class engaging in such open discussions abou• how to control and exploit a 17 18 THE EARLY 2. 0 TH CENTURY labor force. The £rankness of .his writings almost climinae For Frederick Taylor there was an enormous problem afflicting modern society: workers didn't work hard enough. He called such laziness "soldiering". "\Ve can sec our forl-sts vanishing, our water-powers going to wasre .... The end of our coal and iron is in sight. But the larger wastes of human effort, which go on everyday through such of our actS as arc blundering, iU-direcred or inefficient are less-visible, less tangible and arc but vaguely appreciated .... And for this reason, even though our daily loss from this source arc greater, ... the one has stirred us deeply while the ocher has moved us but tittle.• (Taylor, iii) Taylor is shocked that the ;nefficicncy of workers hasn' t created a national outcry: "As yet there has been no public agitation for 'greater national efficiency', no meetings have been called .... " (Taylor, iii) Taylor was often upset that others around him didn't share his obs.-ssion with efficiency and it was an obsession. Taylor was obsessive-compulsive. As a child he counted his steps and rimed all of his actions so as to make his motions as efficient as possible. In his adult life he sought to impose his obsessive compulsions on all those around him and eventually the entire capitalist world. And the capitalist world was ready for a Taylor. In the late 19th century capitalism was growing fusr, competition was accckTating, the firm was growing in size and with it the number of workers employed on a single shop-llooc The need for increased control over this mass of workers was growing as was the need for them to work more efficiently ro stay competitive. • ... in a majority of cases the man deliberately plans to do as litt.lc as he possibly can ro turn our far less work than he is well able to do in many instances to do not more than one-third to one-half of a proper day's work .... This constitutes the greatest evil with which the working people of England and America arc now afflicted." (Taylor, p.3) For Taylor a "proper days work" meant the maximum .level of Output humanly possible. He often calkd it "a fair days work". When workers were not physically capable or unwilling to work "a fair days work" he fired them. Why did workers soldier? Taylor never was able ro give an answer co this question. To him it represented one big misunderstanding between Frederuk Ta y lor-Tiu B,gg e st Bastard E v er 19 capitalists and workers. A«ually, Taylor a rgued, there was no fundamen- tal antagonism between workers and capitalists. "The majority of these men believe th.at the fundamental intcrcsrs of employees and employers arc necessarily antagonistic. Scientific manage- ment, on the contrary, has for its very foundation the firm conviction that the true interests of the two are one and the same."(Taylor, page 1) Soldiering was made possible because management didn't even know how much work it was possible to extract &om workers. "The greater part of the systematic soldiering is done ... by the men with the deliberate object of keeping thc:ir employers ignorant of how fast work can be done." (Taylor, pagc.7) Taylor's goal was to scizc this knowledge of the labor process from the worker and put it in the hands of management to be used as a tool for control. He called this "scientific management". As a science manage- ment could refine the labor process to a point of efficiency far greater than any workcr could achieve on their own. " ... the science which underlies each workman's act is so great and amounts t Note the wording "the workman who is best suited." Who were these workers who were best suited for particular jobs? Workers who were too intelligent, too strong-wilkd, or incapable of working at maximum speeds were not best suited. Taylor envisioned a perfectly harmonious social o rder where all workers were employed in occupations where they could work most efficiently. They would be accompanied by a stra ta of scientific managers who analyzed their motion.s and reorganized them for maximum output. Anyone o ne who didn't 6t into this perfect vision of the world wou Id be fired. "the greatest prosperity can exist only when that individual has reached his highest State of efficiency; that is when he is turning out his largest daily output. • (p2) "The search for better more competent men ... was never more vigor- ous than it is now .... It is only when we fully realize that our dury as well as our opportunity lies in systematically cooperating to train and to make this competent man . .. that we shall be on the road to national efficiency. • (iii) 20 THE EARLY 2. 0 TH CENTURY The entire structure of production and society would revolve around the creation of this new efficient human. "In the past man has been first; in the future the system must be first.• "The fundamental principles of scientific management arc applicable tO aU kinds of human activities, from our simplest individual aces to the works of our great corporations . . . . the same principles can be applied with equal force to all social activities: to the management of our homes; the management of our farms; the management of the business of our tradesman, large and small; of our churches, our philanthropic institutions, OUI universities and our governmental departments." (iv) We can just imagine how satisfying such a rationalized fantasy-world mus t have seemed to his obsessive-compulsive mind. A big part of this fantasy world was Taylor's concept of harmony bctwc-cn classes. Taylor believed that all the workers he was retraining to work harder were his friends and that he had their best interest at heart even if they didn't know that. He persisted in this fantasy even when workers threatened t<) kill him (p.24) " ... the men who were under (me] were [my] personal friends .... [I) used every expedient to make them do a fair day's work, such as dis- charging or lowering the wages: of the more stubborn men wh<) refused to make any improvement .... • (p.23) Midvale Steel testimony before Special Committee of the US House of Representatives: Taylor Started his management career at the Midvale Steel Company outside Philaddplua. "As S()On as I became gang boss the men wh() were working under me and who, of course, knew that I was onto the whole game of soldiering or deliberately restricted outpu:t, came to me at once and said, "'Now Fred, you arc not going to be a damn piecework hog, arc you?"' " I said 'lf you fellows mean you are afraid I am going to try 10 get a larger output from these la Frederuk Ta y lor-Tiu B,gg e st Bastard E v er 21 "I said 'Well if you want to put it that way, aU right.' They said, 'We warn you Fred, if you try to bust any of th.ese rates, we will have you over the fence in six weeks.' I said, 'That is alright; I will tell you fcUows frankly that I propose to try to get a bigger output off these machines.'"' "Now that was the beginning of a piecework fight that lasted for nearly three years, as I remember it ... in which I was doing everything in my power to increase the output of the s:hop, while the men were abso- lutely determined that the output should not be increased .... " "I began, of course, by directing some one man to do more work than he had done before, and then I got on the lathe myself and showed him that it could be done. In spite of this, he went ahead and turned out exactly the same old output and refused to adopt better methods or to work quicker until finally I laid him off and got another man in his place. This new man I could not blame him in the least of circumstances turned right around and joined the other fellows and refused to do any more work than the rest. " Notice that Taylor says he couldn't blame this man for not wanting to work harder. ln several accounts of his bartle ar Midvale Steel Taylor does admits to some son of fundamental antagonism between manage- ment and workers. "As a truthful man, 1 had w rel! them that if I were in their place 1 would fight against turning out any more work, just as they were doing, because under the piecework system they would be allowed to cam no more wages than they had been earning, and yet they would be made to work harder." (p.24) Taylor was convinced that workers needed a material reward for working hardeL A fundamental part of his theory of scientific manage- ment was the permanent raising of wages for workers who conformed to this new scientific work ethic. Taylor thought that capitalists would con- sent to higher wages because the increased cost of higher wages would be compensated for by the increased size in output and by the diminished size of the workforcc(increased efficiency and "scicnti6c selection of workers" meant massive layoffs for many of the firms Taylor laid his hands on.) But, to Taylor's great dismay, once new lrvels of efficiency had been reached most employers chose to slash rates and wages returned to normal or even lower. In fact, the effect of scientific management was to reduce the skill-set of the working class as a whole which in turn reduced 22 THE EARLY 2.0TH CENTURY labor's bargaining power and lowered wag<>s. It seemed there wctt fun- damental class antagonisms immune tO Taylor's utopian philosophy. Bur back to Midvale ... Taylor decided to take the next step: "I hunted up some especially intelligent laborers who were competent men ... and I deliberately taught these men how to run a lathe and how to work right and fast .... and every solitary man, when I had taught them their trade, one after anotbcr turned right around and joined the rest of the fellows and refused to work one bit faster." Frustrated Taylor decided to take the next Step. He said to the men, "Now, I am going ro cur your tratc in rwo tomorrow and you are- going tO work for half price from now on. But all you have to do is to turn out a fair day*s work and you can work better wages . ... " Eventually the men caved in and production rose at the Midvale Steel factory. "After that we were good friends, but it took three years of hard fighting to bring this about." Emboldened by this success Taylor went on to become a highly sought- after and influtncial management consultant. Over the years he perfected his system of "scientific management." Herc's how the system workcd4 First Taylor would observe th.c labor process as it existed. He cataloged aU the motions of the workers and timed them. He then set about, through trial and error, devising the mos• efficient /low of motions possible. " ... there are many different ways in common use for doing the same thing .... there is always one method and one implement which is better than any of the rest. And this one best method and best implement can only be discovered or developed through a scientific study and analysis o( al) the methods and implements in use, together wirh accurate, minute, motion and time study. " (p.9) No jc)b was too simple or complex. Taylor famously spent 26 years studying the best way to cut metal. (The task seemed impossible to ratio- nalize as the.re were too many variables. Even famous mathematicians told him it couldn't be done. But Taylor's obsessive compulsive genius prevailed.) But simple work could be rationalized as well. In a famous example Taylor sought to come up with a more efficient method for loading pig-iron into a mun caL Men had to pick up a piece of pig-iron, walk up a plank and drop tbe pig-iron into a train cru: On average a worker could load about 12 1/2 tons of pig iron a day. After careful study Fr e derick Ta y l o r-TheB,gg e st Bastard E v er 23 Taylor "discovered" that 47 tons a day was a "proper day's work". He did this by analy-,ing the tiring effect of physica.l labor on muscle. He discovered that a man's muscles require a certain percentage of rest for an amount of work exerted. The trick was to rime the ratio of work to rest for each worker so that they could work the hardest without tiring Out. The second step was tO pick the right worker. Any old worker wouldn't do. In fact only about one in eight men could load 47 cons of pig iron a day. "With the very best of intentions' the ocher seven out of eight men were physically unable tO work at this pace. Now the one man in eight who was able ro do this work was in no sense superior to the ocher men who were working on the gang. He mcrtiy happened to be a man of the rype of the ox,-no rare specimen of humanity, difficult to find and there- fore very highly prized. On the contrary, he was a man so stupid that he was unfitted co do most kinds of laboring work, even." Taylor started with just one man: a large Pennsylvania Dutchman named Schmidt. These were his instructions to Schmidt:
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