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“Things Are Different Down Here”: The 1955 Perfect Circle Strike, Conservative Civic Identity, and the Roots of the New Right in the 1950s Industrial Heartland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2008

David M. Anderson
David M. Anderson
Affiliation:
Louisiana Tech University
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Abstract

The article examines the history of the violent 1955 Perfect Circle strike to join the growing body of labor history scholarship that rejects the existence of a postwar “labor-management accord.” Contrary to previous depictions of a postwar “class peace,” the small-town industrial Midwest stood as a key battleground between unionized workers and competitive-sector employers such as the Indiana-based Perfect Circle Corporation, a small, family-owned manufacturer, a model welfare capitalist firm, and one of the nation's leading automotive parts producers. Driven by their desire to hold down labor costs and their own antistatist ideology, Perfect Circle's owners had opposed the New Deal and, by the late 1930s, had shed their previous provincialism to join the national political coalition of business conservatives in the National Association of Manufacturers to secure the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. During the Cold War era, even while they were extending their political reach and expanding their operations overseas, Perfect Circle's owners sought to forge labor-management unity by promoting a quaint vision of “heartland consensus,” a conservative civic identity that management was convinced would render unions unnecessary. As with many business conservatives, Perfect Circle owners tried to rid their plants of unions by tapping into an interlocking network of well-financed right-wing policy groups to mount an extensive employee educational program and public relations campaign in defense of “free enterprise.” Despite Perfect Circle's vigorous efforts to undercut unionization, by 1953 the majority of workers at all four of its east-central Indiana plants voted to affiliate with the United Auto Workers (UAW). Conflict between labor and management culminated in the violent 1955 strike, in which Perfect Circle handed the UAW a decisive defeat while enjoying widespread support from the regional and national press. The strike became a conservative cause célèbre during the 1957 national “right-to-work” campaign and a centerpiece of the Senate's 1958 McClellan “Labor Rackets” hearings, which launched Barry Goldwater's bid for the 1964 presidency. The article concludes that Perfect Circle and many other employers not only continued to contest unions in the 1950s but also played a neglected but important role in the formation of the New Right.

Type
The Conservative Turn in Postwar United States Working-Class History
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , Fall 2008 , pp. 101 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2008

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References

Notes

1. For a more comprehensive analysis of the 1955 Perfect Circle strike, see David M. Anderson, “The Battle for Main Street, U.S.A.: Welfare Capitalism, Boosterism, and Labor Militancy in the Industrial Heartland, 1895–1963” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, 2002).

2. Uphoff, Walter, Kohler on Strike: Thirty Years of Conflict (Boston, 1966)Google Scholar; “The Story of a Bitter Strike,” U.S. News and World Report, October 8, 1954, 103–6.

3. For a summary of the strike settlement, see “18-Week Strike: What Union Got,” U.S. News and World Report, December 9, 1955, 111.

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12. Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise. In a recent study published after this article was completed, Lawrence Richards downplays the effectiveness of the postwar employer public relations offensive and instead insists that “a pervasive antiunion culture” and workers' own opposition to unions help explain the absence of a postwar accord. Richards, Lawrence, Union-Free America: Workers and Antiunion Culture (Urbana, 2008), quote on p. 5Google Scholar.

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28. Richmond (Ind.) Palladium-Item, July 18, 1947; Circle, January 26, 1950; The Compass, Perfect Circle Corporation 1957 pamphlet, 11, original in author's possession; Meyer, One Man's Vision, 160.

29. “Little Labor War,” Wall Street Journal, October 18, 1955, 1.

30. 70 N.L.R.B. No. 40; Brief for the National Labor Relations Board in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Perfect Circle Company v. National Labor Relations Board, National Labor Relations Board v. Perfect Circle Company, 9289 and 9288, F. 7th, 12–13.

31. Circle, March 14, 1946.

32. Circle, November, 1946.

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37. For welfare capitalist firms that remained nonunion or turned back unionization after the war, see Jacoby, Modern Manors.

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40. Carl Evans interview with David M. Anderson, New Castle, Indiana, June 24, 1998. Tape and transcript in author's possession.

41. Evans interview.

42. Owen Favorite interview with David M. Anderson, Hagerstown, Indiana, February 12, 2000. Tape and transcript in author's possession.

43. Circle, January, 1948.

44. For the 1947 contracts, see Files 473–957, RG 280, Case Files, Dispute Case Files 1913–48, FMCS, Box 2164 for New Castle and 473–1587, FMCS, Box 2174 for Hagerstown. For the 1948 contracts for both Hagerstown and New Castle, see File 473–2419, FMCS, Box 2188.

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46. Exponent, November 18, 1948.

47. Circle, March 4, 1948; File 473–2419, FMCS, Box 2188.

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49. Circle, October 7, 1948.

50. Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, 297.

51. Circle, September 15, October 7, 1948; Exponent, September 12, 1948; New Castle (Ind.) News-Republican, November 19, 1948.

52. Courier-Times, November 10, 11, 16, 1948; Palladium-Item, December 6, 11, 18, 30, 1948.

53. Circle, March 24, 1949; Exponent, November 11, 1948; Hearings before the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, 85th Congress, 2nd Session, Part 26, March 31-April 1, 1958 (hereafter cited as McClellan Hearings), 10382, 10386–7.

54. Exponent, November 18, 1955.

55. Exponent, November 2, 1948.

56. Meyer, One Man's Vision, 143–4.

57. Exponent, November 2, 1948.

58. Exponent, November 11, 1948.

59. Palladium-Item, December 6, 7, 8, 9, 14, 1948; Courier-Times, December 8, 9, 1948.

60. News-Republican, November 8, 19, 1948; Courier-Times, December 8, 1948; Palladium-Item, December 7, 1948.

61. Courier-Times, December 8, 9, 1948; News-Republican, December 8, 1948.

62. Palladium-Item, December 9, 1948. For picket line incidents and arrests, see Palladium-Item, December 10, 12; Courier-Times, December 9, 10, 1948.

63. Exponent, December 16, 31, 1948; Courier-Times, December 15, 31, 1948.

64. Exponent, November 18, December 16, 23, 1948.

65. The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service assigned James Allen to the case on August 31, 1948. File 483–3550, RG 280, Case Files, Dispute Case Files 1913–48, Box #2400, FMCS. For Allen's failed mediation efforts, see Circle, October 7, 1948; Courier-Times, November 10, 11, 16, 1948; Palladium-Item, December 10, 1948.

66. Courier-Times, December 28, 1948.

67. Circle, January 13, 1949; Courier-Times, January 1, 3, 1949; Palladium-Item, January 2, 1949; Exponent, January 6, 1949.

68. Richmond Palladium-Item, January 2, 1949.

69. Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise.

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73. Circle, September 1947.

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76. Circle, April 27, 1950.

77. Circle, June 15, 1950; Courier-Times, June 29, 1950.

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79. McClellan Hearings, 10286; Circle, February 23, 1951; William F. Caldwell, Letter to the Editor, Courier-Times, October 4, 1955.

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81. The UAW local union forced management at New Castle's Chrysler plant to enforce provisions in its first collective bargaining contract after a one-day strike in September 1937 that featured mass picketing followed by a successful mediation effort by the Indiana State Labor Board. Courier-Times, September 20 and 21, 1937; New Castle News-Republican September 23, 1937.

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86. Exponent, July 28, 1955.

87. Connersville (Ind.) News Examiner, November 23, 30, 1953.

88. Chicago Tribune, July 27, 1955.

89. Exponent, July 28, 1955.

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