¹ Interview with Janko, Stephan, 15 03 1988Google Scholar, in possession of the author.

² Interviews with Kamarczyk, Gertie, 5 and 7 12 1987Google Scholar, both in possession of the author.

³ Interview with Weightman, Philip, 7–8 10 1986Google Scholar, United Packinghouse Workers of America Oral History Project, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI [hereafter cited as UPWAOHP].

⁴ Kampfert, Arthur, “History of Meatpacking, Slaughtering, and Unionism.”Google Scholar Unpublished manuscript, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, III, 3. See also U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, “The Employment of Women in Slaughtering and Meat Packing,” Bulletin 88 (Washington DC: GPO, 1932)Google Scholar; and U.S. Department of Labor, “Wages and Hours in the Slaughtering and Meat-Packing Industry, 1931,” Monthly Labor Review 34 (06 1932).Google Scholar

⁵ For increased seasonality see Cohen, Lizabeth, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 184–186.Google Scholar See also Department of Labor, “Employment of Women,” 86–87, 102–03Google Scholar; and Herbst, Alma, The Negro in the Slaughtering and Meat-Packing Industry (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1932), 99.Google Scholar

⁶ Oestreicher, Richard J., Solidarity and Fragmentation: Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit, 1865–1900 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 67.Google Scholar

⁷ The phrase is taken from Hy Lefkowitz to Rick Halpern, 4 July 1986, in UPWAOHP Project files, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.

⁸ Quotation reproduced in “Meat for the Multitudes,” vol. 1, 233Google Scholar [special issue of the National Provisioner, 4 July 1981].

⁹ For the social character of the CIO movement in the Chicago stockyards see Halpern, Eric Brian, “‘Black and White Unite and Fight’: Race and Labor in Meatpacking, 1904–1948” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1989).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Interview with Weightman, Philip, 7–8 10 1986Google Scholar, UPWAOHP; Kampfert, “History,” III.

¹¹ Previous historians of packinghouse unionism have pursued a narrative strategy that leaps from the 1921–22 defeat, over the decade of the 1920S, directly into the union revival of the 1930S. As I demonstrate below, such an approach fails to analyze crucial developments which took place in the 1920S, and therefore misjudges the essential context in which to situate the “heroic” period of renewed struggle which followed. See, for instance, Brody, David, The Butcher Workmen: A Study of Unionization (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964).Google Scholar

¹² For the AMC's retreat from the packinghouses following the 1921–22 debacle, see Brody, , Butcher Workmen, Chs 6 and 7, and 152–53.Google Scholar While accurate figures on the decline in Amalgamated membership in Chicago are unavailable, the union's national enrollment shrank from a peak of 65,000 in 1920 to 10,400 in 1932. The bulk of this latter figure was made up of “block butchers” in the retail sector of the meat industry; Cayton, Horace and Mitchell, George, Black Workers and the New Unions (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1939), 257.Google Scholar

¹³ Interview with Jane, and March, Herbert, 25 11 1988Google Scholar, in possession of the author.

¹⁴ Interview with Janko, Stephan, 15 03 1988Google Scholar, in possession of the author.

¹⁵ Interview with Jane, and March, Herbert, 25 11 1988Google Scholar; for Wilson, Interview with Wrublewski, Johnny, 16 03 1988Google Scholar, in possession of the author; Interview with Balskus, Pat, 18 11 1987Google Scholar, in possession of the author.

¹⁶ For the decline in packinghouse employment see Scott, Estelle Hill, Occupational Changes Among Negroes in Chicago (Chicago: Works Projects Administration, 1939)Google Scholar [Report of Project 665–54–3–336, WPA District 3], 191–200, 221–41; and Taylor, Paul S., Mexican Labor in the United States: Chicago and the Calumet Region (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1930), 46.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Cayton, Horace R. and Drake, St. Clair, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 8–9Google Scholar; and Otis, D. and Duncan, Beverly, The Negro Population of Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 24, 34, 300.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Interview with Washington, Lowell Jr., 28 04 1988Google Scholar, in possession of the author. On the surprisingly large numbers of college educated blacks in the packinghouses, see the Interview with March, Herbert, 21 10 1986, UPWAOHP.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Scott, , Occupational Changes, 198–200, 223.Google Scholar

²⁰ Herbst, , Negro, xxii.Google Scholar

²¹ Interviews with Vaughn, Jesse, 4 10 1985 and 23 10 1986Google Scholar, UPWAOHP; Thomas, Elmer quoted in Ann Banks (ed.), First-Person America (New York: Vintage, 1980), 6.Google Scholar

²² Interview with Megan, Tommy, 27 04 1988Google Scholar; Interview with Wrublewski, Johnny, 16 03 1988Google Scholar, both in possession of the author.

²³ Mary Hammond quoted in Banks, First-Person America, 54Google Scholar; Herbst, , Negro, 75–78.Google Scholar

²⁴ Interview with March, Herbert, 15 07 1985Google Scholar; Interview with Saunders, Richard, 13 09 1985Google Scholar; Interview with Norman, Milton, 1 10 1985, all UPWAOHP.Google Scholar

²⁵ Both of these motives are discussed in Barrett, James R., Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 1894–1922 (Urbana:University of Illinois Press, 1987), 95–96, 101.Google Scholar See also Montgomery, Louise, The American Girl in the Chicago Stock Yards District (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1918), 2.Google Scholar

²⁶ Interview with Kamarczyk, Gertie, 7 12 1987Google Scholar, and author's field notes.

²⁷ Interviews with Estelle Zabritski and Mary Hammond in Banks, First-Person America, 54–57.Google Scholar

²⁸ Department of Labor, “Employment of Women,” 18–29, 36–37.Google Scholar

²⁹ Department of Labor, “Employment of Women,” 14, 75–78, 81Google Scholar; Anna Novak quoted in Banks, First-Person America, 64.Google Scholar

³⁰ Department of Labor, “Employment of Women,” 11–13, 96–99, 102Google Scholar; Interview with Kamarczyk, Gertie, 7 12 1987.Google Scholar See also the Interview with Betty Piontowski in Banks, First-Person America, 59–60Google Scholar; and Cohen, , Making a New Deal, 195–96.Google Scholar

³¹ Calder in turn modeled his program closely after the so-called “Rockefeller Plan” first introduced by Mackenzie King at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company in 1915. See Brandes, Stuart D., American Welfare Capitalism, 1880–1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 123–25.Google Scholar

³² Calder, John, Capital's Duty to the Wage Earner: A Manual of Principles and Practice on Handling the Human Factors in Industry (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1923), 165–172Google Scholar; Swift and Company Yearbook 1922, 50–51.

³³ Swift and Company Yearbook 1923, 48–49Google Scholar; Swift and Company Yearbook 1924, 50–52Google Scholar; Swift and Company Yearbook 1925, 51.Google Scholar

³⁴ The types of cases handled by company unions at Armour and Swift are analyzed in Barrett, Work and Community, 252–54.Google Scholar

³⁵ Interview with Weightman, Philip, 7–8 10 1986Google Scholar, UPWAOHP; Holcomb, James R., “The Union Policies of Meat Packers, 1929–1943” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Illinois, 1957), 28Google Scholar; Interview with Wrublewski, Johnny, 16 03 1988Google Scholar, in possession of the author.

³⁶ Barrett, , Work and Community, 250–51Google Scholar; Testimony of Alphonso Malachi in Official Report of Proceedings Before the National Labor Relations Board, Case No. XIII-C-600 and XIII-R-584, 659–60, NLRB Administrative Division, Files and Dockets Section, Transcripts and Exhibits, RG 25, Box 1141, National Archives and Records Service, Suitland, MD [hereafter cited as NLRB XIII–C–600/XIII-R-584]; Interview with Neidholt, Kenneth, 20 03 1986, UPWAOHP.Google Scholar

³⁷ Interview with Norman, Milt, 1 10 1985Google Scholar, UPWAOHP; Interview with Washington, Lowell Jr., 28 04 1988Google Scholar, in possession of the author; Cohen, , Making a New Deal, 205–06, 287Google Scholar; Holcomb, , “Union Policies of Meat Packers,” 30.Google Scholar

³⁸ Swift and Company Yearbook, 1931, 55Google Scholar; Clark, Edna Louise, “History of the Controversy Between Labor and Capital in the Slaughtering and Meat Packing Industries in Chicago” (MA Thesis, University of Chicago, 1922), 196Google Scholar; NLRB XIII-C-600/XIII-R-584, 77; Interview with Milt Norman, 1 Oct. 1985, UPWAOHP.

³⁹ These phrases are drawn from the following editorials: “The New Representation in Industry,” New York Times, 5 12 1921Google Scholar; “Enter the Public,” New York Times, 16 12 1921.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Carver, Arthur H., Personnel and Labor Problems in the Packing Industry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928), 35–39Google Scholar; Calder, , Capital's Duty, 116–22 and Ch. 11Google Scholar; and Interview with Neidholt, Kenneth, 20 03 1986Google Scholar, UPWAOHP. See also Cohen, , Making a New Deal, 167–69.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Interview with Nolan, William, 12 02 1986Google Scholar, UPWAOHP; Interview with Megan, Tommy, 27 04 1988Google Scholar, in possession of the author; Interview with Neidholt, Kenneth, 20 03 1986 and 17 05 1986, UPWAOHPGoogle Scholar; Neidholt, to Halpern, Rick, 15 07 1986Google Scholar, in UPWAOHP Project Files; and Interview with Blumenshine, Don, 16 04 1985, UPWAOHP.Google Scholar

⁴² See Carver, , Personnel and Labor Problems, 35–39Google Scholar; and Adams, Kate J., Humanizing a Great Industry (Chicago: Armour & Co., 1919), 8–9Google Scholar, for the claim that hiring was conducted systematically and with “painstaking care.” Interview with Herbert March, 21 Oct. 1986, UPWAOHP.

⁴³ Interview with Megan, Tommy, 27 04 1988Google Scholar, in possession of the author; Interview with Vaughn, Jesse, 4 10 1985, UPWAOHP.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Interview with Norman, Milt, 1 10 1985Google Scholar; Interview with Anna Novak in Banks, First-Person America, 63.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Anna Novak quoted in Banks, First-Person America, 63Google Scholar; Interview with Karriarczyk, Gertie, 5 12 1987Google Scholar, in possession of the author; see also the detailed account of harassment in the Interview with Schrader, Velma Otterman, 7 05 1986, UPWAOHP.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ The workings of each of these incentive plans is explained in Carver, Personnel and Labor Problems, 124–30.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ The Bedaux system is explained in Herbst, , Negro, 114–16Google Scholar; and in Purcell, , Worker Speaks, 236–37Google Scholar; further examples can be found in Carver, , Personnel and Labor Problems, 128–29.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Quotation from Cohen, Making a New Deal, 170.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Herbst, , Negro, 118–19Google Scholar; Department of Labor, “Employment of Women,” 68.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Jackson, Porter quoted in Purcell, Worker Speaks, 141Google Scholar; Bill Voorhis quoted in Cohen, Making a Nea Deal, 192Google Scholar; U.S. Department of Labor, “The Employment of Women in Slaughtering and Meat Packing,” 71.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Interview with Simmons, Marian, 21 and 25 08 1986Google Scholar, UPWAOHP (and field notes from Simmons Interview, in possession of the author).

⁵² Starr, Vicky (Stella Nowicki) quoted in Alice and Lynd, Staughton (eds.) Rank and File: Personal Histories of Working-Class Organizers (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), 79Google Scholar; Interview with Starr, Vicky, 4 08 1986, UPWAOHP.Google Scholar

⁵³ Interview with Starr, Vicky, 4 08 1986, UPWAOHPGoogle Scholar; Lynd, , Rank and File, 79Google Scholar; Interview with Janko, Stephan, 15 03 1988.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ See Cohen, , Making a New Deal, 192–96Google Scholar, for a penetrating discussion of workers' pragmatic response to these kinds of welfare benefits. Zahavi's, GeraldWorkers, Managers, and Welfare Capitalism: The Shoeworkers and Tanners of Endicott Johnson, 1890–1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988)Google Scholar, pursues a parallel analysis.

⁵⁵ For most of the zoth century, meatpacking was the second most dangerous occupation (following mining and usually slightly ahead of construction); see Corey, Lewis, Meat and Man: A Study of Monopoly, Unionism, and food Policy (New York: Viking Press, 1949), 248.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Adams, , Humanizing a Great Industry, 13–18Google Scholar; Calder, , Capital's Duty, 136ffGoogle Scholar; Armour and Company Yearbook 1917, 31–32Google Scholar; Swift and Company Yearbook 1925, 53–55.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Interview with Jean Solter by Burke, Betty, 20 06 1939Google Scholar, US Works Projects Administration, Federal Writers Project, Box A707, Library of Congress, Washington DC. Interview with Laura Rutkowski, 6 Dec. 1987, in possession of the author.

⁵⁸ Interview with Zabritski, Joe, 22 09 1987Google Scholar, in possession of the author; Interview with Megan, Tommy, 27 04 1988.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ This phenomenon is discussed in David Brody's essay, “The Rise and Decline of Welfare Capitalism,” in Workers in Industrial America, 71–76.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Cohen, , Making a New Deal, 204–05.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Interview with Kamarczyk, Gertie, 5 12 1987Google Scholar; Interview with Zabritski, Joe, 4 12 1987Google Scholar, both in possession of the author.

⁶² Street, Paul, “Breaking Up Old Hatreds and Breaking Through ‘The Fear’: The Rise of the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee in Chicago,”Google Scholar paper presented at the 1985 North American Labor History Conference, Detroit MI, and notes on ensuing discussion, in possession of the author.

⁶³ This dynamic is discussed with great clarity in the Interview with March, Herbert, 21 10 1986Google Scholar, UPWAOHP; Interview with Megan, Tommy, 27 04 1988Google Scholar, in possession of the author.