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Popular Anticommunism and the UE in Evansville, Indiana  Samuel W. White Following World War II, Evansville, Indiana , proudly proclaimed itself the “refrigerator capital of the world.” In 1946, International Harvester purchased the Republic Steel Plant and began producing refrigerators, supplementing the refrigerator production at Servel, Inc., and Seeger-Sunbeam. Refrigerators and automotive goods came to dominate the postwar economy of Evansville, which depended on the production of these consumer durables as never before. Evansville’s workforce continued to climb after the war, from 64,000 in 1945 to 80,000 in 1950. Of the 80,000 workers employed in the city in 1950, 20,000 produced consumer durables, and more than 10,000 of these workers labored at one of the city’s three refrigerator factories.1 By the end of 1946, Local 813 of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) had organized three of the city’s leading employers: Seeger-Sunbeam, Faultless, and, finally, the Servel plant. Based largely on its reputation for getting higher wages and benefits for workers, Local 813 expanded from its base in the refrigerator factories to other plants such as George Koch & Sons, Bucyrus-Erie, and Hoosier Cardinal, quickly becoming the largest labor organization in the city, with over 7,000 members.2 UE’s growth in Evansville was part of a general pattern of growth for the labor movement in the city during the previous decade. By 1949 the CIO alone would boast more than 15,000 members in Evansville, constituting nearly 50 percent of the workforce. While definite membership figures for the AFL are not available, it, too, grew during the 1930s and 1940s, with the building trades as its most organized and active jurisdiction. Even a conservative estimate of AFL membership in 1949 put the total organized Evansville workforce at well over 60 percent . The largest affiliates of the CIO remained the UE and the United Automobile Workers (UAW), the latter of which represented approximately 6,000 workers at the International Harvester, Briggs, and Chrysler plants in the city.3 In 1946, the labor movement in Evansville appeared to be in a position to 141 consolidate the gains it had made during the previous decade. This changed quickly, however, as the Cold War, and what might be called “popular anticommunism ,” drove a wedge between the UE and the community, and, most importantly, between unions—effectively forestalling the opportunity to consolidate the labor movement that existed following the Second World War. Of all the issues confronting the Evansville labor movement during the postwar period, anticommunism proved most divisive. While the local AFL unions and the Central Labor Union had long opposed Communism within the labor movement , the CIO became locked in a bitter struggle to reconcile the issue of Communism within its member unions. As the local CIO affiliates fought first to define and then resolve the issue, the AFL stood ready to raid the membership of those CIO affiliates weakened by internal strife. In July 1946, President Charles E. Wright of UE 813 predicted that The manufacturers in this community together with other forces will leave no stone unturned. They will use the old and much worn cry of red baiting . They will use racial prejudice to stir-up trouble and pit the workers against each other. They will attempt to pit the workers of each shop against one another. This union will become the target of these forces not only from without but also from . . . within our union.4 Wright’s words proved prophetic as employers, government agencies, ordinary citizens of the community, and members of the labor movement itself moved to contain, and eventually to destroy, the UE in Evansville during the decade after the Second World War. Americans’ Cold War fears and anxieties provided context for the struggle to roll back the UE in Evansville. While anticommunism had a long history in the city by 1946, politicians, working people, employers, the labor movement, and the general public found Communism to be an increasingly important issue in their lives during the postwar period. Both the major political parties and the labor movement joined employers in being “tough on Communism” during this period and, in doing so, created a more unified political culture in the city than had existed for more than a decade. The political consensus that emerged in late-1940s Evansville had its greatest impact on the labor movement as anticommunism within the ranks of labor altered the...

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