American Railroad Labor and the Genesis of the New Deal, 1919–1935 (review)

In a July op-ed in the New York Times, industrial relations expert George Yorgakaros called for professional sports, as private cartels that provide a public good, to adapt their labour framework to the 1926 Railway Labor Act. This is a useful reminder that the US labour landscape is still shaped by the experience of decades long past. The passage of that act is central to American Railroad Labor and the Genesis of the New Deal. In it, historian Jon R. Huibregste argues that the railroad unions’ activism of the 1920s helped establish the conditions for the New Deal of the 1930s. Claiming that the standard historiography of the New Deal largely overlooks the pivotal role of these unions, Huibregste’s book credits the railroad brotherhoods as innovators in American social policy and labour law. It provides a clear account of the political activism and social policy reform of the railroad brotherhoods. However, the book leaves several important questions unanswered.

In the 1920s, while American labour reeled under the assault of business after the glory days of strikes and mobilization during World War i, the railroad unions turned to legislative and political action. Wartime rhetoric of “industrial democracy” was abandoned as capital and the state worked to expel radicals and roll back gains made by workers under the auspices of the first Red Scare and the “American Plan.” Huibregste shows that the railroad brotherhoods, sometimes dismissed as conservative and insular, kept that ideology alive in pushing for further gains. The testimony he provides on the hazards of railroad life and the instability of careers provides good context for why security provisions were so urgent a priority for the unions.

During the Great War, the railroads were nationalized and unions recognized by the government railroad authority. After the war, carriers successfully prevailed on the government for legislation that turned back the clock to the prewar era. A particular concern of the brotherhoods was the weakened labour dispute arbiter created by the legislation, the Railroad Labor Board (rlb), which had no authority to enforce its decisions. Huibregste sees in this setback the seeds of future success. In creating their own counterproposal, the Plumb Plan, the railroad brotherhoods learned to work together on matters of political advocacy. Furthermore, the newspaper they created to promote the Plumb Plan, Labor, would become an important pulpit for their reform efforts throughout the next decade.

Another way the railroad unions adapted to the postwar situation was by actively participating in partisan electoral politics. Huibregste details how, through the labour newspaper, their monthly magazines, and on the ground organizers, “railroad labor’s political machine” became a force that influenced races at the Congressional, state, and federal levels. He even argues that the successful and varied organizing of railroad union leadership indicated they “had supplanted the American Federation of Labor as the leading voice of American Labor.” However, this is a contention mentioned in passing, and Huibregste provides little evidence to support this claim.

Throughout the mid-1920s, the railroad brotherhoods worked tirelessly to convince legislators to repeal the Railroad Labor Board. Huibregste demonstrates that they applied political pressure to both Republicans and Democrats, and explored the possibility of a progressive third party under the leadership of Wisconsin senator Robert La Follette. While the third party option petered out after La Follette’s death, railroad labour’s multidimensional activism in the 1924 election season prompted even the GOP to pledge a review of the rlb and tepid support of the brotherhoods’ favoured Howell-Barkley bill, which introduced direct mediation and voluntary arbitration with binding decisions. Huibregste sees the eventual passage of the Railway Labor Act as a “pioneering measure” establishing “collective bargaining in the railroad industry a decade before that right was generally recognized.” He argues that their political efforts and the power railroad workers wielded in the US economy delivered the victory. To Huibregste, this is also a triumph for reformism, and political moderation over radicalism...