Institutional Damage

The great strength of John Hoerr's Harry, Tom, and Father Rice: Accusation and Betrayal in America's Cold War is how strongly it reminds us that each decision made and action taken (or not taken) by not-quite-common people reverberates through their own and others' lives. Hoerr's book is the human face of the cold war on the home front. What's missing, however, is an assessment of the damage done by this clash of union titans in 1949 and an analysis of the causes. What was damaged irrevocably were institutions, not persons—Local 601, the UE, the CIO, the larger labor movement, and the democratic prospects of the postwar world. All recovered in some form or fashion, but with diminished capacity. We have less to lose today, less to try and defend, because they got less than they had hoped for and in 1948 could reasonably have expected.