War all the time

Ta-Nehisi Coates is read­ing and blog­ging about Robert Conot’s Amer­i­can Odyssey, a 1974 his­tory of Detroit that bears the sub­ti­tle “A Unique His­tory of Amer­ica Told Through the Life of a Great City.” Today he offers Conot’s account of Henry Ford’s efforts to quite lit­er­ally beat back union­iza­tion in the 1930s, led by Ford exec­u­tive Harry Ben­nett. Wal­ter Reuther and a hand­ful of oth­ers led the UAW. Things came to a head in “the Bat­tle of the Overpass”:

Seventy-four years old, [Ford] was descend­ing into senil­ity, and was soon to suf­fer a stroke. Yet the grip he and Ben­nett held on the com­pany was as iron as ever. In the plant noth­ing the men did escaped the eyes of the ubiq­ui­tous ser­vice men, who made up one fifth of the work­force. Out­side the plant, Ben­nett, lib­er­ally sprin­kling money about, extended ten­ta­cles into every facet of the area’s life. Many of the Negro min­is­ters were beholden to him. The mayor of Dear­born of a con­ces­sion­aire. The Wayne County Repub­li­can orga­ni­za­tion was under his influ­ence. So thor­oughly had he infil­trated the UAW that ser­vice­men were spend­ing much of their time report­ing on each other. The Knights of Dear­born were injected with new life, and the assigned the task of fight­ing of labor orga­niz­ers and communists.

With the sit-down at GM, Ben­nett increased the size of his force even fur­ther. No pirate ship ever had a more mot­ley crew. They con­sisted of gang­sters, dis­charged police offi­cers, and ath­letes who had gone astray. There was Eddie Cicotte, banned from base­ball in the Black Sox scan­dal; Nor­man Selby, alias Kid Mcoy, a bat­tered ex-fighter who would have mar­ried eleven times but reduced his total by one when he mur­dered one of his sweethearts…Angelo Caruso, the for­mer head of the Down River Gang; Sam Cuva, who had shot his mother-in-law; “Legs” Laman a kid­nap­per and rum-runner…

Flushed with their vic­to­ries over GM and Chrysler, the UAW obtained per­mis­sion from the Dear­born city coun­cil to pass out hand­bills. It was a brisk spring day as the quar­tet of UAW lead­ers, Wal­ter Reuther, Richard Franken­steen, Richard Mer­ri­weather, and Ralph Dun­ham climbed the flights of stairs lead­ing to the over­pass across Miller road to the plant. Behind them, mostly on street­cars, came other pros­e­ly­tiz­ers, many of them women…

Reuther, natty, a gold chain across the front of his vest, a fountain-pen and pen­cil stick­ing out of his pocket, was in the lead.…From the direc­tion of the plant came a group of men there hats pulled low over their eyes. Among them were a pro­fes­sional wrestler, a boxer, an ex-convict with twenty-one arrests, Caruso and Sam Tyler, a Ford fore­man and the pres­i­dent of the Knights of Dear­born. One had a cig­a­rette dan­gling from the cor­ner of his mouth. Another coat­less, exhib­ited a col­or­ful vest. And the lead was a spar­row of a man, not more than five feet four inches tall. As Reuther expect­ing a ver­bal bar­rage, watched their approach, they so resem­bled the stereo­type of the hood in gang­ster movies that he smiled.

In the next instant, he was cracked across the back of the head, and went down. Picked up, he was pum­meled and then thrown to the con­crete again and again. Frakensteen’s coat was whipped over his head so that it formed a strat­jacket. As he stood help­less, he was slugged repeat­edly. Dun­ham and Mer­ri­weather were beaten and kicked. All four were pushed, rolled, and knocked down the sev­eral flights of stairs of the over­past. When other UAW mem­ber tried to get off the street­cars, the leaflets were ripped from their hands. The women were man­han­dled back on to the cars.…

After exten­sive hear­ings, the National Labor rela­tions Board accused the com­pany of vio­lat­ing the Wag­ner Act. Ford retorted: “The things the Board charged never hap­pened and could not hap­pen here.” Asked if he knew the facts, he snapped: “I don’t want to know the facts.”

TNC thrills at Conot’s lan­guage and sto­ry­telling, but he’s pretty good him­self: “Harry Ben­nett is Wee-Bay to Ford’s Barks­dale.” And: “When you read some­thing like this, it puts the Tea Par­ties in per­spec­tive. There’s never been one Amer­ica. There’s always been civil war.”