AS205: Inbetween Peoples

As I sat at the dinner table surrounded by loved ones for a delicious Thanksgiving meal, I considered the many blessings in my life for which I have to be thankful for: an incredible family, great friends, a prestigious education, and..…Lizabeh Cohen?? Well, not so much. Cohen’s “Making a New Deal” is painful, utterly painful. Without sounding completely ungrateful during this week of thanks, Cohen did cause me to reflect upon the issue of immigrant—especially illegal immigrants—workers in the United States, which continues to be a “hot button” topic in a nation devoted to its melting pot history.

With some 12 million illegal immigrants residing in the United States today, politicians at every level of government are engaged in debates over the destiny of these foreigners looking for higher wages and a greater hope for the future. Should they all be deported back to their home country or should a guest-worker program be established? Would allowing them to stay be amnesty? Regardless of what ultimately is decided in Washington, these illegal immigrants are still at the mercy of their employers, a much different scenario than that of the industrial workers in Chicago during the Great Depression era.

Unlike the evolving atmosphere among industrial workers in the 1920s and 1930s that Lizabeth Cohen examines, the illegal immigrants of today do not have the opportunity to unionize, and therefore have a very different relationship with their employers. Cohen details the changing ideal among Chicago’s industries: “The goal toward which Swift & Company is working in its relations with workers…to lead, not drive men, by having well-trained and sympathetic executives and bosses; to provide for self-expression on the part of our workers, and to keep the way wide open for their education and advancement; to bring about a closer cooperation and a better understanding between the workers and the management.” (Cohen pg. 161). This is very different from the mentality behind employing illegal immigrants. Most businesses hire these workers to perform the undesirable jobs, the tasks the majority of America’s proud citizens wouldn’t stoop to doing. Because the American employee will not apply for the menial jobs like janitor or crop-pickers, employers need their illegal employees to maintain these positions. Unlike the 1920’s Chicago companies Cohen examines, there is no attempt or incentive on behalf of today’s employer to foster the advancement of the illegal immigrant employee.

Another stark difference between Cohen’s case study and today’s situation is that employers today are not “wooing workers from ethnicity.” (Cohen pg. 165). Unlike Chicago’s industries that saw nationality as “clannish” and an “interference” to the business, today’s employer hires and groups workers according to their ethnicity, illegal immigrants comprising one entire entity. Ethnicity and comradeship among the illegal workers helps employers today rather than threatens them. One way that Chicago’s industries in the 1920s broke up ethnic clans in the work place was to offer individual promotions. As Cohen states, “Increasingly complex job ladders promised that the makeup of work groups would constantly change…” (Cohen pg. 170). For illegal immigrant workers, that drawl of a promotion is nonexistent. Employers have no incentive to dangle or realize a promotion since they hire illegal workers to maintain their undesirable posts indefinitely.

Ultimately, industrial workers of the 1920s were let down by the welfare capitalist employers, and they turned toward the government for protection: these “Americans now looked to Washington to deliver the American dream.” (Cohen pg. 289). Because of their illegal status, today’s immigrant workers do not have this luxury and continue to rely on their employer.

Welfare capitalism is noteworthy for its effectiveness in lessening the racial segregation which pervaded the factory environments despite its attempts to do the opposite.  With the goal of creating “… loyalty to the boss in return for good treatment and security on the job” (161), industrialists hoped that “In the era of welfare capitalism, the enlightened corporation, not the labor union or the state, would spearhead the creation of a more benign industrial society” (161).  One of the ways in which ‘loyalty to the boss’ was attempted to be instilled in factory workers was through the destruction of ethnic ties and the encouragement of racial segregation within the factory, with the hope that loyalty would be transferred to the boss and the corporation itself rather than to fellow workers.  The idea that the corporation, by being in tune with the wants of its workers could generate the loyalty of its workers over innate ethnic loyalties was, ultimately, a naive and unrealized concept.  Although in principle welfare capitalism seemed feasible, in actuality welfare capitalism failed to achieve its goal of worker loyalty to the corporation and instead led to a greater degree of racial integration and acceptance. 

To achieve welfare capitalism, Cohen writes that “… welfare capitalists sought to restructure workers’ interpersonal relationships at the plant” (163).  Cohen explains how factories sought to isolate individuals of the same ethnicity in order to achieve loyalty to the corporation.  To demonstrate this concept, Cohen quotes the Superintendent of Mill Number 5 from Wisconsin Steel as saying “We try never to allow two of a nationality to work together if we can help it.  Nationalities tend to be clannish and naturally it interferes with the work and the morale of the place” (165).  Attempts at preventing ethnic loyalty could have been more successful had the corporations found better ways of keeping members of the same race apart and solidifying ethnic barriers.  Although corporations were somewhat successful at separating individuals of the same ethnicity within the workplace, employers did not count on the decrease in racial segregation among workers in the factories. 

Despite efforts to encourage loyalties to the corporation instead of to fellow factory workers, welfare capitalists were unsuccessful in attaining the total loyalty of their employees.  This was the result of the fact that the employers’ “… determination to mix ethnic groups in the factory broadened the new alliances… among workers” (202).  The very attempts by the welfare capitalists to separate the workers only acted to unite them against the corporation.  Cohen writes that “… the wage incentives that employers implemented to set workers apart as individuals instead laid new ground for workers to come together” (202).  In rejecting the corporation’s attempts to individualize the worker, the workers banded together to attain the ends best for the greatest amount of people, demonstrating, as Cohen writes, “… that they trusted their peer community with their personal futures more than their employer” (201).  Despite racial and ethnic differences, in the 1920s, loyalties to fellow workers overpowered any loyalties to the boss and the corporation.    

Perhaps welfare capitalists would have been successful in creating and maintaining racial boundaries as a way in which to eliminate ethnic loyalties and create loyalty to the corporation had the welfare capitalists followed through on their proposed reforms.  Cohen writes that “By promoting a new set of expectations and then failing to fulfill them, employers frustrated their workers…  their failure to deliver widened the gap between workers and employers while narrowing the gap between individual workers on the shop floor” (209).  In failing to follow through on their promises for factory reform, welfare capitalists failed to earn the loyalty of their workers.  As a result, employers’ attempts to establish racial and ethnic boundaries to separate workers failed to be effective.  Rather, instead of racially and ethnically separating workers, employers brought different peoples together over their shared dissatisfaction with employer reforms.  Had the welfare capitalists worked to ensure that the factory reforms they proposed actually took place than employers would have been far more successful in ensuring the loyalty of factory workers to the corporation instead of to their fellow workers.