2020 Book of the Year - International Labor History Association
Honorable Mention
- Philip Taft Labor History Prize
This
rich history details the bitter, deep-rooted conflict between
industrial behemoth International Harvester and the uniquely radical
Farm Equipment Workers union. The Long Deep Grudge makes clear
that class warfare has been, and remains, integral to the American
experience, providing up-close-and-personal and long-view
perspectives from both sides of the battle lines.
International
Harvester - and the McCormick family that largely controlled it -
garnered a reputation for bare-knuckled union-busting in the 1880s,
but in the 20th century also pioneered sophisticated union-avoidance
techniques that have since become standard corporate practice. On the
other side the militant Farm Equipment Workers union, connected to
the Communist Party, mounted a vociferous challenge to the
cooperative ethos that came to define the American labor movement
after World War II.
This
evocative account, stretching back to the nineteenth century and
carried through to the present, reads like a novel. Biographical
sketches of McCormick family members, union officials and
rank-and-file workers are woven into the narrative, along with
anarchists, jazz musicians, Wall Street financiers, civil rights
crusaders, and mob lawyers. It touches on pivotal moments and
movements as wide-ranging as the Haymarket riot, the Flint sit-down
strikes, the Memorial Day Massacre, the McCarthy-era anti-communist
purges, and America's late 20th-century industrial decline.
Both
Harvester and the FE are now gone, but this largely forgotten clash
helps explain the crisis of yawning inequality now facing US workers,
and provides alternative models from the past that can instruct and
inspire those engaged in radical, working class struggles today.