The writing of history is the analytical process of converting records into a story that illuminates the past. The historian does not recreate the past, but only a version of the past that is as good as the sources from which that history is drawn. This essay is a commentary on the primary sources used to create this history of Milwaukee’s labor movement during World War II. It is a reflection on the value of different kinds of sources and the ways in which information flows together to inform the historian’s analysis and to shape history itself.
I relied on the records of labor unions, business organizations, civic groups, community leaders, local governments, and federal agencies. These manuscript collections and records series provided many details essential to understanding the nature of industrial conflict and the relationship between that conflict and living on the home front during America’s most important war. Government publications provided statistical data necessary for comparing Milwaukee to other cities and for understanding events within Milwaukee during the war years. As essential as all of these sources were, newspapers provided the basic fabric without which this study would have been isolated events without context.
Milwaukee’s newspapers, flawed as they are with reporting errors and editorial bias, provide the foundation for understanding daily events. The strength of newspapers as a source of information lies less in their factual accuracy or their depth than in their breadth of coverage. As one turns the pages, life unfolds. The reader is immersed in stories of major events of the day—military strategy, battlefield victories and losses, political campaigns and conflicts, American industrial and military power, manpower shortages and migration to industrial production centers, industrial conflict and work stoppages. Newspapers also document the many small ways in which individuals and families participated in the war effort and sacrificed in the name of a national cause—grief of personal loss, rationing and hoarding, prices for groceries, new factory construction, civil defense, war bond and scrap drives, mothers caring for families, and mothers working. We see the surge of patriotic fervor that brought an angry nation to its feet after Pearl Harbor, and the more subtle, enduring patriotism that fueled the long fight for victory over true, malevolent, malignant evil.
Four newspapers were essential for this book: the Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee’s most respected daily; the Milwaukee Sentinel, a Hearst newspaper; the A.F. of L. Milwaukee Labor Press, principal organ of the Milwaukee Federated Trades Council; and the CIO News—Wisconsin Edition (later the CIO News—Local 248 Edition), mouthpiece for the Milwaukee Industrial Union Council and UAW Local 248, Milwaukee’s most significant union. By their nature, newspapers not only report the news but shape public opinion through what is reported and how it is represented. Although we are seldom able to judge the true impact of this reporting and opinion shaping on the readers of newspapers, a thorough reading provides the historian not only with factual information but with a clear picture of what the residents of Milwaukee read on a daily basis.
Newspapers provide details on the causes and outcomes of many labor disputes and, for many events, may be the only record in existence. For example, the most comprehensive record of strikes and worker discontent among Milwaukee’s government employees appears in the pages of the city’s newspapers.
The Milwaukee Journal provides the most thorough coverage of city life. Reporters generally worked to a high professional standard; factually accurate when information can be checked against other sources. For example, the Journal regularly reported summary information drawn from United States Employment Service, Labor Market Development Reports. When compared with these reports, the news stories are not as complete as the official records, but the newspaper accounts are invariably accurate. Indicative of the free flow of information in American society, the National Archives’ copies of the USES Market Development Reports were stamped “confidential,” but clearly were not treated as such in the nation’s hinterland. Although its reporting was generally accurate, the Journal clearly conveyed an editorial bias that was staunchly pro-business and anti-labor, while remaining politically liberal on most domestic issues. The Journal editorialized against most issues important to organized labor, especially related to economic conditions and maintenance of union rights.
The Milwaukee Journal also published a “Business Pulse” column in the Sunday paper approximately once a month. These articles provide an easy mechanism through which one can track local employment, payrolls, department store sales, credit reports, construction activity, and bank debits. These newspaper accounts often add details to information available in government statistical reports.
I relied on the Milwaukee Sentinel to supplement coverage provided by the Journal. The Sentinel belonged to William Randolph Hearst. Sentinel reporting was seldom as thorough as that provided by the Journal, and often carried a sensational undertone. As with all Hearst papers, it was rabidly opposed to the administration of Franklin Roosevelt and to “fuzzy headed” academics and new dealers in general. One could count on editorialists such as Westbrook Pegler to inveigh against all things Roosevelt, New Deal, or labor oriented. The attack on Pearl Harbor gave legitimacy to Hearst’s warnings about the “yellow peril.” The Hearst organization was openly self-promotional and prone to organizing campaigns that produced “news” reported in the paper. For example, the search for “Miss Victory” cited in chapter 5 was an event created by the Hearst organization and reported in its newspapers.
The A.F. of L. Milwaukee Labor Press and the CIO News are the most important sources of labor reporting and opinion available to a Milwaukee researcher. These weekly newspapers conveyed a regular stream of information about significant events into the city’s labor households. The labor papers explained rationing and price controls, recruited civil defense workers, and reported on union participation in every aspect of the home front. In many cases, stories in the Labor Press and CIO News contain the only news about the way in which average people, through their unions, participated in the war effort, and about many small conflicts inevitable in labor-management relations. More importantly, these newspapers gave voice to organized labor’s view of events. While the Milwaukee Journal stated a mainstream view of labor’s record on wages, price controls, work stoppages and postwar reconversion, the labor press provided workers with a counterpoint. For example, numerous articles regularly analyzed the disparity between price and wage controls. As labor’s representatives on the Presidential Committee on the Cost of Living, George Meany (AFL Secretary-Treasurer) and R. J. Thomas (President of the CIO Auto Workers) issued a report highly critical of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Cost of Living Index and government attempts to control wages. Both labor papers ran extensive articles highlighting the findings and implications of the report. This level of information from a labor perspective was unavailable in the Journal or Sentinel. As the war ended, the Milwaukee Journal focused on corporate conversion to peacetime production while the Labor Press and CIO News took up the issue of protecting economic security for workers during the period of postwar reconversion. Just as the mainstream press reflected the community as a whole through the eyes of managing editors, the labor press reflected events important to the union community with a particular emphasis on labor’s perspectives. In addition, the CIO News was a major source of information about the ongoing struggle between UAW Local 248 and management at Allis-Chalmers.
Newspapers provide a rich record for the social historian because of their breadth. Government records and publications provide a rich record because of the depth, focus, and accuracy of information accumulated as agencies and offices went about fulfilling their duties. Not only do these sources provide a window into specific events, but also allow us to make generalizations about events and attitudes based on patterns derived from these sources. Any broad study of home front life must ultimately turn to government statistical reports for data on prices, cost of living, strikes and lockouts, manpower shortages, and corporate assets. Newspapers provide stories, causes, and explanations; statistics allow the researcher to place the anecdotal information drawn from newspapers into a more analytical context.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer’s Prices in the United States, 1942–1948 provides excellent information on changes in consumer prices over time, a significant component of any cost of living analysis. Similarly, the Wisconsin Industrial Commission Statistical Releases document wage information for Wisconsin workers. The availability of this data also allowed for comparison of federal, state, and labor survey data and of organized labor’s claims regarding the decline of buying power during the war.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s Survey of American Listed Corporations: Data on Profits and Operations provided invaluable information about the operations, profits, assets, and postwar reconversion reserves for many of Milwaukee’s biggest corporations. Without this information, it would have been impossible to assess the financial impact of the war on corporations in Milwaukee and the ways in which those corporations prepared financially for the end of the war. By comparing corporate profits and operations with consumer price, cost of living, and wage data, I was able to place concerns regarding economic security expressed by organized labor and business alike into comparative context.
The unpublished United State Employment Service’s “Labor Market Development Reports” provide detailed reporting and analysis of the manpower needs in the Milwaukee area throughout the war. As mentioned earlier, the trends noted by USES analysts are reflected directly in news stories, especially in the Milwaukee Journal. The combination of USES “Labor Market Reports” and newspaper stories (which often contain information drawn from interviews with corporate, union, federal, or city officials) provides the researcher with statistical and anecdotal data necessary to create a historical assessment of employment conditions and their impact on home front life.
Wartime Record of Strikes and Lock-Outs written by Rosa Lee Swafford for Congress provides excellent comparative information on the level of strikes and lock-outs in Milwaukee and other major industrial cities. Swafford’s data are essential for placing strike activity and the losses resulting from this activity into the context of total industrial production. Likewise, these data are essential for placing Milwaukee into context with other major industrial centers.
If government publications provide context and allow for generalization, government records provide stories that bring statistics to life and give them meaning. Strikes, by their nature, are public events. In wartime, they take on added visibility as a breach in national unity. They are reported in the press, they are recorded in statistical summaries, and they are adjudicated by the National War Labor Board. War Labor Board case files and reports, particularly the board’s Termination Report, provide excellent information on significant strikes and industrial conflicts requiring the board’s action. In addition, the Termination Report documents the board’s policies, procedures, orders, opinions, and its defense of wage controls.
Labor unions and workers reduced the number and shortened the duration of open conflicts through their commitment to the no-strike pledge, to the patriotic pursuit of wartime production, and to victory. Because I am concerned not only with the relatively small number of conflicts that became strikes, but also with the far greater number of disputes that never burst into open view, the dispute case files of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service were essential for this study. Indeed, my heavy use of these records distinguishes this work from other studies of wartime industrial conflict. The Conciliation Service closed case files contain detailed notes by conciliators assigned to work with companies and unions to facilitate the resolution of conflicts and thereby avoid strikes or the need for War Labor Board involvement. These files often track disputes from their beginning through numerous negotiations and clearly document the issues important to the parties involved. The conciliation case files are perhaps the richest source of information on individual industrial conflicts available anywhere. No other source provides the combination of breadth and detail.
The detailed notes of federal conciliators are invaluable when trying to assess the nature of wartime industrial conflict. In specific cases, other records augment the Conciliation Service Case Files or provide details of behind the scenes negotiating. Records of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Board, another agency working to adjudicate and mediate industrial disputes, were essential to understanding the slowdown at Ampco Metal, Inc. and the jurisdictional dispute at Hummel and Downing. The files of Federal Labor Unions, contained within the records of the AFL, contributed to assessment of the long-running dispute between Fabricated Metal Workers Local 19340 and Geuder, Paeschke and Frey, to which records of the Wisconsin Industrial Commission also contributed. Records of the International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers and of International Longshoremen’s Association Local 815 helped define the jurisdictional dispute issues these unions faced in Milwaukee during the war. Records of the Milwaukee County Industrial Union Council also augment Conciliation Service information on the struggle between the Greenebaum Tanning Company and the Fur and Leather Workers Union.
What the Conciliation Service case files contribute to the study of industrial conflict, the “Women in Unions in a Mid-West War Industry Area” study conducted by the Women’s Bureau offers to our understanding of the relationship between working women, their unions, and male union leaders. The Women’s Bureau survey project gathered data that make it possible to generalize about the relationships between women workers, male workers, and their unions. Because Women’s Bureau staff talked with female and male union leaders representing large and small AFL and CIO unions, the resulting survey data are essential for understanding the ways in which men and women viewed their participation in the industrial workforce and in their labor unions. In addition, these data allow researchers to generalize about the perceptions of men and women alike, as well as women’s satisfaction levels regarding their roles and representation by their unions.
Newspapers provide broad context and information about specific events. Government records and publications support generalizations about wartime patterns. The records of organizations provide detailed perspectives on narrow events and on issues of interest to the organizations and their members. The papers of individuals play a relatively small part in this study. Although they reflect a well focused view of specific events, it is that very focus that limits the usefulness of individual’s records in this project.
Understanding conditions on the home front in Milwaukee requires weaving together information from newspapers, government statistics, and manuscript collections. Records of the United Community Services of Greater Milwaukee are the best single source for information on social conditions on the home front. When combined with accounts in the Milwaukee Journal and with records from Anthony King, Mayor Carl F. Zeidler, and Mayor John L. Bohn, records of the United Community Services provide excellent analytical information on housing conditions in the city. The governmental and social work perspectives reflected in these records were augmented by the work of Journal reporters who did an excellent job of investigating housing conditions and developing the human side of the story. Similarly, articles in the Milwaukee Journal and records from the John L. Bohn, City Club of Milwaukee, and the Milwaukee County Council for Civilian Defense collections all provided information essential to understanding wartime transportation problems. The Council for Civilian Defense records document fears of German air attack and actions taken to help protect the city from such an eventuality. Defense council records also contributed substantial information to the discussion of women working in war jobs and problems associated with child care for working mothers.
Records from United Community Services provide the best source for assessing Milwaukee’s child care needs, social worker attitudes about appropriate care, and the attitudes of working mothers themselves. Mary Kiely’s reports offer a clear analysis of the problems working women faced in caring for children and attempts to ameliorate those problems. With unvarnished candor, she assessed the local situation and, despite her professional judgement favoring organized childcare, concluded that Milwaukee women workers were finding non-institutional ways of caring for their children.
The records of the United Community Services also offer a unique window into the minds of business leaders who played critical roles in the organization. Without the Community Services records researchers would have no access to the exchange over labor participation in war-relief/community-war chest activities and the tensions this created within the business community. The records also provide far greater detail than records of labor organizations themselves regarding union participation in War Chest campaigns. Two small collections of materials related to Harold Story (vice president for industrial relations at Allis-Chalmers), also contributed to this rare view of the businessman’s perspective.
When combined with accounts in the A.F. of L. Milwaukee Labor Press, records of the American Federation of Labor are particularly useful in documenting the official position of the federation, as well as the views of some of its most prominent leaders on issues such as support of the war effort, protecting worker buying power, and planning for the postwar era. The records provide detailed information on the federation’s development and implementation of the no-strike pledge. Similarly, the AFL records document labor’s view of the Little Steel formula and the struggle over how to best protect worker buying power against the ravages of inflation. These files are augmented by the pamphlet “Cost of Living” (authored by George Meany and R. J. Thomas), the most succinct and widely available joint AFL/CIO statement on the weaknesses of the Bureau of Labor Standards Consumers’ Price Index. As the employment of women in war industries became increasingly essential to production, the records also reflect the fact that women within the AFL leadership began voicing concern for protecting the rights of these workers after the war. Records from the offices of the AFL economist and research director document concerns about reconversion in general as well as the role of women workers in the postwar era.
Milwaukee boasted a strong Federated Trades Council (AFL) and Industrial Union Council (CIO). Although the records of the Federated Trades Council of Milwaukee were of only modest usefulness for this study, the records of the Milwaukee County Industrial Union Council (IUC) provide particularly valuable information about labor’s commitment to the war effort, participation in civil defense activities, debates over housing and meat shortages, and policies of the Office of Price Administration. Milwaukee IUC records demonstrate the active participation of labor leaders in home front affairs, their views regarding solutions to such social problems as housing shortages, and their incredulity that such shortages could be solved by the real estate industry without government involvement or assistance. The CIO News reflects these points of view as well, colored by editorial perspective. As with most manuscript collections, records of the IUC reflect views of events uncolored by interpretations prepared for public consumption. Similarly, two small collections of Harold Story papers document the personal views of an influential business leader, as related to labor management relations in general, and the conflict between Allis-Chalmers and UAW Local 248 specifically.
The AFL combined industrial style unions for production workers with craft unions for skilled workers in the same factories. As a consequence, records of a union such as Local 311 of the International Union of Operating Engineers illuminate disputes at the Milwaukee Ordnance Plant and the Nash Motors Parts Plant. Similarly, the records of Local 311 shed light on conditions or issues seemingly unrelated to that union, as was the case when an official from the Operating Engineers commented on a work stoppage by A. O. Smith employees who were members of an AFL Federal Labor Union called the Smith Steelworkers. Local 311 represented the operating engineers at A. O. Smith. That insight is available nowhere else.
The records of Laundry and Dry Cleaning Drivers Local 360 (Teamsters) and of International Longshoremen’s Association Local 815 document several different wartime disputes beyond conventional industrial settings. Records of Local 360 amply demonstrate that workers outside the conventional factory (such as teamsters) struggled under the same government wage constraints as did their brothers and sisters working at industrial concerns. The Longshoremen’s records document an internal union dispute that never surfaced in public and for which the union’s records may well be the only source.
The records of the Women’s Bureau survey of Midwestern labor unions supplied information essential to generalizing about the relationships between women workers and their unions. The records of the International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers, on the other hand, allowed me to delve in depth into the relationship between one woman, Valaria Brodzinski, and her union. The detailed correspondence between Brodzinski, the international union vice president to whom she reported, and the international’s president allows us to witness the way in which a talented organizer viewed herself and the male dominated world in which she operated. These records also provide a unique window into the thoughts of men around her and their evaluation of her work in light of her gender. Although much more limited, the records of the Wisconsin State Council of Machinists also provided a male perspective on the likely role of women in postwar industry.
As a form of social history documentation, oral histories help place a human face on events. This is true of the Wisconsin Women in World War II project run by the Wisconsin Historical Society in 1992–1993. As the Historical Society contemplated publishing a volume on the role of women in World War II, researchers realized that conventional written sources were insufficient for the project. In comparison to men who served in the armed forces, relatively few women’s letters have survived. Transcriptions of interviews conducted with women who worked in Milwaukee factories provided valuable personal insights into factory work, gender roles, rationing, child care, and general home front conditions. These insights added to the richness of this story.
This study has been an exercise in understanding the home front, labor’s role, and industrial conflict during World War II by focusing on Milwaukee, Wisconsin. To write this social and labor history has required bringing together the diverse resources of newspapers, government publications, government records, and manuscript collections. To all of the archivists and librarians who have collected, processed, and cataloged the primary sources needed for my work, many of whom are employed by the Wisconsin Historical Society, I owe a great debt. In the end, those who preserve the records of the past make it possible for us to write history.