LABOR AND THE POLITICAL-LEADERSHIP OF NEW-DEAL AMERICA

This essay examines the relationship between popular initiatives and g overnment decision-makers during the 1930s. The economic crisis and th e reawakening of labor militancy before 1935 elevated men and women, w ho had been formed by the workers' movement of the 1910s and 1920s, to prominent roles in the making of national industrial policies. Quite different was the reshaping of social insurance and work relief measur es. Although those policies represented a governmental response to the distress and protests of the working class, the workers themselves ha d little influence on their formulation or administration. Through ind ustrial struggles, the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) mob ilized a new cadre, trained by youthful encounters with urban ethnic l ife, expanding secondary schooling and subordination to modern corpora te management, in an unsuccessful quest for economic planning and univ ersal social insurance through the agency of a reformed Democratic Par ty.