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Organized Labor and Radio Station WEVD During the 1930S

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Organized Labor and Radio Station WEVD During the 1930S LaborHistory, Vol. 42, No. 4, 2001 Strugglingover Politics and Culture:Organized Labor and Radio Station WEVD duringthe 1930s NATHANGODFRIED* By theearly years ofthe Great Depression,corporate-controlled national radio net- works,Hollywood-centered motion picture producers,and large-circulation daily news- papers appeared todominate the means of ideological andcultural productionin the U.S.1 Labor,progressive, andradical leaderscorrectly perceivedthe mass media asan integral part ofthe larger social andeconomic relations ofproduction. Echoing the insights ofKarl Marx, they warnedof how the nation’ s dominantpropertied classes wouldseek to control society’ s “governing ideasand motives” by manipulating the massmedia tojustify, among other things,“ great inequalities in wealth in thecom- munity.”2 EdwardNockels of the Chicago Federation ofLabor (CFL),for example, protestedthat networkradio reinforcedthe luster of consumption, the holiness of the marketplace, andthe infallibility ofbusiness. The Socialist Party contendedthat commercial radio programs wereas standardized as anything rolling outof a Ford factory. Nockelsdescribed such shows as bland entertainment“ whennot outright propaganda or delusivespecial pleading.”3 Suchcriticisms foreshadowedthe arguments of e´migre´ Europeanintellectuals who,by thelate 1930s, woulddenounce mass culture for its bourgeois “consumerism,intellectual vapidness,and political complacency,”and contendthat ruling groups usedit “tomanipulate, pacify, andcontrol” the general public.4 In recentdecades, historians have cometo comprehend popular cultureas a compli- catedarena ofsocial,political, andcultural conict. One component of this reconcep- tualization ofpopular culturehas beenan emphasis onthe active role that workersand working-classorganizations themselvesplayed in “consuming”and “ producing”cul- tural goods.Michael Denninghas gonethe furthest in arguing that thedecade of the *Iwould liketo thank LynneManion and the two anonymous readersfor LaborHistory fortheir helpful suggestions. 1Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, “Creatinga Favorable BusinessClimate: Corporations and Radio Broadcasting, 1934to 1954,”Business History Review ,73(1999), 221–255; Steven J. Ross, Working-class Hollywood: Silent Filmand the Shaping ofClass in America (Princeton,NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1998); Susan Smulyan, Selling Radio:The Commercialization ofAmerican Broadcasting, 1920–1934 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press,1994). 2Scott Nearing,“ TheControl ofPublic Opinion in the UnitedStates,” School andSociety , 15 (April 15,1922), 421– 422 (quotations); KarlMarx and FrederickEngels, “ Manifestoof the Communist Party,” in KarlMarx and Frederick Engels: Selected Works (NewYork: InternationalPublishers, 1977),54. 3New Leader,April 24,1926, 10 and Nov. 20,1926, 10; WCFLRadio Magazine ,1(spring 1928),17, 52(quotation); Federation News ,Mar.24, 1928, 1– 2. 4Susan J.Douglas, Listening In:Radio and the American Imagination, fromAmos “ n”Andy andEdward R.Murrow to WolfmanJack andHoward Stern (NewYork: TimesBooks, 1999),127 ( rst quotation); Ross, 265(second quotation). ISSN0023-656X print/ ISSN1469-9702 online/ 01/040347–23 Ó 2001Taylor & Francis Ltd onbehalfof The Tamiment Institute DOI: 10.1080/00236560120085093 348 N. Godfried 1930s witnesseda “laboring ofAmerican culture”in which working-classAmericans andtheir children helpedto advance the “ social democratization”of national culture andpolitics through their rolesas producers (i.e. laborers in cultureindustries) and consumersof mass culture. 5 Denning’s creative andmultifaceted work explores the laboring ofU.S. culture primarily, although notexclusively, through theoperation of thepopular cultureindustries themselves and the activities ofkey cultural andintellec- tual workers. Other historians have concentratedinstead on the efforts of radical groups,trade unions,or labor movementintellectuals tocreate their own media andcultural institu- tions.Studies of the development of labor educationprograms, alabor press,and workers’theater during the1930s, for example, have provided insights into the dialectical relationship among radical organizations, trade unions,the working class, andpopular culture. 6 For instance,the history ofradio stationWCFL, Chicago’ s “voice oflabor,” has revealed howChicago-area unionsand their leaderseffectively utilized thestation to engage in classwarfare onthepolitical, ideological, andcultural fronts.7 The following studyconcentrates on the collaboration betweenthe managers of NewYork radio stationWEVD andof cials oflocal trade unionsto produce labor programming during the1930s. WEVD’s story illuminates, among other things,the contradictionsand tensions encountered and generated by labor movementintellectu- als asthey simultaneously soughtto uplift workerspolitically andculturally while striving tosecure and enhance basic workers’rights andclass consciousness. 8 * * * * * * At aDecember1926 meeting,the Socialist Party’s National ExecutiveCommittee decidedto erect a broadcasting stationto honor the late EugeneV. Debs.The Debs Memorial Radio Fund’s Board ofTrustees—representing a spectrumof leftist groups— agreed tomake stationWEVD intoa “forum for liberal, progressive, labor andradical purposes,and not merely andsolely asa Socialist Party enterprise.”9 Financial contri- butionscame from garment tradesunions— especially theInternational Ladies’Gar- 5MichaelDenning, The Cultural Front: The Laboringof American Culture in the Twentieth Century (London: Verso,1998), xvi– xvii, passim. 6See,for example, LawrenceW. Levine,“ TheFolklore ofIndustrial Society: Popular Cultureand its Audiences,” American Historical Review ,97(1992), 1369–1399; Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, “Industrial Unionism and Labor MovementCulture in Depression-eraPhiladelphia,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History andBiography ,109(1985), 3–26; Colette A. Hyman, Staging Strikes: Workers’Theatre andthe American LaborMovement (Philadelphia, PA: TempleUniversity Press, 1997); Robbie Lieberman, “My Song is myWeapon”. People’s Songs, American Communism,and the Politics ofCulture, 1930–1950 (Urbana, IL:University of Illinois Press,1989). 7Nathan Godfried, WCFL:Chicago’ s Voice ofLabor, 1926– 78 (Urbana, IL:University of Illinois Press, 1997),Chapts. 3–6. 8Denning,73– 74; Elizabeth Faue, “Class and Cultural Citizenship,” LaborHistory ,39(1998), 312. Denning’s conceptof working-class intellectuals has much in common with Antonio Gramsci’s construct oforganic intellectuals. Antonio Gramsci, Selections fromthe Prison Notebooks ,editedby Quintin Hoare and GeoffreyNowell Smith (NewYork: InternationalPublishers, 1971),5– 14, 340. 9New Leader,Dec.25, 1926, 1– 2; Meetingof Trustees Radio Fund, March25, 1927 (quotation), Folder 4, Box215, Miscellaneous Documents, Recordsof Amalgamated Clothing Workersof America, 5619, Labor–Management Documentation Center,Martin P. Catherwood Library, CornellUniversity, Ithaca, NY. On WEVD’s originand earlyyears, see Nathan Godfried,“ Legitimizingthe MassMedia Structure: TheSocialists and AmericanBroadcasting, 1926–1932,” in Ronald C.Kent,Sara Markham, David R. Roediger,and HerbertShapiro, ed., Culture, Gender,Race andUS Labor History (Westport, CT: GreenwoodPress, 1993), 123– 149; Paul F.Gulliforand Brady Carlson, “Dening the Public Interest: Socialist Radio and the Caseof WEVD,” Journal ofRadio Studies ,4(1997), 203–217. Strugglingover Politics and Culture 349 mentWorkers’ Union (ILGWU)— local andstate branches of the party, andorganiza- tionslinked tothe socialists. The Debsfund bought aLongIsland stationin August 1927 andreceived a broadcast licenseshortly thereafter. 10 Facedwith severe nancial andlegal problems in 1930–1931, WEVD turnedto the Jewish DailyForward , the world’s largest Yiddishnewspaper and a long-time supporterof theSocialist Party and WEVD,for help. Ledby Baruch Charney Vladeck, the Forward’sgeneral manager, the newspaperassumed dominant nancial andmanagerial controlover stationoperations. With the Forward’sassistance,WEVD renewedits licenseand built newstudios and a transmitter. 11 While continuingas “ aghting, militant champion ofthe rights ofthe oppressed”and a defenderof uncensored“ minority opinion in America,”WEVD also promised toreport onworkers’ issues and to offer “ distinctly different”entertainment programs.12 WEVD facedproblems similar tothose of WCFL, the station owned and managed by theCFL. Dependent on voluntary contributionsand the resources of their parent bodies,both stationssuffered nancial crises,which wereexacerbated by theonset of theGreat Depression. Poor power,frequency, and time allotments—particularly trueof WEVD—undermined each station’ s ability tobuild an audience.These problems also ledto frequent legal battles with theFederal Radio Commission(FRC) and corporate radio stationsand networks, thus consuming both stations’limited resourcesand energy.13 Called onto defend their station’s right toexist in mid-1929, WEVD’s managers explained tofederal authorities that they representedthe only broadcast outletin theEast controlled by and“ devotedto working classand liberal causes.”Debs radio, insistedSocialist Party leader Norman Thomas, stood“ against thebig chain systemwhich ‘tendsto standardize— to make robotsand Babbitts ofthe American people.’ ”14 Stateand corporate radio ofcials, however,characterized theaudiences and sup- porters ofWEVD andWCFL as special interestgroups, rejecting their claims topublic serviceas in ated. FRC attorneys asserted that “all stationsshould cater tothe general public andserve public interestas
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