DEMONIZING UNIONS: RELIGIOUS RHETORIC IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN STRIKE NOVEL A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by David Michael Cosca August 2019 © David Michael Cosca DEMONIZING UNIONS: RELIGIOUS RHETORIC IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN STRIKE NOVEL David Michael Cosca, Ph. D. Cornell University 2019 Demonizing Unions uncovers the significance of a Biblical idiom in American novels portraying violent labor conflicts from the 1910s to the 1930s. I reveal the different ways that Upton Sinclair’s King Coal and The Coal War, Mary Heaton Vorse’s Strike!, and Ruth McKenney’s Industrial Valley employ a Biblical motif both to emphasize the God-like power of Capital over society, and to critique an emergent socio-political faith in business power. The texts I examine demonstrate how it was clear to industrialists in the early 20th century that physical violence was losing its efficacy. Therefore, much of the brunt of the physical conflict in labor struggles could be eased by waging a war of ideas to turn public opinion into an additional, ultimately more powerful, weapon against the potential of organized labor. I argue that in these texts, the besmearing of the discontented workers as violent dupes of “outside agitators,” rather than regular folks with economic grievances, takes on Biblical proportions. In turn, these authors utilize Biblical stories oriented around conceptions of power and hierarchy to illuminate the potential of ordinary humans to effect their own liberation. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH David Cosca grew up in Santa Maria, CA. He taught high school English for seven years before he and his lovely wife, Christina Loomis, moved to Ithaca, NY, where they produced and began raising Danny, a delightful, although sometimes berserk, son. iv Dedicated to the memory of Corey Williams, whose friendship shaped me, and continues to shape me, in countless ways. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank Eric Cheyfitz for his close guidance, persistent encouragement, and tireless assistance. Kevin Attell, George Hutchinson, and Dagmawi Woubshet have provided me with enormous generosity and support. Sarita Cannon’s friendship and conversation have for the last eight years helped me develop my ideas about my scholarship and contextualize the difficulties of academic labor at the graduate level. Without Mitch Breitwieser’s encouragement toward, then insistence that I undertake graduate study in English, I would never have even attempted the rewarding but often-maddening process. My parents, Daniel and Carmen Cosca, have given me not only their immeasurable love and care, but have for years taken great pains to express their belief that I am worth a damn, even (and especially) when I didn’t always feel the same way. My Aunt Cecilia Cosca and Uncle Bruce Kaduk have been a wellspring of emotional and intellectual support. Finally, I thank my amazing wife, Christina Loomis, not only for helping me with my work, but also for being my citadel as I have gone through the long process of graduate study. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Confounding Solidarity in the Colorado Coalfields 16 Chapter 2: An Unclean Spirit in Gastonia 59 Chapter 3: Mutualism as Miracle in Akron 103 Conclusion 150 vii Introduction My dissertation examines the assault of American corporatized power upon the lives of American workers in texts portraying militant struggles between Labor and Capital in the early 20th century: Upton Sinclair’s duology, King Coal and The Coal War; Mary Heaton Vorse’s Strike!; and Ruth McKenney’s Industrial Valley. Originally, I argue that each of these texts employs a Biblical idiom / motif designed a) to emphasize the God-like power and influence of Capital over individuals and institutions (particularly in the realm of public opinion). And, b) to critique the ways in which irrational social supplication to business power and irrational anti- labor sentiments took on a dimension of religious faith in American society. In contradistinction to Capital’s use of religion to mystify its power, I examine, particularly in my analysis of Strike! and Industrial Valley, Labor’s use of Christ’s social doctrine to oppose capitalist indoctrination. The novels I examine in this study are dedicated to reclaiming the moral influence and authority of Biblical texts. In these novels, the Bible becomes a contested site adjudicating the warring claims of Labor and Capital in America and is employed to elucidate the ruling class’s abandonment of ethical social values and the dedication of the powerful to Mammon-worship. Each of these texts portrays, with varying levels of accuracy, strikes that occurred in real life – strikes that resulted in violent clashes between strikers and police and / or national guardsmen that made national news. The strikes portrayed take place in locales with different conditions for workers, both on the job and in their going on strike: the Colorado coal fields; the textile mills in Gaston County, North Carolina; and the rubber plants of Akron, Ohio and other nearby cities. Additionally, the strikes respectively take place in different time periods, each period having different general public attitudes in American society. In the Progressive Era 1913-1914 portrayed in King Coal and The Coal War, the bourgeois American public was 1 generally business-friendly, but had some reservations about what seemed to be the swift and potentially overwhelming growth of business power in American society. In the pre-Crash 1929 portrayed in Strike!, the general (if not uniform) prosperity of Americans had elevated business power in the imagination of the bourgeois American public to quasi-messianic heights. And, in the post-Crash mid-1930s portrayed in Industrial Valley, the bourgeois American public was beginning to question the faith that the general prosperity of the 1920s had given them in the potential power that businesses were amassing in the early part of the century. (So were the suffering, impoverished working-poor and unemployed whose opinions were beginning to be given serious consideration by those with real economic power, due to the potential threat they posed, if they were to combine their numbers.) And yet, despite these differences of location, time, and conditions, we find in these texts a very similar – nearly ritualistic – pattern. We find the spontaneous rebellion of workers against appalling conditions, which is immediately identified by owners as the result of “outside agitators,” or some other familiar concoction designed to induce fear and hatred. Despite the rebellion’s clear spontaneity, the bourgeois public is more easily able to assign blame for the conflict between Capital and Labor upon an alien source due to the fact that, after the rebellion has occurred, labor organizers arrive to give much-needed assistance. (Because the very notion of labor organization has long been associated with an alien “Other” in the public mind, in conjunction with Capital’s control over doctrinal systems, bourgeois public opinion easily digests a narrative that scapegoats Labor for disrupting society’s harmonious relations.) This rebellion is followed by violence and coercion at the owners’ behest, conjoined with a propaganda campaign designed to discredit and demonize the combined efforts of the strikers. It is a familiar pattern in the history of American labor struggles. At the turn of the 20th 2 century, when the rise of corporate economic strength began slowly and steadily to establish a stranglehold upon American culture, society, and many of its core institutions, the agents of corporate capitalism conspired to wage war against organized labor, using ruthless and sometimes deadly measures. The agents of corporate power used violence to decrease the ability of workers to manage their own lives and demoralize the collective strength of labor. Additionally, they used espionage and agent provocateur-ism to infiltrate its base in order to confuse and disrupt the cultures of collective solidarity that were established through struggle or that spontaneously erupted as a response to degrading conditions. In a society that has long prided itself on democratic ideals – no matter how restricted the potential for the expression of democracy in actuality – there are limits to the efficacy of force and violence. The texts I will be examining portray the ways that it was becoming clear to industrialists in the first two decades of the 20th century that much of the brunt of the physical conflict, in terms of dealing with strikes and pickets through truncheon-wielding cops, rifle- wielding National Guardsmen, along with privately-employed detectives, provocateurs, and spies, could be eased by waging a war of ideas. Brute violence, therefore, was only one front that the labor movement had to face: American workers also faced a doctrinal front in the form of intense propaganda campaigns. Utilizing their increasing control and domination over systems of indoctrination, those in positions of centralized American economic power sought to manipulate the public to accept a way of life that was created in part to foster division and atomization. Capital also widely disseminated the message that American society was under the ever-present attack by an alien Other appearing in various forms – “communists,” “anarchists, “Bolshevists,” “reds,” and so forth. The doctrinal front could thus turn “public opinion”