Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University History Dissertations Department of History 3-19-2010 Removing Reds from the Old Red Scar: Maintaining and Industrial Peace in the East Tennessee Copper Basin from the Great War through the Second World War William Ronald Simson Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Simson, William Ronald, "Removing Reds from the Old Red Scar: Maintaining and Industrial Peace in the East Tennessee Copper Basin from the Great War through the Second World War." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2010. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss/17 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. REMOVING REDS FROM THE OLD RED SCAR: MAINTAINING AN INDUSTRIAL PEACE IN THE EAST TENNESSEE COPPER BASIN, FROM THE GREAT WAR THROUGH THE SECOND WORLD WAR by WILLIAM R. SIMSON ABSTRACT This study considers industrial society and development in the East Tennessee Copper Basin from the 1890s through World War II; its main focus will be on the primary industrial concern, Tennessee Copper Company (TCC 1899), owned by the Lewisohn Group, New York. The study differs from other Appalachian scholarship in its assessment of New South industries generally overlooked. Wars and increased reliance on organic chemicals tied the basin to defense needs and agricultural advance. Locals understood the basin held expanding economic opportunities superior to those in the surrounding mountains and saw themselves as participants in the nation’s industrial and economic progress, and a vital part of its defense. The study upends earlier scholarship contending local industrial concerns acted proactively to challenges from farmers harmed by industrial pollution; investigation shows firms hesitated to initiate new production processes and manipulated local elections. Partisan developments woven amid all this underscore errors in assuming ancient regional affinity for Republicans. Confederate heritage gave Democrats an historic advantage that fractured before New Deal progressivism and expanding basin Republican power. Markets forced basin firms to merge and embrace technological change affecting working people’s relationships, forcing workers to improve skills or settle for low-skill jobs. Excepting TCC managers and supervisory staff, provincialism ruled; suspicions and competitiveness among workers grew as most miners lived a few scattered villages and most managers and craftsmen settled in the basin’s “Twin-cities” district. Early union efforts collapsed before union mismanagement, rational management and a company union based upon Sam Lewisohn’s ideals. Management managed to wrest control of its industrial relations despite the effects of Depression and the New Deal’s empowerment of workers. Workers’ infighting, reflecting neighborhood demographics and ideological differences, benefitted TCC; it convinced locals TCC could best protect industrial peace. The submissive AFL union installed fit of ownership’s nationally recognized program for industrial relations reliant on federal power. After competition crippled local industry, locals continued their reliance on government: to investigate the medical consequences of extraction work and coordinate environmental restoration. Recent regional anti-government populism makes the basin’s peculiar historic reliance on federal help engaging. Index words: Tennessee Copper Company, Tennessee Company, Tennessee Copper and Chemical, Tennessee Corporation, Adolph Lewisohn, Sam. A. Lewisohn, Lewisohn Group, J.N. Houser, T.A. Mitchell, Lamar Weaver, Robert E. Barclay, Mitchell C. Anderson, Broughton Biggs, Polk County, Tennessee, Fannin County, Tennessee, Ducktown Sulphur, Copper, and Iron, Ducktown Chemical and Iron, Ducktown, Tennessee, Isabella, Tennessee, Copperhill, Tennessee, Smelter Hill, McCaysville, Georgia, Non-ferrous industry, Tennessee, oleum, “Loma” Brand plant food, “Loma Dust” pesticide, International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, American Federation of Labor, Tennessee, Strike parades REMOVING REDS FROM THE OLD RED SCAR: MAINTAINING AN INDUSTRIAL PEACE IN THE EAST TENNESSEE COPPER BASIN, FROM THE GREAT WAR THROUGH THE SECOND WORLD WAR by WILLIAM R. SIMSON A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy In the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2010 Copyright by William R. Simson 2010 REMOVING REDS FROM THE OLD RED SCAR: MAINTAINING AN INDUSTRIAL PEACE IN THE EAST TENNESSEE COPPER BASIN, FROM THE GREAT WAR THROUGH THE SECOND WORLD WAR by William R. Simson Committee Chair: Michelle Brattain Committee: Krystyn Moon Charles G. Steffen Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2010 iv DEDICATION To my Family, -whose experiences in the mill towns of Western Pennsylvania shaped my understanding of the world, helped to ground my values, gave me an appreciation of the environment, instilled in me a fascination with industrialization and life in industrial towns, encouraged me to do well in school, and have supported my aims as long as I can remember. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Professors Michelle Brattain, Charles G. Steffen, and Krystyn Moon The Director of the Ducktown Basin Museum, Ken Rush and his Staff, Ducktown, Tennessee The Staff of the Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee The Library Staff of Georgia Perimeter College, Dunwoody Campus, Dunwoody, Georgia Special thanks goes to: Professor J. B. Key, Emeritus, Oglethorpe University--mentor Michael David McKinney—my supportive and patient partner Countless friends, associates, and colleagues whose counsel gave refuge and who bid me to persevere. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………………….v Introduction………………….……………………………………………………..…..……..….1 Chapter 1 Tri-State Industry: The Copper Basin’s Land, People, and Economy………………44 1890s through World War I Chapter 2 Living in the Copper Basin: Politics, class, and culture 1910s-1940s……….….…102 Chapter 3 New Deals come to the Copper Basin……………………………………………….….175 Chapter 4 Conflagration and the CIO Strike of 1939-40…………………………………….…...241 Chapter 5 War and Redemption: Taming labor and tending to the Old Red Scar……………297 References and Bibliography.………………………………………………………………….355 vii LIST OF TABLES Table A: Wage calculations for TCC employees……………………………………..…………93 Table B: Copper Basin job-types 1920 and 1930 from U.S. Census reports………………….129 1 Introduction This dissertation is about the social and labor history of the East Tennessee Copper Basin. As such, it will also address the industrialization of the region and the accompanying political and environmental consequences. Its main purpose is to expand our understanding of Southern mountain and industrial history by focusing on the great changes affected on the people and industry of eastern Polk County, Tennessee, from the 1910s thru the middle 1940s. Located in the southeastern most corner of the state—within a larger region known as the Tri-state, that includes North Georgia and Western North Carolina—the Copper Basin is unique not only as a mineral rich geographical region in the Southern Appalachians, but because capitalist extraction industries established there differed from the lumber, coal, and textile industries usually associated with Southern mountain industrialization.1 Furthermore, owing to industrial emissions trapped by the surrounding hills that rise to nearly 2000 feet, and the heavy rains typical of the Southern Mountains, a vast deforestation and erosion ensued that denuded some 55,000 acres of the Copper Basin by 1900. The phalanx of capitalist and natural forces removed not only forest cover, but also washed away some four feet of topsoil leaving a raw, red clay landscape that prevented any natural repair of the hills. Even two generations after state-sponsored law suits forced local companies to change their production techniques, further erosion and regular, if accidental emissions prevented healing and the raw red hills remained. The area became a renowned example of all that unregulated capitalism could work upon the Earth. It was said the Copper Basin’s wound in Appalachia could be seen from low orbit, the scarring being so 1 The general narrative supplied in this proposal is a summary from several different kinds of history on the region; some of the best of which thus far include, a local survey, published by the author’s family, Robert Edward Barclay, The Copper Basin, 1890-1963 (Knoxville, Tennessee: Cole Printing and Thesis Company, 1975); see the introduction to East Tennessee industrial development in Betty J. Duggan, From Furs to Factories: Exploring the Industrial Revolution in the Tennessee Overhill (Etowah, Tennessee: Tennessee Overhill Heritage Association, 1998). Other useful sources include United States Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper 139, Geology and Ore Deposits of the Ducktown Mining District, Tennessee, by W.H. Emmons and F.B. Laney with the active collaboration of Arthur Keith (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1926). 2 provocative that it gave