Music and Sound Design as Propaganda in Hell-Bent for Election

Though political television and film commercials may be thought of as a recent phenomenon, these have in fact existed for a number of years. Consider, for example, the animated two-reel film Hell-Bent for Election from 1944. Created by the left-leaning studio Industrial Film and Poster Service (later UPA) for the United Auto Workers union, the cartoon pushes for the re-election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt over Thomas Dewey. The film is a metaphor where the two candidates are represented by trains. Joe Worker represents the voter, who must let the “Win the War Special” (Roosevelt) through the station rather than the “Defeatist Limited,” despite the obstacles put in Joe’s way. As with many propagandistic and political messages, the symbolism is not subtle, and the cartoon certainly gets the message across. This chapter examines how Earl Robinson’s music, along with the lyrics of Yip Harburg, works with the other aspects of the film to accomplish the mission of getting out the vote. Robinson, a classically trained composer who is best known for his pro-labor songs, uses a variety of musical styles to convey the message in the animated film, from classical modernist to popular song quotation to agitprop mass song, each of which is designed to appeal to the primary audience: the working class and union members.

The Left and the Class Struggle

Both Toni Gilpin's The Long Deep Grudge and Michael Goldfield's The Southern Key offer ample evidence that the grand era of U.S. labor history scholarship is not yet past. The Long Deep Grudge is in equal parts labor history and family reminiscence as Gilpin seeks the fuller story of her father, who played a leadership role in the United Auto Workers union. The Southern Key is in many ways a study of a different variety, but very much of a similarly militant kind. Goldfield, a labor activist veteran himself, draws the big picture of what he sees as the central failure of the U.S. left: the failure to organize the South.

“Fix the Workplace, Not the Worker”: Labour Feminism and the Shifting Grounds of Equality in the US Workplace, 1960-91

The US Supreme Court decision in UAW v. Johnson Controls, a landmark case that eliminated employer policies that excluded women from jobs with significant reproductive risks, has been the focus of considerable debate. While challenging policies that decided what risks were acceptable for women of childbearing age, critics charged that the ruling weakened labour law protections for women in the USA and lowered standards for all workers. Yet, the case emerged at a time when workplace protections under the Occupational Health and Safety Administration were already failing due to deregulation and unions were running into growing employer hostility. This article argues that labour feminists in the United Auto Workers (UAW) hoped to simultaneously force employers to end sex discrimination and toxic exposures in the workplace. They only shifted to the narrower legal strategy that prevailed in Johnson Controls in the late 1970s and 1980s for pragmatic reasons. Using equal opportunity provisions of the Civil Rights Act was one way for union plaintiffs to ensure that employers were not using foetal protection policies as an end-run around a safer workplace for all workers. Yet, while women workers and unions originally sought to “fix the workplace, not the worker,” conservative opposition accepted women having fewer labour protections while endorsing a less protected and riskier workplace.

Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They Aren’t After You

Under orders from President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) tightened the regulatory screws on conservative broadcasters. The IRS launched the “Ideological Organizations Project” to challenge the tax-exempt status of conservative broadcasters and to stem the flow of donations. The FCC strengthened its “Fairness Doctrine” rules, which required radio stations to ensure politically balanced discussion of public policy and to give free response time to victims of personal attacks made on the air. The United Auto Workers financed the creation of an opposition research clearing house, Group Research Inc., that compiled dossiers of damaging information on conservative broadcasters and politicians. The White House also organized a front organization, the Citizens Committee for a Nuclear Test Ban, to gain free, pro-administration airtime from radio stations that aired conservative critiques of the proposed treaty.

Merging Traffic

This chapter surveys the institutions and movements that brought together the city’s musical life with the aim of merging disparate styles, trends, and personnel. First comes the auto industry, based on archival sources from Ford and General Motors that show how the companies deployed music for worker morale and company promotion. The complementary work of labor follows, through the United Auto Workers’ songs. Next comes the counterculture’s musical moment in the age of the folk revival and the artist collectives of the 1950s–1960s. Motown offers a special case of African American entrepreneurial merging of musical talent and style. The chapter closes with a look at the media—radio and newspapers—with their influential role in bringing audiences together, through music, in a city known for segregation, oppressive policing, and occasional outbursts of violence.

Autoworkers and Their Unions

Since the introduction of “Fordism” in the early 1910s, which emphasized technological improvements and maximizing productive efficiency, US autoworkers have struggled with repetitive, exhausting, often dangerous jobs. Yet beginning with Ford’s Five Dollar Day, introduced in 1914, auto jobs have also provided higher pay than most other wage work, attracting hundreds of thousands of people, especially to Detroit, Michigan, through the 1920s, and again from World War II until the mid-1950s. Successful unionization campaigns by the United Auto Workers (UAW) in the 1930s and early 1940s resulted in contracts that guaranteed particular wage increases, reduced the power of foremen, and created a process for resolving workplace conflicts. In the late 1940s and early 1950s UAW president Walter Reuther negotiated generous medical benefits and pensions for autoworkers. The volatility of the auto industry, however, often brought layoffs that undermined economic security. By the 1950s overproduction and automation contributed heavily to instability for autoworkers. The UAW officially supported racial and gender equality, but realities in auto plants and the makeup of union leadership often belied those principles. Beginning in the 1970s US autoworkers faced disruptions caused by high oil prices, foreign competition, and outsourcing to Mexico. Contract concessions at unionized plants began in the late 1970s and continued into the 2000s. By the end of the 20th century, many American autoworkers did not belong to the UAW because they were employed by foreign automakers, who built factories in the United States and successfully opposed unionization. For good reason, autoworkers who survived the industry’s turbulence and were able to retire with guaranteed pensions and medical care look back fondly on all that they gained from working in the industry under UAW contracts. Countless others left auto work permanently and often reluctantly in periodic massive layoffs and the continuous loss of jobs from automation.

Imagining Racial Equality

Local 65 United Warehouse Workers Union (1933–1987), which became District 65 United Auto Workers, promoted photography with a camera club, and a member-edited newspaper New Voices, featuring photographs taken by members. This left-led, New York City distributive industry union began in 1933 on the Lower East Side, and it became the city’s second largest local. The union utilized photography to normalize the role of African American members within the union and to advance a civil rights and anti-racism agenda. This article includes photographs taken by member-photographers, and photo-reproductions of New Voices. New Voices’ photographs included African Americans in the everyday life of the union, challenged race-based labor segmentation, supported community struggles, and defied racial norms in midcentury America.

Hubley, John (1914–1977) and Elliott, Faith (1924–2001)

Animator John Hubley, born in Marinette, Wisconsin, served as creative head of UPA (United Productions of America) in its early years and originated its most popular character, the near-sighted Mr. Magoo. He had previously worked on several Walt Disney animated features but left the studio during the 1941 strike. Hubley played a crucial role in UPA’s development. In 1944 he brought the fledgling company a United Auto Workers project promoting the re-election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which effectively turned it into an animation studio. He directed the first films that UPA made for Columbia Pictures, which demonstrated the young studio’s ability to make successful theatrical cartoons and so secured a long-term distribution contract with Columbia. Besides creating Mr. Magoo, Hubley earned the studio three Oscar nominations in its first four years of production. His crowning achievement at UPA was Rooty Toot Toot (1951), a modern retelling of the popular ballad "Frankie and Johnny." The film could serve as a compendium of design features characteristic of UPA cartoons: very simple backgrounds; angularly rendered characters; and an extremely idiosyncratic use of color, which includes unusual shading, unmotivated chromatic change, and spillover drawn outlines.

Disruption in Detroit

It is conventional wisdom that because of lucrative contracts negotiated by the United Auto Workers (UAW) under Walter Reuther's leadership, most autoworkers in the U.S. enjoyed steady work, increasing wages, and improved benefits in the postwar boom following World War II. In short, autoworkers entered the middle class. In contrast, this book argues that for Detroit autoworkers there was no postwar boom. Instead, the years from 1945 to 1960 were dominated by job instability and economic insecurity. This argument is based largely on oral history interviews and research in local newspapers, which covered the auto industry extensively. Conditions were worse for African Americans and white women, but almost all autoworkers experienced precarious, often dire circumstances. Recessions, automation, decentralization, and the collapse of independent automakers in Detroit are part of the story, but materials shortages, steel, coal, and copper strikes, parts supplier strikes, wildcat strikes, overproduction (especially in 1955), hot weather, cold weather, plant explosions, age, race, and gender workplace discrimination, and the inability of autoworkers to afford new cars contributed to instability and insecurity. Hardly anyone in the 1950s—whether ordinary autoworkers, union leaders, auto company executives, business analysts, or local shopkeepers—thought that the decade was marked by steady work, improving wages, or anything resembling predictable income for autoworkers.