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Access Type
Open Access
Document Type
thesis
Degree Program
History
Degree Type
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Year Degree Awarded
2011
Month Degree Awarded
September
Keywords
Organized labor, politics, Minnesota, New Deal
Abstract
The militancy that helped prompt federal labor reform and the electoral incorporation of industrial workers exposed serious political fault lines within the so-called New Deal coalition. In particular, militancy and factionalism in the labor movement compromised the early electoral victories of the ruling Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota and New Deal Democrats nationally. Yet the landslide victory of Republican candidates in 1938 in Minnesota, as well as across the industrial North, was not a repudiation of the New Deal or the labor movement. These Republicans refashioned their party platform to accommodate key parts of the New Deal, including recognizing the legitimacy of collective bargaining. Liberal Republicans harnessed popular support New Deal social policy, but unlike Democrats they were free to criticize the supposed “excesses” of the New Deal- namely a militant and politicized labor movement. Minneapolis provides one case study to reconsider the impact of labor militancy on the development of New Deal liberalism.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/2041389
First Advisor
Christian G. Appy