HarryTarg
Minnesota Digital Library
1934 was an apocryphal year for the modern labor movement. Uprisings occurred in San Francisco, Toledo, and Minneapolis. Workers wanted fair wages and just working conditions. They wanted the right to form unions. And when unions existed the rank and file wanted their unions to stand up for worker rights.
The Wagner Act was passed in 1935 giving workers the right to form unions and bargain collectively and more. The CIO, a confederation of industrial unions, was formed. And in 1936-37 auto workers launched a sit-down strike in Flint Michigan for union recognition. While history is replete with starting dates, 1934 was significant. And the events in Minneapolis were pivotal. That is what this excellent informative memoir is about.
Jon Hanson tells the reader the story of a workers uprising in Minneapolis, primarily trucker drivers, who built a union out of a small group of overworked and superexploited trucker drivers to a citywide general strike involving multiple unions and work forces, women’s auxiliaries, and citizens at large to bring the city to a halt. A general strike was met with police violence, including the killing of picketers by police, and the mobilization of the National Guard to “reestablish order.”
Minnesota Digital Library
Workers withstood the violence, repression, lukewarm support of the workers by a liberal Governor to achieve union recognition, bargaining and negotiations, and improved wages, benefits sand working conditions.
The story is told in vivid detail by Hanson’s father ( also named John) who played an instrumental role in organizing Local 574, serving on its strike committee and bringing to the struggles his own knowledge and sympathies for the predecessors from the Industrial Workers of the World.
As John’s father reminisces about the details of the struggle he emphasizes the importance of worker solidarity. And as suggested above, similar struggles were occurring around the country which had a lasting impact on federal legislation and a new militancy among broad sectors of the industrial working class.
The narrative begins with John’s father’s youth, growing up on a modest farm. All the children in the household had farm chores each day, from feeding the livestock to cleaning their living spaces, to preparing them for market, to working in the fields. The account vividly portrays farm life for a reader (like me) who had no experience with farm life.
Because of economic crisis, the family had to give up the farm and John’s father was forced to “ride the rails” to earn a living for the family doing odd jobs. Here again, for those with no such experiences (except for the lyrics to old folk tunes) the reader learns about the varieties of workers who were forced to be itinerate workers and how the experience shaped John’s father’s knowledge of the working class. This knowledge shaped his consciousness as he returned to work in Minneapolis as a truck driver. The pain and suffering of the working class and the IWW sensibility which was imprinted on his mind shaped his activism in Local 574.
After the rich personal biography, the bulk of the volume describes the 1934 general strike in Minneapolis, strike committee strategizing, city and state repression, bargaining and negotiations, sand the final settlement. The reader learns in detail of most of the dimensions of a labor/management dispute, including the organized efforts of the business class to crush the union drive.
The book ends with brief discussion of the impacts of the 1934 narrative, on the labor movement and labors’ struggles today (some gains and some losses).
Finally, in addition to this important narrative for labor scholars and activists, the author presents brief descriptions of his father’s reactions over twenty years later as he tells his story of 1934. It is clear that the general strike not only affected the labor movement in Minnesota, but it affected John’s father as well.
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