Politics in the New Deal Era incorporated many different segments of what would become essential parts of the emergent “middle class” population. But labor’s “deal” with the Roosevelt-lead Democratic Party was not inclusive of all working classes. Racial differences complicated and truncated the effort to build a solid working-class political force. Like many other American institutions racism has been a divisive force with the “House of Labor.”
Michael Goldfield questions the idea of a “Golden Age” of industrial unionism, while Stephen Amberg writes of a “CIO political strategy” that created a “high-road economy” in the postwar era. Are they both correct or does one tell a more convincing story?