Ohio History Journal

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DANIEL NELSON

DANIEL NELSON

 

The Great Goodyear Strike of 1936

 

 

It was the "first" CIO strike, a "stepping stone toward the automo-

bile industry," an affirmation of the potentialities of the sit-down

strike, a case study of rank and file militancy, and a "remarkable" ex-

ample of the effects of non-violent agitation.' Its beginnings were ob-

scure, its consequences uncertain. "The circumstances in which the

strike was carried on and the method used" rather than the imme-

diate causes or results made it a turning point in the labor history of

the 1930s.2 It was the great Goodyear strike, which paralyzed Akron

for more than a month in February and March, 1936.

Contemporary journalists and writers, all CIO partisans, first called

attention to the importance of the conflict. Edward Levinson and

Mary Heaton Vorse published brief histories of the strike in 1937;

Ruth McKenny followed in 1939, Alfred W. Jones in 1941, Rose Pe-

sotta and Harold S. Roberts in 1944.3 These works, building blocks

for more recent students of the turbulent years, help explain the often

insubstantial foundations of their studies.4 The Levinson and Vorse

 

 

 

 

Daniel Nelson is Professor of History at The University of Akron. He is indebted to

Bernard Sternsher, Warren Van Tine and Lorin Lee Cary for their critical reading of an

earlier draft of this essay.

 

1. John Brophy, A Miner's Life (Madison, 1964), 264; Edward Levinson, Labor On

the March (New York, 1956), 146; "Lewis Wins Akron Victory," Business Week (March

28, 1936), 20; P. W. Chappell to H. L. Kerwin, March 21, 1936; Federal Mediation and

Conciliation Service Records, National Archives RG 280, File 182/1010.

2. "The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. Strike," Monthly Labor Review, 42 (May,

1936), 288. The most recent and comprehensive assessment of the labor history of the

1930s is Bernard Sternsher, "Workers in the 1930's: Middle Range Questions and

Ethnocultures," Paper presented to the 1982 meeting of the Organization of American

Historians, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

3. Levinson, Labor On the March, 143-46; Mary Heaton Vorse, Labor's New Millions

(New York, 1938), 5-6; Ruth McKenny, Industrial Valley (New York, 1939), 277-370;

Alfred W. Jones, Life, Liberty and Property (Philadelphia, 1941), 101-07; Rose Pesotta,

Bread Upon the Waters (New York, 1944), 195-227; Harold S. Roberts, The Rubber

Workers (New York, 1944), 147-51.

4. Walter Galenson, The CIO Challenge to the AFL (Cambridge, 1960), Ch. 6; Irving

Bernstein, Turbulent Years (Boston, 1970), 592-97. James R. Green; The World of the

Worker (New York, 1980), 153.