Waiting For Lefty (1935)

Brian Pedaci was Harry Fatt

Life imitates art.

So now, after consuming several Federal Theater Project agit-prop "Living Newspapers" I finally turn to the grandfather of all labor agitation plays, Clifford Odet's Waiting for Lefty. Caught part of the Charenton Theater production, presented in a urine-scented alley as part of the Ingenuity Festival in 2005, but only the last few scenes.

Odet's play was first presented by the Group Theatre in March 1935. Harold Clurman famously described it as "the birth cry of the thirties." Framed by a Union Hall meeting, the play is a parade of brief vignettes, presenting numerous cases of injustice, or the Little Guy kept down by the Big Guy. Outrage is heaped upon outrage - marriages fall apart, relationships are abandoned, underlings are urged to spy on their co-workers, the well-connected are moved ahead, and there's even some examples of racism - against Jews, the only Black person in the play is a lowly errand boy referred to by the 'n-word' who is never actually seen.

Surprising to me is how this play, which pre-dates all the others I have so far read (not itself a Federal Theater Project production) provides the template for those which follows. I understand that Odets did not create this form of drama, the episodic panorama on a common theme, but I did not expect it to resemble a Living Newspaper so closely.

In addition, events presented in this play, produced in early 1935, set the stage for the real-life events of late 1935 and 1936 in during the Akron Rubber Strikes. Lefty begins with Harry Fatt, porcine, cigar-chomping union boss, telling his constituents to sit still, forget about going on strike, that the union was looking out for them and that everything was going to be fine. This is what the national union organizers kept telling the rubber workers of Akron.

Even more hilarious; every time someone in the crowd speaks up, to question Fatt's call for calm and order, and reassurances that Roosevelt would take care of everything, Fatt immediately roars that the interlocutor is a Communist, a dirty red, and demands they be thrown from the hall. This was the same technique used by the union bosses in Akron.

This is not to suggest that substance followed form, or that Odet's was some kind of awesome prognosticator. No, it provides me the education that these things were happening, this was the times. The only prophetic aspect of the production is the very end, when taxi driver Agate Keller takes the stage to speak, others rise to hold Fatt and his cronies at bay, and Keller stages a worker led call to STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!

And so it finally happened in Akron - almost a year later - that the rubber workers stopped waiting for Lefty, refused to wait another day, began the modern labor movement without a leader, and did it themselves.

See also: Waiting for Lefty (2011)

The Sit-Down Strike

Prior to arriving at the idea of a sit-down strike, laborers who wanted to go on strike risked violent retaliation, replacement workers taking their jobs, and their fate resting in the hands of the union leaders to settle the dispute. In the early 30s, the "sit-down" meant a small number of workers could stop working, where they were, halting production, making scab workers impractical, strikebreakers risk damaging expensive machinery, and they protesting proletariat even got to stay out of the elements. When first implemented, they were very successful, and even fostered a greater sense of work unity, as they had the opportunity to converse more under these circumstances and create a greater sense of, might I say, comradeship.

Under threat of a wage cut in early 1936, employees at Firestone in Akron staged a sit-down strike which was settled in two days. Less than two weeks later, there was a sit-down at Goodyear. An injunction against picketing was ignored and 150 new deputies found themselves facing 10,000 united Akron workers. The strike was settled within the month.

In December came the longest sit-down strike ever, at Fisher Body Plant in Flint Michigan. The UAW damanded recognition from General Motors. The strike spread to other major cities, including Cleveland, and eventually over 70% of their plants sat idle. GM demanded the governor of Michigan step in with their militia and there was great fear of bloodshed. FDR eventually stepped in (not physically, of course) and the strike was settled in February, 1937.

In 1936 there were 48 sit-down strikes. The following year there were 477.

Sources:
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States
Encyclopedia.com