Joni Hubred-Golden's List: DiscQuestion11

Events in Dearborn, Kansas City, and Dallas gave currency to a new  term, the Ford Terror. This meant not only the use of violence, but  the creation of an atmosphere of dread and intimidation. In 1938 a  book by a responsible labor leader equally opposed to Communist and  Fascist tendencies, Benjamin Stolberg, succinctly described it: 29   There are about eight hundred underworld characters in the Ford Service  organization. They are the Storm Troops. They make no pretense of work  ing, but are merely "keeping order" in the plant community through terror.  Around this nucleus of eight hundred yeggs there are, however, between  8000 and 9000 authentic workers in the organization, a great many of them  spies and stool-pigeons and great many others who have been browbeaten     A NEW DEAL FOR LABOR 151   into joining this industrial mafia. There are almost 90,000 workers in River  Rouge, and because of this highly organized terror and spy system the fear  in the plant is something indescribable. During the lunch hour men shout  at the top of their voices about the baseball scores lest they be suspected of  talking unionism. Workers seen talking together are taken off the assembly  line and fired. Every man suspected of union sympathies is immediately  discharged, usually under the framed-up charge of "starting a fight," in  which he often gets terribly beaten up.   Harry Bennett s power extends beyond Dearborn to Detroit. In certain  localities in Michigan judges and other State officials cannot run for office  without a petition with a specified number of signatures. Bennett simply  puts such petitions on the conveyor belt, and in one afternoon the prospec  tive candidate has all the signatures he needs.   This statement was essentially accurate. Throughout the 1930$ the  depression accentuated a deterioration of working conditions which  had begun in the previous decade. This was true of all mass-production  industries and especially all automobile manufacturing, but it was  particularly true of the Ford plants after their refusal to emulate  General Motors in accepting collective bargaining, and particularly  galling to Ford workers who knew something of the happier early  days and the oldtime image of Henry Ford as a friend of the workers.   Job insecurity made union organization more difficult, and espionage  more effective. The long lines of unemployed at the gates reminded  every arriving worker that he could be replaced in a moment.