Welfare Capitalism In The 1920's

Following the repression of the working class in the 1910s and 1920s, the unanticipated effects of Welfare Capitalism and the results of the Great Depression transformed disorganized laborers into a unified front by the 1930s. Following Word War I, a wave of strikes and labor militancy ensued across the United States as workers struggled to engender a change in the workplace. The Labor class of America experienced repression by Employers and Management by the backing of the U.S. Government prior to the 1930s. In opposition to social legislation employer by federal or state government, Industrialists employed measures aimed on making workers dependent on the company. Despite the failure of these attempts, corporations began to implement measures

Industrialists believed that developing a sense loyalty to their companies via welfare capitalism would increase worker morale, in which laborers would be more enthusiastic to perform well in the workplace out of respect and pride for the products they represented. Despite this promising system, Industrialists’ main motivation for implementing such measures was an attempt to avoid the threat of the federal government and unions on the business sphere by separating worker from their traditional ethnic associations. Businesses attempted to individualize workers and make their relationship with the company a solitary one, as opposed to a collective ethnic group. (why division is important) In essence, these promising benefits were superficial in nature. This new paternalistic style of management was intended to cunningly control the possibility of a labor uprising. Ironically, the methods used to separate ethnic associations, successfully resulted in the formation of working-class solidarity across the multitude of ethnical divisions. Ethnic immigrants were exposed to others ethnic workers who had shared similar experiences and understood common struggles, which “Americanized” workers; ethnic workers began accepting American culture and speaking in English, not only in the workplace, but also in the real world, "ethnic provincialism was breaking down at the workplace, as it was in the real world…”

Ethnic records, like stores, theaters, and radio programs, set out to reinforce traditional culture in the face of threatening alternatives. Racial discrimination, on the other hand, kept blacks from the same opportunities, and pressures, to assimilate. Given that very different context, black jazz recordings, or black employment in chain stores, became a vehicle for making a claim on mainstream society that racism had otherwise denied. Mass culture, which offered ethnics a conservative retreat, became in the hands of blacks a way of turning blacks' vulnerability and dependence on mainstream society into a demand for respect."