Our popular image of the era of the Great Depression is one of
bread lines, labor wars, and leftist firebrands. Absent from this
picture are religiously motivated social reformers, notably
Catholic clergy and laity. In A Catholic New Deal, Kenneth Heineman
rethinks the religious roots of labor organizing and social reform
in America during the 1930s. He focuses on Pittsburgh, the leading
industrial city of the time, a key center for the rise of American
labor, and a critical Democratic power base, thanks in large part
to Mayor David Lawrence and the Catholic vote.
Despite the fact that Catholics were the core of the American
industrial working class in the 1930s, historians (and many
contemporary observers) have underestimated or ignored the
religious component of labor activism in this era. In fact, many
labor historians have argued that workers could not have formed
successful industrial unions without first severing their religious
ties. Heineman disputes this, arguing that there would have been no
steelworkers union without Pittsburgh Catholics such as James Cox,
Patrick Fagan, Carl Hensler, Phil Murray, and Charles Owen Rice. He
presents a complex portrait of American Catholicism in which a
large number of activist priests and laity championed a distinctly
Catholic vision of social justice. This vision was anti-Communist,
anti-Fascist, and anti-laissez faire. These Catholics, in turn,
helped to make the Democratic Party and the CIO powerful
organizations. A Catholic New Deal shows conclusively the important
role that religion played in the history of organized labor in
America.
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