The militant, innovative strikes and sit-downs by Akron rubber workers in 1936 was the tocsin sounding, responded to by the Spirit of ’37 which would pick up those tactics and run with them.

‘Union Blooms in Akron’ by Blake Lear from New Militant. Vol. 2 No. 19. May 16 1936.

AKRON, Ohio, May 12. Seven workers were slightly wounded on May 7th when a company gunman shot into a crowd of several hundred Goodyear workers milling about a company weasel who was distributing an anti-union pamphlet, “The Real Facts!”

So eager were the workers to receive the pamphlet that the company weasel had to pull a black-jack to repress the importunate crowd. It was an unfortunate tactical error, for he was immediately hurled to the ground. The special deputy, one of those commissioned during the late unlamented strike, then fired into the crowd.

The pamphlet, cleverly signed “A Goodyear Worker,” portrays the Goodyear as a veritable Garden of Eden before the snake of unionism arrived. The ugly lynch spirit pervading the screed is well shown in the following quotation: “There is another condition in the shop today and that is there are some very radical people who thrive from the cause of tearing down something decent and who enjoy causing trouble…Those persons should be singled out and dealt with accordingly.”

Five Sit-Downs in Night

This early morning episode followed a night during which there were no less than five sit-downs at Goodyear and several at Firestone, where they were protesting the introduction of pace-setters in the tire departments. The companies are trying to take advantage of the recent wage increases to speed up production. This is proving a notable failure.

The gears in the machinery of the anti-union forces are slowly meshing. One of the latest evidences of this is the formation of an “Akron Civic Justice Association,” a fit companion to that other pillar of Akron society, “The Law and Order League.” The former is now specializing in full page ads, the chain. of reasoning being that now since the rubber companies out of the bounty of their hearts have raised wages, this union monkey business. ought to be stopped.

Centralization on Increase

More of this type of propaganda. was the recent hullaballoo about decentralization, spread by the rubber barons. Outside sources seem a bit skeptical, somehow, James McMulin in his New York column pointed out that United States Rubber, currently one of the most successful plants in the country, far from decentralizing, is pursuing a directly opposite course, and the “Annalist” openly stating that the rubber companies (beyond being afflicted with the incurable disease of capitalism) are the victims of their own merciless price cutting.

How little all this guff fazes the Akron gum miners was well demonstrated last Sunday when 4,000 rubber workers celebrating the advent of Spring in Akron, Ohio (The Rubber Center of the World), descended upon the amazed town of Kent, a suburb of Akron, and demonstrated before the Black and Decker Electric Company, where scabs remained in the plant, closed recently by striking workers.

Yes, summer is i-cumen in. But it looks like a union summer this time.

The Militant was a weekly newspaper begun by supporters of the International Left Opposition recently expelled from the Communist Party in 1928 and published in New York City. Led by James P Cannon, Max Schacthman, Martin Abern, and others, the new organization called itself the Communist League of America (Opposition) and saw itself as an outside faction of both the Communist Party and the Comintern. After 1933, the group dropped ‘Opposition’ and advocated a new party and International. When the CLA fused with AJ Muste’s American Workers Party in late 1934, the paper became the New Militant as the organ of the newly formed Workers Party of the United States.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1936/may-16-1936.pdf