Murder in the Garment District: The Grip of Organized Crime and the Decline of Labor in the United States by David Witwer and Catherine Rios (review)

Abstract

Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, Volume 19, Issue 3 © 2022 by Labor and Working-Class History Association broader narrative of entitlement. The crux of Trollinger’s argument is that, well before the Great Depression, workers in settlement houses located in immigrant workingclass neighborhoods of Chicago had come to the conclusion that “unemployment was an unavoidable side effect of the American economic system, one that industrial and political leaders had thus far not dealt with” (30). As a result, they believed that “relief was the right (albeit temporary) of men victimized by industrial confusion,” and proposed reforms to poor relief systems (substituting cash relief for grocery orders, allowing relief to be spent on rent) and adoption of unemployment insurance as a matter of “workers’ right” (23, 76, 91). Thus, when the New Deal arrived on the scene, it found a social movement of settlement workers and their clients already primed to put their weight behind (and pressure) FERA and the Social Security Administration. Where Trollinger somewhat overextends her argument is presenting this narrative of entitlement as unique to settlement workers. In Public Relief (1940), former FERA and Works Progress Administration (WPA) staffer Josephine Brown wrote about a new “democratic philosophy of relief” animating professional social workers from the 1920s on that similarly centered around the idea that unemployment was not a personal failing but a systemic flaw in the economy and that unemployed workers were entitled to government support (especially in the direct provision of jobs). This spirit, Brown argued, animated not only local relief officers but also FERA, Civil Works Administration, and WPA administrators under Roosevelt. Likewise, James J. Lorence’s and Chad Allen Goldberg’s work on unemployed workers’ groups in the Great Depression has found evidence of similar ideological shifts inspired by Popular Front groups not affiliated with settlement workers. Trollinger’s work would seem to be a valuable addition to the literature on how a shift in thinking on entitlement swept through many different groups during the Great Depression.