Class struggle rather than cooperation: class, gender, sexuality and the congressional investigation of the National Labor Relations Board, 1939-1941

In examining the attack on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in the late 1930s, historians have devoted substantially more attention to the role played by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) than that played by congressional conservatives. Historians have noted that congressional conservatives portrayed NLRB officials as biased against business and in favor of unions, but they have overlooked the fundamental basis of the disagreement between these conservatives and the NLRB and its supporters. This thesis examines the attack on the NLRB by the congressional committee headed by Congressman Howard Smith of Virginia from December 1939 to December 1940. The fundamental dispute between the conservative majority on the Smith Committee on the one hand and NLRB officials and the pro-NLRB minority on the committee on the other hand centered on the role of class as a factor in NLRB policy. Smith Committee conservatives objected to NLRB officials' belief that the NLRB existed to help unions reduce the inequality in power inherent in relations between workers and employers. This thesis also discusses how beliefs about gender, and occasionally sexuality, colored Smith Committee conservatives' claims about the role of class in NLRB policy. Smith Committee conservatives attacked the passion of NLRB officials to help labor unions empower working-class Americans with language suggesting that such passion was motivated by an excess of un-masculine emotion.