Research for this article was supported by grants from the Henry Kaiser Family Foundation and the Social Science Research Council Committee on the Urban Underclass, through funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, and by the University of Pennsylvania History Department. Thanks to Eric Arnesen, Dana Barron, Kevin Boyle, Lizabeth Cohen, and Nelson Lichtenstein for their critical readings of earlier drafts.

1. Ford Facts, June 17, 1950.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., September 15, 1951.

3. Ibid., September 8, 1951; Michigan CIO News, September 6, 1951; Detroit Labor News, September 7, 1951.

4. For an overview, see “Deindustrialization: A Panel Discussion”, Pennsylvania History 58 (1991): 181–211.Google Scholar An important first foray into the topic is Cumbler, John T., A Social History of Economic Decline: Business, Politics, and Work in Trenton (New Brunswick, N.J., 1989).Google Scholar See also Marcus, Irwin, “The Deindustrialization of Homestead: A Case Study, 1959–1984,” Pennsylvania History 52 (1985).Google Scholar Two suggestive but brief discussions of deindustrialization in the 1940s and the 1950s are Schatz, Ronald, The Electrical Workers: A History of Labor at General Electric and Westinghouse, 1923–1960 (Urbana, 1983), 232–36;Google Scholar and Gerstle, Gary, Working Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914–1960 (Cambridge, 1989), 320–28.Google Scholar Historians have much to learn from the work of economists and journalists who studied deindustrialization, largely from the 1970s onward—although most of these studies lack a historical dimension and ignore the crucial period of deindustrialization in the 1950s. See especially Bluestone, Barry and Harrison, Bennett, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York, 1982);Google Scholar the excellent essays in Grand Designs: The Impact of Corporate Strategies on Workers, Unions, and Communities, ed. Craypo, Charles and Nissen, Bruce (Ithaca, 1993);Google Scholar and Post-Industrial America: Metropolitan Decline and Inter–Regional Job Shifts, ed. Sternlieb, George and Hughes, James W. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1975).Google Scholar For work by journalists, see Hoerr, John, And the Wolf Finally Came: The Decline of the American Steel Industry (Pittsburgh, 1988).Google Scholar For figures on industrial job loss since 1953, see Kasarda, John, “Structural Factors Affecting the Location and Timing of Urban Underclass Growth,” Urban Geography 11(1990): 242;Google Scholar and Wilson, William Julius and Wacquant, Loic J. D., “The Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion in the Inner City,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 501 (01 1989): 26–47.Google Scholar

5. For a general overview of a voluminous literature on industrial development and urbanization, see Sugrue, Thomas J. “The Structures of Urban Poverty: The Reorganization of Space and Work in Three Periods of American History,” in The “Underclass” Debate: Views from History, ed. Katz, Michael B. (Princeton, 1993), 85–117;Google Scholar and Wallock, Leonard, “Work and Workplace in the City: Toward a Synthesis of the ‘New’ Labor and Urban History,” in American Urbanism: A Historiographical Overview, ed. Gillette, Howard Jr., and Miller, Zane (Westport, Conn., 1987), 73–89.Google Scholar

6. For a discussion of these processes, see Mueller, Eva, Wilken, Arnold, and Wood, Margaret, Location Decisions and Industrial Mobility in Michigan, 1961 (Ann Arbor, 1961), 5–6.Google Scholar

7. For an overview, see Schulman, Bruce, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy. Economic Development and the Transformation of the South, 1938–1980 (New York, 1991).Google Scholar See also Markusen, Ann, Hall, Peter, Campbell, Scott, and Deitrick, Sabina, The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America (New York, 1991);Google ScholarLotchin, Roger, Fortress California 1910–1961: From Warfare to Welfare (New York, 1992);Google Scholar and The Martial Metropolis: U.S. Cities in Peace and War, ed. Lotchin, Roger (New York, 1984).Google Scholar

8. Bloomfield, G. T., “Shaping the Character of a City: The Automobile Industry and Detroit, 1900–1920,” Michigan Quarterly 25 (1986): 167–81.Google Scholar

9. Reynolds, Douglas, “Engines of Struggle: Technology, Skill, and Unionization at General Motors, 1930–1940,” Michigan Historical Review 15 (1989): 79–81, 91–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Detroit Metropolitan Area Regional Planning Commission, “Location of Industrial Plants”, 16, Southeastern Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) Collection, Box 9, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University, Detroit (ALUA).Google Scholar

11. On plant deconcentration in the 1940s and 1950s, see Detroit Metropolitan Area Regional Planning Commission, “Location of Automotive Plants”, Michigan P-1 (G) Project Completion Report, 1955–56, 18, SEMCOG Collection, Box 9, ALUA. For a general survey of Detroit's industrial patterns, see Sinclair, Robert, The Face of Detroit: A Spatial Synthesis (Detroit, 1972), 36–41.Google Scholar

12. Untitled memo with list of auto plants constructed since 1949, in UAW Research Department Collection, Box 76, Folder 5, ALUA; Detroit Area Regional Planning Commission, “Location of Automotive Plants”, 17, SEMCOG Collection, Box 9, ALUA. For a discussion of similar patterns in the 1970s and 1980s, see Bluestone and Harrison, Deindusrialization of America, 166–68, 170–78.Google Scholar

13. Mueller, , et al. , Location Decisions, 53.Google Scholar

14. “Available Industrial Properties Adjacent to Railroads, City of Detroit”, February 1, 1951, in Detroit Archives: Mayor's Papers (1951), Box 2, Burton Historical Collections, Detroit Public Library; “Report of a Survey by a Special Committee of the Michigan Chapter of the Society of Industrial Realtors on Trends in Industrial Location”, 1956, 2, Vertical File, Box 18, Folder: Industries, Location of, 1950s, ALUA.Google Scholar

15. See for example, Peterson, Paul, “Introduction: Technology, Race, and Urban Policy,” in The New Urban Reality, ed. Peterson, Paul (Washington, D.C., 1986), 1–29.Google Scholar A powerful rejoinder is Noble, David F., Forces of Production: A Social History of IndustrialAutomation (New York, 1984).Google Scholar

16. See statement of D. J. Davis, Vice President, Manufacturing, Ford Motor Company. U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on the Economic Report, Subcommittee on Economic Stabilization, Hearings on Automation and Technological Change, 84th Cong., 1st Session, October 1955 (Washington, D.C., 1955), 53 (hereafter Automation Hearings).Google Scholar On the roots of automation, see Meyer, Stephen, “The Persistence of Fordism: Workers and Technology in the American Automobile Industry,” in On the Line: Essays in the History of Autowork, ed. Lichtenstein, Nelson and Meyer, Stephen (Urbana, 1989), esp. 86–93.Google Scholar

17. Quoted in Keebler, James C., “Working Automation,” Automation 3 (01 1957): 29.Google Scholar

18. Harder quoted in Lawrence, Floyd G., “Union Belabors Automation,” Automation 2 (05 1955):22.Google Scholar

19. Keebler, James C., “Another Milestone Passed,” Automation 5 (02 1959):26.Google Scholar

20. Lawrence, Floyd G., “Progress With Ideas,” Automation 2 (07 1955):23. For a discussion of automation and workers control in other industries, see Noble, Forces of Production.Google Scholar

21. Reuther testimony, Automation Hearings, 124. For a variation on this quote, see Barnard, John, Walter Reuther and the Rise of the Auto Workers (Boston, 1983), 154.Google Scholar In Barnard's version, Reuther offered the acerbic response: “And not one of them buys new Ford cars either”.

22. Davis statement in Automation Hearings, 56–57, 63; Ford Press Releases. January 18, 1950; February 26, 1950; March 30, 1952; July 7, 1954, all in UAW Research Department Collection, Box 82, Folder: Ford Motor Company Plants and Equipment, ALUA.Google Scholar See also Lichtenstein, Nelson, “Life at the Rouge: A Cycle of Workers Control,” in Life and Labor: Dimensions of American Working-Class History, ed. Stephenson, Charles and Asher, Robert (Albany, N.Y., 1986), 25 1–53.Google Scholar The most comprehensive lists of Ford expansion projects are Ford Press Release, August 20, 1957, and Memo from George Marrelli to Nelson Samp, June 13, 1957 (which includes the number of employees in each plant), both in UAW Research Department Collection, Box 76, Folder 5, ALUA.

23. Nevins, Allan and Hill, Frank Ernest, Ford: Decline and Rebirth, 1933–1962 (New York, 1963), 340–41;Google ScholarU.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Hearings Before the Committee on Unemployment and the Impact of Automation of the Committee on Education and Labor, 87th Cong. (Washington, D.C., 1961), 512; Memo, Carrol Colburn to Woody Ginsburg, “Material for NBC”, March 26, 1959, UAW Research Department Collection, Box 50, Folder 13, ALUA.Google Scholar

24. Ford Press Releases, August 18, 1949, July 7, 1954, June 20, 1955; Nevins and Hill, Ford: Decline and Rebirth, 364–65;Google ScholarAmberg, Stephen, The Union Inspiration in American Politics: The Autosvorkers and the Making of a Liberal Industrial Order (Philadelphia, 1994), 190.Google Scholar

25. Ford Press Releases, September 3, 1953; June 14, 1955. In both, Ford stated that these new plants “will not replace any existing facilities” but merely “add to our present engine capacity”. Nevins and Hill, Ford: Decline and Rebirth, 340, 364–65; Lichtenstein, “Life at the Rouge”, 252.Google Scholar

26. Keebler, James C., “More Automatic Operation,” Automation 6 (02 1960): 44.Google Scholar

27. John Bugas to Carl Stellato, June 7, 1950, and Manton Cummins to Carl Stellato, July 18, 1950, copies in UAW President—Walter P. Reuther Collection, Box 249, Folder 249–19, ALUA.Google Scholar

28. Keebler, , “More Automatic Operation”, 46.Google Scholar

29. Detroit Free Press, April 29, 1955.Google Scholar

30. Halpern, Martin, UAW Politics in the Cold War Era (Albany, N.Y., 1988), 257–59.Google Scholar

31. Ford Facts, February 18, 1950.Google Scholar

32. Letter from John Behenhoff. Stanley Adamczyk. Allen Baker, and Earl Filban, in Ford Facts, April 22, 1950.Google Scholar

33. Ford Facts, February 18, 1950; April 22, 1950; May 6, 1950; May 12, 1951; May 19,1951; June 2. 1951; July 7, 1951.Google Scholar

34. Detroit News, August 6, 1951; anonymous letter in Ford Facts, September 22, 1951.Google Scholar

35. Ford Facts, May 6, 1950; July 8, 1950.Google Scholar

36. In the fall of 1950, Local 600 threatened a strike to force Ford to guarantee seniority rights to Rouge workers transferred to new plants. See Michigan CIO News, August 10, 1950; on early antidecentralization efforts, see also Michigan CIO News, August 24, 1950.Google Scholar

37. On wildcats between 1950 and 1954. see “Study on Work Stoppages”, UAW President—Walter P. Reuther Collection. Box 97, folder 97–6, ALUA. The study, prepared by Ford. reported 185 “unauthorized work stoppages” at the Rouge plant between 1950 and 1954. Out of 408 wildcat strikes at Ford nationwide; see also Ford Facts, April 9, 1955; on the suggestion box, see Ford Facts, October 13, 1951. For a discussion of the context and prevalence of wildcat strikes in the postwar years.Google Scholar see Lipsitz, George. Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s (Urbana, 1994), 229–52.Google Scholar

38. “Detroit Negro Labor Council”, n.d., UAW Political Action Committee—Roy Reuther Collection, Box 64, Folder 64-6, ALUA; “Rough Draft for Article on National Negro Labor Council”, National Association for the Advancement of Colored Pcople Collection (NAACP Papers), Group II, Box A336, Folder; Labor: General, 1950–1952, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC); News Release, National Negro Labor Council, NAACP Papers, Group II, Box A336, Folder: Labor, General, 1953, LC.Google Scholar

39. “Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread”, pamphlet in NAACP Papers. Group II, Box A336, Folder: Labor, General, 1953, LC. It is possible that the NNLC (and other union and civil rights groups) used the phrase “right to work” in another sense: as a double-entendre reference to the “right-to-work” laws that enjoyed strong support among Republicans, southern Democrats, and their corporate allies.Google Scholar

40. Ford Facts, January 28, 1950. I have rephrased Thompson's statements as questions.Google Scholar

41. “Decentralization Means Economic Ruin”, Ford Facts, September 15, 1951.Google Scholar

42. Ford Facts, October 13, 1951; Detroit News, November 19, 1951; Ford Facts, November 24, 1951.Google Scholar On previous attempts to shorten the work week, see Roediger, David R. and Foner, Philip S., Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day (Westport, Conn., 1989), esp. 261–71;Google Scholar and Hunnicut, Benjamin Kline, Work Without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work (Philadelphia, 1988).Google Scholar Opponents of the thirty-hour week also contended that its advocates were attempting to sabotage war-production efforts and undermine America in the Korean War.

43. Ford Facts, February 4, 1950.Google Scholar

44. Copy of Dearborn Resolution in UAW President—Walter P. Reuther Collection, Box 97, Folder 97–4, ALUA; Ford Facts, September 15, 1951; November 17, 1951.Google Scholar

45. Local Union No. 600 v. Ford Motor Company, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division, complaint copy in UAW President—Walter P. Reuther Collection. Box 249, Folder 249–23, ALUA. A general description of the suit is in “Plant Transfers Irk Unions”, Business Week, December 1, 1951, 36, 40.Google Scholar

46. Letter from Carl Stellato to Walter P. Reuther, October 31, 1951, UAW President— Walter P. Reuther Collection, Box 249, Folder 249–23, ALUA.Google Scholar

47. Ford Facts, September 22, 1951.Google Scholar

48. Local Union No. 600 v. Ford Motor Company, 3.Google Scholar

49. Ibid. The Local 600 argument foreshadows arguments deployed by lawyers fighting plant shutdowns in the 1970s and 1980s in cases such as Local 1330 v. U.S. Steel. See Lynd, Staughton, The Fight Against Shutdowns: Youngstown's Steel Mill Closings (San Pedro, Calif., 1983), 141–48, 160–89.Google Scholar

50. Local Union No. 600 v. Ford Motor Company, 4, 5.Google Scholar

51. UAW Inter-Office Communication to Walter P. Reuther from Harold A. Cranefield, November 8, 1951, UAW President—Walter P. Reuther Collection, Box 249, Folder 249–23, ALUA.Google Scholar

52. Brody, David, Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the 20th Century Struggle (New York, 1980), 173–214;Google Scholar 61 NLRB 792 at 802, quoted in Tomlins, Christopher L., The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880–1960 (Cambridge, 1985), 263.Google Scholar See also Atleson, James, Values and Assumptions in American Labor Law (Amherst, Mass., 1983), esp. 111–35.Google Scholar

53. Friedman, Lawrence, A History of American Law, 2nd ed. (New York, 1985), 514.Google Scholar

54. Carl Stellato to Walter P. Reuther, November 12, 1951; Ford Facts, November 3, 1951.Google Scholar

55. UAW Inter-Office Communication to Walter P. Reuther from Harold A. Cranefield, November 8, 1951, UAW President—Walter P. Reuther Collection, Box 249, Folder 249–23, ALUA.Google Scholar

56. Ford Facts, March 12, 1952; Detroit Free Press, March 18, 1952; Detroit Times, March 18, 1952;Google Scholar see also Andrew, William D., “Factionalism and Anti-Communism: Ford Local 600,” Labor History 20 (1979):227–55.Google Scholar

57. Ford Facts, April 19, 1952. This statewide agreement had earlier precedents. In January 1951, laid-off gear-and-axle workers at the Rouge could move to the new Mound Road plant or use their seniority against junior employees in the axle building at the Rouge. Ford Facts, January 20, 1951. Later in 1951, the UAW announced a seniority agreement with Ford that protected the seniority of laid-off workers at the Rouge, Highland Park, Lincoln, Mound Road, and Dearborn Engineering plants. Workers laid off from any of these five Detroit-area plants “will be rehired into one of the others, if work is available, before any new employees are hired”. Ford Facts, February 24, 1951.Google Scholar

58. In fact, UAW membership at Ford rose by 12.6 percent nationwide between 1947–48 and 1957–58, while UAW Local 600 membership fell by 24.5 percent in the same period. See “Ford Motor Company–UAW Membership”, UAW Research Department Collection, Box 76, Folder 5, ALUA.Google Scholar

59. 113 F. Supp. 834; Michigan CIO News, June 11, 1953. The outcome of the suit warranted only one column inch of coverage on a back page of the Michigan CIO News.Google Scholar

60. Detroit City Plan Commission, Industrial Study: A Survey of Existing Conditions and Attitudes of Detroit's Industry (Master Plan Technical Report, 2nd ser.), July 1956, 46; Detroit Times, June 2, 1957.Google Scholar

61. “When People Move”, Detroit Urban League Papers. Box 46, Folder A 10–13, Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Library, University of Michigan. Thanks to the Bordin– Gilette Fellowship of the Bentley Library, which allowed me to consult these materials.Google Scholar

62. Harold L. Sheppard, Louis Ferman, and Seymour Faber, “Too Old to Work—Too Young to Retire: A Case Study of a Permanent Plant Shutdown”, Report to United States Senate, Special Committee on Employment Problems, December 21, 1959 (Washington, D.C., 1960), pamphlet copy in Vertical File, Box 4, File: Employment—Unemployment 1950s, ALUA. “Youth and Automation”, n.d. [c. 1960], UAW Research Department Collection, Box 64, Folder: Youth, ALUA; Detroit News, July 15, 1959. The rate of employed youth in Detroit, especially young African-American men, began a steady decline in the mid and late 1950s, reflecting the shift in job opportunities. See Sugrue, “Structures of Urban Poverty”, 109. For a comparison, see Wilson and Wacquant, “Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion”, 8–25.

63. Lichtenstein, Nelson, “Auto Worker Militancy and the Structure of Factory Life, 1937–1955”, Journal of American History 67 (1980):335–53;Google Scholaridem, “Life at the Rouge”, 256–59. Other Left-led unions and locals around the country also challenged deindustrialization but, like Local 600, they were largely silenced in the anticommunist and antiradical fervor of the late 1940s and early 1950s. See Rosswurm, Steve, “An Overview and Assessment of the CIO's Expelled Unions”, in The CIO's Left-Led Unions, ed. Rosswurm, Steve (New Brunswick, N.J., 1992), 13, 15–16.Google Scholar

64. Wakeham letter to Ford Facts, December 1, 1951.Google Scholar