Exploiting the North-South Differential: Corporate Power, Southern Politics, and the Decline of Organized Labor after World War II

Abstract

In October 1945 the Alexander Smith and Sons Carpet Company, one of the leading carpet manufacturers in the United States and the largest employer in Yonkers, New York, marked its hundredth year. At a gala celebration sponsored by the Yonkers Chamber of Commerce, the company's first vice president, William F. C. “Bill” Ewing, shared his vision for the postwar future. Ewing called for greater federal support for business since, as he put it, “in the last 10 or 12 years, Government has been deliberately unfriendly to business.” He also expressed concern about labor's demands; without federal tariff protection, he cautioned, high wages would “prevent successful competition.” Ewing reminded the audience that his great-grandfather, Alexander Smith, had relocated to Yonkers eighty years earlier “to escape deliberate sabotage and to find a friendly atmosphere. He found it and prospered.” Ewing alluded to Smith's move to Yonkers in 1864 after his first factory, established in 1845, burned down; the fire may have been set by employees incensed by Smith's introduction of the power loom. Ewing's remarks undoubtedly struck a chord with the city's business leaders, who understood that if postwar conditions proved undesirable, the company could move again.1

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