Awards
- Winner of <DIV>Winner of <I>Labor History's</I> Prize for the best book on labor history, 2010.</DIV> 2010
Overview
Shadow of the Racketeer: Scandal in Organized Labor tells the story of organized crime's move into labor racketeering in the 1930s, focusing on a union corruption scandal involving payments from the largest Hollywood movie studios to the Chicago mob to ensure a pliant labor supply for their industry. The book details the work of crusading journalist Westbrook Pegler, whose scorching investigative work dramatically exposed the mob connections of top labor leaders George Scalise and William Bioff and garnered Pegler a Pulitzer Prize for reporting. From a behind-the-scenes perspective, David Witwer describes how Pegler and his publisher, the politically powerful Roy W. Howard, shaped the news coverage of this scandal in ways that obscured the corrupt ties between employers and the mob while emphasizing the perceived menace of union leaders empowered by New Deal legislation that had legitimized organized labor. Pegler, Howard, and the rest of the mainstream press pointedly ignored evidence of the active role that business leaders took in the corruption, which badly tarnished the newly reborn labor movement. Because he was more concerned with pursuing political gains for the conservative movement, Pegler's investigative journalism did little to reform union governance or organized crime's influence on labor unions. The union corruption scandal only undercut the labor movement. Pegler's continuing campaign against labor corruption framed the issue in ways that set the stage for postwar political defeats, culminating with the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which greatly limited the power of labor unions in the United States. Demonstrating clearly and convincingly how journalism is wielded as a political weapon, Witwer studies a broad range of forces at play in the labor union scandal and its impact, including the influence of the press, organized crime, political corruption, and businessmen following their own economic imperatives.
Full Product Details
Author: David Witwer
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Imprint: University of Illinois Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 3.80cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.626kg
ISBN: 9780252034176
ISBN 10: 0252034171
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 30 March 2009
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Reviews
Through creative use of FBI and court records, Witwer carefully peels open the intricate layers of several high profile labor scandals that Westbrook Pegler exposed in the World War II era, exploring how organized crime came to control two important unions. Well conceived and judiciously argued. Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, author of Waves of Opposition: Labor and the Struggle for Democratic Radio
Author Information
David Witwer is a professor of American studies at Penn State Harrisburg and author of Corruption and Reform in the Teamster’s Union.
