iii Looking at Labor-Capital Films

Conservative Films

Conservative labor-capital films presented worker and radical activities in the worst possible light. Plot lines in these films generally followed a standard story: a union leader, labor agitator, or radical troublemaker stirs up previously content workers into a frenzy and turns them into an uncontrollable mob. Strikes are ordered on the slightest excuse by leaders who used them to serve "their own selfish ends" (fig. 13).

Viewers rarely got a sense of the issues or grievances that precipitated strikes. They rarely got to see workers engaged in peaceful negotiations with their employers--something that usually happened before a strike was declared. Instead, filmmakers focused on the violence that often surrounded strikes.

Conservative filmmakers rarely distinguished among different types of mass movements. Instead they lumped the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the Western Federation of Miners, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Socialist party, and anarchists into one general cinematic category: ungrateful radicals who caused trouble for essentially kind bosses. The small but often violent IWW, not the larger AFL, was portrayed as the typical labor organization (fig. 14).

When it came to dealing with strikes and union drives, conservative films repeatedly featured scenes of frenzied strikers (fig. 15) try to blow up or set fire to their workplace or employer's home -- as can be seen in the video clip from Dangerous Hours (fig. 16). Major disaster is averted either through the calming words of the employer, the sudden discovery of the agitator's ulterior motives (which have little to do with the welfare of the workers), the use of outside force--militia or private police--to restore law and order, or a combination of these elements (fig. 17). Most of these films end with a message urging workers to trust their employers rather than union leaders or outside agitators.

fig 16:Dangerous Hours (1920) (v)