1. Delineating the Agricultural and Industrial Sectors in the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act

While the 1935 NLRA officially codified the exclusion of agricultural workers from the protections of New Deal labor law and social welfare programs, debates over the first wave of New Deal policymaking in 1933 laid the groundwork for this exclusion. Although agricultural workers were not a prominent part of legislative debates in 1933, advocates from across the political spectrum effectively argued that different laws and standards should govern the agricultural and industrial economies. One important consequence of this delineation was that the labor standards established by the 1933 NIRA did not apply to the agricultural sector; instead, agricultural workers were exclusively covered by the AAA of the same year. This meant that even the meager protections afforded by the NIRA did not apply to agricultural workers. Beyond this limitation for agricultural workers, the NIRA ultimately proved to be an ineffective attempt at industrial planning, highlighting the limits of labor associationalism for settling industrial disputes. Industrialists under the NIRA framework pressed for exclusions and exemptions, beyond the exclusion of agricultural workers, in ways that further undercut the meager labor standards the law put in place. Compounding all of this, labor's principal advocate in these early debates, the AFL, was internally divided about whether organizing agricultural workers should be an organizational priority.

The NIRA and the AAA were part of the first wave of the New Deal legislation, enacted in 1933 during Roosevelt's first hundred days in office. These early laws and administrative policies included a banking assistance bill, cuts to federal payments to veterans and federal employees, the repeal of Prohibition, and two separate measures providing economic relief for the agricultural and industrial sectors. These measures sought to lift the country out of the crippling Great Depression. At the very heart of the first wave of legislation, the NIRA forged a new version of labor relations that aimed at curbing industrial strife. The act laid out a framework for industrial revival and economic planning: it enabled the federal government to set standards for production, relaxed prohibitions on monopolies to allow for industry-wide cooperation, and called for minimum wages and maximum hour provisions for workers. However, the legislation did not explicitly set any standards or thresholds. Employers and industry effectively argued that the particularities of different industries necessitated specific consideration. As a result, the NIRA delegated the responsibility of setting wage minimums, hour maximums, and price controls for separate industries to a new agency, the NRA.Footnote ¹⁷

Although the NIRA led to new organizing, it did not provide workers seeking to organize with a robust set of legal defenses. Instead, the NIRA reflected Roosevelt's and many other progressive New Dealers’ preferences for a version of labor associationalism. At its core, associationalism was rooted in a collectivist approach to economic planning. While workers were without question a dependent and exploited class, progressive New Dealers thought that the best remedy to their condition was to establish “harmonious and cooperative relations between workers and employers.”Footnote ¹⁸ Critically, proponents of this vision, including Roosevelt himself, did not want trade unions to become a permanent feature of the American political economy. The initial bill, in fact, did not address the issue of worker organizing at all. That did not occur until William Green, the president of the AFL, insisted that Section 7(a) be added, which recognized unions’ collective bargaining rights and outlawed employer interference in worker organization.Footnote ¹⁹

Further, the fragmented system implemented through the NRA, which sought to establish different standards for each industry, opened a window for employers and industrialists to argue about categories of workers that should and should not be included in labor protections. Officials within the administration later estimated that 14 to 20 percent of employees were exempted from code provisions enacted by the NRA.Footnote ²⁰ As Section 2 details, industrialists on many occasions pushed to exclude seemingly small categories of workers, usually those in the most arduous and lowest-paid positions. However, this also happened at a very broad level in the case of the agricultural industry. The agricultural industry was one significant sector of the economy not included in the purview of the NIRA and the NRA. While some members of the New Deal administration were working with New Deal legislators to draft the NIRA, others were crafting a similar bill to aid the recovery of the agricultural economy. Some saw agriculture and industrial production as parallel and entwined enterprises. Others argued that the agricultural and industrial economies had been impacted differently by the economic crash and would require different interventions to recover.

During debates over the NIRA and the AAA, this tension between the agricultural and industrial economies led to extensive discussions of the differences in the structure and function of each. The ultimate result of these debates was that the two sectors came to be managed by different legislative frameworks: the agricultural sector by the AAA and the industrial sector by the NIRA. These separate legislative acts also divided the administrative management of the two sectors into separate administrative agencies: the U.S. Department of Agriculture oversaw the agricultural sector, while the NRA was tasked with promoting economic recovery and growth for the industrial sector. The NIRA committee reports articulated this delineation clearly in Section 8 of the law, which gave the secretary of agriculture primary authority over agricultural commodities and products and indicated “that nothing in the industrial program should be construed to repeal or modify any of the provisions of the [AAA].” The committee rewrote this section in order to eliminate possible conflicts in administering the industrial program and the AAA.Footnote ²¹

The AAA was premised on the broadly held belief that plummeting commodity prices and overproduction were at the root of the crisis in the agricultural sector.Footnote ²² Members of Roosevelt's administration, large and small farmers, and farm federations and agribusiness all focused on farmers and “saving capitalism on America's farms,” which they thought had been too often overshadowed by interest in the industrial economy. In particular, advocates of the AAA endorsed federal programs that offered loans to farmers, set higher prices, and were much more involved in overseeing farm production.Footnote ²³ In legislative debates and administrative management, much of the focus was on farmers, even though many others, like tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and agricultural workers, were integral parts of agricultural production.Footnote ²⁴

Farmers, farm group representatives, and agribusiness supported the delineation of the agricultural and industrial sectors. Citing concerns over dual administration and taxation, they pressed for the agricultural sector to be managed exclusively under the AAA. Even staunch New Dealers like Senator Robert Wagner (D-NY), the great champion of organized labor and workers’ rights, endorsed this view. In his introduction of the NIRA, Wagner made clear that agriculture was not included in the bill's definition of industry and that there should be no duplicative oversight with the AAA.Footnote ²⁵ Although he was an ally of organized labor, Wagner felt no compulsion to protect the rights of agricultural workers, at least in part because the AFL, the leading force in the labor movement during this period, thought that labor's strength lay in the bargaining power of skilled workers. In part, this focus reflected broader shifts in political economy. Between 1919 and 1933, the number of industrial workers had been steadily climbing, while the number of agricultural workers had declined.Footnote ²⁶ Beyond the changes in the number of workers, the AFL's focus on skilled workers also meant that they were not inclined to organize low-skilled farmworkers. However, this was a point of contention within the labor movement. Throughout the earlier twentieth century, a variety of other labor associations, including affiliates of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), the IWW, and the new CIO, challenged the AFL's focus on skilled workers and pursued different strategies for building on collective power.Footnote ²⁷ However, in 1933, these debates were largely taking place across the country in local and regional organizing drives, not in congressional debates. As a result, Wagner and the AFL did not push back against a legislative and administrative framework that set government priorities and oversight of the agricultural economy separately from industry.

Farmers’ organizations, agribusiness, and agricultural manufacturers’ arguments also emphasized the kinds of taxation and funding issues that could arise from “dual oversight” of the agricultural sector by both the NIRA and the AAA. They included labor regulations among this list of issues. In their view, increasing labor costs would unnecessarily increase production costs and reduce farmers’ purchasing power. They argued that in order to establish parity between the agricultural and industrial sectors, sole authority over the agricultural sector should reside with the Department of Agriculture.Footnote ²⁸

For example, A. M. Loomis, representing agricultural manufacturers from the National Dairy Union and the American Association of Creamery Butter Manufacturers, opposed the general sales tax proposed to fund the NIRA because it would impose a double tax on farmers and agricultural manufacturers, who were already subject to the processing taxes under the AAA.Footnote ²⁹ In response, Representative John McCormack (D-MA) and other committee members asked Loomis whether he had supported the processing tax of the AAA and, if so, why he was opposed to a similar tax in the NIRA. McCormack challenged Loomis's position, claiming that his opposition was rooted in the agricultural sector's interest in benefiting from, but not contributing to, the process of recovery:

Loomis's alternative to the general sales tax was the same as the Farm Bureau Federation's: reduce the individual exemptions and increase the payroll tax payments on everyone, including the working classes.Footnote ³¹

In addition to double taxation, representatives of the agricultural sector and members of Congress were also concerned with the issue of dual administration. During Chester Gray's testimony on behalf of the American Farm Bureau Federation, which had supported the AAA as critical to saving the agricultural economy, Representative Harold Knutson (R-MN) asked him whether “dual administration” of agricultural production under the AAA and the NIRA was a concern for his organization. Gray responded that “any reasonable interpretation of the language in section 8 leaves the administration of the Agricultural Adjustment Act exclusively in the Department of Agriculture, under the Secretary's authority.”Footnote ³² In his testimony before the Senate Committee on Finance, Gray restated this position and affirmed their preference was for sole authority to rest with the secretary of agriculture to avoid confusion.Footnote ³³

Outside of his stated interest in avoiding dual oversight, Gray did not expand on his preference for settling agricultural production in the hands of the Department of Agriculture. However, Loomis explicitly referenced labor standards in his testimony. He argued that the AAA already required the agricultural sector to “adopt a program and fair-trade practices for our industry-the very thing that is also contemplated in the industrial recovery bill for all industries.” He continued and pointed out that the only differences between the AAA and the NIRA were the “limitation of working hours and minimum wages.”Footnote ³⁴ Loomis's remarks make clear that the absence of labor regulations under the AAA was a significant reason that farmers and agricultural manufacturers preferred oversight by the Department of Agriculture.

Loomis and others also nested their arguments against oversight under the NIRA in terms of broader concerns over parity between the agricultural and industrial sectors. In his testimony before the House Committee on Ways and Means, Loomis characterized his opposition to the public works’ provisions of the NIRA as rooted in these concerns over parity:

Loomis's concerns over the disparity between the agriculture and industry reflected a common perspective in the agricultural sector. However, they also served to deflect attention from class differences and conflict within the agricultural sector, particularly those related to the exploitative working conditions of agricultural workers, sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and other precarious farm laborers.

In addition, this focus on agricultural and industrial parity on a broad level obscured the fact that employers and representatives of industry in both sectors used similar arguments against labor standards in order to avoid legal measures that would have addressed exploitative working conditions. Indeed, representatives of industries that were included in the NIRA's purview argued against labor standards that would increase the costs of production. In debates over the NIRA, industrial elites and employers made similar claims that rescuing industry meant keeping costs down in order to increase overall production levels. The AFL, organized labor's most influential voice in Congress during the New Deal debates, challenged these arguments and advocated for labor standards that would protect industrial workers.Footnote ³⁶ Focusing on issues facing industrial workers and the industrial sector, New Dealers and the AFL argued that increasing wages would increasing consumer buying power, which was critical for economic recovery.Footnote ³⁷

While the AFL effectively countered the efforts of employers and industrialists to limit the scope of labor protections when it came to industrial workers, there was no comparable organization making the same case on behalf of agricultural workers. Arguments that higher wages were needed to increase consumer buying power were rarely applied to agricultural workers. The AFL was silent on the issues faced by agricultural laborers in debates about the NIRA and the AAA. Their silence in national policy debates reflected the AFL's ambivalence over organizing agricultural workers. Farm laborers, who were largely seasonal and migratory, were thought to be more difficult and expensive to organize. As a result, many AFL leaders believed that the costs of organizing them outweighed the benefits.Footnote ³⁸ As one AFL leader famously said in 1935, “only fanatics are willing to live in shacks or tents and get their heads broken in the interest of migratory labor.”Footnote ³⁹

Further, at this point, the AFL was primarily focused on organizing skilled workers along craft lines. Some agricultural workers who worked in agricultural processing jobs more closely resembled the traditional craft workers the AFL sought to organize. However, the vast majority were unskilled field workers. Given the craft-oriented focus of the AFL, groups like the IWW and the TUUL led the first and most concerted efforts to organize agricultural workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Footnote ⁴⁰

As would be true throughout the next few decades, efforts to organize unskilled workers were highly divisive within organized labor. Organizations like the IWW, the TUUL, and later the CIO emerged in large part to challenge the AFL for its reluctance to organize unskilled workers, including agricultural workers.Footnote ⁴¹ However, as will be discussed in the next section, the NIRA led to a revival in labor unionism among agricultural workers, who worked to establish new unions and labor standards using new federal protections even though the new laws did not formally protect them.

By appealing to concerns about dual administration and effective economic recovery, farmers, farmers’ organizations, and agricultural manufacturers won a definitive victory in settling the agricultural industry under the authority of the AAA and not the NIRA. While the exclusion of agricultural workers was not written into the laws explicitly, as it would be in the 1935 NLRA, this differentiation had a very similar effect, particularly when reinforced by executive action. Just weeks after the NIRA passed, Roosevelt issued the President's Re-employment Agreement, which contained language that stipulated that Section 7(a) did not apply to agricultural workers.Footnote ⁴² In addition, employers and industrialists learned that by drawing distinctions and parsing different types of workers, they could effectively evade the labor regulations ushered in by New Deal reforms. The idea that minimum wage, maximum hour, and other labor protections could harm some sectors of the economy became a tool that the New Deal's opponents used in subsequent battles over industrial relations. Critically, as the following two sections will explore, these debates became increasingly consequential for racial advocacy organizations and Black workers.

2. Coalitional Politics and Worker Exclusions under the National Recovery Administration

However scant consideration of agricultural workers was during debates over the NIRA and the AAA, there was even less consideration of the implications of New Deal programs for Black workers. In reflecting on the drafting of the NIRA, Houston of the NAACP argued that “there was absolutely almost no recognition of the interests of the Negro workers . . . it is a situation in which the relation of the Negro with regard to the general economic picture just has not penetrated.”Footnote ⁴³ Racial advocacy organizations were not among those who testified before Congress regarding the first wave of New Deal legislation, and their interests, like those of agricultural workers, were not represented by major labor associations like the AFL. The question of organizing Black workers was another major source of tension within the labor movement. Organized labor, especially the AFL, was internally divided on how best to address racial discrimination within local unions and member associations.Footnote ⁴⁴ In response, racial advocacy organizations were extremely divided on how—and whether—to work with trade unions in pressing for economic rights. However, the implementation of the NIRA through the NRA's code boards presented an important opportunity for racial advocacy organizations and labor unions to work together for more expansive labor protections. While these administrative debates were not as consequential as their legislative counterparts, they provide further, and in many cases sharper, insight into the racial and political-economic positions of many key groups engaged in these discussions.

Although the NRA was ultimately unsuccessful in establishing a coherent and durable framework for industrial relations, the creation of the first industrial code in the cotton textile sector enabled the creation of a loose coalition that included the Negro Industrial League (NIL) and several AFL and CPUSA labor affiliates. Together, these groups contested the delineation of the industrial and agricultural sectors and exposed the practical difficulties it presented for establishing labor regulations that would protect all workers. Racial advocacy organizations’ interventions into these national debates over industrial policy and labor regulations underscore that racial discrimination was not their only issue of concern; they were also very much concerned with the creation of industrial relations frameworks and the nature of industrial production. These debates also show that there were trade unionists in this period pushing for universal labor standards that would foster solidarity among all workers—including agricultural and Black workers.

The NIRA delegated the responsibility of setting wage minimums, hour maximums, and price controls to a new agency: the NRA.Footnote ⁴⁵ In part, this strategy helped usher the legislation through more quickly and without major debates over these provisions in Congress. But it did not circumvent these debates entirely, instead relegating them to the nascent agency. Rooted in labor associationalist ideals, the NRA created a series of industrial code boards that were overseen by the federal government and composed of representatives from labor, industry, and the consuming public. The NRA was established to promote harmonious industrial relations, avoid class antagonism, and constrain the excesses of capitalism that were thought to have brought about the depression.Footnote ⁴⁶ One important goal of the NRA was to enact price controls and curb massive monopolies. Some argue that this meant the NRA was intended to allow businesses to negotiate among themselves rather than providing an opportunity for negotiations to take place between labor and industry.Footnote ⁴⁷ The structure also tended to favor large corporations, which garnered criticism of the agency among small businesses.Footnote ⁴⁸

The agency also posed an initial challenge to efforts to delineate the agricultural and industrial sectors. Despite Roosevelt's administrative decree that the NIRA and Section 7(a) did not apply to agricultural workers, there was still considerable confusion over the law's applicability to the agricultural sector and its workers.Footnote ⁴⁹ Public interpretations and responses to the legislation did not register this fact. In response to the massive publicity campaigns conducted to spread awareness of the NRA, many farm laborers petitioned the agency to establish standards for their industries.Footnote ⁵⁰ As in the industrial sector, there was a similar spike in labor organizing among farm workers after the passage of the legislation.Footnote ⁵¹

The NRA code board hearings seeking to set wages and working conditions in agriculture-related industries challenged the bright line that Congress and the agricultural sector had attempted to draw between the agricultural and industrial sectors. During the debates that resulted in the passage of the NIRA, the term “agricultural workers” typically referred to non-landowning farmworkers employed by farmers, planters, and ranchers to work in their fields and barns. However, the rise of mass agricultural production meant that there was also a significant component of the agricultural workforce that worked for agricultural cooperatives and industries in packing sheds and canneries or moving an agricultural product like cotton into mills. Many of these positions closely resembled those in industrial factories, making the delineation between the agricultural and industrial sectors fuzzy. This issue of how to differentiate the two repeatedly appeared in debates over wages and standards set by the NRA in agriculture-related industries.

Most critically, the cotton textile code board hearings made clear that the delineation of the agricultural and industrial sectors had significant consequences for both agricultural and Black workers. The massive cotton textile industry was a priority industry for the Roosevelt administration, which was why the president asked the cotton textile board to convene first, before the legislation became law.Footnote ⁵² By the 1930s, the cotton textile industry was the largest in the United States and spanned a broad set of workers and working conditions, with nearly one million workers across twenty-nine states.Footnote ⁵³ Cotton production was also highly concentrated in the South. Moreover, while there were many instances of protest and militant action among Southern textile workers from 1929 to 1934, overall rates of unionization were low. This disorganization of textile workers was compounded by the fact that workers were spread out and frequently reliant on their employers for housing, medical care, and other services.Footnote ⁵⁴

Code debates for the cotton textile industry mirrored the debates that had taken place during the creation of the NIRA. Once again, farmers’ organizations, agribusiness, and agricultural manufacturers attempted to distinguish between categories of workers in order to limit the scope of labor protections provided by the codes. Their arguments endorsed labor protections only for those workers who were deemed essential to the flow of commerce by their relative proximity to the chain of production, which served as another means of delineating agricultural and industrial labor. In the cotton textile code board hearing, the groups of workers that sparked the most discussion were “outside employees” and “cleaners.” Both of these were lower-skilled positions and disproportionately consisted of Black workers, in jobs that looked very much like agricultural and domestic labor. Unlike the debates over the NIRA, there was more forceful opposition to attempts to exclude these workers. Local AFL leaders, labor organizers affiliated with the CPUSA, and the NIL fought to keep both worker classes included in two ways: first by highlighting the need for universal inclusions, and second by focusing on the disparate impact the exclusions would have on Black workers.

The purpose of the cotton textile code, as articulated in a draft presented in June 1933, was to address unemployment, improve standards of labor, limit competition, and increase the “consumption of industrial and agricultural products by increasing purchasing power.”Footnote ⁵⁵ The first version of the code, which had been drafted by the three industrial representatives on the panel, stipulated a maximum 40-hour workweek, a $10 minimum weekly wage in the South, and an $11 minimum weekly wage in the North. George Sloan, an industry representative of the Cotton Textile Institute, spearheaded the effort to draft the code and was tasked with presenting it to the assembled board. However, it quickly became clear that the code had been drafted by the industry representatives without input from organized labor. One of the government administrators overseeing the code board hearing was flabbergasted when labor representatives, including the AFL and its affiliate, the United Textile Workers of America (UTWA), expressed their opposition to the code at the first public hearing. The UTWA representative said that there had not been an opportunity to raise their concerns about the code because the draft had been written entirely by the manufacturing representatives.Footnote ⁵⁶

The UTWA and other labor groups advocated for a lower maximum hour provision and a higher weekly minimum wage than the manufacturers’ draft code proposed. For example, Thomas McMahon, who testified on behalf of the UTWA, argued that the weekly wage should be $14.Footnote ⁵⁷ In doing so, they sought to simultaneously limit workers’ hours and create more jobs without lowering overall wages. Some labor groups were concerned that the maximum hour provision was not a guarantee of those hours and that the weekly wages were likely to decrease for those workers. So, they advocated for higher wages. During the cotton textile code board hearing, the labor groups that testified were the national AFL, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA, an AFL affiliate), the Massachusetts Textile Council, and the National Textile Workers. The composition of this group provides important context for the debates within the labor movement at the time, particularly concerning agricultural and Black workers. While all these locals were part of the AFL at that time, McMahon of the UTWA and Sidney Hillman of the ACWA would be among the seven founding members and unions of the CIO when it broke away from the AFL in 1935 to focus on organizing mass industrial workers. Textile workers, in both the North and the South, were important sectors for that strategy. Many workers in the cotton textile industry were frustrated with the AFL leadership and negotiations on their behalf, particularly with their leadership in the labor disputes in the early 1930s. Both in those disputes and during the NRA code board hearings, many rank-and-file members felt that the AFL was siding with management over workers’ interests.Footnote ⁵⁸

McMahon of the UTWA explicitly objected to the exclusion of certain classes from the definition of “employees” in the draft code: “learners during a six weeks’ apprenticeship, cleaners and outside employees.”Footnote ⁵⁹ The federal NRA administrators questioned Sloan of the Cotton Textile Institute and other industrial representatives about the exclusion of these three classes. Sloan argued that excluding apprentices from the minimum wage requirements reflected the fact that these were training programs, not formal employment. He maintained that if minimum wages were put in place for this group, employers were likely to discontinue the apprentice programs due to the increased cost. William H. Allen, the federal administrator and chairman of the session, voiced a concern that excluding apprentices from the code's definition of an employee could make them “perpetual apprentices,” who would move from company to company without finding stable work. Sloan said that while this exact situation had not been raised in the preliminary discussions, he believed the proposed code would prevent this, although he did not clarify how.Footnote ⁶⁰

Sloan invited another cotton manufacturing representative from the code board, T. M. Marchant, to explain and defend the exclusion of cleaners and outside employees. “‘Cleaners,’ as they are classed in the Southern mills, are sweepers and certain types of operatives that clean up the machines, merely when it is standing idle . . . Outside labor, as designated here, are altogether colored workers who come in contact with the farming employes [sic], or farming help. Colored operators.”Footnote ⁶¹ Marchant's technical defense of the exclusion of these categories was rooted in their distance from the chain of production. Outside workers, who simply aided farmworkers, and cleaners, who worked around the machines when they were not in production, should not be considered formal employees of the cotton textile industry. Marchant's admission that these were predominantly Black workers spoke to the intense racial stratification of the Southern workforce. The additional costs imposed by maintaining segregated facilities meant that Black workers had been all but excluded from the largest industry in the South. Where they were able to be hired in textile mills and factories, Black workers filled the most menial roles, including “outside labor, cleaning and sweeping, or the hot, dirty, heavy work in the picking room.”Footnote ⁶²

Marchant was questioned as to why cleaners and outside workers should not be included in the definition of employee and what that would mean for their labor protections. He responded that although it had not been discussed explicitly in their sessions, he thought “it would be the understanding that naturally the wage scale of the outside employees would come up on some corresponding basis in this fight.” At that point, General Hugh Johnson of the NRA waded into the conversation and asked whether increases in wages for outside employees would be proportional to increases in wages for classes of workers included in the code. Marchant said he could not be sure the increase would be proportional, but he was confident they would increase. Johnson pressed Marchant on why, with that assumption, the code did not also designate a wage scale for cleaners and outside employees. After some ineffective evasion, Marchant said that it had not been considered. Johnson let the issue drop and returned to Sloan's testimony.Footnote ⁶³

Marchant's and Sloan's answers to questions about the proposed exclusions may have been murky and evasive, but their proposal represented another attempt by employers and industrialists to avoid the new labor regulations for the lowest paid, least skilled, and most precarious workers in the cotton textile industry. Just as they had in debates over the NIRA, they used the delineation of the agricultural and industrial economies to single out categories of unskilled workers that New Deal labor protections would not cover.

However, unlike in the NIRA debates, these low-skilled and disproportionately Black workers found allies and defenders within the labor movement in this instance. Union representatives fought back against the proposed code, and their response spoke to ongoing debates over unskilled and African American workers within the labor movement. On the day following Sloan's and Marchant's defense of the exclusion of outside workers and cleaners, McMahon of the UTWA argued that the proposed exclusions from the code invited “careful stipulation about the meaning of the word ‘employes’ [sic]. Under the definition contained in the code ‘employes’ are those actually employed in the operation and tending of looms and spindles.” McMahon recalled the proposal for labor protections only for workers with a certain “proximity to the chain of production” and clearly aligned this with stipulations about workers’ skill level. McMahon argued that establishing labor protections along these lines would mean that those workers in “the most in need of relief are afforded no relief.”Footnote ⁶⁴ Instead, McMahon suggested that the definition of employee proposed in the code and the legal protections afforded should be determined by their precarity and need for legal protections. This argument reflected a more comprehensive and universal version of labor protections than the national AFL's craft-based, skilled worker focus. The UTWA argued quite forcefully that labor protections should extend to these unskilled Black workers, challenging the exclusion of workers based on skill level.

This difference between the national AFL and the UTWA spoke to the increasing divide within the AFL over the question of organizing industrial workers, which ultimately sparked the split and formation of the CIO. However, this incident also highlights those efforts to organize unskilled workers. These arguments about the need for universal labor protections made by soon-to-be CIO affiliates led by leaders like McMahon were particularly consequential for Black workers. Viewing labor protections for skilled and unskilled workers alike underscored the need for a labor movement whose strength lay in its commitment to the principle of solidarity for workers across skill levels. Further, these developments within the labor movement exchange challenge the race-centric arguments put forward by scholars like David Roediger, which attempt to show that a sense of solidarity among the white working class, unified by a psychological experience of whiteness, worked as a constant to perpetuate racial exclusion and discrimination against Black workers.Footnote ⁶⁵ The clear division among white trade unionists as to whether to build on the bargaining power of skilled workers or to build on a principle of solidarity to win bargaining rights and protections for all workers challenges the idea that “the relationship between race and labor can be reduced to a narrative of exclusion and subordination,” and instead were entwined with debates within labor over whether and how to organize unskilled workers and fight for universal labor protections.Footnote ⁶⁶

While union and industrial representatives did not explicitly cast the exclusions of outside workers and cleaners in the cotton codes as racially motivated, two prominent labor and racial advocacy organizers framed their remarks at code board hearings in explicitly racial terms. They were John P. Davis of the NIL and June Croll of the National Textile Workers, a group organizing Southern cotton workers affiliated with the CPUSA. The NIL was the forerunner of the National Negro Congress, an organization that endorsed a Popular Front strategy to synthesize the efforts of unions and racial advocacy organizations.Footnote ⁶⁷ Davis was a forceful defender of Black workers in the cotton textile code debates. In his testimony, Davis provided census data to establish that of the nearly 14,000 Black workers attached to cotton mills, roughly three-quarters were unskilled laborers, while just one-quarter were semiskilled operators. These figures underscore the centrality of Marchant and McMahon's debate over skilled and unskilled workers for Black workers.

Further, Davis stated that seven out of ten of these workers worked in five Southern states (North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, and Georgia). The fact that these were largely unskilled workers in the South meant that, on the whole, Black workers were getting paid significantly less. Davis did not offer comparable figures for white workers, however, as there was no official public documentation of the comparison of wages between laborers and semiskilled operators. He did make reference to unofficial records, which indicated that “persons classified as laborers working in cotton mills receive a lower wage than that paid those classified as operatives.” Further, Davis testified that “an even lower wage scale prevails for Negro laborers in the cotton textile industry than for whites classified as laborers; that the hours of work for this class are more than 40 hours a week; that the work is unhealthy and generally unsanitary conditions prevail.”Footnote ⁶⁸ On these grounds, Davis claimed that the exclusion of outside employees and cleaners would disproportionately impact Black workers:

Davis argued that the very spirit of the exclusion went against the basic principle of minimum wage legislation to “raise excessively low wages.”Footnote ⁷⁰

Like McMahon of the UTWA, Davis stressed that such exclusions would also tempt employers to “evade the law by reclassifying employees.” With an available group of laborers not protected by minimum wage and maximum hour protections, employers were likely to “either falsify the classification or shift men grouped in the excluded occupations to part-time work in fields that are not included in the regulations.”Footnote ⁷¹ This aligned with Marchant's stated intention that the wages of these classes of workers would be determined by the employers, with perhaps some relationship to subsequent rises in the minimum wage for code employees, but certainly no guarantee.

The NRA administrators, Hugh Johnson and Donald Richberg, only engaged with Davis to ask whether the NIL was satisfied with the minimum wage rate proposed by the code. Davis once again pointed to the lack of a comprehensive cost of living study for Black workers in the South, which they had asked the U.S. Department of Labor to conduct. Without such information, Davis said he could not make a clear assessment but agreed with the testimony of other labor groups who raised concerns.

The limited engagement with Davis stood in sharp contrast with Johnson's and Richberg's open hostility to Croll of the National Textile Workers. Communist organizing efforts were another source of tension within the labor movement, fueled by the CPUSA's efforts to organize both independent unions and AFL locals. The CPUSA unions and organizing groups, which had started organizing Black workers in 1929, were among the first labor associations to strongly endorse antidiscrimination principles.Footnote ⁷² In her testimony, Croll attacked the proposed code on the grounds that it would accomplish little in advancing the NIRA's goals to create jobs and increase wages for workers. Croll argued that neither the 40-hour maximum nor the weekly minimum wage considered the actual circumstances textile workers were facing. She also clearly articulated the racial implications of the proposed worker exclusions:

Croll's testimony weaved together racial exclusion and worker exploitation issues in ways that connected the points made by other trade unionists and racial equality advocates.

In addition to highlighting the unfair practices of employers, Croll was also highly critical of organized labor, particularly of the AFL's and UTWA's failure to fight for contracts that reflected the workers’ preferences and needs. She criticized organized labor for using the exclusion of Black workers as a bargaining chip for higher wages for their white members.Footnote ⁷³ She also sought to distinguish between the interests of workers and the machinations of leaders of labor organizations, who had interests in reaching an accord on the codes separate from the benefit of the workers.Footnote ⁷⁴ Labor representatives’ testimony before the cotton textile code board provided some support for Croll's claim that there were important distinctions between the national union's leaders and the rank-and-file workers. While McMahon, a representative of a local union, argued forcefully for the inclusion of the outside workers and cleaners, William Green and John Frey, representatives of the national AFL, stayed silent on the issue. This difference, once again, highlights the growing rift that would give rise to the CIO.Footnote ⁷⁵

The final version of the code, which President Roosevelt signed on July 9, 1933, reflected the NRA's attempts to compromise on many of the arguments that arose during the hearing. Minimum weekly wages were increased by one dollar, but the code maintained the 40-hour workweek. It also accepted the industrial representatives’ proposal to exclude outside workers and cleaners “for the present.” However, it called for the Planning and Supervisory Committee of the NRA to create a “schedule of minimum wages and maximum hours for these classes,” by January 1934.Footnote ⁷⁶ While not an outright success, this was a significant indication that the federal administrators were dissatisfied with Sloan's and Marchant's defense of the exclusions and compelled by the testimony of those who advocated keeping outside workers and cleaners in the definition of employee. The NRA was broadly recognized as a failure of industrial planning, a claim that is supported by the modest adjustments and clear evidence of the powerful position industry representatives held on the cotton textile code board.Footnote ⁷⁷

But this modest concession by the NRA highlights a small moment of victory for the coalition of labor and racial equality advocates that had argued for labor protections for outside workers and cleaners. At its core, the fight over outside workers and cleaners hinged on the question as to whether some categories of laborers outside the framework of legal labor protections. McMahon and the UTWA recognized that the risk of settling for anything other than universal inclusion would be allowing employers to continue to exploit the most disadvantaged workers—a recognition of the need for solidarity that transcended the race and skill level of workers. Davis and Croll also pointed to the harmful consequences of these exclusions, highlighting the racially disparate impact that the exclusion would have on Black workers. It is not clear whether the NRA administrators were more compelled by the racial disparity or universal protection arguments, but what is clear from this debate is that issues affecting Black workers were intimately tied to these debates among competing political-economic visions.

In either case, the final ruling and call for labor standards for the outside workers and cleaners was a significant indicator that the government was increasingly open to a vision of economic recovery that extended protections to more vulnerable workers, one that would develop into stronger labor protections under the NLRA. Ultimately, both the positions of agricultural industrialists and the coalition of racial and labor advocates provided a set of rhetorical arguments that were drawn upon in a similar debate over agricultural workers and the NLRA, as will be discussed in the next section.

3. Rearticulating Agricultural Worker Exclusions under the NLRA

The experience under the NIRA and the NRA was illuminating for those trying to build a new framework for labor relations, including those aiming to build coalitions among labor unions and racial advocacy organizations. But in May 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned vital sections of the law, including Section 7(a) protections for organizing workers. The Court argued that Congress had overstepped the commerce power granted to it in the Constitution.Footnote ⁷⁸ However, the problems with the law extended beyond these constitutional questions. While there was a rapid spike in labor organizing and union growth, the attempts to foster harmonious negotiations between industry and labor had, in fact, led to greater labor unrest. A major strike wave in 1934 and 1935 underscored workers’ dissatisfaction with the NIRA and the perception that the code boards had allowed for too much influence by employers. The agricultural industry was no exception. A massive cotton textile strike in the South in the fall of 1934 was, in part, a response to workers’ dissatisfaction with the outcome of the NRA's cotton textile code.Footnote ⁷⁹ In the West, major agricultural strikes in the San Joaquin Valley in the fall of 1933 and then in the Imperial Valley in early 1934 caused political unrest in the region.Footnote ⁸⁰

But it was not only industrial unrest and the Supreme Court's decision that led New Dealers to devise a new framework for industrial relations. Even before the court struck down elements of the NIRA, Senator Wagner, labor's major champion in Congress, had begun crafting a new labor relations bill that would reconstitute and strengthen the weak protections for workers that had been established by the NIRA's Section 7(a). Wagner and other progressives continued to highlight the importance of harmonious and peaceful labor relations for interstate commerce in order to circumvent further intervention by the Supreme Court. Thus, the NLRA was designed not simply to recreate elements of the NIRA and NRA; it was also written to correct the shortcomings of the previous legislation. Most notably, it created the permanent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that would supervise union elections, expanded workers’ bargaining rights, and codified a list of unfair or coercive labor practices.Footnote ⁸¹ In short, the NLRA offered more substantial protections and powerful tools for workers seeking to organize into labor unions. Thus, with the introduction of the NLRA, it became clear that many New Dealers had begun to move away from promoting associationalism as the primary mode for organizing labor relations in favor of measures that would create and protect a stronger labor movement while still promoting “industrial peace.”Footnote ⁸²

While it provided essential protections for workers, the new law did not go so far as to embrace the vision of universal labor standards that labor representatives and racial advocacy organizations had pushed for during the NRA's cotton textile code board hearing. Instead, the NLRA codified the exclusion of several classes of workers, including agricultural workers. Many scholars have tried to pinpoint where the idea for agricultural workers’ exclusion originated. Some argue that it emerged from members of Congress (particularly Southern Democrats), others point to the influence of advisers on Roosevelt's economic council, and some point to similar exclusions adopted by other Western democracies.Footnote ⁸³ Debates over the NLRA in both Congress and within Roosevelt's cabinet certainly provide support for each of these explanations. However, they also tend to isolate consideration of the development of these policies on the friction and debate between New Dealers and the oppositional Southern Democrats.

For example, many scholars argue that concerns over the “administrative burden” of implementing new provisions of the Social Security Act, which also passed in 1935, were rooted in members’ interest in maintaining a labor and racial regime in the South. They argue that congressional opposition to labor standards and social welfare programs proposed in the second wave of New Deal legislation reflected an interest in maintaining the system of paternalism in the South, particularly in the cotton and agricultural sector.Footnote ⁸⁴ These accounts highlight significant political dynamics that inarguably shaped the policy environment. However, these accounts fail to emphasize the extent to which the congressional hearings and testimony on the NLRA were continuations of the debates that had taken place in the NIRA and the NRA's cotton textile code board over the need to delineate agricultural and industrial production in the eyes of the law. Representatives of farmers’ organizations, agribusiness, and agricultural producers continued to argue for a delineation of the agricultural and industrial sectors, which was a strategy for making some categories of workers (in canneries, for example) ineligible for labor protections. Further, as this section will detail, the cotton textile code board's legacy was a matter of significant consideration during the NLRA hearings.

Despite the fact that New Dealers had begun to shift away from labor associationalism and increase their support for a strong labor movement, an NRA-style coalition labor and racial advocacy group did not form to oppose the exclusion of agricultural and other workers. One reason for this was that in 1934, despite the debates over organizing strategies that were taking place within the labor movement, the AFL was the largest and most influential trade association in the country, which meant that it had extraordinary influence and sway among New Dealers in Congress. As committee debates over the bill reveal, just as they had during the NIRA hearings, these members increasingly deferred to the AFL regarding emergent issues related to industrial relations. This deference had two primary consequences for agricultural workers. First, the national AFL's unwillingness to organize agricultural workers resulted in their lack of champions in legislative debates. Second, this deference also meant that progressive New Dealers were not particularly receptive to the claims of discrimination made by racial advocacy organizations against labor unions.

In addition, the most outspoken members of racial advocacy organizations during the NLRA hearings were conflicted about how—and whether—to work alongside trade unions. Some representatives continued to advocate for a Popular Front–style coalition, in which Davis and the NIL saw unions as partners, albeit imperfect ones, in striking at the core problems within the capitalist economic system.Footnote ⁸⁵ While Davis highlighted racial disparities and the dire conditions for Black workers during the cotton textile code board hearings, he did not explicitly attack labor or union practices. During the NLRA debates, some representatives of racial advocacy organizations echoed Davis's claims and argued forcefully that an alliance with labor would strike at the real enemy: employers. But other racial advocacy organization representatives were more conflicted about the possibility of partnering with unions, many of which still adhered to Jim Crow segregation and discrimination practices. Representatives of the NAACP and the National Urban League directed some of their most fiery critiques of discrimination at labor unions and used the NLRA hearings and worker exclusion policies to demonstrate the barriers for Black workers trying to join unions. They also emphasized the consequences of excluding agricultural and domestic workers from coverage by the NLRA for the majority of Black workers. Ultimately, however, the lack of clear advocates among the strongest labor voice in Congress, the AFL, and the deference to them inhibited the formation of a stronger coalition among racial advocacy organizations and unions.

Tracing back through the committee reports, hearings, and debates on the NLRA, several key dynamics emerge that help to explain how the explicit exclusion of agricultural workers evolved out of similar efforts to distinguish the agricultural and industrial sectors that had taken place in the NIRA and NRA debates. Unsurprisingly, farmers and agribusiness representatives continued to advocate for differentiation of the agricultural and industrial economies. Frederic Brenckman, president of the National Grange (the nation's oldest farmers’ organization), sent a letter to the Senate Committee on Education and Labor in April 1934 that illuminated the Grange's continued commitment to an explicit separation of the agricultural and industrial sectors, including the differentiation of their workers. Brenckman opened the letter by citing opposition from “various parts of the country” to the proposal that the NLRA include agricultural labor. Brenckman claimed that “it would manifestly be absurd to place hired farm labor in the same category with the industrial labor, and to give the proposed national labor board justification over the farmer's hired help.”Footnote ⁸⁶ Brenckman argued that farm labor was merely a reflection of the state of farmers:

As it had during debates over the NIRA and the AAA, the National Grange maintained that imposing labor regulations to protect farm workers would further disadvantage already vulnerable farmers.Footnote ⁸⁸ The Grange held up the ideal of the small family farmer as the backbone of American agriculture and elided the fact that big and small farmers were hiring increasing numbers of farmworkers at very low wages in many sectors of American agriculture. In line with this position, Grange representatives like Brenckman pressed committee members to continue to distinguish between the agricultural and industrial sectors and within the agricultural sector, to prioritize the interests of farmers over those of farm laborers.

The NLRA's definition of “employee” excluded several categories of workers from labor protections, including agricultural, domestic, and other small-scale business employees.Footnote ⁸⁹ While the original bill introduced in the Senate did not exclude agricultural workers, in May 1934, the Senate Committee on Education and Labor amended it to make “clear that the Industrial Adjustment Board is to have jurisdiction over only those disputes which are of a certain magnitude and which affect commerce.”Footnote ⁹⁰ The justification for these exclusions was that only the occupations that had the greatest impact on commerce should be under the jurisdiction of the Industrial Adjustment Board, which would later become the National Labor Relations Board. One significant motivation for this language and for limiting the scope of the legislation to significant commercial activities was to circumvent the possibility that the NLRA would be overturned by the courts, as had been the fate of the NIRA. However, this was the same type of argument that had been used to exclude outside workers and cleaners from the cotton textile industrial code, distinguishing agricultural laborers from the chain of industrial production.

The Senate Committee on Education and Labor ultimately revised the bill to include “employees working for very small employer units” in NLRA protections. After much deliberation, committee members had concluded that Section 7(a) of the NIRA did not impose limitations on the size of employers, and neither should the NLRA deny rights to employees based on the “size of the plant in which they work.” The report concluded that while they may work in smaller establishments, these workers were often part of “very large associations of workers with great public significance.” In essence, this was a recognition that even small groups of workers, when aligned with other workers through labor unions or other organizations, were significant parts of the national economy and required labor protections.

Nevertheless, the committee did not extend this logic to bring agricultural workers under the bill's protections. The Senate committee report pointed to “administrative reasons” that made it “wise not to include under the bill agricultural laborers, persons in domestic service of any family or person in his home, or any individual employed by his parent or spouse.”Footnote ⁹¹ Scholars have argued that members of Congress were concerned that the cost of recouping social security taxes from small employers would impose a massive administrative burden that would exceed any revenue generated by the 1935 Social Security Act. However, in the case of extending labor protections, members did not clarify how labor regulations would generate a similar administrative burden.

As later organizing efforts would show, agricultural workers could and did organize along “craft or industrial lines” into a “large association of workers” with an impact on commerce.Footnote ⁹² In other words, the idea of administrative burden was a political construction that made a largely artificial distinction between agricultural workers and employees of small firms. Whether in response to this call or other pressures, when the bill was reported out of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor the following month, it had been amended to exclude agricultural and domestic workers.Footnote ⁹³

After passing out of the Senate, the bill moved into the House and was assigned to the House Committee on Labor, where the most vocal supporter of agricultural workers in Congress, Representative Vito Marcantonio (R-NY), loudly opposed their exclusion from the bill. His dissenting opinion appeared in three reports generated by the House Committee on Labor in May and June 1935. While he stated at the outset that, overall, he supported the bill, the exclusion of agricultural workers was a significant issue. He presented labor disputes in California's Imperial Valley and Ohio's Hardin County and the work of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Arkansas as evidence that the agricultural sector exhibited many instances of labor unrest that required congressional attention. Marcantonio relied on arguments similar to those that had been used to defend outside workers and cleaners during the cotton textile debates. He forcefully declared that agricultural workers were among the workers in greatest need of protection and that he could not think of “a single solitary reason why agricultural worker should not be included under the provisions of this bill.” Further, he stated that “the same reasons urged for the adoption of this bill on behalf of the industrial workers are equally applicable in the case of the agricultural workers, in fact, more so as their plight calls for immediate and prompt action.”Footnote ⁹⁴

Just as McMahon of the UTWA had argued in the cotton textile code hearings, Marcantonio's minority statement in the House report sought to equate the conditions agricultural and industrial workers faced and push for universal labor protections. Neither Marcantonio nor the majority report, written by the bill's cosponsor, Representative Connery, included any explicit discussion of the reasons for the agricultural worker exclusion, aside from the same “administrative burden” reasoning that had been provided in the Senate reports.

Many of the representatives who testified before the NRA cotton textile board also testified before the House and Senate committees considering the NLRA, including the UTWA, the ACWA, the Cotton Manufacturers Association, and the Cotton Textile Institute. In part, the NLRA debates provided a platform for discussion and evaluation of the efficacy of the NIRA and the NRA, in particular. There was extensive debate over whether the cotton textile code had prompted the creation of new jobs through maximum hour restrictions while maintaining wage levels for the existing employees. Unsurprisingly, labor representatives and industry representatives had different interpretations of the effects of the code. Labor representatives argued that while workers would have maintained the same level of wages if they worked a 40-hour workweek, in many cases, they were not guaranteed those hours and, thus, took home less pay. In other words, the maximum hour provision might have created more jobs, as was intended, but it did not secure the status of existing workers.Footnote ⁹⁵

On the other hand, manufacturers and industrialists argued that the new code's 40-hour maximum and minimum wage provisions had increased workers’ net take-home pay. They defended the cotton textile code with data indicating that both workers’ numbers and take-home pay had increased. Further, they argued that while 40 hours of work was not guaranteed, the figures reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated an increase in the number of jobs and workers’ weekly pay, as well as a decrease in hours.Footnote ⁹⁶ They also pushed for maintaining the NRA framework, contending that doing so would help to promote harmonious industrial relations between workers and employers. While they had initially been wary of the NIRA, cotton manufacturers had been able to shape the code to their preferences and found that they were able to exert significant influence under the the labor associationalist framework.Footnote ⁹⁷ Some committee members, including Northern Democrats, were compelled by the picture of agricultural recovery painted by the agribusiness and agricultural manufacturers and boasted about the recovery of agriculture in the cotton textile industry.Footnote ⁹⁸

Representatives from racial advocacy organizations, like the NAACP and the National Urban League, also sought to connect the exclusions under the NRA to the limits of government protections for Black workers in the new bill. Drawing on the exclusion of outside workers and cleaners under the cotton textile code, Houston of the NAACP extended Davis's argument during the cotton textile code board hearings and argued that racial exclusion was the primary goal of those who fought for exclusions under the cotton textile code:

Houston also presented an article written by Davis that addressed the issue of workers at the Maid-Well Garment factory in Arkansas, whose workforce was composed predominantly of Black women and fell under the cotton textile code's jurisdiction. Maid-Well employees had filed a complaint with the NRA Compliance Board when the company refused to raise wages after the cotton textile code was signed. In response, Davis reported that the employer fired these Black women, claiming they were “inefficient” employees.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ They defended the cotton textile code with data indicating that both workers’ numbers and take-home pay had increased. Once again, employers and industrials sought to segment the labor force and only extend labor protections to some categories. Maid-Well's explicitly racially essentialist arguments further highlight the material consequences of racial stratification in the labor market.

Nonetheless, committee members were resistant to Houston's argument about the racial implications of the NRA's cotton textile code board. Chairman Connery, the House sponsor of the bill, even argued that labor representatives on a national labor board would have prevented the exclusion of the cleaners and outside workers from the cotton textile code:

Here, Connery referred to the five labor representatives that would sit on the new NLRB. Houston accepted Connery's point, perhaps reflecting optimism about a new labor board and more effective administrative machinery. However, as the previous section makes clear, Connery's assumption that the AFL would stand against the exclusion of specific classes of workers was only partially true. The local affiliate of the AFL and precursor of the CIO protested this exclusion and pressed for universal coverage and labor protections during the cotton textile code board hearings. But William Green, president of the national AFL, had not protested the cotton textile board exclusions and was similarly silent about the exclusion of agricultural workers under the NLRA.

This tension over organizing agricultural workers and challenges to the AFL's craft organizing model were not explicitly addressed in hearings on the NLRA. Instead, comments like Connery's reflected members’ deference to the AFL as the primary representative of organized labor during the NLRA hearings. New Dealers’ remarks and lines of questioning revealed their deference to the AFL and their overall positive impression of the AFL's membership policy and attitude toward Black workers. While the New Dealers in Congress were not entirely dismissive of the labor's discriminatory practices toward Black workers, some of their remarks do reveal that their prevailing belief was that Black workers were able to join labor unions without significant obstacles, particularly the AFL and its affiliates.Footnote ¹⁰²

Houston and other representatives of racial advocacy organizations sought to counter these claims and amend the bill to reflect the significant discrimination and barriers Black workers faced in trying to join unions. William Taylor, another NAACP representative, told the Senate committee that the NAACP was “convinced that this bill conceals more danger to the future welfare of the colored citizens of this country than any bill seriously considered by Congress in the last 75 years.” Taylor's forceful claim was rooted in his belief that the bill did not do enough to remove the barriers for Black workers to join labor unions, which were “hostile to colored people.”Footnote ¹⁰³ The NAACP and others proposed that the bill be amended to include an antidiscrimination clause, but the AFL made clear that it would withdraw its support for the NLRA if such an amendment was included.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ During the AFL's 1934 convention, a similar proposal which would have added an antidiscrimination clause to the association's constitution had been voted down by the national membership, signaling that this was an open and active debate.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

In addition to the recommendation for a general antidiscrimination clause, racial advocacy organizations made several other proposals to amend the NLRA, which would have imposed penalties on discriminatory unions. Houston suggested that representatives of national unions on the proposed NLRB should be from unions that “make no discrimination in the matter of membership as to race, creed, or color.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Second, Houston argued that the bill should create workers councils that would represent workers from unorganized sectors of the economy, like agricultural workers.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ T. Arnold Hill of the National Urban League articulated a similar concern in his testimony on the NLRA and suggested the bill be amended to include Black strikebreakers in the bill's definition of “employee.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸

New Dealers in Congress were resistant to these proposals because they undercut precisely the kind of obstructions the law was attempting to prevent. Following Houston's prepared statement, Chairman Connery argued that including unorganized workers in the workers’ councils would allow representatives from company unions to serve on these councils, which employers had created and used to thwart organized labor's efforts prior to the NLRA. Both Representative George Schneider (P-WI) and Chairman Connery argued that Black workers and racial advocacy groups should continue to try to organize workers through the AFL rather than seek legal representation for unorganized workers outside the labor movement.Footnote ¹⁰⁹

These arguments had some resonance with racial equality advocates, particularly with Houston. While the NAACP's proposed amendments to the NLRA were seen as antagonistic to the bill's goals, elsewhere in his testimony, Houston underscored the importance of working with organized labor and using federal regulations to protect white and Black workers against employers. Houston put it quite plainly: “anything that benefits labor in general is going to benefit Negro labor in particular.” He acknowledged that the way to resolve issues for Black workers was through labor “and that as between looking to the employer and looking to labor, I personally would rather trust white labor than white employers, and there are a lot of Negroes who are feeling that way.”Footnote ¹¹⁰ Representative Schneider shared this position and argued that Black workers’ lack of organization was not attributable to opposition by the “intelligent white worker,” but to employer opposition. The employer, Schneider claimed, had realized that “it is to his advantage financially to keep the Negro unorganized and keep that feeling between the [Black and white workers] so that he can get cheap labor, that is all.” Houston strongly agreed with Schneider, further claiming that “it is necessary for economic exploitation of labor for the employers always to have a labor pool into which they can reach down and draw any time labor gets out of hand or threatens to get out of hand.”Footnote ¹¹¹ Here, committee members and racial advocacy organizations found a point of agreement and recognized that employers exploited divisions between Black and white workers. Such divisions allowed employers to create and maintain a flexible, multipurpose pool of laborers outside the protection of the law. However, this acknowledgment did not extend to classes of workers, like agricultural workers, who found themselves set outside the law's protections.

Houston's comments and his forceful argument that Black workers’ fates were inextricably tied to the labor movement reflected a vital debate within and among racial advocacy groups about the potential for coalition building with trade unions. Some racial advocacy organizations and activists saw the New Deal as an opportunity “to reorient America's obsession with the Negro problem away from an answer based upon racial solutions toward one grounded in class dynamics.”Footnote ¹¹² Davis was among them, especially as he worked to transform the Negro Industrial League into the National Negro Congress, which actively sought to build ties to the labor movement as part of early Popular Front efforts.Footnote ¹¹³ But as testimony by other racial advocacy organizations and representatives makes clear, some organizations saw labor as a target, not an ally. Groups like the National Urban League and some within the NAACP, like Taylor, thought that the expanding federal powers should be used to force unions to change internal their practices and hire more Black workers. However, these proposals garnered significant opposition from labor and New Dealers in Congress, who argued that the proposed amendments would significantly undercut labor's power.

Ultimately, attempts to argue against the exclusion of agricultural workers and the challenges for Black workers did not lead to the same outcome that labor and racial advocacy organizations had achieved during the cotton textile code board hearings. New Dealers in Congress maintained that organized labor was the best path forward for organizing Black workers, and they were seemingly unreceptive to arguments that AFL unions discriminated and constructed barriers in place for Black workers. Most critically, no labor representative challenged the agricultural worker exclusion, reflecting the AFL's disinterest in organizing workers in unskilled sectors like agriculture. Moreover, while it limited the coalition-building potential during this episode, it did not settle the tensions within the labor movement about approaches to organizing and building worker solidarity.

This tension over organizing strategies within the labor movement, was also reflected in the testimony of James Rorty, a special correspondent for the New York Evening Post, before the House Committee on Labor in March 1935. Crucially, Rorty's testimony highlighted how this issue over unskilled and agricultural workers within the labor movement was not exclusively a Black-white issue. Rorty testified about the condition of largely migrant Mexican agricultural workers in Imperial Valley, California, before the House Committee on Labor. Rorty's testimony, with its focus on the wages, working conditions, and treatment of primarily migrant workers in the fields of California, spoke to the importance of regional political economies rooted in racial and economic hierarchies in the ultimate exclusion of agricultural workers from the labor provisions of the New Deal.

The West was a particularly significant region for policymakers concerned with unrest in the agricultural sector. More than half of the strikes and roughly four-fifths of the strikers in the agricultural sector were in California in the 1930s.Footnote ¹¹⁴ In the spring of 1934, in response to the particularly brutal labor conflicts in the Imperial Valley, Labor Secretary Frances Perkins directed Brigadier General Pelham Glassford to relocate to California and resolve the disputes among growers and agricultural workers. Glassford is a perfect example of a New Dealer whose views on industrial relations and labor associationalism changed during this period. Upon his arrival in Imperial Valley, Glassford tried to meet the needs of growers hoping that it would lead to greater willingness to compromise without the need for well-defined and powerful labor unions. Perkins selected Glassford precisely because she felt he could broker a peaceful agreement through his version of “benevolent authoritarianism.” However, this plan quickly fell apart. Western growers’ unwillingness to recognize workers’ organizing and their brutal response to labor unrest quickly shifted Glassford's position on the ability to resolve the conflicts through negotiation, and he became more open to the need for labor unions as permanent features of labor relations.Footnote ¹¹⁵

While Rorty's investigation was prompted by unrest in Imperial Valley and, in part, by Glassford's report, he was much more sympathetic to organized labor and efforts to organize workers in the region led by the CPUSA. Based on his two-month investigation in Imperial Valley, which was connected to a larger project on labor conditions in the country, Rorty concluded that the growers in the area had “exploited a communist hysteria for the advancement of their own interests.” Further, he argued, “they have welcomed labor agitation, which they could brand as ‘red,’ as a means of sustaining supremacy by mob rule, thereby preserving what is so essential to their profits, cheap labor; that they have succeeded in drawing into their conspiracy certain county officials who have become the principal tools of their machine.”Footnote ¹¹⁶ The question of Communist Party influence was particularly salient in Imperial Valley and in California agriculture more broadly. Rorty reported that a group of CPUSA organizers had attempted to transform a company union into a real labor organization. As a result, eighteen of the organizers were arrested and the union fell apart.Footnote ¹¹⁷ As Cletus Daniel effectively demonstrates, Communists and other left-leaning labor organizers attempted to organize agricultural workers starting in the late nineteenth century, with little success until the 1930s. Further, Daniel's account underscores how the unwillingness of the AFL to actively organize agricultural workers reflected the organization's preference for organizing skilled workers along craft lines.Footnote ¹¹⁸

Confirming Daniel's claims, Rorty was critical of the AFL in his testimony and clearly more sympathetic toward the efforts of Communist organizers: “I note that frequently radicals are active in labor organizations, and I regard—and myself, have regarded with sympathy, the efforts of the various radical organizations.”Footnote ¹¹⁹ He argued that more than having his sympathy, the Communist-led organizing efforts had also yielded significant progress, referencing the “genuine strike” led by the Cannery and Industrial Workers Industrial Union (C&IWIU) in the previous year. Rorty contrasted these efforts with the AFL's organizing efforts in agricultural labor. He argued that the “American Federation of Labor does not interest itself in agricultural work. Its entrance into the field of food work and food labor is new” and that they had been “standing still because of the failure of the Government to enforce 7(a).”Footnote ¹²⁰ The C&IWIU, which the CPUSA and the TUUL organized, was one of the most significant efforts to organize agricultural workers in the early 1930s as part of the wave of industrial organizing, even though the NIRA did not technically include agricultural workers.Footnote ¹²¹

Rorty raised many concerns and critiques of the AFL and picked apart their arguments against organizing agricultural workers.Footnote ¹²² Ultimately, Rorty endorsed the conclusion of the Glassford report that the NLRA should be amended to include labor rights for agricultural workers based on an assessment that, particularly in the case of Imperial Valley, “the type of agriculture is a highly industrial type of agriculture.”Footnote ¹²³ In the end, efforts like Rorty's to bring agricultural workers back into the bill were unsuccessful. The shift away from labor associationalism had led to much stronger worker and union provisions in the NLRA. However, the outsized influence of the national leadership of the AFL left Rorty, Marcantonio, and racial advocacy organizations without a clear champion. The final bill had improved on the industrial framework provided by the NIRA in many ways, but the persistence of a strict division between the agricultural and industrial sectors had tremendous and lasting consequences for agricultural workers.