HARMONY MOVEMENT

HARMONY MOVEMENT. Business Week magazine in 1937 promoted the use of “harmony campaigns” to curb “the current epidemic of strikes” in communities across the United States. The magazine noted “the importance of cooperative civic efforts for industrial peace.”

The campaign’s main feature was 13 full-page newspaper advertisements sponsored by social and civic organizations in the cities where they appeared. The campaign was to be supplemented by editorials and articles localized wherever possible. Contests are held for the best article on “What industrial harmony means to ______ (name of the city).” The program emphasized the harm done to entire communities by labor disruptions and the value to all of peaceful settlements.

The campaign was produced by the South Bend, Indiana, advertising agency of MacDonald-Cook and, as Business Week (1937) noted, ran “in the local papers of such hotbeds of labor unrest as Canton, Ohio and Johnstown, Pennsylvania.” Several weeks into the Dubuque Harmony campaign, the Dubuque Leader referenced this very article, recommend[ing] that every union man read Business Week, for January 23rd,— the six page article on Public Relations. It gave full view to the methods used to break the union movement. It named the agencies providing the propaganda, and what they do, and how they succeed. They even mentioned the Dubuque Harmony campaign by name. (Dubuque Leader 1937a, 1937d)

The National Association of Manufacturers was so pleased with the Harmony campaign that it purchased the rights from MacDonald-Cook in July 1937 and sent the entire advertising package to 367 newspapers across the United States. Of these newspapers, the messages ran in more than 200 (Tedlow 1979, 65-66; Walker and Sklar 1938).

The Dubuque Harmony campaign consisted of thirteen full-page advertisements that were published randomly over several weeks. Readers were encouraged to save the messages and, at the conclusion of the campaign, to write a brief essay, for potential cash prizes, explaining the importance of “harmony” to the Dubuque community. Residents of Dubuque and “future builders” of the city “not over 18 years old” were encouraged to enter the contest (Telegraph Herald 1936a). Many of the ads were run in Monday editions of the Telegraph Herald, the only day exempted from mail subscriptions of the newspaper. This suggests that the advertising’s sponsors were concerned with reaching the immediate Dubuque community and in building public opinion against labor organization therein.

Thirteen area civic and professional groups were listed as sponsors of each message including the Dubuque Manufacturers Association, the Employers Association, the Dubuque Chamber of Commerce, and the Telegraph Herald.

The DUBUQUE TRADES AND LABOR CONGRESS sent a letter to the superintendent of schools questioning the schools’ decision to allow students “to enter the contest now being carried on [and] paid for by the Manufacturers’ Association” (Dubuque Leader 1937). In subsequent years, labor unions in Dubuque sponsored similar essay competitions in local public schools. These reinforced the importance of labor organization to workers and economic justice to the community.

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Source:

Tracy, James F. “Smile While I Cut Your Throat”: Mass Media, Myth, and the Contested “Harmonization” of the Working Class". Online:http://truty.org/PDFs/Labor_issues/Smile%20While%20I%20Cut%20Your%20Throat.pdf