Mohawk Valley formula
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Mohawk Valley The Mohawk Valley region of the U.S. state of New York is the area surrounding the Mohawk River, sandwiched between the Adirondack Mountains and Catskill Mountains, northwest of the Capital District. As of the 2010 United States Census, th ...
formula is a plan for
strikebreaking A strikebreaker (sometimes called a scab, blackleg, or knobstick) is a person who works despite a strike. Strikebreakers are usually individuals who were not employed by the company before the trade union dispute but hired after or during the str ...
purportedly written by the president of the
Remington Rand Remington Rand was an early American business machine manufacturer, originally a typewriter manufacturer and in a later incarnation the manufacturer of the UNIVAC line of mainframe computers. Formed in 1927 following a merger, Remington Rand wa ...
company
James Rand, Jr. James Henry Rand Jr. (November 18, 1886 – June 3, 1968)"James Henry Rand Dead At 81," ''New York Times,'' June 4, 1968.Ingham, ''Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders,'' 1983. was an American industrialist who revolutionized the b ...
around the time of the Remington Rand strike at
Ilion, New York Ilion is a village in Herkimer County, New York, United States. The population was 7,790 at the 2017 census. The village is at the northern edge of the town of German Flatts, though a tiny portion is in the town of Frankfort. It is south of the ...
in 1936/37. The plan includes discrediting union leaders, frightening the public with the threat of violence, using local police and vigilantes to intimidate strikers, forming associations of "loyal employees" to influence public debate, fortifying workplaces, employing large numbers of replacement workers, and threatening to close the plant if work is not resumed. The Remington Rand company did indeed ruthlessly suppress the strikes, as documented in a ruling by the
National Labor Relations Board The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is an independent agency of the federal government of the United States with responsibilities for enforcing U.S. labor law in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices. Under the Natio ...
, and the plan has been accepted as a guide to the methods that were used. At least one source names the strikebreaker
Pearl Bergoff Pearl Louis Bergoff (April 23, 1875 or 1878-August 11, 1947)U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 for Pearl Louis Bergoff, September 12, 1918, accessed via Ancestry.comU.S., Passport Applications, 1795-1925 for Pearl L Bergoff, Janu ...
and his so-called "Bergoff Technique" as the origin of the formula. Rand and Bergoff were both indicted by the same federal grand jury for their roles in the Remington Rand strike.
Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
has described the formula as the result of business owners' trend away from violent strikebreaking to a "scientific" approach based on
propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...
. An essential feature of this approach is the identification of the management's interests with "Americanism," while labor activism is portrayed as the work of un-American outsiders. Workers are thus persuaded to turn against the activists and toward management to demonstrate their
patriotism Patriotism is the feeling of love, devotion, and sense of attachment to one's country. This attachment can be a combination of many different feelings, language relating to one's own homeland, including ethnic, cultural, political or histor ...
.


Elements of the formula

The following is the text of the Mohawk Valley formula as quoted in the labor press: #When a strike is threatened, label the union leaders as "agitators" to discredit them with the public and their own followers. Conduct balloting under the foremen to ascertain the strength of the union and to make possible misrepresentation of the strikers as a small minority. Exert economic pressure through threats to move the plant, align bankers, real estate owners and businessmen into a "Citizens' Committee". #Raise high the banner of "law and order", thereby causing the community to mass legal and police weapons against imagined violence and to forget that employees have equal rights with others in the community. #Call a "mass meeting" to coordinate public sentiment against the strike and strengthen the Citizens' Committee. #Form a large police force to intimidate the strikers and exert a psychological effect. Utilize local police, state police, vigilantes and special deputies chosen, if possible, from other neighborhoods. #Convince the strikers their cause is hopeless with a "back-to-work" movement by a puppet association of so-called "loyal employees" secretly organized by the employer. #When enough applications are on hand, set a date for opening the plant by having such opening requested by the puppet "back-to-work" association. #Stage the "opening" theatrically by throwing open the gates and having the employees march in a mass protected by squads of armed police so as to dramatize and exaggerate the opening and heighten the demoralizing effect. #Demoralize the strikers with a continuing show of force. If necessary turn the locality into a warlike camp and barricade it from the outside world. #Close the publicity barrage on the theme that the plant is in full operation and the strikers are merely a minority attempting to interfere with the right to work. With this, the campaign is over—the employer has broken the strike. A similar, although more nuanced and longer, version was published in ''
The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
'' in 1937.


See also

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House Committee on Un-American Activities The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...


Notes

{{1920s media culture 1936 documents 1937 documents History of labor relations in the United States Propaganda techniques