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America's Working Man

Work, Home, and Politics among Blue-Collar Property Owners

The University of Chicago Press

The Residential Setting

Among the most striking features of the United States is the high rate of home-ownership. Back in 1906 Werner Sombart drew a contrast with his native Germany: "A well known fact ... is the way in which the American worker in large cities and industrial areas meets his housing requirements: this has essential differences from that found among continental-European workers, particularly German ones. The German worker in such places usually lives in rented tenements, while his American peer lives correspondingly frequently in single-family or two-family dwellings." By 1975, three-quarters of all AFL-CIO members owned houses.

Yet even before rising interest rates in the late 1970s made purchasing a first home harder, some writers discounted much of the social and political significance of homeownership. They argued that residential America is clearly divided by occupation, into blue-collar and upper-white-collar ("middle-class") areas. In particular they claimed that post–World War II suburbia is divided this way. Thus Richard Hamilton concluded from a review of census data that: "There are not enough 'middle-class' suburbs to allow the assimilation of any significant portion of the blue-collar ranks ... most of the working-class suburbanites are located in working-class suburbs. The dominant orientations there ... are quite different from those in the middle-class suburbs." Bennett Berger studied auto workers in a new California suburb and came to the same conclusion.

These are critical issues for class consciousness and class conflict. If blue-collar workers live in their own areas, separate from the middle class and with limited chances for residential mobility, then they are likely to develop a working-class consciousness or strengthen an existing one.

This chapter considers these questions. It examines the kinds of houses workers inhabit (Is there a distinction between a working-class and a middle-class house?), and it examines the class and racial composition of the region and of the various areas where Imperium workers live (Are these working-class or middle-class areas?). A number of parts of the region bear on this question. Places where Imperium workers live include pre- and post–World War II residential and industrial suburbs. Other pertinent areas are the old port of Elizabeth, where many of the parents and grandparents of Imperium workers first settled, and the small number of very expensive areas in the region for "the rich."

Industrial History

Chemical production now dominates the industrial economy of New Jersey, but the modern economic growth of the area was triggered by oil refining. In 1878 a group of domestic refinery owners, desperate to escape Standard Oil's grip on the refining and transportation of oil, began construction of a pipeline from Pennsylvania to the Reading Railroad farther east. Standard responded by building a line right to the North Jersey coast (the Bayonne refinery). Not to be outdone, the independent refiners constructed another pipeline, this time to their own refineries at Bayonne. Abroad, Standard's exports to Europe faced increasing competition from Russian oil. Under pressure to cut costs, in 1909 Standard began production at the Linden refinery, the first United States refinery to use continuous process (rather than batch) methods of distillation.

One result of these battles was the creation of a large number of jobs for refinery workers. The work force, at first mostly German and Irish, in the 1880s and 1890s consisted increasingly of Eastern Europeans—Poles, Russians, Slavs, Hungarians—and Italians. The managers of the refineries had a preference for Eastern Europeans because they were less inclined to industrial militancy than the Irish or English. And most of the jobs in a refinery consisted of unskilled, laboring work. As a history of Standard Oil put it: "Many of these men came straight from Ellis Island to the Bayonne and Bayway (Linden) yards, newly arrived immigrants being preferred because they were docile and not particularly inclined to strike. Slaves were regarded as particularly tractable and efficient in the performance of unskilled tasks."

The labor force at Imperium reflects this period of immigration. Fifty-eight percent are of Polish, Austrian, Czechoslovakian, Hungarian, Rumanian, or Russian origin, and another 8 percent are Italian. Most of the rest are German, Irish, or English. There are two blacks and two Hispanics (see table A1, in the appendix).

Thus most of the men at Imperium were born into the working class. Table 2 shows the main occupations of their fathers. The largest group worked as operators, often in the refinery, or ran drill presses or cranes. The second largest group were craftsmen—plumbers, carpenters, joiners, iron workers. A third group were laborers. Together these working-class occupations account for 74 percent of the total.

Twenty-two percent were self-employed, most in their own businesses. Usually the economics of these operations were too fragile to afford the sons a living. One man had owned a barbershop in which his sons worked for a while, but "during the depression guys couldn't afford to be shaved." Two men owned taverns that closed when a new highway separated them from their customers. Another man was a comedian.

Since their families lived in the area and they were raised there, many workers are part of dense kin and friendship networks. These are essential assets in the job market. To be hired at Imperium, and at many of the plants in the area, the most important condition is to know someone already there. Workers take it for granted that this is how good jobs—in refining or chemical plants or construction or the docks—are obtained. This is why kinship relations at Imperium are close and intricate. Out of a total blue-collar work force of 121 there are twenty-three brothers and seventeen brothers-in-law. Ten men are cousins, twelve fathers or sons, and six uncles or nephews (table 3 and fig. 1). Kin relations also extend into the white-collar work force. Two workers have brothers or brothers-in-law in supervision, one has a brother-in-law who is a company salesman, and two married Imperium secretaries.

The Main Residential Areas

The Old Port

Some of the immigrant parents and grandparents of Imperium workers settled in cities such as Newark and New York, or in places like Scranton, Pennsylvania. But most first settled in the port section of Elizabeth, which contained many of the city's older factories, including a huge Singer sewing machine complex (map 2).

The houses in this port area are small, row houses or detached, on lots generally 25 or 30 feet by 100 feet but sometimes less (plates 1 and 2). As was common in industrializing America, most new immigrants rented rooms in someone else's house. They lodged or else they boarded, with the wife of the homeowner cooking and cleaning for them.

The old port of Elizabeth is now a decaying ghetto, like many in inner-city America. It is inhabited mostly by blacks and Hispanics. No Imperium workers live here any more. Many of the houses are run-down and dilapidated, most industry has closed or moved away, and the huge container port to the north, developed in the 1950s and 1960s, has ended the economic role of the old port. Of the immigrants from Eastern Europe and the earlier Irish and Germans who once dominated the area, only a few remain, and these are mostly elderly.

An adequate discussion of the class structure of these inner-city ghettos, and of other areas in the region, must involve both their actual class composition and the way people perceive that composition. Census data reveal the actual composition of the region. The 1980 census divides the area covered by map 1 into almost three hundred tracts (small subdivisions) and provides data on the occupations of those living within each tract. The category "managerial and professional specialty occupations" comes close to the notion of the upper-white-collar sector used here. In the next few paragraphs, "upper white collar" or "middle class" refers to this category. The combination of two census categories comes close to the idea of blue-collar workers used in this book. These categories are "precision production, craft, and repair occupations" and "operators, fabricators, and laborers." In the next few paragraphs "blue collar" or "working class" refers to the combination of these categories.

Table 4 sets out the occupational composition of selected areas in the region. In general, the percentage of blue-collar residents decreases with distance from the city. Inner-city black and Hispanic areas, such as the old port of Elizabeth, contain the highest average proportion of working class (53 percent), followed by the older industrial suburbs inhabited by some Imperium workers (46 percent), post–World War II automobile townships inhabited by other Imperium workers (30 percent), and the small number of places such as Princeton Township, Colts Neck, and parts of Westfield and Scotch Plains with a reputation for containing the very wealthy (12 percent). By contrast the percentage of middle-class residents increases with distance from the city, from 10 percent in inner-citv black and Hispanic areas to 44 percent in the very wealthy areas.

Yet Imperium workers do not view the inner-city areas with the highest proportion of working class and the lowest proportion of upper white collar as working class. Instead, and like most people in the region, they see them as black or Hispanic ghettos. This underlines the danger of relying on the perceptions of those who live in the region to characterize an area without considering census data.

Preautomobile Industrial Suburbs

Thirty-four percent of Imperium workers live within two miles of their jobs, and most of this group are in the industrial suburbs of Elizabeth and Linden (table 5 and map 2). These suburbs are areas of second settlement for Imperium workers. They developed on the edge of the old port area during the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. In addition to chemical plants and the oil refinery, they contain a variety of plants. For example, Phelps Dodge produces copper rods, and a large General Motors plant assembles Cadillacs.

Such industrial suburbs were a common feature of the economic growth of the period. They were typically on the outskirts of existing urban areas, for only there were there available the large amounts of space required for new industries such as steel, oil, chemicals, and automobiles. Around these factories, developers and companies built housing for the more privileged of the labor force, who could live close to work. Streetcars allowed others to commute from the port area, and some walked or cycled.

Imperium workers who live in the industrial suburbs of Linden and Elizabeth no longer walk to their jobs. Highways built after World War II have cut off Imperium, and many other plants, from the residential sections, making them inaccessible except by lengthy detours.

These pre–World War II industrial suburbs are typical of areas that outsiders often think of as "working-class neighborhoods." But those who live there are less certain. Indeed, social scientists commonly ask respondents about their class identity—"Are you working class or middle class?"—but they seldom ask them about the class identity of their place of residence—"Do you view the area you live in as working class or middle class?"

Imperium workers sometimes refer to these areas in ethnic terms—for instance, as Polish or Italian—for as areas of second settlement they often contain large concentrations of ethnics. And workers sometimes explain, if asked, that the residential sections of Elizabeth and Linden around the refinery and chemical plants contain a large number of Exxon employees. But few stress occupational segregation as a defining characteristic of these areas, and they rarely refer to them as "working class" or "working men's" districts.

This is understandable, for one in six or seven of the employed residents is upper white collar (table 4). There are teachers, social workers, small businessmen, store owners, and a few local doctors. There is even a contingent—certainly only a handful, but a visible handful—who, dressed in business suits and carrying briefcases, wait each morning on the main streets for the express bus that takes them to office jobs in New York City. (The recent tendency for professionals and managers to view some such areas as fashionable is another reason for workers not to see them as "working class.")

Sixty-nine percent of Imperium workers who live within two miles of their job are homeowners. Most of their houses are modest, though detached and larger than those in the old port area. They stand on lots that average 41 feet by 112 feet (see plate 3 and table A3).

Homeownership

Homeownership is widespread among Imperium workers. Seventy-seven percent own their homes, and another 12 percent live in houses owned by their fathers, fathers-in-law, or brothers (table 6). Marriage usually leads to homeownership. All but two of the married workers over age forty-five own their homes. The younger married men who pay rent do so, in almost all cases, because they cannot yet afford to buy houses. The remaining renters are single—young men, bachelors, widowers, or the divorced.

Homeownership is a major goal, a rarely questioned ambition. And this goal, once achieved, is seldom regretted. Workers associate a variety of benefits with homeownership. There is the freedom to do as they please without the restrictions a landlord might impose. There are the pleasures associated with space and privacy. But when men talk about homeownership it is the economic advantages, in particular the difference between what they paid for their houses and the present market value, that most often comes to mind.

For these men residential property is the most important way of saving, accumulating, and inheriting wealth. Few workers deal in stocks, shares, or securities. Some do have savings accounts. But the regular mortgage payments are an important form of saving, and a house is a solid asset whose value, in these men's experience, is prone to rise. If their parents owned houses, they were almost always the most valuable pieces of property they had to pass on to their children. It is partly because of its central place in their financial situation that most workers are willing to spend considerable amounts of their spare time making repairs or improvements on a house. After their job it is the dominant economic fact in the lives of most workers. The following comments are illustrative.

A worker in his mid-thirties—a second-generation Pole whose father had been a welder in Elizabeth:

When I was growing up we lived in those flats over there [on the fringe of the port area in the Italian section of southeast Elizabeth]. In the winter all we had was two kerosene heaters, so we froze. And in the summer we were on the third floor and the sun came right in and we roasted.

I was determined to get my own house. When I was twenty-one I bought a house in Elizabeth for $16,000, and when I was twenty-four a house in Woodbridge for $18,000. Now it's worth $60,000. [In the following paragraphs, workers' estimates of the current values of their homes refer to the period 1975-76; during the next five years values continued to rise sharply, nationwide by 59 percent.]

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Excerpted from America's Working Man by David Halle. Copyright © 1984 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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