Cannery Carl
| 👷 | |
| Era | The Fifties |
|---|---|
| Age | 22-28 |
| Home | Cleveland, OH |
| Demographic | young ethnic Catholic, working-class |
| Lean | labour_left |
| Race | white |
Carl is a young Polish-American factory worker in Cleveland and a second-generation member of a CIO union. He represents the white ethnic Catholic industrial vote, which forms the backbone of the New Deal coalition but holds conservative views on most issues other than pay.
Who they stand for
Carl stands for the white ethnic Catholic industrial worker of the Great Lakes cities, one of the largest blocs in the Democratic coalition and one that both parties competed for. Franklin Roosevelt and the CIO unions made this worker into a Democrat. President Truman held his support in 1948 by vetoing the Taft-Hartley Act and campaigning against the Congress that passed it, and Ohio voted for Truman by a margin of only a few thousand votes. The CIO expelled its Communist-led member unions in 1949 and 1950. When organised labour spent heavily to defeat Senator Robert Taft in Ohio in 1950 and Taft won by a landslide anyway, it showed that this worker would not follow his union against his church's anti-Communism. Eisenhower won a large share of the Catholic vote in 1952 over Korea, Communism and corruption in government, and an even larger share in 1956. The 1955 merger of the AFL and CIO did not win these voters back to the Democrats, but John F. Kennedy did in 1960, because he was Catholic. During this period the factories also began hiring Black workers who had moved from the South, and this changed the makeup of Carl's neighbourhood.
Playing to them
Carl votes according to his pay packet and his parish. He responds well to a president who defends organised labour's legal standing, by fighting to repeal or soften the Taft-Hartley Act, avoiding injunctions against strikes, and resisting right-to-work laws. He does not forgive a president who sides with company owners, uses the Army against striking workers, or allows an economic downturn to cost him his job. Beyond the paycheque, he holds conservative views. A president who appears soft on the Soviet Union, or who mocks the Catholic Church, loses his support as a Catholic even while keeping his support as a union member. On matters of race, he judges a president by actions in his own neighbourhood rather than by what the president says publicly. School desegregation enforced elsewhere costs him little support, but desegregation pressed on his own workplace or street costs much more.
The labour policies that win Carl's support lose Banker Prescott, Junior Exec Chip and Texas Oil Tex, and the bills required to pay for them lose Farm Wife Edna and Old Country Olga. The anti-Communism that keeps his support unsettles Garment Row Saul.
Where they live
The five states where Cannery Carl makes up the largest share of the electorate in the fifties:
- West Virginia
- Michigan
- Ohio
- Wisconsin
- Pennsylvania