Cannery Rosa
| 👩🏭 | |
| Era | The Fifties |
|---|---|
| Age | 21-27 |
| Home | Cleveland, OH |
| Demographic | young ethnic Catholic, working wife |
| Lean | labour_left |
| Race | white |
Rosa is a young Slovak-American newlywed who works on a processing line in Cleveland. She represents the working Catholic ethnic wife, whose Democratic vote depends mainly on wages, but who can be persuaded to change her vote by peace or by prices.
Who they stand for
Rosa stands for working-class women in industrial cities, who were Democrats for the same reasons as their husbands and made up a growing part of the labour force. The Second World War brought married women into the factories, and the 1950s did not send all of them back home. Rosa's situation differs from Cannery Carl's in what she is exposed to economically. Women were typically the last hired and the first laid off, so an economic downturn reached her before it reached him. The Catholic Church's teaching on the family also applied to her directly, and whether she kept her job after having children was decided as much by wages and rent as by religious doctrine. In the 1952 election, women shifted their support to Eisenhower more than men did, largely over the Korean War and grocery prices, and the Catholic households that Eisenhower won over included many where the wife changed her vote while the husband did not. Cleveland's Slovak, Polish and Hungarian parishes also carried strong anti-Communist feeling, brought from Europe and sharpened by the Communist persecution of the Catholic Church behind the Iron Curtain and by the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.
Playing to them
Rosa responds to the household budget. She wants wages that keep pace with prices, a union that can protect her job, no layoffs on her production line, and a president who ends a war before it costs someone from her own street. Unchecked inflation costs him her support, and she is quicker than Carl to abandon a Democratic president who lets a war drag on, because peace and prices are what moved women toward Eisenhower in 1952. She will not forgive a president who sides with the company during a strike, or who insults the Catholic Church or her parish priest. A president who talks about a woman's proper place wins nothing from her, but one who talks about her pay does.
The labour policies that hold Rosa's support lose Banker Prescott, Junior Exec Chip and Texas Oil Tex. The peace that holds her support, if it is bought with a truce rather than a clear victory, loses Air Base Andy and War Widow Bridget. A president who defers to the Church to win her support loses Garment Row Saul and Faculty Eleanor.
Where they live
The five states where Cannery Rosa makes up the largest share of the electorate in the fifties:
- Rhode Island
- Massachusetts
- New Jersey
- Connecticut
- New York