Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for "Salt Of The Earth
Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some films that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. In the future I expect to do the same for books under a similar heading.-Markin
DVD Review
Salt Of The Earth, starring professional and non-professional actors and actresses, directed by Herbet Biberman,1954
Lately, with the recent coal mining disaster in West Virginia and the struggle for union recognition in the Boran mines in California the subject of unions, union safety committees, and the right to organize unions in the mines has come up, front and center. Those events, as well as the repeated instances in this space of my writing about the Kentucky coal mines and the sagas of bloody Harlan County have provided many lessons about how to proceed with this kind of struggle. So it is apt that the film under review, "Salt Of The Earth", is being reviewed at this time. This rather didactic film, by today's standards at least, with quite a political history of its own brings home in dramatic form almost all the lessons of the struggle in the mines.
A quick overview is in order here. Western zinc miners, mainly Hispanic at this site, were negotiating with the local agents of a huge mining conglomerate based elsewhere over working conditions and mine safety. The negotiations stalled, the mine conditions got worst, and eventually the impasse was resolved in a strike vote. The miners went out and stayed out for several months as the company "stonewalled" on their demands. Along the way every trick in management's book was brought into play from closing off credit to the company-owned store, harassment of various forms, bringing in the local police and goons, and going to the bosses' courts. That last trick worked, or almost worked, except that the miners' wives, who had been organized into an auxiliary, saved the day by 'manning' the picket lines. The struggle continued with more harassment, more threats, and eventually things were brought to a head by an attempt at evictions, first of the main local miners' leader. Still the lines did not break. The company seeing its position, for now, as futile agreed to negotiate in "good faith".
That, "for now", is critical for it is spoken by a senior representative of the company who has let the "cat out of the bag" here. A successful fight for a union contract is just a momentary "armed truce" in the class struggle and is recognized by the bosses as such, if not by most union leaders. It should, however, be recognized as such and etched in the mind of every labor militant. That dramatic finish to the film,however, with a hard fought "temporary" victory, thus let's one see in microcosm all the problems that went before in order to get just this momentary justice. I might add that this film, done in 1954, at a time when unions were still growing and thriving in this country, and when there was still a layer of militants in the secondary leadership of the organized trade union movement would almost seem like a "socialist's paradise" compared with he level of class struggle today.
Although some of the factual aspects of this film may be different- the locale of the mines were in New Mexico not the East, were zinc rather than coal mines, and the miners were mainly Hispanic rather than Appalachians whites this script could have been written today without much exaggeration. I am not generally a fan of the Stalinist-influenced "socialist realism" form of political propaganda, of which this film seems a prime example, but in this case it is very effective as it brings up every possible problem that any union recognition effort runs into.
For openings there are the problems of separate Hispanic mine locals and of Anglo locals and of separate local union contracts rather than a uniform national contract. This is a recurring problem, not fully resolved even during the great strike wave of the 1930s. Another is the problem, endemic to the mining industry, of the physically isolated places that the vast majority of mines are located in which makes wide-spread support more difficult, although as depicted in the film, financial and physical aid did come in during this battle. Another problem mentioned here, and a particular problem of long, drawn out strikes is that of union members going back to work, or trying to, for a whole variety of reasons, none good enough. Also the attempts by the bosses to buy off union militants with promises of advancement or "soft" jobs, or failing that to run them out of the mines, out of town, or into jail.
The thing that makes this one interesting, and brings a rush of solidarity to the cause, is that once the militants were committed to the strike most of them were willing to see it through to the end. They faced down the attempts by the company to bring in scabs, to jail their leaders, to use their legal system to get injunctions and other legal relief in order to break the union. There was nothing the company was not willing to do to break the strike. And they almost did, except, and this is what also makes this one so interesting, is the wives of the miners, not without a great deal of social and personal turmoil, filled the breech when the company got it's injunction. The women, who had formed, the by now classic women's auxiliary first used extensively in the great strike struggles of the 1930s, "womanned" the picket lines, and held them through thick and thin, including arrest of their leaders.
This film is certainly an advanced one for the time in dealing with the women question, especially in an isolated, company-run town where the socially conservative Hispanic male miners had a hard time coming to grips with the need to include the women, and their demands, in the negotiating struggles. Of course, in true "social realist" form, the woman narrator/star also turns out during the course of the film to be an "earth mother" and stalwart militant, or at least evolves into that position during the struggle. In that sense this script follows the tradition of Maxim Gorky's "Mother" in its depiction of the evolution of political class consciousness by the most oppressed layers of society, especially house-bound women with children.
Note: As described in the above-linked entry from "Wikipedia" those involved with the production of this film, including the director, produces and many of the actors faced the "blacklist" during the 1950s "red scare" in America. Frankly, whatever qualms I have about its literary and political deficiencies, this film is a powerful statement about working class struggles and the road forward. Watch it.
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