THE competing power groups that make up the American system have never operated in complete harmony. They have moved ahead according to the clout—electoral, financial and sometimes moral—that they could muster. During the 1960s, the blacks, the poor and the young spoke up and pushed forward. The blue collar workers, who sweated in the mines and factories, built the roads and drove the halftracks, seemed to accept stoically the role of providers and members of the Silent Majority. No longer. Today they are making themselves heard as they have not done since the turbulent 1930s. Their voices are loud, angry and aggressive.
Blue collar power has become a mighty and unpredictable political force that was bound to swing many House and Senate races this week and will heavily influence the decisions of the 92nd Congress. Throughout the campaign, both parties assiduously courted the blue collar vote, and many candidates even donned that new symbol of rock-ribbed Americanism, the hard hat. Vice President Spiro Agnew appealed to the workers' fears of crime, drugs and bombings, and to their suspicion of intellectuals. After President Nixon had A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany in for a cozy chat "to discuss foreign policy," Republicans made good use of pictures of the meeting around workingmen's neighborhoods. (Feeling that he had been used, Meany later roasted the Republicans in radio speeches.) On the other side, the Democrats and their old friends in the union leadership played up the pocketbook issues of unemployment and inflation.
The blue collar workers have been wooed not only by the political parties but also by the New Left. For Election
Day this week, the Students for a Democratic Society planned a march on General Motors' Detroit headquarters in clenched-fist support of the auto workers, who are now in the eighth week of a bitter strike against G.M. Reviving the faded dream of a Socialist alliance with labor, the S.D.S. hoped to draw 10,000 students and strikers to the demonstration. Considering the way that workers generally feel about the longhairs and left-wingers, however, the students seemed to be more in danger of violence than the company.
While they are being hotly courted on all sides, blue collar workers are also being severely criticized by traditional friends and opponents alike. Political liberals, who once considered workingmen their most reliable allies, now often see them—rather simplistically—as supporters of racism and repression. Black leaders condemn many unions for systematically excluding Negroes. Many other Americans think of labor as fat, lazy and arrogant, a condition exemplified in their minds by the $10-an-hour auto mechanic, the $15-an-hour plumber and the $18,000-a-year carpenter.