Mechanics Educational Society of America

However, radical transplants from the United Kingdom like Smith, Frank McCracken, and John Anderson recognized the potential of the group and pushed for a full-fledged union.In June 1933, the U.S. Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 which protected the collective bargaining rights of unions.[2] Longtime national secretary Matthew Smith, who had been active in the Amalgamated Engineering Union in England, refused to obtain U.S. citizenship, telling a U.S. Congress subcommittee: "I'm an internationalist, a citizen of the human race.[9] In July 1938, MESA rejected an invitation to merge with the recently-organized Congress of Industrial Organizations, citing "fundamental differences in policy" while also arguing the CIO's established union in the auto-industry, United Autoworkers (UAW), was run by a "quasi-dictatorship.The prevailing Red Scare, which began in 1947 and coincided with a period of McCarthyism, put a damper on popular support for radical unions like the Mechanics.
Congress of Industrial OrganizationsUnited States of AmericaMatthew SmithBert CochranConfederated Unions of Americatrade unionDetroitMichiganInternational Association of MachinistsNational Industrial Recovery Act of 1933Pontiac, MichiganFlint, MichiganAmalgamated Engineering UnionTrotskyistRome, New YorkToledo, OhioCleveland, OhioDefiance, OhioTorringtonNew HavenBridgeportUnited AutoworkersAmerican Economic ReviewWorld War IINational Labor Relations BoardUnited States Under Secretary of WarRobert P. PattersonTaft–Hartley ActUnited States Department of LaborCommunist PartyRed ScareMcCarthyismMetal and Machinery Workers Industrial UnionIndustrial Workers of the WorldAFL–CIOMarxists Internet Archive