May 7, 2025 • 51 mins
You can't tell the history of Bridgeport without Jasper McLevy. Bridgeport's longest serving & only socialist mayor is well known for an incident of not plowing Bridgeport's streets, but his story is one of a lifetime of honest service to the city, in which he takes on and replaced corrupt administrations and political machines.
Author & Fairfield University Professor of Labor & Working-Class History Cecelia Bucki, Librarian & Archivist Jaime Pettit, & Librarian Adam Cleri explore Jasper McLevy, and socialism in Bridgeport & Connecticut.
For more on this topic, listen to Episode 5 of Bridgeport Unmasked (Revolutionary Connecticut by Andy Piascik)
Thanks for listening to Bridgeport Unmasked. Want to make your own podcast? Beardsley Branch Library in Bridgeport has a podcast studio, open to anyone with a library card from a Connecticut city. For more information, see https://bportlibrary.org/podcast-studios/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone and welcome to Bridgeport Unmasked,
the Bridgeport Public Library'spodcast about all things
Bridgeport.
We are here today to talk aboutBridgeport Mayor Jasper McLeavy
and the New Deal socialists wholed Bridgeport from the 1930s
through the 1950s.
I'm Librarian Adam Cleary andtoday I'm joined by Fairfield
(00:22):
University professor CeciliaBuckey and by my co-worker in
the Bridgeport History Center,librarian and archivist Jamie
Pettit.
Today's topic is a must-knowfor knowing Bridgeport history,
so I hope you all stick around.
So thank you both of you verymuch for coming along.
(00:43):
We're going to have a fun time,I think, because for all the
folks up here today, we have twoJasper McLeavy aficionados in
this room and, spoiler alert,I'm not one of them.
So they're really going to runwith this and take it away.
(01:07):
Cecilia Buckey recently retiredafter 34 years of teaching at
Fairfield University asprofessor of history, where her
courses included American laborhistory and immigration history.
She received her PhD from theUniversity of Pittsburgh under
the mentorship of DavidMontgomery, a key architect of
the new labor history in theUnited States, and with an
emphasis on history from thebottom up.
As a Bridgeport native, drBuckey has always been intrigued
(01:29):
by the stories of the socialistmayor of Bridgeport from 1933
to 1957.
But there was no solid historywritten about this, nor was
there any awareness of the greatWorld War I strikes that rocked
Bridgeport and capturednational attention.
She learned about these strikesin Dr Montgomery's seminars and
(01:50):
where he was the first to writeabout those strikes.
This led Buckey to herdissertation topic and later the
award-winning book Bridgeport'sSocialist New Deal 1915 to 1936
, where she traced the historyof labor and radical thought
from those World War I strikesthrough to the New Deal
victories of the Depressionyears Along the way.
(02:13):
She has worked in Connecticuton a variety of labor history
projects establishing theConnecticut Labor Archives at
the University of ConnecticutLibrary in 1980s, researching
and writing the industrialhistory of the waterberry brass
industry for the Matic Museumand creating the award-winning
(02:33):
traveling exhibit Women at WorkConnecticut 1900 to 1980 for the
Connecticut Humanities Council.
She has also beeneditor-in-chief of the academic
journal Connecticut HistoryReview from 2011 to 2017.
She continues in her retirementto work on various labor
history-related projects aroundthe state.
So in other words, we havesomebody in here who's done a
(02:56):
thing or two about the historyof labor in Connecticut and
that's going to be fantastic intalking about one of the most
worker-friendly mayors in thehistory of Bridgeport, certainly
the 1900s, when you knowespecially Buckingham the jerk
before him wasn't great.
Sorry, I have a thing againstBuckingham ever since we did
(03:20):
that bit about the death ofJames Beardsley and how he just
didn't handle that well aspolice chief.
But anyways, cecilia, it is sogreat to have you on board.
I appreciate it, Thank you.
Thank you, so normally I askyou know our guests to tell us
(03:41):
what they're all about, but Ithink that covered it pretty
awesomely.
Is there anything else youwanted to throw in there about
who you are, why you're heretoday?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
No, I think that'll come out when you know, in the
course of the discussion aboutMcLeavy.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Absolutely Fantastic, and my only other question is
you are the author of theBridgeport Socialist New Deal,
which is a book about the riseof socialism in Bridgeport and,
as the title would suggest, theeffect of the Depression and
their reaction to it.
(04:15):
Would you please tell the folksout there where they could get
their hands on a copy of yourbook?
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Oh, it's available in paperback from the University
of Illinois Press and if youGoogle Illinois Press or you
know, just go online to.
I don't want to, I don't wantto be ill for Amazon, but there
too.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Oh, absolutely, I mean.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
B-U-C-K-I.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Okay, thank you very much and awesome, great.
So also with me today, I am mycoworker, jamie Pettit.
She is, in her own right, aJasper McLeavy person.
In fact, I would say that mypersonal favorite of your
exhibits that you have createdjust really struck home was the
(05:04):
Jasper McLeavy exhibit that youmade.
So, jamie, you want to tell mea little bit about the History
Center and what's going on thereand all that jazz.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Yeah, of course.
So the Bridgeport HistoryCenter is located on the third
floor of the Burroughs Library.
We are a special collectionsand archives.
We are a special collectionsand archives, basically treasure
trove of stuff about a treasuretrove of everything Bridgeport,
a lot of stuff relating toJasper and the labor history of
(05:39):
the city, and we're very.
We're open three days a weekfor walk-ins, for walk-in
researchers.
Jasper is, of course, afavorite subject and, uh, we
just had an exhibit on him.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Jasper mclevey, the people's mayor yeah, no, it's
probably one of my favoriteexhibits that the history center
has done has his pickaxe, whichwas pretty awesome.
Um, was that mostly ceremonial,because a roofer wouldn't
necessarily need a pickaxe?
Well, you know what's the storybehind that pickaxe yeah, that
was yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
What?
Yeah, that was, um, it waslabeled as one of his tools.
We're not exactly sure aboutthe details around that, it's
just it was one of our archivearchival materials attributed to
him, a bunch of stuff that's,I'm a librarian and I have a
pickaxe, so I don't even knowwhere that question was going.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
So I really like the exhibit.
My favorite part was this onecartoon where it was like
Bridgeport was on a gurney.
It had like a human being thatwas supposed to be Bridgeport
and they said call in, drMcLeavy, we have an emergency.
Would you tell us why youincluded that cartoon in the
(06:48):
exhibit?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I mean, I find that particular cartoon was actually
I found that by accident whilewe were going through our
archives that was one of thepro-McLeavy cartoons from his I
think his 1937 governor race 38.
(07:10):
38.
Yeah, so that was basicallydepicting the state of
Connecticut beaten up,backstabbed multiple times.
There was a lot of corruptionand scandals going on at that
time.
I think, oh boy, uh, that wasum a scandal involving the merit
(07:31):
parkway.
There was like, yeah, severe,severe mismanagement of that.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Uh, severe a little bit of skullduggery involved
Corruption.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
My personal favorite is.
So I think it was one or twoyears before Mick Levy unseated
Buckingham.
As I said, I have my personalstance.
And so Lenny Grimaldi, by theway, for the folks out there
great Bridgeport historian, andI read Lenny Grimaldi on Jasper
McLeavy, and so basically, mayorBuckingham said a bridge
(08:10):
project was going to cost$30,000, and the tab was running
up to $150,000.
And he was like, of course,there's no graft involved, they
just underbid.
And I think the ultimate costof that bridge was like $280,000
.
But anywho, that's just thelittle bits and pieces I know.
(08:32):
Again, I'm kind of a fan, butnot nearly as much as the two
folks in here.
So I'm going to hand it over tothem.
I might throw in a wit or twoin there as it comes along, but
otherwise I'll leave it up toyou too.
So let's have a great podcast.
I think it's going to be a lotof fun.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Actually, there's a really good entree into your
first question about why thesocialists, with McLeavy at the
head of the ticket, win themayor's race in 1933.
Win the mayor's race in 1933.
(09:10):
It's because of the last fewyears of serious economic
scandals having to do with thebudget, and bridges are always
involved, and that was very truein the mid-1920s and all the
way up to Buckingham.
So he was kind of in thetradition of traditional
Bridgeport politics.
The reason that McLeavy and hissocialists were able to win in
33 is kind of a long-termproject.
(09:33):
They did not pop up overnight.
Mcleavy, in fact, had beenrunning for mayor for the last
decade, always with the notionof corruption.
Let's beat back the machine,let's undo the machine, the
machine politics, and have areal honest government.
(09:55):
And so this latest Buckinghamthing with the bridge that I
don't know the details of, butthat was one one, the main
reason he almost won in 31, butit wasn't enough of a.
The scandals weren't obviousenough.
(10:16):
And you throw in two more yearsof depression and um and and
the city hall was not handlingthe depression well and federal
government was of no use at all.
The Hoopla Corporation was notdoing very much to support
cities or individuals.
And so McLeavy ran both oncorruption and the need for
(10:41):
honesty in government andsecondly about making government
deal with the crisis, the GreatDepression.
It wasn't great yet, it wasonly 1932, 1933.
And one of the things thathelped was that Franco Roosevelt
was elected in 1932, ending adecade of Republican rule on the
(11:05):
national level, and that, youknow, my sense is that gave a
lot of incentive for people tochange their minds about their
traditional relationship withthe two major parties.
And McLeavy had been running, asI mentioned already, always
been running.
But in 1928 or 29, theBridgeport Sunday Herald editor
(11:32):
gave him a weekly column.
I mean, the Sunday Herald was agreat newspaper back then.
It was very progressive,capital P in um, his tendencies
and what it reported on.
And the masthead said no fear,no favor, the people's paper.
So it was really.
(11:52):
It was really amazing.
Unfortunately we don't havedigitized versions of it yet so
it's not easy to get to.
You have to go through themicrophone.
But anyway, the uh by himgetting that weekly column, that
raised his profile quiteimmensely.
That plus the fact that he andthe socialist activists were
(12:15):
working in every neighborhood sothey were having rallies and
this is kind of old school, butthat's what it was until this
era of digital information andthe present day era where people
they really, first of all the20s had led to the creation of
(12:37):
activist wards, and now you hadwomen voting, and so there were
women's clubs, and this is bothDemocrats and republicans, and
the socialists had always had adeep commitment and involvement
in the labor movement.
Now this is the old americanfederation of labor, um, which
is all craft union, um, andmclevey himself was a craft
(13:02):
worker, he was the roofer, hewas president at one point of
the National Roofers Union andvery involved in Connecticut's
labor politics and the StateLabor Council, as well as, of
course, the Bridgeport LaborCouncil and many of his fellow
(13:22):
candidates running in theDemocratic or Republican Party,
(13:46):
and that you had some veryforward-looking and outspoken
women not candidates, but wivesof the male activists and who
were activists in their ownright.
And so, between that, with the,the afl base, which was
significant enough in this era,um, and you know, with the
(14:11):
building trades, uh, painters,uh, you know ed carpenters well,
actually, his nephew, uh,charles mcleavey, became
business agent for the, thecarpenter's district, for the
rest of the 20th century, um,you know.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
So there's a deep base yeah, so like these were
people who basically were amongthe people they were, basically
they recognized the need ofspring orders and they spoke.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
they spoke common language and everyone knew them
because they'd been around for along time and MacLeavy was
always.
He was, aside from being aninteresting character and he
always dressed in the mostungodly, unfashionable way,
which actually got mentioned ina couple op-ed pieces and a
(15:06):
couple letters to the editorthat the Sunday Herald produced
and the Bridgeport Times Star,which was a daily paper, used to
be the Democratic Party paperbut was being much more
straightforward in itsdiscussion of the depression,
(15:27):
its relationship to ethniccommunities and the major papers
that this, the um, bridgeportpost and telegram did not talk
about anything but business myinitial impressions was when I
was like researching jasper'sstory, for I believe when I was
researching Jasper's story forour Jasper McLeavy- exhibit was
(15:51):
how like timely it was.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
You know you had like a group of people in the midst
of economic turmoil who wereboth, who are unsatisfied
basically with both therepublicans and the democrats,
with the.
You know that was one of the umcampaign slogans, I believe, of
both his governor and mayor.
Mayoral races are when the oldparties win.
Bridgeport always loses, buteverybody wins with jasper.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
So yeah, they had some very nifty slogans that way
, and because he was so easilycaricatured in the cartoons,
there were some really greatones.
I actually haven't seen thatparticular one, but so he was an
everyman.
He's also a very rigorous,socially conservative, goddish
(16:44):
craftsman, basically, and didnot have any.
I don't even think he drank,you know.
So he was a very upstandingperson that you could trust the
city budget with.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Very, very honesty.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yep, honest to a fault.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Honest Jasper, I believe Another one.
And so can you tell us a littlebit more about the party that
he belonged to, like theBridgeport?
Well, the Socialist Party ofAmerica.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
You know it's interesting.
I don't believe that thereactually is a good study of the
Connecticut party going back toits origins, but nationally.
I mean, everybody might haveheard of Eugene Debs who becomes
the famous orator.
He was not the leader of theSocialist Party but he was
(17:34):
nationally, but he was one ofthe major spokesmen for it and
he had come out of the RailroadBrotherhoods, famously during
the Pullman strike in the 1890s,went to jail for violating the
(18:22):
federal injunction against.
This was the best Knights ofLabor.
It included some very popularparts of the populist movement
etc.
Coming together not necessarilywith a single manifesto.
Like some of the socialistparties of Europe.
It's a very American-made oneand from that a lot of craft
(18:51):
union leaders um defied theirafl leadership and joined the,
the um, the socialist party ofamerica.
Uh, for a while it included theindustrial workers of the world
leadership.
So it was a very big hit, butdefinitely on the left and so
(19:14):
I'm not sure exactly how Jaspergot involved in that, but he had
been a member at least fiveyears before World War I started
.
(19:47):
He and the rest of thesocialists were basically banned
from national attention andnational newspapers during the
war period because Debs andothers were forthright in their
opposition to the US enteringthe war in 1917.
And the laws that were passednationally basically shut down
the socialist press, jailed anysocialist who would give a
public speech, and Debs, mostfamously, made that choice to
make a public speech.
And so he was in jail for mostof the 90, of the through 1919
(20:13):
and after.
He was only pardoned in like1924, just before his death.
But so there's very little timein which the socialists were
active during the war period andI can't really find I couldn't
find details about McLeevy beingactive in anything during the
World War I era, which madesense because they're all
(20:35):
underground, basically.
But they retained theirconnection to the labor movement
.
They're all activists withintheir labor unions.
They're all were.
You know, there are activistswithin their labor unions.
And as soon as the war was overand things began to open up and
(21:08):
there's all of the in theEurope and then in the United
States as well, that caused asplit in the Socialist Party of
America, where a lot of theethnic federations split away,
joined the Communist Party, andyou could find that same kind of
dynamic going on in Connecticut, which means that there would
(21:30):
be socialist federations withinthe various immigrant groups,
but there would also becommunist federations in those
groups.
That's going to lead to somesplits in the 1930s.
A lot of different branches ofleftist thought lead to some
splits in the 1930s A lot ofdifferent branches of leftist
thought yeah, but you know,still very much a minority.
(21:51):
But the Socialist Party was andMcLeavy was respectable enough
to always have at least onepublic voice, given the fact
that there were just veryprogressive newspapers in the
Bridgeport area, which actuallyis also unusual for the state.
So Bridgeport really in someways leads in these kind of new
(22:12):
ideas and that was shown duringthe World War I era, which no
one talked about, no one knewabout until I went to David
Montgomery's seminar and cameback.
My first chapter of my book isactually about World War I.
I actually I didn't know.
My grandfather was a brasscaster in Burns and Bassick
(22:36):
during World War I and he savedso much money with his war job,
with the overtime that thefederal government gave to all
workers working on war contracts, that he was able to save
enough money to go back toPoland and buy a farm which was
everybody's dream from that era.
(22:56):
Italians went back in verylarge numbers.
Italians went back in verylarge numbers.
Eastern Europeans went back invery large numbers too.
I digress though.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
But anyway.
But what caused Ridgeport to besuch a progressive hub?
Was it really because it wasbasically the industrial capital
of Connecticut at that time?
There were so many peoplecoming in, so many labor-related
issues coming up.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Well, yeah, good question.
First of all, during the warperiod the population of
Bridgeport almost doubledbecause there were so many war
jobs.
Was doubled because there wereso many war jobs and Connecticut
led I'm sorry, bridgeport ledby the end of 1915, bridgeport
(23:50):
had more small arms andammunition going to the European
theater than any other area inthe United States, and it's all
you know.
The US had not entered the waryet.
This was all serving Europeancontracts, the Allied contracts,
and so Bridgeport justattracted many more people
coming in.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
I'm sorry but Cecilia , you actually do a great job in
Bridgeport.
Socialist New Deal of capturingit in my head very clearly.
So I never knew that aConnecticutkee King Arthur's
court came quite so close tohome.
But you you quote.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
I started off that way, I invented that basically
you know, I quoted, yourBridgeport report comes up.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah, Bridgeport comes up.
Yeah, no.
Basically, you know,Connecticut, Yankee, King
Arthur's art court guy goes backin time doesn't know he has,
and this guy in knight armorcaptures him, and the guy who
went back in time thought he wasa wacko so just wanted to go
along with him, right?
And so they come across thisbeautiful, metropolitan,
(24:54):
powerful city and he looks at itand he goes is that Bridgeport?
Speaker 2 (25:01):
And it ends up being camelot.
But no, it is a camelot.
Is this camelot?
Speaker 1 (25:05):
and the knight says no, it's bridgeport oh, so I
completely got your quote wrong.
Right, I'm keeping that inbecause I want I I I still, I
still want mark twain.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Fair enough, fair enough, fair enough.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Uh, I don't have a clue what I'm talking about, but
at day's end, I love thatpicture so much of how big
Bridgeport must have been andthis is the 1880s that he wrote
this particular book.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Okay, industrial capital of Connecticut, ICC,
WICC, is named after the firstradio station.
Bridgeport is named after thattitle.
That was given to Bridgeport inthe late 19th century Because
it was oh, that's interesting.
Yeah, it was.
Because it was such anindustrial hub and by the late
(25:56):
19th century into the early 20th, where it starts to boom, you
know so many patents for machinetools and all sorts of other
kinds of metal products were.
Who you know made theseinventions and the companies
they work for took them over.
That's just a plug for theingenuity of Bridgeport
(26:28):
machinists.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
A hub of progress.
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, so yeah, and so in the fact that my my god
grandfather was involved in Idon't know that he was involved
because he died of industrialdisease in the early 1920s,
which is the downside of workingin various machine shops and
brass boundaries, the you knowthere was a whole lot of
(26:53):
ingenuity and invention going onin Connecticut, which is why
it's the industrial capital, andso entrepreneurs are also
coming into Bridgeport andstarting companies, and so it's
all gone now yeah, but when Iwas in my time, Bridgeport was
(27:14):
still very, very booming.
It's sad to see what's happenedreally is.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Um, we're gonna divert a little bit because
Bridgeport was obviously leadingthe charge.
But on the subject of thesocialists, were they active in
other parts of Connecticut?
I mean, I think we had aprevious conversation where they
actually had a little meetingplace, and actually where I live
, in walnut beach in milfordthat's the, that's the um,
(27:42):
that's the iww hangout duringworld war one really um and and
um sam lavitt, who was theleader of the machinists during
world war one, and he was a bitof a an industrial unionist.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
So before you know, 20 years before his time the CIO
of the 1930s hadn't come intoexistence but he had certain IWW
tendencies and that one bigunion where there were not craft
divisions seemed to be the bestchoice for the union movement
(28:19):
at the time.
Of course they were kind ofcrazy radicals in some other
ways, the IWW and they weresuppressed during World War.
I completely smashed.
I could go on about that.
The socialists recovered fromthat.
It included a lot of people hadthese industrial and
industrialist tendency.
(28:39):
Um mclevey was not one of themand most of most of the
socialists that I followed theninto the 1920s were also very
much afl affiliated um the.
That's not to say that theydidn't have large followings and
they were very successful ingetting their membership to come
(29:04):
along with the Socialist Party.
But it was bigger than that.
They spoke to what peoplereally needed during the
Depression and they were honest,and so it's a combination of
that that led the socialists inBridgeport, precisely because
they were so long-term anddeeply embedded in the
(29:27):
neighborhoods, whereas I knowwell.
Norwalk for a while did have avery active socialist party, but
not during the World War Iperiod.
They wound up getting one ortwo council seats in the 30s and
40s.
I think there also was a in NewHaven.
(29:50):
There was a socialist partythat has some significance for a
time, but they tended to be.
I don't want to over generalizebut the?
Uh, there was a pacifist wingthat they followed.
Norman thomas who took over forjen for, took over for gene
(30:10):
devs.
After he died, norman thomasbecomes the main.
Who was a protestant minister,uh, the, a labor gospel um
follower who was then the leaderof the socialist party of
america through the 1940s andinto the 50s.
So it was another.
(30:31):
There was.
There was a split in thesocialist party in the ways in
which the various constituentschose to explain themselves.
Mcleavy and his gang were notpart of that particular
religious wing.
The, you know the social gospelwas a very important structural
(30:57):
foundation for just a lot ofthe kinds of rhetoric that was
being used by socialists, but itwasn't overly religious.
So that in itself gave somecredence to the sense that, oh,
these were honest, down-to-earthmen who would lead us out of
(31:20):
the depression.
What what jasper was doing in inthis 1933 bid is, of course,
after the democratic party winsnationally.
Um, and democrats inconnecticut were coming up.
Wilbur Cross had been electedas the first Democratic mayor
(31:43):
and governor In some time.
He of course gave lip serviceto the New Deal but did not
really implement it.
And McGleavy and his band ofsocialists in Bridgeport were
saying why aren't we gettingfederal funds?
Why aren't we getting the stateto do this?
(32:03):
We should be able to do thisourselves, when in fact you had
to go through the stategovernment in order to get
federal funds.
So it got very complicated thatway, but they did a good job of
saying the Democrats aren'tdoing the right thing in
Connecticut.
We need a socialist perspective.
And that led to 1934, the offyear for municipal elections
(32:29):
that a number of socialists fromBridgeport were elected to the
state General Assembly.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Wow, so they got, they got pretty far, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
And they in fact were .
Because the state was sodivided the General Assembly was
really lit evenly betweenDemocrats and Republicans were
the deciding vote, and theydecided to vote with the
(33:05):
Republicans.
And this is part of the problemwith how limited municipal
government was at the time, inparticular Bridgeport, because
it had such a history ofcorruption in the state that the
city's business leaders hadgotten the General Assembly of
Connecticut to create agovernor-appointed board to
(33:30):
govern Bridgeport budgets.
It was called the Ripper Actbecause it took power away from
City Hall and the mayor and gaveit to this appointed group of
businessmen who, of course, wantto keep taxes down and do not
want to have, you know, the cityservices that people wanted.
(33:52):
This had been a real problem.
Democrats were not in the city,the city were not very who were
implicated in all these fiscalimproprieties could not create a
new platform that wouldconvince the people that they
(34:12):
would do any better, and so thesocialists had an edge with that
, but they were still stuck withthe Ripper Bill.
The Ripper Act meant that theyhad no control over the city
budget, so they could do nothingto alleviate the suffering.
City and Detroit, where thecities took over charity, took
over unemployment compensation,basically tried to help the
(34:48):
third of the city that wasunemployed, and those big cities
half the workforce wasunemployed.
It was almost the same inBridgeport.
We don't have statistics forthat, but it's very clear that
Bridgeport was also hurting, andso the state candidates who won
(35:11):
the General Assembly seats hadto decide do we go with the
Connecticut governor, who's notactually all that helpful, or do
we go with the majority?
The Senate was controlled bythe GOP, so let us side with the
(35:32):
Republicans and maybe we'll getlucky and we'll get some
benefit out of that.
Governor Cross forgave them in,and in his autobiography he
essentially says they werehonest men who were trying to
help their city.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
So Cross forgave the double cross.
Sorry, there was no way I wasgoing to let that go.
My apologies.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Okay, yeah, what very quickly turned into an attempt
to try, and Cross did in fact,after the successful socialist
campaigns in Bridgeport that ledto some representation in the
(36:20):
General Assembly, activate hisown New Deal by mostly by going
to the federal government forfunds which had not been done
before and siphoned then a lotof those.
You're supposed to go throughthe state governments and then
the state government woulddecide what cities and towns
(36:42):
would get those benefits.
And you know there's some state, the state-funded Civilian
Conservation Corps and a coupleof those other work, study work,
projects that were fundedthrough federal taxes, did
alleviate some of the hardshipthat cities and towns were
(37:05):
feeling.
And so one might say thatBridgeport Socialists did push
the Democratic Party to followthe lead of Roosevelt in
Washington to advance the NewDeal.
So the Bridgeport Socialistswere New Dealers, but they were
(37:28):
going beyond it, but theythought that let's go with what
is and what's happening on thenational level.
And you know there was a realtension between so who do we
support, the mainstreamDemocratic Party or the
Socialists or the socialists?
(37:48):
So on the national level, athird party never does very well
because our two-party system isso entrenched, and so the fact
that the socialists inBridgeport were able to overcome
that and become the majorityparty for the next couple
decades was a real significantthing.
That really didn't have much ofa chance of being reproduced,
(38:11):
certainly not nationally.
There were pockets where thirdparties were in fact able to
succeed, but given the way ourparty political structure is set
up, often the third partieswould play spoilers.
In Connecticut, which continuedto have what's called fusion
(38:32):
politics, many other states wereactually banned this after the
populist upsurge of the 1890s.
Connecticut did not, and thatmeant you could be
cross-endorsed across partylines, and you still can, and
that's how third parties wouldhave some say.
So I mean it didn't work in thefavor of the Bridgeport, but
(39:01):
and this democratic partyremained fairly strong, um and
so that by 1957 they were ableto topple mcleavy.
But you know he had been inpower for so long and he was an
old man at that point um heinsists he was robbed because he
(39:25):
was only a handful of votesthat the democrats won by I did.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
I think that it was rob sullivan.
He made the argument, or hesaid in his book that there was
like a rumor going around thatthat there was like ballot
stuffing going on, for tedesco'speople were doing that or
something that was the rumor,yeah yeah but strong, strong
unions.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
for most of the 40s and 50s and into the 60s.
Through the 60s, theConnecticut economy,
particularly the defense economy, was very strong and Bridgeport
was booming.
I remember Bridgeport boomingin the late 60s.
Going downtown after school Iwent to Cathedral Girls High
School and caught the busdowntown to get back home that
(40:10):
um yeah, the city was boomingeven the middle of the week and
Jasper's.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
I don't know if rain is a good, but Jasper's mayoral,
you know his run was um.
It's still fondly remembered bythe people of Bridgeport like
you know, I remember, like backwhen we had that exhibit up,
there were like a few people who, like, grew up around.
You know that period of time, Ithink 40s, 50s who were like oh
, my goodness, Jasper.
(40:37):
Oh, my parents loved him.
You know he was such a greatmayor.
You know he's still it's.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Yeah, so like like a golden age to a lot of people.
In certain ways, you know, itis interesting because you know
bridgeport did flourish duringthat time, not because
necessarily because of mcleavey,right, um, but mcleavey, but,
you know, because of the wareconomy generally.
You know, just especially afterworld war ii, the uh war
contracts, federal war contracts, never diminished.
(41:08):
There was always a war footing.
What McClevey was able to do ishe made unions popular.
Well, the 30s made unionspopular.
He was not on a cutting edge,he was a craftsman, a crafts
(41:30):
union person.
And so the CIO when it startednationally, the Congress of
Industrial Organizations, whichestablished itself as a split
off from the AFL in 1935, theystart constructing
industrial-style unions whereyou took in everyone who worked
(41:53):
in a certain workplace,regardless of what job they had,
whereas craft workers, craftunions, were always dividing
people up.
That's not how modern factorieswork, right, right?
Eugene Debs was actually talkingabout that in the early 1900s,
(42:13):
saying industrial unions are theonly way to go, and McLeavy and
his group generally did notsupport that.
The communists who supportedthat most actively in Bridgeport
and around the state state um,but you know, a lot of people
just flocked to um.
The new industrial unions likethe unite electrical, radio and
(42:34):
machine workers um, the uh steelworkers industrial union, um.
You know that that they were.
(43:15):
Those became the after 19,become the majority unions in
Bridgeport and in Connecticut,because there was no wiggle room
for them to move, becomeprominent.
At that point mclevey and hisafl unions might have had the
opportunity to have a kind ofstrong labor support and a labor
(43:37):
front um, and become the trulylabor party which a lot of
people are asking for now.
You know, come to think of it.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
Yeah, very timely yeah, so there are lessons here.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
So how did labor unions capture City Hall?
Well, as I said, because somany of the activists,
socialists, were in fact leadersof in their craft unions.
Mcleavy, of course, roofers wasnot a huge union.
Slate roofers were even asmaller part of the larger
roofer.
But Brewster, who became thehead of public works, was a
(44:18):
business agent for the paintersunion, and so he essentially
brought unionism to the citygovernment, because public works
is where city government, andthat's what everyone cares about
is that the roads get fixed andyou know, et cetera.
That was all in union hands andthis is way before unions could
(44:44):
officially become part ofNational Labor Relations,
board-organized contracts in thecity, in any city, public
employees did not have the rightto organize under the National
Labor Relations Act, which isthe key labor act in the New
(45:07):
deal, and that's 1936, um.
But bridgeport really was wayahead of the curve in that
respect because afl unions, uh,especially the building trades,
were very important in the citygovernment itself.
Um, and some of the you knowthe, the, the city councilmen,
(45:28):
had ties to those particularunions, and these are unions
where there's no level ofcorruption to speak of.
Rather, these were hardworkingmen mostly who knew how to get
the job done, and McLeavyhimself insisted on that.
There are plenty of tests inwhich Schwarzkopf, who was his
(45:54):
second in command, would havethese public displays of.
This is why we bought thisparticular product, you know,
and kind of run it through itspaces and say this is the best
we could get at the best price.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
And therefore you know, you, that the city was in
good hands yeah, mcglaveyhimself was always like among
the people, like he was knownfor, like going out in the field
and inspecting.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Yes, exactly you know and you could always meet him
for lunch at Lou's Dinerdowntown.
He was one of the people.
But it's a really interestingbreak with tradition of all the
cities that there would be sucha strong union representation.
New Haven had a mayor who wasin the later 30s who actually
(46:47):
was a union activist too, butMcLeavy is the one who kind of
paves the way for others.
Other union people get involvedcool.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Uh well, thank you both for coming on.
This has been, uh prettyawesome in fact.
Um, preparing for this was wasreally meaningful to me.
Um, I got two things myself outof the Jasper McLeavy story
that like strike me personally.
One is that this man it tookhim 30 years from going from his
(47:19):
first standing on a soapbox, Ithink, literally, and going to
people and being like, hey, Ihave something worth saying to
becoming mayor.
That was 30 years.
So I often get discouraged when, like, things don't happen in a
few months for me, or like, ifmy life hasn't been like what I
wanted it yet, but like, this is, this is I love, whenever I
(47:42):
learn about a person where ittook, you know decades.
Like George Carlin, wasn'tGeorge Carlin?
Speaker 3 (47:48):
until like 60s and 70s.
You know, like george carlinwasn't george carlin until like
60s and 70s.
You know, it takesdetermination, it takes a
horrible economic crash, whichyou know is coming up, so you
have an opportunity uh, thatthat's a little too close to
home.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
But, yes, no, I, I I hear you there very much.
Uh, cecilia, is there any?
Um other sources?
We obviously talked about yourbook bridgeport.
Uh, socialist new deal.
Um, are there any other sources?
We obviously talked about yourbook Bridgeport, socialist New
Deal.
Are there any other laborsources, whether written by you
or someone else, that the folksout there might who are like,
hey, I want to know more aboutMcLeavy, his party work history
(48:22):
in the state and the city thatyou think would be great for
people to go for?
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Well, there are a couple books by um steve
thornton in hartford, who he's alittle book connecticut, iww,
um is a book he has and he'ssecond one with the mike uh andy
andy piasek on strikes in yeah,connect.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
Radical Connecticut.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Radical.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
Connecticut People's history in the Constitution
State yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Yeah, so we do have an episode on this channel where
I interviewed Andy Piasik aboutRadical Connecticut.
So folks listening out therewho want a little bit more.
Thank you for inspiring ananswer to my own question.
You could certainly check outthat episode, which is about
labor related things inBridgeport, and also check out
(49:13):
episode number one if you wantto see why I personally have a
bad taste about McLeavy'ssuccessor Buckingham.
Anyways, Jamie, thank you verymuch.
His predecessor.
If I could use words, thatwould be fantastic.
Jamie, anything you wanted toplug Any of your stuff on the
History Center website.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
History Center is a great source A lot of primary
documents that I haven't evengone through yet.
Yeah, that have been capturedsince I wrote my book.
Absolutely.
My book is like 20 years oldnow.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
Yeah, absolutely, and our collection on Jasper Mc
mcleavey and um, the bridgeportsocialist party is one of our uh
biggest collections mostextensive so definitely
encourage people who are veryinterested in this subject to
have a look.
Uh, we definitely have a lot oncommunity activism organization
.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
We're actually working now with the dsa
hopefully to get some of theirmaterials, so great by the way I
meant, you mentioned soap boxesyes one of the key things that
certainly separates their timefrom ours is that people really
rallied locally, that people setup soap boxes in um, every
(50:23):
little.
Every little neighborhood hassome kind of point with a little
park and a lot of people, notjust socialists, would get a
soapbox and stand in that spotand they would have little
rallies like at every ward.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
I think it was either Sullivan or Grimaldi who
described Jasper as a sidewalkpolitician.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
The last of the great sidewalk politicians think is
how the line went um okay,anything else either of you uh,
please come down and visit thehistory center.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
We we love to have researchers um.
We do have a copy of radicalconnecticut and cecilia's book
bridgeport socialist new deal umavailable for research, and I
think we have circulating copiestoo, if you want to take it
home for a short time.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
Well, thank you very much for the time.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
You're welcome and, on that, thank you everyone for
cozying on up for an hour withBridgeport Unmasked, Bridgeport
Public Library's podcast aboutour city and its storied history
.
Whether you've listened to uswhile driving, cleaning, doing
other chores or just staringintently at your phone, for
(51:37):
whatever reason, I want to thankyou very much for joining us
Cecilia Buckey, Jamie Pettit andAdam Cleary for our exploration
of Jasper McLeavy.
Thanks for lending us your ears.
Hello everyone and welcome to Bridgeport Unmasked,
the Bridgeport Public Library'spodcast about all things
Bridgeport.
We are here today to talk aboutBridgeport Mayor Jasper McLeavy
and the New Deal socialists wholed Bridgeport from the 1930s
through the 1950s.
I'm Librarian Adam Cleary andtoday I'm joined by Fairfield
(00:22):
University professor CeciliaBuckey and by my co-worker in
the Bridgeport History Center,librarian and archivist Jamie
Pettit.
Today's topic is a must-knowfor knowing Bridgeport history,
so I hope you all stick around.
So thank you both of you verymuch for coming along.
(00:43):
We're going to have a fun time,I think, because for all the
folks up here today, we have twoJasper McLeavy aficionados in
this room and, spoiler alert,I'm not one of them.
So they're really going to runwith this and take it away.
(01:07):
Cecilia Buckey recently retiredafter 34 years of teaching at
Fairfield University asprofessor of history, where her
courses included American laborhistory and immigration history.
She received her PhD from theUniversity of Pittsburgh under
the mentorship of DavidMontgomery, a key architect of
the new labor history in theUnited States, and with an
emphasis on history from thebottom up.
As a Bridgeport native, drBuckey has always been intrigued
(01:29):
by the stories of the socialistmayor of Bridgeport from 1933
to 1957.
But there was no solid historywritten about this, nor was
there any awareness of the greatWorld War I strikes that rocked
Bridgeport and capturednational attention.
She learned about these strikesin Dr Montgomery's seminars and
(01:50):
where he was the first to writeabout those strikes.
This led Buckey to herdissertation topic and later the
award-winning book Bridgeport'sSocialist New Deal 1915 to 1936
, where she traced the historyof labor and radical thought
from those World War I strikesthrough to the New Deal
victories of the Depressionyears Along the way.
(02:13):
She has worked in Connecticuton a variety of labor history
projects establishing theConnecticut Labor Archives at
the University of ConnecticutLibrary in 1980s, researching
and writing the industrialhistory of the waterberry brass
industry for the Matic Museumand creating the award-winning
(02:33):
traveling exhibit Women at WorkConnecticut 1900 to 1980 for the
Connecticut Humanities Council.
She has also beeneditor-in-chief of the academic
journal Connecticut HistoryReview from 2011 to 2017.
She continues in her retirementto work on various labor
history-related projects aroundthe state.
So in other words, we havesomebody in here who's done a
(02:56):
thing or two about the historyof labor in Connecticut and
that's going to be fantastic intalking about one of the most
worker-friendly mayors in thehistory of Bridgeport, certainly
the 1900s, when you knowespecially Buckingham the jerk
before him wasn't great.
Sorry, I have a thing againstBuckingham ever since we did
(03:20):
that bit about the death ofJames Beardsley and how he just
didn't handle that well aspolice chief.
But anyways, cecilia, it is sogreat to have you on board.
I appreciate it, Thank you.
Thank you, so normally I askyou know our guests to tell us
(03:41):
what they're all about, but Ithink that covered it pretty
awesomely.
Is there anything else youwanted to throw in there about
who you are, why you're heretoday?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
No, I think that'll come out when you know, in the
course of the discussion aboutMcLeavy.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Absolutely Fantastic, and my only other question is
you are the author of theBridgeport Socialist New Deal,
which is a book about the riseof socialism in Bridgeport and,
as the title would suggest, theeffect of the Depression and
their reaction to it.
(04:15):
Would you please tell the folksout there where they could get
their hands on a copy of yourbook?
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Oh, it's available in paperback from the University
of Illinois Press and if youGoogle Illinois Press or you
know, just go online to.
I don't want to, I don't wantto be ill for Amazon, but there
too.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Oh, absolutely, I mean.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
B-U-C-K-I.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Okay, thank you very much and awesome, great.
So also with me today, I am mycoworker, jamie Pettit.
She is, in her own right, aJasper McLeavy person.
In fact, I would say that mypersonal favorite of your
exhibits that you have createdjust really struck home was the
(05:04):
Jasper McLeavy exhibit that youmade.
So, jamie, you want to tell mea little bit about the History
Center and what's going on thereand all that jazz.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Yeah, of course.
So the Bridgeport HistoryCenter is located on the third
floor of the Burroughs Library.
We are a special collectionsand archives.
We are a special collectionsand archives, basically treasure
trove of stuff about a treasuretrove of everything Bridgeport,
a lot of stuff relating toJasper and the labor history of
(05:39):
the city, and we're very.
We're open three days a weekfor walk-ins, for walk-in
researchers.
Jasper is, of course, afavorite subject and, uh, we
just had an exhibit on him.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Jasper mclevey, the people's mayor yeah, no, it's
probably one of my favoriteexhibits that the history center
has done has his pickaxe, whichwas pretty awesome.
Um, was that mostly ceremonial,because a roofer wouldn't
necessarily need a pickaxe?
Well, you know what's the storybehind that pickaxe yeah, that
was yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
What?
Yeah, that was, um, it waslabeled as one of his tools.
We're not exactly sure aboutthe details around that, it's
just it was one of our archivearchival materials attributed to
him, a bunch of stuff that's,I'm a librarian and I have a
pickaxe, so I don't even knowwhere that question was going.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
So I really like the exhibit.
My favorite part was this onecartoon where it was like
Bridgeport was on a gurney.
It had like a human being thatwas supposed to be Bridgeport
and they said call in, drMcLeavy, we have an emergency.
Would you tell us why youincluded that cartoon in the
(06:48):
exhibit?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I mean, I find that particular cartoon was actually
I found that by accident whilewe were going through our
archives that was one of thepro-McLeavy cartoons from his I
think his 1937 governor race 38.
(07:10):
38.
Yeah, so that was basicallydepicting the state of
Connecticut beaten up,backstabbed multiple times.
There was a lot of corruptionand scandals going on at that
time.
I think, oh boy, uh, that wasum a scandal involving the merit
(07:31):
parkway.
There was like, yeah, severe,severe mismanagement of that.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Uh, severe a little bit of skullduggery involved
Corruption.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
My personal favorite is.
So I think it was one or twoyears before Mick Levy unseated
Buckingham.
As I said, I have my personalstance.
And so Lenny Grimaldi, by theway, for the folks out there
great Bridgeport historian, andI read Lenny Grimaldi on Jasper
McLeavy, and so basically, mayorBuckingham said a bridge
(08:10):
project was going to cost$30,000, and the tab was running
up to $150,000.
And he was like, of course,there's no graft involved, they
just underbid.
And I think the ultimate costof that bridge was like $280,000
.
But anywho, that's just thelittle bits and pieces I know.
(08:32):
Again, I'm kind of a fan, butnot nearly as much as the two
folks in here.
So I'm going to hand it over tothem.
I might throw in a wit or twoin there as it comes along, but
otherwise I'll leave it up toyou too.
So let's have a great podcast.
I think it's going to be a lotof fun.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Actually, there's a really good entree into your
first question about why thesocialists, with McLeavy at the
head of the ticket, win themayor's race in 1933.
Win the mayor's race in 1933.
(09:10):
It's because of the last fewyears of serious economic
scandals having to do with thebudget, and bridges are always
involved, and that was very truein the mid-1920s and all the
way up to Buckingham.
So he was kind of in thetradition of traditional
Bridgeport politics.
The reason that McLeavy and hissocialists were able to win in
33 is kind of a long-termproject.
(09:33):
They did not pop up overnight.
Mcleavy, in fact, had beenrunning for mayor for the last
decade, always with the notionof corruption.
Let's beat back the machine,let's undo the machine, the
machine politics, and have areal honest government.
(09:55):
And so this latest Buckinghamthing with the bridge that I
don't know the details of, butthat was one one, the main
reason he almost won in 31, butit wasn't enough of a.
The scandals weren't obviousenough.
(10:16):
And you throw in two more yearsof depression and um and and
the city hall was not handlingthe depression well and federal
government was of no use at all.
The Hoopla Corporation was notdoing very much to support
cities or individuals.
And so McLeavy ran both oncorruption and the need for
(10:41):
honesty in government andsecondly about making government
deal with the crisis, the GreatDepression.
It wasn't great yet, it wasonly 1932, 1933.
And one of the things thathelped was that Franco Roosevelt
was elected in 1932, ending adecade of Republican rule on the
(11:05):
national level, and that, youknow, my sense is that gave a
lot of incentive for people tochange their minds about their
traditional relationship withthe two major parties.
And McLeavy had been running, asI mentioned already, always
been running.
But in 1928 or 29, theBridgeport Sunday Herald editor
(11:32):
gave him a weekly column.
I mean, the Sunday Herald was agreat newspaper back then.
It was very progressive,capital P in um, his tendencies
and what it reported on.
And the masthead said no fear,no favor, the people's paper.
So it was really.
(11:52):
It was really amazing.
Unfortunately we don't havedigitized versions of it yet so
it's not easy to get to.
You have to go through themicrophone.
But anyway, the uh by himgetting that weekly column, that
raised his profile quiteimmensely.
That plus the fact that he andthe socialist activists were
(12:15):
working in every neighborhood sothey were having rallies and
this is kind of old school, butthat's what it was until this
era of digital information andthe present day era where people
they really, first of all the20s had led to the creation of
(12:37):
activist wards, and now you hadwomen voting, and so there were
women's clubs, and this is bothDemocrats and republicans, and
the socialists had always had adeep commitment and involvement
in the labor movement.
Now this is the old americanfederation of labor, um, which
is all craft union, um, andmclevey himself was a craft
(13:02):
worker, he was the roofer, hewas president at one point of
the National Roofers Union andvery involved in Connecticut's
labor politics and the StateLabor Council, as well as, of
course, the Bridgeport LaborCouncil and many of his fellow
(13:22):
candidates running in theDemocratic or Republican Party,
(13:46):
and that you had some veryforward-looking and outspoken
women not candidates, but wivesof the male activists and who
were activists in their ownright.
And so, between that, with the,the afl base, which was
significant enough in this era,um, and you know, with the
(14:11):
building trades, uh, painters,uh, you know ed carpenters well,
actually, his nephew, uh,charles mcleavey, became
business agent for the, thecarpenter's district, for the
rest of the 20th century, um,you know.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
So there's a deep base yeah, so like these were
people who basically were amongthe people they were, basically
they recognized the need ofspring orders and they spoke.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
they spoke common language and everyone knew them
because they'd been around for along time and MacLeavy was
always.
He was, aside from being aninteresting character and he
always dressed in the mostungodly, unfashionable way,
which actually got mentioned ina couple op-ed pieces and a
(15:06):
couple letters to the editorthat the Sunday Herald produced
and the Bridgeport Times Star,which was a daily paper, used to
be the Democratic Party paperbut was being much more
straightforward in itsdiscussion of the depression,
(15:27):
its relationship to ethniccommunities and the major papers
that this, the um, bridgeportpost and telegram did not talk
about anything but business myinitial impressions was when I
was like researching jasper'sstory, for I believe when I was
researching Jasper's story forour Jasper McLeavy- exhibit was
(15:51):
how like timely it was.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
You know you had like a group of people in the midst
of economic turmoil who wereboth, who are unsatisfied
basically with both therepublicans and the democrats,
with the.
You know that was one of the umcampaign slogans, I believe, of
both his governor and mayor.
Mayoral races are when the oldparties win.
Bridgeport always loses, buteverybody wins with jasper.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
So yeah, they had some very nifty slogans that way
, and because he was so easilycaricatured in the cartoons,
there were some really greatones.
I actually haven't seen thatparticular one, but so he was an
everyman.
He's also a very rigorous,socially conservative, goddish
(16:44):
craftsman, basically, and didnot have any.
I don't even think he drank,you know.
So he was a very upstandingperson that you could trust the
city budget with.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Very, very honesty.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yep, honest to a fault.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Honest Jasper, I believe Another one.
And so can you tell us a littlebit more about the party that
he belonged to, like theBridgeport?
Well, the Socialist Party ofAmerica.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
You know it's interesting.
I don't believe that thereactually is a good study of the
Connecticut party going back toits origins, but nationally.
I mean, everybody might haveheard of Eugene Debs who becomes
the famous orator.
He was not the leader of theSocialist Party but he was
(17:34):
nationally, but he was one ofthe major spokesmen for it and
he had come out of the RailroadBrotherhoods, famously during
the Pullman strike in the 1890s,went to jail for violating the
(18:22):
federal injunction against.
This was the best Knights ofLabor.
It included some very popularparts of the populist movement
etc.
Coming together not necessarilywith a single manifesto.
Like some of the socialistparties of Europe.
It's a very American-made oneand from that a lot of craft
(18:51):
union leaders um defied theirafl leadership and joined the,
the um, the socialist party ofamerica.
Uh, for a while it included theindustrial workers of the world
leadership.
So it was a very big hit, butdefinitely on the left and so
(19:14):
I'm not sure exactly how Jaspergot involved in that, but he had
been a member at least fiveyears before World War I started
.
(19:47):
He and the rest of thesocialists were basically banned
from national attention andnational newspapers during the
war period because Debs andothers were forthright in their
opposition to the US enteringthe war in 1917.
And the laws that were passednationally basically shut down
the socialist press, jailed anysocialist who would give a
public speech, and Debs, mostfamously, made that choice to
make a public speech.
And so he was in jail for mostof the 90, of the through 1919
(20:13):
and after.
He was only pardoned in like1924, just before his death.
But so there's very little timein which the socialists were
active during the war period andI can't really find I couldn't
find details about McLeevy beingactive in anything during the
World War I era, which madesense because they're all
(20:35):
underground, basically.
But they retained theirconnection to the labor movement
.
They're all activists withintheir labor unions.
They're all were.
You know, there are activistswithin their labor unions.
And as soon as the war was overand things began to open up and
(21:08):
there's all of the in theEurope and then in the United
States as well, that caused asplit in the Socialist Party of
America, where a lot of theethnic federations split away,
joined the Communist Party, andyou could find that same kind of
dynamic going on in Connecticut, which means that there would
(21:30):
be socialist federations withinthe various immigrant groups,
but there would also becommunist federations in those
groups.
That's going to lead to somesplits in the 1930s.
A lot of different branches ofleftist thought lead to some
splits in the 1930s A lot ofdifferent branches of leftist
thought yeah, but you know,still very much a minority.
(21:51):
But the Socialist Party was andMcLeavy was respectable enough
to always have at least onepublic voice, given the fact
that there were just veryprogressive newspapers in the
Bridgeport area, which actuallyis also unusual for the state.
So Bridgeport really in someways leads in these kind of new
(22:12):
ideas and that was shown duringthe World War I era, which no
one talked about, no one knewabout until I went to David
Montgomery's seminar and cameback.
My first chapter of my book isactually about World War I.
I actually I didn't know.
My grandfather was a brasscaster in Burns and Bassick
(22:36):
during World War I and he savedso much money with his war job,
with the overtime that thefederal government gave to all
workers working on war contracts, that he was able to save
enough money to go back toPoland and buy a farm which was
everybody's dream from that era.
(22:56):
Italians went back in verylarge numbers.
Italians went back in verylarge numbers.
Eastern Europeans went back invery large numbers too.
I digress though.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
But anyway.
But what caused Ridgeport to besuch a progressive hub?
Was it really because it wasbasically the industrial capital
of Connecticut at that time?
There were so many peoplecoming in, so many labor-related
issues coming up.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Well, yeah, good question.
First of all, during the warperiod the population of
Bridgeport almost doubledbecause there were so many war
jobs.
Was doubled because there wereso many war jobs and Connecticut
led I'm sorry, bridgeport ledby the end of 1915, bridgeport
(23:50):
had more small arms andammunition going to the European
theater than any other area inthe United States, and it's all
you know.
The US had not entered the waryet.
This was all serving Europeancontracts, the Allied contracts,
and so Bridgeport justattracted many more people
coming in.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
I'm sorry but Cecilia , you actually do a great job in
Bridgeport.
Socialist New Deal of capturingit in my head very clearly.
So I never knew that aConnecticutkee King Arthur's
court came quite so close tohome.
But you you quote.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
I started off that way, I invented that basically
you know, I quoted, yourBridgeport report comes up.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah, Bridgeport comes up.
Yeah, no.
Basically, you know,Connecticut, Yankee, King
Arthur's art court guy goes backin time doesn't know he has,
and this guy in knight armorcaptures him, and the guy who
went back in time thought he wasa wacko so just wanted to go
along with him, right?
And so they come across thisbeautiful, metropolitan,
(24:54):
powerful city and he looks at itand he goes is that Bridgeport?
Speaker 2 (25:01):
And it ends up being camelot.
But no, it is a camelot.
Is this camelot?
Speaker 1 (25:05):
and the knight says no, it's bridgeport oh, so I
completely got your quote wrong.
Right, I'm keeping that inbecause I want I I I still, I
still want mark twain.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Fair enough, fair enough, fair enough.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Uh, I don't have a clue what I'm talking about, but
at day's end, I love thatpicture so much of how big
Bridgeport must have been andthis is the 1880s that he wrote
this particular book.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Okay, industrial capital of Connecticut, ICC,
WICC, is named after the firstradio station.
Bridgeport is named after thattitle.
That was given to Bridgeport inthe late 19th century Because
it was oh, that's interesting.
Yeah, it was.
Because it was such anindustrial hub and by the late
(25:56):
19th century into the early 20th, where it starts to boom, you
know so many patents for machinetools and all sorts of other
kinds of metal products were.
Who you know made theseinventions and the companies
they work for took them over.
That's just a plug for theingenuity of Bridgeport
(26:28):
machinists.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
A hub of progress.
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, so yeah, and so in the fact that my my god
grandfather was involved in Idon't know that he was involved
because he died of industrialdisease in the early 1920s,
which is the downside of workingin various machine shops and
brass boundaries, the you knowthere was a whole lot of
(26:53):
ingenuity and invention going onin Connecticut, which is why
it's the industrial capital, andso entrepreneurs are also
coming into Bridgeport andstarting companies, and so it's
all gone now yeah, but when Iwas in my time, Bridgeport was
(27:14):
still very, very booming.
It's sad to see what's happenedreally is.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Um, we're gonna divert a little bit because
Bridgeport was obviously leadingthe charge.
But on the subject of thesocialists, were they active in
other parts of Connecticut?
I mean, I think we had aprevious conversation where they
actually had a little meetingplace, and actually where I live
, in walnut beach in milfordthat's the, that's the um,
(27:42):
that's the iww hangout duringworld war one really um and and
um sam lavitt, who was theleader of the machinists during
world war one, and he was a bitof a an industrial unionist.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
So before you know, 20 years before his time the CIO
of the 1930s hadn't come intoexistence but he had certain IWW
tendencies and that one bigunion where there were not craft
divisions seemed to be the bestchoice for the union movement
(28:19):
at the time.
Of course they were kind ofcrazy radicals in some other
ways, the IWW and they weresuppressed during World War.
I completely smashed.
I could go on about that.
The socialists recovered fromthat.
It included a lot of people hadthese industrial and
industrialist tendency.
(28:39):
Um mclevey was not one of themand most of most of the
socialists that I followed theninto the 1920s were also very
much afl affiliated um the.
That's not to say that theydidn't have large followings and
they were very successful ingetting their membership to come
(29:04):
along with the Socialist Party.
But it was bigger than that.
They spoke to what peoplereally needed during the
Depression and they were honest,and so it's a combination of
that that led the socialists inBridgeport, precisely because
they were so long-term anddeeply embedded in the
(29:27):
neighborhoods, whereas I knowwell.
Norwalk for a while did have avery active socialist party, but
not during the World War Iperiod.
They wound up getting one ortwo council seats in the 30s and
40s.
I think there also was a in NewHaven.
(29:50):
There was a socialist partythat has some significance for a
time, but they tended to be.
I don't want to over generalizebut the?
Uh, there was a pacifist wingthat they followed.
Norman thomas who took over forjen for, took over for gene
(30:10):
devs.
After he died, norman thomasbecomes the main.
Who was a protestant minister,uh, the, a labor gospel um
follower who was then the leaderof the socialist party of
america through the 1940s andinto the 50s.
So it was another.
(30:31):
There was.
There was a split in thesocialist party in the ways in
which the various constituentschose to explain themselves.
Mcleavy and his gang were notpart of that particular
religious wing.
The, you know the social gospelwas a very important structural
(30:57):
foundation for just a lot ofthe kinds of rhetoric that was
being used by socialists, but itwasn't overly religious.
So that in itself gave somecredence to the sense that, oh,
these were honest, down-to-earthmen who would lead us out of
(31:20):
the depression.
What what jasper was doing in inthis 1933 bid is, of course,
after the democratic party winsnationally.
Um, and democrats inconnecticut were coming up.
Wilbur Cross had been electedas the first Democratic mayor
(31:43):
and governor In some time.
He of course gave lip serviceto the New Deal but did not
really implement it.
And McGleavy and his band ofsocialists in Bridgeport were
saying why aren't we gettingfederal funds?
Why aren't we getting the stateto do this?
(32:03):
We should be able to do thisourselves, when in fact you had
to go through the stategovernment in order to get
federal funds.
So it got very complicated thatway, but they did a good job of
saying the Democrats aren'tdoing the right thing in
Connecticut.
We need a socialist perspective.
And that led to 1934, the offyear for municipal elections
(32:29):
that a number of socialists fromBridgeport were elected to the
state General Assembly.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Wow, so they got, they got pretty far, oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
And they in fact were .
Because the state was sodivided the General Assembly was
really lit evenly betweenDemocrats and Republicans were
the deciding vote, and theydecided to vote with the
(33:05):
Republicans.
And this is part of the problemwith how limited municipal
government was at the time, inparticular Bridgeport, because
it had such a history ofcorruption in the state that the
city's business leaders hadgotten the General Assembly of
Connecticut to create agovernor-appointed board to
(33:30):
govern Bridgeport budgets.
It was called the Ripper Actbecause it took power away from
City Hall and the mayor and gaveit to this appointed group of
businessmen who, of course, wantto keep taxes down and do not
want to have, you know, the cityservices that people wanted.
(33:52):
This had been a real problem.
Democrats were not in the city,the city were not very who were
implicated in all these fiscalimproprieties could not create a
new platform that wouldconvince the people that they
(34:12):
would do any better, and so thesocialists had an edge with that
, but they were still stuck withthe Ripper Bill.
The Ripper Act meant that theyhad no control over the city
budget, so they could do nothingto alleviate the suffering.
City and Detroit, where thecities took over charity, took
over unemployment compensation,basically tried to help the
(34:48):
third of the city that wasunemployed, and those big cities
half the workforce wasunemployed.
It was almost the same inBridgeport.
We don't have statistics forthat, but it's very clear that
Bridgeport was also hurting, andso the state candidates who won
(35:11):
the General Assembly seats hadto decide do we go with the
Connecticut governor, who's notactually all that helpful, or do
we go with the majority?
The Senate was controlled bythe GOP, so let us side with the
(35:32):
Republicans and maybe we'll getlucky and we'll get some
benefit out of that.
Governor Cross forgave them in,and in his autobiography he
essentially says they werehonest men who were trying to
help their city.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
So Cross forgave the double cross.
Sorry, there was no way I wasgoing to let that go.
My apologies.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Okay, yeah, what very quickly turned into an attempt
to try, and Cross did in fact,after the successful socialist
campaigns in Bridgeport that ledto some representation in the
(36:20):
General Assembly, activate hisown New Deal by mostly by going
to the federal government forfunds which had not been done
before and siphoned then a lotof those.
You're supposed to go throughthe state governments and then
the state government woulddecide what cities and towns
(36:42):
would get those benefits.
And you know there's some state, the state-funded Civilian
Conservation Corps and a coupleof those other work, study work,
projects that were fundedthrough federal taxes, did
alleviate some of the hardshipthat cities and towns were
(37:05):
feeling.
And so one might say thatBridgeport Socialists did push
the Democratic Party to followthe lead of Roosevelt in
Washington to advance the NewDeal.
So the Bridgeport Socialistswere New Dealers, but they were
(37:28):
going beyond it, but theythought that let's go with what
is and what's happening on thenational level.
And you know there was a realtension between so who do we
support, the mainstreamDemocratic Party or the
Socialists or the socialists?
(37:48):
So on the national level, athird party never does very well
because our two-party system isso entrenched, and so the fact
that the socialists inBridgeport were able to overcome
that and become the majorityparty for the next couple
decades was a real significantthing.
That really didn't have much ofa chance of being reproduced,
(38:11):
certainly not nationally.
There were pockets where thirdparties were in fact able to
succeed, but given the way ourparty political structure is set
up, often the third partieswould play spoilers.
In Connecticut, which continuedto have what's called fusion
(38:32):
politics, many other states wereactually banned this after the
populist upsurge of the 1890s.
Connecticut did not, and thatmeant you could be
cross-endorsed across partylines, and you still can, and
that's how third parties wouldhave some say.
So I mean it didn't work in thefavor of the Bridgeport, but
(39:01):
and this democratic partyremained fairly strong, um and
so that by 1957 they were ableto topple mcleavy.
But you know he had been inpower for so long and he was an
old man at that point um heinsists he was robbed because he
(39:25):
was only a handful of votesthat the democrats won by I did.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
I think that it was rob sullivan.
He made the argument, or hesaid in his book that there was
like a rumor going around thatthat there was like ballot
stuffing going on, for tedesco'speople were doing that or
something that was the rumor,yeah yeah but strong, strong
unions.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
for most of the 40s and 50s and into the 60s.
Through the 60s, theConnecticut economy,
particularly the defense economy, was very strong and Bridgeport
was booming.
I remember Bridgeport boomingin the late 60s.
Going downtown after school Iwent to Cathedral Girls High
School and caught the busdowntown to get back home that
(40:10):
um yeah, the city was boomingeven the middle of the week and
Jasper's.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
I don't know if rain is a good, but Jasper's mayoral,
you know his run was um.
It's still fondly remembered bythe people of Bridgeport like
you know, I remember, like backwhen we had that exhibit up,
there were like a few people who, like, grew up around.
You know that period of time, Ithink 40s, 50s who were like oh
, my goodness, Jasper.
(40:37):
Oh, my parents loved him.
You know he was such a greatmayor.
You know he's still it's.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Yeah, so like like a golden age to a lot of people.
In certain ways, you know, itis interesting because you know
bridgeport did flourish duringthat time, not because
necessarily because of mcleavey,right, um, but mcleavey, but,
you know, because of the wareconomy generally.
You know, just especially afterworld war ii, the uh war
contracts, federal war contracts, never diminished.
(41:08):
There was always a war footing.
What McClevey was able to do ishe made unions popular.
Well, the 30s made unionspopular.
He was not on a cutting edge,he was a craftsman, a crafts
(41:30):
union person.
And so the CIO when it startednationally, the Congress of
Industrial Organizations, whichestablished itself as a split
off from the AFL in 1935, theystart constructing
industrial-style unions whereyou took in everyone who worked
(41:53):
in a certain workplace,regardless of what job they had,
whereas craft workers, craftunions, were always dividing
people up.
That's not how modern factorieswork, right, right?
Eugene Debs was actually talkingabout that in the early 1900s,
(42:13):
saying industrial unions are theonly way to go, and McLeavy and
his group generally did notsupport that.
The communists who supportedthat most actively in Bridgeport
and around the state state um,but you know, a lot of people
just flocked to um.
The new industrial unions likethe unite electrical, radio and
(42:34):
machine workers um, the uh steelworkers industrial union, um.
You know that that they were.
(43:15):
Those became the after 19,become the majority unions in
Bridgeport and in Connecticut,because there was no wiggle room
for them to move, becomeprominent.
At that point mclevey and hisafl unions might have had the
opportunity to have a kind ofstrong labor support and a labor
(43:37):
front um, and become the trulylabor party which a lot of
people are asking for now.
You know, come to think of it.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
Yeah, very timely yeah, so there are lessons here.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
So how did labor unions capture City Hall?
Well, as I said, because somany of the activists,
socialists, were in fact leadersof in their craft unions.
Mcleavy, of course, roofers wasnot a huge union.
Slate roofers were even asmaller part of the larger
roofer.
But Brewster, who became thehead of public works, was a
(44:18):
business agent for the paintersunion, and so he essentially
brought unionism to the citygovernment, because public works
is where city government, andthat's what everyone cares about
is that the roads get fixed andyou know, et cetera.
That was all in union hands andthis is way before unions could
(44:44):
officially become part ofNational Labor Relations,
board-organized contracts in thecity, in any city, public
employees did not have the rightto organize under the National
Labor Relations Act, which isthe key labor act in the New
(45:07):
deal, and that's 1936, um.
But bridgeport really was wayahead of the curve in that
respect because afl unions, uh,especially the building trades,
were very important in the citygovernment itself.
Um, and some of the you knowthe, the, the city councilmen,
(45:28):
had ties to those particularunions, and these are unions
where there's no level ofcorruption to speak of.
Rather, these were hardworkingmen mostly who knew how to get
the job done, and McLeavyhimself insisted on that.
There are plenty of tests inwhich Schwarzkopf, who was his
(45:54):
second in command, would havethese public displays of.
This is why we bought thisparticular product, you know,
and kind of run it through itspaces and say this is the best
we could get at the best price.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
And therefore you know, you, that the city was in
good hands yeah, mcglaveyhimself was always like among
the people, like he was knownfor, like going out in the field
and inspecting.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Yes, exactly you know and you could always meet him
for lunch at Lou's Dinerdowntown.
He was one of the people.
But it's a really interestingbreak with tradition of all the
cities that there would be sucha strong union representation.
New Haven had a mayor who wasin the later 30s who actually
(46:47):
was a union activist too, butMcLeavy is the one who kind of
paves the way for others.
Other union people get involvedcool.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Uh well, thank you both for coming on.
This has been, uh prettyawesome in fact.
Um, preparing for this was wasreally meaningful to me.
Um, I got two things myself outof the Jasper McLeavy story
that like strike me personally.
One is that this man it tookhim 30 years from going from his
(47:19):
first standing on a soapbox, Ithink, literally, and going to
people and being like, hey, Ihave something worth saying to
becoming mayor.
That was 30 years.
So I often get discouraged when, like, things don't happen in a
few months for me, or like, ifmy life hasn't been like what I
wanted it yet, but like, this is, this is I love, whenever I
(47:42):
learn about a person where ittook, you know decades.
Like George Carlin, wasn'tGeorge Carlin?
Speaker 3 (47:48):
until like 60s and 70s.
You know, like george carlinwasn't george carlin until like
60s and 70s.
You know, it takesdetermination, it takes a
horrible economic crash, whichyou know is coming up, so you
have an opportunity uh, thatthat's a little too close to
home.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
But, yes, no, I, I I hear you there very much.
Uh, cecilia, is there any?
Um other sources?
We obviously talked about yourbook bridgeport.
Uh, socialist new deal.
Um, are there any other sources?
We obviously talked about yourbook Bridgeport, socialist New
Deal.
Are there any other laborsources, whether written by you
or someone else, that the folksout there might who are like,
hey, I want to know more aboutMcLeavy, his party work history
(48:22):
in the state and the city thatyou think would be great for
people to go for?
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Well, there are a couple books by um steve
thornton in hartford, who he's alittle book connecticut, iww,
um is a book he has and he'ssecond one with the mike uh andy
andy piasek on strikes in yeah,connect.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
Radical Connecticut.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Radical.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
Connecticut People's history in the Constitution
State yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Yeah, so we do have an episode on this channel where
I interviewed Andy Piasik aboutRadical Connecticut.
So folks listening out therewho want a little bit more.
Thank you for inspiring ananswer to my own question.
You could certainly check outthat episode, which is about
labor related things inBridgeport, and also check out
(49:13):
episode number one if you wantto see why I personally have a
bad taste about McLeavy'ssuccessor Buckingham.
Anyways, Jamie, thank you verymuch.
His predecessor.
If I could use words, thatwould be fantastic.
Jamie, anything you wanted toplug Any of your stuff on the
History Center website.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
History Center is a great source A lot of primary
documents that I haven't evengone through yet.
Yeah, that have been capturedsince I wrote my book.
Absolutely.
My book is like 20 years oldnow.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
Yeah, absolutely, and our collection on Jasper Mc
mcleavey and um, the bridgeportsocialist party is one of our uh
biggest collections mostextensive so definitely
encourage people who are veryinterested in this subject to
have a look.
Uh, we definitely have a lot oncommunity activism organization
.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
We're actually working now with the dsa
hopefully to get some of theirmaterials, so great by the way I
meant, you mentioned soap boxesyes one of the key things that
certainly separates their timefrom ours is that people really
rallied locally, that people setup soap boxes in um, every
(50:23):
little.
Every little neighborhood hassome kind of point with a little
park and a lot of people, notjust socialists, would get a
soapbox and stand in that spotand they would have little
rallies like at every ward.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
I think it was either Sullivan or Grimaldi who
described Jasper as a sidewalkpolitician.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
The last of the great sidewalk politicians think is
how the line went um okay,anything else either of you uh,
please come down and visit thehistory center.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
We we love to have researchers um.
We do have a copy of radicalconnecticut and cecilia's book
bridgeport socialist new deal umavailable for research, and I
think we have circulating copiestoo, if you want to take it
home for a short time.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
Well, thank you very much for the time.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
You're welcome and, on that, thank you everyone for
cozying on up for an hour withBridgeport Unmasked, Bridgeport
Public Library's podcast aboutour city and its storied history
.
Whether you've listened to uswhile driving, cleaning, doing
other chores or just staringintently at your phone, for
(51:37):
whatever reason, I want to thankyou very much for joining us
Cecilia Buckey, Jamie Pettit andAdam Cleary for our exploration
of Jasper McLeavy.
Thanks for lending us your ears.
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