Senator Elbert Thomas and the Hope for Industrial Equity

In September 1936, senators Robert M. La Follette Jr. and Elbert D. Thomas presented an apparently simple exhibit before their colleagues, a map of the United States with dots concentrated in the nation's industrial centers. Yet the map told a complicated and troubling story: for the dots represented tear gas sold to corporations, meant as a tool to subdue their striking workers.¹ That June, La Follette and Thomas had become the heads of a special Senate subcommittee investigating the mistreatment of workers. The La Follette Civil Liberties Committee, as it was informally known, continued until 1940 and gathered much attention along the way as it delved into the use by some businesses of spies, munitions, private security forces, and much else to disrupt legal efforts to unionize. This was not least because of La Follette and Thomas themselves but also because of two blockbuster episodes in 1937: hearings into...