Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Out of This Furnace, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Immigration and American Identity
Industrialization and Destruction
The American Dream vs. Reality
Women’s Work
Capital vs. Labor
Summary
Analysis
At home, Dobie tells Julie that by taking over the ERP the union members would finally have their grievances at least heard, if not honored. “We can raise all the hell we like and it don't get us anywhere,” he complains, “we sign petitions and pass resolutions and it don't mean a thing.” The new ERP leaders face a bureaucratic mountain of obstacles, including unfriendly superintendents, the constraints of the ERP’s constitution, Flack’s continued stubbornness, and the byzantine “corporation policy,” which seems to have a loophole to avoid everything the union might demand.
Despite his success in taking over the ERP, Dobie is dismayed that the company is still able to implement layers of bureaucracy to continue denying the union legitimate recognition. Yet the union’s actions have not been in vain, as Dobie will soon discover.
Themes
Around this time, renowned labor leader John Lewis appeals for industrial unionism at the AFL convention in Atlantic City. He gets into a physical spat with the president of the reactionary carpenters’ union. The tussle inspires Lewis to announce the formation of the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) “for the purpose of encouraging and promoting the organization of the unorganized workers in mass production and other industries on an industrial basis.” The CIO functions as a committee within the AFL dedicated to organizing industrial unions in industries like steel. Workers across the country greet the CIO’s formation with great enthusiasm. Its initials become their battle cry.
John Lewis’s formation of the CIO (a real-life historical event) is the final turning point in the long struggle to free the steelworkers from the power of the steel companies. Lewis’s action is in large part the moment when the new guard of organized labor finally triumphs over the old, a shift embodied in Lewis’s literal fight against the president of the carpenters’ union. By providing the unions in steel towns with a more powerful organization that can take their grievances directly to Washington, the center of American political power, Lewis provides the voice that the unions have long lacked.
Themes
