Out of This Furnace is a novel about hope, and its greatest symbol of hope is the union. The union symbolizes hope because only the union can give the steelworkers a measure of autonomy over their own lives. At the heart of the novel is the long, steady progression from a futile hopelessness on the part of the steelworkers towards a sense of hope embodied in the birth of a new labor movement after a half-century of struggle. After beginning with the death of unions, the novel settles into a long period where unions are spoken of and hoped for, but cannot materialize, as the power of the steel company is simply too strong. Finally, the union begins to show signs of life again with the onset of the Depression, the New Deal, and the new organizing efforts from Dobie and the CIO. Even in the late 1880s, when unskilled Slovak workers could not be members of a union, workers like Andrej understand that only unions can fight the greed of the steel magnates. “Don't fool yourself, “he tells Kracha, “If the union lets Frick have his way it will be the finish for everybody.” Andrej understands that the company abuses union and non-union workers alike. Mike Dobrejcak, for example, wallows in the despair that a non-unionized steel labor force creates, to the point where he cannot even discuss unions with other workers without being suspected for a company spy. Not until the novel’s climax does the union transcend from a hopeful symbol into a tangible reality. Dobie and his fellow workers’ organizing efforts help bring the CIO to Braddock, thereby bringing the hope of better wages, safer conditions, and time off from the grueling, dangerous mill work.
Unions Quotes in Out of This Furnace
These were the same people who snorted disrespectfully when they were reminded that in books and speeches Carnegie had uttered some impressive sounds about democracy and workers' rights.
He was a child of the steel towns long before he realized it himself.
There were few who didn't find something brave and hopeful in its mere presence, the soiled curtains across the windows of what had been a vacant store as heart-lifting as a flag in the wind.
The very things the Irish used to say about the Hunkies the Hunkies now say about the niggers. And for no better reason.
You know, you really ought to be allowed to pick your own place to be born in. Considering how it gets into you.
They were all sorts of men, Scotch and Irish and Polish and Italian and Slovak and German and Jew, but they didn't talk and act the way the steel towns expected men who were Scotch and Irish and Polish and Italian and Slovak and German and Jew to talk and act.
That was where a hearing of this kind should have been held, in the mill yard or in one of the First Ward's noisome alleys, where words and names were actual things and living people, beyond any lawyer's dismissal—smoke and machinery and blast furnaces, crumbling hovels and underfed children, and lives without beauty or peace.
All over America men had been permitted, as a matter of business, as a matter of dollars and cents, to destroy what neither money nor men could ever restore or replace.
