Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1984

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Communication

Major Professor

Herbert H. Howard

Committee Members

Paul H. Bergeron, George Everett, Kelly Leiter

Abstract

The International Printing Pressmen and Assistants' Union of North America, one of the largest printing trades union in the world, for 56 years maintained its headquarters at Pressmen's Home, Tennessee. The Pressmen's Home community, located in the mountains of northeastern Tennessee, was a 2,700-acre hamlet with its own phone system, post office, water system, electrical system, and farm.

This history of Pressmen's Home was studied through interviews and union documents and papers located in the Graphic Communications International Union headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Pressmen's Home included a sanatorium that for A1 years served union victims of tuberculosis. Between 900 and 1,000 members were treated at the facility during its existence.

A technical training school was founded at Pressmen's Home to train pressmen for offset work. The technical school drew journeymen from the United States and Canada to study the 12-week courses. When offset printing became popular in the 1950s and 1960s, enough IPPAU members had been trained in the craft so that the union was able to maintain Jurisdiction over the offset printing area. Consequently, pressmen did not suffer as much job insecurity other unions with the change in technology and the transition from letterpress to offset printing. Approximately 3,000 union members received training at the school from its opening in 1911 until its closing in 1967.

The IPPAU international headquarters was located at Pressmen's Home when the union decided to build the sanatorium and technical school in Tennessee.

George L. Berry was president of the IPPAU from 1907 until his death in 1948. A powerful and influential leader. Berry guided the union on a road of progressive unionism. Berry's philosophy included arbitration in labor-management disputes, and union members should be entitled to fair wages and good working conditions; in return, members should provide the employers with high quality work. And the union had a responsibility to see that the pressmen's training was kept at a high level. Berry believed in the free enterprise system, and while he was responsible social programs that benefited the union members, such as the sanatorium, and worked on national social programs (he helped draft the United States Social Security system), he backed away from Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 when he disagreed with the administration over social and financial policies.

An orphaned waif at the age of nine. Berry grew up in the pressroom of a Jackson, Mississippi, newspaper. As a young adult he acquired a modest fortune in the Nevada gold fields, and at the age of 24 he was elected president of the IPPAU. Berry achieved high positions in labor and politics, and in 1937 he was appointed to the United States Senate. Under Berry's leadership the IPPAU grew to be one of the largest printing trades unions in the world, and its members were one of the highest paid groups of workers in the United States.

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