Rights Of Men, Rites Of Passage: Hunting And Masculinity At Reo Motors Of Lansing, Michigan, 1945-1975 [1]

Journal of Social History, Summer, 2000 by Lisa M. Fine

During the 1960s and early 1970s, the history of hunting in Michigan and the history of Reo intersected in profound ways. As hunting reached new heights of popularity during the 1960s and early 1970s, Reo (then called Diamond Reo because of the many by-outs it was experiencing) was in decline. With remote and changing ownership and uncertain government contracts, in part because of the Vietnam War, the company declined as hunting became more important to the workers that remained. In the increasingly depressing Reo columns in the Lansing Labor News, the juxtaposition of items describing the company's decline and items joyfully recounting hunting activities is striking. In October of 1963, along with news that the company that had taken over Reo had engaged in yet another merger, the men formed a Buck Club, [51] and every year thereafter had Buck contests. In 1968, the year the Reo local formed its own Sportsman's Club and signed 150 members in its first month, the company changed its production manager, pers onnel director, supervisory staff and foremen. [52] In 1969, amidst continuing concerns over the viability of the company in Lansing and the threat of the plant moving, the men of the Reo Sportsman's club affiliated with the MUCC and began publishing their own column, "Local 650 Sportsman's Club Column," in the Lansing Labor News, the only Lansing local to do so. [53] Packed filled with information, the first column alone announced classified ads relating to hunting and the opening of a club library at the 650 union hail, wholesale buying at a sportsman store (if you show your union card), a fishing contest, information about shooting carp, news about the smelt run, a special turkey season in May, state congressional hearings about financing of state recreational facilities, meetings of the MUCC and information about a local shooting range. These sorts of activities continued until the Lansing plant's demise.

"Class is defined by men as they live their own history, and, in the end, this is the only definition." [54]

The Bonds of White Working Class Manhood

It's not that hunting provided a subterfuge for class consciousness, diverting the energies and attention of workers from useful protests against their alienated work, their place in the increasingly global capitalist system, the increasing bureaucratization (or ineffectiveness) of their union or the threat to their jobs and pensions. Perhaps some of the workers at Reo recognized these developments and used the retreat to the woods as a way to respond; perhaps some even were motivated enough to engage in a range of political activities (of the left and right) to address these issues. As scholars, we might decide that it was the deskilling of the workplace, the bureaucratization of the unions, the co-option of the workers by good wages and fringe benefits, the politically repressive atmosphere of the Cold War, or the challenges to traditional masculinity made by the civil rights and women's movements that contributed to the growing popularity of hunting as a form of leisure for Michigan autoworkers. Perhaps h unting can be understood as a particular response of the working class to their "blue collar blues" during the 1950s and 1960s, similar to the middle class men's flight from job and family that Barbara Ehrenreich described in The Hearts of Men. [55] Perhaps the increasing popularity and importance of hunting among the automotive working class is evidence of the "Remasculinzation" occurring during the 1960s and 1970s that Susan Jeffords described in her The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War. [56] Hunting might also be seen as a Midwest automotive version of the hyper-masculine 'hard hat' phenomenon of the late 1960s and early 1970s so well described by Joshua Freeman. [57]