Detroit Research Volume 1

122
with technology (say, Machine) in “the transfer of
energy from raw materials into machines of great
power through human strength and ingenuity.” 9
This harmony, and its evocation of a Golden Age in
the iconography of the work, the harmony, for example,
of the four “races” of White and Yellow (the
South Wall fresco) and Red and Black (the North
Wall fresco) is an intentional irony within the Detroit
Industry mural as the cycle of harmony depicted
is in stark contrast to the social and economic
realities for workers at the time of the creation of
the fresco cycle, for 1932-33 was the height of the
Depression. As Linda Bank Downs comments:
Rivera reconciled the concept of modern
industrial processes with ancient beliefs
at a time in Detroit’s history when industrial
systems had failed the the worker. The
Depression created self-doubt, fear of the
future, and blame of the industrialists. The
Detroit Industry murals present a modern
golden age, before the 1929 stock market
crash, when industrial productivity, employment,
and wages were at their height and
Detroit was a boom town. Rivera created a
nostalgia for a culture of work and labor in
the automotive industry that had been radically
transformed by the Depression, which
created a climate where industrialists were
despised as being reckless capitalists who
abdicated moral economy. Moral economy
holds that industrialists have an obligation
to control the production, manufacture, and
sale of commodities in order to protect the
interests of the community of consumers.
Moral economy was bankrupt in 1932 –
1933 Detroit. 10
stills from Finally got the news
There is a pendant to this persistent topos of an
ironic Golden Age, and it is the extraordinary film
Finally got the news, made by the League of Revolutionary
Black Workers in 1969-1970 and which
opens with the verses of the blues song “Detroit, I
do mind dyin’”:
Please, Mr. Foreman, slow down your assembly line.
Please, Mr. Foreman, slow down your assembly line.
No, I don’t mind workin’, but I do mind dyin’. 11