“Thank God for the hard hats!” Nixon cried. He had been so delighted by the liberal Pete Hamill’s exposé of the political alienation of the white working class in New York magazine in 1969 that he ordered a Labor Department study on the question. Assistant Secretary Jerome S. Rosow had just delivered his report “The Problem of the Blue Collar Worker.” It described a population “on a treadmill, chasing the illusion of higher living standards,” fighting via the only apparent weapon at their disposal: “continued pressure for high wages.”
