THE NATIONAL RECOVERY ACT IS BORN

Without a doubt the most fortuitous event in Reuben’s long political life was the election of the thirty-second President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose 13-year tenure would create an industrial engine to employ millions of workers as well as robust pro-labor legislation to protect them. The powerful FDR legacy would endure through Reuben’s entire life, and his reign as ISFL president would both benefit from and dialogue with the great leader’s administration in Washington. In 1933, Roosevelt’s substantial legislative victories and emergency economic policies lifted the tide for labor causes around the nation, and perhaps no one captured and localized these policies more effectively than Reuben G. Soderstrom, who sat in the Springfield offices of the fledgling Illinois State Federation of Labor.

Public opinion had turned so hard against Herbert Hoover that a constitutional Amendment accelerating the date of the Presidential inauguration from March 4 to January 20 was passed in the opening weeks of 1933. Still, the nation had to wait until March to remove its lame duck president, and during those months the depression worsened considerably. Unemployment was at an estimated record 25% and manufacturing had dropped over 30% during Hoover’s term in office.[1] Illinois was hit particularly hard.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal promised a “more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth,” a message welcomed by the public generally and organized labor in particular.[2] The 1932 election had ushered in a new age for Illinois politics as well. The state’s General Assembly swung heavily to the Democrats, with 33 of 51 Senate seats and 80 of the 153 Representative seats now held by newly ascendant party.[3] Reuben welcomed the shift. “During the twelve years that I have acted as the legislative spokesman for the Illinois labor movement, usually more Democrats have voted for more controversial labor bills in the House of Representatives than Republicans,” Soderstrom wrote in the wake of the election. “Following this line of reasoning it is natural to believe that an increase in the Democratic membership in both the House of Representatives and the Senate should mean an increase in the number of votes that will be given to important labor bills.”[4]

Buoyed by the prospect of additional votes, Reuben planned an aggressive agenda in the statehouse. Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, FDR recited the oath of office and took unprecedentedly quick and decisive action. The day after his inauguration he declared a bank holiday, a move Reuben strongly and openly supported, telling his readership, “Our banking system has been gradually been breaking down since 1929; over one-third of our banks had failed before the crisis…The bank crisis brought clearly to light certain basic weaknesses in our banking system which must be remedied by national legislation.”[5] Soderstrom outlined his own recommendations for greater reform, calling for unification (requiring all banks to be Federal Reserve members, ensuring consistent and comprehensive regulation), divorce of security affiliates (enforcing a clear wall of separation between deposit banks and investment houses) and branch banking (supplying small communities through branches of strong city banks, strengthening the overall banking structure).[6] That year he would see similar recommendations put to practice through the 1933 Banking Act, more commonly known as the Glass-Stegall Act.

But it was only the start. In his first 100 days, FDR famously sent Congress a flurry of bills aimed at addressing all facets of the Great Depression. One of the most radical was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA, also referred to as the National Recovery Act or NRA). Built on the foundation of the Norris-La Guardia Act passed the previous year, the NIRA called for the creation of industry codes, setting standards for prices, pay, hours, and working conditions. Even more importantly, it formally guaranteed the right of workers to form and join unions, stating in Title I Section 7a:

Employees shall have the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and shall be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers of labor, or their agents, in the designation of such representatives or in self-organization or in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection; [and] (2) that no employee and no one seeking employment shall be required as a condition of employment to join any company union or to refrain from joining, organizing, or assisting a labor organization of his own choosing...[7]

Reuben knew immediately that this was an unprecedented and revolutionary boon to labor. National legislation now directly addressed some of the very issues that vexed him in towns across Illinois. Even before the bill was enacted nationally, Reuben pressed the advantage in Springfield, introducing three bills in both houses of the Assembly: one to further limit the use of injunctions, another to outlaw yellow dog contracts (employment contracts that hired non-union workers only on the condition that they would not later join a union), and a third limiting the liability of trade unions and officers against the unauthorized acts of individuals.[8]

THE 1933 LEGISLATIVE SESSION

Fighting Unemployment

The legislative season of 1933 began with the inauguration of the new Governor, Henry Horner, who replaced the overwhelmed one-term Governor Emmerson. Horner, the first Democratic Governor in 20 years, struck a decidedly conciliatory tone regarding labor-employer relations:

The employer and employed both must learn to understand that they are dependent upon each other for the preservation of their wellbeing…The prosperity of the laboring class creates the purchasing power upon which the manufacturer and the distributor prosper. Our standard of life as a people is judged by the way the laboring man lives…While the depression has wiped out or materially decreased many individual fortunes of the country, no group of citizens suffered quite so much during the last two years as the working group did and does now.[9]

Representative Soderstrom used the broad support for Roosevelt’s agenda to his advantage, tying his bills to the President’s New Deal at every turn. He pressed Governor Horner, calling on him in an open letter to help pass minimum wage legislation and asking him to “take such action as may be within your power to respond to the recommendations and the request of the President of the United States in this great emergency.”[10] Citing Reuben as a Republican who supported the Democrat Horner, the Freeport-Journal Standard wrote:

Legislators friendly to labor interests, most of whom have consistently supported administration measures in both houses regardless of party, are hopeful that Governor Horner will through the influence of the administration unbind a minimum wage bill and the five day week measure…They are expecting the governor to sponsor both measures. The minimum wage proposal has been characterized by Rep. Reuben Soderstrom, Streator Republican and president of the Illinois Federation of Labor, as the working man’s sole defense during a period of inflation.[11]

Horner immediately called for additional unemployment relief, a goal Reuben obviously supported. Reub’s enthusiasm, however, soon turned to dismay when the Governor used his influence to push through a three percent sales tax to cover the costs of relief.[12] Unlike progressive taxes like those on income or financial transactions, sales taxes disproportionately fell on the backs of the working poor. Worse still, a minimum per-transaction clause meant that many working families, who purchased goods in small amounts, would be paying far more than three percent. Reub soon spoke out for their plight. Calling the bill an “outrageous tax,” Reub found the burden on working families to be “illegal and utterly disgraceful,” arguing:

Persons of limited means who are obliged to make their purchases in small amounts are being compelled to pay a “tax” of twenty percent or more. In many places throughout the state a one cent alleged “tax” is being collected by merchants on a five cent purchase. A ten cent loaf of bread, likewise, calls for the payment of a cent additional. Thus the working people of Illinois are being required to pay far in excess of the three percent provided by law. Who gets that money? That’s not the main point. The tax is three percent, not ten percent or twenty percent. And no one—not even the state itself—has any legal right to collect or to receive more than three percent as sales tax…The practice calls for drastic action on the part of the state administration without delay.[13]

The Thirty-Hour Week

In addition to fighting against this tax, Reuben readied the introduction of his signature legislation of the session: the thirty-hour week. To him, perhaps no bill was more essential. In response to the growing depression, manufacturers had increasingly relied on a mix of machinery and efficiency to squeeze the last drops of labor from their remaining workers. “The depression stimulated invention even more than it did prosperity,” Reuben warned that year. “Highly skilled engineers, highly trained efficiency experts were working day and night in their plants seeking new devices for the saving of materials, and thus the depression was creating more of the very thing that created the depression.”[14] He worried that this malicious cycle would replace large swaths of the American workforce, devastating the American economy and society. “If one hundred men could produce all the brick needed in our country,” he asked, “what would become of all the men not needed? If it were only brick makers the answer would be relatively easy—they could go into other occupations. But the same conditions would prevail in other occupations.”[15] The only lasting answer to this crisis, Reuben believed, was legislation limiting work to a six-hour day and a five day week. It was the only way, in his estimation, that workers could meaningfully share in the fruits of increased mechanization and efficiency.

He wasn’t alone; in April of 1933 Alabama Senator Hugo Black introduced legislation limiting working time to six hours a day, five days a week. “Why should we cling tenaciously to a system which forces 12,000,000 men into idleness in order that 12,000,000 to 25,000,000 more men may work 10, 12, 15 and 16 hours a day?” asked Senator Black from the Senate floor.[16] His colleagues agreed, and the bill passed the Senate shortly thereafter (to the shock and horror of the National Association of Manufacturers). When Reuben introduced his own version of the bill in Springfield, all the usual suspects turned out to oppose it. Even when proposed as a temporary measure with a two-year cap to help “share the work,” Soderstrom could count on Donnelly and his Manufacturers to act as a ready foil.[17] As the Freeport-Journal Standard noted:

The bill met vigorous opposition from the Illinois Manufacturers’ association which fought a similar measure at the last special session. The association’s position is “that the law, if enacted as a temporary measure would become a permanent statute; that regulation of hours of labor by law is unsound in principle and impractical in operation; that a great majority of manufacturing industries in Illinois are voluntarily adopting every feasible plan to distribute available work among the maximum number of persons; that Illinois would be handicapped in competition with other states where such legislation is not in effect.”[18]

Reub responded by reiterating the projections: the Five Day bill would employ an additional 250,000 able-bodied and willing men and women, with 40 people given work for every 100 persons whose work was cut from seven to five days.[19] Hard pressed by the facts, Donnelly instructed the IMA’s attorney, David Clarke, to engage in an unprecedented stall campaign.[20] After Reuben and his compatriots completed their arguments in favor of the bill in front of the Senate Industrial Affairs Committee, Clarke responded by requesting a two-week postponement.[21]

When hearings resumed on March 22, Reuben was not surprised to see the committee room packed with Donnelly’s men. IMA theatrics were nothing new and he was ready for a public showdown. What Reuben wasn’t prepared for, however, were the repeated calls from the Democratic committee leader to postpone the bill’s hearing.[22] The same thing soon happened to all labor legislation, from old-age pensions to unemployment insurance to anti-yellow dog contract bills.[23] This was something new; since the days of JM Glenn, the IMA had fought labor legislation in committee, seeking to stop it from seeing a vote on the floor. But even Glenn had attempted to do so through debate and demonstration, bringing in supporters and making his case before the assembled legislators. Now, Donnelly was working behind the scenes to prevent Soderstrom’s legislation from even reaching committee discussion, let alone a vote on the floor.

It was clear that the IMA had infiltrated the Democratic leadership, namely FW Lewis, House Industrial Affairs Committee Chair. Lewis, a Democrat, used his authority as chair to shut down committee discussion. “The postponement habit has been acquired by the Illinois senate and house committees to such a degree,” Reuben wrote in anger that spring, “That not a single labor measure has been reported favorably by any committee of either house since the present legislature opened its sessions more than three months ago. The practice is to postpone—and postpone—and postpone!”[24]

By May Reuben declared all-out war on Lewis in his ISFL weekly columns. “The cause of this peculiar performance appears to be the deliberate mismanagement of committee affairs on the part of the chairman of the committee, Representative F.W. Lewis. It is either mismanagement or stupidity. Some observers insist that it is a combination of both.”[25] Reuben made no secret about who he thought was behind Lewis’ antics. “Opponents of the bills, including the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association, who apparently are giving consent to the peculiar tactics of chairman Lewis, must share with him the reputation for utter unfairness which he is steadily heaping upon himself and those who are encouraging him. How long will the Illinois house of representatives tolerate the Lewis tactics?”[26] Soderstrom’s frustrations in Springfield were matched by similar losses on the national scene, as Senator Black’s 30-hour bill was sidelined by the administration, leaving the thirty-hour week in limbo for the time being.

While unable to get his big legislative bills passed in the session, Reub was not without some victories. The Governor used his political influence to help pass the Soderstrom Anti-Yellow Dog contract bill, along with modest minimum wage increases for women and minors. Reub also secured improvements for the Workmen’s Compensation Act and passed banking legislation subjecting the practice of “salary purchases” (the depression-era equivalent of payday loans) to the same laws and regulations of bank loans.[27] Although Reub may have been frustrated with the legislative session in Springfield, it is at this point that the might of FDR’s federal legislation began to impact Illinois in the form of the National Industrial Recovery Act, creating an opportunity Reuben was ready to seize.

A LEGITIMATE VOICE FOR LABOR

Reuben Goes to Washington

FDR’s new National Industrial Rights Act (NIRA) was without a doubt the most important legislative event in the history of organized labor, and Reuben was at its center. Not everyone, however, was experiencing the relief the Recovery Act promised. Many workers in Illinois were up against companies that simply refused to comply, and they turned to Reuben for help. As Soderstrom later described:

When this law was first enacted I received a vast number of telegrams, telephone calls, and many delegations to my office in the City of Springfield. Many of them said: “Soderstrom, this New Deal is a rotten deal; it just isn’t working in my town; it is a joke, insofar as my community is concerned." They submitted to me the names of firms they believed were violating the National Recovery Act. I made quite a list of those names that were submitted to me, and one day, in company with John Fitzpatrick, the President of the Chicago Federation of Labor, I journeyed down to the city of Washington.[28]

Once Reuben arrived in the nation’s capitol, he marched straight into the offices of William Green, President of the AFL. Making the case with his characteristic mix of detail, persuasion, and sheer force, Reuben convinced Green that nothing less than a personal meeting with General Hugh Johnson, head of the National Recovery Administration (responsible for implementing NIRA) would suffice. Shortly thereafter the three men—Soderstrom, Fitzpatrick, and Green—had a direct meeting with the General to discuss, as Reuben put it, “if the government of the United States is strong enough to support this Act.”[29]

The General was clearly impressed by the ISFL President; shortly thereafter he notified Governor Horner that he wanted Reuben to serve on Illinois’ nine-member National Recovery Advisory Board, overseeing the Act’s implementation in Illinois.[30] This board was to play a major role in implementing as the Act’s codes—industry-wide rules for “fair competition” exempt from antitrust laws, which were being written at the very moment Reuben was in Washington. It was a momentous occasion; for the first time labor was being treated as a full partner, sitting at the same table as the National Manufacturers’ Association to help re-write the rules of American Industry. Reub, characteristically, believed the codes didn’t go far enough, stating that while they provided “great changes from the old practices, both in hours and wages, I thought [they] were rather weak and hesitant.”[31] Still, he had reason to hope. “Of course the great industries will struggle against any such measure of justice,” he said on his return to Illinois. “The great industries have so long practiced autocracy and absolutism that they view the New Deal and the new ideal with alarm and hostility, but the door is open through which we may at least march to a fulfillment of a democratic destiny. If we do not march through we cannot very well blame anybody but ourselves.”[32]

Reuben was eager to lead that march. Union membership was now part of the American fabric, and by joining together workers could share in the fruits of their struggles. It was the dawn of a new era, marrying the power of capitalism with the responsibility of representative government. As Reuben declared in his Labor Day address:

The immediate thing that can be secured through the application of the Recovery Act is shorter hours, higher wages, and putting men back to work to give them buying power. Yet there is something deeper than this toward which our eyes must turn. It is the opportunity to build an industrial democracy. That opportunity is provided for in the National Recovery Act. It does not say that working people must join the American Federation of Labor, but it does say that the Government of the United States will protect those who do so. We have been provided with a doorway though which we may march upright, boldly, if we have the intelligence, strength, and courage to do so.[33]

In addition to immediately grasping the momentous nature of the legislation, Reuben also employed the term “industrial democracy,” a delicate and strategic phrase marrying the power of capitalism with the power of representative government. With both domestic Communist interests and gangster forces circling Illinois’ labor movement, the ISFL president was defining his organization for the new era.

Rooting Out Corruption

Labor’s new legitimacy brought with it new responsibilities, particularly with regard to corruption. It had long been true that corrupt individuals sometimes used the power of unions to line their own pockets, particularly in big cities like Chicago. Typically this took the form of collusion with employers’ associations to keep industry profits high and competition low. These rings were unafraid to use violence, including intimidation, sabotage, and even murder.[34] However, by the 1920s a new “gangster menace,” created and fueled by prohibition, entered this mix, brought the brutality to horrific levels. Mobsters threatened more than labor’s public image. In the late twenties mobsters like Al Capone and Bugs Moran began to assassinate labor leaders. The lurid newspaper account of one such murder—that of John G. Clay of the Laundry and Dyehouse Chauffeurs, Drivers and Helpers Union from the Mattoon Journal Gazette—illustrates both the level of brutality and the public fascination with these graphic deaths:

The perforated body of a powerful union labor chief, reposing today on a slab in a local mortuary, bore mute testimony that gangland’s death-dealing machine guns had again gone into action…The “knocking off” of Clay was executed in typical gangland fashion. Clay’s office was in the front of the building on the ground floor. Only a plate glass window separated him from the street.

A large sedan rolled up to the curb. A machine gun and sawed-off shotguns protruded from the windows. When directly in front of Clay’s window the gunners opened fire. A hail of lead raked the plate glass window on a level with Clay’s body. The union official slumped to the floor, dead.

The job was executed with a fineness that would do credit to trained artillerymen. Witnesses say the automobile did not even stop, but crept slowly along the curb while the machine gun poured its deadly volley into the union office…[35]

Employers didn’t hesitate to turn these murders to their advantage. One man in particular, Secretary Gordon Hostetter of the Employers’ Association, used the violence to associate “union” and “gangster” in the public mind. In articles and books, he attempted to link closed shop agreements and criminal extortion, introducing a new word—“racketeering”—to describe the illicit combinations of employer associations and unions.[36] His argument was disingenuous to say the least; after all, these combinations were largely led by the association bosses on behalf of employers, who also gained the most through their collusion.[37] But Hostetter’s attempt to shift the blame (and public attention) was largely successful. It was the “corrupt union boss” who became the public face of such abuses. “The gangster was the perfect symbol for the issue of union democracy,” historian Clayton Sinai writes. “The mobbed-up local, an abuse of union power that everyone could readily grasp.”[38]

Initially, labor pushed back against Hostetter’s claims, accusing him of purposefully conflating illegal rackets and legitimate unions in a “war on unions.” By the time Reuben became president, however, labor’s focus shifted from the Employers’ Association to “the gangster menace” itself. The NRA had made agreements between legitimate unions and employer associations legal, giving unions and Soderstrom’s Federation unprecedented authority (and rendering moot the Association’s efforts to undo the closed shop). But with that authority came responsibility, a duty to ensure that such agreements were free from graft and corruption. Together with ISFL Secretary Olander and Chicago Federation President John Fitzpatrick, Soderstrom declared a war on the “gangster menace,” vowing to rip out by the roots any and all mobster influence. In a public letter to “trade unionists and all other interested citizens in Illinois,” Reuben promised to “eliminate any racketeers or gangsters that may have forced their way into our local organization.”[39] It was not an empty threat. Working with Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly and State Attorney Thomas Courtney, Reuben and his allies targeted illegitimate unions in bed with the mob. He also coordinated with the Illinois Secretary of State, who submitted all applications for charter by worker organizations to the ISFL, ensuring no union would receive state sanction without the State Federation’s blessing. These efforts demonstrated Reuben’s power as well as his commitment. As Professor of History Andrew Cohen notes, these actions highlighted “the degree to which the state government accepted the Illinois State Federation of Labor as the ‘House of Labor.’”[40]

It wasn’t long before the “gangster menace” fought back. 1933 was a treacherous year for Reuben, with more than one attempt made on his life. As Olga recounts:

Reub’s life had been endangered. Someone had sawed the back axle of his car and this was discovered by a garage mechanic who had checked his car. Then, once he learned there was a plan to kidnap him, so he was very cautious. One night in Springfield two strangers approached him in his hotel lobby and wanted to drive him to the depot…These gentlemen were real persistent, but Reub continued to refuse the offer. However, he decided to call Governor Horner and told him about these strangers and of his knowledge that a kidnap attempt was to be tried, and he also called the Attorney General of the State of Illinois and told him his story, so if he turned up missing they would know the kidnap plot was a fact and they could make a search for him. He was not kidnapped, but it was a frightful few months.[41]

Luckily, 1933 turned out to be a turning point in the war on organized crime. Earlier killings and prosecutions had removed or marginalized Chicago’s most powerful gangsters, and the end of prohibition that year deprived the mobs of their greatest revenue source. When gangsters tried to strong-arm their way into the new legal distribution of alcohol, Reuben, Courtney, and various employers associations united in the face of bombings in order to keep them out.[42] The attempts on Reuben’s life eventually subsided, although he remained vigilant. He was lucky to have survived.

The Fifty-First Annual Convention

Buoyed by anti-racketeering efforts and momentum from FDR’s federal government, Reuben felt confident enough to hold the ISFL’s fifty-first annual convention in the heart of the city of Chicago. It was a brazen and calculated move. The national labor scene had been emboldened by the events of the past year, and Reuben was determined to mark Illinois as ground zero for the movement. By holding the annual convention in Chicago, the ISFL president could guarantee a national profile for the event. Not only was Chicago the nation’s second-largest city and de facto capital of the Midwest, it was also host to the 1933 World’s Fair, named “A Century of Progress International Exposition” in commemoration of the city’s centennial. A successful convention here at this moment would cement Illinois’s status as a growing capital of organized labor.

Reuben sent out invitations to labor organizations in eight states surrounding Illinois and convinced Brig. Gen. Hugh S. Johnson, the administrator of the National Recovery Act, to deliver the keynote address.[43] Reserving space at the Hall of Science, Reuben and the Federation prepared for a record turnout unlike anything the organization had seen before. They weren’t disappointed. It was the best-attended convention in the organization’s history, and the glamorous convention hall was filled to the brim with working men and women of all stripes. Sitting amongst the rich tapestries and golden chandeliers, they could hardly believe their own eyes; never before had the Federation enjoyed such splendor. In his closing address to the crowd, Reuben asked those assembled to savor the moment. “Just think of organized labor enjoying a banquet in the Gold Room of the Congress Hotel! It made me think of what Mother Jones used to say, that jails were built by labor and we had a right to occupy them. The hotels, too, have been built by labor and we have a right to them.”[44] Moving swiftly from the chuckles and cheers, Reub directed his audience to take seriously the opportunity before them, granted by FDR’s grand vision. “Now, the labor movement of our time has to demonstrate that we can be a directing force in this state and in this nation. These labor conventions are a sort of medium through which ideas can develop and come to the surface, where they can be acted upon by the General Assembly of the State and by the Congress of the United States…I think our work in his convention will be felt during the coming year throughout all the industrial centers of this great state.”[45]

Reuben made the National Industrial Recovery Act the focus of his speeches and the convention. Paying homage to the Act’s origins and the “blue eagle” emblem that hung prominently in every NIRA-compliant store, Reuben rallied the crowd, declaring:

The National Industrial Recovery Act is the child of the American Federation of Labor, a child which was adopted by our Federal Congress at the suggestion of the President of the United States…Four months ago there wasn’t much of a country left here because of the depression and the unemployment which was caused by the depression; but since the enactment of the National Industrial Recovery Act I see changes and the American Labor movement and the American Government are justified today in proudly flashing the Blue Eagle and the Stars and Stripes against the skyline of America as the emblem of security, inspiration and hope to both the employed and the unemployed millions of our people because of what this Act has already accomplished. The Blue Eagle is just as much organized labor’s emblem as is the union label, and I know I sound the sentiment of every trade unionist in Illinois when I say, God speed the Blue Eagle![46]

Above all, Reub called for unity. The NRA offered an opportunity that couldn’t be squandered. As the assembled press recorded, “Reuben G. Soderstrom, president of the state federation, told the labor delegates it would be their own fault if they failed to organize under the provisions of the N.R.A. ‘Don’t quibble over initiation fees and old rules. Forsake all trivialities and concentrate on organizing. We’ve obtained the very thing for which we fought for years. Take advantage of it.[47]

After so many years of struggle and oppression, it finally appeared, in the words of American Federation of Labor President Green, as if “the whole nation is becoming rapidly convinced not only that the American Federation of Labor is truly an American institution, but also that the National Recovery Act is the American way out of the present depression difficulties.”[48] In the convention hall, surrounded by finery and guests and graced with speeches by one of Roosevelt’s personal advisers, Reuben must have felt triumphant.

REUBEN DRAWS ILL

While attending the convention, Reub took the opportunity to treat his family to a vacation in Chicago. They attended the World’s Fair, getting their photos taken and enjoying a sky ride on the aerial tramway suspended hundreds of feet above the city. It was a happy memory for the family and a needed release after a year of legislative frustrations and shadowy death threats.

But Reub began to feel increasingly fatigued, which he conveniently blamed on the convention. Within a month after returning home, however, he drew deadly ill. Initially refusing to go to a doctor, he finally relented and was immediately sent to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Now a major public figure, Reub’s disappearance did not go unnoticed, and before long several newspaper reports confirmed that the ISFL president had been admitted as a patient at the Mayo Brother’s clinic, although physicians refused to indicate the nature of his illness.[49] What was his condition?

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