REUBEN WAGES WAR WITHIN AND WITHOUT

The “Phony War” Ends

For a brief moment, the world held its breath.

At least, that’s what it felt like to Reuben. The fall of 1939 had been a whirlwind of action overseas, with Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia ripping through Poland, while Britain and France declared war in response. Japan had invaded China. The world seemed on the brink of war. And then…nothing. After the fall of Warsaw on September 27 the Nazis fell silent. The Soviets had their “Winter War” with Finland, but months passed without any signs of military action from Germany. In many ways, the quiet was more disconcerting—it allowed the imagination to run wild with unchecked fear.

Reuben went about his normal activities and entertainments. Regular drives to his Springfield office with Secretary Olander to discuss the upcoming legislative year. Train rides to Chicago for an afternoon with his trusted brother and confidant, Lafe. Often they’d talk union politics over city strolls or dinner at Fred Harvey’s at Union Station. Now a member of the Chicago Federation’s Executive Council, Lafe was deeply involved in the city’s labor scene, and always filled in his brother on the latest rumblings. Other times they’d just relax, spending an afternoon at Wrigley Field to take in a Cubs game. Reub particularly thrilled at watching leftie Larry French (whom he considered the best pitcher to play the game) put away opponents with his patented knuckleball. Reuben also made frequent visits to Champaign to visit his daughter Jeanne, who was preparing to graduate with a degree in Education from the University of Illinois that spring. Sometimes he’d treat her (and himself) with an evening at the movies. “Gone with the Wind” had just hit the theaters, and Reuben, ever the film buff, was eager to see the adaptation of the Margaret Mitchell novel.

And then in an instant the pretense was shattered. On April 9, the Nazis overran Denmark in a matter of hours, destroying any hope of a “phony war.” Then fell Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium. But the biggest shock came on June 22 when France, long considered the best army in the world, was crushed by the German Wehrmacht. The strict neutrality that Americans had called for, including those in the labor movement, was suddenly a thing of the past. What the future held, however, was far from certain.

Reuben Stands with Roosevelt

For Reuben, 1940 was an inauspicious start for the decade to come. War was looming on the horizon, with events abroad on the lips and minds of every American. In an address to Congress on January 3, President Roosevelt urged unity in the face of such strife. Sensing their importance, Soderstrom recorded the President’s words in the decade’s opening issue of the Illinois State Federation of Labor:

For national unity is, in a very real and deep sense, the fundamental safeguard of all democracy. Doctrines which set group against group, faith against faith, race against race, class against class, fanning the fires of hatred in men too despondent, too desperate to think for themselves, were used as rabble-rousing slogans on which dictators could ride to power. And once in power they could saddle their tyrannies on whole nations, and on their weaker members…

I ask that all of us everywhere think things through with the single aim of how to best serve the future of our nation. I do not mean merely its future relationship to the outside world. I mean its domestic future as well—the work, security, the prosperity, the happiness, the life of all the boys and girls of the United States, as they are inevitably affected by such relationships. For it becomes clearer that the future world will be a shabby and dangerous place to live in—if it is ruled by force in the hands of a few.[1]

Labor remained broadly in favor of the President, especially Reuben, who worked throughout the year to demonstrate the ISFL’s support of FDR and his policies. From statements of solidarity in speeches and articles, to mobilizing labor against the affliction of infantile paralysis as a “birthday present,” to the President, Reub did not shy away from FDR even as he undertook an unprecedented (and controversial) campaign for a third term.[2] At the 58th Annual Convention of the Illinois State Federation of Labor, Soderstrom successfully pushed through a declaration “advising and urging our constituent membership and all liberty-loving citizens to aid in promoting the re-election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt” ahead of the AFL convention later that year.[3] Again, Illinois labor was officially all-in for Roosevelt.

“Soderstrom Rips Lewis”

Not all of labor supported Roosevelt, however. While Reuben was working to re-elect the President, CIO leader John L. Lewis sought his defeat. The break between the President and Lewis had been a long time in coming, and was fueled just as much by Lewis’s anger and ambition as by any substantive policy differences. According to Labor Secretary Francis Perkens, Lewis had wanted Roosevelt to make him the President’s running mate, promising “all objections to a third term would disappear” if he was made the Democratic candidate for Vice President. When Roosevelt refused, Perkins claimed, Lewis became an intractable foe.[4] In a speech at the UMW convention that January, Lewis made his opposition to the President public, declaring “Should the Democratic National Convention be coerced or dragooned into nominating him, I am convinced that his candidacy would result in ignominious defeat.”[5] That was just the start; after FDR was re-nominated, Lewis went so far as to stake his leadership on the President’s defeat in a radio address:

I think the reelection of President Roosevelt for a third term would be an evil of the first magnitude. He no longer hears the cries of the people. I think that the election of (Republican candidate) Wendell Willkie is imperative in relation to the country’s need. I commend him to the men and women of labor...If he is therefore, elected, it will mean that the members of the Congress of Industrial Organizations have rejected my advice and recommendation. I will accept the result as being the equivalent of a vote of no confidence and will retire as president of Industrial Organizations in November.[6]

Lewis’s actions infuriated Reuben. It wasn’t just his nakedly self-serving opposition to the President that drove Reub to anger; it was his active opposition to reconciliation and readiness to hurt working men and women in his increasingly personal crusade against the AFL. Lewis had already single-handedly blocked previous attempts at labor unity. According to later accounts by George Meany and Sidney Hillman, Lewis was primarily responsible for the breakdown of the earlier AFL-CIO unity negotiations. Meany recounted that when the members of the AFL-CIO unity committee presented a finished negotiated deal to Lewis in his office, “John Lewis walked over to the window, looked out the window for about ten minutes, then solemnly strode back to his desk, tore the proposal up and put it in the wastebasket without reading it.”[7] Now Lewis was admitting publicly that he had no intention of seeking reconciliation, taking seeming joy in the division. When FDR blamed Lewis for the break in labor negotiations, he gleefully responded, “Well, that is a remarkable discovery, because I have been willing to admit it all the time.”[8]

Opposing labor reunification was, for Reuben, bad enough. By the fall of 1940, however, Reub became convinced that Lewis had crossed the pale, abusing his influence to spur federal investigations of the AFL-affiliated Chicago Building and Construction Trades Council. As Soderstrom explained in his address to the ISFL at their convention on Rockford that September:

All that the Chicago Building Trades Council has tried to accomplish is to carry out the policy of having trade union members work only for contractors who have entered into an agreement with them. These investigators say such an agreement becomes a conspiracy in restraint of trade, becomes the basis for price-rigging or price-fixing, and that it is a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. The Sherman Anti-Trust Law specifically exempts labor unions from coming under the provision act.

There are those who believe that the information upon which these indictments were based was given to the Federal Department of Justice by the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The Federal Department of Justice should not take too seriously the things that are said by the CIO.[9]

Why would Lewis and the CIO do such a thing? Reuben gave two reasons. The first entailed the success of the Council itself; as Reub told the crowd:

The Chicago Building and Construction Trades Council is probably the most active trades council of its kind, not only in Chicago and Illinois, but throughout the entire country as well. It has accomplished more good for its affiliated organizations than any similar trades council of its kind throughout the entire country. This tremendous success has naturally aroused some envy, and some antagonism, and enemies of labor, perhaps representatives of the CIO, certainly some very officious ‘governmental tyrants’ have appealed to the investigating branch of our government and inveigled the Department of Justice to initiate investigations…[10]

Reub believed the CIO had encouraged the probe in the hopes that they could handicap the successful AFL-affiliated council, replacing it with their own CIO-affiliated organization, and he would have none of it. “I regard this form of anti-union activity as tyranny,” he thundered. The CIO was “trying to make crimes out of functions that aren’t crimes at all- and trying to make criminals out of men who are not criminals at all.”[11]

This went beyond simple jealousy and opposition, however. Soderstrom personally blamed Lewis and his vainglorious pursuit of power. From attacking the President to sabotaging unity negotiations to instigating investigations of AFL unions simply to discredit them, Lewis had done all in his ability to increase his personal stature at the expense of labor broadly, and Reub had had enough. The ISFL president, who just a few years earlier had eschewed Green’s heated words against Lewis, tore into the man with rhetorical ferocity:

John L. Lewis has become the most imaginative, the most efficient, the most experienced truth-twisting windbag that this nation has yet produced. When John L. Lewis tells you that the President of the United States will meet with ‘Ignominious defeat’—he’s just dreaming. When Lewis tells you that he will form CIO construction unions and substitute them for the regular AF of L building trades organizations, he is just talking through his hat. When he tells you that he will take those building unions and use them to destroy the American Federation of Labor he is indulging in some more imaginative prevarication.[12]

Newspapers throughout the state covered the fight with relish. Headlines such as “Soderstrom Rips Lewis” filled Illinois papers the following morning. The “Two Titans of Springfield” had staked their claims, and as November approached it became clearer than ever that the 1940 elections would determine not only the fate of the American presidency but the fate of labor’s leadership as well.

AMERICAN LABOR ARMS FORCES OF FREEDOM

While the AFL and CIO differed on their support for the President, they both shared in their opposition to American military intervention. The official policy of organized labor reflected this attitude, with the 1940 AFL Legislative Program unambiguously declaring “The American Federation of Labor is unalterably opposed to our own nation becoming involved in European conflicts.”[13] Still, the AFL remained strongly behind Roosevelt as he ramped up the nation’s support of the allied powers, asking congress to provide $4.8 billion for American armaments, and the development of an annual production program of 50,000 aircraft.[14]

This money was soon used to steer the country’s industrial capacity toward the buildup of war materials for the Allies. The British did all they could to warn Americans, especially American labor, of the existential threat the Reich posed. Delegate for the British Trade Union Congress Sir Walter Citrine attended the 1940 AFL convention and spoke to the delegates, urging them not to repeat the mistakes his people had made:

It is of special importance for us to commune together at the present moment. Fascism and Nazism are two names that describe the same basic determination and has plunged the democratic peoples of Great Britain into a new world war. Had the war come as early as 1936 the Germans would have been ready then by the pressing of a button. We, of England, made the mistake of believing that promises were performances. Do not make that mistake in America. The only thing dictators fear is force. Make haste with your re-armament program so that you be just as ready with implements of defense as are the Nazi dictators now menacing the civilization of the world.[15]

All the British needed were bullets, not bodies, Citrine assured:

Let me say this with all the force and sincerity that I possess, that Great Britain is determined to prosecute this war with all the physical power and financial resources possessed by the British Empire…I have seen bombs blast the bodies of our people but I have yet to see the bombs that could blast the spirit of our people. American labor can conquer the Nazi menace by producing implements of war for England—conquer the dictators in this way without firing a shot.[16]

And produce America did. By year’s end the nation had become, in the words of President Roosevelt, the “great arsenal of democracy.” As he told the nation in a fireside chat that December:

For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war. We have furnished the British great material support and we will furnish far more in the future. There will be no "bottlenecks" in our determination to aid Great Britain. No dictator, no combination of dictators, will weaken that determination by threats of how they will construe that determination.[17] 

This increase in manufacturing generated the biggest reduction in unemployment in the United States since the “Little Depression” of 1936. By the end of the year national unemployment totals had dropped to 8,000,000, with 6,000,000 more jobs predicted in the coming year.[18] Speaking as a guest at the ISFL convention that September in Rockville, US Labor Secretary Perkins detailed the government’s increase in production of war materials to their allies:

On the basis of our present appropriations more than 4,400,000 man-hours of labor will be created by the defense program. Of this 413,000 will be at the site of construction projects, 1,732,000 in factories of final fabrication, and 2,258,000 in the production and transportation of raw materials and semi-manufactured products. Expenditures of this sort increase the demand for consumer goods of all kinds, for food, for clothing, for automobiles, and so on. Increases in manufacturing employment require more workers in trade and service industries to serve those with more money to spend.[19]

While Reuben was excited to see such mass increases in employment, he wasn’t satisfied to sit back passively. It made him angry to see manufacturing interests take credit for the new hiring boom. They weren’t responsible for these gains, he argued; business had a decade to take action, and had failed. It was the war for democracy that had brought this work, and consequently Reuben believed it was the nation’s duty to bring democracy to the workplace. In his Labor Day address, Reuben spoke of the need to apply democratic principles into the world of production:

The principles of democratic organization should be extended to the world of industry. Employers should welcome the suggestion of making room for union representation in their managing and directing groups. The nation is facing a grave emergency and if the world-wide social revolution is to make progress in America, let it be the right kind of American progress. We already have a representative government. The next step is representative industrial management with labor a part of that cooperative relationship…The great industrialists and governmental spokesmen for industry should not only salute the patriotic hosts of organized labor, but in addition to that, invite them to take their place in the driver’s seat with all the other groups that have built and are building up the greatest activity in all the world, our American industry.[20]

This argument—who was responsible for the wartime economic and production gains and, consequently, how those gains should be distributed—would prove to be the single greatest battle labor would wage, and its outcome would have consequences for American society that would last generations. As an established union leader in one of the nation’s crucial manufacturing states, Rueben Soderstrom would play an instrumental role in shaping labor’s voice in that fight, both though his actions as ISFL President and as a member of the powerful AFL resolutions committee.

SODERSTROM FACES LOSS

Father Maguire Dies

Amidst the chaos and construction that epitomized 1940, Reuben had to face a series of increasingly personal losses. First came the death of his longtime friend and ally, Father John J. Maguire. A professor of economics and sociology at St. Viator College in Kankakee, Fr. Maguire had worked alongside Reub from the latter’s first days in labor, making forceful moral and economic arguments for worker rights before the state legislature and national audiences. Just last year Reuben had spoken on the Father’s behalf at a banquet held in his honor, telling his old friend that he looked forward to many future years together.

Sadly, that wasn’t to be. On February 11, 1940, Father Maguire passed away in Miami, where he had gone in an attempt to recover from a heart ailment.Father Maguire’s family had asked for his many friends to write their thoughts of him upon his death. In a personal letter to the bereaved, Reub responded with the respect and love earned through shared sacrifice, success and celebration:

I first heard Father J.W.R. Maguire about twenty-seven years ago when he was engaged in the work of lecturing. He appeared in the city of Streator at a Sunday evening course which was held at the Good Will Church and directed by a scholarly and intellectual leader by the name of John Williams. At that time Father Maguire was much concerned about the concentration of wealth in the hands of too few people and that there should be a wider distribution of the Nation’s income…

Father Maguire’s presence in legislative hearings became an inspiration. The galleries in the legislative halls of the Capitol Building were frequently filled with visitors attracted there by the information that Father Maguire was to participate in the hearings or the debate. He became a sort of counselor to the labor lobby and most easily their most prominent member…

Personally I loved him. His loyalty to a cause was magnificent…Tears well up in the eyes of men when his name is mentioned, prayers are wafted on the lips of those who knew and loved him for the quiet repose of his soul. May he rest in eternal peace in the fraternal hope of every member of the movement of labor in this great State.[21]

Reuben Loses Brother Lafe

As painful as the Father’s loss to Reuben was, the worst was yet to come. Of the members of his family Reuben was arguably closest to his younger brother Lafe. The two had not only grown up together; they both became men of labor. Wanting to emulate his brother, Lafe had become a typographer and a member of the Chicago Federation of Labor, rising to the ranks of that body’s executive council. He was also a devoted family man, a faithful husband and proud father, with his eldest daughter Esther prepared to graduate that year from Northwestern University. He was Reub’s closest adviser and confidant, the man Reuben knew and trusted more than any other. Reub came to him many nights seeking counsel, including the night of July 26, 1940. Lafe was working late that night in the print shop; he phoned Reuben that evening to let him know he would not be home until one or two in the morning. That was all right, Reub him, he would wait for Lafe at his apartment until his work was done; they could talk then.

It was the last conversation they would ever have. That night Lafe was killed at the corner of LaSalle Street and Chicago Avenue. In a letter to Tom Courtney, State’s Attorney for Cook County, Reuben detailed the affair:

My brother was riding with a printer by the name of Mr. Stonecypher, who was driving the car. Stonecypher owned the car. They were headed north on LaSalle Street. Mr. Ralph Ladwig was headed west on Chicago Avenue in another car. Ladwig disregarded the red lights and even failed to stop at the boulevard (LaSalle St.), crashing into Stonecypher’s car, ripping off the door and killing my brother. Both cars were wrecked. Police testimony at the inquest showed that Ladwig had been drinking. Other information picked up by my attorney from the police brought out the fact that Ladwig has been arrested several times and on, at least, one occasion served time for grand larceny.[22]

Reub was overtaken with grief, a cutting emptiness tempered by anger at the man responsible. He vowed to do everything in his power to make certain the man that killed his brother could never harm anyone else again. As he told Courtney:

You are the State’s Attorney of Cook County and my personal friend. While I am not vindictive and am not actuated by any feeling of revenge I am asking you to take a look at this case so that the mistake of turning loose Mr. Ladwig, who acts like he was defective, will not be added to the wrongs he has already committed.[23]

While working to ensure that the drunk driver who killed his brother remained behind bars, Reuben—ever the family caretaker—simultaneously undertook every effort to see that Lafe’s family was cared for. A letter recovered from Reub to Professor William Johnson, Superintendent of Chicago Schools, gives just one example of the many steps Reub took to ensure the security and safety of his dead brother’s wife and daughters:

Dear Mr. Johnson,

My brother, L.E. Soderstrom, met with a fatal automobile accident while returning home from work at the Journal of Commerce office in Chicago. He was a linotype operator, and the accident occurred on July 26th, 1940.

His daughter, Miss Esther Soderstrom, 5016 N. Ashland Ave., Chicago, has been employed as a “sabbatical leave substitute teacher” under your general supervision and direction during the past two years. She has successfully handled her teaching duties at the Volta, Schleg, and other public schools in Chicago. She is a graduate of the Chicago Teacher’s College and has completed one hundred twelve hours of her work at the Northwestern University, which means that when she has secured eight hours more of training she will be the proud possessor of a Northwestern University B.S. degree. This needed eight hours will be attained this next semester.

The income of a linotype operator is not great and it was necessary for Esther to work before her father’s fatal accident and it becomes even more so now that he is gone.

I dropped into your office last week to relate this situation to you personally but you were out of the city. Esther has a younger sister and her mother to look out for so steady employment is the thing which is most needed. Since my brother is no longer here to safeguard and protect his family, I am trying to do it for him the best that I know how. I will deeply appreciate it if you will kindly make sure that steady employment as a teacher is assigned to her.[24]

Reuben wasn’t the only one affected by Lafe’s loss. The entire Chicago labor movement was rocked by the promising leader’s death. The CFL honored him with a moment of silence, followed by a statement by John Fitzpatrick, CFL President:

We are all shocked at the manner in which Lafe Soderstrom met his death. He was coming home from work, in the car of a friend, when another car crashed into him. He sustained injuries which were fatal. Lafe was just in the prime of life. Everybody in this Federation knew Lafe for many years as an active member of the Chicago Federation of Labor. He served on our executive board and on some of our important committees.[25] Reuben was devastated. Lafe was his confidante and best friend. He most certainly remembered warm childhood memories growing up in Streator, fishing together, playing baseball, celebrating family Christmases, plotting local politics in their 20’s and mugging for the camera in plenty of playful postcards they sent back and forth to each other. They were in many ways soulmates, raised by the same Swedish immigrants and compelled to commit their lives to laboring men and women. Reuben wept tears of grief long after his brother was gone. And as he had done once before, he coped quietly with his pain while taking care of all those around him.

Governor Horner Dies

While Lafe’s death was the most personal and cutting to Reuben, another passing in 1940 marked a major change in Illinois labor and politics. On October 6, 1940, Governor Henry Horner died after a long illness. Although their relationship was long and varied, with periods of cooperation punctuated with points of conflict, Soderstrom nevertheless paid a glowing tribute to the Governor who had seen Illinois through the worst of the Great Depression. “His name will be inscribed in the history of Illinois as one of the greatest among those who have served the state as its Governor,” he wrote. “He combined the virtues of a strong, capable executive, with a gentle humanitarianism in a manner that compelled the respect of all and the personal affection of every one of his vast host of friends.”[26]

Horner’s death was a further blow to the Democratic Party in Illinois, which seemed to be on the verge of a major electoral loss. Earlier that year, Soderstrom had tried to warn Democratic legislators. “Generous and helpful as the dominant political party has been to wage earners,” he said, “this is beginning to look like a Republican year in Illinois, and the Democrats, in justice to themselves, should let wage earners know what they intend to do for them because only in this way can the party avoid the grave danger of being swamped.”[27]

Unfortunately for the Illinois Democratic Party, it failed to listen. Voters, reacting in part to the New Deal and even more to charges of political corruption, voted en masse against the state Democrats, even as they helped with the overwhelming re-election of President Roosevelt. Republicans emerged from the 1940 elections with control of the Illinois Senate, House and Governorship—a clean sweep. It was a result that would prove to have lasting consequences for Soderstrom and labor in the decade to come.

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