LABORING FAMILIES GIVE ALL FOR VICTORY

Like every American in 1943, Reuben devoured the daily headlines. In the months following the 1942 ISFL convention, the Axis Powers had suffered a string of crushing defeats. US and British troops opened up a second front in Northern Africa with Operation Torch, putting American boots on the ground and capturing Morocco and Algeria from the Vichy French in a matter of days. In Eastern Europe, Russian troops broke through the Siege of Stalingrad, forcing the surrender of Germany’s Sixth Army. Every day seemed to bring encouraging news from the front lines to the home front.

Despite this good news, most Americans remained in a state of near-constant worry and readiness. In Illinois, posters and radio waves repeatedly painted the picture of an army in desperate need of weapons and material. Workers were rallied with phrases like “We’re building arms for victory!” and “You knock ‘em out—we’ll knock ‘em down!”[1] Households were likewise cheered to “salvage scrap to blast the Jap” and admonished that “when you ride alone you ride with Hitler!”[2] Materials and common goods remained scarce. Gas rationing hit the Illinois Valley that February, while restrictions on common materials ground the production of everyday goods to a halt. Clock making at the local Westclox plant, for example, was temporarily suspended due to a shortage of brass, while the army’s leather needs meant a ban on the production of evening slippers and leather shoes.[3] Foods like meat and sugar became luxuries.

Of all the things Illinois workers sent to the front, by far the most precious was their own flesh and blood. The number of souls sent to war in 1943 continued to mount, as did the number of casualties. As historian R.G. Bluemer writes:

Patriotic ceremonies filled with pride the hearts of parents and spouses of those in the armed forces, but at the same time, families lived in apprehension of the sight of Western Union messengers coming to the door…Examples of personal hardships and tragedies were especially hard to accept, not only for the individual family, but for everyone in the smaller towns. Another name was typically added to the memorial honor roll of those who had sacrificed their lives, and life went on.[4]

Streator was no exception to this tragic rule. The city’s first casualty in action, Thomas Dunn, died that year in the North African campaign.[5]

As the year progressed, Reuben’s weekly waits at the Streator train station grew packed with soldiers passing through on troop trains taking the Santa Fe line to Chicago. A gregarious soul with a noted habit of striking up train-side conversations, Soderstrom likely heard many stories from the soldiers as they stopped to buy coffee and sandwiches from the depot’s Streator Canteen.[6]

Most of the boys he met were the children of working men and women, far too many of whom would be mourned by parents who, like Reub so many years earlier, could scarcely afford their child’s burial. Still more would return alive but scarred inside and out, like his brother Paul who served his country the last time the world went to war. All this led Reuben to repeatedly turn the national attention to the sacrifice working families made for the war, not just in sweat and dollars but in blood and loss:

Sixty-five percent of those who are now wearing the uniform—in the army, the navy and the air-corps—come from the home of wage earners. Sixty-five percent of our patriotic women serving the Nation in the WACS, the SPARS, WAVES, MARINES, and trained nurse divisions, come from the homes of wage-earners. Sixty-five percent of those who made the supreme sacrifice at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, came from the homes of wage earners. All of which means that at least sixty-five percent of the sacrifices made in the Second World War have been made by wage earners.[7]

The war required “soul-stirring sacrifices” from labor, but they were willingly made. The men and women of labor, Soderstrom said, were patriots of the highest order, standing side by side with those in the fight. As he told the assembled delegates at the ISFL convention later that year:

The wage-earners of Illinois, and America, today can be properly designated as the Brotherhood of War Production Workers, just as our soldier sons, and brothers, and relatives, in the armed forces of our country, can be properly designated as the Brotherhood of American Warriors. In my imagination I can see the brotherhood of War Production Workers and the Brotherhood of American Warriors standing silently at attention at sunset, jointly saluting the Stars and Stripes, the flag of the freest and happiest and most enlightened people under the sun.

Today this great convention salutes the soldiers… These working men and women who wear the uniform… are fighting for liberty, equality and the continuation of American freedom for all of us. They are fighting so it will always be possible for wage-earners to gather in conventions of this character and say to the world, both publicly and privately, collectively and individually, proudly and defiantly, I am an American worker, I am an American trade unionist.[8]

SODERSTROM STANDS FOR AMERICAN PRINCIPLES, RIGHTS

Roosevelt Freezes Wages, Jobs

While organized labor in Illinois endorsed the US war effort and the Roosevelt administration’s efforts abroad, it was far from supportive of all the President’s policies at home. In fact, the ISFL spent most of 1943 protesting several of FDR’s key decisions. It started with the President’s Executive Order 9250, which froze wages and salaries. Issued on October 3, 1942, the Order stated:

No increase in wage rates, granted as a result of voluntary agreement, collective bargaining, conciliation, arbitration, or otherwise, and no decrease in wage rates, shall be authorized unless…the National War Labor Board has approved such increase or decreases. The National War Labor Board shall not approve any increase in the wage rates prevailing on September 15, 1942, unless such increase is necessary to correct maladjustments or inequities, to eliminate sub-standards of living, to correct gross inequities, or to aid in the effective prosecution of the war.[9]

The wage freeze couldn’t have come at a worse time. Despite efforts to control inflation, heavy price increases had pushed the cost of living to record highs. As the Chicago Tribune noted that year:

A chart on the financial page…and the statistics upon which it is based give little comfort to those who had hoped that price increases had been arrested. Since the war began average wholesale prices in the United States have gone up 35 per cent, wholesale food prices more than 50 per cent, and the cost of living nearly 20 per cent…These figures suggest that the Roosevelt administration has not been very much more successful in preventing prices from soaring in war time than the Wilson administration was.[10]

The Roosevelt administration’s response was to “hold the line,” refusing to permit any rise in wages while simultaneously cracking down on rent and price control violations. As the President subsequently wrote:

To hold the line we cannot tolerate further increases in prices affecting the cost of living or further increases in general wage or salary rates except where clearly necessary to correct substandard living conditions. The only way to hold the line is to stop trying to find justifications for not holding it here or not holding it there. No one straw may break a camel's back, but there is always a last straw. We cannot afford to take further chances in relaxing the line. We already have taken too many.[11]

While this action stemmed the tide—cost of living over the next 21 months rose only 1 percent—most labor leaders were incensed.[12] The ISFL and Reuben had a particularly difficult time squaring an order which so clearly undermined labor with its broad endorsement of the President’s policies. They first counseled members to reserve judgment while the order was reviewed, then tried to emphasize certain technicalities that left the door open for individual increases.[13] Ultimately, however, it was impossible to deny the fact that Roosevelt had effectively outlawed raises for the duration of the war. Despite its opposition to the policy, the ISFL remained relatively quiet on the issue.

The silence would not last long. On April 8th, 1943, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9328, the Wage and Price order, a broad extension of his “hold the line” policy. While it did indeed reaffirm existing wage and price freezes, the most controversial part of the order was the authorization of job freezes, forbidding workers from quitting or changing jobs if they were in “essential” industries:

The Order also makes clear the authority of the Chairman of the War Manpower Commission to forbid the employment by an employer of any new employee except in accordance with regulations of the Chairman, the purpose being to prevent such employment at a higher wage or salary than that received by the employee in his last employment unless the change of employment will aid in the prosecution of the war.[14]

As difficult as the wage controls were for Soderstrom’s ISFL to accept, this new order created a firestorm. ISFL Secretary Victor Olander in particular found it to be a gross violation of the Constitution, specifically the 13th Amendment’s protections against forced labor. In a series of columns for months on end, Olander railed against what he described as “serfdom obnoxious to Americanism.”[15] He viewed these restrictions as even more oppressive than the previous attempts by industry to blacklist union laborers during the open shop struggles of the 1920’s, writing in an address to employers:

A scheme is now being promoted to hold the worker to your service against his will. He has known what it means to be locked out until you are willing to permit him to come in. Now it is proposed that he shall be locked in until it pleases you to let him out! That’s what is called ‘freezing’ of the worker to his job in your plant.

What’s worse- to be locked out or to be locked in? Take a look at prison walls of any sort and you’ll feel the answer. It makes little difference to the individual worker whether he is tied to your service by labor conscription through law, or by administrative edicts applied without legal authority…The “freeze” will chill the ardor of workers.[16]

Although Olander addressed his condemnation to employers, many industrialists also questioned the policy. Already no friends of Roosevelt and contemptuous of the related price controls, many prominent industrialists were happy to attack another part of FDR’s plan. As C.E. Wilson, President of the General Motors Corporation, told the press:

Freezing of men to their present jobs or drafting them for work in another factory is easy to talk about, but it’s quite another thing to put into operation…It’s alright to talk about making men go where they don’t want to go and do work that they don’t care about, but the big problem is: How are you going to get a man to do a fair day’s work when you get him there?[17]

In the months leading up to and following the President’s executive order, Illinois labor aggressively pushed back against job freezes in multiple ways. Olander eventually wrote and published an alternative Stabilization Plan that relied on social and organizational pressure instead of legal coercion.[18] The Chicago Federation of Labor, meanwhile, lodged official and public protests with the Roosevelt administration.[19] In the end, however, these actions had little effect; the “hold the line” price, wage, and job freezes would remain in place.

While Olander was outspoken in his condemnation of Roosevelt’s executive actions, Reuben was comparatively quiet on the issue. Unlike Victor, he did not publish a single signed article in opposition. When articles critical of job freezes did occur in the pages of the ISFL Weekly, they shifted attention away from the President and onto the War Manpower Commission, the body chiefly responsible for implementing the President’s mandate.

While Reuben almost certainly shared Olander’s unease, his trust and support of the President was most likely responsible for his relative silence. This was one of the primary differences between the ISFL Secretary and President. Olander prided himself on an unyielding commitment to principle, regardless of what opponents or bedfellows that commitment might create. Soderstrom, in contrast, tended to put his faith in expediency and in people; if he thought a man or woman was of a worthy character and had their “heart” in labor, he was much more likely to give them leeway on a given issue. Conversely, pro-union actions taken by a person Reuben distrusted seldom received a warm welcome. Such maneuvers were considered at best with suspicion and at worst as preludes to deception.

Reuben Fights to Expand Voting Rights

Soderstrom’s personal approach to policy could be seen in his earlier battles with Governor Green. In Reub’s estimation, the Governor’s chief sin wasn’t that he appointed Murphy or backed the “relaxation” of labor laws; it was that he’d broken his campaign promise to labor voters to elect a union-friendly Labor Secretary. Even worse, he violated and even denied making a second promise to the ISFL to remove Murphy if the labor organization ended its public campaign against the Secretary of Labor (presumably so Green could quietly retire Murphy without the public appearance of bowing to union pressure).

It should come as little surprise, then, that Reub campaigned hard against the Governor and his Republican allies. For the first time in his tenure as ISFL President, Soderstrom made a partisan appeal in a statewide race, calling on labor voters of all affiliations to vote Democratic in the coming election. It did not go well; the Governor’s party kept control of Springfield, as Republicans strengthened their numbers in Washington. While war fatigue and mid-term voting dynamics could explain some of the Democratic loss, Reuben saw a different, more perverse and pervasive force at play: voter discrimination. In his signed column “Why Elections Go Wrong,” Reuben for the first time called for election law reform:

Standing alone the wage-earner is weak, united with his fellow workers he is strong; but unless wage-earners have a better opportunity to march to the polls together four abreast, so to speak, with every toiler of voting age, man and woman, in the parade, the results on election day will continue to seriously miscarry.

Working people, last Election Day, even those employed in defense production plants, did not show up at their precinct voting places because it was too inconvenient or too embarrassing to get there…Of course politicians find it hard ‘to get out the vote.’ Only leisure classes of citizens, and those who do not need to consult anybody for permission to be away from their place of business…have become the electorate or voting public in Illinois. Something ought to be done about that![20]

And Reuben knew exactly what he wanted done—longer poll hours and “souls to the polls” Sunday voting. Only then, he said, could working men and women be able to exercise their constitutional right without fear of losing their jobs. He worked with Representative Lloyd Harris to introduce a series of voting rights bills to amend the General Election Law.[21] Unfortunately, House Republicans (who feared extending the vote to labor) tabled all voting reform laws, including those that made it easier for servicemen fighting abroad to vote in state elections.[22] Reub didn’t give up, however. He led the ISFL to push for early voter registration, writing:

It is quite obvious that one of the most important duties of a free citizen is to exercise his right of franchise in public elections. The first step is to register as a voter. The Executive Board of the Illinois State Federation of Labor is therefore calling upon all workers in Illinois, and especially upon the members of affiliated unions, to exercise their rights of citizenship by registering to qualify as voters in all public elections.[23]

By October of that year, Soderstrom began a full-fledged voting rights and voter registration campaign, actively working with the Secretary of State and the Election Commissioners of Cook County to identify and register working voters.[24] A believer in the power of democracy, Reub resolved to spread its influence and thereby increase labor’s voice in the legislature.

1943 LEGISLATIVE SESSION

Governor Undermines Worker Protections

Unfortunately, however, Reuben had to enter the 1943 legislative session not with the General Assembly he wanted, and that legislature had painted a target squarely on labor’s back. As usual, Soderstrom built a full-bodied legislative program, complete with old-age pension extensions, civil service amendments, and a fifty percent farmer’s tax, but he had virtually no chance of enacting any of it. There was no doubt—Reub was playing defense, holding the labor line against an expected onslaught of anti-labor legislation.

It didn’t take long for the wave to hit. Soon Representative William Thon introduced legislation to suspend the Six-Day Week Law and the Women’s Eight Hour Law, removing the protections Director of Labor Murphy had been “relaxing” by fiat before he was thwarted by Reub and the ISFL. While Thon’s stated aim was to prevent “handicapping many industries and business concerns in this state in their efforts to supply war needs and civilian requirements,” Soderstrom and others suspected the suspensions were merely the first step in a larger effort to permanently repeal the protections.[25]

Reub did not take the threat lying down. As the Freeport Journal-Standard reported, “Organized labor, having made little if any progress to date on enactment of labor laws in the present session, is ready for a full strength fight to keep from losing any labor legislation passed by previous assemblies.”[26] As he had done two years before, Reub gathered his troops at the Leland Hotel, strategically placing them for committee hearings and honing their rhetoric for the coming battle.

But while Soderstrom was preparing for a fight, his opponents were getting ready to take a dive. Less than two weeks after Thon introduced his bills, Director Murphy came out against them as too extreme. He instead threw his support behind a bill introduced by Rep. McDonald that proposed creating a board that could issue “relaxations” of the law on an individual basis.[27] It was a brilliant tactical move; by starting the conversation so far on the anti-labor political right, Republican politicians (including Gov. Green and Murphy) were able to appear moderate while getting exactly what they wanted in the first place.

Murphy and the Governor received further help from Representative Greene, an influential politician who headed the House Industrial Affairs sub-committee. Greene was a close ally of the Governor and no friend to labor. Greene was someone constantly identified in the press as a “negro legislator,” and his support was commonly viewed as an endorsement by the black community; his voting record, however, more closely aligned with his personal financial interests than community ties. In the last legislative session, he led the attack on Soderstrom’s Wage Hour Bill.[28] Now as subcommittee chair, Greene added a series of amendments to the McDonald bills to further undercut workers’ legal protections. As the ISFL Weekly explained:

The Greene amendments, in the main, are designed to give the Director of Labor authority to permit employers to disregard the Women’s Eight Hour Law and the Six Day Week Act for unlimited periods, with the peculiar provision that such permits, once granted, cannot be revoked or modified ‘except for reasonable cause’…Neither the original bills as presented by Director of Labor Murphy, nor the amendments as offered by the Greene subcommittee, contain any provision for overtime pay…The Murphy bills are bad. The Greene amendments are worse.[29]

The ISFL Weekly bemoaned what it described as Greene’s betrayal of his own constituents:

It is notorious that there are a great number of unemployed among the Negroes of Chicago…Representative Greene, while complaining against discrimination on the one hand, is now in effect urging that, instead of employing additional workers, such industries should be allowed to overwork women already engaged, whatever their color or race might be.[30]

Still, the greatest double-cross came not from Greene, but from the CIO. Two years earlier, Ray Edmundson and his Illinois CIO made the political decision to support Murphy despite his complete lack of union credentials in a bid to shut out the ISFL and curry favor with the Governor. The plan had largely worked. Now, with a piece of blatantly anti-labor legislation up for consideration, Green once again turned to the CIO. To ensure the McDonald bills’ passage, the Governor and his allies withheld key documents from not only the ISFL but also the Railway Brotherhoods and labor-friendly representatives while giving them to CIO chiefs.[31] The CIO, meanwhile, gave testimony in support of the bills, providing the necessary cover to pass the legislation.[32] Despite a hard fight led by the ISFL, Reuben’s efforts were ultimately ignored and the McDonald Relaxation Bills became law, effectively (if temporarily) suspending labor wage and hour protections at employer request.[33]

Soderstrom Wins Equal Pay for Equal Work

Not all news from Springfield was bad, however. While some protections for women were weakened, their right to equal pay finally became the law of the land. For years, Soderstrom and the ISFL had declared that women deserved equal compensation, working hand in hand with famous activists like Agnes Nestor to affect change. Finally, in 1943 Reuben helped Illinois join the ranks progressive states with the courage to codify that right.

The need for such protection was glaringly apparent. According to the Office of War Information approximately 15,000,000 women were gainfully employed, four million of them in war work.[34] Yet these women were heavily discriminated against. According to the Illinois Department of Labor, working women brought home average weekly earnings of $21.57, little more than half of the $41.01 their male counterparts made. In non-manufacturing industries that gap was even higher, with women earning roughly 40% of what men in those fields earned.[35]

Disparities like these spurred organized labor and women’s groups to call for a “Square Deal” for female workers. At the start of the 1943 legislative session, Rep. Lottie Holman O’Neill, whom Reub had worked with to pass the Women’s Eight Hour Law, introduced the Equal Pay for Equal Work Bill. The legislation, sponsored by the ISFL and the Women’s Trade Union League, was beautiful in its simplicity—it provided that “the wages of women shall not be less than the wages paid men when the work performed is substantially the same.”[36] O’Neill, a brave fighter and unionist whom Olander described as “the greatest figure among women legislators in America,” had no easy road ahead of her, as she had to convince the increasingly conservative House Committee on Industrial Affairs to approve one of the most progressive pieces of legislation in the nation.[37] Despite this, O’Neill and her compatriots didn’t hesitate, grounding their arguments on firm labor principles. As Illinois Women’s Trade Union League president Mary White testified before the committee:

The principle of ‘equal pay for equal work’ is morally and economically sound…You are all aware that much is being said in the public press to the effect that women are equal to men and sometimes superior to them in productive capacity. Women are, of course, pleased by the flattering references to our great value in industry and commerce as compared with our brothers who have left or are leaving for the battle fronts….Notwithstanding all the praise we are receiving, the wages paid to the average woman worker is little more than half of the amount received by the average man worker.[38]

This bill wasn’t just about protecting the rights of women, Miss White reminded the commission. It was also about protecting the rights of the boys serving their nation in war:

We feel that we owe double duty to our brothers. Our first duty is to give willing service in war production industry and all other employment into which we are being called because of the war emergence. Our second duty it to safeguard the wage standards of our brothers during their absences so that when they return victorious from the battle fields they will not be forced into a long struggle at home to restore the wage and working conditions which are being lowered by the exploitation of their sisters while the men are away.[39]

Despite these and other expert arguments, the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association was able to bottle the bill up in the House subcommittee for weeks while its companion bill was challenged in the Senate.[40] There, despite a party platform pledge to pass an equal pay act, a majority of Republican senators aligned firmly against the bill. They presented and passed an amendment that left it effectively unenforceable—so weak, in fact, that most Democrats appeared ready to oppose it as well.

Reuben was in a bind. He wanted, desperately, for this bill to pass. As he had previously warned legislators:

That condition of inequality, utterly unfair to the women of the state, is the condition sought to be remedied by the Equal Pay for Equal Work Bill…The issue will not die. Either the women of Illinois will get a square deal from the Illinois legislature on this question, or the failure on the part of legislators to treat them fairly will be heralded throughout the state until every woman in Illinois will know what happened- and who was responsible.[41]

He acknowledged the bill had lost much of its teeth, but he knew even a watered-down act was better than inaction. At the very least, he wanted to be able to affirm that “the principle of equal pay for equal work, as affecting women in relation to men, was upheld by the Illinois legislature.”[42] In this hour of need, Soderstrom turned to an old friend—Senator “Johnny” Lee, a man Reuben had described as “strong, with a steadfastness that never wavered, unflinching in his courage, intelligent and diplomatic in his dealings with others, always patient and courteous, yet never hesitating to peak with utter frankness.”[43] At Soderstrom’s personal request, the Democratic Senator made an impassioned appeal from the Senate floor. As one newspaper accounts reported:

At a critical moment, Senator Lee took the floor on behalf of the measure and urged his Democratic colleagues to vote for it, notwithstanding its emasculated form, in order that the bill might thus be sent to the House with the hope of possible amendment there. The defeat of the bill seemed almost certain until Senator Lee made his plea…Addressing the Republican side, Senator Lee said, “Labor will take your few crumbs and hope for a change of heart by the administration later. We can only hope that the House will do something to strengthen the bill.”[44]

The Women’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act became the law of the land in Illinois, further affirming the state’s status as a leader in labor legislation. Despite immense odds and significant losses, Reuben left the halls of Springfield in 1943 confident that he had prevented the worst abuses and even advanced the line in working women’s rights.

REUBEN RESPONDS TO NATIONAL CRISES

Wartime Strikes and the War Labor Disputes Act

Although labor faced serious and often bitter challenges during the course of the Second World War, neither Soderstrom nor the ISFL ever wavered in their commitment to victory through national unity and patriotic sacrifice. As Reuben so eloquently announced in his 1943 Labor Day address:

Because the labor movement believes in absolute loyalty to our country-fixed and unchanging- Labor Day in this year of our Lord, 1943, becomes something more than an occasion on which to estimate gains won, or losses suffered, by wage earners during the past twelve months…On this Labor Day we are involved in a Second World War, called upon to fight the forces of evil which again seek to prevent our peaceful advancement to a larger freedom and a better life…

The labor movement is supporting America and America is supporting the movement of labor. Wage-earners everywhere are loyally standing by our great Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States, against Mussolini of Italy, against Adolf Hitler of Germany, against Hirohito of Japan. A victorious peace will reward the United Nations in this Second World War because the common people believe in unity, and because they have adopted and put into practice the age-old slogan of the United States, “United We Stand, and Divided We Fall…This year, more than any other like period in the history of the Nation, the spirit of Labor Day becomes identical with the spirit of America.”[45]

Not all labor leaders shared this view, however. John L. Lewis, former founder and chief of the CIO and current President of the United Mine Workers, had grown increasingly bitter and intransigent during the years leading up to the war. His outspoken opposition to FDR in the 1940 election had backfired, failing to convince even a substantial minority of CIO members and causing him to resign from the organization’s leadership in disgrace. Phillip Murray, his successor and former ally, was bitterly opposed to Lewis, whom he considered “hell bent on creating national confusion and national disunity.”[46] It was Murray who worked to ensure Lewis was not nominated to the President’s Combined Labor War Board.[47] By October of 1942, the relationship had so thoroughly fallen apart that Lewis withdrew his United Miners from the very organization he’d helped build.

Though dejected and frozen out, Lewis still commanded arguably the most important union, one with the power to either fuel the nation or bring it to its knees. Coal miners provided the energy needed to keep the factories churning, and they did so at great cost. As historian Melvyn Dubofsky writes:

The longer hours and increased mechanization imposed by the wartime demand for coal made mining—already one of the most dangerous jobs in America--even more dangerous….(Lewis) understood as did neither Roosevelt, (NWLB Chair) William Davis, nor most Americans, that for miners the battle for production on the home front produced its own body count.[48]

By 1943 these miners, like many wage earners, were ready for rebellion. Unlike presidents Green, Murray, and Soderstrom, however, Lewis decided to fan the flame. In April of 1943 he began to demand a $2.00 wage increase, which the operators refused. When the War Labor Board tried to intervene, Lewis refused to recognize their authority. While not directly ordering a strike, Lewis declared that none of the miners would “trespass” on the employers’ property unless a new contract was reached. In response, coal miners across the nation went on strike, declaring “we won’t go back without a contract unless Lewis says so.”[49] It wasn’t until FDR seized the mines from the operators and offered direct negotiation between Lewis and Secretary of the Interior Ickes that Lewis agreed to release his miners for work. For the next six months, newspapers reported the controversy with a mix of entertainment and fear-mongering as work was stopped three more times before a satisfactory agreement was reached.

The strike was disastrous for labor. Whatever Lewis’s reasons, the most lasting and impactful effect of his actions was to sour the nation on labor and union policies. In the wake of the coal crisis, labor’s every motivation was questioned and every misstep magnified. According to historian Rayback:

During 1943 public disapproval of labor policies increased. A fear that labor had secured a power which would enable it to choke off the nation’s entire war effort appeared in many quarters. The nation’s metropolitan newspapers, which had long been anti-labor, and most of the rural press, which took its tone from its urban contemporaries, lost no opportunity to exploit this feeling. They gave wide publicity to every strike, no matter how trivial…The coal conflict climaxed this presentation. Lewis was portrayed as Hitler’s ally, and it was easy to transform this charge of unpatriotic behavior from Lewis to the entire U.M.W. and to labor itself.[50]

All of the union-bashing hysteria Lewis stoked culminated in what has been described as one of the most odious pieces of anti-labor legislation ever passed by the United States Congress: The War Labor Disputes Act. Introduced by Howard Smith of Virginia and Tom Connally of Texas, the bill prohibited strikes or stoppage of production in mines, mills, manufacturing plants, and all facilities which produced materials to prosecute the war. It also included blatantly anti-union provisions unrelated to strikes, such as the outlawing of political donations from organized labor. When Roosevelt vetoed the bill, labeling it unnecessary and counterproductive, Congress overrode the President. The veto marked a new low point for both organized labor and the administration.

Reub Bears Message of Hope

In Lewis, anti-labor forces had an easy devil—someone with fiery rhetoric seemingly aimed squarely at America in its greatest hour of need. Labor needed a corresponding force—someone who could counter Lewis’s condemnation with hope, beat back his separation of the needs of labor from those of the nation with a message marrying the two. Soderstrom’s speeches and appearances from this period clearly demonstrate an understanding of this need as well as an ability to fill it. Much of Reub’s hottest rhetoric—previously his signature—was downplayed, particularly during the second half of 1943. Instead, it was replaced with a hopeful, transformative message. If Lewis presented to the nation a labor movement living in the present moment, strong enough to fear and fierce enough to bite, Soderstrom gave his audience a labor looking to the future, worthy of believing in and ready for fundamental change. In his address to the convention that year, Reuben spoke of how all Americans—wage earners and employers alike—could move past the old fights to expand the country’s commitment to democracy and prosperity in the wake of war:

The cause of organized labor far transcends the winning of the war. We must win the peace too. We must re-arrange our society, in which we do not feel well of, because of the contrast of poverty. Rather we must concern ourselves with the total abolition of poverty, and a realization that the nation can only be rich by sharing with our fellow-citizens all of the joys that a full life can give.

In other words—a political democracy is not enough. We must strive to establish an economic democracy, in which every citizen can enjoy equal economic rights, as well as equal political rights… The principles of political equality, which lie at the very basis of our democratic system, will lose its value unless translated economically into the life of the average citizen. A healthy democracy implies an adequate economic standing for all of its members, and since conditions no longer exist in which it might be hoped this can be attained through the interplay of blind economic forces, self preservation dictates that the national and international policy must be directed deliberately towards that end.

Economic security in this sense for the individual implies more than the old slogan, ‘the right to work,’ or ‘work or relief;’ it implies more even than the prevention of unemployment...It aims at enabling him to secure for himself and his family all that is necessary to enable him in youth, and in his working years, and in old age, to enjoy peace and dignity in the life of the community and make such contributions as his gifts and capacities may render possible.

I say to you the mission of organized labor is to abolish poverty, to make war impossible, to bring to each and every citizen a realization of his or her relationship with their fellows, to usher in an age of human brotherhood. This, and nothing less than this, is the mission of organized labor.[51]

This was message decades ahead of its time, at once fundamental and radical, appealing to the most basic of American ideals while urging the nation to charge forward unafraid. Reuben was calling for nothing less than the complete re-imagining of society, eliminating poverty by establishing a set of economic rights just as fundamental and protected as traditional political rights- and all this in the midst of the greatest war the world had ever seen! In a lesser orator’s hands, such a message may have been viewed as a subversive call for revolution. But Soderstrom, skilled and articulate, was able to fill his audience not with anger but with hope. Hope that this time, we could win the peace, not just the war. Hope that this time we would have the strength and moral courage to abolish poverty. Hope that this was not just one more conflict, but the end of an age, and the beginning of something new.

At a time when the press was so eager to make Lewis’s scowl the face of labor, Soderstrom’s irrepressible smile and infectious optimism served as a powerful and needed counterpoint, especially in the critical manufacturing heartland of Illinois. In the years to come, Reuben would have the chance to put his vision into practice, working to remake postwar Illinois into an industrial democracy. But first, he had to focus on finishing the task at hand: keeping labor together through the crucible of war.

* * *