REUBEN REACHES OUT TO VETERANS

Reuben strode to the podium, brimming with excitement and swagger. The Chicago hall, packed tight with veterans of various ages, wages, and battles, mirrored his enthusiasm. These were heady days for America. The Allies had turned the tide of the war; from the invasion of Italy to the end of the Leningrad siege to the bombing of the German homeland, the Axis powers were everywhere on the retreat. In the months to come, the US and her Allies would capture Odessa, Crimea and Rome—a string of successes culminating in Operation Overlord, the June 6 invasion of German-occupied Western Europe popularly known as D-Day. Soon Allied troops from the West and Russian troops from the East would begin their march to Berlin while the U.S. crippled Japanese forces on land, air, and sea.

None of those assembled came to hear of current successes or future campaigns, however. They had braved that windy, rainy March evening to hear Reuben G. Soderstrom, President of the Illinois State Federation of Labor, make the case for unionism. It was no easy task. True, union hands built the weapons that empowered American soldiers and crafted the armor that kept them safe. Organized labor was directly responsible for 85% of total production of war material.[1] In the words of Rear Admiral FG Hussey Jr., “The men and women of American labor, through their magnificent efforts, made possible the miracle of production that enabled our armed forces to smash the Axis onrush and prepare the coming offensives.”[2] Union households sent more than simply their sweat to the front. Relentless bond drive efforts (tirelessly led in Illinois by Reuben himself) had raised a substantial number of “fighting dollars” to fund the war. A disproportionate number of soldiers—a full 65%—also hailed from union households.[3]

Despite these sacrifices, some veterans had a neutral or even negative opinion of unions. Like many on the home front, they had been fed a steady line of stories about union cronyism and corruption, of selfish opportunists using the war to line their own pockets. In the wake of John L. Lewis’s mining strikes of 1943, “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,” according to historian Joseph Rayback. “Lewis was portrayed as Hitler’s ally, and it was easy to transform this charge of unpatriotic behavior from Lewis to the entire UMW and to Labor itself.”[4]

Although wartime strikes outside of mining were nearly non-existent—productivity lost from strikes during this time amounted to less than one-seventh of one percent of total working time—the popular press had succeeded in pushing the idea of a home front threatened by labor’s “fifth column” out to soldiers serving abroad.[5] As one soldier from Reub’s own hometown of Streator put it in a letter home:

Say, what’s the matter with all the people back there? Going on strikes and raising hell. All they are doing is prolonging the war. I read in the papers of coal strikes and strikes of all other sorts. Maybe they would like to be here in my shoes...I’ll trade them and give them five years of my life to boot. They are acting like a bunch of kids. Do they know there’s a war on?[6]

This was the situation Soderstrom faced as he prepared to speak to the March meeting of the American Legion. His mission that night was not only to defend labor’s record, but to change hearts and minds. The men in that room, along with the millions of others currently in uniform, would shape the nation after war’s end, and Reuben had to convince them of labor’s place in that world. Labor and veterans had much in common, as Commander Bryant noted in his introduction of the ISFL President to the crowd:

It appears to me that it is either an ignorant or a prejudiced follow who has not been able to understand that regardless of its faults or its shortcomings, of its good or bad leadership, that the labor union movement has been a part and a parcel of that great movement stretching throughout history where men have fought for human rights...No one can deny the rightful position of organized labor in this great march for human freedom.

We, in the American Legion, have everything in common with that march...All through our career we have stood for the spirit of Americanism, and surely the very essence of that spirit, from the Declaration of Independence to today, is the importance of human rights, the dignity of the human being, the sacrifice of the lowly; and so we, legionnaires, whose organization is dedicated to the principles of justice, freedom, and democracy welcome as our guest today the leader of another organization which has fought for human rights, and it is our great privilege to present to you the Honorable Reuben Soderstrom, a warrior for liberty.[7]

As Reuben took to the stage and addressed the crowd, he appealed to their common sense and shared experience, particularly the importance of payday:

This audience looks like an audience of grownup people. You are not children...and can probably stand some plain speaking. Everybody loves the holiday season—everybody loves Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, St. Patrick’s Day and New Year’s Day, but the day that really fills everybody’s silent soul with joy and laughter in the labor world is that day called payday—that good old American pay-day!...It gives the head of the household the exquisite satisfaction of feeling important because it was his work or his skill that produced the money in the pay envelope. Whether it is a thick envelope or a thin one depends largely upon his membership, or non-membership, in a trade union. All over the world the labor movement is growing stronger and becoming more and more a factor in the lives of men...It is the organized worker who takes the lead in every move for the betterment of the sons and daughters of toil.[8]

Organized workers weren’t just fighting for more money, Reub was quick to point out. They were fighting for a fundamental freedom—one that President Roosevelt himself had outlined as one of the “four freedoms” of mankind:

The things advocated by labor are fundamental things, such as more food, more clothing, more shelter, more homes, and steady employment. Steady employment is, of course, the most important because all of the other fundamentals are dependent upon the income of steady employment. Well, there are some thinking people beginning to give some heed to the things advocated by labor. Some sixteen months ago, in the Atlantic Charter, so-called, Winston Churchill, the Premier of England, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the President of the United States, outlined four points which have become our war objectives, and which will automatically become our postwar program. These four points are Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. While common people everywhere are very much interested in all four of these points, wage-earners are particularly interested in Freedom from Want.[9]

Having connected the aims of labor to the aims of the World War itself—the very principles and beliefs that his listeners had risked so much to secure - Soderstrom now asked his audience to look beyond the current conflict. He wanted to talk about the fight to come, namely, the struggle to ensure freedom in the peace to follow. He put forth an unflinchingly progressive vision of the problems and solutions he foresaw:

When this war is over there is going to be an opportunity for everybody - including wage earners - to earn an abundance of food, clothing, and homes. This can be accomplished, of course, if the problem of unemployment is actually solved. We still have thousands of people idle in spite of the war, and this problem of unemployment can be solved in one of two ways—either by reducing the hours so that more people might be employed or by developing governmental projects which will employ all of those who are not now engaged in private industry. Both solutions have labor’s recommendation, both solutions have labor’s blessing - in fact, both solutions for the unemployment problem originated with labor…

Labor wants economic freedom for all. Labor does not mean by that the old-fashioned idea of the right to establish a grocery store on the street corner. Labor talking about unemployment compensation, old age benefits, about real public education including university and professional training, and all of the other things that are needed to give to the citizen economic security in this complex civilization, this complex world of ours. Labor does not believe we have obtained complete economic security in the past—labor is fighting for our right to obtain it.[10]

A new world is coming, Reub roared to the assembled, and they had the chance to shape it together:

What the future of America holds depends on what you and I, and all of our fellow citizens together, do. We can follow the course mapped out for us by the signers of the Constitution, working out by peaceful means the way to a better world and to a more equitable distribution of the bounties of a free country. We can make America the Utopia of which men have dreamed throughout the ages, a land of peace and prosperity, of justice and brotherhood for all. We can do this because we, the citizens, are the United States. We, you and I, are America![11]

WINNING THE PEACE

Reuben Joins the AFL Post-War Planning Committee

Soderstrom’s focus on the future of labor after wartime was not new. His early calls for action had earned him a prestigious seat on the American Federation of Labor’s Post War Planning Committee (PWPC), a 10-member council President Green had charged with creating a “plan for labor representation in the peace conferences which will follow victory” including “specific proposals which the labor representatives should seek to have incorporated in the peace treaty.”[12] It was a heavy duty; “There is no more important responsibility,” President Green wrote to Reuben in his request for the ISFL president’s service. “We must look forward to labor representation in the postwar administration as well as among those who shall formulate the terms and conditions of peace. This is an important duty and will require hard work to be ready when needed.”[13]

Reuben did not shy away from the task. “I shall be glad to serve,” he wrote President Green. “Please know that I am conscious of the responsibility attached to this very important assignment…In accepting this grave responsibility I am appreciative of the honor and distinction naturally associated with such service to the labor movement of this character.”[14] He was especially excited to join such a diverse and impressive group, including progressive luminaries such as African-American Milton Webster of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and storied female labor leader and social reformer Agnes Nestor, Reub’s longstanding personal friend. Together the PWPC wrote the blueprint for what was to be American labor’s role in the post-war world; a starring role, in their estimation. After Hitler’s decimation of international labor, American unionism was to become the model for labor organizations abroad. The restoration of organized labor and democratic rule in these crucial years would, in Soderstrom’s opinion, be both necessary and symbiotic; in the words of fellow labor theorist Jay Lovestone, “Labour cannot go forward without democracy, and democracy cannot advance and must perish without labour’s conscious, insistent and energetic participation and support.”[15] Democracy and unionism went hand in hand, and to ensure a flourishing of both, the committee called for the creation of a corps of professional labor attaches appointed on the basis of their experience in the labor movement.[16] This labor corps would spread American unionism throughout the world; as Reuben described to the delegates in his 1944 ISFL Convention Address:

Labor is fighting for a human, progressive American way of life. Labor is fighting so that our river of democracy will roll on and wash away in its waters all inequalities, all intolerance, all discrimination, and all wrongs so that some day, as labor believes, our river of democracy shall reach the sea and mingle with similar rivers of other nations, so that our country, which labor loves so dearly, and all other countries will be bathed always in the waters of human decency, in the waters of human brotherhood, in the waters, I trust, eventually of perpetual peace.[17]

While labor’s role abroad was important to Reuben and his peers, even more consequential was the effect of the war’s end on the home front. The end of the last Great War had brought with it economic calamity. Veterans were dumped into the workforce, sparking mass unemployment, while the abrupt end of price controls brought about massive inflation. This time, labor wanted to make sure the nation didn’t suffer the mistakes of the past. The committee demanded labor representation not only at the peace conferences but “on all Government boards and agencies dealing with postwar problems” and called on state and local labor affiliates to “obtain representation on local governmental agencies created to deal with postwar re-employment and public works.”[18] They wanted an active government overseen by a “kind of Reconversion czar,” but called for civilians, not military officials, to supervise the transition.[19] In its final report, the committee called for the formation of an Office of War Economic Mobilization and Reconstruction with a Review Board. They sought an immediate end to wartime wage and manpower restrictions and the start of a peacetime employment service. They also wanted the government to provide unemployment benefits for demobilized soldiers, demobilization payments for returning soldiers to continue interrupted education and training, and medical and rehabilitative care for the injured.[20]

More important still, the committee believed, was the need to find and preserves veterans’ jobs. Although draft law technically protected a soldier’s job, similar legislation had failed to stem the tide of unemployment after the First World War. To ensure soldiers’ job security, there needed to be more than legal cover. Veterans needed an advocate, and a strong, united institution of unionism could be uniquely positioned to provide such protection. As Reuben explained:

Veterans will need the protection of unions when this Second World War is over. There are many ways in which employers can evade the job rights ex-servicemen have under the Selective Service Act. Veterans who were holding temporary positions, for example, are not entitled by law to re-installment. Soldiers returning to civilian life are, of course, entitled to their former position, or positions of like seniority, status, and pay. Experience after the First World War has proven this was effectively carried out, however, only where there were union agreements containing seniority provisions, with the power of the union to enforce them. Union agreements go much further than existing laws…Veterans of the First World War can testify the workers’ only real security is his or her union and the contract which the union negotiates with fair union-minded employers.[21]

America could not afford to forget her veterans as she had done in the past, and the unions, which had more of their own in the fight than any other civilian organization, would help to ensure that wouldn’t happen. “Over one million, five hundred thousand members of the American Federation of labor are serving in the armed forces of the United States,” Reuben said. “When this Second World War ends victoriously for the Allied nations, the labor movement has its hopes and aspirations for a permanent peace.”[22]

Equality Regardless of Gender, Color

Of all the issues that confronted the committee, Soderstrom took a special interest in women in industry. Committee minutes noted that “Mr. Soderstrom...thought that the problem of taking proper care of women in industry was most important not only during the post-war period but now.”[23] He was especially concerned about the present readiness of states to “relax” laws protecting female workers. Twenty states and the District of Columbia at least temporarily suspended their laws governing hours of women’s employment for the war emergency in 1942 and 1943, according to the US Department of Labor.[24] Reuben worried that these rollbacks, declared necessary for the sake of the war, would sneak their way into permanency at the war’s end. Labor had to be vigilant to protect against such a tragedy; as he reported in the pages of the journal of the Illinois State Federation of Labor:

Action has been taken on approximately 30,000 applications from 12,000 firms for exemptions from various labor laws in 34 States since the beginning of the war period...The firms, not all of them war contractors, applied for permission to work in excess of the maximum hours laws, to employ women at night or for longer hours, or to employ minors beyond the limitations of existing legislation...Long hours and other wartime working conditions must give way to peacetime standards as soon as war production demands permit it…[in order] to stabilize post-war industry and employment.[25]

Of course, any discussion about working conditions for women in a post-war America begged the obvious question: what would happen to all of the women currently employed when all the soldiers returned home to resume their jobs? According to research conducted by the periodical Advertising Age, plant managers and company heads found their female employees to be “invaluable,” and had even “created positions for themselves never before filled by men.”[26] These managers estimated that a full fifth of those women currently employed would retain their jobs in the wake of the war, and while they did not predict this would interfere with the rehiring of soldiers, it did open up a new series of questions, tensions, and concerns.

Throughout 1943 and 1944 Reuben worked closely with female labor advocates, particularly his fellow committee member Agnes Nestor, to address these challenges. Nestor and Soderstrom arranged to have women advocates from organizations such as the American Arbitration Association speak at ISFL conventions.[27] Reuben likewise met with the delegation to the Illinois and Wisconsin Women’s Trade Union Leagues to deepen ties and gain a fuller understanding of their needs and concerns.[28] Through their work in and beyond the AFL postwar committee, Soderstrom and Nestor worked to ensure that the working women of America would have a protected place in peacetime.

As women teamed with organized labor to preserve and expand their rights in the workplace, citizens of color finally began to see signs of hope that the peace might bring with it a real chance to exercise their franchise. In 1944 the Senate Judiciary found that “Most poll taxes were written to prevent Negroes and poor whites from voting,” and recommended passage of a bill passed by the House to outlaw poll taxes for federal offices.[29] Race still proved problematic for the American Federation of Labor. Leaders like AFL President Green and ISFL President Soderstrom supported equality and opposed exclusion on the grounds of race. At the 1943 AFL convention, Reuben and the other delegates officially declared:

The founders of the American Federation of Labor since its inception were opposed to any prejudices, traditions, social or religious demarcations which could be applied to interfere with or prevent thoroughgoing organization of all wage earners. They made one of the cornerstones of the great trade union structure they were determined to erect, the principle that the right to work, or membership in a trade union should not be limited or restricted in any manner because of creed, color or race. National origin, race or color must in no manner or form restrict any American from a free opportunity to prepare himself to become a skilled mechanic, a craftsman, and take his place as such in any employment requiring the skills which he has acquired. The doors of our trade union movement must be open.[30]

Reuben and Green believed they lacked the authority to compel their affiliates to ban discrimination. The transformation offered by the war’s end, however, held promise. In his hallmark address before the Chicago Association of Commerce, Professor Sumner H. Slichter theorized that labor’s growing charge and influence in society would inevitably result in a change in labor itself. “Few persons, even within the ranks of labor, would deny that organizations as large and powerful as trade unions are affected with a public interest,” he said. “Consequently, they are bound sooner or later to be regulated in certain respects. Unions are likely to be forbidden to exclude persons because of race, color, or creed. Several states have already done this.”[31]

Whether compelled by law or not, labor took a growing interest in ensuring the rights of men and women of all colors and creeds. This became increasingly important as some states, particularly those in the South, began to use anti-labor laws to arrest, convict, and imprison black laborers. In his 1944 Labor Day Address, Victor Olander highlighted the case of Emanuel Pollack, a “Negro laborer from Florida,” who was fined $100 and jailed for 60 days for quitting his job, which Florida law defined as violation of contract. To Victor, this case should concern not just those of color but all working men and women:

There can be no free trade unions without free workers...No man can be held to the service of another. The right to quit is inviolable. That simple right is the most important of all human rights because it marks the essential difference between the free man and the slave. Let no man dismiss this subject on the belief that it relates solely to some maneuvering against Negroes in Southern States...The enemies of human liberty have tried in devious ways to counteract the effect of the Thirteenth Amendment by resorting to such subterfuge as the Florida law.[32]

POLITICAL AND LEGISLATIVE BATTLES

Reub Resists the “Labor Draft”

Victor Olander highlighted the case of Emanuel Pollack not just to provide an example of racial discrimination. To him it was yet another instance in a growing, disturbing trend of governments using the law to compel labor. “At the moment, there is much concern over the growing disposition to regulate and restrict labor organizations by law,” he continued. “Trade union officials are aroused on this point. The greater danger, by far, however, is the restriction of the rights of the individual. Not enough is being said about free labor. Under the pressure of war problems, there is a brooding silence on that question.”[33]

In the wake of John L. Lewis’s mining strikes, President Roosevelt in 1944 called for a National Service Law—essentially a conscription service for workers. Opponents of organized labor immediately seized on the idea and espoused the theory that if a man can be drafted to fight for his country, why can’t a man be drafted to build the bullets? Of course, such calls wholly ignored the idea of any subscription or sacrifice on industry’s part. As AFL Vice President Woll noted, “For labor conscription to be analogous, the Federal government would have to nationalize the war industry, in order that the conscripted worker might produce under the direct command of his government, with no profits from his labor accruing to private industry.”[34] If industry was so keen on a “labor draft,” then where was their call for an “industry draft?”

None of labor’s arguments slowed anti-union forces, however. In the U.S. Congress, Senator Warren R. Austin of Vermont introduced a bill to implement the labor draft, legislation Reuben and the ISFL described as “the most direct defiance of specific sections of the Constitution ever submitted to any Congress since the birth of the nation.”[35] The bill subjected workers to indentured service while placing no requirements on industrialists who reaped a whirlwind of profits from wartime production. “Proponents of Austin-Wadsworth would permit industry to operate during the war much as it did during the peace, but regiment labor in order to combat the major dislocations which would inevitably develop,” explains famed historian Paul Koistinen. “The proposal was not only glaringly biased, it was hopelessly absurd. Efficient economic mobilization must begin with controlling the means of production, not just one input of production.”[36]

The Statewide Council of the Congress of Industrial Organizations joined with the ISFL to decry the pending legislation. In the end, a variety of factors led to the defeat of such attempts to conscript labor, including the case of Mr. Pollack that Olander had detailed in his Labor Day message. The black laborer imprisoned for attempting to quit his job appealed his sentence all the way to the Supreme Court., and on April 10, 1944 the Justices ruled such compulsion unconstitutional. Labor had won yet another important victory in the march to justice.

Catches “Election Fever”

Over the last several years, Reuben had given everything he had to the labor movement and the war effort. In addition to his normal duties as ISFL president, he also served on multiple state and national committees, oversaw labor’s defense bond fundraising efforts in Illinois, crossed the nation representing Illinois labor and acted as AFL President Green’s personal envoy at a host of labor events and disputes. He pushed himself so hard on labor’s behalf that by the spring of 1944 he had nearly, and literally, worked himself to death. As the ISFL (most likely his friend and partner Victor Olander) reported, “President Soderstrom had undertaken a trip to the A.F. of L. Conference in New York City on April 11, notwithstanding the fact, very apparent at the time, that he had overworked himself. The result was that, upon his return, he was obliged to remain at home, and, finally to go into St. Mary’s hospital at Streator.”[37]

When the 56 year-old Reuben finally emerged fully recovered and recharged, however, it was to some unexpectedly welcome news. Francis Murphy, the Illinois Secretary of Labor that had plagued Reuben and the ISFL for the last three years, tendered his resignation, effective July 31st, 1944. He was replaced by Robert Gordon, a painter by trade who had served as an officer of the Painters’ Union and the Urbana Central Body. Reuben lauded the change, writing:

On August 1, 1944, therefore, the Illinois Department of Labor will again be headed by a qualified Illinois trade unionist of long service in the Illinois labor movement...The Illinois Department of Labor was established in 1917, as a result of persistent efforts of the Illinois State Federation of Labor. In the years that followed, every director of Labor was appointed from the ranks of labor until October 1, 1941, when Governor Green appointed Mr. Murphy, who was entirely without trade union experience or membership…For a period of three years, the protests of the Federation went unheeded. The election campaigns are now in full swing.[38]

The message was clear: vote out labor’s enemies. It would be no easy task; while Illinois had voted for Roosevelt in the past, an anti-Democratic backlash had begun to boil in the Midwest. Roosevelt’s recent wage and job freezes had angered many in labor, including Reuben’s close friend and colleague Victor Olander. Rumors of the President’s ailing health further depressed his campaign. Illinois freshman Democratic Senator, Scott Lucas, was also no safe bet, winning his last election by a razor-thin 51%. And while Green was vulnerable, he had strong political machinery behind him—assets which his opponent Thomas Courtney lacked.

Despite the odds, Reuben felt personally obligated and invested in these struggles. He viewed the President as the best friend labor ever had in high office, declaring “I am proud of him [FDR] as a co-worker in humanity’s cause, I am proud of him as a friend, I am proud of him as the greatest president that the wage-earners of America have ever known.”[39] He was also personally indebted to Sen. Lucas, who had helped Reub’s brother Paul receive the disability benefits to which he was entitled as a veteran of the first Great War. “He has never requested me, or any other influential person to give him a helping hand before,” Reuben wrote to Lucas in 1939. “In fact, he has been rather backward about pressing his claim. Compared with similar cases of disability his pension is obviously too small.”[40] The Senator also helped Paul get a job as a guard at the Seneca shipyards.[41] While this help on Paul’s behalf didn’t entail any special treatment or untoward favors, they did demonstrate to Reub that the Senator was a person of character and a man of his word—traits the labor leader took very seriously.

Reuben’s main weapon of choice in the 1944 election was voter registration. Week after week, Reub issued reminders in the ISFL weekly newspaper to register to vote, reminding union members that ,“It is not only the right but the duty of every citizen to vote...Failure to register deprives one of the most precious heritage of a free people—the right to vote.”[42] As he had begun to do in essays and articles the year before, Soderstrom began to publicly and loudly call for voting reform. As he told the delegates of the 1944 ISFL Convention in his keynote address:

In many of the industrial sections of Illinois, less than ten percent of our people found time to go to the polls to vote in the primary...We need more time to go the polls on Election Day. It ought to be made convenient for all citizens to vote; not just only professional people and bankers and employers, but it ought to include wage-earners. The polls could be opened at eleven o’clock in the morning and kept open until ten o’clock at night. I think it would be more sensible really to close the polls during working hours and keep them open in the evening after men and women are through with their day’s work, than to expect working people to perform the duty of voting and the duty of working at a time when such duties so clearly conflict and interfere with each other.[43]

By and large, Reuben’s efforts met with success. While most of the Midwest—including Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa—went for FDR’s opponent, Thomas Dewey, Illinois voted for FDR by 51.52%, helping him win re-election. Senator Lucas fared better than he had in his previous election, winning by 52%. Unfortunately for Reuben, however, Green held on to his Governorship by the thinnest of margins—50.75% to 49.93%.[44] Reuben would continue his troubled relationship with Green for another four years.

"What Are The United States?"

Still, throughout all the struggles of 1944, whether against Nazis abroad or politicians at home, Reuben never failed to frame his battles in the greater moral arc of the universe. It was important for him not just to win but to let everyone know exactly what he and his fellow labor leaders were fighting for. The year 1944 was the first that Americans could finally dare to hope for war’s end, to envision the light at the end of the tunnel. But when her citizens emerged, what kind of people would they be? How would they understand themselves and their nation, especially after the experiences and losses they had suffered? Reuben had one, simple answer—they would be a people united. In a callback to the message he had delivered to the legionnaires earlier that spring, Soderstrom called upon the men and women of labor to see themselves not just as citizens but as the engine, the very heart and soul of the nation. As he closed his address, he proclaimed:

What are the United States? Not a mere collection of sovereign states, each controlling its own destiny, not a federation united merely for the convenience of defense, or for economic reasons. It is the people who are sovereign. The people of each state give to the state government such powers as they desire and they keep the rest. The people of all the states give to the national government such powers as they please and they retain the rest... The United States of America are the American people. Neither rich nor poor, neither employer nor employees, neither blacks nor whites, neither Protestants, Catholics nor Jews, but Americans all, united under one banner, which calls for an equal opportunity and an equal justice for all. Working together as one people without regard to class, creed or color, we have coordinated various elements here, people with different backgrounds, people with different faiths, into one common whole, without sacrificing the good in their pasts, by welding them together in a common vision of a world of freedom. It is this cohesion, this ability to assimilate the good and discard the bad, which has made America the richest and most envied country in this world… No country is greater than its people. It is its people. The idea is being accepted that we, the citizens, are the United States. “We the people” are America![45]

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