REUBEN QUELLS VIOLENCE AS WAGE WAR RAGES

Prepares for the War to Come

Celebration seized the nation. The summer of 1945 witnessed the end of the greatest war the world had ever known, and Americans abroad and at home reacted with a wild mix of joy and relief, releasing years of pent-up emotion long subdued for the sake of the fight. Soderstrom’s hometown proved no exception; Streator began celebrating seconds after the formal announcement of Japan’s surrender. When the Mayor ordered the taverns closed, the revelers took their drinks with them, dancing down the city streets.[1] Church bells and fire sirens rang out across the Illinois Valley as soldiers and citizens joined in a sea of merriment.[2]

Reub was thrilled the war was over but already looked to the future with guarded optimism. He’d been through this before as a younger man, witnessing the end of the last World War. He had joined in the celebration only to watch helplessly as the nation quickly drowned in unemployment and inflation. By his estimation, a weak government and laissez-faire policies, hamstrung by a largely disinterested public, had been responsible for a decade of anti-labor legislation that resulted in depression, chaos, and ultimately the return to a war worse than the last.

He was determined not to let that happen again. The nation, he said, must win the peace, and the only way to do that was through powerful and protected unions. It was the lack of labor protections, he asserted, that prompted the descent into war. As he described to the assembled delegates at the 1945 ISFL Convention in Springfield during his annual message on October 29:

Things moved rather slowly in the old days—the good old days. It was dangerous to belong to a trade union. Employers employed spies to report union activities. Labor organizers were tarred and feathered, beaten and often murdered. At times it looked as if the whole labor movement would collapse…Today, at the close of a great world war for survival, trade union members cling to their labor organizations because they know full well therein lies their future safety.[3]

Laborers had to stand up and fight for one another because, as experience had taught them, no one else would. Their contributions to the war would soon be—in some cases, already were—forgotten by a country eager to ignore such sacrifice. As Reuben said:

This much ought to be said…Seventy percent of the men and women who served in the armed forces of the United States during the Second World War came from the homes of wage-earners. About 85 percent of all the bombs, tanks, ships, planes, guns, and ammunition used in the Second World War were not only produced by wage-earners but produced by union wage-earners. With the exception of tilling the soil the workers performed every other essential war duty. They worked in the factories, mills, mines, shops and transportation systems and kept both the home-front and the battle-front supplied with whatever it needed.

I mention this to you because the politicians are afraid labor will get the spotlight if they do so. I mention this to you because most newspapers are too biased and too blind and too unfriendly to do so. I mention this to you because employers are silent. They are envious and would like to cheat labor out of the credit for the great contribution it made to bring victory to the nation.[4]

As 1946 began Soderstrom rallied labor for the coming battles over wages, prices, and public opinion.

“Soldiers of Production” Forgotten

Soderstrom and his board were concerned for those returning from war. As they warned, “Victory without employment for veterans becomes a pathetic homecoming.”[5] Reuben saw veterans as new constituents who, once employed, would eventually join the union ranks. At the moment, however, veterans enjoyed not only popular support but preference in hiring. Because of such policies, returning warriors had comparatively easier times finding employment. According to the US Department of Labor, by the spring of 1946, one out of every six factory workers was a veteran.[6] Although GI’s had 52 weeks’ unemployment pay, 99% of those receiving payments didn’t remain on the rolls long enough to exhaust their benefit entitlement.[7]

Laborers who had served in the war industry, in contrast, had no such protections. The preference for veterans meant that experienced wage earners were losing their jobs to returnees who had only a few months’ experience.[8] The result was devastating to working families. As Soderstrom’s own Executive Board reported at the 1945 ISFL Convention:

In all the industrial centers of Illinois tens of thousands of working people, ‘soldiers of production’ so-called, are already laid off or are being confronted with early separation from their jobs. They are no longer wanted in war plants. They are being released from steady jobs, and no places are found for many who are so released….

If government and industrial management fail to meet the challenge of unemployment, labor must do so without stuttering or fumbling. The intensifying of the unemployment situation will undoubtedly produce a new crash similar to what happened in 1929. Either the business world must offer a means for all to earn a decent living, or the Government must step in and do it.[9]

Worse still, manufacturers used popular concern and anxiety over finding work for returning soldiers to pit veterans against wage-earners. The report continued:

War develops a spirit of sacrifice, which disappears in a measure when the need for giving support to a large fighting force diminishes. Certain industrialists seem to desire large pools of idle labor from which they may draw at will. There is evidence, too, that reactionary employers actually hope to set veterans against workers. All this will tend to weaken the labor movement. That is the purpose.[10]

Labor Defends the Right to Strike

By the war’s end, the nation’s working class was beset on all sides. They faced a rapidly growing threat of unemployment and management eager to pit returning soldiers against labor. On top of this, they were still living on substandard wages. The working class had sacrificed much over the last several years. Throughout the fight, workers had endured “wage stabilization” measures that had kept their salaries artificially low. Price controls had helped to keep inflation in check, but wartime wage freezes still resulted in a cost of living that was 30% higher than it was in the pre-war era.[11] True, more working men and women were employed, but in real terms they were earning much less.

Factory owners, in contrast, emerged from the conflict with record profits never dreamed of in the pre-war era. According to the Office of Price Administration and the Senate Small Business Committee, profits across all manufacturing by war’s end were 450% higher over the 1936-1939 period. Many sectors saw even higher growth; transportation equipment businesses, for example, increased profits by over 650%, while department and specialty store profits jumped by a stunning 1,324%.[12]

The first thing Reuben and others wanted the business world to do was bring wages up to a reasonable level. Such an action wouldn’t only benefit those currently employed; Soderstrom and other labor leaders “concluded that postwar prosperity depended fundamentally upon the amount of purchasing power in the hands of lower income groups.”[13] There was no question that industry could afford such an increase. According to estimates from the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, general industry could maintain their prewar profits and raise wages a full 24% without affecting prices.[14] Management balked at the idea, refusing to consider any wage increases unless the federal government allowed them to increase prices—a move labor argued would undermine the real value of any increase in wages.

Ultimately, labor turned to the traditional practice of collective bargaining to end the stalemate. Central to such bargaining, of course, was the right to strike. Without the real threat of strike, Soderstrom, Olander, and others argued, organized labor would be a toothless tiger, unable to be taken seriously. “The creative adventure of the conference table loses all color of reality if the workers have been deprived of their right to reject management’s offer and quit, or if management has lost its right to refuse the workers’ terms and close the plant,” testified William Davis, former chairman of the National War Labor Board, before the US Senate Committee on Education and Labor that January. “It is, in the last analysis, the pressure of this right to strike or to lockout that keeps the parties at the conference table.”[15] Such a move carried risks, however, particularly in the field of public opinion. As Davis continued:

Especially in times of emergency like the present times, those who are not involved in a dispute—the general public—are too prone to think of a strike as an unmitigated evil. The man on the street is not likely to know, or very much to care, about what the controversy means to those who are in it. He wants peace and production. He resents the stoppage and the strife. He is likely to feel as though the strike were an insult or an injury aimed at him.[16]

Even the new President seemed to abandon labor. When unions began their call for collective bargaining, they were initially supported by the President, who called such negotiation “not an easy way to solve the wage problem, but the sound way…the American Way.”[17] He created a new Wage Stabilization Board, replacing the National War Labor Board, to determine whether and under what conditions wages could be altered. When unions actually exercised their rights, however, Truman grew furious at the interruption, adopting a “plague on both your houses” stance on the exploding number or labor disputes. Publically, he stated his belief that labor and management possessed “too much power,” saying at a press conference “I think it is necessary the government assert the fact that it is the power of the people.”[18] His private sentiments, in a letter to his mother, were more direct: “The Congress are balking, labor has gone crazy, and management isn’t far from insane in selfishness.”[19]

Labor and industry came to a standoff. It soon became clear that a wave of strikes would hit. Less certain was how those grudge matches would play out.

The Battle for Public Opinion

The wave of strikes that followed the war shook the nation. According to labor historian Joseph Rayback:

While the number of strikes did not increase in comparison to the number before the end of the war, more workingmen were involved and the conflicts lasted longer. Between V-E and V-J days the number of man days of idleness averaged much less than 2,000,000 a month…By January of 1946, the number of man days of idleness due to strikes reached a total of nearly 20,000,000—3 percent of working time; in February, 1946, the figure reached 23,000,000—more than in the years 1943 and 1944 combined.[20]

Management prepared a campaign to paint organized labor as unrepresentative, violent, and – most importantly – un-American. There was ample reason to trust in the effectiveness of such a campaign. After the First World War, the steel, shipping, and railway industries had all been able to break strikes using these tactics, resulting in massive wage cuts and a decade of decline for unions. Given the familiar threats of massive unemployment, chaos, and communism, employers believed they could easily repeat their previous success.

The world of work had changed radically since the 1920s, however. First, many of the things unions were fighting for after the last World War–particularly the right to organize and bargain collectively—were now universally accepted principles. Second, organized labor had proved its patriotism during the war. It actively worked with the government throughout to curb strikes and encourage sacrifice, accepting wages much lower in adjusted value than their WWI counterparts, who had seen their wages increase during the conflict. As a result, unions were now on the offensive, fighting for higher wages, instead of fending off wage cuts. Perhaps most importantly, unions were much larger and far more representative then they had ever been. According to the US Conciliation Service, American unions had over 14.5 million members, encompassing a full 47% of all US workers. This was in stark contrast to the situation even a decade after WWI, when unions represented a mere 3.5 million workers.[21]

Despite a hostile press and an initially disapproving public, the strikes of late 1945 and early 1946 eventually worked in labor’s favor. The disciplined AFL and CIO maintained a peaceful atmosphere, ensuring there was little violence. They issued pamphlets, press releases, and radio talks to make their case. Time and again, they refocused the argument on industry’s ability to pay. In the General Motors strike, for example, when the company claimed they couldn’t afford a pay increase, UAW head Walter Reuther simply called for GM to open their books for inspection to prove it. Their refusal, paired with Ford’s and Chrysler’s agreements to meaningful increases, left the company without a sustainable defense.[22]

Labor leaders also pushed for progressive governmental policies that helped them win popular support. Reuben was a master at this tactic. During the height of the strike wave Soderstrom issued an open letter to Illinois congressmen calling for the federal government to roll back existing prices on living necessities and to remove the income tax on the working poor:

High prices and high taxes are causing the unrest of the labor world resulting in strikes. The Federal government controls both prices and taxes…Prices of living necessities ought to be rolled back to where they were in the early part of 1943. Income taxes ought to be removed from working people earning $3,000 a year or less…If this were done, there would be no need of strikes and likely there would be no strikes.[23]

The letter made front-page news in papers across Illinois. By focusing attention on taxes and prices, Reuben offered solutions that would help everyone, not just union members, aligning popular issues with labor interests. His argument also kept attention trained on the issue at the heart of the strikes – the unbearably high cost of living.

In casting the federal government’s established authority to control prices as the solution, Reuben also subtly reinforced the need for government price controls. With the war’s end, industry had been clamoring for the removal of price controls, claiming that low prices were preventing them from raising wages. Reuben was steadfastly opposed to the end of price controls believing that self-centered industrialists, already earning record profits, would push the economy into chaos with radical increases the moment they had the chance.

Wages, Reuben argued, should not be pegged to price. This principle, accepted by many in the labor movement, was most clearly articulated by AFL President Green. In a speech given in Illinois that January at an event hosted by the Chicago Federation of Labor, Green proffered the idea of an “American wage:”

But now in these later days, we have been reading in the newspapers that there are those, men who have lacked experience in the study of economics, who maintain that the wage of an American worker shall be based on fluctuations and uncertainties. Can we accept that? The American Federation of Labor does not maintain such an economic philosophy. It is true that we insist that the cost of living shall be considered when the wage question is being considered but first and above all we demand and maintain that the wages paid to working men and women shall be an American wage—enough to keep the worker and his family in decency and comfort.[24]

For months after the war’s end, the strike war raged across the nation. As McCullough describes:

Picket lines became an established sign of the times…The whole country was in the grip of strikes. Some 200,000 meatpackers had struck by now. There was a glass workers’ strike, a telephone strike, a coffinmakers’ strike, a huge strike at General Electric. In Pittsburgh a strike of 3,500 electric company employees caused plant closings that affected 100,000 other workers. Streetcars stopped running, office buildings closed.[25]

With tensions dangerously high, it seemed only a matter of time before some vicious act threatened to set the nation ablaze in flames of violence. As it would happen, that act occurred in Reuben’s own backyard.

Industrialist Guards Kill Unarmed Labor Protesters in Illinois

On Wednesday, February 6, picketers of the Toledo, Peoria, and Western (TP & W) railroad confronted an eastbound freight at a railroad crossing in Gridley, Illinois. The picketers, armed with insults (and, by some accounts, rocks), attempted to stop the train. Four guards—equipped with revolvers and shotguns and encased in a steel-reinforced caboose with specially-constructed gun openings—responded by firing into the crowd, leaving three protesters wounded and another two, Arthur W. Browne and Irwin K. Paschon, dead in their wake; they were the first fatalities directly attributable to strike violence in a postwar labor dispute.[26] Although the guards later claimed Browne had a gun, the strikers and the cab’s brakeman all denied the assertion, and no gun was ever found at the scene, on the strikers, or with the bodies. Most damningly, the coroner determined Browne had been shot in the back, making any claim of self-defense less than credible.[27]

In the wake of the shooting, a combined memorial and protest meeting was held at the Peoria Armory by the local labor movement in honor of the dead. Working men of all classes, colors, and creeds attended, both to pay their respects and give voice to their rage. After months of strikes and soaring tensions, the mood was volatile to say the least. Just days before, TP & W owner George McNear—a man so disliked and disagreeable that he had the dubious distinction of being the first owner to have his railway taken under government control during the War–had responded to the deaths by saying, “I don’t know the circumstances of the shooting, but I think it is a shame that we can’t go ahead and operate our trains.”[28] The callous remarks had left many in Illinois labor spoiling for a fight.

As the leader of labor in Illinois, Reuben was among the principal speakers at the rally and had to maintain a tight balance between anger and action, righteousness and reconciliation. Speaking to a group over 3,000 strong, Reub called on those assembled to stay the course, telling them:

Good will is something that is greatly needed. At this great memorial meeting in this hour of sadness and anxiety and unusual excitement, we can all agree that the rule of reason and restraint is the one to observe. May I say at the outset, that I intend to verbally observe that rule. We of the American Federation of Labor intend to gird all our forces, to rally all our friends, to resist and defeat the attempt… made by the T.P. and W. Railroad company and its manager, Mr. McNear, to undermine the fundamental rights of the trade union movement and the millions of people who look to the trade union movement for protection.

Whatever we do here, we must do peacefully. It must be done legally. First, the Illinois State Federation of Labor will support the membership of the labor movement in any legitimate effort to bring the T.P. and W. and its management to terms. Second, the Illinois State Federation of Labor will support the FBI, the State’s Attorney in Peoria, and law enforcement… in any legal plan designed to prosecute those who are responsible for the crime committed in the name of the T.P. and W. Railroad Company. In this way the spirits of the two martyred brothers will go marching on. The souls of these two brothers will march onward to establish justice and right and humanity.[29] Reuben’s call for restraint was heeded. Due in no small part to Soderstrom’s diffusing of the situation, the murders in Gridley did not devolve into a series of retaliatory acts of violence. Reuben had helped turned the tide, and the strikes of 1945-1946 would go down in history as the most violence-free of their kind.

Soon after the Gridley shootings, the “strike fever” that had clutched the nation began to ease. President Truman and his Wage Stabilization board helped to negotiate an agreement between labor and US Steel that allowed for a $5 per ton increase in steel prices in return for an 18 ½-cent per hour wage increase. Agreements along these lines soon spread across a variety of industries, setting a new, more appropriate standard wage. The fever, it seemed, had broken, replaced by a relative peace. It would not last long.

REUBEN REACHES OUT

Seeks Mutual Understanding with Industry, Government

With peace and reduced mass strikes taking hold, Reuben and the Illinois Labor Movement were able to explore new opportunities expand labor’s post-war role. One of their primary tasks quickly became promoting understanding between organized labor and other segments of society. In the Windy City, the Chicago Federation of Labor began a new series of labor-management monthly luncheon meetings. The first of these meetings, held in the Casino of the Morrison Hotel, was attended by roughly 350 representatives of organized labor and employers. The first speaker was none other than William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor. In a wide ranging speech, the AFL President praised the series, telling his audience:

I urge the representatives of Labor and Management, here in Chicago, to utilize this instrumentality which is being created by the Chicago Federation of Labor for the purpose of promoting goodwill and cooperation. There is no reason why there should be a destructive feeling between Capital and Labor. The call for the moment is tremendous. And may I say, in closing, in all you do and in all you undertake to do here I assure you, from the bottom of my heart, of the full assistance and complete support of the American Federation of Labor.[30]

Reuben, meanwhile, met with various groups like the United States Employment Service (USES). Speaking at a luncheon session of their annual conference, he chose to communicate to his audience not what organized labor wanted from them, but the wants of the individual worker who came through their office:

[He wants] to be received as an important individual and, to the extent possible, be given a private and complete interview…If he belongs to a union he wants the jobs you refer him on to be in union shops…For the minority worker, discriminated against because of race, sex, religion or national origin, and now even at a greater disadvantage with the wartime labor shortages disappearing, you’ve got a real service to perform. He expects you to be able to persuade employers to hire him solely because of his qualifications to perform the work involved…

He wants a service where he is welcome and his problems and needs are understood; where he can get taken care of quickly and efficiently. A service that has all the information about all the jobs—and the good, the best jobs—not just jobs. A service where he can get special help when he is not quite ready for, or too sure of, what kind of job he wants; that is available in the same manner and with equal efficiency no matter where in the country he may be. A service in which the staff are professionally able and thoroughly trained.[31]

For USES to be such a service, however, Soderstrom firmly believed it must remain under federal control, at least for the time being. Reuben fiercely rejected any and all calls to return control of unemployment to the state, writing to Washington to make his argument. In a written statement to the US Senate Committee on Education and Labor presented to Chairman James E. Murray, President Soderstrom testified:

It is [the ISFL’s] considered judgment that the responsibilities which the Employment Service had to assume during the war years could not have been discharged if the Service had remained under 48 separate administrations…With the war behind us, we are now engaged in reconversion of our industries for peacetime production. The United States Employment Service, on the basis of its war record, can make an equal contribution in the post-war period to its war-time contribution if it is permitted to operate uniformly on a nation-wide basis and is not broken up into 48 independent segments. The labor market, just like business, finance, and industry, is national in character. Hence, problems relating to these markets must be approached on a national rather than state basis…[32]

Reuben was not shy about what he thought was the real reason behind the push for state control. State directors, he said, wanted control so they could create policies favorable to state businesses at the expense of unemployed workers, lowering benefits and consequently, employer payments into reserve accounts. All this, of course, would slow (or even kill) the postwar reconversion:

Organized labor has no quarrel with employers, or Congress, or with State Unemployment Compensation Directors. We want industry to be financially strong and healthy in order to provide jobs with good pay…(but) our national objective of speedy reconversion, full employment, and continued peace and prosperity cannot be accomplished by transferring the present unified Employment Service machinery to the caprice of 48 separate State administrations.[33]

Ultimately, Reuben and his allies helped to push back an effort to decentralize the USES. It remained a national agency, invested in and equipped to fight unemployment on a national level. Throughout the postwar period, Soderstrom worked with and counseled the U.S.E.S. to help find work for laborers, especially for workers whose skills and trades made it difficult for them to find work in the new economy.

The Return of John L. Lewis

Throughout 1946, labor generally and Soderstrom specifically reached out to a variety of organizations and institutions to promote understanding and build on areas of agreement. Of all the olive branches Reub extended that year, however, none was more sudden or complete as the one extended to a man he once called “the most imaginative, the most efficient, the most experienced truth-twisting windbag that this nation has yet produced”: John L. Lewis.[34]

Lewis had been negotiating his return to the AFL for some time. In October 1942, his United Mine Workers (UMW) had seceded from the CIO, the organization which Lewis himself had first created. While financial differences were the official reason for the split, the UMW’s withdrawal largely centered on a personal fallout between Lewis and CIO President Murray, who in exasperation had attacked Lewis as someone “hell bent on creating national confusion and national disunity.”[35] Although he initially threatened to broaden the UMW to extend its jurisdiction over all unorganized workers, Lewis instead approached Green in late 1943 to ask for readmission to the AFL. Despite their checkered past, AFL President Green welcomed Lewis (and his funds) with open arms. By 1946, the negotiations were complete, and the AFL announced UMW locals were eligible for re-affiliation with local and state bodies, including the ISFL.

Soderstrom must have received the news with mixed feelings. Having the United Mine Workers back in the fold unquestionably strengthened the AFL, whose current mining constituency, the Progressive Miners of America, was a fraction of the UMW’s size. Reuben was certainly less enthused about Lewis’s return. Lewis’ uncensored attacks on Roosevelt—whom Reuben considered the best friend labor ever had—had earned him Reub’s anger. When Lewis tried to unseat FDR in 1940, Reuben made headlines attacking him, using his ISFL Convention address that year to rip Lewis:

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.[36]

When Lewis called a miners’ strike at the height of the war, he drew the ire of many without and within organized labor, Reuben included. He and others considered Lewis’s actions harmful to labor and ultimately un-American.

Still, while Reuben shared Lewis’s temper, aggressive oratory, and pugilistic instincts, he differed from the UMW leader in several key respects. Lewis let his personal feelings drive his public policy, and had a habit of turning friends into enemies; even his top lieutenant in Illinois, former State UMW and CIO Chief (and former Soderstrom opponent) Ray Edmundson had spent the last few years in an ugly battle with him for control of the UMWA.[37] Reuben, in contrast, was as quick to forgive as he was to anger, at least publicly. He was also able to work with those he disagreed with, reaching accord with organizations and leaders on issues even if he didn’t trust (or like) them personally. These traits had allowed him to maintain fruitful relationships with the likes of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association and Governor Green, working with them to craft and pass beneficial legislation even as they battled fiercely on other issues. Most importantly, Reuben was able to distinguish between the personal and the professional, between what was in his own best interests and what was in the interest of those he represented.

In light of this, it is perhaps not surprising that when the UMW returned, Reuben wasted no time on rehashing the past, and instead embraced the homecoming. The pages of his ISFL Weekly Newsletter welcomed union mine workers, repeating President Green’s assertion that:

The strength, standing and influence of State Federations of Labor and City Central Bodies will be greatly increased through the affiliation of the membership of the United Mine Workers of America…The loyalty and devotion which the members of the United Mine Workers of America have shown to the principles and economic philosophy of the American Federation of Labor have challenged our admiration.[38]

Predictably, Lewis didn’t waste any time in picking a fight on his miners’ behalf. In the spring of 1946, he emerged demanding not only increased wages but funds for health and welfare. Forgiving past transgressions, Reuben threw his support behind the UMW leader, giving him the front page of the ISFL Weekly Newsletter to make his case. Lewis accepted, writing:

In the 1946 conference the mine workers have proposed the establishment of a welfare fund, asking its acceptance in principle by the operators, and said that the manner of raising the fund and all the details of it were negotiable questions…Nearly every country in the world has such funds for its mine workers, including Great Britain, backward Spain and even more backward India. Even in India they have such a fund, and the mine workers want one in America and feel that their right to have it is accepted by the majority of the American people. The mine workers have no intensions to negotiate a contract now or later that does not provide for such a fund and for such protection to the mine workers. It is a condition precedent to the making of any agreement.[39]

With the help and support of the AFL broadly and Reuben’s ISFL specifically (as Illinois was the center of American mining), Lewis was able to enter into negotiations with a strong, unified hand. When the operators refused to bargain, the Federal Government seized the mines and made the deal for them, establishing hospital and welfare funds for US miners.

NATIONAL GOVERNMENT ASSAULTS UNIONS

Truman Threatens to Enslave Labor

The coal strike sparked a second wave of protests that, combined with the earlier steel and auto strikes, had turned 1946 into a year of seemingly unending economic turmoil. As historian David McCullough illustrates:

Even without the coal strike it had become the longest, most costly siege of labor trouble in the nation’s history. At one point more than a million workers were out on strike…From the day John L. Lewis pulled his men out of the mines, every major industry was affected. Without coal, the steel plants were again banking their furnaces. Ford and Chrysler were forced to close. Freight loadings were off 75 percent. In Chicago the use of electricity was ordered cut in half.[40]

In the midst of all this, yet another massive strike was brewing amongst America’s railway unions. On May 23, two days before Lewis’s column appeared in the ISFL Weekly Newsletter, a nation-wide strike began as engineers and trainmen finished their runs. The impasse, which occurred despite a government seizure of the railways and generous terms, seemed to push President Truman past the edge. Upon receiving a telegram notifying him of the strike’s start, the President went to his upstairs desk and penned a seven-page speech that gave a clear indication of his state of mind. It read in part:

At home those of us who had the country’s welfare at heart worked day and night. But some people worked neither day nor night and some tried to sabotage the war effort entirely. No one knows that better than I. John Lewis called two strikes in war time to satisfy his ego. Two strikes which were worse than bullets in the backs of our soldiers. He held a gun at the head of the government. The rail unions did exactly the same thing. They all were receiving from four to forty times what the man who was facing enemy fire on the front was receiving. The effete union leaders receive from five to ten times the net salary of your president. Now these same union leaders on V.J. day told your President that they would cooperate 100% with him to reconvert to peacetime production. They all lied to him.[41]

The speech was indicative of the mood, misgivings, and misconceptions that had soured the President and, in many ways, the nation. Of course rail workers earned nowhere near what Truman indicated, and labor leaders earned less, not more, than Truman. But these frankly popular delusions drove the President and public alike to strike out against labor. The next day Truman informed his cabinet that he was going to draft the railway workers into the Army, and on May 25, before a joint session of Congress, the President asked for a bill giving him exactly such authority. Truman’s request was met with thunderous applause, and the House of Representatives took less than two hours to approve his request by a vote of 306 to 13.

Reuben was stunned. It was a brutal and surprising defeat for labor. Not only was the spectacle an overwhelming rejection of labor by the President and the House; it was in Soderstrom’s opinion an outright denial of their constitutional rights. The ISFL Weekly Newsletter’s headline following the vote read “Truman Forced Labor Bill,” leaving no question as to what Reub thought of the legislation. Soderstrom and Olander immediately sent telegrams to all U.S. Senators calling on them to provide hearings for representatives of labor on the House’s bill, now under consideration in the upper chamber. In making their request, Reuben and Victor gave their unambiguous opinion of the measure:

During the first half of the life of our great nation, our people were torn by heated discussions on the subject of slavery, which is simply another name for forced labor. After about ninety years the question was settled by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, forever prohibiting involuntary servitude under the American flag. Every effort should now be made to maintain its full integrity and force against the danger of the blight of forced labor again being initiated under the flag of our Republic…We now express the earnest hope that because of the difficulties arising out of the war for freedom of the peoples of the world our governing authorities will not now sacrifice the freedom of the Workers of America.[42]

Soderstrom and Olander weren’t the only ones who questioned the constitutionality of such measures. Truman’s own Attorney General wrote that “the Draft Act does not permit the induction of occupational groups and it is doubtful whether constitutional powers of the President would include the right to draft individuals for national purposes.” Truman’s reported response—“We’ll draft them and think about the law later”—indicated that the President himself hadn’t much thought through the impact his actions would have on individual rights.[43]

Ultimately, cooler heads prevailed. The Senate deleted the labor-draft provision from Truman’s bill, and the act in its entirety died in committee. Labor had won the fight, preventing the most blatant violation of an individual’s right to their own labor since the New Deal. The victory would be short lived.

Congress Constrains Workers’ Freedom

Although Soderstrom and his compatriots had fended off the Truman Forced Labor Bill, it proved only the first volley in a torrent of new anti-labor legislation. One of the most prominent examples was the Case Bill, which called for a 60-day “cooling off” period, outlawed secondary strikes, and even reinstated the use of injunctions against labor during a dispute. A viscously anti-union measure, the proposed act would, in the words of Senator Robert Taft, “amount to putting everybody in jail and allowing every judge to make the law.”[44] The AFL Executive Council suggested that perhaps it was Congress that needed a “cooling off” period, issuing a statement that declared, “Let Congress remember that anti-labor legislation is also anti-American legislation.”[45]

Congress, unfortunately, paid no heed. It passed the bill by overwhelming margins. In the face of such draconian legislation, Soderstrom turned to the only person who could help – Harry Truman, the President who only two weeks earlier had called for the drafting of railway workers. Given recent events, Reuben knew that any message calling for the protection of labor rights or in defense of unions would likely fall on deaf ears. Instead, Reuben appealed to Truman’s humanity and common decency. Instead of threatening war, he turned to Truman’s desire for peaceful progress. In a telegram to Truman on behalf of the ISFL, Soderstrom wrote of the Case Bill:

Legislation of that sort can only result in an increase of the confusion and misunderstandings now troubling all thoughtful citizens. It seems to us that the road to more peaceful progress is not to be found in the use of harsh laws foreign to the general spirit of the nation. It can only come through a clearer appreciation of the morals involved. This will of course require patience and careful thought which you yourself exercised while you were in Congress. There is no other way. We appreciate fully the great difficulties under which you find yourself now laboring as chief executive of the nation and we know that situations in which prompt and decisive administrative action of a purely temporary character may be unavoidable. But we also believe that to make this the subject of laws is certain to be followed by serious consequences affecting the liberties of the people.[46]

The appeal worked. Truman did veto the Case Bill on the very grounds Reuben had argued, saying in his veto message:

I have not considered (the bill) from the standpoint of whether it favors or harms labor, or whether it favors or harms management. I have considered it from the standpoint of whether or not it benefits the public…I have reached the conclusion that it will not…

Strikes against private employers cannot be ended by legislative decree. Men cannot be forced in a peace-time democracy to work for a private employer under compulsion…It is always with reluctance that I return a bill to the Congress without my approval. I feel, however, that I would not be properly discharging the duties of my office if I were to approve HR 4908.[47]

While Soderstrom and organized labor were able to prevent enactment of the Case Bill, they were unfortunately unable to stop pieces of it from passing a few months later in the form of the Hobbs Act. Despite this, the worst pieces of the Case Bill were successfully fended off—for the moment.

The greatest blow to labor that year, however, came in November with the congressional election. Turnout for the 1946 was miniscule, resulting in the worst electoral defeat for labor since the start of the New deal. In the wake of the election only 23% of US Representatives and 24% of Senatorial candidates favorable to labor were elected.[48] The results were no less disappointing in the Illinois Legislature, where Republicans outnumbered Democrats 88 to 65 in the House and 38 to 13 in the Senate.[49] Without question, the election of 1946 posed a significant threat to Reuben and labor in the year to come.

SODERSTROM CALLS ON NATIONS TO OUTLAW NUCLEAR WEAPONS, ABOLISH WAR

Despite the struggles and setbacks that he endured in 1946, Soderstrom remained optimistic about the future. He continued to think big and speak boldly, calling for not just for job and social security but peace for all on a global scale. That year in Rockford, Reuben delivered a keynote speech that called for a radical campaign to orient the public towards peace:

Now that the war is over something ought to be done to create an atmosphere designed to establish a lasting peace on earth. It has been demonstrated many times that the great mass of the people all over the world are susceptible to propaganda. The attempt to establish a lasting peace on earth is in the field of propaganda, too, and would receive just as much support as war propaganda if it was just as sincerely, effectively, and attractively developed and presented as war propaganda has been.

Instead of having a state military department why not have a state peace department? Why not rechristen the national guard? It would really sound much better if this military outfit was called the outfit of peace, or some other name of tranquility. This would create a new psychology and would place the emphasis upon orderly procedure rather than force and violence.[50]

While Reub’s call may have sounded fantastical to his audience, it wasn’t long before at least part of what Soderstrom called for became a reality. The National Security Act of 1947 created the new Cabinet-level level position of Secretary of Defense while simultaneously dissolving the Secretary of War and devolving the Secretary of the Navy into a non-Cabinet level post. Truman also redesigned the Presidential seal, turning the Eagle’s head away from the arrows he clutched in his left claw and towards to olive branch, the symbol of peace, in his right.

Words and symbolic gestures, however, would not be enough. Reuben wanted more; he challenged all who gave lip service to peace to live up to their ideals, matching words with action:

In the future the family of nations ought to spend as much time and as much money developing good will and friendliness between countries as the individual nations do now to maintain military departments, military equipment and governmental occupational protectorates. In that way the average citizen would receive something in the way of peace atmosphere for his tax dollar. In that way the average tax payer would receive something more for his tax money than what he is receiving now—this temporarily exciting but always disturbing rumblings of war and killing.

However, those who desire a lasting peace on earth must do something to attain it. In other words—those who want something done must do it themselves. It seems to me it is high time for organized labor to speak out against war. Other elements in human society are merely playing with the idea. They say they want to outlaw the atomic bomb in the hope of retaining the institution of war…What they ought to do is to abolish war. What they ought to do is not only to outlaw the atomic bomb but try to outlaw the whole dirty business of war. And if labor wants this done labor itself must do it. At least labor must take the lead. People in the business world and most of our political leaders secretly believe in military force and the imitation glory attached to it.

Labor knows war creates more problems than it solves. Labor is better off without wars, and word should go out of this great convention that the labor movement of Illinois intends to do everything humanely possible to maintain permanent peace on earth.[51]

Reuben took his own advice, carrying the message for peace to the 1946 AFL national convention, which that year was held in none other than the Windy City itself, Soderstrom’s own Chicago. During the convention Reuben was able to get a host of ISFL resolutions introduced and passed as AFL directives. From the institution of a public relations campaign and the defining of political policy to proposals for social security amendments, Soderstrom set the agenda, shaping the national AFL agenda in his image.

As 1946 came to a close, he looked to the future with a mix of hope and trepidation. The end of the war and the peaceful resolution of major industry strikes had resulted in a relative calm that gave Reub reason to be optimistic. However, the large electoral defeat and popular anti-union sentiment made Soderstrom more than a little uneasy. His fears would soon be realized.

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