LABOR FACES EMBOLDENED ENEMIES, SOURING ECONOMY

Labor’s “Full, Rolling and Resonant” Voice

The Peoria auditorium shook with raucous noise. Inside the packed, sweaty house, the delegates attending the Federation’s 65th annual convention were loud with an uneasy mix of excitement, anxiety, and fear. They were on their heels and they knew it. The U.S. Congress had just stripped organized labor of the basic protections it had struggled for generations to achieve, replacing them with draconian restrictions not seen since the Great Depression in the form of the infamous Taft-Hartley Act. It was a dark moment for labor and the crowd was anxious and looking for strong leadership to show them a path forward.

Reub waited in the wings as the crowd’s rumblings grew to a fevered pitch, readying himself to take the stage. It was a moment he’d repeated many times before. By now, the former linotype operator and State Senator was a seasoned politico, comfortable at the helm. Just days before, Robert Lewin, a reporter from the Chicago Daily News, had run an expose on the Illinois State Federation of Labor president, drawing from conventions past to describe both the man and the scene that was about to play out:

Reub, a five-foot eight, three quarter inch, one hundred and ninety five pound man with rimless spectacles and iron gray hair that falls near his right eye like a Veronica Lake hairdo is a power in state politics…Reuben George Soderstrom might very well be called “The Voice” of the Illinois State Federation of Labor; full, rolling and resonant…

[That voice] will fan out over the twelve hundred delegates without benefit of a microphone and without loss of a syllable. He never has been known to grope for a word or ponder. He will distribute copies of his presidential address to newspapermen before he speaks. Then through remarkable mental magic and without looking… he will spiel off some five thousand words in half an hour. Except for an error in a word here and there, he will recite the text perfectly, right down to the pause for the hyphen that separates Senator Taft from Representative Hartley when he condemns the new labor law. “It’s just a faculty I have,” Soderstrom explains modestly. “I used to be a linotype operator.”[1]

When the moment arrived Soderstrom didn’t hesitate. He stormed the stage, ready to steady his troops and take the offensive. To give them fight and hope; to point the way forward; to remind those inside the hall and beyond why he was universally known as the man who “will fight to the last picket against anyone who tries to take away labor’s right to strike.”[2]

Blames Stagnant Wages, Anti-Labor Legislators

To understand how the situation had grown so bad so quickly for labor by the fall of 1947, one need only to look at the events of the past winter. By the end of 1946, the American cost of living had grown unbearable. The cost of food had become a particular concern. The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labor (DOL) reported at the beginning of 1947 that food costs were 34 percent higher than the previous year.[3] The American Institute of Public Opinion, precursor to the Gallup Organization, had found a family’s weekly expenses for food had doubled since 1942.[4] According to Thomas O’Malley, regional director of the Wage and Hour and Public Contracts Division of the US Department of Labor, “The purchasing power of millions of our people is becoming less and less every day.”[5]

Wage stagnation, O’Malley said, was to blame. He noted that since Pearl Harbor, farm income had grown by a factor of four, corporate profits had tripled, but wages had barely doubled.[6] Wage earners had fallen far behind. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that since VJ Day in 1945 the cost of living had increased 24 percent while weekly wages had risen only 18 percent.[7] Worse still, many workers weren’t even receiving the wages they were entitled to by law. The Wage and Hour Division later reported that a full 45 percent of Illinois plants in 1947 had violated the law by either denying overtime pay or offering less than minimum wage, costing workers over $874,983.[8] Nationally, more than half of all manufacturing facilities were in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act for payment of minimum wage, payment of overtime rate and use of child labor with 200,000 employees owed $9 million.[9]

Facing desperation, workers across the country went on strike in 1946 in search of wage levels which could provide a dignified life. The strikes had disrupted manufacturing, mining, and transportation. The wave of strikes had become so destabilizing that President Truman ordered the government to take control of both the railroads and the coal mines in 1946. Though both would return to private sector control in 1947, the image of labor as the problem had begun to solidify in the American mind. An onslaught of what American Federation of Labor (AFL) Secretary-Treasurer George Meany called “a triumph of misleading propaganda” turned the country against organized labor.[10]

By November of 1946 that campaign had resulted in an electoral revolt against unions. “The postwar anti-labor movement had its foundations in the widespread and large-scale strikes of 1945-1946 and the wage drives of 1946-1947,” writes labor historian Joseph Rayback, “Which irritated a public far too busy converting itself to peacetime living to bother with the relevancy of issues raised by unions – which assumed, as the press constantly reiterated, that most of its economic problems were caused by labor.”[11] The general election of November 1946 witnessed a wave of candidates win federal office by promising to return prosperity to the people. Those legislators instead launched an attack on organized labor on the premise that unions were to blame for all the nation’s ills.

The irony, of course, was that the state of the nation was largely Congress’s own doing—a fact not lost on Soderstrom. In a blistering attack on the U.S. legislature, Reuben highlighted congressional culpability:

Governmental agencies, controlled by Congress itself, forced the present inflation into existence. Congress, directed by greedy employers, made a shameful record in this particular field. High prices for consumer goods and insanely high taxes in 1942, 1943, 1944, and 1945 caused unrest throughout the labor world resulting in inescapable and justifiable strikes in 1946.

Many legislators had made the disingenuous claim that labor had grown rich off wartime raises, profiting off the sacrifice of the nation. Reuben roundly rejected this charge, arguing that taxes had erased wartime gains made by the working class:

How about war-time wage increases? Well, what about them?...Even the organized wage-earners, who sometimes secured the full fifteen percent war-time raise, were still way behind in trying to keep pace with the twenty percent income tax deduction which Congress gleefully slapped onto their pay envelopes. And to make a bad situation worse, the cost of living in Illinois has soared to over thirty percent above the pre-Pearl Harbor level.

This increased cost of living was not spontaneous or inevitable; it was the direct consequence of the government’s decision to abruptly end price controls. As Reuben wrote:

Congress is not in a good moral position…Congress allowed the prices of living necessities to skyrocket. It was done with a cheer that astonished the nation. Prices should have been rolled back to prewar levels. And the income tax increases! Are they borne exclusively by those best able to pay? Federal income taxes should be removed from the backs of working people earning $2,500 a year or less.

This was the economic plan that Soderstrom had promoted in January of 1946 in an attempt to reverse the tide of strikes that were then sweeping the nation. Congress’s failure to act on his call at that time, he said, made them responsible for the strikes that followed:

Had this been done for the little fellow there would have been no need for strikes in 1946 and in all likelihood there would have been no strikes. Government created these two things—high taxes and high prices. These two things, more than anything else, reduced the take-home pay of wage earners. Naturally, strikes resulted. After governmental creation of unbearable price and tax inflation, driving working people to desperation, strikes and walkouts were inevitable.

Sadly, despite their irresponsibility, anti-labor legislators stood to benefit from the havoc they had caused:

This unscrupulous conduct on the part of members of Congress has encouraged natural enemies of labor in their commercial organizations, trusts, and in their combinations to unite to help tricky federal lawmakers crush organized labor.[12]

Reuben had no idea how prophetic his words would prove to be.

SODERSTROM REVERSES THE ANTI-LABOR TIDE IN ILLINOIS

Urges Unions not to Strike

The political backlash against labor wasn’t limited to national elections. In Rayback’s words, “For labor the full tragedy of the election of 1946 became evident in the following year when state legislatures enacted the largest number of anti-union laws since the Haymarket Riot.”[13] Illinois seemed poised to join that trend. Its legislature was the most hostile since before the Great Depression. Republicans controlled well over half of the House and nearly 75% of the seats in the Senate.[14] Without question, the 65th General Assembly of Illinois was poised to be the most anti-labor legislative body Soderstrom had faced in nearly a generation.

Strikes, meanwhile, still continued to rock the nation, fueling resentment. In April a strike of the country’s telephone operators—mostly female workers who in the day before dial tones connected every number requested—crippled Chicago communications. For almost a month, the “voice with a smile was gone for a while.”[15] Republican legislators used popular anger over the strike to introduce bills that would outlaw strikes altogether for public utility workers.[16] A host of new anti-labor legislation soon followed, including bills that would turn picket line brawling into a penitentiary offense, outlaw secondary boycotts, make labor contracts unbreakable, and prohibit anyone from picketing in sympathy with striking workers.

Even though things looked bleak, Soderstrom refused to give up. He and Olander called for discipline. Recognizing the negative impact of the strikes on popular opinion, they directly appealed to labor in Illinois to largely refrain from striking in consideration both for the public good and organized labor’s long-term interests. In a signed message to all workers, Victor wrote:

It is time to hoist danger signals. The trade unionists of the country are being subjected to a steadily rising tide of public criticism…It is nothing short of utter folly to attempt to ignore the threats fast becoming more and more insistent. The plain truth of the matter is that, in the confusion of chaotic postwar conditions, with none knowing what the morrow may bring, we have concerned ourselves more about the conditions of the day, with insufficient regard for future consequences. This may be said, that, except as to certain unfortunate jurisdictional quarrels between unions, practically every strike which has taken place in recent years—even during the war—when measured solely from the viewpoint of the needs of the workers involved was justifiable.

Reuben, meanwhile, prepared a strategy to weather the coming storm. In the last legislative session Reub had been greatly vexed by the committee process, in which pro-labor legislation that would likely have won a vote of the full legislature was allowed to languish. The Industry and Labor Committees, in particular, had been especially frustrating in this respect. Now, Reuben planned to turn the tables, using the same tactics to defeat anti-labor bills.

Gains Support from Governor Green

As Reuben and Victor prepared for the fight, they received support from a quite unexpected corner—the Governor’s mansion. Governor Dwight Green had long been a thorn in Soderstrom’s side. In the first months following his election, he’d angered Reuben by nominating Francis Murphy, a coal merchant with no labor credentials or experience, in charge of the Department of labor. Murphy’s wartime “relaxations” of labor protections and Green’s default on a private promise to sack him if Soderstrom eased his attack on the Labor Secretary further soured their relationship. Reuben had made headlines across the state in 1942 with his denunciation of the Governor at the ISFL convention, proclaiming “Governor Green has double crossed labor and there is nothing for labor to do but return the compliment.”[17] Green’s denunciation of Roosevelt and his assertion that “the New Deal has used labor, used the working man and women of its ranks for votes…if labor is to live and prosper, then the New Deal must perish” earned him Reub’s further fury.[18] In the last gubernatorial election, Soderstrom’s ISFL endorsed Green’s opponent, nearly costing him the election.[19]

Still, despite their often rocky relationship, President Soderstrom and Governor Green had managed to work together in areas where they could find agreement. Reuben had served alongside the Governor in several wartime committees, working with him to help the citizens of Illinois through the war. Green had also always acknowledged Reub’s position as a (if not the) voice of labor, including him in all state labor discussions and sending him as Illinois’s emissary to the Department of Labor’s annual Labor Conference in Washington. Now, as talk of forbidding strikes grew louder in the halls of the Assembly, the Governor took a firm stand in defense of labor, and in a big way. He declared himself opposed to anti-labor legislative efforts, particularly those aimed at limiting the right to strike. At the Lincoln Day dinner on February 6 in Washington, DC, Green unambiguously declared:

Let us guard against the gains which American labor has made through the trade union movement…High wages and the American standard of living provides the greatest market…largely by the persistent effort of the leaders of American labor…Perhaps we need to remember that Abraham Lincoln said at Hartford, Connecticut, on March 5, 1860 ‘I thank God that we have a system of labor where there can be a strike.’ Strikes are always an expensive and wasteful way to settle labor disputes, but the right to refuse to work is still the cornerstone of the worker’s freedom.[20]

While the shift may seem sudden at first glance, it makes more sense in light of the Governor’s surrounding circumstances and rising ambitions. First, Green had always considered himself a friend of labor, and had touted his labor record on several occasions, going so far as to claim “during my administration more acts beneficial to labor were enacted into law than during any previous state administration”—albeit a claim he made in his veto message of a pro-labor bill.[21] Meanwhile, the labor organization he initially allied with, the Illinois CIO, had fallen into comparative chaos. In 1942, Lewis withdrew his United Miners from the CIO, triggering the resignation of Illinois CIO chief Ray Edmundson.[22] His replacement, Samuel Levin, had reversed his predecessor’s positions on a host of issues, including the organization’s support of Green’s Labor Director, Francis Murphy.[23] Governor Green was also considering a run as the GOP candidate for President. While considered a dark horse candidate, a positive relationship with organized labor would be crucial for the manufacturing-state Governor if he wanted to differentiate himself from the rest of the GOP pack.

Perhaps most important, however, was the Centralia mine disaster of 1947. The explosion of the No. 5 coal mine on March 25 killed 111 people in what was easily the worst mining tragedy in Illinois since Cherry Mine. Governor Green tried to control the political fallout, requesting a fact-finding board to investigate and asking for the resignation of Illinois Mines and Minerals Director Robert Medill. Most miners, however, found his efforts sorely lacking. When the Governor announced his intention to visit Centralia, UMWA Recording Secretary publicly replied “Well, Governor, there are not many of us left not but we that are wish to take this opportunity to tell you in our language it is too late. Today their broken and seared bodies lie in the morgue. No, Governor, it is too late.”[24] The tragedy left the Governor in need of allies within labor.

As with Lewis the year before, Reuben was as quick to forgive as he was to anger. He put aside his differences with the Governor and publicly embraced him in return for his help in defeating the Republican-led General Assembly’s anti-labor agenda. He gave Green full-throated support, calling him “an outstanding governmental leader who has not been caught in the current of hatred running against labor.”[25] Reuben went so far as to endorse the Governor—who had been his implacable foe in the last election—as labor’s preferred GOP candidate for President, telling labor crowds later that year that “Green is the only likely candidate with a good labor record. Labor in Illinois has made more progress under Dwight H. Green than labor has made in any other state under any other governor at any other time.”[26] While politically smart, the head-snapping switch would carry consequences for the labor leader in the years to come.

Defeats Anti-Labor Legislation in Illinois

With his legislative skill and the Governor in his corner, Reuben threw himself headlong into the legislative fray. He successfully thwarted his opponents at every turn. As newspapers across the state reported:

Labor “reform” legislation hasn’t gotten to first base so far during this session of the general assembly… The labor lobby—coached by Reuben Soderstrom, president of the Illinois Federation of Labor—has been successful in defeating three bills before they reached the debate stage.…An even dozen ‘anti-labor’ bills have been introduced so far. Three of them were returned to the floor with committee recommendations that they do not pass. Another three were recommended for passage in the House of Representatives, but were referred to committee for further hearing. The remainder have been languishing in committee for as long as two months.[27]

Soderstrom was even able to defeat the most popular of the anti-union bills, the proposed Public Utility Strike Bill. Introduced by Rep. Paul Randolph, the bill, which would have required the Illinois Commerce Commission to intervene in bargaining between labor and management in public utilities, had at first seemed all but certain. He used anger over the recent telephone strike, claiming his bill would settle such disputes “without stopping the essential services these companies and these workers provide.”[28] Reub pushed back hard. According to news accounts:

Legislation to provide compulsory arbitration of public utility labor disputes has suffered a decisive setback in the Illinois general assembly…Reuben G. Soderstrom, president of the Illinois State Federation of Labor, contended at a hearing that the proposal was unconstitutional. Soderstrom also opposed it on the ground that it would “disturb the well-established” bargaining procedure of direct negotiation, a system he said had worked successfully for over 50 years.[29]

One after another Illinois anti-labor proposals went down in defeat. Bills that would forbid utility workers from striking, make picket line brawling a penitentiary offense, outlaw secondary boycotts, make labor contracts unbreakable, and prohibit anyone from picketing in sympathy with striking workers—none of them saw the light of day, thanks to Soderstrom’s efforts. His successes were all the more spectacular when compared to what was occurring in the rest of the country. In 30 of the nation’s 48 states. anti-union politicians gutted union protections and implemented new crushing prohibitions, including 21 new laws mandating strike notices and cooling off periods, 12 state bans on secondary boycotts, and 11 state restrictions on picketing. 16 states outlawed security agreements or closed shops altogether. This trend hit the Midwest especially hard; Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania all fell before the wave of anti-union legislation.[30]

Illinois alone remained untouched. As Governor Green himself proudly proclaimed to a standing ovation in a speech at the ISFL convention in September of that year, “Illinois is practically the only big industrial state with no so-called “anti-labor” laws, and has been unusually free of major strikes.”[31] State Representative Robert Allison elaborated:

Illinois… one of the great industrial states… did not enact any anti-labor legislation. The credit for that largely goes to your officers and labor representatives who so ably backed us on the floor of the legislative halls… I want to say to you further that some of the legislation… is not aimed so much at labor many times so much as it is at your leaders. In Illinois you should be proud of your men… in the forefront of Labor’s ranks. We have just as good brains there as we have anywhere else.[32]

Reuben himself was jubilant with the results, telling the delegates:

The labor movement of Illinois came through in fine shape and I think it was because the various branches of Illinois’s unionists were working together… in the legislative field and that is what I think is needed on the federal level… the CIO, the Railroad Brotherhoods and the Illinois State Federation of Labor stood shoulder to shoulder in every crisis during the last legislative session.[33]

As Reuben helped turn the tide in Illinois, however, a national storm was brewing; a tsunami that would too soon overshadow all he had accomplished.

THE TAFT-HARTLEY ACT

A Devastating Override of Truman’s Veto

The US Congress delivered a titanic setback to labor on June 23, 1947, when Congress passed the Labor Management Relations Act, commonly referred to as Taft-Hartley, over President Truman’s veto. Officially, the legislation was an amendment meant to “bring balance” to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which focused primarily on establishing union rights. In reality, the Act was a vicious piece of legislation aimed at gutting union power. As President Truman had explained in his opposition to Taft-Hartley:

The bill is deliberately designed to weaken labor unions. When the sponsors of the bill claim that by weakening unions, they are giving rights back to individual workingmen, they ignore the basic reason why unions are important to our democracy. Unions exist so that laboring men can bargain with their employer on a basis of equality. Because of unions, the living standards of our working people have increased steadily until they are today highest in the world.[34]

Reuben was among many of those in the labor community who were outraged at what they viewed as a corruption of governmental power for the benefit of big business. As he wrote in reaction the act’s passage:

The Taft-Hartley law compels the government to take up cudgels for the employer…It compels the government to use the courts to enjoin working people from doing the things they had a legal, lawful right to do under Wagner Labor Relations Act and the Norris LaGuardia Act. Big business has taken over. The federal Congress is controlled by union-hating industrialists. They have a dangerous program of reaction and repression. No matter how the government and business world talk about democracy abroad, they and their Congressional representatives are reactionaries, who advocate and establish repression of industrial freedom at home. The enactment of the Taft-Hartley law has removed all reasonable doubt to the contrary.[35]

What angered those in labor most of all was the fact that the bill was written not by legislators but by lobbyists from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the parent organization of Soderstrom’s old nemesis, the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association (IMA). More radical than the conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce or the Committee for Economic Development, the NAM had long viewed the era of the New Deal as a time of exile. With a Republican Congress in charge, the NAM was determined to waste no time putting their agenda in place, and they had everything they wanted with Taft-Hartley. As Soderstrom detailed in a speech later that year:

The real reason for the union-busting, curb-the-unions law was the National Association of Manufacturers’ hatred of unionism. The National Association of Manufacturers have never denied that they wrote the Taft-Hartley bill…It cannot be denied that labor’s friend, the New Dealers, are out and the National Association of Manufacturers are back in nor can anyone deny the cleverness of the National Association of Manufacturers and their friends in Congress. Instead of passing separate laws one all-purpose act was enacted. The advantage of this omnibus type of legislation is clear. When an attack was made upon the union-busting sections, the National Association of Manufacturers could point to other parts of the law dealing with some well-advertised abuses in the labor movement and emphasize their importance. When the bill was attacked because it dealt too lightly with well-advertised abuses, the NAM could point to the union-busting sections and emphasize their importance. Indeed. The clever use made of the omnibus fooled all of the people and that no one can deny.[36]

While the omnibus bill attacked labor on multiple fronts, some sections were especially repulsive to labor. The most damaging provisions attacked what the AFL and ISFL both considered sacred and protected by the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution: prohibition of involuntary servitude, or slavery. If the government labeled an industry critical to public welfare or the public interest, the new anti-labor legislation would force workers to remain on the job. As Reuben wrote:

The labor movement has many virtues. It has always had one outstanding virtue. It has never lied to itself. It has courageously told its membership that the right to quit work, either singularly or collectively, for any reason or for no reason at all, has been established, legally established. Anything less than that is slavery, and it runs contrary to the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibits involuntary servitude. While strikes are measures of last resort and always reluctantly used, there can be no freedom, no free enterprise for wage earners without trade unions with strike power functioning in industry. Unions in this respect must be unhampered and free. Does anybody seriously believe that profit-hungry employers would voluntarily increase wages, and the American standard of living, if there were no unions, no compulsion, if the strike was outlawed? Who could be naïve enough to believe that?[37]

Not only was this restriction likely unconstitutional, it was also unnecessary. According to official estimates, the number of workers on strike at the start of 1947 was down by 54% relative to the start of 1946.[38] It was, quite simply, a fix in search of a problem.

Perhaps most powerfully, Taft-Hartley also made secondary boycotts illegal. Union members at a business of any kind, manufacturing, transportation, or retail, could no longer support their union brothers and sisters engaged in a labor dispute by refusing to work with materials or products produced by strike breakers. President Soderstrom responded in the federation’s weekly newsletter:

Through the act’s illegal ban on secondary boycotts, it can help the industrial overlords by forcing union workers to scab on strikers. This isn’t done by any coaxing, wheedling or convincing court argument… it’s done by the Manufacturers’ Association Taft-Hartley law which openly compels government attorneys to take over the unconstitutional job of securing injunctions and thus carries out unfair industrial discipline for scheming autocratic employers.[39]

The anti-labor law also allowed the use of anti-trust laws against unions. Again, Reub railed against such associations. “Labor is not a trust,” he wrote. “A trust is a monopoly or a combination which rakes in the revenue from the many for the benefit of the few. A labor organization does just the opposite, it twists the revenue from the few and spreads it over the many.[40]

Most devastatingly, the Taft-Hartley Act outlawed the “closed shop,” shops which hired only union workers, and severely restricted “union shops,” in which workers joined a union after their hire. In so doing the Act accomplished by legislative fiat what the NAM had failed to do through “open shop” campaigns such as the “American Plan,” which had decimated the economies of manufacturing cities like Reub’s Streator in the 1920s. Reuben feared that the next step would be to eliminate union shops altogether—a move that would gut unions through owner intimidation and free riders. This had to be opposed at all costs, Soderstrom asserted, writing:

The stage for an open shop drive has been set. The question is, are we ready? Are we convinced that the labor union is the only agency which will guarantee our being treated as human beings and not as a commodity? Are we convinced that the type of homes we live in depend upon the type of unions we have? Are we convinced that the educational opportunities of our children depend upon the wages produced by unions? Are we convinced that the hours we spend at home with the wife and children depend upon the hours fixed by our local unions? Are we convinced that the only reason an attack has been staged upon our unions is because it has been the bulwark between workers and union-hating, open shop employers? Are we convinced that the labor unions of today are worth the sacrifice and price paid by union men who preceded us?

If we are, then let us be ready to demand fair treatment. Let us be ready to demand recognition of our rights as individuals. Let us be ready to preserve or personal dignity as free men who have out-fought and out-produced and out-lasted these enemies of freedom. And last, but not least, let’s be ready to answer the call of the American Federation of Labor to defeat every Illinois Congressman who voted for the Taft-Hartley bill![41]

Red-Baiting and the Short Temper of Lewis

While all these parts of the Taft-Hartley Act were dangerous, perhaps none was more humiliating than the section requiring all officers of local unions and central bodies to sign an affidavit proclaiming they were not communists. In an act that foreshadowed the communist witch-hunts to come, the affidavit requirement made the implicit assumption that labor leaders were communists unless and until they affirmed otherwise—that they were, essentially, guilty until proven innocent. While all of the AFL’s leadership opposed communism—the organization considered it a fundamental threat to the peace and freedom of laborers worldwide—they had serious reservations about giving in to such red-baiting. During a hurried meeting at the Drake Hotel in Chicago, the AFL Executive Council officers chose to not sign the affidavit arguing they did not represent a specific local, but rather the entire federation. General Counsel Robert Denham, however, ruled that the officers—specifically AFL President Green, his Secretary, and all the AFL Vice Presidents—would have to file the affidavit as officers of the federal unions.

In response, the AFL leadership came up with a compromise. At the annual AFL convention President Green and the Executive Council decided to alter the title of Vice President, making only the President and Secretary official officers, to avoid forcing the 13 Vice Presidents to sign the anti-communist affidavit. The deal was satisfactory to all except, predictably, John L. Lewis, who refused to “grovel.” He instead wanted the AFL to refuse to comply; as Reuben recounted years later in an interview:

The temperament of John L. Lewis was such at times that he was willing to take on a scrap with almost anybody; he’s willing to fight the employer or anybody else, and even to fight his associates in the labor world…John L. Lewis was opposed to the Taft-Hartley law, and had good reasons for it. He wanted his associates on the Executive Council to disregard the law on the theory that if all the unions disregarded the law which happens to be a permissive law, then the law would naturally become obsolete and unworkable. He got to quarreling with the members of the Executive Council over that issue.[42] That quarrel grew heated, exciting the passions of those present. Reuben, who reported on the conference that year for the ISFL, described the convention scene at the time. “He lost in a spectacular fight in which he went down slugging to the very end,” he wrote. “The dramatic floor fight, which had been seething underneath since the convention opened, will be remembered as one battle in which John L. Lewis received tremendous applause, but darned few votes.”[43]

In the end, Lewis was outvoted. That December, the disgruntled UMW chief he sent a note to President Green reading simply “We disaffiliate.”[44] Just one year after being welcomed back into the arms of the AFL, Lewis and the UMW was out on its own, again.

Reuben Targets Taft-Hartley Politicians

It is nearly impossible to overstate the impact the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act had on the American labor movement. The Act greatly intensified the political focus of the organization’s activities, setting it on the path that would transform it into an electoral machine. “The act produced a change of degree in the labor movement,” Rayback writes, “After the first shock had worn off, organized labor turned to politics with a vengeance. ‘Repeal of the Taft-Hartley Slave labor Act’ became a watchword which brought about the revival or the creation of labor political agencies.”[45] In the wake of Taft-Hartley’s approval, the AFL and its affiliated state federations began to abandon their traditional non-partisan political policy. The Democrats likewise took full advantage of the situation, aligning themselves even closer with the rights of labor. The comments of Democratic U.S. Senator Claude Pepper, published in the pages of the ISFL Weekly, was a prime example of Democratic sentiment: “The selfish and greedy few, not satisfied with the biggest profits corporate enterprise has ever made… speaking through the Republican party… the power which forced this inequitable Taft-Hartley Act upon the nation and put its clutch around the throat of every American working man and working woman.”[46]

Reuben, at the spear’s tip of this movement, didn’t wait for the nation to react. At the 1947 ISFL Conference, he opened the affair with a heated attack on Taft-Hartley and its masters, linking them to the last mortal threat America had faced and calling for unity in the face of such danger:

In this grave crucial time in the world’s history it becomes the duty of labor to look ahead rather than to rehash the past. Reaction is definitely on the march. Reaction can bring Fascism to America just as it did to Germany, Italy and Japan. Fascism’s first blows are always aimed at workers…

Why should we beg labor’s enemies to be reasonable? We have the strength to smash the forces of hatred and reaction if we have the sense to unite… Labor unity is the crying need of the hour, not only to save our unions, but to defend our liberties. Let us bypass the sad fate of Germany and her former allies. Let there be labor unity between the CIO, Railroad Brotherhoods and the American Federation of Labor and in this way stop the rising tide of Fascism in America.[47]

Soderstrom was prepared to follow his words with action. As reporters relaying Reuben’s message across the state described:

In a ringing attack, Soderstrom told 1,300 delegates to the weeklong convention that the best way for labor to command respect is by ‘enlightened action and united strength.’ He said time for action is ‘growing short.’ Setting a new precedent for the federation, the bushy-haired labor leader listed Illinois’s ‘anti-labor congressmen’ and called for their defeat. The federation has never before named specific candidates or officials to be defeated or elected.[48]

One by one Reuben read their names aloud to the crowd—cowardly politicians that the ISFL would now officially commit its upmost effort to removing. Soon after the convention, Reuben formed a Labor Committee specifically tasked with bringing down Taft-Hartley backers. The 29-member “Labor Congressional Committee” targeted 19 Illinois congressmen that had voted in favor of Taft-Hartley. They would spend the next year grooming alternative candidates and supporting politicians who had stood up and opposed the act.[49] Soderstrom swore electoral vengeance, writing:

Labor isn’t showing its teeth just to be cussed. It’s because the Taft-Hartley Act makes participation in politics a necessity. There is a notion in the labor movement that this is a free country and in the primary and fall election if 1948 the membership of the Illinois State Federation of Labor is going to enjoy proving it to the discomfort of those who overrode the President’s veto…

There are approximately 16,000 precinct committeemen in Illinois, 8,000 of them are Democrats and 8,000 are Republicans. In addition to that there are 204 county chairmen in the two parties. Many of these political organization people are responsive to the labor groups in their precincts or counties. Full information about the labor voting records of anti-union members of Congress should be sent to the precinct committeemen and county chairmen of both major parties.

Those who voted for the Taft-Hartley bill are a burden to their political party and election workers are likely to drop them for candidates that will not draw the fire of one million three hundred and fifty-thousand union men and women who are going to the Illinois polls in the election of 1948.[50]

As the year came to an end, Reuben faced the future with a new, grim determination. Despite his success in turning back anti-labor legislation in Illinois, he faced a hostile national scene with politicians at the beck and call of industrial interests. If labor was to succeed, it would need to find a new way forward, and Reuben was ready to take center stage against any and all opposition. 1948 was going to be a fight.

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